Human Resources and Social Media
"I don't have the time"....

"I'll get on there when the time is right is right"...

I attend a lot of HR conferences as a part of my consulting and blogging business. I go to stay in touch with industry trends and to meet people for networking. In the past year I have been to:

• 2008 HR Florida state conference
• Kennedy Recruiting Forum in Orlando
• Employers of Excellence Conference, presented by HR.com
• On the Cutting Edge, presented by Suncoast Human Resources Association

and during the balance of the year, I will be (or hope to be) attending

• 2009 SHRM National conference in New Orleans (June)
• Social Recruiting conference in California (June, at the GooglePlex)
• 2009 HR Florida State conference in Orlando (August)

One of the regrettably noticeable trends I encounter over and over again at HR conferences is the lack of concern participation by Human Resources people in increasing their knowledge and understanding of social media and its implications for our profession.
I believe it is imperative that HR people start to become leaders in this area. We will be called upon to develop policies. There are tremendous opportunities to leverage low cost recruiting and talent management solutions. This is a great opportunity to get a seat at the table as an early adopter, which translates into things like Subject Matter Expert and "leader" down the road.

One of the over used phrases in social media is "evangelizing your message".

HR and the use of Social Media is something I have been evangelizing recently on my personal blog: Human Race Horses. We need to get out there and be a part of the social media trend, folks.

How do you do this? Here are a variety of sources that I have created or shared that will help you get started in social media. I am encouraging people to think about utilizing a tool called twitter as the starting point if you need one place to begin. I chose twitter because ii is simple, powerful, and can be used as much or as little as you wish without any advanced learning required.

It is also fun and an incredibly under-utilized platform for research and communication.

I hope you enjoy these links. I encourage you to read through them all. You will find it valuable useful.

• Job search and "Cisco Fatty" : Why it is important to think before you tweet
• On the cutting edge of Human Resources or maybe not
• Incentives on using twitter for HR professionals
• Twitter Training Week!
• Twenty really important HR professionals to get to know on Twitter
• Twenty more HR peeps from twitter you really shouldn't live without!
• Twitter as a research tool for HR - you don't know what you are missing!
• Thirteen twitter research tips for HR from other fields
• Tweetdeck is the key to maximizing twitter as a research tool
• Social Media Research for Human Resources made simple

I hope you found this information useful. I would be happy to chat with anyone who needs help getting started.