TrainingABC Blog

Poor listening in the number one weakness of interviewers. Poor listeners miss the important information that the candidate is giving them in the interview and as a result make poor hiring decisions. While this is a weakness for most interviewers, the good news is that there are ways to become a better listener and make the hiring decisions that are best for your company and for your own future as a manager. Plus, applicants who rate the interviewer as an attentive listener rate your company hirer even if they don't get the job.

Every good job interview has a format. A structure that is well organized and will lead to finding the best possible candidate without using preconceived notions or biases - an interview that uses more than a gut feeling to find the right employee for a job. When your interview is well prepared and has a structure it takes a lot of pressure off of the interviewer. The interviewer just needs to follow the structure and questions and they will feel confident that they have conducted a thorough examination of the candidate.

Many companies these days have chosen to do team or panel interviewing. This type of interview involves a group of co-workers who interview the applicant as a team. This allows for several different opinions on a candidate and can result in a better interview and thus a better hire. Because team interviews involve multiple people, organization is even more key than in one-on-one interviews.

Preparing for a job interview requires a few steps of preparation. A job interview is more than a gut feeling. All of your preparation should revolve around making sure that you ask questions that are behavior-based - questions that will get information about how your candidate handled situations in their past. Past behaviors are the best way to predict future behaviors and all of the preparation should revolve around the purpose of discovering these past behaviors. Because the interview is behavior-based, personal biases and gut feelings will be taken out of the equation and the selection process will more scientific in nature. You will get a better employee this way.

Take notes! Taking notes is one of the most important parts of an effective interview. Note-taking will allow you to go back and see exactly what you were thinking when a candidate gave an answer and what they said. It's easy to forget an interview after it happens. If you rely on your memory it leads to decisions based on gut feelings. Candidates are trying to project an image and this image might be all you remember.

Sexual Harassment is still one of the most important legal issues in the workplace today. Despite years of training and focus in the media, there are still incidences of harassment reported every day. Many times it occurs because employees receive no training or very little training, but even in companies where regular training sessions are conducted the rate of harassment is alarmingly high. It's imperative that as much emphasis be placed on making the training as effective as possible. This is where video comes in. Study after study has shown that the visual effect of video makes learning stick more than any other medium.

The business world is full of organizations desperate to innovate and find the creativity needed to change in difficult times. Yet, most companies have a negative outlook. It's so easy to find fault in things and generally take a gloomy attitude. Businesses become so focused on the problems that face them that they forget that to solve the problems they need to look at possibilities. Looking at the negative closes the mind. Dewitt Jones teaches us to attack problems a little differently. Look for the positive in everything. He encourages us to Celebrate What's Right With The World instead of what's wrong.

Futurist Joel Barker is a pioneer in the study of Paradigm Shifts. Paradigm shifts are a profound change in a business, industry or way of doing things. Businesses that are not ready for these shifts can whither and die. Even industry leaders are susceptible to a severe downturn. Barker has extensively studied how these changes happen and why companies and individuals are not more prepared for these changes. His work presented in the classic video The Business of Paradigms has unearthed several important reasons why this occurs and what organizations can do to be prepared for these shifts.

A manager by nature has a short range view. The everyday tasks of running an organization keep a manager running around putting out fires and trying to survive the day. Day after day, week after week, his time is constantly filled. A leader finds time to look to the future. If there is no focus on the future, then the present will eventually mean nothing. Unless an organization knows where it is going then steering the ship in the present is an exercise in futility. It might as well be in an ocean thick with fog without a compass.

Generating creativity and innovation in the workplace in many cases requires a change in corporate culture. This is never easy but there are some simple yet powerful ways to be begin to create a culture of creativity and find innovation inside the imagination of your entire workforce.