Interactive Recruitment Manager at Norwich University, Karlyn Morissette might be a new comer to the flourishing higher ed blogosphere, but she has been blogging about other topics for a while. She shares ideas and opinions along with a few rants at “Interactive Recruiting.”
1) Why did you decide to blog about interactive recruiting in the first place? Can you tell us a bit more about your experience with blogging?
I started my blog primarily as a way to make mental notes for myself during the work day as I was preparing my presentation for eduWeb. I wasn’t sure if anyone would read it or not, but thought that if other professionals could pull something from it, then it certainly couldn’t hurt anything. Though it originally just started as a way for me to manage my ideas, I thought it was a different prospective than the higher ed community had seen, as so few schools out there have a position like mine. Additionally, most of the blogs you see are from vendors or consultants and while they can certainly offer valuable advise, I would rather hear from someone who is actually in the trenches executing ideas and hoped that my colleagues at other institutions would feel the same.
My experience with blogging actually started way back in 2000 with a DeadJournal blog that I created during my freshman year in college (though at that time, the term “blog” hadn’t become mainstream yet). I’ve continued blogging about various subjects on and off since then, most recently running one of the most-read political blogs on MySpace. In the end it was this blogging that prompted me to start my interactive recruiting blog: I had so many great conversations with people who agreed and disagreed with me in my political blog and also met some of the smartest people I’ve talked to through the comments section. I love discussing what I do with people as it helps generate new ideas and thought that if the blog did catch on, it would be a great way to share knowledge within the community.
2) How is your blogging received by your administration and the rest of your campus community?
Actually very few people in my campus community, including those in my own office, really know about the blog. I told my manager about my idea before I started it to see if she had any objection to it and thankfully she didn’t so off I went. I’ve never hidden it, mind you. It’s just not something I’ve actively advertised. The thing is, I want my blog to be my open, honest opinion about certain subjects without any feeling of need for self-censorship. Unfortunately those of us who work in higher ed know that (ironically) oftentimes university politics and strong personalities take priority over a free exchange of ideas. I wouldn’t want to feel like I have to suppress my consideration of an idea or a technology to avoid a member of the community reading it and blasting off an e-mail to everyone and their mother about this crazy person working in the admissions office. After all, blogging it about being real. How can I ask my students and other colleges to embrace that if I’m not willing to do it myself?
A funny thing actually happened this week with the blog. The President of the University was surfing the web and came across the post I made doing a running commentary on Bob Johnson’s keynote at eduWeb, in which I outspokenly disagreed with the presentation more than once. He e-mailed it to my boss and VP, who then forwarded it on to me. Though my name was at the bottom of the post, I’m not sure that anyone of them put the two together in the first reading to realize the writer worked for them. I’ll admit I was a bit hesitant to reply stating that I had written it because I wasn’t sure if they found the blog to be interesting in a good way or a bad way :-)
3) You also repost your twitter updates on your blog. Do you see any opportunities for admissions officers to use twitter in interactive recruiting?
Twitter is an intriguing tool and I do think eventually it could have opportunities in interactive recruiting. We’re already starting to see some interesting adoptions of it by individuals and businesses – John Edwards and Barack Obama are using it as a campaign tool and NPR uses it to update its “followers” on the latest news stories. However, right now, I think it’s sort of like Second Life in terms of its possibilities with interactive recruiting…It’s one of those tools that web geeks drool over as the next big thing but that the general population, specifically teenagers, hasn’t adopted yet. Of those who have, I don’t know that they want to use it as a tool to communicate with admissions offices. Though it is an idea that I plan on experimenting with in this upcoming recruiting cycle, I’m not sure we’re at a place yet where it could be as effective as more “traditional†methods of interactive recruiting, such as blogs, e-mail and instant messaging.
