Bravo! After conquering the challenging hurdles of technical tests and interviews, it’s time to strut into the office and claim that desk you’ve eyed so many times during your interview marathon!
Before you get too excited, it’s crucial to understand that, unfortunately, 1 out of every 5 new employees doesn’t make it through the probation period.
“What?! That’s a total waste of time!” You may think.
That would be exactly what the employer thinks too. Apart from the expensive hiring cost, study shows that onboarding a new employee is costing a company US$7,500-$28,000 in hard costs. The soft costs, such as lost productivity, can add up to as much as 60% of the total cost to hire. Companies have invested heavily on every new employee.
Surviving your probation period is, t...
Why human beings thrived?
The reason why we human beings conquered this planet is not because we are the smartest. Studies show that we Homo Sapiens are not as intelligent as Neanderthals. Sometimes even a chimpanzee could outsmart us. We have populated this planet because we are social learners. We are copycat champion. We learn from others even though when our intelligence is slow to catch up.
Two sides of the same coin: Social learning and Copycat
That, however, creates a hurdle for our society. We like to blend in, and hate being seen as rocking the boat. We have a tendency to adopt certain behaviours or attitudes simply because others are doing so.
A famous experiment by Solomon Asch reveals that individuals would conform because of social pressure. In 18 rounds of expe...
In a world flooded with career advice for fresh graduates, what you need to read is not another piece of article filled with generic tips. Instead, this article summarises 6 lesser-known tactics most pertinent to this fast-moving employment market in the age of digitization. They will help you stand out from the crowd and lead to more unique and impactful outcomes in your career.
1. Find your dream by elimination
Let’s be honest. Not everyone has a dream, and not all university major leads you to a preset career path. You are not alone if you feel that choosing a career path is paralysing when you are just starting out. It is, however, relatively easier to choose what you would prefer to do over something else. Why not break down the roles into routines and tasks and eliminate the...
Interviewers are human too, they do get tired of asking the same old boring questions repetitively such as, ‘Tell me about yourself,’ and ‘what are your strengths and weaknesses?’ all the time and hearing the same stale, scripted, and well-rehearsed responses. From time to time, they like to ask unusual, and sometimes quirky, interview questions to spice up the mind-numbing interview process. Even so, there are also other reasons for these weird questions to crop up in the interview process. Knowing exactly why these questions are asked help you ace your interviews.
Why employers pepper job interviews with quirky interview questions and example questions1. Testing your critical and analytical thinking skills on your feet
Many of the questions asked based on this reason are not exp...
Luck is an elusive concept. As Richard Branson famously says, ‘Luck is one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated factors in life.’
We have seen successful business titans attributing their success to luck.
Warren Buffett said, ‘I am just lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.’
Bill Gates said, ‘I was lucky to be a young person when the digital revolution was just getting under way, and my Microsoft colleagues and I had the chance to help shape it.’
Elon Musk wrote on twitter, ‘Luck is the greatest superpower.’
On the other hand, we have seen candidates blaming their bad luck for their missed sales targets, setbacks, or stalled careers.
What is ‘luck’ really?
Richard Wiseman has spent eight years researching into ‘luck’. In one of his experi...
Traditionally, Intelligent Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) are recognised as the key factors contributing to success. However, it is disheartening to witness people with high IQ and EQ labelled as underachievers. We can’t help but ask why. Recent studies reveal that Adversity Quotient (AQ) is the missing piece of the puzzle.
Companies are in dire need to find ways to measure AQ so to find out who is worthy of their investment at the end of the day. To employers, higher AQ associates with stability, motivation, perseverance, and creativity that characterises the way they respond to changes.
What is AQ?
AQ, a word coined by Dr Paul Stoltz in 1997, is a way to measure one’s ability to withstand difficulties and overcome them. It is more pertinent to this generation th...
Hong Kong is known for its competitive work culture and relentless pursuit of success. Behind the glory, burnout is not uncommon among workers in Hong Kong.
Prevalence of burnout in Hong Kong
A study by Mercer in June 2022 reveals that 95 percent of employees in Hong Kong are feeling a risk of burnout, which is the highest across markets in Asia. And yet, only 25 percent of executives and human resource leaders have realised the risk and view exhaustion as a threat to a company’s advancement, indicating that this alarming phenomenon is largely unnoticed.
What is burnout?
Classified as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ by WHO, burnout is a syndrome resulted from chronic workplace stress that are not successfully managed. You can check against the list of symptoms to see if you ...
Unconscious bias is costly
Unconscious bias refers to the inherent prejudices and stereotypes that influence our decision-making processes, often without our conscious awareness. Everyone is a victim of it as our brains are wired to find shortcuts to help us make fast decisions. Unconscious bias in recruitment is proven to cost businesses huge amount of money. Study shows that US$64 billion is evaporated annually in the U.S. due to unfairness and discrimination in workplace, excluding the legal cost which could possibly be even higher. It can lead to a higher turnover rate and is detrimental to workplace dynamics leading workers to feel alienated and disengaged.
Understanding unconscious bias
In finding the right talent for your team, unconscious bias is like a mischievous little...
The tech talent shortages persist. It continues to pose challenges for both employers and job seekers. In April 2022, there were 112,425 IT employees in Hong Kong, representing a 17.4% increase compared to April 2018 and an 81.0% increase compared to March 2004. As of April 2022, there were still 9,097 vacancies in the IT sector, resulting in a vacancy-to-talent ratio of 1:13. This shortage can be attributed to factors such as emigration of local talent and the increased adoption of digitised strategies by companies. It is estimated that Hong Kong will face a shortage of 100,000 IT professionals in the next five years, particularly in software engineering, network security engineering, and cloud engineering, while only 1,500 relevant graduates enter the field each year.
The scarcity...
