It’s an odd peculiarity I know, and one I doubt anyone would ever notice. But technically, it is incorrect. There is a reason for it though, and it’s because of chopsticks.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m multiracial (Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and so on) and I spent my early childhood in Hawaii with my Mom’s family which is mostly Chinese in heritage. Thus, before I learned how to write, I was learning how to use chopsticks and that grip just carried over which is why I “incorrectly” hold writing implements to this day.

And that’s just fine with me. Because the way I hold my pen is good enough. It gets the job done and has essentially no impact on my ability to write. My poor handwriting, well, that’s just from laziness really. And at this point, learning the “correct” way would just be a pain.

Every day we find ourselves faced with “Good Enough” situations. Most of them are negligible harm or minor frustrations. The HRIS doesn’t have a specific report you want, that manager didn’t complete their report on time, and the deli gave you potato chips instead of Doritos. That’s life. We sometimes have to make concessions for things that are outside of our control.

Now, the perfectionist in me may get irritated when the world doesn’t conform to my expectations (Bend to my will already world!) but the realist in me knows to let things go. And most of the time it is even successful in convincing my perfectionist side to do that too.

Working in Human Resources there are enough situations where “Good Enough” isn’t acceptable; Times when compliance requires a careful and consistent adherence to the correct way of doing something. Let’s just make sure we aren’t letting that rigidity influence all our perceptions and interactions at work or we will start losing that “Human” part of Human Resources. You know, that fallible, imperfect “We are only human” part of who we all are and what we have to face every day.

And don’t worry if you can’t completely let go either, even trying at all would be considered good enough in my book. But I better not mention the way I type, it’s all kinds of messed up…

Whew, it’s been about a week since I attended the LA State SHRM Conference and I am just about recovered from the experience. I’m not going to lie to you, it was a really fun time and I left with some great take aways, and I don’t mean swag.

I know what you are thinking, you mean I went to a conference and got more out of it than just shenanigans? Crazy I know, but true. And don’t worry, there were still plenty of shenanigans. PLENTY of them.

Here’s my breakdown:
- Dudes, New Orleans is crazy. Like certifiable. There are people everywhere, they pop out from behind cars to cross the street (almost giving me several heart attacks while driving), and the cab drivers drive like they are on a timed obstacle course. All I can say is if it was that crazy just for Jazz Fest (which happened to be the same weekend as the conference) I do not want to know what it is like during Mardi Gras. I think my brain would explode.

- As I was at this conference “Officially” as part of the Social Media Team I had to be responsible. Basically, that means I did what I normally do at conferences which is run around hugging people, live tweeting sessions, and generally get under foot of the people doing real work. But in addition to that I got to help during a couple keynotes and even assisted some attendees figure out Twitter so I guess I was useful too.

-Oh, and did I mention I got to hang with my fellow social media team members Chris Ponder and Robin Schooling? That’s the kind of “work” I’d sign up for any day.

- Speaking of Keynotes, without a doubt each Keynote session was well done and informative. Joe Gerstandt and Jason Lauritsen of Talent Anarchy started the whole conference off with laughter, a free copy of their book, and a flash mob. The CEO panel with Rose Hudson of the LA Lottery and Hugh Weber of the New Orleans Hornets and moderated by the always amazing Mary Ellen Slater was both insightful and thought provoking. Finally, the closing keynote by Scott Eblin had the right energizing tone to help wrap things up and encourage you to go out there and do something that scares you.

- Did I mention that they trusted me with a microphone during the CEO panel? I don’t know what they were thinking either. But I was a good girl and just helped out during the Q&A like I was supposed to. I still managed to slip some fun questions from twitter into the mix…

- Have I mentioned yet how awesome Dwane Lay was as the Master of Ceremonies? Cause damn, he hit this one out of the park! If you think he is a good speaker, which duh, of course he is, then imagine that plus the requirement to warm up the crowd. Yeah, he had them eating out of his hand right from the start.

- And speaking of Dwane, if you haven’t seen his latest swag video from LA SHRM you HAVE TO go check it out right now. So funny and I even get to make a cameo appearance.

- I got to meet Buzz Rooney in like, her first IRL event. Wow, I remember that feeling. Just so you know, she is an absolute dear and lots of fun to hang with so if you get a chance to meet her, do it.

- On to the concurrent sessions. Like any conference, some are hits, some are misses, and most you aren’t able to attend. It’s called concurrent for a reason people. Which is a shame because I missed several awesome sessions I wanted to attend too. Luckily, you and I could follow the #LASHRM12 hashtag on twitter and stay on top of all the sessions. Isn’t the future awesome?

- Of the sessions I attended, Cathy Missildine’s session on Talent management metrics was my favorite because I could take the stuff I learned and use it the next day at work. Very insightful. Right behind her session in terms of awesomeness was Dr. Daniel Crosby with his session on leading people, not change and Jason Lauritsen’s session on Power and politics in organizations. Both were well done and personally helpful to me. You know, it’s like I went to sessions related to information I needed to apply to my own job. Crazy how that works out, right?

- A few sessions also fell flat for me, such as a session on employee engagement that started well but went bad once social media was brought up, a session on Cajun style leadership that was more about the DISC personality assessment and Gumbo (Seriously, too much gumbo), and an Entrepreneurial HR session that had potential, but didn’t give me anything useful to take away.

Wow, that was a long wrap up. Needless to say, I had a really good time, got to do this social media thing that I love, and learned a lot at the same time. Did I also mention the food in New Orleans is pretty damn good? Yeah, I know I’m a lucky girl. Not so lucky as to have won at the casino, but very lucky to get to hang with fun people in a crazy city.

Thanks LA SHRM for the great memories, especially the ones I can’t blog about. Remember people, the badges come OFF when you hit the town…

One week from now I will be enjoying all the shenanigans that New Orleans has to offer and I can’t wait. I’ve never actually been to New Orleans (driving by doesn’t count) and I already know I’m going to have a good time.

Why? Because I’m going there for the LA State SHRM Conference! Even better, I’m one of the “Official Bloggers” for the event, which of course means I will grossly abuse my access and influence to stir up some trouble. What else am I supposed to do with my Blogger Pass, be professional? Pshaw to that.

I mean, just check out the post I did on why I’m attending; You can’t tell me it isn’t going to be one crazy, fun time. So if you will be there, I look forward to hanging out with you. I will be the giggly one holding a little green proxy named Gir and running around hugging people. And if not, no worries, just follow #LASHRM12 on Twitter for all the latest shenanigans from me and the other attendees and look for my “creative” blog coverage of the event as well.

Maybe this conference I will finally win a Coach bag and become a real adult HR Lady.

I’m sure by now everyone has heard about the little “problem” that Secret Service agents had while in Colombia. I think we can all agree there is a valuable lesson to be learned form this: Do not refuse to pay your Colombian prostitute after a night of alcohol and drug filled debauchery. That’s just rude. Especially when prostitution is legal and they can go to the cops.

Err, what I meant to say was, when you are in a high scrutiny position of National Security, you need to realize that your poor decisions not only reflect badly on you, but on EVERYONE within your organization. Now, I don’t have anything but respect for the work that these men and women do. The level of skill, the level of risk, the sacrifices they make: Across the board they are all heroes. Even the agents charged. And unfortunately, that means they are also held to a higher standard of behavior too.

Now I was listening to the Ace & TJ radio show this morning and they were discussing this whole mess and how some people are saying that amongst certain agents there was a “Wheels go up, Rings come off” mentality when they were traveling. This led the hosts to ask their audience if they had any work secrets that they had been keeping; A secret they had either been keeping from their work or something they had been doing at work and keeping it from their spouse. That’s of course when it got really interesting. Dude, people can be devious when they want to be. I’m going to have to keep my eyes on you… (Shakes head disappointingly).

And now I will officially get off my high horse and stop judging. Because hey, I’ve been there too. When I first started blogging, I was anonymous and kept it from my boss at the time. I wasn’t sure how he would feel about it and didn’t want to deal with the drama, so I kept it a secret. Now my secret isn’t anything scandalous, but I could have gotten into trouble for it. And it was fun being a little “bad”.

And that does make me wonder, how many people really do keep secrets at work or about work? How many of them are big, public embarrassment and lose your job kind of secrets and how many are small, silly ones? I think we’ve all had a secret or two before. Secrets are fun and exciting. As long as they don’t involve prostitutes and drugs; those are the bad kind of secrets. Don’t have those kinds.

Do you have any secrets? Preferably ones you will share with me in the comment section? I promise not to say anything…

I often write about customer service, good and bad, because most jobs are customer service jobs in the end. Most roles either have customers, clients, bosses, co-workers, shareholders, investors, and so on involved, and that essentially means you are providing a service or good to someone at any given time.

HR alone has to provide customer service to employees, managers, applicants, and co-workers. We are all accountable to someone which is why good customer service skills are so important.

Now imagine this scenario:

A Company signs a contract with a Vendor for their service. The Company agrees to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to this service. There is no end date for the contract so basically the terms negotiated remain the same until either party chooses to end or change said contract. Both parties agree the price is fair based on current levels of expected use. Many years go by and the Company grows by leaps and bounds. This causes the Company to use the Vendor’s services more than predicted, but the Vendor is seemingly unaware of the increase in use and never questions it.

Then one day, the Company asks to change an aspect of the service. The Vendor pulls a report on the Company, realizes how much things have changed over the years, and issues a new contract charging more than twice as much, not due to the change itself but as a reflection of the increased use over the last few years. The Vendor does not feel they are getting fairly compensated for their services anymore and the Company doesn’t feel comfortable paying twice as much for essentially the same service.

Now, if you were that Company, what would you do? If you were the Vendor, what would you do? Would you sign the new contract and pay the higher fee? Or do you find another vendor? Do you lower the fee to keep the customer? Is there a happy medium? If you wanted to provide the best customer service how would you have handled this?

Hit me up in the comments, I would love to know what you think!

Why bunny pictures? Because not everything can be about HR. And bunnies are adorable. Now let the sugar coma begin!

But living that close also means not having cows in the field next door. I love cows. If I sit on the back porch I can hear them. Oh, and the chickens. I did mention we have chickens right?

Gir likes the chickens. And I really like living out here.

That’s why I have decided to focus on something new and unexpected. We have a lot of land out here and we need to do something with it. So I am giving up the HR game and starting up a hobby farm. There will be vegetables, and berries, and even some pygmy goats. I totally want some pygmy goats.

But don’t I absolutely love my new job and HR? Well of course I do. And that’s where Gir comes in. Gir will be taking over my HR job and this blog. Sure he’s small, green, and stuffed but he’s my proxy for a reason. And honestly, he probably knows this HR stuff better than I do. I credit him with passing the PHR the first time around. and who better to run things than an actual minion?

So no worries, while I am elbow deep in farming the blog will be in capable, tiny hands.

And just in case you are still confused, just think about what today’s date is and it will all start making sense. I do love living in the country, but I’m not interested in giving up HR. Besides, I’m a much better at helping others who actually know what they are doing than trying it myself.

Gir, well, he loves to party. Mardi Gras, 4th of July, St. Patrick’s day; he’s out there living it up. So imagine how happy he was to hear that today is the blogs 4 year anniversary!

That’s right, 4 crazy years. Whew, that’s a lot of HR geekery. Not bad considering my biggest worries when I started was that I would run out of things to say. Yeah, I totally should have known better.

Now a lot has happened over the last four years but I can honestly say this has blog has been one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. The people I’ve met, the places I’ve been, and the opportunities that have come my way are all precious and wonderful to me. Blogging and social media may be time consuming and a lot of effort, but so worth it.

Thank you all for hanging around and reading along, you don’t know how much I appreciate it and how much it means to me. And no worries, as long as I don’t manage to run out of things to say, I’ll keep on writing. I hope you stick around and enjoy that too. Hugs and kisses to you all!

Gir has a lot of business cards to hand out.

Thanks to the new job, I will be going to a lot of career fairs in the foreseeable future. A LOT of them. College, community, Veterans; you name it and I’m probably going to it. Lots of positions to fill means we gotta get our name and our opportunities out there.

Don’t think I’m complaining though; I love it. Career Fairs can be great and there is nothing better than meeting someone at an event, knowing they would be perfect for such and such position, and helping them through the process of getting hired on. It’s all the best parts of recruiting.

But like anything else, you get some bad with the good. So, for your sake and mine, if you are looking for work and are planning on attending a career fair please keep the following things in mind:

- This is a social event so you need to talk to people. Talk to people waiting in line, talk to the people at booths, talk to people grabbing a snack, and even talk to people in the bathroom… outside smoking (if you smoke). This is no time to be shy.
- While it’s best to research companies attending the career fair in advance, sometimes that isn’t possible. So when you get there, don’t be afraid to go up to a company and ask them more about what they do and what kind of candidates they are looking for. They want to talk about the company and why you would want to work there.
- Do not assume that just because a company does “X” and you do “Y” that you shouldn’t talk to them. Companies often have to fill a variety of roles from administration to sales to IT to finance. And even if they aren’t looking to hire someone in your in your field right now, it doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. Start making these connections now and stay ahead of the game.

And probably most importantly of all, treat the career fair as an interview. That means dress and act professionally.
- No jeans, baseball caps, flip flops, or camo jackets.
- Bring copies of your resume and if the company won’t accept a resume on-site, have personal cards with your contact information on it that you can hand out instead.
- Be polite.
- Smile.
- Don’t interrupt other job seekers while they are speaking to company representatives or spend too long chatting them up either. Please be respectful of everyone’s time.
- And while some companies will have candy or swag that they want you to take (otherwise they just have to haul it back to the office), don’t act like you are only there to see what trinkets you can get instead of trying to get a job.

In the end, keep in mind that a career fair is only one of many ways to find a job. But it is often a great opportunity to speak in person to either HR or a hiring manager so make sure you take advantage of the situation and present the best image you can. I’ll see you out there. I’ll be the one handing out branded highlighters and antibacterial gel.

I’ve been around this social media stuff for a while now and I have to say that I really love the HR online community. Almost everyone is nice, supportive, and fun. If not for the great people and how generous they have been with their time and advice I don’t know if I would have stuck around so long.

But not all online communities are like that and no internet community can exist without the haters. It makes me very sad when I hear from someone about how they put themselves out there creatively, something they are proud of, and the only feedback they got was from anonymous, or even not so anonymous, trolls trying to pull them down.

Now, I know that learning how to deal with haters online is just another skill you need to pick up in your journey to social media glory. And you will always encounter hateful jerks in your life; those that think they know better, hate for no reason, and bully to make themselves feel better.

Understanding that mentally doesn’t make the things they say or do hurt any less.

But we have all been there. And the only thing you can do when the haters be hating is to keep going. If someone wants to stop you from doing something that makes you happy then keep going and be ridiculously happy about it. Because really, it doesn’t matter if some random person you have never met and never will meet approves or not. You do it for you.

The only way haters have any power over you is if you let them. But how you deal with haters will depend on what you are comfortable with. Ignoring them, shutting them down, acknowledging them briefly, or even engaging with them. There is no right or wrong way.

Typically, I will either ignore them or try to address the criticism they bring up, valid points or not. But there is always a line though, and if they cross it they get shut down and even removed from the blog. Hey, it’s my blog and there are some things I won’t and don’t have to tolerate on here.

Just keep going.