Alex, who is Australian, now resides in Toronto, a city I became quite fond of last year during my trip to Recruitfest 2009. He is someone you’ll definitely want to connect with and keep a pulse on… Where exactly he’s going is a good guess.. but he is clearly going somewhere. I’m delighted he has become one of my longtime tried and true connections and to follow his journey.

I really appreciate the opportunity he gave me to be his Follow Friday feature this week. In thinking what the heck I should write about, it occurred to me to share the journey I myself undertook this year.

Here’s the repost from Alex’s blog:

Karla and I have known each other for too long. In all honesty I can’t remember where we met (Karla, can you?) but I do remember it was around 7–8 years ago, on a social network everybody has since forgotten about, back when I was running one of my earlier companies. I’ve watched her transition from a kick ass hr professional to a conference goer, intern marker, business leader and now public servant. Karla has been perhaps one of the most supportive people out there, not just to me but to my network (in a practical way, she’s edited resumes for many friends), so let me hand her over and try to give her some payback:

It is so wonderfully giving of Alex to feature contacts and friends on his blog. It’s a great way to optimize the use of blog space and help promote others at the same time, a lesson we can all learn from.

In November of last year, sitting around reflecting on the past, looking into the future and feeling fortunate that my own career was in very good order, I decided I was going to make a whopper of a goal for 2010 that would challenge me to be a public servant – without having to run for office. I mean a year of seriously selfless devotion to use my skills for the benefit of those who found themselves unemployed for one year – no holds barred.

On December 28, 2009 I published a post on my blog that laid it out there – 2010 is All About You! Most of the way through Q3 2010, I have to say it’s been a wild ride. I have met people I might not have, helped others I surely wouldn’t have known needed help, and tasked myself to accomplish things I wouldn’t have otherwise done. And, I am not done yet, I still have two-plus months to go.

My list of accomplishments is confidential; I’m not looking for credit. This challenge was a personal one with multiple tangible and intangible wonderful rewards that has been as good for me as it has been for anyone I have lent expertise or a hand to. I’m looking forward to the end of the year to reflect on what I want to achieve in 2011, how I’ll go about it and why I should do it (also to get back to sleeping more hours at night).

I’m recommending that you too start to think of what you are made of, what your real core values are, your weaknesses and strengths, and put them to the test in challenging waters in 2011 – not only for your own benefit but to help make the lives of others just a little better.

You will not regret this – trust me.

Have you ever challenged yourself and stuck it out to the end? What did you learn about yourself?

What I found was a slew of @ replies filled with Follow Friday luv. Since I can’t turn back the hands of time to yesterday I thought I would express my appreciation via this post and info about what it is that makes these tweeps worth my Saturday afternoon.

Let’s roll!

@punkrockHR Laurie is funny and generous in the way she doesn’t mince words, extroverted and sweet with a healthy dash of cynicism, an expert at self-branding, an HR pro and she loves cats. Her blog Punk Rock HR is a Top 5 career site with a huge  and engaged following and I recommend you check it out.

@MrScrubby is Laurie’s cat and he pees in interesting new places.

@SMRecruiting is the Twitter twin of the LinkedIn Social Media Recruiting Group which should be pretty self explanatory but if it isn’t just go there. It’s safe and educational and good and you will make tons of contacts with other recruiters who are interested in using social media as a recruiting tool. Disclaimer: OK, I’m a co-moderator.

@CIMAPR Are you job hunting in Puerto Rico? Then check out CIMA Services. Tweets good job search tips too. It’s in Spanish but I guess if you are in PR or thinking of working there you won’t have any problems with that. Behind the tweets are @lucymfel,  a tweeter with a real heart who shares job advice in Spanish and English, and @ConsultantRC who owns a Benz and is vegetarian. His tweets are mostly in Spanish but his new Benz blog is in English.

@SignWerks Todd is the owner of SignWerks, located in Kingston, PA. That’s just over the bridge from my locale. He provides a great example of someone who leverages social media. There are no sales tweets just engaging conversation and help if you need it. He is also civic minded and always willing to lend a helping hand. At local tweet-ups Todd brings name badges he makes and even cool bumper stickers. He won a local contest I ran on Twitter to teach new users Twitter basics for business at THE Conference in Wilkes-Barre on October 6th.

@Fathercabbage Chet is a retired firefighter who hasn’t really retired. He loves his community and his profession and does plenty of volunteer work to support them. Let’s roll em’ down the hill in Honeypot!

@PeterParker_PA Chris is the Online Editor at Times Leader, on of the two local newspapers in Wilkes-Barre, PA.  He is often equipped with either a video camera and microphone or a laptop and air card to shoot video or post live updates of news events as they happen throughout the Wyoming Valley. He’s often funny and helpful too.

@mlb217 Mandy is an Advertising & PR student at Marywood University, SEO Specialist at Solid Cactus, Freelance Writer and lover of food. You can check out her writing samples on her blog, Miss Mandy’s stream of… well, something and if you need some copy writing done, well, you know… give her a shout out!

@JustinWaldrop Justin is a Writer/Blogger/Social media fanatic looking for opportunities in PR/Advertising/Marketing in the Chicago area. Check out @MotivelessCrime, his alter-ego and site. He’s a relatively new follower. I tweeted about how I liked his use of Google Sites for his job search and the rest is history.

@atenta Jan tweets for Atenta about recruiting, sourcing, customized search and data mining from Hamburg, Germany, mostly in German but there are plenty of English tweets too. The website can be viewed in several languages and the section about how to obtain employment in Germany is really interesting. The blog is cool, I stumble through it with my own early 80’s rusty German language skills.

@havrilla Chris tweets jobs from Hitachi Consulting and about recruiting and sourcing and the use of social media  in the profession. She’s really friendly and really knowledgeable. Recently, Chris wrote a rockin’ post, Why I Recruit — And You Should Career Search — Using Social Media you’ll probably want to read. She’s also co-moderator of Social Media Recruiting on LinkedIn.

@ki2mylife is Community and Marketing Manager at Glassdoor.com. The career blog at that site has good content for job seekers and the tweets are might interesting and helpful too.

@MikeStivala Mike is the Creator, writer, director of HILLERS, an upcoming series starring Joel Bryant, Tessa Munro, Tom Arnold & Henry Winkler. I have to give the Greater Scranton Film Office tons of credit for figuring out how to get TV and Film productions to come to NEPA.

@FSEnterprises Michael is a local NEPA social media geek who loves music and blogging. He’s funny, articulate and helpful. He has a new blog where he has a lot of interesting info on  insects. He also blogs about politics and other miscellaneous stuff.

@waltonsearch Shannon shares all kinds of great info on recruitng and sourcing via her tweets in addition to jobs. She is a super resource for social media recruiting tips and co-moderator of  Social Media Recruiting on LinkedIn.

@SakibKhan Sakib is a grad student in People and Employment in Auckland, NZ. His tweets are informational and he has a great positive attitude. His blog HR with Sakib Khan is just a few months old but very well done with great content.

@healthydocs Tamyra makes me feel good just following her. You never know, I could be out somewhere and need to tweet with a physician. She has the inside track on how to find them and all kinds of other health care professionals too. Plus, she tweets all kinds of cool medical stuff.

@jobtweet_de In addition to being a cool real-time symantic Twitter job search engine, you get bonus tweets chalk full of job seeking and recruiting with social media tips and news from Hamburg, Germany, in English and German.

@audreychernoff Audrey is Sr. Technical Recruiter / Abstract Artist and Co-Founder of Hirefinders.com, an innovative recruiting platform enabling Employers and Job Seekers to find one another quickly, enjoyably and efficiently.  She’s are looking for beta testers so get on over there now!

So wow, you can see what I missed working on Friday! I hope you’ll find some of these tweeps as interesting and worthy of following as I do…

Before I take off I have one more tidbit of interest. If you enjoy having really interesting reads put before you about a wide variety of topics, then follow @snipurl.

Ciao!