New Technology for Recruiting - on the HR Happy Hour tonight

Tonight at 8:00PM ET on Episode 99 of the HR Happy Hour show, (can you believe Episode 100 is just one short week away?), we will be joined by Ty Abernethy of Zuzuhire, and Craig Fisher the genius behind TalentNet Live and a million other cool things in the recruiting and technology space.

You can listen to the show from the show page here, using the listener call in number 646-378-1086, or using the widget player below:

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

At the recent HRevolution event in Atlanta, Craig led one of the most popular sessions about 'Cool New Tools for Recruiting', and Ty has actually created and operates one of those tools at Zuzuhire. If you had not had a chance before now to check out Zuzuhire, give it a look - it provides an innovative and fun way to create online interviews and applicant screening processes that can incorporate video and audio response, text, and simple multiple choice questions.

But beyond the 'cool factor' of these new tools, tonight we will also dig a little deeper as to how corporate recruiters and hiring managers can make better decisions around technology in the hiring process, and even how candidates can better prepare themselves and make the most effective presentations in this rapidly changing space.

After all, cool is only cool if it helps us hire better, faster, and more efficiently.

It should be a fun show and I hope you can join us live, and be sure to follow the backchannel on Twitter using the hashtag #HRHappyHour.

Personalizing the Pitch (it helps to be first)

More tales of high-stakes, big time recruiting from the world of sports, this time from the National Basketball Association, where last summer an unprecedented crop of high-quality players were free-agents, available to sign with the team of their choice. One of the prizes of the free-agent class was Carlos Boozer, a veteran scoring power forward, coveted by several teams. Boozer eventually signed with the Chicago Bulls, and part of the story of Boozer's recruitment is recounted in this  ESPN.com piece - Bulls went high-tech to land Boozer, that describes some of the high-tech, high-touch, and personalized tactics the Bulls employed in order to convince Boozer to to sign with the team.

A key component of the Bulls efforts was the creation and presentation of a personalized 'Carlos Boozer' iPad, loaded with Bulls information and team history, current player profiles, and a custom app that allowed Boozer to 'see' himself as a Bull.  From the ESPN.com piece:

That dude at Boozer's doorstep was Bulls senior director of game operations Jeff Wohlschlaeger. He presented to Boozer the newest and most cutting-edge recruitment tool that the Bulls, and several other NBA teams, had used: a decked-out iPad with a personalized app for the newly minted free agent, detailing how he would fit in with the Bulls if he would sign.

"He gave me a briefcase," Boozer said. "I pop open the briefcase, and it's an iPad with an intro to the team and the players that they had. The history, showing the championships that they had won in the past. Showing how good we can be if I came."

Boozer was impressed.

The Bulls certainly showed some initiative and creativity in creating and delivering the custom iPad, and even more importantly, they delivered the iPad to Boozer that day before the interview, and early enough in the free-agency period that the Bulls iPad was the first of many 'custom' iPads that the player eventually received from many other teams vying for his services.  While the custom iPad and custom apps were certainly cool and innovative, they were also easily copied, so having moved first, and aggressively at that, (hand delivery by a team official to Boozer's hotel room), the Bulls scored some serious points in the process, a process they eventually won, when Boozer signed with the team shortly after getting the iPad.

Lesson here - no matter how cool and ground-breaking your recruiting strategy is, chances are it can and will be copied by your competitors. When everyone is cranking out custom iPads to star candidates, if yours wasn't first, then it may as well have been last. Or you had better figure out where the game is going next and beat the pack there.

But the more important point is that once again we can take essential lessons from the world of sports and apply them to the realm of business.  A point that the crew known (really only to each other), as 'The 8 Man Rotation' will make on tonight's HR Happy Hour Show at 8PM ET on BlogTalkRadio. 

In the mix will be Kris Dunn, Tim Sackett, Lance Haun, and Matt Stollak, and you can join the fun on the show page here, or by calling in on 646-378-1086.

It's all sports these days, isn't it?

Live from ERE Expo

Today and tomorrow, I will be at the ERE Expo in San Diego hosting what we're calling 'HR Happy Hour - Live from ERE Expo'.

I will be hosting the event's live web stream, doing some previews and summaries of the day's sessions and themes, and also having some 'web exclusive' conversations and interviews with some of the leaders from ERE, event speakers, attendees, and HR/Recruiting industry experts.

You can get all the details about the live web stream here - we will kick off each day's coverage at about 8:15 PDT, and will broadcast throughout the day, supplementing the live streamed sessions from the event.

Some of the folks you will see/hear as part of the Live HR Happy Hour programming:

Thursday, March 24

Alex Douzet - TheLadders

Laurie Ruettimann - The Cynical Girl

Gerry Crispin - CareerXroads

Bill Inman - Emergent

China Gorman - CG Group

Friday, March 25

Eric Winegardner - Monster.com

Matt Brown - Work4Labs

Amy Wilson - Wilson Insight

And more special live stream guests to be added in the next two days at the show as well. We plan on taking some questions from the web stream chat box, as well as questions that come in from Twitter on the hash tag #EREexpo.

If you weren't able to make it to San Diego for the ERE Expo, then the live stream is the next best thing. Several sessions will be streamed, including the keynote speeches, and in between, you can catch the HR Happy Hour Live programming as well.

Many thanks to David Manaster and the entire team at ERE for including the HR Happy Hour in the ERE Expo event.

Modern Alchemy

Tonight night on the HR Happy Hour show we will be joined by MIT Professor Sherry Turkle, author of the recent book 'Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other'.

 'Alone Together' is almost two separate, but linked works. Yesterday I looked at the first section of the book, 'The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies', which explores the world of 'social robots'; today the focus turns to the second half of the work; Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes', which focuses on the always on, always connected world of social networks and virtual worlds.

Whether it is Facebook, text messaging, or instant messaging - these days it seems for many of us, the notion of being 'alone' has changed.  Particularly with the advent of the smartphone, devices with computing power and capability that rival the desktops and laptops of just a few years ago, as many of us move around the world we carry our networks with us.

Tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of friends, fans, followers, always within reach, just a few taps away. It is sort of comforting I suppose to think that with the rise of social networks and smartphones that for many of us we no longer have to truly be alone, or as Professor Turkle suggests, we are now 'alone together'.

But this connectivity comes with a cost.  For adolescents and teens, the smartphone serves not only as a constant tie to parents and friends, but a kind of tether as well.  In 'Alone Together' we hear tales from numerous teenagers that have grown weary with the constant demands that the connected life imposes - text messages that have to be answered immediately, calls from parents that have to be taken, and Facebook profiles that have to be carefully developed, maintained, and nurtured.

Charlie Brown from Peanuts was able to assess his relative popularity and standing in the school based on the number of Valentines that he received in the mail box. Today teens are judged by the interaction on their Facebook walls. If a few days go by without anyone leaving a message on their walls, many teens begin a conscious strategy of posting on other's walls, relying on the norms of reciprocity to generate posts back to their profiles. If there was one main point in Professor Turkle's studies of teens that resounded with me, it was this almost obsessive concern with Facebook.  

But while the book spends significant time discussing the impact of the connected life on children, there are certainly lessons for adults as well.  Young and mid-career professionals are depicted as having to be 'always on', the BlackBerry constantly within reach, a never-ending series of beeps and blinking red lights to be attended to, to be in a way nurtured.  Parents are seen as dividing their time and attention between family events like ball games and dinners and their smartphones.  The book describes this being in two places, the real and the network, as a kind of 'Modern Alchemy', as if through technology we have discovered a way to create time.

Ironically some of the same teens that lament the power and stress that comes from the connected life tell Professor Turkle that their parents are too often not 'fully there' for them, with the BlackBerry and iPhone too enticing to fully leave behind, if only for a short while.

As always, there is more to the story than the simplistic - 'Just put away the darn BlackBerry for five minutes' argument.  These networks, the enabling technologies that make the networks constantly available, and the demands that we feel that they impose (either real or imagined), continue to change the way children grow up, the way we relate to each other, and the expectations of the modern workplace.

What does it mean? What can or should be done?

Tune in to the HR Happy Hour show tonight!

Robotic Moments

Tomorrow night on the HR Happy Hour show we will be joined by MIT Professor Sherry Turkle, author of the recent book 'Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other'.

'Alone Together' is almost two separate, but linked works.  Today, I will take a look at the first half of the book called 'The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies', which explores the world of 'social robots'; creations as simple as LED-powered children's Tamagotchi pets, to much more complex robots developed in the MIT Labs and other places, that ostensibly are the pre-cursors to the next (or next-next) generation of robots that will care for children, the elderly, and even provide companionship of a sort for really anyone.

Professor Turkle explores not so much the technical capabilities of the increasingly complex robots, but rather our relationship with them.  The 'Robotic Moment' has nothing at all to do with feats like IBM's Watson playing (and at the moment), defeating human competitors at Jeopardy!; instead is has everything to do with our willingness to accept and perhaps compete for the attention of and connection to these social robots.

Professor Turkle describes studies conducted at MIT with advanced social robots named Cog and Kismet; robots that were capable of engaging in simple conversation, that would respond to verbal and non-verbal cues, and perhaps most importantly would seek out people in the room, make eye contact, and demonstrate what to many of the study participants felt like 'caring' behaviors. And that, is the key, the Robotic Moment.  When we think robots can move beyond simply performing according to their programming, and acting in caring and nurturing ways.

But we are misguided in these beliefs. Even the most advances, lifelike, and realistic social robots can't truly 'care' about us.  But as Professor Turkle details in the book, that may still be acceptable for many. She recounts numerous stories from her research of Grandmothers ignoring their grandchildren to attend to a robot 'Real Baby's' needs, elderly nursing home residents accepting robot baby seal-like creatures as companions, and even the developers and programmers of the most advanced robots seemingly conflicted about the true nature of their creations.

A book about robots, and the wonderful things they can do, is not really all that interesting, pehaps only from an engineering perspective.  But an examination of what the increasing development and more complex and nuanced relationships that we have with these social robots, and what it might suggest about ourselves is fascinating.

Do we want to develop better and more capable social robots as babysitters or elder care companions simply because those are the kinds of jobs that we no longer value highly enough to staff with people? And do children and the elderly seem willing to accept these robots, while (mostly) aware of their shortcomings as 'good enough' substitutes for parents and adult children that are often too burdened, too busy, and too distracted to devote the time and attention needed?

And if (or perhaps when), robots do become more a part of our cycle of life - as babysitters, assistants, emotional companions, and elder care givers, what does that say about us, and about our conception and definition of emotional connection?  When robots make the progression from 'Better than nothing', insofar as they serve as stand-ins for roles that people no longer can or want to perform;  to 'Better than Anything', preferred over humans as companions and care givers, then the Professor argues we are on the precipice of a dramatic slide. The robots are smart, they 'know' that we want to nurture them, and that we come to love the things we nurture, and nurture the things we love.

But can we really 'love' a robot?

Tomorrow, I will take a look at the second half of 'Alone Together', called Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes', which focuses on the always on, always connected world of social networks and virtual worlds. 

What is the connection between robots and social networks? Think it is sort of crazy to think you could ever love a robot?

How do you feel about your smartphone?