Talent Practices at Home Depot Essays

Talent Practices at Home Depot Essays Talent Practices at Home Depot Essay Talent Practices at Home Depot Essay Discuss how the leadership at Home Depot intended to use its organizational talent to gain a competitive advantage in the Do It Yourself industry. Home Depot has grown to be a retail leader in home improvement with revenues in excess of $90 billion. Home Depot has been in existence for over twenty nine years and has hundreds of stores locally in the United States and globally in other countries. The leadership at Home Depot recognized the importance of talent management in its continued growth over the years. The company has instituted new programs that have lead to the placement of hundreds of human talent that come from diverse backgrounds. The company uses the selection of candidates who are knowledgeable and possess certain skill sets to strengthen and build new strategies for company growth. Home Depot uses pipeline programs to recruit and develop new talent who will advance into key executive roles. It has learned lessons based on its current talent management process. Chief Officer Robert Nardelli has adopted a military approach to management. According to Businessweek, Nardelli utilizes â€Å"ideas and concepts from the military to move Home Dept into a more centralized organization† (Businessweek, 2006). Discuss the key channels that Home Depot developed for recruiting talent. Home Depot used a workforce planning model to identify the types of candidates that were needed to fill key positions in the organization and where they needed to make improvements. Home Depot is a customer based organization so it is critical to recruit individuals who are both service oriented, customer focused and knowledgeable. Home Depot used multiple talent channels to recruit talented candidates. They used the traditional methods of recruitment which included print, media/radio ads, recruiting firms and job boards. They also utilized creative methods to recruit talent by creating strategic partnerships with colleges, universities and other organizations to increase the pool of candidates to fit their talent profile. Home depot created hiring partnerships with governmental agencies and non-profit organizations to reach out in communities for qualified talent with diverse backgrounds i. e. Retirees, Military veterans and Hispanics. Discuss the critical programs used by Home Depot to keep talent in their pipeline. Home Depot is an organization that understands the necessity of talent management. It places talent in positions that are critical to the relationships the company has built with its enormous customer base. Home Depot has established pipeline programs to recruit and develop external talent in leadership positions. The company has instituted two programs that have proved to be successful over the years, the Internal Audit Leadership Program and the Store Leadership Program. The Internal Audit Leadership Program is a two year program that targets high performing college graduates who have some knowledge and business experience. The participants go through a vigorous assessment prior to entry into the program. They are selected to provide business solutions and capabilities to the organization while continuing to progress into various levels of the pipeline after completion of the program. Home Depot has shown that the program resulted in an impressive placement rate and is successful in meeting the needs of the business. The Store Leadership Program is designed to promote individuals with strategic and technical skills to store management positions. This program is similar to the Internal Audit Leadership Program as it also requires a two year commitment and participants go through a vigorous assessment. The difference is this program has a rotational requirement in operations, merchandising and assistant store management positions. This provides on the job learning and encourages strategic thinking as well as leadership concepts. There has also been proven success in this program in addition to the Internal Audit Leadership Program. Since the inception of the program in 2002, there have been 1,142 people hired into Home Depots store leadership program, almost half 528 are junior military officers according to Businessweek (Businessweek, 2006). Discuss three lessons learned by Home Depot related to talent management. The term talent management is best used to describe the selection, recruitment and overall development of human talent within an organization. Talent management initiatives are vast and differ by organization but generally include learning and development, succession planning, career planning, promotion and performance management. Home Depot recognized that its need for talent management is critical to the continued success of the organization. As an organization, Home Depot learned many lessons related to talent management including: ? Get buy in on the business need for the program Do not make the participants too special ?Listen and respond to naysayers ?Give the programs time to work ?Invest in the talent you already have (Silzer Dowell, 2010, pgs. 664-665). One of the most important lessons learned by Home Depot in relation to talent management is obtaining buy in. A program will not be successful without buy in from all the leaders in an organization. It is important that the leaders have full understanding of the program and the impact it will have on the business in order to articulate the information effectively through the organization. Home Depot recognized the business need for a talent management program due to the number of management positions filled internally throughout yearly. It is estimated that 80 percent of leadership placements in Home Depot are internal promotions with a vast number of those placements into key frontline management roles (Silzer Dowell, 2010, p. 655) Another important lesson learned by Home Depot was recognizing the time investment that the program deserves. Talent management can be an enormous undertaking for any organization due to financial aspect and the long term commitment. The value of talent management is not going to be seen immediately so it would be unfair for Home Depot to expect instant results. It will take some time before there is a realization of the return on investment and the overall business impact. One of the most valuable lessons that Home Depot learned is the value that investing in internal talent can have in an organization. It is important to engage everyone when implementing new programs. Development should be accessible to all talent, new and existing, so there is not segregation. This will foster new relationships and participants will recognize their worth in the organization. ?

How Executives Should Answer One Scary Interview Question Who Wrote Your Resume

How Executives Should Answer One Scary Interview Question Who Wrote Your Resume Should executives write their own resumes? As an executive resume writer, I run into a certain number of people who believe every job candidate, regardless of industry, should write his or her own resume. While I agree very strongly that students should write their own academic papers and college application essays, I think very differently about whether executives should write their own resumes. Think about it. Executives are not being judged on their ability to format a beautiful document and craft powerful bullets about themselves. They have not spent years studying and practicing the art of resume writing. What is an executive’s job? All C-Level executives need forward-thinking strategy skills and the ability to manage and motivate teams. A CTO needs to know technology. A CFO needs to know finance. A CMO needs to know marketing. A CEO needs to implement high-level strategy; ensure that teams are functioning optimally; make key decisions that serve the best interest of both the company and its customers; keep operations running smoothly; and liaise between the board of directors and corporate operations. Nowhere in this list is being a great writer, graphic designer, or resume bullet crafter. So why should an executive ever write his or her own resume? I can’t think of a reason. In fact, the most talented and accomplished executive could be undersold and undercut by a self-constructed resume. And isn’t an executive’s job to delegate responsibility to others rather than get caught in the weeds? Successful executives are universally interested in leveraging their time. They do not have 10 hours to spend wrestling over how to present their accomplishments in writing. They would rather pay someone to do what that person does well, in service of a great result. The interview question Given all this, what should you do if you are an executive and in an interview, you are asked who wrote your resume? One hiring manager, whom I will call Mike, used that â€Å"trick† question to vet candidates. He writes, â€Å"I found out a lot by the reaction to that question. The best response I ever heard was an unruffled ‘I contracted with someone good in that business. Look, [Mike], you are interviewing me for the Chief Technical Officer position. I care about the quality of the end result. I dont write software as well as some of the folks in the Engineering group. I dont write resumes as well as the service. Quality of outcome and cost count.’† Mike continues, â€Å"Ive seen some candidates get flustered and talk in circles. I even had one candidate claim he wrote it, only to interrupt me ten minutes later to contradict himself.† I was struck in this story by the attributes this successful candidate’s answer showed: integrity, honesty, decisiveness, the ability to stay clear under pressure, a results focus, and a commitment to finding the best people to do any job. Those are qualities I would want in an executive. Executive responsibilities as a job candidate Even when someone else writes your executive resume, you go through the process of getting very clear about the challenges you faced, the actions you took, and the results you achieved. That is each executive’s work to do, with the support of a resume writer if desired. My advice is to put your best foot forward, and to leverage your resources optimally to do that. What do you think about executives writing their own resumes? Do you have any other favorite, revealing interview questions you want to share? Please comment below!