How Data Can Help You Land Top Talent. Tech founders know that landing top-notch talent is key to their businesses. Bright stars in the employment pool are in high demand. The last thing they want to do is elongate the interview and hiring process. Take your time making an offer, and that genius programmer or well-connected executive could sign with someone else while you're still trying to make a decision. This is exactly the problem BlueKai set out to eliminate. After looking closely at its hiring processes, the marketing technology platform company decided it could strategically use data to shave in half the six weeks it normally took to go from resume review to offer. Not only that, but now the company often is able to make an offer on the same day a person is interviewed. Here's how they did it. Map the Process BlueKai started by looking at every stage of its hiring process--resume review, phone interview, in-person interview, hiring team debrief, when the offer was made, and whether it was accepted or rejected.
Recruiting: 8 Qualities Your Best Employees Should Have. Great employees are reliable, dependable, proactive, diligent, great leaders and great followers... they possess a wide range of easily-defined—but hard to find—qualities. A few hit the next level. Some employees are remarkable, possessing qualities that may not appear on performance appraisals but nonetheless make a major impact on performance. Here are eight qualities of remarkable employees: 1. They ignore job descriptions. The smaller the company, the more important it is that employees can think on their feet, adapt quickly to shifting priorities, and do whatever it takes, regardless of role or position, to get things done.
When a key customer's project is in jeopardy, remarkable employees know without being told there's a problem and jump in without being asked—even if it's not their job. 2. People who aren't afraid to be different naturally stretch boundaries and challenge the status quo, and they often come up with the best ideas. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Great employees follow processes. When Hiring Graduates, Avoid These Mistakes - Tom Moore and Brandon Labman. By Tom Moore and Brandon Labman | 9:28 AM May 3, 2011 It’s that time of year again, and many a manager’s inbox has become flooded with the résumés of (very) soon-to-be college graduates.
And while most hiring managers are well-versed in best practices for recruiting Millennials, it’s amazing to us — as somewhat recent graduates ourselves — how many firms still make the same mistakes when hiring “the best” of Gen Y. Take this example from our experience of one old-school hiring process, in which an IT firm disheartened several qualified candidates with an overly formal and invasive first-round interview.
After a three-hour initial meeting, the firm had mentally drained the young candidates with surprise skill assessment tests and a last-minute decision to have them re-screened by multiple executives. To make matters worse, the candidates were confined to just a couple of rooms — and the company failed to give any insight, spoken or demonstrated, into the office environment. Get Ready for the New Workforce - Ron Ashkenas. By Ron Ashkenas | 10:00 AM December 28, 2012 I recently heard a stunning statistic: For the next 19 years, 10,000 people per day will turn 65 years old, and (presumably) retire shortly thereafter.
While this graying of the Boomer generation certainly has implications for health care and social policy (and for me personally, as one of those eventual retirees), it may have even more significance for the nature of the workforce and the job of the manager. First, there will be a shortage of workers for key jobs. This may sound hard to believe at a time when U.S. unemployment hovers around 8% and parts of Europe have 25% of their people out of work. Yet as millions of boomers leave the workforce, there are far fewer younger people to replace them. In the trucking industry alone, for example, it’s estimated that there will be a shortage of over 100,000 drivers in just a few years. Conduct a demographic risk-analysis of your team or organization. Accelerate training and transition planning. Susan Cain: The power of introverts.
The Fortunes Of Solitude: Susan Cain On Introverts, The "New Groupthink," And The Problems With Brainstorming. Bill Gates, Craig Newmark, and Mark Zuckerberg have more in common than being highly successful founders of tech companies. They’re also introverts. This psychological temperament, according to Susan Cain, author of the recently published book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, is vastly misunderstood and undervalued. A self-avowed introvert herself, Cain is a former corporate lawyer and consultant who says that 30% to 50% of the population aren't just the first to leave a party, they are also uniquely creative, highly focused, and often better prepared than their loudmouthed counterparts. We spoke with Cain about the power of going solo and why brainstorming is broken. FAST COMPANY: You say "introversion is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.”
How did we get to this bias? Not that there were more introverts back then… True, but there was more room for them. Here’s the way I’d put it. Baby Boomers, Millennials Clash in Workplaces Around U.S. A new poll reveals just how different Gen Y workers are from their Baby Boomer forefathers. Among other things, millennials (those in their 20s and early 30s) want flexible work schedules, more “me time” on the job, and nearly nonstop feedback and career advice from managers. They’re also more likely than average to think the boss could learn a thing or two from their young employees. Oh, and they really want to be able to wear jeans at work. All in all, it’s a pretty bad time to be a young worker (or aspiring young worker) in America.
Unemployment and underemployment remain especially high among teens and 20-somethings, and increasing numbers of the so-called “Boomerang” generation have little choice but to live with their parents while weathering the economic storm. (MORE: A Real Recovery? Right now, there are about 80 million millennials and 76 million boomers in America. Gen Y will also reshape the workplace—sooner than later, if they have their way.
Disruptive Demographics in the Workplace: New Strategies for an Aging Workforce | Disruptive Demographics. The past four decades have seen major transformation in the roles and evolving responsibilities of employers with regard to the lives of their employees. While business has changed with the ‘times,’ the times have been defined by the baby boomers. The boomers are the largest generation in the nation’s history – nearly 80 million people born between 1946 and 1964. The last 40 years in the workplace have been theirs. Today’s ‘accepted practices’ were yesterday’s revolutions brought to the workplace by their lifestyles, lifestages, and now, their longevity in the labor force.
For example, unlike their mothers, nearly 70 percent of boomer women work full or part-time. The boomers have at least another 20+ precedent-setting years in the workplace – how will they, now as older workers, shape the future workplace and the role of employers? Because of the baby boomers, business has enjoyed a well-educated, seemingly endless supply of workers for the past 40 years. Insights & Innovation. The Grass Isn't Greener. Not long ago the CEO of a company we know convened his top executives and asked them to look for new strategic growth opportunities, because revenue had stalled and the existing customer base was shrinking.
He encouraged them not to be bound by the company’s history, the markets in which it already participated, the expertise of its people, or the assets it had in place. Instead he wanted them to identify new markets. “We’ve got to find some other way to extend our business,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s a stretch for us. It’s amazing how often senior executives conclude that their problems are simply a function of a decline in their core markets—and how often boards accept that conclusion.
Actually, no. We reached this conclusion after analyzing shareholder returns for 6,138 companies in 65 industries worldwide from 2001 to 2011. One example of the pitfalls of this reasoning is Mattel’s acquisition of the Learning Company, in 1999. Faulty Assumptions. Accelerate! Perhaps the greatest challenge business leaders face today is how to stay competitive amid constant turbulence and disruption.
Any company that has made it past the start-up stage is optimized for efficiency rather than for strategic agility—the ability to capitalize on opportunities and dodge threats with speed and assurance. I could give you 100 examples of companies that, like Borders and RIM, recognized the need for a big strategic move but couldn’t pull themselves together to make it and ended up sitting by as nimbler competitors ate their lunch. The examples always play out the same way: An organization that’s facing a real threat or eyeing a new opportunity tries—and fails—to cram through some sort of major transformation using a change process that worked in the past.
But the old ways of setting and implementing strategy are failing us. We can’t keep up with the pace of change, let alone get ahead of it. What to do, then? The Challenge of the Average Employee - Anthony Tjan. By Anthony K. Tjan | 9:13 AM October 4, 2011 Most businesses have a normal distribution of talent — a limited number, say top 10 percent, of high potential, rock star performers, a bottom decile of underperformers, and a thick middle of 80 percent of folks who get the day-to-day stuff done. In well-managed businesses, there are clear feedback mechanisms to ensure that the bottom of the talent pack gets managed out efficiently and objectively. While at GE, Jack Welch popularized the notion that it was good to fire the “bottom 10″ of his managers every year. On the other end of the spectrum, the better companies manage the top-end of their talent pool, providing mentors to groom this group of next-generation of leaders and compensating them differentially in recognition of their superior performance.
The challenge lies in productively managing talent’s fat middle. . • Almost by definition, they often get lost in the mix, lacking appropriate guidance and management attention. Big Data Rears Its Head, And It's Beautiful | Think Tank. What's the Big Idea? As 80 percent of all humans own some sort of mobile phone, the amount of data we are creating is exploding. This so-called data exhaust can be just that -- exhaust and noise -- but it can also be collected and analysed, and then utilized as one of the most powerful assets in the 21st century economy.
That's the view of tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon, and organizations such as the World Economic Forum. Big Data is becoming as powerful an asset as oil, and it will be the source of many high quality jobs in the near future. Amazon, for instance, has formed relationships with 350 universities around the world to train a workforce 190,000 people in the field of advanced Big Data analytics.
So given the promise of Big Data, what do we all need to know about it and how will it impact our lives? Embrace it. Photo credits Infographics: © Nigel Holmes 2012 / from The Human Face of Big Data 23 & Me © Douglas Kirkland 2012 / from The Human Face of Big Data. The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies | McKinsey Global Institute | Technology & Innovation. In a few short years, social technologies have given social interactions the speed and scale of the Internet. Whether discussing consumer products or organizing political movements, people around the world constantly use social-media platforms to seek and share information.
Companies use them to reach consumers in new ways too; by tapping into these conversations, organizations can generate richer insights and create precisely targeted messages and offers. While 72 percent of companies use social technologies in some way, very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefit. In fact, the most powerful applications of social technologies in the global economy are largely untapped. Exhibit Improved communication and collaboration through social technologies could raise the productivity of interaction workers by 20 to 25 percent.
Enlarge Two-thirds of this potential value lies in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises. Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity | McKinsey Global Institute | Technology & Innovation. The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets—so-called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus, according to research by MGI and McKinsey's Business Technology Office.
Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data-oriented managers. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future. MGI studied big data in five domains—healthcare in the United States, the public sector in Europe, retail in the United States, and manufacturing and personal-location data globally.
Big data can generate value in each. For example, a retailer using big data to the full could increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. 1. 2. Podcast 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The Death Of Big Data. Who's Really Using Big Data - Paul Barth and Randy Bean. By Paul Barth and Randy Bean | 11:00 AM September 12, 2012 We recently surveyed executives at Fortune 1000 companies and large government agencies about where they stand on Big Data: what initiatives they have planned, who’s leading the charge, and how well equipped they are to exploit the opportunities Big Data presents.
We’re still digging through the data — but we did come away with three high-level takeaways. First, the people we surveyed have high hopes for what they can get out of advanced analytics. Second, it’s early days for most of them. They don’t yet have the capabilities they need to exploit Big Data. Third, there are disconnects in the survey results — hints that the people inside individual organizations aren’t aligned on some key issues. High expectations. Capabilities gap. Problems with alignment? How would you rate the access to relevant, accurate and timely data in your company today? More >>
Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box. How Companies Must Adapt for an Aging Workforce - David Bloom and David Canning. By David Bloom and David Canning | 9:00 AM December 3, 2012 The world’s population is growing older, taking us into uncharted demographic waters. By 2050, over one-fifth of the US population will be 65 or older, up from the current figure of one-seventh. The number of centenarians worldwide will double by 2023 and double again by 2035. Projections suggest life expectancy will surpass 100 in some industrialized countries by the second half of this century — roughly triple the lifespan that prevailed worldwide throughout most of human history. Anti-aging technologies — from memory-enhancing drugs to high-tech joint replacements — have combined with healthy lifestyles not merely to increase longevity but to make old age healthier for many people.
Business has been slow to plan for population aging, but delay won’t be an option for much longer. Responding effectively to longer lifespans will require changes in business practices and public policies. Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your world-view. Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four. Gapminder: Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view. - Gapminder.org. When Women Leave the Workforce, Think of Those Left Behind - Karen Firestone. Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.
Technology Is Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say. 5 Things That Really Smart People Do | Inc. 5000. The Science of Incentives, Motivation and Choking | Moments of Genius. Should Your Next CEO be an Inside Outsider? - Stefan Stern. Daily chart: The outsiders. Which MBA? | Academic view: A new philosophy of leadership. 6 Simple Rituals To Reach Your Potential Every Day. Our Measurement Model - The Circumplex. Should Your Boss Care About Your Klout Score? - Michael Schrage. Successful Leadership Skills. Who's at Fault for High Gen-Y Turnover? Fatigue Is Your Enemy - Tony Schwartz. How to Hang Onto Your Best & Brightest. Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation.