Over the last year, I’ve been writing a book on employer branding and social media.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that the book is done. It’s called Culture Convo, and it launches on September 6.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing a bunch of freebies – chapter excerpts, podcasts and free tools. If you want to get your hands on that stuff before I release it on Renegade HR, you can sign-up for the Culture Convo email list.

Click Here to Sign-Up for the Email List

What’s the Book About?

Culture Convo is a beginner’s guide to employer branding with social media.

Keep reading…

Image by jessicafm

My wife and I went to the beach this weekend.

On our way back to the car, we stopped at this ice cream place that had Bliss Dairy ice cream. If you’re not from the MA area, Bliss makes incredible ice cream.

While we were waiting in line, I noticed that the people in front of us never said “please” when ordering.

“I’ll have mint-chocolate chip. Do you have whipped cream? Add a cherry, too.”

If you want to build an organization with a great culture, pay attention to how candidates treat the person in your reception area. The way people treat service employees says a lot.

Today’s article is a guest post from self-described HR Assistant and wanna-be blogger Stephanie Andrews. She’s new to the HR blog thing and still trying to find her voice. Help her out and give her some feedback in the comments section.

Image by Thomas Hawk

We see them all the time: Professional development opportunities, training seminars, and certifications for Meyers-Briggs, Personality Dimension Facilitation, or Fluffy Bunny Petting for Performance Reviews.

Now, I’m not disputing that these resources aren’t interesting, intriguing, and sometimes useful, but I can’t help but wonder once you’ve left the seminar/training session/intergalactic space module: Where’s the real world application?

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Some random ideas and beliefs I have about human resources:

1. People have a life outside of work – and it makes them better employees.
2. Policies shouldn’t cater to the lowest common denominator (example: corporate dress codes).
3. The best performers don’t always make the best managers (in fact, they usually don’t).
4. A lot of the things HR does are things managers should be doing (and good managers already do).
5. Performance appraisals don’t work. Regular, ongoing feedback does.
6. People do better work when they feel it’s meaningful and provides some sort of challenge.
7. That applies to jobs like assembly lines and janitorial roles, too (not just knowledge workers).
8. More jobs than most managers are willing to admit can be done from places other than the office.
9. In fact, for many jobs, an office is actually the least ideal place to get great work done.
10. Strong relationships between team members produce better results.
11. When you speak/write in HRese, people don’t understand you or trust what you say.
12. The best HR pros interact with their employees every day.
13. If you treat employees like children, that’s how they’ll act.
14. If you treat employees like adults, that’s how they’ll act.
15. Great interviewers don’t necessarily do great work (and vice-versa).
16. The best recruiters communicate with candidates openly and often (whether or not there’s news to share).
17. The best recruiters build a pipeline of candidates – before they have a job opening.
18. Just because someone did something well at one organization doesn’t mean they’ll do it well at yours. The circumstances are different.
19. Curiosity and drive are more important than experience.
20. Social media is not a fad.
21. Great HR is about getting out of the way (and letting people do amazing things).

Any you’d add to the list? Disagree with? How do these ideas change the way we think about and practice HR now?

Image by smi23le

About a month ago, HR rockstar Victorio Milian asked me a very straightforward question:

I’m looking to use Linkedin groups as a branding and employee engagement tool and I’m looking for some suggestions. If you have any ideas or best practices that you could share that would be greatly appreciated.

Amazingly, my response was longer than most of my blog posts. I thought I’d share it with you…

Keep reading…

Today’s article is a guest post from Benjamin Eubanks of Upstart HR. Ben is up and coming rockstar. He’s the author of Rock the PHR and founder of the HRevolution Unconference. He’s also one of the coolest guys in the HR world. Enjoy!

Ever play Tetris before? The goal is to line up geometric figures in complete lines to earn points. Making things fit is the name of the game. The image on the left is a joke, because it’s simply not possible to complete a line with the rounded bottom.

In other words, success is impossible.

As recruiters and HR pros, we do our best to get people into our organizations that fit our culture. Sometimes it’s extremely frustrating when you find someone who looks like an all star but isn’t the right cultural fit for your business. Trying to force a fit in this situation isn’t going to make things work. And that isn’t necessarily your fault.

Sometimes people just won’t fit.

But it’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s what separates Zappos from Wal-Mart. Keep that in mind.

Image credit: XKCD

Ben Eubanks is an HR professional from Huntsville, AL. He pretty much lives online, and you can connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn. He also writes a blog for the entry level pros, seasoned veterans, and zombies in the human resources space.

I think world-class recruiting is really about three things:

1. Building a pipeline of qualified talent before you need to hire someone.
2. Accurate, valid selection criteria.
3. A fantastic candidate experience.

Those three things are the real game-changers. Everything else is just fluff.

Keep reading…