HR Executive Magazine Showcases Benefits of Checkster's Collective Intelligence to Customers

Mill Valley, Calif. / May 18, 2011 — Collective Intelligence is what powers sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor or even Amazon product ratings. For managers and HR professionals, it is now possible to leverage similar benefits to assess talent.

Checkster is successfully leveraging the latest advances in intelligence collection to better serve the need of organizations to evaluate talent, as covered in a recent issue of HR Executive Magazine. The article, “Collecting Intelligence,” quotes Checkster customer Petco’s senior vice president of human resources, Charlie Piscitello: “Collective-intelligence solutions will become more common in the HR arena in the coming years as they continue to demonstrate their value.”

Meri Miller-Decker, director of talent acquisition at Petco, was also quoted. “A group of individuals can give you a unique perspective on how you’re doing, and that’s going to be more valuable than from a single source.” The company has 1,060 stores in all 50 states, and 22,000 employees nationwide.

“Assessing talent has always been a difficult task and, if badly done, can lead to disastrous results for organizations,” said Yves Lermusi, chief executive officer of Checkster, the leading provider of talent assessment that leverages collective intelligence. “But thanks to the power of the Web and the principles of collective intelligence, organizations can now reduce hiring risks dramatically.”

But collective intelligence does not come by randomly aggregating feedback from a group of intelligent people. Some fundamental principles, as applied by Checkster, need to be respected in order to increase its accuracy. Three factors are critical when relying on collective intelligence:
* Diversity. Consider this not simply in terms of gender or ethnic background, but also when it comes to diversity of knowledge, experience, personality, cognitive style, etc.
* Authenticity. This is understood as the ability for each participant to be free to express his or her real thoughts, and not to be engaged in a hidden agenda or deceptive tactics.
* Discernment. Even if a diverse group is assembled that can be authentic, the results will be enhanced if discernment can be improved. In other words, enable participants to discern difference and relevance. This is often achieved by using a framework, such as validated competencies.

To read the full article, go to: http://hre.lrp.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=533329674 .

About Checkster
Checkster is the leading Talent Assessment vendor leveraging Collective Intelligence. It provides organizations with cloud computing solutions to recognize and grow talent, with the help of colleagues’ feedback. Checkster’s products range from reference checkup to 360 feedback tools: The Reference Check 2.0 process, which assesses talent pre-hire by upgrading the traditional telephone reference check, to the new process of 360 Checkup, which provides developmental feedback to employees.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Checkster’s products are used by many Fortune 500 companies and providers of HR services. The company aims to improve the world’s productivity and harmony by increasing job fit and work achievement, as well as personal career satisfaction and fulfillment. Checkster leverages the latest technologies to offer its customers and candidates a unique, seamless experience for the ultimate impact. To contact Checkster, visit www.checkster.com.

This press release was distributed through PR Web by Human Resources Marketer (HR Marketer: www.HRmarketer.com) on behalf of the company listed above.