Posts Tagged ‘signaling’

The primary purpose of the graduation speaker is to reassure the parents in the audience that the 200K+ that they spent on their college education was worth it. The speaker’s impressiveness helps with this but they also should stick to one of a few topics: discuss the impressiveness of the students, the value of their [...]

Daniela Papi has a great post on the many problems with “voluntourism,” or traveling to a foreign country to do volunteer work. She points out that most volunteers don’t know much about the local culture, you don’t speak the language and don’t have relevant skills, and this makes it very difficult to find work that’s [...]

Are interviews a good way of sorting the wheat from the chaff? Interviews reward those people who are good at telling short vignettes, who know what they want to do 5 years from now, those who are good at looking comfortable, those who can think on their feet, and those who can articulate the qualities [...]

From Haiti: Every day, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane spends 5 hours flying over Haiti broadcasting a recorded message, no doubt made at the urging of Washington officials, from Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador in Washington, stating: “Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country. If you do this, we’ll all have even worse [...]

In business, “There’s got to be a better way to do this” often has a profitable answer. Electricity is a shortcut for people who are used to burning oil lamps all the time. Laundry machines are shortcuts for people who previously hand washed their clothes. Facebook allows you to get to know people well without [...]

David Roberts writes: The most puzzling behavioral phenomenon to understand when it comes to building efficiency is that Most People Won’t Do Sh*t (MPWDS). “Most people” includes people who could make money by doing sh*t, people who say they will do sh*t, even people who have promised to do sh*t. I’ve heard from people who [...]