I’ve spent over 25 years in human capital management and I’ve gotten 10 certifications in the space. Through the use and study of various assessments and workforce analytics, I can tell you that every job at any company contains some…
Job Descriptions
Hire For a Mission, Not a Job
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in the event of success.” Legend has it that Sir Ernest Shackleton used the copy above in an ad to recruit his…
5 Recruiters Share Their Ideas For Hiring the Best
It is well known that the unemployment rate is at a record low and the economy is healthy. While smart business leaders are focusing on growth due to these positive indicators, there is a bigger challenge these leaders will need…
‘Entry-Level, Experience Required’: Seriously?
For recent college graduates, nothing is more frustrating than applying for entry-level jobs that require experience. With degrees in hand, an eagerness to perform and a willingness to learn on the job, these prospective hires could be making a significant…
3 Simple Steps to Avoid Fighting With Hiring Managers Over Pay
Even though they are our daily bread and butter, recruiting and hiring remain very inefficient and time consuming processes. Because they take so much of our time and involve so many people, just the idea of making improvements feels stressful….
Does Technology Have an Answer to Quality of Candidates Complaints?
Quality of hire is the most important and most difficult metric in talent acquisition. Talent Tech Labs, a New York based incubator, introduced me to Talenytics, a software vendor that focuses on quality of hire. For most recruiters the presenting…
Is Credential Creep Strangling Your Hiring?
Every organization wants to hire top performers on a consistent basis. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen very often. In fact, in most cases, organizations fail miserably. One reason for this rate of failure is “credential creep“: the act of raising minimum…
Only Hardworkers With a BMI Under 25 May Read This
No overtime claim. Do whatever your manager asks you to do. Report to Manager STRICTLY FOR HARDWORKING PROGRAMMER ONLY !!!!!! If you are not please do not apply for this job! [bold and uppercase] This, believe it or not, was…
Make Your Next Job Ad a Game
You can create a job ad in many different media. Traditional job advertisements were text. An alternative approach is to lead with an image (there is a whole world of job advertising via Instagram). Then there’s video (companies like Sparc…
You Need to Stop Hiring Only Elk; Hire Some Wolves
From wolves in Yellowstone to wolves in your company, Ryan Porte insists they are critical to a healthy ecosystem. “We all want out rivers to flow faster and deeper. We want more productivity, better culture, better people. The way you…
What a New Law Grad Can Teach HR About Disruptive Hiring
In 2007, Sarah Feingold had just graduated from Syracuse University Law School. While in school, she’d petitioned to take a graduate-level metal smithing class around her passion outside of law — jewelry-making. That’s when she discovered Etsy—an eBay-type, startup marketplace for…
Lifecycle Mastery: It Begins By Building Trust In Recruiting
This is part one of a six part look at how employers can master the talent lifecycle in a way that will help build a high performing workforce. Today’s post examines talent attraction. Other posts are listed at the end…
How to Make Your Job Ads More Effective
One of my favorite people in the analytics world is Mark Goldberg (now at McFrank & Williams). He called me to talk about the use of data in creating job ads, but ended up impressing me even more by talking…
If You Want a Great Workforce, Don’t Use These 5 Traditional Hiring Practices
Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple, famously said, The secret to my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.” Hiring the best people in the world is an exceptionally high standard…
Reflections of a Compensation Pro: Things I’ve Seen That Drive Me a Little Nuts
I’ve worked in Compensation my entire career. Spent most of it in Corporate America and now, for a bunch of years, as a global consultant. I love what I do, but at the same time can acknowledge that it’s not…
Stop Relying on Job Descriptions and Find Candidates You Really Want
Job descriptions, those horribly written, barely comprehensible strings of roughly 500 words of stuff that only barely resembles reality if you squint hard, are the coin of the realm in the recruiting world. And no matter how much we complain…
The Art of Making Job Descriptions Work for You
Is writing a job description just one more task that has to be checked off? Do you find yourself reduced to just putting down the basic bullets and pressing send before forgetting all about it? You’re not alone – but…
Job Descriptions? They’re a Waste of Time, So Hand Them to Marketing
Only employment lawyers and HR Pros from 1990 believe that job descriptions are important, legal-type documents that are still needed in 2014. Most companies have given up on job descriptions (JDs). At best, you’ll find people today using ones from…
Is the Classic Job Description an Endangered Species?
Several leading business journals recently have declared the job itself, as a vehicle for packaging work, to be on the endangered species list . Commenting on the same phenomenon, Charles Savage describes “the rigor mortis of the industrial era” where the division…
Crafting an Effective Job Description: How to Actually Do It Right
I’ve written before about how managers hated job descriptions. Now, let’s take a fresh perspective and look at how writing descriptions should be handled. Call this a beginner’s guide, a how-to procedural, or simply a few tips ‘n tricks that…