Recruitment via Social networks

Here's what I found on Workforce.com

A Social Networking Solution for Retail Recruiting’s ChallengesCommentary - By Mike Dwyer

Take it from someone who once had to rely on weekly job fairs in strip malls to fill open positions at a fast-growing chain: There’s a better way to hire, thanks to the unlimited recruiting potential of social media’s holy trinity—Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Read the full article here - http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/26/81/90/index.php

Facebook Ties up with Nielson

Industry Leaders to Use Nielsen Products to Help Marketers Better Measure Online Advertising Impact and Realize Greater ROI -
read the article on this link - http://in.nielsen.com/news/20090923.shtml

News of a Green Initiative from my neighbourhood

This news - http://www.technoparktoday.com/2009/04/carpooling-for-technopark/ took me back to memories of 'Nature Club' days :-) during graduation. I think it's a great initiative and have done my bit to help by signing up and also spreading the news to my contacts.

Kuddos to all minds who bring in fresh & Greener thoughts !

A Practical lesson in HR Policy Making

An update on linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/) led me to Sanjeev's blog post. Sanjeev is a Sr. (ex)colleague of mine. You can reach this post
http://thenewschool-sanjeev.blogspot.com/2009/07/flyover-speed-breaker-and-hr.html
Excerpts from his blog:
I relate this to a many HR policies in organizations that are focused on driving compliance but not commitment. Policies that are put in place to stop the 10% of issues from happening but 90% of others getting inconvenienced and demotivated.

I liked his narrative style and the way he connected the speedbreakers and Flyovers to the HR practice of Policy making.. although having been driving in Kerala for some time now, I may have to dispute to the percentages that he's used :-)

I had earlier read this post http://gauteg.blogspot.com/2009/07/business-managers-should-be-hr-business.html on Gautam's blog - and would like to point Sanjeev's case as a real life example of a Business Manager turned HR Leader :-)

First Break all the rules - Audio book

I'm recovering from a bout of Viral fever which made me miss office yesterday.. boredom made me log on to search for audio books and i was happy to have found this link to Marcus Buckingham's First Break all the rules from Simon and schuster Audio.
I feel audio books have not reached their true potential in our country. Maybe marketing guru's in our country will turn their thoughts in this direction :-)

GS - The Great American Bubble Machine

Matt Taibi of Rolling stones mag has this to say about Goldman sachs...

Audio book - Now Discover your strengths

A post from my online pal and Social media Guide - Gautam Ghosh (http://gauteg.blogspot.com/) on career planning for HRM students led me to some research (a.k.a - Google search) yesterday.. among the stuff which came up, I found this one very interesting and relevant to that discussion on XLRI's blog. Follow the link from the title of this post to listen to the audio book - Now discover your strengths..
http://rapidshare.com/files/211098633/NxDxYxSx.zip

I remember reading the physical version of the book some years back.. Highly recommended :-)

Leader or Manager ? who do you want to be?

Here's some excepts from what John Kotter wrote in his (1990) book - 'What leaders really do':

Management is about coping with complexity and 'good management', according to Kotter - 'brings a degree of order and consistency to key dimensions like the quality and profitability of products'.
Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change; and major changes are more and more necessary to service and compete effectively in this new environment. More change always demands more leadership.
Being a Mgmt grad, i found the following as explained by Kotter to be, well 'simpler' :-)
Management - manages complexity by

• Planning and Budgeting
• Organizing and Staffing
• controlling and problem solving
• Produces predictability, order and consistency

Leadership, on the other hand - leads change by

• setting a direction - (Vision being the key word here)
• Aligning people
• Motivating and inspiring
• Produces useful 'dramatic' change