Talent inventories, recruiting trends and pivot points in this week's Three To See.

A common, yet solvable, internal mobility challenge is incisively illustrated in the Dilbert strip below - my first pick:

My next came via Jason Buss at The Talent Buzz and is the 2010 Trends in Recruiting report from LinkedIn.   Referencing a survey of 1,100 in-house recruiters in six countries (Australia, Canada, India, Netherlands, UK and US), the report findings include the following suggestions:

• Improving "Quality of Hire" is the most important consideration when purchasing recruiting solutions (rated by 86% of respondents)
• More than 25% agreed that passive candidate recruiting is currently an important part of their sourcing mix
• Pipelining and pooling talent undertaken by a majority of respondents with only 5% saying that they do not do this
• Recruiters are most concerned that their competitors will achieve market advantage by using social recruiting techniques more effectively, building and nuturing a strong talent pool and investing in their employer brand

It is the "global competitive hot buttons" (slide 11 of 15) from the report that I find most interesting because of the way that it breaks down eight answers to the question "What are you most nervous your competitors might do?" by each of the six countries.

My final pick this week, The New Science of Human Capital on the HarvardBusiness YouTube Channel, has some interesting commentary from John Boudreau on how organisations should build their approach to managing talent around the "pivotal" moments, people or positions that make a difference to the execution of business strategy.

This week Three To See features posts on individual and organisational performance and trends affecting the future of recruiting.

My first pick comes from the Harvard Business Publishing YouTube channel.  Why Zappos Pays New Employees To Quit -- And You Should Too was posted back in 2008 but (I think) is very interesting and relevant to organisations operating in recovering economies.

In an economic environment where the contribution of each employee needs to count it is an interesting concept isn't it?

My second pick expands the theme from individual to organisational capability. Mark Vickers' post Ten Critical Performance Issues for 2010 draws on a recent study by i4cp in which they identified 5 domains of high performance; Leadership, Talent, Strategy, Market Focus and Culture.

Study participants were asked to rate the issues that are important to their organisation and the effectiveness of the organisation in addressing the issue.  The result:  It seems that this year organisations may be more likely to fail in dealing with important issues than they are to succeed, as illustrated in the table below:

My third pick complements Vickers' post by adding a macro-level perspective on factors impacting organisations. John Sumser's second post in his Five Scenarios series: Five Scenarios II: The Trends appeared on the Two Color Hat blog.

Sumser shares a host of (36) trends that he is basing his five scenarios on.  The high-level categories:

• Demographics
• Organizational Design
• Globalization
• Technology
• Social Media
• Search For Better Returns
• Energy and Sustainability

I featured the first post of the series in Three To See - w/c 11-Jan-10 and am intrigued to see Sumser's descriptions of the scenarios in future posts.  What does he have planned for us?

Its that time of year.  As we close in on 2009 and look ahead to 2010 this week's Three to See has plans, predictions and cultural trends.

My first pick this week is StepStone's recent Pan-European study of recruitment, involving 1,600 organisations and almost 2,500 employees.  The research has revealed that that nearly two thirds of organisations surveyed are planning to increase recruitment within the next year and one fifth will be creating new positions.  At the same time, employees are also planning their next moves.

Some of the headline findings include:

• 91 per cent of StepStone candidates surveyed said online job boards were the most important tool for them
• More candidates used search engines (51 per cent) than agencies (30 per cent) when looking for a job
• Too few advertised positions and out of date job offers were cited as the main reasons for not using traditional media during the job search

I found the comparison between what candidates want and what recruiters provide in terms of information about jobs interesting:

Candidates want information about:

1. Salary
2. Diversity of tasks
3. Size and stability of the organisation

But recruiters provide information about:

1. Image and brand of the company
2. Diversity of tasks
3. Work environment

How do your job adverts compare?

My second pick comes from Sharlyn Lauby, the HR Bartender.  In her post A Bartender's Predictions for 2010, Based in the US, Lauby makes six predictions for the year ahead that I think travel well.

Below I've highlighted the headlines but its worth visiting the post to see the rationale for each:

• Outsourcing and contract work will gain momentum
• Professional development is going to look different
• Corporate training will change in the upcoming year as well
• Time will trump money
• Management coaching will become a key retention tool
• The buzzword for 2010 will be 'trust'

With buzzwords in mind I go slightly off-topic with my third pick: Trends in 2010 from Trend Hunter.  Do you want to know what rental culture, simpletising and crowsourced campaigns are?  What does unservice and exposed vulnerability mean to the workplace?  The clip below describes 20 trends for 2010:

I look forward to your comments on this week's Three To See.