Cindy Nicola | TotalPicture Radio - The Voice of Career Leadership Development

Cindy Nicola

Sunday, 28 January 2007

A Passion For Talent

A Big Picture report from the Talent Unconference with Cindy Nicola, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Electronic Arts.

Cindy Nicola

"We hire people that have the skills that you can't teach" Cindy Nicola

Just returned from the first "Talent UnConference," organized by Jeff Hunter and Cindy Nicola at Electronic Arts. The event was held at the incredible EA studio in Redwood Shores, California, and attracted 70 professionals from every dimension of the HR and recruiting equation: brought together by the common interest in people and a venue which promised real dialogue, around real issues.

The "Un" part of the conference meant there were no sales pitches, no press releases, no product launches: a hype-free day featuring very smart people addressing real issues around HR, talent acquisition, education, technology, and retention. Over the next several weeks, we will be bringing you interviews with many of the session leaders, organizers, and attendees of the Talent Unconference.

In our first interview, Cindy shares her passion for the business of talent, some take-aways from the Talent Unconference, and the unique culture of Electronic Arts.

20 Min:

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Cindy Nicola's Bio:
Cynthia (Cindy) Nicola is the Sr. Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Electronic Arts (EA), the world's leading interactive entertainment software company with 8,000 employees worldwide. She joined EA in April 2001.

Having worked as a strategic HR business partner, she has proven skills in global staffing and resourcing, organization and leadership development, rewards and recognition, compensation, change management and TQM with demonstrated influence in other functional areas. Prior to EA, Cindy held positions with Avery Dennison. She joined Avery in 1998 as the head of HR at Averyâ€™s largest labels manufacturing plant in Milford, MA. She was subsequently promoted to Sr. Staffing Manager at Averyâ€™s headquarters in Southern California. Prior, to Avery Dennison, Cindy held multiple HR roles at the A.W. Chesterton Company. In her last role at AWC, in the mid-to-late 90â€™s, Cindy headed up the quality function where she had responsibility for HR, TQM and a rigorous ISO 9001 program. Building on over 15 years of experience and significant contributions at both the corporate and divisional levels, Cindy's recent charter at EA, has been to provide visionary leadership, passion and creativity in building a talent engine. She has leveraged non-traditional models, processes, and tools to attract, recruit, and retain the highest quality talent. Cindy has global responsibility for recruiting, including University Relations, talent technology, and programs. She has spent the last year building relationships across the globe
to optimize talent acquisition at EA.

In 2002, she was named as one of the top 100 Recruiting professionals on Recruiter.com.

Cindy holds an MS degree in Social Work, with a sub-concentration in management, from Boston University and a BA in Human Studies (Psychology Major/Sociology Minor from Bradford College.

About Electronic Arts:
Source: EA web site
Electronic Arts (EA) is the world's leading independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software for advanced entertainment systems such as the PlayStationÂ® 3, PlayStationÂ®2 computer entertainment system, the PSPâ„¢ (PlayStationÂ® Portable) system, Xbox 360â„¢, XboxÂ® video game system from Microsoft, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo GameCubeâ„¢, Game BoyÂ® Advance and the Nintendo DSâ„¢ as well as PC and games for mobile phone devices.

EA has been a leader in its field since the company was founded in 1982. Since its inception, EA has been a creative leader, and today, the company continues to innovate and improve interactive gaming. By combining diverse media such as computer animation, video, photographic images, motion capture, 3D face and body rendering technologies, computer graphics, and stereo sound with contributions from storywriters, film directors and musicians, EA uses technology and creativity to develop mainstream entertainment through an interactive medium.
EA's broad portfolio of franchises includes global sports blockbusters from its EA SPORTSâ„¢ brand including Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer, and NBA Live. The diverse offering from its EAâ„¢ brand features wholly-owned intellectual properties such as Need For Speedâ„¢, The Simsâ„¢, and Burnoutâ„¢ franchises, as well, as key Hollywood licenses for games based on The Lord
of The Ringsâ„¢, Harry Potterâ„¢, and The Godfatherâ„¢ properties. EA SPORTS BIGâ„¢ franchises include: NFL STREET, NBA STREET and FIFA STREET.

EA's five hub studios are in Redwood Shores (US), Los Angeles (US), Orlando (US), Vancouver (Canada) and Surrey (UK), along with development studios in Chicago (US), Montreal (Canada), Warrington (UK) and Tokyo (Japan) and boasts a development team that is more than 5,200 people strong. The company's European corporate headquarters are located in Geneva, Switzerland. With an eye on the global marketplace, EA continues to expand its international presence, most recently having opened offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul. EA is focused on continuing to grow its business presence in Asia Pacific and Japan.
Additional growth drivers for EA are in online gaming and the mobile cell phone markets. EA supports both the PlayStation 2 online offering from Sony and Microsoft's Xbox LiveÂ® capabilities and continues to build out its PC online functions including EA Downloader. EA's Pogo.comâ„¢ casual gaming site offers web-based games including a Club Pogoâ„¢ subscription service which has more than 1.26 million active and playing players. EA launched a mobile games initiative in 2004 and in 2006 acquired JAMDAT, making EA Mobile the world's leading game developer and publisher for mobile phones.