Let Me Ride.

I haven’t posted on this site for going on two years, now, as I’m sure absolutely no one noticed, as evidenced by its recent inclusion on several top 2019 HR and recruiting blogs, despite the fact that I haven’t actually posted anything on here in 2019.

Not that I’m complaining; I’ve been that completely inexperienced junior marketing guy responsible for compiling listless listicles for B2B content before, which is just about as sexy as it sounds, really.

I’ve probably read more blog posts about recruiting and work than just about anyone by now, which is probably why I’m such a douchebag.

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Virtual Insanity: Rethinking The Traditional Workplace.

One of my senior leaders once told me a funny story about the time his kid was asked about what Dad did for work. “He talks on the phone in the basement all day,” the kid replied.

This pretty much sums up a lot of people’s perceptions about virtual work.

The optics of stuff like staying clad in business casual khakis and collared shirts (except for Fridays, which seems arbitrary, TBH), sitting in traffic and driving miles to go to a generic cubicle in a generic office to do what could instead get done in the aforementioned basement must be more important than productivity, engagement or retention.

Glassdoor: An M&A Which Will Live in Infamy.

There are a lot of companies out there that actually walk the walk. Glassdoor, for a long time, was one of the good guys; they practiced the same sort of radical transparency they preached and were the rare company to actually champion the employee over the employer.

Of course, when you’re a startup, it’s pretty easy to live your values, but even as Glassdoor grew from another online recruiting startup into one of the industry’s most ubiquitous players, they remained focused on their vision of giving workers and candidates a voice. Read More

Feeling Lucky: Google Gets Into Sourcing.

One of the foundational premises of talent sourcing lies in the fact that traditional search engines are notoriously bad at searching for individual people and profiles, particularly as they relate to jobs.

If you’re looking for something, search engines are great. If you’re looking for someone, obviously, there are a few inherent limitations to even the most sophisticated search algorithms.

Search results generally tend to reward “authority,” which works for measuring the relative influence of websites based on a myriad of factors like external backlinks, keyword density and referral traffic. This is why Wikipedia almost inevitably comes up at the top of the organic results for almost every search involving a place or thing.

Not so a person, for whom the concept of relative authority is much more difficult to rank. Results favor a number of different platforms, such as Twitter streams embedded directly in results and the prevalence of LinkedIn profiles at the top of most organic vanity searches, or publishers. Read More

Um Yea: Not Another 2018 HR Tech Trends Post.

Here’s a good way to kick off a new year: for the first time in like, a decade, I’m actually not dreading writing one of those annual preview posts. See, if you’re in the recruitment content marketing business (a pretty shit nice, TBH), every year, you’ve got to put out a mandatory forecast into the trends and topics to expect in talent.

I’m about to out myself here – for the last 4 years, I’ve actually recycled the same post – the only modification being the year in question. They’ve been among my more popular articles, despite the fact I run the same copy and “predictions” every. Single. Year.

Except this one.

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