Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find the very best talent development posts. This week, you’ll find pointers to pieces on the role of senior executives in talent selection, competing with the world’s Googles for top talent, improving HR processes and the Jeremy Lin phenomenon.
From Mike Haberman: Senior Executives, Not HR, Are Key to the Selection of Talent
“In their book, The Talent Advantage, Alan Weiss and Nancy MacKay make the comment “…winning the war for talent starts at the top with the CEO; CEO is the brand for attracting, recruiting, retaining world-class talent in your industry; CEO is the exemplar for striving for extraordinary leadership; CEO must play a lead role in building a leadership talent pool for competitive advantage; CEO is key to holding senior executives accountable for attracting, recruiting, developing, and retaining top talent; CEO must partner with HR to align talent management strategically….†Obviously they think that senior executives are key in the selection of talent.”
Wally’s Comment: It shouldn’t be necessary to say this, but, alas, it’s become common for key executives to outsource anything people-related to the HR department. Bad idea.
From Inc. Magazine: What It Takes to Hire Top Ivy League Talent
“Want to hire top-tier young talent for your lower-profile business? Don’t think you can just show up on campus senior year and compete, warns one small company.”
Wally’s Comment: OK, so you can’t go head-to-head with Google and you want to recruit top talent. It can be done, but you’re going to have to do some work. Hat tip to SmartBrief for pointing me to this article.
From Brad Power: Focus HR on Process Improvement
“To deliver more value, the human resources function needs to spend more time accelerating operational improvement and less time on its traditional administrative and compliance activities.”
Wally’s Comment: Brad Power is an expert in process innovation at the Lean Enterprise Institute. He’s got three specific suggestions for how you can improve your talent management processes.
We conclude with pointers to some posts on the Jeremy Lin phenomenon. Lin played high school basketball in Palo Alto, but the hometown university, Stanford, didn’t offer him a scholarship. So he went to and played for Harvard, which is not exactly a basketball powerhouse. Nobody drafted him, but he got on to the New York Knicks roster, was almost cut, and (wait for it) suddenly emerged as a star.
Luck and pluck aside, how does that happen? Why did esteemed and highly paid experts miss Lin’s upside? Add to the mix the fact that Lin is (I think) the first Asian-American to play in the NBA and the fact that (I know) there have been more Harvard grads elected president of the US than have played in the NBA, and you’ve got quite a story. Here are three great posts that tell parts of it, which special emphasis on the lessons for recruiting and talent management.
From John Baldoni: What “Linsanity” teaches us about talent searches
“Talent abounds, but sometimes we don’t know what we are looking for until we are up against it.”
From Jena McGregor: How Jeremy Lin’s star power could go unnoticed for so long
“When Jeremy Lin hit the three-pointer with half a second left on the clock to beat the Toronto Raptors Tuesday night, you could almost hear the collective sound of NBA coaches and general managers smacking their foreheads once again.”
From Eddie Yoon: Does Your Portfolio Have a Jeremy Lin?
“His team is enjoying a five game winning streak. He’s ranked fourth on the NBA Player Efficiency Ratings. He’s played on three teams this season, and until recently was crashing on two friends’ couches since arriving in New York City. He’s also first in the league in points scored per million dollars paid among the NBA’s 40 highest-scoring players. If you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about NBA (and Twitter) sensation Jeremy Lin, who’s become a phenomenon due to his surprisingly-stellar performance and his ‘lin-guistically’ elastic last name.”
