Yes, it’s true that Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer will all pretty much help you carry out the same tasks, but according to a study by software company Cornerstone OnDemand, Firefox and Chrome users make better employees.
Cornerstone OnDemand, a software company that assists employers in recruiting valuable employees, evaluated about 50,000 people who took a 45-minute online job assessment and were hired through the software.
The researchers found that people who took the test on a non-default browser like Firefox or Chrome stayed at their jobs about 15% longer than those who used the defaults (Internet Explorer and Safari). These results were the same for both Mac and PC users.
In an interview with Freakonomics Radio, Michael Housman, chief analytics officer at Cornerstone OnDemand theorized why this may be.
“I think that the fact that you took the time to install Firefox on your computer shows us something about you. It shows that you’re someone who is an informed consumer. You’ve made an active choice to do something that wasn’t default.” he told the radio station.
According to a report by The Atlantic, which also conducted an interview with Housman, companies such as call centers can “suffer from a turnover rate of about 45 percent annually, and it can cost thousands of dollars to hire new employees. Because of that, companies are eager to find any proxy for talent and dedication that they can.”
Housman does point out that Cornerstone’s clients will not be taking browser choice into consideration while hiring (it would be silly to reject an applicant just because they used Internet Explorer) , but can track other variables such as this that help hire employees that are likely to stay at the job for longer periods of time.
On a side-note, Housman’s data also showed that people whose e-mail addresses contained the words “boozy” or “sexy” were pretty bad employees. I know we are all stunned by that revelation.
Story via The Atlantic.
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