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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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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Employee empowerment has absolutely been one of the key factors that have led to the explosive growth experienced by many of today’s modern industry giants. The workforces of these universally known companies are comprised of same dynamic professionals that make up essentially every other modern corporate workforce. The variable that exists between modern industry giants [...]

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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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Mark Suster is writing about Startups in his blog post  Hire Fast/Fire Fast, but how does it apply to everyone else?  Let’s just focus on the hiring part here.  Here’s his take: I don’t think that recruiting is any different than any other decision process in a company. You’re never really going to know how [...]

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Social media is changing the landscape of recruitment and you should care.  Right?  Well maybe.  Using technology to make life easier is always a good thing, but using it for the sake of using it is just a waste of time.  So here are five reasons to care about social media and five reasons not [...]

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When it comes to sex in the workplace companies take two stances: ignore it or forbid it outright.  Okay, so we’re not actually talking about sex in the workplace.  That should be forbidden outright, no question.  But when two consenting adults who work together decide to do more than work together, what’s the company policy? [...]

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