Archive
A presentation inspired by my conversations with friends Michael Kelemen, John Sumser and Don Ramer.
It is embarrassing to be tapped as a “thought leader” when the output of trying to write my Recruiting Trends inaugural post is a waste-paper basket full of candy wrappers and a mind numbed with hyperglycemic confusion. If you could just see this “thought leader” in action! On my hands and knees I am reduced to digging through discarded pay stubs to recover half-scratched notes tossed out two hours ago, trying to work out what I was thinking when, for a brief moment before the sugar kicked in, I thought I had a thought…
Teaser scribbled under the heading, The Talent Management Time-Bomb:
If metrics is to planning what sourcing is to search, and assessment is to performance management what leadership development is to succession planning,’ then isn’t that like saying ‘if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got’ because ”past performance is no guarantee of future results?
Now that’s a doozey, huh? Try this, scribbled on the back of another:
If the personnel department [the Reagan/Bush years] preceded strategic HR [the Clinton years] then what does talent management [the GW years] precede?
I do hope all this A-musing will keep my detractors off the scent of a post published a year ago to the day of my scheduled debut on Recruiting Trends in which I said:
Thought leadership” is one of the phrases, like “best-of-breed” and “mindshare” that have an Orwellian ring about them that simply agitates the rebel in me. I know that those things in of themselves are not bad, no more than seed-money is sleazy, but anything that suggests that my brains need to be scrambled as part of a leadership strategy leaves me, well, muddled.
To my own defense, that post was written in a similar state of sugar-induced confusion, all “thunked out” I was.
RecruitingBlogs.com – a recruiting blog about recruiting blogs – how delicious.
Now I have a place to apply some of what I understand to be the value in the recursive nature of blogging which was difficult to grasp when I flirted with the not-quite-so-self-referential RecruitingBloggers.com and the issues of cross-posting. I think I also understand now some of the payoff for “digesting” as opposed to ruminating, giving back more than I am taking I hope. We’ll see.
I was rather pleased with my first post on RecruitingBlogs.com, The Virtue of Short Posts. Unfortunately, it seems only John Sumser got the joke. Maybe.
Posted Are You Getting Paid What you’re Worth for Recruiting Pharmacists and PTs? on Bells & Whistles which details CyberSleuth Shally’s upcoming sourcing clinic for healthcare:
On Thursday, June 7 at 1:30 Eastern Daylight Time you will have a chance to learn exactly how the best retained search specialists find candidates that the rest of us may never know ever existed. Starting on Friday, June 8 you can begin recruiting them.
As you can see…
…work has kept me focused on healthcare recently.
Following up on John Sumser: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing? and Jason Davis: The Recruitosphere’s Darling, Broken Promises posted on Bells & Whistles.
Posted on Bells & Whistles:
I was lucky to be introduced to Laurence Haughton a couple of weeks ago. Laurence is the author of two books which have received enthusiastic reviews It’s Not What You Say… It’s What You Do – How Following Through at Every Level Can Make or Break Your Company and It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small… It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow - How to use speed as a competitive tool in business. I have added both titles to my bookshelf and you should add them to yours too.
…Birthday Greetings, Bottle of Wine?
It has been a little while since we posted here, hasn’t it? No matter. Those of you who know me well enough to care will also know that I have been somewhat distracted with other projects. Those of you who don’t know me that well, well, don’t care do you?
With the launching of Bells & Whistles: The RCI Recruitment Solutions Blog I find that most of my work here is done. While this blog has been an entirely personal adventure, what I have learned has been most valuable in ways that I could only apply to “work” and other assorted labors of love.
But it is like a bug, you know, having your own little piece of cyberspace to graffiti. So I think I might continue to post from time-to-time, most likely when I feel like talking to myself is the best way to work through a problem, not wanting to upset anyone I might otherwise want to impress. Maybe I’ll post here when I want to write just for the fun of it.
For sure, if this first blog has taught me one thing it is that I do need a personal space for my private public musing. Making connections between work, the business of recruiting, ambition, profit, anticappointment and what-have-you in the context of God, sex, power, bodily functions and boyhood — not to overlook the occasional rude observation about industry luminaries — is hardly appropriate when blogging — as I must now — with the decorum of polite company and paying guests in mind.
So this blog will continue to serve some purpose I guess, even if that purpose becomes increasingly obscured over time, those idiosyncratic connections and contexts never being referenced here again, rather left to the archives for some fool to take issue with.
Who knows?
Maybe I’ll just post links here to other places where I am my contemporary self, diverting one’s attention from my clumsy first kiss with authenticity, my heavy-handed groping with social media. Little, innocuous links giving way to a lighter touch perhaps or just popping in and out when the need to wax lyrical overrides my greater need to cost-justify my time blogging.
Really, darlings, who knows? Who cares?
No, not another post about the currently beleaguered Chief Jobster Jason Goldberg, or a commentary on his recent opacity, unless you want it to be, of course. I write – metaphysically – to please you I hope although on this blog, as previously reported, I’m almost done here.
Ding…
Well, I’ve had fun these past few days, blogging here more than in recent weeks. At least, so it would seem on the surface. In reality I have been busy putting together a great many more posts for the launch of a new and spiffy “blog-enabled” corporate website, going live sometime late January, early February perhaps. My only fear is that by then there will be a general armistice in the war for talent, or Dave Lefkow will have left Jobster for Taleo or some other industry brain drainer, or they’ll be giving away credits for recruiter training on the back of specially marked boxes of Special K – or some such nonsense – like my postings here, obviously dated.
Dong…
Looking back on my posts here I see my tagline “A Contrarian View of Talent Management” hardly describes the bulk of my content since posting here in June. Rather, my work on the whole seems much more introspective and/or recruiting blog-centric. A little light in the talent management department compared to some. So I have changed the tagline to, “A Contrarian View of Life in the Recruitosphere” which seemed to be the overall tenor, regardless. I will be blogging about talent management and related topics on the new corporate blog – Bells and Whistles – and looking forward to shamelessly commercializing my efforts.
Ding…
I am planning to write a personal blog focusing on stuff that interests me in business and in blogging and in general, abandoning the need for this impossible love-hate relationship with the Recruitosphere or an online persona that needs such frequent watering.
Dong..
When I get going, if you find what I post there interesting, I might ask that you please keep it to yourself. First, I am not nearly smart enough to develop threads about how, for example, the augmented social network (PDF) is finally transcending the perceived or real limitations of monetization and walled gardens and trust and persistent identity, evolving to realize it’s potential. Phew. Nor will I have much time to become embroiled in lengthy exchanges, baring my nincompoopery for Mother to see. I’ll be too busy with my other duties. Second, I wouldn’t want everyone to know what I was researching as I sought to develop some competitive advantage for my business, now would I?
So, for who does the bell toll? Jason Goldberg, it tolls for thee.
When John Sumser sent me an invitation to post on interbiznet as part of his Top Ten in 2006 yearend review, I could not have been more surprised, gob-smacked actually. It was not that he referred to me as “one of a few” or that he said – quite nonchalantly – the others were “leading thinkers in the industry.” The reason that I was taken aback was that anyone widely respected in the bubble – let alone the patriarch of recruiting bloggers – would place me in such esteemed company, let me post first. Well, ain’t that something? I mean, I am accustomed to being spanked on the bottom for being naughty, not pat on the head for being good:
We had lunch with Ami in a prototypical Manhattan diner the first time we physically met him. We’d been hearing from and about him while suffering the lash of his pen over the past year or so. Ami is the single most provocative and infectious of the new voices that have emerged in the blogging fury that has taken center stage in the industry. It felt like a gathering of old Bolsheviks plotting the overthrow of anything that came up. We were completely unprepared to like him so much.
As each contributor posted their take on the 10 most important things that happened in our industry during 2006 I realized – seeing that on so many points we were agreed – that perhaps I could hold my own as a panelist at some fancy-schmancy recruiting conference, command some un-Godly fee. We “thought leaders” do get paid un-Godly fees, don’t we? No? How about .01% of the take plus actual expenses? No? How about some free publicity, stroke of the ol’ ego then? Hmmm…that sucks. I might as well stay at home and blog then, don’t you think?
Thank you for honoring me John, sincerely, thank you…
- Amitai Givertz : Top 10 in 2006 (v1)
- David Hurst : Top 10 in 2006 (v2)
- Scott Dow : Top 10 in 2006 (v3)
- Kevin Wheeler : Top 10 in 2006 (v4)
- Hank Stringer : Top 10 in 2006 (v5)
- Tim Driver : Top 10 in 2006 (v6)
- Steve Levy : Top 10 in 2006 (v7)
- Martin Snyder : Top 10 in 2006 (v8)
- Don Ramer : Top 10 in 2006 (v9)
- Hans Geiskes : Top 10 in 2006 (v10)
…and who knows, one day you might invite me to join one of your panel discussions, eh? I’ll negotiate a special rate just for you, John.
Back Chat