Often, when people talk about disclosure, they are usually talking about money. And if you’re a blogger or writer and money is changing hands, I think you should always be on the side of clear, full disclosure. And just for the record, I’ve been called out about disclosure. More on that in a second, though. First, let’s talk about money.

$ $ $

Money is powerful. I think about the work I do with ERE and how I take our work there (and especially the parts I’m intimately involved with) very personally. But I should, because ERE doing well means I do well and there’s a trigger there in my brain. That’s why I disclose when I talk about our events or publications, usually right in line with the text so you can’t miss it.

I also think about the relationships I developed with the folks at Crimcheck, Halogen Software, Rypple or Vault.com (who paid me for the first time, not as an advertiser, but as a writer). Or when I worked on MeritBuilder or for some of the other companies I’ve been lucky enough to be at, it makes sense that I became vested.

That’s not easy an easy reality when you’re solo and trying to put your best pieces out there without conflict of interest. We have a stellar sales team at ERE and they take care of all of the deal making. It is so much easier when there is that separation. When it is just you, it is a struggle. And I’ve seen a lot of bloggers and writers go down that path and take some wrong turns.

Even though it is difficult to know when or where to disclose, I think there is a clear line: when money (or something of value) changes hands, that’s when you look for opportunities to disclose. And the part about looking for opportunities to disclose is the distinction there, and I think it is the right and appropriate choice. Do it often, with clarity and bake it in with a one-time visitor in mind (if someone comes in off a Google search knowing nothing about you or your publication and reads a piece with a conflict of interest, do they know money changed hands?).

Beyond Money: Honesty

So if you disclose money relationships, shouldn’t that be enough? Well consider what I did above: I linked to an article critical of my ability to disclose. Now obviously, I wasn’t paid by Workforce to include that link. While I didn’t think it was very fair at the time, I do think it is fair to point out that some may have questioned my approach in the past. You should have the opportunity to see that.

Similarly, I may disclose the fact that ERE is my employer, but if I blow smoke up your ass about the company, spin the truth or you get the feeling like I’m not giving you the full story, I become less credible. At least as far as writing is concerned, being honest about both successes and struggles of what we’re doing means people take me mostly at my word, even with the knowledge that I’m an employee.

That’s why disclosing about money is simply not enough. The best way to gain and maintain trust is by abandoning (as best as possible) the built-in bias that the relationship creates and speak the plain truth. And you have to do both, consistently, over a period of time to gain trust.

The Changing Rules Of New Media? Not So Fast

Two and a half years ago, I said at a conference that bloggers were not, in and of themselves, journalists. That’s still true today. I struggle with the term myself but I don’t lose sleep over it, either.

The principles of the old ways, of that idealistic view of journalism as the respected fourth estate, is still within reach, even in this digital, anon-blogging, rumor-monging, money-changing-hands-under-the-table environment that the new media works in these days.

What’s easy to forget is that there was a time when the most prominent people evaluating technology didn’t just pick a side and arrogantly and mindlessly defend it until the bitter end. Or that trading money for half-hearted disclosures and favorable coverage was harder to come by. Or that concepts like black hat SEO, astroturfing and throwing anonymous commenters at a situation could influence the discovery and perception of information.

We’re not talking about a zine or underground newspaper with significant costs and logistical hurdles to get it beyond a few dozen miles of its origin. We’re talking about the same web that you used to get to this very low cost blog today can get you to other sources with millions of dollars staked into their sites.

The biggest misconception is that old media rules are outdated and unneeded. In reality, the key thing that happened is that not playing by those rules was finally a choice for nearly anyone who wished to publish something with almost unlimited (and low-cost) distribution.

That’s a great thing for information flow. But if you want to be trusted wholesale as a writer, blogger, or whatever you want to call yourself, you’ll quickly learn that these journalist quacks may have been on to something with their silly rules. They knew it was about trust. Even if you had to get ink on your fingers to read about it.

I try to see many of them and keep up with them. Really. It is a crowded market out there, though.

I found one company out there called HiringThing and this company came to me through an interesting connection.

I was a member of an e-mail group in the Portland area and I saw an announcement about a startup ATS that was looking for companies to partner with in their early stages. I reached out to them to ask them about it and see what they were doing.

That was in July of 2010. Almost a year and a half ago.

They weren’t ready to talk then. They didn’t know what they had yet. But slowly and steadily, they built up a few new clients on the platform, talked to them back and forth and kept improving the product.

Recently, they reached back out to me (there’s a lesson in there somewhere, startup folks). They still aren’t ready to tell their whole story yet but they are looking for a full launch next year (when I will write a more complete look at them then).

They asked me if I knew a few companies who could use an applicant tracking system (preferably ones that might have none, or ad hoc solutions) that they could work with pre-launch at no cost to fine tune their product for final launch. I didn’t know any off the top of my head but I thought I could send out a message to see if anyone would know of a company and would be interested.

If you are interested, please get in touch with Joshua Siler at HiringThing (e-mail: joshuas@hiringthing.com) and put in the subject line “Beta Access.” During this time, they are helping by doing the setup and transition as well as hoping to get your ear about what you do and don’t like about the system.

Other than me being a glutton for punishment, this has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while. After my work started at TLNT, it became glaringly obvious that I couldn’t write about the same things I wrote about there. That’s bad for everyone.

And I wanted to continue to write, on my own, and more frequently. This wasn’t happening with Rehaul.

Then, I Googled my name and found out that this domain still ranked second for my name. It was defunct and needed work.

I also had kicked around this idea about how I could really continue to write about things that are more interesting but not applicable to TLNT. Maybe a bit more inside baseball, or just things I observe from talking to people in HR and recruiting with a insider/outsider perspective. And I could talk a bit more about what I’m doing without rather superficial restraint. So I think the bracket analogy works alright to describe the new direction. And at the very least, it can justify my love for sports stories too.

So that’s it. I moved. No big deal. And really, what I hope is that I push for more content here going forward.

Kudos to Laurie who just told me to go for it. Everyone knows I don’t have time for focus groups and research. And for those of you worried about subscriptions, backlinks and such, I got it. Even if you have old Your HR Guy links, it should still resolve properly. But if you have a blogroll, you can update it (either with an edit… or a delete, heh).

What’s really interesting to me is how the way social networks are changing impacts us and the workplace.

That may seem silly to you. Broadly speaking, businesses haven’t integrated with social networks. How could they possibly be impacted by them this early in the game?

For one, look at how Google Plus has been adopted. I was invited by a friend and he was my first contact with just a couple of other posts. I was able to find about a dozen or so contacts who also made it on in the ensuing days. And while I’m sure that some tried the demo out to learn how to use it, most people just started doing things with it.

At another glance, look at all of the social networking tool based books and strategies and how obsolete they’ll be if Google Plus takes off. If you buy a book written in early 2011, it will be out of date by the time it comes to press. I remember my parents bought a book for Windows 95 and they were able to reference that book for 4 years.

Lastly, Software as a Service is changing enterprise software. Faster iterations and releases, seamless upgrades and a focus on user interface that doesn’t require 1-4 binders worth of information. My first interaction with an AS/400 consisted of black and green screened terminal and a two binder instruction manual that was produced in 1992 (more than a decade earlier). You could have learned everything about that system when it was rolled out and not worry about it. And you kept your references handy too.

This isn’t a post about the good old days or about how the new is far superior to the old. It’s about how we’re changing. And whether that be in reaction to quicker iterative changes in computing or whether those faster changes are closer to realizing our potential of dealing with change and advancement, there seems to be no question that there is no going back.

For those of us who work with employees and are interested in the bigger, longer term picture, you can see the writing on the wall. We don’t need people who understand Facebook or know how to get to the top of Google’s search rankings. We need people who can adapt, change and be naturally curious. If a SaaS ATS rolls out a new feature into your system every six months (or three months, or one month), you’ll have to attract employees who can deal with that change. And if a new social network comes along and you’re dependent on it for part of your business, you better find people who can figure things out quickly.

Not that I’ll miss those giant tool-specific manuals either but they did bring a bit of security. Anyone with decent reading comprehension, patience and time could figure out anything. That was pretty easy to screen for and train towards in the employment relationship. Now? We’ll be looking for people who can be more agile and depend less on the manuals that we’ve built up for the last few decades.

It will be fascinating to watch how people and businesses alike respond.

Now there are a lot of pro basketball fans in the Portland area as you can imagine. It’s the only pro franchise in the city. And most of my friends were fans of either the Portland Trail Blazers or other west coast teams. Steve was one of the first people I personally knew who really liked a team on the east coast (the New York Knicks). So over the course of a couple years and a few dozen David Lee jokes, he was included (along with several others) into a sphere of both HR and basketball loving people.

But you’re not interested in that, right? Let’s get to why he is included in this series.

Getting a start in HR Tech

Boese follows the track that I know many of us in HR followed: the track of accidentally faling into this profession. He was implementing enterprise financial software and a client wanted him to stick around to work on their HRIS and payroll systems. Although he didn’t know much about it, he decided to give it a shot. “I decided that while HRIS and Payroll may not be all that glamorous, it was a step up from Accounts Payable and Cash Management,” said Boese.

He has been involved in the profession ever since. He’s gotten deeper into HR Technology by taking on more project work, eventually becoming an expert in the field. This has led to other opportunities in addition to leading HR tech initiatives such as speaking at conferences (most recently leading a session at the HR Technology conference) and actually teaching the next generation of HRIS geeks.

Social media work and online radio

While not in HR in a traditional sense, Boese really embeds himself in the profession. He seeks to understand the pain points of HR much more thoroughly than many of his HRIS focused comrades. And while HR tech folks have always seemed to been outcasts from both the tech world and the HR world, he seems to have been embraced by both fairly well.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out Boese’s blog (creatively titled Steve Boese’s HR Technoloogy), I’d encourage you to do so. I believe this has been a major factor in him relating so well to the HR space. As far as I can tell from reading the comments, most of his readers are HR folks. Ten years ago, I don’t know if you see that same interest in what a technologist says or cares about but you certainly do now.

His popular online radio show HR Happy Hour has grown from this sort of goofy online show where a bunch of insiders talked amongst themselves (sometimes literally) to a top notch program. How could I judge this? I only get invited on when we can talk about basketball and a contrived connection to HR. And to the show’s credit, we don’t do that nearly as often as I’d like.

HRevolution and beyond

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Boese’s connection to HRevolution. As I mentioned in my post about Ben Eubanks, HRevolution is an unconference aimed squarely at pushing beyond the status quo. They are neat, intimate events with the trademark differentiation between shows being who was there. I liked them both for different reasons which is unique and Boese is definitely a primary driver behind that event.

Boese’s commitment to the HR community has a real impact in terms of the relationships he builds (he includes as influencers all of his co-organizers for HRevolution, HR tech leaders like Mike Krupa and Bryon Abramowitz along with, somewhat inexplicably, Tim Sackett). He’s reaching the next generation of HR technology leaders and is leading them by example of how to build influence in the online world the right way and how to make real, meaningful connections to his customer base: HR leaders.

Now when will we be seeing that basketball game together, Steve?

The HR Stars Series is sponsored by Rypple, social software that makes feedback easy and fun. Our software is built around people, not process, which means teams actually get things done. Managers don’t waste time. People get the useful feedback that they want. Teams stay on track, learn and adapt faster, and get recognized for great work. Learn more at http://rypple.com.

Back in the olden days, I was barely writing anything. So it was easy to do 2-4 posts a week with no sweat. With my new position at ERE, I was doing a bit more writing but it wasn’t significant. As we were talking about launching TLNT, I knew I’d be involved but I didn’t know how much. That’s where the shift occurred.

I was committed to doing three posts a week on TLNT. I still did a SmartBrief poll (which seems a lot easier than it is), this blog, occasional posts on ERE as well as adding or featuring content from the community. This blog is left out in the cold a little bit. Sometimes I figure out what people want to still talk about here and other times I don’t.

In any case, many of you aren’t subscribed to TLNT yet and if you like what I do here, I think you’ll really like what I’m bringing to the new site (it’s even edited for clarity!). Here are excerpts from a few of my recent pieces:

Thanks For Doing Your Job, Now Here’s Your Pink Slip: So people that worked for the Miami Heat the last couple of years probably thought it was a good gig. The team was a bit up and down and the fan base is generally dispassionate about basketball. After the LeBron acquisition though, the job was really quite good for a couple of weeks — until you ran out of tickets to sell.

Sometimes, HR Should Plan The Office Party: I’ve got news for you: sometimes a party needs planning, and sometimes, you’re the somebody that’s going to make that happen. Now, I don’t know many people who like planning parties. And pre-HR, I didn’t know anything about planning a party outside of what we did in college. That primarily consisted of securing a keg of the cheapest beer, spreading the word, and keeping freeloaders from the tap. This experience didn’t help me that much unless I was going to be working with a bunch of other college students.

Want to Retain Good, Young HR Pros? You Better Recognize Them!: As a young HR pro, you get hammered with the worst kind of work. I remember doing weeks of number crunching on our self-insured benefits data only to find my boss taking credit for discrepancies I found. When I pushed for several changes in a single department to help with retention and culture and got them approved, guess who took credit for the changes he was once fighting? The department manager, of course.

How Will Employee Training Change in Free Agent Nation?: And that’s why, for the most part, that sort of long-term, external training or tuition reimbursement will simply just go away. It will disappear from offer sheets and policy handbooks and then out of the memories of the few people that remembered a time when a company wanted you to develop on their dime. Now I’ve been with companies that don’t do tuition reimbursement or external training and personally, it doesn’t bother me. But I’ve talked to many folks who have lamented this change and blamed every generation, company, and even unions.

Check them out, check all of my posts out and last but not least subscribe (e-mail or RSS is easiest).

In 2004, SHRM and EmployMedia wanted to add a .jobs top level domain. The stated goal was to essentially legitimize the process of distributing .jobs domains only to a company’s name (so, for example, Google could get google.jobs but not sanfrancisco.jobs or technology.jobs). SHRM regulated policies for the .jobs domains while EmployMedia handled the business end (sort of a checks and balances thing).

Five years later, there are about 15k .jobs domains sold. EmployMedia attempted to use domains outside of the agreed upon policies (i.e. company name only) and opened beta sites like atlanta.jobs and boston.jobs, directing all of that traffic to sites owned by DirectEmployers. Being that this wasn’t agreed upon policy, an amendment had to be made and approved along with a public comment period that was supposedly directed by both SHRM and EmployMedia.

Nobody knew about it until this last Wednesday. Not even the folks at SHRM. The public comment period ends today (Friday).

Three issues at play:

1. Where was the solicitation of public comment and should that period be extended?
2. Should .jobs be restricted to company use only or should it be allowed to expand beyond company-only use?
3. And if .jobs should be allowed to be used outside of companies, who should control and delegate the use of those domains? How should those domains ultimately be handled?

I believe these issues all warrant serious consideration even though I don’t personally believe anything sinister is going on here. My hope is that the council will react to the sentiments already shared and add a layer of transparency to the process, seek more legitimate public comment on the matter and give consideration to alternatives to the proposed amendment offered by EmployMedia.

Want to comment on these actions? Here is the public comment board. Get your comment in soon.

Got more than 60 seconds? Check out these takes:

• SHRM to Decide on Allowing Non-Company Name for .jobs by John Zappe
• .Jobs Domains and the Impact on You by Laurie Ruettimann
• SHRM Council to Consider .jobs Friday by John Zappe
• An Open Letter to the SHRM .jobs Advisory Board by Gerry Crispin
• Why SHRM Must Reject the .jobs Amendment by David Manaster

There is a lot of information out there about these changes. I hope you’ll take the time and understand how it can impact your organization.

Don’t worry. I haven’t changed my mind.

Like what I bought, only smaller

I want to tell you that I did buy flowers for someone close to me even though I feel that the whole thing is stupid. Given that she works in an ultra-traditional office, the parade of flowers today would have driven her crazy (no matter how irrational it might be). I know that she will love them and the meaning behind them.

In other words, I got suckered into it.

I realize that I’ve had it extremely lucky. Rarely do guys have a stigma regarding having a Valentine thing from a special someone. I’ve also had a wife that never cared about getting something on Valentine’s day. I am also extremely lucky because she has worked in male dominated industries and so there is virtually no external pressures on her.

So maybe there isn’t any sort of rational reason why a person should be any more sad on Valentine’s day than any other day of the year but I think there is something to say about brightening a person’s day who may be feeling down about it (even if it means violating some principles). Maybe it wouldn’t be bad to go out and have a great time together with that person? That’s what we’re going to do. It won’t be a pity party but we will have fun and it will be memorable.

For starters, I love working for MeritBuilder. I would love to continue working for MeritBuilder full time. It is a really great fit.

We have spent the last month pushing forward on exciting plans that are making MeritBuilder what I imagined it could be when I first joined in August. What has developed is a fee free but fully featured way of managing your employee incentive and rewards program. We developed it to the point where the platform is completely self-service. You can sign up, load your company e-mail addresses and have a fully featured and hosted employee incentive program in a fraction of the time and cost of most programs.

Exciting right? I am thrilled.

In the process of planning for this though, we knew we had limited financial resources going forward. So what is important to our current and future customers? That the service will continue to be there, that the system will be maintained and issues can continue to be addressed. Since our lead programmer is also our CEO, the system will continue to be maintained as long as we still have customers. As far as servers and bandwidth are concerned, we’ve got that covered as part of this financial plan as well.

Where does that leave me? Basically I’ve become an adviser (unpaid) to MeritBuilder while also retaining a stake in the company. I’ll continue communicating on their behalf (as I can), working with customers (as I can) and basically continuing the service as we need to even at the certainty of a slower pace of customer growth. We’d rather do it right.

Ready or not, here I come

So given that apparently things like bills and other financial obligations do not take a pause for continued customer growth within your bootstrapped company, I am now throwing myself back out in the market. I am an experienced human resources professional with a solid background at large and small companies. I’m a PR/marketing newbie for the HR vendor space with some heavy emphasis on getting stuff done in the social media space (even though I am no Social Media Rockstar or Ninja). I have been writing this blog for almost four years which means, at the least, I can deal well with doing something like this on a consistent basis, measuring results and leveraging that into productive relationships. I also have a record of thoughts that I will have a hard time shirking.

What am I looking for?

• I am based in Portland, OR with a very happily working wife so something local or telecommuting with travel would be ideal. Relocation would have to be very compelling.
• Obviously I am most experienced in the human resources realm. My life continues to revolve around issues related to that too so it would make sense to continue my involvement there.
• I really love working on the HR vendor side of the business and would enjoy the opportunity to continue doing that (can’t be in the incentives or rewards space though).
• I’d love the opportunity to continue to help companies reach out to other HR people using social media. Continued involvement with my blog is essential.
• Of course, with any of these, I’d be open to part-time or full-time employment, contractual, project based or consultative roles.

Does this spark your interest? For more information, you can check out my LinkedIn profile or download a PDF copy of my resume. And if you want to get in touch with me, please do.

Here’s what I know: I asked for $1,500, I got over $1,700. Was it the biggest campaign in the world? No, but it helped. It was a step forward.

The Haiti disaster has thrown this idea back at me and it is time to take action. I love Portland based Mercy Corps and I want to try to support them. They are mobilizing teams of people (everyone from engineers to public health advisers to disaster specialists) to the area as we speak. Organizations like Mercy Corps are also critical for helping to direct any governmental based aid and making recommendations for actions. I’ve personally made a donation to them and I am hoping the HR and Recruiting community can rally around this cause.

Donate To Mercy Corps’ Haiti Response

If you’ve made a donation to another charity or are unable to make a donation, please don’t feel the need to respond. In fact, Laurie at Punk Rock HR has some tips on how to help if you are unemployed or otherwise unable to give.

I know if you are anything like me though, you may feel trapped by tragedies like this and even a generous monetary response won’t fix that. I don’t have any great advice for that. Tragedies on this scale can be overwhelming.

What you should know is that your donation can still make an impact no matter how you feel. $10 is $10. It goes somewhere. And that’s a start.