KnowHR Blog at the Top of the HR Blogs Power Rankings

Okay, this is just fun. And I’m honored. This week, KnowHR Blog (yep, I’m speaking in the third person, like Deion Sanders) tied for first at the top of the HR Blogs Power Rankings.

The Power Rankings are done by The HR Capitalist with a straightforward methodology:

The short version the methodology is that I have my Google Reader set up to read all 112 blogs for the period in question. Using the star feature, I identify the entries I would recommend to my HR colleagues. The more recommendations, the higher the power ranking and the poll position.

The really fun part is getting read the excellent HR-related articles that were compiled by The HR Capitalist. I subscribed to the The HR Capitalist’s Google Reader feed, as well. You can see a compilation of all the winning articles there.

You can also look at the articles I share on the KnowHR Blog Google Reader by looking here. For those of you who are RSS readers, here’s the RSS feed for those articles.

More fun ahead. Thanks, Kris!

What Everybody in HR Ought to Know About Blogs and How to Read them Fast

I’ll make this quick, I know you don’t have much time. None of us do.

If you clicked to get here or typed in the URL for this…stop it. No, don’t stop reading KnowHR Blog, just be more efficient. Here’s how:

  1. Sign up for Google Reader. Sure, there are a hundred RSS readers out there. Don’t bother. Use Google Reader. Give them an e-mail address and you’re on your way.
  2. Right click on that orange thingy on blogs that you like. That orange button with the radio waves on it is an RSS button. That’s how you subscribe to the blog. Like magic, you copy the feed location, add the feed into your Google Reader, categorize it, and then each time your favorite blogs are updated…voila! they’re in your Reader.
  3. Find some really great blogs and online magazines to read. If you follow this Human Resources search on Technorati, you’ll see that there are 709 HR-related blogs listed. (Including KnowHR Blog on the first page.) If you click on the “Download OPML” file on the upper right, you can download the feeds for all of them…and then import them into your Google Reader. I’d suggest you start smaller. Click on a few that look interesting. If they are, click on that little orange thingy and add them to your RSS reader.

Okay, that’s it. You can read a lot of material fast by following steps 1-3 here. And as a bonus, I’ve added some links for you for HR specialty areas (just download OPML and import that into your Google Reader - under Settings-Import/Export - it’s really that simple.):

Okay, get your RSS on. Here’s a starter for you…the RSS feed for KnowHR Blog is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KnowhrBlog. Just copy that bad boy into your Google Reader using the “Add Subscription” button. It’ll just get added…and you can put in a category if you like (believe me, starting out with categories early is the right approach).

Blogito Ergo Recruitum

Where are you looking for job candidates? If you’re not reading blogs, you’re missing out.

In, How Blogging Can Help You Get a Job, WSJ writer Sarah Needleman says recruiters are using blog readers to find potential hires:

Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they are also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from résumés and interviews.

Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. “Blogs are a tool in the tool kit,” he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.

Sure, I’m partial to blogs. I write articles for two of them almost daily. Why I like blogs so much is that you get a chance to read a writer who doesn’t use an editorial committee or corpspeak. Blogging is authentic writing (with all its blemishes.) If you want to get an unfiltered view of a job candidate, I can’t think of a better way than by reading what they wrote when they didn’t have to.

Tomorrow: What Everybody in HR Ought to Know About Blogs and How to Read them Fast

The World’s Shortest Blogging Policy

“Do the right thing” comes to mind. “What would your grandmother think?” has a certain ring to it. But Jay Shepherd wins the prize for the world’s shortest (and most effective) blogging policy: Be professional. Jay has written more than two words on the subject and every one of them are well worth reading on his excellent site, Gruntled Employees.

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