Following Happiness: 60% Of The Time, It Works Every Time

August 18, 2008 · Filed Under Blogging as a HR Guy, Finding Your Job · Comment 

Brian Fantana: They’ve done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.
Ron Burgundy: That doesn’t make sense.

Anchorman (2004)

Last week, I was lucky enough to sit in on a conference call with Penelope Trunk. She was putting it on for members of Brazen Careerist (Gen Y career-ish oriented blogs) and I was extremely impressed with the overall call. Many people have a visceral reaction to Penelope (if you read through her comment sections, you’ll begin to understand) but despite my disagreements, it always seemed like she was interested in contributing to the overall careers discussion in a positive way. The hour long conference call solidified my feelings on this.

Some of the people on the call talked about some of the difficulties they faced in maintaining their blog or understanding the limit between what should be written about and what should be left behind. There was also an in depth discussion on what should be written about as far as interesting content. It was definitely relatable because I felt those same issues when I started blogging.

One of the things I took away from the call (that wasn’t mentioned but lit up in my head) was the fact that people should write about things that they are good at writing about in order to be successful bloggers. Anybody can write about things in a way that makes them happy. It is a low standard to hit. My first adventure into blogging involved a LiveJournal account that was full of emo lyrics and poorly thought out political stances. This sort of blogging made me happy but nobody cared what I wrote. It wasn’t well executed and writing about things in a way that made me happy turned my blogging into an unfocused disaster.

When you write about things that you are good at writing about (that’s a mouthful), you can hone your skills and actually become successful as a writer. Of course, being successful (usually) makes people happy and that’s what most people want.

Of course, I couldn’t help relating it back to careers. People often pursue (or desire pursuing) the thing in life that makes them happy. They often assume that what makes them happy makes for a good career. That seems entirely unreliable to me. My dad likes working on his 1950 Chevy but he wouldn’t like it as a career (and that would make him unhappy). Doing something you do well is a more reliable way to ensure happiness. It utilizes your strengths and it builds pride in yourself. And to me, that is much more important than following happiness.

Follow success and happiness will follow you.

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Is it Harder to Blog Non-Anonymously in HR?

August 3, 2008 · Filed Under Blogging as a HR Guy · 5 Comments 

As you may have heard, HR Wench is out of the anonymous closet. She’s a fellow Portlander so I’ve been encouraging her to reveal herself but for slightly selfish reasons. But for every anonymous HR person revealing their true identity, there are probably three more starting blogs under the shroud of secrecy. Why does this happen?

I guess it is more of a rhetorical question. I know why HR people start blogs anonymously. I was one of those people so I understand the thinking behind it. It is very simple from where I was:

  1. I am a bit paranoid. I don’t want my bosses or my employees to read about this but my wife is tired of hearing me talk about HR stuff. I’ll do it anonymously.
  2. Writing anonymously gives me more freedom to write as I please including making fun of co-workers or even my boss. Woohoo!
  3. I am a representative for my company so I speak for them. My blog will be boring if I have to limit myself to stuff the company approves.
  4. If I blog openly, it could open all kinds of legal traps. Perhaps I say I am against so and so act and then an issue comes up at work and they find my blog. So much for any good faith effort claim!

And so on. There are probably a million different little reasons to blog anonymously as an HR pro. To me, there is one good reason to blog openly with your name:

Your message is about you (not your company) and if the message is about you, then the only way you can be authentic is to blog under your name.

To me, authenticity was important. It was putting my name behind my words and that was important enough for me to take the leap. Not to say that putting your name on your blog gives you instant authenticity (it doesn’t) but it does give you that potential.  And there are some terrific anonymous HR bloggers out there but people will always wonder who is that person behind the web page?

Some people may also dispute that a blog is about you. They are wrong. You may not be the topic but the blog is about what you think about those topics, how you react to different topics, how you interact with commenters, etc… The blog is YOU. Topic may vary.

But for HR people, it is a difficult decision and I struggled with it as well. I think it hinged on the fact that my employees/boss would be trying to read into it or that outsiders would try to read into what my company was doing. HR is not PR though and we (should be) as active as any other department in making sure that company is going in the right direction and be able to have open conversations. I put three rules in my head that made blogging as an open HR person easy:

  1. Nobody at work would be surprised at my blog entries. This required me to be open with my superiors and employees about what I was thinking. It brought a new level of accountability to the table. So when we discuss an issue at a meeting and they see that I blog about a similar issue, they don’t see something contradictory.
  2. Nobody comes to my blog for breaking news. At least about layoffs or other HR related things. While you might find me talking about a product or something cool we are doing, working on staffing plans is part of my job and people should be channeling official sources for that sort of information. I don’t do spin well so I won’t try on my blog.
  3. Don’t use negative examples from work. This is obviously political but I think it is necessary. Nobody should be the “Bob” in a bad supervisor example. If they can identify themselves from your example, you shouldn’t use it. Most of the bad stories in my blog come from other people who e-mail me or talk to me about their work.

I am all for HR bloggers making themselves known and I am happy to talk about my experience in even greater detail of going from anonymous to open.

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Three Reasons for HR People to get Online

July 29, 2008 · Filed Under Blogging as a HR Guy · 3 Comments 

So I was sort of thinking back to the beginning of my blogging days and laughing. My first attempt at blogging was undeniably stupid and it is only thanks to the fine folks over at archive.org that we have a copy of that project in 2001. Daily updates, e-mailed newsletters, and everything else a 19 year old kid could think of to make other 19 year old kids laugh. The name of the site was Lactose Overdose for Pete’s sake! It was not pretty.

Fast forward to today and things haven’t changed much.

Granted, things are nicer in the blogging world. We’re no longer using tables. Style sheets helped. And it is super easy to update this here blog. Plus it is easier to follow multiple blogs through RSS and customized e-mail subscriptions. But…

It is 2008 and we still have very few HR people blogging and interacting on social networks. In fact, if you discount the recruiting community (which has really had a nice web presence since 2003-2004), there were only a couple true HR blogs I was following when I first started blogging over two years ago. When I was talking to a friend about how great blogging has been for me, he asked how many HR blogs I followed and I could list maybe a couple handful. I consider myself a pretty engaged HR social media guy too.

When I started HRM Today, I really thought I could work on getting more and more HR people online. Now I have started to think of other ways of getting HR people involved online besides my site. But who cares about all of that if people don’t even know why they should be online?

Here are three reasons why every HR person should be blogging, be a part of a social network other than LinkedIn and get engaged in the online HR community.

  1. Street Cred, Google Juice, Online Identity - Do you want to control what is out there when somebody searches for your name online? Take control by blogging and joining social networks under your name. If you look at my name in google, you can see that blogs and social networking sites rank higher. I have control of everything that is seen on that first page so I get to determine what my image is online. That is going to continue to be a big advantage.
  2. Networking, Networking, Networking - Imagine the potential to network with thousands of other HR professionals? That’s what the internet gives you and more. The best part is that you aren’t restricted by geography and it is often easier to network with busy HR professionals online. What can networking give you? Better business contacts, industry leaders and increased job search ability.
  3. Personal Development - I have learned a lot from being involved in the recruiting community. Unfortunately, they don’t teach you much about recruiting in school and you end up learning much more about it as a job seeker. Many contributors in the recruiting community hold free webinars about sourcing candidates or figuring out how to contact that high performer at another company. The same thing could happen in the HR community with more participation.

Maybe you are a lurker to this site. You come in, you read and you either take away something or you don’t and you go about your day. And while I would say that it is better than no social media interaction, I really think you are only getting a fraction of value out of it that you could if you were participating in the discussion.

If you’re looking to get involved quickly, check out four great HR resources to get you on your way.

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Thankfully, I’m not a Gen Y Blogger

May 23, 2008 · Filed Under Blogging as a HR Guy · 8 Comments 

As I am starting my third year of blogging about my profession (you can see my first post for entertainment’s sake), I am starting to realize that I am not a very good Gen Y blogger. I am 26 and so I should be posting things about how I am going to change the world, change HR, change … my pants. You see, because I just spilled ice cream on them.

I was invited to join the Brazen Careerist network which is always a nice ego boost. I was called a hotshot (which by the way is utterly and completely true). It is for bloggers who are under 30. I fit that I suppose. Then I was looking at their front page and noticing how hardly anything I ever write about fits in among my peer bloggers. I know this because I am not stupid but I also know this because looking at my stats/demographics analysis, I have about 30% more 35-49 year olds than 18-34 year olds (which, if you know internet traffic, is completely upside down).

Then yesterday, I sort of had an epiphany. I was reading this post in my Google reader and I clicked on share with a note and wrote (and I quote): “More Gen Y whining.” I should clarify that this wasn’t in response to the actual post (Jaclyn Schiff doesn’t write crap), but in response to the comments which were almost offensively ironic. Talk about unintentionally making the authors point.

As far as I could tell, none of the people commenting (as of yesterday) had read the book. Yet they were tearing the thing apart based on an article written in a newspaper (read: limited in scope and availability of additional resources). I have read the book and knew that while I didn’t particularly agree with the overall conclusion of the thing, it did have a lot of damning information in there that supports the generalizations he makes. And while they are generalizations, that takes nothing away from the validity of the studies being done. If only 21% of people my age can explain the reasons behind the Korean War, that says something. You may not like it and you may try to rationalize it but the fact remains that many people in our generation stay voluntarily ignorant.

For many Gen Y bloggers, this is okay. For me, it isn’t. I have a feed reader (80+ blogs), I have diverse interests yet I am still reading, still working on acquiring, retaining and applying knowledge that will make me better at my career and life. And yes, I may be better at finding information when I need it than other generations but sometimes you need that information in your head. At least in my opinion, you need an accumulation of diverse knowledge to make great decisions.

And while I’d love to believe this sort of thing is going to come about in my lifetime, some of it is simply contradictory to every recent trend in business (and, let’s be honest, common sense). Saying that probably doesn’t win me the Gen Y viewership and that is fine with me (Booyah, I’ve got moxie, baby!). Being a realist (or cynic) isn’t that sexy. If being right means being a little less sexy though, I’ll take it (even though I have a lot of sexy to give).

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    Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...

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