Why you should only be using structured interviews

Most recently I have been asked by the companies through which I contract to assess a candidate’s personality based on a personality questionnaire together with their fit for a particular role. Nothing new here as best practice recommends using a psychometric to measure a candidates’ personality and then using an interview to verify and expand on … Continued

What if positive leaders built positive identities in the workplace?

  How would your team describe their capabilities to you? Do they see themselves as a high-performer, valued team member, a great presenter and a real go-getter? Or are they more down about themselves and think they’re nothing special, a bit of a loner, poor public speaker and worry that they could be replaced at … Continued

A deliberate hiring strategy is critical to growth

Undertaking a deliberate hiring strategy is one of the three crucial aspects to growing a business according to this Kellogg University insight. In the article the author makes the point that “Entrepreneurs tend to come from marketing, product development, engineering, sales, or finance. Not many former human resources leaders are running new businesses.” For this … Continued

What if focusing on others helped create meaning for us.

The odds of being engaged in our work increase by 250% if we are doing meaningful work. But for many of us the prospect of doing meaningful work feels like a long way off. According to Gallup only 20% of employees say that they did something meaningful in their work the previous day. However, pursuing … Continued

How important is self-esteem in the workplace?

  We all know that having good self-esteem is a key part of happiness. If we don’t believe in ourselves how will we ever achieve our goals or feel grateful for the things we have? There is plenty of information about self-esteem in relationships, friendships and everyday life but just how important is it in … Continued

What if we combined strengths based recruitment with the discipline of competency based recruitment?

  As many people who read my intermittent blogs know, I am an advocate of strengths based everything – recruitment, coaching and feedback. However, recently I am becoming increasingly concerned about the beneficial claims made of strengths based recruitment combined with the criticisms largely directed at competency based recruitment. Competencies were ground breaking, fair and … Continued

How to develop a one page strategy for training and development

6 steps beginning with ‘a’ and they all should fit on one A4 page. How neat is that? (thank you Robin Hoyle) AIM – what is the aim of the training activities? for instance, do you want your training to operate at zero cost to the business? AUDIENCE – identify your audience. It is unlikely … Continued

What if organisations addressed the causes of stress?

When Harvard Business School and Standford’s Graduate School came together to undertake research into work based stress, they discovered that work stressors were killing 120,000 people annually. Causes were long hours, economic insecurity at lower levels of organisations exacerbated by uncertainty over contracts and low pay. In the UK we struggle with many of the … Continued