Talent management initiatives often struggle to show how important they are for the success of their company as measured by stock value. The simple reason is that they impact so many intangibles that it is difficult to show an incontestable causation. And we are not going to claim this here either. However, we came up [...]

It has been over two years since we published our report and recommendations on quality of hire. More than ever, it has become a hot topic. If you want to see how AstraZeneca (a $24B company with 65,000 employees) put quality of hire into action, come and listen to this webcast Thursday, May 4 at [...]

We are often asked to explain the difference between Talent Management and HR. If we look at history, the Personnel Department changed its name at the end of the 1980s or the beginning of the 1990s and became the Human Resource Department. What we are experiencing today is very different. We are seeing a division [...]

A study from Veritude presented an interesting contradiction for us. As you can see on the chart below, HR is close to last on the strategic value for an organization, but customer service is #1. This shows again the confusion between Talent Management and transactional HR. Of course printing a check is important as is [...]

For those in your organization who might be skeptical of the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model, tell them to read this recent Business Week article by Jeff Kaplan. Read how the managing director for THINKstrategies consulting lists and debunks the eight Saas myths. Pay special attention to Myth #5. As you can see, [...]

We were amused by an AFP note describing the many creative ways that Indian operations are using to find new employees. The first one was to modify the Speed Dating concept into the job fair market. In other words, you are interviewing and sometimes even extending offers on the spot! We often suggested that Taleo [...]

We read this interesting article from Forbes: Get me Personnel! Who’s got the hottest job in China? The HR guy As described in the article and seen in the experiences of many Taleo customers, China is a new growing environment. Consequently, wages in China for top HR executives of multinational companies grew 20% in each [...]

An updated FAQ on the new OFCCP ruling just came out. The specific Q & A that got our attention was: Does a contractor “consider” an individual merely by running a (basic qualifications) search that brings up the individual’s resume, if the contractor never opens the resume? If the contractor does not open the resume [...]

We were pleased to see the Saratoga April Newsletter emphasize the hidden cost of HR, especially in the staffing function in their Metric of the Month: Indirect HR. They illustrated the point using an example of two companies in comparison. The first company has a ratio of one HR person for 120 employees and HR [...]

We reviewed with interest the data provided by the CEO briefing from the Economist Intelligence Unit. This was truly a comprehensive global survey with 555 executives representing 68 countries. And two-thirds were C-level executives or board members. Contained are both good and bad news for talent management and HR. The bad news is that they [...]