March Madness - HR Carnival Style

The latest HR Carnival is up on Kris Dunn's HR Capitalist blog,

where Kris has set up a 'March Madness' style tournament of your favorite HR blogs.Flickr - Curtis Perry

My HR Technology Blog is included as well, (but if you are reading this, I am already one of your favorites, right?)

Please take a few minutes to check out the Carnival, vote for the HR blogs you enjoy, (or give some sympathy votes to me).

Thanks Kris for hosting and for the great idea for this Carnival.

Google Reader Envy

Do you ever open up Google Reader (or whatever feed reader you use) and see those 'new item' alerts Flickr - Ucumarifor all your favorite blogs, or the blogs of your competitors (assuming you are tracking them and you should be)?

And then did you ever think to yourself, 'Oh Crap, everyone has new content today, and I spent all weekend watching football, barbecuing, and otherwise goofing off and I didn't write a new post for everyone to read when they got to the office on Monday?'

Then you try to make a rationalization that you were busy with your kid's birthday party, your house is for sale and someone wanted to see it, and you have about five other 'side' projects going on that are competing for your time. But still, you look at that feed reader, see your blog, and see a big fat zero for new content.

So, what do you do?  Slap together a half-hearted post just to get something, anything out there? Well, sure sometimes you do just that.  But today, I am not going to resort to that cowards way out.  No, I will do something ever lower, rather that even try to create some compelling, original content, I will simply link out to a few of those 'new items' that were in my Google Reader this morning and made me feel so inadequate.  Since I did not come up with anything interesting for you to read, try some of these posts, from some obviously more 'together' and dedicated bloggers. Enjoy!

From the HR Maven - HR in Higher Education

From HR Thoughts - 'Blitzing' your way up the career ladder

From Michael Specht - the critical need for Succession Planning

From the Human Capitalist - Has Google's Recruiting Model lost its luster?

From systematicHR - Should your Applicant Tracking System be more like a CRM?

From the Taleo Talent Management blog - Why do most boards have no HR types?

And finally, one non-HR related item in my Reader today.

The Baseball Prospectus blog takes a break from baseball to note - soccer player Kaka set to earn $37M per season with Manchester City

So there you have it, a sampling of the 250 or so 'new' items in my reader this morning. Since I did not produce any meaningful content this weekend, at least these folks did.

Back with some new, compelling HR Tech content tomorrow, (I promise).

Hi Santa

Hi Santa
Originally uploaded by steveboese

Time to make your HR Technology Christmas list?

This year I am asking Santa for the following:

1. More vendors willing to donate use of software for my HR Technology class, (thanks once more Halogen Software, SpectrumHR, and Standout Jobs).

2. More students, faculty, colleagues on Twitter, and seeing the value of this platform - follow me - Sbjet

3. Help to make this blog a better resource for students and others who care about HR and Technology.

4. Some more converts in the internal organization to 'modern' tools and technologies to facilitate collaboration, sharing, and connecting.

That is not too much to ask I think. 

And really, I made this post to test the automatic feed of the Santa pic from Flickr over to the blog.  Absolutely awesome functionality.

What is on your wish list for HR Technology?

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Wordle - Word Clouds in 30 seconds

Happy Monday! Was messing around with Wordle again, and so check out the latest creation, created in 30 seconds from the blog RSS feed:

Your HR Director should blog

Either I don't know the right Google search terms, or almost no HR Directors or VPs of HR are publicly blogging.

This seems odd to me, for in these times of forecasted talent shortages, fierce competition for skilled workers, and difficulty in keeping your best assets, the VP of HR really should assume the role of 'Head Talent Marketer'.

So many of the largest consumer brands have invested significant time, resources, and funds in corporate marketing-type blogs aimed at sharing and conversing with customers, prospects, and media.  Some well-known examples:

General Motors - GM Fast Lane

Kodak - 1000 Words Blog

Delta Airlines - Under the Wing

All of these blogs do a great job of shaping a message, helping to define a brand, and connect with their various audiences.

Why wouldn't this work for a VP of HR?  A blog led by the Head Talent Marketer and supplemented by other thought leaders of the organization I think would be an important addition to your recruitment efforts. The leader in the Recruitment efforts can and should be the biggest cheerleader for the organization. 

Why is this a great place to work?  Here are some incredible things that are going on here. Look at some of the superstars you'll get a chance to work with if you come on board. Those are just a few topics that the Head Talent Marketer can address.

I can't be the only one who thinks this is a decent idea, so my question is - where are the VP of HR blogs?

If you know of one - send me the link or leave a comment.

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