One of the first departments to go with  mergers or acquisitions is the human resource (HR) department. With that departure, the acquiring firm, or the more powerful merged firm, loses institutional knowledge when the HR staff departs. Instead of getting rid of the acquired HR staff, keep them. The HR staff departs for several reasons. […]

A qualified local workforce takes investing in our schools, community, and infrastructure. Wow, it is 2024, and the future of the Permian Basin looks bright, partly due to the investment of money and time that most of our energy leaders made in working so hard to help pass the school bonds in Midland, Odessa, and […]

To change the message of the Permian, we need to start by cleaning our own house. That comes by reviewing one employee at a time. Some should stay, and some should go. Keep the positive, hardworking, and loyal ones. Keep the ones who give more than 80 percent and show up on time but are […]

  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 […]