Talent Alley

Building on last week’s post on Yahoo’s work-from-home policy change, let’s look at the big “how” rather than the why.  Cy Wakeman at Forbes wrote a piece basically outlining that a sweeping change in policy is really indicative of deeper problems of leadership within a company. I believe that leaders should reward their best employees [...]

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When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced in February that the company would no longer allow employees to work from home, it launched a media storm.  Actually, it launched several media storms and the story became whatever anyone seemed to want to make it.  Here’s part of what she said: To become the absolute best place [...]

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In this video, Michael Norton talks about a research project that forced people to spend money on other people.  The results?  People were happier when they spent money on other people than if they spent it on themselves.  The amount of money didn’t seem to make a difference nor did what they actually bought.  Just [...]

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There is plenty of advice out there about office parties filled with cautionary tales involving too much egg nog.  This is sound advice, but it kind of frames holiday parties as a kind of necessary evil; a minefield best entered and exited cautiously. But office parties are also important tools for career development, management finesse, and [...]

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“No one thinks their own meetings suck.”  That’s a great take away (and quote) from this talk.  Meetings  are both an employee and a management issue.  Is someone wasting your time?  Are you wasting someone else’s time? But how to solve it?  Merlin Mann offers a few tips on how to fix a broken meeting culture that [...]

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Facebook’s new timeline format was rolled out so slowly that many folks don’t know that it even exists.  And while Facebook isn’t as dressed up for business as LinkedIn, the new format does allow for a much more resume-like feel.  It’s as though Facebook has embraced that sometimes uncomfortable line between private lives and employment [...]

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One of the trends in this ‘jobless’ recovery from the Great Recession is the noticeable skills gap that impacts many industries today. At Nesco Resource, we sometimes struggle to match available employees to the specific job requirements outlined by our clients. In the Cleveland market near our corporate HQ, this skills gap is clear and [...]

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The Elevator Speech is supposed to be that quick 3 minute blurb about who you are and what you do.  It’s that magic moment when you have someone’s (presumably a CEO) attention and you need to make the most of it. Realistically, however, making a well crafted elevator speech can be just as valuable to [...]

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There is actually a fairly common problem in most companies that most people never talk about.  It’s the typical trajectory of a career:  Do a job well -> Get Promoted -> Manage others doing the same job.  The reason most companies don’t think about it is simple.  People like getting rewarded for a job well [...]

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