How to Spread Holiday Cheer Across a Distributed Team (Without Breaking the Bank)
The popularity of remote work has skyrocketing in the United States. From 2005 to 2017, the number of remote workers increased by 159 percent according to FlexJobs. Modern professionals are looking for remote work for a multitude of reasons, but they all generally boil down to a desire for flexibility and work/life balance. While remote work may make employees happier, employers should...
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Leave the Tuna Casserole at Home: Tackling the 5 Biggest Office Pet Peeves
From breakfast at your desk to break room blunders, some obvious and not-so-obvious behaviors are causing unrest in America's workplaces, according to a survey from National Business Furniture and Kelton Global. The good news is these problems can easily be solved by encouraging just a bit of office decorum. Here are five common office misbehaviors and tips on addressing them: 1....
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How to Help Your Employees With Anxiety Feel Motivated
Wellness and performance go hand in hand, so it makes sense that employee well-being has become an increasingly important part of regular performance discussions. Your employees need the support of their managers if they are to perform at their best, and this is especially true for any employees who may be dealing with mental health challenges like anxiety or depression. Your employees...
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The Agency Outsourcing Opportunity: Why Media Buying Outfits Need to Expand Their Talent Options
According to a 2017 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, "The End of Employees," outsourcing has become a leading and long-term driver of productivity and growth for large corporations over the past two decades. In fact, the article says, some companies are seeing productivity improvements of up to 23 percent per employee thanks to strategic outsourcing. The WSJ article notes that between...
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Dispelling the Myth of the Superstar Entrepreneur: Most Innovations Actually Come From Employees
By now, we all know the story: The lone entrepreneur arrives on the scene, ready to shake up the industry with his brilliant innovation. He heroically battles naysayers and the risk-averse to bring his new idea to fruition. It's a smash hit that radically transforms his industry — and the way we live. Except, that story isn't really true. Sure, it happens occasionally, but according to...
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The 3 Keys to Making Continuous Performance Management Work — and Why You Should Care
As anyone in recruiting will tell you today, hiring is tough. The competition for candidates is fierce, as evidenced by a Conference Board survey that found one-third of senior leaders believe finding talent is their most significant managerial challenge It stands to reason, then, that companies should be investing heavily in retention efforts. The more top-tier talent you retain, the...
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How to Keep Politics From Ruining Your Office Relationships
Political discourse in the United States has grown increasingly contentious over the last few years. In a recent survey from Pew Research Center, 85 percent of respondents said they felt conversations about politics have deteriorated, becoming less respectful, fact-based, and issue-centric than in previous years. These conversations have caused stress for 40 percent of Americans,...
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Win the War for Talent: 3 Technologies That Will Change the Way We Hire
The traditional landscape of recruitment is transforming. In the past, technological advances have made elements of the recruitment process quicker and less manually taxing. Rote tasks like scheduling interviews, collecting resumes, and drawing up skills matrices to match applicants to jobs can all now be performed at the touch of a button. Today, however, recruitment technology...
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Don't Treat the Interview Like a Test
Having children recently out of college, I've noticed a disturbing trend in interviewing: New job seekers are preparing to "pass" interviews as if they were tests. I understand that knowing a lot about a potential employer can demonstrate your interest, but it has gotten to the point where preparation sometimes begins a year before an application is even sent in. Job seekers are...
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Breaking the 'Safe Silence': How to Build a Culture Where People Share Their (Good) Ideas
Does your company have a positive culture of conversation — a culture where employees are free to voice ideas, find solutions, and innovate? Many employers believe they do and are often confused by the lack of problem-solving ideas coming from their teams. Why the disconnect? The answer may surprise you. According to our recent research in conjunction with the University of Northern...
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The Most Serious Workplace Hazard No One Talks About
Suicide is a global crisis. According to the World Health Organization, someone dies of suicide every 40 seconds. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that between 1999 and 2016, suicide rates increased in every state in the US; in more than half the states, suicide rates rose more than 30 percent. A Montreal Children's Hospital study found emergency room...
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Sleeping on the Job? It's Actually Not a Bad Idea
You may not realize it, but work and sleep go hand in hand. Sure, we all know sufficient sleep is necessary for you to function in life and at work — but what you may not know is sleeping at work can be a great way to boost your productivity and your overall well-being. Of course, we're not talking about taking a full eight hours at your desk. Rather, we're talking about a nice...
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A Good Interview or a Good Candidate? How to Tell Who's a Fit and Who's Just Confident
Up until her retirement this past August, Diana Natalicio was the president of the University of Texas at El Paso. She held the post for more than 30 years. At the time she stepped down, Natalicio was the longest-serving president still sitting of a major public research university. Believe it or not, Natalicio was originally just supposed to be the interim president, a role to which she...
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From Selling to Storytelling: LinkedIn's 'Future of Recruiting' Report Predicts Transformational Change for the Industry
"The perception is that it's harder to find people. The reality is that it's easier than ever to find people. It's just harder to engage them — especially when that talent has 100 other companies coming after them." So says Recruiting Toolbox Managing Director John Vlastelica in LinkedIn's "Future of Recruiting" report. Such a pronouncement seems to fly in the face of recruitment...
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Hiring a Software Engineer? Look Out for These Resume Red Flags
Recently, I read Joel Spolsky's book, Smart and Gets Things Done. It's a book about hiring software engineers based on Joel's experience running a successful software company. It's an old book at this point, but this is the guy who founded Stack Overflow and Trello (among other things), so it is definitely still a good read. One of the points Spolsky makes is that, when he was doing...
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2019 in Review: 14 Entrepreneurs Reflect on the Biggest Recruiting Trends of the Year
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Today's Question: What major positive recruitment trends did you see in 2019, and why are these trends important? The answers below are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization of the world's most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members...
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Confessions of a Corporate Talent Acquisition Leader: Why HR Should Conduct Its Own Census in 2020
Guess what happens in 2020. Here's a hint: It happens every 10 years. Correct! It's the US census. But why is there a census, and what value does it provide? Well, the census collects data about everyone living in the United States. That data is then used to determine things like how many seats each state gets in the US House of Representatives, updated public safety measures, plans...
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How to Keep Employees Engaged in the Digital Era: Run Better Meetings
Organizational design is a key issue for every business leader. While there may be differences in approach to that design, all tend to agree on one thing: the right strategy and work structure are critical components that shape everything from company culture to the day-to-day experiences of employees. It's common knowledge: When employees are engaged, they are happier, more work gets done,...
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Holiday Retail and Hospitality Hiring: 6 Quick Tips on Finding Top Seasonal Talent
It's that time of year again. Retailers are gearing up for the onslaught of the holiday shopping season. The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts November and December of 2019 will see an increase of 3.8 to 4.2 percent in retail sales. Altogether, the NRF estimates US consumers will spend between $727.9 billion and $730.7 billion this season. For the retail and hospitality industries,...
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Planning Makes Perfect: 4 Best Practices for Planning Recruiting Events
Being a part of the hiring team for your organization is an exciting and daunting experience. It's rewarding to have a hand in molding the future of your company, but making a hire is also a major decision with a lot riding on it. If you're also planning, attending, or hosting a recruiting event, the stress can be even greater. A lot goes into getting a recruiting event off the ground...
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Ditch the Gold Watches — These Are the Perks That Really Attract and Retain Top Sales Talent
Nobody wants gold watches and trips to Cancun as sales perks anymore. Times are changing, and today's employees are looking for less tangible rewards from their employers. That means employers have to start thinking holistically when it comes to attracting and retaining top sales talent. For example, consider how important work/life balance is to the current talent market. As Tim Hird,...
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Employment Specialists Can Help You Tap an Underutilized Talent Pool: People With Disabilities
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 30 percent of the 15.3 million Americans between ages 16 and 64 with disabilities participated in the workforce in 2018, compared to 74 percent of Americans without a disability. An Accenture analysis suggests that shifting recruitment efforts to focus on disability inclusion would provide companies with access to a new talent pool of more...
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Younger Workers Crave Instant Gratification. Here's How to Give It to Them Without Causing Distraction.
Gen. Z workers want immediate access to data that shows them how they're performing. That's one reason many companies — like Accenture, Microsoft, and Adobe — are doing away with traditional performance reviews. Annual cycles are just way too slow for today's workers, among other problems. Younger workers have grown up with expectations of instant gratification. They're used to...
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Cut Workplace Conflict and Improve Productivity With These 5 Tips
Conflict is bound to arise anytime opinions differ — which means conflict is a fact of life in the workplace. Indeed, 85 percent of employees report experiencing conflict at work, and 29 percent say the conflict is nearly constant. But conflict isn't always a bad thing. Handled maturely, it can lead to creative solutions, facilitate new ideas, and challenge the status quo. It is...
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Streamline Yourself: Rejecting the No-Win Stories That Make You Fear Success
There's a reason race cars, bullet trains, and supersonic aircraft have streamlined shapes. The faster a vehicle is meant to go, the more engineers have to take into account an invisible force bent on slowing them down: drag. You probably experience a similar phenomenon when you get up to speed on a project. The more momentum you create, the more invisible forces seem to slow you...
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Everyone Thrives Somewhere: 3 Ways to Find the Right Company Culture for You
Article by Jeff Thompson I had always wanted to work at a place that had fun: lots of laughter and smiling faces, an open-door policy, people working together. In short, I wanted to work at a place I could call home. So, in the '80s, when I was working for a frozen pizza brand, I took it upon myself to seek out my ideal company culture, the one I knew I'd thrive in. I carefully...
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The Age of Uncertainty: Why Skills Training May Be the Next Big Competitive Differentiator
It would be natural for employers to think that feelings of job security are on the rise. The unemployment rate has declined over the past two years, and many job seekers can now afford to be more selective in their searches. Data scientists, for example, are in such high demand that employers are offering a variety of incentives, including flexible and remote work arrangements and more than...
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The New Model of Recruiting? Bringing Back the Old School
In both working with and hearing the stories of thousands of job seekers over the years, I have noticed that many of them — regardless of age, socioeconomic status, gender, or cultural background — face the same challenges and frustrations on the job hunt. I've also noticed that job seekers frequently place the blame for these problems on recruiters, who they feel are ineffective and...
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Navigating Gen. Z's Demands: 4 Tips for Negotiating Job Offers With the Newest Members of the Workforce
As a recruiter, you know you need to stay on top of the latest workforce trends if you're going to keep engaging top-tier talent. And the trends change often: Each new generation that enters the office has its own priorities, and that affects how you sell opportunities and negotiate offers. Millennials, for example, are well known for valuing work/life balance and flexible work...
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You Are the Valuable Asset: How to Be a Brain Instead of a Set of Hired Hands
I remember what it's like to be on a job search. Early on in my career, I would scour the newspaper ads; later, I would search all of the job sites for anything that looked remotely like a place that might hire me. I would adjust my resume to try to trick employers into seeing that I was qualified for the job. I would apply for as many jobs as I could in a day, then stand by, hoping...
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Going Mobile: 3 Ways Recruiters Can Meet Candidates Where They Are
Identifying the best candidates to fill your job vacancies is not an easy process in the best of times. In a market where talent is scarce, it becomes even harder. As a 2018 study by ManpowerGroup notes, 45 percent of employers are struggling to find top talent today. In light of these circumstances, it is no longer enough to send a general email blast to a pool of potential candidates...
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Here and Now: Why Continuous Performance Conversations Are More Effective Than Annual Reviews
Employees like feedback. In fact, 96 percent would like to get feedback from their managers regularly, rather than have to wait for an annual performance review. And as it turns out, sitting down once or twice a year to discuss goals, behavior, and advancement isn't an effective method of performance management anyway. Instead, a continuous performance management process is a much...
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A Silver Lining to Student Debt: 5 Advantages of Offering Your Employees Student Loan Benefits
The employment paradigm is changing. The old notion that an employee is just a cog in the company machine is no longer accepted at face value. Now, the best employees are looking for organizations with people-first orientations, organizations that emphasize the value they can provide their employees. While it's not a crazy concept that employees want to be seen as humans, it does mean...
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The Heart-Mind Alliance: Find Your Core Values and Let Them Guide You at Work
What comes to mind when you think about your morals and values? Is it plausible to think these very basic principles could quite possibly be responsible for your perception of the world around you? What about the effect they have on your job or your work ethic? Family development expert Stephen J. Bavolek defines our morals as a code of conduct with identified rights and wrongs; he...
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5 Communication Mistakes Guaranteed to Drive Away Top Candidates
With unemployment hitting lows not seen in some time, companies have to be especially strategic when it comes to the recruiting process. An unrefined hiring process can scare away the best candidates or even increase turnover among the employees you do manage to hire. That's not to say your recruiting process should cater to the wants of any and every candidate, but you do need to make it...
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Attract Top Talent With These 5 Essential Modern Office Features
Offices are changing. Gone are the days of cubicles and water cooler networking. Corner offices are passé, and old coffee makers just don't cut it anymore. The evolution of the office is about more than just design trends. Our office environments affect our health, well-being, and productivity. They change the way we work. As recruitment and retention grow more competitive, job seekers...
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Help Your Candidates Stand Out With These 15 LinkedIn Profile Tips
It may be a candidate's job market out there, but that doesn't mean it's easy to place every job seeker in your pipeline. Even when talent is scarce, recruiters have to put in a little work to sell their clients on why a given candidate is the right fit for them. As part of your placement strategy, you likely already take steps to help your candidates stand out, whether it's by practicing...
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5 Things to Consider Before Hiring Your Next Recruiting Firm
There are 20,000 recruiting and staffing firms in the United States. But you knew that — it seems like they all contact you every week! The point is you have options when it comes to selecting a recruiting partner for your next search. Perhaps too many options: It can be overwhelming to find the right recruiter, especially considering you need one because you're so busy to begin...
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12 Smart Ways to Lower Recruitment Costs
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Today's Question: What is a good way to cut the costs of recruiting? The answers below are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization of the world's most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate...
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Handle With Care: Advice for Avoiding and Managing Retaliation Claims
Workplace retaliation claims have become one of the most frequently filed claims in employment-related lawsuits. Retaliation appeared in 51.6 percent of all 2018 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges, prevailing over all other discriminatory bases to claim the top spot for the ninth year in a row. This comes as a surprise to many employers and often leaves them wondering...
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For a Better Employee Experience, It's Time to Rebrand HR
The world of work evolves continuously, introducing new HR practices and methods into its landscape almost daily. Because of these changes, startups and established companies alike are beginning to reevaluate the role of HR, the importance of company culture, and the impact one has on the other. In a nutshell, the current wisdom is that culture and HR should work in tandem to enhance the...
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When Innovation Gets Stifled: An MBTI-Based Approach to Bringing Big Ideas to Change-Averse Companies
You're starting an exciting new job, and you've been hired to bring a new perspective to your new employer. During the interview stage, everyone seemed excited about how your ideas differed from the company's standard way of operating. You can't wait to get started so you can make big, transformative changes to prove your worth and take this company to a new level. Fast forward to a...
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To Address the Gender Pay Gap, Look at the Numbers
In September, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) chose not to renew an Obama-era policy that helped collect data regarding employee wages and pay. This data had been fundamental in detailing the discrepancies between salaries earned by men and women and proving the gender pay gap actually exists. The EEOC's decision highlights just how crucial data and analytics are when...
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More Than Just Resumes: 4 Ways Great Recruiters Help Their Clients Land Top Talent
You might think all a recruiter does is send you a string of candidates to interview. It's true plenty of recruiters do just that, but the best ones go much further. Whether they're selling your position to passive candidates, helping your team avoid bad hires, or even taking care of your full hiring process, the right recruiter can offer major benefits to you and your company. Let's...
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Eeeeeek! Beware of These 9 Creatures From the Culture Crypt
It's the time of year when we all try to scare each other silly, so why not add a dose of fearsome reality to our Halloween horror-scape? We present to you some monstrous traits that can creep into any organization's culture, all the more frightening because these characteristics are oh so real. But fear not: We also have some culture charms to keep employees, no matter what their job stage,...
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Closing the Cybersecurity Skills Gap: 8 Tips
More than 130 large-scale cybersecurity breaches occur every year in the US — and organizations are having a hard time finding the talent they need to combat those breaches. According to a new infographic from cybersecurity software company Varonis, 82 percent of employers say they're dealing with a cybersecurity skills shortage. While any skills shortage is bad news for business, a...
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How to Manage Time-Off Requests This Holiday Season
Paid vacation is one of the most important employee benefits, trumped only by healthcare, according to a 2018 study from the US Travel Association. That means employees prioritize vacation time over retirement plans, flexible work options, bonuses, and sick leave. With the holidays fast approaching, you and your colleagues are likely itching to cash in your vacation funds. Employers...
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4 Ways to Streamline Your Social Recruiting With the Right ATS
Ten years ago the idea of using social media for anything other than posting cat videos seemed silly. But now? Social media has become one of the most powerful platforms for sourcing and recruiting top talent. Social recruiting might have seemed like a fad when it first hit the scene, but experts agree it will continue to play a key role in hiring at least into 2020. To stay competitive...
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