Change, Repent, or Progress?

I have a problem with the word "evolution". The way it is being used in the popular science press is a bit disconcerting. It can be used to mean "change", "progress", "adaption", or in the worst cases "God" or "Providence". It can be fun to take an author's words and start substituting potential synonyms. However, this doesn't tell us what the author intended.

Here is the proposal - the popular press stops using the word "evolution" and all of its derivatives like "evolve" and "evolutionary". Instead, I challenge authors to use the word they mean. Substitute progress, adapt, change, or repent. Choose the word that makes the most sense.

Day 100!

William did it! 100 days straight playing the violin. And he had a great recital today as well! Not bad for someone who just turned 8... Woohoo!

Social Recruiting

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.
Find me a find, catch me a catch.
Matchmaker, matchmaker, look through your book
And make me a perfect match. (Sheldon Harnick, Fiddler on the Roof)

There is a new way to find employees - social recruiting. The basic idea is an employer would interact with a community of potential employees to see how/ if their skills/personality would match the corporate culture. This would give visibility to an individuals professional life and provide a more complete picture than the regular three or four hand picked references.

This sounds like information overload - too much. Already we have an environment where it is not unusual for an organization to take 8 to 12 weeks to find and recruit an employee, and that is just for collecting resumes and interviewing. If you are required - like public institutions, to complete a background investigation and verify education it can take considerably longer. For example, I am just now hearing back from institutions that posted positions in June that they are starting the interview process.

Of course, there is a group of people social recruiting really works for - recruiters. A recruiter can use a social website like LinkedIn or Facebook to find people - especially people who may not be currently looking for a job. It is very clear why recruiters would like to connect to as many people as possible through social networks. This is especially important for LinkedIn users because the site limits your searches to three degrees of contact - you can see the people you know, the people they know, and the people who know someone you know.  For recruiters, adding more people - even people with the wrong skill set or industry - adds all of those people's colleagues and contacts.

This raises a dilemma for the individual - are you connecting to the right set of recruiters? Are you going for find a job offer that is right for you? Or are you just going to get offers?

100 Days

It's day 88. William has not missed an evening of practicing in 88 days. He decided he wanted to play for 100 days - if he doesn't break his streak, he will make complete day 100 on December 1. It takes a lot to get into the habit of doing something for 100 days - especially something that takes effort. 100 days, wow.

Why Companies Can't Innovate

Why nations fail : the origins of power, prosperity and poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson should be required reading for most corporate managers. I could see a sequel applying the same contingency theory of history to corporations - Why companies can't innovate.

Acemoglu and Robinson's book is very readable and makes a very strong case that countries are not poor because of location, resources, or cultural heritage, but rather are poor as a legacy of the political an economic institutions they inherited. If these institutions are designed to extract wealth to enrich a small group of people at the expense of the rest of society, the society will be extremely poor and there is a good probability it will remain poor or become poor without radical change. Societies with inclusive institutions that allow mobility and the rise of new interest groups will innovate and there is a good probability the society will experience sustained economic growth.

Companies have many of the same challenges to innovation - if a company's business model is designed to maximize profits in its existing businesses, there is going to be a lot of institutional resistance to any changes that might threaten those businesses. If a company's business model is designed to include the decisions of as many people as practical, I suspect it is much more likely to innovate and be able to react to a changing environment.

And of course, because the economy is an open system there is always a third option - buy your innovative competitor and make his innovation yours.

Why nations fail : the origins of power, prosperity and poverty

Improving Job Search Engines

Most job search engines use keyword searching. Because of this choice by job sites, search results are often meaningless. Usually this occurs because the search engine:

• Searches keywords in all parts of the job posting
• Uses unspecified boolean logic
• Offers filters that are not meaningful to the target users - job-seekers

Each of these could be easily remedied without making major changes to the sites or their search engines:

• There is no reason to not have an advanced search which allows the searcher to direct keywords to specific parts of a job posting - and no reason to not require job postings to have a well-defined structure. You should be able to specify search words for requirements, description, and job title.
• Allow users to specify phrase searching
• Clearly explain the default logic for multiple word searches - getting more results is less desirable than getting good results
• Allow users to specify the search logic in an advanced search - enough people understand set theory to use AND, OR, NOT; there are another large group that could correctly select the same logic when presented as "search for all of these terms", "search for any of these terms", "exclude results containing these terms".
• Add meaningful filters - date posted, closing date and location are meaningful. Industry is not. I would like to see the following: 
• If there is a place for job applicants to enter a security clearance - then include a filter in the search that allows users to exclude jobs that require security clearances above their level
• If there is a place for job applicants to enter skill tags - then include a filter in the search for skills that allows users to select jobs that match identified skills

Job sites could also ask employers to use standard job titles. It is not uncommon for a job seeker to need to search multiple job titles to find the right job function. An "analyst" or "researcher" may have the exact same job, but the titles are different. Variation in job titles becomes even more enigmatic when you consider most salary comparisons are based on job titles. It the job title doesn't match comparable jobs it is not clear what a fair market salary is. Or even if someone is qualified to fulfill the position.  And that can't be good for either the job seeker or the employer. 

Improving STEM Education

Both of the professional organizations I currently belong to - ACM and ASQ, are deeply concerned with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education - particularly how to include more women. Including more women in the education hopefully will also include more women and leaders in the professions and will help the professions become more flexible and innovative by widening the pool and variety of talents and experiences. Usually the proposed solution is to encourage more women by offering more female role models and removing barriers such as the stereo-types portrayed in the xkcd comic: How it Works.

I would like to suggest a complimentary strategy - make STEM careers more family friendly. Having parents in the home that value STEM could be one of the most effective ways to encourage more young people to pursue STEM education. Among my contemporaries that chose STEM education, the vast majority had at least one parent who already had an interest in these areas. Most had two. Richard Feyman pursued physics in part because his Father was willing to explain things. I have a niece pursuing paleontology because both her mother and father are interested in living things.

Here is my list of things that would make STEM careers more family friendly, and get individuals with STEM careers interacting with their children:

1. Allow flexible hours - stop concentrating on the amount of face time spent in the lab/office/server room and start worrying about the work being done. There are several studies that illustrate more hours at work don't equate to more productive hours at work.
2. Allow remote work when/where possible. With the available communications many jobs do not require someone to be present. You can teach from a home office; you can research from a home office; you can program from a home office. For many people just removing out the time to go to and from the office gives them hours with their family.
3. Respect family time. I had a fantasy for years about becoming my senior manager's boss. In my fantasy, I made him check in his laptop and cellphone when he scheduled vacation. He was notorious for keeping the stream of emails and phone calls up during his vacations as if he were in the office. I can't imagine he spent much time paying attention to his family. Just because someone can be connected 24/7 don't expect them to be. If they are needed for emergencies then schedule them to be on call. If not, then leave them alone.
4. Allow people to easily exit and reenter roles. One of the most frustrating things that parents face is the prospect that you need to fill a specific role now. There is a perception that we steadily climb hierarchies and the rise to the top of our professions is somehow a race. Someone who is perfectly capable of being the dean of a department at 45, may wish to delay that position until children have graduated, or may want to take a lesser position to allow a spouse to advance in a career. Should that individual be penalized because the timing wasn't right for a family's needs? Why can't we allow sabbaticals to raise children, or allow a spouse to work? How could we manage periods when individuals are in the "work" force?