What are Selection Criteria? By Gregory
Selection criteria are the essential and desirable skills, attributes, experience, and education standards that an organisation decides are mandatory for all Talent responding to a Role requirement.

Why are Selection Criteria used?
So as to identify the most experienced and qualified Talent for open Roles; organizations often require Talent to demonstrate and prove the ways in which they will be of most value to the organisation and address the requirements of the Role.

For Talent it provides an opportunity to focus the attention of the Talent Acquisition executive on the core value you propose to bring to the Role, which can be substantiated by prior experience or skill sets. From the organisation's point of view, selection criteria help to standardise the process of Talent Acquisition and focus their attention to the relevant and salient skills and experience of the Talent that can offer most value to the organisation.

Barack Obama is off the boil! By Gregory
When the world seems to be spinning out of control and the ‘Dooms Dayers’ are fired up with righteous indignation, then it is a good time to think counter cyclically. Change, either good or bad, is a time of opportunity and for Talent looking for a new level of engagement now is a time of opportunity. Yes, you may have to work harder at getting a chance and think harder at defining your core value but the world and your next employer is looking for the energy and initiative of Talent to propel their businesses forward and reach for growth. Defining your participation in clear and uncompromising words - using lots of verbs and only illustrations of accomplishments is a good place to start.

Economies re-establish, businesses rise and fall, good people are always in high demand and so you too can become a contributor to your own future. Spend time redefining the ways in which you can be viewed by businesses facing the challenges of future proofing their enterprises and creating sustainable operations. Be active in marketing ‘Enterprise You’ and start with a discussion with [ta!ent scout] and discover how we can enlist in your enterprise and contribute to your success.

The "!" symbol is believed to have originated from the Latin word io, an exclamation of joy. It was formed as a digraph of the letters I and O...

In typesetting (and therefore when spelling text out orally), the “!” is called a bang. In UNIX scripting "!" (the bang) is used for logical negation; e.g. A != B means "A is not equal to B".

The [ta!ent scout] bang [ ! ] is used to signify that not all Talent is the same, and only a few are the truly top-performers.

What does it mean when the economy is tightening? By Gregory
Recently I have been inundated by Talent who have been retrenched, many of whom are top-performers in their field and were aggressively recruited by their current enterprise. The fact that they were top performers in competitor enterprises or vendor companies was the very reason that they were ‘head hunted’ in the first place. Now faced with difficult times the enterprise leans toward cost cutting and the first area many look to are Talent costs. One colleague went through 9, yes 9(!), interviews before being offered an exciting role, with more scope and remuneration, only to find that he was first out the door. Doesn’t make a lot of sense! The bad will these enterprises are creating will reverberate for years to come and when the markets shift and the economy improves no one will want to work with them.

The time is now, for a new level of engagement with Talent, where creative solutions can take care of the needs of all concerned. Look at Google and EBay, yes they have made redundancies (the crazy USA reporting season) but they staggered them over 5 months and gave their Talent the choice of when to leave and extended their Health Insurance cover for an extra 4 months. Some companies are job sharing and looking for ways to capitalise on the knowledge and experience tied up in their Talent resources. Talent is not a cost centre like many companies believe BUT a revenue centre — business after all is about people and people do the deals with each other.

[ta!ent scout] is keen to work with Talent and businesses to help identify strategies to make the most of the tightening economy. The truth is that the explosive wealth and growth by some business after the recessions are over is right now in the planning stage, planning for what’s to come not what is here now.