Smoking Hashtags
Posted on November 1, 2013 Leave a Comment
TGIF, right? Yeah, that used to be more exciting before they pulled Family Matters, Step by Step and Boy Meets World from the best programming block this side of Thursday nights on NBC circa 1996, but now, Fridays just mean having to see #FollowFriday (or #FF, if you f-ing like) proliferate throughout my social stream.
I’ve always hated these because they’re not only pandering, but was a trend started by Mashable, the landing spot for all douche canoes floating on social streams. I understand it even less considering that Twitter, in particular, has a pretty good algorithm displaying people you should follow that really defeats the point of this weekly onslaught of hashtag abuse.
Which got me thinking a little about the purpose of hashtags.
How To Stalk (or Source) Someone on Twitter
Posted on October 31, 2013 3 Comments
Twitter can’t be beat when it comes to business development. Sure, it’s good for engagement, and great for sharing content. That’s what it’s really designed for, after all. But the nice thing about effective engagement and relevant content on Twitter is that you can build up a very targeted, highly segmented base of followers which essentially make them warm leads.
If you want to know how to proactively source talent with Twitter’s advanced search function, Jen Picard recently published a great guide for recruiters worth reading. For just-in-time recruiting, I’d also recommend FollowerWonk, a free tool offering many of the same functions but with some nice sorting and ranking tools. Getting true value from Twitter, however, is entirely correlated (in my experience) not to who you find or engage, but who your followers are.
Hiring Assessments & Astrology
Posted on October 30, 2013 3 Comments
It’s pretty obvious recruiting isn’t rocket science, but it might as well be. The goal of talent management, after all, basically involves looking for “stars” and making sure they’re ‘aligned’ with organizational needs, lest they end up in the “black hole” of the hiring process. That’s why it’s time to take a look at the newest weapon in the war for talent: astrology.
If you’re feeling skeptical about the ability of planetary alignment to predict quality of hire, remember that first feeling you had when you learned your Myers-Briggs acronym? They have about the same amount of scientific validity (to true believers, anyway), after all, and both rely almost exclusively on confirmation bias to generate (and validate) their findings.
Analyze This: Debunking the Myth of HR Technology Analysts
Posted on October 29, 2013 Leave a Comment
With the HR technology marketplace seemingly evolving at the speed of a tweet, companies selling into the space are increasingly employing sophisticated techniques to increase both share of mind and, subsequently, share of market. Trends like big data, social media and mobile enablement have become ubiquitous not only in product roadmaps but also in market positioning.
Despite these seismic shifts in product strategy and sales, however, one time tested tactic remains at the center of almost every vendors’ competitive playbook, a critical competency and competitive differentiator for an increasingly competitive (and lucrative) industry: effectively working with third party analysts.
Tool Time: Three Sourcing & Recruiting Technologies Worth Watching
Posted on October 25, 2013 Leave a Comment
The HR Technology Conference serves, for our industry at least, as the debutante ball for talent technology, the annual ‘coming out’ event for dozens of new systems, solutions and services jockeying for their fair share of recruiting organizations’ annual spend. This year, over 170 vendors issued event related press releases, and I’ve sat through literally 51 briefings before, during and after the conference.
Now that we’re over a week out, and the dust has finally settled on another HR Technology conference, here are some of the tools & technologies that, for me, stand out as among the most intriguing tools and technologies in talent acquisition. As a caveat, not all of these vendors actually exhibited or participated in the conference, but are worth following – and, if you’re a practitioner or decision maker, are worth a look when finalizing 2014 budgets.