A Template for Boring B2B Blog Posts.
Posted on July 30, 2015 2 Comments
So, you want to write a B2B blog? While it sounds like a lot of work, in fact, it requires little more than following a few simple rules to make sure that you say stuff without saying anything, never offend a client or customer even a little tiny bit, and trying to push a product marketing agenda while making it look like you’re remaining ostensibly objective.
The goal of B2B blogging, of course, is not to entertain, educate or inform your audience – it’s to sell product. That means you don’t have to worry about your blog being good – the whole point is just having one. This, of course, makes you a thought leader by default.
Oh, The People You’ll Meet.
Posted on July 28, 2015 4 Comments
It’s been a pretty good month for Eisenhower era literature, as Americans discovered Atticus Finch was a racist and Harper Lee still can’t move as many titles as Chelsea Handler, and, perhaps more importantly, Dr. Seuss dropped a new book today. Well, he didn’t do it, although if he was a zombie, that would make him even more badass than he already was, a populist Escher mixing equal parts parenting and psychedelics. Only in a tasteful, understated kind of way, unlike my other great childhood influence, HR Puffnstuff.
Only Fools, Horses and One Lost American: Reverse Imperialism, Recruiting and #RecFest2
Posted on July 15, 2015 3 Comments
Last week, I went to London to talk about creating killer recruiting content at RecFest (that’s #RecFest2 on Twitter). I don’t normally write event wrap up posts, but I kind of feel like I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t, considering the topic, and the fact that I talked a ton about blogging. While I gave myself the out by giving “only write when you have something to say” as one of my purported ‘best practices’ (albeit with the disclaimer that those don’t exist when it comes to writing), I still feel like I owe Jaime Leonard and the entire Reconverse crew a debt of gratitude for flying my ass from Fort Worth, Texas to foggy Londontown. And trusting me to open to a room full of, well, right proper recruiters.
Because, as conferences go, it was brilliant – and in the American sense of good format, attendee ratio and venue (it was a friggin’ battleship, which beats the Las Vegas Convention Center). In the British sense of the word, it was also brilliant, but I can’t get away with saying that shit anymore than I could get away with calling a truck a lorry or the shitter a loo. Them’s fighting words where I’m from – much like “The Irish are a very competent and hard working people” to your average denizen of the Home Counties.
Things Done Changed: The Everyday Struggle of Applicant Tracking Systems.
Posted on July 14, 2015 5 Comments
“And now the shit’s getting crazier and major; Kids younger than me, they got the SkyBrand pagers; Going Out of Town, Blowing Up; 6 Months Later, All the Dead Bodies Showing Up.”
-The Notorious B.I.G.
There is no single piece of technology that’s more universally despised throughout recruiting’s rank and file than applicant tracking systems.
That these cumbersome, rigid legacy systems, written on a code base that’s about as outdated cuneiform, should find themselves the target of such animosity is mostly deserved. And while a Biggie reference might seem out of date or weird in a post about ATS, the thing is, he was still around when most of the on-premise solutions still in use today were as new as Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis.
But while, as Big pointed out in Things Done Changed (a track released in 1996, the same year as PeopleSoft) it seems like, in his words, it seems like we’re still “totin’ techs for rep … we get hype and shit and start liftin’ shit … motherf*&%@, this ain’t back in the day, but you don’t hear me though.” I’m pretty sure I’ve had the same sentiment at almost every user conference for a legacy ERP I’ve heard in the past five years or so. If you’re in recruiting, the hustle hasn’t changed, and neither have the systems, frankly.
The Lovers, the Dreamers & #SHRM15
Posted on July 2, 2015 3 Comments
I’ve always thought that HR practitioners were kind of like puppets, with people with P&L decision making and executive management positions more or less manipulating this function by proxy while making the back office Betties and HR Business Partners (an oxymoron if ever I’ve heard one) be manipulated into thinking that they’re the ones pulling the strings.
Snark Attack 