I'm the speaker/presenter at the March BSHRM meeting, and guess what - I'M HERE TO HELP.
Just straight talk during the March meeting about a space I play in a lot - social media, which means blogs, twitter, RSS, etc. I'm going to introduce you to the tools and get you started understanding how they fit your HR life.
What I've found in talking to the average HR pro about social media is that usage is very, very low. If you read blogs around the HR and Recruiting professions, you're bleeding edge. I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating - when I asked how many folks knew what a blog was in a fall 2008 presentation, every hand went up. When I asked how many of the HR pros had read a blog in the past month, only about 5% of the group had. LinkedIn? About half the hands went up when I asked who had a LI account. When I asked how many had invited a colleague to join their LinkedIn network, half of those hands went down. When I asked how many had used LinkedIn to recruit, one hand in a big group remained in the air.
Guess what? It's not good enough. Here's another reason why from William Uranga at Talent Alchemy:
"One of my standard interview questions is “How do you stay current in your profession?” The response usually includes a mixture of the following: magazines, newspapers, books, associations and conferences. That is a “good” answer, but it is falling short more and more.
Why? There continues to be an explosion of new content and sources of content. In 2006, Google indexed 25 billion web pages. For recruiting, take RecruitingBlogs.com with almost 15,000 members and that is one of the many cadre of recruiters. On top of that, how do you cover the content for your marketplace where you recruit, your industry in which you recruit and your skill sets that you recruit?"
William's talking about candidates in general at TiVo, but why should it be different for HR pros? To his point, the future will bring each HR pro a social media test related to professional development. One such test is the simple question, "Are you using social media to make yourself better?". That question might come from an interviewer, or it may come from a new boss (an HR boss or the CEO you work for) as a quick way to measure how current you are, both in your own profession and technology.
If you answer "I belong to national SHRM and go to the local SHRM's lunch meetings", someone in your future isn't going to be impressed, because you're making the minimum investment in your career.
The day may not be here yet, but the competent HR pro is going to have to know how to use these tools, or they're going to be seen as behind the times and dated. Both externally (recruiting) and internally (multiple uses for engagement, retention, etc.), the tools are going to be as ubiquitous as Outlook. The only question is how quickly that critical mass hits.
Don't be roadkill when it comes to social media - I'll help you get started at the March Meeting, and we'll talk about all the tools - blogs, Twitter, Ning, LinkedIn and RSS feeds.
See you there...
Excellent article and good information about the social media interview question. As a technical writer, keeping current with technology is vital. I have been on LinkedIn for years and find it very helpful. Facebook, I joined later, after a high school reunion. Then Twitter became my link back to my business office during a conference I was picked to attend. I find LinkedIn keeps me more current, based on the groups I've joined, than Facebook or Twitter. However, Adobe has an great presence on Twitter.
Posted by: Stephanie | June 14, 2009 at 02:51 PM