A word on my blog
I’ve received a few comments and quite a bit of e-mails about the VMS series. Quite a few readers have pointed out that I have wrong or misleading information and a few have said I shouldn’t be writing about it because I really don’t know what I’m talking about.
I’m not writing as an expert but as someone who want to facilitate a discussion, which is clearly happening, based on the amount of e-mails and phone calls I’ve received about my VMS posts.
- So a few housekeeping notes here about my blog.
- This is my personal blog. I work for a staffing firm, but as it says on my sidebar, what I say here is my personal opinion and not that of my employer. I am writing from the point of view of someone who has about 10 years of experience in the contingent staffing industry. That experience pales in comparison to those with 20-30 years of experience. I have a lot to learn and I’m using my blog to give people a platform in which they can converse with me, and in effect, educate me. My blog is my listening tool.
- Now that I’ve explained the “personal” label…yes. Of course. It benefits my employer, albeit indirectly. But this is not my employer’s propaganda outlet. None of the stuff I say here is pre-approved by anyone. This blog is not even hosted on any of our servers. So how does it benefit my employer? I’m in marketing. To do my job effectively, I have to continuously educate myself. I have to listen to conversations. I have to keep tabs on the industry. I have to know what the industry is doing. This is my listening tool. Please see #1. Some of us go to conferences, some read trade publications, some attend webinars. Me? I blog.
- Also, I just happen to love blogging. I have another blog where I write about almost anything, and I started this as my career blog. What’s a career blog? Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester, talks about it here, and I wrote a post about it here. Someone commented to me over e-mail that this blog could very well benefit my employer. I’d like to think so, because I do aspire to be a value to my organization. I write knowing that my personal brand affects my employer’s brand. But other than that, this is NOT part of my employer’s marketing arsenal.
- In addition to my blog being my listening tool, this is also my public notebook. I’m a big believer in the power of collaboration. It’s the Web2.0 way. I post my thoughts and people weigh in. I ask questions and people respond with their opinions or sometimes they will point me to a certain direction. Sometimes they will point out certain things I haven’t really thought about. It’s just like going to the library. I’m not going to try to read all the books they have available on a subject, but I will ask for help. I will ask for the librarian’s help, I will ask other people in the aisle which books they recommend. Those recommendations mean more to me than the database search results. So in addition to my blog as a listening tool, my blog is also my research tool.
- And a few housekeeping notes about the VMS series:
- I work for a contingent staffing supplier and my experience with VMS comes from that perspective. I’ve recruited for VMS accounts in the past. Some were great experiences. Some were horror stories. My intent is to highlight what made the first group great experiences, and highlight the reasons why the second group were horror stories. The end result, hopefully, would be that we’d work with more with accounts from the first group, and hopefully those who stumble upon my horror stories will avoid those mistakes.
- There are those that said since I work for a staffing supplier, that I must be anti-VMS and that my ultimate goal is to discourage prospects from using VMS. I recognize that VMS will be around. There are a myriad of reasons why companies implement VMS. Theoretically a product or service will not exist in a free market if there was no real value for it. But any solution is only as good as the way it is implemented. A few have pointed that out that it’s quite a lofty goal to aspire for some sort of VMS best practices that will benefit all parties – clients, MSP, VMS, suppliers, HR, purchasing, hiring managers and contingent staff – and a few have said it’s not going to happen. That may be true, that it’s too much to aspire for, but the conversations that result from the postings whether they be on my comments section or via e-mail, are priceless.
- A few have pointed that out that someone’s gotta be paying for my blog to come so high up on Google’s search results. I’d like to take that as a compliment to my SEO skills, but the real reason behind it is that there isn’t much information about VMS on the Internet. There are plenty of whitepapers and there are plenty of corporate sites that talk about it, but it isn’t addressed much in the Blogosphere and Google’s algorithms tend to have a preference for blogs due to their high trust ranking. But no, there is no advertising at all to drive traffic to this blog.
To summarize all of the above, this blog is my conversation tool. I’m glad you’ve found my blog and I’m grateful to those who have weighed in and pointed things out to me and to those of you who have taken the time to e-mail and call me. That right there, is this blog’s main goal.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Comments
8 Responses to “A word on my blog”
Leave a Reply
-
About This Blog
Lisa Amorao is currently the Marketing Programs Manager for ATR International, a Silicon Valley-based contingent staffing firm.
Lisa has held roles in recruiting and sales before moving on to her current role in Marketing.
The opinions expressed here are her personal opinions and does not reflect those of her employer or any of its clients.
-
Lisa,
You have taken on a subject that is bound to elicite many reactions and comments. Some logical and some emotional. But I believe you are correct in saying that the most important thing is to have the discussion. It would be great if you got input from all parties involved. As you have said, that is really the only way to create a viable solution for everyone. My guess, however, is that certain parties of the VMS equation may not want to participate in a discussion simply because they benefit by others not knowing what they know. I hope I’m wrong.
Hi Jeff,
Based on my conversations here and offline with folks, I don’t think any of the parties in the VMS equation is deliberately holding back from discussions because they benefit from the market not hearing conversations. Or at least I hope not, like you said.
VMS has so many varieties that people are bound to resent being put under one umbrella category.
Again, the purpose is not to make recommendations but to create conversations. People can take what they want from it and use it however way they want to.
Thanks for the comment!
You are absolutely doing the right thing.
As a consumer, pundit, or someone in an industry a blog is a tool that can be used to improve products and industries.
I’ve been the customer of a product from Factiva, and criticized them in public. They responded by bringing me closer, and I eventually ran a workshop for them and even wrote a white-paper for them and helped them to shape future generations of their product.
Speaking you mind, in the professional way you do, with your own analysis from your experience (1 - 10 - 30 years it doesn’t matter) is the beauty of the live web.
Keep on sharing, and helping a community and industry grow.
Keep at it.
Thanks for dropping by, Jeremiah. The conversations you’ve created in the industries you’ve been part of have definitely created value. I aspire to do the same in mine.
Hi Lisa, I’m with you.
I started off reading political blogs and got used to the idea that the blogosphere should be as lively as WWF wrestling.
And I’ve been slapped for that. Because most business bloggers just want to promote themselves as the ideal product or service provider so they don’t want to engage in real conversation and, therefore, hate being criticized.
And that makes for a dull Recruitosphere.
So, here’s an offer. If you ever want to be a guest on The Recruiting Animal Show to discuss VMS or if you’d like to cross post about it on RecruitingBloggers.com (a group blog)let me know.
In the meantime, enjoy getting slapped around. That’s how you learn isn’t it?
The Recruting Animal Show
RecruitingBloggers.com
Thanks, Recruiting Animal.
Not sure if I’m ready for WWF wrestling (LOL) yet I probably need to put on a couple of pounds first and beef up.
Kidding aside, it’s funny that you brought up the point of how there are business bloggers who just want to promote themselves. While the rest of the business world (including recruiters) have welcomed real conversations in their respective industries the contingent staffing industry doesn’t seem to quite get it yet.
It’s kinda sad that the #1 Google search result for “staffing blog” is this: http://www.insourcesolutions.com/blog/. Nothing but a bunch of “job listings” and statements of how many people they’ve placed.
And then also within top 10…is this: http://www.frontlinesourcegroup.com/blog/blog.html. Do these businesses have an understanding of what a blog is?
Luckily for me, my employer is savvy and understands the benefits of transparency and conversations with the markets we serve and interact with.
[…] was looking through my e-mails today and I couldn’t help but get reminded of this post. This post was prompted by one phone call from a VMS provider, who was a bit irritated that I was […]
Beautiful teen girls
www.porntubebestmovies3.tk