Krista Bradford

Plaxo Pulse Beta sends my pulse racing . . .

Wow.  From where I sit this morning . . . Plaxo Pulse Beta seems the perfect business social networking Killer App.  It has been a while since I've seen a social networking product that offers a real return on the amount of energy one is expected to expend maintaining the network.  Plaxo Pulse is liked LinkedIn but with meaningful, up-to-date contact information.   In fact, it keeps your contact information up to date, integrating nicely with Outlook. 

Follow The Money - A Business Primer

"Follow the money" is a mantra repeated by investigative journalists around the world: simply asking "who stands to benefit financially?" produces scoops in the reporting world.  The world of finance does nothing but follow the money. Chasing deals. Maximizing profit. And the best sales people have a refined sense of "smelling" money - knowing how and when to close a deal. 

And so this morning I ponder the human capital implications of the seismic shockwaves sent round the world when the price of oil hit $100 a barrel.  From yesterday's WSJ:

In the U.S., which remains the most oil-dependent industrialized nation, oil at $100 would threaten consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, and is already expected to soften as home values decline. Oil's rise is sending up the price of gasoline, the most visible price in the U.S. economy, and that has a major impact on consumer psychology. Readings of consumer confidence have been weakening recently.

"If oil stays at the price it's at, you could see gasoline prices at $3.60 or $4 a gallon, which is absolutely frightening," said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, a London-based research firm. "It's going to have a fairly devastating impact."

I  have always believe there is opportunity in change.  And, my friends, change is at hand. The question becomes "Are you ready to capitalize on it?"  Great talent will be dislodged as the change shakes out. Of course, the best executives and technologists will only be available for an instant.  So you need to have a way to position your recruiting practice out in front of economic events. 

Leveraging human capital intelligence in retained search and to drive candidate pipelines is the only way you and your company make sure your recruitment practice can profit from impending change. 

Human Capital Intelligence: Mapping Orgs with Resumes

Did you know you likely have a goldmime of organizational intelligence in that stack of resumes sitting on your desk, in your inbox, in your candidate tracking system, or on the internet? Resumes give you an intimate look inside target companies for which a candidate may be working at the time: the names of business divisions, departments, internal teams, the size and locations of those units, the products, the job titles along with experience that maps to those titles, and other unique nomenclature.

Don't simply mine the Internet for resumes, take the added step of mining the resumes.

Mining resumes can be used to find more people on the same product teams (using product keywords), in the same business units (unique department names and acronym keywords), at the same locations (zip code and area code key words, phone number range keywords).

The key to mapping is, well, mapping. You have to get organized and figure out who and what goes where.  It's a matter of sorting and building out a kind of organizational jigsaw puzzle. And like working on a jigsaw, you start at the corners and edges which are easiest to identify (the top leadership) and then list people, products, and business units under each C-level executive, building out organizational branches as you go.

If you notice that a branch seems under-developed, go in with phone ID to build it out, leveraging the information contained in the resumes. And for those that assume every VP is readily available online or in social networks, that is so very wrong.  Almost an equal number are not. So you do need to do primary research (not Internet related) to ID great candidates that simply are off-radar (all the better -- less competition from other recruiters.)

So before you toss those resumes because the candidate wasn't available or the timing wasn't right, stop and get your brain on. The perfect candidate may be hiding within. 

Lemmings are cute little critters, but . . .

For years, the financial industry has leveraged hard-core research to do its due diligence and to make ungodly sums of money.  They know it pays to invest in intelligence.  Same goes for the marketing industry.  Marketers live and die by research. They are masters of teasing out a competitive advantage from seemingly indecipherable demographic data. So what's up with most traditional retained search firms? Why do the vast majority of search firms claim a competitive advantage and then do research the same old cookie cutter way that every one else is doing it?

I am not taking aim at select colleagues at these firms, whom I feel fortunate to count among my friends.  Rather, what I find remarkable is the the lemming-like behavior of the retained search industry as a whole.

( lem·ming (lěm'ĭng)  n.  Any of various small, thickset rodents, especially of the genus Lemmus, inhabiting northern regions and known for periodic mass migrations that sometimes end in drowning.)

Check the search process statements of Spencer Stuart, Egon Zehnder, Korn/Ferry and of the other major firms.  Even though research is the execution engine of search that identifies and develops candidates, traditional search is still cruising around with an Edsel under the hood.  No mention of transforming research into intelligence and leveraging it for a competitive advantage.   We've found our clients prefer search with intelligence embedded in virtually every step of the process. 

Vegan Headhunter:an Oxymoron?

Headhunter is a pejorative term used to describe recruiters.  But whatever the term, I've been pretty amazed to discover that few recruiters have staked a claim in the greentech/cleantech space. I find it amazing because venture capital is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into this space.  And where venture capital goes, hiring follows.

If you find yourself thinking you might want to trade your SUV for a hybrid car, if you find yourself wanting to make a difference in business, consider serving companies in a related burgeoning new sector called Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability.  LOHAS describes a $228.9 billion U.S. marketplace for goods and services focused on health, the environment, social justice, personal development and sustainable living. LOHAS consumers are collectively referred to as Cultural Creatives: a whopping one-third of all adults in the U.S., or 50 million people, are currently considered LOHAS Consumers.

If Not Greentech, Then Cleantech

Alternative and clean technology has attracted $315 million in venture capital so far this year compared to just $90 million, that according to Cleantech Investing.  In addition, a 2006 global survey released July 12 by Deloitte & Touche and the National Venture Capital Association found that engery and the enviornment to be the fasted growing sector with U.S. respondents. 

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has helped position his firm squarely in the greentech/cleantech space.  He's hired a third partner to help him focus on ethanol and other alternative energies.  And where venture capital goes, the need for great leadership follows. 

The Good Search: Start with Greentech

The Good Search is a recruiting approach based on the premise that in order to attract the best executive and technology leadership, one must be counted among the best companies for which to work. By "best", we mean more evolved companies that, in addition to being successful economically, are committed to giving back and to making the world a better place.

One great place to start is greentech.  As our planet's oil supplies deminish and gasoline prices skyrocket, as global warming becomes a hot topic and atmospheric CO2 hits an all time high; as global tensions over limited resources flare into violence and war . . .we're going to need to get green, ASAP. 

In fact the July 17 issue of Newsweek reports that we already are going verdant.  Environmentalism is on the upswing.  Membership in the Sierra Club is up by about a third in four years.  Also, polls show the number of Americans worried "a great deal" or "a fair amount" about the environment has increased from 62 to 77 perent over the past two years. And that was before Al Gore released his global warming film "An Inconvenient Truth".

Addressing these problems will take great leadership from entrepreneurs who want to build profitable ventures and do good at the same time.  And delivering critical talent is what the best recruitment practices focus on.  As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out: "GREEN is the new red white and blue."