04 Nov

Posted at 07:00h in Job Seekers
You have a job but you feel you are stuck in a dead-end position. Or you fell into it and realize it isn’t your dream career. Or you are between jobs and finding it difficult to find something new. Is a career coach what you need to take your professional life to the next level? Possibly. What are the current challenges to finding your dream job? Are you open to advice from a stranger and trying new ideas? Do you have the resources (time and money) to invest in a professional consultant?

Here are some things to consider before hiring a career coach:

hiring a career coach

28 Oct

Posted at 07:00h in Employers, Small Business Owners, Startups
There have often been comparisons, rightly or wrongly, to hiring employees and finding dates. Both require a certain mutual positive chemistry, shared interests and alignment of goals. Many can result in long-term relationships. But whereas it can be a bit touchy to run a criminal background search, do a credit check and interview references on a date, it might well be best business practices before sharing computer passwords with your next employee. An applicant can look great on paper and sound fantastic in an interview without ever tipping off that they have a less than stellar past. Some of that might not be a cause for concern – after all, do you really want to hold against someone an arrest for a student protest from decades before? But people are aware of the stakes when they are applying for a job, and can selectively forget to mention criminal histories and financial difficulties that can take them out of the running. It is also not unusual for people to get “creative about their educational or professional pasts – a correspondence course gets reinvented into a four year degree, a summer internship is elongated into a two year role. Whether it is truly misleading or just poor judgment, it can be an important step in your hiring process to ensure that you have independently researched your potential employee. In fact three-quarters of small businesses now conduct background checks.

Five Suggested Background Checks

21 Oct

Posted at 07:00h in Job Seekers
Interviews are stressful to almost everyone. You want to sound great, but not arrogant, accomplished but not overqualified, enthusiastic but not overeager. So what can you do? Well, you can practice with friends or family (maybe not colleagues if you don’t want your boss to find out), you can study your resume extensively so that you do not stumble over answers, and you can make sure you are prepared for tough but common interview questions (see our post on Five Hard Interview Questions and How to Answer Them for more on that). But here’s the not-so-great news. What you don’t say can also greatly influence how your interview goes. Sometimes your interviewer will consciously notice these unspoken things, sometimes it’s more subconscious, but it will dissuade them from moving forward. non-verbal interview tips

We offer these non-verbal interview tips to keep in mind:

14 Oct

Posted at 07:00h in Job Seekers
Who are you? And what do you do? Are those two different questions or the same thing? Before we get too existential, the basic question is, do you feel that your current career really reflects the person you currently are, or the person you want to be? A couple of decades ago, this query seemed almost unimportant, even confusing. You get a job, get a couple of promotions, perhaps start to manage people, and that morphs into a career. No more. These days, it’s highly unusual to drift toward a job and then look over your shoulder and discover that is the definition of what you are. Why? Two reasons – one, the world is no longer that stable. In a climate of recessions and layoffs and wind-downs, it is not realistic to expect the same company that gave you your first chance out of college to be the same place to give you your retirement part. The average duration of any one job is now 4.4 years. Second, we as employees are no longer that static. We move to new locations, we go back to school. We get bored, we get curious. We pursue passions, we scratch an itch. The “second career” is actually the third or fourth. So how do you reinvent yourself?

Consider the following if you are looking to reinvent your resume:

starting a second career

07 Oct

Posted at 07:00h in Employers, Small Business Owners, Startups
First, there was the closed office, one to a person, hopefully with a window. Then there were cubicles, lauded as increasing productivity (no hiding behind closed doors and surfing the internet), then came open plan (now embraced by 70% of all employers) – no walls between cubicles, just communal tables demarcated by one workstation after another (among other things, very cost efficient). But still very much in the mix is no office at all – at least not at the employer’s site. Telecommuting is popular both with small companies who are still tight on space, to large companies like Dell and Xerox (where a reported 11% of their workforce work from home). Is telecommuting right for your organization? Well, that depends. Is telecommuting right for your company

Here are some things to consider to make telecommuting work for your company

30 Sep

Posted at 07:00h in Job Seekers
The process of finding a new job is never easy. But let's say you've done all the right things -- you've kept your LinkedIn profile current, been dutifully participating in networking opportunities and got the letters of reference in your back pocket. And now you've locked down an interview. Great work -- but are you ready? Interviewers can be tough, but the questions don't have to become stumpers. We discuss some common interview questions that can get you dinged or distinguished.
Tough Interview Questions

Here are five hard interview questions to prepare for:

23 Sep

Posted at 18:31h in Employers, Small Business Owners, Startups
You would have to be under a rock, inside a hole, in the middle of the desert to not know LinkedIn and Facebook. But, many people think of them as an individual user tools, for personal professional promotion and social use, and not enough for business recruiting purposes. But that kind of logic could cost you great opportunities to connect with the perfect candidate. LinkedIn has over 380 million members as of 2015, and over 100 million are in the U.S. And as we discussed in our article about jobseekers ditching paper resumes, LinkedIn profiles have essentially become the leading way to promote yourself in the job market. Social Media for Recruiting

Using social media for recruiting can be highly effective when done smartly.

16 Sep

Posted at 07:00h in Employers, Small Business Owners, Startups
There is almost nothing harder than finding the right new hire for your team. Do they fit interpersonally? Will they be able to align with the mission? Do they have enough experience, or too much? Can they integrate into the culture? A dozen questions bombard the hiring manager as they meet each candidate. Unfortunately, the right candidate can be blurred by unimportant noise, or the wrong candidate can rise to the top for the wrong reasons.

Here then, are five tips on making the right hire:

Making the perfect hire

09 Sep

Posted at 07:00h in Job Seekers
Even the best of jobs can from time to time prove to be stressful. Before we know it, we can find that we’re dreading each morning, and exhausted by noon. So, how then, do we keep a balance of meeting the demands of work without succumbing to the stress that often accompanies it? 5 Ways to Reduce Stress at Work

Here are five tips to reduce stress at work:

02 Sep

Posted at 07:00h in Employers, Small Business Owners, Startups
It’s lonely at the top. If you’re a solopreneur, an entrepreneur with a small team, or running a good-sized organization, you are used to making decisions that you are alone are qualified to assess. One of those considerations may be when to make a new hire. Whether it’s your first employee or your 50th, you have to weigh if perception (yours’ or your employees’) that you need help is real or imagined. So how can you pressure test your company to see if it is time to start reading resumes?  

when to hire