It’s almost September, and if you’re in the HR Technology market you know what that means – it’s nearly time for the annual HR Technology Conference and Exposition (September 29 – October 1, 2010).  In its 13th year, the conference is shaping up to be the best one yet.  With a packed agenda, top notch keynote speakers, and more panel discussions than ever before, the conference has grown to draw not just HR technology participants but HR executives, talent management leaders,  HR generalists and more.  Conference Co-Chair Bill Kutik is constantly looking to tweak the show to make it better year after year – and this year is looking to be a blockbuster.

I’ve had the pleasure of attending 6 of these conferences in the past and am looking forward to my 7th this year.  In addition to attending more than half of these conferences I have also had the good fortune of speaking twice before, in 2006 alongside then Vurv COO Amy McGeorge (now CEO of staffing firm Talagy) and then participating in a panel discussion on talent management hosted by Knowledge Infusion CEO Jason Averbook in 2007.  I’m pleased to share that I will be again make an appearance at the conference, as a panelist alongside a host of other very talented HR bloggers.  The panel, moderated by Kris Dunn (The HR Capitalist) will include well known bloggers such as Trish McFarlane (HR Ringleader), Laurie Ruettimann (Formerly of Punk Rock HR, now co-founder of New Media Services),  Michael Krupa (Infobox), and myself.  We’ll be discussing all sorts of HR issues including technology and social media.  The session is scheduled for Thursday, September 30th at 11:00 AM.

I can tell you all about how great the show is, but that’s been done to death by countless others here, here, here, and here.  All I can say is that if you are in HR or support HR in any capacity, don’t let the name fool you, this conference is for you. Do I have your interest now?  If so and you want to come, save $500 off the on-site registration fee just by being a reader of my blog by registering here and entering BRYON10 (all CAPS please) as the discount code.

See you there…..

Talent Management initiatives always start out with very high expectations.  Having a wealth of information on your employees enables more sound decisions on how to be leverage the largest asset you have – your people.  It seems so simple doesn’t it?  Yet time after time talent management initiatives have failed to live up to initial expectations.  Either you cannot get your employee information from a single core system, the data is outdated, you struggle with privacy concerns in certain parts of the world, or you don’t have a single source of data for security authentication resulting in separate user IDs and passwords.

“No matter what the issue is, the root cause is often the lack of a strong set of core employee data“

Over the past seven years I’ve personally been involved in the selection and/or implementation of over two dozen Talent Management solutions both as a buyer myself and as a consultant assisting others through the process.  In nearly every project I’ve been a part of, access to a single, authoritative source of employee data has resulted in unforeseen delays and challenges.  In some cases it actually can cause a project to fail.

Vendors in the talent management space have developed amazingly robust, highly effective solutions that can help you solve big business issues.  They will show you all sorts of dashboards, metrics, analytics, robust talent matching capabilities, and even lay the groundwork for strategic workforce planning – highlighting the skill gaps between the workforce you need and the one you have.  Unfortunately, the ability to realize the full potential of these powerful technology solutions is entirely dependent upon the ability to source the appropriate data.

The challenge is generally two fold:

1. Organizations don’t have a unified source of employee demographic information.  Larger organizations may have this data scattered across multiple systems, and multinational organizations may have more than one Core HR system, either separate in each country, region or line of business.  Additionally there is a very clear correlation between the degree of decentralization a company has in its operations and the likelihood of redundant HR systems being used throughout the organization.
2. There is often a disconnect between how the Talent Management organization sees the organization of labor in the company and how the job structure is maintained in the Core HR System(s).  This includes lack of or inconsistent use of job families, proliferation of job codes to satisfy the desire to make the business card title the official job title, and plenty of other reasons.

Organizations that purchase a best-of-breed talent management solution often realize these challenges too late in the implementation that they are forced to make decisions that sub-optimize the deployment effort.  The result is what drives users crazy with things like redundant data entry, unsynchronized User ID’s and passwords, or job titles and/or reporting relationships which differ from reality.

To be fair, having a best of breed talent management solution isn’t necessarily the cause of these problems, but rather the tool which exposes this critical flaw that many organizations struggle with.  The same issues arise with a Core HR-based solution for talent management, except that there are often fewer surprises since there the number of locations in which core data can be defined is limited to one system.  The warts are more exposed and having a single solution for both core and talent management is less likely to result in a silo’d approach to the project – with Talent Management, HR Information Systems, and IT all involved.

My advice to all buyers in the market is to be sure that you take the time to fully evaluate the data structure and quality in your core HR system before you go too far down the path of selecting and deploying a talent management suite.  If you don’t heed this advice, you may never realize the value stated in your business case, and fulfill the promises that you’ve made to the organization when selling the idea of a solution internally.   Unfulfilled promises can quickly erode stakeholder support for an initiative and risk complete failure.

I’ll admit it, the HR Technology market can be downright confusing.  The messaging coming from nearly every vendor sounds very similar, making it very difficult to determine which vendor does what and more importantly how they differentiate from one another.  Nearly every vendor offers capabilities that are marketed as “Talent Management” or “Analytics”, ranging from assessment vendors, time-keeping solutions, and organization charting vendors.  And, amazingly enough, they are all correct largely because of the lack of a generally accepted definition of what each means.

As confusing as it is to determine what a solution exactly does, its become even more difficult to determine HOW vendors deliver their solutions.  Cloud-based, Subscription, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), premise-based, perpetual, hosted, hybrid, and outsourced are terms that often are used to describe the manner in which a technology is made available.  Buyers often are looking for SaaS, but many times don’t know exactly why they want or need SaaS and more importantly what solutions are SaaS versus a hosted solution – and why its important to distinguish between the two.

Software-as-a-Service has been defined by Microsoft as “Software deployed as a hosted service and accessed over the internet”.  This definition is as pure and simplistic as possible.  based on this definition, SaaS has a few key attributes:

1. Software is hosted on servers that the vendor provides and maintains
2. Software is accessible via an internet browser
3. Access to the software is subscription-based rather than licensed

Based on this definition, there are countless vendors in the space that qualify as SaaS and just about any solution you buy can be made available in a SaaS model.

I would like to offer a more narrow definition of SaaS;

1. Hosted and maintained by the vendor
2. Delivered over the internet
3. Configurable but NOT customizable
4. Single code-base deployed across ALL customers

In the definition from Microsoft the author goes on to explain that there are different stages of SaaS, ranging from custom, hosted, single-tenant solutions all the way to scalable multi-tenant solutions. And while the architectural nuances of each model may cause an IT Director to squeal in delight like a schoolgirl, to the typical HR buyer they mean absolutely nothing. In my definition, only the multi-tenant options of the Microsoft definitions qualify as SaaS.

As a buyer I’m less concerned about the technical architectural details provided that they don’t limit me from achieving the outcomes I seek from a solution.  I am more concerned about what investment is necessary, how complex will the implementation be, how flexible the solution can be in order to quickly adapt to the changing needs of my business and whether I need to re-skill my IT or HR staff in order to support the solution.

In order to meet MY business needs, SaaS is a must for any business application as I’m always looking to decrease the reliance on IT to support HR solutions.  As a CIO I want to devote my limited technical resources to supporting the infrastructure necessary to run the business and support the applications which are most closely aligned with functions that generate revenue – which is most often not HR.  As a result, anything that isn’t core to my business I would look to have delivered via an outsourced arrangement – generally provided by SaaS-delivered software.

Given that most CIOs have this objective, HR is a market that has become ripe for SaaS adoption.  So given the explosion of SaaS-labeled solutions,  its important to understand how to determine whether the software you’re buying is SaaS or something marketed as such but really isn’t.  In order to determine what you’re buying, ask your vendor the following questions:

• Is the solution available for installation on my servers internally?
• Do I get to choose when upgrades are deployed?
• Do upgrades require me to do anything other than perform acceptance testing?
• Can I buy licenses for the software rather than pay a subscription?

If your vendor answers yes to any of the above questions, then the solution being proposed is something other than a multi-tenant SaaS solution.

I want to be clear that not every solution used by HR needs to be a multi-tenant SaaS solution.  There are plenty of solutions which make sense to deploy on site, but if a vendor ONLY offers a solution through a SaaS-branded offering, be sure you know what you’re getting.

While growing up I was often told that you are the company you keep, and as a kid I had a very difficult time both comprehending as well as following that advice.  As time went on and I matured personally I began to better understand it, but this was really driven home for me while in college.  As a freshman at DePaul University I made a decision to join a fraternity.

While I wasn’t necessarily the “fraternity type” and as a commuter-oriented college DePaul wasn’t exactly the typical college campus in which a Greek-letter organization would thrive, I opted to join regardless. Overnight I went from being classified as a freshman to being a “fraternity guy”.  People started making very specific assumptions about me personally – both positive and negative based exclusively upon my decision to join a fraternity.  Moreover, people made certain judgments and assumptions about me based on which Greek-letter organization I joined.  Certain fraternities had been labeled as “jock” or “party” houses; neither categorization well defined me personally.  I often had to work to overcome these categorizations.

Professionally this same lesson applies, with more impact than could ever have been realized as a child or teenager.  When someone reviews your resume, they are instantly making assumptions about you based on the organizations you’ve worked for in the past, schools you’ve attended, roles you’ve held, etc.  While a resume doesn’t get you a job, it does get you further in the process.

For example – when looking for a Senior HR leader, I would give more consideration to a candidate who has been in HR roles at Pepsi, and organization known for growing very successful HR talent than I would a candidate who worked for a smaller, less well-known organization.  Prior experience at a top consultancy is always a plus, as is attendance at an Ivy League University (or any other well regarded local institution).  A MBA from a top school will always get my attention as well.  Lastly, when researching a candidate I always look at their profile on LinkedIn.  If they don’t have a LinkedIn profile I have second thoughts about their candidacy.

Why is a LinkedIn profile critical?

I can give you several key reasons:

1. People are less likely to significantly stretch the truth about their employment, responsibilities, titles, etc on LinkedIn.  Since often someone is connected to colleagues or managers at their current employer, there is an incentive to not stretch the truth as much as on a paper resume where its not likely seen by colleagues.
2. Recommendations are easily accessible.  While I don’t give them much weight, the lack of recommendations often tells me a fair bit about the individual as well.  They either haven’t done anything worthy of a recommendation or are shy/afraid about asking for one.  In either case, I can be somewhat confident that they’ll struggle in a senior role.
3. You can tell a ton about someone based on the other profiles that are most commonly viewed by others when looking at the candidate’s profile. Web traffic doesn’t lie – it tells me exactly what I want to know.  Do people look at other senior HR leaders profiles after reviewing the candidate’s profile?  Is that list mixed with C-level execs or is it more closely associated with analysts, receptionists, and other less senior roles?

What does all this mean?

In the job market, in the conference room, in the halls, and in the virtual meeting places of the world people are constantly making judgments and decisions regarding you and potentially your future all based on things or people with whom you are associated.  I’m not suggesting that you go and quickly unfriend a bunch of people on Facebook, stop following people on Twitter, and unlink with a large quantity of your contacts on LinkedIn.  Rather I’m suggesting that you evaluate what you’re looking to get out of each of those sites and be sure that your connections are aligned with your personal objectives for joining.   After all,  you are the company you keep.

Do you make similar assessments when reviewing someone’s information?  Please share your thoughts on the topic.

And for those who are wondering, the picture on this post is from the spring formal of my fraternity in 1994.  See if you can find me in it.

As a professional I strive to achieve as close to perfection as possible in my work.  I check, double check, and often triple check my work to look for anything that might later come back to haunt me or embarrass me.  One of my biggest pet peeves is spelling errors, yet in reviewing some of my old posts I can almost always find something that I missed before.  Another pet peeve of mine is formatting issues – where either the font type or size is inconsistent throughout a document.

While each of these and plenty of others can be prevented through more thorough review and an extra set of eyes, there will always be something that seems to slip through the cracks.  Yesterday my blog became a great example of how no matter how well you review and prepare, unexpected things can happen.

For some background, my blog is graciously hosted by my friend Lance Haun on his servers.  Lance recently decided to upgrade from one hosting provider to another for all of his online presence, including my blog (and a few others too).  Transitioning from one provider to another is actually a fairly straightforward process – well at least from my non-technical perspective.  Its a matter of configuring the new servers, cutting a new wordpress site/database for each blog on the server, copying over files from one server to another, and updating nameservers with your domain registrar so that your URL points to the IP address of the new servers rather than the old ones.   Monday night/Tuesday morning Lance and I coordinated our efforts to make this transition happen in a fairly seamless manner.  Late at night I updated the nameservers with my domain registrar – GoDaddy, and then Lance copied things from one server to another.  After the nameserver changes replicated throughout the internet, my new home should appear exactly as the old one did, with only a few hours of downtime overnight.  With the exception of a few minor hiccups along the way (not uncommon), we did everything necessary to move things over.  We validated the outcome and things looked perfect.

Or so we thought it was perfect.  Apparently when a new WordPress site is setup, a default blog post is created called Hello World.  This is then deleted by the blog author and the publishing begins fresh.  With a new blog this is not a problem, but with an established blog with multiple RSS feeds, apparently this post will get picked up and potentially replicated elsewhere.  This is what happened to me yesterday, with the Hello World blog post being published to multiple locations including Facebook, some sites that syndicate my blog, and to each of those who subscribe to my email blog feed.   To my readers, please accept my apologies for the erroneous blog post.

While this was a fairly harmless error, it reminds me of similar issues I’ve faced before as an ERP consultant, and when I managed HR operations for my previous employer.  No matter how detailed your plan is, no matter how thorough your testing is, now matter how prepared you are, things can and will always happen which are unexpected.  Has anything like this happened to you?  Please join me in sharing some of your more memorable technical “mishaps” by posting comments.

10 days ago I posted a somewhat provocative post questioning whether enterprise software was dead.  Based on the results of the Gartner Executive Program 2010 CIO Survey, Enterprise Software experienced a dramatic decline in the list of top priorities of CIOs who where included in the survey.  After a fairly steady #2 in the list the past four years, Enterprise software plummeted all the way off the top ten, to land at the eleventh most pressing priority for CIO.  While the survey results are interesting, being the inquisitive individual that I am I want to understand what this means.

Is Enterprise Software dead?

In response to the specific question of whether Enterprise Software is dead, I would argue that the answer is a resounding NO.  Enterprise software is the lifeblood of many organizations, controlling the flow of money and product between an organization and their customers and/or employees.  A modern enterprise could not function without the ability to execute these types of transactions.  It gets to the heart of commerce and commerce is what sustains nearly all organization (excluding government and/or mission-driven organizations).

While Enterprise Software isn’t necessarily dead, what is happening is a dramatic shift in how these types of applications are delivered to customers.  As highlighted in the newer entries in the top ten of the list of CIO priorities in the Gartner survey,  the top three are virtualization, cloud computing, and Web 2.0.  In each of these three new top priorities, one can extrapolate that Enterprise Software is interwoven (web 2.0 is a bit of a stretch, but not much).   As organizations look to deliver greater return on investment in their technology assets and CIOs look to deliver efficiencies, both server virtualization and cloud computing have substantial impacts on Enterprise Software.

Virtualization – Without going into too much technology speak, virtualization technologies permit organizations to harness the processing power of multiple smaller, more efficient (and less expensive), and typically standardized servers into a single “virtual” server.  Rather than having to purchase a larger server which at times may only run at 20% of capacity, reflecting 80% inefficiency, virtualized servers allow you to dynamically balance server utilization based on need and harness extra processing power when needed and lend it elsewhere when it isn’t needed.  In short, it helps to fill in the peaks and valleys in server utilization, resulting in fewer servers in the data center and greater utilization of the servers that do exist.  The financial impact of this for larger organizations can be quite substantial.

Cloud Computing – Cloud Computing is one of the most over-hyped and widely misunderstood terms.  Without oversimplifying it, cloud computing is less about a specific technology and more about the mechanism by which a software solution is architected and delivered.  Cloud Computing is often a term used interchangeably with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), referring to solutions which are offered to an enterprise on a subscription basis and accessed via a browser.  What makes Cloud Computing really interesting is the fact that multiple companies run on a single installation of software and are all “segmented” in such a way that they will never bump into one another.  I like to think of this as an apartment building where everyone has a private door.  You all share the same infrastructure, walls, etc, yet can live without ever seeing a neighbor.  Just as building apartments is cheaper than building stand alone houses of similar sizes due to economies of scale and the costs of common elements such as the lobby, roof, parking lot, etc are distributed across a larger number of individual owners.

As you can probably imagine, both of these technology solutions/approaches can easily adapt for the purposes of Enterprise Software.  By running across virtualized servers an enterprise application can be run more efficiently, helping to drive towards a more standardized technology infrastructure and a more efficient use of hardware.  Cloud computing can be used to help reduce the overall costs associated with running enterprise solutions within an organization, but with some limitations.

While the overall prioritization of Enterprise Software has declined in the latest CIO survey, Enterprise applications are far from dead – they’re just evolving.

Big software, like ERP solutions from vendors like SAP and Oracle are what most large business use to run their operations.  From supply chain logistics controlling how much product to order, from which supplier, at what price to human resources management solutions which help organizations keep track of their inventory of talent and produce payroll – it’s all part of what is called Enterprise Applications.  Since the death of the mainframe, Enterprise Applications have been the lifeblood of many IT organizations and one of the largest initiatives on the mind of a typical CIO.

How do we know that what the top priorities of a CIO are?  To help answer this questions, analysts from Gartner publish the results of their annual Executive Program CIO Survey which queries over 1,500 CIOs on their top priorities for the year.  In the 2010 survey there was a remarkable absence from the top 10 priorities – Enterprise Applications

Gartner Executive Program CIO Survey, January 2010

After ranking as the second most pressing priority for CIOs, Enterprise Applications suddenly fell out of the top 10 slots.  Equally interesting is that Cloud Computing has quickly shot up from #16 in 2009 and not ranked before then to #2 on the list.

While there are a number of questions that this study raises, the specific ones to consider for this post are:

1. Is the sudden and dramatic shift in Cloud Computing an anomaly or an indication of something more substantial?
2. How does Business Intelligence go from #1 to #5 behind several relatively new topics?
3. Is the substantial decline of Enterprise Software’s ranking related to the sudden increase in focus on Cloud Computing?
4. Is Enterprise Software Dead?

I have my own perspective on this one and will share it in a future post.  Meanwhile, I would welcome your thoughts on this topic.  Please join in the conversation by posting your comments.

As much as I would have liked to have posted this entry earlier, I’ve been trying to catch up after three quick days in Vegas for the Oracle HCM Users Group conference at the Mirage Hotel.  This was the second year in a row that I’ve had an opportunity to attend OHUG and continue to be impressed with what I learn and who I meet at the event.  I’m happy to report that I returned back to Chicago without any scandal, situation, or anything else that if it happened in Vegas I wouldn’t be able to talk about  – oh, and I escaped with my wallet fully intact (actually up a few bucks but nothing worth bragging about).

First and foremost I wanted to share a quick update on Fusion Talent Management On-Demand which was demonstrated again this year.  Oracle VP of Fusion HCM Strategy, Gretchen Alarcon, and Clive Swan Group VP of  Application Development demonstrated several features of Fusion Talent Management which have not been demonstrated at the last three major Oracle events where Fusion was shown.  This year Gretchen and Clive demonstrated some very impressive features of the yet-to-be-released product which rival many of the leading best-of-breed vendors including a highly dynamic 9-box tool for talent review and calibration which permitted you to not only graph your talent pool on a grid of performance and potential (or two other dimensions), but layer on top data points such as risk of loss impact of loss for each individual.  Moreover, there is a feature to perform aggregation of talent on the grid by business unit, manager, location, etc in order to review trends and other talent data at a macro-level.  I can honestly say that I can think of a million and one different ways of analyzing talent data using this tool.

In addition to the dynamic 9-box, Oracle demonstrated their network-at-work tool, a corporate version of a facebook-like social network tool but with a very business focus.  Rather than trying to out-facebook Facebook, Oracle has chosen to take full advantage of the rich data that is housed within its own applications and layer on analytics to deliver a rich user experience to help employees create collaborate groups, find individuals who are similar to them for networking opportunities, search for people in roles that they aspire to reach at some point in the future, etc.  While much of this has been done by other vendors, the breadth and depth of the data housed in Oracle’s applications provide the opportunity to hone in on greater connections than one might find with some best-of-breed applications.

While the functional demonstration of Fusion Talent Management was very well received, what I think is the most brilliant move by Oracle is that Fusion Talent Management can be deployed in a stand-alone environment, layered on top of a client’s existing PeopleSoft HCM or Oracle EBusiness Suite solution, not requiring a full-suite upgrade to deploy Fusion.  While in the past Fusion had been positioned as a future path for PeopleSoft and EBS customers (and still can be), Oracle has changed their positioning such that Fusion and the current PS/EBS applications can co-exist, much to the relief of many IT departments who feared an upgrade would be necessary to deliver the richer user experience that their internal customers.  Rather than Oracle defending its own territory against attack from best-of-breed vendors, My making the Fusion suite more modularized they’ve gone on the offensive and are preparing to deliver something that can not only match the best-of-breed on a features and functions perspective, but can do so without requiring HR to do battle with their IT organizations to venture outside of the Oracle product footprint.  Well done Oracle!

As was so aptly highlighted by industry analyst Naomi Bloom of Bloom & Wallace in response to my live tweeting of the event, there remains a number of outstanding questions regarding how Fusion would actually work for existing customers.  Naomi and I agree on a many things related to HRM data and the use of Position Management for talent management purposes is one of them.  Without getting into too much detail, Position Management is both a set of functionality in PeopleSoft that is largely misunderstood and a business concept that historically has been rooted in budgetary processes more than anything else.  Many PeopleSoft customers shied away from deploying position management because the concept was viewed as being too structured for their dynamic business or their implementation partner didn’t understand the functionality either and steered their customers away from using position management.  Regardless of the reason, Position Management offers most PeopleSoft customers something that they are lacking – data quality and flexibility on role definition without approaching a 1:1 ratio of job codes to active employees.

At OHUG I had the opportunity to co-present with PeopleSoft customer CDW on how we’ve managed to harness the capabilities of position management in a way which has dramatically improved their ability to effectively leverage their automated talent management tools, and cut inaccurate data in PeopleSoft by half.  We had a great audience and some great discussions on the various creative ways that position management can help not only provide budgetary controls but the seemingly vast ways in which it can enhance your talent management initiatives far beyond the norm.

Overall OHUG was a great event.  It was proof positive that not only is the Oracle/PeopleSoft customer community is still very much alive and thriving but that Oracle still has a few tricks up their sleeve when it comes to HR Technology.

For years recruiters have been looking for the best way to reach those who are not actively looking for a job – passive candidates.  For some reason that I don’t always agree with, the passive candidate is perceived to be more valuable than those who are actively seeking a job.  There is a sociological theory called The Principal of Least Interest and what it means which I can see very much applying to why passive candidates are so attractive to recruiters.  The principal of least interest is explained as such:

The individual who is least interested in a relationship has the greatest power

Its simple psychology that explains why we want what it is that we cannot have.  If I want my 3 year old son to eat carrots, I just have to eat them and tell him that he cannot have any.  In seconds he’ll be demanding that I share some with him and he’ll be eating carrots like they were made of pure sugar.  Without directly comparing recruiting to my situation with my toddler, it does highlight an important aspect of reasons why recruiters covet passive candidates – because they’re not available.

There are plenty of well documented methods of connecting with passive candidates which include branding, social networking, and countless “old-school” methods of networking, etc.  In an effort to cut through the clutter that Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn present, my former employer Advertising Giant Leo Burnett has cooked up a great innovative way to reach their target candidates in a way that only an ad agency can – David On Demand.  The Advertising Festival in Cannes France has quickly become a great recruitment vehicle for an organization that looks to hire only the best, brightest, and most creative professionals in the industry.

David on Demand is an interactive tool much like Ad Agency CrispinPorter+Bogusky’s Subservient Chicken campaign for Burger King a few years back except instead of a pre-recorded, limited number of responses to users requests, David On Demand is a way for people to send messages via twitter to David Perez, a creative recruiter at Leo Burnett, telling him what to do while he’s out and about in Cannes.  And to make sure he does what is requested, he’s installed a live-streaming webcam to his glasses, allowing users to see exactly what he’s doing 24/7.

This started as a creative way to attend an exclusive industry event in a location known for its nightlife as much as the events that the town hosts and has morphed into something much larger.  I’m not sure if anyone realized ahead of time, but David has stumbled upon recruiting gold.  How is this gold you ask?

As of this morning David already has 1381 fans of the David on Demand Facebook page, 3,628 followers of the David on Demand twitter account, and messages to David’s twitter account are pouring in nearly every minute of the day.  Each interaction is with someone leaves a trail – a name, a twitter account, an email address, and more important than anything else a very unique impression of what makes Leo Burnett an amazing employer.  This isn’t a professionally crafted culture video, a welcome statement from the CEO (usually crafted by a marketing or PR professional), or a slick brochure.  It’s simply David out having fun, meeting people, and representing his agency in a highly visible way.

To bring it all full circle, Leo Burnett and David have discovered how to cut through the clutter and reach out to the highly coveted passive candidates in a way that few can ever hope to.  In doing so, they have helped to shift the power of the discussion from the highly coveted candidate to the employer, by putting Leo Burnett in a position of having the least interest and thus the power in the conversations that take place from this point forward.

Just a quick note to my readers to invite you to find me if you’ll be at the Oracle HCM Users Group in Las Vegas next week. I along with two incredibly talented individuals from CDW will be presenting on how to use PeopleSoft’s position management functionality to help better enable talent management processes.

Our session is scheduled Wednesday, June 13th at 10:30 am. If you’re planning on being in Las Vegas next week, please be sure to stop by and introduce yourself.  I hope to see you there