Archive for March, 2010

 Carmen Rose, Rest In Peace 1997-2010

One of the unexpected tragedies that happened while I was attending SourceCon and the ERE Expo is that my beloved dog, Carmen passed away. 

He died in his sleep, peacefully.  I wasn’t told until I returned, in part because my friend didn’t want to share the horrible news over the phone, and in part due to the fact there wouldn’t have been anything I could have done.  He knew how much attending this conference meant to me.  As much as it grieved me to hear the news, I knew he made a wise call.

While I was away learning the latest and greatest that our industry leaders have to offer, the little being who fuels my soul, ran out of gas. His car-ride came to a slow, and easy stop, and he stepped off into the dog park in the sky.

“Life happens while we are busy making plans.” I was planning to write detailed accounts of each session I attended.  I planned to tell stories about all the amazing people I  met.  I had plans alright.

My dog had other plans, it seems.

There’s been a lot of doggy drama in my life, you see my other shih-Tzu, Bozzie is 15 years old.  He’s blind, he has cancer, arthritis, and can barely walk or see.   I’ve been taking drastic measures to save him, and make him more comfortable with acupuncture, anti-inflammatory medications, and weekly vet visits.  I didn’t expect Carmen to go first.  No one is ever prepared for their pet passing, but at least I was getting ready to say good bye to Bozzie.  I never thought Carmen would go first. 

I am devastated that I wasn’t there when he passed away.  Even though it wasn’t the fault of the care giver, I keep re-playing the possible sceneros in my head over, and over again. 

Grief has many stages.  The first for me was shock.  Complete and utter shock. I invest so much love into my dogs because they are my family. Other dog people understand this.  This is every pet parent’s worst nightmare: to leave town only to return to find their pet gone.  There are no words for just how hard this hit me.

All my plans for detailed conference reporting went out the window this past weekend.  I need time to heal.  Writing, is part of that process.  I’ve been writing poetry in my journal for Carmen.  I have been comforted by my friends on twitter, facebook, and linkedin.  I have a cyber network of anipals who follow my dog @BozziePup.  They’ve been there for me too.

(Winners of the Cincinnati Reindog Parade)

It’s risky to bare my soul to you in my professional blog.  But, bare my soul I will because I am not an HR automaton.  I am a human being.  Since part of my mission is to put the human back in human resources, then it’s only fair I give you a window into my soul, and into my heart. 

I will leave you with a picture of @BozziePup and Carmen.  Carmen won The Mt. Adams Reindog Parade wearing the princess costume above.  I told the Judges that  he dressed as Camilla Parker Bowles.  Bozzie won in the Senior Category with his sporting costume of Harry Potter (he had a hard time keeping the glasses on, but boy did he look cute. 

Mark Stelzner commented on my facebook post, “This has been a hard year for the dogs of HR.” Indeed it has.  May we all be comforted by the happy memories of our furry friends.  My friend said something very sweet to me today.  “We take care of our dog’s physical needs, and they take care of our emotional needs.”  Vickie is absolutely right.  Dogs are anti-depressants with fur.  They are filled with unconditional love and adoration.  I only hope I can be half the woman my dog thinks I am.

(Before the Howl-o-ween Parade)

(sprawling Bozzie)

Your twitter pal,

@HRMargo

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7 a.m. I waited anxiously near the counter of Starbucks, thinking, “where is John Sumser?” He left a message and a direct message that he was running 20 minutes late for our meeting. He apologized, sat down, stared me dead in the eye and asked me a pointed question. “Why do I think Social Media Is Important.” Taken aback, I thought, “I’m here to interview you not visa versa.” I was concerned he was going to be dismissive, and frankly he was.

Yet I was challenged by the question.

I’m not going to begin to pretend that I am big enough to wander in his playground. Clearly, he’s been at it a whole lot longer than I. I am just a humble servant in this community, and in this space. With that said, I’m not a child. I’ve around the internet since 1994 when there was nothing but “gopher.”

Web browsers were few and far between. I’m not new to the web, nor do I claim to be a world class expert. I don’t know everything, but I do know some things. I know that technology is changing at lightening speed, and if we don’t keep up, we will be left behind. Sumser made me think about the future of social media. He claimed that it may not have a future. Is social media dead?

I wondered, “what is the meaning of influence.” How important is social media? Will we care 25 years from now? Or, is this a mere blip on the radar screen. John made me think. A good question can be far more important than a definitive answer.

Sumser makes this claim about social media, “It’s a fad.”

I take issue with that. I disagree.

I believe that I am leading the global vision of compassionate HR, and that was validated this morning in the first session of the day. I am using social media for social good. We have to build community, and in so doing we will build a strong organization culture.

According to John Vlastetica,”Change is an opportunity to have a better world.” Corporate responsibility is important, doing good is doing well. We have to lead the vision globally to be stewards in the community. It is considered a best practice in Australia.

I share this vision, yet I am on of the few people in the United States who feels the same way as I do. I had a chance to ask a question in this session. I asked, “How long will it take for the United States to buy into this vision?” How do we get our own country to adopt this simple concept?

Today’s 1rst session speaker echoed what I’ve been thinking, and doing. I’ve been waving the flag of steward leadership in this space.

I plan to use social media to be a leader in this area; to be a steward leader, and lead the way in my community. I may not be able to change the world, but I can change my world. My colleague asked when I started the #HireFriday initiative on twitter, “Margo, what are you trying to do, change the world or something?” To which I replied, you bet I am one person at a time, on company at a time. I can accomplish this through social media, and so can you.

Sumser, is a renegade. He made a good point in raising the question ” Is Social Media going to matter 40 or 50 years from now?” Will anyone care? I beg to differ, because I think the definitive answer is YES. You may choose to disagree with me. I invite your comments, questions, and opinions. Now, I’m going to share the comments that John made. I will do my best to capture the key points, and highlights of our discussion.

1. I began by asking John for blogging advice.

2 He believes people that are early adopters are lucky. He doesn’t believe my clients will have results, access to thought leaders that I have been privileged to receive, and to believe otherwise is unrealistic. He warned me about setting the bar to high. Is that true? What do you think readers?

Sumser suggests, “Because I am an early adopter, I’m driving a Porsche, but everyone has a yugo.”

Readers, will I set their expectations to high? What have experienced? Do you think this is true?

4. What will the Long term trajectory be of social media? Are we gambling that our efforts will pay off?

5. How will we develop social media strategies so that they stand out?

6. Sumser claims, “In order to stand out, you have to have original thought, not just a comment or an RT

7. You have to come up with an original point of view, something that others are not currently thinking about.

8. Being a social media celebrity does not equate into real life business success.

Sumser made another interesting claim. He said, the people who are most successful aren’t on social media at all. Many of them don’t even have a linkedin account, nor do they care. There’s not enough traffic to attract the real players.

9. In hindsight, it makes me want to ask the question: So what? So, how does one increase their reach, resonance, and relevance? If social media is a mere blip on the radar screen, why does he have a 100 Top Influences List? If social media is meaningless in the final scheme of things, why is he investing thousands of hours into compiling the data, the metrics, and the findings? I don’t have the answers, but I do have an awful lot of questions.

According to Sumser, you have to embed key words that will draw the SEOs. Recruiters, researchers, and sourcers love to send their web spiders out to track the data. If you are savvy enough to get on their radar, it will get you into the offices of many CEOs.

Not to name drop, but I’ve been interviewing CEOs in my blogs, on my blogtalkradio show Compassionate HR, and they are looking at my fan page, and my linked in profile. I therefore, beg to respectfully differ with John Sumser’s big ideas, and perspective.

I look up to him, and admire him, but I do not agree with him. I think he’s missing the true underlying meaning, and power behind social media. Mathematics can source and track reach, relevance and resonance, but does it really influence our thoughts?

I don’t think we can dehumanize the medium. The jury is out. Are we betting that our efforts will pay off? Or, are we wasting our time on a medium that will obsolete itself in a matter of time?

How much time a day do you spend on your social media efforts?

Are you personally seeing results?

Is qualitative data efficacious? Or, are we reduced to a pile of numbers? Think critically on these thoughts. Timothy Leary challenged us in the 1960′s to question authority and think for ourselves.

John Sumser makes a credible point. He said that many of the business leaders are not on linkedin, twitter, facebook, or youtube. He suggested that they could care less, they are busy making money, not reading their twitter stream. Point well taken. I work for a law firm. Many lawyers in town don’t have linkedin profiles, or have 500 contacts. Their data bases are encrypted, and private. One particular lawyer I know has been practicing law for 30 years, and he doesn’t need or want new clients. He’s having a hard enough time keeping up with the ones he has.

Is he a classic example? No, he’s an example, and an A-Typical example at that. Social media has become fodder for lawyers. There are those who say it’s going to revolutionize the way we do business. There are those who say it’s hoo-doo, and it gets in the way of billable hours.

Sumser made me think about examples in my own home town. He made me think about examples around the world.
While I don’t always agree with him, I dare to say I like to challenge his assumptions.

A true critical thinker evaluates all the opinions in a fair and reasoned way. Critical thinkers investigate the competitive intelligence and analysis. And, furthermore, a critical thinker makes informed decisions based on their own analysis on the data presented.

I have brought up provocative points. I’m asking you to question the social media authorities and think for yourselves. When you critically analyze the data presented before you, what do you think. What does your gut tell you?

Your twitter pal,

@HRMargo

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Glen Cathey’s presentation was brilliant. The topic of artificial intelligence verses semantic search fascinates me. First let me say I am not a subject matter expert in this area. I am a mere reporter. Later today, I will compile my report and offer detailed discussion about his presentation.

It took every bit of restraint to not tweet during the presentation. I knew if I did I’d miss critical bits of information. My goal was to give Glen 100% of my attention, soak in the wisdom, and report back later. The distraction of twitter can be intrusive while trying to listen closely. As much as I love twitter, I decided it was more important to focus my attention and comprehension capacity on Glen’s presentation. This way, I can take time to absorb, process and report back later. He is making his presentation available on his website. It can also be searched: Glen Cathey/slide share.

Please know that my typing today is fast and furious. My content will not be stylistically or grammatically perfect. I’m focusing on content, context verses style. Thanks for understanding.

Your twitter pal,

@HRMargo

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First impressions are important. Mine was smashing. Upon arriving I met up with @MarieJourney and Geoff Webb @Radicalrecruit. We met @JimStroud and his wife Carmen for breakfast. Maria is actively vlogging the event sourcecon You can follow her stream #scjourney which will hot link all her vlogs.

I’ll be photo journaling and blogging Check out the twitter stream #sourcecon to watch my stream. Follow my blog for living blogging during the event. You can follow the twubs.com stream This nifty stream will follow all the members who’ve chosen to have their streams monitored live. Be sure to check out live ustream feeds of the arbita sourcing lab. Watch seasoned pros like @Shally and Glenn Gutmacher facilitate the sourcing lab.

This morning was like a dream. Breakfast with my dear twitter friends whom I both respect, admire and appreciate. Followed by live vlogging with Maria about my blogtalkradio show Compassionate HR.

After breakfast I met the sourcing challenge contenders Irina S. @BrainGain Lisa, Mike, and Katherine. Mike has won two years in a row. Will one of the female sourcers steal his crown? Only time will tell.

I met Chandra CEO of EGrabber. As a sponsor of this event, he believes in corporate responsibility and giving back. In fact, he’s offering 1 year subscriptions free to all participants. He says, Since there’s no exhibitor booths, what he gets to sit down one of one, find out what people’s problems are and discovers how to help them.

I just gave Jim Stroud a hand massage, before he goes on stage. And now, he’s opening the event. As the MC he’s giving a presentation where he says, “he’s going to outsource praise.”

He’s talking about the searchologist. He answers the question, how many resumes are on the internet? He was looking for resumes that aren’t on job boards, or traditional sites. Snap shot in time: bing, google, yahoo were the focus of his search. He only used search strings that would only work on bing, google and yahoo.

The most resumes were on yahoo, google in bing in 2007, December of 2009, Google was 1, Yahoo, and Bing tied for second. Currently, Jim Stroud suggests google has emerged as #1. Then he went to blindsearch.fejus.com and found that consistently bing won (great for his friends at microsoft).

Stroud says, the round number of resumes is 3.2 million are currently on the internet.

Where are the other resumes? There are many more on the web. He looked at facebook, linkedin, plaxo, myspace, twitter to see how many had their job title on social networks. He complied all the data and put it on a chart. He was able pull it all together to identify where these technical professionals are. Hes made this data available at http://thesearchologist.com/zine

I need to go back to the conference and hear Sheila Greco, President of Sheila Greco Associates. I’ll report later about her presentation on telephone research.
Stay tuned…

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Jerry Albright: The Rock and Roll Recruiter.        

No, he’s not Jerry Garcia; he’s Jerry Albright, the rock and roll recruiter. Creator of the “Verbal Summary,” and pioneer of audio resume technology, That link explains why Jerry and Verbal Summary rocks.  Albright has been able to capture the ears of his clients in a way no one ever has before.  And trust me, when Jerry talks, people listen.  Within the first five minutes of our conversation, I was all ears, and here’s why.  Recruiters are now held to a higher standard of performance.  Technology has advanced, candidates and clients expect more, and they demand more.

Some clients have become cynical over the years. They get hundreds of calls each week from recruiters pining for their business.  So, why should people do business with Jerry Albright? He offers a unique solution that cuts down on the time it takes to evaluate the actual skills of a candidate.

The verbal summary allows a client to zero in on exactly what they want to know, when they want to know it.  It’s one thing for a recruiter to make a presentation about how a candidate perfectly fits a position.  With Verbal Summary, the candidate describes the skill, what they did, how they did it, and the precise results that benefited the organization. Take for example Brian Blanchard, Senior Technology Executive.  Notice at the top of the resume there’s a “play button.” Before you even peruse the resume, you can hear Brian describe his innovative E Commerce skills to position the company’s  Internet business strategy.  If a client says, I want Brian to demonstrate his ability to use Java, or Oracle- Jerry can design an interview question that will zero in on precisely what Brian knows.  So instead of hunting through hundreds of resumes to find one person who can deliver that particular skill– a client can hear with her own ears whether or not Brian can do the job. And indeed, she can, because Jerry has already pre-qualified this candidate.

Learning technologists around the world agree upon one thing: people learn, interpret and assimilate information differently. Usually people fall into the visual, auditory, oral or kinesthetic camp.  That doesn’t just apply to learning, it applies to how one processes information and makes decisions, buying decisions.

Jerry Albright’s process reduces the cycle time by reducing the time it takes to evaluate the candidate. There’s no lengthy screening interviews to conduct, no hassles with scheduling people in different time zones-their Verbal Summary Profile combined with the resume provides just in time technology.  A hiring manager can view the resume and listen to the candidate while waiting for her plane.  It’s like hearing the answer to a virtual interview question.  “Resumes are a dime a dozen,” says Albright. “Simply put, when you get a resume from me, you can hit the play button, and hear the answer to the questions that you wanted to ask. Only you didn’t have to take the time to do it, Jerry did it for you. Yes, it’s that specific.

What separates Albright from the pack? When he calls a client, he can get their attention on the phone within the first 60 seconds, he can demonstrate his credibility, knowledge and ability to deliver.  He’s been offering this service for a year now, and he makes this technology available to other recruiters for only  $50.00 a month.  He calls it the "virtual brief case".

Now those of you who read my blog regularly know I’m from the research state, show me the data!  Jerry developed

“Verbal Summary with ongoing feedback from dozens of hiring managers he had worked with during his career. He interviewed them, asking them what they wanted to see, and hear from a candidate.  They provided constant input from beginning to end – making the end result a product they all felt addressed a fundamental flaw in most recruiting services.  That flaw being the difficulty to actually gauge a candidates experience from the written word alone.  Hearing someone speak about their specific areas of expertise – without having to schedule a phone call or awkward face -to -face meeting with someone clearly stronger on paper than real life.” 

From that data, he compiled various solutions to meet those needs. There were several iterations.  At first, he embedded audio into a word document, but it was clunky.  Then he tape recorded the interview with the candidate, but didn’t have the best delivery system.  Over time, he perfected the process and found a way to make it simple, accessible, and interesting. With a simple click of the button at the top of the resume, one can hear the candidate articulate his/her strengths. 

Jerry is an interesting character.  How did it all begin?

Albright got his start in recruiting back in 1987.  He started with a small placement agency, and fell in love with the business.  Admittedly, in the beginning he was more interesting in planning for his next gig with his band than establishing his professional career.  Once he dove into the recruiting field he could tell right away – it was the most natural career choice for him.  Within a short period of time, he took his passion for music and channeled into his love for the industry.  He stayed with that agency for 5 years.  What he realized is that "recruiters are lazy.” He wanted to raise the bar.  In the old days, before there were resumes, recruiters would listen to the candidates oral presentation, and record it on a data sheet.  From that data, they would develop the resume, and present it to the client.  What Jerry quickly learned is that what was going to set him apart from others is that he had the critical knack for sales, he knew how to manage the first impression, and develop presentations better than anyone else.  In transition to our next topic, the question begs to be asked, did email kill the radio star?(play on words from the MTV anthem video killed the radio star)

Then came email.  According to Albright, “email killed the art of the presentation.”  Anyone can flip a resume, deliver it to a client, but what makes the difference between a mediocre recruiter, and a great recruiter is in the vetting process, and how a candidate is presented.  Even then, he knew that the audio presentation was the way to go.   With email, something is lost in the translation.  Ink blurs into the page, and after viewing resume, after resume the eye grows weary.  But, did email homogenize recruiting like milk? This brings us to back to our initial assertion-the auditory experience coupled with an excellent oral presentation trumps video.

I asked Jerry about the video resume, to which he responded, “video can set a bias.” Rather than making an impression about what a candidate looks like, make a decision about what s/he can do.  “Everyone has a phone.”  A lot of people don’t have webcams or video equipment to make a video resume, nor have the time to do so, not to mention potential EEOC violations based on adverse impact, and discrimination. That can become a recruiting nightmare. Verbal Summary combined with the resume brings the best of the audio and visual together in a nice, neat package.  It ensures the credibility and veracity of the presentation.

Perhaps it is Albright’s ear for music and the auditory experience that aided his search for the ideal candidate. He knows how to put both the candidate and the client at ease. He knows the art of relationship building.  His velvet voice oozes charisma, and you just want to talk him, listen to him, and learn what he has to offer. He’s mastered verbal judo. The art of a well crafted word, beautifully articulated is key to landing that call, equal to recruiting success. While the days of smile, and dial may be gone, the ability to speak well, and be heard travels well into the selling process.

Albright had a burgeoning practice, with repeat clients and a secure business.  That wasn’t enough of a challenge.  He set out to call hundreds of new companies.  He didn’t claim to find the upper 5% of the talent pool.  He didn’t claim to be the fastest. What he did claim is that he was the best.  When you ask most recruiters who has made the biggest impact in the field in the last decade, most fingers point to Jerry.

He doesn’t settle for second best.  “The average client will spend anywhere between $15,000 to $30,000 on a placement.  Now, with the advent of Verbal Summary, he can show the client his work, the time and effort he puts into delivering the very best person for the job.  When I asked him about the popularity of “sourcing,” he replied, “the joke that everyone doesn’t get is that we are all sourcing the same people…the difference is in the presentation.”

One of the coolest things Jerry Albright can do with this technology is tracking.  It’s the bit.ly of the audio set.  That alone makes a subscription worthwhile.  You might think, HRMargo, you’re just pitching Jerry.  No, read my blog.  I interview lots of outstanding human capital experts in the field of recruiting, sourcing. and human resources.  I think, based on my years of assessment experience that Albright is on to something.  He’s the real deal, just ask anyone. There’s a reason he’s one of the most successful recruiters in the United States.  And after all, Jerry Albright is the rock and roll recruiter…Perhaps it’s time we read his play book.

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