(This post In Italian)

Sara’ organizato il prossimo 3 dicembre 2009 un web-seminario gratuito sulla comunicazione multi-culturale. Questo evento e’ sponsorizatto dall’Unione Europea con la partecipazione di Economia.hu e EventoNetwork.

Per piu’ informazione e modalita’ di iscrizione cliccate qui.

The following are comments from Linkedin users on the following question:

“Recruiters, employers, do you rely on psychometric tests in the hiring process? Why? Why not? and How do you feel about them?”

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Leslie Traub (Professional profile and Personal Website)

President/CEO Cook Ross, Inc

“We do use psychometric testing, more as a point of understanding the individual and how he or she will complement our team. There are certain jobs that require a particular focus or orientation, and we look for aspects of that job in the testing. We wouldn’t NOT offer a job if everything else lined up. We also use the testing as a way to explore our team dynamics. They become the context for many conversations about how we can work together better, and how can have more compassion and understanding for each others differences.”

Leslie Traub brings more than twenty years of experience in diversity, inclusion and change management consulting, facilitation, training, and development to Cook Ross Inc.

Loren Hicks (Professional Website and Personal Website)

Senior management consultant / tech executive

“I have found the fortune teller down the street to be less expensive, and at least as accurate. Horoscopes are even less expensive. Everyone with an IQ high enough that you’d actually want to hire will try and play the test to tell you what they think you want to hear. You’re much better off reading the signals in an interview, and watching behaviour in the first few weeks after the hire.”

Loren Hicks has business knowledge across many verticals – eCommerce, manufacturing, securities, transportation, banking, insurance, leisure, and more. Specialist in project recovery – bringing new thinking and discipline to make faltering initiatives deliver.

Noel  Wagner (Professional Profile)

Director of Business Development at Carltech

“I have used them off and on over the past 15 years and they can give you some insight into what the candidate perceives about themself (not necessarily what the actual truth is but what they think it is) and have found they are no guarantee or even acurate predictor of future behavior.

Nothing beats a good in person interview and hard skills testing if applicable.”

Noel works for Carltech, a Recruiting firm specializing in contract staffing for Information Technology, Engineering and Accounting.

Connect at http://www.linkedin.com/in/vannoni

For those of you who use linked.com you might have wondered whether or not to buy a “pro” version.

As things now stands, I do not see a need to subscribe to the “pro” features.

You can see a table comparing free membership with the paying ones at Linkedin’s own website.

What I think would tilt the balance for me are the following features:

- A detailed list of “who viewed my profile?”
- Synch linkedin.com contacts and events with my own desktop calendar (like plaxo does).
- Templates on how to best publish one’s résumé or c.v. with a step-by-step “résumé-builder”.
- The ability to insert a video about oneself and/or company.
- Downloadble pdf’s of one’s profile for third-parties.

Any other ideas?

When commenting, be sure to leave your name and URL for reference.

Though these multiple-endings videos, the Metropolitan Police aim to make youngsters aware of the consequences of their behaviour.

Are these effective?

Before I discuss the origins, claims, dubious utility of psychometric tests and unveil strategies to “pass” them, consider the following passage of a New York Times interview with Lawrence W. Kellner CEO of Continental Airlines.

Q. How do you hire?

A. I don’t believe — and I probably learned this through experience — that any one-hour or two-hour interview can let me figure out, “Yeah, that person is going to be really successful.” What I’ve found is that step one is, “O.K., have I worked with somebody who could fill this job who’s really good?” Because I’ve found my success rate is dramatically higher going that route. If not, the second step is to widen the net to people who I trust, and look for people they’ve worked with. Our third net is we try to find somebody we know and trust who knows the person we’re thinking of hiring. The best possible interview is minuscule in value compared to somebody who’s got even a couple of months of work experience with somebody, who’s actually watched how they work.

To paraphrase Mr Kellner, the best kind of hiring takes time; hiring decisions should aggregate months, if not years of combined knowledge of the candidate.

Set against this, are psychometric tests which were derived from a field of study called Psychometrics.

As a reminder, “Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of educational and psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits.”

Here are two claims made by two websites about psychometric tests:

The first comes from Psychometric Success.

Psychometric tests aim to measure attributes like intelligence, aptitude and personality. They provide a potential employer with an insight into how well you work with other people, how well you handle stress, and whether you will be able to cope with the intellectual demands of the job.

The second from WiseGeeks.

Psychometric testing is a tool used mainly in the recruitment process. It is recognized as an efficient way to gain insight into a person’s personality and psychological thinking. It can help develop team spirit in the workplace and assess an individual’s priorities.

…Once the test has been completed, it takes approximately 5-10 seconds to produce the results….

Unlike Continental’s CEO, the focus of psychometric testing is speed. Employers using this scheme hope to gain a presumably comprehensive insight into the candidates skills and character or personality aptitudes.

Skill tests are then further divided into two categories:

1. Ability tests (numerical, verbal and logical reasoning, problem-solving skills, and the ability to identify mistakes accurately).
2. Aptitude tests which aim to assess your ability to use specific job-related skills, and predict future performance.

Personality tests assess your general character. They seek to answer the question: “how would you behave at work?” The concept that employers aim at, is to match job requirements with certain characteristics for particular jobs. For a sales role, for example, they may want someone who is very agressive, organised and creative.

“Beat the test!”

1) Gather information about the company and its people. Start with the job description and pay particular attention to sentences such as:

The ideal candidate will have…

Responsibilities include…

2) Visit the company’s website. Find-out about its products, services, business objectives and what they stand for and core values. In general, you are trying to understand how the company perceives itself.

3) Find about the kind of people who work in the department you would be working in. (Use Linkedin and other professional networks).

4) Having done this, write down the key words you have gleaned under the three categories mentioned above:

Abilities–> e.g. C++, Copy Editing etc…

Aptitudes–> e.g. adapt to change, quick learner, manage multiple projects etc…

Personality–> e.g. introverted, creative, patient, risk-taker etc..

Once you have all this, you are pretty much ready to take the test. In terms of “abilities”, if you really don’t have that knowledge this job is not for you: either you know CSS or you don’t. In some cases, where you feel you could have that skill, find a course, get a book and train to acquire it. You might want to ask people who are at this job how much of that particular skill they use and how.

As for “Aptitudes” and “Personalities” it is now just a matter of thinking quickly and supplying the tester (and employer) with the answers it expects. Remember there are no exact answers, there are only answers that are good for that job description.

So how might you answer this?

Answer on a scale from 1 to 6

This is basically a question between “Selfless” on the left and “Selfish” on the right. What’s the right answer? It’s in the job description. Are you going for a stockbroker job or teaching position?

How about this one?

Answer on a scale from 1 to 6

“If I have a problem, I want to sort it out by myself”

or

“When I have a problem I seek the advice of others”

It’s simple, if the job description stated “self-starter” you would probably select 1 or 2 (i.e. “I sort it out by myself”). If the job description stated “collaborative” then you select 5 or 6.

A few more hints: be consistent in your answers. These tests are meant to confuse you. So you wont get 5 questions in a row about “selfish” versus “unselfish”. Each “trait” will be proposed to you, perhaps every 4th question. So question 1 will be about selfishness, question two about risk-taking, question 3 about creativity and question 4, again, on selfishness.

Final thoughts and take-away.

While it is true that not all companies can take the time to get to know all potential candidates intimately, they have to be aware of the fact that, as shown above, there is a way around these tests. These tests may inform, but well-purposed face-to-face interviews should be the cornerstone of your hiring process.

For candidates know that:

1. the more you practice taking them, the better you will do.
2. the answers to these tests are in the job-description.

See the Personal Branding solution at Mediacodex.com

]]> http://mediacodex.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/how-to-beat-and-pass-psychometric-tests/feed/ 0 manifestmagazine Screen shot 2009-09-30 at 12.01.25 Screen shot 2009-09-30 at 12.06.47 http://mediacodex.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/cortona-cultura-democratica/ http://mediacodex.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/cortona-cultura-democratica/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:56:40 +0000 manifestmagazine http://mediacodex.wordpress.com/?p=361 ]]>

Presentation / Presentazione del 12/Sept/2009

English / Italiano (sotto il video)

The organisers had given me two hours to present on communication in politics (including campaigning through social media).

I settled upon a flexible road-map because I wanted to create an opportunity for the participants to express their opinions. Most presentations, espescially in continental Europe tend to be monologues where the audience sits passively and is expected to absorb dense and sometimes deliberately obscure.

In the end, the presentation was thus:

Part 1) “If you (the audience) were the communications team of your party’s candidate, and your candidate had to participate in a presidential debate in a month from now: what would you do; what would you suggest; what would your strategy be?

Part 2) Focus on www.mybarackobama.com, where I state that the genius of the campaign was to reduce the distance between “emotion” and “action”.

Part 3) At the request of the audience, we then focused on the French Presidential Debate between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. In particular, I demonstrate how Mr Sarkozy was far more prepared and had a communications strategy to meet this challenge. (see an earlier post on Presidential Debates)

What you see in the video below are excerpts of the presentation (in Italian). For the entire 2-hours presentation click here.

Special thanks to my "mentor" Brunella Devoti who dealt with the logistics throughout the conference and introduced my talk.

Questo e’ il reso-conto del mio intervento a Cortona a l’occasione dell’evento “Cultura Democratica”

Come accade spesso (e a maggior ragione in Europa continentale), questo tipo di presentazione si trasforma in un diluvio di informazione che per il pubblico e’ difficile da gestire. C’e’ da scommettere che in certi casi, l’opacita’ e la densita’ della presentazione e’ il risultato, non di un presentatore che non a cura di chi lo ascolta, ma, che sono volute.

Decidetti dunque di far partecipare il pubblico; di dare lui l’opportunita’ di esprimersi, di rivelare quante opinioni contrastanti possano esserci e di diriggere il dibattito. Il meta-messaggio che volli trasmettere tramite l’interazione, e’ che la comunicazione in politica e’ un tema molto complesso.

Percio’, la sessione fu divisa in tre parti:

1) “Se voi foste i consiglieri di un candidato, e che questo candidato dovra’ affrontare il suo avversario in un dibattito televisivo in un mese da oggi; cosa gli consigliereste di fare?

2) Il caso di mybarackobama.com e come il sito ha accorciato le distanza tra “emozione” e “azione”.

3) Per decisione del pubblico, e’ stato approfondito e in fine dimostrato che Nicolas Sarkozy fu molto piu preparato di Segolene Royal durante il dibattito presidenziale del 2005. (Articolo sul tema Presidential Debates).

Tutta la presentazione (2 ore) puo’ essere vista cliccando qui (richiede quicktime).

Vorrei ringraziare Brunella Devoti, il mio "tutor" a Cortona per il suo aiuto e professionalismo. 

I have been invited to speak at the “Scuola Politica 2009″ in the Etruscan town of Cortona in Tuscany.

Scuola Politica's Home Page

The Scuola Politica is a annual forum which gathers international thought leaders such as Rigoberta Menchu’, 1992 nobel peace prize winner, Abolhassan Banisadr, the first president of Iran after the fall of the Shah, Richard Parker Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, David Schweickart, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.

The event will take place from the 10th to the 12th of Septembre. Each day will be devoted to a particular theme: Society, Culture, Communications and politics.

This last theme is the one I have chosen for my presentation. I have realised that while much praise has been given to the Barack Obama presidential campaign, few people have examined in details why it was so effective in spurring volunteers into action.

My presentation will be available for download after the event is over.

Links:

Scuola Democratica homepage

List of participants

Schedule (9, 10, 11, 12 of Septembre)

The Berkman Center is taking a break from public events for the month of August. This is where I met Doc Searls and Arno Grbac during a presentation by Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. (Find the interview on Manifest N6 )

Here are some of the talks, videos, and podcasts produced at Berkman’s over the last few months. To get you started, here’s a sampling of pieces, many of which are now available in Ogg, a free and open standard for digital media.

-Citizen Media Law Project on “Newsgathering and Privacy – Stay on the Story, Don’t Become the Story!”: Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9d8qonx4AY&eurl. Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWKPYfs5DJI.

-Radio Berkman: NBC vs. the Pirates with members of Carnegie Mellon’s iLab and Journalist/New Media Expert Daisy Whitney: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/podcasts/radioberkman122

-Radio Berkman: Why We Search with Stephen Wolfram: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/podcasts/radioberkman120

-Berkman Luncheon Series: A Discussion Around the Google Book Search Settlement with Alex Macgillivray of Google: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheons/2009/07/macgillivray

-Lawrence Lessig on the Google Book Search Settlement – “Settlements: Static goods, dynamic bads: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/07/googlelessig

-Life in the shadow of the Google Books Settlement with John Palfrey, Harvard Law School; Maura Marx, Open Knowledge Commons; and Siva Vaidhyanathan, UVA: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/07/googleopening

-Orphan Works: What does open access mean? with James Grimmelman, New York Law School; Lewis Hyde, Berkman Center; Phil Malone, Berkman Center; Eric Saltzman, Creative Commons; and Jule Sigall, Microsoft (formerly U.S. Copyright Office, principal drafter “Report on Orphan Works”): http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/07/googleorphan

At $2.07 per gigabyte the "classic" is best value for money.

I have recently been on the market to replace my 80 gigs ipod for a new one. I use my ipod principally to listen to podcasts and as an external hard-drive.

I have been surprised by a discontinuity in terms of hard drive space.

The Shuffle and itouch range between 8 and 32 gigs. The next data point is 120 gigs for the ipod classic.

I have put all the pricing (from apple’s US store) into a spreadsheet and compared prices and features. If you are looking to maximise dollars spent per gigabyte, then the “classic” is by far your best option.

Click on image below to dowload the pdf chart.