Gender De-coding and unconscious bias Corporate culture and communication generally has a male tone. Whether it’s job adverts and postings, job descriptions, feedback and review forms or employee engagement and reward terminology. The HR world is awash with phrases such as champion, ninja, winner, hero, scrum master and black belt. It’s hardly surprising that some women or introverts can be deterred from…

How helpful are Blind CVs? There has been a recent move towards proposing blind CVs in the recruitment process. Intended to increase diversity and reduce bias in areas such as gender, ethnicity and ageism, a number of organisations are committing to this system, including the U.K. Civil Service, the BBC, the NHS,  the European Union, KPMG and HSBC. But…

Getting beyond copy-paste recruitment Copy-paste recruitment is generally business as usual in most organisations. A job description will be drafted for any open assignment. Usually this involves pulling out the old one, or re-positioning the CV of the last successful post holder.  “Get me someone like….” is a common instruction. Even if the post was last filled five…

Diversity initiatives and commitment Diversity initiatives are hard to introduce and even harder to manage successfully and bring to fruition. Many would say they are the window dressing and lip service to appease campaigners. Having a diversity policy is very different to making it effective. Neil Morrison covered this exact point in his post the other “Some are more equal than…

What’s happening to the career path? We all know the concept of  having a career path has shifted. Initially this was almost imperceptible, but in the last few years, it is well.. dying, some would say already dead. We saw the arrival of the portfolio career and now I’m seeing the start something else.  What I’m calling a cluster career. That…

The link between candidate experience and your talent pipeline Fuelled by decreased unemployment, retiring baby boomers and different workforce expectations and behaviour, the skirmish for the very best top talent is intensifying. Many organisations pay no or very little attention, to their candidate experience process. It’s either outsourced or automated, with varying degrees of success and efficiency. Ads frequently display clauses…

Finding the balance between attitude and aptitude The adage “Hire for attitude, train for skill” is frequently bandied around social media. Yet the reality is that this doesn’t frequently happen as part of a conscious, strategic hiring decision-making process, at least in ones that I’ve ever seen. The question is would it be the right move anyway? New hire failure…

What is  a “slow no?” A “slow no” is a communication device used by hiring managers or recruiters for keeping short listed candidates warm as a back-up plan. It involves indirect and opaque communication, which is a death knell to any search carried out with integrity. It might involve no communication at all, or fluff about delays. Sometimes it’s intentional.…

Future of work –  is HR equipped to deal with it? There are two concepts guaranteed to divide HR opinion around the future of work.  They are: the sharing or collaborative economy portfolio careers In theory they are both fine and dandy. The reality is something different. The sharing economy Listed in WIRED as one of the main…

LinkedIn Groups changes disadvantage job seekers LinkedIn Groups was one of the first ways LinkedIn attempted to connect its membership, offering like-minded professionals an opportunity to have open and transparent conversations.  It was a great place for job seekers, especially career changers, to get a feel for the career paths and backgrounds of people already in their target company, or…