Hosted by Compass Consulting, one of Hogan’s network of partners and distributors, the two-day Spanish-language certification workshop will take place from Tuesday, May 20, through Wednesday, May 21, 2014, at the Kovens Convention Center in Miami. Participants will learn to use three Hogan inventories:

• The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), which evaluates personality characteristics that people need to ensure job fit and a successful career path.
• The Hogan Development Survey (HDS), which identifies interpersonal behaviors that can impede career success.
• The Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI), which assesses business drivers and core values to determine a person's individual fit within a corporate culture.

Workshop participants will conduct detailed interpretation and analysis of assessment results and give comprehensive feedback on the HPI, HDS and MVPI inventories in group and individual settings. They will also learn best practices concerning assessment use and interpretation.

Participants attending both days and successfully completing the workshop will be certified to use the Hogan inventories. Additionally for HR professionals, the program has been approved for 13 (general) credit hours toward PHR, SPHR, and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. The workshop has also been approved by the International Coach Federation for 13 Continuing Coaching Education units.

For more information, download the workshop brochure, or to register, contact Compass Consulting at contacto@compasslatam.com. There is a 10 percent discount for those registering two or more participants.

Hosted by Compass Consulting, one of Hogan’s network of partners and distributors, the two-day Spanish-language certification workshop will take place from Tuesday, May 20, through Wednesday, May 21, 2014, at the Kovens Convention Center in Miami. Participants will learn to use three Hogan inventories:

• The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), which evaluates personality characteristics that people need to ensure job fit and a successful career path.
• The Hogan Development Survey (HDS), which identifies interpersonal behaviors that can impede career success.
• The Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI), which assesses business drivers and core values to determine a person’s individual fit within a corporate culture.

Workshop participants will conduct detailed interpretation and analysis of assessment results and give comprehensive feedback on the HPI, HDS and MVPI inventories in group and individual settings. They will also learn best practices concerning assessment use and interpretation.

Participants attending both days and successfully completing the workshop will be certified to use the Hogan inventories. Additionally for HR professionals, the program has been approved for 13 (general) credit hours toward PHR, SPHR, and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. The workshop has also been approved by the International Coach Federation for 13 Continuing Coaching Education units.

For more information, download the workshop brochure, or to register, contact Compass Consulting at contacto@compasslatam.com. There is a 10 percent discount for those registering two or more participants.

As the pace of innovation increases, so does the need to test innovations to determine their worth.  Items enhancing quality of life are widely adopted.  For example, software such as SAS and SPSS allow us to instantly run analyses that would have previously taken days or weeks.  More recently, online data collection has replaced paper-and-pencil data collection and manual entry (Horton, Rand, & Zeckhauser, 2010).  Similarly, websites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) may allow quick and inexpensive access to hundreds of thousands of participants, but a critical review is needed to determine its worth as an innovative data collection resource.

MTurk is an example of a crowdsourcing website where researchers outsource data collection to online participants rather than using laboratory and other samples (Chandler, Mueller, & Paolacci, in press).  Websites such as Crowd Cloud and Crowd Flower also facilitate crowdsourcing (Gaggioli & Riva, 2008), but we focus on MTurk because it is currently the dominant crowdsourcing application for social scientists.  In fact, research conducted using MTurk has already appeared in peer-reviewed journals (Holden, Dennie, & Hicks, 2013; Jonason, Luevano, & Adams, 2012; Jones & Paulhus, 2011).

Using MTurk, participants called “workers” browse Human Intelligence Tasks (“HITs”) posted by “requesters” conducting research.  After selecting and completing HITs, workers are paid a pre-determined fee.  Because MTurk offers access to a large and diverse pool of over 500,000 participants from over 190 countries, researchers’ interest in MTurk as a potential new data collection resource is understandable (Bohannon, 2011; Mason & Suri, 2011).

The goal of this symposium is to bring professionals together to conduct a critical review of MTurk as an avenue for conducting psychological research.  Before turning our session over to our discussant, presenters will share data to evaluate MTurk against other samples.

The Gaddis and Foster paper uses MTurk to test items for developing and maintaining assessments.  The authors compare MTurk data to samples of students as well as applicants and incumbents from organizations.  This paper also includes lessons learned and recommendations for professionals interested in using MTurk.

The Harms and DeSimone paper explores a data cleaning approach to assessing the quality of MTurk data.  Using seven statistical data screens, the authors investigate the prevalence of low-quality data in a large sample of MTurk data.  Results from this paper differ with those from the existing research literature.

The Woolsey and Jones paper recounts a first-time user’s experience using MTurk to conduct international research.  The authors detail practical, methodological, and ethical issues they encountered using MTurk to collect data in the U.S. and Japan.  The paper concludes with questions about the future of crowdsourcing as a means of collecting data.

The Cavanaugh, Callan, and Landers paper reviews a research study comparing MTurk workers to undergraduates on individual difference variables and an online training task.  This paper fills a gap in the existing literature by examining the feasibility of MTurk as an avenue for conducting research on training processes and outcomes.

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available

As the pace of innovation increases, so does the need to test innovations to determine their worth.  Items enhancing quality of life are widely adopted.  For example, software such as SAS and SPSS allow us to instantly run analyses that would have previously taken days or weeks.  More recently, online data collection has replaced paper-and-pencil data collection and manual entry (Horton, Rand, & Zeckhauser, 2010).  Similarly, websites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) may allow quick and inexpensive access to hundreds of thousands of participants, but a critical review is needed to determine its worth as an innovative data collection resource.

MTurk is an example of a crowdsourcing website where researchers outsource data collection to online participants rather than using laboratory and other samples (Chandler, Mueller, & Paolacci, in press).  Websites such as Crowd Cloud and Crowd Flower also facilitate crowdsourcing (Gaggioli & Riva, 2008), but we focus on MTurk because it is currently the dominant crowdsourcing application for social scientists.  In fact, research conducted using MTurk has already appeared in peer-reviewed journals (Holden, Dennie, & Hicks, 2013; Jonason, Luevano, & Adams, 2012; Jones & Paulhus, 2011).

Using MTurk, participants called “workers” browse Human Intelligence Tasks (“HITs”) posted by “requesters” conducting research.  After selecting and completing HITs, workers are paid a pre-determined fee.  Because MTurk offers access to a large and diverse pool of over 500,000 participants from over 190 countries, researchers’ interest in MTurk as a potential new data collection resource is understandable (Bohannon, 2011; Mason & Suri, 2011).

The goal of this symposium is to bring professionals together to conduct a critical review of MTurk as an avenue for conducting psychological research.  Before turning our session over to our discussant, presenters will share data to evaluate MTurk against other samples.

The Gaddis and Foster paper uses MTurk to test items for developing and maintaining assessments.  The authors compare MTurk data to samples of students as well as applicants and incumbents from organizations.  This paper also includes lessons learned and recommendations for professionals interested in using MTurk.

The Harms and DeSimone paper explores a data cleaning approach to assessing the quality of MTurk data.  Using seven statistical data screens, the authors investigate the prevalence of low-quality data in a large sample of MTurk data.  Results from this paper differ with those from the existing research literature.

The Woolsey and Jones paper recounts a first-time user’s experience using MTurk to conduct international research.  The authors detail practical, methodological, and ethical issues they encountered using MTurk to collect data in the U.S. and Japan.  The paper concludes with questions about the future of crowdsourcing as a means of collecting data.

The Cavanaugh, Callan, and Landers paper reviews a research study comparing MTurk workers to undergraduates on individual difference variables and an online training task.  This paper fills a gap in the existing literature by examining the feasibility of MTurk as an avenue for conducting research on training processes and outcomes.

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available

Most of us work for a jerk – seriously, according to a new Gallup poll, 82 percent of U.S. managers are wrong for the job. But what if YOU are the jerk?

Research shows that as many as 75 percent of managers have trouble managing their behavior, which means if you have people working under you, odds are some of them think you’re a jerk. So, what can you do?

• Start with self-awareness. Since most people, especially managers, are generally unaware of how others see them, valid assessment methods such as personality tests or 360-degree feedback provide an objective view of your strengths and weaknesses.
• Compensate with alternative behaviors. Use positive behaviors to rebuild a reputation marked by counterproductive behaviors.
• Support weakness with resources. If you have clear weaknesses, sometimes the most effective development strategy is to compensate by supporting them with additional resources.
• Redesign your job or assignment. Most managers got where they were because they were a valuable individual contributor. If this is the case, sometimes companies may alter your job requirements to remove roles in which you struggle.

“The Jerk Store called, and they’re running out of you.” - George Costanza (1997)

Seinfeld fans will recall George’s ill-fated attempt to deliver the perfect comeback to a smart-ass coworker. Rather than trying to outdo them, the key to dealing with jerks, or any other kind of difficult manager, is to understand them.

“Bosses are just like any other human: unique but predictable,” said Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, vice president of Research and Innovation at Hogan. “The best way to manage your manager is to figure out who they are, what they want, and why they do what they do. Then, adjust your behavior to fit their personality.” For example,

• Is your boss impulsive? Impulsive bosses are driven by feeling rather than reason, so tune into their moods. Share your ideas when they are already feeling excited.
• Is your boss creative? Creative bosses jump from one idea to the next, so avoid any discussion of admin details, bureaucratic processes, and rules. Admire their ideas and show interest in their eccentric suggestions.

Check out more personality types and what you can do to counteract the jerk in your boss in our new eBook So, Your Boss is a Jerk.

“The Jerk Store called, and they’re running out of you.” – George Costanza (1997)

Seinfeld fans will recall George’s ill-fated attempt to deliver the perfect comeback to a smart-ass coworker. Rather than trying to outdo them, the key to dealing with jerks, or any other kind of difficult manager, is to understand them.

“Bosses are just like any other human: unique but predictable,” said Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, vice president of Research and Innovation at Hogan. “The best way to manage your manager is to figure out who they are, what they want, and why they do what they do. Then, adjust your behavior to fit their personality.” For example,

• Is your boss impulsive? Impulsive bosses are driven by feeling rather than reason, so tune into their moods. Share your ideas when they are already feeling excited.
• Is your boss creative? Creative bosses jump from one idea to the next, so avoid any discussion of admin details, bureaucratic processes, and rules. Admire their ideas and show interest in their eccentric suggestions.

Check out more personality types and what you can do to counteract the jerk in your boss in our new eBook So, Your Boss is a Jerk.

Bookstore self-help sections are laden with volumes telling us to lean in, act confident, or fake it until we make it. Although research shows there are benefits to glass-half-full thinking, it also links overconfidence to outcomes ranging from increased traffic accidents to the recent financial crisis.

In his 5-minute talk at TED@NYC, Hogan Vice President of Research and Innovation Dr. Tomas Chamorro urges the audience to take a more self-aware approach to confidence, and to embrace the power of negative thinking.

Bookstore self-help sections are laden with volumes telling us to lean in, act confident, or fake it until we make it. Although research shows there are benefits to glass-half-full thinking, it also links overconfidence to outcomes ranging from increased traffic accidents to the recent financial crisis.

In his 5-minute talk at TED@NYC, Hogan Vice President of Research and Innovation Dr. Tomas Chamorro urges the audience to take a more self-aware approach to confidence, and to embrace the power of negative thinking.

Nope, I’m not talking about brewing a pot of coffee and plotting out the future of your organization in the wee hours of the morning. When “Late Show” host David Letterman announced he was retiring after more than 32 years on the air, network executives moved quickly to announce his replacement, reportedly spurred by concerns over meetings with advertisers next month.

In the post-Conan era of late-night host selection, I imagine CBS executives put more than a few days of thought into who would fill Letterman’s shoes. However, the network’s choice, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, brings up a familiar problem in succession planning: whether it is better to promote from within or introduce a fresh face.

The arguments for Colbert are pretty clear: His show, “The Colbert Report”, which airs at 11:30 p.m., could bring with him tremendous viewership in key 18-49 demographics, which CBS badly needs to compete with NBC’s new late-night juggernaut, Jimmy Fallon. And, the argument has been made that in order to ultimately beat “The Tonight Show”,  CBS will have to completely overhaul its late-night format. Finally, Craig Ferguson, Letterman’s one-time protégé, has consistently low ratings in the 12:30 a.m. testing ground (CBS is reportedly replacing Ferguson with E! talk show host Chelsea Handler).

On the other hand, as one writer put it, the Colbert with which people are familiar is the ‘Colbert’ in quotation marks – a faux-conservative talk show host. Trying to transition his send-up of Bill O’Reilly to an hour-long network show would be disastrous, but abandoning it all together could mean alienating a significant portion of his current audience.

Although we can’t claim expertise in late-night host selection, in the corporate world, outside hires face tremendous challenges, and studies show that more than half fail, many within the first 18 months on the job.

For more on succession planning, check out our free ebook, From Potential to Performance.