Great article this week on Psychology Today website called You Get Hired for What You Know; You Get Fired For….  Spoiler alert:  They authors claim you get fired for WHO YOU ARE. The subtitle of the article is:  Lessons from our favorite…

Talent management expert Peter Cappelli has an article this week on Human Resource Executive OnLine entitledThe One Thing You Should Do Now.  In this piece, Peter discusses how HR people can help their executives manage uncertainty.  But of course, Peter is a professor, so it isn’t one…

Yesterday was Labor Day, and my local newspaper ran excerpts from people talking about their first jobs.  Thought I’d share mine, and I invite you to write me about yours!

At age 11, the Bronx Butcher Shop that supplied our family with meat hired me, ostensibly to do deliveries.  Deliveries aren’t non-stop at a small local butcher, so in between, I kept the place…

Getting the most out of your people will give you the edge in pulling out of the recession.  Most leaders agree that people are their company’s #1 asset.  Yet, HR leaders struggle to find the best metrics by which to achieve solid performance management.  Talent acquisition is usually done based on candidate competencies.  Specific job objectives are used to manage people…

Pay it Forward is an expression that most of us know because of the Kevin Spacey movie that came out about 10 years ago.  The movie was based on a book by Catherine Ryan Hyde, and the expression itself may have originated close to 100 years ago.   Now there is a pay it forward foundation, and a “movement.”

The concept is easy:  When you are the beneficiary of a good…

Ever had an awful boss? I’ll bet he or she had some or maybe most of these bad traits:

Control Junkie: Has a tough time truly delegating or letting go. Has an opinion about everything.

Being Right: Even if your boss is usually right, it feels bad to think that you are generally wrong.

Rude: Bosses too often fail to say…

Perhaps you have heard the story:  Internationally acclaimed concert violinist Joshua Bell once agreed to don street clothes and play his $3.5 million dollar Stradivarius violin in a Washington DC subway station, as a social experiment, sponsored by the Washington Post.…

One of the most critical factors in evaluating a candidate’s work history is how/why they left previous jobs.  As a recruiter, how you ask the question, and how you receive the answer, will impact the accuracy and completeness of the information you receive.  Questions about departures must be asked without bias – don’t word the question to presume either a voluntary…

Light Summer Reading!  I just ordered this brand new book called The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management (got it on Amazon for less than list), which includes chapters from 20+ authorities, including: David Ulrich, Marshall Goldsmith, Peter Cappelli, Noel Tichy, Edward E. Lawler, Jon…

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.  - Abraham Lincoln

I just happened to be surfing business news on the Washington Post when I spotted a headline about tax rates and job creation in one graph.  That led to two articles: The Myth of the Lower Marginal Tax Rates, and Rich…

There was a question posted in the LinkedIn Q&A Staffing and Recruiting section that I’ve been wanting to comment on.  The question is:  What is your least favorite interview question to ask or answer?  The question gathered 54 answers, from both recruiters and job seekers.  I’m fascinated by the answers.  I find that both sides, recruiters and job seekers, are…

In our newsletter last month, we published “Poison Control” – an article on how to deal with toxic individuals in the workplace (e-mail me for a copy).  This week, Peter Cappelli published an article called Managing the Difficult Employee, in which he points out that there are a lot of…

Most recruiters are still trying to get candidates to switch to bullet points instead of paragraphs, and use one font consistently. 

One sector that has gone way beyond bullet points is the media business.  Just for the fun of it, take a look at this article 7 Ingenious Resumes That Will Make…

Ages ago, when I was in Architectural school, modernism ruled the day, and most students embraced the motto “Less Is More” (Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe).  This aesthetic of minimalism had a foundational philosophy of simplicity – don’t surround people with too much complexity (in design) and they will be more in…

I answered the following question on LinkedIn today, and thought I’d publish my thoughts on whether a home address is on resumes.

Q:  There is a growing concern among employment candidates with putting their home addresses on their resumes. Would you consider a candidate who sent you a resume with only a phone number or email contact?

A:  One…

Tactics are underrated.  Problem solving is taken for granted.  Business leaders want to hire executives who are strategic, who take a big picture view, who can make long term plans, guide and mentor others in the plan execution, and not get bogged down in details.

Interestingly, when I ask high level candidates…

Many business leaders cite what has become a cliché: that people, human capital, are their company’s most important asset.  But do most CEO’s walk the talk?  In an article last week in the Harvard Business Review called The Only Thing That…

Executives want to change jobs at an alarming rate, but they don’t necessarily expect to move up.  According to a recent comprehensive survey by BlueSteps (a career management service of the Association of…