Where HR Beginner Sticks his Nose.

Time to share some of my most frequently used tools used in my continual professional development.
There are many more sources I have tried and keep trying and so should you.

I will indeed elaborate on all of the sources below in later posts, but firstly let's put them into nice list.


RSS feeds

Generally speaking the most frequently used tool to keep me up to date with all News, Websites and Blog posts updates as well as all job vacancies out there coming from online recruiters. If you haven't tried it yet put it on top of your list to make your development more efficient. I use Google Reader.I will share all my sources of feeds sometimes soon in the post about RSS feeds. Stay tuned and subscribe to my blog if you want to safe time researching it yourself.


The Economist,

I use audio edition, in my car while driving. Every Friday new weekly updates on current issues around the world. Excellently written by some excellent journalists.


Forums

CIPD Communities, HR Space etc. Reading it gives me a good idea what are the most current concerns and problems of HR professionals. Participating in discussions I practice my HR terminus technicus while getting some feedbacks on my critical HR thinking. An excellent way of developing the writing and thinking as a HR professional.

Networking

Blogs, Twitter, Linkedin are the must to keep me in touch with most influential people out there. When I have started to use twitter I was amazed by the amount of people willing to help and cooperate.

Academic Journals

Excellent for research. While Wikipedia is great to get a quick look on something quote it very sparingly. Academic journals hold some empirically supported materials where there is less guessing and more facts available. Try your local University library. There are some online libraries offering great selection of HR journals but the subscriptions are very expensive.

Final word

Don’t punish yourself for not being able to stick your nose in all of them at once. Make your own routine and make sure you stick your nose in each of the sources every now and then (ideally once a week). This will keep you moving and growing as a HR professional.