Ethel Lindley

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

What are the scientific, time-tested methods for hiring the best people?

Stanford MBA school professor Bob Sutton lets us know which employee selection methods were best and worst as predictors of job performance:

The upshot of this research is that work sample tests (e.g., seeing if people can actually do key elements of a job -- if a secretary can type or a programmer can write code), general mental ability (IQ and related tests), and structured interviews had the highest validity of all methods examined...

The study he's citing is "The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings." The paper's abstract describes how the most effective use of the three is through combination:

This article summarizes the practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research in personnel selection. On the basis of meta-analytic findings, this article presents the validity of 19 selection procedures for predicting job performance and training performance and the validity of paired combinations of general mental ability (GMA) and the 18 other selection procedures. Overall, the 3 combinations with the highest multivariate validity and utility for job performance were GMA plus a work sample test (mean validity of.63), GMA plus an integrity test (mean validity of.65), and GMA plus a structured interview (mean validity of.63). A further advantage of the latter 2 combinations is that they can be used for both entry level selection and selection of experienced employees. The practical utility implications of these summary findings are substantial. The implications of these research findings for the development of theories of job performance are discussed.

Sutton should know -- he's the author of a number of excellent business books. I highly recommend: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't and Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst.

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Kindlebility sends Web pages from your computer to your Kindle

Kindlebility is a bookmarklet that can send any Web page you're viewing to your Kindle. Kindlebility will format the websites so that viewing them on the Kindle isn't a pain. Once you've set it up (more on that in a moment), Kindlebility only requires one click to use -- and the pages arrive on your Kindle in seconds.

Before you use Kindlebility for the first time, you have to quickly set it up. This only needs to be done once, and requires that you go to the Kindlebility site and enter your Kindle email address (something @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com). The bookmarklet is then generated for you, and you can drag it to your bookmarks bar. However, you can't use it just yet. You need to go to Amazon, enter your account page, and find the email whitelist under the Manage My Kindle settings. Then just add kindle@darkhelmetlive.com to the whitelist.

That's it. Whenever you're surfing the Web on your computer and find an interesting page that you want to read on your Kindle, just click the Kindlebility bookmarklet. A quick demo video showing you how to set Kindlebility up is after the break.

Continue reading Kindlebility sends Web pages from your computer to your Kindle

Kindlebility sends Web pages from your computer to your Kindle originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, July 18, 2011

GNOME 3 released, ushers in an interesting amalgam of iOS and OS X

GNOME 3, after more than two years of development, has been released into the wild. GNOME 3 is not merely the logical successor of GNOME 2: it is an entirely new project, started from scratch, to create a "completely new, modern desktop designed for today's users and technologies."

The best way to check out GNOME 3's new features -- and it has lots of new features -- is to run a live version of openSUSE or Fedora, or simply head over to the GNOME 3 website and watch the (rather pretty) introductory videos. If you want a synopsis, though, here it is: GNOME 3 looks a lot like Mac OS X, with a healthy dollop of iOSesqueness for good measure, but yet it still somehow retains an underlying feel of Linux.

The overall aesthetic is very simple, very elegant, and despite being slightly out of fashion, there are plenty of rounded corners, too. The main addition, workflow-wise, is the addition of an app-launcher-cum-alt-tab screen, where you can launch apps, or flip through your open windows. For a complete list of the new features and changes, check the GNOME 3 release notes.

Despite GNOME 3 being officially launched, there aren't actually any releases for existing, stable Linux distros -- it's the live CD/USB images, or Ubuntu users will have to wait for the launch of 11.04 for a GNOME 3 PPA, but it will break Unity in the process. Fedora users will have to wait for for the May 24 release of Fedora 15. Of course, if you're feeling crazy, you can always build GNOME 3 from source.

GNOME 3 released, ushers in an interesting amalgam of iOS and OS X originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Business of Recycling and the Impact of Pollution (INFOGRAPHIC)

Our earth is a very fragile thing. Our daily lives involve a lot of activity that we don't even think twice about - activities that are detrimental to the earth's 'health and well being'. In the United States alone, over 50% of our disposal goes to landfills, and only a tiny fraction of our waste is being properly recycled. What we need is not a better recycling program, but an entirely different outlook on recycling. Taking advantage of what services we already have available to us, could help future generations learn to take care of the planet we seemingly take for granted.

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Researchers Debut Proxy-Less Anonymity Service

Trailrunner7 writes "As state-level censorship continues to grow in various countries around the globe in response to political dissent and social change, researchers have begun looking for news ways to help Web users get around these restrictions. Now, a group of university researchers has developed an experimental system called Telex that replaces the typical proxy architecture with a scheme that hides the fact that the users are even trying to communicate at all."

Microsoft strikes deal with China's biggest search engine Baidu

Boost to both brands, but English-language search results will be censored to meet Chinese government's demands

Microsoft has signed a deal with Baidu, the biggest search engine in China, to provide English-language search results ? but they will be censored to meet the Chinese government's demands.

The announcement of the deal is a boost to Microsoft, which has been struggling to boost the position of its Bing search engine against Google's dominance in almost every country around the world. It will also be a boost for Baidu, which has ambitions internationally.

Baidu has roughly 83% of the Chinese search market, but there are also up to 10m English searches per day, the company said. The Chinese market comprises roughly 470m users, despite only about 30% of the population having internet access.

Bing ? which filters out results in China relating to controversial subjects, such as political dissidents, Taiwan or pornography, to be able to operate in the country ? has a negligible share of the market, while Google has nearly 20% counting visits to its offshore sites, making it the second-biggest in China. Yahoo has 6% and Microsoft's Bing 4%, according to Net Applications.

English-language searches to Baidu will be redirected through Bing.

Kaiser Kuo, a spokesman for Baidu, said that Bing searches would not be censored any more "than they already do".

Google shut down its search service on the Chinese mainland in March 2010 after alleging that government-inspired hackers had broken into the systems for its email and source codes to its wider network. Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had been unhappy at the idea of submitting to China's censorship for search results, and declared after the hacking incident that they would stop censoring them. Instead the company added a simplified Chinese service for mainland users to its search operation in Hong Kong.

Some analysts were sceptical over how much demand there would be for English search on Baidu.

"It's a good thing, but I see very minimal impact for Baidu. I don't see a lot English keywords going through Baidu. It goes through Google," said Wallace Cheung, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Credit Suisse.

Search engine marketing company Greenlight said it saw the deal as positive for both sides, and could envisage the new partners dominating the Chinese search-advertising market.

"Whilst it represents an opportunity for Bing to make more money from the Chinese market, Baidu gets what it needs to expand overseas when it is ready to do so," said Greenlight Chief Operating Officer Andreas Pouros.

"Microsoft has entered the Chinese market slowly and has made some friends, in a way that the Chinese government will have no issue with. This should leave Baidu and Bing to control the Chinese search ad market without too much difficulty."

Baidu made $1.2bn in online marketing revenues last year, up 78% from 2009. Microsoft's total online advertising revenue in fiscal 2010, including a small contribution from Bing, was $1.9bn. However Bing loses almost as much money as it takes in.

Microsoft may be satisfied with delivering censored results. It acknowledged as long as as 2006 that it filtered certain words, including "democracy" and "freedom" from the Chinese version of MSN. At the time Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said that it was better to do business inside the country than to boycott it.

"We certainly think it is better for us to be present around the world rather than not," Smith said in 2006.

? This article was amended on 5 July 2011. The original said "Google withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010". This has been clarified.

Charles Arthur

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