Month: February 2025

While interning at a construction company this past summer in Seattle, I heard from a few full-time employees about why they chose to work for and stay at the company. While there are many options for construction companies to work for, especially in the greater Seattle area, employees continuously chose this company and to stay with them long-term, with a significant amount of employees who have been there for 10+ years. A primary reason employees gave for choosing this company was compensation.

As we learned in class, compensation accounts for some of the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards an employee earns in their job. Some of the extrinsic rewards that these employees mentioned they valued at the company are decent salaries, bonuses, COLAS, and stock options. Intrinsic rewards included feelings of satisfaction and fulfillment from getting to participate in special events for “old-timers” (employees who have been at the company for a long time) and from overall company project successes. The company more or less uses a merit pay system where employees receive increases in their pay based on performance evaluations, which the employees like. Overall, the highly competitive compensation plays a big part in making employees want to stay at the company.

Why Compensation Motivated This Behavior and Made People Want To Stay

We learned in the HBR article “Most people have no idea whether they’re fairly paid” that, unsurprisingly, how much people get paid can affect them emotionally as it represents their value at a company (Smith 1). While money and other rewards aren’t everything a person looks for in a job, compensation can still play a large role in helping a person make career decisions. Especially in highly competitive markets like the construction industry, it is important for companies to give employees a good reason to work for them instead of someone else. Providing good compensation can set companies apart from others in the industry. Like with the company I worked for this summer, people wanted to work for this company because it offered the best compensation in their opinion. These employees wanted to work somewhere where they feel their work matters and will get recognized, and the compensation at this company makes them feel that way. Employees at this organization also likely chose this company because of its special compensation perks that many companies don’t have, like the ability to have company stock. Finally, the people who work at this company not only want to succeed individually, but want the entire company succeed, so they chose to work for an organization where there will be extra compensation when the company overall is successful, such as stock compensation in the form of payouts as well as feelings of gratification from working for a winning team.

Reference:

Smith, D. (2015). Most people have no idea whether they’re paid fairly
Links to an external site.. Harvard Business Review, 93(12), 1-3

Training is an essential part of integrating new employees at an organization (as well as helping current ones) and ensuring they will exhibit high performance. It is where new hires learn about their position as well as gain the required skills and knowledge to perform at the company. Trainings such as onboarding are crucial for maintaining employee engagement and decreasing turnover (Tsipursky). Poor training can lead to low performing employees who are much more likely to contemplate leaving the company, and can cost an organization a considerable amount of money (Tsipursky). Adequately trained employees are much more likely to stay at a company and be engaged at work (Tsipursky).

My Beneficial Training Experience

One training experience that I felt was very successful was during my onboarding at a construction company I interned with two summers ago. Although interns are only expected to work at the company for three months during the summer, they still go through the majority of the new-hire onboarding process for full-time employees. As we learned in the class lecture this week, onboarding is a major part of the new employee training process where employees learn about the organization such as the values and norms, and it is when formal socialization occurs. In my onboarding, I first found it useful that the recruiters maintained contact with me before my first day of onboarding, ensuring I had all of the information I needed and that I knew what to expect on my first day. This method is a form of anticipatory socialization that can make the onboarding process more effective. During the actual onboarding process, the company used a group approach where all new employees learned together, which I thought was helpful in allowing each new employee to socialize and get to know what other people at the company were like. The primary training method used was presentation, with lectures and PowerPoints that talked about company history, different departments within the company, benefits, and much more. Group-building was also implemented by having team activities and discussions, which helped us build relationships with others. One last beneficial feature of this training that I want to point out is that each training session was taught by a different manager from the company, including the COO and many department heads. Involving managers in the onboarding process, especially if it is the manager the employee will report to, can greatly increase the effectiveness of onboarding and provide new employees with valuable attention and support (Ellis). Having these managers play an active role in the training helped me personally by making me feel that I could easily approach each of them and ask them for help during my transition into my new position.

My Unfavorable Training Experience

One less beneficial training I have experienced occurred during a webinar I participated in during one of my construction internships. We learned in this week’s class lecture that webinars are a form of presentation training, used to convey facts or compare alternatives. This webinar was about a specific construction process and consisted of a one-hour presentation on the topic with little audience interaction. I found the presentation boring and not very useful. Our class lecture mentions the importance of creating a learning environment during trainings, which includes making the content meaningful and communicating the relevance of the training to the employee. I felt this training lacked relevance to my position as an intern, although it was construction related, which made me uninterested in the content. I also thought that the content during the entire hour of presentation was not very meaningful, and that a lot of time was spent talking about things unrelated to the webinar topic.

Trainings of all forms should be useful to employees and to the company, otherwise the company is wasting money and employees feel like they are wasting time. Successful training experiences can lead to happier employees who perform well and stay at a company for many years to come.

Citations:

Ellis, Allison et al. (2017). “Your New Hires Won’t Succeed Unless You Onboard Them Properly.” HBR, https://hbr.org/2017/06/your-new-hires-wont-succeed-unless-you-onboard-them-properly

Tsipursky, Gleb (2023). “A Guide to Onboarding New Hires (For First-Time Managers).” HBR, https://hbr.org/2023/07/a-guide-to-onboarding-new-hires-for-first-time-managers.

Being a woman with a STEM major and pursing a full-time position in the male-dominated construction industry, I am very familiar with the idea of an implicit bias. Everyone, myself included, has implicit biases. For this assignment, I took the Gender-Career implicit bias test on the Harvard University Project Implicit website.

IAT Results

During the implicit association test (IAT), I was asked to organize words into the following four categories as quickly as possible: Male, Female, Science, and Liberal Arts. My results indicated that I have a moderate automatic association for Male with Science and for Female with Liberal Arts. I found these results rather intriguing, considering I am a woman pursing an engineering degree (which according to the IAT is part of the “Science” category) and I am actively trying to combat the implicit bias and stereotypes that women do not perform as well in STEM jobs as men do. Unsurprisingly, according to the results page, most people that took this test had the same results as me. We live in a society where, although women have come a long way, in general men still dominate “Science” positions, therefore establishing an implicit bias in most people that men belong in Science and women belong in more “female-suited” Liberal Arts positions. It is possible that this implicit bias can have an unintentional effect during job recruitment and selection in STEM fields.

Effect of Implicit Bias on Reliability

During the selection process for potential new hires, a company should implement methods that are reliable so they can depend on the methods to produce appropriate, qualified employees. Implicit biases could negatively affect reliability of the selection process. For example, if an engineering firm is deciding who to hire between a man and a woman with the same qualifications, it is likely that, because of the Gender-Career implicit bias that associates men with Science, the man will get the position over the woman. Hiring or not hiring someone because of their gender produces an error in the selection process that is supposed to be consistent and dependable. Selection should be free from any bias to ensure that only job-related qualifications are being considered. If someone will be judged during selection based on a protected trait that is not related to the job, then the selection process is no longer reliable or consistent in producing the most qualified employees.

Preventing Implicit Bias

One thing I would do to prevent implicit bias is become more aware of my own implicit biases, while also spreading awareness about implicit biases to others. Awareness is an important step to uncovering unconscious biases, and helping everyone around you become aware can begin movements towards counteracting implicit bias (Knight). Especially in STEM industries like the construction industry that I will be a part of in my career, it is important for people to understand and acknowledge that implicit biases exist, and that they can have drastic effects in the workplace. Managers specifically play crucial roles during the hiring process in decreasing implicit biases (Knight). The only way for society to believe subconsciously that women belong in STEM is if they see women in these positions in the first place.

Citation:

Knight, R. (2018). “7 Practical Ways to Reduce Bias in Your Hiring Process.” SHRM, https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/7-practical-ways-to-reduce-bias-hiring-process.

Job interviews are the first time a potential new hire has an in-depth interaction with a company, and thus they play a significant role in the hiring process. As an undergraduate senior, I have interviewed for many internship positions in the construction industry over the past few years, and I am currently in the process of interviewing for a full-time position. There are some interviews I have had that I thought went very well, and others that seemed as though they could have gone better.

What Made My Interviews Effective?

The most effective interviews I have participated in were structured and professional. As we learned in this week’s lecture, a structured interview is one where the interviewer has a predetermined set of questions that they ask in all of the interviews for potential candidates. I found the standard questions to be effective as they helped the interview stay on topic, and it eliminated problems that could occur with unstructured interviews. Further, asking the same interview questions can help with reliability by ensuring consistency, and asking only relevant questions assists with validity of the interview. I also found it effective when my interviewers kept the interviews professional, by using some of the tactics discussed in the lecture like taking notes while I was speaking, and asking appropriate questions while avoiding irrelevant questions. These actions made me feel that the interviewers were actively listening to me and considering everything I had to say, and that there was no bias. Lastly, I found it effective when I was asked questions about my soft skills, as this gave me an opportunity to demonstrate skills I have for the job that could not always be shown on paper. For example, determining whether a candidate has leadership skills can be a great indication on how well they would perform in a job (Friedman). Overall, when considering selection utility, my interviews that seemed worth the time and money of the recruiters and were therefore most effective were structured, asked relevant questions about the job, and were given professionally by recruiters who took the interview seriously and engaged with me throughout.

What Seemed Ineffective About My Interviews?

There are some things that I have noticed in my experience with interviewing that may contribute to ineffective interviews. One specific experience I had during an interview occurred with an interviewer who was not very talkative and seemed uninterested in the interview altogether. According to the article “How to Take the Bias Out of Interviews,” the way an interviewer acts can play a crucial role during an interview and can affect how the person being interviewed responds (Bohnet). While I feel that I was asked meaningful questions about the job during my interview, the way the interviewer acted affected how I answered the questions, and the interview felt rushed. In the lecture, we discussed the importance of selecting a recruiter who is warm and personable. These traits did not seem to apply to this recruiter, and therefore the interview was not as effective as it could have been.

My Recommendations to Employers For More Effective Interviews

• Obtain high-quality recruiters to perform interviews who are personable and act appropriately. All of my most enjoyable and successful interviews were with fantastic recruiters who were friendly and engaged with me during my entire interview.
• Review the resume during the interview as another method to assess the candidate for selection. I find it could be helpful for the interviewer to use my resume to determine my specific experiences and skills, and that addressing the resume during the interview can allow me to expand on my experience and demonstrate further my qualifications for the job.
• Establish rapport – Get to know the candidate to make them comfortable during the interview and to help determine if they would be a good fit for the company. I feel it is important for the company I am interviewing with to understand who I am as a person to assess how I would feel in their company culture. Additionally, I am more willing to be myself and give more in-depth answers during an interview if I have rapport with the interviewer.

Works Cited:

Bohnet, I. (2016). “How To Take the Bias Out of Interviews.” HBR, https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-take-the-bias-out-of-interviews.

Friedman, T. L. (2014). “How To Get a Job At Google.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html.