Wow, the previous blog entry I made was in March; don’t think I’ve ever left it for so long.

I think – like others – I was sorta kidnapped by Twitter; meantime though a number of things happened in regards to the LatinOcean practice. Allow me to make a recap:

1. Despite the GFC (remember it?) there were a quite a few clients keen to make investments in their staff education, reviewing processes and sprucing up internal and external systems. They were able to take advantage of their revised/lower opportunity costs (e.g. consultants less busy, more negotiation power with vendors, etc.).

2. What also helped us keep a steady path re. ‘business coming in’ was the expected growth of career management and transitioning/outplacement services from our larger clients. To leverage of this part of the cycle, we adapted our sourcing and recruitment focused offerings into the services from HR outfits that were preparing retrenched professionals for their next move. Our contribution had a lot to do with personal branding and reputation management on the web.

3. At the end of June, LatinOcean was sold to Jabor Holdings. Jabor Holdings is a private company in which I am a director. Our expectation is that LatinOcean will continue operating for as long as our customers want us around. If anything, we plan to explore how we can use the materials and IP developed over the last three years to expand into other professional services verticals.

4. Jabor Holdings is also owner of Digital Reach a new venture that came to life at the beginning of this year; focused on the online advertising industry, this startup needs lots of love and nurturing which is what hopefully we will be giving it.

This post is making me look back and now I understand why I haven’t blogged in such a long time.

In the meantime though, there have been interesting/encouraging topics/trends emerging; on which I can only hope I will be chipping in more proactively. For example:

- Less observers and more doers online; in particular more actual recruitment consultants walking the talk re. online sourcing, etc. and bringing insights from the real world. Greg Savage and Kelly O’Shaughnessy come to mind.

- The ever growing quality and volume output coming from the thinkers. The discourse and reports like Phillip and Michael’s sources of talent study opened the room for debate, discussion and further refinement outside the echo chamber.

- The ongoing tinkering with services and technologies supporting recruitment, sourcing, engagement

- The social recruitment meme, which was undergoing a stylish discussion entanglement until someone looked at the time and said that it was time to get back to work (just being facetious; I am always keen to listen and contribute to concept-shaping views on this topic)

Look forward to getting back into blogging shape. Thank you for sticking around

Any other recruiters that you know are blogging in Oz?

When I mention I’m an engineer in our Sydney office, I’m often greeted with looks of surprise: it seems many people aren’t aware of our Australian presence. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we are inviting engineers from Silicon Valley (or anywhere in California) to the Googleplex in Mountain View next Tuesday, 8 May for G’day Google: an evening (6-9 pm) open house event showcasing Google Australia…

… Working in the Sydney office is lots of fun and incredibly challenging. My desk looks over Darling Harbour, so it can sometimes be difficult to spend all day looking at a monitor.

from G’day California, organised by Google Australia, and intended to leverage off a particularly strong regional employer brand to reap talent for the co’s worldwide offices. My guess is they may recruit more yanks into Sydney than get expats to come back. Where’s your money on?

- there is in fact a blogger dress-code
- there is a blogger demeanor (“i must have been a journalist in a previous life”)
- wifi is never fast enough
- there’s never enough jelly bellys, i meant jelly beans to go around

Other than that boththe host and the idea sponsor were gracious and accommodating. Ah yes, and the show… lots of telco, voip, network, some rfid, some tablets, old-ish software all round, web hosting…

Exhibitors that had to do with recruiment/people/hr:

- recruitment systems who are launching a new version of their integrated management system in the next few months (no specifics, maybe we’ll catch with the GM and get a deeper scoop

- jobserve, maybe it was too early but there weren’t too many people around them

- support resort, get an hour of .net development out of India or the Philippines for 5 aussie bucks (!)

- ford and james, candidate assessment circa 1980, that was my impression after hearing the pitch anyway

i trust there’s more upbeat posts from the blogger peer group at bloggerzone.com.au

.. and a handful of pics

Cebit 2007

When you are no longer aligned with your customers is when the company starts getting into trouble. When you start saying your gizmo is great and your customers are telling everybody it sucks, then you have (a) serious misalignment.

So how do you keep misalignment from happening?

The answer lies (in) the cultural (corporate) membrane that separates you (the company) from them (your customers). The more porous the membrane, the easier it is for conversations between you and them, the internal and external, to happen. The easier for the conversations on both sides to adjust to the other, to become like the other.

And nothing pokes holes in the membrane better than blogging.

read the rest of Hugh MacLeod’s notes of his presentation to UK PR outfit Edelman, via Seth