Category Archives: Helpful Hints

Smart

If you’re like most people you’ve been interviewed for a job at some point.  Maybe you’ve even done the interviewing.  It’s one of the most important things we do as managers and the ability to do interviews that successfully separate great candidates from merely good candidates is worth a lot to your employer.

I’ve done many interviews over the last 30 years and hired quite a few people.  Inevitably I ask them a question which I’ve found very useful in the process and I thought I’d share it with you today. Continue reading

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Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Why Learn?

Plots of quadratic equations with discriminant...

Let’s start the year off with a question I’m sure you’ve heard if you have kids. It goes something like this: Why learn? “Why do I have to learn all this stuff in (math, history, chemistry – pick one) when I’ll never use it anyway?”  The easy way out is to remind them that you had to labor through it and it’s the unfortunate lot of children that their play gets interrupted to acquire certain life skills. However, in an age when damn near everything anyone has ever learned is pretty much accessible via a search of some sort, and access to search is immediately available everywhere, why learn indeed? Well, here’s why, and it’s a business lesson as well. Continue reading

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Filed under Growing up, Helpful Hints

Top Posts Of 2010 #1

As has become my custom, I’m going to repost a few of the more widely read posts from this past year.  What’s interesting, at least to me, is if what I wrote at the time is still relevant or is the post just indicative of a bad night’s sleep.

Today’s post was one of the top two in terms of reads.  I suspect that in part it has to do with an SEO quirk – people searching for Stripes or Sgt. Hulka – but hopefully it has something to do with the topic as well.  As I read it again my feelings about the subject haven’t changed a bit.  In fact, as the year went on, they only intensified.  Let’s see how you feel. Continue reading

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Filed under Helpful Hints, Reality checks