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Thursday, September 20, 2007Spare me from statements of the obvious
Please, let's have no more of this inanity. Doesn't everyone know that productivity is largely affected by the quality of human relationships including cooperative, social group moods and interaction. Or must it now be postulated by the high and mighty before it's actually taken notice of? Have we, as free thinkers, progressed so far that we have become brainwashed into the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome? Have we really lost the ability to think freely and actively and challenge the conventions that surround us? Have we become so conditioned that we MUST seek someone else's validation and verification for any original thought we might have? Stop the wheel and let me off, please. Conventions, you can keep 'em. Enjoy the taste of your own bathwater, I'm off to enjoy something a little more stimulating; in a bottle, with a label marked Merlot. Cheers !  
Tuesday, September 18, 2007HRmarketer.com will soon be launching a new site
The purpose of making these enhancements is simple - to better service the needs of our customers by leveraging the power of social networking and web 2.0 functionality. But we are not, and never will be, a pure social networking service. We'll leave that to the experts at Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace and others. This may seem like an obvious statement but I think it is worth exploring, especially considering all the negative hype (and misunderstandings) surrounding what is often called the Web 2.0 bubble. Or, as Todd Dagres, co-founder of venture-capital firm Spark Capital, told The Wall StreetJournal: "There are some similarities between the current [Web 2.0] ‘bubble’ and the last one that burst in 2000. Lots of incomplete and under-experienced teams, business models based more on eyeballs than cash flow, and a rash of incremental and ‘me too’ deals." But what many critics of Web 2.0 fail to realize is that social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies are not so much businesses in themselves as they are new technologies that improve the way people communicate, or in the case of B2B, conduct business. In fact, when you think about it, the term Web 2.0 makes no sense - to take a Polaroid of the Internet at any given time and then label it assumes the Internet is evolving in predictable stages. But the Internet is much too dynamic. It continuously evolves and as it does, the market determines which technologies are relevant and smart companies then integrate these into their core business. In the early days of the Internet many so called experts predicted the demise of "bricks and mortar" businesses. But what happened was as the Internet became more mainstream, the established bricks and mortars integrated the Internet into their core offering leading to the demise of many dot.coms. As the above article from The Atlantic points out: "Instant messaging was once a unique and compelling reason to subscribe to AOL, not to mention hyped as a revolutionary application that would render e-mail fogeyish and vestigial. It is now a commodity function." And as we wrote in a blog last year titled "If it's Not a Bubble, How Can it Burst? More Talk about Web 2.0" , when Jobster pioneered social networking in recruiting, some analysts in the HR space were predicting the demise of other leading job boards. But what is happening is that as social networking becomes more mainstream, these technologies are being adopted by many established recruiting and staffing suppliers. In other words, at some point the features associated with social networking will become a "commodity function" on the Internet and get tacked on to existing sites. It's happening now.
7 Stupid Thinking Errors You Probably Make
The brain isn’t a flawless piece of machinery. Although it is powerful and comes in an easy to carry container, it has it’s weaknesses. A field in psychology which studies these errors, known as biases. Although you can’t upgrade your mental hardware, noticing these biases can clue you into possible mistakes. Which made me consider the significant levels of thinking bias and error in HR processes. The tough part about these biases is that managers and HR practitioners are often unaware of them. Incentive programs are built on faulty assumptions. Training classes are offered without identifying underlying needs. Flawed assumptions tare made abilities. Logic flaws are dangerous in the HR environment. Awareness is the first step toward improvement. So, I took Lifehacker’s list about thinking bias, and overlaid some HR implications. The thinking error labels in bold and the text in italics are from the original Lifehacker article (please go read it in its entirety). The commentary in the text blocks involve HR and people management practices. Confirmation Bias. The confirmation bias is a tendency to seek information to prove, rather than disprove our theories. The problem arises because often, one piece of false evidence can completely invalidate the otherwise supporting factors. HR Implications: When one employee accuses another — of uncooperativeness, lack of attention to detail, aggressiveness or discrimination — there is often confirmation bias present. As they say, “It takes 100 attaboys to make up for one uh-oh.” Very clever Machiavellians in organizations exploit this thinking bias by accusing early and often. Then the accused is on the defensive. And what do we do about this in HR? We look for others to confirm the story rather than looking at the composite of evidence over long periods of time that would argue against the accusation. From a people management standpoint, some look for confirmation that “people don’t work for money” and exclude all evidence to the contrary (like the last 60 people who left because they were underpaid). Hindsight Bias. Known more commonly under “hindsight is 20/20“ this bias causes people to see past results as appearing more probable than they did initially. HR Implications: This is one of those “I just knew he was going to turn out bad” kind of thinking errors. Managers use this one all the time with the “I was able to do it with one hand tied behind my back and you should too” speech. They often forget that a number of forces had to come together to create success. Clustering Illusion. This is the tendency to see patterns where none actually exist. HR Implications: This is about pay and incentive programs. Rewards programs are designed based on controllability, when, in fact, many outcomes can be attributed to purely random occurrences, e.g., the stock market just went up or people started buying more Hush Puppies. A lot of executive pay plans are built around the idea that there are patterns in management decisions that directly affect stock price. It just isn’t so. (Gifted executive compensation designers understand and account for absolute versus relative performance.) Recency Effect. The recency effect is the tendency to give more weight to recent data. HR Implications: In your performance review you’re only as good as your last mistake. When we ask managers to review a year’s worth of performance they often fall prey to the recency effect — they remember more vividly those things that happened in the last month that over 12 months. And reviews suffer for them. Anchoring Bias. Anchoring is a well-known problem with negotiations. The first person to state a number will usually force the other person to give a new number based on the first. HR Implications: The questions most hated by job applicants is “What was your previous salary?” It’s because as soon as the number is thrown out there it becomes the “anchor” for negotiations. Great sales people know this one stone cold. When companies spend three months each year getting employees to document their goals, it turns out that whoever writes down a number first wins. But if an HR manager writes down that a recruiter is going to bring on 300 new hires for the year, that’s the number, even if the previous all-time record in the company was 100. Overconfidence Effect. Studies have shown that people tend to grossly overestimate their abilities and characteristics from where they should. HR Implications: What happens every year at performance review time? Everyone comes in above average, right? There was a recent study (I’m still looking for it) in which something like 80% of managers thought they were well above average in performance. It’s the Lake Wobegon Effect. The same thing happens around pay: Everyone thinks they’re underpaid and should get more. Confidence is one thing; overconfidence as a thinking bias is dangerous. Fundamental Attribution Error. Mistaking personality and character traits for differences caused by situations. HR Implications: We like people who like what we like. When we’re managers, we like people who most resemble us and don’t like people who have different views. And it’s not that we don’t just dislike their ideas, we don’t like them. In a workplace environment that is encouraging more diversity, the fundamental attribution error can be very dangerous Labels: Business Lessons, Excellence, human resource, motivation
Monday, September 17, 2007Benchmarks are important?
As a benchmarks lover, though, I can't help but wonder if time to fill is the best metric for recruiters. What I've been doing lately is looking back at my time to source number. I'm operationalizing time to source as how long the clock ran between the time the requisition was opened and when I found the candidate who was ultimately hired. This metric also is completely within my control: no watching the clock running because the hiring manager has gone to Japan for three weeks--or worse--just doesn't look at the candidates more than once a week. One of the reasons I like the time to source metric is that it helps me determine if I'm getting better at my job. The first time I go looking for, say, a Power Electronics engineer, it may take me a while to find the right venue. The second, third, tenth time-----the time to source should be much shorter. So my proposal: out with time to fill, in with time to source Labels: Business Lessons, Consulting, Excellence
Do you hate your job?
Do you get the "Monday Morning Blues?" If you truly dread Monday more than any other day, then the work you are doing may not be work you find enjoyable or rewarding. Is Friday the day you long for more than any other? When it comes to time off, who doesn't enjoy it? However, if you spend all of Friday just longing to leave, then maybe your work isn't providing the contentment it should. Enjoy gossiping more than working? If you spend more time chatting about your bosses and co-workers than at your desk getting work done, there might be problems. Other signs include avoiding projects until the very last minute and not ever receiving any kind of recognition from management for projects you do complete. All of these are signposts that maybe the job you are working at is not the job for you. So, what's the solution? Looking for a new job is one. The second is maybe trying to change the job you have. If you used to love your job and now you hate it, maybe it's time to look at what changed. Can it be changed back? Given that humans spend most of their lives working, it only stands to reason that the work they do should be something they enjoy doing. If it isn't, then maybe there are ways to change it. Labels: Consulting, human resource, motivation
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