Saturday, March 01, 2008

I Care Therefore I Am?

I have noticed over the past few weeks that Kent Blumberg has started to post more frequently after pausing for a bit as he ramped up his coaching practice. Glad to see it.

Last week he had an entry titled: Teasing out core values in an interview in which he cited Phil Gerbyshak who co-authors a blog called Slacker Manager and Steve Roesler who blogs at All Things Workplace. As Kent said, and I would certainly agree, both are URLs well worth putting on your list of favorites.

In any case, this most recent post caught my attention because it was focused on one of the most if not the most significant challenge facing every hiring manager - how to really try and identify what an individual's value system is all about.

How important is value system when it comes to bringing someone into your organization? In my mind, the word critical only scratches the surface. Skills as they say can be taught, attitude can't, and attitude is driven by value systems instilled in us all by our parents with life experience added for good measure.

So how does one ferret out values? Read Kent’s post and I think you'll pick up a couple of good hints based on the insights that Kent has pulled together.

No time? Okay, then the one word answer is passion. If I am passionate about something the argument is that the passion is tied to my values.

Works for me. Does it work for you?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link!

Passion is 90 percent of good hiring, in my opinion. A passion for one's work will drive the skill building required to close any gaps. Passion for one's mission will keep the motors running when times are tough. I want to know that a candidate's values/passions are going to be a good match for my team. More importantly, I want to know a candidate can actually get passionate about something - anything!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the kind mention, Dave.

It looks as if I should check the Google Alerts a little more frequently!

Keep up the helpful writing. . .