Shauna Moerke is…

Wow. I have four, count them FOUR, HR Happy Hours to talk to you about. I guess that’s what happens when you have three shows in one week. But you’re like me and just can’t get enough of the HR Happy Hour, right? Of course you can’t. So let’s get to all the HR geeky goodness!

Episode 60 – Seiden Says
For our 60th show we have a special treat for you all! Steve took the night off but that just meant that we could bring in a special guest host for the evening: Jason Seiden!! I won’t lie to you, it was a fun time. Jason gave out some great advice, I giggled like a weirdo, and everyone learned why I call Jason “punk monkey”. How can you not check it out below?

Episode 61 & 62 Live from HR Florida
We were live from HR Florida this week with two special shows at a special time! And this wasn’t just coverage of the event either, we had some amazing guests on, like first time guests William Tincup and Cathy Martin, who brought some great conversations around HR technology, leadership, and engagement to just to name a few things we tackled. It was so good I sneaked out of work to attend! (Shhhhh! Don’t spread that part around…)

61 – The World According to William Tincup

62 – Leadership and Engagement with Cathy Martin

Episode 63 – The HR Tech Conference Preview
Finishing up the week and back at it’s regularly scheduled day and time, episode 63 was all about the upcoming HR Technology Conference, coming up quickly on Sept. 29th – Oct. 1 in Chicago, IL. To tell us all about the show, the Godfather himself, Bill Kutik was our guest, and he did a great job stealing the show away from Steve! It was great to learn more about the show and I am more excited about attending this year! want to know why you need to go too? Check out the show below!

Thanks for listening in and as always, check out the crazy active #HRHappyHour back channel for the full story!

The latest Carnival of HR is up and it’s on your TV!! Well, not really, but our host this time around, Bill Boorman, wanted to do something different and asked people to submit video or vlogs! You know the best part? You can still get your submission in!! That’s right, go here to not only see all the great Carnival videos but also submit your own! Feel free to just skip over that first video of that weird Shauna person though, who does a video in the car?

In a whirlwind of Carnival of HR events, I have two, yes two Carnivals coming up to tell you about! First up, straight from last night’s HR Happy Hour show, the dancing queen Sarah White will be hosting a Special Carnival on September 8th: Why you should go to the HR Technology Conference! Now, I know a lot of you already have that post published or are about to, so be sure to send it in to Sarah! You can email her at imsosarah at gmail dot com. Second, The regularly scheduled Carnival will be on September 15th and hosted by a long time friend of the Carnival of HR, Jon Ingham, at his Strategic HCM Blog! Jon always does an awesome job with the Carnival so don’t forget to get your submissions in to him by Monday September 13th!

On more than one occasion, I’ve had people mention to me that they felt the HR online community was a clique. Apparently there are “cool kids”, you know, the ones who get invited to all the cool parties (conferences) and get all the attention (blog traffic). I’ve also been told that it is really hard to get into that “cool kids” group. When I hear stuff like this, I can tell that a good deal of frustration, and maybe even hurt feelings, is behind it. In the end, the HR online community is actually fairly small, especially when you consider how many HR professionals aren’t involved. It’s a little discouraging to think that people seeking a place to belong online feel left out. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I got involved myself. But you know what, I’ve come to the conclusion that yes, the HR online community is like a clique and that’s not a bad thing.

Here’s why:

1. Popular doesn’t just happen. One of the biggest mistakes you can make about a “thought Leader”/”cool kid”/(Insert another meaningless blogger title here) is to assume that their popularity just happened. That’s crap and anyone who has dedicated hours, and I do mean hours, of their time building their social media presence and reputation will tell you, it doesn’t just happen. Your content has to be good, well-written, and informative. You have to be entertaining, market yourself, make connections, and build an audience. Yes, luck does come into play too, but if someone is popular, they are working hard for it.

2. You get what you give. Related to my first point, popularity doesn’t just happen, and sometimes the problem isn’t that people are ignoring you, they don’t know they should be paying attention to you. When I hear from someone that they don’t feel like they can get a foothold in the community, one of my first thoughts is, “How much are you putting into it?”. Social media is an investment. You contribute time, ideas, interaction with other members, and eventually you can start reaping the rewards of your involvement. Give people a reason to want to get to know you and read what you have to say.

3. Remove your ego from the situation. Let’s be honest with ourselves and just admit that part of why we blog is because we all have some ego involved. We all want people to like us and think we are clever. Yes, there are a million and one other reasons why we blog but… Come. On. So when you dedicate so much of yourself to blogging and you aren’t getting as many comments as that person, or don’t get as many RT’s as this person, it can hurt. So learn to take your ego out of the process and enjoy what you are doing for itself.

In the end, cliques happen, but they happen for a reason. People get close to each other, build off each others ideas, and naturally want to work with each other more and more. To someone new to the HR online community, it can feel like you can never break into that inner circle. But that isn’t true at all. I have seen bloggers established long before me fall into obscurity and newbies blast past me in popularity. So instead of worrying about the “cool kids”, focus more on yourself and what you can give. You’ll be surprised by how fast those feelings of being left out go away.

Dude, I know I said last week’s HR Happy Hour show was going to be crazy, but man, that is one show that “exceeded expectations”! Ha! Get it? It was a show about performance reviews and I said it “exceeded expectations”. Hahaha…ha, erm, yeah, so moving on… It was a great show full of controversy, great questions, comparisons between HR and the KGB, and we had a crazy active #HRHappyHour twitter back channel. Be sure to check it out below!

While I have your attention, you have to check out this week’s HR Happy Hour! Steve will be taking a much needed break from the show but don’t you worry cause Jason Seiden is stepping in and will be your personal career coach for the evening! And he won’t be giving you any of that fluffy advice either. No sir, you better be sure you have the balls to handle it. If you think you do, go here to find out how you can get your question on the show and be sure to join us this Thursday at 8 pm EST. That is, if you have the balls for it.

(Dances around the room with wild abandon) Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you all there, reading this blog post. (removes headphones) I was just grooving along to the latest Carnival of HR! That’s right, it’s carnival time again and I hope you are all ready to rock! That’s because Paul Smith didn’t just pull together a great collection of blog posts over at his Welcome to the Occupation blog, he paired them up with some sick tunes for your musical enjoyment! So for all you HR music fans out there, check it out here and get ready to bust a move, just not that vase you have in the corner over there.

Rolling right along, the next Carnival of HR is coming up on September 1st and is hosted by that international man of mystery, Bill Boorman at his Recruiting Unblog! It looks like Bill may be hosting a vlog Carnival again so get those web cams and Flip cameras ready to go! More details to come! In the meanwhile, be sure to go here to learn of all the ways that you can stay connected to the Carnival of HR!