In 2002, there were not many people talking about blogging (the term of art was Weblog). The dot com collapse was still front and center. Business was at a standstill following 911. Weblogging was in its infancy in Silicon Valley. There were few international proponents.

In India, Gautam Ghosh was trying to sort out his place in the world. After a series of starts in the hotel industry and pharma sales, he’d picked up an MBA from XLRI school of Business and Human Resources, one of the country’s leading universities, in 1999. While trying to build career traction, Gautam launched his blog in 2002.

By 2007, he was being recognized (by HRWorld) as one of the most influential online voices in HR. Ghosh is busy demonstrating that social media can be a real careerpath. It’s particulary interesting to hear him tell about the use of social media in India. Creating a new career path in a stodgy discipline like HR is less common outside of the United States.

As the democratization of celebrity continues to push through global society, the applecart is being upset all over the place. Much of the reaction to the algorithm generated lists of HR and Recruiting influencers has to do with the unpredictability of new work trajectories. Emerging communications technologies make head spinning career moves possible.

Ghosh rode the blogging trajectory through stints with Dell, Deloitte, HP and Erewhon while coming to the conclusion that his future was in independent consulting. By 2009, Businesspundit.com had him listed as one of the top 75 business blogs in the world. It’s pretty heady stuff.

In my conversations with Ghosh, I’ve always noticed an undertone of something particularly HR-like in his approach to developing his vocation. “I was always looking for my place in the world,” he said in a recent phone call. This emphasis on ‘fit’ is at the heart of what social media makes possible.

He told me about a large Indian company that has a Chief Beliefs Officer. The CBO is responsible the way that rituals, beliefs and myths are deployed in the workplace. Ghosh used the example to illuminate some of the differences between Indian HR and it’s more Western implementations.

“We are not investing in fundamental research and are just blindly applying Western HR concepts to work. But, as you can imagine, in a land where a ‘CBO’ is a good idea, there are some hiccups. Work, compensation, community and motivation are all different culturally. We are in the early stages of discovering what is Indian about Indian HR”.

That’s part of the reason that Ghosh joined the startup 2020Social, where he heads the talent practice. The company’s clients are mostly in the marketing space. 2020Social has Ghosh in its ranks because they understand that the difference between custmers and employees is mostly theoretical.

Gautam Ghosh is a role model in his home country and around the world. A decade of demonstrating that alternate career paths work while focusing on big ideas and implementation gives him a platform for influence all over the world.

In yesterday’s review of the SHRM HR Standards project, we looked at the interesting effort the professional association is generating. Standards, analytics and metrics are an integral part of the emerging world of global commerce. Jeremy Shapiro, the Bernard Hodes Group (Hodes) senior Vice President at HodesIQ, is on top of that question. He might be the most effective proponent of HR analytics in the business.

Shapiro has been a driving force in the Online Recruiting business for 14 years, the majority of that time at Hodes. He’s been central to the development of the only Applicant Tracking System owned by an advertising agency (that we know of). Managing technology development within the loving confines of an ad firm is no small challenge.

HodesIQ is a fully features SaaS system that provides soup to nuts recruiting technology including ATS, onboarding, job posting, sourcing and media metrics, succession planning and performance management. The solution is configurable and scalable. The interesting thing about being housed in an advertising agency is that it makes the HodesIQ emphasis on employment branding and career-site development all the more credible.

One measure of influence might be the number of press releases that mention you.

Continuing Bernard Hodes Group’s long-standing history of working to advance the field of human capital management, Hodes iQ’s Senior Vice President Jeremy Shapiro will lead an HR metrics workgroup for the innovative Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) initiative to help develop standards certified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which “oversees the creation, promulgation and use of thousands of norms and guidelines that directly impact businesses in nearly every sector”.

Shapiro, an author and expert in human resource metrics and talent management technology, will lead a cross-functional team of volunteers to create a standard for the frequently used HR metric, “cost per hire.” This workgroup is one of three initial efforts by SHRM to help HR teams better define common HR functions and measurements. “This is an exciting time in the field of HR metrics; executives are more interested in maximizing human capital potential, and are looking to HR for answers, but we need to get the basics down first,” said Shapiro.

“Efforts such as this one, which helps better define what cost per hire means, allows the HR function to move on to more challenging analytics. I’m excited to lead a strong team of HR professionals to submit our recommendation on a standard for cost per hire to ANSI.” A well-known expert in the world of talent management solutions, Shapiro oversees the development and management of Hodes iQ, Bernard Hodes Group’s award-winning talent acquisition and management software solution, and is co-author of the HR metrics book Ultimate Performance.

The Hodes iQ talent management system provides users with a robust business intelligence tool to report on HR metrics, in addition to access to Hodes iQ experts in talent acquisition measurement through seminars, webinars and direct consultation. – From the press release

Shapiro was a geek from day one.

Always hustling to make money, Shapiro’s youth might be better characterized as mis-saved rather than mis-spent. He loving tells the story of his first computer, a Tandy 1000. At 10, he computerized the town directory and sold it to the local politicians. He simply loved the intersection of technology and commerce.

A life long learner, Shapiro continued his education after undergraduate school picking up a degree that combined an MBA and a Computer Science Degree from Stern. The more he watches HR, the more he is sure it’s about data.

It’s easy to get at Jeremy’s passion. Just ask him about analytics. An association with Nick Burkholder got him started. Increasingly he is placing his energies and presentations into the Analytics world.

From here, it looks visionary. Of course the next generation of recruitment advertising client will be metrics (evidence) driven. Shapiro is setting the stage for Hodes’ emergence as a next level player.

We talked for a while about how HR Departments learn to use data. He repeatedly cited the following maturity scale proposed in the book he coauthored with Burkholder.

In the beginning, the use of analytics involves non-standard spreadsheets. In the end, the tool set shifts from predefined dashboards and into the issues that make talent management strategic.

In a separate piece, we’ll tell you about the conversations we had about trends beyond analytics. Meanwhile, keep your eye on Shapiro. His influence will be seen in the rate that analytics are adopted in HR.

Last week, we published the Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters list on the HR Examiner. Each of the 25 people profiled are major contributors to the online dialog. They have large followings, generate significant traffic and make a powerful impact in the niches in which they operate.

The list created a small stir with critiques ranging from cronyism to a runaway algorithm. Lists always produce sour-grapes, Monday morning quarterbacking and conversation on the topic. The idea behind the influencer lists is to build an ongoing dialog about who has influence, why they have it, how they got it, what they do with it and whether or not doing whatever it is that they do will be useful in your career.

I am extremely curious about the way that ideas move around the HR Industry. As the recovery slowly takes shape, I think that budgets will get pressed, outsourcing will be on the rise and different people will be doing old HR/Recruiting jobs in new and different ways.

Talent Management can mean anything from ’succession planning’ to ‘the cultivation and harvesting of the human capital investment”. It ranges from an afterthought to the central reason for being in the HR department. Where it is shortchanged, people are treated like a physical supply. Where it is fertilized and matured, it is understood as renewable and worthy of ongoing examination and support.

HR spans a similar gulf. At the street level of maturity (a very large percentage of all firms, maybe 60%), HR is nothing more than the old personnel department, processing forms and polishing procedures. In 30% of firms, SHRM drives the performance standard with committed professionals who want to know how to make a contribution. At 10% of all companies, HR is a competitive weapon; these operations redefine the basic components of the profession as adjunct components of an offensive strategy.

The people who influence Recruiting range across these dimensions. Many of their views on recruiting are contradictory and hard to reconcile. Recruiting ranges from filling a well worn requisition to identifying the next leader of a powerfully innovative new company. Is there any question that generalizations about the discipline will come up short?

But, the web is an exercise in making things measurable. As we move through the experiment in trying to articulate and measure influence, a number of things are getting clear. We find nuances in the data long after it settles out.

Here are some of the questions I’m asking:

• Is influence really different from popularity?
• Do the people we are identifying on the Traackr lists really have influence or are they just the loudest mouths on the block?
• It seems like the people who make their way on to these lists are getting better jobs. Are the lists measuring something that has to do with career momentum?
• We believe that the measurement process will more closely correspond to actual influence over time. What else do we need to know?
• Some of the critics have great ideas. What’s the best way to involve them in the process?
• Is it true that influence will become more and more important as organizations continue to flatten?
• Will the current bits of web architecture last long enough to have institutional style consequences?
• About 60% of the HR leaders profiled in the On The Go Section of the HR Examiner do not have LinkedIn profiles. Is this because they already have all the influence they want?

The idea behind this experiment and the HRExaminer is to take a fresh look at the way that HR and careers within its disciplines actually work. If you have input, ideas or insults, we’re happy to get them.

There are more than 50 small organizations that offer peer to peer networking (in the old fashioned sense) for HR Executives. From the Conference Board and the Recruiting RoundTable (whose parent offers a number of similar forums) to analyst firms like Bersin and Associates to a slew of academic operations (Cornell’s ecosystem is particularly interesting). There are consultancies built around academic figures, Institutes for the Future, and a host of exotic, nichey operations. Some (but not many) vendor user groups accomplish the same end.

There are a number of things that these influential groups have in common. They are:

• Intimate (a handful to forty members in the most effective groups)
• Relatively vendor free (and always vendor neutral)
• Designed to combine networking and education
• Focused on helping members become more effective (in one way or another)
• Loosely facilitated

Some have a greater emphasis on Research (Analysts tend to chart their own courses while larger groups tend to answer the questions of members). Others focus on conversations about what is working and what isn’t.

Most interestingly, there is no central repository that compares and contrasts service and pricing. These are tony groups who don’t really like a lot of attention. There doesn’t appear to be any consistency in the price value equation.

That said, customers are often rabid fans of the service they use. Virtually every Fortune 2000 HR Executive belongs to one or more of these small groups. The networking and cross-competitor information transfer gives members a real edge when it comes to innovation and execution within their companies.

You can think of this arena as ‘the trade show business for real HR decision makers” or “the HR Industry’s Think Tanks”. The institutions are amorphous and live in the shadows. They provide a fast information distribution system while shielding members from an avalanche of sales calls.

One of the more interesting operations is called the Learning Forum. With about a dozen “councils“, LF members meet in groups of 10 to 15 participants about three times a year. A look at their website tells you that these folks are not interested in slick marketing.

The Learning Forum is a network of senior executives who join together for direct, peer-to-peer dialog and sharing of “better practices”. We focus on Leadership Development, HR Strategy, Workforce Planning, KM, Innovation, Wellness and Sustainability. We also run executive level workshops for top teams using Gettysburg, Normandy and other key historical sites to teach timeless lessons of leadership and human nature.

At the heart of the Learning Forum is Brian Hackett. A former Towers-Perrin consultant and director at the Conference Board, Hackett is one of those people (nodes) who are spectacular at making connections. A long time student of evidence based decision making, leadership, innovation, knowledge management workforce planning and a host of eclectic topics, Hackett runs the Learning Forum as a self organizing network. The members set the agenda and the rules.

Hackett is the archetype of a kind of networker not usually covered in the tomes about social interactions (yup, that means Malcolm Gladwell). At the heart of many small HR / Recruiting networks is someone who loves research and experimentation. The ability to make and develop connections comes, in part, from having something interesting to offer in conversation. The essence of real connectors is that they are profoundly curious. It doesn’t take long, when talking with Hackett, to see his wonder unfold. He loves learning and creating environments in which others can learn. What makes Hackett’s connecting work is the fact that he is content rich as a character trait.

Five years ago, Hackett co-founded Apex Performance, a small consultancy that provides what he calls neuro-leadership training. The idea is that performance can be measured and improved scientifically. The firm routinely trains high-end military teams and athletes/teams who want leadership and performance improvement.

Hackett shares our distaste for best practices. Doing the best with what you have is a better formulation for the peer to peer education he facilitates. The learning Forum is all about conversation and adaptation rather than a stream of copycat “best practices”.

Hackett is an advocate of conscious capitalism (as practiced by Patagonia, Whole Foods, Southwest Air) and is fascinated by the economics of trust in and between organizations. At some point during each of our conversations, he recommended Firms of Endearment, the seminal book on conscious capitalism. Integrity, subdivided into keen self-knowledge, project candor and maturity as the components of marketplace love. Love, says the book, distinguishes the great companies from the rest of the best.

When asked for advice to HR professionals just starting out, Hackett said, “Go into business, don’t go into HR until you have some sense of the business. Learn politics and get good at it. Develop financial acumen and expertise (overcome your fear of math). Find a mentor and be a mentor. And, if you want access to the boardroom, do a stint in the executive compensation department.”

As she was finishing her undergraduate degree in Social Work, Ann Bares realized that she just didn’t want to do it. Degree in hand, she went shopping for work and found herself in an HR Department. In the first year or so, she concentrated on Recruiting and administrative tasks.

When a job in the Compensation department opened up, she chased it. It meant more responsibility and a promotion. Much to her surprise, working in the comp function fueled her twin passions: quantitative analysis and behavioral influence.

She never looked back. Ultimately, she picked up an MBA from Kellog and led the life of a big time comp consultant.

In the following 30 years, Bares has worked in every conceivable compensation environment. From consulting with the big dogs at places like Watson Wyatt, Bares likes to say that she’s worked with progressively smaller companies. Six years ago, she formed her own firm, Altura Consulting Group.

Most people run across Ann in her blogging role(s). If you look at the December version of the Top 25 Digital HR Influencers, you’ll find her at number 9. While that list only quantifies influence in the online world, it’s a measure of Ann’s success elsewhere.

For most people, compensation is a dry arena for faceless, gray, narrow practitioners. through her myriad online outlets, Ann is able to use the discipline to shed light on key organizational issues.

Ann Bares has spent time around the clan at Fistful of Talent. Her own blog, Compensation Force is a near daily look at Compensation issues through a variety of lenses. She also runs the Compensation Cafe. Her work is routinely recognized in polls like the Fistful of Talent FOT/HRCapitalist v. 6.0 Talent Management Blog Power Rankings.

While the issues are powerful within the profession, Ann has the ability to make them resonate for outsiders. Give Compensation Force and Compensation Cafe a try. You’ll find the engaging analysis of compensation issues flavoring your view of organizational dynamics.

As the HR profession continues its metamorphosis, folks like Ann Bares are leading the way. Her blogs, which were started as a lark, draw readership from all across the business landscape. The combination of great writing, subject matter depth, intelligent analysis and a sense of humor makes Ann an emerging powerhouse of influence. She’s learned to wield social media in a way that changes perception, builds her business and teaches.

When John Hollon gets on the phone, you get hit with a huge wave of enthusiasm and insight. With 32 years of journalism under his belt, Hollon is a principled and opinionated influencer. As the editor of Workforce Magazine for the past six years, Hollon shapes and encourages the HR Industry.

Of course, professional journalists tend to have very interesting online profiles. Here’s how he describes himself on LinkedIn:

I am a highly successful and experienced leader and manager, in that order. I am also a highly accomplished writer and editor, with deep experience online and in print.

I’m also a workforce management expert, mainly because of my deep management experience, and, because I have seen so much management done so badly, to so many, for so long. That’s the theme of my award winning Workforce Management column, The Last Word, and, my award-winning workforce.com blog, The Business of Management.

My approach is thoughtful, experienced-based and pragmatic. You won’t see me embrace the latest flavor-of-the-month management practices espoused by so many current bloggers and writers who are full of provocative opinions but terribly light on evidence or experience to back them up. My expertise comes from years of successes I celebrated, failures I learned from, and simple hard work.

My deep expertise flows from a lifetime of experience managing people in groups from large to small. Want my philosophy? It’s this — I believe in the power of people working together to make something greater than they could ever build on their own. And, I believe in the power of smart and focused management to help lead them in the quest to do it.

Hollon’s reach is pretty impressive. Workforce Magazine (the print edition) has 52,000 subscribers. The email and web properties reach about 400,000 readers. With a predictable flow of 100,000 web visitors per month (excluding email), Workforce is easily the second most trafficked site in the industry.

He’s one of the primary arbiters of the idea flow in the HR Industry.

In our conversation, it became apparent that Hollon is much more than a professional journalist. As an active participant in the evolution from print to web, he has a host of hard won insights into the cultural transition both within and without the HR profession. His primary concern, from a business perspective, is trying to figure out how to educate a generation of consumers used to ‘free’ media that it’s not really free at all.

At the same time, he is strongly concerned about the ‘loss of the watchdog function’ once performed by broadcast media. He’s watching the evolution of non-profit (journalism subsidized by philanthropy) experiments. He frets that without this critical function, transparency s a pipe dream.

I was introduced to John by Kris Dunn who freely credits Hollon for his rise from obscurity. When I ask Hollon about his favorite accomplishments, he quickly says “being able to shine the light on lesser known talent”. It’s something he does regularly.

The state of Blogging in HR would be vastly different if Hollon wasn’t constantly experimenting with new media. Fistful of Talent, the amazing group blog founded by Dunn and edited by Jessica Lee gained its momentum from Hollon’s support and sponsorship. With the Workforce Magazine promotional engine driving publicity, its no surprise that FOT is a traffic powerhouse.

Somewhat surprisingly, Hollon seems most proud of his work as an Adjunct Professor of Communications at Cal State Fullerton. He teaches the art of opinion writing and is ecstatic about what he learns from his students. In spite of an enormous pile of awards and a huge volume of self confidence, John Hollon is happy to continue to introduce new people and new ideas to the HR Marketplace.

John Murabito credits his success to the fact that he got big jobs fast, ahead of his capacity. Development was a matter of people showing confidence in him when he was 22. Early identification as a leader coupled with great development programs helped him turn his raw talent into a finished product.

“I was out of the nest really early,” he says, “Leaving home in Chicago to chart my course forced me to become independent. That’s where maturity comes from. I worked in a number of different industries and developed a broad foundation rather than a limited view that comes from working in one company.”

These themes pepper Murabito’s narrative. “Risk builds confidence; Independence is the foundation of maturity; Breadth yields competence; search for risky opportunity; Take personal responsibility.” The simple slogan-like messaging seems essential to his trajectory.

Currently, Murabito is the Executive Vice President, Human Resources and Services at CIGNA. He’s been there for nearly seven years.

Prior to joining CIGNA, Murabito served as Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Services at Monsanto. His background includes more than 30 years of extensive related experience with the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo, Symbion, Inc., and The Trane Company.

This fall, he was named Human Resources Executive of the Year by Human Resources Executive magazine. The article describing his award details the work of a visionary HR Leader. Murabito integrated, streamlined, measured and made accountable the sprawling disconnected HR function he found at CIGNA. He moved, in fact, to be a part of the turnaround

The essential skills of great Human Resources Executive leadership are:

- Communication that Stays on Target and On Message
- Evidence Based Decision Making (driven by Workforce Analytics)
- Effective Outsourcing
- Program Management
- Contracts Administration
- Solid Leadership Development

Murabito excels in each area. Like Rusty Rueff and Brian (Skip) Schipper, Murabito is a graduate of the Pepsi HR Leadership development ‘laboratory’. In it’s time, the Pepsi system produced an enormous number of powerfully influential Human Resources Executives. The keys were:
- Bigger jobs than the leadership candidates merited based on age and experience (trust and confidence) and
- Job Rotation in rapid succession through different functions

The Pepsi approach taught these aspiring leaders how to rapidly adapt, find problems worth solving and feel good about moving on.

Murabito is exercising a kind of influence that only an Human Resources Executive can deliver. As a champion of data driven decisions and analytics, Murabito is one of the people who is actively changing the way HR is executed. To be influential in this sort of operational way requires that you:
- actually do the work and accomplish something and
- find ways to bring visibility to the arena.

At the bottom line, Murabito is a team player. For every compliment I volleyed his way, he returned some form of “you can only do that with a team.”

16 Times a year, over 75,000 decision makers in the HR universe receive their copy of Human Resources Executive Magazine. In an era that is supposed to be the death of print periodicals, this foundational industry publication just keeps on trucking.

According to their PR. “Human Resource Executive® was established in 1987 and continues today as the premier publication focused on strategic issues in HR. Written primarily for vice presidents and directors of human resources, the magazine provides these key decision-makers with news, profiles of HR visionaries and success stories of human resource innovators. Stories cover all areas of human resource management, including personnel, benefits, training and development, HR information systems, relocation, retirement planning, workplace security, and health care.”

While some competitors my quibble with the characterization, there is no doubt that Human Resources Executive Magazine has had a strong hand in shaping the industry.

Most of readers will be familiar with the HR Technology conference put on by the company behind the magazine, LRP Publications. Human Resources Executive Magazine. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. LRP produces a handful of conferences including HRWeek and (returning this year) The HR Executive Forum. Always one of the top 3 online HR offerings, LRP’s online properties are diffused. A little late to the web game, LRP focuses on webinars, mailing lists, direct marketing and the vastly more profitable print advertising.

At the editorial helm of this industry standard is David Shadovitz. A career journalist, Shadovitz has run the show at
Human Resources Executive Magazine since its birth in 1986. After nearly a decade in B2B publishing, Shadovitz found a permanent home. He’s a journalist and a publisher at heart.

Somehow, you believe him when he says, “We never publish the same thing twice. We’re always looking for the new angle, the fresh way to tell the story.” 23 years later, David remains passionate about keeping his audience engaged and informed.

Things are very different now.

In the beginning, the publication was small and HR was more personnel than HR. The idea that the function should have executives and be strategic was not quite mainstream. With support, encouragement and inspiration from LRP’s founder Kenneth Kahn, who was once a practicing employment law attorney), Shadovitz dug into the assignment.

Today, HR increasingly plays a strategic role, spends huge dollars on technology and programs and is moving closer to business issues. “It’s been fun watching the community grow and evolve,” he says.

In trying to keep the content fresh, Shadovitz is the consummate networker. He talks with industry executives, vendor leaders, consultants and academics during most of his day. A team of seven editors and a stable of freelance writers (here’s how to get in print) power a content engine that produces rich, high quality journalistic material every 3 weeks.

In David’s case, stamina is a large part of his influence. The magazine and conference deadlines are relentless. So while he appears to be a mild mannered and very gracious fellow, there’s always a crisis brewing somewhere. Deadlines are just like that. Shadovitz makes his mark by staying smooth in the storm.

One way of thinking about influence is the way we’re measuring it in the digital influencer project: Reach, Resonance and Relevance. Shadovitz is the embodiment of all three.

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.

The Business Process Outsourcing world is one of those emerging professions in which having influence is a key part of the job. Roger’s views on policy, aging, workforce flexibility and demographics are sought both within the vast network of employees and clients and on the larger industry stage. She’s another player who has figured out how to have broad influence while working the job.

Rogers, who is the Secretary & Treasurer of the Human Resources Outsourcing Association (HROA), began her career as an industrial engineer at General Motors. Global stints with Black and Decker landed her in Europe. Stepping out of line HR for ‘a moment’, Mary Sue joined the consulting industry in the UK working for PWC. She never went back to the formal HR function.

Listening to her talk about the work she does, one gets the clear impression that she remains true to her industrial engineering roots. Key to the execution of any BPO strategy is a dependence on fundamental industrial engineering analysis. “The way we determine when to create an asset (invest) is by looking for the repeatable processes that can be automated,” she says.
With IBM’s resources, Rogers is able to consider the investment question across a range of clients.

In a way, Mary Sue Rogers is the Industrial Engineer’s industrial engineer. A relentless focus on process excellence while simultaneously looking for the leverage points that improve efficiency and effectiveness gives IBM the muscle and maturity to stay competitive and profitable in HRO/RPO space. Global staff and global reach give Mary Sue’s operation the kind of legs required for
sustained operations in the enterprise business.

She’s quick to point out that HRO/RPO is quickly becoming a mature business. The characteristics of industry maturity are steady growth, profitability, competence in the broad fundamentals, strong business controls, career paths for professional members of the industry and adequate clarity for infrastructure investment. The HRO/RPO industry now passes each of these tests with flying colors.

We talked about the changes and consolidation in the HRO industry.. “There’s been a good deal of disruption in the industry during the  economic downturn. IBM is deeply committed to staying in the business and making the entire industry successful over the long haul.”

Mary Sue Rogers is a ground breaking professional woman. In the spheres she influences, women are still a relative rarity. She exudes the competence and calm of any great leader. In itself, that accomplishment guarantees her a spot on the Top 100 Influencers list. Rogers is something more. As I talked to her direct reports, I routinely heard that she is “the best boss I ever worked for.” Expect to hear even more from Mary Sue.

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.