Egosurfing, talent risks and management mistakes in your organisation in this week's Three To See.

My first pick this week is The Google Job Experiment which came to me via Frank Roche on the KnowHR blog.  You've probably heard the story in the news about the guy that used Google to reach out to his target employers by anticipating that they would self-Google.

So it got me thinking - if this guy bought the names of the people that he wanted to work for, what's to stop an employer buying the names of the people they want recruit or retain and using it to deliver a message to that individual?

The Drive To Normalcy by Ian Till appeared on DDI's Talent Management Intelligence blog.  In the post Till discusses "four talent risks and opportunities as we drive" to what McKinsey have labelled, The New Normal:

1. Flat Tires: Unengaged employees who feel their jobs are monotonous and flat
2. Road Rage: The recession may have brought about a ceasefire in the War for Talent, but the war is still raging
3. Speeding: As we prepare for better times, and move back into cyclical patterns of resignations, organizations must not fall back on making poor and hasty selection decisions simply to fill seats
4. Blind Spots: Leaders cannot solely rely on past skills and approaches to navigate the future.

I think there are some useful points in the post that blend nicely with my final pick; The Harvard Business Review Ideacast: Keep You Top Talent from Defecting.  This is an audio interview of Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt of the Corporate Executive Board's Corporate Learning Council in which they share some of most common mistakes that managers make with their talent, including:

• Failing to properly identify top talent
• Assuming that top talent is highly engaged
• Expecting stars to share the pain that the organisation is going through
• Forgetting that talented people still care about getting paid

At 14 minutes, this podcast is well worth listening to.

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.