HRAConnection Newsletter

President’s Pen
by Betty Lonis, SPHR

Betty Lonis I am pleased to announce the HRACI 2004 Awards for Excellence in Human Resources. We have developed two awards to recognize outstanding performance of our members. Below I have outlined the awards along with the nomination and selection process.

Volunteer of the Year Award – This first award recognizes the efforts of an individual who has provided outstanding leadership, motivation, and organizational skills to the development of the local chapter or other SHRM program. The Volunteer of the Year Award recognizes successful efforts of an individual in serving the profession.

This award, which includes a trophy and recognition in professional publications, is presented at the July HRACI monthly meeting. The HRACI board will nominate the winner of this award for the Indiana State Council Volunteer of the Year Award.

Professional of the Year Award – This second award recognizes creative approaches and consistently high performance that benefit the nominee’s organization as well as their business and professional communities. This award recognizes successful efforts in applying creative management concepts to improve performance, advance the profession, and promote better understanding of human resource management.

Nomination Process - Nominations will be sought through all chapter members. The deadline for nominations will be Friday, May 28th.

Selection Process - A selection committee will be established to select the winners. The selection committee will include the President, Vice President-Programs, Treasurer, and Vice President-Membership of the HRACI Board as well as one at large member.

I know we have several individuals in our chapter who are deserving of this type of recognition for their efforts in serving and advancing the profession. I am excited that we have a vehicle to provide such recognition to individuals and hope that you will thoughtfully consider nominating one of your fellow chapter members. Attached is a link to the on-line nomination forms for both of these awards. And, don’t forget, nominations are due Friday, May 28th.

Click Here for Nominee Form.

I hope to see you at our joint meeting with CIASTD this month!

Please feel free to contact me at (317) 277-5345 or through e-mail at president@hraci.org.

Betty Lonis

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Thursday, May 20 Morning, HRACI Meeting

You can now register online with Visa or MasterCard

Topic: Saying Yes To The Future: Creative Problem Solving with guest speaker Len Mozzi (Len Mozzi's Dramatic Difference). Joint meeting with CIASTD.

Note: Breakfast meeting instead of lunch.
Speaker: Len Mozzi, Dramatic Difference

Sponsored by Temporary Avenue

We will again be at a different venue for this celebration. The Junior Achivement facility is located at 7435 N. Keystone. Parking is free.

Date:	Thursday, May 20, 2004
Location:	Junior Achievement Facility 7435 North Keystone Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46240 click here for directions Catering by Hoaglin Fine Catering
Time:	7:30 a.m. - Join CIASTD with their "Cranberry Juice Cocktail Hour" networking 7:30 - 8:30 a.m. - Rregistration 8:30 - 11 a.m. - Program Deadline for Meeting Registration is May 14th by 5PM
Program Cost:	Members $25, Guests $35 <-- Note slight price change for this meeting
Sponsors:	Temporary Avenue

Next Meeting: June 17
Topic: 'Waddayamean, Value?' A Concise Entertaining Guide To Defining Value For HR Professionals .
Speaker: Karl Ahlrichs, SPHR

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Chapter Celebrates 30th Anniversary

by Kim Vosburg

What started with just 18 individuals and an Indianapolis locus has grown to an organization of almost 800 human resource professionals liberally populating businesses in central Indiana. More than a hundred of today's HRACI's members gathered at the Marott Hotel on April 15th to celebrate the Chapter's 30th anniversary as a chartered affiliate of the Society for Human Resource Management. Karl Ahlrichs served the audience a rich program of "Putting it all together: HR's new strategic direction". With a even mix of real HR issues and people (and a solid dose of humor), Karl tool attendees to the HR world of 2024 and then brought them back to the present day. Only time will tell how 'right' his predictions will turn out to be but, more than a few in attendance were betting that at least some of them would come true (albeit, probably not Brian Cox).

The occasion also served to remind attendees of the HRACI's primary mission, to "Serve the Professional and Advance the Profession". The occasion further served to recognize the contributions of numerous volunteer leaders throughout the years including 13 current and former Chapter Presidents. Along with current President Betty Lonis, former Presidents in attendance included Dan Guio, Colin Kebo, Mary Lou Hopkins, Judith Muessig, Dennis Dunlap, Rick Taylor, Patricia Edwards, Dale Hinshaw, Greg Smith, Larry Roberts, Chris Raisovich, and Kim Vosburg.

Making the evening event even more special were proclamations received from Indiana Governor Joe Kernan and Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson. The Chapter was most appreciative of their glowing words of praise and recognition for the important roles that HRACI and its members have played throughout the years in making the contributions we have to both the profession and businesses that we serve. For a complete text of each of these proclamations, click on the following links: Governor Kernan and Mayor Peterson.

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Your Foundation at Work: Research-Based Knowledge

The SHRM Foundation promotes the use of "research-based knowledge". What does that mean for you? It means enhanced credibility. Imagine proposing a new program to senior management and being able to cite solid research to demonstrate the benefits of your proposed change. The Foundation is funding practical research every year to help you do just that. Current research projects focus on critical areas such as Technology & HR, HR Measurement, Global HR, and The Changing Role of the HR Professional. Research results will help provide research-based answers to questions such as: How should an organizational mentoring program be structured for maximum effectiveness? How do HR leaders make a strategic impact on their organizations? To review SHRM Foundation research findings, visit www.shrm.org/foundation.
The SHRM Foundation: Investing in Your Future as an HR Leader.

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Can Social Networking Help Recruiters?

by Peter Weddle
Submitted by Tammy Goins

In case you haven’t heard, the latest craze to hit the Internet is something called social networking. It’s a service offered at such sites at Friendster.com, Itsnotwhatyouknow.com, and Ryze (www.ryze.com).

Social networking uses technology to help people make connections with other people who are friends with their friends. If genealogy traces the ancestors you never knew, social networking (at least as it is practiced online) traces the contacts you never knew you had. At Friendster.com, for example, you sign up for the service by filling out a form (with self-descriptive information) and linking that form to all of your friends. They, in turn, do the same thing which brings their friends into your network and your friends into theirs. Do that with 100 friends, Friendster claims, and you’ll have 800,000 people with whom you can connect.

Can social networking help recruiters connect with high quality candidates? Well … sort of. Networking, after all, remains a key component of candidate sourcing, even on the Internet. Indeed, as my long-time readers know, I believe cyber-networking or e-networking is the most underrated aspect on online recruiting and the one with the greatest potential for advancing an organization’s position in the War for the Best Talent.

How does e-networking work? Just as it does in the real world. You connect with prospective candidates and develop relationships with them through personal interactions. In the real world, those interactions are typically one-on-one and face-to-face. On the Internet, they are one-on-many and occur via e-mail. Traditional networking usually takes place around business meetings or at the annual conferences and monthly get-togethers of professional and trade organizations; networking online, in contrast, takes place in the discussion forums and the bulletin boards of association, alumni organization and affinity group Web-sites. In the real world, you’re talking to a single prospect, while in cyberspace you’re writing to and reading posts from all of the participants in the virtual conversation.

In both cases, networking enables you to:

find high quality prospects who (a) have not applied for one of your openings, (b) are not familiar with your organization and/or (c) may not even be looking for another opportunity;
pre-qualify them or make an initial evaluation of their potential contribution to and fit with your organization; and
pre-sell them or begin a private conversation (away from the meeting or online forum) where you endeavor to convince them that it’s in their best interest to consider joining your organization.

Traditional networking, however, is both time consuming and limited in scope (after all, there are only so many one-on-one conversations you can have in a single day). By networking online, you can interact with hundreds, even thousands of prospects at one time and do so from the comfort of your office or even at home.

Now, don’t misunderstand; I’m not saying you should stop your traditional networking. What I am saying is that you should start e-networking. And, that brings me back to Friendster.com and its fellow purveyors of social networking. While those sites can, indeed, put you in touch with other people, the lack of community communication among them essentially eliminates your ability to pre-qualify them. In other words, when prospects are speaking to their peers at association or trade sites, the interaction, itself, enables you to spot prospects and form opinions about their capabilities. Those early impressions need to be validated, of course, but they are infinitely more helpful than reading a couple of paragraphs about a person and peering at a photo (unless your real purpose is to find a date).

More importantly, why go to some other site to do your networking? Why go to Friendster or to an association or alumni site, for that matter, when you could interact with great prospects right in the comforts of your own Web-site? The answer to that question is the best kept secret in online recruiting. I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to promise not to ell anyone else. Are we agreed?

O.K., here’s the secret. The single best way to win the War for the Best Talent online is to network at your own corporate career site. That’s right. Create a discussion forum or bulletin board on your own site that stimulates, informs, entertains and educates the best and brightest in key career fields and they will come (and, even better, bring their friends and colleagues) by the hundreds or even thousands.

Huddle with the hiring managers who most need this talent and ask that they select “A” level performers to moderate the forums and/or bulletin boards you set up on your site. Then, devote the first thirty minutes of your day to reading the posts to see who stands out and to interacting with those prospects privately to pre-qualify and pre-sell them. The return on that 2 ½ hour investment each week will dramatically enhance the quality of the candidates you recruit and lower your cost of doing so.

Online networking works because top talent shares two unique attributes:

They like to hang out with their peers and
They like to strut their stuff.

Yes, you can put those attributes to work for you at association, trade organization, alumni and certain affinity group sites. Networking at such locations can and does yield great prospects. But, using them means that you are competing with other recruiters who are also networking online. Bringing your networking “in-house,” on the other hand, enables you to acquire its benefits privately and brands your organization as one that uniquely walks the talk when it comes to supporting top talent.

Reprinted with permission from WEDDLE’s Newsletter (www.weddles.com)
Copyright 2004
All rights reserved.

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What’s New from the Membership Committee…

2004 Membership Drive

Remember all the reasons you joined HRACI? The ability to network with fellow HR professionals, conference/seminars, exciting monthly programs, newsletters with industry articles, job postings database, certification preparation, and recertification opportunities are just a few of the great reasons to be a member of HRACI. Why keep this a secret? Let’s spread the word so others too can enjoy these benefits!! Our Membership Drive is from May 1st to July 15th. Invite a friend or colleague to join and they will receive a $20 gift voucher that they can use to pay for one of their meetings in the first three months of membership!!

New Member Referral Program

Reward yourself too!! For every 4 referrals you make for membership in the HRACI in a rolling 12 month period, you are eligible for a $20 Simon mall gift card. Who doesn’t like free money? Anyone can conveniently apply for membership by completing the Membership Application on the chapter website. See www.hraci.org for additional information. Make sure the new member lists you as the one who referred them! The program begins May 1, 2004 but continues throughout the year into 2005 with no stated end date. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your referral engines!

SHRM Member Madness

SHRM is the nation’s largest organization dedicated to human resource management and is committed to both advancing the HR profession and serving the HR professional. SHRM provides a wide range of services and products designed to meet the needs of more than 170,000 professional and student members and the entire human resource profession. To kick off the ‘Member Madness” program SHRM is offering a reduced rate of $145 for HRACI members who become new SHRM members. That’s only $145 for 12 months of great information and resources! For more information or to join now, visit the website at www.shrm.org/membermadness/splash/intro.htm or talk to one of our HRACI Membership Committee members about the benefits of membership in SHRM.

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Interesting Website

Submitted by Greg Medcalf

Indiana Worker’s Compensation Institute, Inc.
www.iwci.org
This is a web link to a great active association to help you learn how to better manage injuries, costs, etc. They meet monthly on the 1st Thursday of each month In attendance are other Human Resource professionals, physicians, nurse case managers, and many others from the workers compensation industry.

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Welcome New Members

Karen Smithers

Sallie Vicino

Wendy Hill

Cynthia Gambino

Reid Presnell

Ginger Rice

LIsa Arbuckle

Melinda English

Martin Lang

Amy Housel

Roxanna Johnson

Sue McMillen

Sherri Dorsey

Lynn Russell

Gillian Lyngh

Twana L. Burton

Lori Winkler

Michelle Hammett

Denise McCleese

Angie Niederhauser

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