HR: Want A Promotion: Embrace Your Tim Sackett

I have always advised my team members to take control of their careers by speaking up.  Here is a good example of why it is important:

#timsackettday that is why.

My pal Tim Sackett… my partner in crime at Fistful of Talent and The CYA Report Podcast has the formula down for being noticed.  He is great at promoting himself: He is a prolific content generator (www.timsackett.com and www.fistfuloftalent.com), he makes the national HR conference circuit as a featured speaker, and he is great with eye-catching blog post titles (ie Hire More Beautiful People, I clicked that one for sure).  Oh, and he is really nice.  And he is a great HR pro.  I’m glad he is my friend.

So recently he wrote a post called I Hate Sumser’s Top 25 Lists on his blog.  It also ran on Fistful of Talent’s sight as well.  Tim was referencing John Sumser’s, HR Examiner, Top 25 influencers list for Digital Recruiting .  Yes, the same list I actually made. Tim, despite his influence, popularity and HR smarts was not ranked on this list.  See, the HR Examiner actually uses a HR marketing firm to run the search.  This list was not generated by popularity or subjective judges, but through some type of statistical algorithm and keyword searches.  Frankly speaking, and John Sumser would agree, if HR bloggers were polled subjectively, Tim Sackett would most definitely have made the list.

Now I must say there really were a few people on the list that deserved to be on there.  Aka moi, Kris Dunn, Matt Charney, even Steve Boese (despite Sackett’s objection). So it was not all that bad.  And since this way my first shout out…I’ll take it!

OK, THE MEAT OF THIS POST:

Tim openly wrote a post about his hate of this list and others like it.  He took on a top HR knowledge leader (Mr. Sumser), and penned a nice rant about the fallacies of any list. He had a blog post title with the word HATE in it and got a massive response.  OK mostly by haters, but a response.

THE RESULT:

The HR Examiner actually wrote an individual post all about Tim Sackett, stating he was indeed a huge HR influencer.  It was glowing. Tim got focused praise on one of the best HR blogs out there.  AND then HR blog gurus Laurie Ruettimann (@lruettimann) and Matt Stollack (@akaBruno) marketed this on twitter as #timsackettday.  Holy crap.

So HR pros, leaders, managers.  There are lessons to be learned.  Do not expect for anyone to magically get turned on to your greatness through telepathy.  Do not expect for your boss (on their own) to take the time to figure out how much you rock.  Do not expect for people to bow down to your fabulousness just because you work your ass off.

PROMOTE YOURSELF.  Make people aware of your contribution.  If you want to be part of a strategy team, simply ask to be on it.  If you want a raise, make a case and ask for it.

Of course now that I have Tim Sackett’s name in this post it will knock me off the list next time.  That bastard. 

oh… and take it easy on Dean Decosta…