Tag: HR

HR & Marketing…Do You Think They’re Overlapping?

HR and Marketing…they’ve certainly been making eye contact.

And it’s moved on…there’s a definite frisson in the air. They’re beginning to discuss needs, share information, and work on internal and external communication. In fact engagement, branding, communications are clearly concerns and interests common to both. And Social Media seems to be bringing them closer.

Those terrible twins Recruiting and Talent, whilst appreciative of the sterling job that HR has done raising them as a single parent, are growing up fast and long for the creative input that Marketing could bring to the family.

At Stopgap Group we speak to many HR and Marketing practitioners and can sense the closeness developing. That’s why we’ve devised a short survey to try and get a feel for how other practitioners see it.

You can do the Marketing & HR Overlap Survey here – will only take a minute…we’d really appreciate your input.

By way of an introduction, I’ve given the rest of this post over to Callum Saunders…he’s the Marketing Manager for Stopgap Group and he’s giving you his take on this growing overlap:

HR & Marketing – in bed together at last?

Despite the (unfortunately all-too-common) perception amongst my peers that all I do is ‘play around on Twitter and Facebook all day’, my day-to-day role at the Stopgap  Group is in fact rather diverse and indeed, unique.

For those of you that are still unsure as to what I actually do (including my other half!), I look after the marketing and Social Media functions for Stopgap, Fitzroy and Courtenay; marketing, executive and HR recruitment firms respectively.  Whilst this variety in brands affords me an enjoyable amount of diversity in my day-to-day role, it has also allowed me to look at both marketing and HR from a holistic viewpoint.

If I look back to when I started in the Marketing department here in late 2007, I wouldn’t be alone in claiming that HR and marketing were separate entities requiring different methods of thinking, marketing and strategy.  Move the clock forward to 2010 however, and Social Media has been a huge catalyst, I believe, in bringing these two functions closer together.

I first gained my first real glimpse of this at the well-received Connecting HR event in March.  I attended the event in a professional capacity representing the marketing function of Courtenay HR, but soon found I had more in common with the HR community than I had previously thought.

Several insightful conversations with various HR practitioners caused something of an epiphany for me.  Listening to these HR professionals discussing the role of Social Media from a human resources perspective, I found that this new medium has blurred the lines between marketing and HR exponentially.

Employees are now much more accountable in terms of ‘employer branding’ than ever before.  Traditionally, it has been marketing departments that have set the agenda for controlled communications.  ‘Digital Democracy’ however, has given all workplace denizens a voice – and thus an opinion that audiences listen to.

Similarly, ‘brand advocates’ within an organisation are being increasingly used to market the company.  In our own organisation, we have several prominent Social Media users whose primary function within the organisation is not marketing.  Nevertheless, their blogs, tweets and LinkedIn interactions have all combined to create an additional Social Media marketing / branding function that has undoubtedly complimented the more ‘established’ marketing efforts coming from my direction.

HR and marketing have so many similarities.  Both aim to engage groups of people.  Both functions wish to market an organisation in the best possible light.  Both look at new ways of communicating and engaging – the list is endless.

Now these similarities are not ‘new’ – these principles have been fundamental to these two disciplines for a long, long time.  However, the way we as humans communicate is shifting dramatically – and this can be ascribed almost wholly to the advent of Social Media.

As long as HR and marketing remain intrinsically about connecting and communicating with people, I have no doubt that Social Media will be the catalyst that draws these functions even closer together – and why not?  Marketing and HR are natural bedfellows and I believe it’s crucial for early adopters of this way of thinking to champion this union and achieve some very big things.

Expert, Texpert…Don’t You Know The Joker Laughs At You?? (Everyone’s on Twitter, Everyone’s a Star)

Whole forests have been pulped to enable Beatles obsessives to speculate/pontificate in print over the exact meanings of John Lennon’s lyrics to ‘I Am The Walrus’ – don’t worry, I’m not about to add any – however I do like the accepted explanation of the line

Expert, Texpert, Choking Smoker

Don’t you know the Joker laughs at you

The expert/texperts are all the academics, teachers and journalists who analyse and try to find hidden meanings in his lyrics, being laughed at by Lennon’s Joker…laughing because the meanings that they see just aren’t there?

There’s a lesson for social media enthusiasts in there somewhere. Every day more experts, gurus, consultants, advocates, enthusiasts, specialists, advisors and commentators spring into view with blogs, journal articles, tweets, newsletters, forum threads and speaking engagements, all passing on their wisdom.  Everyone has a view, an opinion to share.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the stuff churned out is useful, enlightening and entertaining…but the rest is self-promoting, attention seeking noise. Personal brand positioning by association.

Forests aren’t being pulped…but there’s a cacophony of white noise in the echo chamber.

My twitter timeline positively collapses under the weight of it some days.

On top of that everyone now seems to be consulting or advising. We have speakers, guest speakers, keynote speakers, facilitators, hosts, track leaders, live tweeters, bloggers…everyone sharing their thoughts and insights.

I followed a live feed from ILSHRM last week regarding a ‘speaker’ – oh how well the unconference set-up does away with the need for expert ‘speakers’- who appeared less enlightened than some of his audience, who were commenting, less than approvingly, on a live twitter feed. Good blog from Mike Vandervort summarises.

Now I don’t have a problem with this. Proper live speakers have always been able to handle hecklers and mischief-makers. Previously if you sat in a talk or presentation that you haven’t enjoyed, you used to have to wait for the coffee break to share your thoughts with people. Not any more. The immediacy of social media allows instant comment and observation. If you can’t deal with it…get off of the platform (in more ways than one!)

At this point I’ll hold my hands up, as clearly I’m not a complete outsider…you’re reading this on a blog, and I’ve been known to host the occasional tracks at unconferences, and live tweet. But then I’m a recruiter; I’m not really looking for speaking or consulting gigs. Although happy to oblige if offered, I’m really not trying to pass myself off as a consultant, adviser or speaker, merely voicing my thoughts on what I see, hear and experience.

For me, Social Media is really all about connecting, engaging, sharing and learning. It’s not about looking good, looking smart or looking well connected.

So where will it all lead?

An excellent blog from Trish McFarlane – In Search of Normal – got me thinking. Are the social media non-adopters, naysayers, cynics and deniers really Lennon’s Joker, laughing at us for seeing something that they don’t think is there?  If they were to eavesdrop our online conversations would they just see a rash of self-serving, self-referencing micro PR releases masquerading as engagement? A ‘conversation’ where nearly 30% admit retweeting without even reading what they’re retweeting?

Maybe social media gives us all the chance to shine…remember what Marilyn Monroe said?

Everyone’s a star and deserves the right to twinkle

I’m just worried that the modern social media take on it is

Everyone’s on Twitter and deserves the right to be an expert

Let me know what you think…

Think Before You Tweet (A Twitter Recruitment Tragi-Comedy in 5 Parts)

It had to happen one day.

It’s probably happened before and I’m sure this sorry story will be repeated many times in different forms until recruiters finally understand the power of social media, and it’s use for informing and engaging not just name gathering.

This week it happened to a recruiter I know…

The Scene:

Candidate has an interview for an interim role with Company XXX. The interview goes well, and candidate is asked if they have any other interviews. Candidate says no interviews with companies, only agencies. Company XXX offers Candidate the job, a 6 month contract to start next Monday. Candidate says YES!

The Action:

Candidate goes home and logs in to their Twitter account. Candidate tweets to followers:

Got offer from Company XXX, hope to get one from Company YYY tomorrow. Exciting times.

Company XXX have people who monitor their mentions on Social Media. They see the tweet and pass to HR.

The Denouement:

Offer is withdrawn.

The Lessons:

1)      Recruiters…Get on Twitter! Find out if your candidates (and clients for that matter) are on Twitter too. If they are, follow them and engage with them. You need to know what’s going on.

2)      Candidates…If you are going to tweet about your interviews, and name the companies involved, expect your tweets to be read by both the company and the recruiter (in-house or 3rd party) because they need to know what’s going on.

3)      Clients…Be prepared for people to share their experiences of you on social media. In this case the client found out something that enabled them to act quickly. That may not always be the case. You need to know what’s going on.

The Moral:

Get on Twitter, or any Social Media! You need to know what’s going on.

Anyone experienced anything similar?

Can Social Connecting Help Us Find a Head of HR?

It’s time for my first guest blogger.

The company I work for – Courtenay HR – are recruiting a Head of HR for a really great client and we thought that this may be a good opportunity to put the strength of our social connections to the test! Our leader is Gareth Jones – who some of you may now on Twitter as @garelaos – and he has blogged about it on his excellent site Inside My Head…that blog is reproduced here:

Help me prove the concept…

Anyone who knows me, reads my blog or follows me on twitter will know that I am somewhat of a social media evangelist and right now it’s a hotly debated subject in the field of recruitment.  I believe, as some others do, that social ‘connecting’ will have a significant impact on recruitment and will be a significant enabler of people moving in and out of organisations in the future.  But right now I appear to be in the minority.

So, rather than wait for the market to produce an example where a key role has been filled through social connecting, we have decided to test the concept and create our own.  And that’s where we need your help!  We have a great role to fill, and I want to see the impact that resourcing through my social connections can have.  So without further ado:
Overview
The role is a c£80k Head of HR for a financial services (non banking) company.  They are a multi award winning organisation for both customer service and employee engagement and are in the top segment of the UK’s high performing organisations (officially measured).  I personally know the HR Director extremely well – we placed them a number of years ago.  They are one of the most credible, commercial and professional individuals I have met in HR so needless to say this is a great opportunity.

The details of the role can be found here but a top line of the kind of person we are looking for in terms of experience:

  • A solid background in generalist HR and Management
  • Strong compensation and benefits experience
  • Experience of managing centralised employee services environments
  • High levels of numeracy and attention to detail

How can you help?
Spread the word!  Some things that you can do to push the role out beyond the traditional recruitment channels would be:

  • Enter the link to this blog in your LinkedIn status message
  • Send a message with a link to this post to your connections on linked in
  • Tweet this post on twitter
  • Refer to this post in your own blog if you have one or:
  • Guest post me – put my post up as a guest post on your blog
  • Send a message out via facebook if you are comfortable with that

Getting in touch
The role is being handled by my good colleague Louise Curtis but if you have any questions you can contact either of us as follows:

Louise: Twitter: @lou_kiwi_curtis or LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/louisecurtis

Gareth: Twitter: @garelaos or LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/garethmjones

I’m not sure how we are going to measure the results as yet, but we are hopeful that the momentum we can generate together will demonstrate the power and speed of social connections made through social media.

Thanking you all in advance for your help and support.  Over to you!

Clarity, Communication, Closure – 3 Keys to getting Recruitment Right

(This post was originally written for HR Zone and published as part of their series on recruitment)

Recruiting, hiring, talent attraction, talent acquisition…whatever words you use you can’t escape the fact that sourcing and hiring new people for your business is far harder to get right than it is wrong, with new research showing that a negative experience can damage your bottom line.

Its long been said that you can tell a lot about a company by the way it goes about recruiting its people, and never was this truer than now, with technology and social media helping to create immediate and transparent contact between jobseekers and a hiring company, whether sourced directly or through a third party recruiter.

The process of hiring now brings your business into contact with a range of people…successful applicants, unsuccessful candidates, third parties, RPOs to name a few. And the rules of candidate attraction mean that your business will be visible through website, digital advertising, Facebook page, Linked In profile and very possibly a Twitter feed.

Getting the right person is now not the only key outcome… using the right approach is vital as those who are involved in that process now have channels through which they can vent their frustrations.

The best recruitment processes should contain the 3 Cs – Clarity, Communication and Closure – and should always manage expectations. Key questions to ask yourself are:

Why do you need to hire?

Every recruitment process starts with a need to hire, and whether you are looking for one person or a number of people it pays to know exactly why you are hiring, what role(s) you are trying to fill. Hiring managers need to put time into into scoping out exactly why they need someone, what they need that someone to do, and what deliverables will be expected…and the key question:

Do we already have someone here who can do this role, or do our people know someone who can do this role?

Many jobseekers talk of their frustrations at finding roles for which they have been interviewing eventually filled by internal transfer or promotion, or recommendation. There is nothing wrong with this, but it pays to be transparent from the start. Very often the approach is to see who is available and then compare with what you have internally, whereas the most successful pieces of hiring will often start with looking at the people in whom you have already invested time and training.

Assuming you don’t have an internal resource then a clearly defined role profile is essential before you go to market. It’s not enough to assume that the position is the same as it was three years ago, or send out the message ‘we just need a good person who can do x and y’; you need to know exactly what the new person has to achieve, what their key internal relationships are, and what scope there is for personal and professional development within the role.

In other words…clarity.

How will you find them?

As a 3rd party recruiter it won’t surprise you to find out that I still think that we are the best route! There are plenty of values based, knowledgeable recruiters out there who have a sound grasp of their markets and have built a community of some of the best talent within them. The way to approach this is not to brief a number of suppliers, with a low fee attached, and assume that this competition will deliver quality candidates. It won’t! The best recruiters rarely enter into these kinds of CV chases and you are more than likely to end up with a number of poorly matched, inadequately briefed candidates.

You should work with one or two recruiters who you have not only met, but also have taken a reference on from previous clients as to how successful they have been and how they work. It’s always useful to also go to their offices, find out a little about how they project themselves, how they are targeted, and how they deal with people who apply for roles.

Remember that the experience that your chosen recruiter gives to candidates who apply for a role with your company will reflect on you and not always the recruiter.

Should you go to market directly then a clear message will always be the key. From a well written ad, to the way that you contact all candidates, and the information that you pass on at every stage of the interview process…all of this says something about your business. Transparency is vital – everyone needs to know where they stand in the process, what is the next stage, are they moving forward (if not, why not) and when will they know more?

Clear and transparent Communication

How will you bring them in?

You’ve found the person that you want and they want to join you…what next? Well, from my experience of 20 years as a recruiter I would say that the majority of problems that lead to unsuccessful hires can be traced back to either before the candidate joins, or to their initial three months. It is important that once you have an offer and acceptance that everything runs smoothly. No waiting for contracts or other detail, regular communication between hiring manager and new hire and some clear information regarding onboarding and induction.

Many companies will leave this to HR, but I believe that those in HR need to involve not just the hiring manager but also the rest of the team in making the new person feel both welcome and valued. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve interviewed a candidate who is leaving a role after only a few months and hear ‘I knew straight away’ or worse ‘they gave me loads of information about themselves in the interviews that, as soon as I started, I realised wasn’t accurate’.

The most successful hires that you make will always be the ones who find no surprises at any stage of the process, never have to check where their paperwork is, never have to phone a week before they join to find out starting details and, crucially, walk in on day one and find not only is everything as they have been led to expect but that they have also already met everyone in their immediate team.

That is only part of the closure though…what about the candidates who didn’t make it through to this stage? A lot of damage can be done to an employer’s brand by poor communication to rejected candidates. They have invested time (research and preparation) and hope in working for your business, they have an emotional bond with you and may well want to work for the business at some stage in the future. They need to have expectations managed as rejected candidates are consumers and ambassadors for your business too.

The Need for Speed

‘I feel the need…the need for speed’ (Tom Cruise, Top Gun 1986)

Whatever artistic merits ‘Top Gun’ may possess, there is little doubt that it remains an iconic 80s movie, with a number of quotable lines, not least the one above. With the ‘greed is good’ business decade well and truly in full swing by 1986 there was little doubt that speed was intoxicating. Everything needed to go faster, to happen quicker, from the time it took your car to accelerate to the length of wait for your burger, it had to be now, now, now!

I was a rookie recruiter in those days, placing qualified accountants in accounting firms, learning that success came from fully understanding the client brief and partnership culture, and growing a network of candidates and contacts that could give you access to a range of talent. Candidates usually came to you through your knowledge of the market, mainly referrals from people who you had helped/advised.

When a client briefed you they would always ask…

Do you know anyone who can do this? Or Can you find us someone who can do this?

Innocent, less complex times maybe, but in specialist permanent recruitment your clients tended to value your knowledge. They expected to wait for the most suitable person and wanted to brief someone who could go out and find them. If there was urgency, they were almost apologetic; as if giving us reduced timeframes would make our task harder. Now, now, now was not something that seemed to apply to crucial pieces of recruitment.

It’s all very different now, of course. Speed is king.

I recently conducted some spontaneous research, speaking to a few recruiters about their markets and what they felt they competed on most. Almost all of them said speed. Attend a recruitment industry get together and you will hear recruiters bemoan the rise of speed over quality.

I asked a few internal recruiters what was most important to them in a recruitment partner, and alongside ‘not wasting my time with irrelevant CVs’ and ‘really understanding what we want’ speed of response also rated highly.

Why?

No-one could really say, but like Maverick and Goose in Top Gun, speed was necessary, exhilarating, a sign of strength. It implied you were good.

Hiring managers used to ask ‘Who do you know?’ now they ask ‘Who have you got?’

There seems to be an expectation that we all ‘have’ a number of CVs ready to pull out at a few hours notice. Yet the role that is to be filled may be a key position that will have a large impact on the business. Getting it wrong may be costly and disruptive. Could businesses be failing to make the best hiring decisions through an artificial time restriction?

Many briefs now ask for CVs within 48 or 72 hours…a good recruiter won’t just fling CVs at a client, they will want to conduct a full search, speak to candidates, discuss the role with them, get their authority to submit the CV, candidates may want to think over the role, do some research on the company first…

…if that can’t be done within 48 or 72 hours then some very strong candidates may not get in front of a hiring manager, and those companies may well be ruling out the most suitable person for the role…

I am always interested to know why speed is considered so desirable in a piece of specialist permanent recruitment…if there is a sudden need, then surely the business should look for an interim solution whilst following a proper and thorough process to find the best permanent candidate…so

Third party recruiters…I’d love to know if speed is something you embrace, or if you find it a hindrance…

And internal recruiters…I’d love to know why ‘who have you got’ has replaced ‘who do you know’

Look forward to hearing your thoughts

Should Recruiters Do It On The Phone…or Do It With Social Media?

My Twitter followers will know that I got a ‘Headhunt’ call Monday morning, and I was less than pleased.

Now I’ve already written about my concern over what passes for ‘Headhunting’ in today’s contingency recruitment market…but I think that this one took the biscuit.

Traditional start, he got past switchboard saying he knew me personally, then gave me a name, said he was from an executive search company (?!) and told me he was headhunting for an HR Recruitment company who were looking to bring in an experienced HR recruiter, then said ‘is that the kind of job you would be interested in?’..

Er, what job?

‘The one I just told you about’

But you haven’t really told me anything about a job

I won’t bore you with the next bit…I asked him what he knew about me and he read the first 2 lines of my Linked In profile back to me. I asked why he felt his opportunity may interest me and he just asked what I was looking for.

So I asked if he could tell me more about this role, and he said…

‘This is an excellent opportunity with a fabulous company, that’s really growing’

That’s it…he read an ad to me.

I asked what else he knew about the role and he said he’d told me all he knew, but if it sounded like the kind of job I was interested in he could get a senior consultant to call me back.

Well, I thanked him for his time, and passed on the opportunity.

Now look, maybe I’m being a bit demanding here. Maybe the fact that this guy and I inhabit the same business sector bothers me. Maybe I was concerned how this ‘approach’ would sound to a candidate who wasn’t familiar with the workings of the recruitment industry.

Maybe I was just concerned about shoddy values and ethics, about a company who clearly are happy to let someone make calls like that in the hope that they may score a spot deal.

Now the thing is that I would probably have been less bothered if I got this approach as a message through Linked In. In fact I do get a number of messages and approaches through LI either asking me nicely, or asking me if I know anyone…I always respond.

I find that approach less intrusive…the lack of experience and knowledge of the person contacting me is way less obvious. Initially…but this can’t be used as a smoke screen, far from it as I can see a lot about the person contacting me – career history, connections, referrals, recommendations, groups, PICTURE – you’d better know your stuff if you’re going to use that medium.

Everywhere you turn the recruitment experts/gurus/thought leaders/entrepreneurs/traditionalists are telling us to forget social media and get on the phone…in fact I’m surprised I haven’t read a blog…

REAL RECRUITERS DO IT ON THE PHONE …

I usually take it with a pinch of salt, a bit like punk rock and spangles, it’s something we dinosaurs use to show the young upstarts it was better in our day…then today I read an excellent interview with Clay Shirky about paywall and why the print media won’t survive…talking of print media, and how 25 year olds prefer to read news online,  one quote really stood out..

“And to put it in one bleak sentence, no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds.”

Oooh, not many 25 year olds pick up the phone these days…they prefer instant messaging, texting, tweeting, facebooking…hell, anything other that actually talking..

So maybe, just maybe, we’re approaching the time when…

REAL RECRUITERS DO IT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA…

So could times really be a-changing…let me know what you think…

Blogged on the 4th of July…a message for my US buddies

Sorry about the cheesy title…hope you can forgive me.

I wanted to grab the attention of my US friends and wish them a Happy Independence Day…celebrating their freedom from the British (oh how some of my Scottish friends would love to celebrate something similar, substituting British with English!)

Independent or not, there has always been a close bond between the countries… and one that, on a personal level for me, has gotten even closer through Social Media.

So no more of this…

‘Two Nations Separated By a Common Language’

… I can honestly say that after attending HREvolution in May, and also speaking to many of my US Twitter buddies at TruLondon, not to mention the ongoing chat through Twitter, Facebook and many blogs and webchats, then for the Anglo-American HR & Recruiting community it is definitely a case of…

‘Two Nations United By Common Concerns and Issues’.

So to everyone across the Atlantic….Hope You Have a Happy, Relaxing, Enjoyable, Fun-Filled Day with Friends and Family…and I look forward to chatting and debating with you all again soon!

Damn! I may even get to stay awake long enough for HR Happy Hour one of these days!…

War?? What Is It Good For??

(It’s a Question of Appropriateness of Language)

There is no war for talent.

I’ll re-phrase that…

There is no war, for talent.

There is talent everywhere.

I was reading an article about how Accenture are going to hire up to 50,000 people this year, but that 40% of hires would be through social media (mainly Linked In and Twitter), and you may have thought that as a 3rd party recruiter I would be concerned by that. I should have been…but what really concerned me was the lame, gratuitous use of the word ‘War’.

‘Currently there is a War for Talent’ opined their head of recruitment.

Really?

In the UK alone we have 2.5 million unemployed (sorry, claiming jobseekers allowance…lord knows how many others aren’t) almost 2 million economic inactives, not forgetting about 1 million working part time who would like to work full time…there you are, abundant talent.

Sorry, maybe unemployed people aren’t talent. Those who have to take part time work to keep a roof over their families possess no talent. Clearly the 900,000+ under 25s who are desperately searching for a chance, any chance, to learn and prove themselves, have no potential.

Of course the original phrase ‘War for Talent’ sprang from a report by McKinsey, which really dealt with what companies need to do about the impending ‘talent’ shortfall to avoid ‘war’. (If you haven’t yet done so then I recommend you check out Gareth Jones’ excellent blog Talent Management : The Emperor’s (Not So) New Clothes)

Yet some of our biggest companies would rather see themselves at ‘war’ with one another. But do they know what war really is?

I propose that anyone who thinks that 2 or more companies trying to hire the same person/people is a war should be parachuted straight into Helmand for 72 hours and find out what war is…failing that, maybe some time spent with the bereaved families of servicemen who have actually fought in a war may provide a reality check.

Back in the day, in the masculinised world of 80s business, when lunch was for wimps and no self respecting executive would be caught without his copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, when companies saw themselves as armies fighting over consumer turf, military comparisons were seen as the only way to grow.

But not now, surely. Not when there are real wars being fought on the planet, when we are in the middle of a recession/depression that no-one really knows the end date of, when the misery, desolation and hopelessness of long term unemployment haunts so many.

How can NOW be a time to use the language of military triumphalism in such a glib, gratuitous way?

All of us in HR and Recruiting should try to ensure we use language that is considered and compassionate, appropriate to the situation. Not lazy and lame, misleading and mis-representative.

…and In My Very Humble Opinion, companies are not in a ‘war’ for talent…talent is in a ‘war’ for real opportunities… (but that is a different post)

Gotta Get Myself Connected…

Make sure you’re connected
The writing’s on the wall
But if your mind’s neglected
Stumble you might fall

I’m not sure that Stereo MCs foresaw social media when they wrote those lyrics, but one thing I am increasingly sure of is that if you want to succeed in business in the future, you’re going to have to be connected.

There’s little doubt that Social Media, Social Networking and Social Recruiting increasingly impact on my day to day working life…if I’m not communicating with people through social media channels, then the chances are that I’m engaged in a discussion about those channels…whether face to face or over the phone.

Very soon we’ll have the second ConnectingHR event. This is a meet-up for HR people using or interested in social media, and is co-organised and co-promoted by Courtenay HR, the company I work for. It will be a landmark event; I don’t think I’m giving too much away if I say that it will be the launch pad for the ConnectingHR Unconference, the UKs first specialist HR unconference…and an event where the attendees will have a unique chance to create and shape the content.

These will be just two of many events surrounding social media, and organised and promoted through its various platforms, which I will have attended this year and I never cease to be amazed by the energy, passion and momentum that each one generates.

At each event I have met intelligent, interesting and committed people who are there to meet and share, learn and inform, and do it all whilst having a great time!

If you’ve ever doubted social media, or its ability to connect people and facilitate learning and information flow, ideas and creativity, sharing of thoughts and opinions, then I urge you to just join in and go along to unconferences, networking events or workshops and experience it all firsthand. There are 3 things you’ll find:

1)      It’s the ‘Social’ that makes the media, networking, learning or recruiting so powerful and enriching

2)      Everyone you meet will be exactly as you imagine – one thing about social media is that the platforms and channels really do work when everyone is just themselves

3)      You will learn something! More knowledge is available through these channels that you could imagine!

What are you waiting for? Jump in and get connected…the writing’s on the wall!