Blog

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

  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

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

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

  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

  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

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

The average employed adult spends at least eight hours at work five days a week. As a result, for many, work represents more than just a place where we go to earn money. The workplace is in fact an important source of social support and it’s not uncommon to form close and sometimes even life-long … Continued

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

Today’s front cover of The Independent screams out that thousands of working class people are being denied jobs at top firms as they effectively need to pass a ‘poshness test’ to join elite employers. This was according to an official body set up by the Government to promote social mobility. This poshness test includes ‘the … Continued