Thought of the Day - Mismatch Problems

Anyone who has felt like they had to jump through pointless hoops at an assessment centre for a job (i would imagine just about everyone these days), can now rest assured that they are infact a complete waste of time. At least according to best selling author Malcolm Gladwell.

In the video of a presentation he made, he argues that most assessments used to determine peoples suitability for jobs are fundamentally flawed. That the entry to careers ranging from ice hockey player to lawyer, are based on tests that have no bearing on actual ability to perform the duties of a job. Moreover he argues that they only thing that indicates if someone will perform well at a job is if they actually do the job.

I suppose the question is how can you tell if someone can do a job without incurring large costs in terms of time or money?

The mismatch problem is only a concern to you and me if people believe that tests and interview questions are doing anything more than weeding out the blatantly unsuitable candidates. And more to the point, accept that the candidates that do well at the tests may be useless at the job.

Idea From: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/gladwell

Thought of the Day - Job Acceptance

Something that I noted down from Go Put Your Strengths To Work by Marcus Buckingham:

Before accepting a job ask yourself 3 things:
Purpose - What is the purpose of the job? Does it fit with your values?
People - Who will you be working with? Do you think you will get on with them?
Activities - What will you actually be doing? Does it fit with your strengths?

He suggests that the the top is the least important, getting more important as you go down. I would agree, if you don't like what you are doing day to day you would have to be working with some very special people or have a very strong purpose before it would be bearable. On the other hand if you love what you are actually doing the other two are easy to put up with if they aren't right.

Thought of the Day - Time Constraints

Today i happened across an advert for possibly my ideal job - Business Design Consultant with IDEO, the daddy of all creative consultancies. There was only one slight problem, the closing date was the 25th of April ... today.

It was 20:30 and my first reaction was; "stuff it, not enough time, why bother". Then it occurred to me that my CV would probably only need minor tweaks and really 3.5 hours should really be plenty to draft a cover letter and project report. So i whipped up a plan with some tight deadlines and set to it. Turns out i didn't even need until midnight, i finished 30minutes early!

About half way through the work i realised that if i had found the advert earlier i would have procrastinated or forgotten or not really worked on it until now. So really having a very challenging time scale was probably beneficial to me. Unfortunately we can't rely on serendipity to bring tasks to us at exactly the right time but it has convinced me that Goldratt is right in Critical Chain. What i really need to do is work out how to manufacture that tight deadline, that stress, so there is a cut-off to each task and i don't continue tweaking for longer than is required.


Ok so the chances of me getting the job are virtually zero, but i would have always wondered 'what if?' if i hadn't applied. The worst that can happen is i don't hear back from them, anything above that is gravy. If they call me i can ask what i could do to develop more, if they interview me i get a free trip to London to the meca of creative consultancies and while it is a million to one shot, i might even get a job out of it.

Thought of the Day - The Grass Is Always Greener

"The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence"
So true of so many situations, but in my current situation it applies to jobs, or more particularly my perception of jobs. Reading a job spec i always imagine the good things, make the spec fit what i am looking for, then at the interview i steer the interviewers to tell me what i want to hear, then i start the job and it is never quite right. I think i have gotten better at checking my optimism and having a more realistic view of jobs but it is still difficult. The biggest problem is that you never know what a job will be like until you do it and by the time you find out if it is good or not you are kinda committed.


Idea From: Caroline "The grass is always greener on the other side of the golf-field"

Thought of the Day - Job Application Tip

When applying for jobs always keep a copy of the Job Spec, you never know how long it might take to get an interview and you could be left without it.