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.

Top 100: At the 1/3 point

33 people into the Top 100 list is a good time for a reckoning. I began the process of identifying the industry’s key influencers over five months ago. 145 interviews, 33 profiles, and hundreds of hours later, it’s the one third of the way there. Moving forward, we’re going to speed things up.

Are you finding this useful?

For me, the most interesting part of the project is coming to terms with the limitations of my own assumptions. Before I started the project, I was certain that I knew the nooks and crannies of the industry. Today, I am not so sure.

Influence works in pockets and niches. Each of the players in the profiles has influence within a context and almost none outside of it. That’s easy to understand. SHRM Membership, at best, is about 35% of the HR market and much less of recruiting. In total, the trade shows reach about 1% of the market. There are no easily recognizable figures on the national scene.

The players occupy self-contained orbits that are nearly immune to the rest of the scene. Instead of an overall industry, there’s a sort of planetary structure. Each planet is certain that it is the center of the universe. In some ways, that’s true.

For now, I’d appreciate a little bit of help. Please let me know (in the comments) how you think the process is going, what you think I’m missing and what you’d like to see next. As always, I am particularly interested in suggestions for the list.

Here’s the progress to date:

Overview Pieces

• Keys To Influence
• Key Influencers
• Influence Happens In A Context
• Top 100: Recruiting and HR
• Spheres of Influence

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

There’s an explosion of tools that try to harness social media for recruiting purposes. One of the most interesting is something called Rapleaf. It’s the product of a guy named Auren Hoffman who is a serial entrepreneur in the Recruiting and Staffing Industry. He’s founded a fistful of companies and successfully sold them while building a cultural network with deep influence in valley political and cultural life.

Widely respected well beyond the industry, Hoffman is one of those voices that drive external perceptions of HR. Like David Perry and Penelope Trunk, his influence is best seen on the outside pointing in. He is a routine contributor to Business Week with pieces on job hunting, career management, social media and the intersection of technology and politics.

Rapleaf is an interesting project. Fully integrated into at least two Applicant Tracking Systems, the service captures all social media data and integrates it around individual email addresses. For large commercial customers, they can help provide segmentation by social platform. For recruiting processes, they provide an integrated data dump as supplemental background information. When an address goes into the ATS (or, more likely, Candidate Relationship Management tool), a full social media profile is instantly assembled. The rapleaf database actively includes over 375 million email addresses.

One of the most interesting services is a public tool that allows you to see your online footprnt.

His blog, Summation, is a constant source of stimulating insight and wisdom. Here’s how he frames the job hunting problem:

1. 1. Look for companies you want to work for … not jobs you want
   2. Don’t apply to the job … apply to the company
   3. Send your resume directly to the hiring manager (not HR)
   4. Dumb down your resume
   5. Send a very targeted email to each employer
   6. Follow-up at least twice with everyone you do not hear from
   7. Don’t be discouraged if they don’t respond
   8. Do something nutty and unorthodox
   9. Get in the door for a company you want to work for
   10. Interview the company

Like many influencers, he is quick to cite strong material for others. He points to this description of corporate culture at Netflix:

We’re a high-performance team, not a family.

A strong family is together forever – no matter what. A strong company, on the other hand, is more like a pro sports team: it is built to win.

Management at every level has the responsibility that professional coaches have – to recruit the players and forge the teamwork that makes great performance possible. To accomplish this, we seek to fill every position in our company with exceptional performers. In many companies, adequate performance gets a modest raise.

At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance package.

For us, the cost of having adequate in any position is simply too large, when we could have extraordinary. Extraordinary performance means excellence in the nine values described below. Plentiful extraordinary talent makes for a high-functioning company. The benefit of a high-performance culture is you experience the exhilaration of working with consistently outstanding colleagues. You do your best work, you learn the most, and you achieve the highest professional satisfaction, when you’re surrounded by excellence.

A great workplace is not how many perks are offered; it is how stunning are the colleagues.

This is, quite obviously, not your mother’s HR-Recruiting. Hoffman’s influence on the industry comes, in large part, because he distances himself. If you want to see the things that are really coming our way, follow Hoffman. He’s not drinking the bathwater.

It’s hard to think of someone in the industry who is better connected than Gerry Crispin. The big company HR guy went from corporate to Ad Agency to author to general networker. Crispin’s influence is felt in the agenda at SHRM, the vast number of young professionals he mentors and the executives who network under his watchful eye.

A fixture on the conference scene, Gerry’s late career persona evolved as the result of working with Mark Mehler. (There are those who swear that they’ve never seen both men in the same room at the same time). The duo are responsible for CareeXRoads (an early guide to employment websites).

They have evolved the brand to its current incarnation, the CareerXRoads Colloquium.The Colloquium is a vetted group of effectiveness oriented peers who want to improve their game while measuring and assessing their performance. The group holds six events a year to discuss recruiting issues. The maximum attendance is 40. In order to qualify, the prospect has to be passionate about Recruiting, willing and able to share company data and be analytical.

At a typical function, participants break into teams that compete to reinvent a subset of the Recruiting process. Each get together and the interim flurry of information are designed to stimulate insight. Crispin takes great delight in introducing these aggressive professionals to new ideas about quantification and assessment.

Underneath that soft hearted HR exterior lies the sharp mind of an engineer. Crispin is a graduate of Stevens Institute of Technology with a BE in Engineering. In spite of multiple graduate degrees in Organizational Development, he finds himself ever more fascinated with things you can measure.

The attention he pays to things that can be calculated extends way beyond the Colloquium. This year Gerry is helping move the HR profession towards standards. Championing an initiative started at SHRM, Crispin believes that standardizing definitions will help the HR craft become a profession.

According to SHRM Online,

SHRM will “actually begin to oversee the [HR] standards across the globe,…Once these standards are created, local HR leaders can use them “to manage their practices more effectively in their workplaces, and [the standards] will be connected to what we do with certification … Having operating standards rather than using an ad hoc approach to manage HR operations will allow HR to act in a manner similar to other professionals…. It can lead to SHRM becoming “the arbiter of HR standards not only for the domestic U.S. marketplace but also across the globe.”

It’s a heady agenda (and one wonders how the rest of the world will feel).

Crispin is also a vocal advocate of the importance of community in life long learning and improvement. He gets it from the details of his life. Each year, Crispin and 80 of his closest relatives camp out for a week of cooking, singing, parenting, grand parenting and all around summertime fun. Ask him to show you the pictures.

Influence takes a variety of forms. Gerry Crispin plays the soft spoken good listener who is as happy to share credit as he is to get it. A generation of HR Leaders turn to him for tactical and personal advice. He oils the wheels of progress.

Crispin is a patient advocate of change. Playing the long game, he focuses on accumulating incremental moves to accomplish large objectives. Being a part of a detailed plot for world dominance is just what you’d expect from him.

John Sumser is the founder and CEO of TwoColorHat, a company specializing in market strategy for HR – Recruiting Vendors. You can keep up with his other stuff at johnsumser.com. Follow the rest of the Top 100 Influencers project.

Our industry stretches from recruiting on one side to more traditional HR on the other. One part moves at market speeds; the other runs at a conservative pace. One part is an engine of competitive advantage. The other is the hard work that must be done with precision. Like families during the 60s, we are half conservative and half liberal.

What’s odd is that the conservative function (traditional HR) comes with a relatively liberal perspective. The liberal function (Recruiting) tends to have a more conservative set of politics. To be clearer, traditional HR, the defensive function, often champions liberal views. Recruiting, the offensive operation, often delivers a more ‘business-y’ set of politics.

Obviously, the generalization breaks down in the face of anecdotal specifics. But, one of the reasons that the Recruiting operation influences the strategy of the organization is this relative political alignment. Harsh competitive realities, severe deadlines, impossible goals, aggressive tactics and sales style motivation characterize the great Recruiting functions. The more traditional aspects of HR have softer things at the core of their operations. This is the reason for the historical tension between the two functions. HR leaders who are able to really harness both sides of the business are rare creatures.

The tension is so strong that many people don’t believe the two halves. are parts of the same industry. It’s only recently that ‘Talent Management’ software, which tries to integrate all aspects of the HR Department into a single toolset, came to market. After years of internal squabbling, there is a drive to have a single record for all employees. The typical HR operation has over 200 separate databases and software tools. Enterprise style integration is long overdue. The question is whether a toolset that operates at market speeds can also be precise enough to handle routine operations like payroll, benefits, compensation analysis. Is the level of record keeping (sloppy) that makes Recruiting departments successful going to fit with data where completeness and accuracy are essential?

Imagine that the industry is a matrix with two dimensions. The professional axis includes HR at one end of the spectrum. Recruiting is at the other. The other one includes the vendors, event producers, speakers, academic, consultants and analysts. This is the commercial axis.

The most observable forms of influence in the industry come from commercial forces (including academia). The players on the commercial axis make their living, in one way or another, by trying to change, guide or drive the behavior of the professionals in the business. It’s a complex feed of newsletters, advice, blogs, conferences, podcasts, specification development, standards creation.

One of the most interesting features of the landscape is the class of service providers who deliver recruiting services from outside of the corporate walls. Third party Recruiters (search firms, contingency, staffing agencies, contract recruiters). They act like a hybrid, part vendor, part practitioner.

There’s another emerging class of provider who deliver outsourced services. Built on the Recruiting model, they range in depth from sourcing operations to complete Human Resources Outsourcing. While third party recruiters were the first outsourcing operations, these new providers are developing new approaches to basic tasks. By applying industrial and information era management techniques, they are driving the costs out of service delivery in both Recruiting and traditional HR.

The industry is roomy. With a footprint in every company and a representative in every company with more than 100 people, our industry has nearly 2,000,000 professionals. There are complex layers and niches. The way that people perform basic tasks varies with region, industry and size of the operation.

Influence in the industry comes in a variety of forms …professional practice, software choice and design, fads and fashions in language and issues, purchasing choices, operating concepts. Over the remainder of the Top 100 Influencers project, we’ll be taking a deeper look at each area.

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