TMT Editor's Corner

Onrec and Kennedy Information Team Up in November

This fall is when many believe most industries will be poised to exit the recession. That means their appetite for recruiting technologies and services will be ramping up, too. In the midst of the anticipated economic turnaround, recruiters will be looking for the very latest, most sage insight into how they can best practice their craft. And in what appears to be an optimal pairing, Onrec and Kennedy Information, two heavy-hitting publishers in the recruiting marketplace, are joining forces to provide recruiters with the advantage of just this kind of cutting-edge knowledge -- and exactly when they'll need it most: For many years, recruiters have had both these organizations' events to attend, but this year, Onrec and Kennedy Information have combined their efforts to up the ante. Onrec Expo 2009 and Recruiting 2009 Conference & Expo will be a combined recruiting event on Nov. 3 and 4 in Chicago, Ill., at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. Registration is now open.

CSIdentity Teams with Career Site and Job Board to Streamline Background Checks

Even for jobseekers who tell the truth, waiting to pass the background check can be an anxiety-ridden experience. The prospect of going through the process just once, then, undoubtedly sets many minds at ease, which is one reason the news is welcome that identity theft protection company CSIdentity has made this a reality. Another reason? Scores of hiring organizations now have the option to drop this time-consuming task from their own to-do lists.

Through its recently announced background screening partnership with TelecomCareers.net and ITJobs.net, CSIdentity has created a passport of sorts around the concept of the background check. Technology and communications-focused jobseekers on TelecomCareers, a telecom, media and technology-focused career site, as well as their counterparts on the niche job board ITjobs, can now become "CSIdentity SAFE Certified."

"CSI SAFE Certified" jobseekers run their personal information just once through CSIdentity's screening process, which allows them, in turn, to present themselves to prospective employers as "pre-screened." A "CSIdentity SAFE Certified" jobseeker is one whose identity has been verified and authenticated; a "CSIdentity SAFE Certified" jobseeker is one who has already passed a rigorous background check.

MrTed's New ATS Partnership Provides Benefits to Small Business

The migration of the applicant tracking system (ATS) to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model has been underway for awhile, and plenty of vendors offer parts, if not all, of their ATS products under the auspices of SaaS; among these providers, however, SmartRecruiters is the only fully functional, 100 percent free SaaS ATS to connect users with recruitment-related services, according to creator MrTed Ltd. And now, through MrTed's partnership with FirstAdvantage, more of SmartRecruiters' functionality is available to small business. Because of SmartRecruiters' partnership with FirstAdvantage (click link for related news release posted to TMT), MrTed's ATS for small business will include background checks and I-9 verification by Q3 2009.

Identifying the Who's Who in Talent Management: Bucky Couch of StepStone

We at TalentManagementTech.com use the Industry Who's Who to scout, identify and showcase leaders in talent management. Bucky Couch, managing director of the Americas for U.K.-based StepStone ASA, is the latest to join the ranks.

Does Your Front Line Need an Alignment?

Last week we learned from TalentQuest that employment training should eclipse talent attraction and even talent retention when the economy is fledgling. The obvious conclusion is that employee productivity spells organizations' success or failure when profits are down. And of paramount importance are profits, indeed -- and strong employee productivity brings them about. Because when profits are down, each employee's direct bearing on them become increasingly evident.

Well, it's not just research from TalentQuest -- not to mention common sense -- that tells us this. And now we have a Taleo white paper (link launches a PDF file) that goes a step further, showing talent management professionals how to foster this productivity among those on the front lines, their employees. Specifically, if a company can clearly describe the line of sight between an employee's contributions and success for the business itself, the likelihood that this employee will become more engaged and, thus, more productive grows. This makes sense.

Executive Hiring Still Reeling from Credit Crisis, but Survey Unearths Growth

Nineteen percent of companies are significantly reducing employment, but this is a number that's down from 24% in October of 2008, according to the May 2009 Talent Market Survey. The survey comprises the responses of more than 230 of the thousands of executives in Greenwich, CT–based executive search firm Claymore Partners, LLC's client database. Reductions are greatest in investment and retail banking, investment management, consumer finance/payments, and life and property casualty insurance, indicate the findings, which further reveal that healthcare, health insurance, securities brokerage, and consulting are hiring the most at this time.

The credit crisis of 2008 continues to affect the executive job outlook, suggests Claymore's report, with more than 50% of respondents saying that they expect the situation to continue its negative effect on hiring through 2009 and into 2010—six months longer than anticipated in Claymore's 2008 survey, the report notes. About 30% are currently worried about losing their own jobs, and almost three quarters of are at least open to consider new positions with about one third actively seeking new opportunities.

Areas of optimism are evident, however. The percentage of companies reducing their staff levels by more than 10% is down 21% compared to October of 2008, the percentage of companies in a hiring freeze is down by 17%, and the percentage of companies increasing their workforces by as much as one-tenth is up 12%. Areas of discipline enjoying the greatest hiring activity right now are risk management and compliance (56%), sales (57%) and professional services (50%).

ExecuNet's Recruiter Confidence Index Surges

One indicator of economic conditions is to gauge the sentiments in the C-suite. Where do executives think the market is headed? What is their average level of optimism. The answers to these and similar questions can give us a sense of our collective future in talent management. And the answers right now are looking good.

The executive search industry’s outlook for the employment market improved for the third consecutive month amid signs that economic conditions are stabilizing, according to ExecuNet’s Recruiter Confidence Index (RCI), which has surged 16 points higher and now stands at its highest level since June of 2008. Fifty-seven percent of the 143 executive recruiters surveyed are confident or very confident the executive employment market will improve in the next six months. This number is up from 41% in the previous month, and 67% of all executive recruiters expect at least a 10% increase in search assignments received from corporate clients.

"Conditions have clearly changed," says Mark Anderson, ExecuNet president and chief economist. "We can now see the first clear signs of a recovery indicated by responses that are similar to what we saw coming out of the last recession in the second quarter of 2003. Executive recruiters expect hiring to increase as we move toward the end of the year. For executives interested in making a change, now is the time to come off of the sidelines."

Recruiters’ short-term confidence remains virtually unchanged, as 19% report being confident or very confident the executive employment market will improve during the next three months—up from 18% in the previous month. "Recruiters who earlier this spring had a much more negative outlook, are now clearly seeing signs of new hiring from their client companies," says Anderson. "However, it is going to take a few months for those business plans to affect the demand for talent."

Independent analysis of the RCI, introduced in May of 2003, has confirmed it is a leading indicator for the executive employment market, and any RCI reading greater than 50% indicates recruiters expect the number of search assignments in the next six months will increase.

Talent Optimization Eclipses Attraction and Even Retention during a Recession

A new talent management white paper from TalentQuest maintains that the training of managers ought to be organizations' primary objective during an economic downturn; the optimization of staff is the most important factor determining success when profits are down.

Business leaders and human resources leaders must carefully differentiate which programs can increase profitability and employee effectiveness in the short term, especially at a time when talent management budgets are streamlined and constantly scrutinized. Since the manager's skill level correlates with team performance, if the manager's skills are increased, the individual and team performance will also improve, according to the report, titled The Importance and ROI of Training: Surviving and Thriving in an Economic Downturn. The best productivity possible, after all, is a key to success when the business climate is stormy.

HRSEO Is Like a Shark: It Needs to Keep Moving to Breathe

We've explored PRSEO (public relations search engine optimization) on this blog. It's a highly effective approach to organic SEO, the kind you can't pay the search engines to obtain. Readers may recall that a fundamental tenet of PRSEO is to post keyword- and link-optimized content to the Internet on a regular basis; this is what the search engines like, and their algorithms will award higher organic rankings to anyone who does so. In other words, much like a shark, a PRSEO program must continue to move to breathe. But once such campaigns are on the move, they're highly effective.

So why aren't most human resources departments employing it? Why aren't we seeing more HRSEO, the equivalent to PRSEO for HR? The career pages for the top five companies in the world seldom use SEO to improve the visibility of their job listings in the search engines, finds an HR-SEO white paper by SharkStrike LLC. Specializing in developing recruiting search engine marketing (SEM) and SEO solutions for the talent management marketspace, SharkStrike notes that this neglect of an increasingly ubiquitous marketing tactic is depriving these companies of the very exposure their job listings need to attract the very best talent in an ever increasingly search-centric environment.

Looking at the issue more broadly, it is evident that companies whose focus is talent management technology can use PRSEO to their own advantage, too. The objective is to reach target markets directly by bypassing traditional gatekeepers and thus be found in search engine results by the potential buyer. These organic rankings command potential buyers' attention, research has shown, and companies are remiss not to employ the tactics that will land them in these results.

PayScale Helps Bing to Ping You with Salary Information

Microsoft has a new thing called Bing, and last week Bing apparently snagged Google marketshare to surpass Yahoo! as the second most popular search engine. Much of this may be due to the curiosity factor, according to ReadWriteWeb, but the facts on the ground are undeniable, and the new ring to them is Bing.

Already, in fact, talent management technology vendors are making use of Bing. Earlier this week, for instance, PayScale, Inc. announced a service that enables all Bing users seeking answers to salary queries to receive immediate answers from the PayScale, whose dataset comprises several million. TMT will remain on watch to unearth additional uses of Bing for search engine marketing.

Identifying the Who's Who in Talent Management: Nancy Baughman of Calm Water

We at TalentManagementTech.com use the Industry Who's Who to scout, identify and showcase leaders in talent management. Nancy Baughman, president and founder of Calm Water Business Partner, LLC, is the latest to join the ranks.

Learning and Performance Management Converge to Form an Emerging Best Practice

Written by Sean Conrad, senior product analyst at Halogen Software, the following article looks at the convergence of learning management and performance management as a coordinated, emerging best practice. Readers may reach Sean by e-mailing sconrad@halogensoftware.com.

Linking Together Learning and Talent Management in the High Performance Workplace
by Sean Conrad, Senior Product Analyst, Halogen Software

Traditionally, learning management systems (LMS) have been used primarily in large enterprises where the HR and learning teams often work in isolation from one another. However, recent research in talent management points to the union of learning and performance management as a growing best practice, leading to a new set of functionality requirements for learning management systems.

Research for Bersin & Associates’ 2008 Corporate Learning Factbook identified that more than 25 percent of corporate learning and development (L&D) managers rate integration with performance management as one of their top two priorities. In theory, all L&D programs, interventions, activities and resources should support the performance management process. As IDC states, “The majority of intersection and integration points among the various talent functions pass through performance management.” However, accomplishing that and further demonstrating it can be a challenge.

Traditional learning management software was developed as a standalone solution. It focused on improving the efficiency and operational effectiveness of the training organization; it provided tools for trainers and content developers to more easily build, administer and deliver training programs and for employees to more easily access these. But it lacked a key function – the ability to support a development process between manager and employee that helps employees improve their personal performance in conjunction with organizational goals.

As a result, stand-alone LMS offerings didn’t meet expectations. This was due in large part to the lack of integration with other HR functions. In addition to being time consuming to administer, LMS offerings required a significant duplication of data and effort. Further, one of the biggest issues with traditional LMS systems is that improvements in performance from training could not be measured. In fact, Bersin & Associates found product satisfaction to be low -- an average of 6 out of 10 -- based on a survey of over 500 LMS users.

Why integrate performance management with learning?
An integrated learning and performance management process enables organizations to align enterprise-wide learning programs with corporate and individual goals and reap greater benefits from the L&D investments. L&D managers and executives can identify key goals throughout the organization, and any large development, competency or performance gaps.

After looking at the best practices of over 750 corporations, Bersin & Associates discovered that aligning training with organizational goals as well as individual development goals is a leading talent management best practice that drives business impact. The power of an integrated LMS is that it enables learning managers and HR leaders to use the same system to link and track employee performance and learning, thus gaining actionable intelligence about their learning investments.

An effective LMS seamlessly integrates learning activities into the performance management and succession planning processes -- making it easy for HR, employees and managers to access information; identify and assign development plans; even register for learning activities and track progress on achievement – all from a single user interface. They can also identify skill gaps and measure the success of learning programs in terms of improved individual and corporate performance.

Using integration to drive a high-performance workforce
Research shows that employees perform much better when they have a clear picture of the development needs and opportunities for their jobs. When they realize that they are not proficient at a task or process, most people want to improve. Busy managers often don't have in depth knowledge of the innate skills and competencies needed for success, and rarely know all the developmental activities available in their own organizations.

With an integrated performance management and learning system, the L&D organization can publish all internal and externally available programs, and align them directly to specific competencies and job descriptions. Employees and managers can then easily find “the right training” at “the right time”, without guessing. This gives employees the power to plan and implement their own career and performance growth – which ultimately improves morale, retention and succession rates.

Filling the leadership pipeline
Succession planning is a key part of most organizations’ talent management strategy as they face increased pressure when it comes to attracting and retaining highly skilled workers. Management and senior-level positions require many critical skills, including deep knowledge of the organization, strong skills in people management, and higher-level skills in planning, administration and financial analysis. An integrated LMS and performance management program can help to identify and develop key talent and ensure organizations are using the best practices driven talent pool model of succession planning.

Often organizations promote employees to higher-level positions based on a “gut feel” of management potential, or recent project-based successes. Some of these promoted employees succeed and some do not – a costly exercise in trial and error. With the integration of performance management and learning management, a robust assessment and integrated development planning process can clearly identify and develop employees based on longer-term performance and big-picture organizational goals. For example, employees who are slated for promotion can attend well-designed development programs. The result is a much higher level of performance and success in the mid-level manager population, and a rich pool to draw from for executive-level succession.

Making an integrated platform a reality
For the HR department who is championing an integrated performance and learning management approach, it’s important to secure executive buy-in by focusing the discussion on strategy – communicating the business benefits. This includes aligning talent management investments with corporate priorities and demonstrating how managing talent from a holistic view will ultimately improve competencies and performance across the organization and drive corporate results.

When seeking a technology partner, HR needs to carefully define the solution features required to meet the organization’s needs. They should identify the key needs and clearly outline what benefits are expected from the technology. Their plan should include evaluation criteria and a comprehensive project/implementation plan. Too often implementations fail not because of faulty software, but because organizations haven’t thought through the steps to successfully manage executives, management and employees through the process (and effect a culture change.)

Summary: Performance and learning belong together
In the current climate, it is imperative for organizations to link the performance management and learning processes together. Unfortunately, these software markets have grown up separately. LMS vendors have focused on automating the administrative aspects of training and e-learning, while performance management vendors have concentrated on automating the process of employee assessment and evaluation. Each has its own complex requirements. Today, however, by linking these systems together, there is greater potential for organizations to drive even higher levels of performance, better use their training resources, and achieve new levels of employee engagement.

SEM Feeds Social Media Activity that Leads to Leads

Last week, we looked at how search engine marketing (SEM) leads not only to good search engine optimization (SEO), but also to a Twitter frenzy. But can activity in social media lead to, well, leads -- and closed sales, for that matter? Yes.

Forty-eight percent of businesses have generated qualified leads by utilizing social media, according to a survey of 880 marketing professionals whose responses are compiled in the Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Presented at Social Media Success Summit 2009, this white paper by business research expert Michael Stelzner also reveals that 35 percent of these same participants have witnessed social media marketing closing sales for their business.

The report itself includes a great deal of data on who's using social media and the results they're seeing. For those in talent management, we've already established that TMT's approach to SEM can provide a big boost to a company's SEO, which runs a high likelihood of inspiring a flurry of activity on social media sites such as Twitter. All that's necessary is a presence on social media in the first place.

Inspire a Twitter Frenzy with Search Engine Marketing

Part of search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of strategically selecting keywords and keywords phrases designed to improve the organic (i.e., natural and free) search engine rankings of a product, service or company itself. The idea is to get in front of potential customers looking for information on whatever it is the company does or sells. The tactic makes sense. But how does Twitter fit into all this?

Well, first of all, Twitter does fit into all this. Think of Twitter as a massive social media community, everyone in it determining for themselves via search engines what is and is not important to their micro niches of interest. And some of these micro niches pertain directly to talent management, which makes Twitter incredibly valuable to talent management technologies as they market their products and services recruiters and other HR professionals.

That's the strategic picture, but what kind of tactics feed the strategy? And how is it, again, that SEM fits into the process? Just a couple weeks ago, we here at TMT updated the "About Us" section of our site, optimizing the content to include keywords related to "search engine marketing." Later that very day -- because search engines recognize TMT as a regular generator of quality content -- our "About Us" update displayed highly in a Google News search for the keyword phrase "search engine marketing."

This itself was encouraging; it meant our efforts to make this site SEO-friendly were paying off huge dividends. But what happened next illustrated how a strong visibility in the search engines can be of further benefit: It can lead to buzz on Twitter -- a Twitter Frenzy, if you will.

Following our update to TMT and its appearance on Google News, a flurry of pertinent activity developed organically on Twitter. Out of nowhere, a Twitter frenzy began, with people there who follow the keyword phrase "search engine marketing" on the search engines tweeting about TMT, linking from their tweets to our site's updated material.

And to think, we haven't even been on Twitter for that long.

All this can benefit the TMT reader, too. Do you need good visibility in the search engines? Would you like Twitter to work to your advantage? Of course. Any member of our community, then, should get in touch with Keri Poirier by e-mailing kpoirier@talentmanagementtech.com or dialing 603-479-1845. She'll explain the TMT PR Boost™, which can produce results -- similar to those I've just described -- for any company in the talent management marketplace.

Oh, and in the meantime, feel free to follow TMT on Twitter @talentmgmttech.

Employee Communication Benefiting from Web 2.0 During Economic Slump

Fervent followers of the talent management technology marketplace find it challenging not to embrace Web 2.0 technologies on a daily basis. Among others in business, the sentiment has taken some time to catch up; new research finds, however, that the adoption and integration of Web 2.0 technologies within corporate communication structures is increasing, apparently in tandem with the economic slump.

Since the economic downturn began, employers have been also using newer technological tools for communication, according to the 2009 HR Technology Trends Survey of 181 large employers by global consulting firm Watson Wyatt. Nearly one-third (32 percent), for instance, have increased their use of webcasts; 13 percent have increased their use of social networking tools; and 12 percent have increased their use of blogs for communication.

"Web 2.0 technologies work well, in most instances, for targeting specific employee and manager groups, and companies are using them in appropriate situations," says Jon Osborne, senior technology consultant at Watson Wyatt. "Using tools such as role-based portals, internal blogs and webcasts ensures that both managers and employees can send and receive tailored messages in an engaging format. This is useful for improving productivity and maintaining employee morale and engagement, particularly in this difficult economic time."

Role-based employee portals are enjoying particularly rapid deployment. More than two-fifths (41 percent) have already deployed or are piloting role-based employee portals, and nearly a quarter (24 percent) are planning to adopt them in the next 24 months.

With the use of new technologies has come a precipitous decline in interest related to Web 1.0 models. The implementation of older approaches to internal communication with the workforce is seeing a decline, for instance, with initiatives to install generic intranets having slowed almost to a halt: While 86 percent of companies currently have them, almost none (a mere 2 percent) plan to implement them in the next 24 months. Rather, companies are planning to deploy blogs (13 percent), wikis (13 percent) and podcasts (10 percent) in the same timeframe, according to Watson Wyatt's findings.

MrTedTalentLink Sourcing Anxious Generation Y Jobseekers Through Social Media

Concerns over the job market are pervasive among new college grads -- the so-called Millennials or Generation Y -- finds new research from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE); in fact, 63.6 percent of the college Class of 2009 are concerned about finding a job, and 61 percent see the economy itself as an impediment to finding a job following graduation, according to NACE's findings. Even so, 52 percent of the more than 35,000 students from more than 840 colleges and universities nationwide who took NACE's survey are confident that they will be employed withing three months of graduating.

Delving deeper, NACE's news release on Generation Y employment concerns not only notes that nearly three-fifths (59 percent) of these same Millennials had yet to begin their job search as of April 2009, but also that only a paltry 19.7 percent had secured jobs so far, and two-fifths seem to recognize that their first job may not be as lucrative as they had hoped and might force them to rely financially on their parents, at least partially.

Despite these numbers, investments and partnerships in the realm of talent management technology suggest that companies are (or soon will be) keenly interested in recruiting the best of the crop of 2009 graduates and others who fall under the category of Generation Y talent. International talent management technology firm MrTed, for instance, has teamed with e3 unlimited, an HR specialist in generation trends, to enhance MrTedTalentLink, which allows HR professionals to participate in social recruitment, by linking recruitment efforts with social networking sites. The idea is that e3's expertise in the behaviour, wants and needs of the next generation will be a crucial addition, complementing MrTedTalentLink, itself a readymade tool because of its ability to integrate with the social media that Millennials know so well.

Identifying the Who's Who in Talent Management: Mary J. Clarke of Cognisco

We at TalentManagementTech.com use the Industry Who's Who to scout, identify and showcase leaders in talent management. Mary J. Clarke, chief executive of Cognisco, is the latest to join its ranks.

Jobseekers Can Take Advantage of Social Media

Social media, for all its proliferation throughout the marketplace, remains challenging to grasp as an application for business. The possibilities are many, of course, and plenty of smart people are figuring it out. As far as our industry is concerned, two companies with recent news posted on the TMT Newswire provide ways for jobseekers to utilize two of the biggest social networks around, Facebook and Twitter, to find their employment.

Arlington Soho, for instance has developed InSide Job, an application that transforms Facebook into a networking tool for jobseekers. Specifically, it allows jobseekers who use it to get in touch with anyone who has interviewed or worked at the company they have targeted themselves. Additionally, eQuest, in an effort to make use of Twitter's viral potential, has added TwitterJobSearch.com to its network of job boards.

Even Online Ads Prompt Online Search

Is your organization spending money on online advertising? That's not a bad thing, but you should probably invest in search engine marketing for its counterbalancing effect. Potential customers are nearly as likely to see your online ad and then search that ad's contents in a search engine as they are to click on the ad itself.

More than half of Internet users actively respond to online display advertising, finds the Search Engine Marketing and Online Display Advertising Integration Study, research commissioned by iProspect and conducted by Forrester Consulting. In other words, online advertising remains effective. But here's the kicker: According to the same survey of 1,575 adult users of the Internet, the percentage of viewers of online advertising who immediately perform a search of the content seen on the advertising display is nearly as high (27 percent) as the percentage that cuts right to the chase and clicks on the ad (31 percent).

What are the implications? Even if your company is justifiably spending money on online advertising, it's a big mistake to neglect investing in search engine marketing that optimizes for the search engines the many keyword phrases found in your online advertising. 

Organic Search Tastes Better -- And It's Better for You

Where are your customers immediately before they're your customers? That's where you want to be. What are they thinking about? That's what you want to be about. What do they need? You want to be that solution.

Think about the very first thing you do when you need something. After possibly asking your colleagues and friends for leads and ideas, you probably go straight to a search engine and type in some keywords that, to you, seem relevant to your need. Are you any different than your potential customer?

Chances are your customers were on a search engine just before they decided to buy from you. And chances are that, at the time, they were thinking about their need for a solution just like yours; in fact, chances are they needed one pretty badly.

What do you pay attention to, by the way, once you've entered the keywords and then pressed "enter"? Well, it's more than likely that you look at the top ten entries on the very first page of results and determine which one speaks most directly to what it is you're seeking.

These are the organic, or natural, search results. Organic results comprise all entries on the search page that someone or some company did not actually pay the search engine to display. As early as 2005, JupiterResearch found that 87 percent of commercial traffic online originates with organic search. Surely this number remains the same or has increased; search engines have only grown in prominence since. Plus, paid search traffic (stuff like pay-per-click, PPC -- basically, all those other links on the search results page) has seen a precipitious decline over the past year (a 26 percent contraction, to be exact).

It all adds up to the dominance of organic search. The plausible conclusion is that the importance of organic search is at the zenith of its flight and showing no signs of descending. Indeed, the vast majority of your potential customers rely on natural search engine results as they begin their buying process. These results are just more trustworthy in the consumer's eye. Why? Because search engines themselves are perceived to be trustworthy, third-party vetters of information.

Your brand needs to be in these organic results, and the good news is that proper search engine marketing (SEM), and close cousin to search engine optimization (SEO) will improve your presence in the organic results. And an excellent way to get there is to participate in the TMT Spotlight, an article about your brand that includes TMT's logo and seal of approval -- yet more third-party endorsement of your technology. The TMT Spotlight helps you to get ranked highly in organic search results associated with keyword phrases pertinent to your solution. Not only will you be vetted organically by the search engines, but you'll also have the additional benefit of a third party -- TMT itself -- further vetting your worthiness. Most importantly, you'll be where your potential customers are before they buy.

Global Companies Are Dropping Knowledge

The mistake for organizations in any industry is to neglect proper talent management. Plenty of blog entries here have explored this self-evident wisdom. But let's again examine the driving dynamics of poor talent management and what the implications of it are.

As they inevitably slash their workforces during an economic recession, organizations that have failed to adopt proper talent management technology inevitability let go of productive and unproductive employees alike. The employees this leaves—those who manage to dodge the layoffs—may or may not possess the kind of legacy knowledge that the organization will need in order to compete once markets come back to life.

Contrast this with the organization that manages its forced attrition effectively because it has in place efficient, robust talent management technology and knows how to use it. Clearly, such an organization is at a marked advantage as it faces the same external reality.

A lack of investment in employees is indeed threatening the ability of many leading industrialized countries to maintain global competitiveness in the post-recession economy. This is according to Knowledge—The New Commodity, an economic study commissioned by Cognisco, provider of technology and services to measure and track employee knowledge and confidence. In comparison, according to the 301 firms surveyed in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s February 2009 Asia Business Outlook Survey, few businesses in emerging Asian markets plan to decrease training budgets.

Keen to help Western industry combat this tendency, Cognisco recently launched the new products Configure, an administrative hub of Cognisco’s knowledge development software; and Reveal, the real-time reporting interface; and upgrades to Run, the platform that delivers and "plays" Cognisco’s appraisal programs and modules to assist the development of individual employee’s knowledge; and Evaluate, a single-module, one-event appraisal solution.

Says Mary J. Clarke, chief executive officer of Cognisco, "We are finding a great interest in what we do" to help organizations determine whom they must let go vs. retain. "The idea is that you cycle your staff so you know exactly what the capability and confidence levels of your workforce are. A large client of ours, for instance, was about to cut its workforce by about one-quarter, and the criterion this organization was going to use was highest paid to least paid. We changed their minds, convincing them to identify their knowledge custodians before conducting mass layoffs."

Generation Y Asks, "Why Not?"

Figuring out how to manage today's young workforce can be really tough. Several studies and anecdotal observations have noted that Generation Y -- those born after 1980, who are now joining the workforce -- display unconventional work habits and attitudes. But new research suggests that these traits work in Millennials' favor as they seek jobs in a tough economic climate.

Jobless rates are at 12 percent for Millennials in the U.S., as cited in a recent TrendWatcher from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (ic4p), which goes on to note that this number is double in Australia. And yet, 50 percent of college students and recent grads feel the job outlook is still positive, according to findings in the 2009 Economic Impact Survey, a report from Boston, Mass.-based Experience, Inc., a company that offers a university-endorsed network for the younger workforce.

Millennials' attitudes toward the current economic recession, in fact, appear to be positive manifestations of their quirks. For instance, Generation Y's willingness to take on ambitious projects early in their careers has always been an asset, and will only continue to be so: Close to one-third (30 percent) of the 1,644 Millennials surveyed by Experience reveal that they are prepared to take on more projects or help colleagues with their work in order to keep the positions they have. Furthermore, 33 percent say that they are willing to work more hours to improve job security, and 44 percent rank job security as more important than personal job satisfaction -- putting the lie to the myths that they are largely self-absorbed and unrealistic about their careers.

Readers interested in learning more about how to manage Generation Y's top talent should go to on-demand online video about managing Millennials, which features Penelope Trunk, widely read blogger and CEO of the Brazen Careerist, a business social network for young people.

"Due to the seismic shift in population demographics, Gen Y will soon dominate our workforce, and will comprise half of the headcount at any given company within 10 years," says Jenny Floren, founder and CEO of Experience. "Gen Y is optimistic about the future, and is eager to contribute to finding solutions to today’s challenges. We can all learn from their optimism and willingness to adapt to changing situations."

Being for the Benefit of...Benefits

Just over a week ago, we looked at analysis suggesting to companies that they might save millions by suspending their 401(k) matching for just one year. The advice, of course, was meant in good faith as a tactic to weather this time of economic recession; the implications of such a move for employee morale, however, are potentially disastrous, and any savings can be eclipsed by equal losses in productivity. Top talent has a way of losing its morale, after all, when an employer shows seeming disregard.

Luckily, this seems to come intuitively to most companies, a Towers Perrin survey of close to 500 HR and benefit executives has found. Looking at employee benefits, Towers Perrin's survey shows that despite the pressures of the economic crisis, most U.S. companies continue to view their retirement benefits package as a vital part of their workplace relationship with employees. While companies appear to be trying to keep their programs as consistent as possible, the survey results do reveal trepidation in the workplace. Between 30 percent and 60 percent of survey respondents say that their employees were postponing plans to retire, reducing participation in 401(k) plans and increasing hardship withdrawals and loans from the plan. Only 7 percent predict any uptick in 401(k) participation.

In the face of extraordinary economic challenges, this level of commitment to the unspoken employee-employer contract is encouraging and bodes well for the morale of knowledge custodians, just the people these companies need to retain in preparation for an eventual rebound in the marketplace. Even so, it is this last finding in the Towers Perrin study, the paltry number of respondents expecting an uptick in 401(k) participation in the near future, that portends the temptation organizations must resist moving forward: Employees are already making tough changes to their retirement plans on their own. For an employer to then match its employees' actions by scaling back benefits would communicate only pessimism and prompt a precipitous decline in productivity among the otherwise most productive in their workforce.

Recruiting as a Marketing Exercise

Rising unemployment and reduced resources for acquiring new talent, according to the Talent Acquisition Challenge Report, jointly released by the HROA, TPI and Pinstripe, Inc., together create the foundation for a renaissance by which companies will have to think about recruitment as a marketing activity. Among those that do approach recruiting as an exercise in marketing, most (80 percent) embrace social networks more than anything else. But, by far, the largest number of companies (45 percent) adopt a "post and pray" approach, whereby, essentially, they post their open requisitions to the major job boards and then "pray" that the right talent will come their way.

Because it was researched and produced by organizations concerned with recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), the report goes on to identify the areas of recruitment most commonly outsourced. The attendant opportunities for talent management technology vendors are obvious. For instance, more than one-half of companies that use RPO turn to it for background checks, and more than one-third for reference checking. Plenty of technology providers cater to these needs, and others handle recruitment advertising and creation, which is on the radar of nearly 30 percent of RPO-using firms.

What About Employee Morale?

With purses tight, the quest to find ways to save money typically leads to the usual suspect, layoffs. But with this downturn, all sorts of options seem to be on the table. According to a new analysis by Hewitt Associates, for instance, most companies could save millions of dollars by suspending their 401(k) match for only one year.

Even though Hewitt recommends that employers take this step only as a last resort, the very mentioning of the possibility is worrisome. More than ever, employee morale is important. A precursor to retention is good employee morale. A company that spends good money to identify its best peformers and knowledge custodians in order to spare them from the cutting ax doesn't want the employees left behind to lose their will to produce and contribute.

"Employers should also consider their remaining employees, who will watch their friends and colleagues lose their jobs," says Michael J. Canavan, a labor and employment attorney in the law firm of Pepper Hamilton LLP. "It's critical to ensure that your remaining employees maintain their morale, and that they stay motivated under the pressure of trying to maintain operations with a decreased workforce. This is a critical, but often overlooked, aspect of any downsizing plan."

Canavan suggests employers consider the following points to get the most out of employees in difficult circumstances:

1.  Carry out downsizing respectfully. Nothing can poison employees' morale faster than watching their former colleagues be shown the door abruptly and disrespectfully.

2.  Clearly communicate what's expected of remaining employees. 
    
3.  Recognize that remaining employees may have ambivalent feelings; they might feel "survivor's guilt" in being spared while their colleagues were not as fortunate.

The point is that high performers are people, too, and the reasons for their productivity can be complicated. To assume that they will continue to contribute, no matter and at levels they always have, is a mistake. During a recession, a sense of togetherness and shared struggle between employer and employee is especially important .

Role of Learning Management Systems Continues to Evolve

Last month, a blog post here looked at Learning Management Systems (LMSs). Talent management research from Aberdeen Group had shown not only that use of an LMS tends to foster the assimilation of additional talent management technologies, but also that LMS software from SumTotal Systems enjoys the highest satisfaction rating (vs. offerings from Plateau, Saba, SkillSoft and others) among the 718 HR, talent management, IT and line of business executives that Aberdeen surveyed.

Since that blog entry posted, yet more research on LMS has emerged, this time from Bersin & Associates. Titled LMS and Learning Platforms 2009: Facts, Practical Analysis, Trends, and Provider Profiles, the report combines the results of detailed briefings and product demonstrations provided by LMS vendorscompiles with the results of a quantitative survey of more than 525 LMS customers across a large cross-section of industries. The 180-page document is the fifth annual assessment of the LMS marketplace that Bersin & Associates has taken.

Among Bersin's findings:

1) The role of LMS is evolving, with companies increasingly viewing LMS as a platform that enables informal knowledge sharing, collaboration, networking, and performance support. Providers are responding by adding separate social and informal learning modules to their product suites and platforms, selling separate social software platforms, or finding OEM partners.

2) Corroborating the Aberdeen data blogged on here last month, corporate buyers want to integrate their LMSs with other talent management software. LMS vendors are rapidly expanding their offerings into performance management, succession management, and social networking to compete in the market for talent management suites.

3) The market continues to grow. The study shows a projected 8.4 percent growth over 2008, with estimated revenues for 2009 of $817 million (compared to 10.6 percent growth and revenues of $754 million in 2008).

4) Saba and SumTotal remain the two largest players in this market, each with market share above 10 percent. Oracle, SAP, and more than 60 other solution providers compete for the rest of the market.

5) Software as a service (SaaS) is the most popular delivery model for LMS applications, even for large organizations. Forty-seven percent of organizations with more than 10,000 employees report using a SaaS or hosted delivery model. 

Identifying the Who's Who in Talent Management: Scott Murray of OMI

We at TalentManagementTech.com use the Industry Who's Who to scout, identify and showcase leaders in talent management. Scott Murray, president and CEO of OrganizationMetrics Inc. (OMI), is the latest to join its ranks.

Short-term Outlook among CEOs Improves Even as Online Job Demand Drops -- Why?

Recent news indicates that online job demand is down severely. Whereas it dipped by just 6,600 in February, according to The Conference Board, the drop was a cool 100,000 in March. That is worrisome. But contrast it with additional data from the same organization. The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence, which had declined to a historical low last quarter, posted a gain in the first quarter of 2009. The Measure now stands at 30, up from 24 last quarter.

It's important to note that a reading of more than 50 points on the Measure of CEO Confidence reflects more positive than negative responses. Furthermore, as The Conference Board notes, CEOs do expect more job losses. Still, that's a 25 percent increase in confidence.

Why?

The reasons are unclear, and clear trends are anything but readily apparent. Economic news has been generally gloomy. Even so, encouraging signs continually emerge. The good news is welcome, but the resulting narrative can be confusing to the casual observer.

Undersanding the circumstances, ironically, might be unnecessary, for the confusion may in fact present opportunities for providers of talent management technologies. Absent irrefutable evidence that they will not be rehiring later this year -- and faced with the constant possibility that they may, indeed, be doing so -- talent management professionals will be forced at least to consider making investments in technologies; without these tools, they'll lose the war for talent once hiring resumes, after all.

AfterCollege Helps Employers Reach Jobseekers During and After College

Recent findings reported on this blog suggest that hiring of college graduates is on the uptick. But this turnaround is just now beginning, and in the meantime, 79 percent of college students and recent graduates report that the economy has made the job search extra challenging for them, according to a survey by AfterCollege of 659 of them. If potential employers could reach these jobseekers more easily, the knowledge of open positions might alleviate difficulties for all involved.

One way to achieve this is with email, but cost is occasionally an issue. AfterCollege has addressed the dilemma, launching a low-cost alternative to custom email campaigns. Employers can reach students and alumni by posting featured announcements in weekly targeted email digests to more than 200,000 job seekers. The AfterCollege Career Network Digests offer employers a consistent high-exposure email presence and an effective branding opportunity to highlight jobs, internships, events, educational opportunities and other unique aspects about a company's culture, products or research. Relevant and otherwise hard-to-find opportunities make their way straight to job candidates' inboxes.

"We rolled out our Featured Announcement email product in response to shrinking recruitment budgets and in order to make it as easy as possible for employers to share entry level opportunities that they would normally not share this way," says Roberto Angulo, CEO of AfterCollege.

Getting back to that uptick in entry-level professional hiring -- internal auditing and fields that fall under the decision and information sciences are among the 10 fastest growing professions in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest forecast, according to a news announcement issued by the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.

"Corporations, the public and our federal and state governments are requesting an increase in assurance, risk and compliance services. New regulations continue to increase corporate transparency and leadership accountability. This will increase the demand for audit, risk compliance and IT security professionals," says Santos Monroy, president of the Institute of Internal Auditors, Houston Chapter.

New Sets of Data Reveal Conflicting Trends in Hiring among the Newly Graduated

During an economic recession, entering the workforce for the first time is extra tough, and over the past year, newly graduated former students indeed have encountered difficulty in their quest for the coveted entry-level job in the market space of their choice. This is why news from CollegeRecruiter.com that hirings of recent graduates are rising in some states is encouraging. Even so, the development is tempered by a National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) report finding that starting salaries for the newly graduated have dipped slightly.

Entry-level hiring is up significantly in typically high-activity states such as California (8 percent), New York (12 percent), Florida (3 percent) and Pennsyvania (10 percent), according to CollegeRecruiter.com's state-by-state search at its own site.

"There has certainly been a lot of doom-and-gloom related to the economy over the past year," says Steven Rothberg, founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, "but an increase in the number of advertised job openings means that more employers are finding it difficult to attract the talent they need to fill the openings they have. Historically, increased entry-level hiring is one of the earliest signs that an economy in recession is recovering."

The overall average offer to a 2009 bachelor’s degree graduate, however, is down 2.2 percent from a year ago, notes the NACE's report, which is based on a seasonally administered compilation of data from college and university career services offices nationwide. The current average of $48,515 falls shy of the $49,624 posted in the spring of 2008.

"This report illustrates the effects the recession is having on the job market for new college graduates,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. The engineering disciplines fared best, as a group, posting a 2.3 percent increase in their overall average offer, which now stands at $58,438. But computer science majors didn’t fare as well, losing 3.6 percent off their average, bringing their current starting salary offer to $57,693.

StepStone Findings Suggest the Onset of a Cold War for Talent

With the help of the Economist Intelligence Unit (part of The Economist Group, publisher of The Economist), the U.K.-based talent management software provider StepStone recently released talent management research last month, and the findings reveal surprising trends. Although the worldwide economic recession has prompted the war on talent to change shape, the war on talent remains. It's just that, according to the research, talent management practices seemingly at odds with each other are transforming that long-standing conflict into what StepStone describes as a Cold War for Talent.

Most interestingly, organizations are recruiting talent for key posts and trying to improve retention and training even as they shed staff to consolidate redundancies. In other words, there's a whole lot of hiring, firing, retaining and training going on, all at once. Nearly three-fifths of the 484 senior executives worldwide who participated in the survey agree or strongly agree that the economic slowdown presents an opportunity to streamline their businesses through redundancy. And yet, 53 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit and retain talented employees, and 47 percent of respondents indicate that their organizations will improve training and development in the next 12 months to retain employees.

"Gone are the days of organizations blindly hiring the best people they could find from a small pool to keep fuelling growth," says Colin Tenwick, CEO of StepStone. "We are seeing an extreme correction back to classic people management where companies are nurturing and rewarding the best talent, releasing the non-performers and quietly hiring in strong talent to replace them."

While 70 percent of business leaders surveyed say that, given the economic climate, their companies' talent management strategies are becoming more important, ownership of talent management differs significantly from one organization to the next: More than one-third (35 percent) believe talent management is HR’s role, 24 percent say the CEO is most responsible, 26 percent think it is individual business unit heads’ responsibility, and 8 percent point to line managers.

Identifying the Who's Who in Talent Management: Colin Day of iCIMS

We at TalentManagementTech.com use the Industry Who's Who to scout, identify and showcase leaders in talent management. Colin Day, president and CEO of iCIMS, is the latest to join its ranks.

NorthgateArinso Reminds Readers that Talent Management is More than Hype

As we've pointed out numerous times at this blog, the temptation to disregard long-term planning on talent management issues is great during a recession. But, as the following article from NorthgateArinso suggests, companies do so at their own peril.

Talent Management: Moving Beyond the Hype
By Kay Mason, president of NorthgateArinso North America. NorthgateArinso is a global provider of human resources software and services.

In the heyday of human resource transformation, talent management was the new buzzword. As the economy has worsened, however, many HR professionals have begun to regard talent management processes as unaffordable luxuries in a time of deep budget cuts and layoffs. But deferring talent management during these challenging times is a big mistake. Doing so will drag on the organization not only through the downturn, but also into the longed-for recovery. The extent to which a company can respond to external opportunities and threats is more than ever being determined by the talent of its employees. It is therefore essential for companies to identify and nurture the talent they have; this helps them to remain competitive. And there is no better time than right now to start planning a talent management strategy in order to secure the future of the organization.

Before any steps are taken to roll out talent management processes, HR professionals first need to shore up the foundations of every successful talent management strategy—HR data. Rather than establishing a plan on disconnected, incorrect and inconsistent data, companies should invest in establishing a repository of reliable HR information. Basing strategic workforce decisions on accurate HR information will bring greater value to the investment in any of the talent management processes.

A successful talent management plan also aligns to the changing workforce. As knowledge exists in the mind of the employee, company capital has become a lot more volatile, and the company will have to put more effort into holding on to its human capital. The United States is now a service economy, and as such, individual skills and expertise are extremely important—company assets comparable to a machine or tool, since people are a talent management professional's business. Shortages are typical for specialized and experienced workers, and can coexist with relatively high overall unemployment in the external environment. With the help of workforce planning, HR can predict any excesses and/or shortages of skills to help organizations act before it is too late.

The way we look at employees is also changing. Where organizations were used to thinking in terms of employee groups, focus is now on the individual: differentiating on rare abilities, some employees are simply crucial to the company. HR will have to ensure that this differentiation is emphasized in appraisal and reward schemes, and in career planning, so that these crucial employees feel recognized and valued while ensuring that other employees do not feel ignored. HR also must ensure that adequate knowledge-sharing methods, as well as training and development opportunities, are in place, thus maintaining a sufficient skill base.

For the company, it is essential that HR identify new talent, stimulate their development and offer them challenging opportunities within the company. This is especially true when dealing with members of the new generations: they are used to thinking short-term and will switch to a different employer that offers them more challenging work as soon as they view their current work as uninteresting.

By developing and deploying a sound talent management plan, HR is providing a strategic value-add to both company and employee, delivering a more developed and stronger workforce than competitors'. It is easy to get bogged down in the challenges of today, but talent management is all about positioning for successes now and in future.

iCIMS: Improving the Health of Health Care Organizations with SaaS

For those ensconced in the marketplace of talent management, it is easy to believe all potential buyers of all the related technologies share a baseline understanding of how it all works. But this belief is inaccurate. Whereas talent management technology is commonplace to some organizations, it is in fact a new, perhaps even foreign concept to others; solutions therefore must run the spectrum, from the intricate to the easy-to-implement. Furthermore, in marketing their products, the last thing talent management technology providers want to do is overwhelm organizations that have never turned to technology to manage talent. The idea, after all, is that technology simplies and streamlines things.

Take the field of health care, for instance. Shuffling paper to manage talent has grown ever more tedious. Even so, the field of health care still uses lots of paper, apparently. "Regulations hamper health care with all sorts of paperwork," says Susan Vitale, director of marketing at iCIMS, whose Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Talent Platform enjoys popularity in the health care industry.

She says iCIMS' popularity among health care organizations is attributable to its system being well-tailored to the needs to companies that may not have much, if any, experience with using talent management technology. They're "moving from nothing to something," as she says. "Health care is a late adopter of new technology. So, when they come to iCIMS, they're typically coming from nothing at all. It's important to make the transition easy for them. We want to make it as easy as possible for them to understand and use the technology. Particularly in this economy, it's a disaster to pay for something you can't use."

A hallmark of iCIMS' product is its ability to be personalized to any given customer's needs -- without becoming a challenge to understand for the organization that needs an immediate way to "technologize." Says Vitale, "Other industries might be extra demanding of talent management technologies; with health care, however, anything is an improvement in most cases. Even so, they're scared to adopt anything because of the 'bells and whistles' race."

A solid, easy-to-use-and-implement solution such as iCIMS' therefore is attractive.

The Sum Total of Learning Management

Use of a Learning Management System (LMS) appears to encourage assimilation of other talent management systems with it, suggests a survey by Aberdeen Group of 718 HR, talent management, IT and line of business executives. More than half (56 percent) of organizations that use an LMS have integrated it with their talent management strategies, Aberdeen notes, and those who use an LMS are 60 percent more likely to have this strategic alignment than those who don't use one.

SumTotal Systems, a provider of LMS solutions, encourages this sort of integration. "Talent management is somewhat of a fragmented process these days," says Jon Bianco, vice president of Product Management for SumTotal. "Who's managing it? It's not as integrated as it should be. There's no reason why these applications shouldn't be more embedded in employees' everyday work."

Also according to Aberdeen, an LMS significantly improves the likelihood that business leaders will be satisfied with their organization's learning and development program. In fact, the number is 76 percent, according to Aberdeen's survey, and this finding alone proves technology's importance to talent management.

But where should talent management professionals turn for an LMS? The market offers many whose many features and benefits virtually guarantee that there's a right solution for everyone. Even so, Aberdeen's survey does identify one LMS that enjoys the highest satisfaction rate among all users of LMSs. That LMS comes from SumTotal, with 75 percent indicating their satisfaction with SumTotal over solutions from Plateau, Saba, SkillSoft and others.

Identifying the Who's Who in Talent Management: Jon Ciampi of SumTotal

We at TalentManagementTech.com use the Industry Who's Who to scout, identify and showcase leaders in talent management. Jon Ciampi, vice president of Product Management at SumTotal Systems, is the latest to join its ranks.

Workforce Management: Embrace it during a Downturn

I've been blogging quite a bit on the need to manage talent effectively when the economy is in a recession. Although layoffs become a necessity during a downturn, this is the time when companies cannot afford -- in the true sense of this overused phrase -- to lose the truly talented talent; in fact, it is because of layoffs that tonotch talent management processes are essential: Nobody wants to lose the wrong people, after all. The following article, from Taleo Corp., explores the intersection of recessionary economics and workforce management.

How Effective Workforce Management can Help Weather the Storm
By Alice Snell, Vice President, Research, Taleo Corp., the leader in on-demand talent management solutions. Ms. Snell regularly comments on talent management topics and current research on the Taleo blog.

For many American businesses any renewed sense of optimism is tempered by the doom and gloom of the current economic landscape. But despite the uncertainty, most would agree that the global economy is cyclical – it will inevitably rebound and, within a few years, organizations will be competing even more intensely for talent. The company therefore that is able to successfully weather a potential economic storm will be the one agile enough to recognize the strength of its current talent pool and better assess how to leverage employees as a strategic asset. This also includes the ability to maintain a high quality of hire within a low growth economy.

But what can today’s organizations do right now to ride out the storm while positioning the business for the next economic boom? By taking a deeper look at workforce management challenges in 2009, HR departments should not only be equipped for a tightening economy but be better able to prepare for the expected boom times ahead. In fact, past economic shifts have also been viewed as opportunities to drive growth and capitalize on incremental business opportunities.

According to a recent US Unified Talent Management study conducted by Taleo Research and the Human Capital Institute, the majority of respondents noted that talent management is essential for business success. While companies used to focus on the efficiency of transactional HR operations, today’s organizations are more concerned with variables such as leadership, performance and increasing retention and productivity.

Indeed, talent management—best practices around recruiting, onboarding, internal mobility, performance and goals management, career and succession planning, and compensation—should be seen as a huge competitive driver in 2009. This means adopting a more forward-looking approach to acknowledging and understanding your talent and staying abreast of key employee trends and issues. It also means looking to further develop or extend the current talent management tools within the organization. The companies that succeed will be the ones that look to improve employee retention, boost national competitiveness and leverage social networking tools.

Enhanced employee engagement

Even as companies look to shift economic gears in 2009, a successful talent management strategy will be the one that focuses on a lean, finely tuned workforce with an emphasis on strong employee retention. Particularly within a tightening economy, enhancing employee retention of top performers can have a direct impact on the bottom line in terms of revenue generation and earnings potential. According to industry consulting firm MAP's Quarterly CEO Survey, open communication is valued more than salary raises by nearly a factor of two. And in a slowing economy—where stakes are high and morale is low—low-cost perks can go a long way.

However, talent management is more than just succession planning; it upholds employee engagement as the platform for improving staff motivation and productivity. This means that managers need to encourage an ongoing dialogue about performance – including solid career pathing strategies and a clear indication that an employee's career development is critical. In addition, investing in existing staff can be essential for companies to be better positioned for recovery. Simply showing that the company has a stake in the growth of its workers can make a considerable difference in the long run.

Standing tall on a global stage

Although most corporations think in terms of globalization, countries think more about how their national economies fit into the global scheme. In addition, closely reviewing national competitiveness now and in the future delivers important insights for many countries. Worker skills play a vital role in a nation's productivity performance and are essential to businesses' ability to grow and succeed.

When it comes to workforce management, many organizations still operate within fragmented applications. Data is not shared and reporting is disjointed and siloed. A talent management system that closely aligns staff activities and performance with specific business goals allows for a more strategic organization – one that can thrive within an economic downturn and is better positioned to develop a competitive edge.

Additionally, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, businesses are facing challenges in finding skilled IT workers to help them grow and prosper. As technological needs increase, talent management becomes an even more important priority with the overall global economy. What this means for HR is that a talent management strategy should ensure that talent closely aligns with current country standards for best success and that there are opportunities for continuing innovation.

To boost productivity and reduce costs, adopting a comprehensive talent management application can create a foundation for more agile HR processes. An optimized recruiting solution, for example, can mean the difference between sifting through thousands of resumes and rapidly hiring the best candidate available.

In an economic downturn, companies typically receive high volumes of resumes as an increased supply of candidates applies for vacant positions. Talent management in a low growth economy offers new opportunities to deliver significant business performance benefits in the face of economic constraints—especially internal mobility, performance management and quality of hire. It also reinforces the popular idea that large international companies need a consistent global approach to talent management and local flexibility to meet regional talent challenges effectively.

This includes increased labor mobility and improved access to career development opportunities. It also means being more strategic, specifically around capitalizing on opportunities to upgrade talent and boost your employment brand during an economic downturn when top talent becomes available.

Transparency is the new black

The current economic landscape also presents a strategic opportunity to adopt alternate or non-traditional methods such as social networks. Businesses need to understand that organizations are not in sole control of their published information and responses to their actions. Social media tools such as blogs and social networking sites are putting a new spin on employee communications. Although many organizations currently do not allow access to social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, social network usage is a reality.

Many HR departments are already reporting that there is a higher rate of new hire turnover among Millennials. Not only is making legitimate social network job connections beneficial to the recruiting process, it can be a great tool for mentoring and retaining talent as well. Online social networks allow workers to stay connected with colleagues and can be a source of referral for passive jobseekers.

Simply put, as socially networked community expands across generational and geographic lines to redefine the concept of connected, it has become essential to an updated employment brand and making the right connections.

Lower costs, higher productivity

It is no secret that this year is fraught with economic uncertainty. Particularly in light of current economic events, 2009 will be a time for strong talent management practices—including career and succession planning—with an eye on retaining and motivating talent. Successful talent management strategies allow companies to benefit from lowered internal costs and increased productivity, which are especially welcome in a constrained business climate.

Organizations need to incorporate a holistic and integrated approach to talent management in order to improve employee retention and keep workers happy and productive at all levels. While the objective is to deliver a sustainable and competitive industry edge, developing a successful HR and talent management strategy involves a solid commitment to managing and motivating workers while supporting the underlying business operations.

Implementing a strong unified talent management solution to support these goals, therefore, can deliver deeper visibility into a workforce. This includes the ability to reveal top performers, identify skill sets and be better positioned for future growth. Instead of waiting for an up tick in the business cycle, savvy organizations should view an economic downturn as an opportunity to upgrade talent and emerge stronger.

How Can Companies Best Manage Talent During the Economic Downturn? (Part Two)

Retention is the buzzword when times are good, the order of the day in a bull market. But doesn't retention still matter during an economic downturn? Of course, and in the same way it always does: making sure that top talent never leaves.

Managing talent is an activity that calls for extra precision when layoffs (and bad morale) loom. Unless the ability to meet payroll is indeed dire (and, if so, much more than retention is at stake), few firms can afford if for their best, most valuable talent to migrate elsewhere. This holds especially during a recession, and the missing piece that nevertheless allows this to happen is often the right talent management technology.

"Being able to align employees is critical," says Jon Ciampi, vice president of Product Management for SumTotal Systems, a provider of turnkey talent management technology for the enterprise. "The downturn has made companies realize they need to optimize their workforce to weather it. This calls for lots of effective workforce planning, and the technology capable of achieving that."

A white paper from SumTotal, Compensation Management During the Economic Crunch: Five Tips to Make Your Processes More Efficient and Effective, elaborates by providing advice to companies trying to figure out how to survive the downturn. As the title implies, employee compensation is a critical factor in managing talent in a downturn. "For businesses to get the most from the budget they do have," SumTotal's white papers notes, "they must focus on those areas that directly influence the company’s bottom line--and compensation has one of the most profound impacts of them all."

"All of a sudden HR is elevated to the status of hero when the technology actually works," says Donna Ronayne, vice president of marketing and business development for Halogen Software, provider of a suite of web-based products that automate, simplify and integrate performance appraisals, 360 degree feedback, compensation management, succession planning and learning management. Companies can turn to online performance and talent management systems, for instance, to identify employees who are high performers or who have high potential and competencies rare in the company, notes Managing Employee Performance Through the Down Cycle, a white paper sponsored by Halogen and published by Creelman Research.

In both cases, the takeaway is that retention matters, and the only way to retain the best is to have the best technology for doing so. As this blog has previously noted, talent management technology vendors face the challenge of convincing their potential customers to invest in solutions that will help them to manage the coming uptick in hiring. But there's nothing misleading about convicing these same buyers that the need to make those investments is in fact now.

Who Best Knows the Company? Cognisco Explains How to Retain Knowledge Custodians

Because proper staffing levels become a moving target, an economic recession can throw a workforce into flux. At the same time, retention of the best performers becomes as important as ever. But whose contributions best support operations, and how can an organization identify these people? One common denominator among top performers is their knowledge of the company; they possess the institutional knowledge that leads to efficiency. Organizations that retain these knowledge custodians position themselves favorably for the staffing challenges that come with recessionary conditions, according to Cognisco, provider of online employee assessment and learning solutions. The following article -- which recently ran at Onrec.com, as well -- provides further detail.

Do you know who your knowledge custodians are?
By Mary Clarke, Chief Executive of Cognisco

Clarke will be a speaker on Nov 3-4, 2009, in Chicago at www.Onrec.com/Exp2009 for the session titled "Circumvent the Costly Effects of Training an Unqualified Employee." A full bio and session description are available at http://www.onrec.com/profiles/mary_clarke.html.

In today’s challenging economic climate, companies across the board have been forced to re-examine company spending and cut budgets.  Unfortunately, for businesses in many sectors, this has meant an increase in layoffs.  The American unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent last month, increasing from 7.2 percent at the beginning of 2009.  The situation is dire for all parties involved, but for executives it means maintaining normal business practices and production levels with reduced employee numbers.

In times like these it’s more important than ever for executives to have a clear view of their employees’ knowledge, competence and confidence so that they can utilize their current staff in the most effective way possible.  Every company has employees that qualify as “knowledge custodians.”  These are the go-to people that have mastered the ins and outs of the business and are a consistent and reliable resource for other employees.  For executives dealing with extensive layoffs, it’s critical to identify these people, not only to ensure that their positions are preserved, but also to utilize their knowledge and skill in the training of others.  

A knowledge development program is one tool that can help executives in any sector gain a clear view of their current staff.  Often, successful knowledge development programs revolve around consistently administered employee assessments, which provide a holistic view of the individual employee and measure competence and knowledge in conjunction with confidence.  Including a measurement of confidence allows for a more complete view of the employee, because if employees lack confidence in a skill or knowledge set, they are less likely to fulfill their potential.  On the flip side, if employees have unwavering confidence in incorrect knowledge, they pose an increased risk to the organization. 

By utilizing assessments as a part of knowledge development programs, executives can identify their knowledge custodians and ensure that their skills are fully utilized.  In some cases, this could mean a promotion in which the knowledge custodian is given more responsibility within the company.  In other cases, it could mean recruiting the help of the knowledge custodians to train and educate those lower on the company ladder.  In any situation, the identification of top-performing employees can only prove beneficial to both the executives and employees alike, especially in difficult financial times that demand increased business efficiency as job numbers are reduced.  

Employee assessments can also prove helpful in other ways.  When executives and managers are faced with the difficult decisions of choosing employees to let go, assessments can help them make these decisions in a fair and justified way.  They also provide valuable insight for other forms of intervention, such as redeployment, coaching, mentoring and training.

The current economic situation is not easy for anyone.  In stressful times like these, business owners and executives need as much help as they can get when faced with the difficult prospects of letting employees go, redistributing responsibility, and moving forward on reduced budgets without decreasing productivity.   Employee assessments help the company decision makers identify their knowledge custodians and make the most of these people’s skills and experience.  A clear understanding of your workforce is invaluable in today’s economic climate.  It could easily mean the difference between becoming a business survival story and falling victim to the economic recession.

How Can Companies Best Manage Talent During the Economic Downturn? (Part One)

For talent management professionals, this is the prevailing concern; nobody wants an unmanageable payroll when times are lean, and nobody wants to be short on staff when times get fat again (and they will). That means managing the laying off and retention of the workforce during the interim in an effective manner.

Much of the process is intuitive: Lay off the poor performers and be sure to retain the most productive employees. Oh, and make sure those who get to stay feel good about that (and their employer's intentions), because any workforce cutback runs the risk of engendering cynicism and seriously demoralizing even the most cheerful employees.

This intuition to do these things occasionally loses its sway among management types, especially when it's needed most -- e.g., when companies scramble in short order to weather recessionary economic circumstances. Recently, I blogged on research from TalentDrive, which not only suggests that hiring is bound to return later this year (see link above), but also that investments in talent management technology is failing to keep pace with the predicted reality.

Yet technology is an indispensable tool for any firm that wants to manage its talent effectively in turbulent economic times. "The investments in technology should be now, no matter when the uptick in hiring will be," says Taleo's Director of Solutions Marketing Chris Tratar. "Screening and selection technology are important right now, as is the ability to align your talent with drastically shifting, cascading goals within the organization."

In an effort to help companies retain not only their best employees, but also their very bearings during an economic downturn, Taleo Research and the Human Capital Institute (HCI) in fact recently issued Recessionary Management: The Top DOs and DON'Ts for Managing Talent in the Current Downturn, a white paper on the subject. The related news release, on TalentManagementTech.com, provides top-line "findings from a global survey of 345 corporate executives and respected talent management leaders," the announcement states.

Observing that this recession is shaping out to be different and farther-reaching than past economic downturns, Taleo and HCI nevertheless note that a recovery will be inevitable; they therefore provide readers with best and worst practices for managing talent during the interim. For instance, top among best practices, according to the survey's findings, is to "identify the work that is core to retaining business" itself, and top among worst practices is cutting with a "hatchet," and not a "scalpel."

A recording of the accompanying webcast is available.

Recruiters: With VirtualJobCoach, Help Outplacements Manage the Job Search

VirtualJobCoach allows companies to offer online outplacement services. Because these services are online, they can be offered at a fraction of the cost of traditional outplacement solutions, according to Will Robinson, secretary and cofounder of the company.

TalentManagementTech.com recently had the pleasure of speaking with Robinson, who explained how online outplacement solutions such as VirtualJobCoach's can greatly reduce associated costs; many small- and medium-sized companies can now afford to offer outplacement benefits. For larger companies that already have an outplacement program, an online service for it yields greater flexibility.

Internet Outplacement Solutions: The Time is Now
by Will Robinson, secretary and cofounder of VirtualJobCoach

The value of outplacement services is well documented: less litigation, decreased unemployment insurance and corporate good will. The simple fact is that outplacement services mitigate the sting of being laid off, particularly in a down economic environment.  These services are also increasingly important from a public relations standpoint. 

But the downside of outplacement is its high cost, the result of the use of high-paid outplacement consultants who provide their one-on-one council. Unfortunately, this model does not scale; whether you layoff many people or a few, or whether you are a large company or a small one, the outplacement cost remains the same.

The Future is Online
To improve services and reduce costs, many outplacement firms are beginning to move some of their services online; these services, however, tend to augment traditional high-touch solutions rather than replace them -- and thereby do little to reduce their cost. Besides, many outplacement firms do not want to reduce their profit by offering a lower-cost solution. 

What does it all mean? Traditional outplacement is simply too expensive for many small- and medium-sized enterprises, and for larger organizations, the sheer number of outplacement candidates is forcing them to revisit their outplacement costs.

Building a Valuable Online Experience
The goal of outplacement is to get displaced workers back into the workforce as quickly as possible. To achieve this, most programs focus on instruction, guidance and motivation.  Specifically, the engagement typically begins with instruction on the modern job search, tools and best practices. Common programs, for instance, include reference materials, a resume writing exercise, career counsel and ongoing support to keep the client focused.

With all the complexities of the modern search process, however, the ideal solution is develop a single-stop job-search portal that helps people manage and execute their search. A preponderance of job-search sites focus on any one part of the search (e.g., job-listings, resumes, networking, etc.), but few address the entire job-search process.

VirtualJobCoach: Providing and End-to-End Outplacement Process the CFO Will Love
VirtualJobCoach examined the job-search process and best-practice information and studied how people manage their job searches. Then, the compay integrated tools into every phase of the process so that users would have everything they need to research, prepare for and conduct a modern job-search. A core set of tools comprises a calendar, resume builder, cover letter builder, to-do list, networking tool and job-search agent. The system leverages the best job-search and networking sites, but does so within the application itself -- to keep users organized and focused. It's an efficient, all-encompassing solution at a fraction of the cost of conventional outplacement services. The CFO will embrace it wholeheartedly.

A Free Applicant Tracking System? Yes, It's Free as an SaaS from MrTed

"Free" is one of those words that can pique just about anyone's interest, and talent management technology that is free, fully functional and practical will certainly grab the attention TalentManagementTech.com's readers. Following is an article by Jérôme Ternynck, CEO of MrTed Limited, a company that last year launched SmartRecruiters, a 100 percent free applicant tracking system (ATS) and the first-ever Open SaaS talent management solution.

Value of Free: Why an Open SaaS Applicant Tracking Solution Could Shake Up The Industry
By Jérôme Ternynck, CEO of MrTed Limited

Is "free" a realistic business model for recruiting software? If we use almost everything else available on the Internet as a comparison, then the answer has to be "yes."

Consider Chris Anderson’s story last year in Wired Magazine, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business." In that article, Anderson makes a compelling case that innovation driven by processing power, storage and bandwidth is a journey that global business is just beginning. It’s a new territory, but one thing is clear – it’s a journey toward free: "For good reason: It's now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. Storage now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. Basic economics tells us that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing."

I know what you are thinking – we aren’t there yet. But where are we? Currently, there are three ways to get business applications:

• On-site: Think Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems like SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft. Cost: Millions
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Applications are hosted as a service, configurable and available online. Cost: Thousands
• Open SaaS: This is a mashup of SaaS and open-source software. The software is free, it’s hosted and maintained online with a strong user community that helps the software develop organically and the developer makes money by selling pay-per-use services. Cost: Free.

Does this mean that large companies are going to ditch their PeopleSoft systems? Not immediately. In the same way, large companies probably won’t move away from SaaS-based business applications overnight. But for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), an Open SaaS business application makes sense, especially an Open SaaS Applicant Tracking System (ATS) such as SmartRecruiters. Why? An ATS is:

• Mandatory in recruiting: Because candidates are more digital and submitting a resume takes only a few clicks, it’s easy to apply for most positions online. An ATS is a tool that makes this tidal wave of information manageable.
• Expensive for SMBs: These guys need to play on the same field with the big boys, but without the deep pockets. The ability to get the benefit of an ATS without the expense will attract interest, especially in a down economy when businesses are looking for ways to cut costs.

But what about that “free” part? Is it really free? As an Open SaaS ATS SmartRecruiters is free in the same way that Gmail is free. Google offers many free services and applications, but it also provides a higher level of service called Google Enterprise for users that need it. However, for most users, Google’s free level of service provides everything they need, and most users of a free ATS will provide the basic level of service appropriate. Some users will occasionally (or even regularly) need to access pay-per-use services, and that allows these Open SaaS companies to make their money through other channels as they charge for services, such as:

• One-click posts to selected job boards with or without media buying
• Mining job databases for relevant resumes
• Headhunting services that deliver leads willing to talk
• Temp services
• Phone screening
• Managing negative print response
• Online and offline skills and behavioral assessments
• Pre-employment drug, security, background and reference checks

The idea is to create a solution that customers will value, and build a business model that will drive revenue over time.

Although this development isn’t good news for the companies that make their money off of selling ATS solutions, it is good news for recruiters. Providing free functionality for career website, job posting, candidate management, reporting and more has the potential to be a game-changer in the largest and fastest growing market segment in talent management technology.

Is Open SaaS the future of business applications? Yes, and the future starts now.

Down Economy? Invest in Talent Management Technology

Recently, I blogged (twice, actually) on surveys from TalentDrive, which indicate that many firms, evidently, are in fact not in a hiring freeze right now. This is good news, but a large percentage of firms who plan to ramp up hiring later this year aren't investing in sourcing technology to assist themselves in these efforts, according to the same surveys. The findings prompt questions as to what other technologies recruiting firms and HR departments might be failing to consider as organizations stare down the barrel of a possible staffing crunch in the second half of 2009.

But talent management technology is part and parcel of a successful HR strategy in good times and bad. To wit: In a recent article, Alan Deichler, chief marketing officer of HRSmart, explains why healthy investments in "best practice talent management technology" will help companies weather staffing issues during the economic downturn.

One consideration Deichler shares, for instance, is the significant influx of curricula vitae and resumes currently inundating employers. Technology adds efficiency to the fielding of these. And while outplacement may be the order of the day at many companies, ensuring that the very best performers are indeed retained is absolutely critical. Only with robust, accurate employment performance management, career development, and succession planning tools can companies even begin to know who is worth keeping and who needs to be let go.

I encourage readers to follow the link to Deichler's article. In it is sound advice on the use of talent management technology during a recession.

Staffing firms are bulking up in anticipation of an uptick

Apparently, as part of their response to today's economic conditions, a clear majority (58%) of staffing firms are adding services and respositing themselves to attract new clientele. It's one of the major findings of "How is Your Firm Adjusting to the Economy," a survey by TalentDrive of 7,500 such organizations in January.

More than half (52%) are investing in areas traditionally associated with cutbacks during a recession: marketing and a sales force. Furthermore, 65% of firms express concerns over the the quality issues affecting the large number of resumes inundating their offices; they in fact cite these quality problems and sheer inundatation itself as primary concerns for 2009.

Here on TalentManagementTech.com, readers may view TalentDrive's related news release, which quotes Sean Bisceglia, the company's CEO: "With the weakened economy and rising unemployment rate across the US, the exponential increase in the talent pool is causing real issues for staffing firms and the recruiting industry as a whole. It is important that staffing firms work towards improved efficiency and possibly technology solutions to help make sense of the mess."

TalentDrive's survey suggests an obvious area of opportunity for talent management technology companies during this recession: solutions that help staffing firms and others field and manage the large influx of jobseekers who find themselves suddenly dealing with the realities of outplacement.

What's that hiring outlook again?

Watching the news, you'd think we were in for an unending hiring freeze. And, yes, the situation isn't exactly great. But truly grim, it may not be. Forty-six percent of firms were not in a hiring freeze as of January, according to TalentDrive's January 2009 survey titled "Time to Upgrade Your B Talent to the A Talent." Furthermore, 68% of the 8,000 firms surveyed expect normal hiring to return by Q3 of this year, TalentDrive reports. Readers may view TalentDrive's related news release here on TalentManagementTech.com.

TalentDrive offers an SaaS sourcing solution; other talent management technology providers do, as well. And all such companies should take note: A majority of respondents to TalentDrive's survey (66%) report that they are not employing sourcing technology to assist them when hiring resumes. The opportunity is at hand to convince talent management professionals to embrace technology as a way of improving ROI in the hiring process.

Triple Creek Associates: "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technology" for 2009?

It's time for another post on the "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies" for 2009. Triple Creek Associates has a news release posted on TalentManagementTech.com that describes the success of its Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions designed to help talent management professionals with mentoring efforts.

Remember: TalentManagementTech.com will be determining the "Hot Hundred" later this year, and we'll be basing our decisions partially on the input of our readers -- i.e., you. How will you provide this input? All content on TMT can be rated with "fire." You can see the flames at the top and bottom of any post. The more flames you select, the hotter the technology associated with that content will be rated in our rankings.

It's that simple, and it'll help us better understand what the best talent management technologies out there are, according to the talent management professionals who actually use them.

Create a resilient professional life with career athleticism

Peter Weddle, founder of the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS), has written a book titled "Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System," in which he applies analogies such as fitness, athleticism and the classic Olympian in order to describe and explore the concept of "career" in the 21st Century. The subject matter couldn't be more relevant in today's economic climate; as many find themselves forced to reinvent their professional lives, Weddle's book explores once unconventional approaches to career that will become more and more the norm in years to come. Following is an excerpt:

Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System
(ISBN: 978-1-92873447-7, $24.95)
By Peter Weddle
203.964.1888, peter@weddles.com

Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System begins with a very simple premise: in order to achieve true career security in today’s tough times, we must re-imagine ourselves as “career athletes.” We must see ourselves as a new breed of worker-champion. Our model is not that of the athletes engaged in professional sports, but rather, the athletes who are most like us. Worker-champions are the workplace version of Olympians, at least Olympians as they were originally envisioned. These champions are not amateurs; they are athletic activists.

Such athletes have a number of special attributes:

• They are independent. They decide where and when they will exercise their physical abilities and under what conditions. It might be jogging around the neighborhood or playing in a tennis tournament, but they determine the content and duration of their activity.

• They are passionate about their sport. They love the doing of it and are energized and fulfilled by that activity. It strengthens and conditions them, exhilarates and rewards them, and leaves them with a pervasive sense of physical and psychological well-being. Indeed, athletic endeavor can actually create a pleasurable physiological response—what is sometimes called a “runner’s high”—that replenishes the spirit as well as the body.

• Their goal is to be the best they can be in their chosen sport. A successful athlete continuously strives to excel and then extend the limits of their performance. There is no end to their effort because they believe there is no limit to what they can achieve.

• They can be anyone. Athletics are a democratic activity. All of us have a body, so all of us have the inherent ability to engage in and enjoy physical activity. Sure, some of us will perform better than others, but all of us can be athletes, and all of us can reach for and attain the peaks of our own personal excellence.

Career athletes are also not amateurs; they are career activists. Their attributes are identical to those of athletes engaged in sports:

• They are independent. Career athletes decide where and when they will work and under what conditions. It might be for one employer rather than another or as an independent contractor, but they determine the content and duration of their activity.

• They are passionate about their field of work. They love the doing of it and are energized and fulfilled by it. It strengthens and conditions their self-expression, exhilarates and rewards their personal growth, and leaves them with a pervasive sense of mental and emotional well-being. Indeed, a career athlete’s work can actually create a pleasurable physiological response—what is sometimes called “flow”—that replenishes the spirit as well as the body.

• Their goal is to be the best they can be in their profession, craft or trade. A successful career athlete continuously strives to excel and then extend the limits of their performance. There is no end to their effort because they believe there is no limit to what they can achieve.

• They can be anyone. Career development is a democratic activity. All of us have a mind, so all of us have the inherent ability to engage in and enjoy the work we do with it. Sure, some of us will perform better than others, but all of us can be career athletes, and all of us can reach for and attain the peaks of our own personal excellence.

We can’t become successful career athletes, however, by simply stating our intention to do so. We also can’t rely on serendipity or depend on fate or good fortune, and we certainly can’t look to our employers to make it happen. We won’t transform ourselves into career activists by wishful thinking or by being loyal and dependable and showing up for work every day.

There is only one sure way to establish ourselves as genuine career athletes, and that’s to practice Career Fitness. This concept is based on two lessons all of us have learned about our physical health. From our earliest days as a child, we are taught that:

• Each of us is individually responsible for the well-being of our own bodies; and

• We must work at strengthening and protecting our physical well-being every single day.
These responsibilities are nontransferable and nonnegotiable. When we ignore them, we harm ourselves; and when we accept them, we better our lives.

In the 21st Century workplace, the same facts of life apply to our careers, as well:

• Each of us is individually responsible for the well-being of our own career; and

• We must work at strengthening and protecting the health of our career every single day.
These responsibilities are also nontransferable and nonnegotiable. When we ignore them, we harm our standard of living; and when we accept them, we better the quality of our lives.

Career Fitness enables us to become career athletes and face down the bullies among our employers. It gives us a new vision for our work and the fortitude and self-confidence with which to redesign the nature of our employment. It transforms the reality of our workplace experience. It alters the possibility in our lives from simple survival to prosperity and fulfillment.

Career Fitness will restore us—it will give us back what many of us have lost: our belief in the American Dream—but it will not recreate the past. It will not bring back the gold watch or a workplace built on (seemingly stable) career ladders. Instead, Career Fitness enables us to re-set the conditions of our future. It empowers us to end the abusive behavior of bad employers and to reach for the extraordinary occupational goals that each and every one of us are naturally capable of achieving. It liberates us to claim our right to full citizenship in the American workplace as well as in the American polity.  Ultimately, Career Fitness gives us the vision and the tools to transform our work into a personal and potent pursuit of Happiness.

Purchase the book: Get the book now at www.weddles.com and in bookstores in April. 

Starr Tincup helps talent management firms market themselves

Earlier this week, I spoke with the folks over at Starr Tincup, a company that helps talent management firms develop marketing strategies for themselves. In and of itself, this is an incredible service. But Starr Tincup does more. The Fort Worth, Texas-based firm help these same clients, as well, to recruit marketing professionals who can carry out those strategies. A TMT Spotlight on Starr Tincup is in the works that describes these and still other services the company provides in the talent management space. Continue to come back to this blog, where I'll make an announcement when Starr Tincup's spotlight is ready for reading.

IDC Evaluates Integrated Talent Management Technologies

Readers of TalentManagementTech.com looking for companies whose offerings just might deserve to be among TMT's "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies" for 2009 can take a look at the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Integrated Talent Management 2008 Vendor Analysis. A news release on TMT provides an overview, indicating that the firms whose technologies IDC evaluated included Authoria, Cornerstone OnDemand, Halogen Software, Kenexa, Lawson, PeopleSoft and Oracle, Plateau, Saba, Salary.com, SAP, Silkroad Technologies, Softscape, Stepstone, SumTotal, SuccessFactors, Taleo, and Workscape.

What do TMT's readers think? Many of these firms have listings in the TMT directory and post their news on our site. Keep an eye out for their content and rate it. We'll be keeping track and compiling the results, which promise to comprise a major component of our evaluation process later this year.

Are you a TMT "Industry Who's Who"?

It's been a few weeks since we nominated another of our members to be featured at the TMT "Industry Who's Who." Do you think you have what it takes to be featured? Let us know why. Maybe you've made an exceptional contribution to the field. Perhaps you regularly speak at industry events. Have you founded a company in talent management? Whatever it is you've done in this profession, tell us about it. E-mail editor@talentmanagementech.com with your professional bio, photo and a brief explanation of why you think you should be highlighted. Oh, and don't forget to register and create a profile on TMT, among your peers in HR and recruiting.

Avature's Recruiting CRM™: "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technology" for 2009?

As a site where scores of talent management technology companies post their news, TalentManagementTech.com is well positioned to point HR and recruiting professionals to the latest, hottest ideas in technology for their work. TMT is in fact counting on the talent management community to help us as we determine the "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies" for 2009. It's an opportunity for those in the trenches of talent management to assess, from their point of view, the technology available to them.

For instance, last year Human Resource Executive® named Avature's Recruiting CRM™ to its Top 10 HR Products of the Year 2008, according to a news release from Avature itself (and posted right here on TMT). Recruiting CRM was chosen as a winner for its innovative use of advanced technology and its focused solution to recruiters needs, indicates the news release. Built on Avature’s proprietary Web 2.0 framework, the application brings Internet spidering, Live Search (with Boolean & Custom Operators), tagging and tag clouds, e-mail threading, SMS communication, and other advanced Web 2.0 features to the talent acquisition software solution space.

Is Recruiting CRM going to be a "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technology" for 2009? You decide.

CareerCast: Adicio helps drive traffic to 500+ niche career sites

Adicio Inc. has launched CareerCast, the culmination of much work the company has conducted to drive traffic to its many partners' niche job boards. Links to various featured jobs at more than 500 such sites now display on CareerCast, making life easier for jobseekers and recruiters alike -- not to mention the partners, many of whom benefit from the traffic-driving capabilities of Adicio. All job links take visitors to the originating source, too; the tool is in fact complementary. For more on Adicio's launching of CareerCast, check out the recent coverage at The Wall Street Journal, Classified Intelligence and Cheezhead.

iCIMS: "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technology" for 2009?

TalentManagementTech.com will be compiling the "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies" later this year. Our selection process will include you, our readers. All you need to do is rate the content of any talent management technology provider whose content appears on our site.

For instance, most recruiters and HR professionals are familiar with software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider iCIMS. Just before the holidays, a news release from iCIMS appeared on TMT, touting that the company continues to win business from Fortune 500 firms. Certainly this is a criterion by which TMT readers might consider a talent management technology company to be worthy of the "Hot Hundred."

Kenexa: "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technology" for 2009?

Our readers will provide their input as TalentManagementTech.com compiles the "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies" later this year. In the meantime, we have some fodder for the deliberations:

Just before the holidays, a news release posted here on TMT, announced that Kenexa had been ranked no. 326 on Deloitte's 2008 Technology Fast 500 on the strength of its fast North American growth in the HR technology sector this part year.

Web 2.0 Recruiting -- consider attending this event

For recruiting, Web 2.0 has been nothing short of game-changing: While many intangible fundamentals of sourcing and placing quality talent remain the same, the way to go about doing so evolved significantly. Talent management technology is at the center of it all, and sorting through the kaleidoscope of new tools and must-have processes can be daunting. To help recruiters make sense of it all, an annual opportunity to network and learn comes courtesy of the Illinois Recruiters Association. News of this organization's Jan. 28th event, "Web 2.0 Recruiting & the Latest Trends," appeared on TalentManagementTech.com on New Year's Eve.

Taleo eRecruiting: "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technology" for 2009?

Our readers will have their say. In the meantime, a news release from Taleo, posted on TalentManagementTech.com, indicates that IDC identified Taleo as the number one eRecruiting vendor in the marketplace. IDC's report, Worldwide HCM Applications 2007 Vendor Shares, pitted the company's technology against offerings from other well-known providers of eRecruiting solutions, including Callidus, Infor, Kenexa, Kronos, Lawson, Oracle, Peopleclick, SAP, SkillSoft, SumTotal, Synygy and Ultimate Software.

Implementing an Enterprise Performance Management System?

Karen Farmer, talent solutions consultant for Taleo Corporation, has shared with us "The 12 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Implementing An Enterprise Performance Management System." Her article appears below. -Ed.

An efficient and effective performance management system for employees garners crucial benefits for organizations today – from greater workforce productivity and retaining top talent to increasing operational efficiencies and lowering HR costs.  In fact, in this tough economy, global corporations are increasingly adopting on-demand software solutions to help step up their workforce optimization efforts. However, implementing the proper performance management system can sometimes prove to be a daunting task.

Following are the 12 biggest mistakes companies make when putting such a system into place, and guidelines on how your business can address these pitfalls, or avoid them altogether.  

Mistake #1: Keep Managers in the Dark
Organizations that struggle with user adoption often have not taken the time to adequately communicate with their managers (the key users of the system) regarding the decisions that went into selecting the performance management system, nor have they adequately educated managers on the benefits they will derive from using the new system. 

Fix: Constant communication and manager training is vital for success.  Often, managers will perceive a new performance management process or system as yet another burden or another distraction - something happening “to them” that makes their life more difficult.  Relentless communication and training that focuses on the benefits to the manager of using the system can help turn resistance and fear into acceptance and excitement.

Mistake #2: Introducing Too Much Change Too Quickly
Transforming the performance management process touches nearly every aspect of the organization and can take years to accomplish.  Introducing too many changes quickly runs the risk of overwhelming managers and employees.

Fix: Focus efforts on a few key outcomes (i.e., reviews being completed on time, all employees receiving reviews) and show success in those areas.  Enterprise Performance Management systems can be configured with hundreds of options and features that end up being unused because the value of using the feature is not established nor understood.

Mistake #3: Creating Overly Complex Performance Review Forms
Performance management systems have been designed with ease of use in mind.  However, too often, HR is so enamored with all the bells and whistles available, they configure review forms with too many options which end up confusing (and losing) users.

Fix: Remember to keep it simple.  Just because the online review form or system has the option, button or drop down menu, doesn’t mean you need to include it for everyone, in every circumstance.  Approach system configuration with the specific end-user in mind and design the right process and options for the right user.  Most enterprise performance management systems support multiple role-based workflows, forms, and processes.

Mistake #4: Underestimating Change Management
Configuring the software is only one part of the work the organization needs to do to successfully implement a new system.  Understanding the change management issues for both managers and employees is just as important.  When you ignore the “people issues,” users resist change because they aren’t realizing the benefits of changing their behavior.

Fix: Develop a solid communication and training plan for senior management, HR, managers, and employees.  Clearly communicate the changes that are coming and explain why.  Don’t be opposed to fielding questions, complaints, push-back and excuses for why things won’t work.  This dialogue is critical to understanding the underlying issues that could be sabotaging the project and offer an opportunity for users to take ownership of the process, and avoid feeling as though this new way of doing things has been thrust upon them.

Mistake #5: Failing to Adequately Plan
No organization would attempt an enterprise-wide rollout of a performance management system without a plan.  Often, however, it is the things that are not planned for that stall, delay or even kill a successful implementation.  Expect the unexpected and have contingency plans that address delays, technical issues and end-user resistance.  

Fix: Get together with peers who have gone through an implementation.  Ask your vendor to connect you with a community of successful users willing to share their experience.  Plan to roll out functionality in phases that can be monitored and adjusted and expect the full solution implementation to take months, not weeks.  Consider what would happen if the system was not fully operational for the next review period and have a fall back plan in place to ensure employee needs are met.

Mistake #6: Keeping End Users Out of Configuration Process
One of the biggest challenges organizations face when selecting and implementing a new system is balancing the wants and needs of the managers and employees with the needs of HR and the business.  However, cutting managers and employees out of selection, evaluation and set-up processes can have serious effects on adoption later on.  Allow end users to experience the solution and be open to their criticism and suggestions for improvement.  Too often, HR falls in love with the “back-end” functionality and shuts out the concerns of end users.

Fix: During the evaluation process ask vendors to stage a demo site geared specifically for managers and employees.  Often, vendor demos focus on what the system can deliver to HR and management.  None of those features will deliver value if people aren’t using the system.  Allow a select group of managers and employees to use the system as they would when implemented and incorporate their feedback into your selection and configuration decisions.  During implementation, allow a representative team of managers and employees to participate in the configuration of the system.

Mistake #7: Failing to Ask Questions and Uncover Issues
Configuration and implementation of a new software system is often the highest point of disruption.  Often, there is a time crunch and an impending review cycle approaching creating a stressful environment.  Once completed, HR often breathes a sigh of relief, thankful that the implementation “issues” (and there will be many) have been resolved.  However, this is a critical time to continue to gather feedback and uncover hidden issues.  The technical and functional issues will have been easily detected and solved; it is the people issues that now need to be uncovered and addressed.  Some users may only use the performance management system a few times a year, so it is critical to continue to ask for feedback and proactively uncover user issues as those who are frustrated will most likely not speak up, they will simply stop using the solution.

Fix: Create a feedback survey that can be sent via email or filled out online to regularly solicit feedback from users.  Establish an ongoing, regular forum to allow managers and employees to offer suggestions for improvement and encourage involvement.  Creating an environment where managers and employees do not feel as though the system or process is being “forced” upon them, but rather feel they are valued partners with HR in creating a system that works for them will turn nagging and resistance into problem solving and solution building.

Mistake #8: Not Establishing Links to Business Objectives
Establishing and communicating the business objectives set forth when initiating the project must be a recurring theme as you move through phases of implementation and adoption.  The business objectives may change over time (phase I – process efficiency, phase II – reviews for all employees, phase III – competency gap analysis for career development) but the need to clearly establish, communicate and measure the results against those objectives will not.  Too often, organizations lose sight of the business objectives (i.e., improving the employee experience) and users become unclear as to “why” they should make the effort to use the system.

Fix: Like any goals, the goals of the performance management process must be specific and measurable.  It is equally important that the objectives be defined and communicated in terms of specific business outcomes.  Completing all reviews on time, or reducing the number of transactions between HR and managers due to incomplete or inappropriate reviews may be primary goals of automation.  However, those objectives alone do not rally the users around a meaningful cause and almost always carry punitive, rather than inspirational motivation.  Consistently strive to communicate how the performance management activities support the success of the business.  In the example of completing accurate and comprehensive reviews on time, there are a number of outcomes that support the goals of HR.  To inspire users (and your CEO) also include the outcomes that support the goals of employees (career advancement), managers (more effective teams) and executives (winning against the competition) every time you communicate why it is important to use the system.  

Mistake #9: Unclear Roles & Responsibilities
Often, organizations assume that automating the performance management process simply means transferring the responsibilities of those administering and executing a paper-based process to “users” who will perform the same basic tasks on a computer.  It is important to understand that implementing, administering and utilizing an enterprise performance management system will require new roles and responsibilities, not just in HR, but throughout the organization.  Even the most basic deployment may require job-competency development, form design, approval process design, and a host of other system configuration decisions that influence the efficacy of the system. 

Fix: Create a project plan that goes beyond indentifying IT and HR resources needed to implement technical parts of the system.  Identify those in other parts of the organization who will be needed or affected by the new system.  This can include OD resources that will be needed to address the myriad of change management issues, managers or employees needed to help define the job competencies, compensation resources that may need to review market data on current positions, senior management who may want to define the approval processes, or recruiters who may be need to describe job opportunities with the organization in a completely new way.  One thing is certain; automation will require more participation from more areas of the organization, not less.

Mistake #10: Lack of Buy-In From Senior Executives
Executive sponsorship is often a necessary first step in moving the organization to an enterprise performance management system.  Gaining buy-in from key executives is frequently needed for budget approval and often creates the necessary teeth to get organizational attention for projects coming from HR.  But that doesn’t mean senior executives are necessarily bought into the concept of creating a performance management culture (see Mistake #12).  Until senior executives participate (in reviewing performance and being reviewed), it is just lip service.

Fix: Senior executives may not care about the specific features of the performance management system but they will most certainly care how performance management impacts the bottom line.  Create a set of dashboards or reports that show trend data relating to important business metrics such as reduced costs, faster time to market, or improved customer service scores due to improved employee performance across the organization.  Prior to system implementation, ask your vendor to put your CEO or other senior executive in touch with other C-Level executives that can speak directly to the benefits they’ve experienced. 
 
Mistake #11: Ambiguity About What to Measure
Measuring performance can mean many different things, even within the same organization.  Evaluating skills, competencies, goals, and outcomes for both individuals and teams are all valid methods of measuring performance.  However, it is crucial that whatever performance metric is chosen, employees and managers have a clear understanding how to observe, measure, and improve performance.  Inconsistent and contradictory measurement can lead to confusion and mistrust as employees may feel the system is unfair or biased.

Fix: One of the first steps in rolling out the performance management system will be to examine your existing job descriptions.  Without question this can be a major undertaking, but a critical step that will pay major dividends down the road.  Every employee needs to understand not only the duties and responsibilities of their job, but specifically on what basis their performance will be measured as this is will be the basis for subsequent decisions effecting compensation, advancement opportunities, and career development. 

Mistake #12: Failure to Establish a Culture of Performance
A culture of performance means more than implementing an enterprise performance management system or completing employee performance reviews.  Creating a culture of performance often requires a dramatic shift in the attitude of an organization towards its employees from one of a “workforce” to one that values unique contributions, recognizes strengths and invests in developing weaknesses, and understanding the value of each individual.  As noted, executive buy-in is an important ingredient but the critical element needed to infect the culture is the development of the manger-employee relationship.  Too often, managers are not given the tools, training or support they need to be successful in this new relationship with their employees.  The result is abandonment of a process that doesn’t seem to be working and employees who are left wondering what happened performance management.

Fix: Without a cultural change, performance management may never evolve from the annual performance review.  Managers need to meet with each of their employees to discuss performance expectations, goals and objectives, career development, and more.  Managers need to become mentors, coaches, and teachers with the employees’ performance top of mind.  Invest in manager training and development and provide support for those who are uncomfortable with these types of conversations.  Encourage managers to allow their employees to review them, and show that everyone is interested in performance improvement.

Search engine optimization for talent management

Last month, I blogged on how online search technology may in fact be leading to a full circle evolution of online job postings back to the company website. Obviously, this conjures tantalizing possibilities for employment branding. It's all possible because of SEO, and at least one company has announced here on TalentManagementTech.com the availability of its free report, "How to Make Your Job Postings Search Engine Friendly."

OptiJob calls the approach HRSEO, short for human resources search engine optimization, and it seems like a great way to complement the PRSEO tactics we at TMT can conduct, namely the TMT PR Boost campaign. The point is that search engine presence can have a dramatic effect on any company's visibility to its core markets, and it's important to take advantage of this.

Anything related to SEO, by the way, is certainly one of the hot technologies out there right now, and I again want to remind readers to weigh in on what technologies they think are the hottest here at TMT. Your involvement will assist us in compiling the "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies" in 2009.

For many, loyalty to career is greater than loyalty to employer, study finds

The more you read about the current downturn, the more it appears quirky. One brand of conventional wisdom, for instance, says employees are less likely to stray in a slow economy; they want to hang on to what they have, after all. Even so, a survey from CareerBuilder.co.uk of more than 250 HR managers and hiring managers and more than 600 employees finds that as many as two-fifths feel more loyalty to their career goals than to their employers right now, and that 23 percent plan to leave their positions in a year or less. The largest percentage of participants within this group of fence-sitting employees indicate that they don't think their employers value them; the second largest percentage of them say their employees don't pay them enough.

This can't bode well for government and business organizations alike that are cutting benefits as means to counteract the effects of a down economy, as Paula blogged yesterday. The irony here is that the loss of an employee runs the potential of costing an organization more than paying benefits does when he or she is still an employee, as the same announcement from CareerBuilder implies.

Talent management leaders assess economy's impact on HR and recruiting

Plenty of insight into the current economic situation's impact on HR and recruiting is hitting the wires, and much of it is on TalentManagementTech.com. Research into the economic circumstances complements the outpouring of optimism and practicality that has emanated from talent management professionals' circles everywhere.

• HR spending looks to remain healthy. More than two-fifths (42.2 percent) of 210 HR leaders, primarily from North America, who participated in a survey by the International Association for Human Resources Information Management (IHRIM) report that their HR IT budgets will remain unchanged in 2009 compared to 2008, according to an announcement of IHRIM's findings. Another one-fifth (20.6 percent) say that their budgets will increase by an average of 23 percent, and 37.3 percent of respondents say their budgets will decrease by a median of 15 percent. Companies making software investments will spend the most on onboarding tools (28 percent) and benefits management solutions (25 percent), and less on core HR management systems (12 percent), IHRIM's survey also finds. IHRIM broadcasted a free Webinar on its findings last month.

• Stephen Shepherd, president of the Recruitment and Consulting Services Association (RCSA), "the voice of the Australian & New Zealand recruitment and on-hire industry," expresses optimism regarding the industry's ability there to adapt to the current economy. Speaking at the organization's State of the Industry Address in late November, he said, "Now, more than ever, we have an opportunity to demonstrate our worth to employers, to candidates and to governments," according to a press statement on his speech. "Whilst there may be a loosening of the candidate market in the short term, the underlying demographic factors which have driven the skills shortage will remain for some time."

• To handle the recent influx of jobseekers, some job boards are altering their approach and, thus, opening additional streams of potential revenue for themselves. Fresho.com, for instance, has changed its business concept from a simple job board site to a job aggregator and job search engine, according to the company's news release, which goes on to note that all partners receive the benefit of free listings in Fresho's generic search results, but that companies needing additional exposure of their job ads can advertise their openings on a CPC basis.

(Note to readers: Be sure to rate content from Fresho.com and any other talent management technology company whose news appears on TMT. We're keeping track of your ratings and will draw on them as we compile the Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies in 2009.)

Help determine TMT's "Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies"

We at TalentManagementTech.com encourage purveyors of talent management technologies to post their news at our site. It's a great way to keep HR and recruiting professionals apprised of the latest developments in technology designed to make their jobs easier. In 2009, we'll be taking things a step further by assessing these products and services to compile the Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies, a report that ranks talent management technologies available to the human resources and recruitment communities.

We'll base our evaluations partially on our own judgement -- and partially on yours. If you're a member of our community, be sure to rate the content here. For instance, surely at least one of the online recruiting marketplaces currently available to recruiting professionals is worthy of joining the Hot Hundred. You may have seen this news release on TMT announcing the release of the latest user interface for Dayak, one such online recruiting marketplace. And, by now, you've probably seen this TMT Spotlight introductory text on BountyJobs, another estabished online recruiting marketplace.

So go ahead and rate their content or suggest yet another online recruiting marketplace for inclusion on TMT and rate that firm's content. Again, we'll be keeping track as we determine the Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies.

Mark your calendars for Online Recruitment Conference and Expo 2009

Many of you may already be aware of the dates for Online Recruitment Conference and Expo 2009, which will take place on Nov. 3 and 4 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Chicago, Ill. As always, the focus will be online recruiting specifically, with an emphasis on its global impact. There's more about the Onrec conference on TalentManagementTech.com and even more at the website for Onrec USA, including information on exhibiting and speaking at the event.

Talent management technology -- express your needs

One of the goals we have for TalentManagementTech.com is to facilitate communication between HR professionals, recruiters and the companies that create the talent management technologies that they use. Simply by existing, we already help. But we want to do more. That's why we provide the Easy RFP process. Do you want to know how easy it is? Follow the link -- anyone who has a personal profile on TMT may get in touch with us to broadcast his or her technology need to every company on the site.

Talent management professionals can be rock stars too

TalentManagementTech.com is a destination online for anyone in the talent management profession. If you're a recruiter or work in human resources, we want you to visit TMT, register yourself and create a personalized profile. It's easy and free. And, if you're an innovator in the field of talent management, we want to feature you in the TMT Industry Who's Who.

Every week, in fact, we plan to cast the spotlight on a "mover and shaker" in talent management. This week -- as you've probably figured out if you followed the link above -- we're featuring Colleen Aylward, founder of two businesses focusing on talent management.

If you think you're curricula vitae qualifies you for center stage, then make sure your personal profile on TMT indicates as much. Every week, we'll comb through the personal profiles; if yours catches our eye, we just might feature you in the Industry Who's Who.

UPDATE, 11/25/08:
We featured Colleen Aylward over the weekend, and wanted to feature another TMT member, Steven Bonacorsi, before the Thanksgiving holiday. Check out his full TMT profile or the highlights over at the TMT Industry Who's Who.

Peeling the mask off the perfect stranger

Coming from CSIdentity, a firm that provides an array of security services (e.g., from identity theft protection and prevention to the conducting of background screenings) here's an insightful piece on effectively screening the background of potential employees. Note that the writer of this piece, CSIdentity's CEO Bill Morrow, will be speaking at the 2009 Online Recruitment Conference and Expo, next November in Chicago, Ill.

There are numerous challenges in running a business, and one of the most difficult and costly tasks is hiring the right people.

Employee searches can be exhaustive in terms of time and money. Unfortunately there is always the underlying risk that you could hire someone who isn’t who they say they are. That in itself is damaging in terms of your organization’s credibility. It also can be costly in terms of lost data and finances should that person be an identity thief or some other criminal.

A recent survey by CareerBuilder.com found that one out of 10 job applicants embellish their resumes. If that many people, presumably professionals, are lying about their qualifications, how truthful are the thousands of people applying for a job online?

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, as much as 40 percent of the information given employers by applicants is false. Nearly 2 million identity thieves are hired each year with stolen credentials. Business owners and hiring managers cannot count on the standard background check. Granted, it’s better than not checking at all, but not everything put on an employment application is on the up and up.

Businesses rely on applicants to provide accurate information because that information is the foundation for a background search. But those with something to hide will often use aliases, false birthdates, false addresses and incomplete job and residence histories to cover any past misdeeds. Con artists, criminals and identity thieves know this and use it to their advantage. But if you know what to look for and know some extra steps to take, you will be able to weed some of these people out during the hiring process, thereby providing more protection for you and your company.

Watch the dates. Criminal background checks are based on names and dates of birth, but changing one number in a birth date is just enough to throw off a criminal background check. Multiple forms of identification that show a date of birth can help you make sure that you are looking at the right person. Also, checks can be performed that connect a person’s name to his / her date of birth and Social Security number. If all three match up, you’re increasing the probability that the applicant is who they say they are. 

Remember the variations. Nicknames and aliases are hardly ever checked. Bob Johnson could have a felony record, while Robert, Rob, Bobby and Robbie may not have any record of criminal activity. Most screeners seem to stop after checking that first name. A comprehensive background search will check the name given and relevant nicknames and aliases to help ensure nobody slips through on a technicality.

Not just here. A lot of criminal checks stop with the state where the business is located. On occasion, a check may be made of all the states where the applicant supposedly lived. But what if the applicant committed a crime in another state? You don’t have to live somewhere to break the law, and some applicants with criminal records are slipping through the cracks that way.

Social Security is not secure. So much of our lives are tracked through our Social Security numbers. Unfortunately, criminal activity is not. Social Security numbers are valuable for verifying the identity of a person and can help ensure the name on the application matches the name tied to that number.

Don’t stop with hiring. You should continue to monitor employees after you’ve hired them. If a criminal has sneaked through your screening system, chances are they aren’t going straight just because you gave them a job. Continuous monitoring will alert you if an employee breaks the law.

Healthy skepticism is never a bad thing. Remember, it’s your business and you can be as picky as you want in hiring. If something doesn’t feel right, follow that instinct. Invest is a thorough search and monitoring system to keep out those who would destroy your business from within.

Bill Morrow is CEO and chairman of CSIdentity, a provider of comprehensive, accurate and real-time background screening checks for small to Fortune 500 businesses. More information about CSIdentity can be found at www.CSIdentity.com. You can reach Bill at bmorrow@csidentity.com or attend his session at the 2009 Online Recruitment Conference and Expo in Chicago.

Are you content with the content on TMT?

Then rate it -- and fan the flames of content at TalentManagementTech.com.

You may have noticed my blog entry from earlier this week. If you particularly like something you've read on TMT, give it five flames, the highest rating possible for content posted to this site. Just roll your mouse pointer over the flame icons until they light up -- it's that easy.

If your firm offers HR and recruiting technologies, invite as many of your external constituents as possible to become TMT members and rate your content here. And, if you're an HR or recruiting professional who uses technology -- and who doesn't? -- this is your chance to play a part in rating all the options out there.

For instance, Advanced Personnel Systems Inc. (APS) posted a flurry of news recently. You may rate any of this news -- and thus contribute to our assessment of the hottest one hundred technologies in talent management.

We're keeping track of the fire ratings of everything posted to our site, and these ratings will play a significant role in our compilation of the Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies, a report we plan to make available in 2009.

"The Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies" -- rate their content

Last week, I blogged on your ability to give as many as five flames -- the highest rating on TMT -- to anything posted on the site, thus expressing your approval of our content. And we really do want you to fan those flames. Specifically, we're talking about news releases posted on the site. Whether you see one linked to from an individual company's TMT listing or on our Talent Management Technology Newswire, go ahead and rate it -- because we're taking note of these ratings as part of a methodology to determine and compile what will eventually become The Hot Hundred Talent Management Technologies, a report that will be available later in 2009.

If you're a recruiting professional or HR professional, this is your chance to have an impact on the technologies you admire most. Whenever you see news posted about a technology you like, fan the flames; give it five fires. And, if you represent a talent management technology company yourself, make sure not only to post as much content on our site as possible, but also to invite as many of your constituents as possible, too, to visit TMT, to rate your content here, and to become members of the community.

Job board moving against the grain

Worrisome news on the economy seems to hit the wires daily; few doubt we're now in a recession. And, yet, bucking this general trend, significant pockets of the talent management technology industry continue not only to hold the line, but also to thrive. One of those pockets, apparently, is online college job recruiting. Just last week, CollegeRecruiter.com announced the hiring of two new sales representatives. TalentManagementTech.com has the related news release.

Where to focus efforts in an economic downturn?

Last week, Towers Perrin announced the results of a survey whose findings suggest that the current economic downturn portends significant cuts to compensation and incentive programs for personnel as well as reductions to staff itself. Even so, and contrary to the approach taken in past economic downturns, the focus on mass workforce reductions will shift to more targeted, strategic workforce reductions and cuts in other discretionary spending, Towers Perrin's research reveals.

And what about this economic downturn? Where should a company focus its energy, time and money in this environment? Well, the focus should be on SEM, suggests recent research. Amid these adverse economic conditions, SEM is gaining in popularity among businesses seeking an online marketing method that yields "measurable returns," reports Zero Strategy, which cites an ongoing study into the matter by Sempo UK. Natural listings receive the majority of clicks in the search ecosystem, with more than 80 percent of all activity occurring in the natural search space, according to Conductor, Inc., whose recently announced research into Fortune 500 firms revealed that less than 30 percent register any presence in natural search.

If you've been following this blog, not to mention TalentManagementTech.com in general, you know that our very modus operandi is SEM. Everything you do on TMT elevates your search engine presence and gets your name in front of your target market.

Fanning the flames of content

You've probably noticed them. They appear at the top of every blog post and every news release here on TMT. See them? They're displayed even at the top of this very blog entry.

You might think they look like flames of fire -- and you'd be right. The technology platform that makes TMT possible is FireStarter Software, a product of 365 Media, Inc., and in keeping with the namesake, TMT allows you, as a member, to rate any content that participants post to the site.

Just roll your mouse pointer over the number of flames you wish to award to something you've read on the site. Do you think it's a five-alarm fire's worth of information? Then give it five flames, the highest rating possible on TMT. Behind the scenes, FireStarter Software then calculates the number of flames that you and all other members select, and the number of colored flames that ultimately display expresses the average.

So, go ahead and be a firestarter of content on TMT. Fan the flames or post something of your own, to be rated by others. It's simple and free, and it slowly but surely helps your SEM.

Blogging on TalentManagementTech.com

Here at TMT, we're excited about blogging. Not only is it free and great for SEM in general, but blogging on our site also helps to make you more visible to your professional peers, as well. And, today, we posted a news release inviting anyone in the field of talent management to blog on our site.

TalentManagementTech.com -- the buzz

We here at TalentManagementTech.com are greatly encouraged by the buzz online about our site.

First, I must admit: we started it -- the buzz, that is. RD Whitney, our founder, posted an informative news release of ours at RecruitingBlogs, at Onrec.com USA (where he is CEO) and at Tarsus, parent company of TMT, Onrec, and a slew of other endeavors. You may have seen our release, as well, over at the venerable Interbiznet Bugler and at TechWhack, a free online portal for the posting of news releases. Come to think of it, RD even posted it right here on TalentManagementTech.com. Stay tuned, by the way, for an upcoming blog post on PRSEO. Free portals online for news release can play a big role in helping your firm elevate its search engine presence, and I plan to explain how TMT can be a big help for your firm in waging a PRSEO-minded communications campaign.

But let's get back to the buzz. I want to thank Joel Cheesman for including a wonderful entry -- over at his blog, Cheezhead -- about our site for talent management technology. A number of thought leaders in this industry, after all, count on Joel's own thought leadership when it comes to talent management and recruiting. A thank-you also goes out to our very own blogger, Jake Stupak, who wrote about us in his sister blog at JobDig, Inc., The ATS Guy -- who's even Twittering about JobDig's activity on TMT -- and to Jim Michaud, who was gracious enough to write about us at his blog for the Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC, publisher of the Classified Intelligence e-newsletter.

Job boards "nichify" all the way back to the company website

With my last blog post, I noted that job boards are evolving into two camps: clearinghouse sites such as Indeed and a vast array of countless niche sites. What I did not mention was the company job site, where the organization posts its own open positions on its own website. If you think about it, though, it's the most targeted, niche job board of them all. You can't really get any narrower than a company's own job site, after all.

Let's get back to this polarity among the two brands of job boards surfacing today. Aggregators such as Indeed and Simply Hired have taken the place of the world's Monsters, but not for the reasons that gave rise to Monster all those years ago. No, back then, our application of the Web was elementary, and our ability to search it rudimentary. Back in the days of Web 1.0, the prospects of creating and maintaining a niche job site that would realize success just weren't there in any practical sense. Niche interests lacked the financial wherewithal to fashion sites of Monster's caliber because Web publishing tools were expensive and required expert IT staffs. Plus, nary a soul would have known they existed, anyway, had they not then invested heavy expenditures in traditional advertising, too.

By necessity, jobseekers and hiring organizations alike therefore sought a central destination where they could encounter each other. Monster filled the void. Communicating a job via Monster was far more logical, and it worked. Monster's purpose was functionally loftier than today's aggregator's -- because it had to be: bring jobseekers and hiring organizations together, because if Monster (or some other organization like Monster) wasn't going to do it, who would? Aggregators, by contrast, make the search easier, but by no means serve the entire jobseeking population, as Monster once did. Whereas a still-robust percentage of jobseekers still look for jobs in the macro, just as many are looking for work in the micro.

So, what does this have to do with company job sites? Well, with search engine marketing -- another topic I recently covered -- anyone can be found by the narrowest of target markets. The logical extreme says even niche job boards may be in danger of extinction if a company can render its own job site content-rich. And this is the topic of the upcoming Jobs2Web Recruiting Webinar: Break Free of Job Board Dependency. Jobs2Web's webcast will explore how "innovative recruitment leaders...have discovered how to source and recruit using their own company career sites instead of pricey and often ineffective job boards," according to the announcement, right here on TalentManagementTech.com.

What's new in job site functionality?

Job boards have come a long way since Monster and others pioneered the market last decade. No longer static, reconstituted classified ads for the Web, job boards, now in a Web 2.0 world, strive to become as nichified -- or as aggregate -- as they can be. Just look at any job board targeted at a vertical market, or, conversely, take a gander at clearinghouse job sites such as Simply Hired.

In adapting to the attendant, elevated expectations of interactivity, a job board also does well to be as interactive as possible. Jobseekers want to be engaged. They want to participate. They even want to be entertained.

Tools that facilitate all this for job boards exists, of course. One example is Standout Jobs, a company that just announced availability of its software's second version. Standout Jobs' Recruitment Communication Platform gives job boards the ability to fashion themselves as "do-it-yourself interactive career sites," enabling posting companies to use "video, blogging, chat and widgets to showcase and brand their culture and teams to potential recruits," according to Standout Jobs' news release on TMT.

Lots and lots of insight into Applicant Tracking Systems

If you've been poking around this site of ours on talent management technology, you've probably noticed that there's a lot of content that covers applicant tracking systems (ATSs). This isn't because our secret love is the ATS -- although we do love the ATS -- but because there's just so many options out there for a firm that's looking for an effective ATS.

ATSs reside at the core, really, of HR and recruiting technology, and this not only makes competition among solutions fierce, but also opens the doors to all sorts of niche solutions; the marketplace for ATSs is a big tent, after all, and plenty of buyers exist for plenty of providers.

And plenty of these ATS providers post news releases right here on TMT to communicate the latest developments surrounding their products.

For instance, according to one such news release from myStaffingPro®, the company has released myStaffingPro Express, "a straightforward applicant tracking solution for small businesses looking for the essentials in applicant tracking."

With all the ATSs out there, it might be challenging to make sense of them all -- to narrow the search down to the specific solution your company needs. That's why TMT also has its own resident ATS expert, Jake Stupak, whose blog here, TheATSGuy Review, helps buyers navigate their way to an understanding of just how ATSs work, and how an ATS might work best for them.

Request proposals from TMT's community of talent management technology providers

Just the other day, Mike Loginov, owner of Pragmatics Strategic Talent Managers, sent me a message. Mike would like to hear from folks in the TalentManagementTech.com community who might be seeking talent management services in the U.K., where he and his company are based. He also welcomes communication from talent management suppliers looking for a base or partner there. Pragmatics advises clients on how to find, develop, motivate and retain their people through the right processes and technologies. Anyone interested may get in touch with Mike at the contact information visible at his personal profile or company listing.

Mike's request is a good a reason as any to alert readers a future functionality we here at TMT are working hard to provide the community. It's called the Easy RFP, a process by which HR professionals may submit requests for proposals to firms in TMT's directory. Eventually, in our continuing efforts to make TMT as user-friendly and easy to use as possible, we plan to automate this function as the Easy RFP Access: Lead Engine; for now, however, anyone interested in requesting a proposal from any company in TMT's directory may simply e-mail editor@talentmanagementtech.com, and I myself, editor in chief of TMT, will make sure your message makes its way to the appropriate recipients.

SEM for recruiting

Sharkstrike, a company in our directory, recently launched a search engine marketing (SEM) technology of the same name. You may read the Sharkstrike news release right here on TMT.

Think of SEM as just that: the marketing behind search engine optimization. SEM strives to improve the search engine visibility of a company's website as it relates to a collection of pertinent keywords. Sharkstrike's technology helps recruiters to develop, manage and track these keywords. Talent management professionals who neglect SEM do so at their own peril, and cede visibility to savvier recuiters, who understand how the calculated use of keywords can catapult their names into a higher search engine ranking than their competition's.

Recruiters can use TalentManagementTech.com for SEM, too, by the way.

Here on TMT, anyone can create a robust personal profile chock full of rich content that can attract others in the TMT community and cause the search engines, over time, to rank it favorably. And anyone with a personal profile who happens to represent a company that provides talent management technologies or services may also create and expand a listing in TMT's directory -- a listing that enjoys these same benefits.

UPDATE -- 10/29/08:

I just happened across a great demonstration of Sharkstrike over at Jim Stroud's blog, The Recruiters Lounge.

Online video -- the jobseeker's ultimate Web 2.0 tool

We're all well aware that online video is a hallmark of Web 2.0. This helps both jobseekers and recruiters, of course. In keeping with our mission to track the marketplace for recruiting technology, just a few weeks ago we posted news of the launch of ResumeTube.com, a new site for -- you guessed it -- video resumes.

And ResumeTube definitely has the right idea. Plenty of jobseekers are posting their video resumes online, and it just makes sense to create a site dedicated to this. Already, savvy recruiters search YouTube for standout jobseekers who've posted their video resumes there. Just this morning, I myself entered the term "resume" into the search field at YouTube. This yielded a slew of video resumes from jobseekers of all types.

Perhaps the best of the video resumes I took the time to check out today, this individual's showcases his deep experience in video editing and overall professionalism. A couple folks have even left him comments saying they'd hire him.

These video resumes are particularly popular, by the way, among the Gen Y set, and creative types do seem to gravitate to the format. This aspiring film director's video resume links to her MySpace page, too, itself geared to the job search.

And the format lends itself well to traditional needs. Here's one, for example, from someone seeking to be hired as a television reporter. Much like a demo tape, this jobseeker's video resume gives the potential employer a sense for her presence in front of the camera.

Case studies -- they're on TMT

Jobs in Pods has a case study posted right here on TalentManagementTech,com. Evidently, Chris Russell, chief jobcaster there, recently worked to develop three podcasts with a client, the Colorado-based Exempla Healthcare -- one with a nurse, another with a recruiter and a third with the CEO.

This is what Jobs in Pods does. The company works with clients to develop what Chris calls jobcasts -- audio interviews with HR managers and employees. Jobs in Pods' jobcasts are designed to help jobseekers gain in-depth understanding of the interviewed firm's culture. This helps the client's employment brand, thus improving the odds that jobseekers who do apply for jobs at the "jobcasted" firm will fit the culture they're about to join.

"So, what, exactly, can I do on TMT?"

You might be asking yourself this. It's a good question, and I'm going to walk you through just a few of the many things you can do on our site.

Take Advanced Personnel Systems, Inc., for instance. We'll call this company APS, for short; after all, that's what they call themselves, too. Just last week, APS announced a new functionality for its technology suite, a talent management system it calls SmartSearch. The new feature seems to be pretty cool: evidently, APS's technology now automatically identifies qualified candidates when users enter or edit a job in a database that uses APS's product.

You could go to Google News and search for this news on talent management systems. And you'd probably find it. But it's also here, right on TMT. That's because TMT continually updates its very own TMT Newswire with the latest news in talent management technology every day. And if you simply refresh the TMT home page regularly over the course of any day, you'll see the newest headlines updating, right on your screen.

Now, suppose you wanted to learn more about APS? You could go to the company's website. And that would be a logical move to make.

But you could also go into the TMT Directory (a.k.a. "Technologies and Services" in the bar of links at the top of your page) and type "APS" in the search field. This would take you to a page listing two firms matching the search criteria of "APS," where you'd then immediately see which one is in fact Advanced Personnel Systems. Clicking on that link would take you to APS's listing in our directory, where the company has included a wealth of information for you to peruse.

Why is all this material right there for you see? Because TMT provides this free capability to APS and all other companies in the TMT Directory. Go ahead and browse; that's free, too.

Invest in technologies that bring efficiencies -- and cost savings

With markets uncertain, cost savings are the order of the day -- and for many days to come. The smartest way to save money is to invest it in the right places, and the obvious cost savings-related R&D investments for HR departments to make are in technology; talent management systems, after all, are rife with functionalities that could benefit from improvements that streamline the process.

Maybe this is why Authoria, a firm listed in the TMT database and whose technology products add this very brand of high-tech efficiencies to recruiting, performance management, compensation management and succession planning, was recently able to seal a deal to be bought by White Plains, NY-based private-equity firm Bedford Funding. For how much? $63.1 million.

With smart people investing large sums of money where they think they will realize a return are  placing their bets on technology. This kind of confidence amid market turmoil speaks volumes about the talent management technology marketplaces's ability to weather coming economic storms, and the TMT database itself includes categories such payroll, benefits and administration and human resource management systems -- technologies with the ability to introduce much-needed efficiencies into HR departments' infrastructure.

HR technology -- looks like we might be in a robust market space

Amid the economic hubbub of recent weeks, you would be forgiven for thinking the sky is falling. It is, in ways -- but not necessarily in the marketplace for recruiting technology.

Yes, the rate of hiring may be slowing. Just yesterday, for instance, I read in the "McKinsey Global Survey Results: Economic and Hiring Outlook, Third Quarter 2008" that nearly "30 percent of respondents now expect their companies to shrink the size of their workforce in the next six months, up from 18 percent a year ago." But access to capital apparently remains, and many companies "seeking external funding have so far been able to find it...despite the ongoing financial turmoil and a notable lack of confidence in national economies," according to McKinsey's report.

This second finding seems to be further reason to believe recent research from Towers Perrin, which I saw today on TMT. Close to a third of companies have increased their investment in HR-related technologies, according to Towers Perrin's eleventh annual study of HR service delivery and technology. The number only "somewhat lags" last year's. Additionally, 55 percent are maintaining the same levels of investment in HR-related technologies as last year, finds Towers Perrin, which goes on to note that 40% of respondents indicate that talent and performance management systems were their top service delivery issues.

What does this all mean? Probably a lot more than what the headline of this blog entry suggests. But it at least mens that the marketplace for talent management technology is robust. In HR technology, we have a dynamic, multi-pronged market space, one well-positioned because of the needs it serves to weather any economic downturn gracefully.

Let's have a corporate social...software for networking, that is

If you know what Facebook is, you know what social software is. And, if you've been following the latest technology news, you know that IBM is about to release Bluehouse, which attempts to incorporate the very best of corporate social networking and business collaboration tools.

It seems that corporate social networking is poised to be the next big thing. Just last week, Bersin & Associates announced the availability of "Enterprise Social Software 2009: Facts, Practical Analysis, Trends, and Provider Profiles," a new report projecting the likely rate at which business will adopt corporate social networking software. You can read the associated news release right here on TMT. The market for corporate social networking software should grow to $420 million by the end of 2008, a 72 percent year-over-year increase, says David Mallon, principal analyst at Bersin & Associates and primary author of the study. Josh Bersin himself projects that the industry could grow to $2.5 billion by that time in 2012.

What is corporate social networking software, exactly?

You're probably familiar with social networking sites such as LinkedIn and MySpace. Even TMT itself incorporates social networking capabilities. Well, corporate social networking software embraces elements of the best-known social networking tools and adapts them for the entire enterprise (or simply for nooks and crannies of the enterprise).

Atlassian, Jive Software, LiveWorld, Mzinga and Telligent are market leaders, according to Bersin & Associates, whose principal analyst goes on to note, "In the coming year, we expect corporate HR and training to become more involved in its use and to identify ways these tools can support important initiatives in their areas."

Speaking of online recruiting marketplaces...

Earlier this week, I mentioned a TMT Spotlight about BountyJobs, an online talent marketplace where recruiters and employers meet in order to set and earn bounties for open job requisitions. You'll be seeing that article in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, readers of this blog and participants in our TMT community are no doubt aware that online recruiting marketplaces are hot right now. All sorts of companies are trying their hands at it, and for good reason: the concept is a honest-to-goodness game-changer, and a diverse group of players such as TALENThire, RecruitAlliance and others, all bringing their own take to the idea, have together carved out a robust niche for themselves in the recruiting technology market space.

"Why is this concept a game-changer?" you might ask.

Well, for one thing, it seems to disrupt long-standing business models. When I spoke with BountyJobs' CEO Jeremy Lappin last month, for instance, he told me that his site is successfully tapping into the $100K+ job market.

The $100K+ job market once was the exclusive domain of well-entrenched, retained executive search firms. Names such as Korn/Ferry, Russel Reynolds and others come to mind. And while these high-powered, global consultancies' grip on the rarefied market for top-level, C-suite talent remains fundamentally secure, it seems that the lower barriers of their market, which they ceded over many years' time to contingency firms and smaller retained firms, is again giving way to additional players: less expensive, more direct channels online. Other models, such as TheLadders', also lay claim to the $100K+ job market, of course, but the point remains -- and may even be bolstered by this fact.

And it's not just the high end of the job market. Take, for example, the recent experiences of Dayak, yet another online recruiting marketplace. At The Fordyce Letter's blog, Allen Sabol, CEO of Dayak, is quoted as saying his company is different than the competition in that it gives "small and large companies the ability to leverage the experience and skill of the independent recruiters and boutique firms who can fill positions quickly and for a much more reasonable fee." So, we now see mid-level and lower-level sections benefiting.

Dayak has in fact received much attention as of late. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with Allen at the OnRec Expo in Chicago (where he delivered a fantastic presentation, by the way). Later, he and I shared a follow-up phone call. I left the conversation more convinced than ever that Web 2.0's ultimate impact on everything we "know" to be true in recruiting has yet to be fully realized.

Recruiting across cultures

If you recruit for a multinational organization, chances are you find yourself sourcing candidates across many, many cultures. And this can be a challenge if you're not a natural-born multicultural expert, right? Well, of course, but you can fill the gaps in your knowledge, and in short order, if you're a quick study who has the proper tools at your disposal.

This is why, if you've suddenly been assigned to a cross-borders open job requisition, you might want to take a cyber jaunt over to CultureActive. There, you can quickly acquire a baseline understanding of the culture where your chosen job candidate comes from or is headed. Drawing on The Lewis Model, a basis for understanding and analyzing various cultures, CultureActive provides users with the knowledge they need to make informed cross-cultural hiring decisions. A robust repository of background information details the culture in question's politics, history, geography, economy, styles of communication and other interaction, and more.

A trial registration grants you access to the site's benefits. Before signing up, you may even go to this video for a demonstration of the underpinnings of and need for a service such as CultureActive.

By the way, be sure, as well, to explore TMT's own, free database, the largest directory online of talent management products and services. In it, you'll find plenty more examples of game-changing technologies that span just about all your recruiting and HR needs.

Check out Checkster

Web 2.0 -- we've heard ideas about it from every corner of the blogosphere. ERE includes a recent, enlightening blog entry from Doug Berg, founder and chief innovation officer of Jobs2Web Inc. In it, he explores how the social media and other dynamics of Web 2.0 have improved the baseline job-searching literacy of jobseekers and increased their exposure to jobs that might fit their skills. It's an insightful read.

But what does Web 2.0 do for talent managers? Yes, many have addressed the question. But have you ever wondered, specifically, how Web 2.0 might improve employee performance management -- or even the simple reference check?

If you have, you'll probably want to check out Checkster, a company whose technology, among other things, democratizes 360-degree employee performance management, a lengthy, high-touch process that has hitherto been a practical approach for your executives but few others; Checkster's technology, however, infuses drastic improvements in efficiency, rendering this performance management process cost-effective and thus applicable for a larger cross-section of your workforce.

Oh, and Checkster also streamlines the tedious reference check. The technology, in fact, can even help individuals project the possibilities of their very own best-scenario "personal, career and earnings potential," as Checkster's website puts it.

Intrigued? Keep coming back to this site. In the not-too-distant future, TMT will post an in-depth article exploring Checkster's story and technology.

We're still in beta mode, but...

We're still in beta mode, but you'd think that we weren't; already, firms "get it" and are reaching out to us, exploring ways to participate in our community--which is really theirs.

Take BountyJobs, for instance. If you're a recruiter, you've probably heard of this firm. Not too long ago, I chatted with BountyJobs' CEO, Jeremy Lappin, who led me through a GoToMeeting that allowed him to display his screen on my computer and demonstrate how BountyJobs works.

Coming out of that meeting, I realized just how beneficial BountyJobs is to recruiters and employers. An online market, BountyJobs vets recruiters who then vie for the bounty that employers offer in exchange for qualified candidates to fill their open positions. BountyJobs is growing by thousands of job listings per month, and investors have expressed a great deal of confidence in the company's model.

I'd share more, but you'll have to wait and read the "TMT Spotlight" on BountyJobs, coming soon.

What, exactly, is the "TMT Spotlight"? You might be asking this question. Allow me to explain.

If you've spent any time exploring our site, you've probably noticed an area on the front page dedicated to the "TMT Spotlight." This is where TMT features your game-changing technologies and services. As editor in chief of TMT, I'll interview the CEO of your firm. And I'll then write an article that showcases your contributions to the marketplace.

The "TMT Spotlight" (part of a package we offer, really) is an in-depth, thoughtful foray into your firm's offering. Participants in TMT's community, after all, deserve the very best insight and information about their profession and industry.

Welcome to TalentManagementTech.com

Post a press release. Start a blog. Browse the database. Build your very own profile.

Welcome to TalentManagementTech.com, what we like to call "TMT," for short. Our directory is anything but short, however; it lists more than a thousand (and counting) providers of HR technology products and related services. You can search them all. And then there's our "Industry Who's Who," itself a list of thousands of HR professionals who want to learn more about technology.

In other words, TMT is an online destination for anyone with an interest in HR technology. What's more, we pretty much give them the keys to drive the subject matter -- with our gentle guidance along the way. Think of us as a business community where you create the content. If you're in public relations, it's ideal. In fact, we some ideas around that; stay tuned to this blog for more.

In the meantime, we encourage every single one of you to explore the many functionalities TMT, which runs on 365Media's FireStarter Softeware -- enabling, yes, you to become your very own "firestarter" of content on our site.

Questions? Ideas? Well, this here is the TMT blog you're reading, so leave us a comment. Oh, and you may also get in touch with me, the TMT Editor, directly by e-mailing editor@talentmanagementtech.com or by giving me a call at 603-925-1160. I'm here to help, after all -- and to make the TMT experience everything it can be for you and your firm.