At 3:00 P.M./2:00 P.M. Central, I'll be the featured Twitterati on #nextchat focusing on the transition into a career in HR.  The questions will be:

Q1. If you are currently practicing HR, would you encourage others to join the HR profession? Why?
Q2. Is a specific HR degree or certification necessary to get into HR? Does it depend on the specialty? Why?
Q3. What professions (Legal, Sales, PR, Marketing?) can most easily transition into HR and why?
Q4. What is the biggest obstacle to breaking into a career in HR and what are ways to get around it?
Q5. How can you get experience in HR when you can’t get a job in HR until you have experience?
Q6. Can building a personal brand on social media help someone more quickly break into the HR field? How?
Q7. Can attending a popular HR conference like SHRM Annual help you transition into a career in HR? How?

More details can be found here

Please join and share your thoughts.

I was perusing my alma mater's student newspaper when I came across this article:

"Re-posting on WikiLeaks could affect job prospects."

The reporter, Summer Ballentine, writes:

For some students, posting links to WikiLeaks on social networking sites might be another hurdle to landing a job in an already competitive job market.

WikiLeaks, an organization working to provide government and leaked information to the public via the Internet, released additional confidential government documents to numerous media organizations last week, and has since sparked a worldwide debate.

Students planning to find work or internships in the federal government after graduation were recommended not to post about or comment on WikiLeaks on social networking sites by college career advisers across the country — including at MSU.

Jaimie Hutchison, field career consultant for James Madison College, said an e-mail was sent Friday advising MSU students against posting statements on social networking websites about WikiLeaks.

However, the information in the e-mail is not based on any official James Madison College or MSU policies, she said.

Although the decision is up to students, they should be aware of possible implications of their actions, Hutchison said.

“I don’t know what the outcome of this will be — I just want students to have a heads up,” she said.

“The important thing for me as a career adviser is to make sure students have the information I do.”

The statement was influenced by a similar letter sent to some students at the University of California, Berkeley, Hutchison said.

A couple of thoughts:

1. The article gives opponents of social media yet another reason to strike fear into the hearts of those who use it. It once again signals that using social media can be an unwise proposition....be careful what you post or you won't get a job.

2. Are recruiters/HR managers really using postings of a political nature by candidates to influence their decisions? Are career advisers going overboard in expressing their concerns to students about such postings?

Today we have a special guest post from my beloved father, Gary Stollak. Dr. Stollak, a Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University from 1967 until 2009, has written many journal articles and is the author of several books on marriage and child rearing, including "What Happened Today; Stories for Parents and Children," and "Until We Are Six: Toward the Actualization of Our Children's Human Potential." He is fond of Stanley Kubrick movies, corned beef and pastrami sandwiches, and ice cream...sometimes even at the same time.

Most of us understand that it is necessary to receive many years of education and many hours of supervised practice (possibly, according to many, approximately 10,000 hours) for almost all careers demanding complex skills.

On October 19^th 2007, Mitt Romney, at that time a candidate for the Republican nomination for President, stated in a speech at a Values Voters Summit in Washington DC, that “Parenthood is the ultimate career for which all other careers exist.” For many commentators “Learning how to be parents is perhaps the most important task facing the human race.”

There is another, equally important, complex, and evolving “career” that demands great skills—hopefully accumulated before becoming a parent—being a committed friend, partner, and spouse.

Skills in adult-adult relationships and in parenting include, among many, being accessible; being empathic and accepting of the validity of the other’s needs, wishes, and desires; being cooperative in activities and in decision-making; and able to resolve, via negotiation and conflict-resolving skills, the inevitable conflicts of living together sharing time and space.

In these, as in many others careers, one needs to have an enduring commitment to learning motivated by passion. With practice and mentoring, there will be confidence in the knowledge and skills accumulated. Yet very few of us received any long-term formal and structured education, training, or mentoring in developing peer social skills and those relating to child caregiving.

Assuming we have acquired (and are continually increasing) knowledge that contributes to the acquisition of skills in intimate relationships and child caregiving, should we not have required K-12 education for both of these ultimate careers “for which all other careers exist”? And if we make such a commitment as a society, do we not have an obligation that educational systems have methods to assess knowledge and skills in these roles, along with the current focus in our nation on a student’s acquisition of knowledge and skills in reading and mathematics through the school years? Should there also be an equal government responsibility for such assessment, as we do for learning to drive a car or cut and shape hair, and for myriad number of other careers—including those in human resource management—demanding a diploma before licensing and before allowing practice in the career, before a couple can receive a license to marry? Should a government require prospective parents and parents of infants to participate in several year-long child caregiving education and mentoring programs that would facilitate the positive and optimal physical, psychological, and social development of their young children? The state could, at the very least, provide those participating parents a diploma…and maybe, someday, a license to parent!