Talent Tidbits – talent, talent everywhere

Australasian Talent Conference
I received the final programme for The Australasian Talent Conference today, and boy am I excited.  Here’s an opportunity to hear and perhaps meet some of the giants of the recruitment/HR industry (What does one ask/say to the likes of John Sullivan and Gerry Crispin?). The conference starts on 5^th May with a range of workshops and concludes on the 7^th. You can re-visit what’s on offer at the conference here. I plan to live blog or Tweet from the event. If you are interested, it’s not too late to register. A discount of 15% for readers of this blog is still on offer; use the code ‘DES09’ here. If you do attend, please say ‘Hi’, it would be lovely to meet you.

Source of Talent in Australia
Michael Specht, recently dubbed ‘the godfather of online recruitment in Australia’, and I are collaborating on a new report/study on the sources of talent in Australia. Given the paucity of data on the subject in Australia, we aim to understand more about the most effective channels for finding talent. We are currently laying the groundwork for the study, seeking support at the same time . I’ll announce more details in the coming days. Whether you are in corporate HR of an agency recruiter, there will be an opportunity to raise your voice. Watch this space!

The Talent Debate
Industry guru, John Sumser, ignited an almighty debate in the recruitment/HR community with his article ‘mincing words’. John’s argument is that widely used nomenclatures in our industry such as ‘Human capital’, ‘Human resource’, ‘Assets’ and ‘Talent’ are flawed, can be demeaning, and implies ownership of employees by their employers. John raised a lot of thought-provoking questions, but does not provide answers. He argued in a later post that not knowing the answers and accepting that a problem exist is the first step towards redemption. What do you think. Are there better alternatives?

The Talent Code
Newly released book ‘The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t Born, its Grown’, by Daniel Coyle seems to toe the same line as previous authors (Malcolm Gladwell & Geoff Colvin) who argued that talent is not hereditary, but nurtured. In a recent interview he quoted “it’s possible to grow skills, fluency, speed, power, all the qualities that add up to what we know as talent.” More of Daniel’s view on talent here. An excerpt from the book here. Follow Daniel’s blog here. One more book, to put in my ‘must read’ pile. 

Funny Talent
In this video, funny man Kirby (actually, very intelligent man) visually explains that talent is really 10,000 hours of hard work and luck. Simple.