New HR Skills: Learning By Doing

Author: Dave Crisp

22 Jun

Every HR professional is facing a bigger set of new learning challenges than ever before. How are we going to learn the new social networking technologies, among them Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Twitter, YouTube and Second Life and still have time to do the basic job. There is only one answer: try them yourself whenever Learning like drinking from a firehose? you have a few minutes. Do a bit at a time. Learn by doing.

I’ve always loved technology, so it’s easy for me to say. But none of it is completely transparent and easy. The new blog hasn’t been as easy to finish setting up as I’d hoped, but it’s been a chance to try engaging help via elance (a popular site for hiring virtual help, mostly in this case for techie challenges like web design. It’s only one of many, though that provide a mind-boggling array of services.

The technology is amazing, but the first time you try anything there’s a learning curve. Fortunately you can usually get advice from Google at any point along the way.

The real quesiton is going to be how many of these new initiatives you can juggle along with everything else. What’s the ROI for individuals trying this stuff? Are we going to drive ourselves crazy or can we anticipate there will be a limited number of sites and programs to learn and then we’ll feel “fully equipped?” Somehow that seems a bit unlikely just at this point. What’s your take?

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