TEDxAmmon plans first event Feb. 21

You've probably heard of TED and TED Talks, but you will have a chance to find out on a more local level as TEDxAmmon rolls out its first event Feb. 21 at Eastern Idaho Technical College.

For those of you who don't know, TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design" and is a non-profit organization that started out with a conference in 1984. Since then its scope has become worldwide. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference and TEDGlobal -- TED includes the award-winning TED Talks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

TEDx is about local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At TEDxAmmon, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark discussion and connection in small groups. Presentations will be given from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., and the event will include a light dinner at 7 p.m. Seating is limited to 100 people, who will be selected through an application process.

“We are so excited to be hosting a slate of presenters with very exciting and innovative ideas,” said Brad Christensen, the organizer. “I think everyone who attends and tunes into the live broadcast on the web will be absolutely stunned by the caliber of people we have in this area and the captivating concepts they present.”

The speaker list will be released Feb. 3. For updates, information may be found at www.TEDxAmmon.com, on FaceBook at www.facebook.com/TEDxAmmon and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TEDxAmmon.

Who's feeling dread today?

Reporting is going to have to wait until later this afternoon. Meanwhile, here's a link from the Wall Street Journal to tide you over:
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/BL-MBB-15597

Developer to submit Ammon plats to planners for review Feb. 5

The ground at the corner of Hitt and Sunnyside Road.

It looks like things are beginning to move with the ground at the southeast corner of Hitt and Sunnyside Road, which is being offered by Ball Ventures and Woodbury Corp.

Ammon City Administrator Ron Folsom said that developer Ball Ventures will be asking the city's planning commission to review two plat proposals at its Feb. 5 meeting. After review, the commission votes on whether the plats should or should not be approved by the City Council, which meets the following night.

Folsom said he no information about who might be planning to build on the land, but said one of the lots being platted has already been sold. He said he has been told that three operators are ready to build as soon as the ground changes hands and the infrastructure is ready.

"I don't know if we're going to see anything going up this fall, but we're going to see things start to happen there this year," he said.

Finding the Right Person for the Job

Have you been one of the lucky business owners, managers, or supervisors in charge of a recruiting project recently?  If you have, you more than likely have sifted through numerous resumes, dodged candidate phone calls and sat through countless hours of interviews to settle on a candidate. Then, in a leap of faith, you hire the candidate and hope that he or she is the right choice.

For people involved in hiring and recruiting, it would seem like finding the right person shouldn’t be difficult, especially with unemployment rates staying steady over 5 percent at the state and national levels over the past few years.  Additionally, Baby Boomers are retiring, leaving positions open for the first time in decades.

So why is it so hard to find the right person? It has become increasingly important for businesses to look beyond a carefully crafted resume and well thought out responses in interviews.  In fact, even a perfect combination of education, experience and skills doesn’t guarantee a candidate will be selected even for an initial interview. 

Today’s businesses are concentrating their recruiting and hiring on finding the best fit.  This means going beyond the right fit on “paper” with the right combination of education, experience, knowledge, skill and ability. This is important because employee turnover is costly and can significantly hurt a company’s bottom line.

It doesn’t seem like it should make a huge difference with a person quitting here or there coupled with a termination or two, but it does make a huge difference.  Not only does a company face increased unemployment insurance rates with high turnover, but there is the time and resources it takes to recruit, hire and train replacements. This can amount to thousands of dollars.

Businesses have decided to get smart for the start about how they recruit. While they are still using traditional methods of recruiting -- newspaper classifieds, career fairs and postings on company Web sites -- recruiting efforts have expanded out to partnerships between management and marketing departments. Professionals and public relations campaigns are being used to match candidates to a company’s culture.

Businesses are going as far as creating mobile applications that send text messages to candidates the moment an opening is posted.  Social media have paved the way for real-time recruiting not only of potential candidates but also to a candidate’s center of influence.

On the outside, companies might seem to be overly selective in their recruiting and hiring efforts.  But these companies are paving the way for operating more efficiently, effectively, and in turn being more profitable, by taking the right steps to find the right people for the right workplace culture. Each company that chooses to recruit with this mindset is taking on a big challenge, but the dividend is huge -- employees that will stay on the job a long time and bring real value to the company.

Waiting for the layoff shoe to drop

When it comes to writing stories about layoffs, you won't find an older hand at it than me. In August 1980, I arrived in Jeffrey City, Wyo., to run the local newspaper. It was a uranium mining town that had boomed in the mid-'70s to nearly 4,500 people. Unfortunately, I caught it on the downturn. The lead story of my first edition, was "Western Nuclear announces 118 being laid off."

I spent a year there, but in June 1981 the other shoe dropped -- 244 lost their jobs at the mine and mill -- and I started looking for a new gig. After a brief layover in Laramie, where I was police reporter for the Daily Boomerang (greatest newspaper name ever), the then-hyphenated Post-Register hired me to be its central Idaho staff writer. I arrived in Challis in October 1981 to learn that Cyprus Mining Corp. would be laying off scores of people at its Thompson Creek molybdenum mine.

Here's the funny thing about layoffs and writing stories about them. Everyone knows they're coming, but corporations seem reluctant to make the news official in a timely way. Are they secretly humiliated or is their aim to torment reporters? Although I could be wrong, I don't think most corporations give reporters enough thought to want to torture them.

Nevertheless, when a layoff looms, we press people make our calls and visits and ask our questions. The supervisors and public affairs people say things like, "At the present time we have no current plans to lay anyone off." We wait and wait for official word before we file our stories. Then we're off to the races.

At present, I'm waiting for a piece of layoff news from a significant employer in Idaho Falls. From what I've heard, employees have already been told, but no press release or e-mail has been issued. It might come today; then again it might not.

Can you guess who I'm talking about? Feel free to weigh in. Let's put the magic off social media to work, people.