080820 Big Picture

(August 20, 2008) It’s like watching thousands of ants close up. You’re sure there’s a pattern. You can only see it by standing back.

The further the better.

What makes the new waves of tools useful is not a question of what they can do on a function by function basis. What defines their importance is not a detailed instruction about how to use them. Whether or not you can use them for sustained periods of time has little to do with their relative merit.

So, when consultants and would-be celebrities sing the praises of Linked-In, Blogging, online community, personal publishing, Ning, Twitter, Facebook or the thousands of clones, be careful.

And keep your hand on your wallet.

Have you seen the stuff in artificial intelligence about single function robots? The idea is to have a task accomplished by little tiny machines that do one little tiny thing over and over again. Like ants, this form of intelligence can surmount incredible obstacles.

That’s how Silicon Valley is beta testing its latest tools these
days. Take a close look. Lots of ants, no big picture. Lots of ants claiming lots of things, no big picture. Millions of ants all over the furniture.

It makes me itchy.

The reason you have to spend time figuring out a big picture is that
the little ant-like stuff can’t give you guidance. You need a big picture to guide the ants. You need a grand scheme to make sense of the incoming data.

No matter how often you twitter, you can’t twitter your way into strategic value. While it’s true that you can learn the nuances of digging by working with a shovel, it’s virtually impossible to learn landscape design by shovelling. You have to know both. Digging is insufficient training for architecture. Architecture is an adequate reason to learn how to dig.

Big picture first, details second.

Much of what passes for strategic consulting boils down to "Here’s some cool stuff you can do with these new tools." Lots of wannabe consultants present their experience digging as if it were a degree in Architecture. Sadly, they don’t know the difference.

Developing a big picture takes a little while. Much of what you have to do (like an English course in the business department) doesn’t seem immediately relevant. It’s the depth and breadth you get from exposure to big ideas that makes it possible to understand the real utility of the new tools.

So, we’re going to start talking about the long view, the grand scenario, the vision thing, the big pic..

080820 Daily Links (Aug 20, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: Population dynamics are the backbone of Recruiting.
• What Makes for a Good Blog? "People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?"
• Recruitfest: I’m In! The unique format and content is creating major buzz.
• Attention & Ambiguity: The Non-Paradox of Creative Work This piece about being a blogger intelligently highlights the tough to manage aspects of creative workers.
• What’s the story? Count on Bill Martineau to get to the essence of things. You can’t recruit for a job without having  a story.
• Millennials Are Taking Over the Workplace - Is HR Prepared? "For recruiting, any employer who is not saying/offering the following things to Millennial job candidates, is missing the boat: We offer a great mentoring program ; we respect and support your desire for work-life balance ; we offer a fun environment ; and we have a solid program for fostering your growth and advancement ."

080819 Daily Links (August 19, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: The foundation of Recruiting Strategy is an understanding of labor market supply and demand.
• This is strange…I can read the blog but I can’t see the site. Anyone else blocked in this way?
• Social Media, Gen Y and the Workplace
• If You Can’t Recruit from a "Van Down By The River", You’re Not A Real Recruiter… Beneath the macho posturing is a smart idea…learn the fundamentals.
• Garmin gets in the social-networking groove Another move in the "the network is the location" direction.
• Don Ramer, CEO of Arbita: “Community Builders, Leadership” Mendoza supplies a gem from the Portland Roadshow
• NewsCred Goes Public With Credibility-Based News Source This is what the competition for Jason Goldberg’s SocialMedian looks like. The idea is to take community opinion to a new level. Yahoo’s Buzz is a similar notion.

080818 Daily Links (August 18, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: You have to stand far enough back to see the whole thing
• Findability is a Legitimate Concern for Bloggers "Findability is the concept that content can be “found” by readers. This is a common problem that many bloggers wrestle with, and many have tried a wide variety of techniques to make their blogs more findable. This is not the same as SEO, though. SEO is a subset of findability. It’s findability for machines. Findability is as much about the data structure as the content or theme structure or the device compatibility (is it mobile compatible, for instance?)"
• The Trouble with Twitter "Twitter is not a vast communications network of 2.3 million users squared. Rather, it consists of small pools of people with gaps and limits on how they interact. This is important to marketers and investors, because it puts big brakes on how internal communications could propagate inside any social media network"
• Web Strategy: The Evolution of Brands on Twitter Great deconstruction of the way that companies get good at using micropublishing.
• RecruitingBlogs.com redesign…smooth
• why won’t anyone buy indeed.com? Meaty analysis from a cheesy source

080815 Daily Links (August 15, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: "When I tweet every two or three minutes, I lose followers" - Maren Hogan
• Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v1.15 Stirring Up the Pot.
• Google Launches AdSense for Feeds Too bad they’re driving market pricing down
• Why Blogs Need To Be Social Blogging is not just publishing, it’s a communal activity.
• The Google Black Hole "Despite Google’s reputation for fostering new companies, many services that nestle into Mountain View’s welcoming bosom are never heard from again. The pattern: Company gets bought out. Users rejoice. Company lies fallow for months. Users grow impatient. Company’s employees get farmed out to other Google projects. Company lies fallow for more months. Users get even more impatient …"
• CareerBuilder Wants to Kick Your Nuts. The cool thing about a dying industry (CareerBuilder is the newspaper’s last stand) is that you can do stupid things like this and no one will notice.

080814 Daily Links (August 14, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: Success is built on tiny things and timing.
• The Risk in Using Twitter as a Public Utility Accountability for changes to the API is the tip of the iceberg. The company has not demonstrated much concern for the consequence of its design decisions.
• Sourcing is like attending a garage sale "the main reason why sourcing reminds me of garage sales is that if you just pick up “bargains” simply because they’re bargains you’ll soon find out that sometimes there’s a good reason why an item is a bargain: It’s junk. Beware of the low hanging fruit!!!"
• Online Video Ad Spending Growth online video ad spending in the US will reach $505 million this year and keep climbing through at least 2013. Over the next five years, growth will peak in 2012 at 78.9% above the 2011 spending level—reaching $3.4 billion."
• How to create a Recruitment Video for $0.00 When people who work in our industry say that something that takes time costs nothing, they embarrass us in the eyes of the rest of the business community. Time is vastly more valuable than money. That said, here is a good cheap way to do Recruitment Video..
• You’re ticking me off!

080813 Daily Links (August 13, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: Is there something uniquely American about Social Media?
• Does Good Tech Require PR? "The point is that great technologies probably do sell themselves. The web is mostly filled with bad technologies, though, and it’s the job of the technology press to find the good ones, with occasional discoveries of greatness. Can PR people help us do that? They can. Is it worth the expense and loss of direct experience for many startups to hire PR people? It probably is."
• Conflict. To make your marketing much more interesting, add conflict "One writing teacher told me "writing without conflict is propaganda."
• Taking the shine off: Why blog publishing ‘failed’ in the UK (or at least didn’t create a $30m exit) Social media doe not work the same way in all cultures
• Movable Type Pro to meld blogging and social networking The distinctions are blurring.
• And the Award for the best recruitment blog goes to

080812 Daily Links (August 12, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: Community depends on manners
• Bejant.com  It’s their lucky day because ofnthis video. Actually, in spite of the video.
• Social network popularity around the world Google Insights will change the way we think about the internet.
• Recruitment Consultant with a SMILE -advertisement It’s time to start the "worst of" series.
• Early adopters vs the Mainstream: Google Insights points out websites only used by Silicon Valley nerds Nice piece that starts to look at the real impact of early adopters and how that is reflected in actual usage.
• SMAART Presents Crazy John’s Contact Centre Jobs   A surf soundtrack, a live stuffed manager, lots of smiling cherubic faces. I wonder if they’d relocate me?

   

080811 Daily Links (August 11, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: It’s organic if it’s repeatable.
• Salon launches blogger ‘tipping’ system If you thought blogging was fun, here comes a wave of begging bowls designed to make you feel like a street musician.
• Meet Rainer Jeske: "Going Global, A German Recruitment Expert in Japan" Dave Mendoza is the industry’s own social-roto-tiller. He churns up really interesting information about really interesting members of our community. Today, it’s Rainer Jeske’s turn in the barrel.
• Is Content King Again? The pendulum swings quickly when disruptive distribution schemes (RSS, Blogging, etc) get normalized.
• What We’re Not Admitting about Asterisk Scan this fascinating article. It’s the self assessment of an open-source visionary who is trying to make his innovation stick. It’s an eye-opening set of insights about how to think about a technical project. It helps make clear the difference between human issues and those caused by the technical infrastructure.
• RecruitingBlogs.com Video Contest Winner is…

080808 Daily Links (August 08, 2008)

• Thought For The Day: Seek sources of delight
• The Job Okay, this is funny.
• Al Gore Joins Web 2.0 Summit Lineup Insert obvious joke, scratch head, keep your eye on this.
• Alexa is Becoming Completely Worthless We gave up hope years ago.
• Facebook and StudiVZ battle over Germany Facebook sues and tries to buy at the same time.
• Why Recruitfest…Why Now? Just look at the sessions.