The cliché “Hiring the right person for the right job” continues to be loosely used by the HR industry. In order for HR to recruit “mister/miss right”, HR would need to put emphasis of conducting a job analysis, which will help HR in understanding the current and future situations that impact the position. Unfortunately, this seldom happens.

Once HR understands the situations that surround a position, they will be able to reduce the risk of a wrong hire, which subsequently increases the chances of a right hire. At HireLabs, we call this Situation-based Hiring (given that there is no violation of EEOC).

Let us look at an example of situation-based hiring:

A leading airline wants to start a low-fare program, and needs to hire a cabin crew.

The first step would be to conduct a job analysis keeping in mind the situations that the new cabin crew will encounter. Some of these situations include:

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The era of the two-job employee (let us call him “Sam”) has emerged as a result of the global recession. Sam is a new breed who developed entrepreneurial survival skills to battle the recession, and learned how find and keep a second job.

You, the employer, do not need to be too alarmed if Sam takes on a second job as a baker, or a mechanic, because this would require Sam to be physically present at that location. However the situation is more complicated if Sam takes on a second job that he can do from any remote location.

Suppose that Sam takes on a consulting project to do bookkeeping, or write code for a website, or maybe even develop a training program, how do you think that Sam’s productivity will be affected at your work place? Read more…

While interviewing Mark Kurtz for a programming position, Debra Tobin, the head of HR had a smile on her face. The moment that she saw Mark’s resume, she knew that Mark was the high potential talent that Johnson & Company had been searching for to solidify the team. Mark was a recent Stanford graduate with a long list of impressive projects, including working with Oracle on a special integration project with the Malaysian government. Two days after the interview, Mark received an offer letter, and he started work the following week. One month later Mark handed in his resignation.

During his one month at Johnson & Company, Mark reported to Liam Watts, who was the CTO. Liam was very different from Mark, he grew up in Brooklyn, barely made it through college, and worked his way up into the management position over the last 16 years. Liam was risk averse, and his strategies were conservative.

As you might have guessed already, Mark’s short lived career at Johnson & Company was due to a clash of personalities and philosophies. Read more…

Economy has definitely affected the use and implementation of employment background checks. In fact, it has driven some interesting trends.
Let’s start with the obvious. Today, there are more people competing for fewer jobs. While hiring managers have Read more…

Employee Assessments – A Six Sigma Approach

Developing competencies like ROI projections and VOC surveys make it easier for businesses to tackle critical  business challenges. But these challenges take more than just the business systems & tools. The thing that ultimately makes all the difference is the level of employee engagement. Employee assessments help, to a great  extent, in  finding the existing motivation levels among employees.

Six Sigma implementation calls for such assessments, as it involves organizational changes at the root level. It is important to understand the two main components in a Six Sigma employee assessment plan: the ‘Preliminary survey’ and the ‘Comprehensive Survey’. Both these surveys serve the purpose of a smooth change management. The surveys involve select employees who are interviewed individually by the management, and/or a team and their unit managers and leaders. A variety of generalized questions are asked to find out if the implementation has reduced their workload, made them more efficient, has brought about positive changes in their work, has helped reduce waste, etc.

These questions help management to understand the perceptions that employees might be having about the ongoing Six Sigma implementations, and ultimately helps them devise better policies.

It was exciting to see Saleem Qureishi, Chief Operating Officer at Hirelabs Inc., at the Human Capital Management 2009, an HR event organized by Terrabiz Group.

Saleem Qureishi, a serial entrepreneur and a specialist at human behavior quantification, is the Chief Operating Officer at Hirelabs Inc.,a Stanford University based company in California.

Saleem spoke at length on the importance of strategic board room decisions regarding talent management during the current global economic downturn.

Human Capital Management 2009 was held on the 18^th of April, 2009.

The organizers of the event, Terrabiz Group, said that around 75 percent of the delegates had stated that the conference was above satisfactory in all aspects including speakers, content, presentations, discussions and management.