As another year draws to a close, and as you prepare yourself for the inevitable frenetic return of the work-life treadmill, you might allocate space for some deep thought. Not about others, your work, your family, but yourself. You.

Organisations of all shapes and sizes love to use staff appraisals to ensure that performance, engagement and motivation is optimised, supporting the achievement of corporate goals.  So why not use an appraisal yourself to help realign your own individual success, health and, most importantly, happiness?

​Assuming you still use interviews to select new employees (and many companies don't)  you might consider how effective they are.

In normal circumstances, interviews fall into 2 categories:

1. Benign but not informative - a benign experience but providing no insight into the potential of the individual or their fit for your organisation, or 
2. Totally pointless and unpleasant - offering no insight into interviewee suitability but also being a negative experience that reflects poorly on the interviewer and the organisation.

Why not,  then, make interviews work for your organisation as, whilst imperfect, they can be a useful mechanism for obtaining a better idea on the interviewee's experience, approach and style and more importantly they can offer a real insight into the individuals' willingness to learn.