This week's news round-up is slightly different in that we're permitting ourselves a comment or two...

As you might expect, the economic downturn is exercising minds: from the predicted training budget squeeze to the secrets of success. A potential remedy could be coaching while organisations are urged not to inadvertently fire their brightest talent: Generation Y causing trouble at the top for talent management.

While we're on the subject of talent, two stories have caught our eye, the first being What talent is going untapped in your organisation?. We reckon there's a potential debate here about why employers don't ask about these skills, why employees don’t volunteer them and whether anyone really wants to bridge that gap? The second was The importance of workplace learning 'overlooked'.

It was a tough call to select our favourite story of the week: Students learn through mobile phones almost scooped it – but in the end we just had to go for
Bad dress sense could keep unemployed out of retail work. Our initial response: what price a qualification in common sense? But then we started wondering about defining common sense and the best way of teaching it...

Of course, these weren't the only stories we’ve covered this week. Go to also on TrainingZone.co.uk to see all our news and features.