Surfing USA

I spent many days this summer kickin’ it on a beach chair watching surfers and consuming copious amounts of water and electrolyte-infused drinks. My teen-aged son and daughter recently took up the sport and it has been fun to join them at the ocean and enjoy their learning process.  There are always experienced surfers who show up in the spot where we choose to plant our towels. They are always good at what they do and they do it often. A trademark attached to someone who is “good” at what they do is the practice they put into their craft. Not only practice, but staying apprised of anything new in their selected field of interest or endeavor.

This certainly does not preclude surfers. Several of these old school surfers, who may have enjoyed surfing on short boards, were out in droves using a long board or even a “softie” – a soft, foam core board on which beginners learn. Yours truly will even be getting out on a softie at some point this summer. Never stop learning, right? It was incredibly intriguing to watch these guys, who might have been thought of as hot dogs, enjoying a ride on a board typically reserved for the inexperienced or one-weekend water warrior. There was one surfer in particular, obviously experienced, who surfed ALL DAY while standing on his head, jumping around, holding yoga poses, and generally displaying a good positive attitude to the young surfers, as well as putting on a great show for the shore surfers – like myself. Things he achieved on a soft surfboard.

I have never liked the phrase, “You can’t teach an old dog…,” for I believe you can. And actually if an old dog wants to stay in the game, he better learn a few new tricks. And in order to stay on top of your game, you must never stop learning, never stop practicing. For failure is eminent the moment you stop learning, the moment you become stagnant. If major corporations recognize stagnation as a death knell, why wouldn’t you? Why would the human body and mind be any different?

“All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort , and effort means work.” ~Calvin Coolidge

Sure, practice makes perfect. Sure, merely showing up is imperative. But don’t you think the extra effort is what makes a person unique – better – at what they do? BeKnown and BranchOut and even Facebook are knocking on the solid oak door of LinkedIn. The hinges are a bit creaky on that door, I am happy to open it wide and see what else is out there.

Don’t ever give up and don’t ever shut down, try surfing on a softie, instead of just a sluggish oak door.  Imagine riding that wave a whole new way.

A Better Way.

photo credit 
Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for the online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.  

You Mean There's Rules?

How often should you update your social media profiles? Recently, I did a walk through our offices and reminded the employees that they need to go to LinkedIn and update their profiles. Several looked at me blankly, one even said to me, “Am I supposed to have a profile?” I nodded patiently and said in my normal, playfully acerbic tone, “Yes, you need to have a LinkedIn profile.” She looked at the others around the room as if I had chopped her head off.  I guess the “playful” part of my tone didn’t shine through.

It is easy for me to forget that not everyone has had a profile for five or six years. Not everyone thinks regular updates and profile maintenance are necessary. I do and my co-workers know that I do. In a busy, growing company, LinkedIn and other professional networks have served as a great help in my efforts to recruit for or promote my company, yes – I’m gonna say it: branding.  And personally, I gain an  understanding of my connections’ positions and how I can help them, how they can help me.

LinkedIn is the ultimate professional networking tool, even with its constant updates and changes. I also have profiles on many other networks claiming to be the next LinkedIn.  For instance, years ago Plaxo considered LinkedIn direct competition, but it has evolved from trying to compete to becoming, basically, a cloud-based Rolodex and a great birthday reminder tool, which was always its greatest strength.  I love sending eCards to friends, as well as professional connections; it is a great way to let someone know you are thinking of them and another way to maintain inactive or passive relationships. You never know when an inactive relationship will blossom into a full-blown active one.

And of course, there are other online networking profiles floating around out there. My personal social media philosophy has always been: There are an awful lot of details available about you on the internet- take control of your online persona and have what YOU control be the dominating sources, the highest ranked listings in a Google search about you. I cannot stress enough the importance of knowing what is out there about you. For example: go to pipl.com, type your name into the search bar and see what comes up about you. The listings of personal information are all available on line. Next go to Google and type in your name in the search bar, but search in “images.” Other surprises await you. Not only information you put online about yourself, but also details that your connections post online are all cached somewhere and are retrievable.

Be careful and be in control.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I was always a huge proponent of having an open Facebook. I use it for business and professional networking, so I want people to be able to find me and feel free to contact me. But I also like feeling secure and up until a year ago, I have always felt secure online. That was no longer true after a few harassing emails and messages through Facebook and other networks. I constantly update my privacy settings on Facebook and now avidly block followers on Twitter. Also, like many of my friends, I have closed my Facebook chat function. Why? Because I want to continue to use social media in my work and just like any other tool, there are evolving rules regarding its use.

I choose to continually evolve with the rules.

photo credit 
Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for the online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.  

A New Revolution

A world that finds distress necessary seems to be emerging. I don’t really understand it, but it seems to be true even as we recognize the need to ease distress, solve an issue, change a course, innovation and provoking thoughts or actions occur. Provocation has, on more than one occasion, driven home the need to rethink or transform. It is a continual itch that needs to be scratched, a bottomless hole that needs to be filled, and an oft-asked question begging to be answered.

More than a mild irritation that is easily soothed by calming words or Neosporin, revolution comes along when what is currently in place is no longer working or relevant. Thomas Jefferson said, “Every generation needs a new revolution.”  So, what revolution have we, this current generation of business?

The perpetual swell of technology and the speed with which we communicate have initiated a whole new way to master human resources, to create partnerships and create continuing biz opportunities. When I first entered the corporate world, the fax machine was invaluable and snail mail was the preferred way of sharing important information. Email quickly took over and increased the tempo to our favorite song.

IM, Social Networks, Twitter, Gamification, and Location Tech continue to evolve the face of sourcing, marketing, presenting, negotiating, and selecting. Thank goodness. Think of how different our lives might be without the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google. Especially in the wake of recent economic changes. Evolution, actual revolution was imminent, continues to be imminent.  It will not slow down – it may even increase. Are you ready?

Relationship-building will become even more imperative as we enter the next evolution.

Anyone can tweet – where is their face?
Anyone can join a social network and add a hundred new contacts in a day – where is the handshake?
Anyone can find the perfect match for the perfect job online – where is the voice and personal engagement?

Don’t be anyone.

Be the someone whose voice is recognized.
Be the someone whose client knows you look good in red or that you like deep dish pizza.
Be the someone who knows the value of engagement.

Be someone.

Every generation needs a new revolution…

Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for the online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.  

Is relevance just a matter of perspective?  Of course, it is.

I attended a marketing summit recently.  It was not a recruiting conference or a recruiting unconference.  It was a meeting of local marketing minds from mobile, public relations, social media, and…, wait for it…, the soon-to-be extinct direct marketing.  I have attended multiple tech conferences and enjoyed them, and many, many, many HR and Recruiting conferences.  But this was my first marketing conference – if you don’t count a Seth Godin concert or a Scott Stratten sing-a-long (with greatest respect, as I admire both immeasurably).

It was a great opportunity to meet folks, within my own community, fearlessly working and trying to navigate the new rules of marketing, just as I am.  Typically, I am hopping on a plane or driving for at least four hours for such an opportunity.  Who knew I could be inspired and learn from just down the street?  True, there were only three or four of us tweeting, but the information and deets shared were relevant because of our location and our chosen fields.

We are all battling the same demons:  How many email campaigns before we get deemed spam by our receivers?  Is print marketing dead?  Is social all it’s cracked up to be?  Can you really measure it?  Do we really want to help each other?  How much more can we possibly learn? Are there really that many platforms and do I need to be present on all of them? Whew…, makes even the most level head spin.

No one is teaching this – no formal educator anyway.  We are learning it on our own, organically, as we go.  When last I checked, my alma mater was still not offering social or mobile marketing classes.  Why is that?  Has it been determined, somewhere, by the academic gods that  social media is a flash-in-the-pan?  That mobile is just a fad?  I, for one, am very happy to declare that they aren’t going away.  They aren’t going to ride off into the sunset, like Polaroid cameras and Playtex bras.  They aren’t going to sing one last song for the road, at least not until the next greatest elevation of innovation.  This is it, the latest and greatest.  Learn it, embrace it.  Use it to do your job better.  Listen to what others are saying and doing.  And share what you are doing.

When all is said and done, perspective is everything. How you use what you use.  What you need to “make it work” depends on you – your approach, your management and maintenance, what is relevant to you, your family, your friends, your business.  G+ may be just what you were looking for as an individual, but how will it work for your business?  LinkedIn may be perfect for your HR department, but how about marketing?  Twitter may be the be-all-end-all for viral marketing, but  does it really make a recruiter’s job easier?

Facebook sits on the throne, but how long will be the reign? With lightning speed, functionalities change or increase.  Sometimes, the crown becomes crooked or tarnished – but is always righted and shiny once passed along.  The elevation of innovation.

Here lie the graves of:  reel-to-reel, facsimile, cassettes, Napster, dictaphone, pagers, and of what once was Friendster -  What will be next?

Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for the online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.

I can remember when I bought my first stereo, it played cassette tapes and had a radio.  It was post-the LP /vinyl album era and pre-compact disc.  I LOVED it!  Since I have already dated myself, I’ll go one further:  the first album I ever bought was Billy Joel’s The Nylon Curtain.  Eight-track tapes had recently become obsolete, LPs were still being sold but cassette tapes were the hit of the day.  I could never have imagined CDs or that they would eventually be replaced by MP3s only to have any-time online streaming music become the latest and greatest.

Once they became affordable, more people bought CD players than purchased reel-to-reel, phonographs, eight-track players and cassette players combined.  The adoption curve for the MP3 was considerably shorter than it was for CD.  And those investigating services like Spotify will adopt and adapt far quicker than those who reluctantly left their eight-track player behind.

I purchased my first cell phone ten years ago.  I was a little behind the game but my new-found singlehood pushed me into making the purchase and joining the new millennium.  I never would have guessed then that ten years later, I would no longer have a house phone or a land line, other than the emergency VoIP handset that is plugged into my computer.  I am sure the telegraph operators of old never imagined a world where wireless communication would be so prevalent.  I have been a smart phone user for three years, I cannot imagine a day without my mobile device, let alone my life. The adoption rate from regular cell phones to Smart Phones was, of course, way quicker than from telegraph to the early telephone.

I have had a Google profile for years.  As a matter of fact, several years ago, I had a bit of an inkling that social media was going to be somewhat important and I went about creating online profiles on any network or site that I thought had their act somewhat together, enough to last for a couple years, anyway.  Some of my early ones included MySpace, Facebook, Plaxo, Xing, Naymz, Spoke, LinkedIn, Reunion.com, Classmates.com, Match.com, ZoomInfo, and many others.   Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla soon followed.  Needless to say, I find social networking, eMarketing, social recruiting very important, obviously.

There are 750 million registered Facebook users.  Half of those users log in every single day.  I was lucky enough to be part of the initial 10 million Google+ users.  It was NOTHING for me to set up a profile and begin using it, NOTHING.  So all the reports of “Ewwww, G+ has more registered users than Facebook did at the same point!” <- kind of insults the intelligence of anyone who understands technology adoption or social media.  A recent Mashable post claims that within a year, Google+ could have more users than LinkedIn and Twitter.  Of course, G+ will – the base they are drawing from is much larger than either of these companies ever dreamed at their own inceptions.   Seems silly to even speculate since the same article states that 31% of G+ users created then promptly abandoned their accounts.

What happened to wait and see?  Or earning it?  I am tired of the G+ hype already – ummm, what have you done for me lately? Not much, not even close to FB, Twitter or LI.  Don’t get too big for those over-sized britches…

Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for the online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn. 

Human Resources practitioners who are working in the trenches need access to information, advice, and data immediately outside of HR associations like SHRM and ASTD.  Thankfully, there are HR bloggers, communities, and websites that are providing HR pros with real time information and resources.  Here are a handful of resources, in fact Six resources that I recommend HR professionals add to their RSS readers or bookmark.

• The Human Race Horses.  An HR blog managed by Mike Vandervort.  Mike discusses Human Resource topics, Labor Relations and a mix of social media.

• TNLT.  An HR extension of the popular Electronic Recruiting Exchange or ERE, TNLT is a new network of HR related blog posts and articles.

• LinkedIn HR.  Almost 300,000 members strong.  This is a valuable resource and LinkedIn Group to build connections, ask questions, and learn about news and information concerns the HR Practioner.

• SmartBrief Workforce.  An amazing email newsletter and resource with a collection of leading HR bloggers and practioners.  Last week’s announcement of their new editor and former COO of SHRM, China Gorman is a smart move for this publication.

• HR Fishbowl.  Charlie Judy is a senior level HR practioner and one of my favorite new and upcoming HR bloggers.  He is focused on HR issues and provides an experienced point of view with a focus on strategic and feet on the street human resources.

• The HR Net.  Steve Browne, an HR Practioner from Ohio who has created an amazing HR Forum that is free and available for anyone to join called The HR Net.  He sends weekly updates to members of the forum who are able to post HR questions and comments anonymously.  Connect with Steve directly to learn more at sbrowne@larosas.com.
  

Do you have a great Trench HR Resources you care to share?  Leave a comment let the Blogging4Jobs readers know.

Photo Credit Dry Icons.