Pay It Forward: Helping Military In Transition
Last July 29th and 30th , over 800 troops returning from active service in Afghanistan and Iraq attended a pilot 2-day event at Ft Dix, NJ.  Volunteers included Tip of the Arrow, Fort Dix staff, ESGRA, and NJ SHRM members led by Sherrill Curtis from the NJ SHRM Garden State Council along with hundreds of professional coaches and 50 employers with openings. Information about the event was promoted extensively including through my blog and summarized later in Frank Zappe’s article for ERE.. ...but the core of this event, what made

Social Media Summit: Moving Learning to Another Level
ERE's Social Recruiting Summit (#socialrecruiting), held in New York yesterday [Monday, Nov 17] was a another milestone in the evolution of niche, community-focused experiences that may eventually change the way we think about "conferences"- how we approach them as attendees and how their "owners" monetize them. The fact that yesterday's subject matter reflected the medium was just coincidental.  The combination of a comfortable guide (Laurie Ruettimann), diverse content (see next paragraph), pre-conference relationship building (#Monstersocial), intimate non-traditional setting (Comix on 14th street), and multi-media virtual conversations (free, live video-streaming,

What Should Staffing Leaders Be Doing Now to Plan for the Hiring of Recruiters During Recovery?
A future ERE Corporate Leadership Journal (not yet out) will include an article about what HR leaders should be doing NOW to plan for the hiring of recruiters during the recovery. John Zappe, the article's author, asked several members of our industry to respond to a series of questions (and then extracted contrasting points of view). I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product. I was among those asked to contribute and, here is the unabridged answer I provided to one of the questions (which will, of course, be edited and combined with others in the final article): Q: (John) What should employers look for in recruiting and in hiring recruiters? (In economic

Déjà Vu All Over Again: The 2009 Social Media Conversation is But an Echo of the Internet Past
If Social Media is keeping you up at night, relax-- You've just been there before. (As we approach ERE's SM summit for what I'm sure will be an valuable day of conversation, I thought this commentary from our November CareerXroads Update might be interesting.) In 1996, just 13 years ago, the Internet was at a tipping point - not so new that we couldn't see its promise but also not so accepted that we couldn't imagine its dangers. As the debate raged on, the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) and the Society of Human Resource Development (SHRM) conducted a broad-based survey of several thousand

Speed bumps and time warps
8am on a dreary rainy, grey Wedenesday in a small corner of northern New Jersey. Lots of trees past their peak as I look outside from a brightly lit Panera Bread sitting by a very fake but still enjoyable fireplace. Fog and drizzle cloak whatever is left of the tree's color. I backtracked 6 miles from the One Stop in the city of Dover, NJ to connect to Panera's wifi. I'm going to spend the next couple hours in conversation with 60 plus out of work professionals this morning. Dover is in a time warp- less than hour and a half drive from where I live in central NJ (exit 9).  In stark contrast to the tacky, but cuttin