Someone tweeted me a question yesterday, “Is GPA [Grade Point Average] an accurate summary of how someone will be as an employee?” I checked the source of the tweet and — no surprise — it seems to be coming from a student. I don’t know the person but my guess is that he is either [...]
Tagged as:
Careers,
Expectations,
Focus,
Hiring,
human nature,
Leadership,
Objectives,
perception,
Recruiting,
training
I was asked this question at a recent speaking engagement in Utah, and I’ve thought about it a bit more since then. “Digital natives” are people who grew up using digital technology; they used computers as children and so they never lived in a non-computer world. “Digital immigrants” grew up in a world that didn’t [...]
Tagged as:
Careers,
Change,
Communication,
Effectiveness,
Focus,
Hiring,
human nature,
Management,
Motivation,
Objectives,
perception,
Recruiting,
stereotypes,
training
I’ve promoted scores of people into first-time manager positions. Some did well and some didn’t. Here are a few of their stories, with names changed and a few relevant facts altered to protect the individuals involved. Fred This was early in my career, and I didn’t have any experience in promoting people into management. But [...]
Tagged as:
Careers,
human nature,
Leadership,
Management,
Recruiting,
training
Last month I did some work for a company that has manufacturing plants in a number of rural locations. The IT managers who work in those locations complained about how difficult it is to hire IT people, partly because of the locations and partly because of the image of manufacturing being a dirty industry. Here [...]
Tagged as:
Hiring,
human nature,
Leadership,
Management,
Recruiting
I don’t do job interviews well, at least not as an interviewee. But I do a great job when I’m on the interviewer side of the desk. And it’s partly because I’ve learned from my mistakes as an interviewee. What a lot of people don’t seem to realize is that interviewee performance is not at [...]
Tagged as:
Communication,
Effectiveness,
Expectations,
human nature,
Interviews,
Leadership,
Management,
Motivation,
Objectives,
perception,
Recruiting,
stereotypes
There are two basic approaches to hiring: Hiring like a jigsaw puzzle, and Hiring like an assembly line. Hiring like an assembly line is more common. When you work on an assembly line you have very little variation in what you do. One particular task might be to put a bolt into a hole and [...]
Tagged as:
Careers,
Effectiveness,
Expectations,
Hiring,
human nature,
Management,
Objectives,
Productivity,
Recruiting,
stereotypes,
Strategy,
training