Securing your organization by use of Psychometric Testing

Most companies use psychometric testing today as a tool to recruit the right person with the right skills and attitude for the job. The tools used for psychometric testing are reliable, mostly computerized, secure and it is generally not possible to fiddle with them to get a job.

The test results are systematically scored against well researched and authenticated models to make sure there is a fool proof testing and assessment. 

The psychometric tools available today balance the questions against each other to ensure that the interpretation is accurate in assessing the test takers psychological attributes and personality. 

The most popular method is to use two type of questions, the first type measures the candidates characteristics relative to each other while the second type measures the candidates profile in the given business. 

In the light of maturity in psychometric assessment the time has come for organizations to also access the candidates attitude to information security of the organization. Psychometric testing must be able to assess the candidates attitude to integrity, loyalty and honesty by adding this to the existing questionnaire.

This approach will ensure in the long term that Business stop a Snowden from entering the organization and thus ensure continuity of compliance, ethics and integrity in their organization.

Identify the fault lines before they bring your organization to a standstill!

The employee has been the weakest link in the security of the organization and psychometric testing gives the organization the chance to be proactive in stopping unwanted rogue employees from entering the organization and proving to be a threat to the business.

It is time organizations started administering psychometric testing to evaluate the integrity, honesty and ethics of the employees in its organizations and this must include all existing employees and also new recruits.

Psychometric testing has been successfully used in Latin America to lend to the poorest of the poor for establishing a credit score based on the borrowers psychological profile to access the intent to return the money borrowed. The success of this has been encouraging and can the details can be found in various micro-finance journals. 

In an ungrateful and dangerous world psychometric  testing for information security will ensure that your organization is secure and your colleagues have been rated by a standard psychological evaluation about their integrity.

Back Office of a Bank reflects the reality !

Recently I visited the Back Office of a Bank and it was quite different from the Corporate Office.
There was not enough place to be seated, and there were many people floating around the place and the seats taken at the reception of the bank's back office included vendors of various hues.
The corporate office was all glitzy and nice and had the trappings of  power and confidence, but the Back Office had a different story to tell.
At the Back Office there was no effort made to be customer friendly, since most visitors were vendors of the bank who came here to provide the bank services. Somehow I believe the way a banks treats its vendors will be the way it will treat its customers. If you treat vendors well and with respect you will carry the same attitude to your customers else the crack will show sooner of later.

You cannot have a colored view of the world, with one set of rules for vendors and another for customers, the code of conduct and etiquette need to be consistent across the bank and must be constant irrespective of the relationship.
Banking is about relationship, trust and consistency whoever the entity maybe, you cannot get on a high horse and wield a whip on a vendor because you are in a position of strength and in the same breath you cannot fawn and get on all fours to please a customers.
Banks must work in uniformity in dealing with their customers and vendors with the same courtesy and care and respect. How does your bank conduct itself ?

Disruptive Technologies and their Adoption

Over the Centuries any Disruptive Technology has always been welcomed with skepticism and resistance to adoption, sometime the creators of these disruption have been executed, imprisoned or forced to publicly take back their technology insights and apologize for their oversight.
In the last fifty years disruptive technologies have transformed the way we live, eat and procreate and also pair, whether it is DNA sequencing, bio-technology;genetic modification, health and medical delivery, intrusion into our privacy and the way we conduct our lives and business.
These disruptive technologies have compressed time and have been deployed  quickly that we sometimes forget that there was an era without these tools.
Let us take the instance of this blog, in the old days I would have to get this written in a typewriter, have it proof read and hope to disseminate it through print media, indeed a herculean task for a layman to get their ideas to the  world.

Disruptive Technologies Adoption needs Acceptance of Change 

Today withing minutes and a press of a button people right across the world have access to my thoughts expressed in this blog irrespective of their location, the disruptive technologies that make this possible are the blogging site, the cloud computing, the internet, the mouse, the laptop on which I write this blog, the spell checker in the world processor, the ease of transferring my pictures from my digital camera into this blog and finally the social media through which this blog will be advertised and distributed.
Many of these technologies are less then a decade old and for sure none of them are more then 50 years old; but we have learnt to adopt these technologies and harness this for the benefit of mankind and sharing  our thoughts and insights.
Disruptive technology have repeatedly  shown  that they have an adoption cycle, they are first denounced, then accepted and then embraced. The same is true of Cloud Computing which has been one of the game changers in the way we compute, communicate and share information and collaborate.
Accepting Disruptive Technology Adoption with open Arms is the right way forward rather then trying to resist change in a world where technology innovation is in months rather then decades, get real and get used to the ever changing and disruptive world of innovations if you want to excel in your pursuits.
Your thoughts on how disruptive technologies and their adoption has changed your life will be appreciated as an addendum to this blog post.

Gratitude recieved for being gratuitous is a Joyful experience.

I suddenly have a flurry of people thanking me for what I have done for them ages ago, I am quite surprised and did not realize that being gratuitous was a rare virtue.

There were more then four people in the last ten days thanking me in person or phone stating that they are where they are because of the heads up I gave them in their career or personal life.

The more I think about these favors, they were done to help people who were competent, confident and had fire in their belly to succeed. My role was that of a catalyst, though I had been firm with some of them in convincing them to make the transition.

In a changing world receiving gratitude for past gratuitous deeds is indeed refreshing and is a joy which money may not be able to buy. 

If someone has been gratuitous to you in your life, maybe now is the time to reach out to them and thank them, if may cost you nothing, but for the recipient is it is pure joy and happiness.

Go ahead and pick up the phone and dial up someone today and make the difference. Remember what you give always comes back to you !