As we reach the end of my first year in the “Careers Corner” at Corporate Eye, it’s a great opportunity to look back over all the topics that have been covered in the column. We’ve analyzed best practices, explored fundamental issues and emerging trends, cataloged some hits and misses, asked serious questions—and had a little fun. Not a bad way to spend twelve months!
Year-end lists always seem to be the “Ten Best.” (Or “Ten Worst,” but I’m not going there.) So that was my goal. But it turns out to be quite a challenge. Just ten? So I’ve cheated a bit, and chosen all the series from 2009. Which actually makes sense, since the topics that merited multiple posts were among the most important.
So here they are, in no particular order:
1. Employer Brand
Three posts exploring the 2009 Fortune list of 100 Best Places to Work: Communicating the Employer Brand, Shaping the Employer Brand, and Energizing the Employer Brand. Plus a Fortune Follow-up.
2. Diversity on the Corporate Website
Possibly the most ambitious series this year! The four posts were: Hot Topic or Obsolete Concept?; Four Strategies; The Challenge of Messaging; and Disability and Unvisibility.
3. Some Really Good Advice
Part 1 and Part 2 offer a road-map to John Sullivan’s important series of articles, which add up to 127 suggested features or capabilities for the corporate Careers website of the future.
4. Surfing the Boards
Exploring a report on job rankings, which provided Thought Provoking Hilarity. The first post did the thought-provoking, so the second is called . . . And Now for the Funny.
5. A Macy’s Mystery
Part 1 and Part 2 investigate the Forrester Report on corporate websites–and consider Macy’s shift from an award-winning charmer of a site to something rather more ordinary.
6. Talent Acquisition 2009
Three posts on an important study: Considering the Aberdeen Report, No Surprises, and On the Other Hand . . .
7. Tick Tock: Recruiting Hourly Workers
Part 1 and Part 2 take a look at what’s true, what’s new, and what works in this challenging segment of the recruitment world.
8. Social Media Roundup
An informal series on the most talked-about aspect of recruiting this year: Twitterama, Fair Play for Facebook, and Leveraging LinkedIn.
Okay, that’s eight. Which leaves just two more. But—why not make it a dozen? And since no one’s stopping me, I’m going with the four I most enjoyed writing!
9. Funny Business (because it has Jack in it)
10. Exciting Sites (because it’s beautiful)
11. Get the Popcorn (because it’s always fun to think about movies)
12. Silver Linings (because it touched me)
Once I started, this review process got really interesting—so I’m going to follow up with a list of the posts I think were most significant. In the meantime . . . here’s looking forward to 2010!
(Many thanks to James Cridland for the marvelous numbers. They come from different places in the London Transport System—visit the original Flickr page for this image and you can mouse over the numbers to see where each one came from!)
Cynthia Giles has followed a serpentine career path from academia to publishing to marketing and design to information technology and corporate communications. There’s plenty of detail about this journey at www.cynthiagiles.com, but briefly--the common theme has been ideas, and how to present them effectively. Along the way, she became an accidental expert on data warehousing and business intelligence, and for the past ten years she has combined corporate contracting with an independent consulting practice that focuses on marketing strategy for smaller businesses and non-profits.
Having spent quite a bit of time looking for work, and anywhere from two weeks to two years inside a wide variety of American companies—she has given much thought to what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to creating a great employment fit.
