Commencement of Week 4 of the Blog Swap approached. Attention to the fact was noted in my email account reminders area. As with any good consultant, it was a fact that the one thing most necessary before approaching a new client or situation is to learn more about them, research them, make certain you understand what they're about. So I began surfingHRMDirect's blog site in order to learn Colin's "voice" and principal focus. And I wanted to learn how long he's operated not only HRMDirect but also maintained his blog.
Clicking through the archives was time consuming. But that clicking yielded fruit. There on April 27, 2006, Colin spoke of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day and the importance of preparing those seeds of our future for the real workplace in meaningful ways. "We speak the same language!" I emoted, "We share the same passion!" And I decided that the contribution I made to HRMDirect would focus on (as I have spoken about in the past) our responsibility for future workforce preparation.
An alternative to development of our future workforce was a more generic and germane topic, leadership development, with an emphasis on "leadership."
But I stopped turning over these ideas as I realized I was going off track with what Colin's site is about. It was time to march back over and examine the site more carefully. It was time to read the posts in detail in order to understand the "voice" and business focus of HRMDirect. A good consultant stays on track, keeps focused on the essentials of their project, and demonstrates discipline by knowing how to pull themselves back to what they are <b><i>supposed</i><b> to do. In returning to examine the site once more, the realization that HRMDirect is about ATS applications became more obvious (as it was initially) and I was going off topic with all of those other peripheral discourses.
Meanwhile, Week 3 came and went. A client's real-world, onsite work came up and took me away from the goal of writing in Colin's voice and on his theme. But perseverence is another mark of a good consultant. New starts at the post were made. The drafts were saved and stored to the hard drive in their proper folder as time ran out. And Week 4 drew to a close.
We are now in Week 5 of the Blog Swap and I am dedicating this time to completing Week 4's post in Colin's voice and on his theme. It is now that the collection of these endeavors starts to take shape and evolve into a picture of what Human Resources in The New Millennium and Web 2.0 means. It is about all of the things that were considered, succession planning, human capital planning and preparation, Internet maximization, software utilization, innovation, tools, communication, keeping track of projects and promises and contracts, knowing laws and regulations, compliance with laws, and much more.
While I am not the ATS software guru that Colin and his team are, there are some things about HR management I do know as a consultant. It takes using a very powerful tool to help keep things on track in order to be the most effective and efficient human capital professional for one's organization. To the extent there is one cost-effective tool that will allow maximizing tasks such as communication, contract stages, onboarding, and the other multitudes of HR dynamics, it is worth one's effort to identify it in order to save the time and dollars as time passes. It's important to have a tool that will evolve with your organization. Each system allows input and calling of resumes. Not all systems offer identical features. So it's important to, once again, assess what's important to your organization, research what's on the market, analyze the features, determine the potential return on investment not only in terms of dollars and cents but also in effort and redundancy of software
presently residing on your hard drive, and ease of integration into your overall system.
The reason I was so scattered is because those are all the same dynamics that impact HR on a day-to-day basis, including the forgotten commitments that need to be attended in order to keep the business.
~~~~~
About the Author:
Yvonne LaRose is a California Accredited Consultant whose office is in Beverly Hills, California. Her practice focuses on two general areas: Organizational Development and Career Coaching. Her column, Career and Executive Recruiting Advice was created in early 2000 and then moved to its own domain in mid-2002. She now blogs from The Desk.
Blog Swap
Clicking through the archives was time consuming. But that clicking yielded fruit. There on April 27, 2006, Colin spoke of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day and the importance of preparing those seeds of our future for the real workplace in meaningful ways. "We speak the same language!" I emoted, "We share the same passion!" And I decided that the contribution I made to HRMDirect would focus on (as I have spoken about in the past) our responsibility for future workforce preparation.
An alternative to development of our future workforce was a more generic and germane topic, leadership development, with an emphasis on "leadership."
But I stopped turning over these ideas as I realized I was going off track with what Colin's site is about. It was time to march back over and examine the site more carefully. It was time to read the posts in detail in order to understand the "voice" and business focus of HRMDirect. A good consultant stays on track, keeps focused on the essentials of their project, and demonstrates discipline by knowing how to pull themselves back to what they are <b><i>supposed</i><b> to do. In returning to examine the site once more, the realization that HRMDirect is about ATS applications became more obvious (as it was initially) and I was going off topic with all of those other peripheral discourses.
Meanwhile, Week 3 came and went. A client's real-world, onsite work came up and took me away from the goal of writing in Colin's voice and on his theme. But perseverence is another mark of a good consultant. New starts at the post were made. The drafts were saved and stored to the hard drive in their proper folder as time ran out. And Week 4 drew to a close.
We are now in Week 5 of the Blog Swap and I am dedicating this time to completing Week 4's post in Colin's voice and on his theme. It is now that the collection of these endeavors starts to take shape and evolve into a picture of what Human Resources in The New Millennium and Web 2.0 means. It is about all of the things that were considered, succession planning, human capital planning and preparation, Internet maximization, software utilization, innovation, tools, communication, keeping track of projects and promises and contracts, knowing laws and regulations, compliance with laws, and much more.
While I am not the ATS software guru that Colin and his team are, there are some things about HR management I do know as a consultant. It takes using a very powerful tool to help keep things on track in order to be the most effective and efficient human capital professional for one's organization. To the extent there is one cost-effective tool that will allow maximizing tasks such as communication, contract stages, onboarding, and the other multitudes of HR dynamics, it is worth one's effort to identify it in order to save the time and dollars as time passes. It's important to have a tool that will evolve with your organization. Each system allows input and calling of resumes. Not all systems offer identical features. So it's important to, once again, assess what's important to your organization, research what's on the market, analyze the features, determine the potential return on investment not only in terms of dollars and cents but also in effort and redundancy of software
presently residing on your hard drive, and ease of integration into your overall system.
The reason I was so scattered is because those are all the same dynamics that impact HR on a day-to-day basis, including the forgotten commitments that need to be attended in order to keep the business.
~~~~~
About the Author:
Yvonne LaRose is a California Accredited Consultant whose office is in Beverly Hills, California. Her practice focuses on two general areas: Organizational Development and Career Coaching. Her column, Career and Executive Recruiting Advice was created in early 2000 and then moved to its own domain in mid-2002. She now blogs from The Desk.
Blog Swap