We are looking for unsung heroes

We are looking for unsung heroes that are courageously taking a risk and challenging the status quo in their own, genuine way.  We want to honor people that have put forth a creative thought, led with compassion and created a movement because we believe that doing these things day-in and day-out is how we will make a positive difference in the world. 

Nominate someone or someones that has put forth a creative thought, led with compassion or created a movement for a 2015 E+ Award.  We will be selecting an awardee for each category:

- Youth Effort - Under 21
- Local/Regional Effort - Northern Colorado (all ages)
- National/Global Effort - Reaches beyond Colorado (all ages)

Nominating them only takes a few minutes. The deadline for making a nomination is November 2, 2015. Award recipients will be announced January 1, 2016.

Nominate someone at: http://entreprenerds.biz/2015-e-plus-awards/

Simple Lessons for Creating High Impact Speeches.

This is reprinted from a post by Ava Diamond* and I really liked it so I thought I'd re-post it here for my audience. Not my normal post - but good stuff all the same!

Masterful speakers don’t just pop out of the womb that way.  They learn, they study, they practice. They fail, they figure out why, and they get better. They overcome their fears and build their skills. And they deliver powerful messages that transform the lives of their audiences.

So how can you become more masterful?  How can you deliver a speech that inspires, that entertains, that educates…and that moves people to action?

1.  Start Strong

Don’t start talking as you’re walking out on stage.  That behavior often comes from nerves and takes away from your power opening.

Instead, say “thank you” to your introducer as you walk up.  Then, confidently walk to the center of the stage.  Stop.  Take a moment to ground yourself. Make eye contact with the audience. Smile. Take a deep breath. 

Only then do you open your mouth.  And you start with something powerful.

The first few times you take this silent pause before you speak it will feel awkward. But what it does is conveys to the audience that you’re confident, you’re in charge, and that you are ready to connect with them.

2.  Focus on Them

Your audience can tell when it’s all about you. And you’ll lose them.

Your total focus has to be on what you can give them that will be of value to them, and will help them transform their lives.

Yes, you may be there to sell your ideas, sell yourself as an expert, sell your products and services…but this cannot be your primary focus.

When you are focused on delivering value to your audience and to serving them in the highest way possible, those other things will happen.

3.  Connect with Your Eyes

One thing that separates great speakers from mediocre speakers is their ability to connect with the audience.

So how do you do that?

Eye contact is critical.

A mistake that many speakers make is they try to give the impression that they’re making eye contact with the whole audience, so they move their head like a sprinkler head, back and forth, back and forth.

Instead, connect with one person at a time.  Deliver a thought to one person, then switch to another and deliver the next thought. Over the course of your talk, your audience members will feel you are speaking directly to them.  They’ll feel connected.

4.  Be Human

The days of the “sage on the stage” are over. Today’s audiences want to engage with a real human being that is authentic, vulnerable, and has a message that will help their lives get better.

Be you. Be real.  Allow your personality and your humanity to shine through. 

Don’t imitate a “great speaker” you saw.  Don’t take on a persona of what you think a speaker should be. 

Don’t strive for perfection.  That will sabotage you every time.  (click to tweet)

Just get on stage and deliver the absolute best talk you can for that audience in that moment. 

5.  Don’t Be Distracted by the Haters

Focus on the audience members who are smiling, giving you eye contact, nodding their heads, and are engaged.

If you focus on those who look like they are in disagreement with you, it will throw off your game.

By focusing on those who are loving your message you’ll feel more confident and relaxed, and will give a better performance.

These five tips will help you be more powerful onstage.  They’ll help you connect, and to stay confident and relevant.

© 2015 Big Impact Speaking

*Ava Diamond is a speaking mentor and messaging strategist, and is the founder of Big Impact Speaking.  She has created such programs as Speak Your Way to Clients and Cash, and the Rock Your Speaking Academy.  A professional speaker for seventeen years, she helps entrepreneurs rock their speaking so they expand their influence and reach, become known as the “go-to” expert in their field, and get all the clients they want.

Download the complementary Rock Your Speaking Power Pack at http://BigImpactSpeaking.comContact Ava at ava@bigimpactspeaking.com  or at 970-224-3015.

Ode to the Skeptical HR Leader

I am doing my job quite well; thank you.

I work from dawn to dusk.

And if I feel I can’t get ahead

I am good enough, I trust.

I am an HR leader.

And I do my job quite well.

I hear of new technology.

But I’ve been burned before.

I still feel the pain

Of the last big project we bore.

So what’s all this I hear:

Big data, artificial intelligence and social HR?

I’ve heard it all before.

Risk will tarnish my star.

Too much magic sauce

Promised for HR gain.

So what if I don’t have time

Change isn’t worth the pain.

I’m, an HR leader, I’ve heard it all before.

I was born to question,

I’m skeptical of the sell.

I’ll sit back and see what happens,

More time will surely tell.

I’m an HR leader

And I do my job quite well.

HR revolutions can wait

………until I have more time.

Give a Con a Break

The City of San Francisco banned the use of criminal histories as part of the pre-employment process. Several other government jurisdictions have considered similar legislation. This trend is born of the idea that criminal histories may be racist (because minorities tend to be convicted at a higher rate than non-minorities) and that it exacerbates the unemployment problem – especially among those with criminal records. OK – so I am sympathetic to the whole concern about racism creeping into our judicial system and I understand how that can correlate to unintended job discrimination. But isn’t this more an issue that should be taken up at the judicial level? When it comes down to our responsibilities as hiring professionals, aren’t we the ones best suited to assess whether a person represents a “bad hire” for our companies? If a person represents a real risk to the safety of our employees or our customers or if the person could potentially abuse their position to hurt our company and our shareholders through fraud or theft or some other action that reflects poorly on the company – shouldn’t we try and reduce that risk? Of course we should!

But for me the more interesting question (and more difficult challenge) is how do we truly assess that risk and make smart hiring decisions about people with previous legal or drug problems. Should they all be damned forever and a day? Story ended. That would be the easy way to handle the problem. No need to worry about complex hiring procedures or concerns that people won’t follow the exact dictates of the company. We hire no one with a previous conviction or a previous problem with drugs. Period!

We’re better than that.

A previous conviction does not have to be a permanent sentence of unemployment. The real solution to the problem above is that criminal history alone should not be the only reason for rejecting a candidate. Yes – I understand (I am in the background checking business after all) that there are very real circumstance that mean zero tolerance (access to vulnerable populations like children or elderly for example) where the risk is just too great. But that is what I mean when I say that a criminal history record alone should not decide the hire/no hire choice. A criminal history record PLUS a high sensitive position – should mean no hire. Other situations such as repeat offenders, people with a pattern of multiple problems, a conviction along with lying on your resume might all be reasons for rejecting a candidate. Patterns and context should dictate hiring risk – not just single data points. Its people we are dealing with and people can make mistakes and still move beyond them. This is where our professionalism comes in. We use data to help make decisions – we don’t let data make the decisions for us. 

5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Helps Recruiting

There are a lot of new trends in HR around data: Big Data, Social Data, Data Analytics. But one area that is gaining ground is the use of Artificial Intelligence in support of HR. (of course many may argue that those of us in the HR products world have always been artificially intelligent – but I won’t go there). What I want to discuss briefly here is 5 key ways that Artificial Intelligence can be used to improve the processes of recruiting: finding the right talent quickly.

1.       Goes Beyond Key Words: most search and discovery solutions can only find candidates that use the same words you use when you write the job description. If you say Marketing Manager, you’ll get people who use that term. But you might miss the perfect candidate who happens to have the right skills but a different job title and maybe a less traditional career path. AI uses data clustering techniques to create job clusters so you can identify these alternative skills and titles.

2.       Fast and Accurate: Have you ever spent hours poring over social and professional media sites to try and find that perfect candidate? Artificial Intelligence based search can look through that same data in seconds using refined searching and matching that helps you narrow in on what you are looking for.

3.       Perfect For the New World of Social Recruiting: Data in the social “ether” is growing and become more and more relevant to work place decision making. But not all the data follows the traditional rules of old-style recruiting. People talk about their skills and experiences in different ways, their job titles are unique (and funky) and while all of this is fun, it can make it harder to find people. AI based data matching has no problem with these anomalies. Chief Idea Officer, no problem, Chief Moral Officer, no problem, Beer Ranger, AI loves that title too!

4.       Customizes to your Needs: Not everybody who says they want a project manager or a sales lead or a client support specialist means the same thing. Sometimes you can see that clearly in the job description, other times, not so much. With artificial intelligence based matching, you can work with predicted outcomes to customize the kinds of people and skills you are really looking for. This allows you to build the customized profile for a particular job that is matched to your needs.

5.       Gets Smarter: The final and perhaps most important element of Artificial Intelligence is that it gets smarter the longer you use it. AI adjusts to patterns it recognizes. So it you hire sales people with a certain background and experience level, every time you accept or reject a match the system finds for you, it begins to understand that pattern and adjusts the types of recommendations it forwards to you.

Artificial Intelligence is gaining a foothold with HR products. If you want to find out more about it, feel free to talk to us at Innotrieve. We can get a little nerdy about it, but we’ll make sure you learn what you need to know about this valuable HR tool.

TaskRabbit is the New Recruiting Model

Image from TaskRabbit, Inc.

Have you heard about the company Task Rabbit? Basically it is a site (https://www.taskrabbit.com/) where you can post a task you want done: Walk the dog, pick up laundry, or wash your windows. You name it, you can post it. But there are no employees sitting behind the scenes waiting to be tasked to do your chore. Instead it is an open market exchange where people post a task and other people (just everyday people) bid on doing the job for you. I read that the # 1 task requested in TaskRabbit is building your Ikea furniture. (I think my wife would agree with that after the last time she had me build something…I don’t understand why she thought it was bad to have a lot of leftover parts).

There is a lesson in the TaskRabbit model for recruiting. And this lesson may be in both how you recruit and whom – or should I say what – you recruit.

First – how you recruit. Recruiters talk about the importance of networks, but in reality act either like islands and do all the work themselves, or act like King Edward VIII and abdicate their role to third party recruiters. But there is a better way and TaskRabbit has a hint of that better way. Get someone to help you. Both recruiters and employees have a vast network of people who you can ask for help. Employee Referral Linking Solutions like Innotrieve’s Referral Link is a great example of one of these solutions. With these tools you can quickly find people in the vast network of connections you have that might either be interested in the open job you posted, or know someone who is. Let your employees help you find the resources you need.

The second trend is who you recruit. Most companies, especially big companies think they need full time help. Yes, there is a trend to do more contracting, but that is the lazy way out. Companies should use the network of contacts that their employees have to create a grand marketplace of talent. What do you think it would be like if IBM or Cisco, or GE had a Task Board, where everyday people could simply bid on a task? Would the world come to an end? Would we blame it on Obamacare?  No, we’d simply get a good task done by someone we don’t know.

My bet is that we will all use advanced employee referral solutions to connect us to a bigger world, and we will all be better for it.

An HR Entrepreneur in the Navy

When I was a kid my dad told me being in the Navy was all about hurry-up-and-wait. As he explained it you were always supposed to quickly move from one place to the next, but once you got there you typically had to stand around and wait. Hurry-up-and-wait.

As an entrepreneur in HR (probably not unique to HR) I feel like this sometimes. Everything we do is urgent, but when we get there, we typically have to wait. Wait on software development, wait on investor funds, wait on sales prospects, and wait on customers.

Our product Referral Link was over a year in the making and finally went live in November. I felt like a Formula 1 race car sitting at the starting line ready to roar into high gear. 0 to 180 MPH in practically no time. We are ready to win the race.

Thing is, products that break old boundaries and introduce new ways to do things are rarely a race. Maybe a marathon, but never a sprint. Good ideas take time to take hold.

We have started to introduce the Referral Link product to the market place. Like any company full of more smarts than cash, we are following a Lean Start Up model. We are well beyond the MVP, but we are well into Lean Marketing. No Super Bowl ads for us. (Although I do think Jennifer Lawrence would be the perfect person to endorse our product at halftime – fiery and fierce, yet innovative…yes we do have an inflated image of ourselves). Instead though, we are slowly bringing the product to market by introducing it to certain targeted customer groups. We are getting a feel for how customers respond to the product, how the product performs and where the product best fits in the value chain.

So I guess taking over the world with our new innovation in recruiting is going to have to wait. In the meantime, I need to hurry up and get some things done. World domination takes preparation.