I logged on to watch Robert Scoble’s WorkFast 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.
Continue reading ‘Social Disorders: Do Not Adjust Your Set’
I believe Recruiting.com has fulfilled its purpose for me and is about to give up the ghost. The so-called recruiting community portal serves no strategic purpose and drives all but no traffic. There is no interesting content that I couldn’t get somewhere else. There are no pictures of Filipino hot babes after all and, quite frankly, the site has turned into a useless waste of blogroll, more irritation than anything else.
Kick it…The intrinsic value of Recruiting.com beyond it’s earlier googliciouness and rambunctiousness has been reworked by the Recruitosphere’s alchemist Jason Davis. The transfiguration of Recruiting.com in RecruitingBlogs.com has been more than a reinvention. With less emphasis on the blogging bit and dollops of slobber about “community,” Jason Davis has enhanced his reputation for being the guy in the right place at the right time. If nothing else, the passing of Recruiting.com and ascension of RecruitingBlogs.com, — Jason’s hand in both — reminds me that there is indeed a time and place for everything.
…see if moves! No doubt for some, Recruiting.com will continue to serve a purpose. One imagines that when Steven Rothberg, Andy Headworth, Jason Buss and other longstanding posters stop submitting their articles we might observe the stillness of the corpse, and the decomposition can begin. While revolting to thinkabout blueflies and maggots doing their thing, without their feasting we could never get beyond the off-topic stink. Who knows, I might continue to post my occasional musings on Recruiting.com too, just to appease the SEO gods. On the other hand, continuing to share the love with a stiff Recruiting.com, well, that would be sick — wouldn’t it? Yeah, probably — sacrilegious too.
Nah, its a goner. Oh well, in blogging as in life I guess, all things must come to an end. Otherwise we would never know that it is time to begin again, would we?
I learned yesterday that John Sumser will be vacating the Editor’s desk at Recruiting.com. His going — timed for early May — will mark the closing of another chapter in this seminal site’s interesting history, perhaps the closing of the book.
At this point I have to ask: “Who cares?” John’s throw-away remark at the end of the Recruiting Animals’ Morning After Show referencing his exit suggests he may feel the same way. Who knows? For sure, for those who look within the Recruitosphere’s publishing clique for amusement it will be amusing in the coming weeks, no doubt.
To my own pathethic contribution…hmmm. Recruiting.com has been an interesting place for me to experiment with a number of ideas some of which fizzled out, some of which sputtered along and some of which remain open-ended.
Moving forward, I shall simply plug my Bunsen into the new mixture of gas and hot air on RecruitingBlogs.com, the combustible bloggy-ning thing where I now spend my early mornings. Like you perhaps?
Ah, Recruitopia…doesn’t it just make you sick?
Mommy! Mommy! Come quickly, Daddy’s blogging again!
Is Twitter naff?
Now, c’mon kids, how hard was that?
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?
But then again, hold on — I’m in stealth mode! Am I really ready to start drawing attention to myself?
And what about my beloved Recruiting.com, Jobster’s love-child? We don’t want to tick off the new sugar-daddy, do we?
And another in the series, Food for Thought…
I remember many years ago when subliminal advertising was being used for the first time, at least that we knew of, there was a hullabaloo about it in the U.K. when I was growing up. The concern was this Kremlin-inspired technique was nothing more than a cynical attempt to take over the minds of Coronation Street’s already gullible audience. Right, as if.
Around the same time there was a stink because James Bond [himself!] was kowtowing to big business buying into their latest subliminal ploy, product placement. James Bond as our poster boy for fast cars and hard liquor was consistent with the image of the cold-war lady-killer but pushing product? No, no — it was un-British.
I guess at some point someone should have pointed out that any form of advertising that works below our normal levels of consciousness runs the risk of being viewed by the unwitting as suspect. It hardly matters if the message comes and goes in the blink of an eye or is unobtrusive in other ways, the intent is the same — to influence the subject’s behavior whether they become aware of it or not. Outrageous, huh? The lengths we’ll go to…I mean, really!
Anyway, somewhere between the idea of being able to control feeble minds and getting blotto in the back of a Bentley I made the juvenile decision to enter into the glamorous world of advertising. It was either that or become an MI6 operative, working undercover.
Ahem…
Continue reading ‘Food for Thought: The Weakest Link’
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.
On the same day Jim Stroud posted his interview with Sumser, Shally Steckerl posted his reflections on his year doing the conference thing, linking to one of the posts I wrote on the subject: From the Frontlines to the Home Front: A Different Kind of Conference!
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?
Lesson learned? Hit the road, Jack — or whatever your name is!
Well, its Christmas Eve. It seems everyone is at home googling this and googling that.
A larger number of visitors than usual are flocking to this ever so ‘umble blog today. To read my learned works? Nah, its that Kingsbury fellow!
Being a contrarian has historically been a mixed career move. On one hand, it may get a statue put up in your honor. On the other hand, it will likely be erected on the spot where you were hanged, drawn, and quartered before a cheering crowd of thousands.
Bah, humbug!
Bill Vick gave an excellent — albeit abbreviated — presentation last week at John Sumser’s Dallas Recruiting Roadshow. It was interesting on many levels. Taking the elevator up, first floor…
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!
Roof top parking: Just a thought.
Part 2 in my Food for Thought series…
Early on in my professional career I worked as the Manager of Market Planning for BIS Banking Systems, a U.K.-based subsidiary of the now defunct NYNEX Corporation. That was back in the ’80s.
One of my earliest assignments was to input to the organization’s five-year strategic plan. BIS had never produced a five-year plan before, at least not to the exacting specifications of a U.S. monolith.
The project required my assessments of things like market size and potential for a variety of segments across international banking, computing and communications. Without the aid of anything remotely resembling the Internet, let alone search engines — or in Banking Systems’ case a library even — I took the task in my youthful stride thinking I could get away with semblance over substance.
Well, I was wrong. Expected to slice and dice markets with precise measurement and translate all that with something “strategic” left me stumped from the get-go. In short, I was well and truly buggered.
Continue reading ‘Food for Thought: The Man in the Know’
Back Chat