Blog

The word “expert,” is one that’s used by many but it’s hard to say that any of us can definitively agree on what does and does not make an expert. The closest I’ve heard is the definition from Malcolm Gladwell: It takes 10,000 hours of learning to become an expert ...
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At our firm, we have a real process called “The Talman Way” that’s fairly extensive but nonetheless vital to the ideal fit between candidate and client we’re striving to achieve. When a technical candidate has reached a certain point later in that process, they’ve often taken a series of tests ...
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Without question, one of the most popular topics in our business right now is how to get a job working with artificial intelligence / machine learning. At one level, we have clients that want cutting-edge, top-of-the-line researchers. Fair enough. However, there is one issue we’ve seen arise in lot of ...
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While there has been an issue with how expensive it is to build machine learning systems and “feed” them, there’s good news to be had in that we foresee the cost of building these systems and feeding them continually going down. And as that happens, their usefulness and applicability is ...
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As we’ve written a few times on the challenging, ever-evolving H1B Visa process for employers and international candidates, a minor but interesting change to the H1B Visa program has occurred that’s worthy of you to be aware of if you hire people from that program. There are two types of ...
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As we’re frequently dealing with senior people in high-frequency trading shops and hedge funds, it’s not uncommon to see many of them face a non-compete situation that can last as long as 18 months. This person may be privy to a process that is material to generating revenue, so a ...
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For a very long time, we've heard about shortages of people with specific skills but most of those skills in question tend to be on the newer side of the spectrum. For example, if you listen to people at Google and Amazon, they're in dire need for machine learning talent ...
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In the last 18 months, with a variety of tech companies facing a solid amount of turnover – as in people leaving after only a year or two – you’d imagine that many candidates don’t need to put a whole lot of work into the entire interviewing process. They’d just ...
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In one of our recent posts, we wrote about the coming revolution in machine learning that candidates have to prepare themselves for. In truth, we’ve heard a lot of talk about it for several years now, but we still haven’t seen a lot of activity utilizing machine learning in many ...
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Many times, we’re preconditioned to think of hiring for talent that’s right in our own backyard. It’s convenient and let’s face it – there’s less to consider in the way of relocation expenses if it’s local and “home grown.” However, if we’re going to always be looking not only for ...
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Recently, Google had a massive walk-out – about 20,000 employees – over its handling of cases of sexual harassment and misconduct. It’s part of a shift we’re seeing in tech environments in what some are branding, “tech worker activism.” Employees in the tech space seem louder than ever, essentially saying, ...
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Before I get started about what I foresee in the tech space for the coming year, let me share my favorite line about predictions, from Niels Bohr: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” So while you may take some of these predictions with a grain of ...
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When Amazon chose the markets of New York and northern Virginia for its HQ2 company headquarters, a number of cities on the short list asked the same question: “Why not us?” Based on the chatter around town, Chicago was no different in asking this, especially since it appeared at one ...
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Until recently, Amazon had an AI-based tool to screen candidates that probably sounded really good at first on paper. In fact, it seemed like the Holy Grail: You give the tool 100 resumes, it helps screen for the top candidates and, wow, look at all the time we’ve saved! Right? ...
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Someone recently came into my office with a background in database management for the financial industry over many years. He asked, “I’m not seeing a lot of needs that entail the use of Oracle products…why is that?” My answer, basically, was that a heavy background in Oracle didn’t matter because ...
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A few months ago, Facebook signed a new lease in the Loop comprising a whopping 263,000 square feet – a space that many speculate can hold 2,000 employees or more. Around the same time, we learned that Google was planning on adding 100,000 square feet of office space. Pinterest leased ...
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In our last post, we talked about how some people are drawn to the idea of making it big in an expensive area like New York or San Francisco while working for one of the top companies in the tech space. We often refer to this idea as “winning the ...
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I’ve written before about the concept of “The Lottery” as it pertains to certain people who want to have it all in their careers. What’s winning the lottery to them? Living in a big house in a highly desirable location like San Francisco or New York with a wide range ...
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I was reading a fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal focusing on a very large software-specific private equity firm that has a unique strategy – when they buy a company that happens to be based in a high cost area, they subsequently try to diversify the geographic location of ...
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If there’s one observation that can be made in regard to the average job tenure at a company, it’s that these days, people generally don’t stay in one place for very long. By now, the assumption is made by many hiring managers at tech companies that within two or three ...
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There’s a school of thought among some in the technological space that as advanced as we humans have become at coding, code generated by machines is getting better all the time. Still, the future lies with people who can leverage the code that machines are generating for us. We still have such ...
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