Hip Hip Hooray for Cheezhead

Big news happened right after I got back from vacation. Usually it happens during my vacation, so I was pleased to be in the know just as it was announced once I got home. Joel Cheesman, of Cheezhead.com, the HR and Recruiting commentator and thought leader, has officially sold his company and taken the position of Senior Vice President at Jobing.com.

On a personal note, I'm really excited for Joel, since I consider him to be a friend. On a selfish note, I'm happy that the Cheez, and his lovely wife, Laura, will be in the same time zone as me for half of the year. On a business note, well, that has yet to be figured out. CoolWorks.com used mJob, a Cheezhead affiliated company, to create Cool Works Mobile, a website that is optimized for use on mobile devices starting in April of this year. I hope that this relationship won't change, but I'm sure more details will be known in the coming months.

Listen to the man himself in his interview with Jason Davis of RecruitingBlogs.com at the recent ERE conference down in Florida.

Find more videos like this on RecruitingBlogs.com

Anyhow, to Joel, this angel is proud of you. I look forward to hearing more about your new adventures in the desert. Since we didn't quite make it out to Cleveland, perhaps we can meet up at Grand Canyon National Park? Congratulations!

Introducing CoolWorks.com Mobile

Change has come to CoolWorks.com and we're pretty excited about it. We've been fans of the recruiting news website Cheezhead for some time, and when the chance to better serve both our employer clients and job seekers through mobile was offered, we jumped at the opportunity. With iPhones taking the world by (Blackberry) storm, we didn't want to fall behind. According to the mJob website, a Cheezhead affiliated company, "With more than 4 billion handsets in the world, mobile is rapidly becoming the media of choice for savvy recruiters across the globe." We definitely wanted to make sure that CoolWorks.com is a part of this mobile revolution.

What does this mean for our job seekers? Job seekers can now check out the open job opportunities via their cell phones anytime, anywhere by visiting the following link.

http://m.coolworks.com

They can then email leads to themselves to follow up on later.

We're hoping that this becomes a simple way for them to keep up with the latest and greatest on CoolWorks.com in addition to the current job notification emails and RSS feeds we already provide.

What does this mean for our employers?

It's just another way for job postings on CoolWorks.com to reach even more people. As access to mobile continues to grow exponentially, the number of job seekers who utilize m.CoolWorks.com to find their summer jobs will only increase. It means better odds for employers to find the qualified job candidates needed to fill their seasonal job opportunities.

It's a win-win situation for everyone.

So, a BIG thanks to Joel and his team at mJob.com for taking us into the next realm of recruiting possibilities. Be sure to check out http://m.coolworks.com and let us know what you think.

Even More Networking Goodness

This is more of a cool, personal post than the last one. This week I got to hang out with an Internet personality, Cheezhead, aka Joel Cheesman. And why is this cool? (......works). Well, just a year and a half ago, I had no idea who he was. Here's a brief time-line of our history.

March 2007 - I joined CoolWorks.com and was introduced to Google Reader and the Cheezhead blog about recruiting and SEO.

June 2007 - I actually meet Joel and photographed him in action at the annual SHRM conference in Las Vegas.



Time rolls on and I keep reading his blog. We become friends on Facebook, we follow each other on Twitter, and then one day....

October 2008 - I get a message via Facebook that he is coming to Seattle to do a presentation for a client and wants some sightseeing advice. I offer up some best of Seattle options and suggest meeting for coffee. He says sounds good, but he'll check with Ms. Cheezhead, who is joining him on the trip. And so, a tweet later and text from Joel, we end up meeting for drinks at Anthony's on the Waterfront. Good times.

Another day passes and we meet up again for lunch at a Seattle hole in the wall place called Salumi, operated by the Batali family, and talk shop. While standing in the long line to get our tasty sandwiches, we chat about how cool it is to be able to know people around the country, who work for entirely different companies, but are tied together through like-minded interests via the 'Net. In some ways, it's just crazy, and in other ways it's indescribably cool.

Anyhow, I am pleased as punch that I got to hang out with them and show them an insider's look at my town. My tour guiding skills are still serving me well. Thanks, Gray Line!

Now, I can't wait for another opportunity to hang out with the Cheez at some HR or recruiting conference or maybe on a visit to Cleveland!



The bottom line:
Social networking ROCKS!

Follow Me On Twitter

I must admit that I am in awe of bloggers like Punk Rock HR and Cheezhead, for example, who can write everyday and sometimes more than once in a day. For me, in keeping up on Staffing Center requests and the various advertising needs of clients, I am lucky to get one posted once a month sometimes twice. I suppose that's one reason I like Twitter so much. There isn't the pressure of coming up with a full post, but I can share my thoughts and goings on in a brief, sometimes thought provoking manner. And by thought provoking, I mean, trying to condense a thought to 140 characters can be challenging. Plus, I can share other blogs I've read and videos and keep up on politics and HR trends by following other people.

What's funny to me is that when I took the job at CoolWorks.com and was exposed to RSS and Google Reader, I was amazed that all I had to do was click the little orange RSS icon and magically all of the articles I wanted to read came to me. I would go to my Google Reader and spend an hour or so getting caught up. Fortunately/unfortunately, I now follow so many bloggers and news sites that it either takes me much more time than that or I end up clicking the "Mark all as read" button to be free of the guilt of not being able to stay caught up.

Again, this brings me back to Twitter.

• Twitter is short and sweet.
• Twitter is fun.
• Twitter is instant.

I can follow some of the same bloggers and news channels, but I can scan the headlines a whole lot faster to get to the nitty gritty of what I want to read. I also get to know a little bit more about the people I follow. I can tell you who the coffee drinkers are, who takes the train home, and who loves their kitties as much as me. Even better than that is the fact that when I go to my next big conference, I'll actually know people so the face to face connection will only solidify the networking relationship.

So, do you Twitter? If not, you should. Okay, well, you should at least check it out. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and get the gist of it. If I was an internal recruiter today, I would be willing to give it a try to find a new stream of applicants. Twitter is a free and quick way to expose your open jobs to a new audience and a fun way for you as the employer to show that you have a personality and are interested in being authentic and known in the social media world.

If you don't want to take my word for it, here is a video of lots of other Twitter users who LOVE Twitter. It's a bit long, but you get the idea. Give it a try. You just might like it.