Checkster Blog

At Checkster we follow the labor trends closely, one good movie summary done by a vendor:

Have you ever asked yourself how many candidates are telling the truth during an interview?

Here is the answer from a serious study*, as 17,368 applications were analyzed across many different job categories (general management, economic and political analysis, public relations, etc.) with an innovative but strong way to detect the fake. Also, it is important to note that “candidates were warned that their responses could be verified and that any attempts to falsify information could be used as a basis for not employing them.” Thus, it was not a laboratory experiment.  The researchers divided the applicants into three groups, which we have taken the freedom to name:

In short, a third of the people you will see will pretend to have done many more things than they actually have.  The only solution: check for yourself, i.e. to connect with ex-colleagues.  This is typically called reference checking, but to check references the traditional way, you need time.  The only viable, scalable solution: Reference Check 2.0.

* Study from study from Julia Levashina, Frederick P. Morgeson, and Michael A. Campion.

Listen to the interview here: Interview

A recent article by Les Rosen, explains it well, while also endorsing Checkster’s approach.

They are several ways to look at it, the summary of this article: “Internet based references can be utilized by an employer to whittle down the field of candidates and to help an employer decide whom to hire.  Background checks occur after an employer has made a tentative decision, and needs to determine whether there is any reason NOT to hire an applicant. ”

See my latest article on ERE:

Message to Candidates: Cheating Works … Sometimes!

How many applicants fake test results and assessments?
Does cheating work? Is it worthwhile?
What can you, the employer, do about it?

keep reading…

Sometimes I would speak with people and they would say that reference checking was the best way to screen candidates, but not anymore. Fear of legal action and low compliance from participants reap poor results. Therefore, their judgment is based on reference checks performed that led to poor results, so they are convinced about their stance.
I would challenge this position and say that indeed poorly executed reference checks are a waste of time, but the Reference Check 2.0, as we call it at Checkster, is as good if not better than structured interviews. In order to prove it this, let’s look at this body of evidence.

- Harvard Business Review article on the assessment of best practices in which the authors said, “Poor practice: Conducting inadequate (or no) reference checks. Best practice: Conducting detailed reference checks.” I also recommend listening to their 14 min podcast here, where at minute 9:11 and 12:40 they explain the aforementioned point.
-Leading books on recruiting methods such as Topgrading, a well known and respected method for recruiting, is fundamentally based on two core methods: the interview process and a proper reference check. Lou Adler’s “Hire with your head” Performance based hiring said it simply: “Here’s a basic rule about reference checking: that’s not 100 percent true, but you should follow it (perform it) 100 percent of the time.”
- If you question HR practitioners and want to get more validation from business people, watch Marissa Mayer, V.P. of Search Product and User Experience at Google here in an interview and at minute 42:10 answer this question: “When you are hiring new people [at Google], is there an X factor that you are looking for?“ She replies: “ We did a regression test on what was the best predictor of performance with the interview score, the references, their background,… and we basically found that their background and references are the best predictors…”. Watch for yourself here.

- If you are in a startup watch this one.

You may find this to be all nice and good, but may simply not have the time to do it. I would challenge your view and say that you simply can’t afford not to do it. With the Reference check 2.0 you can perform a very powerful online version of the reference check by taking only 2 minutes of your time. Listen to the feedback of some of our users here. In short, reference checking went through a disillusion period for many when they had to find new ways to get to the truth. Now with the help of social networking and online automation, there is no way not to perform it anymore.

Have you ever asked yourself the following questions:
•    How good is my new hire?
•    Did I promote the right person?
•    Am I good in this new job?

If you are a manager or a recruiter, or more importantly, a member of a new team, then you want and need to know if you are good at what you do.
In business jargon, we call this the quality of hire.
Yet, the core question is: how can you know?

A report conducted by the Newman group posed this question to about 500 staffing professionals, the answers to which resulted in the chart below.

We believe that one metric is missing: the probability of re-hiring an individual. That metric is essentially a net promoting measurement tool for an individual. Think about it for a second: this simple metric (probability of re-hiring) contains it all. If someone is a great contributing team member, you will hire him/her again, if not you will not, with all grading in between. This is what we use at Checkster for our 360 and automated reference checking system. We recommend you add it as a measuring tool to assess your quality of hire, like some of our customers are doing.

See the full article Here.

We are pleased to announce a recognition we received last week at the ONREC show.

“Onrec, the only global Online Recruitment Magazine, follows worldwide innovations in the recruiting space. After extensive review of all innovative technologies across the world, we are proud to recognize Checkster as a Game Changing Recruiting Technology,” said RD Whitney, CEO of ONREC.

Full press release here.

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!