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Acing a job interview is all about making a good first impression, and one big way to miss the mark is to answer an age-old question with a cliche. Responding to the question “what are your weaknesses?” by painting yourself as a perfectionist or a workaholic will likely prompt an eyeroll from Tom Gimbel, CEO of the staffing agency LaSalle Network.
“Oh, yeah, that’s a real weakness all right,” says Gimbel, who says he’s extended offers to “hundreds and hundreds” of people during his 25 years in the hiring business. “You want to be perfect and you work all the time. It’s a trick answer.”……Continue reading…
By: Jennifer Liu
Source: The worst way to answer ‘What are your weaknesses?’ per hiring pro
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Various psychological tests can assess a variety of KSAOs ( including literacy. Assessments are also available to measure physical ability. Recruiters and agencies may use applicant tracking systems to filter candidates, along with software tools for psychometric testing and performance-based assessment. In many countries, employers are legally mandated to ensure their screening and selection processes meet equal opportunity and ethical standards.
Employers are likely to recognize the value of candidates who encompass soft skills, such as interpersonal or team leadership, and the level of drive needed to stay engaged but most employers are still using degree requirements to screen out the 70+ million workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) who already possess many of those skills.
In fact, many companies, including multinational organizations and those that recruit from a range of nationalities, are also often concerned about whether candidate fits the prevailing company culture and organization as a whole. Companies and recruitment agencies are now turning to video screening as a way to notice these skills without the need to invite the candidates in person.
The word disability carries few positive connotations for most employers. Research has shown that the employer biases tend to improve through first-hand experience and exposure with proper supports for the employee and the employer making the hiring decisions. As for most companies, money and job stability are two of the contributing factors to the productivity of a disabled employee, which in return equates to the growth and success of a business.
Hiring disabled workers produces more advantages than disadvantages. There is no difference in the daily production of a disabled worker. Given their situation, they are more likely to adapt to their environmental surroundings and acquaint themselves with equipment, enabling them to solve problems and overcome adversity than other employees.The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) grants companies Disabled Access Credit when they meet eligibility criteria.
Internal recruitment or internal mobility (not to be confused with internal recruiters) refers to the process of a candidate being selected from the existing workforce to take up a new job in the same organization, perhaps as a promotion, or to provide career development opportunity, or to meet a specific or urgent organizational need.
Advantages include the organization’s familiarity with the employee and their competencies insofar as they are revealed in their current job, and their willingness to trust said employee. It can be quicker and have a lower cost to hire someone internally. Many companies will choose to recruit or promote employees internally. This means that instead of searching for candidates in the general labor market, the company will look at hiring one of their own employees for the position.
After searches that combine internal with external processes, companies often choose to hire an internal candidate over an external candidate due to the costs of acquiring new employees, and also on the fact that companies have pre-existing knowledge of their own employees’ effectiveness in the workplace. Additionally, internal recruitment can encourage the development of skills and knowledge because employees anticipate longer careers at the company.
However, promoting an employee can leave a gap at the promoted employee’s previous position that subsequently needs to be filled. Traditionally, internal recruitment will be done through internal job postings. Another method of recruiting internally is through employee referrals.
Having existing employees in good standing recommend coworkers for a job position is often a preferred method of recruitment because these employees know the values of the organization, as well as the work ethic of their coworkers. Some managers will provide incentives to employees who provide successful referrals.
Immigrant worker populations often are at greater risk for workplace injuries and fatalities. For example within the United States, immigrant Mexican workers have one of the highest rates of fatal workplace injuries out of all of the working population. Statistics like these are explained through a combination of social, structural, and physical aspects of the workplace.
These workers struggle to access safety information and resources in their native languages because of lack of social and political inclusion. In addition to linguistically tailored interventions, it is also critical for the interventions to be culturally appropriate. Those residing in a country to work without a visa or other formal authorization may also not have access to legal resources and recourse that are designed to protect most workers.
Health and Safety organizations that rely on whistleblowers instead of their own independent inspections may be especially at risk of having an incomplete picture of worker health. The roles and responsibilities of OSH professionals vary regionally but may include evaluating working environments, developing, endorsing and encouraging measures that might prevent injuries and illnesses.
Providing OSH information to employers, employees, and the public, providing medical examinations, and assessing the success of worker health programs, In Norway, the main required tasks of an occupational health and safety practitioner include the following:
- Systematic evaluations of the working environment
- Endorsing preventive measures which eliminate causes of illnesses in the workplace
- Providing information on the subject of employees’ health
- Providing information on occupational hygiene, ergonomics, and environmental and safety risks in the workplace
In the Netherlands, the required tasks for health and safety staff are only summarily defined and include the following:
- Providing voluntary medical examinations
- Providing a consulting room on the work environment to the workers
- Providing health assessments (if needed for the job concerned).
“The main influence of the Dutch law on the job of the safety professional is through the requirement on each employer to use the services of a certified working conditions service to advise them on health and safety”. A “certified service” must employ sufficient numbers of four types of certified experts to cover the risks in the organisations which use the service:
- A safety professional
- An occupational hygienist
- An occupational physician
- A work and organisation specialist.
In 2004, 37% of health and safety practitioners in Norway and 14% in the Netherlands had an MSc; 44% had a BSc in Norway and 63% in the Netherlands; and 19% had training as an OSH technician in Norway and 23% in the Netherlands. Because different countries take different approaches to ensuring occupational safety and health, areas of OSH need and focus also vary between countries and regions.
Similar to the findings of the ENHSPO survey conducted in Australia, the Institute of Occupational Medicine in the UK found that there is a need to put greater emphasis on work-related illness in the UK. In contrast, in Australia and the US, a major responsibility of the OHS professional is to keep company directors and managers aware of the issues that they face in regards to occupational health and safety principles and legislation.
However, in some other areas of Europe, it is precisely this which has been lacking: “Nearly half of senior managers and company directors do not have an up-to-date understanding of their health and safety-related duties and responsibilities.”
In the Arab Gulf countries such as Qatar, there is poor OHS. During the construction of different FIFA World cup infrastructure, it was reported that workers were treated badly.
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