WEBINAR: Bootstrap your employment brand the FOT Way

Here’s the short and sweet version of the information you need:

Register here, for the next Fistful of Talent Webinar on Thursday July 19th at 1:00PM ET.

If you need more convincing than that, well here you go....

It’s July, it’s hot, (at least in most of the Western Hemisphere), and you’re possibly feeling a little less-than-inspired. You look around the office and see a bunch of empty cubes, left unattended as your colleagues with more seniority and better ability to plan, (and schmooze the boss), are taking a nice, long summer holiday, leaving you to pick up the slack.  Yep, nothing like commuting to work at 7:45AM and seeing the temperature gauge on the minivan read 86 and the annoyingly perky morning radio guy letting you know today’s forecast high is 102.

You know how you can turn this around and exact a little revenge on those who conspire against you? (and trust me, that’s everyone).

By getting smarter while the other guy is lounging on the beach, by sharpening up the tools in your arsenal while the dude you’ll be up against for the next promotion is squeezing himself down the water slide, and maybe most importantly, having a little bit of fun with your pals at FOT while you’re at it, by joining us for the latest episode in the ever-popular, sure to excite, FOT Webinar, this time on the hot (Get it? Hot? It’s summer.), topic of Employment Branding.

Here’s the ‘official’ sounding pitch for the webinar, but you know as well as I do that in the new world no big brand, even cats as sharp as us kids here at FOT, can truly control the message.

Fistful of Talent is back this week with the July installment of the FOT webinar on Thursday, July 19th at 1:00PM ET,  brought to you by our innovative friends at TweetMyJobs. Join hosts Kris Dunn and Steve Boese, (hey that’s me),  as they deliver: Bootstrap Your Employment Brand the FOT Way, and serve up the following:

- A Quick-Hitting Approach to Building Your EVP. Forget what you think your employment brand is. FOT's going to break down a low cost way for you to determine your EVP and get some fresh ammo for your recruiting brand.

- How to Create Cool Content to Support Your EVP. The FOT team will walk you through how to develop a low-cost, low-pain way to develop quick hitting content that supports your EVP.

- How to Deliver Your Cool EVP Content via Social Media, with the Usual Suspects and TweetMyJobs. Now that you’ve identified your culture via an employment brand-supporting EVP, it’s time to package your message and ship it out to the public via mobile, photos, video, social apps, etc.

- What You Should Focus on When Gauging Your ROI, Ignoring Clicks and Other Measurement Gibberish. FOT will bring in TweetMyJobs Co- Founder, Gary Zukowski, to tell you what really matters when it comes to measuring your return on investment in relation to your employment brand – it’s more than click deep.

- 2-Way Conversations or How to Eat the Dog Food and Ease it Down with a Kool-Aid chaser. We’ll wrap up the webinar by walking you through how smart companies get team members fully engaged with the EVP and on the front lines of building a talent pool that wants to work for you.

Don’t call it a comeback – your EVP has been there for years. You’ve just never asked the right questions to figure out what people think is in it for them to work at your company.  Join FOT and Tweet My Jobs for this webinar and we’ll show you how to determine your real employment brand via the EVP and share it with the world.

So there you go - while your competition is making smores or shooting off fireworks, you’ll be getting the latest on building and communicating all the awesome in your organization, while plotting the decor in the big corner office that is reserved for people like you who soldier on instead of slacking off.

Make some plans to join the FOT crew on Thursday, July 19th at 1:00PM ET, 10:00 AM PT, (the rest of the world sort out the time yourselves).

And as always, the FOT Webinar comes to you guaranteed - 60% of the time it works every time.

WEBINAR : Talent, Succession, and Zombie Identification

A quick plug for my colleagues over at Fistful of Talent who next week, Wednesday June 20 at 1:00PM EDT, will be running the latest installment of their fun, informative, and popular webinar series, this time with what promises to be a fresh, innovative, and probably not at all like you are used to approach to succession planning and talent reviews. You know as an HR or Talent profession you secretly love talent reviews and succession planning. You do.

Why?

Because you love judging people. I mean, don't we all? You're reading this and judging me right now. If you are still reading this, I guess I made it past the latest in what naturally is an almost constant evaluation of where I fall on continuum running from 'What an idiot' to 'Genius! I need to show this article to my CEO'.

If judging people isn't the nation's second favorite pastime, (football is still number one), then how do you explain, variously, the success of American Idol, America's Got Talent, The Voice, Dancing With the Stars, and the 73 other competition/reality shows out there? And don't get me started on the internal monologue running in your brain when you go to the mall, the airport, or that pinnacle of judgmental snarkiness, the county fair.

But back to the point, and I remember there being one. As a talent professional perhaps the single most important job you have is making sure the organization has the talent it needs, in the roles where they are most likely to succeed and have some kind of affinity for, (or at least be good at), and demonstrate a readiness in organizational capability to adapt to (among other things), new business strategies, changing external conditions, and lastly and more commonly, people just being people and doing things like resigning unexpectedly, flaking out on an overseas business trip, or getting a too-good-to-pass-up and too-rich-for-you-to-match offer from ACME Corp. down the road. 

So how as a busy with a million other things HR and Talent pro begin to get a handle on the 'sound boring but are really important' processes of Succession Planning and the mechanism that drives much of the Succession Planning process, the Talent Review?

Well, that is what the FOT webinar is all about. Check the details below:

Halogen Software is bringing in the team at Fistful of Talent for a quick, street smart webinar, Wednesday June 20 at 1:00PM EDT, on how to bootstrap a talent review and get started with Succession Planning.  Attend “Zombies, Grinders and Superstars:  The FOT Talent/Succession Review” to get the following goodies:

How what you do with performance management at your company is directly related to how you approach talent reviews and succession

• Why corporate values don’t belong anywhere near your performance management system
• How items called “potential factors” add flavor to your approach to performance/talent/succession, and how to create potential factors for your company to use in the talent review
• How to use the talent review process to calibrate performance ratings across your company, box in managers who are soft on performance and create a greater sense of pay for performance in your organization
• An outline and best practice notes on how to run a talent review meeting, with formats that differ for your company’s Leadership Team, a division/departmental group, or a high potential employee program.      

This webinar comes with the Fistful of Talent guarantee:  60% of the time it works every time.  Join the FOT crew as they tell the truth and cut through the smoke and mirrors related to Talent Reviews as a part of your succession program.

Got it?

Seriously, I always have learn something new on the FOT webinars, and even if you think you have the Succession/Talent thing down cold, it is worth your time to dial-in and help make fun of Sackett.

WEBINAR: 5 Ways to Use Video to Raise Your HR and Recruiting Game

The merry band of misfits over at Fistful of Talent are at it again, ready for another classic no-holds-barred, (Really, you're probably asking, are there truly no holds barred? What about the Sleeper? Or the Figure 4 leglock? The Boston Crab? Trust me, even those holds are fair game.), free webinar designed to share information, insight, and real, actionable strategies and tactics all delivered in the trademark FOT style. This time the crew will be tacking video, and more specifically, how video is and can be used more effectively in HR and recruiting.

Here are the particulars:

You’re a progressive HR and recruiting professional (that’s why you’re reading this), and you know that video is more than a lame feature of bad compliance training.  You get that video transcends quirky YouTube videos that go viral or running Netflix/Hulu on an iPad.  You get that mobile video is the trend that will change the way your department works in the coming years, but you’re just not sure where to start…

That’s why Fistful of Talent created their latest webinar – The Future of Talent: 5 Ways to Use Video to Raise Your HR and Recruiting Game. Join us for this webinar, and we’ll give you the 411 for how to think about video within your HR or recruiting practice and a road map to get started in the following areas:

•    Employment Branding
•    Recruiting
•    Role Play for Mangers
•    Training Shorts Delivered via Mobile
•    A “How To” Guide to Get Started with Video in Your HR/Recruiting Organization

This webinar comes with the Fistful of Talent guarantee:  60% of the time, it works every time.  Join the FOT crew as they break down the video scene and brainstorm about the best way to build video chops in your HR or recruiting practice.

Compelling stuff, right?

Seriously, I promise it will be worth your time to check out the webinar, the FOT style and approach to webinars is not at all the usual boring, '45 minutes of some guy reading slides' method that you are used to.

It will be fun, informative, and relevant - and you'll walk away with at least a few practical and actionable ideas for video that you can begin to work with right away.

Register here, (did I remind you it is FREE?), and to learn more visit here.

WEBINAR : Early Adoption: Against HR's Nature?

I'm really pleased to announce that in a few weeks I will be joining the great China Gorman for an upcoming Webinar titled 'Early Adoption: Against HR's Nature?' on Wednesday March 7, 2012 at 1:00PM ET.

.Go ahead, register, it's free!

The Webinar is sponsored by a very cool company called Achievers, (you might still remember them by their former name, I Love Rewards), the leading provider of social recognition solutions in the market today.

What is social recognition?

You know that time your boss stuck his or her head into your office and said, 'Nice job on Project XYZ?', (ok, so if that never happens to you just pretend for a minute), well imagine if that little gesture was posted on a social platform that the rest of your colleagues could see, and perhaps even 'like' or add their own words of thanks and kudos. Then imagine further that you could share this recognition with your friends on Facebook or your professional network on LinkedIn. And one last thing, imagine all these accumulated thanks and kudos would earn some rewards points that you could exchange for some great stuff.

Sounds pretty cool, right?

Achievers provides solutions that let companies do all of that and more, helping to support and build a culture of recognition, openness, and well, I have to say it - achievement.

But in addition to making a great product, the team at Achievers are really active and supportive of the HR community overall, and have sponsored a number of events and webcasts that are designed to share insights, spur conversation, and add to the body of knowledge for the industry. So I am really pleased and honored they asked me to join China in presenting the webinar on March 7.

The central idea behind the topic, 'Early Adoption: Against HR's Nature?', is that while tradtionally HR has been reluctant to be on the leading edge of technology solutions and innovative strategies, that now that time has passed. In the critical areas of employee engagement, the adoption of new technology solutions for talent management gives today’s HR leaders opportunities to recast their function as forward looking rather than history- and compliance-bound. We will also talk about the great results organizations that are on the leading edge are seeing, and how social rewards and social recognition fit in the overall picture.

It should be a really fun webinar, and I hope you will join China and I on March 7th. 

Register, (it's free!), here.

The Authority on Talent - Webcast June 16

So here is the premise:

An authority is defined as the undisputed expert in a particular field. And, just as the CFO is the authority on finance and CIO the authority on IT, HR leaders are emerging as the authority on their organization's greatest variable expense—its people.

Does that description, the HR organization being recognized and respected as the organization's 'authority' on all things related to its people, seem to fit your views and the manifestation of your HR reality?The obvious image. Sorry.

Can 'HR' really be that ubiquitous to truly understand or at least appreciate the intricacies, nuances, particulars, and practicalities of the thousands of individuals that may be working in the organization, and each one's personal and unique set of attributes and circumstances that ultimately drive and effect individual and organizational performance?  It is a tall order for sure, and if you as an HR leader buy into the premise, HR as the 'authority' on people or talent or whatever you call the humans that work in your organization, then having the right tools, processes, education, and technology to make that vision a reality will be of prime concern.

This 'Authority on Talent' premise was floated by the folks over at Plateau Systems and this week on, Thursday June 16th at 12 Noon ET, I will join Kris Dunn and Mark Stelzner for a free webcast/conversation called 'Authority on Talent', to talk about this idea, and some of the ways HR professionals can raise their standing in a kind of organizational pick-up game. 

KD, Mark and I will talk about HR’s role as the Authority on Talent in the organization, focusing on the following questions: 

• What do HR leaders need to establish this authority?
• What’s different now from previous “seat at the table” moments for HR?
• What role does technology play?

These are kind of big questions, and while important, there is also the sense that we have been around this same block a few times before, and over the years all we really seem to be doing is re-phrasing the questions, churning out the same fundamental recommendations, while in reality not much at all is changing. It could be that while the questions are still the 'right' ones to ask, the expected and obvious answers are letting us down. Or it could be that we should be re-framing the conversation completely, and recognize that what HR has been trying to do for the last, well forever, just isn't working and it is time to change the geometry of the conversation.

I suspect like many conversations of this type, the truth is somewhere in between. But finding that truth sure isn't easy and while I am not at all convinced in an hour this Thursday that Kris, Mark, and I can truly get you or anyone any closer to that truth, one thing I can promise is that it will be an enjoyable, lively, and perhaps even provocative ride.

Thanks very much to the folks at Plateau Systems for putting together this webcast, and for trusting the three of us not to embarrass you (too much).

You can learn more and register for the free webcast this Thursday June 16th at 12 Noon ET here.

And if you do tune in this week - the Twitter hashtag for questions, comments, and snarky remarks is #TalentAuthority.