The Carnival of HR has made it's way to Central Minnesota and baby it's cold outside! The only way to thrive in the Minnesota winter is to get out of the house and embrace the chill. Before you walk out into the windchill, you must be prepared. So, we kickoff this edition of the Carnival of HR with, well, HR and my favorite winter accessory/necessity, hand warmers!

HR Hand warmers: Get Them While They're Hot!

Michael VanDervort, Human Race Horses Blog, kicks off the carnival as he shares his thoughts on the fact that we tend to over think terminations these days in Terminate Your Fear!

To SHRM or not to SHRM? Ben Eubanks, Upstart HR, was really looking forward to SHRM 2010 but when he found out it was going to be across the US, his excitement waned, "I can’t make that trip." Is your travel budget cramping your HR style too?

Mariana Villa da Costa, a regular contributor to the International HR Forum Blog, covers International Employment Law Quick Facts: Brazil, the basics about how employment law operates in Brazil.

In her post, Compassionate HR: What's Your Company Doing to Improve the Community? Margo Rose, HR Margo, highlights amazing community volunteer projects from around the world.

5 loads of HR bollocks is a light hearted review of some of the big myths and moans in HR. It's not in-depth analysis or great theoretical thinking, just a light, irreverent and funny post from My Hell is Other People.

Kelly Mitton. tHRyving, knows that Gen Y has much to offer the modern-day profession of HR and she shows you how in her post, 8 Ways Gen Y Can Impact HR.

The HRStore posts an answer to a query from a reader on whether or not they should hire external interviewers as part the staffing plans at a start-up. What would you do?

Paul Smith, Welcome to the Occupation, presents Fixing A Hole, a commentary on HR's responsibility for representing the gay population and where a company can start to make it better for the LGBT community

Chris Young, Maximize Possibility, discusses Non Strategic HR and the Destruction of Value. Some HR departments are strategic while others are not. Strategic HR departments use pre-employment personality profile screening tools. Non-strategic HR departments do not.

Handwarmers will help you ease into that first step out the door but once you are outside (think temps in the single digits), you have to keep moving to stay warm just like you have to stay on your toes to keep up with the pace of change in the world of social media.

Social Media Snowshoe

Overwhelmed by all that is social media? Trish McFarlane, HR Ringleader, shares tips on How to Simplify your Social Media Life. How does she do it? Simple, she schedules time and uses some simple tools to help organize her online experience.

Mike Krupa, Info Box, helps you to find precious moments that could be used for social media that might otherwise be wasted time in How to Steal Time For Social Media. Yes, he steals time. And it works too!

What is all this Social Media Business? I’m in HR! asks Benifys HR Solutions. Social media has fundamentally changed, and is still changing, the way that we work from Fortune 500 organizations hiring people to blog or ‘tweet’ for them, to personal brand management and collaboration.

Steve Boese, Steve Boese's HR Technology, alerts you that your Candidates are Talking and interacting in social networks discussing your company and even individuals in the hiring process. Organizations have to be aware, vigilant, and ideally engaging in these environments to both support candidates, and manage the employer brand.

Gautam Ghosh, Guantam on Organizations 2.0, is Thinking About Social Employee Relationship Management and suggests the steps that HR needs to follow to leverage the energy employees are spending on Social Networks, following the principles of Social CRM.

Michael Long, The Red Recruiter, notes although it seem key metrics in recruiting have remained fairly consistent, the tools have and will continue to change quickly. In his post, Social Media Recruiting and The Bottom Line, he asks questions for you to ponder.

Everything looks the same covered in snow and it's easy to get off the beaten path and turned around. When this happens, we look to leaders for direction. What is the state of leadership in your organization? What is the state of your own personal leadership?

Leadership Luge

As a leader, it’s easy to get isolated from the realities of the workplace. Don't let this happen to you. Dan McCarthy, Great Leadership, shows you how to be an Undercover Leader and offers you 10 ways to make sure you don't get isolated as a leader.

John Hunter, Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog, wonders, Undercover Boss – Will They Really Change? Managers going to where the work is actual done is an important lean manufacturing concept but unless management systems are in place to systemically learn and improve, it is more like a site-seeing trip than a management tool.

Becoming a Great Leader is Up to You says Wally Bock, Three Star Leadership. If you want to become a great leader, you have to take responsibility for your own development. He offers some tools you can use.

Jennifer V. Miller, The People Equation, discusses a troubling trend in her post, Employees Can't Get No Satisfaction and goes on to explore “Managerial Quality,” one of four employee engagement drivers identified by the non profit group, The Conference Board.

Mary Jo Asmus, Aspire, asks What Workplace Relationship Goals Have You Made? As a leader you are the role model. Set some goals for your relationships at work that will assure they are healthy and strong, and watch others follow your lead to help create a great place to work.

No More Stars? Do teams perform better without stars? If you think you have a star problem, you may have a management problem says Laura Schroeder, Working Girl.

In A Community of Thinkers, Mark Levison, InfoQ, shares his thoughts. "Less leaders, more leadership" resonated with me. What resonates with you?

When it Comes to Leadership Companies are in a World of Hurt says Michael D. Haberman, SPHR, Omega HR Solutions. Unfortunately many companies have the approach that once we give someone a title they are automatically imbued with all the supervisor, managerial and leadership skills we would want.

Sometimes being lost is ok, especially on a freshly groomed trail with a bright sun overhead, if only for a little while. But it always comes time to head home and get back to business. For some, getting back to business means growing their business, developing employee skills, honing their own skills or finding a job.

Performance Enhacing . . . Posts

What you see is what you get . . . or is it? April Dowling, Psuedo HR, challenges you to see if you can see what's right in front you in her post, Perception is Reality.

For Career Development, Get Involved with Mentoring. If you want to make a mentoring relationship work, you need to be in the driver's seat and define what you want from the relationship. Dr.Lois Zachary spoke with Melissa Prusher at The Devon Group blog and offers some practical advice about making mentoring work for you.

Are you wondering Is Engagement So Last Year? Well, so is Cathy Missildine-Martin, SPHR, Profitability Through Human Capital. She discusses engagement and wonders, is it still worth focusing on, given our new normal?

In The Five Domains of High Performance, Kevin Oakes, i4cp, talks about the five human capital domains most correlated with high-performance organizations, based on a recent study we conducted. The five domains are strategy, leadership, talent, culture and market.

Career Seekers Cross Country Ski

Rachel Salley, SPHR, Career Anarchist, talks about what career seekers need to do in order to better position themselves in the job market via conceptualizing their Value Added Proposition.

Shennee Rutt, Deeply Rutted, shares learning and tips in Job Search 101. Tip number 1? Dazzle them from the start!

Laurie Ruettimann, Punk Rock HR, answers a question on Career Transitions from a reader who is working on overcoming self-doubt and anxiety. You need to conquer your personal fears to give yourself more opportunities. This applies to life and to your career.

Susan Heathfield, Guide to Human Resources, provides questions you can ask yourself and a place you can share your thoughts if you wonder, When Is Leaving HR the Answer? Sometimes leaving HR is the right answer for you.

Everyone knows how awful applying for jobs is, but few think about how hard the hiring process can be for employers. Here's some tips on Omaha.net from Kathleen Nicolini in The Other Side of Recruitment for applicants and human resources recruiters to increase equity, reduce stress, and generally ease the hiring challenge.

Sometimes, it just comes down to the numbers.

Counting Medals

It's in the numbers. right? Well, maybe not says Lance Haun, Rehaul, in The Errant Pursuit of Quantification. The search for quantification is boring and missing the mark. Numbers have severe limitations and give a false sense of security in judgment. Click over to read why.

If you're wondering why half of every headcount report or total compensation planning meeting, really any HR discussion, is spent getting clear on the underlying concepts and terminology, look no further for an explanation and action plan than Naomi Bloom's post The Tower of Babel in HRM: Where Is Our Domain Object Model?

Can Optimism be Taught? Boris Snitkovskiy from Infohrm writes about metrics for measuring employee “optimism,” an increasingly important attribute in light of current events.

Passing the Torch

I'd like to thank all of the contributors for their submissions and you for reading along. All good things must end so with that, we wrap up this edition of the Carnival HR as I pass the torch for the January 27 Carnival of HR for Haiti to our host Mike VanDervort at Human Race Horses blog.

Blog