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 »]

When I was a kid, I watched adults get their teeth pulled and replaced by dentures. My kid-brain thought it was normal. When I grew up, my adult brain learned it wasn’t necessary to give up on your teeth. The same goes for most organizations. People routinely think reviewing resumes and conducting casual interviews are... [full article »]

Why don’t physicians bleed patients anymore to let out the “bad” blood? Why did they stop freely administering opiates, radioactive water, and addictive drugs as cure-alls? Why don’t they feel the bumps on your head to diagnose personality type? Because these are voodoo science. But voodoo science is not limited to medicine. It is still... [full article »]

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of products in the marketplace promising solutions to managing applicant flow. But, how do you know which ones to use, and, which ones to trust? Let’s start with the trust part. Wrong-Headed Testing I’ve found that many people think they can author a screening test by sitting down,... [full article »]

If you have been reading ERE over the last few weeks, you have probably been exposed to assessment argument overload. You might have read claims that unstructured interviews alone were sufficient to survive a guarantee period. You might have read selection scientists quoting numbers showing it took more than interviews to reduce turnover, increase training... [full article »]

In Part One I explained why a test user has to be exceptionally careful about trusting a vendor’s claim their test is suitable for hiring. Without due diligence on the part of the test user, junk tests lead to hiring too many wrong people and turning away too many right ones, amounting to an estimated... [full article »]

You probably already know there are hundreds of self-report tests promising great hires. What you might not know is most of them are poorly designed junk. Why is this important to know? First, the test user — not the test vendor — is primarily responsible for test use. Second, junk tests hire too many wrong... [full article »]

A few weeks ago John Sullivan wrote an article citing a few disturbing recruiting numbers: 70% of participants are dissatisfied with the hiring process; 46% of new hires turned over within the first year (50% for new executives); and top producers produce 40-67% more than others. Sullivan recommended a variety of solutions. One of them... [full article »]

As anyone who has worked in more than one organization knows, in addition to job skills, successful long-term employees tend to act and think similarly. You can think of it as “culture.” Personal success depends on both personal and environmental factors, each of which is important in its own way. Personal factors include having the... [full article »]

For some strange reason, Todd Raphael, the ERE Editor, sent me an article on yet another wacko idea pretending to facilitate hiring. He must think I have an axe to grind against wrong-headed hiring ideas. Imagine that! Well done, Todd. This one ranks right down there with handwriting analysis. The article cites a lady who... [full article »]

Every time I encounter customer service that is so bad that I just have to write an article about it. (I call it cheap psychotherapy). You see, I think most organizations cause their own problems because they hire the wrong people to represent them on the phone. In this article, I refer to my experience... [full article »]

People are always writing articles about the best interview questions. One author (who positioned himself as a hiring expert) actually advised, “In terms of ‘canned’ interview questions, my suggestion is to select a few questions you like and ask them.” This is a fine strategy for making friends, but absolute nonsense for a recruiter (I... [full article »]

Any manager who takes an honest look at individual performance knows all employees are not created equally. About 20% of employees rise to the top of the heap; 20% drop to the bottom; and the rest hang around in the middle doing only enough to attract attention. Employee-productivity differences have attracted their share of researchers.... [full article »]

What test instrument can quickly assess a candidate’s personality preferences; is cheap; available to almost everyone; marketed by dozens of vendors under a variety of names; and, is recommended “unreliable and untrustworthy” by most testing professionals? Yes, there are others, but I was referring to the DISC. (Although this article focused on the DISC, you... [full article »]

The idea of redirecting recruiters toward internal movement and succession planning seems like a good one, but I’m afraid it is another dead-end recruiting street unless some basic principles are applied. Wrong-Way Thinking There is a common fallacy among a significant number of people that anyone can do anything: a good-looking applicant will make a... [full article »]

Time and again I read recommendations for evaluating quality of hire. Ask the managers, ask the employees, ask an astrologer. None of these things will ever give you more than a subjective opinion about the kind of information you need to improve the quality of hire. Here’s why. Imagine advertising for superheroes. There are a... [full article »]

The phone rings. Someone on the other end says he or she wants to build (or buy) a Web-enabled hiring test. Let’s say it will be for salespeople (generally the caller is a recruiter or HR manager, but sometimes he or she is a gopher). After discussing the idea for a few minutes, I make... [full article »]

Every so often, I come across shameful hiring information included in newsletters. I always thought journalists were supposed to research their facts; however, in a recent career newsletter, there were three articles that immediately got my attention. If any readers come across articles like these, may I suggest you flame the author for reporting pure... [full article »]

Get used to it: unless your organization hires everyone who applies, you are testing. Some people (even attorneys who should know better) vigorously deny that their organizations test applicants (pssst?interviews are tests!). Whether an organization uses verbal questions or written questions, they both have the same objective: to separate qualified applicants from unqualified ones before... [full article »]

It’s a common assumption. A good sales manager should first be a good salesperson, right? Wrong. It is a big jump from being a skilled “doer” to being a skilled “coach of doers.” In many cases, the top sales person is an enigma. Salespeople are ego-driven and competitive and want to be recognized and rewarded.... [full article »]