It is Friday so let’s go to another anecdote: I was involved in a face-to-face interview with a very confident candidate at one of our customer’s offices. We were trying to determine if the candidate was as good at developing new business as he was claiming to be. He had a strong “D” factor so we knew we could ask him very direct questions. So our customer asked the candidate, “How can you prove to us that you are as good at developing new business as you say you are? In your sales process, what type of close do typically like to use?” The candidate responded: “Usually business casual unless… Read More
Continue ReadingFrequency of Rewards/Incentives
I’m not a fan of gambling, but this CareerJournal article contains an interesting point: Many newer programs incorporate elements of behavioral psychology, offering more targeted incentives for increasing sales or productivity, for example. They tend to offer smaller rewards more frequently so that employees make a mental link between their behavior and the reward. Ravin Jesuthasan, managing principal at consulting firm Towers Perrin, says employers are shifting to instant-recognition programs, instead of quarterly or yearly incentives. The article is clearly based on more of a B2C selling model (banks are prominently mentioned), but as a psych major, I appreciate their Pavlovian approach to reinforcement. Reminds me of rat lab –… Read More
Continue ReadingMore About Hiring Experience
Our latest article is finished and has been submitted for editorial review. Look for it early next week – can it really be that the Fourth of July is just over a week away? I was reviewing some of our previous articles and came across these paragraphs from Retooling the Hiring Process for Today’s Market: One key to properly retooling will shift the current focus from experience to talent. This fundamental change will be precipitated by the need to develop talent as opposed to hiring experience. The experienced candidate will become a product of a supply and demand marketplace. There will be more demand with less supply which leads to… Read More
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