I am working in an office which has just taken on two apprentices.  They appear bright, capable and charming.  Not the stereotypical mono syllabic non communicators with no work ethic that you hear about.

The problem is what do they do?  They have done the first set of tasks, that little set of not important non urgent nice to have tasks that every office has.  Now what?  What are they actually going to do?

This sparks for me the really big issue of where are the entry level jobs in a service based, white collar economy?  And it makes me think that this is maybe what is really at the heart of the current malaise of youth unemployment

Following on from the article on how to tell if a graduate is on track,  this is a second checklist of what needs to be in place from the organisation's side.  What are the structures and processes needed for managers to ensure a graduate can succeed.  The items are broken into three sections.  Interstingly, all 16 items are in the must have not nice to have category  

I have been  inspired by a blog from Tim Ferriss on why David Lee Roth always insisted on the contract clause of "A big bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out" (link to blog here) to write checklists.

This is a checklist to see if a graduate is on track.

Recently I read an article saying that the War for Talent for was an out of date concept Part of the critque was that "war" is not a useful metaphor for which I have some sympathy.  The major argument though, was that it is more important to take a holistic view and that everyone is talent, and to discriminate is a bad idea The three thoughts I had were 

A follow on from the Top 10 strategies for learning at work this article looks at the challenges that we find people have