Innovative Job Recruiting Styles

I read some interesting articles focusing on innovative Job Recruiting Styles. This interested me since I will be doing a presentation tomorrow morning at American University on Blogging and Recruiting.

I contacted a respected blogger, Trey Reeme, at OpenSourceCU and asked him some of his thoughts on this subject. Mr. Reeme pointed out the following article called The See-Through CEO which states, “There's a whole class of CEOs who can hardly write an email. In this new digital world, there are haves & have-nots, & people who can't write convincingly - they're leaving themselves defenseless. The people who clearly enjoy writing & blogging are like CEOs 2.0 - they have competitive advantage over other CEOs.” Clearly Mr. Reeme feels strongly that writing ability which can be expressed through blogging can be a saving grace in managing a CEOs reputation.


Blogging is a great way for companies and their vital employees to reach outside of themselves into the world. How then could a company transform this power into their Human Resources division to recruit top employees?

i agree. blogs aren't all that - but they do have their place is an article about how companies should not bother with blogging to recruit employees. That instead they should focus on their current recruiting methodologies and let the website designers bother with the blogging. This may be true in general for now, but it certainly works with some of the techie companies like Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Skype. In time, like other technologies, blogging may reach a larger audience other then the IT industry.

The youth are more open to innovative recruiting methods. That's why the controversial online social network site Facebook has teamed up with Jobster which can be found in the article Facebook, Jobster To Launch A Site For Young Job Seekers. It is hyping Facebook which used to be focused only towards college students now open to the public to further be opened up with college recruiting. The irony here is that Facebook has been keeping students from getting jobs from using the website leading parents to investing in the company Reputation Defender to clean up their child's reputation. I blogged on this topic earlier in February 2007.

It will be interesting to watch the different innovative ways that companies will begin changing their mode of operations. The recruiting practices of the Human Resources department will be most telling in the new directions we take through where they feel they can implement new techniques via youth, techies, or other groups.

What's the difference: credit union vs. bank?

I came across this great blog posting called Communicating the "Difference" by John Cote which can be found at: http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2007/03/19/communicating-the-difference#comments

It's about explaining to people the difference between a credit union and a bank. I myself have had to explain this one several times to many people. Usually I give the quick, "A bank was originally formed to invest and lend money to commercial businesses who at a much later time began investing and lending money to regular people through it's retail branches. A credit union is a membership of regular people investing and lending money amongst each other, the regular people, instead of primarily targeting commercial entities."

I still get blank looks at the end of that explanation which is why I enjoyed John's entry so much when he said,'How is a credit union different from a bank? These and other cosmic queries are often met with a shrug, a vacant stare, and if the questioner is lucky in the latter case, a quick “I’m not sure, let me get somebody else that can help you.'"

Here are a few of many items that differentiate a credit union from a bank:

• They don’t have customers - instead they have members
• Money deposits are considered shares into the financial institution.
• Tax-exempt
• Not-for-profit
• Volunteer and unpaid board of directors.

Clearly - this cannot be recreated by a bank.

Reputation soured by hostile takeover?

Reputation is everything, especially for an industry trying to define itself from another which is especially the case between Credit Unions and Banks. Credit Unions strive on being cooperative with each other and putting people and members first as a way to distinguish themselves from a bank. This distinction and reputation helps credit unions maintain their tax-free status. The industry is now scrambling to recover from an attempted hostile take over by Wings Financial Federal Credit Union over Continental Airlines Federal Credit Union as can be seeing in the following LA Times news post:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wrap10.1mar10,1,3175489.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

There seems to be a lot of activity amongst credit union advocates where such avid postings about this sort of behavior can be found at many sites including Trey Reeme's Opensourcecu blog and DougTrue's blog:

http://www.opensourcecu.com/articles/2007/03/16/is-wings-hostile-takeover-step-one-towards-conversion#comments

http://www.dougtrue.net/

Thank you Trey and Doug for bringing this issue to everyone's attention!! How will the credit union movement ultimately respond to this sort of behavior? What do you think they should do to salvage their reputation that they have painstakingly built for years?

Perhaps Wings Financial Federal Credit Union should lose their status as a credit union and be turned into a bank or better yet Wings Financial FCU should get a hostile takeover instead. What is the best remedy for the industry in this instance?