Job boards are so last decade. In 2013, one-click job applications are all the rage.

Digital experts say it's becoming increasingly difficult to separate recruitment from social media in this day and age. Employers are extensively using online venues including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to broadcast available positions; in fact, it's become an essential part of most companies' current recruitment strategies. According to Jobvite's 2013 Social Recruitment Survey, 94 percent of the 1,500 respondents are already using social recruiting and plan to increase their investment in candidate recruitment by 73 percent.

The reasons why so many organizations are eager to tap into social recruiting are pretty obvious: they spend less time to hire (by 33 percent) and see significant increases in candidate quality (43 percent), as well as in quantity (43 percent). When screening candidates on social networks, recruiters can also better assess the candidate quality and make more informed hiring decisions.


Check out the findings of Jobvite's survey, illustrated in the infographic below:

Read More: http://tinyurl.com/lahuawx

Some of the most iconic images from space are the ones that show astronauts floating outside the safety of a spacecraft. Week-End Reading: http://philippemora.tumblr.com

Avoiding pitfalls and become a more effective leader: authenticiy begins with self-awareness, knowing who you are—your values, emotions, and competencies—and how you’re perceived by others. Only then can you know what to reveal and when. I remember a mentor of mine telling me to “dumb down” to manage the CEO properly, because being too smart becomes a liability past a certain level. This actually means that good communication skills are also key to effective self-disclosure, and that is a critical skill that has to be learned in political organizations.

-Philippe.

[Thank You Harvard Business Review | by Lisa Rosh and Lynn Offermann 10.01.13]
To evaluate when—and when not—to share, take this interactive assessment.

“Authenticity” is the new buzzword among leaders today. We’re told to bring our full selves to the office, to engage in frank conversations, and to tell personal stories as a way of gaining our colleagues’ trust and improving group performance. The rise in collaborative workplaces and dynamic teams over recent years has only heightened the demand for “instant intimacy,” and managers are supposed to set an example.

But the honest sharing of thoughts, feelings, and experiences at work is a double-edged sword: Despite its potential benefits, self-disclosure can backfire if it’s hastily conceived, poorly timed, or inconsistent with cultural or organizational norms—hurting your reputation, alienating employees, fostering distrust, and hindering teamwork. Getting it right takes a deft touch, for leaders at any stage of their careers.

Consider Mitch, the director of a newly established department at a major U.S. university, who was responsible for negotiating and maintaining links with other educational and research institutions. Attempting to break the ice in his first meeting with the dean of a prominent college, he mentioned how excited he was to be at the dean’s school, because he’d wanted to attend it but had been rejected. He got a cold stare in response, and the meeting ended without an agreement. Mitch thought his comment was friendly and self-deprecating; now he realizes that it probably lowered his standing with the dean, who may have thought he was either challenging the admissions process or seeking pity. Mitch learned that such revelations must be skillfully deployed.

In our years of studying and consulting on leadership development, team building, and communication skills, we’ve come across hundreds of cases like this. Drawing on them and on more than four decades’ worth of research in social and organizational psychology, we now have some lessons to share. Here we look at the common mistakes executives make when they’re trying to be authentic and offer a five-step plan for moving toward more-effective self-disclosure.

Where Leaders Slip

Authenticity begins with self-awareness: knowing who you are—your values, emotions, and competencies—and how you’re perceived by others. Only then can you know what to reveal and when. Good communication skills are also key to effective self-disclosure; your stories are worthwhile only if you can express them well. We typically encounter three types of executives whose lack of self-knowledge causes their revelations to fall flat—oblivious leaders, bumblers, and open books—and two types who fail because they are poor communicators: inscrutable leaders and social engineers. (However, people often fit into more than one category at least some of the time.)

Research suggests that poor leaders produce disgruntled, unengaged employees and conversely that great leaders do the opposite — that is, that they produce highly committed, engaged, and productive employees.

This post is a corollary to my article about what stops leaders from showing compassion last week. This research is fundamental in terms of management science because it shows convincingly that neither the strong approach (tough) nor the soft approach (nice) work. As a matter of fact, it appears that the ‘tough and nice” approach is the most effective: leaders with highly engaged employees know how to demand a great deal from employees, but are also seen as considerate, trusting, collaborative, and great developers of people. Something to think about.

-Philippe

[Thank you Harvard Business Review | By Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman 09.11.13]
It’s probably no news to most people who work that poor leaders produce disgruntled, unengaged employees. Our research also shows convincingly that great leaders do the opposite — that is, that they produce highly committed, engaged, and productive employees.

And the difference is cavernous — in a study of 160,576 employees working for 30,661 leaders at hundreds of companies around the world, we found average commitment scores in the bottom quarter for those unfortunate enough to work for the worst leaders (those leaders who had been rated in the bottom 10th percentile by their bosses, colleagues, and direct reports on 360 assessments of their leadership abilities). By contrast, average commitment scores for those fortunate enough to work for the best leaders (those rated in the 90th percentile) soared to the top 20th percentile. More simply put, the people working for the really bad leaders were more unhappy than three quarters of the group; the ones working for the really excellent leaders were more committed than eight out of ten of their counterparts.

What exactly fosters this engagement? During our time in the training and development industry we’ve observed two common — and very different — approaches. On the one hand are leaders we call “drivers”; on the other, those we call “enhancers.”