Top 100 Influencers in HR, Recruiting & Talent Acquisition

Mike Foster v1.33 The Builder

Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by John Sumser in Blog, Top 100

By John Sumser

Mike Foster founded AIRS and the Human Capital Institute. Foster, a serial entrepreneur, saw windows of opportunity and exploited them. The two institutions changed the face of the Recruiting and HR segments.

AIRS is the precursor to today’s sourcing gold rush. Rooted in the focused use of search engines and internet tools for candidate discovery, the company grew from a training house to a software provider. Today, as a part of The Right Thing (an RPO), AIRS positions itself as the leading Recruiting Training Provider.

The Human Capital Institute, on the other hand, offers training, certification, continuing education, research and community for the entire spectrum of HR. The company is focused on HR development and shies away from the lobbying business (unlike SHRM).

In Mike’s view, information markets are like a pyramid. First you teach people how to do something. Then you turn that process into software. The you build users and super users. This is the story of the growth and development of AIRS.

HCI, which seems to follow a similar trajectory, is in the fleshing out of the training stage. Like AIRS, HCI offers certification. They’ve focused on the area that is untouched by other providers: HR as an element of strategy.

Foster’s real strength is as an entrepreneur. His background is information businesses, not HR. He comes from the school of learning from doing. His companies grow a=on a seven to ten year cycle. HCI is the third and it’s well positioned for success.

Foster’s philosophy is that business dominance is about how quickly you can change the game. It’s not always about efficiency; it’s not always about business model; it’s not always about automation. Inevitably, the game changer takes the prize.

“The Talent Management Business Science is like a Financial Science. Until there was a CFO, money was not really used /component/page,shop.product_details/flypage,flypage.tpl/product_id,46/category_id,6/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,44/”>cialis fast delivery strategically. It took one common view of money/capital before we got real understanding of the levers that make things work. The same is true of Talent Management but we have no single integrated view just yet. HCI wants to understand and define a full ecosystem approach to Human Capital.”

Here are some stats:

• HCI has 162,000 members.
• It offers 360 web casts per year.
• Web casts are rebroadcast to five regions of the world.
• All of the content on the site is free to anyone who will register.
• They provide a robust social network and are building out the tools.
• The services reach 67 countries.
• Over 20% of the membership is international.6,000 professionals have acquired certification.

Mike Foster has influenced the careers and world view of 10s of thousands of HR and Recruiting professionals who have taken the AIRS training, HCI courses or participated in the communities. By treating the problem as a business problem, he practices what he preaches.

John Sumser is the founder and CEO of cialis fast delivery href=”http://www.twocolorhat.com/”>TwoColorHat, a company specializing in market strategy for HR – Recruiting Vendors. You can keep up with his other stuff at johnsumser.com. Follow the rest of the Top 100 Influencers project.

Tags: AIRS, HCI, john sumser, Mike Foster, Top 100 Influencers