Confident. Resilient. Charming. For many hiring managers, these words evoke an image of the perfect employee — a true “go-getter” — self-assured in a crisis, but also likable. They favor people who exhibit these qualities in interviews and are more likely to promote them. Unfortunately, these qualities may come with a hidden price. Confidence, resilience, and charm are also key […]
When faced with the choice between technical expertise or intangible personality traits, hiring managers choose the former. This preference is amplified in more technical fields like engineering, programming, and project management. Unfortunately, this approach is unsustainable. Why? First, millennials are career-hoppers. Recent studies have found that millennials change jobs four times during their first decade after college — often from […]
Psychometrics is a rigorous and long-standing field of study that attempts to measure personality and aptitude. Lately, however, the most accessible prototypes are Buzzfeed quizzes that tell you what Disney Princess you are – needless to say, its reputation in popular media has faltered. Despite this bad rep in the pop psych consciousness (i.e. Cambridge Analytica), psychometrics has wide-reaching implications […]
Frankenstein’s monster or Dr. Frankenstein? Algorithms provide a cloak of objectivity – but that doesn’t make them infallible. Just like humans, algorithms may rely on stereotypes that reinforce discriminatory hiring practices. Why is this? Because that’s what they’re designed to do. The backbone of many of these potentially discriminatory algorithms is something data-scientists call “satisficing,”. Satisficing is a decision-making strategy […]
Happy Groundhog Day! The big prediction is in for 2018. Punxsutawney Phil—the star of the most popular annual Groundhog Day event—saw his own shadow this morning (as he does about 70% of the time). According to tradition, this means that there will be 6 more weeks of Winter! But how likely is that prediction to come true? As a […]