An old Gary Larsen cartoon once showed a kindly old lady hand-feeding birds in her back yard. Off to the side was a sack labeled with words that read something like: “Fake birdseed. Great fun! Birds just can’t figure it out!” Fake bird seed represents many vendors’ test claims … and, what users don’t know... [full article »]

Throughout the year I get many questions from readers, recruiters, HR, and vendors. In this end-of-the-year article, I’ll list a few of the most frequent ones. [full article »]

I owe the term “Riduculist” to Anderson Cooper. Every so often he discusses something so silly it defies explanation. This article deals with an email solicitation I received recently that was so ridiculous, I laughed out loud. Job Failure and Job Success My profession is studying jobs and designing tests/exercises/interviews that measure both skills and... [full article »]

Politicians claim they never let a good crisis go to waste. Reacting to crises is how people take advantage of opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked. But, have you ever thought about how that applies to HR? Or, maybe you have not kept up with the trend to eliminate internal recruiters. Professional recruiters are citing... [full article »]

In this article, an abridged version of one coming up in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, I’ll describe how and why hiring and promoting the best people is usually undermined by seven common organizational obstacles. Briefly, it helps to think of organizations this way: you can hire and promote 100 people whom 20% are... [full article »]

Is your hiring test leaky? I mean, does it pass too many unqualified candidates? I recently did a search for “hiring tests.” Google turned up 84 million listings, Yahoo about 70 million, and Ask … well, I stopped counting after 106 pages. By any standards, selling “hiring” tests is a big business. But, there is... [full article »]

Do the vast majority of people who pass your personality tests turn out to be exceptional performers? If you answered “no,” then your tests aren’t testing. Recruiters and hiring managers are led to believe people who pass their personality tests will be successful. Unfortunately, practical experience shows that about 50% of employees and 70-80% of... [full article »]

A few days ago, John Hollon wrote a short blurb about the growing population of HR “experts.” I could not agree more. I blame it on public exposure from the Internet. The web has made it possible for almost anyone with a computer and an opinion to claim expertise. So how do we separate expertise... [full article »]

In my last article about hiring salespeople I focused on the need to evaluate trust pre-hire. In this article, I’ll discuss the need to evaluate candidates for questioning skills, and why this skill is more effective than delivering a sales pitch. But some might be asking where I learned this stuff. [full article »]

This is a time when many organizations are scrambling to produce sales. Some will be successful and some will not. Sales success and trust-building skills go hand in hand; yet, a salesperson’s ability to develop and maintain trust often goes unmeasured in the pre-hire phase. Fundamental Sales Abilities Put on your customer hat. Do you... [full article »]

In case you were enjoying yourself over the holidays instead of reading my critically-acclaimed (OK, criticized) articles, my objective is to bring best practices to the HR forefront. Experience shows organizations that make informed hiring and promotion decisions (e.g., based on objective job-related tools) tend to have happier employees, are more successful, and reduce their... [full article »]

I ended Part 1 with Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, “Any sufficiently advanced (hiring) technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s a play on words, but describes the same reaction I get from almost everyone unfamiliar with the best-practices outlined in 1978 in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Typical question, “How do I know... [full article »]

Senior managers, at least the ones I know, think spending $10 today to get $100 back is a no-brainer. They think getting $100 back, over and over, is even better. That’s what happens when organizations invest in best-practice hiring and promotion methods. (By the way, I did not invent either assessment or best practices. They... [full article »]

Imagine you were in charge of quality control, and no matter what you did you still had a problem with 80% of your product. Do you think it would be a good idea to carefully examine raw material quality? That is a lot like hiring salespeople. You might think 80% of the salespeople would produce 80%... [full article »]

I’ve written before about frustrated managers designing their own hiring tests. The story goes like this: one or more line managers become so dissatisfied with the quality of new employees they either decide to develop their own hiring test or buy something off the web. Good idea? Nope! Let’s explore a few reasons why. Discover... [full article »]

This is a real dilemma for me. On one hand, corporate recruiters clamor for metrics, but when I tell them what is necessary, their eyes glaze over. My advice to them is to be careful: you just might get what you wish for. You see, metrics attract attention. When competent people have competent metrics at... [full article »]

John Sullivan wrote about the cost of a bad hire. Reading through the list, I thought it was extremely comprehensive … someone must have done their homework. Sure, we should plan ahead, forecast hiring trends, and develop candidate pools. This is just good business sense. But, assuming hiring managers and staffing folks are doing the... [full article »]

Validation can get squirrelly fast. Without first conducting a legitimate job analysis and choosing a legitimate hiring test, there is no need to go any further. Everything is worthless without the first two steps. Once that is behind you, establish a strong link between a specific test score and on-the-job performance. Litigation vs. ROI Litigation... [full article »]

This might seem like a no-brainer, but many tests used for selection/promotion have no validity. In lay terms, the scores predict absolutely nothing! Not only do these tests fail their basic purpose, but they invite legal challenges, favor the inept, and eliminate the qualified. That’s why validation is so important. We all know personal opinions... [full article »]

Imagine you are a coach. It could be in the business world or on a playing field. What can you control: how the game is played or the final score? If you said final score, then you have probably never coached. If you said how the game was played, you probably know good skills almost... [full article »]