WEBINAR: Hire for smart (unless you think the world will stop changing)

I'm sure you've seen or heard statements like '61% of the jobs in the USA by 2017 don't even exist today' or 'Kids are learning things during freshman year in college that are already obsolete by the time when they graduate.' Ok, I made up the '61%' stat - but the gist of the assertion is probably accurate. No matter what you or most of the people in your organization are doing today, there is a pretty good chance you and they will be doing something different, even significantly different, tomorrow.

What matter more to long-term, sustainable, and adaptable organizational success probably isn't finding and holding on to people that (just) know how to do their current job, but to find, develop, engage, and retain the kind of people that will be able to thrive in tomorrow's uncertain future as well. Way back when, before we knew anything about competencies and personality types and employee engagement mumbo-jumbo - most smart managers knew that finding the smartest people was the only to be able to navigate uncertain times. With this in mind, my friends at Fistful of Talent are back to help you make the leap to hiring smart vs. hiring a resume.

Here are the deets: 

Join hiring smart (people) experts Kris Dunn and Kelly Dingee for Brains Before Bros: Why Hiring Smart People over Experienced People is a Winning Talent Strategy, sponsored by our friends at SumTotal, on Tuesday June 12 at 1pm EST and they’ll hit you with the following:

 

A rundown of the factors driving talent scarcity in today’s workforce and why it’s better to hire smart people and train for success.

1. FOT’s definition of “smart” and common false positives you need to consider when defining what smart looks like for your organization.
2. Three signs that your top talent may be looking to jump ship and how to reel them back in by providing the incentives they really want. (Hint: It’s not always monetary).
3. Five ways to keep training and development programs aligned with evolving expectations from top applicants and your existing talent – without breaking your budget.
4. We’ll close this webinar by bringing in Steve Parker from SumTotal to help you ensure your leadership team is creating the right environment to get the most out of your existing talent.

Your traditional approach to talent isn’t working –- start putting brains before bros and maximize your talent strategy today.

Register for the FREE webinar HERE.

As always the webinar comes with the standard Fistful of Talent promise: 100% of the time it's guaranteed to work 60% of the time.

WEBINAR: How smart managers are employee agents

Yep, it's time for me to pitch the next installment in the Fistful of Talent free webinar series, this one titled Get My Agent On The Phone- How Smart Managers Position Themselves as Agents Via Performance Goals, which is set for next Tuesday, May 21st from 1:00PM  - 2:00PM EDT, and is sponsored by longtime friends of FOT and of mine, Halogen Software. 

You can register for the free webinar here.

But why should you?

Because chances are at your organization either performance management, goal setting and tracking, or the capability of your front-line managers to really manage employee performance and inspire and encourage development need some help.

Because your company is probably like 98% of companies out there that are not getting enough - enough improvement, enough accountability, enough understanding of who the best performers really are - out of your performance management process.

Because despite the hype and buzz about 'scrapping performance reviews' you know that will never happen anytime soon where you work, and that you as a talent pro have to find ways to make the system work for you, and not try and invent something entirely new.

And last, because you secretly know if your organization doesn't continue to improve and innovate and stay one step ahead, there are 4 dudes who just dropped out of Stanford that have already figured out a way to do what your firm does, only cheaper, faster, and using only an iPhone app. 

So what will you learn from  Get My Agent On The Phone- How Smart Managers Position Themselves as Agents Via Performance Goals?

Simple.

Making sure the goals you set represent the Five Most Important Things (5MIT) for the employee in question. What are the most important things your employee has to focus on this year? If you can only talk to them about five things, what would those things be and why? Smart managers skip discussing the busy work and get to what's going to change the game - for the company and the employee. We'll give you the 411 on how to do that.

Offering up ways each of the Five Most Important Things might be measured in the months that follow. You want measurements - we get it. The key in offering up how you’re going to measure the 5MIT in question is not to limit yourself. The more you box yourself in, the less innovation you get. We'll show you how to set the expectation your direct reports are going to be measured without actually taking performance off the table. PS - They'll love you for this if you deliver it in the right way.

Having Thoughts on what “Good” and “Great” performance looks like in each area. That’s right – we’re going through a goal setting process not because HR told us we had to, but because it can set us up to be a great performance coach for the rest of the year. Nothing sets you up as a coach more than owning the difference between “good” and “great”. We'll tell you how to reserve the “great” tag for employees who really innovate, drive change or add true value in the job they’re in.

Including a section that details “What’s In It for Me?” for each area of focus. Being an agent is about talking about how chasing great performance in the area in question could be great for the employee’s career. We'll show you how to frame this as the agent/coach. It's the most important thing you can do.

Putting it all in an easy to follow, informal format. If you go beyond one page, you’re making goal setting too complex. List everything we’ve described to this point in one page, and make the headers conversational in nature, and you win. We've got some format to share with you.

Look you and your managers want to be viewed as career agents for your employees rather than a run of the mill corporate bureaucrat. The robots are coming for those jobs. Trust me on that.

Join FOT for "Get My Agent on the Phone"  on Tuesday, May 21st from 1:00PM  - 2:00PM EDT and we'll show how the secret sauce to goal setting and follow-up conversations can dramatically change the positioning of what you do in performance management.

As always, the free FOT webinar comes guaranteed - 60% of the time it works every time.

WEBINAR: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting

You know what niche industry is really suffering right now?

Ok, that was a dumb question, there are hundreds of possible answers, (luxury electric cars, shoe shine stands, sites trying to peddle surplus Jeremy Lin 'Knicks' gear), but the one I was going for was gossip magazines.

You know the ones I mean - National Enquirer, The Star, The Weekly World News. The rags that line every supermarket checkout counter in America.

Why are these publications feeling the squeeze lately? It's not for a lack of juicy news - heck the Kardashians alone take care of providing all the content they need. It's because while people are stuck waiting in the checkout line, when they used to scan and once in a while make an impulse buy of one of these magazines, now they are heads down on their iPhones.

Texting, Tweeting, Facebooking - whatever. The attention they used to pay to the starlet of the moment on the magazine rack is now diverted to their mobile device.

Face it - our attachment to our devices is changing everything - from gossip mags to reading news to looking for a job - and yes I just made that leap. Candidates are looking for jobs, (maybe your jobs), on their mobile devices instead of reading about the latest world's largest baby. And guess what? You probably are not ready for that.

That is why your friends over at Fistful of Talent have you covered with the latest in the FOT Webinar series - The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, Wednesday April 24 at 1:00PM ET.

What will FOT's Kris Dunn and Jason Pankow cover?

Jason and Kris will lay down FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, brought to you by the mobile sages at iMomentous by hitting you with the following:

A survey of the mobile recruiting landscape and the factors driving the need for HR and recruiting professionals to develop their mobile recruiting strategy.

Mobile site vs. Native App? FOT tackles the great debate, presenting scenarios of how each fit into your mobile recruiting strategy.

The five keys to enhancing your mobile recruiting strategy by capitalizing on features like quick apply, SMS, social media and QR codes

The ultimate checklist for selecting your mobile recruiting vendor, including the top questions you need to ask when vetting potential vendors

How to go beyond the optimized screen to attract top talent to your organization by incorporating video content and thought leadership into via your mobile recruiting strategy.

So what are you wating for, register here for the April installment of the FREE FOT webinar and start laying down the foundation for your mobile recruiting strategy.

As always, the FOT Webinar comes guaranteed - 60% of the time it works every time.

WEBINAR: Seven strategies to save your employee referral program

Batman is without a doubt the greatest of all superheroes. A tragic origin story. A relentless and lifelong pursuit of elusive justice. And just the right amount of darkness, doubt, pain, and mystery to sustain the narrative for decades. You, me, all of us - we need a Batman. 

And you know what else you need - Mr. or Ms. Talent Pro? You need to fill that Sr. Software Developer role like yesterday - or the next version of Super-fantastic-amazing product might night make it out the door as promised. You could use someone like Batman helping you out, that is for sure.

The really cool thing about superheroes is that they are superheroes for a reason – they have someone who is their equal to compete against them. These competitors are the super-villains, and in the movies they’re doing bad things – but in real life these “villains” are only the bad guys and girls because they work for the competition.

So, how do you get your competitors talent to come over to your side and put on your company’s cape? A great employee referral program is the key.

Your pals over at Fistful of Talent are back at it with the March installment of their monthly webinar series. This month, with the help from the heroes at Zao, HR SuperFriends Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett will be laying down seven strategies that are guaranteed to put your employee referral program on another planet.  

Join us Wednesday March 27 at 1pm ET and we’ll hit you with the following:

• Seven surefire ways to engage your best employees and increase referrals (while ensuring your employees don’t refer SuperDuds!)
• How to develop an internal communication strategy for your employee referral program
• The keys to sustaining your program long-term
•  How and why trends like gamification can lead to better employee referral results
• he top three reasons 99% of employee referral programs fail and how you can make sure your employee referral program is delivering the goods all year long

Don’t let your employee referral program fall to the Legion of Doom. Register now for The SuperFriends: 7 Strategies to Get Your Superhero Employees to refer Their Arch Nemesis! 

As always, the FOT webinar comes with a guarantee - 60% of the time it works all of the time!

WEBINAR: You Rejected Me, But I Still Love You

The fine, fine people over at Fistful of Talent are back with the next installment in the popular webinar series that we like to jokingly refer to over at Fistful HQ in Cheyenne as the FOT Webinar!

Here are the details you need to know:

Title: Before the Rose Ceremony: How to Become an Employer of Choice Through Your Interview Process

Date and Time: Thursday, October 25, 2012 - 1:00PM ET

How to register? - Easy, just click here

Price: Free! (now that's a deal)

Need more convincing before you commit exactly $0 and 1 hour of your time to your pals at Fistful?

Ok, here goes:

Ever wonder why some of those women on The Bachelor don’t smash a window on their way out the door when they get voted off?  Let’s explore that in recruiting terms.

Join Fistful of Talent for our October webinar, (sponsored by the good folks at HireVue) – “Before the Rose Ceremony: How to Become an Employer of Choice Through Your Interview Process”, where we’ll explore the following and compare it to the meat show on the Bachelor/Bachelorette:

What pre-interview, pre-phone screen features subconsciously tell a candidate that you’re different from your competitors and help you plant the initial “why you want to work here” seed.

The 3 things that need to be present in your initial outreach to a candidate to prevent their BS meter from exploding (aka momentum killers).

The 5 Key Features of the live interview process at your company that sell your culture as a Great Place to Work – regardless if you hire the candidate or not.

FOT’s Top 7 Interview Questions for uncovering great info and selling the candidate on your company as an employer of choice – they won’t even realize you’re doing it (and you’ll get great info as a result).

SEND IN YOUR LESS ATTRACTIVE FRIENDS TO GIVE APPROVAL! (That’s FOT in this case.)  We’ll end with a simple audit process that you can use to determine if your interview process is contributing as much as it should toward your company being viewed as a destination of choice for candidates.

Join FOT for “You Rejected Me But I Still Love You” and install a couple of the interview process features we discuss, and candidates will start to view you less as the Motel 6 and more like the Ritz.  

So that's the pitch - what do you think, do I get a rose at the end of the ceremony, or am I riding back to the bachelor house in the limo of shame?

All kidding aside, the FOT Webinars are the best in the industry for a reason - they mix actionable information, smart people, and just the right mix of fun and entertainment that make your investment, (remember it's FREE), pay off.

And as a bonus, we get to make fun of Sackett on the backchannel!

So one last time here is the 411:

Here are the details you need to know:

Title: Before the Rose Ceremony: How to Become an Employer of Choice Through Your Interview Process

Date and Time: Thursday, October 25, 2012 - 1:00PM ET

How to register? - Easy, just click here