ResearchGoddess

A friend of mine on Twitter @monicawright sent me these questions to answer as part of an interview – so I am posting the interview here on Research Goddess, and she’ll post hers on her site. Enjoy!

I love Jim Stroud’s The Recruiters Lounge - he has such a fantastic mix of recruiting, research, and HR material in addition to tutorials for beginners in internet research which is a wonderful way to give back to our research community. Plus, Jim is one of my favorite research colleagues

My best blogging tactic? I would say my personal branding with “Research Goddess”. I am now better known as Research Goddess than I am by my own name. I think that’s pretty decent branding to have that kind of recognition I continue to capitalize on my personal brand with videos and such, to strengthen the connection of “Research Goddess” to myself.

 I do – I followed this last election much more closely than any other. I voted for the other guy and I hope the PEOTUS makes good on the many promises he has made to the American people – he has set himself up for a very difficult task and I think expectations of him are quite unrealistic. However he seems to have been able to create some unity and excitement around the Presidency again. My fear at this point is that we will start relying too heavily on the government to take care of things which should be our own responsibility, and as a result the incentive to produce and excel in the United States will diminish. I do not want to see that happen.

The Shorty Awards have been a hot topic on Twitter over the past few days. So, what are the Shorty Awards?

“The Shorty Awards honor the world’s top Twitterers. You can nominate as many people for as many categories as you’d like until midnight December 31st. ”

• To nominate someone for a Shorty Award, send a tweet similar to this: @shortyawards I nominate @researchgoddess in category #business / #pr / #recruiting because… (but write something of your own).
• The text of the tweet is completely up to you. As long as it contains @shortyawards @someone #category you can be as creative with the rest as you like.
• You actually have to write something. Just submitting the default tweet doesn’t count.
• The five people with the most nominations in each category will go on to the final voting round, held January 5th to 14th.
• There will be an awards ceremony in New York in late January, where the winners can deliver their 140-character acceptance speeches.

Rules:

• You can nominate people for any category you can imagine. We’ll eliminate categories that don’t have enough nominees and add categories that become competitive.
• You can’t nominate the same person more than once for the same category.
• You can nominate yourself, but beware, you might win the #egocentric category.
• Only one person and one category per tweet. If you want to nominate someone in multiple categories, you have to send multiple tweets.
• Corporate and personal Twitter accounts are eligible for any category.
• We’ll perform audits to make sure people are not gaming the system or hanging chads. Contact us if you see suspicious activity.
• Nominations close at midnight, December 31st.
• Your nominations won’t be counted if your twitter account is private. You nominations must appear publicly.
• If you change your twitter username, any nominations under your old username won’t carry over.

Props to the folks over at Sawhorse Media as they are the brains behind these awards.

Think about who some of your favorite tweeters are and start nominating them! Remember those with the MOST nominations will move to the next round of voting. And if you can’t think of anyone, I’ll accept your nomination

Thanks to Joe Budde, Jr. as well as CincyRecruiterfor pointing me to this neat blog “personality” analyzer…

Typealyzer analyzes your blog URL based on a sort of Meyers-Briggs type of personality analysis. It recognizes texts that characterize the different types. The system by itself can find features that distinguish one type from another. When all features, words and sentences, are statistically analyzed, Typealyzer is able to guess which personality type the text represents. Here is how it has analyzed this blog:

ISTP – The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

I have to say – this suits me personally as well…especially the adventure and risk. I’ve been bungee-jumping, spelunking, and have a strange desire to go sky-diving sometime! And, I have sported the overalls before (though not sure sure I will do it again)

Do you feel this is an accurate assessment of the content of this blog? Please leave your thoughts in a comment, and try it out on your own blog!

I love being able to have conversations with intelligent people. Especially ones who aren’t conceited about it I have had the absolute pleasure of dining with a fascinating man this week here in Cincinnati who has caused me to put some serious thought into communication methods today and the fact that they are really costing us in quality what they supposedly make up in quantity. As someone who communicates for a living, this is huge to me and I am compelled to share some thoughts, both his and mine, on the matter.

For those of you over the age of 30, think back to when you were a little kid – when you wanted to play with your friends, how did you contact them? You either called them up on the phone, or you went directly to their house to ask permission. Children today don’t have to do that – they can text, then can IM, or they can email. What’s obviously lacking here? Conversation – real live conversation. With the communication tools we have today, we really don’t have to have actual conversations with other human beings to communicate thoughts, ideas, and information with them. We seem to have managed to seriously devalue live human interaction as an “inefficient use of our precious time”, and that is a really scary thought. Next thing you know, we’ll be back to grunting and drawing pictures on cave walls (some are already leaning in that direction).

Have we allowed so much noise into our lives that we can’t filter things out and thus resort to perpetually skimming everything, including our face-to-face time with people? Here’s an experiment – for those of you with a PDA phone, do you freak out if you leave it at home when you go out? When you’re having lunch or dinner with a friend or colleague, are you constantly checking it when a new text, call, or email comes through? Imagine the message you are sending to that person you’re with while you do this – “you’re not as important as this message I’m receiving, even though I have no idea what it’s about.” I have a couple of colleagues who, when we do actually talk on the phone, I can always tell they’re doing at least 3 other things at the same time, because the conversations are short and choppy and usually get cut short due to an email or another, more important activity. I understand their lives are chaotic, but I can’t help but feel devalued when this happens all the time.

By the way, while eating with my new friend, both of us had our phones on the table, and while we were discussing this very topic, both of our phones were ringing and buzzing. But we maintained our conversation because that’s what was the most important thing at the moment. It was a breath of fresh air to eat with someone who was present, and it compelled me to return the favor to him.

What have Twitter and Facebook done to us? I of course bring these things up tongue-in-cheek, as you know I am a big fan of Twitter, and I just launched our Waggener Edstrom Staffing page on Facebook. I definitely see value in both of these tools – when used for the right reasons. And what are the right reasons? You have to make that determination yourself. But honestly, do we really need to know every sordid detail of everyone’s life? I read a Facebook update this morning about someone who said he was coughing up some nasty stuff – that, in my opinion, is WTMI (way too much information). I have contacts on Twitter who don’t respond to a call, text, or IM, but they’re right on top of a DM from Twitter. There are “friends” on my Facebook who won’t pick up the phone to talk to me, but continue to leave notes on my Wall, or write responses to my blog postings instead. And by the way, the loose use of the term “friend” these days lends about as much credibility to the word as people have assigned lately to the term “love”, but that’s an entirely different blog post.

Have we achieved critical mass in alternative communication methods? As an avid user of all these tools, I’ll say no. But I think we definitely need to return to the basics when it comes to gleaning any kind of value from them. It boils down to relationships – they must be built with human interaction. Technology cannot culture a relationship.

If you have a colleague who lives close enough to you, let them know that they are important to you and meet them for lunch one day. Leave your PDA in your pocket and put it on silent while you’re eating. Focus on that conversation, it’s only an hour and the world won’t come to a screeching halt if you don’t check your emails for 60 minutes.

If you do a lot of work on the phone, face away from your computer when you are talking with someone. You’ll be less tempted to multitask without seeing things whizzing across your screen. I learned this the hard way when one of my co-workers called me out for multi-tasking and not paying attention to our conversation one day. Busted!

Resist the Pavlov’s Dog reaction – don’t go dashing off to check your email, check your phone, or respond to an IM when you hear a buzz or a bell. Several of my colleagues have implemented a strict policy of checking email at set times every day to be more efficient in their work, but my hope is that in doing this, they’ve also made themselves more available for real human interaction. Donato DiOrio recently posted on his blog about filtering and actually requested some input for ideas on how to best tackle this issue.

Please don’t think I’m pointing fingers here – because there are 3 pointing right back at me. I’d be a hypocrite to write about this topic without acknowledging my own shortcomings in several of these areas. Admittedly, I’m not a big phone person. In fact, those of you who know me know I really dislike talking on the phone, and thus I don’t pick it up that often. But what you may not know is that I absolutely love in-person interaction. Having lunch this week with my fascinating friend was a breath of fresh air for me, not just because of the stimulating conversation, but because we actually got to be in the same place together having that conversation. Those of you whom I’ve met at conferences know how much I enjoy attending those because we take the conversation offline and get real with each other.

My take-home message is this: while technology has made it easier for us to consume more information, it doesn’t necessarily make it easier for us to decipher and organize that information on a basis of importance. Technology cannot substitute for human emotion. There is still a very real human element that must be present for quality communication. Don’t mistake efficient communication for effective communication – they are not the same thing.

Once again, I’ve been honored with a top spot in Fistful of Talent’s Talent Management Blog Power Rankings 2.0. I made a big leap from #16 in the last rankings up to lucky #7. Thanks to everyone at FoT for your continued confidence in my content!

Here are the full rankings – I’m flattered and humbled to be mentioned in the same breath as these other talented bloggers:

1.    cheezhead™ (Power Index Rating – 120 | 1st Place Votes – 3 | Last Poll Ranking – #10)
2.    The Recruiter Guy (Power Index Rating – 79 | 1st Place Votes – 1 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
3.    Jim Stroud’s The Recruiters Lounge (Power Index Rating – 78 | 1st Place Votes – 3 | Last Poll Ranking – #1)
4.    Compensation Force (Power Index Rating – 66 | Last Poll Ranking – #4)
5.    Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel (Power Index Rating – 62 | Last Poll Ranking – #23)
6.    Your HR Guy (Power Index Rating – 54 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
7.    Amybeth Hale – Research Goddess  (Power Index Rating – 41 | Last Poll Ranking – #16)
8.    All Things Workplace (Power Index Rating – 38 | Last Poll Ranking – #3)
9.    Employee Evolution (Power Index Rating – 35 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
10.  Great Leadership (Power Index Rating – 34 | Last Poll Ranking – #9)
11.  Learn @ Trizle (Power Index Rating – 30 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
12.  TalentMash by Kristin Gissarro (Power Index Rating – 29 | Last Poll Ranking – 22)
       Andy Headworth’s Sirona Says (Power Index Rating – 29 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
14.  HRmarketer.com (Power Index Rating – 28 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
       Evil HR Lady (Power Index Rating – 28 | Last Poll Ranking – #5)
16.  Marketing Headhunter.com (Power Index Rating – 27 | Last Poll Ranking – #21)
17.  HR Bartender (Power Index Rating – 26 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
18.  Three Star Leadership Blog (Power Index Rating – 26 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
19.  Ask a Manager (Power Index Rating – 23 | Last Poll Ranking – #16)
20.  Seth Godin (Power Index Rating – 24 | Last Poll Ranking – #7)
21.  The Business of Management (Power Index Rating – 24 | Last Poll Ranking – #15)
22.  JibberJobber Blog (Power Index Rating – 23 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
       Punk Rock HR (Power Index Rating – 23 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
24.  TalentedApps (Power Index Rating – 22 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)
25.  Social Media Headhunter (Power Index Rating – 21 | Last Poll Ranking – N/A)