Improving team engagement and motivation has been a hot topic for me this week.  It has become clear that the team at one of our suppliers is not performing as expected because the team’s engagement with the product and the job is not where it needs to be.  They are doing the functional part of […]

I caught up with an old friend one evening while I was on a business trip in southern California earlier this week.  After spending most of her career in larger companies with mature processes, she had recently joined a company still in the start-up phase.  While she has learned to appreciate that “putting steel in […]

Being on vacation this past week, I have not been thinking much about work.  However, I couldn’t help but follow the story of RIM‘s woes after announcing poor quarterly results and subsequent major sell-off of their shares.   The  Open letter to BlackBerry bosses on Boy Genius Report really caught my attention.  I am sure […]

After three weeks of discussion on how to get a job, I thought I would conclude with a post about the other side of the job relationship:  the break-up.  A young engineer I am mentoring, who recently quit his job, wrote: I felt that like any break up it doesn’t pay to tell the person […]

Woo hoo!  You got a job interview!  You know you are a perfect fit for the job, now you just need to convince the interviewers.  Easy, right?  Hold on.  I have interviewed a lot of people over the years and I keep seeing people make some simple mistakes.  So, to conclude the Hiring From A […]

For the candidate, the phone interview is both a victory and the first of many tests in the interviewing process.  Some companies skip this step, particularly with local candidates.  Personally, I prefer the phone interview, even if it is a straight forward interview with HR.  As a candidate, it gives me a first impression of […]