Why Speed is Important for Hiring Top Talent

Why Speed is Important for Hiring Top Talent The job market is moving ever faster and employers can’t afford to dilly dally. This is especially true of the entry level to the middle management market, where the strongest candidates can take their pick of the jobs. Ambitious companies are in a race to hire top talent  who will increase growth and revenue. However, they aren’t just racing against each other, they are also racing against speed: the speed of the market, speed of candidates’ expectations, the speed of change. So what can you do to make sure you secure the right candidate? Don’t drag your feet: Hey, you’re busy. You’ve got to do the rest of your job plus recruit this position, while your pesky recruiter keeps ringing you when you’re in the middle of something. If the candidate really wants the job they’ll wait a few days right? Wrong. The reason your recruiter is bugging you is because they know how many other companies want your candidates and are putting in the effort to snare them. If you want talent in your team you have to, for the moment, make hiring a priority. There are plenty of jobs these days, and candidates have the power to pick and choose. You need to make candidates feel wanted and enthusiastic about your company, otherwise they will easily find another one that does. The interview process now is as much about them sizing you up as you them. Don’t think the grass is greener: You’ve had a slam dunk. You’ve found someone who ticks all the boxes, plus they’ve got that little bit of X Factor. The only problem is that you’ve got no one else to compare them to. What if there’s someone else out there who’s even better? It is sensible to make sure you see others as a benchmark, although be aware that if you take too much time over it you may lose your first choice candidate. We’re not suggesting you hire someone without seeing anyone else. You just need to realise that you’re probably not the only one to have recognised the star candidate for what they are. By all means see one or two others, but don’t expect to have time to run a full and rigorous process. Don’t keep quiet: There will be times when you have to run a slow recruitment process. Perhaps funding didn’t come in on time, maybe you’re waiting for a more senior appointment or company policies are tying your hands together. However, if this is the case it becomes much more difficult to keep hold of candidates. The most important thing you can do is keep communicating. It’s tempting to bury your head in the sand and hold tight until you’re given the green light, but by then your candidates may have moved on or are feeling deflated because they’ve not heard from you. Keep candidates informed with developments so they continue to feel the love they felt at their first interview. Yes, your recruiter will do their best to keep them warm, but they can only give them as much information as you give. Do be flexible: So, what if you’ve run a speedy process and you’ve managed to keep hold of a great candidate, yet when it comes to  negotiating an offer it all falls apart over details? Companies offer lots of benefits these days, from home working or flexi-time, to cars and train travel through to generous bonuses and equity. If your company won’t match these sorts of benefits then they are likely to fall behind in the race for talent. Allow someone with a long commute to work from home one day a week, or perhaps work in a different office. Offer a contribution towards travel costs or match their bonus from their last job. A multi-million pound corporation can surely afford to be flexible for a candidate who will significantly increase the bottom line. Even if you’re small or unable to budge on financial offerings, you can still bag your perfect candidate with non-monetary or contractual deals. Maybe a few extra days holiday will swing the balance, or bonuses and pay rises after x amount of profit. Regardless of a company’s size, they need to convince a candidate that they are a great place to work and can offer them a work life that no one else can. Know your key selling points and shout about them. The world is getting faster. Your customers are expecting you to deliver yesterday, and your competition is quickening. The best talent is used to moving quickly, and want to work with organisations that are ambitious, innovative and fast moving. If you can’t hire quickly not only do you lose time and money within the business, you may lose great candidates to more nimble competition. Worst of all, you will gain a reputation as slow moving, bureaucratic and backward thinking. If you can’t keep up, you will find yourself at the back of the pack. RELATED:  How to Attract Top Tech Talent.

Your Story Why I Joined Classy Career Girls Networking Challenge - Classy Career Girl

Your Story Why I Joined Classy Career Girls Networking Challenge Todays post is written by Savvy Working Gal  who strives to inspire women one post at a time!  Congrats to her for joining the 4X4 networking challenge.  If you are interested in joining, just read about the networking challenge here and leave a comment.  I am keeping tabs of other bloggers taking the challenge here.  Good luck Savvy! Ever since  I read Frau Techs post Blaming Women Entrepreneurs,  I havent been able to stop  thinking about networking.   Here is the section of her post that had the greatest impact on me: Starting a business is like getting a job. It’s more about who you know than what you know. Many of my male colleagues have networks and contacts built up within the industry. Their opinions are trusted more on technical matters than mine are. I even asked  Anna Runyan of Classy Career Girl to write a guest post  for me on  Why Networking is Important.   Anna mentioned some interesting points about barriers that hold you back from networking. I could relate to all of them. Her post also got me thinking about another networking fallacy: Networking Fallacy: Networking is only important when you are looking for a new job The truth is you should be developing and nurturing your network on an ongoing basis. And networking is a two-way process. The most successful networks are ones where you give your network more than you receive. I  realized I have been neglecting my own network.  Over the past couple of years I have become  increasingly disillusioned with my accounting career.  So much so, that I have been contemplating a career change.   The practical side of me, however, realizes I still need to support myself and a career change is most likely a pipe dream.   Not wanting my accounting network to know I want out I have been ignoring it.  Also being an introvert, it is easy for me to sit  in the corner allowing  others to sit at the table. It is time I get back in the game I have decided to join Anna Runyans Networking Challenge. Here is the challenge Anna created for  herself: Every month I would meet with four people I already knew but would like to get to know even better. I also made a point of meeting with four new people.  My goal was to learn from each person I talked to and ask questions about how I to get to the next step in my career. Anna says we dont have to start with 4 people right away she recommends we begin with just a couple of people the first month and grow from there.   Her most important tip is to plan ahead, write down who  we want to meet with and email them before the month starts. Her second tip is to find  someone to keep us accountable.   For her accountability, she shares her progress with us on her blog and we keep her accountable. My Networking Challenge I am going to begin with meeting two people I already know and two that I dont each month.  These will be  people in my community. I too, am going to use my blog audience to keep me accountable. I am also going to try to attend two local events  each week.   These could be meetings at trade associations or book events at  book stores or libraries.   Lisa Bloom author of the book  Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World  (which I wrote about here) has challenged us to attend one book event a month.   I am going to take her up on it. On Accountability As part of this post, I was going to link to Getting my Ducks in a Row, a previous blog post where I introduced a similar challenge. In rereading that post, I noticed how similar it was to this one.  As I recall, that particular challenge did not last very long, which just goes to show how hard networking can be for  people like me. I think by actually joining Anna’s challenge and having this post listed on her site I will feel much more accountable this go-round. Do you need a networking challenge to push you out of your comfort zone?   If so, why dont you join us!

The Secrets to Being a Great Handyman in Your Community

The Secrets to Being a Great Handyman in Your Community Being a handyman can be an extremely profitable and lucrative venture for anyone with the knack for repairs and a penchant for getting their hands dirty. More and more people have become over-reliant on these specialists helped in no small part by their expertise in tackling a wide range of problems and issues that would otherwise leave the layman in a stump with no idea of what to do. This profession will never go out of style simply because there will always something that will have to be repaired or fixed. With that being said, there are a few things that will help set you apart and make you a great handyman in your community. Be insured It goes without saying that having the right insurance is almost mandatory for any profession or trade, and this includes being a handyman. Having yourself insured shows a level of professionalism that will no doubt put you head-and-shoulders above the rest of your competition. Oftentimes, procuring these kinds of policies is foregone in favor of additional savings however this is a false economy. Being able to show a certificate as a result of having handyman insurance at Next Insurance can go a long way in setting yourself apart and acquiring even more business. Don’t forget your license Generally, there are certain exemptions and things that you can and cannot do if you’re a handyman without a license. While you certainly can do a lot of jobs without it, it’s good common practice to invest in a license. You’ll undoubtedly get more work this way and clients will opt for someone who has the proper credentials to do the job needed as opposed to someone who lacks it. Never skimp on acquiring all the tools and knowledge for the trade They say that knowledge is power, and this certainly holds true when it comes to being a great handyman. Going the extra mile and learning as much as you can on the challenges you expect to encounter in this profession can do wonders for minimizing your limitations in the field. But tools are just as necessary, and it’s important not to skimp on their acquisition. Think of it as a preventive measure. It is a small investment of time and money that will no doubt pay dividends in the future. Being a handyman is a profession that almost anyone can get into. But while it certainly doesn’t require a great amount of qualifications, having the right documentation, tools and knowledge in the business is needed in order to be successful in it. In this highly competitive industry, putting in the work will set yourself apart and yield the desired profitable results as well as make you a great handyman in your community.

Reading fiction helps your career, but reading poetry helps more

Reading fiction helps your career, but reading poetry helps more We have known for a while that people who are most successful in business read  fiction.   And people who read fiction have more empathy, no matter where they land on the gender or personality trait spectrum. Its interesting to me that genre fiction sci-fi, mystery, and political satire, for example do not increase our empathy, and exposure to nonfiction correlates with loneliness and lack of social support. But what about poetry? Its hard to find examples of famous writers of fictional narrative who also have flourishing careers in the business world. For the most part, novelists have a day job and jump at the chance to quit that day job as soon as they can reliably support themselves writing. Yet the world of poetry is full of writers who had long careers in business. T.S. Eliot worked in banking. After Wallace Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, he turned down a faculty position at Harvard because he didnt want to leave his position as VP of an insurance company. It turns out that poetry is especially beneficial to people who want to lead and manage. John Coleman wrote in the Harvard Business Review that poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexityBusiness leaders live in multifaceted, dynamic environments. Their challenge is to take that chaos and make it meaningful and understandable. Reading and writing poetry can exercise that capacity, improving ones ability to better conceptualize the world and communicate it through presentations or writing to others. Fictional narrative expects the reader to keep turning pages   to connect with a character and feel what they feel. Poetry demands that the reader decipher each line for understanding the world, or the self, or others. Both poetry and fiction develop empathy, but fiction is better for that. Poetry, however, is the practice of simplifying complex topics. (Extra credit alert: To illustrate this, read   Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson.) Most people can make a good business decision if they have all the relevant data in front of them. But the most successful executives are excellent at making decisions with incomplete information. The less information you need to make a decision, the higher you can rise. Think Elon Musk deciding he can go to the moon. Or Mark Zuckerberg assuming he will be able to get millions of people to use his Harvard dating website. Dana Gioia explains that this decision-making skill is about sorting complexity to come up with a guess at the truth. And in Knowledge@Wharton he says reading (and writing) poetry, rather than conventional fiction or nonfiction, is the most effective way to develop these skills. Clare Morgan, author of What Poetry Brings to Business, cites studies that show readers of stories and poetry generate nearly twice as many alternative endings for the poems, and poetry readers develop great self-monitoring strategies that enhance the efficacy of their thinking process. Morgan says these creative capabilities help executives keep their organizations entrepreneurial, find imaginative solutions, and navigate moments when they cannot rely on data to make good decisions. The world is full of examples of executives who read poetry. Steve Jobs collected the works of William Blake. Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, always tried to hire poets into management, arguing, Poets are our original systems thinkers. They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand. Recently The Nation  published a poem that received so much backlash that the magazine published an apology longer than the poem. When have so many people cared so much about a poem? I had to read it. And I love it. So Im republishing it here. This is  a career blog, and reading poetry will help your career. So read it. And tell me in the comments what you think. How-To by Anders Carlson-Wee If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl, say you’re pregnantâ€"â€"nobody gonna lower themselves to listen for the kick. People passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know you is. What they don’t know is what opens a wallet, what stops em from counting what they drop. If you’re young say younger. Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray, say you sin. It’s about who they believe they is. You hardly even there.

Episode 013 The C.A.R.E. Podcast Experts Corner - Emily Kapit CareerMetis.com

Episode 013 â€" The C.A.R.E. Podcast â€" Experts Corner - Emily Kapitâ€" CareerMetis.com Emily Kapit is a 3X-Certified Master Resume Writer with extensive client experience globally and across all sectors/levels. In addition to being highly strategic and effective, she emphasizes the importance of collaborating with the client and partnering to ensure that he or she has not just stellar documents but the confidence and strategies needed for an effective job search.Emily Kapit is also the Lead Career Strategist at ReFresh Your Step, LLC, which assists working professionals at every level in maximizing their career potential and achieve professional objectives. Since its inception in 2008, we have worked with a diverse clientele of professionals in terms of age, experience and industry from over 45 states, Canada, Puerto Rico, Latin America, Africa, India, and Europe.evalYou can connect with Emily Kapit on the following platforms:WebsiteLinkedInTwitterFacebookBook a Free Consultation

PSNI Police Officer Eligibility Criteria

PSNI Police Officer Eligibility Criteria PSNI stands for Police Service Northern Ireland. It is the official and recognised police service of Northern Ireland, and works in partnership with local communities to maintain peace and prevent crime.The selection process to join the PSNI is extremely competitive. Over 7500 people apply to join the force every single year, with only around 500 of these applicants being successful. This means that there are several stages you’ll need to complete, if you wish to become an officer.In this blog, we’ll show you the PSNI Eligibility Criteria that you must adhere to, if you wish to get started in the selection process.PSNI Eligibility CriteriaAge. In order to apply to the PSNI, you must be at least 18 years old, and no younger than 57 upon appointment. Usually, when the PSNI is recruiting, they’ll inform you of the specific date by which you’ll need to meet these criteria.Nationality. In order to apply to the PSNI, you must have leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for an indefinite period of time, and be a national of a country/state within the European Union (excluding Croatia). If you are not a member of a state within the European Union, you may still be accepted but must be able to provide documentary evidence that you have the right to remain in the United Kingdom for an indefinite period of time.Education. All applicants to the PSNI are required to have a minimum of 5 GCSES at A*-C grade, with both Maths and English included. Candidates will be expected to provide evidence of their exam certificates and relevant qualifications at Assessment Centres.Computer Skills. When applying to the PSNI, you will have to demonstrate that you have a basic level of computer literacy. This will not be done through a specific test, but throughout the process you will have to demonstrate basic skills when filling in the application forms and the assessment centre questions. When working as a PSNI officer, you will spend frequent periods working at your desk in the office, where you will need basic computer skills. When filling in your application form, you will be asked to confirm and acknowledge that that you are competent in using IT software and devicesDriver’s License. In order to become a PSNI police officer, you must be in possession of a full manual driving license.Drug Use. The PSNI requires all successful applicants to undergo a drug screening test prior to any offer of appointment/employment. If you are tested positive for any of the substances listed under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, then you will be automatically rejected from the force.Criminal Record. When applying for the PSNI, a previous criminal record could damage your application. You will have to declare all past convictions or warnings, and list any past involvement that you may have had with the police. During the vetting process, the seriousness of any offences will be weighed against your suitability to the role. If you have convictions for dangerous driving , drink driving or driving under the influence of drugs within the last ten years, then your application is highly likely to be rejected.Tattoos. If you are working for the PSNI, you will have to ensure that any visible tattoos are covered at all times. During the application process you will need to take a photo of any tattoos that you have, as these will be considered during the vetting process. Any tattoos above the neck or on the hands are not acceptable, nor are any tattoos which might be deemed as offensive or discriminatory.   This entry was posted in Police, Eligibility Criteria. Bookmark the permalink. Jordan Cooke What Qualifications Do You Need To Become A Pilot?How To Pass Non-Verbal Reasoning Tests

Resume Tip - Your Resume Should Read as the Perfect Match for Your Next Job -

Resume Tip - Your Resume Should Read as the Perfect Match for Your Next Job -   So, you are trying to write your own resume, and you are focusing on all of the things that youve done in the past to highlight?   STOP! Your resume isnt ABOUT your past its about your future! Of course, you need to rely on what you have done to convince your next employer of what you can do for him or her, but remember: Your resume needs to read as the perfect match for your next job. You dont want to look like the candidate who is qualified to do the job you already have. Just as you need to target you resume to address your potential employers problems, you also need to target it to highlight the skills and accomplishments that propel you to where you want to go.   Review job descriptions that interest you. What do they want? What skills do they seek? Demonstrate that you are that person by artfully illustrating that you have the skills and accomplishments to get the job done. You dont have those skills on your resume? The propel you forward ones? Take the wheel and get them! Talk to your employer about the skills youd like to develop. See where there are opportunities to get involved in projects that will give you what you need for your resume. Drive your own career bus, or be stuck hopelessly at the red light. If you want to receive free up-to-date tips to help with your job hunt, Click here to subscribe to receive future blogs sent directly to you! Need help with your resume? Did you know we offer a resume consulting service? We advise, you write! Or, hire us to write your resume for you. Visit Keppie Careers online for information about our services: www.keppiecareers.com. photo by KM