Three great contributions from the talent crowd this week.

The UK's Chartered Institure of Personnel Development (CIPD) has published an overview of talent management concepts with fact sheets on Recruitment, Development, Performance Management, Succession Planning and Compensation that use simple images to illustrate key points (example below from www.cipd.co.uk).

Brian Chappell of Ignite Social Media shared geographic, demographic and traffic data from the 2009 Social Network Analysis Report's look at more than forty social networks.  The data is displayed in a series of easy to understand charts with brief analysis on each of the social networks included in the report - useful information for anyone using 'social' for talent acquisition.

Staying with social, if you are thinking about using social media for pre-employment background checks then Steve Bruce's post to the HR Daily Advisor blog; Background Checks on Myspace - Dangerous or Due Dilligence is worth reading - not least for some of the sensational examples of  what employers have found when conducting internet searches.

I hope that you enjoy this weeks Three To Read - if you'd like more, please see what else I've bookmarked at http://delicious.com/craigendicott.