What’s Black, White and Read All Over?
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: April 27, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Sourcing Strategies
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
Not USA TODAY!
CEO Mike Moore describes the recruiting medium’s highly targeted reach, demographics and explains a couple of reasons why strategic recruiters — and opportunists — use RCI’s bannered recruitment feature…
What Bob Learned from a Leadership Assessment
- Author: Eric Jackson
- Posted: April 26, 2007
- Category: Recruitment Solutions, Center of Excellence
- Tags: Leadership Training, Performance Management
- Comments: 1
The following is a true story.
A number of years ago, one of Jackson Leadership’s longtime clients asked us to assess one of their “high-potential” leaders who was up for a key new leadership position within the organization. His name was Bob.
Bob was told he had to go to visit with Jackson Leadership for a day to be “assessed.” Later, he told me that he didn’t know what to expect when he first heard this. He knew that we’d worked with his company for several years on assessing and developing their leaders, but didn’t know quite what that meant.
He knew he wanted the job, though, so gladly agreed to visit with us. We put him through an “assessment center.” We sent him some surveys and tests in advance, which measured his personality but also included a 360 survey, where peers, direct reports and bosses gave him feedback on his management style.
We then spent a day with him, when we interviewed him about his background, asked about his career objectives, and posed a number of “behavior-based questions” which asked him to recount specific examples of work situations in which he had to overcome some challenges. We even gave him some new “case studies” to work through, and made him give a couple of presentations to us about the courses of action he was recommending. All in all, the “assessment” gave us — as third-party observers of leadership potential in organizations — a sense of what kind of leader Bob was and what his future potential was; his strengths and weaknesses.
Smart Leadership, Part 2
- Author: Eric Jackson
- Posted: April 19, 2007
- Category: Talent Management, Business Matters
- Tags: Center of Excellence, Leadership Training, Performance Management, Succession Planning
- Comments: 0
This week I draw to a close this four-part excerpt from the book Why Smart Executives Fail, co-authored with Sydney Finkelstein. In the book we examine why smart executives fail, the early warning signs for corporate disasters, keys to leadership success and failure, learning from mergers and acquisitions and lessons for board of director effectiveness.
In the last post — Smart Leadership, Part 1 — I started out with the first four skill-sets that describe the Three Pillars of a “Smart Organization:” Smart Leadership:
The first commonality we found across Smart Organizations was that they possessed “Smart Leadership” at the Executive Team and Board levels. The “smart” label doesn’t reflect their collective IQ (although all would have scored highly). Instead, what made their teams and boards “smart” was a combination of certain individual skill-sets that each officer and director possessed, none of these organizations had “Imperial CEOs” with thousands of faceless followers. Rather, they had teams, boards, and leaders throughout the organization who were the stars of the show. These officers and directors had skill-sets, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors that were in place in “Smart Organizations” but were conspicuously absent in successful companies who later headed towards failure.
Here are the balance of skill-sets from last week’s post…
Turn Our RSS Feed into an Email and Feed Your Recruiters Too
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: April 17, 2007
- Category: Tools and Resources
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
I know your time is precious, so here is a gem.
We are testing some options for you to subscribe to our site with updates delivered via email. In the meantime, here is a turnkey solution that fits the bill because it not only allows you to get updates from RCI Recruitment Solutions’ site but other sites too.
“Reading RSS the way you are already reading your emails,” RssFwd.com provides an invaluable service that saves time and more besides. It makes getting the content you want easy to access, scan, read, digest, file and/or discard.
I’m using RssFwd with a rule set in my Outlook that puts the day’s updates in a special folder for me. Some of our recruiters are starting to use it in some pretty creative ways too. It’s worth checking out for the stuff you read and if you want to use the tool for recruiting, let me know.
To get started with subject-specific emails from us, check out our RSS feeds. If you want to get it all, cut and paste this link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/rcirsblog into RssFwd. Enjoy!
Hat tip: dumb little man: tips for life
Jason Davis: The Recruitosphere’s Darling
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: April 16, 2007
- Category: Business Matters, Blogging
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 15
Part Two in a Series About Today’s Recruiting.com
The recent announcement by Jobster that John Sumser will be replacing Recruiting.com’s founding member Jason Davis in an effort to add value to its year-old acquisition – whatever that means — has left many people speculating, “What is going on?”
For a man who boasts that he eats dog food – yuck! – perhaps Jason Goldberg’s pick of John Sumser is a good one for this blog-eat-blog world we live in. Others might suggest that John Sumser is about to consume his own taboo-tasty with Recruiting.com – double yuck! – ruminating on Jobster’s original “modest proposal,” one bite at a time. Yummy!
In an effort to better understand what this dog’s dinner is all about we are starting with a cameo of the players. Profiling Jason Davis then, here is Part Two:
I don’t how much of what I have been told about Recruiting.com’s history is fact and how much of it is fiction. It hardly matters. Jason Davis is now a legend in his time.
John Sumser: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: April 12, 2007
- Category: Business Matters, Blogging
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 13
Part One in a Series About Today’s Recruiting.com
Since the announcement that industry ol’-timer John Sumser will be replacing the beloved Jason Davis to assume a management role in the affairs of Recruiting.com I have been organizing my thoughts so that I could communicate in some coherent way the assortment of important things that this one event represents.
Like the symbols of Easter - lambs, eggs and lilies, bread, wine and what-have-you — alone they mean one thing but together they convey a greater meaning, significance and potential for those who “believe.”
So, under the banner of this short series of posts we can discuss each one of these things drawing them together to make sense of what combined represent the symbols of Recruiting.com: content, community, transparency, social media, corporate social responsibility, thought-leadership, online persona and personal branding. You digg?
For the atheists and agnostics among us – those less concerned with the higher purpose of publishing in our space as a force for change – these things along with a good dollop of ego-mania, profiteering and power-play make for interesting gossip I think. So whether you hear a prayer in the whisper or something else, come a little closer and I’ll speak softly in your ear.
Smart Leadership, Part 1
- Author: Eric Jackson
- Posted: April 10, 2007
- Category: Talent Management, Business Matters
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 2
In last week’s post, The “SMART Organization” Defined I mentioned that I would draw this excerpt from the book, Why Smart Executives Fail to a close with a description of the first of the Three Pillars of a “Smart Organization”: Smart Leadership. Here is the first of this two part conclusion:
Smart Leadership
The first commonality we found across Smart Organizations was that they possessed “Smart Leadership” at the Executive Team and Board levels. The “smart” label doesn’t reflect their collective IQ (although all would have scored highly). Instead, what made their teams and boards “smart” was a combination of certain individual skill-sets that each officer and director possessed, none of these organizations had “Imperial CEOs” with thousands of faceless followers. Rather, they had teams, boards, and leaders throughout the organization who were the stars of the show. These officers and directors had skill-sets, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors that were in place in “Smart Organizations” but were conspicuously absent in successful companies who later headed towards failure.
Defining Talent Management
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: April 5, 2007
- Category: Tools and Resources, Talent Management, Blogging
- Tags: Blogs, Industry, Talent Management Consulting
- Comments: 4
Modestly billing itself as a “daily news and commentary site about HR strategy and technology” systematicHR is in actual fact exceptional for its consistent quality and clarity of mind. It continues to be one my favorite blogs to read, re-read and read again. Hardly typical then, today’s post Defining Talent Management is typical:
Talent management is a true buzz word around HR these days, has been for a few years now. We all know the components of talent management: performance, compensation process, succession, recruitment, learning, competencies. All of these are major components to an overall talent strategy. Inclusive in this list should also be technology. But what really, is talent management?
Read the whole post here, subscribe to this blog’s feed and elevate your thinking about talent management and HR strategy.
If you want to know more about RSS feeds and subscribing to your favorite blogs — like this one — check out How to explain RSS the Oprah way.
Flippin’ Burgers, Flippin’ Jobs: Two Outsourcing Models
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: April 4, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Workforce Planning, Business Matters
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
Last November it was widely reported that a number of fast food franchises – Burger King, Panda Express and Wendy’s among them — had outsourced their drive-thru operations to a MA-based outfit, Exit41, Inc. The company bills itself as the “next generation restaurant of ordering solutions.” I remember hearing about it on the radio.
In short, when you place your order at a growing number of fast food drive-thru locations around the U.S. your order is taken and keyed-in at a call center, conceivably thousands of miles away. The business case for this outsourcing model is compelling: increased drive-thru capability by as much as 25%; improved customer satisfaction and loyalty; decreased food costs, yada-yada. It makes sense to me.
On closer examination though, this innovative approach raises some interesting questions as it relates to one of the underlying factors for success: the “human element.”
Why no mention of the impact of this outsourcing solution on staffing costs either on Exit41’s site or the industry press? Perhaps the expense of implementing the solution and the potential savings in recruitment costs is a wash. But the increase in productivity to be expected by improving workplace conditions should be easy enough to measure. Fewer screaming and agitated customers might have an effect on retention rates too, no?
Where’s the Mustard?
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: April 3, 2007
- Category: That's Life, Blogging
- Tags: Whatever
- Comments: 2
Posted on the inscrutable The ItzBig Blog I thought Kinder, gentler generals needed in the war for talent sounded like it might resonate with some of the sentimental comments on GE’s Bill Conaty: Secrets of an HR Superstar. Preceded with an Editor’s note that said…
This post was originally published on March 19th. Since this post attracted such great traffic and reader response, we thought it worthwhile to publish this one again.
…I thought, this must be worth checking out. On reading the post I was impressed by two things:
First, it is worth the time it takes to read although it hardly talks to the GE Bill Conaty comments other than a shared fuzziness perhaps. Not the point though, it’s worth reading.
Second, if the post’s first publication attracted such “great traffic and reader response” the first time round what happened to all of the comments? At the time of this writing I didn’t see any.
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