Ever wanted to work at Disney? I got myself hired as a cast member yesterday, but only for a couple of hours. More on that in a second 
HR Florida conference ends
After a great party Tuesday night at the HR Florida state conference, I picked up Michael Long from Disney at 6 AM to do an early morning session on using Twitter as a recruiting tool at HR Florida. He presented some great information to a surprisingly large group of HR people considering the previous evening’s party. I will be posting a lot more from HR Florida soon, but here is the Cliff notes version:
- The state leadership committee at HR Florida rocks. They put together a terrific program this year on all levels.
- Social media was a part of the conference. For the first time ever, I left an HR event feeling like people were excited about trying to embrace social media as part of the HR skillset, rather than being reluctant about even trying something. While it may have been universal, it was exciting to watch. Again, the leadership at HR Florida had a lot to do with this, setting a great example by bringing in bloggers to interact throughout the conference and going out of their way to add some late speaking sessions on the topic to the program. Kudos to that whole group on doing a great job with this as well as the overall conference!
I have bunch of other stuff to post later, but thanks for inviting me, and thanks for another great conference.
Disney Institute
Once Michael finished his pitch, we drove across town in Orlando to Disney where I immediately jumped into the middle of the week long course called “Disney’s Approach to Business Excellence” which I am attending at the Disney Institute.
Full disclosure – Disney invited me to attend the course and write about it. They are providing lodging and the class at no cost, but have placed no other stipulations on what I write, excluding proprietary information. None of the posts I write about Disney are being sponsored in any way.
SInce it is 4 AM, I am just going to highlight some of the things I saw on Wednesday briefly and I will post more detail later.
Rocking Disney
- Disney rocks at on-boarding their employees, who they refer to as cast members.
- A lot goes on behind the scenes to provides guests at Disney with their resort/theme park experience.
- Disney cast members are passionate and engaged.
- Disney listens to their cast members.
- Disney is conservative and very image conscious. This helps them be consistent in service and presentation.
Knocking Disney
- Disney is conservative and very image conscious. This makes some aspects of the culture feel rigid, but they do it in a respectful way.
- I had an expectation that the training materials would be way more glitzy than they are. The material is good, but the presentation is industrial in nature.
- We saw backstage space for cast members. I would have loved to see the more “magical” areas where the creativity that Disney is famous for takes place, rather than a unisex locker room. It was a nice locker room, but I have my own locker rooms, if you know what I mean.
More later. Oh. If you want to find out about job opportunities with Disney in Orlando, call 1-407-828-1000.
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