Your first 100 HR Twitter follows

Twitter.

In late December I posted 'An Introduction to Twitter for the HR Student', which was meant to be a guide and starting point for my HR Grad Students, as well as HR professionals who were interested in diving in the world of Twitter.  That post can be found here - and remains by far the most viewed post on this blog.

About a month has passed since that post, and I have since found and been found by many, many more talented, informative, interesting, funny, and fantastic HR Tweeps, so I thought I would try to expand the 'Introductory' HR Twitter list, and see if I (we) could come up with the definitive (for today) list of the 100 first follows for the HR student or professional.  So without further ado, lets see how far we can get.

 Me

1. SteveBoese - Me, since I am spending my 'free' time working on this, I get to be number 1.  Seriously, I am an HR Technology Instructor and advisor and I hope if you found your way here, you will give me a follow.

The Bloggers

2. Lisa Rosendahl - from the HR Thoughts blog

3. The HR Maven - from the HR Maven blog

4. lruettimann - from Punk Rock HR

5. sharlyn_lauby - from HR Bartender

6. hrwench - from the Hr Wench blog

7. Hr_Minion - from the HR Minion blog

8. williamtincup - from the Human Capital Vendor space blog

9. kris_dunn - from the HR Capitalist blog

10. pdxmikek - from the Info Box blog

11. mvndrvrt - from the Human Racehorses blog

12. penelopetrunk - from Brazen Careerist

13. thelance - from Your Hr Guy

14. ChrisFerdinandi - from Manager's Sandbox

15. marenhogan from marenated.com

The Recruiters - note a more complete list of recruiters to follow is here, from The Recruiter's Lounge

16. toddkmiec

17. Barry_at_Impact - Executive Recruiter

18. SJDelaney

19.CincyRecruiter - Executive Recruiter

20. blogging4jobs

21. JenWojcik

22. HireCentrix

23. TheRecruiterGuy

24. animal

25. jjbuss

26. heathergardner

27. havrilla

28. ejobfairs

29. SourcerKelly

30. StevenGilbert

31. jerry_albright

32. jimstroud

The Pros

33. HollyMVG - HR Director and Novelist, if you follow her now, maybe you can get a signed copy of her novel when it comes out, (maybe)

34. SHip - Executive Recruiting Consultant

35. clachnit - Exec Editor at Workforce Management

36. amylewis - from the Human Capital Institute

37. Kelly Mitton - recent HR Graduate and a great person to follow

38. johnhollon - Editor of Workforce Management

39. thealphafemme - HR Director

40. jessica_lee - Employment manager and blogger at Fistful of Talent

The Consultants

41. stelzner - from Inflexion Advisors and from what I hear, a friend of Obama, and the head 'Angel'

42. vastrat - a really deep thinker and interesting follow

43. gautamghosh - Consultant and blogger

44. hrwhisperer -  OD Consultant

45. rickdeare - talent acquisition consultant

46. rhhr - President RHHR Associates

47. jasonaverbook - Jason Averbook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion

48. jcorsello - Jason Corsello, also from Knowledge Infusion and the Human Capitalist Blog

49. joningham - Jon Ingham of the Strategic HCM blog

50. seiden - from JasonSeiden.com

51. bncarvin - CEO of Nobscot Co. and once you find out her home base, you will want to take a meeting

52. mspecht - Michael Specht, leading HR consultant and blogger from Australia

The Vendors

53. ICIMS - Recruiting solutions

54. OrangeHRM - open source HR systems

55. VisualCV - service that lets candidates create rich, multi-media CV's

56. Success Factors- Performance Management solutions

57. Salary.com- Compensation data and planning, recently expanding into Talent Management

58. Smart Recruiters- Recruiting solutions for small and medium size businesses

59. Human Capital Institute- great source of information and knowledge

60. Workscape- suite of Talent Management solutions

61. Sum Total Systems- learning management solutions

62. Standout Jobs- Really cool and innovative approach to recruiting solutions

63. ross- Ross Mayfield, Chairman and co-founder of Socialtext

64. dpriemer - from Rypple a cool service for getting performance feedback

Resources

65. DailyCareerTips - helpful tips and links to manage your career

66. CompetencyMGMT- helping organizations make better workplace decisions

67. GoCollaboration- feeds blog posts on workplace collaboration

68. kwg4now - COO at HR Marketer.com

69. Leadership News- all about leadership

70. jobangels - a resource for job seekers and folks trying to help them

71. thehiringsite - community for hiring professionals

Everyone Else - I am tired of 're-numbering' so here are the rest I came up with to get close to 100

72. employerbrander - Employer branding consultant

73. yammer_team - Yammer is the 'Twitter for the Enterprise' leader

74. StevenRothberg - founder of CollegeRecruiter.com

75. presentationzen - great resource on effective presentation design

76. MNHeadhunter- Minnesota based recruiter

77. pauljacobs4real - New Zealand based HR Recruitment strategist

78. jasonalba - from JibberJobber

79. michellerafter - reporter covering business, tech, and  HR

80. Bersin - Bersin & Associates Research and News

81. coffeebuzd - HR Pro from the bullseye company

82. GLHoffman - Author of Digyourjob

83. heatherhuhman - resource for Gen Y types

84. annbares - Compensation consultant and blogger

85. chris_bailey - workplace experience designer

86. TheResumator - ATS solutions for the small business market

87. Workscape - Talent Management Solutions

88. visualcv - Resource for jobseekers to create online, multi-media CV's

89. byosko - the man behind Standout Jobs

90. ERE_net - source for recruiting news and information

91. SlideRocket - site for creating and sharing presentations

92. slideshare - site for uploading and sharing your presentations, and for research

93. HRSearchPros - Executive search for HR Pros

94. MikeHaberman - Human Resources Consultant

95. cathymartin - HR Consultant

96. williamu - Talent Acquisition

97. venlatch - HR Student at RIT

98. lunatic09 - HR Student at RIT

99. bizofmanagement - John Hollon's Workforce Management blog

100. hrbartender - HR served up in a refreshing frosty mug

Summary

Well, I made it to 100.  If I forgot anyone I should have, I am really sorry, I spent a bunch of time on this, but eventually I just had to post the darn thing.  I hope some folks will add some suggestions in the comments that will boost the list to 200 (or more).

Please add any names of 'key' folks to follow to the comments, and happy Twittering!

Why Teachers should Twitter

There are dozens of good reasons for educators to get on Twitter, I am not going to try and re-hash them all again here, but rather tell a simple, quick story of the real power and strength of Twitter for classes and students.  One of the assignments in class is a presentation of a company or organization's application of technology to support or enhance a Human Resources process.

We had a series of excellent presentations on topics like employee self-service, onboarding, and corporate social networks.  We also had a great presentation on the use of technology for recruiting by the US Army.

The student, Jessica Wagner, did a fantastic job of discussing the challenges faced by the Army in meeting their recruiting targets, the makeup and psychology of the 'target' demographic for potential candidates, and the Army's application of innovative technology to bolster their recruiting efforts.

The next morning I sent out a Tweet with a comment and observation on the presentation, which led to the following exchange of Tweets between myself and Amy Lewis, Director of the Talent Acquisition Community on the Human Capital Institute.

 

After that last Tweet, Amy and I took the conversation to a few private Twitter direct messages and arranged a time to have a chat on the subject.  A couple of days and one really great discussion later, we arranged for my student and I to deliver an HCI webcast, 'Tell the Hiring Stroy with Technology' on May 14, 2009, which will be largely based on her original class presentation.

Needless to say, for a student (who is also a new HR Manager) to participate in delivering an HCI webcast presents a phenomenal opportunity, and I want to thank Amy for her interest and support.

The larger point though, is if you are a teacher part of your role should be to advocate and promote the work of your students beyond the four walls of your class, and even outside the boundaries of your school.   Twitter can be a fantastic avenue for that kind of recognition and promotion.  Jessica gave a great presentation in class last week, and now thanks in large part to Twitter, she will get the chance to share that presentation with a wide audience. 

Thanks Amy, thanks, HCI and thanks Twitter.

HR Technology for the Small Business - The Resumator

Small businesses that need to hire traditionally have had limited technology resources available to help Flickr - Nonsequiturlassmanage the flow of applicants and resumes that come in for any of their openings.  For most, they remain stuck on the last 'big breakthrough', that is applications and resumes sent through e-mail, rather than in snail mail or submitted in person on paper.

Once e-mailed resumes start pouring in to the unfortunate HR rep or hiring manager, then starts the tedious process of opening, downloading, forwarding, saving locally, printing, and copying resumes, cover letters and anything else the candidate e-mailed you.  Big companies with staffs of recruiters and (at least once upon a time) hundreds or even thousands of openings long ago implemented full-featured Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), that provide wide-ranging functions like job posting, online applications and resumes, screening and assessment, interview scheduling, and finally offer management. These systems greatly improve the productivity and effectiveness of the recruiting function, but have traditionally only been implemented by, and accessible to the larger organizations.

The problem for the small business that needs to hire is that they need to complete all the same processes as the large company, but usually with no tools (other than e-mail) to assist them.  They spend comparatively way more time that the large organization manually processing paper and resumes.

A new entrant into the HR Technology market The Resumator, recognizes this problem and delivers a simple, inexpensive, yet elegant solution.  The Resumator is a basic ATS in 10 screens.  It allows a company to enter job openings, collect applicants and resumes, engage multiple staff members in the hiring process, and overall streamline and remove so much of the tedious, manual paper-pushing that most small organizations have to endure.

Nothing really remarkable yet, but where the Resumator distinguishes itself from its competition, is the ability, with a single line of code, to embed and include up to date job listings and a form to accept resumes directly on a company's website.  So in a flash, candidates who find your corporate website and see and submit for your open positions.  Very few, if any, 'enterprise' ATS's offer this kind of simple website integration without quite a bit of custom code.

Other beneficial features of the Resumator include aggregated ratings. The tool allows unlimited people to participate in the candidate evaluation, enter their indiividual candidate ratings on a 5-star system, and the Resumator produces an aggregated ranking.  Space is available to enter team comments, and communications with the candidate are also visible to all team members.

Finally, the Resumator offers help to the small business that may not be terribly tech-savvy by recommending local, industry specific, or niche web job boards that may be a good fit for posting the job opening.  And finally, it automates the process of actually posting the job opening to many of these boards and keeping track of the candidate activity that gets generated.  Again, this is a feature I have seen enterprise class ATS's struggle to pull off.

As for the cost, The Resumator is priced at a flat fee of $59 per month for unlimited jobs, applicants, and users. A 30-day free trial period is offered with registration. Even the smallest shop hiring one person a month easily spends 59 bucks of labor passing around paper.

I really like the Resumator, and I would encourage any small organization that is lucky enough to be in position to be hiring to give them a look.

New Series - HR Tech for the small business

The relentlessly bad economic news continued this morning, just a few snippets:

Caterpillar to lay off 20,000

Home Depot axes 7,000

Sprint to hang up on 8,000

Seemingly no end in sight, major corporations shedding workers like my dog sheds in the summer.

Seems like this could be a bad time for folks in my space, HR Technology to be thinking, writing, and talking about new technology and advocating to folks to convince their organizations to invest in new technology.Flickr - cobalt123

But actually very strong arguments can be made that times of crisis are EXACTLY when organizations need to ensure that their HR Technology can support their strategy, yes, even if the strategy is 'let go of thousands of people and hope we survive'.

But I'm not going to try to 're-make' that argument here, I am going in a bit of a different direction.  I am going to kick off a new series of posts specifically focusing on HR Technology solutions for the small business.  I don't know if the small business space is any more healthy than the giants who are hemorrhaging jobs, but since some of the solutions and technologies I am going to highlight are dirt cheap (some even free), I figure they all have a better chance of remaining relevant to the typical small organization than big, expensive, or out of reach talent management or collaboration platforms.

I have not decided how many or which technologies to write about yet, (and actually last week's post about Rypple could be viewed as really the first in this series), but I will write a few technology solution profiles, and let comments and feedback determine how far I go with this.

So, that's my plan, devote some time and energy bringing to light some tools and solutions that are inexpensive, accessible, easy to implement, and possibly beneficial to the small (or medium-sized) organization.

Any suggestions, links to vendors or solutions I should research and write about are really appreciated.

Do you need a Corporate Social Network?

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have seen dramatic growth in the last year.  The chances are extremely high that your employees are already engaged on one or more of these networks.  And the chances are also high that your employees are interacting and engaging with each other on these platforms, during the 'normal' work day.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.Flickr - Zach Klein

In fact you could make the argument that staff engaging each other on these networks is really no different than them e-mailing each other, or talking on the phone. But there is a difference.  Corporate e-mail and phone networks are essentially 'private', no one outside the organization can get in, the data and networks are secured and likely archived.  Companies don't usually have to worry about inappropriate content or embarrassing revelations on the internal e-mail network.  Contrast that with stories like this one - Virgin Atlantic Facebook scandal.

But the truth is that many (if not most) of your employees are going to continue to engage on social networks.  As a company you have a few options available to address this situation:

1. Don't do anything, treat employees like adults, and manage performance and performance alone.

Whatever mechanism and tools employees use don't really matter, only results matter. Whatever information, learnings, and discourse take place on external social networks remains 'in the ether' so to speak.

2. Block employees from accessing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like from the office

Estimates vary on the number of companies that block social networking sites.  Last year the firm Challenger Gray & Christmas released a study claiming 25% of companies were blocking Facebook. Blocking these sites addresses your immediate concerns (time wasting, inappropriate content, etc.), but may spawn a new set of problems (employee dissatisfaction, Gen Y employees leaving, disconnecting staff from their networks that actually help them with their job duties).  But if you feel like you have a problem that blocking these sites will solve, chances are you have more serious employee relations and performance issues.

3. Allow access to external social networks, but set and enforce guidelines as to their appropriate use

So you realize that staff are on these networks, and while you may not be ok with that, you understand it, and define and enforce guidelines for their use. Many organizations are going down this route, it is a more pragmatic approach that attempts to balance corporate and legal concerns with employee satisfaction.  There are lots of examples in this area, a good one from the Higher Ed space is from DePaul University.

4. Develop or deploy a Corporate or Internal Social Network for your employees

This option recognizes the utility and attractiveness of social networking to your employees and attempts to harness that power and energy to drive increased productivity, knowledge management, and community building.  If you are not familiar with corporate social networks, the simplest way to explain one would be 'Facebook for just your employees'. But that kind of description is certainly incomplete and possibly misleading. 

Most corporate social network platforms start with the employee profile, a way for the employee to indicate personal and professional information about themselves. This profile information enables staff to 'find' each other, based on tags or keywords.  This facilitates making connections with the right people for supporting a new project or initiative where specific skills are needed.

In addition to the profile, these platforms usually possess some type of collaboration tools, like blogs, forums and wikis to promote information sharing, discussions, and the development of a sustainable corporate knowledge repository. There typically is the ability for employees to upload and share content such as documents, images, and video. Also, chat and integrated IM may be included.

These platforms can be developed from widely available open source platforms, be licensed from one of many vendors in the spaces and deployed as a subscription-based service, or licensed and installed on the company's own servers and then deployed to employees.

This market is crowded, so I will hold off to another post getting into the details and vendor profiles, but I will say that it is an emerging market and one that deserves attention. But for a company that really wants to capture the value and promise of social networking to drive business results, the internal social network may just be the way to go.