Andrew Karpie's Blog

Far From the Madding Crowd—Crowdsourcing Comes of Age at CrowdConf 2012

I have to confess—I am a big Thomas Hardy fan.  And I can’t help but to suggest that his protagonist, Bathsheba Everdine, may have been one of the earlier adopters of crowdsourcing—though probably the Egyptian pyramid builders should be (more appropriately and much less controversially) cited as such.  ...but I digress.

Early this week, I attended CrowdConf 2012 (the 3rd such annual... More

"Online Staffing" - Seeing the Forest For the Trees

"On-line staffing" (which our SIA Lexicon currently defines as "a type of Talent Exchange--typified by a growing number of companies like oDesk and Elance-- consisting of an online platform where contingent workers, contractors, freelancers can offer their skills and services for limited projects or even on-going assignments and where organizations and individuals can post their requirements... More

Part I: The Reality of "Social Recruiting" and How To Approach It

I was recently asked to talk about “social media and recruiting” (for staffing firms: how to approach it, what to do, etc.) at the SIA Healthcare Staffing Summit held this past week.  This assignment really caused me to think about the challenges of adoption and what a reasonable perspective on approaching “social recruiting” might be.

I think one of the biggest and most important challenges... More

Staffings firms? More help to demystify Unified Communications (UC)

In a recent post, "Unified Communications (UC): A Technology Perspective Essential to Staffing Firms," I introduced the case for why this particular perspective on integrated technology should be a very important one for staffing firms. 

To further make the case and further clarify what UC is and what its significance may be, I wanted to cite another reference resource I came... More

Eureka!! The New Potential for Scaling a Business with “Contingent Workforce”

oDesk has been very visible recently.  In addition to a New York Times article earlier this week, oDesk also recently released a truly informative survey report on how companies are approaching hiring and using contingent workforce.

Yesterday evening, I attended a Meet-up of sorts and panel discussion (“Talent Wars”) hosted by oDesk. The event was targeted to San Francisco start-up companies... More