The Carnival of HR – Digging the New Breed and Learning from Old Friends

It’s time for the Carnival of HR and I’m really honoured to have my first go at hosting!

The Carnival doesn’t often pitch its big top on this side of the pond, so I’ve taken to opportunity to introduce you to a whole host of UK HR Bloggers who may or may not be known to you. There’s some really great talent developing here  a real New Breed.

But I’m not biased! My buddies and old friends from the US and Australia have also come up trumps with some really strong and varied posts too. So read on…

Digging the New Breed….

Leading off  is Michael Carty (XpertHR) not least because he is also known as the politest man on Twitter so it would be rude not to! His economic commentaries are a must read for many of us and this March 2011 Edition is no exception

Emma P aka @onatrainagain has only been blogging a short while and has already built a big following with her very personal and honest style. This post is called What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

Alison Chisnell is our very own HR Juggler! How she also finds time to blog is beyond me, but she does! Always interesting, here she talks about New Experiences, Pyjama Parties and Comfort Zones

Katie Davis is the HR Hopeful and writes a newer blog called They’re Only Humans. ..here she’s musing on the Pull of Community

Doug Shaw is the Johnny Cash of the #ConnectingHR community, with a guitar and a song at every tweetup and unconference! And he writes a blog called Stop Doing Dumb Things To Customers – how cool is that? In this post he even gives us a poem! Phantom HR

What can I tell you about Flip Chart Fairy Tales? Well, its written by an affable and knowledgeable beer expert called Rick and he writes an informative, well researched and extremely readable blog about politics and business. This post is about Confident Leadership in an Uncertain World

Ailsa Suttie is an HR Director who I’m sure only embraced Twitter and blogging to stop me nagging her to do so! She is about to move in to a CEO role in a new business venture, which may be why she’s called her blog HR Metamorphosis. She raises an interesting point in A Monopoly Does Not an Expert Make…

Some of you may already know Felix Wetzel. He’s charming, intelligent, insightful…OK, he hired me recently…what else am I going to say?! He does write a really interesting and thoughtful blog about people, brands, creativity and growth. In this post he writes about The Future of Work

Janet Parkinson has a background in social media, recruitment and personal branding. She brings a really fresh approach to her technology oriented blog Technotropolis, as you can read here in her post on Digital Nomads – The Rise of the Independent Worker

Kay Phelps is better known as PR for HR and here she writes about concise messages with the intriguingly titled blog I Wish I Were an Oscar Meyer Weiner

I once called Kevin Ball the Shakespeare of HR bloggers…that was before he called me the thinking man’s recruiter! You can see why he is one of our best writers in this blog Cavalier or Zen

Sukhvinder Pabial is better known as Learning Grump on twitter. And he writes a blog called Thinking about Learning. He left the choice of post to me…so needless to say I chose one not about learning! This is much more personal – A Post about Appreciation

Next up is Gareth Jones, better known to some of you as @garelaos and someone who’s been a candidate, client, colleague, gaffer and above all, friend over the last 15+ years. His posts are always interesting and often controversial. See what you make of Job Board Futurology

Gary Franklin (aka Yogi – but only to @theHRD) is a European Head of Recruitment who muses/rants about all things recruiting. Here he has sound advice Careful! Think! Plan! Interviews are Really Important!

Next up we have one of our newest bloggers TinyBean HR…she lives in France and works in Switzerland and is another who writes in a very open and direct style, ably demonstrated in this post – I Want Passion

Wendy Jacob has been working as an employability consultant for a London based University doing some brilliant work helping students through the jobhunting process. She recently took some of her students to TruLondon and writes here about TruLondon and the World of Graduate Recruitment

If Doug was our Johnny Cash then @theHRD is our Johnny Rotten! He has this knack of ranting, raving and rattling cages and getting straight to the heart of the question. He’s also a really intelligent and engaging guy. He’s on cage rattling form here with 5 People Myths We Need To Blow

Lastly a man who I’m sure needs little introduction to my US readers, Jon Ingham. He’s been running a survey on HR Challenges in 2011 and talks in detail about the results in HR Challenges 2011

…Learning from Old Friends

Leading off with two really good friends both offering strong advice. First up Trish McFarlane (HR Ringleader) encouraging us to remember the importance of face to face interaction with 3 Reasons To Meet With Clients in Person

Then there’s Jessica Miller-Merrell (Blogging4Jobs) talking about creating compelling, interesting and relevant content in HR Blogger Hell & SEO Strategy Tips

Benjamin McCall (ReThinkHR) urges us to stop hiding our creative outputs and to spread our ideas and see who could benefit from them in By Sharing Your Ideas You Are Losing Nothing

‘What are you doing to make your work relationships as important as the bottom line?’ asks Mary Jo Asmus (Aspire) and offers a very poignant example of a team pulling together with Building Work Relationships Should Be Intentional

Wally Bock (Three Star Leadership) has Two Questions for Bosses. You’ll have to read the blog to find out what they are, suffice to say if you’re a boss then you ought to be answering yes.

Laura Schroeder (Working Girl blog, Workday Solutions) gives us a great example of good management even if you’re only on a living wage on Project Social : You Can Still be a Good Boss

Ben Eubanks (Rocket HR) tells us about the five most valuable competencies for a senior HR leader to have in How to be an HR Leader

Erik Samdahl (IC4P) offers us something different…with two different viewpoints in the same blog on The Contingent Worker Debate – who’s side are you on?

Kristin Frasch (HRE Leader Board) is looking at workers managing their schedules in ‘Recession Appears to have bred Punctuality’

The excellent Women of HR community is represented by Michelle Chesnutt who tells us about HR, Workforce Readiness and Organizational Glue –are you ready?

Ian Welsh aka Ian Clive (HR Toolbox) wonders if top level HR has moved too far away from the employees to be effective on ‘Has the people side of HR been downgraded’

Steve Browne (Everyday People) advocates a new ‘What’s In It for Others’ approach with HR focusing on the person not just the situation in WIFO-A New Approach

Kevin Grossman (Marcom HRsay) hits the beat for drummers as the HR role model, bringing the business together in the awesome, Rush referencing  It’s the EQ independence that drives the interdependent biz beat

‘Has HR gained or lost ground post-recession?’ wonders Cathy Martin (Intellectual Capital Consulting) with some interesting findings

From our friends in Australia NGA.NET we have two really good posts – Is Your Organisation Focused on Quality? from Scott Comte and Five Magnetic Strategies to Help you Attract the Best Candidates from John Capon

‘9 Box Your Way to a Job’ says Lois Melbourne (Acquire) with a useful tool to put you ahead of the interview game

No-one wants one but lots of us have one…what’s that? A micro manager! Here Kevin Eikenberry (Leadership & Learning) gives us Six Ways to avoid being a Micro Manager

The older we get, the more we crave praise…here’s a good guide on how to give effective praise from Dominique Jones (Employment Performance & Talent Management) A Manager’s Guide To Giving Effective Employee Praise

Is your HR System causing a bottleneck? Then check out Amy Wilson (Constellation Research Group) who gives us Bottleneck vs Value Adder – It’s a fine line for HR

Despite the increase in social networking, don’t lose sight of personal connections says Karen Turner (SourceRight) when talking about the relationship between talent communities and the candidate experience in Shifting to Company Branded Talent Communities

Amit Bhagria (Young HR Manager blog) looks at the part rewards and recognition play in attracting and retaining top talent in Has Your Company “Got Talent”?

More than half the respondents in a recent survey said that being appreciated would motivate them to stay at an organisation. Just as well Cori Curtis (Baudville) gives us 5 Recognition Strategies to Improve Employee Engagement

Paul Smith (Welcome to the Occupation) has Wellness on my Mind, a personal take on poor eating and exercise habits in the pursuit of blogging nirvana…wise words for us all

Dwayne Lay (Lean HR) tackles the subject of thought leaders. Who are they and why are they? Some great points made on Human Resources Thought Leaders

Eric Meyer (The Employer Handbook) asks a really important question in Unemployed Applicant + No Job Offer = Discrimination?? – are employers really screening out unemployed candidates?

And that’s just about it…except for a post from ME! I’ve gone for a recent one that was inspired by many of the New Breed that I introduced you to earlier…and probably is a fitting finale for the Carnival of HR….

Is HR Blogging the New Rock ‘n Roll??

Hope you enjoyed the show!