Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio every seven years to take a year long sabbatical.

For a whole year, he pursued other interests that were not possible in a normal working environment. Refreshed and rejuvenated, on his return, Sagmeister found that his job became a calling again, is more enjoyable and financially more rewarding.  Read more...

Lava Communications alerted me to a recruitment Video they produced for Optiver Trading.

Lava claimed they registered 60,000 views in three weeks. By any standard, it’s an impressive result.

Watching VIDEO online is popular. Twenty hours of VIDEO gets uploaded on YouTube every minute, equivalent to 86,00 full-length movies per week. A new research shows that watching VIDEO online is more popular than Facebook or Twitter.  Read more...

The future of work
Time magazine has a good piece on what the future of work would look like. I particularly find Seth’s contribution thought provoking: “ there’s going to be a huge focus on finding the essential people and outsourcing the rest”

Is optimism back?
Optimism among executives is back, McKinsey’s latest economic survey says so. 39% of executives across the globe think their economy will improve. Another study by AESC also found signs of improvement in executives recruiters activity.  Read more...

I am a fan of Robert Sutton. In this VIDEO he offers advice on how to be a good boss when times are bad (Also check his Harvard article)

Similar to his earlier books, Seth Godin’s ‘Tribes’ opened the eyes to new ways of seeing things. Seth’s central argument is people like to connect and be part of something – a group, a community or a tribe. This basic human longing is bringing people with similar interests together, and in the process offering anyone an opportunity to be a leader; often, to lead and change the world for the better.

What is the relevance of ‘Tribes’ to the recruitment industry?  Read more...

The good: engaging story, visually appealing, good quality and no hard sell by Facebook

The bad: Good intentions but doesn’t really say anything, except ‘we dance badly’.

The Ugly : So bad it became a Youtube hit. Here’s the link

Do you have examples of good, bad or outright ugly recruitment videos? Post the links in the comments section.

A presentation by Tony Hsieh on the importance of company culture, and how it dictates hiring and performance at Zappos (8 minutes long, but well worth the time)

Tom Peters argues that ‘passion’ is much more important than ‘experience’ when it comes to hiring staff (transcripts).

Tom Peters on Passion! from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

Tom Peters is arguably one of the world’s most influential thinkers. An early proponent of personal branding (Coined the word Brand You), Tom is big on getting ‘talent’ right, and it takes a central place in most of his trademark themes (business excellence, quality and leadership), books and presentations.

Loud, bold, and confronting his presentations are unforgettable both in content and style.  Not everyone’s cup of tea, his presentations are richly populated by thought provoking and inspirational quotes collected from a wide range of sources.  Some of the money quotes from Tom’s presentation:  Read more...

No surprises, a new study by Maren Rawlings of Swinburne University of Technology  found that humour in the workplace contributes to job satisfaction and is linked to productivity.

After a tumultuous battle with Microsoft, Yahoo invited Matt of ‘where the hell is Matt’ fame to infuse humour in the workplace.  Here’s the question – given a choice would you prefer to work at a company where you can participate in a Matt impersonation gig, or a company where you couldn’t?  It is no coincidence that companies voted the ‘best places to work’ in Australia have fun work environments.  Read more...

IBM’s ad pokes fun at social network recruitment.  Emarketer points out – majority of adults haven’t heard about social networking, yet.

Crazy John’s video on Youtube – A good example of employment branding done well.

Close to 62 million people visit Youtube daily.  What will visitors see, if they keyed in your company name?

New benefactors of Linkedin continues to emerge.

Close to 500,000 Australian professionals are listed on Linkedin. Which players in the human capital marketplace are under threat by the Linkedin juggernaut?

Is this the latest talent acquisition trend? If only ‘talent’ were this abundant!