HR Influencer: Mike Foster

Mike Foster has had an amazing impact on the HR universe during the past 15 years. The serial entrepreneur founded AIRS, the Recruitment Training Company and The Human Capital Institute (HCI). Both organizations focus on the professionalization of various aspects of the HR marketplace.

Foster’s real strength is as an entrepreneur. His background is information businesses, not HR. He comes from the school of learning from doing. His companies grow on a seven to 10-year cycle. HCI is the third and it’s well positioned for success.

Foster’s philosophy is that business dominance is about how quickly you can change the game. It’s not always about efficiency; it’s not always about business model; it’s not always about automation. Inevitably, the game changer takes the prize.

“The talent management business science is like a financial science. Until there was a CFO, money was not really used strategically. It took one common view of money/capital before we got real understanding of the levers that make things work. The same is true of talent management but we have no single integrated view just yet. HCI wants to understand and define a full ecosystem approach to human capital.”

Here are some stats:

• HCI has 162,000 members.
• It offers 360 web casts per year.
• Web casts are rebroadcast to five regions of the world.
• All of the content on the site is free to anyone who will register.
• They provide a robust social network and are building out the tools.
• The services reach 67 countries.
• More than 20 percent of the membership is international.6,000 professionals have acquired certification.

If you're not aware of the Human Capital Institute, you'll find that it is committed to helping the HR function become a strategic part of the enterprise. All of the operations courses and certifications have strategic contribution at their core.

It's easy to get involved. For the most part, all of the community oriented offerings are free to registrants.

As part of John Sumser’s ongoing Top 100 Influencers project, in which the key influencers working in recruiting, staffing, HR, HCM and HR technology are identified and profiled, John shares additional perspectives and compelling insights from those who are profiled here in Salary.com HR Voice each Friday.

John Sumser is a member of the Salary.com Board of Directors as well as the founder and president of Two Color Hat, Inc. Contributions to Salary.com HR Voice and this Website reflect the opinions of the authors and are not an official opinion of Salary.com, Inc., or any of its subsidiary or affiliated entities.