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Articles in Brief
A quick synopsis of what other publications are
saying about topics related to leadership, employee
involvement, quality, and organizational
performance
Business2.0
www.business2.com
July 2003
Why Are Manhole Covers Round? (And How to Deal
With Other Trick Interview Questions)
Companies of all stripes are zinging job applicants
with sadistic puzzlers. There are no right answers,
but there is a right way to answer.
Sometime after “tell us about
yourself” and “describe a challenge you
faced at your current job” comes the zinger,
that off-the-wall Zen riddler that can leave you
sputtering in the middle of a job interview: Why are
Coke cans tapered? How would you weigh the
world’s fattest man without using a scale? How
many tennis balls are in the air in New Zealand right
now? It’s a growing trend in this buyer’s
market for the best and brightest—everyone from
tech companies like Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard to
Wall Street investment banks to the U.S. military
uses these sorts of questions to gauge a
candidate’s problem-solving ability.
Fortune Magazine
www.fortune.com
June 23, 2003
Down and Out in White-Collar America
Professionals have never had a tougher time finding a
job. It’s not just the economy; the rules of
the game are changing.
Finding a job has always been hard, of course,
even for someone who holds a bachelor’s in
engineering as well as an MBA. But whether
you’re a newly minted college graduate or a
seasoned executive with Fortune 500 experience, the
job market now is the harshest it’s been in
decades—bleaker than the “white-collar
recession” of the early 1990s, and by many
counts, even more severe than the downturn of the
early 1980s. “I’ve been in this business
for over 20 years, and it’s the worst
I’ve ever seen,” says David Hoffmann, CEO
of DHR International, a Chicago-based recruiting
firm. “Nothing even comes close to
this.”
So what’s keeping white-collar applicants
from finding jobs? The rudderless recovery and
economic uncertainty deserve much of the blame, but
it’s bigger than that. Increasingly,
supereducated and highly paid workers are finding
themselves traveling the same road their blue-collar
peers took in the late ‘80s. Then, hardhats in
places like Flint, MI, and Pittsburgh were suffering
from the triple threat of computerization, tech-led
productivity gains, and the relocation of their jobs
to offshore sites. Machines—or low-wage
foreigners—could just as easily do their
work.
HR Magazine
www.shrm.org
July 2003
A Hire Standard
Most human resources professionals should be aware
that a panoply of federal and state laws that
prohibit workplace discrimination based on such
factors as race, color, creed, national origin,
religion, gender and age—to name just a few.
Some employers, however, may not fully understand the
extent of potential liability involved with making
hiring decisions. Perhaps most potentially
frustrating for employers is the fact that their
employee selection systems can be found illegally
discriminatory even in the absence of offensive
intent.
The legal risks associated with hiring systems may
be especially great now when unemployment rates are
relatively high. When employment opportunities were
plentiful, workers who were passed over for a job
opportunity had far less incentive to wonder why or
to take legal action. After all,
another—perhaps better—job was likely
around the corner. Now that the economy has slowed
and jobs are no longer plentiful, workers may be more
likely to question why they were not hired—and
to look for legally actionable causes.
The challenge for HR professionals is to create an
employee selection system that is efficient and
beneficial, but that also minimizes vulnerability to
legal challenge. The article gives seven tips that
can help guide you in assessing the general
vulnerability of your employee selection procedures.
Where necessary, consider revising procedures to
reduce your organization’s legal
risk.
T+D Magazine
www.astd.org
July 2003
Who Wouldn’t Like It?
Believe it or not, there are people out
there—friends, neighbors, and family—who,
brace yourself, don’t like the Internet. Worse,
they’ve decided to live their lives unplugged.
Twenty-four percent of Americans live their lives
free of the Web’s entanglements, and more than
half say they don’t need it; they don’t
want it.
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