In the interview, talk about your talent plan

Cool story from (Shock!), the world of sports, in this case professional basketball.  The National Basketball Association, (NBA), is not unlike most competitive businesses in that strategy and leadership, while important, will only take an organization so far. To win, heck, to even compete for NBA titles, a supremely talented and thoughtfully assembled roster of players is mandatory. And even then, since almost all the teams possess top talent, you'll never be guaranteed of success, for the teams that usually win rely on two or three superstars - ultra-rare talents that all teams need and compete for.Like a young Lance Haun

So last summer when Los Angeles Clippers executive Neal Olshey was interviewing for the General Manager job with the Portland Trail Blazers, he, in his words, spent almost the entire interview with Portand owner Paul Allen talking about talent - specifically how the Blazers biggest talent need was at the point guard position, AND the team should address that need by selecting a college player named Damian Lillard in the upcoming player draft. 

From a piece on SI.com on the Blazers, Olshey, and Lillard:

In the first week of June, Olshey left the Clippers, a team stocked with point guards but devoid of prominent draft picks, for the Trail Blazers, who had no reliable point guard but two lottery picks.

During his interview with Blazers owner Paul Allen, Olshey talked about Lillard almost as much as himself. "It was basically the whole interview," Olshey said. "The biggest need was clearly point guard and Damian was the guy. There was no question he was the guy." The Blazers wanted to draft him at No. 11, but feared, for good reason, that he would be gone, so they snagged him sixth.

So far, about a dozen games into the NBA season, and Lillard's career, Olshey's talent assessment has been right on the money - Lillard leads the Blazers in scoring, assists, and has impressed fans, rivals, and teammates with his outstanding and heady play.

The larger point I think this story illustrates is how having a talent plan, not just a 'business' or 'strategy' plan was to both Olshey's successful candidacy for the General Manager job, but also the ultimate success of the team, and by extension, Olshey's job performance.

It is fantastic in an interview setting if you can talk confidently about the target company's industry, competitive situation, opportunities, and challenges. It is great to be able to confidently describe how your skills and experience can help the company solve problems or operate more effectively. But if you can talk about talent - the needs, gaps, where to find talent, what kind of talent you'd recommend to bring into the organization, and how you will bring them in - then I think you have the advantage.

And if you can, like Mr. Olshey has so far in his tenure, execute on your talent plans, then you win.

#HRHappyHour Tonight - 'The LinkedIn Show'

Tonight at 8:00PM EST  the HR Happy Hour Show is back live with Episode 151 - 'The LinkedIn Show.'

You can catch the show live starting at 8PM on the listener call-in line 646-378-1086, on the show page here, or via the widget player embedded below.

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

Our guest tonight will be industry analyst and thought leader John Sumser from HRexaminer.com.

Recently, HRexaminer ran a series of pieces about LinkedIn, the current state of professional networking, the impact and influence of LinkedIn for the talent management community, and finally some interesting and thought-provoking ideas about LinkedIn's future.

What you WON'T learn on the LinkedIn show are things like, 'How to stuff your LinkedIn profile with the right keywords' or 'How to use LinkedIn to find electricians in Toledo.'

What we will talk about, and we invite everyone listening tonight to join in and share your thoughts, is LinkedIn's place in the overall professional/personal networking space, how LinkedIn's platform and walled garden are impacting the industry, and what potential threats and alternatives exist to LinkedIn.

As an HR, Talent, and Recruiting pro, I am sure you have an opinion about LinkedIn as well, and tonight on the show, and on the Twitter backchannel (hashtag #HRHappyHour), we invite you to share your thoughts. 

It should be a fun and interesting show and I hope you can join us!

Avatars and office decorations - sometimes little things matter

I've never been one for personal office decorations - family pictures, inspirational posters, desktop golf putting games, etc.  I always kind of felt like putting up pictures of the family or the pets on my desk or walls was sort of dumb - after all it was just work, I wasn't going to prison or on some kind of arctic expedition. I'd just seen all these people and animals in the morning, and I'd see them all again that night. I would put a calendar on the wall maybe, but that was about it.  And for me, that was perfectly normal and acceptable. If other folks wanted to 'personalize' their work environment with photos and other items, more power to them, I mean to each their own, right?

Except for some folks, and surprisingly even some leaders I have known over the years, my decision to leave my office free from flair was (at least sometimes), interpreted as a demonstration of a lack of commitment to the position and to the organization. For some folks, a colleague that doesn't take the time to put up a few pictures reads to them like someone that doesn't really intend to stay very long, and/or doesn't really care enough about the job to make the space more warm, welcoming, and personal. While I wish that workplaces would be free from these kind of petty and trivial situations, I am also enough of a realist or pragmatist to understand that is often not the case.

I thought about that former job of mine when I caught this recent piece on Business Insider, A Simple Illustration That Shows How Steven Sinofsky Wasn't a Team Player, about former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, who up until a few weeks ago, ran the huge and lucrative Windows business. Apparently, and for reasons that remain unclear, (probably forever), Sinofsky did not join the rest of the Microsoft executive team by replacing their corporate website headshots with a cutesy Microsoft Kinect-style avatar.  Check out the image below, and notice how this lack of participation stands out.

According the BI piece, this seemingly small, unimportant detail spoke to a larger point, that it "symbolized Sinofsky’s reputation inside Microsoft — (he) focused intently on controlling the success of his own division, and not all that interested in playing along with the rest of the company."

Silly right?  I mean Sinofsky was an important, busy executive. He probably couldn't be bothered to supply an avatar image, (or more likely, just approve one), for the website. I mean, who cares anyway? What does that have to do with building great products?

I suppose nothing. But somewhere, someone, maybe more than a few folks, interpreted this as Sinofsky's lack of 'buy-in' to the team.  It's likely people that felt that way probably felt it all along, and this little example helped to cement their feelings about him.

Either way, and whether we like it or not, sometimes these tiny, insignificant things matter. It would not have killed me to put a few photos up in my office, heck, I could of just bought a couple of new frames and left the stock images they usually come with in them. No one would have known the difference.

But it would have at least made them feel like I was more like one of them, and I was indeed also part of the team.

And that is not insignificant.

Twinkies or technology skills: Shelf-life is shorter than you think

All of us, or at least most of us that care about the future of some of America's most beloved snack foods, have been following the sad story of Hostess - the venerable maker of all things wonderful, (Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and my favorite, those orange nuclear-looking cupcakes), that after failing to come to terms with striking workers, appears to be in its death spiral.  If indeed Hostess has to liquidate, it seems likely that some of their most popular and iconic brands like the Twinkie might survive, with a number of potential rival baking companies seemingly eager to purchase (at a fire-sale price), the brand name and recipe for the cake.It might still be good

While a plausible scenario, the Twinkie's future is still uncertain, and in the week or so run-up from the initial announcement of Hostess' intention to pursue liquidation, and the last, failed attempt at a labor settlement, consumers across the country essentially bought out all remaining supplies of Twinkies and other favorite Hostess snacks. The idea being to stock up while you still could, and if you acted quickly and scored a few extra Twinkies boxes, that combination of your stockpile with the Twinkie's legendary decades-long shelf-life, you'd be set to get your Twinkie fix for a really, really long time.

But it turns out, despite the urban legend that the preservative and artificial ingredient-heavy Twinkie being able to last forever, (or near enough), the true shelf-life of a Twinkie is no more than about 25 days, and typically were pulled from store shelves after about 10 days. So bottom-line, Twinkies last for less time than you think, (please let's hope they come back, I finished my stash two days ago).

I thought about the little Twinkie paradox while reading this piece, 'What's the Shelf-life of a Techie? Just 15 years, from the Times of India site.  In the piece, high-ranking technology leaders from the India operations of several well-known global tech firms,  (SAP, Microsoft, Texas Instruments), paint a pretty stark and probably realistic picture of the increasingly rapid deterioration of technology skills and expertise, as the pace of newer, hotter, and more in-demand technologies come to market. There are about half a dozen choice quotes in the piece, but this is the one that really stood out the most:

Mukund Mohan, CEO of Microsoft's startup accelerator programme in India, says the shelf life of certain kinds of developers has shrunk to less than a year. "My daughter developed an app for iPhone 4. Today, she is redeveloping the app to make it smarter for iPhone 5.

Five years ago, developers were talking Symbian (the Nokia operating system). Today, it's not very relevant. You have to look at Android or iOS or may be even Windows 8 to stay relevant."

A pretty telling quote and a bit frightening as well. The iPhone4 is maybe a year old, the iPhone5 less than that, and about to be rendered, 'out of date' in maybe 6 more months. It used to be that hardware, software, and the technical skills needed to make it all work advanced more evenly, regularly, and more importantly, the big firms that make these technologies, and their customers that use them, had much longer time horizons in mind when developing and deploying technology.

In the (recent) past a large, enterprise deployment of an ERP or an accounting system at a big firm could reasonably be expected to be in place more or less unchanged, for a decade, maybe even longer. Lots of IT pros and managers have made long and successful careers essentially by developing a deep understanding of a single technology.

While that was commonplace, and if you chose the 'right' technology, a pretty shrewd approach to career management, if these IT executives are accurate in their assessments, specializing in one technology at the expense of, exposure to, and continual learning about the 'next' technology that will be in demand is the only way to at least have a chance of remaining relevant, (and employable), past a time horizon, like the shelf-life of the Twinkie, is a lot shorter than you think.

Have a great Tuesday!

WEBINAR: It's Time for Your Close-Up

Have you heard about the latest trend in cosmetic surgery?

Of course you have, you are on top of things, you even know that this past weekend the mighty South Carolina Gamecocks football team defeated arch-rival Clemson for the 4th consecutive year, (sorry, I just had to slip in a sports reference).

Back to cosmetic surgery.  With the growing accessibility and importance of video communication - Skype, Google Hangouts, Video Interviewing, FaceTime, etc., a new genre of surgery has emerged - the so-called 'FaceTime Facelift'.

The idea behind this clever marketing stunt by a couple of enterprising cosmetic surgeons - that increased use of video technologies will drive a subset of users to seek, ahem, enhancements, in their appearance and some kind of improvement in their confidence when using these new technologies.

Sounds crazy, right?

But the 'FaceTime Facelift', despite how ludicrous it sounds, does reveal an underlying truth - video technology for essential communication, collaboration, and simply 'getting things done' continues to emerge as one of the most dominant technology trends of the last few years. And this trend is bigger than Skyping your Aunt Betty for her birthday, it continues to drive important changes and present opportunities inside of organizations as well.

That is why your friends at Fistful of Talent, in collaboration with the folks at Blue Jeans Network, have decided to focus on video and it's role in driving results inside the organization for the latest installment of the FOT Webcast titled "Video Killed the Radio Star: How Collaboration Tools and the BYOD Movement Are Reshaping the Way HR & Recruiting Pros Get S#*T Done”, to be presented this Thursday, November 29th at 1:00PM ET.

Here are all the deets:

Join FOT for our November webinar (sponsored by the fine folks at Blue Jeans Network), “Video Killed the Radio Star: How Collaboration Tools and the BYOD Movement Are Reshaping the Way HR & Recruiting Pros Get S#*T Done”,  on Thursday, November 29th at 1:00PM ET, and we’ll hit you with the following:

1. A detailed dive into why video collaboration is quickly killing the use of traditional audio conferencing tools and the positive impact the shift is having in modern day organizations.

2. Five ways you can leverage video collaboration tools in your organization today. FOT is determined to make you a believer, so we’re offering up five scenarios in which video collaboration would be the most effective route to execute challenges in your daily role and ultimately drive business results.

3. A comprehensive roadmap for driving user adoption of video collaboration across your organization. You’ve got the goods now it’s time to put them to use. FOT will break down the three barriers to user adoption and offer up a resistance free roadmap to implementing video collaboration across any business.

4. A universal script guaranteed to eliminate pregnant pauses, crickets and speaking out of turn.

5. BYOD and the Mobile Era - the final definition.  We’ll bring in Jeremy Malandar from Blue Jeans Network to define BYOD and the Mobile Era, and break down why they are leading drivers in the shift to video collaboration.  

Bonus: We’ll wrap this webinar by stocking your toolbox full of free, cheap and accessible video tools and hardware to help you get started with video collaboration in your organization today.

Toss your outdated audio conferencing equipment like a pair of acid wash jeans and start collaborating like it’s 2012 – register now for “Video Killed the Radio Star”.

This webinar comes FOT guarantee – 60% of the time, it works every time.

Register today!