For example, when a senior writer for Sports Illustrated makes an impassioned argument, you might find yourself in agreement.  You would be wrong.

Today's playoff win may have been 'the most amazing of them all' according to SI.  I know that very little work was being done in our office and that watching TV on the Internet is BIG- this was memorable to me for that observation alone . 

Verily, you must never fully trust the experts - self-interest easily clouds judgement; this guy was mad that he had to rent his car for another day.......     

SystematicHR  links to CedarCrestone's whitepaper research regarding the dollar value of human capital automation.  Some good figures in there in case you were wondering what it costs a large firm to change someone's salary for instance, or approve a promotion.   

My takeaway: no surprise, organizations with data warehousing capability show superior return.  Also key: HR Help Desk systems and Competency Management systems.   I see the former as any workflow or task/ticket system - essential for coordinated efforts by small groups, yielding high productivity. 

Yes its true- if you can slice and dice data and use whatever systems you want to use, whenever you want to use them, and still get reliable numbers from your data warehouse, you are going to get your mission done faster, cheaper, and better than the other blokes.

I have been writing (esp. in context of Vurv/Taleo) about my contrary opinion that Talent Management is in a race with advancing data technique; firms with high powered HR data warehouses really don't/won't care if all the application interfaces or databases are from a single vendor. 

John Sumser has been out to prove otherwise. 

He brings the tradeshow experience to recruiters who may have never been to a real event, and packs four hours of real content between a light breakfast, and yes, a free lunch.  His notion: bringing 125 recruiters together at no cost to themselves on a regular basis will naturally lead to good business activity and fun for all concerned.  Sponsors do pay (somebody always has to pay, but John will need to be extra clever to  figures that one out!) but the only expected ROI for a sponsor is the genuine and appreciated halo effect arising from doing something in a true community spirit (and the ritual giving away of schwag, of course).

If its Tuesday and its Cleveland, lament not: its a fine town and we are going to have a great time.  

Learn about the event here.

More interesting news today for the industry, beyond the dismal employment numbers: internal migration (e.g. relocation) is way down in the past year and expected to decrease again in 2008-2009 timeframe.

Reason: if you can't sell your house, you can't take that job in another city. 

If you are a recruiter who does a lot of relo business, you are already probably more of real-estate expert than you might have expected to be at this point......I know I know more about mortgage banking than I ever thought I would.....  

Intersting take on non-compete agreements today on thestreet.com

The gist is than rather than attemp to complete/enforce an uphill battle, you might be better as a firm owner to sell departing recruiters their books of business for (a suggested valuation) 3X sales. 

I think this indeed may be a more common practice in the TPR industry, as we now deal with database transfers to ex-employees at least a few times per month. 

Some tips if you are including database elements in an agreement:

-Make it clear if the transfer will be a move or a copy (e.g. will you retain the data and then both use it going forward, or will you no longer have access to it?)  

-Make it clear when title to the data is passed (upon final payment, upon execution, or something in the middle). 

-Make it clear what kind of data is to be subject and which is not (e.g. company database files , Outlook contacts, Word docs, email archives, etc.)

- You may want to inform your database vendor or IT people that a given data asset may be subject to future transfer- could lower costs to seperate it going forward and avoid mistakes later    

From my seat, it might also be smart to include provisions in any future account sales agreement about solicitation of your other employees- losing one person is one thing; mass exodus is a whole other thing.   

It also might be smart to define what it takes to 'secure' a client (i.e. how much of the work was the salesperson's and how much was the firm's, with a valuation model fitted to each situation)

This is a tough but real aspect of bringing people along in any services business......

For those of you who know who he was, he probably had as much influence on you as he did on me.  We are far from a small group- so rather than echo what so many others have said about him, here are links to a Space.com tribute, part 2,  and his Wikipedia page.

Many, many scientists, engineers, and aerospace types were inspired by his work, and as a vector toward the subject of recruiting, it should never be underestimated how powerful real inspiration can be.

His passing marks the end of an era- although its been well and truly gone since at least the early eighties, when the visual arts began to dominate popular SF.   

Yes I am aware that ERE is not an economics or political website, but events are now so serious in the macroeconomic area that there is little doubt that recruiting will be impacted in the coming months and years by what is happening today.

The bailout of Bear Stearns lasted about 48 hours before taking another turn; the essential wipeout of the firm, sold to JPMorgan for maybe the value of its office furnishings. 

Nouriel Roubini has been an astute observer of the crisis- his Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster have been widely linked and discussed, and we now appear to be at Step 9.

He closes his latest post with the line:

Breaking decades-old rules and practices is a radical action that seriously requires a clear public explanation and justification.   

To which I can only ask:

Where the heck has he been for the last six years? 

I have been watching for what seems like years now as leaders recognize that talent has now almost wholly superseded capital as the key driver of business worldwide. 

Secretary Paulson today gave an important speech regarding an interagency working group tasked with getting a handle on the ongoing credit crisis/ meltdown we are seeing.   I thought the speech was well conceived although I think he laid too much blame at the feet of investors-saying that they had to do more work to understand what they were buying, and that simply counting on credit ratings is not enough.  Frankly, nobody without advanced math degrees could really understand how CDO's and Credit Default Swaps eventually pan out; the essence of the problem is that it appears that nobody can know.  Not to mention that the rating systems are rigged (even if the rating agencies could understand the products, which they clearly don't) being the elephant in the room.  

The quote that really got my attention was this one:
 

"The ultimate success of any CEO is largely determined by the answer to one question: Do we have the right people in the right jobs with the right incentive structure? And these large financial institutions have a large number of key jobs to fill."

If you are in the talent business, you have to be pleased that the very highest levels of economic leadership in our society are thinking along these lines. 

Reading the whole speech might be worth a few minutes of your time- he hits on a lot of the key drivers of our current crisis, without doubt one of the biggest challenges our country has faced in a generation, if not the past 50 years.   

I dont know how anyone in business could fail to be disturbed by this report.*

Not only do we imprison more people than any other nation per capita, we have a ticking time bomb among African-American men, with more than 10% of prime career age behind bars.  Literally decimated. 

In the past 10 years, more than 1000 measures have been passed to increase sentences, and not a single one to reduce them.

This can't continue...... 

*excepting folks in the prison-industrial sector, of course....  

Saw this item today about speed recruiting.  I wonder how its going to turn out ?

Kevin Wheeler has a good item up today regarding just how selective one should be.  I think it varies by role- creative and leadership types should be wide open in terms of experience and qualification, while technical, medical, and engineering types should be very tight-for obvious reasons.  

Credentialism can lead to ossification and caste-building systems that weaken a culture; on the other hand, when rewards are decoupled from contributions, you need some way to aportion the pie that does not include physical force....