Not one to pass along those hokey and bogus email chains, you'll usually find me simply deleting them and sending off a warm email response asking to be removed from those types of emails going forward.  Something a little different came to me via tweet today from my friend, AmyBeth Hale (aka: ResearchGoddess) - and if it's the new form of chain emails then I'm guilty of some level of hypocrisy I'm sure... but I'll play this one forward in the interest of getting to know some fellow bloggers and perhaps discovering a few new ones.

Be warned... If I tag you and you fail to forward this before the next full moon then you'll find that someday your coffee will be weak, your shoestrings will never remain tied, and you'll always feel like there are crumbs in your favorite sheets.  So here we go...

The rules are as follows:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or twitter.

So the idea is to share seven things... and given that I think my personality is fairly transparent on my blog I'm shooting for a few items that may not be obvious.  I can't guarantee no one knows this stuff but I'll give it a shot:

Friday I was checking the RecruiterGuy.net analytics reports - web traffic, sources, trends, etc. - the usual geeky stuff.  The idea behind taking a look at where people are arriving to RecruiterGuy.net from, figuring out exactly what they're clicking on,  is fun for me.  Think of it as a puzzle - especially since many of the high traffic articles have less comments than some that are much less trafficked.  Ahhh the mystery of dialogue.

Anyhow - it was interesting to see that my blog continues to get a steady amount of traffic from RememberTheMilk.com.  I shot out a tweet about this a month or so ago when I first discovered this nifty service the same way I was reminded about it on Friday - via web traffic to my blog.

For anyone that's not ‘in the know' about Remember The Milk, it's a nifty little reminder service.  Of course, I'm not sure they can be called ‘little' anymore as they're in their 3^rd year of service and last week announced a new iPhone application for their users.  The idea behind RTM?  In summary, it's a reminder service... on steroids.

In an article posted last week I explained how to use Google Reader to create sourcing agents "on a cloud."  The thought behind it being that no matter how 'on the go' a recruiter might be, they'd have their Boolean agents available and sorted neatly online... waiting for them... like little friends... that are always there for them... that won't let them dow... okay - never mind.  You get the idea.

What resulted was a barrage of emails and a handful of IMs and comments asking for more information on being productive recruiters using Newsreaders, RSS Aggregators, and Email. Most of the emails consisted of questions around RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and it's emergence into recruiting.  I won't dive into that here since a quick Google or Wiki search will get you the basics and most should be able to connect the dots - but in the interest of getting us all on the same page, I'll provide a quick definition.

A family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works - such as blog entries, news headlines, audio and video - in a standardized format.

(click to watch the video version of this article - warning: the text may be better!)

A quick post this morning as I work to get back in the groove.  The idea behind this week is to find as many ways to maximize my productive time as possible.  One of the tools I think I've found to help with this - or at least be an enjoyable distraction...  SocialAddict.

SocialAddict is an Adobe AIR application that provides a simple interface for several of the social communication (or Action Aggregators) that you might use.  The application currently supports Twitter, Ping.fm, BrightKite, FaceBook, FriendFeed, Hellotxt, Jaiku, MySpace, Plurk and Pownce.  If you're using more than that let me know if you find a social intervention program... I'll join with you.

What SocialAddict seems to be is a basic mini-browser with each of your favorite services provided with crisp and easy to use navigation.  While I'm not sure I'll give up TweetDeck and it's ability to group my tweeters, SocialAddict is definately worth a look for most.  Will this little gem take advantage of API's available for any of these services?  Ask him yourself.

One of my favorite topics of passion lately is Cloud Recruiting.  If you were fortunate enough to be able to attend the ERE conference last week in Florida you would have been hard pressed not to find someone that wasn't buzzing about Microsoft's Michael Marlatt and his presentation covering the concept of Cloud Recruiting.

The idea behind Cloud Recruiting is that as we continue to become more mobile and more technologically savvy we (hopefully) seek easier and more efficient ways to access our tools and resources - to untie ourselves from the cables that bind so to speak.

This article isn't to explain what Cloud Recruiting is but instead to give a detailed example of just one way technology changes the way we're able to recruit and source - truth be told this is my first real "How To" article and is only a result of several emails and a new thread that's buzzing over on RecruitingBlogs.com.  If you're looking for a more detailed explanation of Cloud Recruiting head to Michael Marlatt's site, CloudRecruiting.net.  You can also check out this quick video of him I took at ERE.

At ERE this year I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Steve Lavin, ESPN broadcaster and former UCLA head coach. The sports legend and current analyst spoke about a few different aspects of recruiting while tying them in nicely to personal stories and relationships.

If you didn't know, Steve and his coaching staff signed the number one rated recruiting classes in the US in both 1998 and 2001. He signed seven McDonald's High School All-Americans and can still boast that several of his former Bruin recruits are sitting on NBA team rosters even today. Because of his recruiting efforts, UCLA has the longest collegiate streak in the country in regards to consecutive years having a player drafted to the NBA. Yeah, I'd say Steve knows how to engage and follow through with a candidate or two. He had my attention.

In his hour presentation Steve talked about several key points - but the one that struck this RecruiterGuy was his request of his audience to not give up on pen and paper. Lavin challenged today's recruiters to test his theory of how powerful a handwritten and personal letter to a candidate can be. Truth be told - it's something some of us have been buzzing about for a while and that some CEO's are taking serious enough to take on themselves - but for some reason many recruiters are ignoring.

In a world that is trying to go paperless (and man am I happily guilty!) it would seem that the power of paper and pen - in the recruiting game - can carry considerable weight. Last May I was speaking in Boston and ran into Scott Pitasky, general manager of HR at Microsoft, where a similar topic came up - engaging candidates. Scott explained how Bill Gates isn't above sending a personal message or picking up the phone to call a top candidate or two when they feel it could make a difference. I think we can all appreciate how engaging a letter or phone call from someone like Mr. Gates might be - at that point it really doesn't matter if you're a PC or a Mac.

Okay, Recruiters... we heard the rumble that Circuit City would announce the closure of 155 retail locations and the list has hit the press. Looking to hire retail personnel? Well the Circuit City list has just been dropped and you can grab it here - of course, you'd better hurry - Best Buy is positioned to jump.

 For anyone catching up, Circuit City detailed plans of the forward direction where phrases like "waning consumer confidence" and "weakened retail environment" were the credited causes for the closures.

The quick of it was that 55 markets would see closures that would result in a 17 percent reduction in the company's total workforce. With closures slated for as early as November 5th the movement is fast.

As the train pulled in this morning I waved at my fellow and familiar commuters. I shared where I'd been for a week to those that asked as we boarded the same double decker mode of transportation that pulls out of the station at the same time every day. I moved to the back of the car to my normal seat, fired up the laptop, and sipped on my coffee (from my new JuJu travel mug) and thought to myself, "It's good to get back into my morning groove where things are dependable and the same... Or is it?"

At the beachside networking session the evening before the kickoff of the ERE event it was clear to me that this conference was going to be a little different than most. Outside of the many people I'd been communicating with for months/years and was finally meeting face to face for the first time, there was sporatic chatter about finding a magic bullet for recruiting. Most were interested in new tools - and while I think new technology is great, I was part of what seemed to be the minority in that my search was more for innovative practices or thought when using said tools.

So why the interest in the Free Applicant Tracking System? Free is certainly a factor - but it's not what sparked my interest at all.

As exhausted as I am having just returned from ERE, today is still one of my favorite holidays and deserves a quick blog post to wish my readers (and those of you that stumble upon these rants) a Happy Holiday!

As a kid I grew up loving Halloween.  The candy, the costumes, the candy, getting to stay out all night, and the candy.  Let's face it, what kid doesn't like to walk around the neighborhood all night dressed up as whatever they'd like and bring home a bag full of cavity creating loot?

This year my daughters went as a Pirate and a Dark Fairy (don't ask.)  I, as usual, will be going as the zombie dad - which after a week at the ERE conference will be easier than ever to pull off.

Word on the street is that MySpace is calling it quits... at least in the Netherlands. With an office opened in Amsterdam less than a year ago already shutting down it would seem that MySpace has had enough of a beating from Hyves.

Hyves (in case you aren't Dutch) is the Dutch based social networking site that MySpace attempted to aquire back in QTR1 of this year but was obviously unsuccessful. Word on the street is that the site did pull more than 250,000 users giving it a total of 650,000 from launch - and while this would seem impressive it did little more than dent Hyves over 5 million user base.

Will MySpace make a comeback with it's MySpace Music launch scheduled for Europe launch in 2009? If it doesn't then it would seem that Netlog and Facebook could be the last of the major players looking to get that desired foothold that Chris DeWolfe (MySpace CEO) couldn't seem to manage.