Recruiting the best candidates isn’t always easy. HR outsourcing firms and hiring managers know this. With recent college graduates entering the workforce, different factors are at stake when it comes to making a decision about where to work. Whether you…

Continue

In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." 

— Warren Buffet

(CEO, Berkshire Hathaway)

 

Recruitment isn’t an easy lark. As a recruitment consultant I am often on the phone to candidates of an evening, arranging interviews and hearing feedback. There is an argument to be made that some…

Continue

At this point you may be wondering what a highly creative “1 + 1 = 3” advertising campaign for Schweppes has anything to do with the title of this piece. Most likely, your eyes were drawn to the image and then your brain tried to make some sort of semantic connection between these two disparate elements. *PLEASE DO NOT STOP READING* I realise that I may have lost some of you, but in this article I will attempt to explain how this mathematical improbability is a…

Continue

"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere." -- Agnes Repplier

Am I a culture fit for this company?  Do my values and beliefs align with those of the organization?  These are two questions that many job seekers, employers, and employees are asking themselves these days.  Culture is the… Continue

I watched this TED Talk recently, and though it's more than two years old now, the message from Mike Rowe, producer and host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs, resonates strongly enough to still be talking about it today. Rowe outlines what he calls America's War on Work, supporting this theory with numerous examples of how we, as a culture, have marginalized manual labor and those who do it, thereby creating a culture that turns down it's nose as those who are out there doing the ugly jobs… Continue

In his well-known book, The Trusted Advisor, David Maister explored the paradigm of that very important business relationship, using the professional services paradigm as a basis. His book covered some key components of trust (the trust equation), the process of creating trust (including the most common trust-breaking mistakes and this post includes a good example).



Trust is not a soft or an ambiguous concept – and it should not be. Some years ago I attended a one-week leadership… Continue

It’s a phrase that has been around for years, yet different people define it in different ways. Some think it’s just about a slogan or ‘tag line’, others equate successful companies like Virgin or Google with it, But what IS an employer brand? And should it be called that in the first place?



Take a can of Coke or a Mars bar, or a Ferrari if you like. Each are made to a constant formula or recipe. They never vary. They are proper brands (or in the case of the Ferrari each car is a… Continue

It was US Open 2009 in Flushing Meadows a couple of weeks ago when I got to see Serena Williams yell and scream at the lines umpire for calling a foot fault. Serena threatened the lines umpire with profanity laced tirade waving her racquet and was eventually thrown out of the US Open for her behavior leaving Kim Clijsters to not only win the semis but also the finals against Wozniacki. What left me aghast was the attitude of a very talented world… Continue

Having spent most of my career of 20 years identifying and winning customers, I see the process of recruiting talent into the company in a similar light. Let us analyze the process of winning the right customers for a product or services company. First, the marketing team BUILDS a BRAND for the target audience. Then, the sales team is tasked to identify all the potential customers interested in the product by FILLing a sales funnel. It is then the function of the management team to SELECT the… Continue

A good recruiting/staffing organization typically does strive to reduce recruiting costs, reduce time to hire, increase acceptance rates and also to improve time to productivity. However, most organizations do not spend enough time to PREPARE for recruiting. I am not talking about the process of hiring a team. But, more the understanding of the needs of the micro-organization and at the macro level of the company. Typically, the recruiting process starts when hiring managers lob a standard… Continue

In our lifetimes, many of us have had the opportunity to work with leaders who displayed great leadership values every day. These true leaders were interested in our personal growth, showed compassion to every team member and cared for the success of the entire organization. I am sure a few of us have had the unfortunate times of working with managers who we want to stay away from for ever. How do we identify the creme de la creme among the leaders that we want to work for? What do we look for… Continue

Most of us spend an enormous amount of time at work, sometimes wondering if we work to live or live to work. There should be no confusion on why we live on this planet. Definitely, not to work 80 hr weeks in a job that one does not have a passion for. How does one realize own passion to make a living? A job where you are eager to jump out of the bed most mornings, get to work and kick some butt.



How and when does one realize ones own passion to make a living? When does one make the… Continue

Feeling valued? What does that mean to you? To me, it means that my opinions are respected and my judgment is trusted for its worth. It is well known that the best teams or the best companies to work for in any corner of the world are most productive and creative when its team members are valued for who they are and what they believe in. That should be of no surprise to any of us. However, some companies do not seem to recognize and strive to develop a culture that embodies trust and… Continue

Have you ever taken on a job or a task because you felt you SHOULD rather than because you wanted to?



I went to a networking event earlier this week, hosted by the Association of Women MBAs (AWM). The session was a presentation by Nancy Monson, a certified Coach whose practice focuses on “individual, team and organizational leadership”.



The title of the presentation was “Living a Life… Continue