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The Task of Predicting Performance for Complex Jobs
Pre-employment tests are used for a lot of different jobs—everything from entry level clerks to executives. One of the best known users of tests is a consortium of 32 companies that uses tests for their 1760 “front of the house” employees. I am speaking of the...
Really, We Can Do That
The Sunday NY Times had an interesting interview with Daniel Hendrix of Interface, Inc. The primary focus of the discussion was on Hendrix’s views on work-life balance and delegation. That message is important to leaders who are working way too much. Unless you are...
Another Example From California Law as to Why You Need Honest Performance Appraisals
I am more than open to the argument that most performance appraisal systems are mean, misguided, and do not improve performance. Many are designed to be punitive rather than part of a coaching process. Supervisors hate doing them because they are time consuming and...
Is Who THEY Know the Best Person for YOU to Hire?
I’ll admit right now that recruiting is not my specialty. You find them, I’ll assess them. However, this article in the NY Times caught my eye. It describes how some companies are aggressively encouraging employee referrals of job candidates. While the article...
What if Someone Doesn’t Interview Well?
Here’s one of my hiring pet peeves: When talking about assessment, a manager says, “What if the person doesn’t test well? Do we still have to use the test results?” As with every question, I first try to think through why it was asked. Had this person failed a...
This Interview is Really About Me
I’m always interested in reading about leadership and selection issues from a different perspective. As in any field, HR (and industrial psychology) can become an echo chamber of the same ideas without generating much new thought. With that in mind, I was fascinated...
How Much Does Training Cost?
Most employees need training after they are hired, particularly at the entry level. If you read here regularly, you know that I’m a big proponent of using validated selection tools when hiring and promoting. It’s just more cost effective. Recently, I was reading...
If You Want to Lead, Please Raise Your Hand
I was at an event for healthcare executives last week and one of the panel discussions was on which leadership skills are needed for the future in the industry. Afterwards, I spoke to some on the panel and a few other attendees and asked them, “How do you identify...
Are You my Supervisor?
“Are you my supervisor?” It seems like a pretty straightforward question. In most organizations there is someone is who responsible for directing another person’s work. Where this gets tricky is when the organization is being sued for harassment or some other nasty...
What Does the Presidential Election Tell Us About Executive Decision Making?
While this post is about the election, it is NOT about politics. Rather, it’s about decision making and how letting pre-determined analyses about the facts affect the process. In this case, the facts were the polling data regarding the presidential election (you can...
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