Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Job of Finding a Job

Finding the right job is hard. Finding the employee is ever harder. This past summer I worked in the Human Resources department and helped my co-workers with the entire recruiting process. Reading resume after resumse is quite a task. Most are boring, unorgainzed and don't really give a clear view of the person. After reading about blogging for resumes, i've come to think it would be pretty helpful. Yes, you would first have to wade through the daunting stack of papers, but after narrowing down the candidates it would be a great resource to read about how the person works through projects, problems and everyday tasks.

However, I do think professional blogs have a drawback. You have to be careful how much information about specific projects and conflicts you expose. Most large companies have strict confidentialy contracts for employees. Also, an angry blog post about a boss or co-worker will always come back to haunt you.

If HR and recruiteres move towards personal/resume based blogs, people should be exteremly careful how they presnt themselves and the information they give out. You never know who is reading your blog

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Is this my future?

I watched the 8 mintue EPIC video and found it to be very interesting and kind of scary. This whole social progression of news and interactive websites are changing our world very fast. The video takes place in 2014 and reviews history to see how we got to 'where we are today' (in 2014). To think about where we will be in 2014 is weird enough and then to hear about the future like it is the past is very strange.

It did make me think about how these websites such as Amazon, Google, and blogsites will change the future. Now, people don't need real news sources to stay tuned into the world. Instead, the internet allows users to connect to people who are invloved and around these actual stories. People are free to react to and discuss storeis are they evolve. Maybe someday soon traditional news sources will fade out.

Companies will be able to completely customize anything to fit anyone in the world. It is a very scary reality coming true with every new modification and specilization. I wonder how accaure the 2014 video will be once we reach 2014? Only time will tell

Monday, March 17, 2008

....Not Another Group Project!!

Virtual teamwork facilitates conversations and interactions between employees without the need for physcial proxiemity. For someone like my dad who tracels to three or four locations a week to meet with customers this might not be the best idea because a personel interaction is still needed to make and maintain solid customer realations. But for college students like me, this virtaul teamwork would help tremendously. As soon as the words group and project roll off a teachers tounge a collective groan escapes from the class. "Oh no! Not another group project!". It's not that we don't like to do them, it's that they are so hard to coordinate. Everyone has to be in the same place at the same time. This becomes espcially hard when you don't live on campus or you work. Virtual Teamwork could help us by elimnating the physical componant.

For businesses as well as students, there still needs to be enforced guildlines for those who want to use virtual teamwork such as being on time to the "meeting". Just because everyone isn't in the same location doesn't mean that you can sneak in late! Antoher worry would be group dynamics. Does anyone know each other before going in to the project? For a student project meeting in person once would be a good start and then progrossing towards virtual meetings would create a better working envirnoment. I'd really like to be able to try to do a project virtually and to see if it is, in fact, easier

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Do I Know You?

Job searching is hard, it's something i am trying to tackle right now for a summer job. Luckily, I already have some contacts which make connecting easier, but for others corporate networking websites are the perfect jumping off point. Not only do they allow people to get their information out to the public, but they also help people see who is connected to whom. Perhaps you need a contact for a huge ballroom for a banquet, but the only people you can find are only willing to charge more than you hoped. However, using sites like Visable Path lets you see that your co-workers friend works for a company that can get you a super sweet discount! I can even use something like this in my sorority when we're looking for venues to have our Formal and Crush parties.

There have always been Monster.com and other online resume posting sites. Now, even these are becoming more high tech. A site called Visable Path lets you look at your company's orgainization and networks. Another site, LinkedIn allows users to post their resumes (for a fee) and lets company's conduct different searches. A really neat thing they do as well is let companies search resumes even if the people are not activily searching for a new job. This allows people the option to change jobs if a better fit comes along.

I definalty think these sites are worth checking out (Visable Path)and are something that will hopefully come in handy in my future!