While providing consulting services to the governments of the Middle East on how to build cities that are powerhouses of talent, we at HireLabs realized the true meaning of the saying ‘birds of a feather flock together’. The same logic holds true for talent. True talent usually has a hunger to learn and innovate, and when you create an environment where talent lives  and works in close proximity to each other, you are on your way to building a knowledge economy. Before we started our research, we made a claim: Talent attracts talent!

Our research noted how history points to Baghdad at the turn of the first millennium as a thriving knowledge economy. The next major knowledge economy was created when Venice and Florence took Europe from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance era. In modern times, England transitioned into the industrial age from an agricultural society. Read more…

New data from ExecuNet Survey 2009 on C-class trends proves a distinct point – Executives do not spend enough time on the job to hit peak performance.

This is made worse by the fact that executives spend half of a year actively searching for jobs.

So the questions is not what competencies must executives possess to stay motivated – rather it is how well can executives understand the business.

Having asked that question, it shouldn’t be difficult to grasp the underlying factor that executives must speak finance. Add to that a strong leadership ability, and you’ve got a true superstar executive who can really begin to rake in greater benefits for the business while staying motivated.

It has, thus, come to pass, that given the new dynamics of a new economy, the best person to have on the helm will be the one with a strong financial background. After all, Read more…

If you are anything like most of us, you wouldn’t be able to help but be in absolute awe of the phenomena that is the CEO. Go on. Admit it!

But often it has been observed that most CEOs haven’t always been the performing types (must I post a link here to confirm the claim!?), and that’s because so few of them can get beyond the glamor of the title!

So many of them don’t even understand what is being expected of them, let alone measuring against some performance metrics. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being impossible), how hard do you think a CEO’s job is? Answer: 10! But do you believe the job is simple to do? Absolutely Yes! Read more…

Evaluate a CEO: The HireLabs Talent Assessment Tool-Kit

A CEO stands for the corporate board. How it operates, and what strategies the board develop? The whole image of what is the corporate board-room reflects through the CEO.

Setting the tone for everything that the company eventually undertakes, a CEO’s decision will impact the business from all corners. Corporate strategic plans are mostly between a 3 to 5 years period. That’s a lifetime (in corporate life terms). A CEO’s evaluation should not wait for the end of that period. A regular CEO assessment will need to be conducted.

The regular assessments will increase and improve the board by ensuring across-the-board accountability. This will form a unique partnership between the proverbial shepherd and the herd.

Hirelabs recommends having a fiscal dimension in the CEO assessment. As detailed here, the CEO must Read more…

A HireLabs Inc. research report
August 2009

Increasing Returns by understanding Talent

The VCs must ask themselves if their companies are run by management teams¹ that capable of driving companies as the recession bottoms. Studying the shift in the current unemployment rates in the US, HireLabs can forecast a recovery in the international labor market – lead by the US – sometime around Feb 2010. Very few CEOs of venture-backed companies have the experience of riding a company out of a recession successfully.

The first sign that a management team is not performing at optimum is when market conditions are blamed for loss of productivity. The questions that investors should ask their management team is whether the competition was able to monetize on the opportunities in the given market conditions. Read more…

Strategic market development at HireLabs takes another leap with an innovative partnership with one of industry’s leading names in human capital data analysis for talent management.

HireLabs has officially announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with the Albuquerque-based Group Harmonics Inc.

This strategic partnership could well define talent management strategies at organizations globally. Talent assessment systems, and the analytical data they need to measure a firm’s Read more…

In his interview with Jehan Ara on “In the Line of Wire” Saleem Qureshi, President & COO HireLabs Inc., talks about the need for employment assessment so that people are placed in the right professions, in the right departments and at the right level of competency.

Saleem and his company work mainly with large organizations to ensure that all employees and potential employees are assessed to determine that they are right for the jobs they are being placed in. I asked him if similar assessments could be used to determine which disciplines kids should select when entering university and what kind of professions they were suitable for.

Saleem answers this and many other questions in this episode of ITLoW.

What is HireLabs? According to Saleem, HireLabs is the leading innovator of pre-employment assessment services. Their goal is to streamline and simplify the HR decision-making process to maximize talent alignment while minimizing company costs. HireLabs works in collaboration with data collected from the US Department of Labor and Stanford University to create the next generation in employment assessments. Read more…

Do you remember that guy who got a funding of $3million in his the series A round, he had an impressive business plan, he displayed rapid growth and claimed he was 12 months from breaking even?

Do you remember how he delivered his commitments during the first 6 months, which was followed by a series of losses? This situation is all too common, we have all seen this, but now instead of ignoring this Read more…

Over the past few years, we’ve seen new and traditional private equity firms slowly gain interest in the HR technology space.  Private equity investment isn’t actually new to the HR vendor market.  General Atlantic Partners has been one firm that has take interest in HR over the years. humancapitalist.com, The Human Capitalist » How Important is Private Equity in Human Capital and Talent Management?, Jul 2009

You should read the whole article.

One of the most beneficial aspects of an evidence based talent assessment tool is to identify a candidate’s talent gap in a specific job role. With the range of assessment diagnostic techniques developed at Hirelabs Inc., and experience in internal development processes at our clients’ base, HireLabs can work in a consultative position with your organization to help you identify where talent exists in your organization, and then put in place effective measures to support the rapid development of your employees. Read more…