Every week, I review all kinds of blogs to find the very best talent development posts. This week, you’ll find pointers to pieces about spotting talent, creating a great onboarding experience, shrinking training departments, and great leadership development as an example of great talent management.
From Bill Taylor: How Do You Know a Great Person When You See One?
“Rather than evaluate candidates strictly on grades, scores on standardized tests, and how they present themselves in an interview, Virginia Tech Carilion now subjects candidates to nine brief interviews “that [assess] how well candidates think on their feet and how willing they are to work on teams.” The technical term for the process is the M.M.I., or the multiple mini-interview. The Times calls it “the admissions equivalent of speed-dating”: nine eight-minute conversations about an ethical dilemma, on-the-spot decisions, even health-care policy that aim to capture who candidates are, not just how smart they are.”
Wally’s Comment: Bill Taylor discusses the way you can spot someone who’s both talented and a great fit for your organization by comparing the admissions practice at Carilion medical school with hiring at Southwest Airlines.
From Mike McAllister: Creating a Brilliant Onboarding Experience
“So I landed this sweet new gig I was pining for, and I must admit I was pretty keen to get started. A positive onboarding process at the start of my first day was a great way to get introduced to the company’s values and culture. The onboarding experience helped me feel welcome and gave me an understanding of what was expected of me, right from the get go. Companies are paying more and more attention to this process as research shows that a strong onboarding process increases retention rates by up to 25 percent, according to a 2008 Booz Allen study.”
Wally’s Comment: Mike McAllister uses his own experience as new employee at Halogen Software to give you an idea of what a great onboarding experience looks like from both sides.
From Harold Jarche: Training departments will shrink
“The Epic social learning debate for Summer 2011 states: “This house believes that as social learning grows, so the requirement for traditional training departments shrinks.†Let’s examine why they grew in the first place. Training on a massive scale was a requirement for preparing citizen soldiers for war and initial methods were tested during the second world war (1939-45). A systems approach did not become standardized until after the war, led by applied research done by Robert Gagné, as noted by Donald Clark:”
Wally’s Comment: Harold Jarche is my go-to blogger on personal knowledge management in the 21st Century and this is an example of why I read every post. By the time you finish reading it, you’ll have an idea of where training departments came from, how the world of learning is changing, and how both learning and training departments are likely to change.
From David Wilkins: Leadership Development Spans All Key Talent Management Practices
“Leadership development remains challenging in part because it spans across many talent management practices. And yet numerous recent studies – from i4CP to Hewitt to IBM – all indicate leadership development and pipeline to be the number one concern. Organizations that do leadership development consistently well create sophisticated development programs that are tailored for all leaders from frontline managers to the highest executives.”
Wally’s Comment: David Wilkins is a VP at Taleo Research. In this post he describes excellent leadership development programs and uses them as a model for all things talent development.
Carnivals, Lists, and Such
The Carnival of HR hosted at Halogen Software by Sean Conrad
