High-tech entrepreneurship, the health care industry and a resurgent manufacturing sector are just a few of the important elements of the Chicago region’s economy. Among some of the well-recognized Fortune 500 companies headquartered here are Motorola, Boeing, McDonald’s and agricultural processor Archer Daniels Midland. Internet marketing company Groupon calls Chicago home and employs more than 2,000 people at its local offices, and online review website Yelp is also growing its operations in the Windy City. Chicago economic development officials are also trying to create homes for some lesser-known...

Tacit Knowledge Helps to Differentiate the Brightest Organizations We can know more than we can tell - Michael Polanyi The rise of the internet, advances in mobile technologies, online communications and collaboration tools have revolutionized the way we work, who we work with, and the way we serve our customers. Michael Polanyi, in his book Personal Knowledge[i], suggests that human’s intellectual superiority over animals is due to our linguistic capabilities…" What’s left he called tacit knowledge - information that’s difficult to transfer to others. Examples of tacit knowledge include things like experience, perspective, and intuition. What...

Pardon me as I take a trip down memory lane.  Join me if you can.  Close your eyes.  Think back to when you were starting out as an early career professional.  Think back to your interviews and the things you learned from those experiences.  What did you learn?  Now think back to the early career professionals you have interviewed recently.  What have they said?  What have they done?  More importantly, have you been left shaking your head wondering...

In 2015, the SHRM Foundation launched a new scholarship competition in partnership with SHRM. We awarded five scholarships to attend the SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 28-July 1, 2015.   Congratulations to the 2015 scholarship recipients whose profiles are displayed below.  We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas! Northeast Cindy King, SHRM-CP, HR Director, Institute for Health and Recovery Danvers, MA   Southeast Jatisha Marsh, SHRM-CP, Employee...

On April 15, @shrmnextchat chatted with Poachable CEO Tom Leung (@TomL) about The Rise of Passive Talent Matching. In case you missed this amazing chat, here are all the tweets:   [View the story "#Nextchat RECAP: The Rise of Passive Talent Matching" on Storify]      ...

  It's no surprise that effective networking is one of the most critical aspects of a successful career.  You may dread awkward networking events, but there's no denying that they are an important source of building your professional network.  It all finally clicked for me after watching the Season 5 premiere of HBO's Game of Thrones on Sunday evening. Nerdy? Yes. Insightful? We'll see.. The first step towards effective networking at an event is being able to introduce yourself in an engaging and informative, yet concise manner. ...

  Recently, my HR Manager team did an exercise I found very empowering.  We called it "What’s your Superpower?" In essence, we wanted to understand what each team member was great at.  We wanted to define our "Superpower." We framed the discussion in terms of an area that you have deep knowledge in (employee relations, management development, leadership coaching, etc.), great utilization of a specific skill, or a keen ability to do something. Discovery of this Superpower could be based on your own self-assessment, feedback from others, and/or something you’ve had frequent success with. ...

If a merger or acquisition is on your horizon, prepare for one of the most challenging times in your HR career. Not only will you encounter competing cultures and potentially conflicting management styles, you will likely be working with incompatible Human Capital Management (HCM) systems. This makes it tricky when you need to get an accurate, single inventory of all the people and determine new roles, compensation levels and titles. Executives will also need to understand how much the new combination of talent will cost -- not an easy task when the data is floating around...

  Do you despise performance management time?  Do you despair at the thought of performance appraisal season?  Do you ever call in sick when asked to rate someone’s performance?  Rest easy.  You are among myriad professionals, supervisors, and other stakeholders who all cringe at the mere mention of the words "performance management."  Like you, I cringe when thinking about performance appraisal and, more importantly, performance management.  The reason is the entire process is wrought with pitfalls.  No matter what you do, how you do it, and when you do...

  In the book "The Cobler of Preston," Christopher Bullock wrote the famous line, "’Tis impossible to be sure of anything but death and taxes." As sure as we are about paying our taxes, one thing we’re often unsure about is getting tax relief. That’s why I wanted to share some information about a tax credit opportunity I learned about. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) is not a new program. It’s a Federal tax credit available to employers for hiring individuals from certain target groups. But did...