Tasmanian IT Blog   •   March 29, 2019

Each week, we post a “Take 5” article to our website with tips, tricks, thoughts and actions we’ve come across during the week that we feel you may benefit from too.

It’s designed to be short and sharp that you can read when you need to “Take 5”.

Grab a drink, give yourself a (productive) break and check out our latest 5 below.

1. Feed the brain – Podcast: Without Fail

Any big success requires looking failure in the eye. Without Fail is the new show from Gimlet Media that asks people who have pursued incredible things: What worked? What didn’t? And why?

Each week, Gimlet co-founder Alex Blumberg interviews a person who’s taken a big bet and won or lost. He talks to people who’ve risked everything to try something no one’s ever done before, or to try something they never thought they’d achieve.  He also interviews people who looked like they had it all, only to fail spectacularly. A really interesting podcast.

Link: https://www.gimletmedia.com/without-fail

2. Has your online account been compromised?

Every week there seems to be new details of the latest data breach and implications for big business.  But how do you know if your accounts have been compromised?

The folks over at “Have i been pwned?” keep a close eye on the latest data breaches and their contents – resulting in them developing a tool for you to register your usernames/emails and they will pro-actively notify you if your email or username is present in data breaches, including new ones as they are discovered.

There are many services that provide this kind of notification – but this is a nice simple way to register for a free service that can keep track of your account presence in the data breach scene.

Link: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

3. Job interview robots who won’t judge you

Here at Tasmanian IT we are always on the lookout for great people and it got us thinking about the methodologies we use in recruitment. So doing a bit of research we came across Tengai, a robot designed to carry out unbiased job interviews that is being tested by Swedish recruiters. Different? We thought so. Why not read about Tengai – follow the link for more.

Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47442953

4. Unconscious Biases

Research is proving that we are biased towards the world around us and use stereotypes all the time. Our brains are wired towards patterns and similarity, while difference is harder to accommodate. The impact of unconscious bias is that there is bias (conscious or unconscious) in the workplace, we continue to recruit, promote, allocate work, and manage performance with filters on our thinking.

We cannot change what we do not see or acknowledge, but we can change conscious attitudes and beliefs. When it comes to creating inclusive and diverse workplaces  the Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT), is a most effective online tool to gain greater awareness about one’s own biases, preferences and beliefs.

It’s free, quick and easy and you can assess your unconscious bias in a variety of fields by clicking on this link

Link: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

5. Quote of the week

“One of the criticisms I’ve faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough, or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, it means I’m weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong”.

— Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister, New Zealand

Have a great week from the Tasmanian IT Team