Month: November 2010

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Posted on by Scott

Last month (for Thanksgiving), my dad, sister, a few cousins and I cooked so mom could have a break. The food turned out so well, she asked us to do it again for Christmas–including a candied sweet potato recipe I cobbled together from different ones on the internet. The recipe is below.

Ingredients
4-5 lbs of sweet potatoes
1 20oz can of crushed pineapple
1 1/2 cups of dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cup of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter
cinnamon, nutmeg, & ginger to taste

Instructions
Fill an 8qt pot 2/3rds of the way with water. Bring to a boil. Boil the sweet potatoes for 15 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool for peeling and slicing later.

In a saucepan, melt the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, add the brown sugar and stir. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger until the sauce tastes how you want it.

After you’ve peeled and sliced the sweet potatoes, lay down a layer of them, drizzle/smear on some of the sauce, and sprinkle on some of the crushed pineapple. Repeat until you’ve filled whatever casserole dish or foil pan you’re using.

Bake this at 425 degrees for 90 minutes.

The problem with exit interviews

Posted on by Scott

The biggest problem with exit interviews is that they’re too little, too late. I had an exit interview recently (since I accepted an offer to go elsewhere), and there wasn’t anything wrong with the questions–it was just that nothing could be done about any of the concerns I raised.

The second major problem with exit interviews is that they focus too narrowly. All the feedback from exit interviews comes from people who’ve decided to leave. Assuming a company has had relatively low turnover for awhile, the feedback could be leaving out information from as much as 90% of its workforce.

If a company is serious about employee retention, they need to get feedback from as much of their workforce as possible on a regular basis. In my exit interview, I got questions about benefits, commute, holidays, and other issues. Regular, anonymous surveys on those issues would probably reveal a lot of useful information about ways benefits could be improved. Gathering this kind of information regularly will mean that at least some (if not most) of the answers you get will be from people who still have a stake in the company’s future.