What does HR have to do with Race Horses?

Nothing on one level except a story to open my blog, and a lot at a another level all together.

The story: When I was working with Texas Instruments, our Vice President of Human Resources at the time told a story about how much he enjoyed calling from Dallas Texas to Versailles....no, not the palace in France, but Versailles, Kentucky, which is pronounced phonetically....Vur Sales. TI owned a facility there at the time, and there was a woman who worked in the HR department whose name has faded into my past, but whom Chuck the HR VP loved to hear answer the phone, because he said it always sounded to him like she was saying: "Hello, Human Race Horses, may I help you?" He was sorely disappointed that he never got to see those special race horses run around the track, although he did say that Versailles, like the rest of TI had excellent human workers, and he made do with visiting them.

In the nearly 18 years since I first heard that story, I don't think the race run by humans at work has slowed down, and in fact, while Chuck the VP is no longer with TI, and the Texas Instruments business I worked for has been transformed fantastically, some things do remain constant. The pace of the race for human capital has increased at just as fast a pace as the levels of technology have within business, and we are at the beginning of another fantastic leap into the future. It may be HR 2.0 or HR 3.0 or just on-going process of change that drives business today, but many techniques and tools we utilize today to hire, train, develop, and retain talent are changing faster than the employees or the HR professionals that support them can assimilate.

Take the following quick quiz:

1. What is an HR Wiki and what do they do?
2. What is a VLOG?
3. Have you ever recruited via podcast?
4. What is a streaming resume?
5. What good does it do to have Xing?
6. Are any of your employees nearshored?
7. What is a LION? (hint: they don't live at the zoo anymore)

Answers to come in a day or so...

Michael VanDervort
Tampa Florida USA
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelvandervort