3 Reasons to Add Texting to Your 2018 Recruitment Strategy
Today's recruiters face unprecedented challenges. Technological shifts have not only changed how people communicate, but they have also created a more dynamic, ever-evolving business world. As a result, recruiters and hiring managers tasked with filling open positions must move quickly and find creative ways to source top talent and deliver value to their organizations. In this brave new...
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3 Ways to Use Experiential Learning to Boost Your Career
Article by Dan Lauer Most of us have been in the room while a boring professor drones on and on in front of dozing students. While the centuries-old lecture format can be an efficient way to transfer knowledge, it doesn't necessarily further learning. Instead, students are more likely to gain lasting understandings of new concepts when they're asked to teach or use those concepts,...
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6 New Year's Resolutions for a Better Personal and Professional Life in 2018
You returned to work bright and early on January 2nd, and I bet the first person you encountered in the break room turned to you, perky and upbeat, and asked: "So, what are your New Year's resolutions for 2018?" Did you have an answer ready? What inclines us toward making New Year's resolutions, anyway? In attorney-speak, we're dealing with what is called a "bright-line point"...
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How to Write a Sure-Fire Elevator Pitch for Your Job Search
Every now and then, you may bump into a friend or acquaintance with whom you'd like to reconnect. This person may have resources or connections that can be of value to you in your professional life. If the topic of conversation shifts to what you do for a living, that's when things can get interesting. You can take this opening to market your business or yourself through what is popularly known...
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10 Ways to Optimize Your LinkedIn Engagement in 2018
Having a strong LinkedIn profile is essential to being found by other LinkedIn members and employers, but your job on the site isn't complete unless you're communicating with your connections and the LinkedIn community as a whole. I tell my LinkedIn workshop attendees that I spend approximately an hour a day (it's probably more) on LinkedIn. Their faces register surprise, and I'm sure some...
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Busting Tech Career Myths, Part 1: 'Tech Jobs Are All About Math and Science'
In a recent survey from CompTIA, one of the world's largest technology associations, nearly half of the 600 IT and business executives polled said skills shortcomings within their organizations had grown during the past two years. While these skills gaps widened in a variety of domains — marketing, sales, business development, accounting and finance, etc. — perhaps none of these...
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SEO Trends Every CMO Should Be on the Lookout for in 2018
As 2018 begins, it's appropriate to take some time both to reflect on the previous year and to look ahead into what the new year will bring. In digital marketing, this is especially important, as the rapid pace of change in technology has only increased in recent times. One specific area of digital marketing that is always in constant flux is that of search engine optimization (SEO)....
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Recruiting 101: How Managers Can Work Better With HR and Recruiting Pros
You are a team leader, and you suddenly find yourself with an open role on your team. You should: A: Hide under the covers. If you ignore it, it will go away. B: Do it all yourself. Hiring for Dummies, anyone? C: Contact your human resources representative, who will partner with you to find the right person. Many managers seem to select A, as the recruitment process is no one's...
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Why the Future of Hiring Is a Row of Numbers
It's the beginning of January, and your boss has just asked you to estimate your hiring needs for the year ahead. You're not worried: What was once a bit of a chore is now quite easy. You just log in to your ATS and press the "Predict Hiring Needs" button. Thanks to a clever algorithm you helped program, your ATS returns a report that details how many people are likely to leave this year and...
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For Freelance Success, Visibility Must Be a No. 1 Priority
In recent years, the freelance economy has redefined the way we approach work. The likes of Uber, Fiverr, and TaskRabbit have given freelancers more visibility and more access to work than ever before. As a result, many workers are turning away from traditional work and choosing to embrace the freedom and flexibility of freelancing instead. There are now more than 53 million freelancers...
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Interviews Are Like Dates, So Ask Yourself: 'Are They Right for Me?'
Interviewing for a job is a nerve-racking process. Of course it is: You're basically walking into a room and asking someone to judge you. That's never a pleasant experience. And if the interviewer judges you not to be a good fit and you are rejected, the company doesn't owe you an explanation. Often, it will offer you no additional information about why you weren't picked. That leaves...
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4 Things Your Onboarding Process Is Missing
Onboarding affects every member of your team. Existing employees know they'll be expected to answer questions and show new hires the ropes. Meanwhile, new hires have to absorb tremendous amounts of new information. A poorly constructed onboarding process that is missing key elements keeps new hires from reaching their full potential, and it can frustrate existing employees and sap their...
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The Best Employers in Medical Sales for 2018
The field of medical sales is known for its stressful but highly rewarding jobs. In spite of the ups and downs, sales reps eagerly seek out these positions with their favorite medical sales companies. In November 2017, the niche job board MedReps canvassed more than 800 professionals in various concentrations of medical sales to get their opinions on the current state of the industry....
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How to Build a Mission-Driven Company
Every successful company has a well-defined mission that imbues team members' day-to-day activities with purpose. A mission-driven culture is one that not only embraces the company's mission statement, but also reinforces it in every decision, from organizational strategy to hiring and firing. Today's workforce is looking for a sense of purpose, according to Deloitte's "Millennial Survey...
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4 Recruiting Strategies to Find Top Marketing Talent for Small Agencies
Attracting top talent is hard. For small and boutique agencies, it's even harder. What constitutes high-quality growth-marketing talent? There are basically two types: Validated talent: These are individuals with years of professional experience who are difficult to lure to your company if you're not a more established brand. Unproven talent: These are young, motivated individuals...
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How to Find the Thing That Gives You Joy
Article by Emma Johnson "Listen." That is the best business advice I've heard and heeded in my lifetime. Listen to the spark that lights inside of you. Follow that spark and nurture it. Listen to your market, whether that's your clients, the people you mentor, those you serve through volunteer work, or members of your community. Your market will tell you what works and what doesn't....
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Give Yourself Permission to Lead – No Matter Your Job
Everyone has the capacity to be a leader, and the authority for this power is inside everyone. Once you buy into the premise that each of us can be a leader, the next step is to give yourself permission to tap into that power — which isn't always so easy to do. First, you need to overcome the self-limiting belief that you do not have the authority. Put another way, you do not have to...
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Not a Big Fan of Large Networking Groups? Try Buddy Groups:
How do you react when you hear the word "networking"? Do you feel uncomfortable? Roll your eyes? Break out in a sweat? You're not alone if the prospect of networking doesn't make you jump for joy. Truth be told, most people don't relish the idea. And yet, networking remains a most effective way to land a job. According to Jobvite, 40 percent of hires come through referrals. That's...
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The Top 3 Fashion Essentials for Professional Women
No matter your job, you always want to show up to work looking professional. A strict workplace dress code can raise fears like "Is this okay?" and "Is this professional enough?" On the flip side, if your job allows you to dress casually, it's easy to get lazy — and when you don't put in the effort to look put-together, you can come across as disrespectful. To help you avoid the...
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5 Tips for Staying Productive in Your Home Office
More people than ever before are working from home. In fact, 43 percent of U.S. workers said they spend at least some time every year working from home in a 2017 Gallup poll. There are a number of reasons why working from home has become such a popular option, from cutting down on transportation costs to boosting productivity and efficiency. But remote work is not totally free of...
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Is Your HR Department Practicing Cultural Competence? 5 Ways to Tell:
Today, many businesses are investing in diversity and inclusion programs, and for good reason. According to McKinsey, gender-diverse companies are 15 percent more likely to outperform their non-diverse counterparts, and ethnically diverse companies are 35 percent more likely to outperform those counterparts. However, simply hiring a more diverse staff isn't enough on its own. To see the...
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How to Deal With a Holiday Season Layoff
As the end of the year approaches, employers reevaluate their priorities and reorganize their businesses. These strategic shifts often lead to layoffs. It's never easy to lose your job, but it's especially difficult during the holidays. Expenses go up thanks to travel and gifts. Searching for a job at this time of year can be slow and discouraging. This holiday season, I've seen a...
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Online Coaching: The Recruiting and Retention Tool You Keep Overlooking
Online employment coaching platforms have radically transformed how employers connect with employees and aid in their professional growth. If on-the-job coaching is not a fixture of your workplace, your company is missing out on a powerful recruiting and retention tool. Businesses often train new hires to get them up to speed, but rarely do they devote attention to the education of...
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The Right Way to Deliver Bad News to Your Team
"Because I am better than the rest of you, this is your problem. Good luck." Would that message inspire you? Would you trust an organization to navigate successfully the next challenge if this were the message it offered in response to today's crisis? Of course not. Yet, this is exactly the message most leaders communicate when facing bad news, like the departure of a critical customer...
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3 Reasons to Let Your Employees Work From Home
According to the "State of Remote Work 2017" report from Owl Labs, 52 percent of employees work remotely at least once per week, and 65 percent of employees who don't work remotely at all wish that they could. Remote work is transforming from a luxury to a common expectation, and businesses need to find the best ways to adapt. Perhaps you've already considered allowing your employees to...
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7 Stupid-Simple Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Recruiting Process
This summer, I attended Midwest Recruiter Bootcamp. It was a great couple of days, with sessions covering a mix of topics like employer branding, sourcing, recruitment tools, retention, and local marketing. The event was packed with real, practical advice on everything from using LinkedIn to its fullest potential to candidate personas, HR culture development, and working with H1-B...
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5 Tips on Interview Prep From a World-Class Career Coach
When it comes to landing a job, interview prep is just as important as your resume. Hiring managers interview hundreds of candidates throughout their careers; they can spot your lack of preparation from a mile away. Thea Kelley is an experienced career coach and the author of Get That Job! The Quick and Complete Guide to a Winning Interview. Recently, she was kind enough to speak with me...
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Make It Personal: To Get What You Want, Give Job Seekers What They Want
Job seekers are looking for a more personal experience when communicating with recruiters. They want to be able to show their true colors and stand out above the competition. Hearing the call, many recruiters have tailored their tactics to improve the candidate experience. For instance, candidates in the job market are proud of their portfolios. They constantly look for opportunities to...
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The Workforce Is Buried in Student Debt and Needs Your Help
If you want the best talent working for you, there's one sure way to attract them: Help pay down their student loans. With $1.34 trillion in student loan debt hanging over the heads of today's college graduates, young professionals find themselves unable to make the same financial commitments their parents were making at their age. Forty-nine percent of borrowers said they would choose a...
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3 Ways to Use VR for Recruitment in 2018
Most of the current hype around virtual reality (VR) – and there's a lot of it – centers around gaming and entertainment. However, according to research by Tractica, business spending on VR will reach $9.2 billion by 2021. That forecast carries a lot of implications for various industries, but it especially affects human resources in all spaces. As a person who is passionate about...
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Ring in the New Year With a Raise: 12 Steps to Getting the Pay Bump You Deserve
With the new year right around the corner, many of us are starting to think about our resolutions. One that may be on your mind: Get that raise you know you deserve. As with any resolution, getting a raise requires a little work. It won't magically happen – even if you ask your boss very nicely. Luckily for you, online lenders CashNetUSA have put together a new infographic that explores...
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How to Use an On-Demand Workforce to Make Better Staffing Decisions
Supply chain management has greatly improved the health and efficiency of many companies, but it is no longer just a technique to bolster competitive advantage. Now, smart supply chain management is a must-have if an organization is to compete at all. In searching for new ways to streamline workflows and hedge for risk, many employers need to rethink their workforces as strategic...
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Forget A.I.: 8 Timeless Job Search Tactics You Can Use in 2018
Despite all the talk about how A.I. is taking over industries, pushing people out of jobs, and reshaping the hiring process, I'm here to tell you that as long as "human" remains a central element of "human resources," you can rely on a few surefire job search tactics that reach people. Here are some timeless ways to find job search and career success in 2018: 1. A Well-Written...
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Repairing the Broken Bridges Between Medical Sales Reps and Recruiters
Job seekers are becoming more confident and independent. New opportunities are readily accessible to candidates across the country through a variety of different channels, such as social media sites and online job boards. With recent advances in technology, current and hopeful medical sales reps are searching for ways to bypass recruiters. There are several reasons for this. A 2016...
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Why Holiday Parties Are Great Times to Kick Off a Job Search
We've all been there: Stuck at a company holiday party you'd rather not attend, or maybe your next-door neighbors are throwing an event you just can't avoid. Whatever the occasion, these parties can be draining during the holidays. This is especially true for those of us who are introverts, or those of us who have other commitments such as children or demanding jobs. But if you're planning...
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How LinkedIn Recommendations Can Boost Your Career
The days of hard-copy recommendation letters privately shared with prospective employers are over. Now, it's all about LinkedIn recommendations. LinkedIn recommendations give prospective employers valuable insight into your skills and accomplishments. They stand as public proof of your professional reputation, because they're tied back to the profiles of those who give...
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Breaking Down Barriers Between Veterans and Civilian Employment
Military service gives veterans a broad set of skills that can be applied in the civilian workforce. Yet, countless veterans remain unemployed, or they land in part-time or minimum-wage jobs that pay far below what they were making in the military. This happens for a variety of reasons. Recruiters and military veterans can run into communication difficulties because they use different...
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Be Selfish – and 3 Other Tips for Your Job Search
We often think of the job search as a set of discrete, concrete steps: writing our marketing documents, preparing for interviews, networking, using LinkedIn, etc. However, there are also some less tangible factors in the employment market that job seekers must consider – the first of which is the need to be selfish. Maybe this isn't the optimal word, but the fact is you must demand the...
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Don't Let Your Net Worth Dictate Your Self-Worth
Article by Aditi Shrikant When I graduated college and decide to pursue a career in writing, I knew I would not be making a lot of money. What I didn't anticipate was how bad that would make me feel. While all of my friends were taking girls' trips to Miami and moving into one-bedroom apartments, I was sharing a bathroom with three other people and calculating whether I had enough money to...
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The Recruiting Reel: Building Personal Connections With Candidates Through Social Media
While some decry the spread of social media, the fact is it can make our lives much easier when we use it the right way. It's no different in the world of recruiting: If you can build and leverage relationships with candidates on social media, it will be much easier to find and recruit top talent. However, few people know how to properly recruit via social media. Many assume they can...
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Do You Have What It Takes to Be One of America's Healthiest Employers?
Healthy people feel better. People who feel better are more productive at work. When it comes down to it, this is why many top companies give their employees opportunities to participate in wellness programs. They want workers who take less sick days and have more energy to dedicate to their jobs. In fact, the very promise of more productive workers is enough for most companies, as 76...
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Why You Need to Pay Attention to Mental Health Trends in the Workplace
There's an elephant in the room when it comes to the modern workforce. We build benefits around it, establish perks to improve it, and even tout it for recruiting efforts, yet it still remains a massive issue for a number of reasons: Mental health among working adults is deteriorating, while the stigma around treatment is rising. In a recent survey from online therapy company TAO...
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Focus on the Future: 3 Ways to Show Employers You Can Do for Them
You've probably heard the saying, "Employers don't care about what you've done; they care about what you will do." Rest assured, it's the truth. Throughout every round of interviews, employers are trying to determine how you can save them money, improve quality, increase revenue, improve productivity, or help the company in other ways. Employers believe that if you've achieved similar...
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U.S. Lags Behind Rest of the World on Parental Leave Laws
Looking to start a family soon? You may want to try to get a job abroad first. While the governments of many developed countries mandate at least some paid parental leave, the U.S. has no such laws at the national level. A new interactive map from global mobility company CapRelo starkly highlights the disparity between the rights of U.S. workers and those in similar nations, with the...
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When Doing Good Is Also Good Business: Why You Should Hire Formerly Incarcerated Job Seekers
Seventy million Americans – roughly one in three adults – have criminal records. Very few employers directly market to this demographic, despite its size. The negative bias toward people with records may, on some level, be understandable, but does it make good business sense? In my experience, ignoring large populations in the labor market – be it women, African-Americans, or the...
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I'm Dreaming of a Holiday Bonus, Just Like the One I Used to Know (or a Bigger One)
Many of us have been fortunate enough to receive big fat bonus checks during the holiday season. Many of us have also been at the other end of the spectrum, receiving only branded coffee mugs to thank us for our hard work – if we receive anything at all. (My personal favorite gift from a former employer was a cheap, branded plastic analog clock that broke before New Year's Eve.) These...
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The Beginner's Guide to Recruitment Marketing
Recruitment used to be a fairly transactional process. A recruiter would receive an open job from a client, find a candidate who met the requirements, and submit the candidate to the client. The end. These days, that transactional approach is a surefire way to repel top talent. Instead, many recruiters are adopting a new set of strategies and practices collectively referred to as...
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4 Dos and Don'ts for Both Sides of the Interview Table
As much as recruiting and hiring have changed over the years, a couple things have stayed constant and are likely to remain so: Recruiters want to know what candidates are looking for, and candidates want to make sure they don't mess up the interview. While these fundamental aspects of the recruiting and hiring process may always be with us, the surrounding system does change every once in...
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