Have a look at this video.

A couple of things stood out for me.

1. Innovative idea and great execution. Genius. Braille on the burger bun.

2. Wimpy get the fact that People with Disabilities spend money just like other demographics.   Designing solutions and marketing for that segment makes business sense.  Part of this is about equal rights and access, but it isn’t charity.  Humour works.

3. The power of the referral. See the stats at the end of the presentation.

As part of my academic research, I’m looking at how enterprise software companies approach accessibility. Wimpy puts them all to shame.  Well done Wimpy.

Click on the the link and then head back here.

This is one of the better examples of linking corporate and employee branding for recruitment I have seen.

• Low cost
• Innovative
• Targeted
• Measured (note the stats at the end).

It cleverly reinforces the corporate and the employee brand.  I wrote a note several years ago now (client link here) where I stressed the need for organizations to get marketing and HR to work more closely together on recruitment branding. This is probably the best example I have seen of a company doing that. Ping me others that you have seen, please.

A clever play like this does put pressure on the rest of the recruitment process. Make sure you have good, solid administrative processes in place to process the applications effectively.

My colleague, Michael Maoz, has been critical of those that try to do Social CRM without getting the rest of their CRM in order.  The same goes for recruitment.  If you target your customer channel for recruiting, make sure you give them prompt, polite and top notch service, especially if you don’t end up hiring them. Applying for a job is a big step for most people, so treat that step with respect.  If you mess someone around in the recruitment process, the chances of you keeping them as a customer are next to zero.

Continuing this theme, a Belgian cartoonist, Canary Pete has a lovely take on the next stage of the IKEA hiring process.

But please don’t cut and paste real people’s  data from Linkedin or other social networks and use it in your demo.  You are trampling over their privacy and copyright, and you are probably  in breach of the Linkedin or Facebook  T&Cs too.   If you use photos,  get permission, even from your employees.

Be careful when you demo social software integration too.  People linked with you to be friends, or connections, not demo fodder.

Tread softly, for you tread on my data.

Apologies to W.B. Yeats.

Back to the M3.

It has a very fancy double clutch gearbox with Drivelogic.  It is an automatic and a manual.  It changes gear in milliseconds, depending on the aggression setting on the Drivelogic.

It has electronic damper suspension. (EDC)

It has Dynamic Stability Control (DSC)

It has variable servotronic steering support

And lots of other clever stuff

In the hands of a total amateur, these three letter acronyms stop you from fishtailing into the wall.  The default mode for all these settings is on. In order to override them, you need to know to hold down button A for 10 seconds and then press button B.  It then warns you that you have switched off the clever computer and it emails your friends and family your last will and testament.

Now Facebook is in trouble with another German Organization, the Hamburg Datenschutzbeauftrager, according to the Deutsche Welle. English Article here.  The Data Protection Commissioner,  Johanes Casper, had this to say.

A legal assessment by our office came to the conclusion that [Facebook's] face recognition violates European and German law because Facebook is providing its users with contradictory and misleading information,” he added.

“A normal user doesn’t know how to delete the biometric data. And besides, we have demanded that biometric data be stored with the subject’s express consent. At first [any company] has to ask if the user wants their data stored or not. Facebook just gives them the possibly to opt-out. If you don’t opt-out, you’re not consenting.”

Facebook has a long history of confounding us all with their privacy settings, and it looks like the folks in Hamburg have had enough. Face recognition is the privacy equivalent of 420 horsepower without traction control.

I think I will need to do what the M3 can teach ERP vendors post, but that will need to wait till I’m back at work.

I have been watching the company from afar for a number of years. I’ve been consistently impressed with how they manage recruitment, and I think a lot of IT departments and larger software companies could learn from what they do.

1. consistent use of twitter, youtube, flickr and blogs to position Atlassian as a cool employer.

2. Posts and video from current employees about working there. No complicated HR speak.

3. Engaging and dynamic careers page. with a strong graduate offering, including international placement, coding festivals etc.

4. Vigorous referral program

6. Executive focus on recruitment as being vital to company strategy

7. Excellent alignment of marketing and employer brand.

8. Effective use of their own software to help manage the process.

I’ve done a bit of research over the last couple of years on employer branding, and I plan to step it up in 2011.  I’ll be on the look out for more examples like this.

Dan Pink picked up on Atlassian’s “Fed-ex” days in a recent TED talk. You should watch the whole talk. It raises some important challenges for HR and HR technology. What are you doing to attract and motivate your employees?

His XING profile pinged me today, asking me to validate his skills.  The app is in beta, and it is still quite basic, but I like the look and feel. The recommendations, skills cloud and the peer validation capability are rather impressive. UI is simple and the app was painless to “install”.

Makes me wonder if you really need those complex, expensive, poorly maintained HR competency management applications behind the firewall.

  (XING is a successful business focused social network in Germany.)

Also, have a look at what Linkedin is up to via Michael Specht.

It really is time I wrote that Research Note about HCM disruption.

This then takes you to the LinkedIn page of a Gartner recruiter, Peter Fay.

To those that say this social software stuff isn’t having a fundamental impact on HR processes, I say see above. If your organization isn’t using or seriously thinking about using these channels for passive candidate search, then perhaps it is time to start doing so. If you build recruiting software and you don’t have a plan on how to integrate all this social software business into your offering, I’d suggest you have some work to do.

Oh, and if you are interested in the job, please do get in touch with Peter.

There is also a cool job looking at privacy too. I’m almost tempted to apply for that one !-)

via the TED site. Ushahidi — a crisis-tracking tool with roots in TEDGlobal 2007 — has been awarded a $200,000 grant for development from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Spend a moment watching Erik in Action. link here if it doesn’t display in your reader.

Well done Erik and the gang.

Web 2.0 technologies are having an impact on UK politics too.

More generally, there is a lot of HR technology innovation coming out of Australia and New Zealand. Expect to hear more about HR technology innovation from outside the US in my Gartner research over the next few months. Global companies looking at talent management processes would do well to cast their net wider than just the leading US and European Vendors. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see Australian and NZ vendors start to succeed globally. They seem to be growing in confidence and reach through the success with the larger Australian multi-nationals. Now the next test is to see if they can make the big leap and compete for other multi-national business.

Keeping up with the rate of innovation in HR technology is challenging, so if you have come across an innovative smaller vendor,  no matter where in the world you are, let me know what you are doing with them. If you are a small vendor innovating in the HCM space, arrange a vendor briefing with me or Jim Holincheck.  Rolf Jester and I are also interested in talking to SIs that focus on HCM technologies, would love to hear about what you are up to.