Once again, I'm here at Barnes & Thornburg (a local law firm that also has its hands in several community projects as well) for their monthly "Tech Point" to learn about local entrepreneurs, technologies that will be impacting our community, and just general things that are "up and coming". Anyway, today's panel of speakers mainly centered around issues related to Human Resources, and the following were my "takeaways" from the morning.
C. Todd Richardson (VP, ExactTarget, LLC) - Capturing Outstanding Quality Talent
* Quality Talent is defined as...
** Experienced Professional - their potential is/has been realized.
** Recent Graduates - their potential is/has yet to be realized.
*** Flexible Career Paths
*** Laid-back work environment (dress code, hours, mgmt. styles)
*** Environmentally Friendly (paperless, green awareness)
*** Freedom to take risks
*** Growth in the Personal as well as Professional (i.e. encouragement in the employee's pursuit of outside interests).
* Successful staffing strategies are dependent on drawing from both of these talent pools.
* What are your Differentiators?
** Personal development opportunities. Aggressive people want to know how to "go somewhere". Seldom do they just want to "do status quo". Often, this requires customized personal development plans.
** Industry Growth Initiatives (i.e. the industry is actually growing, and there are opportunities for actual growth).
** Entrepreneurial Environment (i.e. encourage experimentation).
** Workplace Flexibility (i.e. telecommuting, compressed workweeks, food provided at the office, etc.)
** Lifestyle/Employment Differentiators (Compensation/Benefit Plans/Stock Options, ExactFun, ExactImpact, ExactWellness).
* Understand the difference between your team and your "farm team" (internships).
** Internship Program (Slingshot)
*** 10 week intern program with the expectation that participants will think, innovate and contribute.
*** Will provide them with a minimum of two resume-worthy projects.
*** The Goal: Foundation for long term-relationship.
** Accellerated Track for Full-time Employment (Catapult)
*** Post-graduate, full-time, rotational program.
*** Comprehensive orientation, followed by three separate 6-week rotations through the business.
*** Allows non-committal, high-potential grads to discover the career path of most interest.
*** Goal: Passionate employment
Christopher O'Bryhim (Chief Human Resources Officer, Veriana Networks, Inc)
1 year old Tech company that focuses on content creation and distribution, as well as content consumption. Has a high value for helping Indiana recognize that promoting and maintaining technology-centered jobs will be its key to being a major player in the emerging economy.
* Veriana supports the practice of "Corporate Onshoring": a concept is based upon the recognition of talent and resources that are abundant in Indiana and the Midewest. In fact, Technology oriented businesses are a key element to sustainable development in Indiana.
* Reverse the "brain drain" in Indiana via further development and attraction of technology oriented jobs to the state.
* Technology success breeds more technology success.
Deborah Mullin (Director of Human Resources, ChaCha Search, Inc.)
ChaCha gets a lot of press for being one of the foremost notable "up and coming" Indiana-based businesses. It focuses on providing a seriously innovative "ask anything" digital response service via cell-phone, and i was interested to find that you can literally use ChaCha to answer just about anything through networks of "guides" who specialize in particular areas. You could, for instance, send ChaCha a question like "What was 'Dirty Harry's' last name?" and a guide somewhere would ping you via the ChaCha service to say "Callahan". It's free, it's mobile-based, and is very SmartZombie in that links crowd-sourcing with good tech infrastructure. Think Twitter meets Wikipedia. Cool!
ChaCha has (and is) demonstrated a radical committment to genuinely trying to make its workplace "the best place to work in America" through a combination of an exciting product and an open work environment. I sound like a commercial... i don't mean to... i was just genuinely impressed by them. Free weekly massages at the workplace? Okay, now you have to admit that that sounds good!
How do they "recruit top talent"?
* Hired a full time recruiter just to gather and hold top talent.
* Host "outside the box" recruiting events with their employees.
* Internal referral program.
* Website reflects the internal culture of the company, as well as provides the service.
* Have close and developed connection(s) with local universities to ensure that they have "top pick" upon graduation.
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Ha ha I don't blame you for sounding like an advertisement for ChaCha. Sounds like they have a recipe for success. It's really caught on (I use ChaCha a lot) and the company has grown leaps and bounds. Their internal structure doesn't sound half bad either (massages? at work?!) I might have to jump on the bandwagon! Sign me up!
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