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The
Radin Report
Published monthly,
our free e-mail newsletter contains sensor industry news and career
commentary. To subscribe, simply
send us your e-mail address.
The Future is Now
Will technology experience
20,000 years of growth in the next century? Futurist
Ray Kurzweil thinks so.
Tribute to a Sensor Industry Giant
When
Emory Farr handed over the keys to Sensortronics in early 2002, a
generational torch was passed—and with it, leadership qualities that are
absent in today’s corporate culture.
Crash
Diets: The Cure for Overweight Companies?
Given the enormous costs of recruiting and training employees, it’s
surprising that so many companies are purging themselves so quickly of their
valuable talent resources.
How
Effective is Your Capture Strategy?
In the war for talent, you may
know how to wine and dine the talent you need. But as a manager, are you
able
to actually
consummate the deal?
Merger
Mania Hits the Sensor Industry
Sensor companies may lack
celebrity status, but they’re no less active than the highest profile
companies when it comes to shuffling the deck.
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Intelligence
Failure Costly to Employers
by Bill Radin
With
better translators and interpreters, could 9/11 have been avoided? Many
experts seem to think so, and steps have been taken to strengthen our
nation’s ability to process communications.
Meanwhile,
the sensor industry is suffering an intelligence failure of its own,
resulting in a massive waste of time, money and human capital.
The
culprit? A collective inability to effectively translate job requirements
into plain English and interpret poorly written resumes.
If
the syntax used in the employment game could be improved, employers would
save millions of hours---and dollars---from unnecessary interviews,
anxious hiring decisions and dysfunctional employment relationships.
Here
are three simple ways to clarify the language of requisitions and resumes:
1. Replace the concept of “job descriptions” with “business
objectives.” Too often, employers define a job as a collection of skills
or keywords, rather than the desired outcome that drives the piece of work
needed to be done. Since a job’s objective ultimately defines the skills
necessary to do the job, the objective should receive top billing.
2. Prioritize the job objectives. Too often, companies reach a state of
hiring gridlock, in which conflicting or mutually exclusive goals serve to
disqualify a field of perfectly good candidates. If the job entails more
than two or three hard-core objectives, then minimize the number of
objectives or split the job in two.
3. Write (and look for) resumes that document accomplishments
chronologically. Hiring managers can’t make an informed decision without
knowing what a job seeker has done in the past, and when (and where) he
did it. In most cases, “summary” resumes are counterproductive,
because they tend to be too vague and require too much effort to
interpret. In contrast, an explicit chronological accounting of employment
and educational credentials can simplify the evaluation process, and
“fast-track” a deserving candidate.
My
role as a recruiter is to make sure the employer’s business objectives
are clearly stated, and that a candidate’s resume accurately reflects
his past performance. Once these two conditions are satisfied, I can spend
less time translating, and more time searching for talent.
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