Week of Association Learning

Two days of SHRM conference (http://www.gscshrm.org/Conference/index.htm)
And one day of NJSA (http://www.njsa.com) is how I spent this last week. The cool part of these three days is that attendance at these meetings is very much focused on the future. And although the SHRM members are very concerned with skill shortages and the aging of the work force the NJSA group sees this as a wonderful opportunity to increase business.
I had the honor of presenting a breakout session to the SHRM (http://www.shrm.org)
Group. My topic was the “Advantages of Partnership compare to Vendor Relationships with your Staffing Firm) the good news is that the few that attended this 7 AM session gave co-presenter, Bonnie O’Brien and myself very positive feedback. The bad news that I wish attendance was greater in numbers. But in all my years of doing presentations at conferences I have never had the honor of a 7AM start time. This is one ambitious group of learners.
The sessions that I attended as a participant gave me great insight into the pluses and minus of the job boards. Special thanks to Tony Lee from the Wall Street Journal for another thought provoking look at the online job communities.
I also had the honor of facilitating the all day NJSA’s (http://www.njsa.com) annual planning conference. This organization has accomplished so much this past year and as a member I can’t praise the leadership enough for all the work they have done. However, the one theme that became evident to me was that this association needs a larger presents in the job-seeker and hiring authorities communities. Although well known within the staffing community they have a tremendous challenge to get their brand outside of the staffing community. I know their current leadership and talented board members both old and new will make headway into these challenges.
As for the job market, we at Berman Larson Kane (https://www.jobsbl.com) continue to see a steady stream of new search assignments. And we remain confident that this demand will help all job-seekers have a wonderful holiday season.