This week’s HR carnival is going to be going up at EvilHRLady on Wednesday. The theme is “What were you doing five years ago?”, so I thought I would throw in a post to that effect. Nothing enlightening or exciting today, just a chance for me (and you) to reflect back on the amount of changes that five years can bring…

Five years ago, my life was radically different. I was still busy, but my focus was totally different from what it is today.

• I was thinking about running my first ultramarathon.
• I was helping to plan my wedding.
• I was doing manual labor during the day and going to school at night.
• I was a junior in college.
• I had only the vaguest sense of what this “HR” thing was.
• I had to turn down an unpaid HR internship because I needed the $$$ when I got married.
• I was living in my first house all by lonesome.
• I had never even read or thought about writing an HR blog.

At any point in the middle of the hustle and bustle of 2007 I could have made one or more decisions that totally changed the course of my life. And despite all of that, here I am today. Married. Kids. HR degree. Job in the HR/recruiting field. And blogging to my heart’s content.

So how did I make the leap? What was the secret ingredient?

I studied pretty hard in college, but I also did all the research I could on the people who were already working in HR. I surfed websites looking for an HR point of contact. Once I had that I would email them and ask a few questions about what it was really like working in the HR field. Some of that information helped me to write papers in my junior/senior years, but it also helped to 1) confirm my choice in professions and 2) give me as much of a realistic job preview as I possibly could get.

I’d have killed for some job shadowing opportunity, but between working 40-50 hours a week, going to school full time at night, and the rest of that list of daily tasks, I was just holding on by my fingernails.

In the latter half of 2007 I got a job for a company that ended up paying for my senior year of college in return for my indentured servitude for a year after I graduated. Working for that company was a so-so experience. Not bad, but not really great, either. I learned  a few things about good managers, poor planning/consideration for remote employees, and how team dynamics can influence the amount of work that gets accomplished.

The big takeaway

If I can give a piece of advice… Even if you’re in a position you don’t enjoy, you are learning something valuable. That might be how not to treat people or do business, but it’s still a learning opportunity. Looking back now I can see that every job I’ve held has taught me something about the right things to do. More importantly, it’s helped to teach me how to stay away from the wrong things.

All in all it is definitely tough to think about what life was like five years ago, but I can say with certainty that I am thankful for the experiences that I had leading up to this point. Each step (and misstep) has formed me into the person I am, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Enough about me! How about you? Where were you five years ago? Did you love/hate your job? Were you in college? Was there something interesting going on in your personal life? I’d love to hear about it! 

We are drawn to lists. It’s pretty simple, really. With all the information at our fingertips on a daily basis, our brains need some way of keeping track of all the data. It needs a way to catalog resources it runs across, so it sorts, ranks, and filters as needed. Today I have a special list. The Carnival of HR is in town, and I’ve collected 17 fantastic posts for your enjoyment. Whether you’re looking to increase your productivity, get more speaking roles as a trench HR pro, or fire an employee, there is something here for you!

1. Tanmay Vora brings us 10 productivity reminders.
2. Lizzie Smithson shares 7 reasons people hate you on Twitter.
3. Laurie Ruettimann offers up 3 annoying things you do on Twitter.
4. Eric Meyer tells us 6 shocking social media stats.
5. Paul Baribeau lets us in on the top 5 job boards for recruiters.
6. Mark Stelzner preaches on 4 ways “trench HR” pros can get more speaking gigs.
7. Mike McCarty gives us 4 steps to understanding background checks and the FCRA.
8. Jennifer Miller lets us know the 4 critical roles on a project team.
9. Jennifer McClure presents 10 presentations on using social media for HR and recruiting.
10. Dan McCarthy tells us 10 reasons not to do succession planning.
11. Laura Schroeder offers 7 trendy HR trends to follow.
12. Naomi Bloom brings Thanksgiving early with 6 things she’s thankful for.
13. Andrew Tarvin yuks it up with 5 tips for corporate entertainment success.
14. Mike Haberman talks about the number 1 key to retention.
15. Chris Young throws out 4 tips for effective meetings.
16. Susan Heathfield lists 10 “don’ts” when firing an employee.
17. Shauna Moerke coughs up 5 ways to know you should have called in sick.

Thanks again to all the great participants for sharing their expertise! I had a great time reading through these posts and I know you will, too.

The ones who started it all...

We have about thirty posts here today from some of the people I respect most in this industry. It’s not because they’re the smartest (although many are brilliant). It’s not because they know all the secret tips and tricks (although they could teach us all a thing or two). It’s not even because they are good looking (those avatars don’t show everything) . It’s because they take the time and make the effort to continue pushing this profession and the people in it to be better. Every. Single. Day. We’re all better off for your efforts!

Because we have so many great posts, I’m going to keep my commentary to a minimum and just share the links to these fantastic recaps, takeaways, and nostalgic moments. If you set aside twenty minutes to start digging into the posts below, I can pretty much guarantee that you will find new blogs/people to follow. Fair warning: you’ll also have an insatiable desire to attend the next HRevolution. What can I say? It’s an awesome event.

Speaking of awesome… We are going to be partnering with the HR Technology Conference to offer a special one-day HRevolution event on October 2nd, 2011 in Las Vegas! More details to come, but if you have been wanting to attend the event but you’re out in the western US, this is going to be your big shot! Stay tuned.

The posts

• Cathy Martin of Intellectual Capital Consulting shares why you should go to HRevolution
• Dwane Lay of the Lean HR Blog offers up the HRevolution speaker playlist and asks what we learned today
• Paul Hebert of Incentive Intelligence writes on his personal blog about why the event sucked
• Lisa Rosendahl of Simply Lisa tells us about passion, energy, and intention
• Mike Haberman of HR Observations reviews the session on managing virtual teams and talks about world class HR
• Krista Francis of AliveHR! brings us thoughts about this (f)unconference
• Benjamin McCall of Rethink HR shares his next steps after HRevolution
• China Gorman compares and contrasts events as two sides of the conference coin
• Donna Rogers, the HR Warrior, shares about her thoughts as a SHRM-ie at HRevolution
• April Kunzelman tells us why her first HRev won’t be her last
• Robin Schooling, one of the sweetest/nicest ladies I know, talks about cursing and HR(!)
• Mike Krupa, the only guy I know who is tech geekier than me, says that, by golly there was tech talk at HRevolution
• Joan Ginsberg offers two of her valuable insights into the event
• Kathy Duffy shares with us about supporting innovation through HR
• Paul Smith talks seriously (and not so seriously) about HRevolution sucking and even gets hijacked by Mike Krupa
• Shauna Moerke, the esteemed HR Minion, lets us know she needs a tardis (time machine, for the less geekily inclined)
• Mervyn Dinnen is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, and he’s from the UK, so you know I dig his accent; he wrote about the HRevolution love shack
• Gareth Jones talks about his views of the event in Brits Abroad
• Maren Hogan gives us a great view of the emotional/spiritual side of HRevolution by talking about building a history
• Matt Stollak of True Faith HR gives us three shots in Skullcrusher, Dubculture, and Blue Monday
• Tim Gardner, the no-longer-anonymous HR Introvert, talks about fear and influence in the ATL
• My own post, in case you missed it, was about HRevolution being exponentially better this year.
• Jon Ingham, one of our UK visitors, shared about love in HR and at HRev. Speaking of Jon, he also hosted an international HR carnival a few days back and it’s pretty interesting. We could all stand to be a little better rounded in HR, and looking at the international HR scene is a great way to start on that.
• The Monster team’s all star photographer Alana brings us a great helping of HRevolution photos
• Chris Havrilla of Recruiter Chicks tells us what HRevolution has for the recruiters out there

And that’s not all. We have videos from the event coming soon thanks to Maren Hogan and some more great stuff on the horizon. Remember, HRev isn’t your usual conference. We keep the good stuff coming all year long! Thanks again to our sponsors, facilitators, and attendees for making the event as successful as it is. We appreciate you all!

Subscribers need to click through to see the video below.

I am a firm believer in work safety, but not in the traditional, dry, boring sense. Let’s make things interesting. I want someone to feel just as safe in the workplace as they are at home. But to get people to pay attention to the safety rules and processes, you’re going to need something more than a pamphlet to hand out to everyone. Check out the video below for more.

Subscribers may need to click through to view.

Are you stuck on how to make something “fun” at work? Leave a note in the comments and I’ll give you an example or two.

Welcome to the HR Carnival-HRevolution style! I’ve prepared a short video to lead into this fun “occasion” and the text of the video is below if you’re the reading type (or if my mug isn’t something you enjoy staring at). Please set aside some time to seriously read through and absorb this stuff, because it’s the most comprehensive collection of information about the event to date.

(Subscribers may have to click through to view.) Continue Reading »

Whew! With all the serious stuff lately, I haven’t had time to catch up with what’s going on in my little world (like you all are just dying to know). A few things…

Adoption

Melanie and I are sitting on our butts with the adoption. We have finished all of our tasks, but now we’re looking/waiting for a baby. Why am I telling you? We just need one person. Yeah, it’s a little strange for most of you. To y’all, I’m just a guy writing about HR. Well, luckily there’s a place you can go to learn all about the hope for adoption that I share with my wife. Some of my great friends at HRev took the time to ask about how it was going, and I appreciate the sincerity and concern!

HR Carnival

Back when I did my first HR blog carnival, I prepared everyone with a post about how they need to share the stuff with people outside our little bubble. I think it’s pretty darn funny that Lance and Laurie finished off HRev with the same advice. Anyway, I am running the carnival again here this week, and the theme will be the event that I helped to create, so I’m really excited about bringing all that HRev goodness back to the home front. If you would like to contribute but don’t have a blog, I take email submissions!

Oh, the Irony

"Irony"

I just realized something. I wrote a post a while back about how I was so productive and I planned to teach you all a few ideas on how to do the same. Then I never even finished writing the series. Is that hilarious or what?

New eBook Project

I’ve been looking for my next eBook topic. I haven’t written one since Rock the PHR. Nothing has really sounded that appealing to me. But one day last week I had lunch with my web design partner and he mentioned a recent post as a great point of expansion. All that for a teaser, huh?

Getting Out of HR

Check out my Google Reader screenshot above. That’s how I read the blogs and keep up with everything that goes on in the blogging world. I’m cutting HR blogs and adding other subscriptions to my Google Reader (click here to learn how to use Google Reader). I love you guys. Really. But there are two constraints. First, I can’t keep up with everyone. After resigning myself to that fact, I moved on to the second reason. My life is more than just human resources, and I have been trimming my HR blogs and adding more on topics like marriage, relationships, communication, web design, graphic design, search engine optimization, marketing, and sales. Way off topic for the day job, but infinitely helpful in so many ways.

The Breakup

I alerted the people on the free Rock the PHR newsletter this week, but some of the rest of you may be interested. Ning, who has traditionally offered free social network building tools, is canceling their free service. That means I get to scramble for another option or just pay the fee. And due to their customer service flub I mentioned, I think there are better alternatives. Breaking up is hard to do… I’ve used them for almost half  a year to run a network that is a bonus benefit to those who purchase the RTPHR eBook, and now I’m on the hunt again for another option.

Blog Stuff

I had a great chat on blogging tools and tips last week with Charlie Judy of HR Fishbowl. When I had my super-secret Rock Your Blog group running a few months back, I wrote a few articles with ideas on Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Feedburner, and search engine optimization. That’s Greek to most of you, but it’s like heroin for us bloggers. Anyway, I’m putting them together into a guide and have made some videos showing how to do general stuff with WordPress. If anyone’s interested in learning how to get a blog off the ground, just let me know and I’ll hook you up. Or if you’re wondering if blogging is even a remote possibility for you, I can talk you through that, too. I’m always up for some email.

HRCI-You’re Doing it Wrong

I have to let it go. HRCI (the Human Resources Certification Institute) is stepping into social media and they are going about it all wrong. But instead of being purely negative and jumping down their collective throats, I want to offer some suggestions and positive points. I should have a post up on this by Friday. Stay tuned.

And that’s about all I have going at this exact second… What about you? Doing anything interesting? Don’t forget to stop back by on Wednesday for a great collection of HRevolution posts as I host the HR blog carnival!