More and more, companies are using psychological and behavioral tests as pre-employment screening devices. They supplement their interviewing processes in order to ensure less false-positives.This is wise, in our judgment, based on what we see of interviewing. Too many companies don’t screen rigorously enough, and have started enlisting more cerebral and/or technical techniques to be certain of new hires.

Even if you haven’t experienced one yet, it’s becoming more and more likely.

What does this mean for you? What’s the best way to approach and be successful at pre-employment tests? This is Manager Tools, and we’ll walk you through it.

Now that we’ve been producing weekly podcasts for almost 2 years, new listeners to the show are often confused (understandably so) on where to start. What are the foundational podcasts, the core principles that underly the Manager Tools philosophy?

We’ve listened and here it is - The definitive list of the “must listen to” podcasts. If you’re a new listener or want to refer a colleague to Manager Tools, the Manager Tools Basics is where to start!

Check out the Manager Tools Basics now.

If you are a regular listener, you know that each week we focus on specific actions you can take to improve your managerial effectiveness (i.e., what to DO vs. a bunch of theory). Well, today’s show is different … there is nothing “actionable” in here.

Today, in this extra cast, we share our thoughts on the last year and what we have planned for this coming year [read as “share our plans for the coming year so you can hold us accountable” ].

if you are a first time listener or fall into the category of “just want the bottom line recommendations without all the fluff”, please ignore this cast and accept our apologies for clogging up your hard drive. I know some of you don’t like ANY tangents we take during the podcast and THIS is one BIG tangent (about 60 minutes worth!).

For those of you interested in our thoughts and where we’re going with Manager Tools, this is the show! If not, we’ll see you in a couple of days on our normal weekly podcast.

You’ve been warned!

I thought you all might enjoy another clip of Mark on Interviewing …

This video is a brief 2 minute excerpt of Mark’s Interviewing Presentation, covering Horstman’s 2nd Law of Interviewing - “You Are Not As Good As You Think You Are:You’re As Good As The Recruiter Thinks You Are.”

Thanks again to all of you who have signed-up for Premium Content. Mark and I are VERY appreciative of your support. And we’re been hard at work making few improvements.

First, we’ve heard that RTF documents are troublesome for some. So, we converted all the RTF documents to the Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Second, it appears that you don’t really enjoy visiting every post, and doing the “right-click, Save as ..” a hundred times or so to download the Premium documents to your hard drive. Go figure! So, to resolve this, we created RSS feeds for both the Premium Content and the Interviewing Series (for those of you who purchased the Annual Premium membership). Add these feeds to iTunes and you’ll have all the documents right there in iTunes waiting for you immediately after the documents are published. It doesn’t get any easier than that!

The Premium Content documents feed is: http://www.manager-tools.com/premium/premium_docs_rss.xml

Similarly, if you have purchased the Interviewing Series (a separate product), there is a document feed for you as well.
The Interviewing Series documents feed is: http://www.manager-tools.com/MTInterviewSeries/interview_series_docs_rss.xml

Add the Premium Content documents feed to iTunes

Add the Interviewing Series documents feed to iTunes

The feeds, like the content itself are username and password protected, so if you’re not a Premium member and/or an Interviewing Series subscriber, these feeds aren’t for you .

Hopefully, you’ll find these changes useful. And, if not, I know you’ll let me know how we can improve it!

best regards,
Mike

This cast is the second in our series on how to prepare and deliver an agenda for a large meeting or training. If you haven’t listened to the first cast on the topic, we’d encourage you to do that first. You can find it here: http://www.manager-tools.com/2007/08/how-to-handle-agendas-in-a-meeting-part-1-of-2/

Thanks to quentindaniels, we’re having our first Chicago meet up tonight, 630 pm, at Leona’s in Des Plaines.

Here’s a GoogleMap. The phone number is (847) 759-0800.

I may be a few minutes late - I am with a client in Milwaukee and have to drive down. Please start the party without me!

Mark

Our second Milwaukee meet up is now ON for tomorrow - Wednesday the 15th, NOT the 22nd as I so stupidly posted earlier today.

DUH! Sorry.

We will meet at Pizzeria Piccola - same as last time: 7606 W. State St. Milwaukee (actually, Wauwatosa).
Phone: (414) 443-0800.
Here’s their website and here’s a Google Map.

We will start at 7 pm, and pizza is on Mike and me!

Our second Milwuakee meet up is now ON for tomorrow - Wednesday the 22nd.

We will meet at Pizzeria Piccola - same as last time: 7606 W. State St. Milwaukee (actually, Wauwatosa).
Phone: (414) 443-0800.
Here’s their website and here’s a Google Map.

We will start at 7 pm, and pizza is on Mike and me!

This cast walks through how to prepare and deliver an agenda for a large meeting or training.

Agenda preparation is a lost art. We think of agendas as the skeleton of a good meeting. Sadly, too many meetings suffer from a lack of the structure that agendas provide. Meetings without agendas are usually terribly inefficient. Because they are [somewhat ] time-bound, that inefficiency means ineffectiveness. And ineffectiveness is anathema to Manager Tools managers.

In this cast, we tell you what to do once you’ve prepared your agenda. (There’s a separate cast for the details and rules around preparation).

Be a management artist: use agendas.