Checkster Blog

For those of you who are unclear about what Checkster is doing, check out the interview that Hyveup did on Checkster recently:

Make reference Checking a strong and powerful tool for your organization. Avoid legal pitfalls, save time, and benchmark your organization. To do this:

Participate in a 4 minute online survey and receive the Best Practices Report for free: Click here.

Details about the survey:
The results of the research study will provide you with the best questions to ask to optimize the reference check process. This will allow you to benchmark your own internal practices.

Checkster is underwriting the cost of this study, “Best Practices in Reference Checking,” as a value-added service to our clients to encourage future product development and contribute to ongoing research in our industry regarding automated, online reference checking solutions.
Privacy is guaranteed and your contact details will not be shared with any other organizations.
All results will remain confidential.

While in India recently, I had the opportunity to meet the head of Google India, Shailesh Rao. India is in an economic boom with a GDP growth of 9 percent (compared to 3 percent with the US) in an extremely competitive talent market. It is interesting to see how Google, one of the most innovative companies today, is addressing the talent challenge. In short, what can we learn from this smart and innovative company about how they address the talent challenge in a hyper growth market?

I wrote this article for Kennedy information and you will see how recruiting decisions are made at Google. Leveraging the collective intelligence: mainly relies on two core techniques: interviewing and reference checking. We of course like the collective feedback as we provide tools that just do that, our automated reference check (reference Checkup) and 360 Checkup (simplified 360 feedback tool).

Read full article here.

The latest report from the Economist Intelligence Unit clearly states: Tomorrow will be a struggle for a good workforce; It is a talent War!
The reasons for this are an ageing population; changing business needs; education gaps; work-life balance; and global competition.
The 944 executives that took the survey see a couple of “out-of-the-box” solutions to these problems:
1. Talent management is owned by the businesses and supported by HR. It is literally too important to be left to HR alone! Really?
2. Recruiting from other countries and other industries. Transferable skills are more true than ever.
3. Bring retirees and mothers back to work.
4. Work more with outside training institutions to improve training.
5. Develop training programs even with competitors to broaden the talent pool.

At Checkster, we strongly believe that adding out-of-the-box tools to the aforementioned practices is a recipe for success. Our 360 Checkup tool enables organizations to provide next generation training support based on the latest findings in neuroscience. These types of tools address points two and three in the chart below.

If you are a job seeker, you’re probably wondering what works best for finding a job?
Here is a list of the top 3 things that lead to a successful job search:
1. Referrals (from current employees, friends, or customers of the employer)
2. Employer Website
3. Online Job database

What about employers? How can you attract active job seekers?

1. Leverage your referral program
2. Brand appeal
3. Utilize an online database
4. Optimize your website

Surprising absolute loser: “best employer awards”

More details about these findings are contained within the following Gallup survey.

A good article titled, “The Rash Of Problems Over Job References,” published in the March 10 edition of the National Law Journal, discusses problems found in traditional reference checks. In short, it explains how employers are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
An increasing number of employers are landing in court over job references and are facing lawsuits for what they said and didn’t say about ex-employees. Employers are finding that they are being sued no matter what course they take: “Whether they give a bad reference, a good reference, or stay entirely silent.”
Checkster’s Reference Checkup is such an awesome tool because it takes the employer out of the equation and places the responsibility of obtaining feedback on the candidate. It can therefore save employers many headaches and the recruiting organization large legal fees! If you have not tried it yet, look at how Checkster’s Reference Checkup not only saves you time, but helps one avoid the legal landmines highlighted in the aforementioned article!

Reinforcement Learning is a well accepted model in the computational community.
It was originally created by the artificial intelligence community as a model to understand and improve learning. The model’s core principle is based on a reward signal. Rewards in the animal world can be juice, food, or excitation of a pleasure zone in the brain. What we find fascinating is the fact that neuroscientists have been using Reinforcement Learning at the center of their model for understanding the brain, and it seems to be working!

The most interesting aspect of studying the brain has been the realization that some neurons (called dopamine neurons) have the power to react not only to the reward signal, but also to the early sign of a reward signal once the pattern has been learned. Pavlov experiences in which the sound of a bell creates a reaction (salivation) in dogs prior to them receiving a reward (food), are probably the most well known examples of this mechanism. The reward signal was already delivered to the dog at the time of the sound of the bell.

Let’s make the leap to the corporate world, where we see from the start that we have major issues:
1. Often people complain about the lack of feedback they receive on their job. This major issue is preventing our brains from receiving the tools it needs to learn. In short, it prevents us from growing at all!
2. Lack of candid feedback: this non-consistent feedback makes any learning opportunity a waste. There is no way we can consistently see patterns and learn from them when they are not candid. What’s even worse is that we can build the wrong reward signals when the feedback is not consistent.
3. Rare feedback: Seeing the annual review as an opportunity to gain feedback in an organization is a waste of time for learning purposes because the brain cannot retain the information over a year.

Our feedback approach at Checkster is based on a “Checkup” system of regular feedback in order to prevent the traditional lack of “reward” signals that enable our brains to learn.
Today Gen Y expects to receive these types of signals (feedback) and looks at the older generation as Crazy! The best analogy is that of a cook who only tastes the dish when it is served on a plate. It’s crazy because one wonders why the cook can’t just taste the food as it is cooked?
We can only dream of the potential benefits this Y generation can deliver to the workforce if regular feedback is performed diligently over the course of one’s career!

Often we see individuals trapped in their past experience. They want to change jobs but don’t have the “relevant” experience. Recruiters and managers don’t like taking risks and often prefer to hire someone who is not only a high performer, but also has relevant experience.

For years, research has shown that past experience is a poor predictor of future performance, yet a recent article describes how “Conventional wisdom holds that as we do more things more often, we learn from experience and get better and better. What we found in our research is that this may not always be the case.”

Why? “Managers don’t get the right feedback.”
So what does one do? If you are a manager, find a definitive way to get candid feedback. Checkster’s 360 checkup has been designed with this in mind.
If you want to change careers? It is usually harder. Our best advice is that you should try to move within your organization first, if possible, because lateral moves are easier!

Today, about 95 percent of companies perform reference checks. Reference checking is a current practice in the world of employment, but is often poorly performed. Not only is the process rushed and utilizes a limited amount of references, but recruiting and hiring managers don’t ask the right questions. These two issues are really at the core of what constitutes a quality employment reference check: good questions and the right people as employment references.
At Checkster we looked at these factors and created a free report that is available here and covers the best questions to ask and the best process to use.

The important question that remains for the job seeker is: What is there to learn from a traditional reference check? The answer to this is nothing.
At Checkster we are changing this by providing a reference checking tool that not only automates the process for recruiters, but also gives candidates a copy of the report so they can learn about their past performance.
The right career is found by knowing yourself and knowing how you did in your previous job, yet feedback is not used often in today’s world. We want to make sure that companies get better employees and individuals find careers that are aligned with their core talents!
That is what Checkster stands for!

Peter Cappelli is releasing his new book in a couple of weeks on the state of the talent management industry. He will be presenting a new model for talent that impacts organizations, employees, job seekers, coaches, counselors and anyone involved in the world of talent. We can already see his view in action in many organizations today.
Cappelli’s approach borrows from the principle of the supply chain and the manufacturing just-in-time revolution, but changes the language from an engineering certainty to a market-based approach with intrinsic uncertainty.

This new workplace dynamic revolves around 4 principles:
1. Make and buy talent: Internal talent development is still the preferred method as it is the cheapest and least disruptive for an organization. Yet, since the cost of unused inventory is a burden too heavy to carry, companies need to undershoot what their talent predictions are. Why undershoot? Because we have to accept the imprecise nature of talent forecasting.
2. Reduce uncertainty in Talent Demand: We have to accept the imprecise nature of talent prediction at its essence. Instead of going after the highly specialized developmental programs, we’re looking at providing training, tools, and framework that can apply to large employee populations and not small sections of your organization. We like this one, as it is exactly what Checkster is providing—a tool that helps all individuals grow!
3. Earn your ROI when you develop employees: Employees will have to share the cost of training, by either investing more of their personal time for training, or paying off the training investment if they leave. Note that new employers hiring employees could pick up the tab, making the reluctance or current training investment disappear. We like this one very much, as it is for the good of all parties!
4. Balance Employer/Employee interest: The internal job market within organizations places career management in the hands of employees. That’s one very efficient way to make a market-like approach to career evolution. Plus, it enables others to access a new realm of possibilities without being stopped by a rigid deterministic system. The only element that could stop us: our ability to produce results!

Order your copy of the book here.