Sorry, It's not me...It's You
Meet Sharon. Sharon is a 27-year-old employed adult actively looking for a new job. She has a bachelor's degree from a four-year university, graduated in the top 10 percent of her class (with honors), and has worked in the same role and field for the past five years (she has the same job she landed post-graduation). Although Sharon has a lot of PR and marketing experience, she also...
Read MoreIntraprise Solutions Launches Leadership and Executive Consulting Service
Intraprise Solutions, a provider of technology innovation, has announced the launch of its new Leadership and Executive Consulting Service, geared toward assisting companies in the private equity and investment banking markets with a technology-oriented focus on opportunity assessment, early stage growth, and strategic mergers and acquisitions activities. "Our experience in various vertical...
Read MoreDo You Make Candidates Play the "Interview-Dress-Code Guessing Game"?
There is always much to fret over when you're prepping for an interview: what will they ask me? How early should I be there? How do I sell myself without being pompous? For the most part, though, you didn't have to worry about what to wear. It didn't matter where you were interviewing or what you were interviewing for: you wore a muted suit or – for the adventurous – a tasteful,...
Read MoreCMO Council Releases CMO Compensation Report, Top Earners Report to CEOs
According to a new "CMO Compensation Report" study, chief marketing officers (CMO) who report directly to CEOs are likely to earn more than their peers. The study is a part of the soon-to-be-released eighth "State of Marketing" audit by the CMO Council—a comprehensive audit that serves as a valuable resource and reference for the CMO Council's 7,000 members in 110 countries, who...
Read MoreCan you be Your own Life Coach? 8 Questions to Assess Your Goals
I was talking to a management consultant recently, and the conversation dipped into the coaching arena. You see, this consultant has more than 25 years of experience consulting businesses, government entities and schools. Yet, he also acts as a "coach" with many of the trainings he conducts through his consulting business. When reviewing his bio, I wondered why he never thought to include...
Read MoreIndeed.com Study Finds What Job Seekers Want
According to a study by Indeed.com, money is not the primary focus of job seekers as the highest-paid professionals in the country were found to be restless while healthcare workers are most satisfied with their jobs, regardless of salary. Entitled "What Job Seekers Want: Occupation Satisfaction and Desirability Report," the study is predictive of which occupations could be losing workforce....
Read MoreZuman Launches HR Solution for People Operations
Zuman announced the availability of its premium human resources solution for people operations. The solution delivers powerful people operations from the cloud for growing companies to access payroll, benefits, analytics, self-service capabilities and HR experts on demand, from one data set and one partner. "Businesses are finding quickly that old-school HR models developed around compliance...
Read MoreHow to Stop the Hunger for Employee Engagement
There are probably a billion articles on employee engagement that we can find on Google right now. It's a highly discussed topic that gets the attention it deserves, but not enough of the action that it actually needs. I mean, think about some of the reasons we talk about employee engagement: lack of employee engagement because of poor leadership, no opportunities to display creativity,...
Read MoreFurstPerson Brings Transparency to Talent Acquisition with FurstPerson Analytics
Talent-assessment solutions provider, FurstPerson, has announced the release of FurstPerson Analytics, a new solution that enables companies to combine real-time performance data and candidate assessments to make better hiring decisions across the enterprise. FurstPerson Analytics addresses the problems of inaccurate information, fragmented systems, and others encountered when maximizing the...
Read MoreCosts, Benefits and Applications of Psychological 'Locus of Control'
The usefulness of the psychological concept "locus of control" crucially depends on how it is defined, much as the concept "hage" defined as "height x age" would, if we chose to create such a concept. Consider a standard definition of "locus of control", reviewed in Part I: "A locus of control orientation is a belief about whether the outcomes of our actions are contingent on what we...
Read MoreShould You Burn Your Appraisal Forms – and Start Again?
When companies, such as the software maker SAS Institute, and lesser known companies, like Glenroy Inc., get cheers from their staff for a bonfire celebration that burns their appraisal forms as a signal of them ditching their annual review process, one has to wonder whether there is a serious problem with appraisals hiding in all our corporate closets. What we do know is that there is a...
Read MoreA Practical Guide to Being Better Than Your Boss
Time and time again, we've heard successful people make an interesting claim: hiring employees who are smarter than you is a great business practice. Here's Phil Libin, co-founder and CEO of Evernote: "Hiring people smarter than yourself is the long-term answer to your micromanagement problem. I take it very seriously, and I encourage all of my direct reports to apply it to their...
Read MoreWise Noodles Unveils All-encompassing Recruitment Support Program
Wise Noodles has announced the launch of a recruitment support program offering an inclusive alternative to the traditional recruitment agency model, including recruitment strategy, job specification, CV screening, telephone interviews, technical testing and interview support. The Wise Noodles program offers an inclusive package that addresses recruitment issues such as budgetary limitations...
Read MoreJob Hunting The Social Beast
With the rise of social media, jobseekers now have to pay attention to more than just their resumes. Ninety-two percent of companies use social media for recruiting. Creating a personal brand isn't just toner and paper in today's technology. An active and robust LinkedIn profile is a good tool for jobseekers, but recruiters are active on other platforms as well. Recruiters use multiple...
Read MoreWork-life Balance Interrupted by Recessionary Pressures, says TriNet Survey
The work-life balance of most employees is tipping more toward the workplace, according to a new study by TriNet, included in its monthly SMBeat report. Also included in the report is the finding that employees at small and medium-sized businesses work an average of 5.14 more hours per month than in 2007. Additionally, employees in all industries except professional services worked more hours...
Read MoreHRsmart Updates Professional Edition Software for Small Businesses
Leading provider of global unified talent management solutions, HRsmart, released it latest Professional Edition offering. The offering comes with the addition of Learning Management and Career Development. These additions have been added to a suite already including Recruiting and Performance Management, making HRsmart Professional Edition an affordable talent management solution accessible to...
Read MoreHave you Caught a Terrible Case of Bad Leadership?
What is it about fantastic leadership that's so hard to come by? Is it because managing people is such a difficult thing to do? Or is it because there's not enough of leadership DNA to go around? The truth is there are three types of existing leaders out there: natural born leaders, leaders chosen by management and self-appointed leaders. Which do you think has the best chance of becoming a...
Read More8 Questions Great Candidates Will Ask You? (Part 2)
You can learn a lot about candidates, not just from the answers they give to your interview questions but from the questions that they ask you during or at the end of the interview when prompted. Candidates who ask no questions at all, (or who ask basic questions where the answer can easily be found on the website), demonstrate low levels of enthusiasm and engagement with your organization....
Read MoreHalogen Software Study: Large Gap in Frontline Manager Performance
A new report released by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR Analytic Services) and Halogen Software reveals low executive confidence in their frontline managers' ability to succeed, despite their critical importance to organizational results. "Frontline Managers: Are They Given the Leadership Tools to Succeed?" shares findings from a survey of more than 600 global executives on...
Read MoreWhy Can't Hiring Be More Like Speed Dating?
Hiring is a long and trying process. One side holds the ball in their court for almost the entire process. The other side has to smile and play nice until the organization shows interest. A roommate of mine, who is an educator of young minds, recently switched jobs and within a two-week span was interviewed and hired. I thought to myself, imagine if the rest of the hiring world made sense like...
Read MorePsychological 'Locus of Control': What It Really Means (for You and Your Jobs)
Among the three most important things you do in life are to cause, control and/or justify what happens in it (with prevention and coping liberally interpreted as two forms of control). If you believe that you—not someone or something external to you—are principally responsible for all or some of these three life elements, you have, as I and researchers see it, a legitimate claim to...
Read MoreWANTED Announces Open Platform for Supplying Job Openings to Job Boards
WANTED Technologies, a leading supplier of big data analytics for the human capital marketplace, has announced that its real-time database of more than five million currently available job openings in the U.S. and Canada is available for integration into consumer-facing career and education sites. WANTED collects real-time job opening information from more than 25,000 online sources of jobs...
Read More8 Questions Great Candidates Will Ask You (Part 1)
Job interviews are a two-way process where, of course, you as employers want to question candidates to find out how suitable they are for the job. But, increasingly, a large part of interviews should be about candidates questioning you about the job and company. I know what you are thinking, "Hang on a minute, I'm the boss here and I should be conducting the interrogation." And you still can...
Read MoreA 12-step Manual for Constructing Talent Pipelines (part 2)
In part one of this article, we referenced ManpowerGroup's Survey, which revealed that talent shortages affect more than one in three businesses globally. And more than one in three of the 36,000+ employers from around the world who were polled for the survey cited difficulty filling positions due to a lack of suitable candidates. Yet, how can employers improve their talent shortages? By...
Read MoreSecurian Survey: 40 Percent of Workers to Quit Jobs if Comparable Insurance Available
Securian Financial Group has conducted a survey of employed full- (94 percent) or part-time (6 percent) workers with health insurance as an employee benefit. The survey shows that 40 percent of them are experiencing job lock. That is, they would leave their jobs if they could buy health insurance on the open market that is comparable to the coverage they have through their employers. A large...
Read MoreHow to Hire the Best Startup Team
Startups can be a tricky hiring environment. You need to balance hiring good employees and workers who have an entrepreneurial spirit. Melding the two to form the best startup team might be easier than you think. TechRepublic.com says, "The team behind your idea is the most important piece of the startup puzzle. Once you choose a great co-founder and go as far as you can with just the two of...
Read MoreAllSector Announces Incident Management Solution for Nonprofits
AllSector Technology Group, a provider of cloud based software solutions to the nonprofit sector, has announced the availability of its latest version of AllTrac Automate Incident Management and Reporting (IMR). The web-based solution provides comprehensive tools to manage all business processes associated with initiating, recording, tracking, investigating, and analyzing adverse events to...
Read MoreMiranda Nash Shares Five Tips to Maximize Your Chances of Landing the Job — Drawn from an Unlikely Source
Miranda Nash, president of recruitment software company Jobscience, agrees with most Americans that "politics today are not exactly the example we all want to follow." But that hasn't stopped Nash, a self-professed "political junkie," from finding uses for the inspiration she draws from watching the political world. Recently, Nash turned lessons she learned from watching politicians...
Read MoreCareerCast Releases List of 10 Most Endangered Jobs for 2014
Mail carrier is the most endangered position in the United States, according to the CareerCast Jobs Rated report for 2014. The profession came in last out of 200 careers examined, with an expected employment decline of 22 percent by 2022. Current carriers are not affected by this decline. The move from paper to electronics is a common theme in many projected job losses. For example, newspaper...
Read MoreGlobal Talent Dominated by U.S., U.K., and Canada
The Indeed Hiring Lab has revealed that there are three global labor destinations: the U.S., UK and Canada. These countries attract the most candidates from around the world; the U.S. receiving searches from 50.2 percent of international job seekers. The research also found that of the four emerging BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), only India is effectively attracting talent from...
Read MoreIntergalactic Recruiting Wars: The Empire and The Rebellion
When looking for the perfect candidates, George Lucas had the right idea. While the series follows the story of the Jedi and the Empire, there are talent acquisition lessons recruiters can learn. With the right amount of effort and flexibility in your recruiting process, you can find the droids you're looking for. "Never tell me the odds!" To the 33 percent of recruiters who openly...
Read MoreTriNet Analysis Finds Employees Working More Than 5 Additional Hours per Month
Cloud-based HR services provider, TriNet, has announced the findings of its June 2014 issue of TriNet SMBeat, a monthly analysis of small to medium-sized business (SMB) employment and human capital economic indicators. The report highlights that employees are working an average of 5.14 hours more per month than in 2007. Compared to the 12-month period leading up to the start of the Great...
Read MoreThe Wisdom of Sending Employees Somewhere Awful
Matt Kosinski's interesting recent article "Do Your Employees Want Career Development? Maybe You Should Send Them Out of the Country" got me thinking about what a great idea sending employees overseas for professional development is. There's the broadening of perspectives, the exposure to other cultures and their professionals, the excitement of new venues and opportunities, fresh synergies,...
Read MoreBath Psychology and Lyme Disease: the Case for Bathing After, Not Before, Work
Her question was natural, but only in context. We were in Japan, where having a bath or shower before going to bed—i.e., after work or school, and at the end of the day, not the beginning—has been the traditional norm. So, when Tiris, a student traveler and a Japanese studies major from China staying at the same forest guest house as I in Furano, Hokkaido, asked me, "Aren't you going to...
Read MoreHR Tech Goes to College
Dave Duffield, a co-founder of HR tech company Workday, says he has a passion for higher education. Couple this passion with a number of colleges and universities using Workday's solutions for HR and finance, and "it was only a matter of time before we provided a way for customers to run everything — their workforce, financials, and student applications — in one unified system," says Liz...
Read MoreThe Unbelievable Truth About Workplace Culture
The truth about workplace culture is that there's a super bug going around that exists within almost every organization. This super bug either acts for the greater good of all employees still engaged, or it brings the entire system down. The longer it floats around and is left unmaintained the more resistant it becomes to treatment (engagement). And ultimately, it can take control of your...
Read MoreStanford Business School Finds Narcissists get Paid More Than Others
New research by Stanford Graduate School of Business professor shows that it is the persuasive personality and aggressive "me first" attitude embodied by narcissistic CEOs that helps them secure large pay packages. Specifically, narcissistic CEOs are paid more than their non-narcissistic peers. There is also a larger gap between narcissists' compensation and that of their top management...
Read MoreCareerBuilder's Midyear Job Forecast Shows Increase in Hiring for Remainder of 2014
CareerBuilder's Midyear Job Forecast suggests sustained job growth for the second half of 2014. Nearly half of U.S. employers plan to add full-time, permanent headcount over the next six months, and one-third plan to hire temporary or contract workers, both improvements over the same period in 2013. Survey results showed: • 47 percent of employers plan to hire full-time, permanent...
Read MoreCan Small Talk Make a Big Difference to Your Career?
You need a tongue strap to stop some people talking, but you need an iron lever to pry some people's mouths open, as they see small talk as a nuisance and having limited value. But who is right? Does small talk really matter? Can small talk really make a big difference to your career or will just walking into your interview room and listing your critical competencies when prompted suffice? Well,...
Read MoreMost HR Professionals Grade their Employers' Performance Reviews at a "C" or Lower
The effectiveness of performance reviews leaves much to be desired, according to the latest BLR Performance Management Survey of human resources professionals. More than three-fourths of respondents give their employer's performance reviews a "C" or lower. More than 1,480 HR professionals participated in the study, which was conducted by Business Legal Resources (BLR) in Brentwood, Tenn....
Read MoreIs it Finally Okay to Include a Photo in Your Resume?
In the U.S. and UK in particular there is a strong aversion to including photos in resumes. The general belief is that photos should ordinarily not be included in a resume as it will bring a focus on protected characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity etc., and increase the chance of you being discriminated against in the short-listing process. It can also bring a focus on features such as...
Read MorePoll: Nearly Two-thirds of Small Businesses Support Minimum Wage Hike to $10.10
According to a national poll commissioned by the American Sustainable Business Council and Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, small business owners favor raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 and adjusting it to keep up with the cost of living in future years. Also discovered is that business owners are considerably less partisan than Congress in weighing the issue. The federal minimum wage...
Read MoreMonster Poll Finds Job Seekers Desire Fulfillment over Brands/Innovative Offices
A recent international poll conducted by Monster reveals that "cool" brands and innovative office design are as not important factors to respondents when considering a new job. Respondents are most excited by the opportunity to work in an industry they are passionate about, or the opportunity to work with people they professionally admire. Monster Inc. asked visitors of its job market...
Read MoreSpoken For
I hate resumes. I hate resumes. I hate resumes. I HATE resumes. Ostensibly, they're simple, no-nonsense things, short documents that highlight relevant work experience and skill sets. Plug in your work experience, responsibilities, special skills, maybe a couple references, and you're good to go. In reality, however, they're awful, needy, bafflingly amorphous sources of endless stress and...
Read MoreLexmark Launches Perceptive Cloud Share to Simplify Collaboration of Social Content
Lexmark's Perceptive Software announces the release of Perceptive Cloud Share, a lightweight, scalable and intuitive cloud solution that simplifies the sharing and collaboration of enterprise social content, including rich media. Built upon the Perceptive Evolution platform, Perceptive Cloud Share brings customers rich content management in the cloud, making rich media content available from...
Read MoreThe 4 Kinds of Professional Respect: Which Ones Have to Be Earned and Shown?
Rodney Dangerfield, gruff sputtering Las Vegas and Hollywood comic and legend, parlayed his catchphrase "I can't get no respect!" into a very likeable career persona. That comedic lament made him a spokesperson for everyone with the same complaint, but not always the same humorous give or take on it. Indeed, far too many among his "constituency" are deadly serious about respect—especially...
Read MoreFive Rising Social Networking Sites — and How to Recruit on Them
Some call it "unbundling": the movement away from massive, multi-purpose social networks — like Facebook, where you can post pictures, comment on walls, and hold private conversations all on one platform — toward more singular-minded social media — like Instagram, where you can pretty much only share pictures. This movement has led to an influx of new social media platforms, as new...
Read MoreVendor Management System Success
A thoughtfully implemented and robust vendor management system (VMS) can completely optimize the disjointed and complicated process of the acquisition and management of a contingent workforce. A good VMS can result in significant cost savings through more efficient processes at every step of the contingent workforce supply chain. A special thank you goes out this month's Leadership Sponsor,...
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