15 Minutes With Mendoza

A few weeks back, Dave Mendoza offered to profile me on his blog. He has done this with many others and I felt honored to be approached with the opportunity. It was an interesting experience though. I'm actually a pretty modest guy. I like to have some control over what I put out there about myself and who I 'connect' to. On the other hand though, it's all about building your own personal brand these days, and I'm all for that.



Mr. Mendoza was so kind as to put up my Profile yesterday and I thank him for that. BTW, if you aren't LinkedIn to Mr. Mendoza, you aren't LinkedIn, so be sure to join his network today!

Welcome to Referralpalooza!

Last week, Dave Lefkow was kind enough to acknowledge my work on our firm's new internal employee referral blog on his blog. I got a few suggestions, including one from the Animal and from Craig Silverman.

After alot of thought, I decided to go with something a bit fun, and hopefully attention getting. Welcome to Referralpalooza! (screen shot below)

Yes, same ugly 'mug' there that's on my external blog, guess I need to line up a professional photo shoot to expand the portfolio (yeah, right). This was built on our Intranet Sharepoint platform, so we are a bit limited by it's functionality, but it is a functional blog nonetheless.

At any rate, I've done a few posts there now and am getting a little traffic so far. Blogging is still taking hold internally at my firm. Hopefully as the program continues to grow, the traffic on this blog will continue to grow as well. It's a great platform for providing tips, success stories, and highlights of referral-related events throughout the firm. I'd be curious to know if anyone else out there was doing internal blogging about recruiting. I'd love to have a chat with anyone who does.

It's a Blogaversary!

Hard to believe, but it was a year ago today that I launched this blog. I had been interested in starting a recruiting blog for a while, ideally a corporate recruiting blog, but was unable to get one launched at the company I was with at the time. So for that reason, and because I was looking for a creative outlet, I launched ...from the trenches.

I admit that for the most part, this blog has been written for mostly selfish purposes. I like writing, and sometimes I think I actually come up with something interesting to share. According to the stats on my Site Meter, I've have on average about 15 unique visitors a day, although some are surely by accident (such as those who end up at my blog from their Google search on 'Trench Warfare'). I've had alot of very nice comments from those who have read my blog, and I truly appreciate all those who have spent the time to stop by and poke around.

It's been a crazy year this past year, probably more eventful than I could of ever imagined. For example, some advice for everyone, if it isn't absolutely necessary to buy/sell a house and change jobs at the same time, DON'T DO IT!!!

I've looked back over the past year, and from my 100+ posts, there have been a few highlights that I wanted to share here:
- Welcome to DC SHRMers! (my guide to DC for last year's SHRM Nat'l Convention. Worth another read for those of you coming here for ERE in the Fall!)
- B.S.T.A. (still think it's a good idea)
- The Story Behind The Story (my one shot at stardom on ERE, yet to be repeated)
- 100>1M and Growing (now at 345>2.3M)
- WTPF Talent ROAR Recap (recap of a great local HR conference)
- Saw It With My Own Two Eyes (seemed like a good idea at the time)
- A New Adventure (it's always hard to say goodbye)
- Ch-ch-ch-changes (as I said above DON'T DO IT! if you don't have to)
- The New Gig (it's been a great ride so far)
- Greatest Recruiting Experience Ever (it really was)
- Our First Recruiter's Conference (great collaborative event that ended with my worst travel experience. Was all worth it though)
- RIMS Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (RIMS! RIMS! RIMS!)
- worst.corporate.video.ever (might actually be a lowlight, depending how you look at it)
- ERE Expo Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Pictures (I love these conferences!)
- Virtual Edge Power Summit Recap (am I becoming a conference junkie?)

So what's ahead in year two? Hopefully a little less stress and more of good recruiting tales to tell. Thanks again to everyone for stopping by!