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.......     

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. 

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.

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.....  

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......

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.   

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? 

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.   

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....  

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.... 

Amitai Givertz called me and proposed a sponsorship opportunity. 

Because I know Ami and John, I knew this would be a great event,

and it was.   You can read about the particulars here, but to me,

this was an eye-opener in a few ways.    

One was that of that 150 people in attendance, just a handful had

ever been to real recruiting trade show like ERE Expo.  As a

result, because of both the novelty and quality of the presenters,

the audience was fully engaged for the entire event.  This could

have gone a full day rather than a half day, and I think the crowd

would have barely thinned- people were clearly enjoying themselves.

Two was that in a way, bringing the ‘talent’ to the people rather

than the other way around is not at all a bad idea.  That’s not to

say there is not still a huge value on an all-up event like ERE

Expo, because its not apples to apples.  The big event draws many

vendors, execs, and markets into one time and place, and there are

irreplaceable benefits to doing that.  The Roadshow, on the other

hand, provides a much more accessible taste of the experience by

trimming it down to its essence; learning with thought leaders and

the social buzz of mingling with your peers.

Three was a new kind of value emphasized by the deal itself.  Ami

and John Sumser realized that technology has changed some things

around in ways that allow this to be totally free to attendees,

reasonably priced for sponsors, and adequately rewarding for the

organizers.  

For attendees, the show is coming to them, it only costs their

attention and a short drive, and it’s a compact, high quality

experience.  I think many of the people in Dallas may want to do it

again next year.  

For sponsors, the pop is in the act of being a sponsor.  The

Internet increases the value of a short branding experience because

interested buyers can gain more information with a click in an

exploring / buying medium (the Internet) with which they are fully

comfortable.  The branding experience is effective because you have

an intensely engaged audience.   Anyone experienced in marketing

knows that multiple brand exposures prior to customer demand are a

key driver of sales conversion events.   In our business, trade

shows are an expensive way to gain brand exposures and a very

expensive way to gain sales conversions. 

This type of event remains an expensive way to gain brand

exposures, yet still saves money and finds relatively fresh targets

relative to a trade show.   With an executive deployed, there are

inevitably some direct business opportunities to be found almost

anywhere a few hundred people gather in one industry. 

For John, Ami, and the presenters, they each brand themselves

fabulously with the audience and have their direct costs covered. 

Cell phones, wireless web and mobile devices combined with Internet

powered travel infrastructure allows a kind of miracle; I woke up

in my bed in a Cleveland, OH exaburb, traveled to Dallas TX, had a

fully engaged seven hour workday at two locations, and traveled

home in time to be in my kitchen with a chicken sandwich at

midnight.  

The entire trip, with car-rental, airfare, etc., cost

$296 and a few gallons of diesel for the family tank.

All in all, it was a winner.  I don’t know if the model works

forever or is only fun once, but it was a good time and I hope the

model has legs.  I think the organizers worked hard and did well,

and Main Sequence was grateful for the invitation.

Last, DFW Airport has to be seen to be imagined.  I have been there

before, but this time I had a flyaround to see the scale of the thing. 

Within the belly of the beast, you lose all sense of direction as you are

enveloped my masses of concrete in every configuration and hundreds

of turns in the roads.    All from a shuttle bus that felt like a small craft

 on a cement sea.   Yet, the sailing was smooth from the highway to

the ever too-small seat on the plane.   First time I was ever on a jet

with one-seat rows.  I kind of liked it. 

Howard Adamsky's emphatic post on the OFCCP Internet Applicant Rule, while overheated, is interesting to me for a number of reasons.   
 
First is my long and extensively documented disgust with the rule.  I don't think keywords are a prevailing or even material tool of discrimination (but I do think names and ZIP codes are). I think the economic impact of the rule is way beyond $100 million (the threshold a rule must not cross to avoid an actual cost/benefit analysis by executive order).  I think the rule is unconstitutional as hell because you are forced to report to the government which of your own documents you have read.    

But more noticeable to me lately is how much politics have infused themselves into business.  I can remember a time not so long ago when business etiquette tended toward euphemism when politics entered the stage, and smooth operators kept indications of political leanings to a minimum (beyond healthy admiration of a dollar, which now sadly seems to have disappeared as well).

See the politics creeping in there?   It's hard to keep politics at bay day-to-day when events have names like credit crunch, housing meltdown, war, peak oil, and torture.  I don't really want to think about the implications of a truly evolved totalitarian / capitalist government driven by an ideology of profit for a two class system of owners and everyone else.  (naturally the ownership class will be more finely graded than Olympic figure skating, but that's human beings fer ya...) 

All I want is to do is my bit to help make it happen.  After all, talent management may be the killer app for social control. 

Howard compares the rule to SOX, as did Kurt Ronn (in a BusinessWeek online article), but in opposite ways.  Kurt argued that the rule is better than bad, its good- because process gives structure, and structure is good.  I strongly disagreed with Kurt because bad process gives bad structure.  SOX provides for reasonable generalized control objectives relating to accounting and on the whole, while expensive, seems to have turned out well. The OFCCP rule, on the other hand, is unreasonable, far too specific, and has had no good results yet (I have no information about results because I have yet to hear of any enforcement actions).    I'll say this for Kurt; from his comment on Howard's post, he remains sanguine about the potential for abuse and the slippery slope on this one.   

Howard, on the other hand, compares it to SOX as both being examples of bad regulations.  I disagree for the same reasons; SOX seems to be OK.

But then Howard has to bring Al Gore into it.  And to finish with a real flourish, he has to bring Ayn Rand, the Ann Coulter of her day, into it.  And then Colin Kingsbury had to bring global warming into it, along with a cite of Whittaker Chambers, just to show his range.  So the whole thing went political.   

Colin throws out the sophistry that:

"OFCCP regulations apply to a very specific group of companies, namely, those who do a significant amount of government contracting. No government contracts, no OFCCP compliance requirements."  

When we are facing a government of 40% of GDP in a generation that is not a sustainable position.   

Colin says about climate change that "generalized guilt and suspicion of progress and wealth underlies much of the current global warming frenzy" Maybe its just suspicion of the wealthy that's the driver.....but I don't really think that it is.  I think it's the ease with which anyone can do a simple thought experiment to figure out the issue:  

1) Park your car in your garage and close the door, but keep the engine running.   What happens?  

2) Multiply your garage's volume by a some billions and do a powertrain upgrade on your car to a billion internal combustion engines, and leave the whole rig running in your big garage for 100 years.  What happens ?

Old Whittaker and I agree- Atlas Shrugged sucked as both novel and philosophy.   I find it a little unsettling that as he utterly destroys Atlas Shrugged he culminates with a foreshadowing of our current polarized body politic: 

"In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them. "

Howard too culminates with a warning, and thats what makes his post special and well worth writing about:

"I get the feeling they are looking at the recruiting industry closely, very closely. You never wanted to work for the government? Guess what: You already are, and you ain't seen nothin' yet."

The OFCCP Rule is nothing but Big Brotherism and should be vigorously fought at every turn, not "accepted" as a stage on the way to perdition. 

I don’t know where the phrase came from discussing areas to be cut, but the line 'non-revenue generating functions, such as human resources'  says it all.

Were I come from; ALL revenue is generated by Human Resources.

Considering that Monster’s customers are all about Human Resources, one might have hoped that they would be contemplating 'world-class, innovative products' that address the most fundamental shift in business in the last 20 years- the totality of talent tools and techniques driving business success and differentiation more than ever.

I would been excited to hear about millions of dollars being spent on talent initiatives- how to help the remaining 85% of Monster’s staff do more for customers and ensure that a customer will always be working with a superior performer. 

Online job posting is still a huge and important market worthy of investment, but what I see here is another missed opportunity for Monster to exploit their current strong position to launch themselves as a major provider of talent tools, techniques, and thinking.  

Even though it has nothing to do with HR or recruiting, I thought this would be a good place to write a few words about him.

My dad and his family (dad a prison shrink, mom a teacher) came from Pittsburgh PA.  He graduated from Aspinwall High School, class of 1961.  After college at Pitt (and meeting and marrying my mom)  he was not so keen on jungle warfare, so he produced a son: yours truly.  After the draft rules changed, he became a teacher himself, and a little after that, he had a second son.    

My dad had a lot of interests; I inherited his passion for cars, planes, and computers.  He also was an avid antique and glassware collector and served for many years on the board of the Cambridge Glass Society.  My dad was a huge dog lover- with a soft spot for troubled animals (his last dog was named, appropriately, Nipper)

I learned something about the tech business a few years later when that computer was scrapped for four hundred dollars- the PC had arrived and taken over the world.   My dad was not too fond of PC’s (or Bill Gates for a while), but he eventually came around.

Ironically, my dad tired of the sun and Florida in general after Hurricane Ivan, and finally landed in Hickory, NC, as nice a place as you can find without an ocean nearby.

Its funny, but I was so young back in April of 07.   It seems a lifetime ago.  Today, the phone is ringing off the hook, and many, many tasks await. 

My dad had a ton of flaws, and he made a ton of mistakes, but I wish for my kids that my flaws and my many mistakes will add up to a legacy as excellent as that which I enjoy today.  

When I posted my first entry I noted that it’s sad (but sometimes inevitable in life) when a blog devolves toward stasis- unkempt, unseen, and not alive in any meaningful sense.  I said that if mine got to the point, I would stick a fork in it.  

Colin had extended a thread suggesting that the OFCCP Internet applicant rule could have effects similar to the SOX law in terms of improving recruiting processes,  which I disagreed with.

I then left a long comment on Colin’s blog but for whatever reason it was lost before he saw it.  I did not realize that and assumed that Colin did not want to publish my comment because it was opposed to his position, and so I published the comment as a full post on my blog  (Apologies for the assumption Colin but enough people mess with my comments that I did not consider technical issues)

Colin then did another post called Paging Martin Snyder, responding to my response.   I did not see that post for a week or three because I have been lamming it from the sphere with a new baby boy.   When I wanted to respond on Colin’s blog, it would not allow it because more than 15 days have elapsed.  

So with that excessive backstory, here is my response to Colin’s latest on the subject: OFCCP Rule v. Sox

Colin says:  

So if CFOs feel different today than they did five years ago, that says more about the CFOs and boards than it does about the law.

I see the law and people’s reaction to it as inseparable.  A law is defined by its enforcement and the real-world sanctions that await those who run afoul of it, both explicit and subtle.   So while the text of the law may not change a word, its essence may be altered beyond recognition.      

More:

Really, am I missing something huge here? The search audit requirements are a little kooky, but in practical application I've yet to hear any real horror stories about auditors going on fishing expeditions, least of all in smaller organizations  

I have yet to hear of ANY enforcement on the Internet Applicant Rule.   I sure would like to know just what form and format the OFCCP is seeking/accepting.   The rule does not include a report form or format section, only which data elements need to be available.    One man’s little kooky is another’s affront to the Constitution.  

 If you're unable to say, 'here's everyone who applied for the req,' then the OFCCP would seem to be the least of your problems. Circling back to the SOX example, are going to see recruiters in 4-5 years saying, 'ya know, that OFCCP wasn't really *that bad* after all...' I think the answer is probably yes.

The rule provides for an intolerable intrusion, on a presumption of guilt not warranted by reality.   But I’m not talking about employment discrimination, which remains a real problem that the government has a very legitimate role in remedying, I’m talking about keywords.    

Colin does not seem to be responding to the keyword angle at all:

Last, I can't shake this sense that Martin thinks that the OFCCP is tilting at non-existent windmills here in terms of systematic discrimination. I think it's understandable that we'd all like to say 'yes, that's gone, don't happen 'round here no more,' but as the years go by I become less convinced of my own former certainty

I don’t see how discrimination is occurring on a large scale via keyword.  I think geography and simple name filtering are the primary vectors of discrimination prior to face to face meetings.    If the OFCCP wanted to really cut into the problem, they would create and maintain a database of alia for jobseekers- so employers would only see a code name and no geographic information except a mileage from a selected point.

We can’t know what the impact of the rule will be in five years, but I see the likely state as distinctly Un SOXlike.   If the winds keep blowing as they are politically, we will be in a regime of greater regulation, but the courts are always a wildcard and we don’t know how this is going to be enforced.  I think if its enforced to the letter, the economic impact will be large and unexpected.

Today, David Brooks, one of the Times’ conservative voices, came across with the idea that the next major political opportunity / challenge is in the area of Human Capital.

Brooks wrote:

“What the country needs is a candidate who can transcend current categories and give a speech laying out a human capital agenda”

Anyone remotely cognizant of what the recruiting blogosphere is about knows that the underlying principle of our modern world is that economics are no longer about labor v. capital  (work and money) but talent and innovation.  

It seems like a new-age idea, something akin to psychobabble or ‘The Secret”, but it’s a real and pervasive shift in thinking that will have profound consequences on our political and economic arrangements.

I think its notable is that a conservative like Brooks sees the shift as obvious, irreversible, and positive.  That's a pretty good sign that the Human Capital idea is here to stay.

It may turn out that in the lens of history, our era will be more defined by this change in our beliefs about economics than almost anything else.   The changes in our institutions, rituals, status markers, and practices that will arise as a result are likely going to be the stuff that politics will be made of when our current focus on right v. left finally plays out.        

Hopefully these changes will occur quickly, because Brooks also says:

“High school graduation rates have peaked and are sliding. And over the next 25 years, the Educational Testing Service reports, better educated people will leave the work force and they’ll be replaced by people with less education and worse skills.”

I think that the twin ideas of America and Human Capital work wonderfully together, and may yet lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, in the utilitarian ideal, because what we have been doing for the past 25 years or so clearly does not seem to be supporting that evolution.   

The moment I read the story I saw blog post in it.  Some of Todd’s commenters took the expected tack that zero tolerance is the only acceptable position in a case like this.  Is it true that if a party is revealed to be dishonest once, no further trust may ever be placed in them?   Karen Mattonen, in her indomitable way, takes it up as a matter of justice. 

This case raises fascinating questions that go to the core of how we organize our economy.   What if this Dean had done the job wonderfully for 48 years, or 68 years?  Would the lack of actual ‘qualifications’ mean anything?     If the ‘qualifications’(esp. in the case of public monies for salaries) are not reflective of actual ability to do the job (provide value to the public), is it socially just to demand them?   Is a lie told to evade a social injustice equal to any other lie?

Are we doing ourselves any favors within our economy by allowing credentialism to thrive in places where it should not?   Is credentialism  the price we pay for a kind of shorthand that lets us be comfortable that most people hired for certain roles will indeed be able to do the job?   Is that kind of shorthand really needed today, and without it, would we have to develop better assessment systems to make these determinations?   Would there be both more justice and more value in our economy if jobs were allocated on the basis of actual ability to do the actual job, measured (at some greater expense and care) in a credentialism-discouraged environment?

I dig Colin Kingsbury. He is a fine writer with an eclectic background, and he usually has an interesting take on any issue. He comments frequently across the recruiting blogosphere, and for whatever reason, he and I seem to find ourselves on the same thread and bracketed in the same way as ATS vendors/bloggers. However, Colin is a direct competitor from time to time so there is a touch of antagonism mixed with generous collegiality when we hit the same subject.

Recently, Colin blogged about my take on a BusinessWeek article related to my online obsession, which name I will not say in this posting so as not to bore even myself. I commented on his post, but he decided for whatever reason not to include the comment in his thread. I won't stand for that, so I am posting the comment here:

So much for that bit of business.

On another note, do you recall the classic scene in 'Office Space' where Peter Gibbons tells 'The Bobs' that he only works about 15 minutes a day? Upon hearing that, the consultants can tell instantly that Peter is management material.

Recently I read a Salon.com piece by Cary Tennis, the house advice columnist for Salon. It was about a person who still had a job, but had completely stopped working. I think some of us have been there at one point or another in our lives, and I think Cary did a great job with the answer; an evocative take on our mechanistic life, but with a twist about the state of being a thinking machine. I don’t know what it says about recruiting, but you may enjoy the piece