Midland College had an event in September titled The Latina Women’s Conference. I attended and listened to a panel of ten women discussing how they could get bachelor’s and master’s degrees, get great jobs, and start their businesses against what many would consider difficult obstacles. Those obstacles included growing up without enough to eat, […]

Covey said famously, Begin with the end in mind. Let’s talk a bit about artificial intelligence (AI). What is the good, the bad, and the ugly? The good is that it improves individuals’ writing abilities. Or does it? I can tell, in a second, something that AI has written. Refrain from falling for a glossy […]

In resuming the topic of recruitment from last month, I want to mention the latest buzzword: quiet hiring. Remember quiet quitting and quiet firing? I would be a millionaire if I could be clever enough to come up with these terms. I want to give credit to Gartner’s “future of work” team, who appear frequently […]

Last month I wrote about best practices for hiring. This month, I want to take a step back and look at recruiting in a market where recruiting keeps getting more and more difficult. I have taken a new job as the Director of Recruitment and Retention for the largest employer in Midland. I will not […]

“Hire right because the penalties of hiring wrong are huge.” —Ray Dalio  This is my third summer writing about hiring the right employees. I continue to follow an executive, and in the past year, the guy has changed jobs twice. You want to ask, are companies that desperate, or is there something else going on? […]

Goodbye Henry Ford. Considering my hope for a better Permian, we, as employers, need to be flexible with our workforce. Recruiters need help finding new employees. Millennials and Gen Z workers do not want to have to spend every day at work in an office. You know, these employees want more life balance. Also, the […]

Workforce development in the Permian is a hot topic. Still, as I have met with various educational and non-profit organizations, there needs to be more clarity between what the industry needs and how the word is getting out on professional development offerings for our workforce. I learned that some organizations could better market their offerings […]

I recently presented on my favorite Human Resources (HR) topics and was pleasantly surprised that more participants than not answered over half my questions correctly. The same day of the presentation, a client called and asked me a question; I answered that the client had to pay the individual who resigned unless they wanted to […]

Listen and learn, or a meltdown may be just around the corner. I pulled out eight or ten books on leadership skills for this article, and I came up with the same conclusion—the best manager skills are to listen and learn. Listen to your employees because they are often not just thinking about themselves. Employees […]

Jim Collins has written extensively about the concept of turning the flywheel. The idea is simple. Success breeds support and commitment, which breeds even greater success, which breeds more support and commitment… around and around the flywheel goes. People like to support a winner. I have written about leadership quite a few times and have […]