Sirona Says

Reverse Mentoring by Generation Y'ers

Generation Y'ers are now being employed as consultants to coach 'senior leaders' in new technologies. The phrase adopted for this is 'reverse mentoring', and Time Warner have appointed gen Y'ers to give 90 minute mentoring sessions to its senior leaders at $500 per session.
They are giving advice on subjects such as iPods, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and are even getting some of these senior leaders into chat rooms!!

Well done to Time Warner for having the kahuna's to actually engage with gen Y'ers on their terms. The gen Y'ers are the most technically advanced generation ever, so it makes absolute sense for the gen X'ers and the boomers to use them for specialist advice.
I wonder how long it will be before Accenture open up their own gen Y division, and start charging stupidly high fees to reverse mentor senior executives in new technologies?

Why would this video attract graduates to a job board?

Friday does seem to bring out the bizarre videos. Here is one that is 'supposed' to attract you to the IrishGradjobs.ie job board. Quite why they think this appeals to graduates I am not sure.

The big question that needs answering, is what brief these advertising agencies are getting from their clients when they are producing these videos? Remember the outrageous car wash video for the RPO company, and of course the infamous careerbuilder video?

Is there really a talent shortage or are companies just jumping on the bandwagon?

There is a recognised talent shortage in the UK currently..........isn't there?  Well that's what we are being told every day, so it must be true!!.

But is it a real talent shortage or is it a case of companies not being able to find the talent out there in the market? (Yes I know there are some genuine talent shortages such as engineering, construction and accountancy before you accuse me of being blase!)
There are those that jump on certain bandwagons without experiencing things for themselves, and I believe the 'shortage of talent' is no exception. Companies must not assume that the talent shortage applies to their industry until they have discovered it for themselves. If they don't do this, then they will be potentially missing valuable talent, that they would have otherwise missed.

There are three things that point to this happening right now:

• We know already know that companies don't use new technologies such as web 2.0 to source employees - technologies that we know prospective job seekers are actually using themselves, and want to use while looking for a job. STRIKE ONE.
• The CIPD says that only half of companies in their recent annual recruitment and retention survey have a formal resourcing strategy, meaning that resourcing is at best unplanned and random for a large number of companies (7P's).  STRIKE TWO.
• There is still a lack of respect (and some would say apathy) for recruitment in business. It is not given the standing and position it deserves in a company, usually just tucked away as part of HR.( In the US Resourcing/Recruiting is a stand alone business function that is part of business strategy and planning). So it has little chance of getting the resource , time and commitment it needs from the business to really perform effectively.  STRIKE THREE

So are companies doing all they can to recruit staff? Of course they aren't, but THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE, which is the problem!

The rise in recruitment agency spend highlights that the default method of recruiting staff  still appears to be  recruitment agencies. All the time companies fail to address their recruitment needs directly, then their level of spend with recruitment agencies will remain on the high side.
I am certainly not against using recruitment agencies, but companies should pick the 'low hanging fruit themselves'. Only then will they understand the talent marketplace, and what the issues around talent really are - and of course they will save themselves a fortune at the same time!!

Some new talent acquisition strategies maybe?

Talent acquisition is getting harder as we all know, so when I saw this video from Barclays last night, it did make me smile. Maybe these ways of getting staff will catch on??

They should make a follow up to this!!

Worthing Birdman Competition - Why a Crocodile?

There is now less than two weeks to go before I stand on Worthing Pier and launch myself off the 35ft high ramp into the sea, for the Worthing Birdman Competition. Well part of my outfit is now nearly finished, and as it has created much interest I thought I would show you part of it. This is a picture of me (take my word for it, it is!) and the crocodile head that we have made for the Worthing Birdman (the rest of the outfit will be revealed nearer the day itself).

Some of you will have already seen that I am doing this event in aid of Leukaemia Research, in memory of my brother who died last year from leukaemia. Thank you to everyone that has sponsored me so far, but I don't want to stop there, I really do want raise as much as I can to help other leukaemia sufferers, so please visit my online page to make a donation today. 

I have been asked by many people why a giant crocodile? Well the picture here will help to answer that question.
On Christmas 2005 David and Marlynne (his wife to be) were exploring Australia. We sent them out a Christmas package to open on the beach on Christmas Day, which apart from an array of crackers, silly hats etc included an inflatable 6ft crocodile (shown here with David).
With my brothers sense of humour, he readily  adopted 'Snappy' as their 'guest' for the day, and proceeded to have some fun. They even sat him down for their christmas day meal - for some reason he didn't eat much though!!
It obviously created lots of strange looks and much fun for the day for David and Marlynne, and it has become a part of our family's 'folklore'.

So you see my choice of a crocodile was an easy decision really, and now you know why it means so much to me and my family!

Now, please do go to my Just Giving page and sponsor me for The Worthing Birdman on the 6th July. Every donation, every £,$ or euro will help other leukaemia sufferers, and if we can help more of them into remission to enjoy more time with their families then we will have achieved something good.

It wasn't me. It was the hotel's fault!!

You know there are times when you have done a bad job, you try and find an excuse why. Well there are bad excuses, and there are just pathetic ones!!
This is from Raymond Domenech, the coach from the French Football Team, who failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the European Championships this year.
His reason for failure -  the team's hotel!!!...
"The layout of the hotel was all wrong," he said. "It was in a kind of cul-de-sac with only one route in and out. Plus, there were no proper directives from the Swiss about gatherings of people watching us eat."  What planet is this guy on??

So it wasn't his team selection, his management or his inability to get them motivated, it was the hotel's fault!!  I wonder if his contract will be renewed?....uuuhhmmmmm maybe not....

Sticking your head in the sand is not the answer!!

Having attended the CIPD show on recruitment and retention this week, it has left me feeling a little disillusioned. Don't get me wrong, the show was very good and it was very well attended by many companies, but there seems to be a state of apathy around recruitment - more specifically, how to recruit new employees using modern technologies.
You are probably reading this and thinking I have gone mad, after all isn't every company saying they are trying hard to recruit talent? Well they may well be trying to recruit staff, but they are using the same recruitment tools and methods they have always. They seem to be allergic to trying anything "new" - and by "new" I simply mean online (reactive and proactive), networking, social networks, blogs etc
They have their heads firmly stuck in the sand, and are not even coming up for air to check on what is happening around them!

The New World of Work - fail to engage with generation Y at your peril!

Yesterday I was at the CIPD Recruitment and Retention show in London. There were a good range of half hour showcases on subjects like Web 2.0, Tesco's graduate recruitment and online recruiting. But for me there was one that was by far the most engaging of the day. It was from Bruce Morton of E3unlimited, who is renowned speaker on talent management. His subject was Generation Y. He not only talks with real knowledge  and passion, but he also engages with the audience very quickly.
Unfortunately there isn't a video from yesterday, but this video from his website shows you some of the thought provoking facts that are just around the corner for companies. Talent management and generation Y are problems of today, and should not be put on the shelf, just because companies don't think it applies to them right now. Anyway, enjoy The New World of Work.

The Yell.com gadget - example of a new recruitment tool from Google

Last week I sat through a Google webinar, and for the first time I saw google gadget advertising. It is a very clever way of using paid advertising in the same as PPC, to reach jobseekers. I am not yet sold on how effective this is going to be, but because it is only limited by the ideas that companies' web developers, have it could be quite interesting. I am sure that like other gadgets, if they interest people then they will go exponential virally. Anyway, judge yourself with the first of its kind, Yell.com.
There are three parts to the gadget:

1. Video









2. Games









3. The actual jobs









It does look appealing and it certainly entices the viewer. But how effective they will be over a Google Adwords campaign, I am not so sure. Only time will tell!!

Taking Blackberry addiction a little too far.......

I love my Blackberry, but there is a limit to where you use it, isn't there? Well, watching this video certainly shows how far some Blackberry users go.....