You don’t have to be an economist to realize that inefficient markets are bad. Where inefficiency reigns, information fails to flow freely, middlemen and time-lags enter, and costs expand. The same is true for inefficient talent markets. Where they exist, information—around what short- and long-term clusters of opportunity exist, and around who did what, when, and to what outcome—does not flow freely. Inefficient talent markets also make visibility difficult: the right person, with the right skills and aspirations, is difficult and expensive to find.

Remember the days when you needed a recruiter simply to find where the talent was? In inefficient talent markets, finagling deals with high-priced middlemen selling temporary access to their rolodexes is the norm. Inefficient talent markets strangle productivity. They don’t work.

What’s remarkable is that inefficient talent markets not only exist outside of companies, in regions and nations; they are also VERY REAL within enterprises—places where employees celebrate customer wins together, share lunch trays and coffee breaks, and become tribal groups that converge around common projects and tasks. And just as it is in broader markets, the cost of inefficiency in an internal talent market is high: a continual loss of talent, under-utilization of necessary skills, and a general inability to master the talent equation—what do we have, what do we need, where are the most business-critical gaps? In an enterprise where an inefficient talent market exists, poor hiring decisions abound, and morale is impacted. A glut of people and systems are required to prioritize the top 12,000 candidates for an open position. The information arteries are blocked. Hawking third parties can and do take advantage of blind spots; they see where your treasures—your high-potential, high-energy talent, and best sales, marketing, and product people—live.

Sound familiar?

That’s exactly the problem we strive to solve at UpMo.  Allow me to tell you how we’ve addressed the inefficiency problem. We’ve devised a unified, trusted talent marketplace that, when installed in your enterprise, matches your talent to internal jobs, assignments, rotations, and development opportunities. The marketplace we create for you promotes employee strengths, interests, and aspirations to hiring managers and HR. It provides a mechanism by which your internal networks can rival the external ones on LinkedIn. The marketplace we create for you also—finally!—delivers the tools and analytics managers, talent execs, and corporate leaders need to make predictive talent decisions.

The UpMo Talent Marketplace application is part of the broader UpMo suite of cloud technology that uses intelligence and matching technology to surface and connect the best internal talent with multiple types of internal opportunity. One CEO of a $3B company says that the marketplace gives him line of sight into the talent his company has already invested in, and real, tangible ways to curate and use the skillsets that exist within his company.

In this new market, where opportunity and skills freely flow through a frame of clarity and context, fewer employees are poached by competitors because employees find assignments, jobs, and rotations with new teams instead of with new companies. In this new market, executives understand the inventory of skills and competencies that exist internally. In this new market, employee engagement genuinely grows because the enterprise—finally!—can meet the promise that has long been implied: That it’s not just a job; it’s a career!

We’d love to tell you more.

Join me and UpMo’s VP of Product next Wednesday to go deeper into this fascinating topic, as well as a live demo of UpMo’s social talent engine:

Leveraging Enterprise Professional Networking to create Talent Market Efficiencies
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
11:00 am PST (2:00 pm EST)
JOIN >>

This morning, the UpMo team announced the general availability of its innovative cloud-based Social Talent management solution, and the team couldn’t be more excited.  The last few months have been peppered with late nights, hard work, and lots of collaboration with some of our private release enterprise customers who have helped shape an amazing product.

And so we present to you an industry first: a decisively unique, innovative and advanced take on talent management and enterprise professional networking. Check out this cool intro video.

While analysts talk about Social HR, Collaboration, Cloud, Consumerization, Gamification and a myriad of other buzzwords that are impacting the way enterprises engage and HR manages talent; we are thrilled to share a product that actually leverages those trends into an employee-centric, delightful and engagingly intuitive social platform that delivers internal talent mobility while reducing employee churn.

Alright, enough talk. Here are screenshots of some of our cool features:

Enterprise Professional Networking and Talent Career Collaboration

UpMo enables internal professional networking (think LinkedIn for the enterprise) so employees can build long-lasting mentoring and career relationships inside, NOT outside the enterprise.  UpMo also enables employees to showcase themselves (social personal brands are taking over), build dynamic profiles (does anybody think we still need resumes?), and collaborate around career goals (who needs formal training, when you have the knowledge right inside your company).

Internal Employee Mobility and Intelligent Job Hunting

UpMo matches employees with relevant opportunities: jobs, short assignments, rotations and content.  Push, not pull.  Socially, not in isolation.

Career Roadmapping and “Dream Job” Path Visualization

UpMo allows employees to visually and dynamically plan their careers, leveraging crowd intelligence.

Talent Marketplace and Analytics

UpMo offers real-time view of the entire internal marketplace including skills, career goals and aspirations. No need to search: UpMo automatically and continuously matches employees with open reqs, so talent acquisition teams and hiring managers can quickly find the right talent and hire from within.

UpMo also offers decision-driving analytics based on employee talent data: who to hire, where to focus, skills to develop, opportunities to provide, areas of attrition risk to address.

Want Some More?

Join me and our CEO, Promise Phelon, for a  live demo:

Leveraging Enterprise Professional Networking to create Talent Market Efficiencies
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
11:00 am PST (2:00 pm EST)
JOIN >>

Microsoft – “Hotdesking” in Amsterdam
Microsoft really takes employee mobility to the next level with its “hotdesking” setup in the company’s Amsterdam office (that is, no permanent desks or offices for anyone!). How about advocating planking, while they’re at it!

Consumerization of IT Creates Blindspots
64% of CIOs surveyed in a Compuware study claim that support for employee mobility is almost impossible due to reliance on external networks, making it much harder to control performance and the end-user experience. Among their key fears? Social media and consumerization of IT. Yikes.

Cultural Compatibility in M&A
An interesting look at how employee engagement and alignment with corporate culture can make or break mergers and acquisitions. Zynga’s failed bid for PopCap is noted as a key example. The two cultures were so distinct that no one could make it work. Somewhere, Tim Gunn is crying.

8 Powerful Approaches to Create Meaningful Employee Engagement
Chock full of resources about creating the best environment for happy employees, including a list of ways to create meaningful work. Our favorite, of course: Master Your Mojo.

Causecast Harnesses Do Good Activism for Better Employee Engagement
A new start-up is offering a turnkey platform to help companies become better corporate citizens and in the process increase employee engagement. Sounds good to us!

Enjoy these gems and let us know if we miss your favorite article from the last week by adding it to the comments below or sending us a shout on Twitter @UpMo.

Image courtesy of MyeOffice – Workplace Design and Technology, Office Space and CoWorking.

Passion is an X factor, something that you can’t always touch or see or understand, but that gives those who have it an edge over other employees.  What we know is… HR is looking for passion, whether recruiting or promoting people from within.  So, do you have it? It’s not, though, something you can fake (at least, not for very long). Therefore, it’s important to understand the edge passion gives you, and then to develop it in relation to your own field.

The word passion has many meanings and is often confused by the job seeker with “excitement” or “positive attitude”.  Nope, it’s not that.  Before we proceed, let’s define “passion” in the workplace.  According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, here are the two descriptions that fit our understanding of passion in the context of a job seeker and potential employer:

I believe that transparency and the lack of availability of opportunity for growth is at the heart of employee dissatisfaction.  Do your employees know what opportunities exist for them within your organization?  Are they given opportunities to hone and develop skills and engage in projects about which they are passionate? How do you give them a transparent view into internal mobility opportunities? Do you at all?  With LinkedIn making it easier and easier to poach your best talent, and aggressive poaching tactics becoming the norm in the tech industry and beyond, it is more important than ever to ensure that you are giving your employees the chance to grow their careers internally while creating an atmosphere of transparency in which they feel authentically valued.  After all, “hiring from within” tops the list of HR trends for 2012 according to most analysts.

Ensuring that your employees have a clear, comprehensive vision into the growth and mobility opportunities that may exist for them within your organization is key to helping employees feel engaged, supported, and keep them ignoring messages from external recruiters.  This also helps employees feel valued, seen, supported, and engages them, motivating them to do their best work to get ahead inside your organization.

In order to cultivate a corporate climate of loyalty and high levels of engagement it is critical to both make job mobility opportunities obvious in your organization as well as provide project opportunities that can help employees get where they want to go internally. How can you help your employees have a clear vision into available jobs in your organization? How do you develop a system that enables visibility into projects across the organization?  At UpMo, this is one of our missions: to level the playing field for employees so they can have as many opportunities internally as they have outside.  Lofty goal? Yes.  But if you want to ensure retention of your best employees this year, you must subscribe to a service or implementing programs that can provide deep visibility into internal opportunities for employees and make mobility a key aspect of your organization’s corporate climate.

Of course, there are many additional ways to keep talent happy and loyal beside what has been discussed here. Do you have other ways you know are working to ensure talent retention?  We’d love to hear them, so don’t hesitate to join the conversation…

Kevin Wheeler of ere.net makes predictions each year around recruiting and points out one major shift this year – Internal recruiting will skyrocket because employees have the knowledge background, baseline skillset and already work there:

“Perhaps one of the most significant trends will be a greater focus on finding current employees to fill existing jobs. Rather than continue time-consuming and expensive external searches, more hiring managers will opt to go with an almost-ready internal candidate who is a good cultural fit and is willing to learn fast. Although hiring managers may push back at this, management will encourage it, and the increasing difficulty in finding and recruiting top talent will help accelerate the trend.”

He also points out that “there is more focus now on finding satisfying and rewarding work than on just finding a job that pays the most,” for most employees. Hiring from within certainly pinpoints that satisfaction by helping employees grow their skills and know-how within the company they already have dedicated so much time and demonstrated value.

Clearly, we believe this is a win-win.  Employees get to progress their careers in a more meaningful and dynamic way, while a company can respond nimbly to the changing talent needs of the organization, leaving talent acquisition teams to focus their external hiring efforts to those jobs that can only be filled with external candidates.

Mr. Wheeler is not the first one to recognize the internal mobility and recruiting, Josh Bersin from Bersin & Associates as well as John Sumser of HRExaminer have zeroed in on this trend for 2012, and we couldn’t agree more with these 3 thought leaders.

Check out the full article here: 5 Predictions for Recruitment 2012, by Kevin Wheeler on ere.net.

If pondering your performance review is something you shy away from, you’re not alone. However, since only 1% of companies have done away with these annual reviews, you’ll have to look at it sometime. Fortunately, there are productive ways for you to think about your review and the whole reviewing process.

Keep a Balanced Perspective

Very few people like performance reviews, and that includes the people who give them. In fact, almost 60% of HR execs give their review system a grade of “C” or lower. Nancy Seeger, an HR pro out of Glenroy, Inc., was part of a team that eliminated performance reviews at that company. “No one liked giving them. No one liked receiving them,” she says.  In fact, most companies only keep their current review system because they don’t know what else to do, and they’re too busy focusing on other aspects of their business to figure out a better process.

Knowing these things will help you put your review in perspective. While you want to do well on it to get your raise and/or bonuses and to have a better chance at promotion, the truth is that it may very well not be the most accurate assessment of how you’re doing at work. Holding this balance will help you look at your review in a more objective light.

Focus on Relationships

A recent and currently-unpublished study shows that, among other things, companies without performance reviews have stronger supervisor-employee relationships. Employees who don’t have to think about reviews are less intimidated by their bosses and less concerned about being judged and found wanting, so they’re more likely to feel, and actually develop, closer ties with those managers.

While you cannot undo a poor performance review and no relationship will make up for bad performance at your job, developing a closer relationship with your boss will help you feel more confident at work. After all, when you and your boss know each other better, you’re more likely to get feedback before the next review comes out, so you can improve any areas that are lacking.

Ask for More Immediate Feedback

If you don’t like the review process or you don’t feel you were fairly reviewed, request more immediate feedback from your supervisor. Many supervisors are being encouraged to give this kind of feedback anyway, so you’re probably not asking for something unheard of. Not only will this save you from repeating things your supervisor perceives as mistakes over the course of a year, but it will help you feel like your supervisor is paying attention to what you do. It also give you the chance to ask any questions before you’re being evaluated.

In addition to giving you more feedback, setting up regular times to meet with your supervisor can pave the way for making changes in the overall review process. Many companies that eliminate reviews institute, instead, weekly or monthly one-on-one meetings between supervisors and employees where both can give feedback on how things are going. If it works for you, that might be a catalyst for larger change.

Make Suggestions to Improve the Process

If you don’t enjoy getting or giving performance reviews, think of something that might work better. Even if you aren’t in a position to make suggestions to HR, if you have a good relationship with your supervisor, you can start requesting a few changes that are within his or her purview. Big changes often start on the lowest levels, so don’t be discouraged by your lack of influence.

In some cases, regular meetings won’t be possible for you or your supervisor. In that case, you can request a limited number of specific goals, and ask not only what you have to do to meet them, but what exceeding them would look like in your supervisor’s eyes. That way, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to be an excellent employee.

Whatever you do, don’t let your review languish long-term. Suck it up, see exactly what your supervisor has to say, and decide where to go from there. Most employees find that their reviews aren’t so bad, once they drum up the courage to look at them.

They don’t want to leave though. It’s a pain: new boss, new team, new everything… start all over again. They want to stay with you, but you have to make it easy for them to find ways to leverage their skills within your organization.

This is why we created UpMo: the leading innovation in talent mobility, keeping employees engaged, loyal and motivated.

Check out our spanking new vid introducing how UpMo works. Would love you hear what you think:

Are you ready for UpMo? Get a FREE trial started now, no strings attached. We mean it.

1. Don’t Take it Personally

2. Maintain an Appropriate Boundary

3. Keep Things Impersonal

4. Do Great Work

5. Help Them Look Good

6. Don’t Fuel the Fire

7. Be Proactive

8. Leave it at the Office

Easier said than done, right?  Well, here are some very specific ways to execute on these strategies.

1. Don’t Take it Personally

As long as you’re doing everything that you need to do, know that your boss’s difficulties probably don’t have anything to do with you. If anything, your boss may feel threatened by you and be looking for things to critique. Whether this is rational or not, it still doesn’t have anything to do with who you are or how you’re actually doing at work.

It’s easy to say that you won’t take things personally, and much harder to actually apply it in a situation. A more common reaction is to have an emotional, personal response, and to take some time away to discharge it. Contain your emotions when you’re around your boss, then take a bathroom break or a coffee break to clear your head.

2. Maintain an Appropriate Boundary

While healthy workplace boundaries are always important, they’re even more important when you are working with a difficult boss. Whether your boss tends to be critical, aloof, or to share too much, maintaining boundaries is an important step in managing the situation. Keep your conversations to work-related topics and, if possible, only interact with your boss when you need to.

Remember, too, that you can only be responsible for yourself. While your boss may infuriate you, frustrate you, and make you want to tear your hair out, you cannot change him or her. The only person you can change is yourself, and sometimes that’s a relief.

3. Keep Things Impersonal

When you talk to your difficult boss, don’t ask him how his day is going. This will only give him the chance to start talking about topics that aren’t directly related to work, which probably isn’t what you want.

Keeping things impersonal also helps you maintain your emotional cool. Almost every difficult situation will only be made worse if you react emotionally, especially if your emotions are strong and negative. When every conversation is focused on a specific, work-related topic, you will have less of a chance of flying off the handle over your continued frustrations.

4. Do Great Work

It can be tempting to neglect your tasks when your boss is being difficult. Not only is this a passive-aggressive technique that will only make the situation worse, but it doesn’t show you in a good light, either.

If you do good work, on the other hand, and keep up with your tasks as best you can even if your boss is overloading you, he won’t have anything to complain about, even if he’s looking for something. It also means that you can defend yourself if things get really bad and he takes the problem to someone else.

5. Help Them Look Good

Many bosses get difficult when they feel threatened, either by you or with failure on a project or a deadline. If you’re doing your work, you should already be doing your part to make sure they look as good as possible. However, if you have a chance to say or do something that explicitly communicates that they’re doing a good job, don’t hesitate to take your chance.

This can also help your boss understand that you have nothing but good will towards him or her. When your relationship has had conflict in the past, it can be easy for the boss to assume that you don’t wish the best. Saying good things about your boss, even when it’s hard, will help reassure them that, from your standpoint, the relationship is still valuable.

6. Don’t Fuel the Fire

Everyone has their pet peeves, including your boss. If your boss is difficult or in a difficult mood, take note of what these are and avoid them. Thus, you may be able to avoid a confrontation that, otherwise, would have ruined your day and given you an even worse taste in your mouth for the job.

In addition, if your boss is regularly doing something that annoys you, politely ask her to stop. If she leaves papers on your desk, for instance, ask her to put them in the Inbox so you can be sure to find them. When you give a solid work-related reason for your request, you have a better chance of not only getting it, but impressing the boss in the process.

7. Be Proactive

It can be easy to just let things slide in a difficult relationship with a boss. Often, it’s easier to avoid discussing things than it is to bring them up and risk a conversation that will leave you frustrated, hurt, angry, and more. However, not bringing these things up, especially when they pertain to necessary work-related tasks, will only make things worse later.

If you need to bring something up and you know it’s a bad time or you’re not sure how, let your boss choose the time and place. Let them know that you have some questions, tell them what the questions pertain to, and then let them take it from there. When you present your questions or the situation, note how it effects not just you but the overall project or set of tasks in front of you. Remember, keep the conversation work-focused and it may go easier than you’ve anticipated.

8. Leave it at the Office

At the end of the day, whether it’s been a good day or a bad one, leave your work-related stresses at the office. This will help you have a balanced work-home life, and it will help you stay healthy physically and mentally in spite of the difficult situation at the office.

If you just can’t leave it behind, find someone in your personal life who is willing to listen and set a time-frame on the conversation. Discuss the situation or vent your feelings, let them respond, and then be done with it. Don’t let your difficult boss ruin your personal life even if he’s making it hard to be happy professionally.

In the end, remember that it isn’t worth sacrificing your health to work for a difficult person. If there’s no solution to your problem that involves you staying in your current position, the next best thing might be to start a job search. Even if you have a million reasons not to do this, remember that happiness and health are closely linked and you might be amazed at how much better you feel in a new job situation.

For others, distilling exactly what makes them happy and excited is a much more complicated process. If you struggle with finding your passion, there are some ways you can start thinking about it that should eventually be fruitful. While there’s no one, sure way to figure out what your passion is, the techniques below should help you begin to think about it more clearly.

Finding Your Passion

Do Some Soul-Searching

One of the most important parts of finding your passion is searching your soul. There are many places online offering lists of questions and different ways to reflect on the things you enjoy, the things you would pursue even if you weren’t paid, and then to distill these into your passion. In general, you’ll want to spend some time pondering what really makes you happy, excited, and feeling like you want to jump out of bed in the morning.

Dig Deeper

Ask yourself why you like the things you came up with during your soul-searching. Sometimes, you’ll find that you like something for itself – that’s a passion. Other times, though, you’ll find that you like something for the sake of something else. For instance, you might like building toys for your kids because you like working with your hands, or you may find that you enjoy team projects because you often get to take a mentorship role in them. In these cases, this deeper “why” is probably your passion, not the activity itself.

Talk to Others

Ask the people closest to you what they see as your passion. This can be a double-edged sword, because they aren’t inside your head the same way you are. However, it can also give you some insights that you might not have had on your own (or it can help you find them faster). Be sure you only talk to people who you feel know you well. Otherwise, this will be more frustrating than beneficial.

Take a Test

If you aren’t sure where to start or you want some more “objective” input, take a test to find out what makes you happy or what gets you excited. There are some good tests online, if you want to do it that way. These tests can both help you get started by pointing you in the right direction, or help you refine your passion if you’re struggling to distill it later. (Note: I haven’t used either of the ones I’ve linked to here, though they come with good recommendations. You will have to register, but after that the process should be free).

Give Yourself Time

Sometimes, finding your passion involves trial and error. If there’s something in your life that you think might be a passion, try pursuing it for a few months and see what happens. Do you burnout, or are you even more thrilled about it than when you started? If you’re excited, you have probably landed on something that is truly important to you. If you’re tired, ask yourself why. Maybe there’s an aspect of the activity that’s a passion, even if the whole of it doesn’t thrill you. It make take several trials like this to find something that’s truly a passion. Even then, you may need to refine the way you think about it to really nail down what you love.

Turning Passion Into a Job

Do You Really Want to Work at Your Passion?

Before you start looking for careers that allow you to do the things you’re most passionate about, you need to decide if working at your passion is something you really want. For some people, working in a field involving their passion means making too many compromises, which leaves them more unhappy than they were before. This is often true of artistic fields especially, where a writer who wants to write novels may have to sling advertising copy, or an artist who wants to paint Paris may have to do graphic design instead. For some people, these compromises are acceptable. For others, they are miserable.

If you decide not to pursue your passion as a career, realize that you can still pursue it and enjoy it fully. Many people find day jobs that they enjoy, even if they aren’t passion-centric. These jobs, then, enable them to pursue their passion outside of business hours, leading to a balanced, fulfilled life.

Give Yourself (More) Time

Whether you choose to pursue your passion as a career or not, you need to give it some space in your life. This can be an hour a week, if that’s what you can give it. The point is to carve out some time. This time may be spent actively pursuing the passion, or it may be spent looking for work that will allow you to pursue it.

Investigate Careers

There are a surprising number of careers out there that most people have never heard of. Take some time to look into them. You may even want to schedule a meeting with a career counselor or coach, as these people are more familiar with what’s available, career-wise, than the average person. This is especially true if your passion is a little more abstract (like “bringing people together”) rather than concrete (“writing” or “acting”). There will be many places where you can bring people together, so you’ll want to see what is available before you begin pursuing something.

Jump In!

Depending on the career you want to pursue, you may need further training, an apprenticeship, etc. Swallow your fear (and there’s almost always fear at this point) and jump in. Even if the steps you’re taking are very small, know that they’re eventually leading you to a job you will love. Note that this process of preparation can take years, so you’ll want to have a long-term view of these goals. Remember that many of the best things don’t happen overnight, and keep plugging away until you have the job that makes you happy.