I saw this gem of advice: ask for a candidate to explain his/her most significant accomplishment when sending a resume. (Found on Recruiting.com.) This is a great screening device (better than technical tests, in my opinion). Candidates, this means you need to be thinking about your significant accomplishments (work-related please, unless you can make a […]
Take a look at HBS’s Working Knowledge, Hiring for Executive Intelligence. Some quotes that rocked my world: IQ test questions don’t assess the practical, on-your-feet thinking skills needed in business. What’s more, these tests have been repeatedly accused of racial and gender bias. Yet, despite these very real shortcomings, IQ tests are still a better predictor
I’m doing a webinar for Kennedy Information Systems next Friday, Dec. 9, 2005. The webinar is Detecting Cultural Fit Issues. It’s updated from the webinar I did in February. Please use the Kennedy link to register for the webinar. And for those of you who are wondering, I’m fine, just crazy-busy, which is why I
I received an email from a reader today, along with an outline of their hiring process. They spend about 6-8 hours with each candidate, most of which is a series of auditions. They spend maybe an hour with behavior-description questions. These folks have an atypical problem—they’re hiring for consultants, so they need to know how
Warning: I’m on a rant. Yesterday’s Wall St. Journal had an article called “Behind ‘Shortage’ of Engineers: Employers Grow More Choosy” (if I could figure out the URL, I would paste it in here, but I can’t figure out how to do that. Sharon Begley is the author, and the WSJ requires registration. If you’re
Last week, at the AYE Conference, I led a workshop called “Conversations with Candidates.” One of the participants wanted to know, “How do I build off a behavior-description question?” I’ve always led the conversations intuitively, so I had to think for a minute to describe what I do. If the next questions doesn’t just come
I’m guest blogging this week on computerworld.com. It’s different from what I normally post here.
Experience and Education makes the point We hire people to complete tasks and run functions (not really–we employ talent to create value, but I?ll try to stick to the point). He goes on to say The problem is, both of these (years of experience and education) are unreliable measures of whether someone can do a
Amit Rathmore has a thought-provoking essay, Recruiting and the Butterfly Effect. His conclusion is that the people closest to the founding team need to be the ones interviewing candidates, so that the newest hires are as close the ideals and capabilities as the original hires. My only quibble with Amit is that this technique does
Recently, a manager asked how he could detect critical thinking skills in candidates. I had to ask him more questions, so I could answer. Here’s what he meant by critical thinking skills: The ability to think through a problem in a certain architectural domain The ability to deal with people across the organization in planning