Member Spotlight: Evan Sinar

Name
Evan Sinar

Position/Employer
Senior Research Scientist, Amazon

How long have you been a SIOP member?
23 years

What roles have you had within SIOP?
Financial Officer, Conferences and Programs Officer, Program Chair

Interest area(s)
Generative AI, Interviewing/Selection, Employee Experience, Data Visualization, HR Analytics

What sparked your interest in I-O psychology?
Not getting into a Cognitive Psychology course in college and when dejectedly paging through the course catalog (yes, it was a paper catalog back then) for alternatives, coming across an Org Psych course at a neighboring college. That plus loving my Social Psych courses but wanting something with broad-based people impact sent me down the I-O path.

What advice would you give to students or those early in their career?
Strive daily to be appreciative, tenacious, and inquisitive - in that order. Commit to writing, delivering, or teaching a) with a deadline you’re accountable to and b) for a topic you’re currently in the 50%tile in - quickest way to push yourself into the 80%tile+. Invest in learning tools and techniques that save you time and make you better at translating your work to others (I’ve found GenAI and Dataviz to meet both these criteria). View boundary-setting for your time and selectively/tactfully saying no as features, not bugs, during your early career.

What is one of your favorite SIOP Annual Conference memories/highlights?
Having the opportunity to Program Chair the 2014 SIOP Annual Conference in Honolulu. We had a chance to fully reshape the schedule and attendee experience. Our team was proud to achieve SIOP’s strongest-ever global representation via record attendance from Asia, Australia, and Europe.

Please share one non-I-O-related bit of information about yourself.
Huge podcast listener; none of which are I-O related (though sometimes still yield some I-O ideas). Current favorites: 99% Invisible, Cautionary Tales, Criminal, Economics of Everyday Things, Pivot. Trying to train my brain to listen to them at 1.5X speed.

Is there anything you would like to add?
Book suggestions? Four career-oriented books I’ve gotten a lot of value from and highly recommend to others: Impact Players (Liz Wiseman), Influence Is Your Superpower (Zoe Chance), Framers (Kenneth Cukier et al.), Thinking in Systems (Donella Meadows). Also - THANK YOU to everyone in the SIOP staff and SIOP Service roles; you make this incredible organization better every day.

Editor’s Note: Evan Sinar was one of the presenters at the Aug. 14 Work Smart Series event, Understanding and Evaluating AI Solutions. A recording of this session is now available for purchase.

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