bullet points

Bullet Points: Embrace the Fail

The Hired Guns on February 22, 2012

bullet points, failure, marketing Comment

Should we be trying to learn from freshly shut-down companies the same way we try to learn from shiny new startups? [Washington Post]
It’s “practically a religion” in lots and lots of offices, but does brainstorming even work? [The New Yorker]
Leonardo da Vinci, failure. [Boxes and Arrows]
Social media has had lots of successes, but that doesn’t mean that any of them came without spending real money. Writing in Inc., Hollis Thomases tallies up social marketing’s likely costs, using everyone’s favorite viral, that Old Spice guy, as an example.
Why is the talent pool in IT, entertainment, and management so shallow, and why are the wages so high? Maybe it’s not that the raw talent’s so rare — it’s that it’s just really, really hard to identify it, and to train it once you do. [Marginal Revolution]

Bullet Points: Keeping Counteroffers Off the Table

The Hired Guns on February 16, 2012

bullet points, recruiting, talent management Comment

Everyone in HR knows that between “67% and 80% of those employees who accept a counteroffer leave in the next 6 months.” But that doesn’t mean these sometimes desperate-seeming tactics aren’t also super-common. Here’s what recruiters need to do to counter those counteroffers effectively. [Recruiting Blogs]
If This Isn’t How You Recruit, You’re Doing It Wrong. [Inc.]
“So, I’m sitting here wondering why all these talent/HR Pros have jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon? I keep waiting for the great HR blog posts on how Pinterest is the next evolution of Performance Management, or how you can use the Pinterest platform to recruit top talent. And I wait… You see, Pinterest has nothing to offer HR or Talent Pros,” says Fistful of Talent’s Tim Sackett. Some great comments.
Italy is coming to terms with a time when it will no longer be usual for workers to hold the same job until they retire. “The problem is actually getting a job, not being fired from one,” says an under-30 spokesman for the National Youth Council, a lobbying group.

Bullet Points: The End of “More Is More”?

The Hired Guns on February 14, 2012

Agile, bullet points, Facebook Comment

Hired Guns blogger Jeff Gothelf is cochairing the AgileUX NYC conference, to be held Saturday, 25 February — a few tickets are still available….
The neighbors are a little unsure about the new house that Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, is building. (It’s 40% bigger than Zuckerberg’s, but the Wall Street Journal opines that by “billionaire standards, [her] mansion is nothing special”).
Speaking of Facebook, it’s using you. [NYT]
Stanford University’s online “Introduction to AI” course attracted 160,000 students from more than 190 countries, with a median age of around 30. And about 23,000 of them finished the course. [The Guardian]
Have we reached the end of more-is-more when it comes to online content? Felix Salmon writes that “If we have reached that point — and I hope that we have — it’s a function of the way that the world of the web is moving from search to social.”
Valentines for the curve-loving economic wonk in your life. [Freakonomics]

Bullet Points: Oracle’s Play for Taleo

The Hired Guns on February 9, 2012

bullet points, human resources Comment

In a deal worth nearly $2 billion, Oracle intends to buy Taleo, which makes cloud-based “Talent Management” software used by HR departments in 5,000 companies worldwide. The purchase is seen as a move against SAP, which recently bought a Taleo competitor.
The bad first impressions that new employees get during onboarding may linger for a long, long time. [Ere.net]
Helicopter parents are keeping a close eye on their little darlings’ entry into the workplace. But how are companies supposed to deal with it? One consultant goes deep: “You don’t want to block the energy of the parent…. It’s like jujitsu. You just want to channel it in a certain direction.”
In what’s starting to feel a lot like the first dot-com bubble, there are simply not enough great programmers to satisfy Bay Area startups: “Top programmers are like a race car,” says one developer. “Once you get them you don’t want to lose them and you want to get as many as you can.” That’s caused headaches for the talent agency GitHire, which is a startup itself.

Bullet Points: “I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor.”

The Hired Guns on February 8, 2012

bullet points, David Ogilvy, job hunting Comment

Letters of Note reprints a key letter from advertising legend David Ogilvy. “I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.”
30 Tumblrs to Remembr [Time]
8 Outdated Gadgets You Must Toss [Inc.]
Money.com rounds up 25 companies that each have at least 700 openings and talks with their recruiters to find out what qualities they want to see in candidates.
In the rigorously bro culture of today’s Silicon Valley, patterned socks are a major fashion statement. [NYT]

Bullet Points: What Makes Good Companies Tick?

The Hired Guns on February 2, 2012

bullet points, corporate culture Comment

What makes a company a good place to work? It’s not the free quinoa at lunch. The Vault takes a stab at answering for real.
Hiring’s up, but it still lags behind the numbers from January 2011. [SHRM]
A graffiti artist is one of the more unlikely stockholders standing to become much, much more wealthy because of Facebook’s IPO. [NYT]
Flexing his mentorship muscles, the former CEO of Tyco, Dennis Kozlowski, has been encouraging his fellow inmate, the hip-hop star Ja Rule. to go back to school. [Business Insider]
This five-year-old has some idea of what lots of logos stand for, but McDonald’s, Apple, and GE lead the pack in recognizability:

[from the Next Web. See also: The Top 15 Brands on Twitter]

Bullet Points: New Tech Solutions for Talent Acquisition

The Hired Guns on January 26, 2012

bullet points, talent acquisition Comment

Sarah White of the HR Tech blog is way bullish on recruiting technology: “More than any other segment of the HR Tech industry, the innovations, drive and risk taking in the Talent Acquisition world is amazing…. As SmartRecruiter Founder & CEO Jerome Ternynck points out, ‘Recruiting is $400bn problem that affects every business in the world. I guess that makes it attractive to both entrepreneurs and VCs.’”
The employment site Monster.com has laid off 400 employees, about 7% of its total workforce. [MassHighTech]
Over at Slate, Matt Yglesias points to an analysis of the metro areas with the highest median wages.
Why you should never be authentic on social media. [The Cynical Girl]

Bullet Points: When a Resume’s Too Good to Be True

The Hired Guns on January 24, 2012

bullet points, resume, technology Comment

It’s a jungle out there, and it looks to HR folks as if more and more job candidates have been “inflating” their experience, titles, and just about everything else. [CNBC]
Business cards are often pretty. But are they also irrelevant? [Lifehacker]
Given that we want to teach the children well, should they be learning how to be entrepreneurs rather than employees? [The Next Web]
Giving your just-bought Android phone a tune-up. [BI slideshow]
Are smart phones ushering in the “death of street smarts“? Sara Goodyear, writing for The Atlantic, argues that maybe we should all be spending more time with the GPS off.

Bullet Points: Stop the HR Bashing!

The Hired Guns on January 20, 2012

bullet points, HR, recruiting Comment

Is it time to stop picking on Human Resources? The consultant Ron Ashkenas blames the problems on changing times — the instability that’s resulted from putting new computer systems into place, for instance, as well as the ways that HR functions have begun to overlap with management. “HR’s evolution… does not just concern changing HR. It’s also about helping managers take more accountability for people and culture, and eventually blurring the rigid distinction between ‘HR’and ‘management.’” [HBR]
Candidates hoping to be assistant football coach of the University of South Carolina should probably not be smokers or “fat, sloppy guys” if they want to get hired, advised the team’s coach, Steve Spurrier, at a press conference. [Steve Boese's HR Technology]
11 useful tips for marketing your brand on LinkedIn [The Next Web]
This year’s just-released list of the 100 best companies to work for might not be full of surprises, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still learn some things from it. [The Business of HR]
Mercer gives the infographic treatment to a survey that asked men and women how they felt about their pay, performance goals, and benefits. [HR Bartender]
BBC Radio 4′s Michael Rosen speaks with Chris Anderson about the “new wave of public-speaking events, including Ignite and TED, and asks if the culture of ‘Show & Tell’ in American classrooms produces better public speakers” than methods in Britain.

Bullet Points: HR and Recruiting

The Hired Guns on January 12, 2012

bullet points, HR, recruiters, recruitment Comment

You might be doing it wrong: 10 misconceptions about social recruiting.
–Sirona Says Blog
How do you tell the boss his fly is down?
–Barbara Pachter
Why Googling job candidates isn’t going away. A cautionary tale.
–Kris Dunn, HR Capitalist
“NOT THE PRECIOUSSSS!!!” All that amazing institutional knowledge you’ve accrued through hard experience? You should be sharing it, not hoarding it.
–HR Fishbowl

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Bullet Points: Embrace the Fail

Bullet Points: Keeping Counteroffers Off the Table

Bullet Points: The End of “More Is More”?

Bullet Points: Oracle’s Play for Taleo

Bullet Points: “I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor.”

Bullet Points: What Makes Good Companies Tick?

Bullet Points: New Tech Solutions for Talent Acquisition

Bullet Points: When a Resume’s Too Good to Be True

Bullet Points: Stop the HR Bashing!

Bullet Points: HR and Recruiting

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