My Three Favourite Highlights From 2015

Writing the final post of the year can sometimes seem like writing an awards acceptance speech! 2015 has been a busy year for me with some genuine ‘best ever’ moments, plenty of air miles clocked up, a new book published and more happy clients.

I thought I would share just three of my favourite moments this year, followed by some changes I have planned for 2016.

The Northern Lights were magical but driving a dog sled was amazing!

In March, I had the real pleasure of spending two days speaking and running workshops for Norway’s senior HR professionals at HR Norge in Oslo. My visit coincided with the heaviest snowfall of the winter, which was great apart from the fact it nearly stopped the next leg of my Norwegian trip in its tracks!
My wife, Sara, flew out to meet me after I had finished working in Oslo (albeit very late due to the snow), and the next day we flew up to Alta in the Arctic Circle, hoping to see the Northern Lights. Unsurprisingly, it was bitterly cold, but it was fantastic being that far north - especially as we got to experience our dream of seeing the magical Northern Lights (as you can see from the picture at the top of the post).
We had also booked a dog sledding trip through the artic woodland and along several miles of a frozen riverbed outside of Alta. I have to say it was the best experience of the year for us - from having to select and harness your own huskies - to driving them down the frozen river in the blue light of the arctic, and back again. It was just amazing and highly recommended.

Virtual reality (VR) can and will be used for recruiting

In September at TRULondon50, I had the opportunity to meet Stan Rolfe, the Resourcing Manager for Barminco, an Australian mining company. He had brought with him the his VR headset and the software they are using to recruit people to work many miles underground, in the mines. It genuinely blew my mind - not only because of how ‘real’ it felt, but also because of the potential VR could have in recruitment in the near future. I am now keenly awaiting a VR headset to be released for my XBoxOne to see how it will be when gaming!
In the picture below from London, I just have the VR headset and headphones on, but when they use it at Barminco - they make prospective candidates change into all the full mining gear, to make it even more lifelike!

A launch party for your own book is kind of surreal

For regular readers of this blog, you will know that May this year was the culmination of a project that started back in March 2014. It was the publication of my book, Social Media Recruitment. Since the commissioning of the book by publishers, Kogan Page in 2014, my focus for over a year was firmly on researching, writing the book and of course, marketing it. It was a lot of hard but very enjoyable work.
As you never know how many more books you will write, I decided to have a book launch party with many of the book contributors and good friends in attendance. If you know me, then you will understand that overt self-promotion and publicity is not necessarily a strength of mine, so a book launch party for me and my book did feel a little surreal!  However, it was brilliant and thank you all of you that came along and made the evening such a highlight for me.

As a footnote to 2015, I got a nice email from the publishers earlier this month telling me as it was selling so well, it was being translated into a number of different languages for 2016! 🙂

There were of course many more things I could add, but if I added more then I wouldn’t have a favourite three would I 🙂

So the 2016 changes……

I mentioned that next year will see some changes from my perspective, and I thought I would share a few of them. As an independent consultant, international speaker, author etc I have the pleasure of working with many different companies across many countries. These include a wide variety of projects across recruitment, social recruiting, training, writing content and recruitment content marketing. These are typically project sections, smaller projects or individual aspects of wider projects (strategy, training, social media etc).
While I really enjoy the variety, next year I plan to get involved in a bigger project(s), delivering across a full project lifecycle, not just a segment. What this looks like I am not sure just yet, but likely it will mean longer contracting or interim assignments, more hotel rooms and more miles travelled - I am not looking for a easy life! Feel free to contact me if you have something of interest.
Also next year, will see the formation of a JV with another consulting firm, based around (recruitment) project delivery, implementation and vendor focused project support . We have been talking about it for a while, and 2016 will see this come to market with some EU focused implementation projects for US HR/Recruiting tech vendors.

So there we have it for this year, I can’t believe it has gone so fast (again)!

Thank you for all the likes, shares and  RT’s of my blog posts this year, it is very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy the time off over the next few weeks - I know I will!

If you cant wait until next year and want to get hold of me sooner, just send me an email and let’s have a chat. And remember, if you like this post, don’t forget to subscribe to Sirona Says  blog to ensure you don’t miss the weekly posts. And if you haven’t got your copy yet, don’t forget to buy a copy of my new book.