LinkedIn has gone through a recent metamorphosis. As with all technology, it’s never a constant for long. Once again, we’re faced with acclimating ourselves to a series of new features. This most recent change, however, could possibly impact your school’s hiring season.

How many times a day do you see or hear ads from cell service providers, telling potential customers how they offer faster service, better coverage, and cheaper rates than the other guy? They spend all their time and effort attempting to lure new customers. Same goes for cable television providers. But what effort goes into retaining their customers? Generally, not much. These services usually have their customers nailed into two-year contracts. It’s easy to argue that the law of inertia tends to keep customers where they are beyond two years—and the thought that it's not really worth the effort to move.

The faculty hiring season will soon be upon us once again. In preparation, we want to share a few tips from HR and recruiting experts as quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Ruth Mantell, "Must Have Job Skills in 2013". While these experts spoke from the candidate’s perspective, we’ve turned around each point to consider the key skills that employers (schools) need to identify in interviews.

The National Institute for Prevention of Workplace Violence, Inc. has released its 2013 Workplace Violence Fact Sheet, a repository of information, statistics and charts on workplace violence presented to give Human Resources, Threat Management, Security, Risk Management and Operational Managers current information on workplace violence.

In a recent e-Letter, we discussed the importance of developing a robust crisis plan. We suggested you begin by selecting your Crisis/Risk Management Team (CRM). The focus of this team would be to perform an initial risk assessment to identify concerns and determine which risks present the greatest exposure to the school—that is, which risks should be addressed first (triaging). This team should also be responsible for developing general, overarching goals for your school’s crisis plan.

Let’s think about one idea that might be helpful: process versus event. Where do we see this in practice? A standard question we ask students when face to face is “What is the most difficult time of year?” Typically, at least one student will talk about the end of each quarter, semester, or marking period. When asked why that is so hard, the answer is always “The faculty are rushing to get work done so they can have ‘marks’ to report on."

While we are conducting on-site consultations, one of the things we hear is that schedules do not allow enough time for faculty collaboration. Faculty collaboration breaks down the learning silos of the 20th-century model, which in turn helps slow the frenetic pace many students deal with. In other words, faculty collaboration time will help balance demands on students while allowing to have a richer, more productive experience.

Dosomething.org hosted a Green Your School Challenge last year. 5,404 schools and 141,000 students from all over the country participated. Areas of competition included recycling, energy saving, and green agriculture.

There has been renewed conversation in the private school community recently about diversity training. Wikipedia defines diversity training as: Training for the purpose of increasing participants' cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills, which is based on the assumption that the training will benefit an organization by protecting against civil rights violations, increasing the inclusion of different identity groups, and promoting better teamwork. As with any training initiative, schools should reflect on their needs and objectives before launching this training.

On April 4, 2012, Chronicle Online published an article stating that obesity now accounts for almost 21% of all U.S. health care costs. A study from Cornell confirms this is more than twice the previous estimate.