That sentiment comes from Dave McClure, venture capitalist and founding partner at 500 Startups, an Internet start-up seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, Calif. He was part of a panel discussion on recruiting at the War for Talent event this week, in San Francisco.

For me, that phrase epitomizes how company brands are built and maintained, and how reciprocal the ebb and flow of concept to founding team to scaling a company truly are. What’s interesting is that most new jobs are created by start-ups, but most of the employed work for larger companies. So if a startup makes it and grows, they become a multifaceted brand. Facebook is just one exciting example: They’re about to go public, but just look at LinkedIn, as well as many others.

At whatever point in the growth stage of a company, each person added to the team, whether full-time, part-time or contract, incrementally changes the persona of the company, the internal and external brands, which are what make the company a multifaceted brand. The goal is to encourage hopefully happy folks’ individual brands to shine through and share the larger brand love — which in turn drives further visibility and growth.

Hence, we have McClure’s “attract quickly, hire slowly” formula. Even if we applied that maxim primarily to start-ups, I’d argue that successful larger companies apply it, as well. Whether you believe hiring for cultural fit is a reality or not — and I bet many of you believe it is — the great diverse yet loosely unified collective is what makes the brand shine inside and out.

And a really big marketing and ad budget, too — at least to shine outward, because management, marketing and recruiting still own the “expression” of the unified external brand. The figurative “half-life” of that depends on how unified the internal brand is. It is important to note, however, that more than ever — before that internal brand solidifies — many on the company team are loyal to the work, not necessarily the brand. Keeping your teams excited about the work helps productivity go up; revenue increases, and the brand equity increases, too.

And then you can have a bigger marketing and ad budget, as well as the organic brand equity, to attract new customers (employees and buyers) quickly, create more exciting work quickly, and let the brand simmer to a slow boil.

(Cross-posted on TalentCulture and inspired by #TChat)

To recruit and retain women. A measly one percent. That’s it.

When 1,226 employers were asked what their primary reasons were for developing workplace flexibility, caregiving leaves and dependent care initiatives, recruiting and retaining women was last on the list. Dead last.

Granted, retaining employees in general came in at 37 percent, followed by helping employees manage work and family life better at 16 percent, and third was improving morale at 12 percent (neck and neck with “mandated by law” at 12 percent, of course).

This being all part of the 2012 National Study of Employers, designed and conducted by the Families and Work Institute (FWI) and released jointly by FWI and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). I had the opportunity to attend a press briefing about their latest invaluable study at last week’s SHRM Talent Management and Staffing Conference in Washington, D.C.

The new FWI and SHRM study, which was first conducted in 1998, shows significant changes for U.S. Workers since end of recession. According to the FWI and SHRM, the National Study of Employers is the most comprehensive and far-reaching study of practices, policies, programs and benefits provided by U.S. employers to address changing flexibility needs of today’s workforce.

The study targeted employers with 50 or more employees, 75 percent that are for-profit and 25 percent that are non-profit. They had a huge response rate of 44 percent. The good news is that “flexibility” remains on a steady track to the new normal since 2009, including changing start and quitting times for work, but opportunities to take extended leaves from work have declined.

You can read other highlights from the study from the press release or directly from the study itself available for download.

But I want to get back to the one percent from above, because I have two little girls who are almost two and four, who just may grow up to be captains of industry someday. Recently I wrote about women working in technology and how low the numbers were, even today. According to a recent study by the Anita Borg Institute, an organization dedicated to increasing the role of women in technology, there needs to be a culture shift inside companies today. They need to recruit from bigger candidate pools and advertise positions more neutrally, removing stereotypes and culture references that tell “diverse” candidates to stay away. When hiring, make sure that at least one woman is in the running for every tech job as well as being a part of the recruiting and hiring management teams.

As well as part of the team who’s developing workplace flexibility.

Also, let’s not forget that women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools (for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same). More and more women are entering (and reentering) the workforce in record numbers since post WWII, and retaining more jobs than men in this never-ending economic ice age we’re in (I don’t care how hot markets are like Silicon Valley).

And when you see enlightening events like the 2012 Technovation Challenge where 11 teams of high school girls unveiled their mobile apps that were totally new-school, stunningly savvy and digitized to the max, it gives me hope that employers will continue to provide and increase flexibility for women (and men) alike when it comes to workplace flexibility, caregiving leaves and dependent care initiatives.

I read another article recently titled Why The World Needs A More Feminine Version Of Success and this relevant quote really stood out to me:

“The female ‘counter’ need is community and collaboration [to the status quo of business today], driven by a desire to protect vulnerable children who are only safe when the entire community is caring for them. A shift to a more balanced design basis that embodies feminine principles would mean moving from dominance to harmony, from exclusivity to inclusivity, and from individual success to community success.”

Right on. Women will continue to give birth and start families. Gay men and women will increase their adoption of children and/or have surrogate children and start families (straight couples too, I know). Unfortunately, fathers are still getting the short end of the stick when it comes to childcare and paternity care according to this year’s National Study of Employers. Even if they get time, they may not get paid. The world of work still assumes the women will take care of the children and the men will take care of business. Crazy, I know.

I’ll bet you though that by the time my daughters enter the workforce, there will be many more female captains of industry, and then it will be interesting to see what the National Study of Employers reveals about workplace flexibility.

It’s like crossing a fast-moving river in a boat without a motor or a paddle, while you slowly sink. At least that’s what it feels like when you have yet another anemic month of job growth — only 115,000 jobs in April (which may get revised upward like other months, but still). But economists keep telling us our heads will remain above water and bob away for now, even though more folks are dropping out of the job market all together.

Last week when I attended some of the SHRM Talent Management and Staffing Conference (which I’ll write about this week), and then attended and participated in all of the HRO Today Forum, and every time I caught a glimpse of the Potomac outside of the Gaylord Conference Center, I imagined millions still bobbing away.

For now.

Two things galvanized me at the HRO Today Forum, though — first was the first opening keynote panel, Where do Jobs Come From: The Birds & Bees of Labor Flows & Job Creation. The brilliant panel included:

• Brink Lindsey, Senior Scholar in Research and Policy from The Kauffman Foundation
• Scott Case, CEO of Startup America Partnership
• John Haltiwanger, Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland

The panel was moderated by Sharon Taylor, Senior Vice President, Corporate Human Resources at Prudential. The discussion centered around the question of where do jobs come from?

I know, right? Where do they come from? Here are two facts:

1. Most firms are small.
2. Most workers work at large firms.

According the panel, young businesses (startups) contributed to more job creation than other businesses from 2003 to 2007. When you compare the private sector job growth to startup job growth, the private sector created 2.5 million net new jobs, while startups created over 3 million.

Another fact (of irony): young businesses create the longer-lasting sets of new jobs, but most young businesses fail.

But here’s the rub: today’s startups aren’t creating the same level of new job growth than in the past; there’s a downward trend. That’s not good news at all (and I’m seeing more downcast heads bobbing away in the water), because without startups, there wouldn’t be any net job creation. The downward trend is quite worrisome, especially since only 78% of college grads are working, but 46% of high school dropouts are not. We’ve got a lot of work to do; there’s too many people in the water.

Job growth happens where people live and migrate to, and thankfully based on what I’ve seen and read recently, there’s hope in that category across the board, the nation, the world — startups abound. Scott Case from Startup America concurs. Listening to him at the end of the panel session refreshed and revitalized the audience, and brought some chuckles as well when he said:

“It’s people making this sh$t happen.” And the average age of a startup founder is 40, not 22. These are learned folk ready to rock, of both genders, and the winners of the iTalent Competition whole-heartedly agree as you’ll see below.

The second thing that galvanized was just that — the iTalent Competition at the HRO Today Forum in cooperation with the Startup America Partnership and sponsored by Oracle. Five very diverse and exciting startups (the people making this sh$t happen), selected from nearly 30 entries, each giving a 10-minute pitch to a judging panel of HR and recruiting practitoners, analysts and technology investors. I helped organize and moderated this session, which was very exciting considering what each startup was up to.

The startups included:

• Kapta Systems, Inc.
• JobEscrow, Inc.
• MyNextGig.com 
• The Good Jobs™ 
• Degreed

I’m not going to review or promote any of these firms in this article, since I’m now working with one of them and may work with others, but I will say I wish them all the best of luck, especially the winner.

And after all the judges’ ratings were tabulated for each presentation, the resounding winner was The Good Jobs, co-founded by two amazing women, Anne Grace Nimke and Betsy Rowbottom, both very passionate about what they’re doing.

For that matter, all of the founders from each startup are passionate about what they’re doing, and that passion get will hopefully get translated into productive and profitable firms. Not all of them will make it, but again, this is where there jobs are going to come from — from those who do.

In fact, the most productive and profitable firms are the fastest growing businesses and where the long tail of jobs come from. They’re the ones who will get us across the river, sinking boats intact and beached safely.

At least, that’s the way it felt as I walked through Cruzioworks from my co-working office to the restroom and past the packed day-long classroom on covering HTML5. Or maybe it was jQuery. Or C#. Or PHP. Or Ruby. The times I went past the classroom when they were all on break I heard the buzz of “open source” and “cool new idea” and “the next big thing.” This is all happening in the heart of Santa Cruz, the laid back little surfing community in the backyard of traditional Silicon Valley. Remember hearing “Silicon Beach” back in the dot-com day? That tide pulled back and supposedly never returned. Not true. I live and breathe it almost every day.

Now according to one of my favorite tech columnists at  the San Jose Mercury News, Chris O’Brien (San Jose once being the heart of innovation):

After years of drawing a sharp circle that included Santa Clara County as well as southern San Mateo and Alameda counties, this newspaper is expanding the geographic boundaries that it considers to be part of Silicon Valley to include the five core Bay Area counties: Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa. This is recognition, perhaps overdue, that the kinds of entrepreneurial companies and industries once tightly clustered in the South Bay can now be found throughout the region.

Just a smidge over an hour-and-a-half drive time (as long as it’s moving), the new heart of SV innovation is San Francisco. In fact, in 2011 companies in San Francisco raised $2.87 billion in venture capital, and San Francisco has led the world in venture capital since at least 2009. But I’d still argue that Silicon Valley proper should extend as far south as Santa Cruz and Monterey, and it will someday.

Startups abound across many industries, and if the upcoming HRO Today Forum iTalent Competition and the Recruiting Innovation Summit Startup Competition are any indication of how hot the HR and recruiting technology spaces are getting, then the world’s going to catch fire.

We can only hope.

Sure there is intense competition for the right combination of folks, but let’s stop calling it the war for talent. Really. Again, this is a mobilization of innovation and motivated minds — the leaders, the builders, the doers, all the combined skills that make up rocket soup and of course the money that make it all happen. These are the job creators, whether they be full-time, part-time or freelance (and just check out how tech is pulling up the Bay Area).

Innovation is the heart of job creation. Let’s make it happen.

(Cross-posted on TalentCulture and inspired by #TChat)

“We are the CIT’s so pity us, the kids are brats the food it hideous…” –Meatballs

Wow, it’s summer camp time already, but don’t pity us. It’s time to head to lovely Vancouver, British Columba, on May 16 for SocialHRCamp, where the kids aren’t brats and the food isn’t hideous.

The kids are pretty cool actually.

SocialHRCamp is for the human resources industry—to start truly leveraging and integrating social media within the workplace, to create and drive unparalleled business value. (There will be seven in all this year.)

This is a true unconference — a highly customizable and flexible unconference — and attendees get to create their own learning path, be as engaged as they want to be and get as much out of “camp” as they want. Attendee self-service and ownership. Right on.

I’m excited to facilitate one of many “moving and schooling” sessions in Vancouver, all of which you can review here.

My session is titled Business Blogging: Moving, Schooling and Finding Your Voice.

It’s simple enough: I want to be moved and schooled by what I read. A book, a short story, an article, an essay, a blog post, a Facebook update or a Tweet — all of writing is good story — the push and the pull — the laugh and the tear. Business blogging should also be good story, and anyone can write a blog post, right?

Yes, anyone can — although not everyone can move and school. It comes down to the writer and the voice, and it is highly subjective. Good writing and voice come with time, but relevancy will always be key for your readers/audience/industry/marketplace.

Good story is the human experience, but it’s not so simple to tell– or, more appropriately, retell. Sixteen years ago an editor told me that, “You haven’t quite found your voice yet; you haven’t fallen through the center of the earth and back again. It takes experience and practice to find your inner voice, and not everyone gets there.”

I’ve learned a lot since; I write a lot for business and pleasure. I write about the greater HR B2B marketplace, marketing, career management and the world of work, and I write about fatherhood, personal leadership and domestic violence prevention.

Ack. Still falling here though, always falling, so come to camp and help move and school me — that’s again what the unconference is all about.

There’s still time to attend SocialHRCamp Vancouver on May 16, so get your $99 tickets today!

Or, something happens outside. Maybe it’s a major epiphany or a series of interconnected events that brought with them sunlight, water and warm earth, cracking the seed to spring life forth.

Whatever the idea is, whatever problem it addresses, whatever new way to do something it brings, once it’s born it must fight like hell to stay alive. And the first steps in staying alive are capital and/or early beta customers (assuming we’re talking about software, which I am). I’ve out and about in the Bay Area a lot lately and there are startups sprouting up from Santa Cruz to Sausalito, but San Francisco is currently the germinating capital.

According to a recent San Jose Mercury News article, “In 2011, companies in San Francisco raised $2.87 billion in venture capital, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ MoneyTree report. Coming in a distant second in the Bay Area was much smaller Palo Alto with $1.3 billion. San Jose, a larger city, pulled in $784 million — a big improvement, by the way, for a city that has traditionally struggled to attract startups. Only New York City, where startups raised $2.03 billion in 2011, comes even close. According to PwC, San Francisco has led the world in venture capital since at least 2009.”

But a step was skipped, because unless this idea sprouts from someone who knows how to design and code (again assuming we’re talking about a software startup, which more than likely we are these days), employees need to be sourced, lured and “hired” — maybe with stock options and sweat equity or some overly competitive salary in a currently hyper-competitive market.

Maybe a chief technology officer (CTO) is hired, or a lead developer, and from there it’s a mix of brain, braun, gut and experience to identify and assess who to hire next. Maybe assessments and other screening tests are using prior to making offers — “Can you code your way out of a paper bag? Right on. You’re hired.” Sure it’s more serious than that, more a combination of science and art, but no matter how it’s accomplished, identifying the skills and competencies needed to grow the new business venture is critical. And not just the skills, the entire living, breathing personality package the skills are wrapped in.

Hire them, and then continues the fighting like hell to stay alive and relevant, to stay in business, even though the race from earth to sun has only just begun. Allowing the employees to help till the business soil, and their own career development, to make what the business is all about their own, is smart organic fertilization. Take Facebook, where every new programmer hire “begins the six-week journey of a new employee class in Facebook’s ‘Bootcamp,’ an experience shared by every engineering hire, whether they are a grizzled Silicon Valley veteran or a fresh-faced computer science grad. Since 2008, hundreds of Facebook’s engineers have passed through Bootcamp, which may lack the physical tests of military basic training but does provide the same kind of shared experience and cultural indoctrination into the world’s largest social network.”

Scaling from 10 to 10,000 employees is no easy trick, but identifying early on the talent needs that will help pollenate growth must be done. Then, documenting weekly/monthly continuous feedback/performance/career path loops, while regularly realigning with the talent needs, becomes even more important to survival. Weeds abound and will choke out any and all fledging growth, but once a business knows what to measure and why, and who they’re hiring and why, and who they’re developing and why, you just might be able to see their talent vitals future, the very life source of business.

Of course it helps that you have a product the marketplace wants and needs, but still.

(Cross-posted on TalentCulture and inspired by #TChat)

I’m really excited about this year’s HRO Today Forum. This is the second year I’ve been involved with this event, and the entire program this year (April 30-May 2) will be led by senior level HR practitioners, analysts and government policy makers providing attendees with the insight needed to turn HR departments into profit centers.

That’s right — I wrote “turn HR departments into profit centers” and “government policy makers” in the same sentence. Crazy, right?

Crazy cool, that is. Okay, maybe “cool” isn’t the right word (or left — get it?), but check out some of the speakers:

• Tom Daschle, Former Senate Majority Leader
• Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier, Assistant Secretary Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education
• Scott Case, CEO, Startup America Partnership
• James H Quigley, CEO, Emeritus of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited and Senior Partner, Deloitte LLP

And those are only four of the speakers. There’s still time to register and here are some of the sessions you can experience:

• Driving Sustainable Value for your Contingent Workforce: A Panel of Business Leaders Share Key Strategies for Achieving Long Term ROI
• From Choosing to Excusing and Back: Successfully Transitioning Your RPO Partner
• Managing the Blended Workforce: Are RPO and MSP Poised to Converge?
• Global Strategies for Workforce Administration, and Payroll Management
• HR Transformation: Is it driving business performance?
• Check out the complete agenda for more information.

Like last year’s iTalent Competition, one of the highlights for me will once again be this year’s iTalent Competition. Nearly 30 companies submitted entries to participate and the top 10 were selected based on their HR, recruiting and talent management technology innovations as well as how they are creating job growth themselves while helping businesses recruit, hire and develop employees.

The HRO Today Forum announced today the top five finalists that will compete for top honors on May 2 in the iTalent Competition, sponsored by Oracle in cooperation with StartUp America. The five HR technology finalists include:

• Kapta Systems, Inc. — Check out their video – ”We are really excited about joining the iTalent Competition. We strongly believe in the power of technology to help America’s small companies get ahead and stay there.  This event is going to be a great forum to introduce the Kapta tools and show how we can help American companies grow and create jobs.” –Alex Raymond, Founder, Kapta Systems Inc.

• JobEscrow, Inc. — Check out their video — “The JobEscrow team is honored to unveil our new innovative HR technology platform at this year’s iTalent Competition. We are excited to pioneer the next evolution in recruiting and outplacement and can’t wait to show off our patent-pending services.” –Ken Winters, PHR, CEO and Co-Founder, JobEscrow, Inc.

• MyNextGig.com — Check out their video – ”We are thrilled that HRO Today has selected MyNextGig.com as one of the leaders of innovation in this space and we are grateful for the opportunity to show our vision of what the future of hiring looks like today. We’re young. We’re Innovative. We’re Fired Up. And We’re coming to win!” –Richard Linden, CEO, MyNextGig.com

• The Good Jobs™ — Check out their video – ”We are thrilled to be chosen as a finalist for this year’s iTalent Competition!  Recognition from the HRO Today Forum and Startup America Partnership is a vote of confidence for The Good Jobs™! It’s exciting to have the opportunity to unveil The Good Jobs™ to our friends and colleagues in the HR community.” –Anne Grace Nimke, Founder and CEO, The Good Jobs™

• Degreed — Check out their video – ”Degreed is grateful to HRO Today and Startup America for hosting the iTalent Contest and brining a spotlight to the innovation occurring in an effort to get America back to work. At Degreed, we couldn’t be more excited to part of this competition and effort to rally together in facilitating job growth and innovation.” –David Blake, Founder & CEO, Degreed

These finalists will give 10-minute pitches before the conference attendees and panel of HR technology experts, industry advisers, and investment analysts. I’m excited to be moderating the competition and each pitch will be “grilled” by the judging panel, and a winner will be chosen at the end of the session. Panelists include:

• Bill Filip, Former Managing Director and Partner, Baird Venture Partners
• Yvette Cameron, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research
• Madeline Laurano, Research Director, Talent Acquisition Solutions at Aberdeen Group
• Brent Skinner, President & Chief Executive Officer of STETrevisions
• Mike Schnoll, Senior Director, BPO Program, Oracle
• Susan Strayer, Head of Talent Strategy at Evviva Brands
• Cooper Mills, Managing Director at CHILDS Advisory Partners
• Meghan M. Biro, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of TalentCulture and #TChat
• Jessica Miller-Merrell, Chief Executive Officer at Xceptional HR
• Geoff Webb, Chief Executive Officer at Radical Events

The iTalent winner will receive a number of promotional benefits, including face-time with the judging panel including investors, one-on-one meetings with attending HR executives, a feature article in HRO Today magazine promoting the winning company and the innovative technology, and a free ad in an upcoming issue of HRO Today magazine.

Rounding out the top 10 HR technology entrants are Feathr, Ascendify, Work4 Labs, GetHired.com, and UpMo. The top 10 companies will all participate in the Big Idea iTalent Networking event later that same day on May 2, talking directly with HR officers about the challenges of today’s workforce, sustainable job growth and the technology innovations that can help spur growth.

There’s still time to register. We hope to see you there.

Based on the economic terms conspicuous consumption and conspicuous conservation, I’ll call the above example conspicuous consummation: the relatively recent phenomenon of engaging in online activities and sharing information that highlights the best professional (and personal) self in order to obtain or signal a high social status.

I’m certainly no economist by trade or training, but I do find the field fascinating, just as I find it fascinating how we show ourselves (hopefully) in the best light online, whether we’re in a job search or just keeping ourselves relevant and marketable.

I started thinking about this more and more after listening to a recent Freakonomics podcast titled Show and Yell. It highlighted a relatively recent phenomenon of engaging in activities that are environmentally friendly in order to obtain or signal a higher social status (for example, buying a Prius versus other hybrid models). This concept was developed and analyzed by a brother and sister team of economists, Steve Sexton and Alision Sexton.

In my ripped off, I mean highly leveraged world-of-work economic concept, conspicuous consummation can be a valiant personal branding effort to get noticed, but is it enough to truly be evaluated on when seeking varying levels of employment and/or business (for the consultants out there)? The obvious answer is no, which is why we have a myriad of screening tools to choose from as employers. Then throw in the interviewing, maybe a scenario-based exercise or two, reference checking, and a few other housekeeping-to-hire activities, and we’ve got ourselves a new employee (or not).

But what if there was a way to show your current employer or prospective employer actual real-time examples of you shining in action? No scenario-based acting models – actual footage of you kicking butt and taking names. We already use surveillance cameras in places of business for preventative measures like crime prevention (not to mention identification technologies that confirm our identities via fingerprints, retinas, breath, blood, DNA…whoa, Nelly!).

Agencies, vendors and companies record external and internal meetings with consent (usually audio but I’d bet more video today too). So why not record day-in-the-life highlights and accomplishments in video?

Crazy, I know. The sheer volume of video to screen and store, the management issues, the logistics and policing and all sorts of other legal nightmares to deal with is enough to make even Google and YouTube pass out. But then there were those who said e-mail and the Internet would grind business to a halt.

Video interviewing and screening has become more mainstream, both in live virtual and recorded formats. Heck, we virtually stream events online as well as babbling industry influencers and thought leaders quite regularly now (and I write that with fondness), much of which is being recorded on the other side anyway by the content consumers.

What I’m suggesting may get the EEOC’s, the ACLU’s and many other privacy advocates blood boiling, not to mention direct supervisors, executive management, IT and legal counsel, but c’mon, we (the people) have already changed the world of work with social and smart phones, complete with still and video cameras mind you.

Talent networks screened in real-time doing real work and making real bottom-line progress could be very cool. Integrate that into our current conspicuous consummation and we’ve got something pretty powerful we’ve never had before.

(Cross-posted at TalentCircles)

“I’m getting a really cool Breakfast Club vibe in here. Are you? Do any of you know what The Breakfast Club is?”

Most of the high school kids sitting with us in the circle nodded, some even smiled knowingly.

Right on, I thought.

Except the cast in this real-life version included two classes of well-behaved hip and sociable 9th and 10th graders, and a career panel made up of a very smart gay female DA wearing a man’s suit and tie, a very passionate straight male martial arts school owner dressed in relaxed sports attire, and me the marketing biz dev solopreneur social media guy dressed in Silicon Valley sports coat and jeans.

And it became very real very fast — we all spilled personally about our worlds of work and life, and the DA even cried when she talked about the murder cases she prosecutes.

At first it was pretty straight forward (although the DA would want me to say “direct forward”). We introduced ourselves and discussed what we do professionally.

I saw myself then as a 10th grader, the world of work and life before me…

“When I was your age, many moons ago, I wanted to be an architect and a writer. Fast forward through a lot of life — the crazies, college, careers, marriages and children — and here I am, an architect of sorts and a writer. Always a writer…”

The students then proceeded to ask us questions such as:

• What inspired you to do what you do now?
• What do you like most about your job? The least?
• When did you know what you really wanted to do when you grew up?

Half of each class frowned when the DA and I said how old we were (while on the other hand, the martial arts school owner is only 26, opening his business when he was 19 — dang).

Another student said, “Ahhh. I don’t want to grow up.”

I smiled. “Try not to fast forward. Enjoy the now and every moment you’re in it going forward. Learn to be comfortable in your own skin.”

Then I added, “But don’t be afraid to fail. Ever. Assess and learn from it and get your butt right back in the game.”

Each one of us on the career panel shared our own aspirations and realities, dreams and failures, and of course our triumphs and what we’re passionate about. As the students warmed to us, they felt more comfortable asking us more pointed questions, listening to every word we spoke, as we listened to every word they spoke.

“Thanks for keeping it real,” one male student said to us when we finished. Others nodded in agreement.

Right on, I thought.

What we participated in was a career panel put on by an amazing local organization called Your Future Is Our Business (where my wonderful wife has been working of late). YFIOB is a community-based 501(C) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to fostering business/education partnerships that benefit student. Their mission is to support young people in Santa Cruz County with making informed educational and career decisions.

A memorable experience indeed and I look forward to doing it again.

“Don’t you forget about me…”

Not in a million years, kids. Make us proud and keep it real.

(For those keeping score at home, I wrote this article while listening to The Breakfast Club soundtrack.)

[blink]

My plane landed in Sydney, Australia, at 6:30 a.m. last Tuesday, exactly 18 hours in the future from my present and where I spent the next five and a half days.

Half of that time was spent at a new conference called the Recruiters’ Hub Conference (RHUB) where I was invited to speak about marketing to HR and talent communities, while the other half spent exploring greater Sydney and the Blue Mountains. From the Three Sisters to Echo Point to Flat Rock to Featherdale Wildlife Park to Watson’s Bay to the Opera house to Circular Quay to the Sydney Harbor Bridge to Hyde Park — the scenes went from picture books to visceral experience for me.

I underestimated how transformative this trip would actually become for me, although I’m not sure we can ever estimate how transformative anything will be until we’re transformed. My professional and personal life were about to become further elevated and integrated than ever before, what Jason Seiden calls being Profersonal.

To be immersed with a people not too dissimilar from my own, except of course the accent and Australian and English expressions like “right” and “fair enough” and “crikey”.

To be around “brilliant” HR and recruitment professionals, agencies, tech suppliers and thought leaders alike who share the trends and challenges we do — the growing contingent workforce, the complexity of government regulations, aligning corporate recruiting with recruiting agencies, recruiting technology innovation and efficiencies, and all things social including recruiting, marketing and PR.

To be moved and schooled by others while finding my voice when presenting. To connect and become friends with others who’ve also become comfortable their own skin, and who each day grow to like it more and more.

Indeed.

My Blue Mountains tour guide Paul was overheard paying homage to the show Lost, hence the quote up top. (He really looked like the character Desmond.) He was just one of many amazing people and connections I made during my brief time travel.

The time travel lifeline remained intact, however. Seeing and talking with the Mama and the B-hive on Skype sustained me with love while away, as well as being able to check on my dad and mom.

The transformative crescendo came all at once my last evening in Sydney as I sat in the greatest of company, surrounded by locals and tourists eating and drinking and enjoying each other’s company at the Opera Bar as the lights of the harbor came on at dusk. Fireworks from an event at Hyde Park lit up behind us. Once the colors faded an unknown constellation shimmered in the early evening.

“Look, there’s the Southern Cross! You wanted to see it!”

In that moment, I remembered many things all at once: man-handling old ghosts while growing comfortable with my own skin, meeting my wife on the beach, Beatrice’s birth and Bryce’s birth, my dad surviving radiation treatments and my mom just surviving, and meeting new amazing friends.

I saw the other side, Brother; I saw the future.

And I can’t wait to do it all over again.

“When you see the Southern Cross

For the first time,

You understand now

Why you came this way.

‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from

Is so small.

But it’s as big as the promise

The promise of a comin’ day.”

–Crosby, Stills and Nash