Stacking on top of yesterday’s G+ post (http://goo.gl/VOxZK) regarding the Fb IM app, I thought I’d share a little gem that’s helping you stay “up to date” on G+. (in the event you don’t want to keep a pesky tab open or rely on your mobile for notifications)
Google Plus Notifier
The Zen of Communication
It’s that time of year when I radically revamp my blog, update profile pictures and re-define/re-visit my social workflow. I’ll typically spend a good part of holiday time and early January doing this – yet this year, I feel compelled to take a slightly different approach.
You see, for the past few years I’ve struggled to get (most specifically) my Google and Google Apps accounts to play nicely together in my own workflow. I’ve longed for the day that I’d have the option to merge the two accounts together and I’d be allowed to quickly and easily find that zen place between the two – letting me move quickly between products and applications from that single dashboard and ultimately removing the burden (it’s a heavy one, right?) of needing to move between accounts and login pages.
Of all of my communication channels, this has been the hurdle that I’ve cursed the most because of the potential that I’ve seen and was really never able to fully take advantage of. But recently it dawned on me that this is because I’ve approached my Google account much differently than I have any other social or communication tool… until the launch of Google+, that is.
So now that my “communication channel” has become a “social & communication network” I think that it’s time I took a step back to try to re-define sharing and talking with peers, colleagues, jobseekers, family and friends. I believe that a more holistic strategy is required of myself (and perhaps you?) in 2012 to make the most of the socialsphere we call home.
Connections & Bookshelves… (random thoughts from The RecruiterGuy)
As I was thinking about a challenge today related to connections, I found myself staring at one of the bookshelves in my office. So I took a picture of one of the shelves just to share it with you (it’s above.)
In looking at them, I find they’re full of books related to both personal and professional interests and that range from really old to relatively new. I also see some clutter, memorabilia, and seemingly random, “stuff.” (Nope, I didn’t clean it for ya’ before taking the snapshot – sorry.)
If you took a close look, I wonder if anything on these two shelves (out of dozens that I manage) would surprise or interest you. Do you know me? Is my personal brand as transparent as I strive for it to be?
After all, we’re “connected” aren’t we? Heck, we might even call one another “friends” on Facebook as well as in person!
If you were to see the attached image all by itself, could you pick a handful of your network members that might have been responsible for stocking these books and items? Are our online personas and personal brands transparent enough to show who we really are? Are the people we’re sharing them with even listening?
When we forge these online connections as recruiters and tout that we’re building relationships, is it our goal to really make a connection with someone or rather just to connect with anyone?
Online communities are about more than just “talking channels” – or at least they should be in the crazy place I like to live.
As I’m re-evaluating communities and relationships in 2012, I’m forced to go back to some of the basics and ask myself:
Recruiting Industry Events & Observations – Fall 2011
I’ve just wrapped up what is essentially 7 weeks on the road. While the 7 weeks wasn’t constant travel (I was home ~2-3 days a week) it certainly began to push the limits of my working rhythm. Of course, for those of you that travel considerably, you know the rhythm of which I’m referring to. Moving scheduled calls to unreal hours of the morning, answering emails in between learning sessions, catching up on most issues while in-flight and taking the urgent calls as they come in with the rest of your calls landing when you can grab a connection and a coffee. I’ve got it down to almost a science… until I hit the 7 week mark, that is.
Why the 7 week mark was an issue, I’m unsure. Perhaps it’s because mentally I knew that week 7 was the last week and as a result it just seemed tougher to make sure I was meeting all of my commitments. Maybe it was just fatigue setting in. Heck, it might even be that there was so much to take away from the conferences/events (nearly a dozen – more than I’ve ever seen in recruiting in one season!) that I subconsciously knew that I needed to hit pause and create a “download” for my team so that we could review everything observed and learned before trying to take anything else in! My guess is that it’s a little bit of everything above.
So as I begin to digest all the events and meetings and conferences, I’m reminded of a topic of conversation that I’ve had several times over the last two months that results from the following question from attendees, speakers and leaders alike:
