This time of year, HR pros (and all other business professionals) are being bombarded by various conferences, trade events, and the like.  For the most part, they all sound appealing, if not spectacular and sometimes glamorous with destination cities, celebrities and riveting keynote speakers. Is it about the content? Or is it your favorite 80’s band—reunited “one-last time” just for THIS special occasion?  Or, the chance to go to the fabulous “insert your dream city here”? How can you refuse?  You are torn.  You want to attend but, how do you sell to the Boss?

When proposing conferences, here is a list of “Don’ts and Do’s”: read more »

2011 was another tremendous year for all of us at Aquire, and the press took note. Take a look at the top Aquire articles of 2011, written by industry experts and our own, Lois Melbourne. Also, keep up to date on the latest HR Industry News and HR Events on our website.

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Right now a lot of organizations are experiencing pain caused by talent shortages – not the kind caused by a lack of skilled workers, but because there has been a lack of internal mobility. Companies just aren’t managing talent development across departments, which is what turns skilled specialists into well-rounded leaders who can see the forest and the trees. Then, they wonder why they’re left with workers who have the skills to perform narrow, specialized tasks, but not the talent to run projects, launch business initiatives or manage global growth.

CIO magazine ran a recent article citing the pain being felt in IT departments because their employees generally have narrow technical skill sets, but lack the broader business skills needed today. It’s a great read. And timely. I gave a presentation devoted to internal talent movement at the IHR Contract Workforce & Talent Exchange conference this week in San Francisco.

Here’s the gist of my presentation: read more »

There are plenty of reasons to go to the HR Technology Conference. The chance to network with HR professionals across the nation, the opportunity to hear and interact with leaders in our field, the ability to prospect products and services side-by-side, and the sessions focused on social media (They have a session on blogging!), to name a few. Not to mention, our friend, Marc Effron, will be following up his keynote at our conference by keynoting at HR Tech. These are all great and are already worth the trip to the Windy City. But honestly, they’re just an appetizer to read more »

Many years ago the CRM (customer relationship management) industry exploded.  Organizations realized that if they kept better track of their customers and prospects and their relationship building exercises with those contacts, they could improve their processes and replicate their successes.  Suddenly, the rolodex and the single sales guys copy of “ACT!” was not enough.  Companies invested in integrating their information, and suddenly, they had TONS of information.  The marketing department started demanding access to the data that helped them watch the tie between their activities and the process of the sales department.  Amazing things happened to increase the sales and relationships companies had with their customers.  There is so much more about this evolution that had an impact.  One of the biggest wins was the fact that now many managers could see and measure the success of the initiatives they were doing – where it counted – the deal pipeline.

We are really at the early stage of another powerful industry explosion.  The Talent Management processes are being taken more seriously than ever.  Yes, there have been processes, employee development programs, etc., for as long as companies have had employees.  However, the heat is rising in the real attention the processes are getting.  Organizations are understanding that it is critical to track and manage the development of their employees.  A lot of activity and dollars are being spent on these initiatives.  These projects and systems are generating a LOT of data.  Everybody loves data.  I am sure your favorite item in your inbox is the huge spreadsheet with the reams of data in rows and columns, and occasionally, a pie chart or bar chart helps make the data consumable.  But what does it mean???? read more »