Some time ago my wife was suffering from a persistent abdominal pain. A kind neighbor who learned that medical science had failed us for years came over to lay hands on my missus and pray with the family.
Our apostolic neighbor got to work and in no time was possessed. She began uttering some unknown prayer that was only coherent to God and herself.
While it seemed quite possible that everyone else in the room was being transported to a higher place, I found myself being teleported to the Appalachian foothills where one imagines spirits of a different sort give voice to an equally unintelligible, if not distilled, form of incantation.
Somehow, in my befuddled Hebraic interpretation of what was going on I confused the “charismatic church” with the “charismatic me” and foolishly decided to apply the lessons of the day to some healing of my own.
Without going in to the pathetic details of my amorous overtures — or my completely missing the point with the snake metaphor — suffice it to say, getting lickered up, and my own very clumsy “laying on of hands,” resulted in my waking up the next day with a thick head and a lip to match. Go figure.
I logged on to watch Robert Scoble’sWorkFast TV full of excitement. Joined by social media superstar Shel Israel and modern day Leonardo Mark Bernstein the lineup would have been enough to compel anyone to tune in. But the topic for this premier — technology and the future of work – that was the clincher.
All the more for being full of anticipation at the beginning, by the end I felt deflated and annoyed.
Particularly disappointing was Scoble’s self-confessed, web-enabled obsessive-compulsiveness and apparent delight at finding new ways to feed it. Rather than seek help for what most would consider a disorder it appears he finds all the solace he needs in a similarly unhealthy physical attachment to his computer. I could be wrong but it just struck me that way, very odd.
Well, it would be bad sport for me not to at least recognize paidContent.org’s headline having been one of the early adopters of Jobster-related content for a little SEO lift.
With the company’s likely implosion at hand, better to make hay while the sun shines, don’t ya fink?
I enjoyed listening to John Sumser in the Recruiters Lounge this week, stumping for the Recruiting Roadshow. I think the Recruiting Roadshow is a brilliant idea and all for a good cause. It will be interesting to watch how things roll out in 2008. I hope that I have been helpful in some small way getting the thing in motion.
The lessons learned form all this? Well, altogether too many for a quick missive but the most important lesson was maybe this:
Those of “us” who are bound by the niceties of political association, cliquey affiliation, fat-cat business, product to push, thought-bleedership, social status, blogebrity or whatever — those of us who collectively make up the industry’s self-appointed infrastructure — need to get out more. There is nothing quite like seeing 98% of a Roadshow audience — representative of the local recruiting community — bemused by talk of the social networks, blogging and search engine stuff to put things in perspective. Video resumes? Give me a break! Skype? Isn’t that a skin disease?
In a hard, hard world where people still run help-wanted classifieds and equate sourcing with Monster page views some of us could do a lot worse than get to know the people who we are supposed to be serving, then actually serve them — why not?
Read my take for the coming year just published by ZoomInfo…
Amitai offers a different take, predicting that early adopters of social media for recruiting will remain in the minority. Too few frontline recruiters will risk the perils of transparency in corporate environments that need to mitigate risk and innovation and apply bottom-line metrics instead. As the economics of recruiting come under closer scrutiny with a softening economy and an inability to quantify the ROI on social media, there will be a slowdown in the rate of adoption by recruiters.
Bill’s presentation introduced “bleeding edge” technology to recruiters who by and large — by their own show of hands — were hemorrhaging on old notions of how to use the Internet. It was that that was was most interesting to me. I wondered, “Is the so-called war for talent going to be won with what most recruiters are currently equipped with?”I don’t think so.
Mezzanine level, going up: On the topic of the importance of online profiles — why recruiters should have them, how they are used in recruiting, and how they will be used in the future — Bill made an interesting comment, something to the effect that the day is coming that everything that could be known about a person will be available for anyone to sniff out online. Hmmm…that may have some downside, don’t you think?
First floor: Listening to Bill, I was reminded of a couple of things taken off my morning reader earlier in the year. The first was a post by John Sumser on ERN called More About Search and the other was posted on Proverbs31 titled He Knows My Name. Somewhere there was a stream of conciousness that went from technology for recruiters to playing cards to house of cards to, well, frankly I don’t remember — I’ll have to read the posts again!
Second floor: Somehow in that flow of confused recollection I concluded that in what Bill was suggesting — our being sorted according to relative value [good deeds] and reputation [good name], and all that for some omnipresent recruiters’ advantage — it would be just as well to remember what happened the last time tried to create such a thing — a whole heap of confusion!
How out of synch are employers with the next-generation workforce when our schools are so out of synch with their students?
In the same way as brick-and-mortar schools can barely contain a wireless generation how well are they preparing them for future jobs the likes of which we haven’t imagined yet?
[Can't see the video? Click here to view on YouTube]
How many entry-level job descriptions read like they were scratched out on chalkboards, the required skills, competencies, attitudes and what-have-you reminiscent of workplaces that predate Google?
An interesting post on Social Media ExplorerDeconstructing Second Life questions the value of Second Life based on a review of the virtual world’s demographics:
The demographics show 8.5 million users, but only 561,000 of those are “active.” While nearly 40 percent of the active ones are age 25-34, only 26 percent are from the United States (with Brazil a distant second a 8.5). The numbers show 57 percent of active users are male.
So, the population is 561,000, not exactly a number global brands raise an eyebrow toward. Only 149,000 of those are in the U.S., so you’re basically trying to market to the population of Eugene, Ore. If you’re trying to reach men, your audience becomes 84,900. Women? Less.
When I spoke with Jim Stroud about this a few weeks ago he mentioned the Q-factor as being important — a counterpoint in the post — but unless you are recruiting techies who also happen to be early adopters, is there any point?
Back Chat