Interview with Dr. Cappelli - One of the top 5 HR Thought Leaders in the World

 

Dr. Peter Cappelli is an amazing HR thought leader who has had significant roles on the Public Policy side, and in Academia. He has been a prolific researcher, and author. And when I say he is one of the top Thought Leaders in the world - it isn’t just my opinion, its been the result of the global surveys! He was kind enough to allow me to interview him.

Dr. Cappelli, you have been recognized many times as one of the leading thought leaders in HR. If you don’t mind, what has your journey looked like and what led you to focus on Human Resources? 

I spent much of the 1990s working on policy issues around education and the labor force.  One of the things that became clear then was that much of what drove labor market outcomes was determined by the choices that employers make. So I sort of backed into these HR topics through public policy.  The breakdown of lifetime employment, which I wrote about in the late 1990s, ends up driving most of what is new in HR now.

You are always working on some amazing research, so if you don’t mind, what are you focusing on now? 

I’m interested in education from the perspective of the student and the parents who are paying for it.  By pushing kids toward degrees that are vocational, are we just making them pay for what would have been employer training and in the process giving them skills that won’t last long?

 How do you see HR changing over the next 5 to 10 years?  

One big story is that the trends in different countries are diverging.  The US is training less, pushing the skills problem onto schools and workers, and moving toward even more churning of the workforce.  China is pouring tons of money into development as is India.  Europe continues on something closer to the lifetime model.  Other countries fall somewhere in between.

 Lastly, given all of the research you have done, if there was one lesson that you wish HR practitioners would pay more attention to and/or implement - what is it? 

 In the US, I wish practitioners would take decision making seriously.  You can figure out what hiring practices make sense, what pay practices work, and so forth by looking at data. Copying what everyone else says they are doing is rarely a good idea.