If you have been in the workplace for a couple of years, you have most likely already learned the lesson that your talent and hard work will not ensure your promotion. The myth of the meritocracy has been shattered. Though it seems unfair to be passed over to less qualified candidates, it can be a rude awakening to the reality of the workplace today. It takes more than your talent and great performance to get ahead.

The folks over at Johnson Controls have put together an interesting report called Smart Workplace 2040: The Rise of the Workspace Consumer, it’s a lengthy 84 page report that explores various scenarios for what the workplace might look like in 2040.

Your company may be suffering from a genuine talent shortage. It may be suffering from a flawed hiring process. It may be one or the other or even both, but the end result will be the same: Companies that can’t find creative ways to find the employees they need can’t grow. Business leaders who can win the talent war (and it is a war) will be able to say yes to new business opportunities while their talent-strapped competition will have to walk away.

Most people’s biggest fear is being put on the spot by oddball interview questions such as these (which are real):

“Describe the color yellow to someone who’s blind.” – Spirit Airlines

“If you were asked to unload a 747 full of jelly beans, what would you do?” – Bose

“Who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman?” – Stanford University

Decades of research into the effectiveness of employment interviews has shown one consistent result: we are terrible at conducting them. Our ability to predict success from a typical unstructured job interview is roughly the same as flipping a coin. A round up of 85 years of research by leadership scholars showed that unstructured interviews were ranked so low in effectiveness that they only explained 14% of an employee’s performance.

The “War Room” – where once battle strategies, and today business strategies, are formed, tactics devised, and actions monitored. By designating a War Room, a company recognizes that from time to time, it’s necessary to take a step back from the flurry of everyday activity and survey the scene from ten thousand feet. From a […]

There has been no shortage of recruiting conferences going on the past couple of months from national events like ERE and SHRM Talent to regional events including Minnesota Recruiters, recruitDC, Seattle SMA, Nashville TANS and the list goes on and on. As Talent Acquisition professionals look to arm themselves with bite size information and stats […]

We’ve all come across this type of person in our careers: the guy who is miserable to work with but who’s also “the top salesman we have.” Or how about “the smartest guy in the room,” who’s also the most unapproachable person you’ve ever met? The talent may well be there but, in today’s increasingly networked workplace, it isn’t a guarantee of success.

Hiring the right employees can make or break your business. Employee recruitment is about managing stress, as you will constantly be judged on your selection, and you obviously cannot please everybody in your organization. However, there are certain rules that you can use to hire the right employee for your business every time.

Each spring the sun shines its light on the faces of our future workforce—those whose pale skin has been buried in books as they study for finals. Springtime also seems to be the time when family, friends, and acquaintances seem to come out of the wood-work to offer advice for job seekers who are wondering ‘What am I going to do with my life?’

Curious about the most common advice people receive when they’re searching for a career path (be it when they choose their major, enter the workforce, or want to change careers) we decided to informally poll our friends, family, and coworkers to see what kind of advice they received in their lives. Was the advice good? Did they follow it? And, if so, did it work?

Employee referral programs typically outproduce any other source of hire, when looking at recruiting cycle times, costs, and new hire quality. No surprise, right? What should be surprising is that companies typically invest the smallest amount of resources into referral programs when compared to other recruiting programs, tools, technology, and databases. Listen to the average […]

When I last checked in on video interviewing nearly a year ago, the concept was still an emerging best practice in recruiting. That’s changed quite a bit as more talent acquisition professionals have adopted the technology and found ways to integrate it into their hiring. Providers in the video interviewing space haven’t been sitting still […]