Agile Elephant

I have always been a big fan of Shai Agassi and his quick leadership ascendency within SAP.  I am equally impressed with his current commitment to Better Place.  This interview from CIO.com gives you some solid insight into his motivations for trying to rid the world of oil dependency (as difficult as that might be).

Watch this video and decide for yourself if you think Shai can do for the transportation industry what Google has done for information...

"Google (NSDQ: GOOG) runs special versions of its home page to mark everything from the Persian new year to the birthday of Diego Velazquez (who?). So what's on the search giant's Web site today--the seventh anniversary of the attacks on World Trade Center, the Pentagon and UA Flight 93? As of Noon Eastern, nothing."

You Decide....

Ben Worthen reports in the WSJ that tech spending was up in the U.S. and globally this year and will grow in 2009.  While the true growth will not be as high as reported due to currency fluctuations, I'm just happy there's any growth at all!

Leave it to James McGovern to shake me out of hibernation.  There's nothing like a little rant to wake you up in the morning.  Thanks James!

To even suggest that there is an IT talent shortage is ridiculous.  I have blogged extensively in the past regarding this topic and nothing has really changed.  Too many organizations focus on their more immediate needs rather than the long-term growth of the organization.

This is a marathon, not a sprint.  If you treat your hiring practices as a short-term race, then the results are obvious.  It will all be over before you know it.

In honor of Earth Day, here's an old post for you...

I just received my latest copy of InformationWeek and enjoyed Rob Preston's article "Are You A Complainer Or Part Of The Solution?"  His summation is spot on:

It's too easy to point fingers in the war for talent.  The challenge is in the solution.

I'm a pretty avid reader of newspaper and magazine articles related to the search for IT talent and if I ever miss out on something, I can always rely on the blogosphere to identify the things I miss.  And even though James McGovern alerted me to this article about lack of available talent in Massachusetts, I can't help but think that this is just more of the same.

I have read more articles than I can count about the lack of IT talent, the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers and the low percentage of tech grads coming out of college.  We can certainly set up programs to meet these challenges and, according to the article, the Bay State appears to be doing so.  But all of that is for naught is companies don't make the investment in hiring these individuals and training them to grow with their company.

Too many times corporations make hiring decisions based on their most immediate project needs or, in the case of the executive offices, what will best placate their shareholders.  The companies that I enjoy having as clients are the ones that have the vision to hire for the long term and look beyond their quarterly numbers.

Having 'heavy hitters' who can come in and solve the most immediate problems is important, don't get me wrong.  But that hiring strategy must be tempered with individuals who can grow with a firm and provide long term benefits.  Maybe interview processes need to be altered to identify those candidates that can provide that potential.

What makes the New York Yankees so good?  They spend the money on 'heavy hitters' but they also have one of the best farm systems in baseball.

Nurturing talent is the key to success.

Mark Cummuta has been chronicling his job search on the CIO eZine for quite some time and I have enjoyed most of his posts.  One of his most recent really got me to thinking about my business, the importance of relationships and how many people take this for granted.

I have been blessed with the opportunity to develop many good personal and professional relationships as a Recruiter.   These have been honed over time and have helped me to be successful.  When I started recruiting in the early '90's, all of my contacts were in a rolodex and resumes were stored in file cabinets.  When working on searches for clients, I would attack my rolodex of contacts and network, network, network.  The phone and the fax were my main tools of the trade.  Even email was not as widely utilized.

Now we're in the era of social networking and relationships are measured by the number of connections you have on LinkedIn.  There are a lot of people who are 'connection aggregators'.  But I never really understood what this achieved, unless you are able to take advantage of the opportunity and build real relationships with the people you connect with.

Building strong relationships is one of the real keys to success, professionally and personally.  If everyone had the ability to build and maintain these strong ties then I, and many other people in my profession, would be out of a job.

Quality, not quantity people.  And if you're really interested in building better relationships, read this book. 

I must have missed this from a few weeks ago, even though I'm an avid WSJ online reader.  Tibco's viral marketing campaign with Greg the Architect is getting some attention.  I think I will still be forced to explain what SOA is to my friends at dinner parties (I know....boring dinner parties), but I think it's interesting that the more mainstream press is reporting on this subject.

I will be at Web Services/SOA on Wall Street Conference this Monday, February 11th in NYC.  Please contact me if you would like get together to talk about career options.  Needless to say, the job market for qualified Enterprise Architects with strong knowledge of SOA principles is very hot!