Talent Management and Development Resources
On this page I will share the resources (books, courses, podcasts, blogs, people to follow, etc.) that have significantly influenced my career development and the way I think about human resources work. I will separate these resources into two sections. The first section is for resources that are directly related to HR including talent management, recruiting, learning & development (L&D), and people analytics. The second section is for ones that are more tangentially related to HR including psychology, lean / agile management, and the future of work. These days I read a lot in this second area because the nature of work is changing very quickly in the world today and I want to help lead this change towards ways of working that will both improve productivity for organizations and quality of life for employees.
Talent Management, Recruiting, L&D, and People Analytics
Relatively early in my HR career I decided to study and take the test for SPHR certification. This certification is based mostly on US labor law and HR practices, which are not entirely applicable for me since I’m working in Korea, but nevertheless learning this material helped me a great deal in understanding HR fundamentals. I studied quite intensively for about 4 months and was able to pass the test. I recommend studying to obtain one of these certifications early on as it helps build a solid foundation of understanding in the field.
This is a good book to read if you are just starting out in recruiting. It does a good job of outlining what a good selection process should look like, from defining the job, through to selling the role to top candidates identified through a standardized interview process.
Social Talent is a website and training platform for recruiters run by Johnny Campbell. I was able to do a trial of it and the courses are fantastic. In particular I found the content on sourcing techniques very valuable. There are also courses led by John Vlastelica (mentioned below) on this platform and I highly recommend those. In the Resources section of the website, the blog and 'Shortlist' podcast archives have a lot of great content too.
John runs the Recruiting Toolbox consulting and training firm, and his ideas on how to recruit effectively have had a strong influence on me. He preaches that to be a truly great recruiter that adds value to the business you need to be more than just an order-taker; you must become a trusted talent advisor. This is what I strive to do every day in my work. He also has a mantra that in recruiting “misalignment is the root of all evil”. Once I heard and understood this, I began to be able to recognize it and take steps to prevent it from happening. Some of John’s talks are on YouTube and I suggest following him on LinkedIn too.
There are so many lessons to be learned from the incredible work done at Google in establishing great talent acquisition and management practices. I consider this book a must read for anyone working in HR.
There are more than 400 episodes and counting in this podcast at the time I write this, and Matt has had some really great talent acquisition leaders on the show that I’ve learned a lot from.
This is another good recruitment focused podcast that has talent acquisition leaders on the show as guests.
Lou Adler runs a talent acquisition consultancy and is the author of a number of books on what he calls “performance based hiring”. The idea behind performance based hiring is to start by creating a “performance profile” that defines what the person needs to achieve in the role once hired rather than the traditional job description that focuses on skills and past experience. I like this approach because it opens up the door to consider a more diverse pool of talent and focuses on what is most important to actually be successful in the job.
Keith McNulty is a consultant at McKinsey and a thought leader in the people analytics space. He's also kind of a role model of mine because he started programming later in his career, like I did. He writes articles on medium, and he has a book that I am planning to read as I work on building my skills in regression analysis called the Handbook of Regression Modeling in People Analytics. I also recommend following him on LinkedIn as he actively posts there too.
The focus area of this podcast is digital transformation in HR. The show brings on HR leaders to discuss topics like people analytics, HR technology, and organizational design.
AIHR stands for Academy to Innovate HR and they offer courses and certifications through their online platform. Although you to pay for the courses and certifications, the articles and videos posted on their blog can all be accessed free of charge. The posts are very high quality, giving in-depth explanations of key topics along with helpful frameworks provided in infographic format.
Psychology, Agile Organizations, and Future of Work
This book is all about how we, as human beings, make decisions, and there are a lot of decisions to be made in talent acquisition and management. The main idea is that we have two systems that govern our thinking: a fast and intuitively functioning system one, and a slow and methodically functioning system two. We like to think that we make all our decisions rationally, using system two, when in fact we are highly influenced by our system one, which is highly prone to systemic bias and errors. We cannot prevent this from happening, but we can learn to recognize how these misjudgments in our thinking occur and design our policies and processes to mitigate them.
This book is an excellent follow up to Thinking Fast and Slow, because it is very much based on the same ideas and offers many concrete examples of how to use “choice architecture” to “nudge” people towards making good decisions. The two books put together give you a strong theoretical understanding of human decision making plus a lot of practical ideas to help you design policies and processes that lead to better outcomes.
It’s obvious that we face a huge amount of distraction in today’s world, but what is not obvious is just how widespread and detrimental this distraction is, and how much it affects our ability to do truly valuable work. After reading this book I quit using Facebook, and now the only social media I use is LinkedIn which is pretty much essential given that I’m a recruiter. I’m also working on being more intentional with how I use my time at work by scheduling blocks of time during which I can focus on important tasks without interruption, but this is harder than it sounds in a real office environment with instant messages, phone calls, and questions from colleagues sitting next to me, all of which break the “flow” needed for deep work. This book has convinced me of the incredible value of deep work, and I believe we need to rethink how we design the layout of our spaces and modes of our communication at work to facilitate it.
Gene Kim is the author of the Dev Ops Handbook and the host of a podcast called The Ideal Cast on which he primarily discusses advances in the DevOps movement. But the scope of his ideas and the topics discussed on his podcast are much broader than this. The most important takeaway I've gotten from listening to his show is that, in today's knowledge economy, the highest performing companies are those that are able to push operational decision making to the edges of their organizations and get information flowing upwards and across, rather than strictly down. There are a lot of nuances involved in doing this well, but I firmly believe that this is the way companies need to operate to win in today's world. I also believe that this is the kind of company that top talent wants to work in. The very best people want ownership over their work, they want to try new ways of doing things to solve problems, and they want to continuously learn. Gene’s ideas have had a big influence on the way I think about people management, and I want to help build the kind of high-performing, learning-focused work culture he espouses.
Adam Grant is a professor at Wharton and a best-selling author. On his podcast he takes a close look at companies and people that exemplify new and better ways of working, and it’s always super insightful. He's also active on LinkedIn, regularly posting little snippets of wisdom, of which he seems to have an endless supply!
I already have an entry for Adam Grant and his podcast above but I had to add a separate one for this book because it has been really important to me. At work, one of my main priorities has always been helping others. I like to lead by providing support and guidance, trying to “lift all boats” so to speak. Until I read this book, I’ve always had this nagging kind of feeling that maybe by helping others too much I could end up hurting my own performance and chances for success. And many people will tell you as much too. But this book has erased those fears for me. I now have confidence in my natural disposition towards being a “giver” at work and I've learned strategies to avoid being taken advantage of by “takers”.
This is the podcast of the venture capital firm Andressen and Horowitz. It’s great for keeping up on the latest in cutting-edge tech and innovation. And, some of the episodes also get into topics like business management and corporate culture. Ben Horowitz, one of the namesakes of the firm, also has some very good business management books out: The Hard Thing About Hard Things and What You Do Is Who You Are.
In his posts Dror paints a picture of a future in which the way people organize themselves to do work and how they are compensated for the value they add to the economy is completely different from how it is today. He's an expert on crypto and blockchain and he explains how these technologies will change the world of work as we know it. This is really exciting stuff and Dror is right at the leading edge of thinking in this area.
I first heard about this book through listening to Gene Kim's Idealcast podcast which I mentioned above. Gene and Steven have worked together on projects, and the podcast episodes that have Steven on are really great. This book, which is all about how companies can beat the competition through building and constantly improving their work processes, is without a doubt one of the best business books I've ever read. Although the book does not directly address HR or recruitment related topics much, I think the main ideas have some very important implications for talent attraction and retention too. The ideas in this book have really served to give shape and depth to my thinking on how companies need to purposely design how work gets done. Companies that do this do this stuff well will not only beat the competition in the market, they will also become top talent magnets.
These two books should really be read one after another. The Talent Code explains how talent develops in individuals, including the neuroscience behind it introduced in layman's terms, and describes how this talent can be grown and nurtured. Basically the secret sauce is a lot of authentically motivated practice, which makes intuitive sense, and the lesson is that we should be focused a lot more on developing talent rather than seeking out "naturally gifted" people. The Culture Code, on the other hand, aims to explain what makes groups of people successful. The book asserts that, in order to perform at a high level, groups need to be constructed as inclusive safe spaces in which people feel free to share their ideas, and leaders need to build and maintain a culture that empowers members to solve tough problems themselves.