Thought for the Day: More and more, HR-Recruiting will be the place you go to understand the data about people in the organization. And, people outside of the organization. And, how they go together.

• Obama / One People
  Don’t let the title keep you away from this amazing visualization. It shows the changes in cell phone traffic over time during the week of Obama’s innauguration. HR should be pioneering the use of this sort of tool to help see and understand the flow of communications and work in the organization.
  The link shows domestic activity in Washington, DC. Also see the global visualization.
• Jorge Camoes Charts
  Follow this guy if you want an ongoing tutorial in how to make your data mean something.
  Always ready with a technique to make your spiel more effective.
• Show Me The Numbers (Amazon)
  The single most practical place to start making your presentations more coherent. Increasingly, we’re all going to be interpreting a sea of data. This is a very good starting point.
• Edward Tufte
  Tufte is the godfather of data visualization. His approach favors quantitative graphics that deliver more information the harder you look. There’s something to be said for ‘hit ’em over the head’ simplicity, Tufte’s not the place for that. If you’re trying to think about how visualization works in HR-Recruiting., start your thinking here. No one in HR is going to help you much.
• Moving Dependencies
  One of my favorite charts ever. It shows the ratio of dependents to workers (and whether they are older or younger) for countries over time.
  The ‘dependency ratio’ is one way of thinking about the ‘overhead’ a country carries. The higher the ratio, the more dependents per employee.