2010 – the Year of Change, via the Top 20 songs according to Me.

It’s traditional for me to do an end of year blog post, and also a top twenty song countdown, so this year I thought I would combine the two traditions into one post and hey, make a new tradition.  For me 2010 has for sure been the year of change, starting last year when at around this time I came out to the world that in fact I was a divorced dad.  I wanted to move into 2010 from the abysmal year of 2009 in the clear and set myself up for a year of getting better, and that certainly happened in many many ways….so here are some of my thoughts on 2010 again set to the top 20 songs of 2010.

February 2010 – in February I attended my first UnConference as a Co-founder of TRU Events we flew over to London where I got to hang out with people like Bill Boorman, Sarah White, Craig Fisher, Marie Journey and my BFF for life Maha Akiki,  it was an event that would change my life and direction for the forseeable future and I have all the above mentioned friends to thank for that.  It would set up Bill Boorman, Jason Davis and myself as the Founders of an UnConference Movement that would sweep the HR world….and forever change the way that we interact at the conference level…because I’ve become a serious fan of Glee and this song was playing everywhere we went here is the first of the top twenty, done new school….

March – when March came around I was off for my first trip to San Diego where I attended my fourth Sourcecon in a row, it was really cool to hang out with some of my sourcing peeps.  It also saw the culmination of my year as Sourcecon Dude with Julia Stone.  It was a very cool year of building and executing challenges that also had a big influence on my career direction.  It was great to be part of the changing of the guard as Katharine Robinson became the world’s second Grand Master Sourcer by defeating Mike Notaro in the final challenge.  I think they are both still very good friends.  It was also a great time to hang out with sourcing peeps Marie Journey, Amybeth Hale, Kay Keilson and Bryan Reichart.  This second song goes out to all my sourcing peeps around the world…

You know I’m trying to keep this post on a timeline, but sometimes folks can influence your entire year, just by being there for you, and three people come to mind over 2010 (well four but we’ll get to the fourth later)…my BFF’s Maha Akiki and Samantha Harris have both been my most excellent co-hosts and partners in crime.  And surprisingly I found a new friend this year in Recruiting Animal, who has been both personally supportive during the ups and downs of 2010 but has also really gone out of his way to support me professionally….so for these most excellent ladies and gent, I dedicate the next song….

Another dude who has been like a brother to me has been my friend Craig Fisher…it’s funny when you fly miles and miles just to hang out together.  At times he has been the best wingman and I hope I have returned the favor over the year, we’ve gotten lost in the middle of London, partied in Las Vegas and probably broken many a traffic law in Texas.  I can’t think of a better person to have my back so this one goes out to  him…..

Another person who has been my IM buddy over the past year, and believe me we’ve had our differences but she’s a cool girl and I have been happy to share the ups and downs of life’s journey’s both hers and mine has been Sarah White.  She’s a seriously smart person with a great big heart (I know I’m not supposed to say that)…but when she’s not intimidating Disco Jesus she’s one of the most fiercely loyal people I have ever met…alas now she just has to find that man of her dreams (or maybe she has?) …. Sarah this one goes out to you….

You know one of the great joys of what I do is getting to watch new Social Media stars rise.  In early summer of 2010 there was a new person on the scene and she made her debut on the Recruiting Animal show.  Although we are yet to meet in real life (or #IRL for you tweeps) she has really been there for me and we’ve become extremely close.  Cathy Mannis came on to the Social Scene like a storm and over time has become a force to reckon with both Socially and as a strong Sourcer.  I hope to see Cathy compete and win a Sourcecon Challenge in the near future but until then I’ll keep following her on Facebook, watching her Tweets with anticipation, wait for her blog and be happy that she is my friend…Cathy this one goes out to you….

In April of 2010 we held our second UnConference in Madison WI.  Although TRU USA was by far a financial disaster it was also a great meeting of minds.  By holding TRU USA in Madison we learned that holding a major UnConference you have to go to an accessible hub like Chicago or for that matter Toronto.  One of my only regrets for the year was that due to the financial issues that came out of TRU USA I lost a friend in Julia Stone.  I do wish her well and hope that at some point in the future we can be friends together, but that seems unlikely in the near future….

There were many lessons learned in 2010, one of them was the pitfalls of Internet Dating….so if you are thinking of Internet Dating here is some advice from a person who had a lot of very disappointing first dates (oh I could tell you stories)….if you are going to do it then at least use one of the paid sites that does some filtering for you.  Sites like Plenty of Fish and others that offer free dating are very much like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun, you never know what you will hit.  I actually met someone in the the summer of 2010 on Plenty of Fish.  Although she was a beautiful and geeky girl there was something missing in our relationship from the start.  Maybe it was honesty and maybe it was spark but whatever it was we only dated for a month before we split apart.  I took it hard because I internalized it to mean that I wasn’t worthy of happiness….but of course I now know that’s not true.  I will always thank Renee for being my rebound girl and teaching me that women would and could love me….but she wasn’t the girl for me…

It wasn’t until later in the summer of 2010 that I decided to get back on that horse, I also knew I didn’t want to go the POF route for internet dating so I signed up for a free weekend on EHarmony.ca – and had a very cool girl message me, we ended up exchanging about 20 or so emails and then we went on our first date.  I had never believed in the concept of love at first site but she took my hear away from the minute she walked into the Magic Oven in Toronto.  Val has really shown me that love can last forever…

Funny enough she shares my love of many things….not the least of which is music…she first told me she loved me by sending me this song, so Colbie Callait made it to the top 20 songs of 2010….

A big part of my year was my partnership with Bill Boorman (also one of the best friends a dude can have) running the TRU Events.  Again the summer of 2010 marked more changes in my life as Bill and I decided to go our seperate ways and I broke off from TRU to set up Radical Events.  Really we decided that Bill was better of focusing on developing the TRU brand in Europe while I focused on the Radical brand in North America.  Bill and I will continue to collaberate throughout 2011 and he remains one of my greatest friends and supporters….this one goes out to you Bill….

We kicked off Radical Events in Toronto in September with Radical North.  Although small it was a fantastic UnConference and set the stage for us to take the UnConference model across Canada in 2011 with stops in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal.  We’ll highlight the year with Radical Innovation in Toronto on September 20-21st.  Radical Innovation will be all about sharing ideas that matter in the HR space and will feature some of the most innovating speakers in our industry…and it will be streamed live to the world.  When I think of how far this has all come since the beginning of 2010 I think….

You never know in the journey of life when you will meet someone that really impacts your decisions.  During Radical North I got to meet a great lady who not only is the world’s only Career Coach for Recruiters but also has decided to partner with me to help drive out all aspects of Radical Events.  Rebecca Sargeant has become an inspirational figure in my life.  One of the things that I appreciate most about Rebecca besides her business savy is her great heart.  Rebecca is really in this business for all the right reasons, and along the way she wants to help her fellow recruiters to be better at their jobs, and lives….this one goes out to her….

At the end of 2009 I attended PunkATL in Atlanta mostly because my good friends Stephanie Lloyd and Todd Schnick asked me to come.  From that experience I was really proud this year to be the guest host of RadicalATL just a few weeks ago.  I was really honoured and priviledged to work with Stephanie and Todd to put together what is I am sure the best Recruitment Tweetup in North America…maybe only second to the lads at RIDE.  More than that Stephanie and Todd are really good people and good friends and have shared with me much of the journey of 2010…so this one goes out to them and all the 200+ recruiters who braved the weather to attend RadicalATL….

There are two more gents that really deserve a shout out because they have become really good friends and supporters….heck I’ll again travel for miles just to spend some time with them.  Bryan Wempen and William Tincup are about to embarque on some cool initiatives together in 2011.  I’m not going to steal their thunder but they are both awesome individuals with great minds and miles and miles of heart…..perhaps they are….

There are probably tons of more people who deserve mentions for impacting on my life in 2010….new friends, old friends and family alike.  I love you all…so these ones go out to anyone that I missed in this post….

Oh and it wouldn’t be a Year End post without one announcement….like I said six months ago I met a most wonderful person who has become my best friend, love, and partner for life, and now it’s official…here’s what she got for for Christmas this year.

I’m so awesomely happy to have Val in my life, and love her with all my heart….the fact that I get to wake up next to her every morning well it makes me….

Overall 2010 has been a transitional year I think for so many of us, here’s to hoping that 2011 is a break out year for all my friends and family that I love.

Here’s to hoping that 2011 is Fly Like a G6…..Peace Out see you on the other side.

Vote For the HR Person of the Year Here #SHRM #HR #HRblogs

Here

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Meet Josh LeTourneau (@jletourneau) Speaker at #RadicalInnovation #RadicalEvents

One of the fundamental purposes for building Radical Innovation is to highlight people who are on cusp of innovation in the HR space.  Sometimes they are so far ahead of the wave that’s it’s mostly about education but they bravely go forward and continue to innovate knowing they are on to ideas that can fundamentally change the HR landscape for the better.  One of those people is Josh LeTourneau.  He is talking about and working with #SNA in a way that heralds a completely different way of thinking about Human Capital inside of organizations.  It’s no longer just about your Competencies but also about the networks that are formed around you and your role within those networks….

For that reason we are proud to make Josh our first confirmed speaker for Radical Innovation – in Toronto on September 20-21, 2011.

Josh LeTourneau

Joshua Letourneau is the owner of Knight & Bishop, a  Human Capital Intelligence firm based in Atlanta.  Prior to founding Knight & Bishop, Josh worked as a Sales & Marketing professional in the software biz and was a hard-charging Sergeant in the Marines.  In his spare time, Josh contributes to Fast Company.com meditates on the value of psychology in the talent game…

Situation: You’ve invested heavily in retention programs that aren’t yielding the results you’re after.  While your overall retention rates have improved, you’re losing critical talent . . . that you didn’t realize was so important until it was gone.

Reality: Losing key talent is a tremendous risk as replacing tacit knowledge is highly expensive, time-consuming, and involves a level of risk.  You don’t simply need to increase retention, you need to retain better and more intelligently.

Knight & Bishop’s Retention solution is designed to help you identify your key Organizational DNA, meaning your Hubs, Gatekeepers, Boundary Spanners, and Outliers.  Powered by Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools and techniques, we will help you identify these critical archetypes within the following dimensions:

1. Information-Flow Network (i.e. the “Work Network”)
2. Social Network
3. Innovation Network
4. Expert-Knowledge Network
5. Career-Guidance or Strategic Network
6. Decision-Making Network
7. Customer-Focus Network
8. Revenue-Collaboration Network, etc.

Bearing in mind that individuals take on different network archetypes (Hubs, Gatekeepers, Boundary Spanners, and Outliers) within different dimensions, our analysis will provide with a surprising and comprehensive view of your Organizational DNA.  Not only will you retain more, but you’ll retain better, meaning keeping your key players . . . many of which whom were invisible prior to the analysis.

 

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1. The elevator just closed and you’ve got 30 seconds to pitch the random reader on who you are and why they should read your rants. Go..

Mr. Elevator-Rider, Reader-Person . . . You’re a lot smarter than the rest of the business world gives you credit for. You’re not just another recruiter. You are aCovert Business Operative who “walks the streets” among the very talent pools many companies wish they had access to. On a daily basis, you make decisions about who will or will not lead their organization into the future – you also make decisions over you’re going to subtract from their ranks when the time is right. In many cases, you have as much impact on an organization’s stock price as C-level management. Think about it — Your recruiting actions impact their performance over the next 3 – 12 months as much as the other external factors lining the PR pages of their Annual Report. And in most cases, they don’t even know you exist.

2. One more question that everyone expects. What’s the reason you’re in this game? (why do you do what you do?)

I’m in this game because I love it. In my estimation, Executive Search is the highest form of management consulting because it involves the lowest level of “on the street” activity. On a business level, I derive no higher level of satisfaction than recruiting a proven Game-Changer for my clients or helping them implement a clandestine Strategic Sourcing strategy that puts the competition in a significantly weakened state within the talent pool. In my eyes, our work is professional nirvana.

3. If you’ve ever been to a professional baseball game, you know batters from the home team get to pick their own theme music as they walk from the dugout to the plate. What theme music will you come out to to pump the crowd up and why?

Theme music at a professional baseball game – wow, great question . . . If it were up to me, I’d say “Back in Black” by AC/DC. I’d say that for a couple reasons, the first being extremely narcissistic: Much like most Executive Recruiters think, an organization does not want me targeting their top talent because they’re going to lose much more often than they win. The second reason would be that “Back in Black” pumps me up as well – success is as much about our way of thinking as it is the crowd’s. The power of intention can’t be overstated.

4. Let’s stick with the baseball theme. If you’ve ever been to a pro game, you also know that the visitor doesn’t get to pick their own music. The home team picks that for them, and it’s usually less than stellar as a means of attempting to crush them. If you could pick theme music for your arch-rival to walk into a conference room to, what would it be and why?

Considering the venue being a professional baseball game, I’d have to select the most neutering, testosterone-reducing, testicle-atrophying music on the planet. There would be many contenders on the music list here, and considering my marketing sense, I’d lean toward considering where the opposing team is from (i.e. NYC, LA, Minneapolis, Montreal, etc.). If I had to pick just one song, I’d probably go with “It’s A Small World After All” played in a continuous loop, over and over and over . . .

5. Finish the following sentence – “When I’m interviewing, I can tell within one minute that this thing isn’t going to work out because _________…”

…the candidate lacks confidence and I’m not a social worker or therapist . . . and I definitely don’t coach on “The Secret” during an interview.

6. Name the actor/actress that will portray you in the movie about you. Why the heck is that a fit?

Ironically, I’d have to say the very inspiration for this blog itself: Clint Eastwood in “Fistful of Dollars”! “I don’t think it’s nice – you laughin’. See, my mule don’t like people laughing – gets the crazy idea people are laughing at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you’re going to, I might convince him that you really didn’t mean it.”

Actually, this scene from Dirty Harry is probably more fitting as I have been known to be sarcastic from time to time. In his movies, he doesn’t mind calling it how it is – he’s definitely not running for Mayor, and if you don’t want the truth, don’t ask for it. But if you look real closely, you can tell he wants to crack a smile with his crazy lines sometimes (just like me).

7. List three of your favorite books to pander to the educated segment of our readership…

“The Art of Profitability” by Adrian Slywotzky
“Freakonomics” by Levitt and Dubner
“Being Spherical: Reshaping Our Lives and the World for the 21st Century” by Phil Lawson

8. List three of your favorite movies to connect with the segment of our readership that doesn’t like to read…

Braveheart – One of the best movies ever.
Heat – Pacino and Deniro at their best in a faceoff. Need I say more?
The Fog of War – Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s recollection of Vietnam. Wow . . .

9. Let’s reach out to what remains of our readership. Who’s your favorite Old-School Rapper and why?

1986 – I’m an 11-yr on the basketball courts 6 hours a day listening to Rakim (“Paid in Full”), thinking he’s my favorite old school rapper until I see “Special Ed” freestyle live at a tournament in 1989. This is when hip-hop used to really be hip-hop (and still is today because the club blows up when “I Got It Made” is spun).

10. My first car was a and here’s how it defined who I am….

<1986 Pontiac Grand Prix> – I don’t know if it defined who I am as it was my Dad’s 2nd car and toys don’t define us . . . but I do remember that car could hall some serious *ss and I actually got a speeding ticket on the way to pick up my date for the senior prom!

 

HR Person of the Year #HR #SHRM #CIPD #RadicalEvents

HR Person of the Year

So here it is….Radical Events is looking for the 2010 HR Person of the Year.  Yes we aggressively borrowed this idea from Trish’s wall.  This person can be from all aspects of HR, including talent management.

Here is how it will work:

1. We will take nominations via comment on this blog.  To leave a nomination you have to actually register to leave one and you cannot nominate yourself.  Nominations will remain open until Christmas Day (December 25th)

2. We will then take votes on a Survey Monkey up until January 3rd.

3. On January 10th we will announce the 2010 HR Person of the Year.

Now for what they will get….besides the title and a Blog Badge they will win an all expense trip to speak in Toronto on September 20-21st for Radical Innovation (the TED Talks for the HR industry).  Yes that means travel and hotel brought to you by the fine folks at RBS-Staffing.

Remember nominations can come from anywhere in the world and you must not nominate yourself.

Good luck and happy holidays.

Meet Brenda Dumont (@retailblog) a #RadicalBC #RadicalEvents Track Leader

Brenda Dumont

Brenda’s lifelong professional strength has been in various formsof recruitment for the retail industry. In addition to corporateHR positions for Woodward Stores, she founded and operatedDumont & Associates Retail Recruitment Ltd. and later createdwww.canadianretail.com, Canada’s first online job board devotedstrictly to the retail industry. She formed Brenda Burch DumontConsulting in 2010 and provides consulting and training servicesto retailers and third party recruiters in the area of social mediarecruiting. Brenda’s blogs under the title ‘The Burch Report on DigitalMedia’ – http://www.brendadumont.com, Tweets under @retailblog and is anavid user/advocate/teacher of LinkedIn.

Brenda will join us in Vancouver for Radical BC on June 14, 2011 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

#RadicalATL Hotlanta was not so Hot

Ok before you get your undies in a knot…I am Canadian and I am used
to cold weather but when I come to Atlanta I expect it to get at least
a bit warmer, alas this week it was not to be.

Having said that the party at #RadicalATL was hotter than hot. Even
with snow and ice and terrible Buckhead traffic (due to the Holiday
Season) we still had out over 200 Recruiters. How awesome is that.
Huge shout out to my co-hosts Stephanie Lloyd and Todd Schnick, you guys
rock. It was an evening of good wishes and introductions and hugs and
generally getting to see and connect with the folks that you are too
busy to see all year long. The folks at the ATLRecruiters were great
and so another shout out to Chris who really helped to make the
evening gell together.

So the question often comes up, why would I want to travel all the way
to ATL for a Tweetup. Here is the thing. How many times can you
network with 200+ Recruiters in a pressure free environment for a
night for the cost of a flight. It really doesn’t happen anywhere
else. I mean sure the folks who do the Conference circuit see each
other all the time but often at a prohibitive cost.  The Tweetups
bring out the local in the trenches Recruiters that really don’t
attend the bigger conference events. For me that means I get to
interact with folks that normally I would never even see because cost
is less of a factor.

So although my time as the official co-host of the ATL holiday event
is over (and I am a bit sad about that) I must say it was a blast and
I will be back for sure next year for #?ATL.

Meet Rebecca Sargeant (@rebeccasargeant) #RadicalEvents Track Leader and Sponsor

Rebecca Sargeant

When Radical Events announced that we would be embarking on a Cross Canada Tour in 2011 now titled Radical Tour ’11 Rebecca was the first person to stand up and say she wanted to partner with us to make the Tour happen.  Thanks in part to her generous sponsorship of Radical Events we will be bringing some of Canada’s best and brightest Recruiters and HR practitioners together for a Cross-Canada conversation starting in Montreal in March and ending in Ottawa in November.

Rebecca has 10 plus years experience as a successful Recruitment Professional. She brings a wealth of knowledge and hands – on experience about what is takes to succeed in a variety of environments, roles and sectors within the Staffing Industry. Her passion for the Recruiting Industry fuels her drive to be the leading expert in placing and training Top Recruitment Professionals across North America.

Check out the #RadicalEvents 2011 Cross Canada Tour