• The Great White Referral
  Howard Adamsky's 2005 article on The Myth of the Passive Candidate was a timely repost on today's ERE. If 2005 was the year of the Passive Candidate, 2006 has been the year of the Employee Referral. It's a good thing it's almost 2007 because I am getting tired of it. Don't get me wrong: employee referrals can produce great hires, no doubt about it But I think they're being oversold. (HRM Direct)
   
• Where is Jeff Taylor?
  I was watching the Discovery Channel the other day when a commercial appeared from a company called eons.  The commercials (which can be viewed below) included Jeff Taylor, the founder and visionary behind Monster.  I've heard many stories about Jeff, and although I have never met him, his reputation remains solid as on of the leading thinkers and visionaries in the online recruitment industry.  As one industry veteran once told me, "I would work for two CEOs again, one is Jeff". (Human Capitalist)
   
• Can We Move Beyond "HRO Vendors Aren't Making Money"?
  One of the big themes in human resources outsourcing (HRO) this past year was, "...none of the HRO vendors are making money".  Can we please move beyond this because, frankly, its old news?  Yes, Hewitt and Convergys have disclosed challenging financials with their HRO business (I actually credit these 2 vendors for actually disclosing their financials at the business unit level) but does it really matter?  (Human Capitalist)
   
• Always Be EchoSign
  I'm blogging this on the last working day of Q4, the busiest sales day of the year. And I have the time to blog this because of a seriously great deal execution web service called EchoSign. This morning I had a deal to be done with someone who doesn't use Word out of principle (hey, we are wiki guys and all for it), threw away their fax machine when spam ate all the ink and paper and didn't have access to a scanner.  Another person was on vacation and I didn't want to burden them with the manual labor or a Kinko's run.  I signed up for a free account, uploaded an agreement, sent them, tracked progress during the day and got counter electronic signatures.  CCd the lawyer in the process.  Deal done hassle free. (Ross Mayfield)
   
• How the brain forecasts
  Neuroscientists report that the same regions of the brain are used for forecasting the future as recalling the past. In the Washington University study, subjects underwent fMRI brain scans as they were asked to remember, say, a BBQ they attended and also imagine one in the future. The fMRI enabled the scientists to identify which specific brain regions lit up during both tasks. From Scientific American:

  "...To effectively generate a plausible image of the future, subjects reactivate images (e.g. visual-spatial context)," the researchers write in a paper published online January 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. "Postexperiment questionnaires indicate that while envisioning the future, subjects tended to place those images in the context of familiar places (e.g. home, school) and familiar people (e.g. friends)." In other words, to imagine the future, we remember the past and put our projections in that context.

  (Boing Boing)
   

• RSS wasn't invented
  In the dustup over Microsoft's RSS patents, some of the mainstream press brought up, once again, the issue of Who Invented RSS. But RSS doesn't have an inventor. It wasn't invented. Something else happened, something harder than invention, imho -- an activity that we don't have a word for in the English language. First, let's try to figure out what happened, never mind, for the moment, how it happened. (Scripting News)
   
• How to Develop People
  • Any organization develops people; it has no choice. It either helps them grow or it stunts them… In developing people the lesson is to focus on strengths. Then make really stringent demands, and take the time and trouble (it's hard work) to review performance. 1

  Do you even have a talent management practice yet? I'd say that pretty much every large organization has a "VP of talent" or something similar. However, the small and mid sized businesses may be lagging behind a bit. (Systematic HR)
   

• What is a weblog?
  The unedited voice of a person People use blogs primarily to discuss one question -- what is a blog? The discussion will continue as long as there are blogs. It's no different from other media, all they ever talk about is what they are. We got dinged by the NY Times because all bloggers talked about at the DNC was other bloggers. But what were they busy doing -- talking about other reporters, except when they were talking about bloggers -- talking about bloggers. Nothing wrong with it. In the early days we joked that they were watching us watch them watch us watch them. And so on. (Scripting News)
   
• Vanishing Professions
  Party excess this time of year, but it's also a liberating period when one can practice all one's vices -- gluttony, alcohol abuse, and sleeping late  -- with the knowledge that repentance is nigh on New Year's Day. Resolutions to eat right, exercise, and save money and/or the environment/the world provide the antidotal whiplash to holiday blowouts. I figure it's the ying and yang way to keep people in check for the rest of the year.  (BerkeleyBlog...hat tip Dave Winer)

John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.
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