Do Your Managers Know How to Interview Candidates?

If you are in charge of or a participant in the recruitment process, you know very well this is an important question.

A lot of recruitment efforts go to waste because Managers take their part in the process for granted. They don't prepare for interviews, don't know which questions to ask and don't know what to make of candidates' responses to their questions. A lot of managers go by their gut feel when deciding who to hire. While I continue to believe that instinct should have considerable weight in hiring decision making, it should not be the sole basis for it. A lot of expensive hiring mistakes are made when managers fail to account for the necessary competencies when making hiring decisions.

ExeQserve Launches No Frills Training

I'm interrupting regular blog programming to share with you some information about the training product we are launching at ExeQserve.


We are formally launching No Frills Training in February and the first three workshops are; Job Interviewing, Handling Disciplinary issues and Headhunting 101. We will add more titles as we develop new courses that follow the program pattern. I'd like to share with you the thoughts behind this plan, my motivation and why I think this idea works most for the learners.

Here are a number of realities that we in the business of running public seminars must contend with:

• People's learning habits are changing. The over abundance of information is causing us to have shorter memory and attention span. Accommodating  information in our head is too much of a burden so we tend to intentionally forget them because we know they can be accessed again through various means. 
• There are other ways to learn. You probably notice that you are engaging Google, Wikipedia and YouTube for your learning needs more often now. The new members of the workforce and the ones who will join us in the future will be so accustomed to it they will have less use for traditional training approaches to learn new things. There are various materials that can be downloaded from the Internet. In fact, with some materials, enough courage and a little  "googling," you can build your own home-made rocket. For more than a dozen times, I looked at YouTube to learn how to cook certain dishes. The only problem with self-paced learning methods like this is that they don't have features that tell you if you are doing it right. A good training program that teaches skills should be able to do that for you.
• Not everything is useful. Many trainers tell participants that attending a seminar is like going to a buffet with lots of food offered on the table. You get what you want and what you need and you consume them. you leave out those thing you don't need. Well, apparently, Buffet is not the best metaphor for public seminars, They're more like plated dinners with dishes served one by one. If you don't like what is being served now, you'll have to wait for the next round. It's a waste of your time and that of the resource person. What if you paid for the whole course but you are really just interested in one particular dish? 

Talent Management: Making Sense of the Grissoms and the Ecklies of the World.

I must admit that I am a late blooming fan of that spectacular TV Series, CSI. I spent the past few weeks devouring seasons 1 to 8 and is looking forward to seeing the rest of series soon. As much if not more than the mind blowing crime scene investigations, I got very interested in the dynamics of the CSI workplace. The HR man in me kicked in as I observed the characters' jobs and realized that they are in their right positions in the organization even if at times, it seems that they shouldn't be so. Grissom, the night shift supervisor and Ecklie, former day time supervisor and now Grissom's boss are a perfect study in talent placement.

For the non-CSI fans, let me tell a bit about the situation here. Between the two, it would appear that Grissom is the better scientist and the only reason why Ecklie edged him to that higher position is because he plays the politics card which to my eyes look like organization savvy.

Empowering Employees to Make Decision

On several occasions, I'm asked to emphasize decision making in my supervisory and management skills workshop, which actually is needless to say because decision-making is in deed an important part of it. The reason for this "special request" is that managers think their employees can't or don't have the skill to make sound decisions.

More often than not, they are right about their employees' inability to decide but wrong about the lack of skill. As a matter of fact, the right decisions are often just hanging there not being taken because those who are expected to make decisions do not have the... (drum roll please) needed empowerment to make them!

Who Builds Your Team?

If you are the leader of a team, then it is you. The success or failure of any team building effort depends on your ability and willingness to make things happen. Leaders lead, followers follow.

At exeQserve, our team building facilitators make it a point to lay this down clearly. I talk to whoever is the leader of a requesting organization and clarify both his/her role and ours as workshop facilitators.

If it is an organization-wide team building, we talk to all the managers and let them in on the strategy and tell them what role they will be playing during the workshop and then more importantly, after. This way, we already have them as ally or co-facilitators right at the start of the workshop.