Labor Day weekend means you should only be concerned with two things: wearing white pants for the last time for the season, and reading these top five stories from talentmgt.com for the week of Aug. 25.
1. The Art of Asking Questions: Mentors should ask questions that probe for understanding to create a more insightful dialogie, writes Talent Management columnist Marshall Goldsmith.
2. Luring the Best Talent: The ongoing recovery in the job market belies a persistent need for employers to take a more active role in cultivating talent, writes Talent Management editor Mike Prokopeak.
3. Skillsoft to Acquire SumTotal: Experts say the deal will allow the company to use SumTotal's lineup of products to pair with its own robust content library.
4. Can Playing a Video Game Land You a Job?: Some players of popular strategy or role-playing video games say they learn skills playing such games that should help them land an office job, The Wall Street Journal reports.
5. Using Predictive Analytics to Improve Hire Quality: With the economy on an upswing and voluntary turnover increasing as a result, quality hiring is under the spotlight. Predictive analytics can help companies alleviate first-year attrition. Ranjan Dutta has the story.
In Other News …
Business schools are starting up this week, which can only mean one thing: professors are learning to pronounce Chinese students' names. Right?
Yes, with the rapid increase of Chinese students in American business schools, professors are having to take crash courses in leanring how to say Chinese names, The Wall Street Journal reports.
One such school, University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, started offering training to faculty about a year and a half ago in the form of a 90-minute crash course on pronouncing Chinese names.
As the Journal reported: "Starting last fall, the school’s Judith R. Frank Business Communications Center, which provides students with support for writing and speaking assignments, offered one-on-one training for faculty to help them figure out how to address all their students in class, during academic advising sessions or just when passing them in the halls."
Read more here.
Also, the one big hiring mistake most companies make, via Business Insider. Read here.