Talent is more expensive than capital

Great post over at Talentism entitled - Start: 20 Rules for Recruiting in the Creative Age.
You can read the whole post here.
But my favorite rule is Rule #1 [also repeated for emphasis as Rule #20].

1.) Talent is more expensive than capital.

Good companies remember this rule. Bad companies never learned it.

Japan approves first generic biotech drug

According just a story in Reuters that just broke here:

Japanese regulators approved a human growth hormone from Novartis AG, the first green light in Japan for a biosimilar or generic version of a biotech drug, the Swiss drugmaker said on Thursday.

Biosimilars are viewed as a promising new market, given the pent-up demand for cheaper versions of extremely expensive biotech drugs, some of which are coming to the end of their patent life.

Somatropin, made by Novartis' generics unit Sandoz, is for treatment of growth hormone deficiency in children and growth disturbance associated with Turner's syndrome or chronic renal insufficiency, the group said.

It will be interesting to see how this development plays out.....

Nobel laureate Richard J Roberts says "Future is in Biotech"

The recent economic woes have cast a pall over a wide swath of industries. The Pharmaceutical and Biotech industries have been particularly hard hit this time.
And for the first time in my 18 years as a Recruiter, I actually have candidates asking me how to transition out of the Pharma/Biotech fields.

But not everyone is despondent about the prospects for the industry.

Nobel laureate Richard J Roberts opines here that "The futures lies in Biotech."

Roberts says that despite the current economic woes, now is the best time to be in the industry. Roberts goes on to say:

"Recession is the right time for this because there are no competitors. The early bird always gets the worm....We still know very little about biology and the mechanisms of life. So this provides us with a huge opportunity to focus on areas that humanity needs most. Far from being a negative factor, the recession has provided us with an opportunity to plan and consolidate better."

Roberts adds that the "key thrust areas where the biotech industry can catch up are genetically-modified food, bio-energy, stem cell research, synthetic biology and personalised medicine."

Personally I think Roberts is right on the mark. The future for Biotech still burns brightly.

The Power of Weak Ties on Facebook

I just heard about this video and this website on Twitter today.
Shama Hyder has been named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Social Media and she has a great video over at her site, Shama.Tv that discusses The Power of Weak Ties on Facebook. [Although the value of 'weak ties' extends not just to Facebook, but across all social media. And in fact, I think it is fair to say that, 'weak ties' have value in the 'analog' world as well :)]

I think not that only job seekers, but anyone who is looking to improve themselves, will enjoy this video. It is good stuff!

Creative Marketing Promotion - Free Hair Color For Job Hunting Women

This is a little off-topic from what I usually post about....but I thought this promotion by tng worldwide and Kemon was a really great example of some creative marketing coupled with companies offering a good old-fashioned 'helping hand' to the community. Kemon and tng worldwide are teaming up to offer free hair color for job hunting women in the Detroit area. You can read the details here.
The program is called Hair for Success.
According to the article:

Larry Gaynor, CEO and president of tng worldwide....convinced local salons to donate their time, talent and services for the Hair For Success event, while tng worldwide is supplying the Kemon coloring product that stylists will be using on the women. It is one of the most sought after color products in the industry. Gaynor expects to help 2,000 women during Monday’s event by giving away about $100,000 in professional color treatments.

This program is a great example of 'giving before you get'. And it seems like this event will be a winner for all who are involved.....

Be Professional when Job Hunting

Marvin Walberg has a good article with some basic common-sense tips about how to conduct yourself on your job search. You can read the article here.

One of his tips is as follows:

Get a permanent and appropriate e-mail address. If you want, use one for friends and fun and another for business, using your name or initials — no cutesy names like hotmamma1795@hotmail.com, or — well, you know what we mean.

Now you would think that most people would know that they should use an appropriate email for their business related conversations....but that is not always the case. Years ago, I had a candidate that had an email address that was, shall we say, somewhat pornographic in nature. It was listed at the top of her resume. When I mentioned to her that she may want to consider using another email address for her job search, she balked at the suggestion.

Needless to say, I did not spend any more time working with her.

Palm's Pre Proves The Value of Recruiting Talent

Greg Kumparak over at MobileCrunch writes here about the resurgence of Palm.
How did Palm do it? They went out and recruited the people that they needed. And did they simply post a couple of ads and hope the right people responded to them?
No - Palm went out and aggressively recruited the talent that they wanted and needed from their competitors.

Kumparak writes:

"In early June 2007, Palm was teetering on the edge of obscurity. Their flagship Treo product line had gone stale, numbers were down across the board, and rumors of a sale were abound. On June 4th, 2007 it was announced that Elevation Partners had purchased a 25% equity stake of Palm for $325 million. Flash forward to today; just two years later (almost to the day), Palm has launched the Pre, a phone which managed to nab the attention of just about every blog and blog reader out there.

So what changed? What had that new-found $325 million bought them? Talent. Lots and lots of talent - from their competitors, no less. With a good amount of lucky timing and some decent salary proposals, Palm managed to snatch up at least 8 people who were just oh-so-damn good at what they do, ending up with the Palm Pre and webOS as a result."

The moral of the story....if you want to build a quality organization....if you want to make products that people want to buy....you can't just passively sit back and wait for talented people to beat a path to your doorstep. You have to go out and find them!!!

Worker Burnout

Joel Cheesman writes here that workers who have survived layoffs are increasingly experiencing burnout. Joel writes:

"...according to CareerBuilder’s latest survey of more than 4,400 workers nationwide.

Forty-seven percent of workers reported they have taken on more responsibility because of a layoff within their organization. Thirty-seven percent said they are handling the work of two people. Thirty percent feel burned out.

To accommodate growing to-do lists, 34 percent of workers who kept their jobs after a layoff reported they are spending more time at the office. Seventeen percent are putting in at least 10 hours per day. Twenty-two percent are working more weekends."

Should be interesting to see if these 'burned-out' employees stick around...or if they end up moving on to other companies once the economic recovery begins.