The Watercooler

The Watercooler Blog is full of workplace tips and trends related to employee retention, engagement, interviewing and more. The Watercooler is frequently refilled, so gather ‘round often.

How to Seek Out a Team Player from a Pool of Candidates

One of the most requested qualities in a candidate to the point that it sounds cliché is “team player”. Yet unless your company entails all employees working silently and independently, you truly do need to find those who work well with others, who understand the importance of give-and-take. So how do you find them in [...] Read More

Focus on Energy Management Rather Than Time Management

We all hear the talk about time management, how if we could figure it out, we’d have (obviously) more time, less stress, get more done ... But we don’t talk about managing our energy, which allows us to manage all of that time and use it to its best capacity. Sometimes working more hours just [...] Read More

How Employees Benefit From Continuous Training

Effective training should start on day one of an employee’s tenure at your company and become successive as a person grows within the organization. The short-term expense is well worth the long-term gains, as you develop satisfied, qualified, productive workers. Recent research showed that 40 percent of employees who received poor training left their jobs [...] Read More

What Hiring Managers Should Look for in Resumes

A job candidate’s resume is their first introduction to you, the hiring manager responsible for matching the best talent with the right roles. Hiring mistakes are devastatingly costly to everyone involved – starting with you, your HR team and your organization. They hurt candidates, too, so you want to avoid them at all cost. It’s [...] Read More

Why Negative Feedback Doesn’t Have to be Personal

At a time when the younger generation of workers grew up used to praise for their efforts, it sometimes comes about that today’s employees have trouble with constructive criticism, seeing as a personal attack. However, one doesn’t always mean the other. Sometimes receiving that negative feedback just takes some practice.   Remember that we all [...] Read More

Using Behavioral Interviews to Find the Right Candidate

A behavioral approach to interviewing can take the guesswork out of hiring with a structured process that helps you better assess candidates’ knowledge, skills, work styles and other relevant competencies – as you narrow the field toward your final decision. Behavioral questions delve into an individual’s actions and results in past work situations that are [...] Read More

How to Handle a Candidate Whose Background – But Not Personality – Fits the Criteria

Skills versus personality … which one is more important in a job candidate? A successful long-term employee has a personality that matches both their role within your company and your workplace culture. And while skills, knowledge and ability can be developed with experience, an employee’s personality is unlikely to change. In one study of more [...] Read More