How can you maximize your hiring efforts through social media? Ask your savvy employees to help you indentify quality candidates.

One thing that I’ve learned throughout my career is how overly trusting people in the workplace can be. I cannot count the number of times I’ve investigated a case where a long-time bookkeeper embezzled millions of dollars from a company, simply because the associate was like an entrusted “member of the family” and given the “keys to the kingdom.”

Finding the right talent in any industry is tough. Trying to stand apart from the crowd and be an industry leader in attracting top talent can be even more difficult.

So yesterday I was on the local event circuit. I joined 80ish folks for lunch at Corporate College for the CBC Magazine event, NEO’s Skyrocketing IT Presence and then sat in on One Community and ideastream and their Tech Town Hall event in the evening.

We’ve been working hard this year on deployment of the strategic plan that the NEOSA board laid out. One of the most prominent aspects of our plan centered on the talent needs of our members. So I’m very pleased to announce that Patrick Antos has joined our team, effective Monday, September 22, 2014.

From the NEOSA Quarterly Survey, we know nearly every local tech company is hiring. And we also know that many report difficulties landing top tech talent, from the survey and from anecdotal conversations.

Start-ups are a really important part of the tech industry here in Northeast Ohio.  JumpStart was an early leader, providing funding, mentoring and more and in the past few years several tech accelerators have launched in the CLE:  Bizdom, FlashStarts and LaunchHouse.  They each strive to help start-ups get off the ground and gain early traction.

Inc. Magazine recently released its Inc. 5000 list, great to see so many awesome companies from the Northeast Ohio on the list. All told, fifty-three companies from NEO are on the list, more than Columbus and Cincy, which is cool.

There’s almost always something cool happening in local tech, from conferences to awards, to networking and more. But I recently met up with Marsha Dobrzynski, and she’s doing something REALLY cool, she founded the Cleveland High School for Digital Arts.

Selling a car is not that hard, selling a house is a lot harder. But selling your software company, now that can be challenging.