With the end of the year fast approaching, I thought it would be a good time to look back on the year that was. Here on Blogging4Jobs we published hundreds of new blogs on human resources, business, and tech – over 700 new blogs, in fact. Our top posts for the year cover the gamut of hot topics of 2015 – social recruiting, HR tech, and millennials – but they also include bread and butter HR issues like performance reviews, personality conflicts, and compliance.

Every month someone is declaring the death of HR, but I can’t see that happening until those bread and butter, inherently human, workplace issues die too. Maybe when we’ve all be replaced by robots.

Top 30 Posts of 2015:

But in the meantime, take a look back with us, at the HR conversation in 2015:

#30 To kill or not to kill performances appraisals. That is the question.

We wrote a lot about performance reviews in 2015. If you, reader, have a blog, I’m sure you wrote a lot about them too. No one likes them. Everyone has to do them. What to do? Kill them, change them, or muddle through. Here’s a piece in favour of murder:

https://workology.com/hr/three-reasons-to-dump-performance-appraisals/

#29 Or, instead of killing, transforming the performance review.

What if, instead of killing performance reviews, we just… did them completely differently? Well, somewhat differently. Rank and yank, anyway, that’s definitely got to go.

https://workology.com/hr/pay-for-performance-without-using-ratings/

#28 How to: keep up with LinkedIn updates.

Social recruiting, social HRing, and social living – it’s a lot. Many of our most popular posts in 2015 helped you – and us – navigate and make the most of the ever-evolving social media platforms that now dominate networking and recruiting.

https://workology.com/social-media/social-recruiting-101-linkedin-profile-for-recruiters/

#27 The life outside HR. Wait, there’s life outside HR?

HR can be consuming. Whether you’re an executive, a recruiter, or a HR generalist, there’s always more work to do than time – and a lot of that work is just keeping up. The race to keep on top of compliance and evolving regulations is not a fun one. What if you just… stopped? And quit? One HR practitioner did just that.

https://workology.com/job-search/6-things-that-happened-when-i-quit-hr/

#26 In HR, plan for the worst, hope for the best.

Don’t get caught in the rain without an umbrella. In HR, your umbrella is your organization’s willingness to plan for difficult scenarios and to commit to finding equitable solutions. Maybe you don’t even want to imagine domestic violence impacting your colleagues – but you should imagine it, and you should have a plan in place. Anything less will do harm to those colleagues and to your employers.

https://workology.com/hr/domestic-violence-and-hr-dont-wait-for-a-ray-rice-moment/

#25 How to: be more efficient at screening.

2015 was just as much about the future as it was about the basics. Phone screening! It’s still an important skill.

https://workology.com/hr/how-to-use-phone-interviews-to-screen-candidates/

#24 How to: use your HR knowledge to survive the apocalypse.

What if zombies roamed the earth? Would you, humble HR practitioner, have the skills to survive? Well, I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with your Crossfit, but don’t underestimate the importance of your people skills.

https://workology.com/hr/human-resources-in-the-zombie-apocalypse/

#23 How to: ruin your life with a bad outfit and too many drinks.

The holiday party. Treacherous waters. Every year brings new holiday party horror stories. Jessica’s got your guide to not being the star of one.

https://workology.com/hr/why-you-got-fired-after-the-holiday-work-party/

#22 Introverts! They’re everywhere.

Introverts were a hot topic in 2015. Introverts on speaking tours, book tours, and various other publicity tours – that’s a lot of talking for introverts! – educated us about the downside of ignoring the differences between introverts and extroverts. But this piece is about something very specific: understanding that your salespeople aren’t all cut from the same cloth.

https://workology.com/hr/how-to-motivate-introverted-salespeople/

#21 How to: be more strategic.

There are so many tricks to making Facebook work for you, but this is a neat one: using marketing techniques to target passive candidates for long tail recruitment.

https://workology.com/social-media/facebook-dark-posts-to-recruit/

#20 When efficiency means sleeping.

Like many of you, I check my work email as soon as I wake up and just before I fall asleep. I’m always connected and that’s great. It’s also, potentially, bad, if I don’t take time out for myself. Sometimes working smarter means working less, because there’s a point at which working even harder means working for worse and worse results.

https://workology.com/hr/overworked-employees/

#19 Predicting 2015; looking back on 2015.

2015 was a great year for HR tech. The market is expanding exponentially and the technology is becoming ever more sophisticated. Back in January, Jessica highlighted five trends she thought would dominate the year in HR tech.

https://workology.com/hr/2015-recruiting-talent-acquisition-trends/

#18 The big picture.

Recruiting isn’t just networking and sales, it’s understanding the big picture of your industry’s hiring trends and the job market as a whole. Why is your time to fill so darn long? Well…

https://workology.com/job-search/hot-job-market-economy/

#17 The worst of the worst.

Is there anything more painful than delivering a bad review? The consequences of NOT delivering that review.  It’s not fun, but you’ve got to do it – here are some tips. (Ugh.)

https://workology.com/hr/performance-feedback-employee/

#16 How to: make your life easier.

As a former in-house recruiter, I know how strained relationships can become between HR and management. And I know how hard work becomes in that context. Don’t let it happen to you. Back to basics: building good relationships at work.

https://workology.com/hr/how-hr-can-have-a-good-relationship-with-managers/

Tune back in tomorrow for the rest of our top 30 posts of 2015.