A recruiter must watch these 5 TED talks

You know TED talk is a video made from a presentation at the main TED conference or one of its numerous satellite events found worldwide. TED talks may be on any topic and are limited to a maximum length of 18 minutes. An 18 minutes presentation is lengthy enough to be serious and brief to the point, enough to hold the viewers’ attention. The incredible online compatibility of this length is noteworthy. Simply the length of a coffee break, here you enjoy a great talk to forward the link to a couple of your friends.

Coming to recruiters around the world, very few actually realise which skills are required to be good at this job. The recruiter definitely needs to possess sales skills, besides knowing how to interact with candidates and clients. The recruiter needs to be a skilled multi-tasker who may also be ideally skilled in emotion management. Finally, a good recruiter must have a great memory to remember almost all the key talents they would speak to along their career besides having the vital ability to judge positions, candidates and companies for making sure the ideal match among them.

Here are five selected TED talks HR professionals are advised to watch. These come from five renowned speakers.

Margaret Heffernan’s ‘Forget the Pecking Order at Work’

Margaret Hefferman is the former CEO of five separate firms besides being a successful author. In her talk at the 2015 TEDWomen Conference, she highlights the idea that value is placed only on employees that perform high, using the ‘super-chicken model’. She says it is an outdated and unproductive model. As a welcome change, she forwards a couple of workplace aspects to the minds of HR managers – social cohesion and emotional sensitivity. Her point, all employees have potential and oppressing low-performing workers costs the company in terms of loyalty as well as productiveness, is significant.

Dan Pink’s ‘The Puzzle of Motivation’

This is one of the most popular TED talks for HR professionals. Pink, as a career analyst turns his insight into factors that motivate employees at the workplace. According to him, wrong is the traditional concept that the right motivation for the workers is a financial incentive. Instead, he stresses mastery and purpose as the keys to motivation when success and productivity of workers come to question. However, this is definitely contrary to what HR managers are traditionally taught.

Leila Hoteit’s ‘Three Lessons on Success from an Arab Business Woman’

HR managers are said to be often careless about the concept that women, especially those of colour, are valuable as well as integral to any business venture’s success. Leila Hoteit, an Arab businesswoman and engineer, in her TED talk at BCG Paris aims to change that. Although the essence of this talk hardly seems to be focusing totally on HR, it is still considered for serious viewing. A perspective is offered by Leila in this talk on how women looked at their workplace positions; particularly mothers with children or those working in an area which hardly has a precedent of potential businesswomen. Leila’s talk can be of great use for businesses seeking to employ women from separate cultural backgrounds.

Jason Fried’s ‘Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work’

Many an HR manager can be misled by the title of this TED talk by Jason Fried who is popular as the founder head of Basecamp. The title can lure the viewers to assume it as something regarding freelancers. Also an author, Fried has given vital insight into when as well as where workers actually do their work. In his talk, he states that the majority of managers carry on operating on the idea that seeing workers work is inevitable. According to him, the fact is that most workers perform better when they are not distracted by both managers and meetings. Fried advocates the provision of uninterrupted time during work-hours for the employees, of course without senseless meetings.

Regina Hartley’s ‘Why the Best Hire Might Not Have the Perfect Resume’

A twenty-five year veteran of Human Resources management, Regina Hartley is an integral part of UPS Information Services and the force behind this widely accepted TED talk. A vital yet comfortable fact often deliberately overlooked by HR managers is what Hartley exposes in this talk. It is all about the idea that ideal recruitment on paper may not exactly deliver for a company as a candidate with an imperfect resume. The concept behind the talk extends to a message that candidates with less than perfect resumes may actually be more motivated or armed with the feel of empowerment since a firm obliges them by taking a chance on them. On the other hand, candidates with perfect resumes may feel less passionate or ambitious that those struggling for a position.