My blog of HR, and technology stuff

Remember blog moved!

2005-06-21T14:36:00.000+10:00

Remember my blog has moved to http://www.specht.com.au/michael, while the blog has moved the feed has stayed the same.

New Home

2005-04-25T09:12:00.000+10:00

Hi after several weeks of thought I have decided to move this blog to a new home. From now on I will be using WordPress and be based at www.specht.com.au. Each old post on this site will have a pointer to the new site, I have already updated the feed so you do not have to do anything.

Farewell Blogger, hello WordPress and my own domain.

Podcasting in education

2005-04-24T08:32:00.000+10:00

Great to see Anne Barlett-Brag caling for podcasting to enter education. Having seen the increase in productivity from my wife now she can download her lectures same day from Macquarie Uni there is huge potential.

Success of your blog

2005-04-24T08:27:00.000+10:00

Regina from BNet Blogs asks an interesting question. How do you measure the success of a blog strategy?

There are many items out there that can help you develop your measures. At the end of the day you need to have a clear measure for success, like when Jeremy Wright auctioned his blogging service on eBay.

Vertical search

2005-04-22T08:25:00.000+10:00

A couple of days ago Indeed announced a partnership with Info.com that will integrate the 100,000s of jobs that Indeed has into Info.com's aggregated search engine. (In Australia Sensis is doing a similar thing to Info.com). An interesting convergence of tools.

This got me thinking about comparing Indeed with SimplyHired, an interesting question. How does one judge the results returned by these meta search tools? Or is it just the results that are important, what about additional tools and services? So let's take a look.

I ran the same search on both tools, SAP Project Manager located in New York. Indeed returned 456 jobs, while SimplyHired had 705 jobs. An interesting result given Indeed has been in the market for several more months then SimplyHired. However looking closer SimplyHired looks within 25 miles of the location entered, I did not see the same for Indeed although their advance search sets the distance at 25 miles by default so I would guess that this is their default setting.

Indeed has several very useful features for a job seeker. Firstly they automatically prompt you to refine your search, I assume based on information they have gather from other searches. Indeed also provides several sets of statistics on the job market which might be of interest to a job seeker. They also provide a jobroll service via their published web services that allow several different uses.

SimplyHired also provides services and tools for job seekers. Firstly they are getting users to rate the quality of the results returned. While not being used now in the future could provide for some interesting personalised features. They also allow the job seeker to filter their results by company or different market segment, such as Fortune 100 Fastest Growing. Possibly the biggest feature is the recently announced partnership with LinkedIn. Which allows the job seeker to see who they know that might help them get the job. (I plan to post a bit more about LinkedIn later today.)

So then which results are best? Like the regular search engines it is hard to tell and a very personal choice. I would suggest that job seekers use both services so that they do not limit themselves.

Of course let's not forget RSSJobs, however RSSJobs seems to only search a single source and requires users to pay a subscription for usage.

Japan, knives and GPS tracking

2005-04-21T15:54:00.000+10:00

It seems the Japanese are getting very serious about the security of their children. They now have knife proof clothing, GPS tagged bags and personal alarm systems.

However I have to wonder about the privacy impacts and long term psychological changes with the culture based on these types of changes.

Another vertical search tool

2005-04-21T13:43:00.000+10:00

simplyhired is another vertical search tool that has entered the market in the last few weeks. They will be taking on Indeed.

Interestingly they already have a linkage/partnership with LinkedIn.

Online Recruitment company lists

2005-04-20T09:32:00.000+10:00

It seems Seek had a reasonable first day in the Australian Stock Market, which is good considering the overall market went south.

In the long term I wonder how they will perform and what impact being a public company will have on their day to day operations. Seek has been a leader in the Australian market around online recruitment for many years and has pushed the big US vendors around a bit.

New Visa arrangements in Australia

2005-04-20T09:21:00.000+10:00

Just noticed that DIMIA (Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs) in Australia have released changes to the infamous 457 Visa's.

I wonder if it will have an impact on the offshoring process that is happening within Australia? Or even the whole skills shortage issue.

Lenn leaving Microsoft to join Skype

2005-04-20T07:06:00.000+10:00

I found this interesting piece of news this morning. Lenn Pryor, Robert Scoble's boss is off to the UK to join Skype. He leaves Microsoft after almost 8 years.

Interesting, I wonder long term what this means?

Messaging and workflow

2005-04-19T09:35:00.000+10:00

Dub's has continued his thoughts on workflow and extended on my post around messaging (aren't blogs great!) and simplified my thoughts into an easy to read summary.

However I don't agree with his comments on HR-XML being the "new" model and savior to our messaging needs. (Again a great thing about blogs is we can all express our opinion and push forward to a combined understanding.) While HR-XML is going in the right direction the latest specifications are getting very very complex.

The other area where I disagree is XML is not always synchronous, look at RSS. It is through the implementation of web services (which communicate in XML) that we get a synchronous environment. XML (even HR-XML) by itself does not get us there. I do understand that Dub's is trying to simplify things and many of the XML implementations are synchronous however it would be wrong to assume that if your vendor says things are in XML format that you have a synchronous messaging environment.

Personally I don't see that we need synchronous messaging to fully exploit agent based computing, however it does help. A combination of synchronous and asynchronous messages overlaid with an effective workflow engine that automates forms processing will provide significant benefits to an HR department.

ERE has blogs

2005-04-19T09:12:00.000+10:00

I just noticed Electronic Recruiting Exchange has blogs. Cool. Not sure how long they have been there but it is still good to see, now only if they had an RSS feed.

White paper registration!

2005-04-19T09:01:00.000+10:00

Ok this is just a rant and I am picking on Hire Desk only because they are the most recent company to do this.

Many technology focused companies require you to register before you can download their white papers, this gives them some great lead data, which I support. But WHY WHY WHY do I have to do it everytime! Have they not heard of a cookie?

Even worse is HireDesk I recently subscribed to a email newsletter which I thought was going to give me access to some great content, lets not even start as to why they do not have an RSS feed. I got a email today around measuring the quality of new hires, I thought it was interesting so I clicked to download the white paper. Guess What! I have to register with them, again!

Now I am a subscriber to their email list they should know this and automatically allow me access to the white paper without me having to fill in the forms yet again!

The truth about blogging

2005-04-19T08:48:00.000+10:00

Heather Hamilton provides a great summary on what I feel makes blogs such a wonderful communication tool.

There's more to life than just technology

2005-04-19T08:46:00.000+10:00

I touched on the subject during my quick Jobster review last week and previously, technology alone will not save you. Well, today I noticed that the Jobster Blog provides a great overview as to what else needs to be done when trying to track down passive candidates.

Many a time I have sat with end users who start off a conversation by explaining the solution that they want, not the business problem that they have. The difference here is critical if you start with a solution in mind you are looking at technology as the answer, however if you start with the business problem and then look at solutions your solution has a greater chance of being balanced and addressing both the technical and non technical aspects.

Related to this is if you cannot implement your business process with paper then there is no point in trying to implement technology, because you have not yet clearly defined the business process. Implementing a technology solution without clearly defined business processes just does not work. Look at the recent discussions on workflow and messaging technology. These solutions have wonderful potential for any business, but if you don't clearly understand your process and clearly define how you are going to use the technology you will not be successful.

Just updated my Blogroll

2005-04-18T13:58:00.000+10:00

I have just changed my blogroll to more accurately reflect who I am reading. I was using BlogRolling but found it very difficult to keep in sync with Newsgator Online and as such as I added feeds I was not keeping the BlogRoll listing up to date.

I was also using BlogRolling to track static/news style sites that I read in more a bookmark fashion. Over the last month or so I have begun to play around with del.icio.us to manage these types of links. If you are interested, or just a voyeuristic soul then my links can be found at http://del.icio.us/mspecht

Over the weekend I notice that Newsgator allowed me to create a blogroll based on my feeds. I rarely read a blog that does not have a feed, at least more than once, I switched. Now my blogroll accurately reflects what I am reading, including the PubSub and Technorati watchlists. The only downside is the links displayed in the Blogroll go to the feed files, ie XML files and do not really display that well in the browser, I hope this does not detract from the over listing. The other thing I have done is to expose my Blogroll/feed listing view OPML, if you are interested.

Something I did learn as just because a Blogger site does not display a feed icon or link they might site have one. By default Blogger seems to create an atom.xml file in the root of a blog, for example careerxroadsannex.blogspot.com, did not seem to have a feed link so I subscribed to http://careerxroadsannex.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

A final thought I must compare my listing against the listing of HR blogs that is being circulated at the moment.

Podcasting and vodcasting in education

2005-04-18T09:48:00.000+10:00

Robin Good links to an interesting paper on the impact of podcasting and vodcasting in education. A recommended read for anyone involved in learning.

More on employee communications

2005-04-18T09:42:00.000+10:00

I'm sure this has been mentioned last week by someone, I just can't remember, so here goes again.

Further to my last post what happens when Mary from accounts posts her video on Google, while their terms and service prohibit pornography/obscene material there is still a large amount of content that really Mary probably does not want her colleagues in the office seeing?

What will happen to bandwidth usage in the office, will IT now have to ban certain file types, what impact will that have on the legitimate work?

Just more things to consider.

Blogging policies

2005-04-18T09:05:00.000+10:00

Lori Dorn points to an interesting piece by Niall Kennedy (from Technorati) on blogging policies and how employers in his mind are not looking broader enough at their policies.

Naill touches on the different disruptive technologies that are entering the workplace, blogs, cameraphones, IM, P2P, CD/DVD writers etc. Each of these "new" technologies (I say "new" as they are not really new it is just that they are now becoming mainstream) has the potential for good and evil the trick is we all need to learn how to use them for good. Most of us know that giving a tip to a mate over a few drinks that your company is about to announce something good/bad and if they act quickly they could make some money is bad. How different is that to tapping out the same tip on your blog, even anonymously, or via IM, email etc? Do employees understand that everything is tracked, have we told them? Do you even know that this is the case?

What about snapping a picture of the office and placing it on Flickr? Many companies ban camera's on site for fear of trade secrets being photographed, does this mean we all now need to check our phones at the door? Or with the rise in DVD writers can employees now walk out the door with the payroll system on a single DVD?

As I said all of these technologies can be used for good or evil, we need to educate ourselves, management and employees on how to balance the good, bad and the ugly of each technology. The good can be seen when blogs help team/workplace communication, cameraphones assist in product development or marketing, IM enables collaboration across locations, P2P rapidly allows documents to move around the organisation, etc. Possible solutions are for induction courses to inform our employees on what is appropriate for each organisation, specific courses for our existing employees we did this when email and PCs were introduced.

Lots to think about for a Monday morning.

Workflow vs HRMS

2005-04-15T18:58:00.000+10:00

Dubs from the HR Technology Discussion board provides a great primer on workflow.

As Dubs said workflow in HR is HUGE, I could not agree more. The ROI that can be demonstrated by an effective workflow solution can pay for itself very very quickly. It does not even need to be a top of the line (complex) implementation to get major benefits.

Dubs describes in his second example agent based computing, and according the SAP one of the next big things. Agent based computing is a very broad area and will impact all areas of the business, including HR.

I Dubs third example where disparate systems are interacting with each other you are starting to move into full cross process automation. Typically these scenarios have been implemented by the use of a message based architecture. In the late 90s there was a big movement towards a standard called CORBA, however this proved very costly to implement. In the last couple of years the growth in web services and XML has meant that we are getting closer to applications being able to communicate with each other.

The only downside with all of this technology is you must have your processes clearly defined and consistently applied across the enterprise. While this is not too hard in a single legislative environment the more sets of legislations and cultures that need to be included the more complex and costly things get. Very very few organisations have been able to effectively implement even relatively simple processes such as leave requests across different countries. You need to have a very good understanding of what you are trying to achieve and be able to document the scope in a clear manner, otherwise your projects have a very high chance of failure. The other very important aspect of workflow is testing. Testing of workflow solutions can be difficult and requires a slightly different approach. For example many workflow systems allow for escalation rules to be built into the process, ie when a manager does not action a task it gets escalated via the workflow to another manager. If the escalation time frame is set to 5 days, you need to ensure your tests take this into account and the result might be longer test cycles.

Blog anonymously

2005-04-15T08:52:00.000+10:00

(Via blog*on*nymity)

The EFF have published an interesting item on how to blog anonymously. The post has some good tips and some not so good ones, many are also only relevant if you live in the US which while might be good for a lot of bloggers does not cut it for the rest of us.

Again not being an IR/ER expert I do wonder about these sorts of things, does actively trying to hide your blog when you know the content might get you fired actually makes things worse if you do get caught? I guess it would depend on your local legal environment.

A final thought, it is very hard (if not impossible) to really be anonymous in the internet. So it is easier to just "Be Smart"!

Quick Jobster Review

2005-04-15T07:30:00.000+10:00

Just a quick post before I leave for work. Yesterday I had lunch with Dave Lefkow from Jobster who was in Australia on evangelising-type trip, and thanks again to Dave for picking up the tab.

After lunch we sat at a bar in Southbank and he gave me a quick demo of the product. Unfortunately the demo was just Flash-based as we had no WiFi, when will be get more Wife spots in Australia? From what I saw the tool is very easy to use and solves a simple but complex problem for recruiters. While a smart recruiter could probably run similar referral campaigns themselves, Jobster gives you so much more.

They have based the product on several similar ideas, social networks, employee referrals and the fact that many times your best candidate comes from a recommendation, from here the tool builds on this base to provide recruiters (both internal and external) a fantastic framework/baseline for to be build and manage referral campaigns. On top of this they provide further features/reports for recruiters to understand where leads are coming from ie referrals or recommendations and to understand how many degrees of separation exist between each lead.

The web interface is clear and easy to navigate once you have had a bit of training. You can see at each set of the process where your campaign is up to, how many people have received it and how many people have registered. Each time someone registers they end up in your talent base, and such they might match a job you have in the future. Jobster have worked very hard to reduce the amount of information you need to collect about a person before they end up in the talent pool. Another nice feature is Outlook integration, which provides an easy mechanism for recruiters to select their initial contacts for the campaign.

Reporting is a little light however as Dave explained they wanted to get people using the tool and then with customer feedback understand what was needed. Having said this the reports I saw were useful and informative about your campaigns.

Their pricing model is also very sensible and would appeal to most corporate recruiters.

My only concern is around the implementation and change management of such a tool, another item confirm by Dave as being recognised by Jobster. To this end they have begun to find top recruiters and recommend deploying only to a limited set of people so that the system gets success before total deployment within an organisation. This is a very sensible approach and if there are issues down the track it shows that it was not the tool, more the process and practices used by the other recruiters.

In the end if you have hard to fill positions and people who might fill those positions have email then you would find a benefit from using Jobster.

I've been published on CircleID

2005-04-14T10:59:00.000+10:00

My post on .jobs has been profiled on CircleID with the title Fitting .JOBS Into the Marketplace

HR plug ins for sharepoint

2005-04-13T09:08:00.000+10:00

Via Angus Logan

Stephen Huen has created a series of HR focused placeholders for Sharepoint and the MS Content Mgmt Server. If you are a sharepoint site you might want to have a look and see how they go. Unfortunately I do not have a sharepoint environment to test them on so I would be interested in feedback if anybody uses them.

Jobs Discussion board

2005-04-13T09:05:00.000+10:00

Joel Spolsky has just opened up a new forum on his Joel on Software site for jobs in the software development field. Like all good sites it has an RSS feed.

More on dot jobs.

2005-04-13T08:52:00.000+10:00

There have been several posts over the last 48 hours in response to the new dot jobs domain on both sides of the argument.

John Sumser from The Electronic Recruiting News provides a balanced view of the new domain and in the end determines that then new domain will not help job seekers. Gerry Crispin has a slightly different view on The CareerXroads, which is not surprising as Gerry was a advocate of the new domain from the beginning. Joel Cheesman provides a fantastic top 10 thoughts on the new domain as well.

There seems to be agreement that the main winners from all of this are SHRM and EmployMedia, as there is going to be the traditional land grab as we all rush to get our domains. Jason wants recruiting.job, in reading Gerry's post he views that Jason won't get it, but he should. Gerry also mentions we won't be seeing domains like blow.jobs, but what about Blow Off in the UK at http://www.blow.co.uk/, they might want blow.jobs I can't see why but there is the possibility. This land grab will result in more money going to EmployMedia, SHRM and ICANN.

Let's look at the whole global aspect of the new domain. Most US based organisations struggle to provide consistent recruiting approaches to all countries around the globe. Look at Microsoft as a good example. The corporate careers site is at http://www.microsoft.com/careers, the Australian/New Zealand site is at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/careers/. Are we going to end up with microsoft.jobs and microsoft.jobs/australia or microsoft.jobs.au? How are the subsidiaries going to be catered for? Another issue, take National Australia Bank one of the largest banks in Australia have the domain national.com.au, however if you look at national.com you end up at National Semiconductors in the US, so who should have national.jobs? Are job seekers going to have to learn new domains just to see the careers site, nationalaustraliabank.jobs? How will SHRM clearly and evenly promote this new domain around the globe, or will they promote it first to their members, primarily US based and then to people outside of the US as an after thought? Maybe they will need to partnership with similar groups like AHRI around the globe.

Then there are the technical issues. As John mentioned any tech person can point microsoft.jobs to http://www.microsoft.com/careers, so where is the value? Joel brings up the idea of the registration process needing to be very easy for non-technical people. If only a qualified candidate can apply, ie someone who complies with the same code of conduct as SHRM members, then it will have to be very easy because many HR people are still trying to come to terms with technology as it is. Joel also talks about search engines and the waiting they give, the quality of the data so that .jobs does not end up like .net. There is speculation that .jobs will mean organisations will want to post jobs firstly to their own sites so job seekers can find them quickly. I feel this is missing the take up of vertical search with sites like Indeed, however dot jobs will make things much easier for Indeed and others to join the market place.

Now if these items, and others, can be addressed then dot jobs might have value to add in the internet, unlike dot tv. EmployMedia and SHRM could learn a thing of two from how the .com.au domains have been handed out, ie you must provide a valid government identifier to show that you are a valid business. But even this process has been full of headaches around trademarks, brands and other identifiable attributes that companies have wanted to use preceding the .com.au.

New HR Blog

2005-04-12T19:19:00.000+10:00

Just got an email from Lori telling me about her new blog HRLori that she launched over the weekend. Her first post is about blogging and keeping your job! She points to an interesting piece of law within California and how it impacts employees and employers.

Welcome to blogsphere Lori!

Registered for Blogtalk Downunder

2005-04-11T19:16:00.000+10:00

Just registered for Blogtalk Downunder in May, should be good!

.jobs domain approved

2005-04-11T16:03:00.000+10:00

It seems that SHRM has got their wishes for a new .jobs domain. Details of the SHRM release are here.

I posted about this in December and had some concerns over the introduction and how it would operate.

It will be very interesting to see how things play out in the coming months around registration processes etc. I really hope SHRM takes a global focus and does not make this just a US-centric activity.

The power of the internet

2005-04-11T08:42:00.000+10:00

On Friday morning I posted about Jobster and the misunderstanding many seem to have had about what they are trying to achieve.

I also commented in the post that I would like to see what made them tick. About 4 hours later I got an email from Jason looking to hook up and show me what they have been doing. On an aside it is good to see the new HR technology vendors (Indeed and ResumeFit included) are paying attention to the blogosphere.

I did not immediately reply to Jason as I was on my way out the door to fly to Sydney for the weekend to see family. On Saturday I logged into my GMail and replied to Jason saying I was in Melbourne (GMT+10) and maybe we could hook up via Skype? Jason replied via his Blackberry that he had someone who would be in Melbourne this week. Dave then replied via his Blackberry and we started to line up a time to talk.

Exchanges like this just reminds me about the power of the internet and the different communication devices that are available. 5 - 7 years ago I could have quite easily missed Dave's trip to Melbourne as it would of taken us all several days to reply to each other's messages.

What is Jobster doing?

2005-04-08T08:11:00.000+10:00

The Jobster blog has linked to a item posted by Cote who was questioning the logic and design of Jobster.

Jason Goldberg does a really good job of explaining why they are doing what they are doing. That is trying to tap into the passive job seeker. He also explains why they are not opening up for people to register because they are active job seekers and not the target market.

It is interesting to see the disconnect between what people are use to seeing online and what is happening at Jobster. What do I mean? Well normally when a company launches with a big fan fair they want lots of people to register or try out their service, Jobster is different.

Having said this I would love to look underneath the hood and see what makes Jobster tick, out of pure interest.

More on IM

2005-04-06T12:16:00.000+10:00

ComputerWorld here in Australia have picked up on the IM issue today as well. This time they are quoting SurfControl and their particular report on the threats posed by IM technology within the enterprise.

Must be something in the air today?

Funny how things line up

2005-04-06T09:51:00.000+10:00

Over the last few months I have touched on IM an its possible uses within organisations, and the lack of take up.

Today I noticed Dubs from HR Technology Discussion Board picked up on the HR.com item on IM and the reshaping of organisational communication. Dubs quite rightly mentioned several of the security concerns around using the consumer based IM clients, a reason the big players looked at developing corporate IM platforms and while Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Live Collaboration tools will take off, and why many IT shops block the IM ports, have locked down desktops and implement State-full Deep Packet Inspection on their networks. Dubs then found an item in CNet confirming his thoughts. Strangely enough, or not, if you download the IMLogic report you will see that most security issues have come from the MSN network about 75%. These attacks are using social engineering to successful infect end users and due to the nature of the tools being used IM worms will spread through your network at a far greater rate than any email based worm.

Ian Goldberg from blog*on*nymity also posted today on some the issues around IM and brings together some of the encryption and privacy items around the whole topic. Ian gives a very good technical background as to WHY consumer based IM tools have issues. He also raises some interesting thoughts on the whole identity management issue.

All of these issues are why organisations like IMLogic, and others, have created specific products in this area. Many of the existing accounting and legal compliance standard such as SEC, NASD, HIPAA and SOX have legal obligations around storage of client communications.

The benefits of IM are the ability to facilitate multi party collaboration, presence awareness, collaboration anywhere and immediate closed loop communications within your enterprise. These benefits have significant upsides especially when IM is implemented consistently across the enterprise and even integrated into business applications such as CRM, and ERPs. But while the benefits of IM are large from a collaboration point of view the downside can also be very large if not implemented correctly. Once again IM is an area that HR should be working "hand in glove" with IT to ensure all of the legal, compliance and people issues are taken into account.

Mark Jen's blogging policy

2005-04-06T08:48:00.000+10:00

It seems Mark Jen (ex Google and Microsoft fame) has been helping his new employer with their blogging policy. (Thanks to Michael Fitzgibbon for the link).

Overall it seem a clear easy to read policy that most employees would understand and be able to follow. In reading the comments on Mark's blog readers have certainly pointed out areas for improvement, however that would be the case for most policies. Thomas Nelson Publishing have been going through the same process via Michael Hyatt's blog Working Smart and have revised the policy to be more readable.

I hope Mark and the team at Plaxo have taken into account their organisation's culture when developing the policy. For example Microsoft seems to have taken into account their culture with the very general "Be Smart" but that would not work for all organisations, Sun has done the same thing.

Jobs In HR

2005-04-05T09:41:00.000+10:00

Registered last night for a new service called Jobs In HR. Jobs In HR is an Australian based service that emails jobs to subscribers on a weekly basis.

As of Mar 22 05 they had 3400 subscribers all receiving HR jobs on a weekly basis directly into their inbox. The jobs are ad free as the ad publisher is paying $A120 per ad for a month period, interestingly they exclude agency recruiter roles as they are classified as sales roles. Further they currently do not offer RSS feeds, however after contacting Vincent Ho from Jobs in HR he said they looked at it but doubted the wide spread addoption or RSS readers by HR professionals in Australia something I would have to agree with him on.

Great to see such a service, but I wonder about it's long term viability if a job aggregator service like Indeed was to launch in Australia, in the meantime good luck to them.

How to start blogging

2005-04-05T09:01:00.000+10:00

Michael Hyatt from Working Smart has posted a great intro on how to actually start a blog. He outlines 8 steps needed to get going and stay going. Having spoken with several people recently who are thinking about starting but don't know how, have issues on what to write, or the time to write his items provides a nice starting point.

I would add two things that if you are looking to set up a blog:-

1. Read other people's blogs and comment on them.
2. Get an RSS reader so you can easily read other people blogs in an aggregated fashion.

More on engagement

2005-04-04T09:05:00.000+10:00

Terry Hill from the Performance Management Blog provides some additional thoughts on developing employee engagement.

Can you please reengage

2005-04-03T17:41:00.000+10:00

Keith Jackson over at Corporate Engagement quoted an interesting item from the Australian Fin Review on employee engagement, or lack there of.

Employee engagement is really about person to organisation alignment. Without advocacy, motivation. satisfaction and commitment (aka pride) an employee will no be actively engaged in your organisation. Many years ago while at Nortel we worked to a very simple (and popular) formula Employee Satisfaction drives Customer Satisfaction which drives profits or ESAT + CSAT = $$$. Essentially if you have an employee who is proud of their company they naturally want to see their customers happy.

So how do you get people to engage at work? Invite them to something that is meaningful.

Oh, and if we look at the quotes from the Fin Review it would seem that the main reasons employees feel disengaged is poor company leadership and problems with the employees' immediate manager. :-) If we look honestly at this issue the article claims that this issue is costing Australia $A30 billion pa, wow! What an impact we would have if we got a 10% increase in engagement, an extra $A3 billion into the economy.

Benefits of HRIS technology

2005-04-03T10:20:00.000+10:00

Dub from the HR Technology Discussion Board, points to the great usage of HRIS technology to help support single sourcing HRO.

Having been involved in something similar at Nortel with PwC, the options we have available today are certainly far greater than even 5 years ago.

Personal messages

2005-04-03T10:15:00.000+10:00

Simon reminded me of really interesting concept today, he called it evolutionary behaviour, I call it personal communication.

What is it? Cameron Reilly sent him a hand written email note from his Tablet PC. Having also been on the receiving end from Cam I can say it feels very personal. With the advent of email, SMS, IM, Skype, etc the notion of sending or receiving a hand written note has all but disappear. As Cam mentions in the comments on Simon's blog he does it because it is personal. Such an action removes the loss of personal touch we get when everything is online.

Now how else do I justify a Tablet PC?

Cost of online recruting?

2005-04-03T09:56:00.000+10:00

Joel Cheesman has some interesting thoughts around using web analytics to help develop recruitment metrics. Great idea!

Joel sees Google's purchase of Urchin as a step in the right direction.

I agree with Joel's view of both the recruiter and ATS's in this matter. Most recruiters do not understand what can be done with technology and most ATS vendors just seem to have their head in the sand when it goes to forward thinking changes.

It will be interesting to see where things go.

Your online presence

2005-04-03T09:45:00.000+10:00

Louise from BlueSkyResumes looks at ZoomInfo. She touches on some of the same items I did a week or so ago.

What all these services are really doing is providing vertical search. There has been lots and lots of discussions about this in the last few weeks. What I don't see is the traditional recruiting vendors entering the conversation. Maybe I am just not looking the the right spot, but I would love to talk through these concepts and ideas with some of the players. Maybe they are keeping their ideas secret, I hope that is what they are doing and not ignoring the discussion?

Does the HR-XML consortium have any thoughts? I would expect the grassroots growth in vertical search around jobs and candidates could be hurting their push for standards.

RSS/Blog Spam

2005-04-01T11:33:00.000+10:00

Over the last few weeks I have noticed sites like Hris Info appearing in my Technorati and PubSub watchlists. Essentially I am being returned entry after entry of advertising, which is just plain annoying.

Why am I ranting about this? Well I also happened to notice an item on Enterprise RSS talking about how a site's search engine ranking was increased dramatically because of their RSS content. We have had email, comment, wiki and other types of spam, and it now seems due to how search engines rate RSS content we are going to get overloaded by RSS spam. The end result will just be another battle in information warfare.

However, there is always the chance that I am missing something and it is not what it seems, that has happened before :-)

Labour shortage will worsen

2005-04-01T10:01:00.000+10:00

Hmm, it kind of sounds to me that our government is giving up on the issue, I know the words don't say this but if I read between the lines it seems that it all might be too difficult.

However, China and India will have lots of graduates, maybe all the work will be offshored?

eLearning podcast

2005-04-01T09:49:00.000+10:00

Just got an email from the guys at The Otter Group about their first eLearning podcast.

You can find out more on their blog or subscribe directly here.

Technorati & one billion links

2005-03-31T13:48:00.000+10:00

Will this be the one billionth link? Probably not I think it will be at March 31st 11:45pm Australian EST which is in about 9 hours.

onebillionlinks

Could the person you are looking for be here?

2005-03-31T08:29:00.000+10:00

Via Asia Pacific Headhunter.

There are 3 million new graduates in China this year, hmm maybe there is a solution to the proposed labour shortage?

Jobster has gone live

2005-03-31T08:10:00.000+10:00

A new recruitment tool was launched overnight Jobster. They have been around for about 18 months and in the process raised $US10.5mil so what are they and what shall we expect from them?

Jobster is a new online recruitment service that joins together social networking and your network of contacts. What? Personal referrals basically. They are trying to tap into the passive job seeker market, a common trend at the moment. Good luck to them!

Oh and yes they have a blog.

#$#%#@ blogger

2005-03-30T13:41:00.000+10:00

Just lost a nice post about Jobster and their launch today. Pressed the Publish Post button and got:-

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, support@blogger.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

This is the fourth post today that blogger has crapped out on me.

Mitch reviews Frog Creek job ad

2005-03-30T13:04:00.000+10:00

Mitch Denny provides an interesting review of a job ad posted by Joe Spolsky of Frog Creek Software fame.

An great insight into how a candidate sees a job ad and if I read in between the lines the ad got Mitch's attention. While he says he is not leaving, and he is in Melbourne and the job in New York, it still got attention something all recruiters want from a passive candidate.

Health agencies to trial ASP HRMS

2005-03-30T09:09:00.000+10:00

The IT Australian had an article yesterday about Victorian Health Services looking to replace their existing HRMS systems for the six agencies by the end of March 2006. With the resulting vendor possibly having all the 60,000 employees.

The catch?

It must be an ASP thin client. I guess the client server vendors will be selling a citrix based solution. My previous employer might be well placed to compete in this tender, time will tell.

Employers & Blogs

2005-03-30T08:47:00.000+10:00

Ahh, Tuesday night brings the weekly newsletter from Workforce Management. This week a couple of interesting things to report, you might need to subscribe to view them.

Firstly a survey for HR professionals looking at who within HR is involved in blogs, 70% (when I took the survey) said they did NOT participate nor read blogs within their industry and 11% were not sure or said it depended (what ever that means).

The second item is a article by Sam Greengard on blogs in the workplace. The article highlights some of the more high profiled firings around blogs and provides links to several good quality corporate blogs. A couple of very interesting quotes from Eugene Volokh profession of law at UCLA that employers in the US should be aware of:-

"Legal challenges arising out of terminations related to blogging are a vague and under-litigated area of law."

"Companies must understand that this isn’t just a random hobby that a few people are engaging in. It’s becoming a mainstream and widespread form of communication, employers must recognize that unless they accommodate blogging, they risk losing good people."

The article goes on to promote a clear policy for employees.

A great intro for HR professional who has never experienced blogs.

My Resume

2005-03-29T20:25:00.000+10:00

Well tonight have begun thinking about what is going to happen post the takeover of my company (WMC) by BHP Billiton, I decided now is the time considering each have now made formal statements to the ASX. When I took the role at WMC I knew they were going to be taken over, the question was just by who. As things have happened, it all seems to be happening faster than I first thought. While there is not guarantee that I will be looking for a job in the next 6 months you never know when it comes to takeovers.

First step update my resume, for this I am going to undertake two actions. Firstly to develop the traditional MS Word version, the other manually in HR-XML. During the process I might actually hack together a small site that allows me to maintain both and generate the Word version on demand, but let's not get too far ahead of myself here I actually need to update the document first :-). The challenge is going to be how to do it. The only web server I have at home is Linux, and I really only know enough ASP (not even ASP.Net!) and VB Script to get by, hmmm. I could always go for a Java based solution, but that seems to hard for a non-coder like myself.

Ok I have downloaded the OS Recruiter Java tar a I will see where it takes me, or maybe I should look at creating my own ePortfolio?

Blogs & Wikis by InfoWorld

2005-03-29T08:43:00.000+10:00

InfoWorld has a good primer on the use of wikis and blogs within an enterprise. While for someone who has been around blogs and wikis for a while none of the information will seem new, it is a great introduction for new people. If you are looking to get them introduced into your company forward the link to others.

However what is useful for all is their Blog and Wiki Best Practices which can be viewed here. I have summarised below.
1. Choose the right tool
2. Enhance existing processes
3. Encourage honest and open voices
4. Establish policy
5. Support successful blogs
6. Plan for leaks
7. Review content regularly.

Revised corporate blogging guidelines

2005-03-29T08:34:00.000+10:00

Michael Hyatt from Working Smart has published the revised version of his companies blogging guidelines. While less legal than the first version I still think it gets the point across.

He is looking for comments and feedback, if you have any let him know.

More on business spam (unsolicited email)

2005-03-28T08:22:00.000+10:00

A couple of days ago I posted about business spam and where it fits within my framework. I posted about ResumeFit and a couple of emails I received from Tom Schmidt the CEO. Well it was not really spam as it was not sent indiscriminately to multiple people, just to me. As such Tom actually sent me an email explaining that he was just trying to introduce me to some new technology within the HR space.

So let me redefine it is unsolicited email, and this was the basis of my post.

As I said the service provided by ResumeFit looks really interesting and I actually plan to have a bit of a play around and see if it provides the resumes as HR-XML. So far I have not found a tool that allows me to publish my resume online in HR-XML format, maybe ResumeFit will be the solution?

Work life balance do you have it

2005-03-26T08:55:00.000+11:00

A couple of interesting things passed under my nose today. Firstly I saw from Scoble and Steve Rubel that several well known bloggers are trying to get some more blog life balance. Then I was listening to the second ComputerWorld Live show where they were discussing the Australian Computer Society's (ACS) Work Life Balance policy statement that was made earlier in the month.
The ACS is also trying to look for ways to get more women back into the work force to help reduce the pending skills shortage. Having an appropriate work life balance is critical. ACS are proposing several very interesting and personally good options for workers and employers. The Australian Government however have respond with yet another committee to look at the telecommuting. Not really the answer we need to address the skills shortage, nor our work life balance issues.

JobsBlogCasts

2005-03-25T08:55:00.000+11:00

The forward thinking (read cool) Gretchen has released a new podcast called Jobcast where she is interviewing Microsoft employees, managers and recruiters to give us all a first hand understanding of Microsoft from all perspectives. All these cool things almost makes me want to go work for Microsoft... Maybe that is the point ;-)

Downloading now and will listen today!

Business spam

2005-03-25T08:49:00.000+11:00

This morning I checked my Gmail and found some spam that Google had not caught. Why am I surprised? Because it was actually interesting, relevant and real. I got two emails from Tom Schmidt CEO of ResumeFit.com while the content was interesting and the proposed service might work it is still spam.

However this does put me an interesting dilemma. While the topic of the email is interesting do I ignore it and make it as spam on principle?

As things go I also saw a post today from HRMarketer on email campaigns that refers to a case study showing spam, sorry email marketing is actually working. Then there is Gretchen who has been looking at ways to contact passive candidates, email is one method, is that also spam?

I am now confused, what is spam and what is not? Do I want interesting spam?

HR and your company's brand

2005-03-25T08:03:00.000+11:00

Regina from deep your brand is instilled within your organisation. Very interesting read.

It got me thinking about the different clients I have worked with over the years and which of them had their brand instilled in their HR systems and processes. Some of the best implementations of workplace systems have certainly been in organisations who truly understand their brand and reference it in everything they do.

Updated:- Fixed the title, shows what happens why you blog before coffee.

Background checking and recruitment

2005-03-23T09:34:00.000+11:00

It is strange how things come together and where ideas pop up.

Last week I meet up with some guys from RefSure, a background screening company based in Australia with global reach. I originally meet them several years ago when they were getting set up, pre 9/11. Now business is booming!

Like all background checking services they offer identity, employment, and education verifications along with police checks, work authorisations and they will even do reference checks for you at a reasonable price. They have links with the major recruitment vendors in Australia, for everyone outside of Australia sorry. Looks like a fantastic service for busy recruiters. However having now used the service myself I cannot comment on the quality of the service.

Now the interesting piece is how this type of service stacks up against general Yahoo and Google type searching, or specific people searching on Yahoo (of course you can pay for background checks on Yahoo as well). Time will tell.

Today I noticed Doc Searls talking about a couple of services that allow you to get information about people, some of them for free. ZoomInfo provides a very comprehensive service that I feel will compete directly with paid background checking services for free, unfortunately seems to only cover the US. It is this free service that seems to have got some attention in the last few weeks.

ZoomInfo provides business solutions for recruiters. They are advertising the use of their service as a talent pool, nice concept. (I need to check which rock I have been under cause ZoomInfo have been around for several years.)

Another service mentioned by Doc is MyDestiny, which maps your online social network, however I have not been able to get it going for some reason my Java VM does not want to work.

These tools along with Preople, Technorati, Feedster, Pubsub and the tradition Google/Yahoo are in some ways making it easy for us all to help inflate our online egos. However they are also going to form a major input source into recruitment process, if your company is just using traditional means of both sourcing and checking candidates you will most likely find yourself in hot water over the next year or so. The legal implications of getting it wrong are quite substantial and you should be ensuring you are doing everything possible to reduce the likelihood of error. Oh, you can also have some fun the process to inflate your ego.

US based Jobs via XML

2005-03-23T08:44:00.000+11:00

The Indeed Blog has pointed to a real world example of a JobRoll based on their XML API in the same manner that I wrote about recently.

Great to see!

Another "On The Pod Session?"

2005-03-22T21:40:00.000+11:00

Hmm just noticed both Mick and Cam pop online at the same time on Skype. Could this mean there is another "On The Pod" coming soon?

Apparently I am going to be rich

2005-03-22T14:17:00.000+11:00

I just received an email (in my Yahoo account) from someone by the name of Patrick Taylor who can gain access to the US$32mil in fund of the late president Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, who died on the 5th of February, 2005. It has been a while since I have been privileged enough to be offered such amazing wealth, last time was about 2 years ago. I find it interesting on the accuracy of the claim, the scammers are getting better.

A search on Togo on Google gave me lots of interesting hits, obviously a real place. The first real link was to the CIA's fact book, they even mention the president's name, however the president is still alive according to the CIA. The only news link is from the Taipei Times, published yesterday stating that the president is in fact dead. Now where things go wrong is the email mentions there is no next of kin, however his son was installed as president by the military.

For a laugh I have reproduced the whole email below, but please keep it confidential ;-).

Just another real life example of why companies need spam filters and other internet tools to assist employees in how they operate online.

I am Patrick Taylor, a member of staff in a Corporate Securities firm. We keep valuables for high net worth individuals, blue chip corporations and diplomatic organisations.

I am contacting you in regards to our client, the late president Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, who died on the 5th of February, 2005. This client has a total deposit of Thirty Two Million United States Dollars in our vaults. After the 9/11 incidents, our company policy do not permit cash deposit, so he confided in me as the foreign operations officer to make this deposit since June 2003.

The last communication I had with him was on the 25th of November 2004, where he was making arrangements to claim the deposit. Thereafter it was revealed that he died of heart attack in his hometown in Togo. After the acknowledgement of his death, it became apparent that there was no claim to his funds since he listed no next of kin in his bio-data form. He made the deposit under the name of Guardian Trust investment (GTI) and disclosed the content as company valuables and Antiques. This was for confidentiality and to reduce taxes.

If no claim is made within six months, the company under its storage terms and conditions will legally auction the content of the deposit. If discovered that the content is cash, it will be confiscated and I would be penalised, since I accepted the cash deposit against the companys regulations. As a staff, it is impossible for me to have access to the funds or claim it myself. More so, such valuable deposits are kept at a different branch, where we have our terminal facilities. Consequently, it is important that I find a credible candidate to play the role of a Trustee or representative to Guardian Trust Investment to help claim the deposit. It is on this ground that I need your assistance to claim the funds which will be possible with the information I hold. Once this is achieved, you shall be entitled to 50% of the total funds while I shall retain the balance 50%.

I am aware of the risks involved in this proposal, therefore I ask that you consider the factors above and keep it strictly confidential. However, if you feel you are unable to fulfil this role, I request you discard of this letter.

I look forward to hearing form you.

Thank you

Senator Andrew Bartlett weighs in

2005-03-22T06:54:00.000+11:00

Will pointed out a comment from Senator Andrew Barlett on his blog around the recent proposed changes where bloggers will need to provide the names and address details on election related blogs. In fact it seems the Senator Barlett not only reads blogs he has one himself and provides a lengthy review of the issues.

While I don't necessarily agree with his political views, having a blog is great to see.

Finally getting things done

2005-03-21T22:03:00.000+11:00

I feel like I must be the last person on the planet to be Getting Things Done! Ok maybe not the last, I suspect there is someone somewhere in the middle of South America that might be after me but I could be wrong.

Over the last 36 hours I have made it through most of David Allen's book and I feel like saying "D'oh", "is that it?", "how silly am I" or "where was I when logic was handed out?". Now I just need to set aside the time to implement the process.

Fantastic book, worth the expense.

Scoble misses the point

2005-03-21T08:44:00.000+11:00

Scoble "bashed" Tony Chang for his post on Google's 20% time policy (not that I think Tony is right either). Scoble seems to have changed his tune a bit when prompted by Aaron Hockley in his comments. Robert goes on to admit that "Lots of people also get stuck in ruts and don't know how to get out. This might be a good method for getting out and finding something new to work on."

It is very hard to have a revolutionary or even evolutionary idea when you are in the trenches day in and day out. You need time to step back reflect and assess where things are up to and then go forward. A policy like 20% time helps in this area.

Now back to Tony, he suggests that only companies with "lots of data" could make the process work. I think he is missing the point that 20% time is not about leveraging what others in the organisation are doing it is about coming up with something completely new. For this you don't need lots of data, what you need is a management practice that supports your efforts. When the idea does not work out, you are not looked at at a failure or if you never come up with anything from your 20% time.

The point is that an organisation needs to provide a supportive environment for employees to experiment, learn, develop and invent. At Google this process if 20% time, at Microsoft :-

"One is to just do it and say heck with the consequences. One way is to submit a
Thinkweek paper. One way is to join someone who is already doing what you want
to do. One way is to email one of the mailing lists that is pretty close to what
you want to do. One way is to just email Bill Gates and tell him your idea."

Other organisations have other processes the fact is each organisation needs a process that works for their culture.

Amazon missing books?

2005-03-20T09:12:00.000+11:00

I have been trying to find a couple of books on Amazon without any luck, however they do appear at Dymocks here in Australia. Maybe they are yet to be published in the US I'm not sure but it is the first time I have not found what I am looking for on Amazon.

I guess I will get them locally, which is probably a good thing anyway, support Australian businesses.

Online ego tool

2005-03-19T10:43:00.000+11:00

Steve Rubel has posted about a new online ego tool, called Preople.

I had a play with it this morning and it is nice to know that there are only 9773 names above me and 27914 below. At least I am on the right side :-), now my ego feels better and I can face the weekend with a positive attitude.

Corporate Blogging Policy

2005-03-19T10:38:00.000+11:00

Michael Hyatt (from Working Smart) CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing has set out with his in-house counsel to design a corporate blogging policy.

Michael says he has spoken to a Microsoft blogger about their unwritten policy "Be Smart" and decided they needed more, which is probably a good decision. He has decided to post a draft of the policy for two reasons, firstly to get feedback and secondly it might help other organisations.

While I am not an IR or legal expert the policy looks like a great starting point, many of the comments are very relevant and should be considered as well such as who owns the content. The policy is clear and easy to understand, I would expect that in most organisations such a policy would form part of a general Internet Usage policy.

I would strongly suggest anyone who is looking at developing a blogging policy look at this draft and Sun's (via Tim Bray).

Usage of Indeed.com

2005-03-19T10:20:00.000+11:00

Steve Rubel has posted about how many jobs there are for bloggers out there. How does he know? He used Indeed.com.

A History of Communications

2005-03-18T17:29:00.000+11:00

A fastinating read on the history of communications from 35,000 BC to 1998 AD, while only up to 1998 it shows how things are dramatically speeding up. I am looking forward to the next 7 years.

Are you a cultural misfit?

2005-03-18T17:14:00.000+11:00

Steven (The Asia Pacific Headhunter) pointed me to a really interesting item published yesterday on Radar (a blog like site run by The Sydney Morning Herald).

While the item is an interesting read which I can relate to and know of people who have been "cultural misfits" it is the comments that really interested me. Not even the next item in support of Paris Hilton has had the same reader reaction!

I am just glad I am not a recruiter in Australia based on the comments, lower than a used car salesman? Unfortunately I do know many recruiters and while most of them are not like the ones described in the comments, many are.

Ideas for corporate RSS feeds

2005-03-18T09:02:00.000+11:00

Elizabeth Albrycht from CorporatePR has 10 interesting ideas for the use of RSS within corporations, while mainly externally focused they do offer food for thought on internal applications.

1) Email is an increasingly problematic communications tool due to the growth of spam and the overwhelming amount of email most businesspeople receive.
2) RSS is perfect for the online press room.
3) Keep your partners informed.
4) Keep your customers informed.
5) Provide specific informational categories so people can just receive what they are most interested
6) Make your resource centers/online libraries dynamic!
7) Put your events to work for you online.
8) Capture and publish the buzz.
9) Set up a feed for special promotions.
10) You can just as easily create private (password-protected) RSS feeds as public ones. These can be a great way to keep employees, partners, customers informed of company happenings, events, promotions, office closings, and other information you don't necessarily want widely available.

Each of the above 10 items can also be applied to internal applications in different ways but the general themes stay the same.

Bloggers, spammers face clampdown

2005-03-17T09:51:00.000+11:00

This has been popping up on many sites over the last 24 hours. I wonder what will happen in the long run.

We have had several pushes in the last few years in Australia to regulate and control what happens on the internet, all have failed. Being a bit cynical I wonder if it is just big business, government, brother, media etc wanting to keep control of what is going on and what is said. Which if that is the case, are we not moving more and more towards George Orwell's 1984?

Bloggies recognised by ABC News

2005-03-17T06:42:00.000+11:00

My wife found the Bloggies being written about by ABC News Online, good to see the mainstream press catching on.

Effective use of recruiting blogs

2005-03-16T17:59:00.000+11:00

Gretchen from Microsoft has provided a fantasticreal world example of how to effectively use her blog within a recruiting environment.

Gretchen and some of her colleagues are looking at cold calling candidates to try and attract "passive candidates". So before they undertake the exercise she has decided to run a short survey to find out what the readers of her blog think.

Is it scientific, probably no. Is it the most accurate method of collecting data, probably no again. However, it is easy, effective, fast and a fantastic marketing exercise for Microsoft. I am not sure how many readers she has but, if the comments are anything to go by she has a lot of candidate and recruiters reading. Therefore the feedback received will be real, and honest. Honest you say. It will be honest because due to her blog she has been having a conversation with her readers over the past week, month, year or however long they have been reading. There is a trust that has developed. Yes, she might only get people who like her and Microsoft replying, but I am sure this is not their only benchmark. What the process is doing is instead of launching their new "recruiting product" into the market place they are getting a quick temperature gauge on how it will be received.

Rugby and the English

2005-03-16T09:49:00.000+11:00

Ok this is completely off topic and even a bit petty but I don't really care as I am a huge rugby fan and love stirring the English.

Philip Malone directed me to an online voting process being conducted by the London Development Agency who want the public to name the new bridge which will lead up to the new Wembley Stadium. It seems a bunch of us Australians want the bridge named "The John Eales Bridge".

And yes I was childish enough to vote, sorry.

Digital IDs at Cebit

2005-03-15T12:19:00.000+11:00

Computerworld has an item today talking about digital identity and how some of the work from organisations like Liberty Alliance were starting to make progress on enhancing security online.

While an interesting read, the article really says nothing, I found it filled with PR-type comments and meaningless announcements from big companies. It is sad to see such when so much good work is going on, and a lot is available already in the public domain.

Blogging = Good Career?

2005-03-14T09:30:00.000+11:00

Tim Bray from ongoing wrote last week about how blogging can be good, yes good not evil. Basically Tim brings it do to a couple of clear facts.

You will have employees who blog
Becuase 1 is true then you must have a policy!

Tim's post also gives us 10 reasons why and how blogging can be good, while he has focused on the benefits for the individual who blogs I see the same benefits can be found for the employer.

If you are HR manager then please add blogging to your Internet Usage policy! If you are unsure how or what should be included then there are lots of people out in blogsphere, just ask.

Well I'm back!

2005-03-13T17:30:00.000+11:00

I am back from my trip to the Olympic Dam mine out at Roxby Downs. I flew on Qantas from Melbourne to Adelaide and then Rex Air to the Olympic Dam airport, which is really the Roxby Downs airport. The whole trip was an interesting experience, it is about 15 years since I have flown in a prop plane, a first time into the centre (well close enough) of Australia (I know I really should have been there before but the cost), my first time at a mine site and my first business trip for WMC. Overall a great time, and I think successful.

Over the next couple of days I am going to catch up on my feeds.

Away

2005-03-08T17:23:00.000+11:00

I will not be posting over the next few days as I will be away on business at a mine site, my first visit! Should be very interesting.

Indeed thoughts

2005-03-08T08:35:00.000+11:00

Michael sees some flaws with the Indeed system, I however see the potential of their system, with some changes (which I guess could be seen as flaws).

Why only search jobs? Why not search the resumes that are on the web and delivery matched candidates to recruiters via RSS as a paid service.

Another extension of this would be to allow candidate to register themselves for free, post their resume (in HR-XML format of course) and then deliver matched jobs to the candidate.

What about the temporary labour market? What about adding the RSS feed into a system like eShift currently being used in Boston for nurses to bid on extra shifts?

I mentioned yesterday about the options for using the Indeed API for specific types of vertical market solutions.

These are few of my initial thoughts, I am sure there are many great ideas I have forgotten. I would be interested to hear from Indeed what their plans are and to see what feedback they have received from the marketplace.

PeopleSoft loses local customers

2005-03-07T15:43:00.000+11:00

seems that second tier vendor Aurion in Australia has picked up a several of high profiled clients.

I wonder how many more there are out there? I do know that while I was in the vendor area I spoke to many potential clients who were looking to move away from PeopleSoft.

Aggregated jobs site indeed.com

2005-03-07T12:26:00.000+11:00

Slashdot reported overnight on the Job market for developers based on data from indeed. While the results that Slashdot have are interesting if you are a developer, but from an HR/Recruitment perspective it is much more!

indeed went live Nov 2004 and aggregates jobs postings from many different sources in reading their FAQ they describe themselves as a Jobs Search engine, very similar to RSSJobs. As a user you enter what you are looking for and where you would like it; ie SAP Project Manager in New York. The system then conducts the search providing the job seeker aggregated results across many different sources, today they claim to have 2,510,345 jobs from the last 30 days. The search can now be set up as an RSS feed, or email alert.

Indeed are also providing Job Trends across the US and the service can be used to benchmark the current demand for certain skills. Both useful pieces of information for both employers and job seekers. Indeed also state that they plan to add additional information as time goes on. They also have a blog which if you are interested in these types of developments I would recommend subscribing to.

There have been a couple of posts over the last few months about the service.

One very cool piece of functionality that they have provided is a series of web services to allow third parties to query their data via XML. You can create a simple version of this using the Jobroll function, or a more complex solution if you register as a developer. For example here is a query I created for SAP HR project managers in New York.

Indeed have provided the framework for several services to be provided based on their data. For example professional organisations could provide a scrolling jobs service for their members, or education institutions could help students to find jobs once they have graduated. There might even be some vertical markets for the service, we shall wait and see.

ResumeWiki Shutdown

2005-03-07T11:29:00.000+11:00

Jeremy has had to shutdown ResumeWiki due to wiki spam. This is an unfortunate event, I hope he is able to get it back up and running.

ResumeWiki was a great concept Jeremy set up late last year allow job seekers to publish their resume and allow others to provide feedback and change the resume for them. A unique and fascinating use of wiki technology.

Teachnology a new term or an old one worth suing over

2005-03-06T19:26:00.000+11:00

From Scoble about Dan Mitchell who has a blog at www.teachnology.org covering teaching and technology, who received a cease and desist letter from an organisation that runs their site at www.teach-nology.com.

Yet another great blog, into the RSS feed reader it goes. While Dan only posts about once a week, if you are into education and technology it is worth a read he pulls together many interesting articles from around the Internet.

Flickr photos

2005-03-05T17:37:00.000+11:00

Just loaded up a number of photos that I took yesterday at the Melbourne Grand Prix practice day. I have also been playing with the banner on the side of the blog, now my Flickr images appear in a random order, I will see how it goes.

Sending blog entries from my phone

2005-03-05T12:00:00.000+11:00

My post yesterday from the Grand Prix practice round made it up, but with a typo in the title. I plan to leave it there. I am in the process of uploading several other pictures to Flickr.

Celebrates qualifying

2005-03-04T13:17:00.000+11:00

Melbourne Grand prix

My iPod earbuds are damaged

2005-03-03T08:02:00.000+11:00

I am quite sad and a bit disappointed with my iPod earbuds. About two days ago while listening to Adam Curry's DSC I started hearing static in the earbuds at certain bass level (I am not a audio expert so I might not be describing the problem correctly). Initially I thought it might have been on the podcast but no I tested a couple of other podcasts, a Midnight Oil song and yes deep base sounds now cause static in the earbuds. The really disappointing part is the iPod is only 2 months old and I have been reasonably careful with it. Normally I am very hard on technology items but I was given very clear instructions from my wife that if the iPod broke there would not be a replacement.

I searched Google but did not find any real help, iPodLounge had a similar but different issue that caused static

Project Manager does suicide PowerPoint presentation

2005-03-02T21:22:00.001+11:00

Another item from Trevor Cook about a very sad case of death by PowerPoint. Ok once you have read the story my pun might be a bit on the tacky side, but am currently in a project management role and the story kind of stuck a cord and no I am not suicidal :-)

A solution for labour shortages

2005-03-02T08:47:00.000+11:00

Michael from the Canadian Headhunter points to an interesting perspective from Germany on the discussion of labour shortages.

I suspect it will not pick up as a common approach.

Electronic Forms & a paperless office

2005-03-02T08:43:00.000+11:00

Angus Logan pointed me to a new blog Electronic Forms from the developers of InfoView, a product that works with the Microsoft product InfoPath, I sort of referred to InfoPath on the weekend in my post on HR-XML and resumes.

The InfoView product adds a new dimension to the picture and could provide the framework for SMEs to build forms based solutions that match solutions from the large ERP vendors. On the flipside if you have an ERP solution there are numerous possible combinations on how you could connect InfoPath to your ERP, how is the so? Because of the magic of XML.

More on the labour shortage

2005-03-01T19:12:00.000+11:00

Business 2.0 blog has a good follow up on my earlier post on the different generations.

Are workplaces family-friendly?

2005-03-01T12:40:00.000+11:00

Trevor Cook as found a great opinion on family friendly workplaces via Tim Watts of the Nous Group.

I am concerned by the comments from the CEO Tim was talking to, as it seems was Tim and Trevor on how to manage the aging workforce. Gen Xs and Ys are very different to the current Baby Boomers in what drives them and what they expect from an employer. Paternalistic employers will begin to find it harder and harder to attract key talent in the future if they do not start to engage in many of the activities Tim highlights.

Many of these topics were discussed last year at AHRI's People in Business conference. Such as how to manage when you have 3 generations in the workplace, you know when the Gen Y sitting next to you is only there 3 days week, because the other two they are running their own business in a completely different market, who's mobile phone goes off every 5 mins with an SMS, and the IM screen buzzes as they keep contact with their social/business network. Or the Gen X'er that just wants the baby boomer in the corner office to retire so they can have their rightful place. While the baby boomer is staying in the corner office because they can no longer afford to retire. Now this is not a bad thing it is just different, and organisations need to learn how to engage with these employees.

I personally also feel that as things progress if your organisation does not present itself as a forward thinking organisation from a workplace technology point of view you will just not be able to attract Gen Y's. This process will begin with the first contact the applicant has with your organisation, which will most likely be in an online fashion. Therefore do you track abandonment from your career's site, maybe this should be can you? Will we need to understand why people keep arriving at your site but leaving within 10 secs and you have a very low conversion rates of visitors to job applications? There are many other examples.

Will your processes internally make is easy for employees to have a family friendly life. I know many organisations that make it extremely difficult for employees to connect back to the corporate network from home. While there is a debate that working from home is not family friendly I would far prefer to be at home to see my child and then work late at home than work late in the office and not see him. Of course in the pure sense of the term "family friendly" you really shouldn't need to work late :-)

Tim's article certainly poses many great questions, which unfortunately there are not many great answers to.

Are you present?

2005-03-01T08:09:00.000+11:00

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about presence. By presence I am talk about your online presence and what that means to workforce solutions. I have posted about this before but now I am seeing the whole idea pop up in several different places. The traditional area is in instant messaging, which is cool, but now all sorts of other tools have presence built in Skype, mobile phones (initially ones like a Blackberry but others will soon just listen to The Gadget show to hear more) etc.

Presence awareness when integrated into business process interesting things happen. Firstly, systems can make “intelligent” decisions based on who is available to action the next business step. Systems can become more ”event” based, such as remind Fred to approve the next step in a critical business process I know a bad example but I hope you get the idea. Alternatively time sensitive processes can automatically redirect/escalate if the first approver is not available.

Presence can also be determined via security systems (previously the old clock in clock out type tools) and more recently organisations have been trying to implement RFID to track people. Once all this data is brought together into a system two things happen, firstly we have a very powerful foundation for business process, but secondly the possibilities for poor use of the data and information aka "Big Brother" and the option for the world to become like George Orwell's 1984.

Once we have a propagation of presence aware systems the Seven Laws of Identity become VERY important. Why because presence is a form of identity, how you feel if systems started to communicate about you and your presence either at your desk or in the office without your knowledge.

A Mac in a Lexus

2005-02-28T09:03:00.000+11:00

Richard from the Gadget Lounge and The Gadget Show found this great item on a guy who installed a new Mini Mac in his Lexus.

Besides being very cool, it raises some interesting other uses of the Mini Mac, which is probably the vision Apple had for it in the first place. For example, my wife has always wanted a computer in the kitchen mounted in the benchtop, maybe now we can do this. LG has their top of the line fridges that have TV's built in, a handy kind of person (not me) could build one themselves.

Many a geek out there probably could of done this before but the Mini Mac provides such a nice pre-packaged box for us all.

Security flaw in PayMaxx software/service

2005-02-26T10:05:00.000+11:00

Here is a very interesting (read scary) press release from Think Computer., if you have an outsourced payroll vendor it is a must read!

I wonder what Kim Cameron and others in the identity management domain would think?

The future of recruiting software in 2005

2005-02-26T09:49:00.000+11:00

The Employment Marketplace has an article from Bob Nelson (yes he is a vendor) on where he sees ATS and other recruiting solutions moving in the next 12 months. An interesting read after the last post.