This March at the ERE Expo attendees (and those watching the live video stream) will be treated to something new. For the first time in the Expo’s history three of the longest-running ERE authors (Kevin Wheeler, Lou Adler, and myself) will come together for a live crossfire to respond to your questions …

Using social media to support recruiting efforts is justifiably a hot topic. Social media tools are one of the top three most powerful recruiting tools, along with referral programs and mobile technologies. Despite its potential, the approach most recruiting functions are taking to leverage social media is haphazard and weak. …

90% of performance appraisal processes are inadequate. –Salary.com survey In conversations with HR leaders and employees, the talent management process that suffers from the most disdain around the world is the performance appraisal. It’s one of the few processes that even the owners of the process dread. If everyone hates …

Note: This is a “think piece” written to stimulate your thinking about strategic HR. The idea of having a corporate function focused on managing labor resources is one that has been around for more than two centuries (corporate functions emerged following the advent of labor unions in the late 1700s). …

Someone recently asked me to name an aspect of talent management that has the potential to largely impact business performance, but that is essentially ignored by most organizations. It was a genius question … most talent management leaders spend hundreds of hours trying to marginally improve existing practices, but few …

Personalized marketing and mass customized manufacturing are powerful concepts that when adapted to recruiting can provide a strategic opportunity to successfully recruit even the most difficult candidates. While personalizing the recruiting approach to fit every candidate is nearly impossible, the growth of social networks has made it significantly easier to …

All new hires have the potential of bringing with them game-changing thoughts and ideas, but no matter how rare the talent found, seldom are major business successes ever attributed to recruiting, except in the case of “lift-outs.” While not for everyone (few recruiters have the cojones or the planning skills …

Employment reference checking and background screening should win recognition as the weakest of all corporate HR processes. A validity meta-analysis study conducted by Aamodt & Williams in 2005 found that the corrected validity coefficient for reference recommendations and actual job performance was a staggeringly low .29. Despite the facts, 96% of …

With access to and leverage of talent playing a more critical role in an organization’s ability to succeed than ever before, it should come as no surprise that the financial analyst community would start evaluating talent management capability when rating organizations. The fact that analysts historically haven’t paid much attention …

This article addresses five questions raised in response to Part 1 of this series published last week. It addresses the best ways to assess candidate performance pre-hire and when to use references. Question 1 — What are the most accurate indicators of past, current and future performance? Finding accurate real world predictors …