Are Talent Leaders Only Using Half Their Resources?

Peter Weddle, CEO of HR and employment specialty publisher Weddle's LLC, said American workers - including talent managers - are struggling to achieve career success with half their brains tied behind their backs.

"Career success begins with a good understanding of who we are as individuals. Our characteristics, believes, principles, values, all of that you have to know before you can figure out what you're passionate about. The problem is that information doesn't come to us intuitively," Weddle explained. "We have to work at understanding what that unique person inside us is all about."

He said the challenge is that every person/worker has a preferred way of thinking about thinking about things. Creative people rely more on the right hemisphere of the brain and seldom use the left. Analytical people rely on the left hemisphere and seldom use the right. Thus, we end up only using half of our inherent talents.

His book, Recognizing Richard Rabbit: A Fable About Being True to Yourself, attempts to make it easier for the average worker to find out who he or she is, what he or she is trying to become and how to tap into inherent talents. Encouraging the reader to use creative energy to try and answer those questions, the book also offers a self-interview to explore the analytical side of the brain and reason through questions that may reveal what a person values, believes in and hopes to leave behind as a legacy at work.

Some of the questions include: Does the significance of doing something truly different influence how you feel about it? Are you affected by what you will have to accomplish in order to make a difficult change in your life? And can you really change the circumstances that affect your day?

The book's premise is based on research done by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Weddle said during the course of his research, which involved thousands of interviews with high- and low-profile workers, Csikszentmihalyi found that no matter what workers did or how long they'd been doing it, people often had optimal experiences when they were confronted with a meaningful challenge and then stretched to their limits and beyond to meet that challenge or accomplish a goal.

"The single greatest milieu in which that kind of goal stretching occurs is at work," Weddle said. "Recognize yourself in both dimensions of your life. Of course you want to be authentic in your personal or social relationships. You want to be authentic with your family and friends. If you do that, you experience an emotional state called joy. That's only half the story. If you're equally authentic and passionate about who you are, and you bring that person to work, you will experience a cognitive state called happiness.

"The bottom line is, be joyful, but be happy too. Don't forget that work is just as great an opportunity to express your own true self as the rest of your life is. HR people talk about work-life balance as if work has to be balanced with all the good things that happen in life. That's true, but it's also important to balance your life with all the good things that can happen at work.

"The fundamentals of our economy may be in trouble, but the fundamentals of our character are not," Weddle said. "This is the very moment when working strong is just as important as living strong. If you can do that in this environment, you can do that anytime. And that will serve you well for the rest of your working life."

[About the Author: Kellye Whitney is managing editor for Talent Management magazine.]

Recruitment & Retention- Objective Hiring

While hiring, employers focus on objective factors like hard and soft skills and when firing, they often focus on subjective failure. When rehiring again employers return to objective qualifications.

Objective qualifications are necessary but prove to be insufficient at times. If employers look for all the qualities in one person, then that would be the biggest hiring mistake. This also limits their business potential.

If employers take a closer look at the hires in the past, which did not work out, it would be clear that the hirer must have taken only the objective factors into account. Individuals are more than a collection of technical skills and degrees. To avoid repeating hiring mistakes subjective factors that proved to be a success in the past, should be included. When we hire a new employee, we introduce into our work environment a whole person-with varying communication styles and unique personal strengths and weaknesses.

Most job descriptions talk about objective requirements but do not focus on interpersonal requirements. Interpersonal requirement is a subjective factor.

It is important for companies to mention at the time of hiring, that strong interpersonal skills are required. This is a precautionary step taken to ensure that the right candidates get into the company, so that the company does not have to rehire the same profile again. This should also be mentioned in the job description of the candidate.

Employers don't begin to judge a candidate’s interpersonal skills until the interview takes place. However, applicants do reveal their personality traits long before the actual interview.

The best way to gauge an applicant's interpersonal strengths is through the interview process itself. Interviews tend to focus on the applicant’s past work experience and existing technical skills. This is again an objective way of looking at the candidate.

By asking situational questions, the candidates’ subjective interpersonal style can be measured. Situational questions are not philosophical or abstract but require people to talk about how they would handle a particular situation at work place. By probing deeper into the candidate’s background, hiring mistakes can be avoided to a large extent.

Ref: TheManageMentor

Recruitment & Retention- Behavioural Interviews

Recruiting is a crucial task for any Human Resource department. Especially for the senior management positions, unless an appropriate succession planning is implemented, HR will need to screen a number of prospective candidates before short-listing the appropriate ones. Understanding a candidate's attitude and behaviour is very important, as it determines his approach to the organisation.

An interview is the only means of investigating and finding valuable information about a candidate. No other process of assessment can give a better insight than the interview process. An effective interview is a process of understanding the unspoken and requires the skill of deciphering verbal signs of deception to gain vital information. The best method of gaining information is when the prospect is unaware of the process, since the scope of tampering is minimal here.

A structured and methodical interview helps uncover the known and - obvious aspects of a prospect's personality. To gain deeper insight into the unknown and understand the candidate completely, HR relies on behavioural interviews.

Behavioural interviewing is a technique that uses a structured set of questions aimed and designed to determine a candidate's attitude. This interview technique is based on the paradigm that, when a person makes a conscious effort to act against his natural instinct to respond to the situation, an increased tension and anxiety is displayed. As connecting situations are posed, he loses control due to increased anxiety and fails to keep track of his answers, thus bringing out his true behaviour. More importantly the interviewer understands the body language of the candidate. Such a technique is particularly useful to determine if a candidate is editing information or fabricating responses. This technique of interviewing is generally applied while selecting candidates for crucial management positions in the organisation.

Ref: TheManageMentor

How To Get A Job In This Economy - Interviewing

Interviewing is often compared to dating—and for good reason. Just like a first date, an interview is a forum for you to look your best, highlight your attributes, and convince the other person that they should pursue a long-term relationship with you. While these are all important aspects of successful interviewing, don’t forget that it’s important to interview the company as well to make they’re as a good a fit for you as you are for them.

This process is very similar to visiting a date’s apartment for the very first time. The way a person lives is very telling. Your date may look and seem well put together in public but their apartment could be filled with dirty magazines, old food and a futon mattress. If you always use coasters and like having everything in its place then no matter how wonderful this person is you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle.

Here are a few pointers to help you evaluate whether a potential employer is right for you:

Before The Interview

When you arrive at the interview, which will hopefully be the same location at which you will be working, observe the exterior and interior of the building. Ask yourself the following:

1. Can you imagine yourself walking through the halls of the interior?
2. What is the mood of the workers? Friendly? Busy? Deflated?
3. What is the dress code? Will you be comfortable conforming to it?
4. Is this a location I would be comfortable commuting to everyday?
5. Is the exterior of the building in good condition?

Don’t underestimate the impact a long commute or uncomfortable working conditions can play in your job satisfaction. A 45-minute drive to an interview may seem like no big deal, but having to make that trip twice a day, five days a week in traffic can really be a big drain not only on your time but also on your stress level. Also, working in an office that’s poorly maintained or poorly laid out can also have negative effects. Leaky ceilings, broken air conditioning, smelly bathrooms—these are not things most people want to deal with eight hours a day.

During The Interview

Most interviews allow at least some time for answering questions—make sure you use it! Not only will you look thoughtful and prepared to an interviewer, you will be gaining valuable information that will help you asses whether or not the position is a good fit for you. A few questions to ask each interviewer:

1. What would a typical day in my position be like?
2. Are there opportunities for personal and career development such as tuition reimbursement, mentoring programs or training seminars?
3. What do you like best and worst about your job?
4. Why do you like working at this company?
5. How would you describe the corporate culture?

Having spent more time as an interviewer than an interviewee, the most impressive candidate I have had the pleasure of interviewing came to the interview with an entire notebook page full of questions. Not just a tiny, pocket-size notebook but a large, 8 × 10 sheet with notes on every line and in the margins. I went straight from the interview to the hiring manager to beg them to hire this person.

The answers to any of the above questions can be extremely telling. If your interviewer gushes on and on about how wonderful everyone is, how well the company treats people and seems genuine, then you know that the company must be a great place to work. If the interviewer seems guarded or unsure of how to answer questions about their personal job satisfaction then maybe there are some internal personnel issues and you might want to keep looking for something better.

Remember that the employer-employee relationship is a lot like a marriage. Each one takes care of the other so that each can be happy and successful. Make your ‘marriage’ a solid one by first choosing the right mate.

Ref: Jacqui Tom

Recruitments- The story of perfect fit.

In present day scenario of growing economies, companies are always on the lookout for talented professionals to be part of their teams. At any given point, recruitment for positions across various levels in an organisation would be on in full swing. It may be impossible to fill all the positions immediately. Therefore, it’s an imperative need to identify the critical positions that require immediate attention and action. Organisations have seen an increased focus on the development and selection of key talent.

Recruitment is not just a process for filling vacant positions. Today recruitment and redundancy are factors of utmost importance to bring about organizational growth. Keeping in mind an Organisations short term & long term goals, a fully structured and regulated recruitment strategy should be formulated for successful hiring of talented professionals. An unregulated & unstructured recruitment strategy can be a catastrophe leading to a loss of bright & prospective candidates. To attract and increase inflow of quality candidates, few steps that can be followed:

 Website: A window for the world to know what’s happening in the organization. A well structured and user friendly website can be of great help. The website should be checked regularly to view fresh applications. Candidates’ expectations from prospective employers are also rising. So, we should be more innovative in attracting talent. The website should also showcase the benefits of working in the organization.

 Screening of profiles: Firstly a detailed Job Description should be published. This helps in narrowing down the candidate pool and makes the process easier. We should avoid overlooking the qualification of the candidate and reason for leaving his previous company. Sometimes the recruitment process slows down significantly as we end up interviewing people who should not be applying for the position in the first place. Proper screening of the resumes received viz a viz the detailed Job Description can help us ride over this issue and in turn save time and effort.

 Interviewing and selecting prospective employees: The recruitment decision in most cases is based on the outcome of a face-to-face interview. For outstation candidates, video-conferencing or conference calls can also be used. During an interview, the most widely asked questions are:

* How would you best describe yourself?
* What is your major achievement— professional and personal?
* Why would you like to leave your current organisation?
* How do you see yourself five years down the line?
* What is your career objective in the years to come?

To accomplish successful recruitment, better compliance and retention, we should watch out for the softer elements while evaluating a candidate. We should check his preference areas, what does the candidate seek in an organisation – a good work profile, compensation or fast career growth? We should also take into consideration the candidate’s team management abilities, his response either positive or negative in terms of experience in his previous company and his flow of thoughts. The body language and eye contact of the candidate is also important.

 Communication: A proper and candid feedback should be provided to candidates appearing for the interview. This helps build a very strong brand image. Even if the results are negative, a proper feedback will leave a positive and long lasting impression about the organisation in the candidate’s mind which can have multiplier effect in terms building strong brand equity.


Interview Dos and Don’ts for candidates:

Dos:

o Dress appropriately for the industry. Your personal grooming and cleanliness should be impeccable.
o Be sure to find out the exact time and location of the interview.
o Arrive early: 10-minutes prior to the scheduled time.
o Maintain good eye contact during the interview.
o Sit still during the interview. Avoid fidgeting and slouching.
o Request a clarification if you don’t understand a question.
o Be thorough in your response, while being concise.

Don’ts:

o Don’t make excuses. Take responsibility for your decisions and actions.
o Don’t make negative comments about previous employers or professors.
o Don’t falsify application material or answers to interview questions.
o Don’t chew gum during the conversation.
o If you smoke, ensure that the smell of smoke is neutralized with deodorant/mouth freshener.
o Don’t allow your cell phone to ring during the interview. Do not answer a phone call during the interview.
o Don’t treat the interview casually, as if you’re are shopping around and doing the interview for practice.
o Don’t display frustration or a negative attitude in an interview.

Dos and Don’ts for interviewers:

Dos:
* Put the candidate at ease.
* Offer a glass of water/tea/coffee.
* Explain the purpose of the interview.
* Help the candidate to speak as much about him/her on relevant subjects.
* Give the candidate a chance to ask questions.

Don’ts:

* Don’t make the person wait. Try your best to be on time.
* Don’t ask irrelevant personal questions like references to marital status, disability and religious beliefs.
* Do not answer phone calls during the interview.
* Spend at least a few minutes in going through the resume of the candidate before you begin the interview.