Pour One Out For These Dead Recruiting Trends, Homies.
Posted on July 8, 2014 Leave a Comment
Recruiting and HR pundits sure seem to like writing obituaries. Hell, there’s an entire cannon of posts, white papers and corporate copy on the death of any number of human capital-related themes. Reading through this generic genre, everything from job boards to resumes (false) to LinkedIn (true) are either dead or on life support. Most of these are premature in their declarations of imminent mortality, and written to sell consulting services or align with whatever keyword happens to be trending or whatever buzzword is performing well on Google.
The funny thing is, some of the hottest topics and trends in recruiting are, in fact, alive only by virtue of these same influencers, product and content marketers and “influencers” whose chief industry influence comes from successfully gaming Klout. Good news: some of their most omnipresent “trends” are about to become obsolete.
Original Content
Posted on July 3, 2014 Leave a Comment
This is the douchiest possible post, but a bunch of people have been asking me to write about writing, which makes me this sleazebag (not actor Rip Torn, whose name and jawline I continue to envy):
I’m Not In HR. Trust Me.
Posted on July 1, 2014 3 Comments
I haven’t written much recently, because the fact of the matter is I suck at writing on the road. When you train as a writer formally (which is to say, you pay to learn stuff you don’t need to know) and have silence and solipsism built into your process, it’s hard to find a corner and polish off some specious post on what some “thought leader” happens to be thinking. I’ve likely contributed as many conference wrap-up posts as anyone in the history of this annoying yet ubiquitous genre – and they’re designed to focus on the what and who of a conference, the small stuff like sessions or speakers, but never look beyond the preprogrammed scope of the conference agenda.
Recruiters: The Real Brand Ambassadors
Posted on June 10, 2014 11 Comments
I think a lot of my work was inspired by Punk Rock HR, which was the only recruiting related blog I actually read when I was actually recruiting; I didn’t want some pedantic professional “thought leadership” in the few minutes I had between meetings, interviews and phone screens. The reason I loved that blog – and the various iterations that have followed – was because there was a clear and distinct voice that wasn’t afraid to state the obvious, call out the asinine and undermine the conventional – and it came from a real person.
On Starting A Career
Posted on June 2, 2014 Leave a Comment
LinkedIn seems to be pimping this #IfIWere22 thing kind of hard, which is cute, considering that basically puts this retrospective series already out of the most desired online demographic. But for those Golden Girls aficionados, 60 Minutes enthusiasts and Murder She Wrote fans who think that LinkedIn is, in fact, a social network, 22 sounds like the beginning of time.
And for most, it is the traditional age where you start your career, although that’s increasingly becoming more difficult, the result of too much competition, too few jobs and a definite trend towards freelance and contract over employment in the workforce.