TeleSHRM: it's on-line and ready to serve you - Society for Human Resource Management's directory assistance service

ATLANTA-As I write this, TeleSHRM will go live in five days. By the time you receive this magazine, the new state-of-the-art, live-operator directory assistance service will be up and running, replacing the quickly outdated and bulky Who's Who in HR.

SHRM President and GEO Mike Losey and I have just finished participating in a training session for the customer service representatives who will be on the other end of the line when members call for directory assistance service. And even though it's been a long day, I'm still excited. This new service for SHRM members is exceeding my expectations.

The SHRM Membership and Services Guide, enclosed with last month's issue of HRMagazine, is the successor to Who's Who. It includes all the "owner's manual" information that used to be in the front part of the old directory. It will be published every year.

The member directory listings, which occupied hundreds of unchanging pages in Who's Who, will now be changed on this database as the membership changes; it will grow as the membership grows. No longer will SHRM members have to wait up to a year for the opportunity to network with new members who have joined since the listings went to press.

It's easy to use and it's free to members of the Society for Human Resource Management. Two numbers are important for your use of TeleSHRM: The toll-free TeteSHRM number, 1 (800) 770-SHRM, and your member number.

The TeleSHRM customer service representative will give you information only if you can provide a valid SHRM member number. All SHRM members have received a membership card with their member number printed on it. If your card isn't available to you, you can get it from the label on this magazine's package. The number is eight digits and it appears directly above your name.

Once the TeleSHRM representative has verified your member number, he or she will ask you what information you wish to receive. If you are looking for the phone number of someone you know, all you have to do is give the representative the name of the party you're calling.

If you want to network with a SHRM member you don't know, you can get names and phone numbers of colleagues by title, by company name, by company size, by industry group, by professional specialty or by geographic location. Or by any combination of those identifiers. In the demonstration we saw today, a simple search took about two seconds to complete. Multi-level searches took a few seconds longer.

If your selection results in a list of five or fewer names, the TeleSHRM representative will give you the information you need over the phone. If your selection comes to more than five names, we can fax you the information you need (up to one page) in moments. We can do up to three searches per phone call.

TeleSHRM will be available from 8 a.m. to midnight Eastern time, Monday through Friday. Members can call from any telephone in North America.

And in addition to the speed, accuracy and timeliness of this new service, there are more advantages: The environmental impact of each year's printing of Who's Who is enormous. For example, the press run of the 1993 member directory consumed about 400 trees, a wooded area equal to three football fields. And if you laid one on top of another, the stack would be a mile and a half high. That's six times taller than the Empire State Building. At the end of the directory's life span, most of that giant, 97-ton stack would end up in landfills.

Placed end to end, the 1993 press run would measure about eight miles. That's roughly the distance from my hotel to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where I'm going to see the Braves tomorrow night.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Society for Human Resource Management
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