The 5 Biggest Challenges in the YouEconomy and How to Face Them
Article by Michael Pietrzak Congratulations, you've escaped the 9-5 to become a solopreneur! You've decided to join the YouEconomy, the growing global movement of pioneers who have opted out of being told what to work on and when by bosses who also wonder who set up this antiquated, industrial, consumption-obsessed economy. Will you write cheeky marketing copy for clients on...
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4 Reasons Why Content Marketing Should Be Part of Your SEO Strategy
Businesses that start online are growing and it's no surprise. Some require zero investment, while others just don't need a physical location like they would have in the past. Remember Warby Parker? You should, because it completely shook up the eyewear space — an industry once based on the assumption that consumers would need to visit a traditional brick-and-mortar store for a try-on —...
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Imagine Your Life Without a Timeline: How to Succeed on Your Own Terms
Many people have told me that they feel "behind" in life because they're failing to meet their timelines — those life plans with milestones we all feel like we are supposed to achieve within defined time frames. These milestones and timelines are actually externally imposed, yet we internalize them so thoroughly that we feel like failures when we're not on track with them. And so, I...
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Be a Coach, Not a Critic: 11 Things Great Managers Never Say
Managers do more than simply make sure things get done — though, of course, they do that. But beyond keeping tabs on employees, a manager's most important duty is to unlock full employee performance potential. Under great managers, teams thrive. Under poor managers, teams crash and burn. In fact, managers account for 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement levels,...
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Focus on Values: The Strategy for Making Long-Term Hires in a Tight Talent Market
When the job market is tight and people have fewer options, job seekers will ask the question: "What do I have to do to impress you?" However, when job seekers have more choices — like they do right now — the power dynamic shifts. The question then becomes, "What will you do to impress me?" When workers can easily find jobs that meet their basic income and insurance needs, they are...
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7 Performance Questions to Ask Your Employees Each Week
We keep hearing about the demise of the annual appraisal and the accompanying rise of regular performance discussions, but we rarely hear any guidance on what to discuss during these more frequent check-ins. Regular catch-ups are certainly essential in today's agile business world and they have been linked to great performance, but quantity of conversation isn't nearly as important as...
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Good Networking Is About Great Listening
The one thing you cannot create more of is time, so you need to maximize every opportunity you have to its fullest potential — especially when you're networking. You know the importance of networking for your career today and in the future. What you may not know, however, is exactly how to use a networking event to enhance your personal brand. If you want to set yourself apart and...
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Beat the Brain Drain: How to Recruit Tech Talent Outside of the US's IT Hubs
California. New York. Washington, DC. We often hear of recent graduates and skilled talent moving to these areas for lucrative jobs. Places like, say, Michigan? Not so much. Brain drain, the mass exit of talented people from a given area, has been afflicting many states for well over a decade. As the CEO of a business headquartered in Michigan — where more young people have been...
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Employee Recognition: 4 Characteristics to Look for and Reward in Exceptional Employees
Employee engagement can boost productivity, improve workplace culture, and benefit a company's bottom line. Unfortunately, despite recent improvements, overall employee engagement is still relatively low in the US. In 2018, Gallup clocked a historic high of just 34 percent engagement among American workers. When looking for ways to improve employee engagement, many company leaders turn to...
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Obstacles and Opportunities: For HR, Digital Transformation Is About Much More Than Job Automation
When the terms "digital transformation" and "human resources" come up in the media, the focus is often on the possibility that automation will eliminate job opportunities, with negative consequences for workers and communities. While that is a serious issue, it is also a shiny headline that takes attention away from more pressing concerns that HR teams handle every day. The fact is, digital...
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The No. 1 Way to Future-Proof Your Career in the Face of Emerging Technology
Every sector and every industry is rapidly transforming under the influences of automation, artificial intelligence, and data science. To succeed in the workplace of the future, workers will need to be equipped with hybrid sets of job skills that span across an array of subject areas and industries. Additionally, the skills any one employee needs will change often throughout their career...
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4 Ways to Surround Yourself With People Who Challenge You
Article by Brittany Hodak You may not be average, but according to Jim Rohn, you are an average: the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Through his studies, Rohn came to understand the power of peer influence. Peer pressure, he realized, isn't always a bad thing. It may be a primary reason teens pick up smoking, but it can also promote stronger performance in...
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Employee Training: More Critical to Recruiting and Retention Than You Thought
Employee turnover is costly. From a purely financial perspective, replacing a departed employee can cost roughly one-third of their total salary. From a cultural perspective, institutional knowledge is lost, morale can be harmed, and engagement can suffer. What can companies do to avoid these costs and convince their employees to stay? Stronger benefits and salary raises are...
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In a Radically Transforming Staffing Industry, Acquisitions May Be the Key to Unlocking Corporate Value
Today's staffing market is robust and healthy, growing between 3 and 6 percent annually, according to recent data from Staffing Industry Analysts. At the same time, the nature of the market itself has changed dramatically, with engagements increasingly executed through managed services providers and vendor management systems. More and more firms are finding their go-to-market strategies...
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Start Small: 22 Simple Ways to Start Investing in Your Success Today
Financially speaking, smart people invest early and use the advantage of smaller gains in the shorter term to create big payoffs in the long run. Whether we're talking mutual funds, CDs, or your retirement portfolio, slow and steady wins the race. As it turns out, the same logic applies to investing in yourself: By making incremental investments of time and energy in small changes today,...
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Employee Severance: It's Not Just Nice — It's a Savvy Business Move
This is a great time to be an employee. Not only is historically low unemployment giving workers more leverage in the job market, but companies are also expanding benefits packages to entice new talent and keep existing team members from looking elsewhere. According to a new study from RiseSmart, employers feel that boosting severance benefits is one of the ways they can project an...
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A Millennial-Friendly Workplace Is All About Getting the Values Right
Millennials. Chances are you manage at least one. You may even be one yourself! Poised to make up 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025, this generation of future company leaders has a lot to learn from — and give to — your organization. Yes, Generation Y — definitions vary, but for our purposes, we're considering that to include everyone born between 1980 and 2000 —...
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What Do Job Seekers Want From Your Benefits Package? Stability.
Work is not just about earning a wage — it's about facilitating a certain lifestyle. Employers know this, and they have long combined competitive compensation with robust benefits packages to attract top talent. Offering attractive benefits is, of course, still a sound recruiting strategy in today's day and age, but this strategy is also long overdue for an update. We must acknowledge...
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Landing Your First Post-Graduation Job: 7 Practical Tips
Congratulations! Graduating from college and looking for your first "real" job is an exciting and daunting time! The good news is the national unemployment rate is only 3.6 percent as of April 2019. The bad news: It takes an average of five months to land a job, and 82 percent of job seekers find the process stressful, according to a recent study. So while the economy may be...
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How to Market Your Resume Like a Pro
When you're eager to jump into a new role and have spent time and effort crafting a fresh resume, it can be almost soul-crushing to have your applications repeatedly rejected or simply ignored. However, if you're only applying to publicly advertised jobs, you're missing out on a huge pool of opportunity. The perfect role is out there, and you can get it — you may just need to dig a...
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To Map the Candidate Journey, You Have to Understand What Google Analytics Is Telling You
Everyone wants to be more data-driven, but when it comes to recruitment marketing, that isn't always as easy as it seems. Sure, when you roll out a social media advertising campaign, you can pretty easily find out how many candidates are seeing your ads and clicking your links — but what happens after that? How can you gain insight into users' behaviors once they have clicked your call...
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Promoting Play in the Office Boosts Productivity
Years ago, goofing off at work might have been a fireable offense. Today, companies know that play is an essential component of creative stimulation. In other words, employees who are permitted to use their imaginations in ways that aren't directly related to their job responsibilities are more likely to make valuable contributions to company success. It's no wonder, then, that big...
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7 Traits That Can Move a Potential New Hire's Resume to the Short List
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Today's Question: What qualities immediately move a candidate's resume into your short list? 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...
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The Hidden Costs of Hiring: Onboarding Drives Up the Price Tag More Than You Think
Employee turnover costs do not typically appear in budgets. There is no single figure in the balance sheet, profit and loss statement, or cash flow statement to describe the true impact of hiring, nor is there even a standard formula for measuring such costs. Today, I'd like to explore the components required to produce a more comprehensive measurement of turnover and hiring costs, and...
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Here's What to Do If Your Glassdoor Ratings Stink
Keeping tabs on your Glassdoor reviews makes sense, but dwelling on bad ones isn't useful. At that point, the die is cast. Unless you have a wayback machine, there's nothing you can do to change the person's experience. However, that doesn't mean your HR and leadership teams can't make some changes to prevent future bad reviews. Cool-headed leaders and recruiters realize how valuable...
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Pros and Cons of Getting a Corporate Credit Card
A corporate card sounds like a great perk, but don't forget the fine print. Most importantly, you need to clarify whether you're being offered a corporate card or a business credit card. They may sound like the same thing, but they're actually a little different. One key distinction: Where business credit cards are concerned, employees are personally responsible if the company fails to...
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Freelance vs. Full-Time: When to Hire Which Type of Talent
The rise of the freelancer is one of the most impactful workplace trends of the decade. Today, millions of people are taking on side hustles or leaving full-time jobs to freelance. Meanwhile, small businesses need to keep their budgets under control. When it comes to cutting costs, talent often bears the brunt. Because hiring a freelancer is generally cheaper than hiring a full-time...
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How to Argue With Your Coworkers — Productively and Positively
There's no room for fighting at work — but there is room for a good argument. In fact, we should probably be arguing with our coworkers more. I'm not talking about slinging insults — I mean "argument" in terms of a robust and honest discussion of contrasting opinions. Research suggests that a mix of differing perspectives is the best way to bring new ideas to the table and drive...
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3 Tips to Improve Your Tech Job Shadow Program's Recruitment Rate
Across the nation, organizations struggle to fill key IT vacancies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the US economy will require 100,000 new IT workers per year over the next 10 years, but only 60,000 new IT employees enter the workforce annually. This gap has pushed tech companies to explore new recruitment methods, and many have turned to job shadow programs to fill their...
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Employee Development Is a Critical Company Asset: 3 Reasons Why You Should Invest
Employee development: It's a concept commonly invoked in HR and recruiting, but little action is ever actually taken to implement or improve it within an organization. Very few companies invest in strong employee development programs or effective software. As a company leader or business owner, you can't ignore that a lot of candidates are explicitly looking for development opportunities...
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More Women in Leadership Makes Good Business Sense. How Can We Make It Happen?
Striking the right gender balance in organizational leadership roles can help a business better understand and serve its clients or customers. A truly diverse and inclusive organization better mirrors its customer base, which helps the company connect with those customers to nurture long-lasting, positive relationships that drive additional revenue and profitability. Here's how to make a...
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Meet These 3 Expectations to Hire Top Sales Candidates
You've done the heavy lifting. A qualified sales candidate has been identified, you have extended an offer, and the hiring process is in progress. The end is in sight for this open role. Now, you can take a deep breath and relax. That's the idealistic picture of the transition from the recruitment process to the hiring process. Unfortunately, it's not exactly accurate. According to a...
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3 Ways to Boost Employee Retention and Engagement in Just a Few Minutes Per Day
It is expensive and resource-draining to replace great people when they leave. Hiring new staff takes a lot of time, energy, and money, all of which could be better spent on driving the business forward. Turnover is a fact of life, but there are a couple of key things leaders can do to improve employee engagement and retention — and these things only take a few minutes every day. We're...
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The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Culture Fit
Everyone in the hiring world has heard of the concept of culture fit. It's one of the most important ideas in modern recruiting — so important, in fact, that many companies won't hire a candidate whom they deem to be "not a culture fit." No matter how qualified that candidate is, they'll be ejected from the process. But what exactly is culture fit? It's a good question, and one that...
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The No. 1 Threat to Cybersecurity? Your Employees
Hackers and malware are formidable foes, but employees are the biggest threat to your company's cybersecurity, according to a recently published study. A complacent or poorly trained employee can undermine even the strongest security protocols with a single mistake. Lost or stolen hardware, weak passwords, and other bad habits lead to more data breaches each year than cyberattacks. The...
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Considering a Coworking Space? Keep These Things in Mind:
Accepting a position as a remote worker no longer means working at home alone in your PJs. As coworking spaces gain popularity across the country, you have more opportunities to work with — or at least in the company of — others, and possibly work more productively. A coworking space is a shared work area designed for members and guests to spend all or part of their workday. Most...
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Are You a Hard Worker — or a Workaholic?
You like to work — and you like to work hard. There's nothing wrong with that. Giving your all to a project fills you with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. But beware: There's a fine line between being a hard worker who takes pride in their efforts and being a workaholic who is actively harming themselves, their organization, and the people around them. Thanks to our...
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Quit Waiting for the Perfect Candidate — Hire the Acceptable Candidate Instead
Good talent is the top competitive advantage an organization can have, which is why it's so important both to know when you've found the right person and to move quickly when you have them in your sights. Unfortunately that's harder than it sounds. Many companies struggle to choose the right candidate in a timely manner, which leads to serious staffing problems and lengthier hiring...
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Holistic Career Development: A Company-Employee Partnership
Employers and employees targeting career engagement often believe that career development is a 50/50 responsibility, but this is a mistake that costs employees opportunities and employers their best talent. In reality, career development is a 100/100 accountability. When employer and employee both fill their vital roles in three areas, dramatic improvements are seen in motivation,...
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Understanding Your Data Needs: Should Your Company Hire a Business Analyst or a Data Analyst?
In the digital age, companies are scrambling to make the most of the treasure trove of big data at their fingertips. However, it's not always clear what skills a company's employees need in order to make that happen, especially if the hiring managers and recruiters in charge of talent acquisition don't have data analytical skills themselves and can't clearly define the need. As a Harvard...
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Knowing When to Bark: How Thinking Like a Dog Can Help You Advance at Work
Need a little career advice? Maybe you should ask your dog. That's the premise of the new book from business strategist and corporate CEO Scott MacDonald, Think Like a Dog: How Dogs Teach Us to He Happy in Life and Successful at Work. "Cowritten" by MacDonald's rescue dog Sadie, Think Like a Dog explores the myriad ways in which we could all stand to be a little more like man's best...
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How to Help Your Remote Employees Avoid Loneliness and Burnout
It's Monday morning and Jane, a marketing associate, begins her workday by pouring a cup of coffee and getting cozy in her home office. Jane is a remote worker. As long as she keeps her manager in the loop, she can work from anywhere at any time. Jane is not alone: Remote work has recently transformed from a progressive perk into a standard workplace practice. Forty-three percent of US...
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6 Questions to Ask for a Better Stay Interview
Losing employees is enormously expensive. According to the Center for American Progress, even replacing a worker who makes less than $30,000 a year can cost a business 16 percent of the worker's salary. For executives or senior partners, that number can skyrocket to 213 percent of the departing employee's salary. In addition to the purely financial price tag of turnover, there are other, less...
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Your Second Job as a Recruiter Is Critical — Choose Wisely
Your first job as a recruiter is a chance to cut your teeth, gain a strong foundation, and build the skills you'll need for a successful career. Sooner or later, you will be ready to move on — but where to? No ambitious young recruiter entering the industry today is going to stay in one role for the next 25 years, especially if they see little chance of promotion at their current firm....
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Is the Internet Actually Making It Harder to Reach Younger Job Seekers?
We live in the age of unobstructed connectivity. Thanks to the internet, everyone you could ever hope to reach is just a tweet, chat, or email away. Which, paradoxically enough, might actually be bad news for recruiting firms hoping to connect with younger job seekers. According to a recent survey from international recruiting consultancy Renaix, job seekers older than 45 are 137...
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Never Win Alone: 5 Pieces of Professional Advice for My Younger Self
I've spent my entire career servicing the staffing and recruiting industry, and it has been nothing short of incredible. Throughout the course of my career, I've been lucky enough to work with some of the world's largest staffing agencies and the individuals who lead them. The trajectory of the staffing industry and the year-over-year growth at Bullhorn, where I am a managing director,...
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How to Finally Start Leaving Work on Time
In a fast-paced, competitive work environment, it can be a challenge simply to walk out the office door on time. Whenever 5 p.m. rolls around, it feels like there's still more work to be done. You certainly don't want to fall behind or look bad compared to your coworkers who are laboring late into the night, and you definitely want your boss to see you as a hard-working team...
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Your Employee's Hobbies Are None of Your Business
Lately, I've noticed a new recruiting trend — or maybe it's an old one that has just started to gain new prominence: Hiring managers are asking job seekers about their hobbies. They're not asking in a normal, friendly way. They're not asking because they want to get to know their candidates better. Instead, hiring managers are asking job seekers about their hobbies because they want to...
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