Sunday, February 5, 2012

Hire a Dynamite H.R. Person!

During my time with CNET, the single most competent and decent employee I met in the entire company (other than Max Mead) was part of the human resources department. I'll call her Linda.

The complexity of corporate employment issues keeps increasing, and it will only accelerate as the new health insurance rules cut in. Linda has a gift for patient, clear, kind explanation, both one-on-one and in the documents and materials she created. She designed a web page explaining some pretty unexplainable aspects of health coverage, and I found myself dumbfounded and moved by the level of care she'd taken, and the deep clarity she'd achieved.

One doesn't expect to be moved by a corporate health coverage materials. But magic can appear anywhere. It's a byproduct of caring, and diligently working until the result's completely permeated with that caring. Everything Linda did was like that. She was ace.

Decent, honest, smart, and eminently competent, Linda was let go by CNET, and now works elsewhere. But the current job's a poor fit, and her employer is going through merger spurts, so the position's future is not assured. Linda reports:
"I'm not located close to Silicon Valley which is causing problems. My dream would be to have a pod small space to crash during the week in Silicon Valley and come home on the weekends, but I don't know who is doing that besides maybe Google. I've talked to Google, Facebook, Zynga, no luck. They are looking for innovators since that's what they do - - I think innovation is getting a company to pay for good medical coverage."
Damn right, Linda.

I've offered some good tips here over the years (SIGA may seem like a dud for now, but we'll see how it works out in the end!), but this is as good as any: If you - or anyone you know - is in a position to hire a human resources person, Linda will be one of the best hires you'll ever make.

To be put in contact, shoot me an email.

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