Hank Stringer has been in and around the Recruiting business for 31 years. In that time he’s seen all of the sides of the equation. He’s been in executive search, corporate recruiting, contract recruiting, CEO of a big league Recruiting Software company. If you poke at anyone with legs in recruiting, they’l know or know of Hank.

Hank tells a fantastic story about his first assignment. He dialed his way into the office of the CEO of a large Oil Company and was given a search for a “land man”. When the oil company leader finally had a chance to meet with Hank, Hank’s youth and inexperience became obvious. As he was being shown the door, Hank asked if he could cjeck back in a couple of weeks. The CEO was gracious enough to allow the earnest young recruiter a return visit.

When Hank got to the second meeting, he noticed a pile of resumes on the executive’s desk. Asking to see the top one on the pile, Hank began a recitation of the qualities and characteristics of the fellow’s resume. There were fifteen on the desk and Hank had talked with eight of them in the two weeks. While that was insufficient to get him the deal, it built a foundation for the rest of Hank’s career. The CEO was gracious as he showed Hank the door again.

You will never meet a better prepared, more enthusiastic, humble leader than Hank Stringer. What he got form that early encounter was a deep respect for graciousness. (It probably doesn’t hurt that he’s from Texas where gracious is a food group like Barbeque).

Hire.com was one of the bright shining stars of the first wave of Recruiting infrastructure compaies. While Hank had been poking around the edges of technology for years (He was a recruiter during the buildup at Dell), in 1996 he began in earnest. I can remeber an early visit to the company that was then called ‘World.hire’.

Over the course of the next decade, Hire.com became an unshakable part of the Recruiting landscape. The firm is resposnible for a number of ideas that still hold sway in the cyrrent crop of recruiting tools. In the end, Hire.com was purchased by Authoria (who recently acquired Peopleclick.)

Hank went on to author a book with Rusty Rueff (Talent Force). The book presents a systematic approach for making talent the key competitive discriminator in your company. The book, as you might imagine is propelling the second phase of Hank’s career.

Influence is a complex thing to pin down. Part popularity contest and part vision, the ability to wield influence does not come easily for every one. In Hank’s case, the exercise is easy.

Kurt Lewin, the psychologist founder of force field analysis and action research, is credited with the “Freeze-Unfreeze-Freeze” model of social transformation. In that view, the status quo is held in place by a series of counterbalancing forces. Change is only possible when there is an interruption in the force field. The window for change is short and closes as a new status quo emerges.

That’s where we are. The old order is undergoing an unplanned rapid evolution driven by the arrival of new social media tools. Yes, there’s a lot of noise. Yes, there’s a lot of well intentioned crap. But, new paths of influence are being created while we watch. Today, it is possible for a young person with limited experience to command the attention and bandwidth of an entire profession.

There are all sorts of new and interesting phenomenon. Trolls, people who look to interrupt conversation for the joy of conflict and the love of their own voice, have free reign in an environment that tries to be egalitarian. Wikipedia describes a Troll “someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” As yet, there are few governance mechanisms that allow administrators to deal with the disturbance.

One of the interesting challenges facing us all is how to tell the difference between what’s important and what’s the result of a Troll or an overenthusiastic geek with diarrhea of the mouth. There are amazing nuggets of novel insight and truth hiding in plain sight. The noise, growing more severe as blogs continue to proliferate, obscures much of what’s potent. At the same time, more and more amazing stuff is just under the radar.

I spent an hour talking with Lance Haun about how he finds new and interesting material in the deluge of information. Lance’s formula is that a piece has be about solving a unique problem by a unique person. He searches and sifts for exactly this kind of information. “The net is cluttered with repetitive topics and lists of stuff. I’m looking for something authentic that works.”

What Lance thinks matters. One of the top two or three voices in the online HR environment, Haun is nearly everywhere. He blogs, he talks, he chats, he advises. He has been able to convert a young career into a platform for developing expertise for a couple of reasons. One, he’s willing to work late into the night, well after his HR job at a startup is done. Two, he asks questions, looks for answers and celebrates the new.

As number 3 in the Top 25 Online HR Influencers, Lance was described as:

“Lance Haun is one of the industry’s most prolific bloggers. He practices what he preaches by reaching back and reevaluating what he says. One of the folks who is working in HR while writing about it, Lance predicts that 2010 will be the year of the HR Rock Star. He’s one of them. Recently, he began working for MeritBuilder as their VP of outreach. He’s in the business of “Helping companies understand and influence their culture and employee engagement through positive and portable recognition.”

In Lance’s view, it’s all the product of hard work. I asked him if he actually had a social life. He allowed that he likes to sleep late on Sundays and squeezes in a social life before he works through the night.

His current company, Merit Builder is a startup in the recognition program space. Lances is enthusiastic about the product, the project and the team. He’s enjoying a level of influence that few people his age have tasted in this profession.

When I was in high school (don’t ask, but we did have telephones), my girlfriend and I figured out a code for saying “I love you” on the phone. In those days, there was generally one phone line with many phones on it. Family life and telephone privacy were mutually exclusive. It was embarrassing to say it while sitting in the middle of the kitchen while dinner was cooking.

If you add all of the numbers on a phone pad that spell I love you, they total 49. I’d say “49″. She’d say “49″. The assembled siblings and dinner guests just thought we were weird. Nothing new there.

“49″ is one of those strange things that stick with you for a lifetime. Since we just passed number 49 on the Top 100 Influencers list, I am reminded to fill you in on progress to date and update the list.

The Top 100 Influencers project uses a network methodology. For over a year, now, I have asked each person that I talk to to name the five most influential people in the HR Industry. (I’ve asked about 700). Every time someone is referenced by five other people, they go onto the interview list (I’ve interviewed about 280). From those interviews, a subset of influencers are selected based on net visible contribution to the industry.

It’s been an interesting process. Along the way, a number of people have proposed improvements to the methodology. In the next version of the process (after the first 100 are finished), we’ll take a look at improved methods. It’s good to be able to learn as you go.

There are a number of very interesting findings from the research so far. In no particular order,

• People who wield influence are not usually people who work in the business on a day to day basis. Consultants, Analysts, Vendor executives, academics, event promoters, writers and editors all have an edge at being influential. It’s a part of their job and a key success metric.
• People who work in HR and its various sub disciplines are less likely to be influential. They have no industry marketing budget.
• There are some executives who successfully create industry influence while holding down a ‘day job’. They usually build an institution of some importance as an expression of their passion.
• Social Media is making it possible for more practitioner voices to be heard.
• There is little in the way of training in leadership or managerial disciplines for people who want to be successful running HR organizations. There are no observable road maps currently.
• The industry produces an enormous number of analyst companies and executive think tanks to fill some of the gap.
• There is a huge difference between the way that HR is practiced in the top 10% of companies. It almost doesn’t resemble what the other 90% do.

We ve begun an interesting and related experiment. Each month, in the HRExaminer, we are going to offer a list of the Top 25 Online Influencers in specific subsets of HR (the overall Top 25 Online Influencers in HR is already available).

These lists are completely computer generated. We define a keyword cloud and the terms are spidered and the players are measured in three areas: Reach (eyeballs), Resonance (inbound links, community participation) and Relevance (match against the keyword cloud). From what we can tell, it’s the first objective measure of influence in the industry. It’s powered by Traackr, a Boston firm with good tools for the Recruiting market.

(The name influenza is Italian and means “influence” (Latin: influentia). The most common symptoms of the disease are chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness/fatigue and general discomfort.)

Here are all of the pieces of the Top100 Influencers Project to date:

Overview Pieces

• Keys To Influence
• Key Influencers
• Influence Happens In A Context
• Top 100: Recruiting and HR
• Spheres of Influence
• We’ve Moved
• Key Influencers: Observable Trends
• Measuring Influence
• Influenza

The Influencers

1.01 Naomi Bloom – The Software Architect – Bloom and Wallace
1.02 Kevin Grossman – The Clarifier – HRMarketer
1.03 Kevin Wheeler – The Futurist – Future of Talent Institute
1.04 Elaine Orler – The Recruiting Strategist – Talent Function Group
1.05 Jeanne Achille – The Gentle Connector – Devon Group
1.06 Robin Ferracone – The Boardroom Player - Farient Advisors
1.07 David Manaster – The Community Builder – ERE
1.08 Bill Kutik – The Technology Czar- HR Technology Conference
1.09 Bill Vick – The Padronne - ExtremeRecruiting TV
1.10 Rob McIntosh – The Game Changer- Avanade
1.11 David Perry - The Guerilla – Perry Martel
1.12 William Tincup – The Reframer – Starr-Tincup
1.13 John Sullivan- The Good Doctor – John Sullivan Associates
1.14 Dan Hilbert – The Edge – OrcaEyes
1.15 Doug Berg – The Scientist – Jobs2Web
1.16 Allan Schweyer – The Director – Center For Human Capital Innovation
1.17 Tony Karrer – The Training Engineer – TechEmpower
1.18 Peter Clayton – The Reporter – Total Picture Radio
1.19 China Gorman – The Operator – SHRM
1.20 Jessica Lee – The Editor – Fistful of Talent
1.21 Mike Mayeux – The Processor – Novotus
1.22 Shally Steckerl – The Sourceror – Arbita
1.23 Rusty Reuff – The Entertainer – Reuff Associates
1.24 Elliot Clark – The Publisher – Shared Expertise Media
1.25 Valerie Frederickson – The Sage – Valerie Frederickson & Co
1.26 Todd Raphael – The Quiet Force - ERE
1.27 Brian (Skip) Schipper – The Coral Reef Manager – Cisco
1.28 Penelope Trunk – The Brazen Careerist- BrazenCareerist
1.29 Gerry Crispin – The Connector – CareerXroads
1.30 Darren Romano – The Headhunter’s Headhunter
1.31 Auren Hoffman – The Synthesizer – Rapleaf
1.32 Neil McCormick – The Standard Bearer – Talent2
1.33 Mike Foster – The Builder- HCI
1.34 Jason Davis – The Innovator – RecruitingBlogs
1.35 Libby Sartain – The Godmother – Brand For Talent
1.36 Joe and Cecelia Gonzalez – Dynamic Duo – BCA Executive Search
1.37 Wes Wu – The Technologist – Systematic HR
1.38 Debbie McGrath – The Organizer – HR.com
1.39 Bruce Steinberg – The Enumerator – Steinberg
1.40 Steve Boese – The HRTech Professor – Steve Boese’s HR Tech
1.41 Matt Alder – Recruiting Futurologist – Recruiting Futurology
1.42 Eric Winegardner – The Shoe Guy – Winegardner
1.43 Jeff Kaye – The Outfitter – Kaye Bassman
1.44 George Bradt – Mr. Onboarding – Primegenesis
1.45 SHRM
1.46 Dan Finnigan – The Pioneer – Jobvite
1.47 Kris Dunn – The Instigator – HR Capitalist
1.47 Sue Marks – Edge Finder – Pinstripe Talent
1.48 Marc Effron – Talent Manager – New Talent Management Network
1.49 Mary Kitson – Master Mentor – NOVA/Dulles SHRM Mentoring Program

Leverage is one of the keys to having long lasting influence while holding don an HR management job. Leverage means finding areas where the return for an investment of time is disproportionate. These facets of the craft of HR are not easy to identify. If they were, everyone would have enormous influence (and all of our investments would yield Bernie Maddoff returns).

Nonetheless, finding an arena where the returns are high is what makes the difference for a lot of influencers. Simple hard work, while a prerequisite, is never enough. Being smart, while handy, may have little or nothing to do with the question. Figuring out how to exploit a niche to deliver extraordinary benefit is the essence of self-made influence.

Obviously, some positions are better suited than others to building broad impact. Being a leader in a professional association, an industry analyst, an event producer, a trainer or a consultant all offer easier access to influence than working in the trenches. But, ‘dirt under your fingernails‘ provides credibility and understanding that you simply can’t develop at 30,000 feet. And, if you’re busy making an impact in a day to day job, it’s hard to reconcile the lofty generalized proclamations of the consulting crow with your day to day reality.

Mary Kitson generates influence and legacy where there appears to be none. Currently an OD Consultant for Government customers at MITRE, Kitson is the muscular energy behind an amazing grassroots training program. The NOVA/Dulles SHRM Mentoring Program is a benchmark model for managerial HR Training around the world. (Here’s their Recruiting Video featuring Mary.)

When she left school, one of Mary’s mentors advised her to get involved in SHRM as a part of building her career. She found the local Chapter and volunteered to work on the local mentoring program. She worked as a junior volunteer for a couple of years. What she found was just what you’d expect… a typical mentoring program that didn’t quite work because the mentors were too busy and the objectives too opaque.

In a delightful confluence of events, Mary got to take over the leadership of the program at about the same time that Fast Company published a story about the combination of mentoring and networking. Mary took advantage of the support of the chapter leadership and a couple of good ideas to reshape the offering.

“A major influence on the new mentoring program concept was Kathleen Ferris, the 1998 NOVA SHRM President. She encouraged a spirit of volunteerism, persuading members to give back to the chapter just one time – it was called a “one shot deal.” Mary Kitson had a light bulb moment when she realized it might be feasible to use the “one shot deal” volunteerism with the Senior Expert Mentors. The group mentoring program was formed from this concept of asking Senior Experts to share their knowledge and expertise with a small group of mentees on just one occasion – a commitment few can say “no” to.” (from the History of the NOVA/Dulles SHRM Mentoring Program)

The Program’s fact sheet tells much of the story. Some of it is obvious. After a decade, there are about 150 graduates of the program. That’s an astonishing legacy for a volunteer effort at a local chapter. The alumni network is well placed and active. Combining executive involvement and a collaborative partnership with each pair of participants, the mentoring program delivers shared experience and expanding effectiveness for everyone who touches it.

Kitson began her career in Recruiting. Of fifteen years in HR, about half were spent Recruiting. “It helps me keep perspective. Where lots of HR generalists don’t really understand the business that they’re in, you can’t be an effective recruiter without that understanding.”

She went on the get a Master’s in HR and moved into consulting. She currently does Workforce Analytics, Strategy, Planning, OD and Training. At MITRE, she works with consulting teams to help government clients with HR issues.

Mary functions as a network hub for a universe that extends well beyond the 150 alumni. In order to continue to evolve and improve the program, she gets to know key executives, ambitious professionals and every manner or careerist.

Influence that doesn’t come directly with the job takes a level head and an even hand. Figuring out how to move opportunity through a network while accomplishing your own goals takes patience, discipline and a strong intuition. Mary Kitson is a great example of how to do it.

The folks who don’t work in HR have an advantage. In order to be a successful academic, consultant, publisher or vendor, you have to devote a significant portion of your resources to marketing. Working professionals and managers rarely get to spend their time, energy and money in this way. The ‘rubber chicken circuit’ is full of the freelancing types who drive the industry’s conversation.

Social media has the enormous potential to change this. Practitioners and their leaders now have the opportunity to see an influence the larger picture. In the move to democratize influence, unconferences are turning lectures into conversations. If you wanted to change the game, now would be the time.

Marc Effron is currently VP, Talent Management Avon Products. With his own epononymous website, a burgeoning talent network and a forthcoming book, he’s the model of future HR Rock stars. Effron infuses his day to day responsibilities with enthusiasm while building out the rest of his size extra large personal brand.

The Talent Management arena is exploding with new ideas, tools, software and approaches. Depending on who you ask, Talent Management is anything from a reframing of succession planning to a full reconsideration of the role of workforce planning. Effron is clever enough to understand that there is a critical intersection between the emerging theory and practitioners needs. He’s harnessed contemporary publishing ethics and tools to form a national network of Talent Management executives.

The New Talent Management Network describes itself as:

“a group of 1,600 senior talent management professionals interested in advancing this field. We share three primary goals:
- Improve talent management effectiveness by conducting original research that benefits the TM community
- Coordinate opportunities for local, free networking among TM professionals
- Increase the capabilities of TM professionals and raise the bar for this profession”

With impressive research resources, local gatherings in major cities and regular surveys, the New Talent Management Network is the sort of all-volunteer effort that creates sustained change. As social media integrates further and further into industry discourse, this sort of low-overhead, high value organization will be evermore visible. Effron’s managerial skill set is in evidence.

The new book (in stores mid-Spring, 2010) is called One Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value. You can get a feel for the content by skimming through this presentation on One Page Talent Management. Essentially, Effron assaults old school HR, validating the charges levied in the various forms of “Why We Hate HR” articles and studies presented in recent years. A McKinsey study says: “Executives do not see the HR function as having the influence and capabilities to shape effective talent-management strategies.” He then proposes a simple (not simplistic) approach to executing Talent Management solutions. His mantra? Avoid unnecessary complexity.

So how did a mid level HR manager at a big company make such an enormous impact?

After undergraduate school, Effron began his professional career in politics. A paid internship with a local congressman evolved quickly into a role with a company that worked to elect candidates who favored growth. After a few years, Effron began to think of his work as narrow and decided to go to Business School.

A Yale MBA led to a series of jobs in a variety of HR settings. Starting in a boutique HR Consultancy, he moved through Oxford Health Care, Bank of America, back to consulting for Hewitt, and finally to Avon where he works today. With nearly 17 years of HR experience under his belt, Effron is proof that effective careers require learning a culture, making a contribution and moving on.

It is well worth noting that his LinkedIn profile makes no mention of affiliation with a professional association other than the New Talent Management Network.

Marc Effron is a role model for a working professional who wants to wield influence in the industry. Broad career moves in a variety of setting, publications, a reputation as an engaging speaker and willingness to experiment beyond conventional thinking are the hallmarks of his approach.

Follow Marc Effron on Twitter @marcse

Like a slow moving tsunami, the Recruitment Process Outsourcing movement is headed to a recruiting department near you. These days, the state of the art looks like a seamless integration with the host company. Today, RPOs engage in talent pool development, employment branding and onboarding for starters. The practice has moved from a plug and play replacement of recruiting to something that looks more like embedded high powered consulting.

The range is enormous.

Over 1300 companies claim to be in the RPO business. Most of them are some form of staffing company (contingency, temp, contract or retained) who are experimenting with a new pricing model. It’s often easier to use a new buzzword than it is to actually develop a new approach. The vast majority of the firms who claim to be in the business are engaged in a me, too exercise in wallet grabbing.

But, at the core, something really important is going on. Recruiting departments are being detached from their organization’s books and run like businesses. Because of the long term contractual structure, it is in everyone’s interest to have the RPOs deliver novel, innovative value for their clients. The real RPOs are the foundries for major innovations in the recruiting industry.

In spite of the generic claims that recruiting is more art than science, RPOs are systematizing the process, driving costs through the floor, delivering recruiting value and shifting the landscape. Every working recruiter knows how difficult it is to tell an employer about the negatives in their brand. This is true whether you are inside or outside the organization.

When you own the entire function, it’s another thing entirely. Having contractual leverage creates the foundation for difficult but important conversations. One recruiter saying that the entire engineering profession won’t come to work for you is a whole different story than a discussion about raising prices unless the brand is renovated. Companies who really want to develop a competitive advantage in recruiting absolutely must embrace the principles, if not the practice of RPOs.

One of the most interesting things about the RPO industry itself is that there are significantly more female chief executives. Running RPOs (and/or the industry association) seem to generate large numbers of female led companies. This is not true in the rest of HR where the leadership is predominantly male and the workforce predominantly female.

Sue Marks, the CEO of Pinstripe, is a second generation recruiter. Her father ran the Management Recruiters (MRI) office in Milwaukee. Sue cleaned the offices when she was 11 and went on to work in them. She helped her father open an office in her teens. The recruiting business is in her blood.

In 1980, she left her father’s employ (at 24) to start ProStaff with a partner. She bought out the partner seven years later, grew the company to $30M by 2000 and sold it to a fortune 500 company. Since then, she’s been a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. She was an early investor in Virtual Edge which ultimately sold to ADP.

Founding Pinstripe in 2005, Sue began really demonstrating her passion for Talent Management and Talent Acquisition companies. Pinstripe is an RPO focused exclusively on replacing a company’s existing recruiting infrastructure. Pinstripe is one of the largest independent RPOs. Over the four years of the firm’s existence, Sue has shepherded the operation through difficult economics while keeping sales slightly better maintaining a compound 125% growth rate

She’s building out a team pf powerful leaders with pedigreed backgrounds. One of the interesting things about running an RPO is that it manages to be somewhat more stable than traditional recruiting operations. This makes the acquisition of talent for real enterprise development a boatload easier.

That’s not to mention the patient and wise hand of Baird Capital. Pinstripe is built, successfully, on venture funding. Baird is one of the highest quality investors in the industry.

Anyone on the social recruiting circuit knows Sue and Pinstripe. The company routinely sponsors and promotes the use of social media as a recruiting toolset. Sue believes that an RPO has to be way out in front if it’s going to offer its clients true value. RPOs, she thinks, can help a company maintain its competitive edge with constantly renewed technology.

Marks is influential in ways that elude other players. As one of the highest ranking (if not the highest) women in the business, she has a unique level of access to a range of players. Never a shrinking violet (remember, she’s a recruiter at heart), Marks is often the point person for sales and marketing in the company. She’s fearless.

By being out front, in the VC game, willing to invest and building her second major company, Sue Marks sets an example for the other women leaders in the industry. Her influence falls into the role-model category. It’s great to be able to point to a successful woman leader.

At a party the other night, someone said that Kris Dunn is so omnipresent because he never sleeps. Kris’s output is prodigious; he seems to be everywhere. There are very few VPs of HR who hold a candle to his insight and contribution. He is the quintessential next generation HR Leader.

If you’re not familiar with Kris and his work, he’s the Vice President of People (VP of HR) for DAXKO, a Birmingham, AL software as a service provider.

Step back for a moment and consider the credibility of that scenario… influential, HR leader, software company in Alabama. Ten years ago, that would have been strikes one, two and three. Today, in an internet driven economy, influence, innovation and insight can come from anywhere. Even, out of nowhere. If he is anything, Dunn is a man of his time.

The prolific blogger writes at The HR Capitalist and founded Fistful of Talent. The HR Capitalist is a plainspoken near-daily report from the executive front lines of Human Resources. Kris is quick to call a spade a spade. Fistful of Talent, built in a fascinating collaboration with Top 100 Influencer Jessica Lee, is an amazing destination site for HR insight. The team of a dozen or so content generators cover the HR waterfront. The site has a strong regular readership and in itself is a source of amazing influence.

Somehow, Dunn leads a small town life while driving the leading edge of thought about HR and its importance. When they say he never sleeps, they mean that output and consequence on this scale are nearly unimaginable for someone who holds down a regular job. People who generate this sort of impact usually work full time to do it.

Beneath the Jimmy Stewart, aw-shucks, I’m a small town guy veneer, lies the heart of a born entrepreneur. On his way to Birmingham, Dunn learned the HR ropes in IBM Global, Cingular, Bell South, Charter Communications (a Paul Allen Company) and a venture backed medical company. He learned big company management and startup styles while getting his MBA. He has experience as a project manager (shouldn’t all VPs of HR) and a rounded generalist.

Don’t look to Kris for the normal HR pablum. His insight is biting and direct. Here’s a soundbite:

“Let’s face it.  Even if you’re one of the best interviewers in the history of that scrum you call a company, odds are you’ve gone through periods where you just didn’t feel like bringing your A-game to the table when interviewing candidates.  It’s OK, it happens to everyone who interviews a lot for a living.  You’re human.”

It’s fair to say that Kris is not a cheerleader for any of HR’s professional associations. He believes that administrative work is elastic and expands to fill available space. He sees recruiting as the foundation of great HR.

If you spend some time with Dunn’s blog, The HR Capitalist, you’ll find a bounty of useful ideas built on deep personal experience. If he were just a VP of HR in a software company in Alabama, it would be an interesting story. Dunn is something much more. He’s the archetype of a local player who wields global clout. In doing so, he strengthens his company and the profession.

Dan Finnigan has the deepest roots in internet technologies of anyone in the HR or Recruiting space. He’s had his finger on the pulse of changing communications infrastructure since the early 80s. With roles in academia, business, newspapers, internet media and now SocialRecruitment, Finnigan has been at the start of three, possibly four, successive phases of internet growth.

Finnigan’s roots are in Journalism with an MBA from Wharton. He worked with Dave Farber, one of the founders of DARPANET. In those days, the Internet was understood as a communications infrastructure with lots of future potential. Finnigan’s role was to try to understand how people used various kinds of technologies. He tells wonderful stories about his research into telephone systems in the 80s.

As the web began to take shape, Finnigan worked in the yellow pages business, bringing them online. (This was the foundation of the empire that became Monster.com, by the way, just not the project that became Monster). As a telecommunications player, he led telephone company forays into internet businesses.

The combination of a journalism degree, an MBA and telecom experience made him irresistable to the team at Knight Ridder. For much of the dot com era, Knight Ridder’s internet strategies were the benchmark for the newspaper business. In that role, he engineered the acquisition of CareerBuilder, the newspaper industry’s attempt to harness the recruitment advertising business.

He then moved to Yahoo to run HotJobs which he did for the years after Yahoo acquired the company.

These days, Dan is happily ensconced in his first real startup. Jobvite is a venture backed company that has capabilities ranging from facebook job referrals to an Applicant Tracking System. The toolset is modular and companies pick from a menu of options.

Jobvite Source enables employees to spread the word about jobs through twitter, Linked In and Facebook. It includes a Candidate Relationship Management system. It also includes a matching technology that scavenges the internet as a sourcing tool. Jobvite Hire is a full front to back hiring system.

Finnigan is one of those people you want to spend time with. He’s been an active part of four waves of technology adoption and is wiser than most about the setting and meeting of expectations. He’s full of generous praise for the teams he’s worked with over the years. He keeps stepping up to the helm of the next thing. His timing is meticulous.

Influence comes in a variety of forms. Often, figuring out how to be in the right place at the right time creates a platform for influence. Somehow, it doesn’t really work well if it’s too planned.

Finnigan’s approach to moving through his career is rooted in his love of the future of technology. It’s not hard to imagine that he’s got a large library of the sort of practical science fiction that was around in his youth. He’s essentially curious and finds his way towards things that excite him.

One amazing thing I’ve noticed is that he’s continuing to learn as he moves Jobvite forward. There’s a world of difference between running a HotJobs operation at a big comp nay like Yahoo and scrambling for attention as a startup. Things that are a matter of course at the big company are not even on the radar at a startup. The lessons can be very hard to learn.

It seems to come easily to Dan.

There’s a core network in Silicon Valley’s HR-Recruiting Technology networks. There are a ton of people who have worked with or for each other over the course of nearly 20 years. Finnigan is one of the tall poles in that tent.

SHRM takes a lot of heat for its ‘failures’. I’ve come to realize that much of that criticism is misplaced. SHRM is often used as a surrogate for the profession itself.

Like many national associations and franchises, the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a bundle of contradictory strengths and weaknesses. The local chapters offer amazing regional innovation and stodgy academia-ish tenure based networks. The national association is both lifeline and anchor for its membership. On the whole, the benefit SHRM delivers is significantly greater than the burden it creates.

SHRM serves its primary purpose, keeping its members up to date, and informed more effectively than most professional associations. The local chapters are the backbone of the profession. Much of the criticism aimed at SHRM ends up there because there is nowhere else to throw it.

The market offers mixed reviews of SHRM’s performance and validity. The venerable professional society has its share of competitors and naysayers. At the same time, over 40% of industry practitioners have a membership. SHRM certification is widely understood as a measure of competence. (It’s notable that there are competing certifications that emphasize human capital strategy.)

There are no other operations that can hold a candle to the SHRM infrastructure. With deep (but separate) penetration in local markets, much of the real SHRM action happens at the chapter level. There are feudal legacies in place in most regions of the United States. The local SHRM organization is often the best path to employment in the sector.

SHRM’s architecture and framework make the outstanding contribution of the local chapters possible. While there is an inherent friction between national and local operations, the benefit can be seen in the flowering of grass-roots initiatives. The national organization has a thankless job.

Without SHRM and its local chapters, HR professionals would drown in a sea of contradictory information. The organization provides, at its roots, the structure and data necessary to keep the profession viable. Critiques that don’t account for this fundamental value miss the boat.

Criticizing SHRM is the active past-time of a range of commentators, managers and pundits. Some of the flak is a direct result of the profession’s fungibility. HR is a different beast in different regions and different industries. Approaches to HR that work well in information/service businesses fail routinely in the manufacturing, hospitality and retail sectors. The manners and procedures required for effective execution in Birmingham, AL are a kiss of death in New York City.

It’s nearly impossible for an organization to simultaneously provide critical maintenance information and insight while teaching a profession how to innovate.

SHRM’s tendency to maintain a large moat around its silo is both structural and intentional. All professional associations share an inherent core belief that there are transferable skills and messages within the profession. The view comes at the expense of traction in some settings and is the source of the industry’s penchant for self-measurement and navel gazing.

A large chunk of the difficulty lies with the profession itself. HR is a jumbled bag of cats and dogs that vary from organization to organization. Any rational human being would have a hard time staying on top of the material. The networks that evolve outward from the local chapters give working professionals access to the expertise required to navigate the regulatory and region specific aspects of the discipline.

“Keeping up with it all” is a routine struggle for the men and women who operate the vast majority of HR Departments. These folks are their organization’s eyes and ears in the battle to solve employee relations problems while staying one step ahead of changes in regulation. SHRM and its loose network of local operations serves these people magnificently.

SHRM is significantly better at the task of keeping its membership up to speed than professional associations in other areas.

Things are much less clear when the question turns to the creation of sustained value for the organization. In a land of best practices, no meaningful advantage can be developed. Almost by definition, a professional association is in the business of transmitting old stories and conventional wisdom. It’s the wrong place to look for innovation (or its seeds). In fact, it’s worth being a little suspicious when a professional association takes on the question.

Maximizing the value derived from Human Capital is an organizational contact sport. In mature industries, the process is formulaic. But, in young, expanding sectors, the rules appear while the game is being played. Sometimes, basic functions have to be radically reconceived in order to accomplish the organization’s mission. This is where all professional associations are their weakest. SHRM is no different.

The parts of the profession who are not served by SHRM fall into two categories: adaptive companies that insist on pure business results from their HR operation and those that get their information from another source. The first group is not really a potential SHRM customer and the second gets value from competing services, periodicals and associations.

The depth and intensity of the criticism aimed at SHRM may be the best indicator of its overall influence. As the factions argue about SHRM’s validity and viability, the future of the profession takes shape. One of the most interesting aspects of the association’s integrity is its willingness to engage critics thoughtfully and patiently. China Gorman, profiled earlier in this series, works diligently to understand and incorporate new ideas and constructive critique.

It is likely that SHRM will be the only institution to make the Top 100 Influencers list. For the people inside the silo, it is a source of credibility, inspiration and information. For those outside its purview, perspectives range from frustration to admiration. SHRM is the one element of the HR ecosystem on which every member has an opinion. For everyine involved, it is a stabilizing force.

I had a good laugh today in a conversation with an old friend. “Imagine”, I said, “that you got to your new job and, on day 1, your desk was in place, your name was on your door. Your first 15 meetings were arranged, you had clear goals and a 100 day plan.” My friend, who is 30 days into his new job, laughed hysterically. “I still can’t remember where the bathroom is and my job description feels like jello.”

This is the world of George Bradt.

Bradt has worked for a number of big companies (Coke, Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, JD Powers) in sales and marketing executive roles. He is not your standard issue HR leader.

He tells the story of his epiphany this way:

“In the ’90s in Japan, I was responsible for hiring this one particular Vice President. On his first day in the office, he walked in and nothing, absolutely nothing was ready for him. We spent the day sorting out the logistics of office space, bathroom locations and so on. We’d spent a fortune to get the guy on the job and were simply unprepared for him. I know it was a real waste and a real opportunity. I swore it would never happen again.”

Onboarding was born.

“The next new executive hire was a different story. When she arrived, her name was on the door; her computer was ready; there were flowers in the office; she had meetings scheduled. In other words, we got her off to a running start.”

Bradt believes that success or failure of a new executive is determined in a very short and early window. (At least 40% of all executive placements fail in the first 18 months.) In the following years, his recipe for improving the odds grew richer and more detailed. He forced his organizations to work to make new executives successful. Today, Bradt refers to a Heidrik and Struggles study that suggests onboarding reduces the failure rate to 10%.

When he launched his own company, PrimeGenesis, the idea was to follow the onboarding thread exclusively. What makes a guy like Bradt so influential is that he knows how to stay focused and on message. In the early days, no one wanted to talk about onboarding. Today, it’s nearly a household word. Meanwhile, the company has stuck to its knitting. The company blog is a cornucopia of onboarding insight.

The New Leaders 100 Day Action Plan, George’s first book, got its name because the publisher didn’t think the word ‘onboarding’ would sell. It continues to move at an interesting rate and was the foundation for Bradt’s second, “Onboarding“. The third, “Total Onboarding” is due out next spring.

PrimeGenesis also offers NewJobPrep.com, a structured nine step workstream for people who want to make their next job a success.

The combination of laser focus and a clear story are the underlying elements of George Bradt’s influence. Nearly single handedly (with the help of the PrimeGenesis team, of course), George has brought a new aspect of the hiring process into focus. This google timeline gives you a sense of the explosion in the use of the term ‘onboarding‘.

Bradt focuses on three aspects of the new engagement.

1. Preparation for a Head start.
   The onboarding processes focuses on researching the new job and the new team in advance of Day 1. The name of the game is to have a clear agenda and a clear message. The process includes making sure that the workplace is prepped from a logistics perspective with offices arranged and meetings set.
2. Push.
   George and his team are relentless about their focus on having a message and sticking to it. One message, one clear set of objectives.
3. Inspiring and Enabling The Team.
   After initial introductions, success is really all about the team. Bradt urges an approach based on the new executive being grateful for the opportunity to serve his team (rather than charging in on a shiny white horse).

Bradt likens his work to being a harbor pilot. “We get put on the boat with the new captain. We help them map out their plan. We facilitate meetings. In rare cases, we take the helm. Onboarding helps the transition process gain traction and momentum.”

George Bradt is changing the way that companies treat new employees. There is an emerging partnership that focuses on getting the right start for both sides of the equation. It’s an important part of the proactive hiring process.

This creates an interesting conundrum. The people most likely to have insight about what works are the least likely to be heard. The most influential have a looser, more theoretical view of things.

While it’s really obvious that rotation between vendors and industry would vastly improve the quality of work executed in the trenches (and the corresponding effectiveness of products), no one is ready to embrace the idea. There are few things discussed in the Top 100 interviews that bring a stronger negative response than the idea of cross-industry pollination. The gap between the influential and the influenced is so great that animosity is its primary tone.

There are some exceptions.

HR is a really regional sport. Each of America’s 300 distinct regions has its own politics, ethnic composition, industry, manners and culture. HR (as currently practiced) is a reflection of these things. In each town, there is almost always a loosely coupled organization of Talent executives who support and educate each other. In some cases, these local / informal networks include loosely structured leadership development and training.

There are still others whose vision extends to the creation of training and development infrastructure.

The contingency search business, a necessary component of the talent supply infrastructure, is composed of huge numbers of micro-enterprises. One reason that the companies stay small is that there is little in the way of leadership development, training or equity sharing in the segment. Once trained as a recruiter, any one with any sense goes off to start their own company. You simply make more money that way. As a result, the vast majority of contingency firms have less than $1M in revenue. Their talent alwys leaves.

The industry is the HR world’s ‘wild, wild west’. Growth is non-existent. Companies gain a little traction and then scatter. Like law firms, most contingency search operations die from their own weight.

Jeff Kaye runs Kaye/Bassman (KB), the largest firm with roots in the contingency business. Large, in this case, means $15M to $20M in annual revenue. Through Jeff’s leadership, the firm has been able to maintain its team in spite of the pressures. Comparatively speaking, the firm is a giant. Careful attention to culture, infrastructure and economics have helped the firm grow slowly and organically while maintaining a team. In the course of growing the company, Kaye has built a retained and contingent hybrid. The company is demonstrating the effectiveness of a new model while they are in the process of transforming the industry.

KB is a legendary source of great recruiting talent. Many famous Texan recruiting legends worked at KB. The fundamental DNA of the company is great training. Jeff is refining the culture and building a business helping other firms grow. Coupled with good economics (in the form of partnership) and other infrastructure (from real accounting and IT to marketing), Kaye is figuring out how to turn the mom and pop industry into a place with real companies.

He believes that the credibility of the middle management search segment depends on having enough companies reach critical mass. Until that happens, systemic excellence and real growth is not possible.

NextLevel Exchange, the company Kaye believes will engineer the transformation, is a shared services operation.

“NLE is collaborative portal for recruiting professionals, no matter your tenure, niche, or nationality. Rookies can examine scripts for new marketing approaches, or revamp their current voicemails and emails from our library. Veterans can listen to recorded calls from other recruiters to freshen up their approach, and get exposure to new forms and templates that may streamline your old processes. Owners can utilize the Facilitation Guides for morning meetings to provide new and revived content for training your team; with a Guide for each week of the month, this serves as an immediate training curriculum for any office.”

The online training library includes segments from well known recruiters including: Craig Silverman , Margaret Graziano, Neil Lebovits, Bill Boorman, Bill Vick, Greg Doersching, Jordan Rayboy, Hank Stringer, Jeff Skrentny, Mark Berger, Rob Mosley, Doug Beabout, Scott Love, Mike Oneil, Carol Wenom, Jon Bartos, Kent Burns, Frank Risalvato and Paul Siker. More are in the hopper.

Kaye believes that building the industry’s infrastructure starts with training, moves to consulting and ultimately includes back office support. The operation’s growth has not been constrained by the downturn. Kaye, the permanent optimist, is bullish about the near term prospects.

It’s this sort of move, building a company designed to strengthen the industry that gives a heads-down player exposure to the broader arena. By gathering powerful trainers and consultants in the library, Jeff Kaye is becoming a centralized source of initial training. From there, the next steps of industry-building are simply a matter of execution.

Here are a few of the things I’m discovering as I interview people for the Key Influencers project. I’ve recently crossed the 180 interview threshold.

The unconfirmed word on the street is that in the Fortune 500, 130 of the Chief HR Officers (or whatever you call the person with that title) are alumni of the Pepsi HR system. I’m discovering an interesting bias in the market that involves these folks. That’s an astonishing track record. (The next closest is GE with about 40). It even looks like there’s a market (recruiting) to support it.

Pepsi alums seem to:

* Be really goal oriented and focused,
* Not particularly believe in SHRM,
* Believe in job rotation,
* Give really big assignments to young leaders,
* Care about outcomes not processes
* Look at company wide human capital trends not department specifics
* Expect the HR Function to perform at a certain level
* Network with each other,
* Know about the careers of other Pepsi alums

Another trend involves ’schools of HR thought’. These are spheres of influence that coalesce around a particular theory.

Some segments of the profession align themselves with particular schools of organizational design and psychology. There are a number of faculty at USC, Stanford, Harvard, Yale and Wharton who command interesting followings. There are smaller contingents in Chicago, DC and San Francisco.

There’s a real question about whether or not best practices actually work. HR is so diverse by industry and region that a really good idea in one setting can be a disaster in another. For instance, the treatment of attrition has an entirely different meaning in consumer facing (restaurant, hospitality and retail) than it does in information systems and biotech.

In one case, you want to increase retention in specific jobs. In the other, you want to increase retention in the company while decreasing it in specific jobs.

There don’t seem to be many magic bullets. That’s because great HR is focused on business results and not the measurement of internal processes.

Here’s my favorite example of the week.

A very large informationish institution on the East Coast is reorienting its recruiting function. From now on, 75% of the work of the 300 members of the recruiting team will be internal. They are going to compete head to head with the executive search firms who have been raiding their talent coffers.

The company has given its recruiting team a mandate to find capable internal players for any opening and to pursue them as aggressively as a competitor would. The recruiters don’t need the boss’ permission.

The net effect is to create opportunistic career paths while never allowing people to rest on their laurels. The company believes that this is the key to massive productivity improvement and deeper levels of agility.

The idea is potent enough to spread without someone collecting so-called best practices. What’s interesting about the HR Industry is that excellence is happening in pockets rather than across the board. The success stories that make the most sense are not being transmitted. It’s a problem with the current information structure of the space.

The first thing you don’t think when you meet Eric Winegardner is, “This is the corporate VP of Product Adoption at a Billion dollar company.” Maybe, “Where does that dude get all of that energy.” Or, “Who picks his shoes.” Or, “Man, if I was only that good looking.”

Kidding aside, Eric is the public face of Monster.com (at least in the Recruiting community). He travels relentlessly to spend time with groups of his clients. That means he’s a regular on the conference circuit. He helps Monster understand how to make its investments in this or that aspect of the HR universe.

Among other things.

Winegardner is an Ohio boy made good. Life on a farm led, obviously, to an early career stocking shelves in grocery stores. Even then, Winegardner obsessed about job quality. He focuses on delivering enthusiasm and value. You can be sure that that grocery store had the best looking shelves in Cincinnati.

Eric learned the ropes from the ground up. Prior to joining the Monster team in March of 2004, he was an active and vocal customer for over six years. He spent three years as a recruiter in a niche Executive Search firm and five years responsible for the U.S. recruiting operations of a Fortune 500 financial services organization.

These days, after years in Boston, Winegardner commutes to work from Cincinnati. His team of 25 in Boston is responsible for training and product solutions. He manages them by setting priorities and moving on.

He laments the consequences of the first generation of Internet Recruiting. “We’ve built a generation of sourcers. It’s as if there was nothing but the transaction. Early Internet tools made companies more capable of hiring. But, the art of Recruiting suffered as a result. It used to be a hiring centric sport. Today, it’s all about filling the req. We went from Recruiting to Sourcing. In order to woo top talent, we have to head back towards Recruiting.”

That’s impressive talk for the head of product adoption at a job board. “The definition of job board has changed in the past several years. We’re just starting to do the education required to help our customers catch up with what we do.”

That’s why you see Eric at the edgier parts of the Recruiting Industry. An active participant at Recruitfest and deeply involved in the Social Recruiting Summit, Winegardner is helping the Monster battleship execute a necessary turn. Take a look at the “Twub”

Eric is both an example of and an advocate for “the Power of Passionate People”. He envisions recruiters who:

• Always know who their next hires are going to be
• Know how to see hardwired attributes like optimism and a ‘calling’
• Are the company brand
• Believe that their purpose is life changing.

It’s easy to be influential when you are everywhere. Of all the people covered so far in this series, Winegardner has the harshest travel schedule. He shows up at every event, trade show and coffee klatch. When he’s there, it’s an enthusiastic blur.

In each interaction, Eric strives to be fully present. He listens well and is always on message.

The role is complex. Winegardner is both mouth and ears for the Mother ship in Maynard, Massachussets. He collects customer input relentlessly and feeds it back without a sugar coating. More so than anyone else on the list to date, Winegardner is effective both as an external influencer and an internal one. That rare coupling makes it likely that Eric will be a key industry player for a long time to come.

Matt is currently Head of Digital and Product Strategy for Penna Barkers and also blogs at the Digital Recruiting community blog. His own blog, Recruiting Futurology, is routinely ranked as a must-read in British Recruiting circles.

Matt got into the Recruiting business the way most people do…he stumbled in. After a couple of years at Corbis, a privately funded Bill Gates Company, Matt got into the net and found his way to a job with TMP. He’s been in the UK Recruitment Advertising space since 1999. If you want to imagine an equivalent person, he sort of a Shannon Seery Gude with glasses and other male parts….and a British accent.

In England, the Recruiting Agency plays a different role. Candidate advocacy is practiced as a matter of course. This is in part because the majority of new assignments are acquired through an agency. Matt represents the disruptive influence. His job involves evaluating new tools and technologies for one of the UK’s premier advertisng shops. You can predict that he will be in the audience for any of the edgy conferences (Social Recruiting Summit or Recruitfest).

Both of us try to incorporate new tools into our work. So, of course, we conducted the most interesting part of the conversation via Google Wave.:

Sumser – So, Matt. What is the most important thing in the future of Recruiting?

Alder – Difficult to name just one thing so I’ll indulge myself and talk about two!

The first is the change in behavior social technologies are starting to drive. The interesting thing is that it isn’t actually a change at all it’s actually a return to more natural ways of human interaction. Mass market advertising and large anonymous corporations have only been with us for a relative short time in the context of human history. It is a much older and more natural behavior for people to find jobs via recommendations from people they know. The emerging dynamics of the social web are combining this “old” behavior with “new” technology and I believe the effects will be revolutionary in our space

The second leads on from this and is the end of recruiting as a siloed activity. I believe that developments in technology, culture and the economy are rapidly advancing the pace of organisational change and in order to recruit and retain top talent companies will need to see recruiting (however it does eventually evolve) as a key holistic part of their organisational DNA

Sumser – When you talk about ‘recommendations from other people’, you don’t mean an expansion of the referral system, do you? It seems to me that smart organizations will be able to harness their member’s social networks to do a more targeted form of recommendation. Many of the current referral programs are seriously plagued by the fact that there is no quality control or requirements expression process. Do you think organizations will evolve toolsets to harness networks? How? What will they look like?

Alder – Yes exactly. I’m fascinated by tools I’ve seen that map people’s social graphs. Sociology and the theories of networks and influence were never things I’ve looked into as deeply in the past. The more I learn and the more I look at the power of social graphs the more I realise just how important this will be to the recruiting industry. The point you make about the current state of referral schemes is an interesting and valid one, I really don’t think that there are very many set up to fully exploit (or even partially exploit) the true potential that is now out there.

A lot of companies that I’ve worked with struggle to get their existing technology to track measure and reward the referrals they do get so I think there is a very long way to go! I’m certain that we will see an explosion of tools, technologies and methodologies in this space over the coming months / years. Difficult to say what they will look like in detail as the needs they will fulfil will vary a lot across industries and geographies

Sumser – I’m starting to see a number of initiatives to bring a new order to HR and Recruiting. Is that just happening in the states and Australia or are you feeling the rumblings in the UK as well? What do you suppose it takes to change the institutional structure? Does it really matter?

Alder – I’ve not seen much evidence in the UK to be honest and the past tells me that those kind of initiatives end up being somewhat limited in their reach and effectiveness over here. The way things seem to truly change is for particular individuals and companies to set bench marks that others follow because they work and deliver the value companies are looking for

That said it’s interesting to see more informal collaborations becoming effective. There is a group in the UK called the Forum for In House Recruitment Managers (The Firm) which started as a LinkedIn group. It now has over 500 members and they hold regular face to face meetings and workshops. I would envisage self organised groups like this having huge amounts of influence in the future Is there anything similar in the US?

Sumser – I don’t really see much in the way of physical organization like that here. Partly, I think that’s because Recruiting is really a regional thing. I’m very tempted to suggest that the regional nature of recruiting and HR (regional being the combination of industry and neighborhood) will be one of the forces that reshapes the profession in years to come. You’re experimenting with an array of social media as recruiting tools. What are you seeing? What’s working? What looks promising?

Alder – What I’m seeing and hearing is a lot of talk and a lot of theorising and a lot of people using social media to talk about social media. While I’m convinced this will change quickly there isn’t a huge amount of recruitment activity that fully utilises all the new methods available. That said there are some interesting things going on, I have clients who are experimenting with Twitter both on a feed and conversational basis and the early results look interesting. Ironically, although it sounds like missing the point, using advertising within social media seems to work very well for certain types of campaign and we’ve seen a lot of success with highly targeted campaigns on LinkedIn and Facebook. I also think there are some pretty good technologies being created specifically for our space. Although they aren’t quite in the UK yet I think companies like Jobs2Web will do really well over here. It’s a shame that there isn’t a huge amount of similar recruitment / HR innovation currently with UK based technologies. Perhaps thought the exception that proves this rule is the London based TwitterJobSearch….their proposition has a long way to go but the concept behind it could turn out to be a very interesting one

Sumser – I’m starting to hear serious rumblings about the integration of software silos through social media. I think that means figuring out that the universe of stakeholders includes lots of people who wear multiple hats. Employees become contractors and vice versa. Contractors are customers, potential employees can be investors, customers, channel partners. Customers roles stretch across the same lines. The tendency to organize our operations based on internal organization is under serious pressure that will only get more intense. Places like Dell, Microsoft and Google are starting to show signs of awareness but they’re the vanguard. How do you suppose that recruiters operate in a world of seamless community? How do messages get coordinated internally?

Alder - I think it is inevitable but there is a huge amount of catching up to do. I always thought it was crazy that existing customers of a company would have to re-introduce themselves by re registering with the recruitment system if they wanted to find a job there. I also think it’s crazy that many companies end up in bidding wars with themselves on Ad Word campaigns because of a lack of co-ordination between departments. I think the future will be about aligning communication systems, software systems and culture to offer a integrated authentic view. Until companies can catch up with themselves the pace of change will driven by the consumer / job seeker. Recruiters and Recruitment department that can work ahead of the game and proactively de-silo themselves will be the most successful in the future Reply Edit

Sumser – So, if you were going to give some advice to an ambitious young person who wanted to make a difference (and have a successful career in the industry), what would you tell them? Reply Edit Oct 20

Alder - Two things…keep an open mind and network well. The pace of change in this industry is only going to increase and while it’s important to take learnings from the past, holding on to outmoded ideas and institutions isn’t going to get you very far. Social technologies have quickly made industry networking real time and global. Each new connection is another potential set of opportunities, go for it!

Sumser – Thanks, Matt.

If you want to keep track of Matt Alder, Follow him on Recruiting Futurology

The Rochester Institute of Technology offers a course in HR Technology as a component of their Master’s in Human Resource Development Program. It’s one of the few in the country. There are 34 discrete courses across the country teaching the fundamentals of the technical tools that people in HR use every day. Steve teaches the HR Technology course at RIT.

The course lasts 10 weeks and is divided into three segments:

• Concepts and Fundamentals
  The whole cookbook: demographics, definitions, roles. Covers Saas vs onsite, licensing decision making structure of the full suite
• Talent Management Applications
  Review and evaluate with hands on experience where possible.
• New Technologies
  Everything from Social Media to Twitter. Exploring the difference between what’s in the apps and what people are using. He has ranged as far afield as the use of prediction markets for succession planning.

Needless to say, Boese has his hands full trying to stay abreast of the changes in the industry. He blogs routinely on the subject and is @sbjet on Twitter.

There is even an academic debate about whether such a course should stand alone or be integrated within the structure of other courses. That’s a really sad commentary on the state of HR today. The backbone of any corporate HR operation is going to be its capacity to define and manage technical programs. The elements of contract administration, prtogram management and project managment, coupled with a good understanding of core requirements is the essence of HR leadership today.

I spent some time with him talking about his background, the course, social software and emerging trends in HRTech.

Boese is a hands-on software professional with systems experience all over the world. He began his career in finance and accounting but eventually moved into systems implementation roles.Over the course of a couple of decades, Boese moved from Finance into Software Implementation and from there found his true love: HR Tech.

“My students are going to have to be good at understanding the variables in deciding whether or not (and how) to use social media. Like the early days of the web, many employees have better access to social technologies at home than they do on the job. Our graduates have to help figure out effective policies about on the job utilization,” he says.

Boese describes his goal as “empowering students to make a difference”. The graduate level course is usually evenly split between big company HR people and students from small and medium sized businesses (SMB).

When I asked him what he might need for industry or other HR professionals, he said “We can always use more access to tools. The more hands-on experience I can give my students, the better off they are going to be. It’s a huge universe of possibility. I can always use more insight about the size, scope and implications of the problem.”

You can keep up with Steve by following his blog.