Good post on use of psychometric assessments in hiring. As a certified MBTI practitioner, am glad to see the red flag around using MBTI ( Myers-Brigss Type Indicator) for filtering candidates during the hiring process. MBTI is an indicator of personality types and does not measure skills /aptitude. #mbti #astd
Category: Talent
How to Engage in Social Recruiting – Talent Management magazine
Perspective from AOL on social recruiting. Connecting with potential employees has never been more important before. The war for talent will be be won through different frontiers. Social is one of those.
How to Engage in Social Recruiting – Talent Management magazine.
MOOCs are here- let’s leverage them thoughtfully!
Uwituze and her family live in Rawanda. They have $75 in savings. Although it is unlikely that Uwituze will ever be able to afford college, she aspires for a career in finance / banking.
She might just get what she dreamed for! She will get the required knowledge through the Kepler project initiated by a non profit Generation Rawanda. Briefly, the Kepler project will leverage the MOOC ( Massive Open Online Course) model of education, and blend online content from best universities of the world with in-person instruction to help Uwituze realize her dream.
In 2007, at the AERA Conference in New York, a professor from Yale demonstrated the first open access course ( earlier name for MOOC). What began as bootstrapping has now grown into a blossoming industry. Harvard and MIT started a $60 million dollar non-profit and created edX. Likewise, Udacity raised $21.1 million with venture capital funding! (Source)
The power and reach of MOOC is undeniable. Reasonably small sums of American dollars deliver immense value for people all around the globe. The cost of one hundred cappuccinos could mean a student earns a CS101 or is able to take a class on Teaching, and sign up for the signature track and get verified as a successful candidate from Stanford, or other such university!
From a corporate L&D point-of-view, Jeanne Miester has shared a very useful article with the community. Here, I note some additional considerations, and few reasons to use MOOCs.
1. Most organizations are not necessarily training content creators. Even though some content is generated in-house, most is procured from third parties (trainers, training companies, or publishers). MOOCs could be a great source to procure content (all in one place if no customization is required).
2. MOOCs are mostly free and can enable professional development, up-skilling, or re-skilling. Resources thus freed-up can be allocated elsewhere.
3. Verification and certification becomes possible for $39- $100 per course.
4. Learning on-line is convenient and easily accessible for employees / participants with internet access.
5. Learning on-demand means that work time can we used for working which is a benefit to both the employee and the employer.
6. MOOCs provide context-free situations ( are not organization, or industry specific), skill development, and add to the knowledge base.
MOOCs offer a good deal of benefits but there are challenges to consider as well.
1. What’s the incentive to complete the program? Only 5% of participants completed a MITX’s MOOC. (Source)
2. How will we evaluate knowledge transfer and measure achievement?
3. 70:20:10- Do MOOCs currently address the need for peer-peer, informal, and formal social learning?
MOOC’s are not a perfect fit in every instance but they offer rich possibilities creating opportunity and flexibility in the L & D space. I think of these considerations- will MOOC platforms by Coursera, Udacity or others allow for creation of bespoke content?
There will be other considerations around:
1. Interoperability
2. Technical specifications
3. Reporting
4. Content assimilation, and curation from multiple providers
The future is bright, and every organization needs to leverage this emerging trend in learning, and teaching to the extent they can ( just as McAfee did by ‘flipping the classroom’).
Build Talent Pipeline, Manage Knowledge: Add a Mentoring Program to your Talent and KM Tool-Kit!
What are the tools in your talent management toolbox? Do your TM processes include a structured mentoring program? Is retention one of your challenges? Are you interested in structured, but informal learning? Worried about the reduced half-life of the organization’s knowledge base? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, a mentoring program in your TM toolkit will help?
I’ve personally experienced the power of both formal and informal mentoring relationships, and I know how much it can further the goal of talent development. Having advised and designed mentoring programs for non-profit organizations, participating in pro-bono small business mentoring initiatives; having a few mentor/ protege (mentee) relationships, I vouch for its tremendous benefits.
Why mentoring?
- A very cost-effective tool to develop talent
- Identify and nurture “young” leadership and build “Bench.”
- Promote retention
- Deliver a highly impactful “onboarding” experience that does not end with the orientation day!
- Harness organizational knowledge
- Facilitate cross-functional collaboration
- Exchange of expertise
- Facilitate structured informal learning opportunities
- Increase morale and build a community
‘Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders’.- Tom Peters
Students of Leadership training, creators and developers of Leadership training, and people in Leadership roles; all define Leadership differently!
Some equate Leadership with having followers, some with bringing success to team, some with taking initiative, and some even with empowerment. It is the ’empowerment’ aspect that in my point of view defines Leadership, and is closest to Tom Peter’s quote.
A measure of Leadership is how dispensable one makes oneself, and empowers others to take on the baton! To those leadership models and theories, which state that Leaders cannot be created, this would be a new way of thinking. We can create Leaders- we just need to be willing to do so. This requires commitment, confidence, and compassion ( I call it the 3Cs of Leadership development)!
Commitment to success of others, confidence in their abilities, and compassion when people falter or take baby steps-These 3Cs are qualities, which if possessed, would set the foundation toward creating more leaders, and fewer followers.
You can hear the nay-sayers now. Their argument would be how many leaders can there be in an organization, in one division, or in one function? ‘Definitely not more than one!’ Imagine all the chaos that would arise from people doing their own thing and wanting to pull the organization in the direction they were heading, they might say.
But wait! Who said all follower turned leaders had to have the same responsibility/ job description/role? Neither Tom Peters, nor this blog says ‘all employees have to be CEOs, or all employees have to be managers’. Both these sources, however, definitely say that if one leader is able to create more leaders, then talent management models, and succession planning models will look very different.
With this post, I want to initiate a conversation on Leadership. I welcome you to join me here, or on other forums, and add to the Leadership body of knowledge, and experience.
People and Organizations: Capability, Leadership, Learning, Talent and Change 