You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to make progress. But what about the freight train? Founded by 3 former SpaceX engineers, start-up company Parallel Systems’ goal is to do just that. By modernizing freight trains, they hope to transport more goods by rail (and less by highway trucks) to combat pollution levels. To do that, they’re essentially reinventing freight trains as autonomous, [...]
Do people like working at your company? Organizational culture is critical to HR success, and something a lot of companies struggle to define. But it’s one of the first things job seekers ask about. Especially in a time when they have a lot of choices, as a recruiter, I can attest: They’re choosy about their work environment — even if they’re working remotely. When [...]
Among the trends Harvard Business Review called out for 2022, the one that really caught my eye was “wellness as the newest metric companies will use to understand their employees.” Wellness as a concept has arguably always been important, but in business, it’s not officially important until it reaches the level of having its own metrics. And after two years of a pandemic, [...]
Remember offsites, those annual gatherings to get the team together for high-level strategy and planning work — not to mention extreme team-bonding activities? Now, in the hybrid era, when people aren’t always in the office — if ever — offsites are turning into onsites. As Erica Keswin describes it in Harvard Business Review: “Professional development is critical to stemming the tide of the Great [...]
If you’re new to hiring, you probably wish someone had just given you a playbook. Or at least a primer. That’s unlikely to have happened. So before you step into your first interview, make sure you've got a strategy for what you want to learn (i.e. behavioral vs competency vs stress type interview). Instead of "winging it" make certain you’re prepared with the [...]
More than perhaps any other line of business, HR folks have had to adapt in the last few years. As we round the bend into year three of the pandemic moving towards an endemic stage, what does this look like? According to HR Dive, there are a few big trends happening right now: 🔹 Workplace and workstyle flexibility are now the normal mode for [...]
How to do well in an interview? It depends what kind of interview we’re talking about. A behavioral interview focuses on your behavior — both in the interview and in the hypothetical workplace. Questions revolve around your conflict-resolution skills and try to tease out insight into the way you think and act on the job. A competency interview assess your core skills, both hard [...]
Science fiction fans of a certain (long ago) era remember with fondness the Doctor Who television show on PBS. It was a nerdy British affair that still holds up pretty well today. But I’m not here to talk about TV. I’m here to talk about a really interesting study some folks conducted. By analyzing the contributors to each Doctor Who episode that aired [...]
Empathy has become a big soft-skills buzzword over the last few years, and it’s no wonder. It’s been a challenging time for a lot of people. But specific to the hiring world, and particularly when hiring for leadership positions, empathy is a critical marker to look out for. Empaths are simply better at understanding what a situation calls for, and having a flexible [...]
In the flow of your busy day, you get a LinkedIn notification that someone has InMail messaged you. It’s a message from a recruiter you do not know. “Yeah right,” you think. “I’ll get to that after I clear my inbox, catch up on Slack, and sit through all these Zooms.” You never get to it. If you’re not even looking to change [...]