Blog
ideas, work, articles, newsletter, journal
Drilling for Good Candidates
The current low unemployment rates and data mining have led to companies tossing out wider and wider nets to fill positions. But, is all of this confusing activity with productivity? This article (thanks to Dennis Adsit for bringing it to my attention) brings up some...
Putting Too Fine a Point On It
I will admit that I am more of a big picture person than a perfectionist. Going through old blog posts would likely lead to the finding of some spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. That does not bother me as long as I am getting my point across. I also have a...
Finding Talent in Nooks and Crannies
Low unemployment is great for the economy (rising wages!), but challenging for employers (higher quit rates and a smaller available talent pool). This can lead to many creative recruiting strategies and looking at (relatively) untapped sources. I came across two...
Can We Prevent Top Talent From Walking Out the Door?
Biographical information (biodata) has been used to predict turnover and performance for a long time. The idea is that certain verifiable aspects of a person’s life are indicators of future behavior. To use an adage from an earlier time, if a person has changed jobs...
The Article Fallacy
Most popular press about industrial psychology topics makes me twinge. It usually creates a train wreck between human behavior and management and makes over generalizations that fit into neat boxes which do not exist in practice. At the same time, academic...
Selecting Managers Who Understand the Value of Praise
When I do leadership/management workshops, the first topic is always motivation. While I am a big believer that motivation must come from within, managers can impact performance, in the short term, by effectively using rewards. Years of research tells us that cash...
Are Organizations Becoming Less Biased?
I’ve written quite a bit about bias in this blog. It is an important topic to me because I believe that people in HR and industrial psychology can be gatekeepers to a more fair society while improving organizational performance. Of course, bias in employment is merely...
Celebrating (Painful) Learning
In a previous post I talked about using the Marshmallow Challenge to provide insight into cultures that support risk taking. Taking the stigma out of making mistakes is one way to encourage creativity. Taking this to the next level are FUN nights (note that curse...
Addressing the Last Mile of Discrimination
Many organizations have taken steps (valid tests, removing pictures and names from resumes, blind auditions, etc.) to erase discriminatory practices in hiring. While by no means perfect, these actions have reduced bias in many places. A much lauded effort was done...
Can we Predict Karma in Applicants?
We would all like to think that doing well towards others will benefit us in this (and future?) life. At the same time, capitalism can encourage some people to act entirely in their self-interest in order to get ahead and create efficient organizations. So, should...
Contact Us Today