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Thursday, May 8, 2008
Innovative Sourcing for All Seasons
In the midst of economic uncertainty, a majority of respondents to Knowledge Infusion and ERE?s The Future of Recruiting & Sourcing Survey consider recruiting and sourcing in the top third of business?not HR?but business priorities. That?s because best practices for finding and hiring great talent is never out of style?regardless of the economic season. We also see the advantages for all size businesses using new processes and tools for recruiting and sourcing. Yesterday, smaller businesses: ? Relied on simple career sites, print ads, and limited job board access. ? Missed relationship building with passive candidates. ? Lacked sophisticated job board tools. ? Had to manually troll the social networks. Today, technology and targeted marketing has leveled the playing field. Join me?Alice Snell, Vice President of Taleo Research; Krista Bauer, Talent Acquisition Recruiter with MobiTV; and Kevin Nanney, Senior Director of Products with Taleo, as we explain how to hire smarter and faster in a slow economy using innovative sourcing channels and real-world examples. Register for the Innovative Sourcing in Today's Economy webcast on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. PT / 12 noon ET.
In the midst of economic uncertainty, a majority of respondents to Knowledge Infusion and ERE’s The Future of Recruiting & Sourcing Survey consider recruiting and sourcing in the top third of business—not HR—but business priorities.
That’s because best practices for finding and hiring great talent is never out of style—regardless of the economic season. We also see the advantages for all size businesses using new processes and tools for recruiting and sourcing.
Yesterday, smaller businesses:
• Relied on simple career sites, print ads, and limited job board access.
• Missed relationship building with passive candidates.
• Lacked sophisticated job board tools.
• Had to manually troll the social networks.
Today, technology and targeted marketing has leveled the playing field.
Join me—Alice Snell, Vice President of Taleo Research; Krista Bauer, Talent Acquisition Recruiter with MobiTV; and Kevin Nanney, Senior Director of Products with Taleo, as we explain how to hire smarter and faster in a slow economy using innovative sourcing channels and real-world examples.
Register for the Innovative Sourcing in Today's Economy webcast on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. PT / 12 noon ET.
Read MoreWant to Dress Just Like Celebrities? You’ll Like Coolspotters
Want to Dress Just Like Celebrities? You’ll Like Coolspotters
Coolspotters, a new site from Connecticut based startup Fanzter, will launch later today. It’s an eye-candy celebrity-focused site that shows users the products celebrities are wearing in various photos. Users can then talk about and, of course, purchase those items. Users can track celebrities, products, brands, shows (TV, Movies, etc.), places, events, and more. The idea [...] 
Coolspotters, a new site from Connecticut based startup Fanzter, will launch later today. It’s an eye-candy celebrity-focused site that shows users the products celebrities are wearing in various photos. Users can then talk about and, of course, purchase those items. Users can track celebrities, products, brands, shows (TV, Movies, etc.), places, events, and more. The idea [...]
Users can track celebrities, products, brands, shows (TV, Movies, etc.), places, events, and more. The idea is to show connections between people and stuff. These connections are called 220;spots” (as in, 220;I spotted that”), and show details on the item. If something is incorrect, users can change or remove it, and add new people and things.
There are other services that try to help people find products that celebrities use. Like.com is a visual search engine that lets people find related products based on visual patters. And SeenOn shows clothing and other items used by celebrities in TV shows, which can then be purchased.
But Coolspotters is the first collaborative site that gets users to do most of the work. It’s essentially a structured data wiki (see our coverage of Political Base and our own CrunchBase, which use the same ideas to track politicians/issues and startups/entrepreneurs, respectively). The end result is a ton of highly structured, highly valuable information. Users can sit for hours clicking around and finding related things. And in the case of Coolspotters, buy stuff.
Parent company Fantzer was founded in mid 2007 by Aaron LaBerge, Eric Kirsten and Sujal Shah and has raised $2 million in venture funding.
See their the Coolspotters CrunchBase profile for more screen shots.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Herbert Hauptman - Identifying Molecular Structures
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Herbert Hauptman, Nobel Laureate and mathematician, and asks how he and Dr. Jerome Karle opened a new era in research using data from crystallized material research. 
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Read MoreFacebook Agrees To Child Safety Plan
Facebook Agrees To Child Safety Plan
Facebook has announced an agreement with 49 U.S. state attorneys general and the District of Columbia to take significant steps to protect children on the social networking site.
The move comes after a similar agreement was reached with MySpace in January. The Facebook agreement is aimed at better protecting children from online predators and inappropriate content.
Foster Creativity So Talent Can Power Innovation
If you missed the last post, be sure to look at BusinessWeek?s The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies and how these organizations drive success. Their formula: ?They nurture cultures that value creative people in good times and bad.? IBM used to have a cultural mantra posted in their offices: THINK. Apple used the tagline: THINK DIFFERENT. How about: THINK CREATIVE?because creativity drives success. Ready to Innovate: Are Educators and Executives Aligned on the Creative Readiness of the U.S. Workforce? from The Conference Board offers some artful insights on the disconnect in business between creativity and innovation. 99% of educators and 97% of employers believe that arts are crucial for teaching creative thinking. But they don?t necessarily back beliefs with action. Says Jonathan Spector, Chief Executive Officer of The Conference Board: "In particular, we believe it is time for employers to evaluate how well their corporate support of education and the arts, as well as their own employee-training programs, stack up against the strategic value they themselves place on innovation and its creative underpinning.? If arts are primarily elective, then is innovation mostly optional? We don?t think so. Neither should business, however: ??among those employers who cite creativity as a primary hiring criterion?80% provide the three activities/training options that they say best develop creativity ? working in departments other than their own, managerial coaching, and mentoring ? only on an ?as needed? basis.? The summary statement says it all: ?...this new research shows that both businesses and schools recognize the critical role of creativity as a workforce skill, and both groups accept the role they have in fostering it. Both also recognize that arts-training is a key way to foster creativity. Yet despite this recognition, most schools do not include arts training as a mandatory part of the curriculum, and most businesses provide creativity-fostering training only to very few employees. With this growing recognition of the role a creative workforce has on the global competitiveness of American business, both business and education leaders need to examine what changes can be made to more widely foster these skills in our current ? and especially our future ? workers.?
If you missed the last post, be sure to look at BusinessWeek’s The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies and how these organizations drive success. Their formula:
220;They nurture cultures that value creative people in good times and bad.”
IBM used to have a cultural mantra posted in their offices: THINK. Apple used the tagline: THINK DIFFERENT. How about: THINK CREATIVE230;because creativity drives success.
Ready to Innovate: Are Educators and Executives Aligned on the Creative Readiness of the U.S. Workforce? from The Conference Board offers some artful insights on the disconnect in business between creativity and innovation.
99% of educators and 97% of employers believe that arts are crucial for teaching creative thinking. But they don’t necessarily back beliefs with action. Says Jonathan Spector, Chief Executive Officer of The Conference Board:
"In particular, we believe it is time for employers to evaluate how well their corporate support of education and the arts, as well as their own employee-training programs, stack up against the strategic value they themselves place on innovation and its creative underpinning.”
If arts are primarily elective, then is innovation mostly optional? We don’t think so. Neither should business, however:
220;230;among those employers who cite creativity as a primary hiring criterion230;80% provide the three activities/training options that they say best develop creativity — working in departments other than their own, managerial coaching, and mentoring — only on an ‘as needed’ basis.”
The summary statement says it all:
220;...this new research shows that both businesses and schools recognize the critical role of creativity as a workforce skill, and both groups accept the role they have in fostering it. Both also recognize that arts-training is a key way to foster creativity. Yet despite this recognition, most schools do not include arts training as a mandatory part of the curriculum, and most businesses provide creativity-fostering training only to very few employees. With this growing recognition of the role a creative workforce has on the global competitiveness of American business, both business and education leaders need to examine what changes can be made to more widely foster these skills in our current — and especially our future — workers.”
Read MoreMitchell Kapor - Open Source: The End is Not in Sight!
The first generation of Open Source has been a wild ride unimaginable at the time it began. But Mitch Kapor, President of the Open Source Applications Foundation and chair of the Mozilla Foundation, thinks the end is not in sight and that we can influence the future of Open Source by our actions and contributions. Open Source has some great virtues that deserve to be spread through all of society, not just the computing industry. 
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Read MoreDon't show me problems show me answers, and don't show me them either!
A couple of years back I had a very surprising experience with a junior programmer, who had just joined our team. I had asked him to work on some code until there were no more JUnit errors. A few hours... Read More
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