Strengths-based hiring and job posting customization

I don't usually just point to other articles, but there are two worth special mention.

First: For a while I've been meaning to do a post about the strength-based movement, typified by the StrengthsFinder tool and related books. But a recent post on The Science of Personality does a much better job than I could of discussing the pros and cons of this approach. It's actually an excerpt from an upcoming book on the subject.

And if you're interested in that subject, check out this article that provides a fairly balanced take on the subject.

My 1.5 cents: great idea for managers to focus a little more on strengths; we spend way too much time obsessing over behavioral problems. But not taking weaknesses/growth opportunities/whatever-you-want-to-call-them into account is seeing only half the equation.

Second: Jamie Madigan over at the SelectionMatters blog describes a recent article in Journal of Applied Psychology about the substantial benefits of customizing job postings; it's a great addition to an earlier study I posted about. Jamie has some great ideas on how to implement the results, and the authors provide additional suggestions in the paper, such as providing higher quality information to applicants. I look forward to further studies that investigate other strategies and use a broader subject pool (this study used undergraduates). It would also be interesting to look at using this approach for career development of existing staff. Finally, it will be interesting to see how well the job boards using a similar approach (e.g., JobFox) succeed.