Tag: hiring

Online Job Ads? In the End, They’re a Really Bad Way to Find the Very Best Person

Editor’s Note: I’m occasionally republishing some of my most popular posts here on The Skeptical Guy. Here’s one that was originally published back in August 2017. HERE’S A CONFESSION: I hate online job ads because I’ve found that they’re a crappy way to find the very best candidates. On the one hand, my recruiter side

Continue reading

The Corporate Kiss-Off, or What I Learned After Getting Jerked Around About a Job

YOU FIND ALL SORTS of interesting things when you go through old email. I’ve been doing that recently as I try to get rid of the many messages I’ve saved over the years. Why I saved so many escapes me now, but the silver lining is this — I’m finding some interesting conversations that are

Continue reading

When Hiring, Is Personality More Important Than Skills and Competence?

Editor’s Note: As the summer winds down, I’m republishing some of my most well read posts here on The Skeptical Guy. This one is from back in March 2015. A LONG TIME AGO, I worked with a company that valued managers with great personalities over just about anything else. There was one guy who corporate management

Continue reading

What Do Job Seekers Want? It’s Pretty Simple But Organizations Can’t Get It Right

Editor’s Note: I’m occasionally republishing some of my classic posts here on The Skeptical Guy. Here’s one that was originally published back in September 2018. JUST WHAT DO job candidates want most? It’s actually pretty simple, as a Glassdoor survey of job seekers found. Yet, simple or not, it’s remarkable how so many organizations can’t seem to

Continue reading

No Doubt About It: This is Probably the Greatest Job Candidate Cover Letter Ever

Editor’s Note: I’m occasionally republishing some classic Skeptical Guy posts, and this is the most popular one of them all. It’s also highly relevant given the screwy state of today’s job market. It was originally published back in August 2018. ********************************** REMEMBER THE OLD military concept of “shock and awe“? It got a lot of

Continue reading

When Does Reality Kick In? When We Realize How Screwy Today’s Job Market Is

I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS for a few months now: the job market is screwy and not nearly as good as everyone — especially the president — has been saying it is. I’m not as plugged into the recruiting and hiring space as I was for the past 20 years, but even I can hear the

Continue reading

A Problem That Never Seem to End: Jobs That Get Posted That Never Get Filled

HERE’S A WELL KNOWN hiring practice that is as stupid and shortsighted today as it was when I first encountered it nearly 30 years ago. It popped up — again — in a BBC story this past week titled The “ghost jobs” employers never fill. As the BBC described it: “Job boards like LinkedIn and

Continue reading

Lots of Good People Get Fired, But the Big Issue is This: What Do They Learn From It?

Editor’s Note: I’ve been occasionally reposting some popular articles from the past. This one was published here back in March 2019. HERE’S A WORKPLACE TRUISM : Good people frequently get fired. Steve Jobs got fired from Apple, eventually returning to build it into the high-flying, trend-setting company that it is today. Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, and

Continue reading

The End of the Year Job Market? It’s a Pretty Odd Way to Close the Door on 2023

Editor’s Note: This is the final Workplace Week That Was for 2023. We’ll return next year. HERE’S A FINAL THOUGHT on the year-end job market — it’s an odd and frustrating time to try to find a new job. One of the indicators of just how odd an employment market we have is a story

Continue reading

You Can Learn a Lot About Company Culture If You Watch HOW Employees Quit

Editor’s Note: I’ve been republishing some classic Skeptical Guy posts the last few months. This one is from July 2018. DESPITE THE NEVER ENDING focus on how we recruit and hire new employees, we know that we should also spend as much time and energy on how we can better retain the good people who are

Continue reading