the recursive nature
of recruiting blogs
a presentation by amitai givertzfrom huh?
to ah-ha!
[and back again]
www.blogversity.com/recruitomaticTo understand what
RECURSIONisyou first have to understand what
RECURSIONis.A procedure that is applied once, and
then applied to the result of that
application, and so on«
is a recursive procedureGet it?ON REFLECTION
RECURSIVE STATEMENT
I BLOG ABOUT BLOGGING
RECURSIVE BLOGGING
CONNECTED BLOGGERS
LINK TO SHARED SOURCES AND
CONTENT, BLOG ABOUT COMMON
INTERESTS. WE ARE GROUPTHINK.
AND WE BLOG ABOUT THAT TOO
RECURSION ENABLED
SHARED SUBJECT MATTER
INCESTUOUS ONLINE
COMMUNITIES
SELF-REFERENCE
CROSS-POSTING
TRACKBACKS
BLOGROLLS
THREADSBLOGGING
COMMUNITIES
are like bubbles
Bubbles EXPAND and
CONTRACT with interest
Bubbles ABSORB each other and
become SELF-ABSORBED
Bubbles INTERCONNECT and
yet are SELF-CONTAINED[the recruiting bubble]
when the recruitosphere
...like any
other bubble online¹
collides with something or has been active too long it breaks into smaller bubbles.- a neat recursive effect. big
group-blogs turn into small-group-blogs and blog communities turn into blogs about blogging. eventually what
once was the center of gravity becomes a black hole [infinite recursion] another interesting recursive effect. cool.recruiting bloggers operate in their own personal bubble and/
or bubbles of professional and/or corporate interest...
«thought leadership bubbles
bubbles of association
trends and technology bubbles
subject matter bubbles recruiting bloggers represent diverse
interests, some vested¹
some political
some social some theoretical
and some undefined,
unclear. Some blogs are serious...
others are whimsical
if are we are gorging on food for thought then why are we
forever hungry, frothing at the mouth and babbling?
RECRUITOPIARECRUITING BLOG COMMUNITY THE RECRUITING FLY lists 275 individual
recruiting and related employment blogs¹
Recruiting.com
ERE Blog Network
RecruitingBlogs.com
The Recruiting Network
um, whod i miss?
¹covering the same range of topics,
recurring themes and personal agendas.Who reads recruiting blogs
anyway? With what regularity?
How is audience defined,
readership measured and
influence observed?
Are recruiting blogs nothing more
than user-generated content
being published for self-
consumption and/or
self-promotion?
More or less?
I S I T R E C U R S I O N ?The recurring questions: why and why not?
RECURSION IN
LANGUAGE
RECURSION IN
PROCESS
RECURSION IN
BLOGGING
The money-shot answer: huh?TOWER OF BABEL
GENESIS 11
[5] But the LORD came down to
see the city and the tower that
the men were building.
[6] The LORD said, "If as one
people speaking the same
language they have begun to do
this, then nothing they plan to
do will be impossible for them.
[7] Come, let us go down and
confuse their language so they
will not understand each other.
WHATS THIS?
I WONDER: is the architecture of
CONFUSION modeled on a
recursive design by coincidence or
is the TOWER a metaphor for a
hierarchy of knowledge,
understanding and wisdom?
Doh! Its Chomsky's hierarchy
ZUT ALORS! JE NE SAIS PAS! of grammars, dummy!Linguist Noam Chomsky
theorized that the
unlimited extension of a
language such as English
is possible only by the
recursive device of
embedding sentences in
sentences like this one:
The war for talent makes
competing for skilled
workers tough.
The much blogged about
war for talent which goes
on unabated makes
competing for skilled
workers like top-notch
recruiters tough because
the demand for those
people exceeds the
supply.Like other bloggers
perhaps, when we are
not blogging about
ourselves and how we
feel, Recruitopians blog
about things and
processes that are by
their very nature
recursiveRECURSIVE PROCESSES
changing jobs and the process of
finding a new one is a recursive
process made up of lots of little
recursive processes
for example: the first step in the
process is to update your resume
and the last step in the process
is to update it again
if you have been involved in a job
search recently you may have
experienced the recursive nature
of systematic voice- and email
tag
JOB HUNTINGRECURSIVE PROCESSES
recruiters use terminology that is
reminiscent of recursion. we say
things like full-cycle recruiting·
to describe complex processes
like full-cycle recruiting
the recruitment/retention
continuum is recursive by
definition. words like backfillto
describe replacing someone who
leaves has a certain recursive
ring to it, dont you think?
we use recursive techniques like
targeted selectionto· recruit
people who match a candidate
profile itself modeled after the
model hire·
CHASING TALENTRECRUITINGS
DIRTY LITTLE
SECRET
IN RECRUITING
RECURSION IS
DEFINED AS DOING
THE SAME THING
OVER AND OVER
AND OVER AGAIN
EXPECTING BETTER
RESULTS
INSANE, ISNT IT?SO, WHO CARES
ABOUT ‡THE
RECURSIVE
NATURE OF
RECRUITING
BLOGS ‡ANYWAY?
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
[huh?]WHO CARES?
We shouldTHE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY
Huh?REFLECTIVE
PRACTICE
To understand the recursive
nature of recruiting blogs is to
open up the possibilities of
understanding how buyers
and sellers are seen by each
other in on- and offline
communities and transactions.
It can help us communicate a
shared vision for things like
trust, transparency,- fair
dealing, authenticity,
reputation, and other
practices that are hard to
manage in our business.
Thats the theory.
When you are selling ideas,
thats the practice too.
if you can see through the
other guy·s eyes you
can sell what the
other guy buysAUDIENCE OFF, MUTES THE CONVERSATION
ECHO CHAMBER BABBLE TURNS THE
Huh?The Attention
Economy
...in an info-ricrmath world, ionthe wealth
of information means a dearth of
something else: a scarcity of whatever it is
that information consumes.
What information consumes is rather
obvious: it consumes the attention of its
recipients.
Hence a wealth of information creates a
poverty of attention and a need to allocate
that attention efficiently among the
overabundance of information sources
that might consume it.µ
[Herbert Simon]WHO CARES?
You shouldOBJECTIVE FACTS IS A CONMANS TRICK
EXPRESSING SUBJECTIVE VIEWS AS
Huh?Just because self-referential bloggers state the obvious in their work doesnt mean they are
innocent of deliberately obscuring the truth when it suits them‡I know ‡I just did itWE ARE PERPETUATING BABBLE
AND CALLING IT FREE SPEECH
Huh?From Andrew Keen·s polemic
´The downside of all this
¶democracy, which the Washington
Post's Robert Samuelson described
as the greatest outburst of mass
exhibitionism in human history· is
the integrity of our political
discourse.
[If this is true, isn·t the same true
for other types of social
intercourse like recruiting
and our Recruitopian
conversation?]
´The YouTubification of politics is a
threat to civic culture. It
infantilizes the political process,
silencing public discourse and
leaving the future of government up
to thirty-second video clips shot by
camcorder-wielding amateurs with
political agendas.
«The Cult of the Amateur:
How Today's Internet Is
Killing Our CultureWHY ARE 97.8% OF BLOG
POSTS 86.2% BULL-CRAP?
fertile minds feed the feeds
and social media
grazing the internet for food
for thought and blog fodder
ruminating on half-digested
content and/or indigestible
subject matter
wasting time producing more
waste, dung to feed hungry,
fertile minds¹
and on and on and on and
on and on it goes, herd
behavior
‡THE ‡RECURSIVE
NATURE ‡OF ‡
RECRUITING
‡BLOGS
[go on. log on. chew it over]RECURSION
ON A ROLL
From blogrolls
to buttons and
everything in
between: drip
feeding the
recruitoshere
[as a dog RETURNETH to his
vomit, so a fool RETURNETH
to his folly.
Proverbs 26:11]looking on the bright side...
RECURSION and REFLECTIVE PRACTICE can be illuminatingRecognizing patterns that
emerge from processes that in
their recursive nature may be
flawed helps us find new ways of
thinking about how to interrupt
the pattern, innovate
If the goal is to elevate the role
of social media to enfranchise a
wider audience of people who
would otherwise benefit from
IT IS A access to networks of ideas and
resources [the good] ² but who
would otherwise be turned off by
CREATIVE the bad and the ugly it follows
we should try to do something
differently next time round
PROCESSThe problems we
face today cannot be
solved with the same
level of thinking that
created them.
[it is well understood in highbrow
circles that any bloggy presentation
that does not quote albert einstein
lacks credibility. even though on the
face of it this quote would suggest
we interrupt recursive thinking to
better address the issues of the
good, the bad and the ugly, it is‡ in
of itself ‡a recursive device.
just wanted to clear
that up, okay?]Clearly then, we need
to take a first step in
understanding how to
define the problem
and then how to set
about fixing it
Who controls the
past controls the
future: who controls
the present controls
the past.
[george orwell in recursive mode?]ALWAYS START
WITH THE END
IN MIND«
STEVEN COVEYTo understand what
RECURSIONisyou first have to understand what
RECURSIONis.from huh?
to ah-ha!
[and back again]
just kiddingThe Recursive Nature of
Recruiting Blogs
A presentation inspired by my conversations with
Michael Kelemen, John Sumser and Don Ramer
My name is Amitai Givertz.
THE
I contribute to the online
conversations about the
recruiting industry on Amitai Givertz¶s
Recruitomatic Blog.
RECURSIVE
I am a contributing editor on
Recruiting.comand sit on the Advisory
Board for Kennedy Information's
Recruiting Trends. I also publish On the NATURE OF
Radar, a daily post on
RecruitingBlogs.com
In addition to running my business ±
AMG Management Advisors -- and RECRUITING
juggling a weekly schedule of recruiter
training, I collaborate on various
projects that encompass social and
relationship networking and advocacy
for open source business models.
BLOGS
To learn more about my work visit
http://amitaigivertz.com or feel free to
email me at info@amitaigivertz.com.