CRA Inc

Trusted Advice On Interviewing For Character

As many of our clients will attest, we are big fans of David Maister … and that is probably a bit of an understatement. (Alan has referenced one of his books, True Professionalism twice: here and here and we regularly recommend The Trusted Advisor to clients.) Well, as you may or may not know, David started blogging a few months ago (and podcasting!) and his blog is one of the first in my Bloglines account that I read.

I was about to post his post from today to our internal blog when I realized that many of you would also benefit from his thoughts, as well as the thoughts from his commenters.

The number one challenge of many organizations (including ours) is recruiting and retention. David’s post today focused on Screening For Character–a practice I’ve watched many clients try to emulate unsuccessfully. His post has sparked quite the discussion in his comment section and I encourage anyone interested in the topic to read through all of them.

Additions to the “What Not To Do” file

Presented without commentary, aside from the title of this post…

1. Money Saving Tips for the Recently Downsized. If you haven’t heard about the money-saving tips Northwest Airlines provided to a group of laid-off employees, go here… and here. I didn’t have to seek out the information; a Northwest employee was nice enough to place the second news article on my airplane seat so I could read it on my flight from Philadelphia to Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago.
2. We told them they’d find out via email, so what’s the problem? And the latest…Radio Shack laid-off between four and five hundred employees via email this week. For more, go here… It seems that when Radio Shack announced two weeks ago that they would lay off employees they told employees that some may learn of their loss via email.