"Hiring with your heart on your sleeve".

One idea I've had for a while now is to open up my personal blog-roll a bit for the world to see. I don't have the largest roll in the world, but I feel I'm developing an interesting collection of blogs that might appeal to visitors of this blog for a variety of reasons. Of course I have a lot of gamedev/gamebizdev blogs that I frequent (some of which I've permanently linked to on the sidebar) but I regularly visit some others that are less connected to my work yet very interesting.

Given the relative popularity of my last post I thought I'd start by pointing you all towards an article called 'Hiring with your heart on your sleeve', the latest from Austin Hill on his blog: BillionsWithZeroKnowledge. A few choice quotes:

The number one job of any leader is talent development

Hiring top players, who have the intelligence, passion and are a cultural team fit in the right positions is the single biggest leverage a management team has in building a successful company

Top talent is never looking for jobs. Jobs need to hunt out top talent.

First and foremost I like this blog because Austin often talks about subject matters that are important to me - a would-be team leader with a desire to truly be worth of my title. He has some excellent posts on leadership, business and entrepreneurial spirit in general and a few innovative talent-attracting strategies of his own.

Additionally his is one of the most visually pleasing blogs I frequent. He uses videos and images liberally, but they are very profesionaly integrated and really give value to his posts rather then try to cover up a lack of meaningful content. His blog inspired me to try and use images and video on my own blog more, I'm far from his level of polish, but its amazing what an embedded youtube video can do to make a post feel more rich.

Finally, Austin is a native Montrealer with a strong focus on the Canadian entrepreneurial scene, and given that the chance is good if you're reading this you too are from Montreal, you should check out his blog if for no other reason then to support one of your own!