Top Things to Do in the First Week at Your New Office

First few days at a new office, will give mixed emotions for a new joiner every time. They will be excited, as well as be anxious for a few days, as the entire atmosphere will be new for them including the job as well. This feeling will be among every individual, no matter he or she is a fresher or already a professional for few years.

So, if you are in a new place, where you need to spend most of your day’s time, naturally, you need to start mingling with the people around you as well as get adjusted with your job as early as possible. To make it easy for you, if you are a new joiner in any of the company, here are few small and key tips you can follow,

1.  Always keep smiling:

No matter what, as it is you who is a new employee in the company, it is your duty to start conversing with others with a  smiling face, as there are many employees, who don’t like to mingle with a fresher so easily unless and until they are familiar with you for the first few days. So, to make them feel easy as well as to make yourself comfortable, start conversing with your colleagues with a smiling face. As everyone know, knowledge-based skills are very much important to grow up in your career, soft skills as mentioned above like smiling and greeting the colleagues everyday is equally important to create a pleasant office atmosphere.

2. Develop a helping nature:

This doesn’t mean you should stop helping people in your workplace as soon as you become a senior in a company. It the initial stages, helping others is a much needed behavior, as that can be a better way to build a nice friendly relationship with your co-workers. Give ideas and suggestions to your team leads no matter you are a fresher. But it is advised not to share your opinion on the company’s business strategies in just the first week at office, as it might lead a negative impact on you.

3. Learn new things:

There can be no other better opportunity for you than in the first week in a new job or in the first few days to learn a lot of new things. It is in this period, where you won’t be blamed for minor errors as you will still be a learner at that time. So, make a good opportunity of it, and try sharpening your skills day by day by learning new things as per your work demands. Observing things is very much important, as you will be surprised to see you as an expert just by observing things and listening to what people discuss around you regarding the work. If you are given a task which you are already familiar with, then carry on with that work even before they give you instructions regarding that. By doing so, you can showcase the proactive nature to your employers and prove that you are a fast learner.

5 Key Hiring Metrics for 2013

With 2013 fast approaching, many of us will be using the traditionally quieter hiring month of December to take stock of the key industry developments and market trends of 2012 in order to refine our strategic approaches accordingly for 2013. These refinements may include a change in strategy, tactics or processes or it could involve the adoption of new cutting edge technologies.
Evidence does indeed suggest that the sands are shifting in the HR world, and I thought it would be a good time to take another look at the hiring metrics that we are using to check the relevancy of them going forwards and to see if any new metrics need to be brought into play or further examined.
1. Source of hire; With there being so many different methods for hiring staff emerging on to the market, such as employee referrals, gamification and crowd-sourcing,  it is more important than ever that you track source of hire to understand your most effective hiring channels and to establish whether key sourcing channels are being underutilized. Additionally, the recent shift toward more performance based or CPC job posting systems such as Indeed and SimplyHired allow a better understanding of total cost per applicant and cost per hire.
2. Cost. An oldie but still goodie. With the OECD having just slashed its global economic growth forecasts, the threat of recession still looms over many major economies, which means hiring teams will need to be able to demonstrate cost-effectiveness very clearly next year. There should clearly be some emphasis on the following metrics in 2013.

• Cost per hire
• Cost per hire as a percentage of average starting salary
• Cost of vacancy and money saved by reducing time to fill
• Revenue or productivity increase due to successful hire

3. Employee Referral rates
We have written extensively about just how influential employee referrals are becoming as a source of hire, with surveys from Jobvite, CareerXRoads and others all showing that employee referrals are the most influential form of hire a the moment. As well as this, the Jobvite survey has shown that referred employees are hired quicker and stay longer than employees hired through most other channels, which means that in theory increasing your emphasis on referrals may reduce time to fill and empty desk time. For all these reasons, we expect this employee referrals trend to strengthen in 2013,  as social recruiting technologies like Mesh-hire and Jobvite begin to take hold.
Hiring teams should clearly be placing emphasis on tracking referral rates versus other sources of hire to see if they are fully utilizing what is currently thought to be the most effective form of hire.
4. Quality of hire
We reported recently on a study by Futurestep which found that hiring metrics are beginning to shift their emphasis to more sophisticated analysis. The most important metric of all was ‘performance of new hire’, followed by ‘new hire retention’, with the traditional metrics of cost to hire and time to hire being considered of lesser importance.
There is no doubt that in 2013 ‘quality of hire’ should really be the primary metric that hiring professionals are using to effectively manage the performance of their function.
5. Pipeline of talent
With an increasing focus on talent communities and strategies to engage with passive talent, (who are thought to be the lion’s share of the candidate market), employers should be developing actionable pipelines of quality prospects who can be reached out to at future times of need. You should be consistently assessing the size and quality of the prospects in your pipeline and the number of people that you actually recruit from the talent pipeline you have engineered. Is all the effort you are putting into talent communities, passive talent engagement etc… turning into results?
I’d be interested in hearing about any more hiring metrics that you think will be crucial for 2013.

5 Onboarding Best Practices

How does your organization help new employees integrate into a new job and workplace? I’ve heard numerous stories where a new hire was thrown into a position without any training or background knowledge. If you’ve been going with the baptism by fire model, then you should consider taking a different route. Statistics show that new hires who went through a structured onboarding process were 58 percent more likely to be with the organization after three years. It’s evident that a structured onboarding program can reduce turnover rates.

So what are the best practices regarding onboarding? It should come as no surprise that transparency ranks among the highest, but below I’ve outlined the five major onboarding best practices—those you certainly want to consider when bringing in your next new hire(s).
Representation
There are only a few things that can deflate that new job buzz faster than realizing that the job you thought you had applied for really isn’t the job that you are going to be doing.  An incredible 76 percent of new employees say that their job description was drastically different, or not as originally described when they started. One company I interned with provided me with the job description and required duties during the interview. Yet, once I accepted the position and got into the groove of things, I quickly realized that my actual duties were far from what I expected.
Go over the responsibilities of the position with a fine-toothed comb, in black and white if possible, and have the employee initial the job description. This will make the boundaries and duties very clear and prevent any miscommunication in the future. Believe me, no one likes to get duped and this is especially true in the workplace.
Paperwork
Calling to different departments, printing forms the first day of work and running around looking for files is not a good way to start things off. Make sure that all relevant paperwork is ready the day before, preferably in a professional manner such as a manilla folder or portfolio, so that the employee can go through the paperwork, fill out each form and quickly move on with the onboarding process..
Also make sure that the employee’s office or workstation is filled with the tools he or she will need for the job, right down to the very last pencil or package of copy paper.  It will not only make the new worker’s office feel homier, but make him or her feel more comfortable and welcome. Every new hire desires to feel like the company is expecting and anticipating his or her addition.
Introductions
Although this part is quite simple, many employers neglect to do it. While sending an introductory email is always a good idea, it should not be the first and only step. Physically introducing yourself, giving the new employee the lay of the land, showing him or her where the bathrooms and break room(s) are and introducing the worker not only to their superiors, but to their peers as well is the best way to help new hires get acclimated.
Technology
If you have specialized software, you will need to send the employee to a one-or-two day training course (either internally, or externally) so that he or she has a chance to familiarize him or herself with the software systems. The worst feeling as a new hire is not understanding how to operate a company’s system and no one being available to teach you.
Stay Connected
You will need to be ready to answer a barrage of questions from the new employee, so stay available. Whether it is by email, phone or in person, you have to employ an open-door policy. Schedule regular weekly progress meetings for the first month, which gives new hires an opportunity to open up and be detailed about where they are thriving and where they are struggling. Based on their progress, provide feedback and decrease (or increase) the frequency of the meetings as times goes on.

How to Reduce your Recruitment cost by Maximising Retention

Recruitment is a big project that requires understanding of job requirements and budgets for an organisation to sustain business as well as grow. From sourcing candidates to shortlisting,to interviews, and the hiring process, recruitment is responsible for retaining the employee in an indirect way. In order to reduce the recruitment buget and HR time within an organisation, the most essential task is to retain the present talent pool. What can a company do to reach this conclusion? Following are some basic things to remember when hiring:

1. Recruit by Understanding the Job Description

If HR personnel has a clear understanding about what the organisation is looking for in a particular role, they’ll be able to find a suitable match. Make sure whoever is sourcing candidates understand exactly what type of roles they’re trying to fill.

2. Recruit Dependable Employees

When searching to fill a position, make sure that the shortlisted candidates are dependable and have a decent history of work. If a person has been hopping jobs without being in a company for more than a year, it is better to find out a genuine reason for it. Make sure you check references and find out exactly how dependable the person really is.

3. Recruit Knowledge Workers Who are Willing to Learn

Understand that today’s employees are knowledge workers who gain and share knowledge and use it to make a living. This knowledge is very valuable so it needs to be put to good use for employee satisfaction. If you recruit candidates who are willing to learn and grow within your organisation, they can accept more challenges, grow and help the business grow as well. It becomes the ultimate way to retain employees.

4.Retain Employees as Intellectual Assets

Employees are not just resources but intellectual assets of a company. Make sure your retention programmes communicate the fact that they are valuable and that they have a clear picture of his or her growth plan. Having rewards and incentives for their intellectual growth will also assist in building up employee satisfaction.

5. Incentivise Performance

The process of salary increment on the basis of performance and time spent in the company should also be discussed in the beginning of the recruitment process such as the interviews and also during the induction process. When they do perform well, they should be immediately rewarded and the incentive programme should be executive. Not being able hold up the bargain on your side can seriously dampen employee morale and make people leave.

6.Practice Your Beliefs

An organization’s integrity is in its words, especially the promises made to the employee at the time of hiring. If there is a reason to change any pre- decided promises, make sure you involve the employee actively in that decision which is going to affect him directly. These include respecting the individuality of the employee by letting him or her know exactly how you’re changing certain processes, or changing the designation of the person, or shift timings etc. When you say something in the vision or mission statement of your company, make sure you practice it.

7.Consistency

It is important that an organisation is consistent in it’s performance and has a strong foundation based upon its principles and ideologies. It gives a reason to the employee to be able to trust the company and its promises, and be loyal to it.

Losing employees is a loss in terms of cost to the company in two ways: one the company is losing the intellect of valuable talent, and two, more cost in terms of time and funds needs to be incurred for recruiting and training new talent for replacement. Yet, the attrition rate in India is not dipping low anytime soon. Due to this reason, almost every company in any sector is spending more time and money in process of hiring new employees. If there is a balance between the give and take of an employee and the organisation, it will be advantageous to both.

9 Daily Habits That Will Make You Happier

Happiness is the only true measure of personal success. Making other people happy is the highest expression of success, but it's almost impossible to make others happy if you're not happy yourself.

With that in mind, here are nine small changes that you can make to your daily routine that, if you're like most people, will immediately increase the amount of happiness in your life:

1. Start each day with expectation.

If there's any big truth about life, it's that it usually lives up to (or down to) your expectations. Therefore, when you rise from bed, make your first thought: "something wonderful is going to happen today." Guess what? You're probably right.

2. Take time to plan and prioritize.

The most common source of stress is the perception that you've got too much work to do.  Rather than obsess about it, pick one thing that, if you get it done today, will move you closer to your highest goal and purpose in life. Then do that first.

3. Give a gift to everyone you meet.

I'm not talking about a formal, wrapped-up present. Your gift can be your smile, a word of thanks or encouragement, a gesture of politeness, even a friendly nod. And never pass beggars without leaving them something. Peace of mind is worth the spare change.

4. Deflect partisan conversations.

Arguments about politics and religion never have a "right" answer but they definitely get people all riled up over things they can't control. When such topics surface, bow out by saying something like: "Thinking about that stuff makes my head hurt."

5. Assume people have good intentions.

Since you can't read minds, you don't really know the "why" behind the "what" that people do. Imputing evil motives to other people's weird behaviors adds extra misery to life, while assuming good intentions leaves you open to reconciliation.

6. Eat high quality food slowly.

Sometimes we can't avoid scarfing something quick to keep us up and running. Even so, at least once a day try to eat something really delicious, like a small chunk of fine cheese or an imported chocolate. Focus on it; taste it; savor it.

7. Let go of your results.

The big enemy of happiness is worry, which comes from focusing on events that are outside your control. Once you've taken action, there's usually nothing more you can do. Focus on the job at hand rather than some weird fantasy of what might happen.

8. Turn off "background" TV.

Many households leave their TVs on as "background noise" while they're doing other things. The entire point of broadcast TV is to make you dissatisfied with your life so that you'll buy more stuff. Why subliminally program yourself to be a mindless consumer?

9. End each day with gratitude.

Just before you go to bed, write down at least one wonderful thing that happened. It might be something as small as a making a child laugh or something as huge as a million dollar deal. Whatever it is, be grateful for that day because it will never come again.

8 Things Remarkably Successful People Do

1. They don't create back-up plans.

Back-up plans can help you sleep easier at night. Back-up plans can also create an easy out when times get tough.

You'll work a lot harder and a lot longer if your primary plan simply has to work because there is no other option. Total commitment--without a safety net--will spur you to work harder than you ever imagined possible.

If somehow the worst does happen (and the "worst" is never as bad as you think) trust that you will find a way to rebound. As long as you keep working hard and keep learning from your mistakes, you always will.

2. They do the work...

You can be good with a little effort. You can be really good with a little more effort.

But you can't be great--at anything--unless you put in an incredible amount of focused effort.

Scratch the surface of any person with rare skills and you'll find a person who has put thousands of hours of effort into developing those skills.

There are no shortcuts. There are no overnight successes. Everyone has heard about the 10,000 hours principle but no one follows it... except remarkably successful people.

So start doing the work now. Time is wasting.

3.  ...and they work a lot more.

Forget the Sheryl Sandberg "I leave every day at 5:30" stories. I'm sure she does. But she's not you.

Every extremely successful entrepreneur I know (personally) works more hours than the average person--a lot more. They have long lists of things they want to get done. So they have to put in lots of time.

Better yet, they want to put in lots of time.

If you don't embrace a workload others would consider crazy then your goal doesn't mean that much to you--or it's not particularly difficult to achieve. Either way you won't be remarkably successful.

4. They avoid the crowds.

Conventional wisdom yields conventional results. Joining the crowd--no matter how trendy the crowd or "hot" the opportunity--is a recipe for mediocrity.

Remarkably successful people habitually do what other people won't do. They go where others won't go because there's a lot less competition and a much greater chance for success.

5. They start at the end...

Average success is often based on setting average goals.

Decide what you really want: to be the best, the fastest, the cheapest, the biggest, whatever. Aim for the ultimate. Decide where you want to end up. That is your goal.

Then you can work backwards and lay out every step along the way.

Never start small where goals are concerned. You'll make better decisions--and find it much easier to work a lot harder--when your ultimate goal is ultimate success.

6. ... and they don't stop there.

Achieving a goal--no matter how huge--isn't the finish line for highly successful people. Achieving one huge goal just creates a launching pad for achieving another huge goal.

Maybe you want to create a $100 million business; once you do you can leverage your contacts and influence to create a charitable foundation for a cause you believe in. Then your business and humanitarian success can create a platform for speaking, writing, and thought leadership. Then...

The process of becoming remarkably successful in one field will give you the skills and network to be remarkably successful in many other fields.

Remarkably successful people don't try to win just one race. They expect and plan to win a number of subsequent races.

7. They sell.

I once asked a number of business owners and CEOs to name the one skill they felt contributed the most to their success. Each said the ability to sell.

Keep in mind selling isn't manipulating, pressuring, or cajoling. Selling is explaining the logic and benefits of a decision or position. Selling is convincing other people to work with you. Selling is overcoming objections and roadblocks.

Selling is the foundation of business and personal success: knowing how to negotiate, to deal with "no," to maintain confidence and self-esteem in the face of rejection, to communicate effectively with a wide range of people, to build long-term relationships...

When you truly believe in your idea, or your company, or yourself then you don't need to have a huge ego or a huge personality. You don't need to "sell."

You just need to communicate.

8. They are never too proud.

To admit they made a mistake. To say they are sorry. To have big dreams. To admit they owe their success to others. To poke fun at themselves. To ask for help.

To fail.

And to try again.

5 Reasons People Fail (& What to Do Instead)

Why do some people achieve their goals while others fail? I believe it's because successful people manage to overcome five barriers that, in many cases, guarantee failure. Here are those barriers and how to overcome them:
1. Uninspiring Goals

When most people set goals, they envision a "thing," such as a particular amount of money, an object (like a new car), or a specific achievement (like writing a book). Unfortunately, these "things I'm gonna get or do" goals don't appeal to the core of what motivates you, because they miss the point that what you're actually seeking in life and work is the POSITIVE EMOTIONS that you believe those things will produce.

Fix: Rather than envisioning a "thing" as your goal, envision--with all the strength in your imagination--how you will feel when you achieve the goal. That way, you'll be inspired to do whatever it takes (within legal and ethical bounds) to achieve that goal.
2. Fear of Failure

If you're afraid of failing, you won't take the necessary risks required to achieve your goal. For example, you won't make that important phone call, because you're afraid that you'll be rebuffed. Or you won't quit your dead-end job and start your own business because you're afraid that you might end up without any money.

Fix: Decide--right now!--that failure, for you, is a strictly temporary condition. If things don't go the way you'd like, it's only a setback that, at most, delays your eventual success. In other words, accept the fact that you'll sometimes fail, but treat that failure as an unavoidable (yet vital) component in your quest.
3. Fear of Success

In many ways, this fear is even more debilitating than the fear of failure. Suppose you achieved something spectacular, like enormous wealth. What if it didn't make you happy? What then? What if you ended up losing all of it? What then? Would your friends start acting weird? Would your family be envious? Such thoughts (and they're common) can cause even a highly motivated person to self-sabotage.

Fix: Decide that you're going to be happy and grateful today and happy and grateful in the future, no matter what happens. Rather than focus on possible problems, envision how wonderful it would be to be able to help your friends and family achieve THEIR goals. (Hint: Watch the last season of the TV series Entourage!)
4. An Unrealistic Timetable

Most people vastly overestimate what they can do in a week and vastly underestimate what they can do in a year. Because of this, most people try to cram too many action items into the short term rather than spacing out activities over the long term. The inability to get all the short-term steps accomplished creates discouragement and the impression that the final goal is slipping away.

Fix: As you list the activities and steps required to achieve a goal, schedule only the 20% of the activities that will produce 80% of your results. (I explain more about this in the post The Secret of Time Management.) Beyond that, set ambitious long-term timetables, but always leave some "wiggle room" when you plan short term.
5. Worrying About "Dry Spots"

It's easy to get discouraged when you reach a point at which nothing you do seems to advance you toward your goal. For example, suppose you're trying to master a certain skill. You make swift progress at first but then, after a while, it seems as if you're not doing any better, or maybe a little worse. Some people use these "plateaus" or "dry spots" as an excuse to give up and therefore fail.

Fix: Whenever you reach a plateau or dry spot, it's time to celebrate rather than give up. A plateau is almost always a sign that you're on the brink of a major breakthrough, if you just have the patience to stick with it and trust that you'll eventually achieve your goal.

10 Leadership Practices to Stop Today

If you want to be the best in your industry, you have to get rid of your outdated management style.
You might not feel it day-to-day, but business management is in a major transition.  The old days of command-and-control leadership are fading in favor of what might be better termed a trust-and-track method, in which people are not just told what to do, but why they are doing it.  More formally, we're moving from what was called "transactional" leadership to "transformative" leadership. And there's no turning back.
Business owners certainly have a long way to go, especially in more established companies where old practices die hard.  But you can see increasing evidence that by creating a company with a clear purpose and values, you'll find your employees connect themselves to something bigger, and that increases productivity.  In other words, a culture of engagement leads to greater customer loyalty, and better financial success.
Here's my list of "old school" practices you ought to chuck, and "new school" practices to champion instead:

1. Out: Micro-management, or the need to control every aspect of your company.
   In: Empowerment, the ability to give your people some rope--even rope to make mistakes without blame.
   

2. Out: Management by walking around the office; it is no longer enough to be visible.
   In: Leadership by watching and listening, engaging in conversation, implementing the ideas presented to you, and distributing the results.
   

3. Out: Pretending you know everything. You don't have all the answers, so why try to make people think you do?
   In: Knowing your leadership team members and trusting them. Choose great people who have the right skills and fit the culture.  And get out of the way.
   

4. Out: No mistakes, or a "no tolerance policy" some still think works.
   In: Learning from mistakes, or being the first to admit an error.
   

5. Out: The balance sheet drives the business, and informs all other decisions.
   In: People drive the business, boosting customer loyalty, and profit.
   

6. Out: Job competency is sufficient. Do the job asked, and you'll survive.
   In: Recruit "A" players who will go the extra mile. They're out there.
   

7. Out: Invest in technology to increase productivity.
   In: Invest in people.
   

8. Out: Demand change; be very specific about what you want and when.
   In: Nurture change; your people can come up with the best ideas and you can give them credit for it.
   

9. Out: Fried food in the cafeteria.
   In: Wellness in the workplace.
   

10. Out: Incentives; pay employees more money and they'll do more.
    In: Rewards; being valued matters more than money.
    

So ask yourself which of these out-of-date practices you're still using. There's no time like now to try something new.

HR Nightmare? Employees Who Become Rivals

Bangalore: History & pop culture is rife with examples of famous mentor - student relations and so is literature ; Frodo & Gandalf, King Arthur & Merlin, Harry Potter & Dumbledore, Yoda and Luke Skywalker.

Mentoring an individual is an experience that brings with it a strange mix of satisfaction and intense frustration. This is because in many instances, the student manages to outdo the teacher. Although a good teacher may take this a sign of success, it may invariably also result in some envy and paranoia. This is what deters many employers from hiring extremely ambitious people to work for them. They are worried that the freshers will take all the lessons that they can learn in the company and use it to start a company which may rival the place where they started off. This is an exercise in futility claims Mikal E. Belikov in an article for entrepreneur.

What does this imply for HR personnel? You are forced to recruit subpar individuals who may bring along a ‘work to eat’ attitude and will do the bare minimum it will take to get their wages. They will not attempt to learn more or grow in their career. Lack of ambition is not a virtue. “Where do you see yourself a few years down the line?” is a question most recruiters ask candidates during preliminary selections. HR personnel should seek to hire the individuals who wish to grow in their work place and not start off their own business ventures. If they state that eventually they wish to work in your organization but probably at a higher post, you have found a keeper.

Even then there may be candidates who do wish to start an enterprise which may rival yours. However it is pertinent to note that rivalry is not always bad. It is necessary to treat employees as resources who carry the potential to bring about change in your enterprise. They may also seek to start their own business, in which case the management has to ensure they have a strategy that is unique and will attract new clients/ retain old ones.

Prep Your 30-, 60-, 90-day Business Plan for the Job Interview

Want to land a sales job and start on the right foot? Be ready to explain how you’ll move the numbers in the first months.

If you work in sales at the manager level or above, you should be prepared to hear the question from a hiring manager on a job interview; he wants to know what your 30-, 60- and 90-day plans are to build a new sales territory, halt a customer exodus or improve revenue. Be ready to deliver your plan and back it with data, said Kathleen Steffey, CEO and founder of Naviga Services, a Tampa, Fla., recruiting and staffing agency that specializes in marketing and sales roles.
“We highly recommend it for candidates, especially in the final stages of the interview,” she said. “It shows them, ‘I’ve thought about this.’ ” In any field where revenue is at stake, if the hiring team sees someone who’s prepared and appears ready to enhance revenue right away, they’ll be more likely to offer that person the job.
Dan, a medical-supplies salesman from the Midwest and a SalesLadder member who asked that his full name not be used, used the tactic to his advantage on a recent job interview for a diagnostic-services company. He said the business plan he put together for his interview showed the hiring manager that he had done his homework and was familiar with the company, its products and the market.
“I did the back research and found out what types of jobs I’ll be going on,” Dan said. “They were mainly concerned about ‘what you can do for me’ in terms of revenue.”
Dan provided the potential employer with a detailed account of a sales territory, citing specific numbers of how many doctors and medical groups are in an area; he said his planning not only impressed the hiring manager, but it also prepared him to do the job.
In sales, it takes time to develop contacts and strengthen relationships, so business plans should reflect that maturation as it develops over periods of 30, 60 and 90 days. Dan said his plan was realistic and obtainable – major factors in its effectiveness – “targeting smaller accounts initially and larger ones in the 60- and 90-day period.”
Generic is garbage
The plan doesn’t need to be a 100-page briefing on every factor facing the company’s sales strategy and every data point down to the penny. It can be a simple PowerPoint presentation attached to an e-mail. Nevertheless, you must include a summary that proves you’re capable of making money for the company.
Such presentations are a platform to show the hiring manager how seriously you’re taking the opportunity, Steffey said.
While you can find business-plan templates online, there’s no auto-fill application that allows you to demonstrate your prowess with the click of a button.
Naviga Services’ Steffey stresses that these reports need to be as unique and informative as possible − considering trends and market conditions. The more it speaks to the hiring manager’s needs, the more effective it is, she said.
“It can’t be general. It has to be crafted for the particular employer,” she said. “If it’s general, it’s garbage.”
“That’s a turnoff when they see something generic,” Dan agreed. “If it matches up with their values, that’s what you have to base the business plan around.”

Career Resolutions That Helps You for a Good Future

Every time people make resolutions according to their wish list of achieving something in their life. Yes, every individual would have been bound to certain practices that would have helped them for a better lifestyle, but some may be those practices that might have led for a negative impact on their life. So, making resolutions shouldn’t be just for namesake during your birthday and during the New Year. It should be a promise you make to your own self, which you won’t break it at any point of time even if it is difficult to attain.
Apart from that, you need to make resolutions for your professional life as well as it helps you to succeed in your journey towards a great career. Here are few resolutions you need to make in your career as reported by Namrata Nongpiur in the mensxp website.

1.  Be Organized:
To succeed in your professional life you need to be organized without lagging behind. To be prepared every time, you need to come out of your laziness, as the first step if you are lazy by nature. It has been believed that being organized every time influence a lot on your career. Apart from that, being organized will help your efficiency level. So, the best example to be organized is by maintaining your important files and papers in a proper order so that it will be handy for you to reach whenever you want. Prepare a list on those activities you are suppose to concentrate each day, so that it helps you to concentrate on the most important work of the day with high priority.

2.  Build New Contacts:
   In a workplace no worker can be guessed as a permanent one as old workers will be quitting the company in some point of time and new one will be replacing their positions. So, it will naturally be difficult for an employee to mingle easily with their new colleagues. But, this shouldn’t be the situation even if you find it difficult to mingle with new colleagues. You should start building good rapport with your colleagues and start interacting with company’s clients whenever you get an opportunity like during the press conferences, other corporate get together. This type of social network will be beneficial for you in sooner or later.

3.  Leave office work at workplace itself:

Always though you are more professionally enthusiastic, you are needed by your family as well. So, as this is the situation that every professional is facing in their life, they need to know how to maintain a proper work-life balance. The first step towards achieving a proper work-life balance is that keeping your office work at workplace itself instead of bringing it to home as well. So, if you follow this way, you can give your proper concentration towards your family as well without making them get irritated by seeing you working on the office work at home too.

4.  Set a target for yourself each week:

Many believe that, setting a self-target will help an individual work according to achieve that by adjusting their time for each work. By setting a self-target will favor you to a great extent. It also helps you to increase your level of dedication towards your work. Achieving your own target will be more joyful that achieving the targets set by others. Prepare a self-target for every week and schedule your time according to that.

5 Steps to Effective Alumni Networking in a Job Search

Alumni can be some of your most valuable job search networking contacts, but only if you utilize them effectively.
Unfortunately, most candidates have the goal of an introduction ... and it's usually the wrong goal. When you pick an alumni networking goal that's achievable (one that is in the contact's power to deliver) and that delivers maximum impact to your job search, alumni can be a huge help to your efforts.
The strategy of alumni networking wasn't always so important. When there were candidate shortages prior to 2007, most companies had written or unwritten policies to give a guaranteed interview to anyone who came through a company employee from anywhere within the organization. Pre-2007, when so many employers had guaranteed interview policies, it didn't matter how you networked because volume of networking was more important — it was literally just a random numbers game.
Fast forward to today's job market, where "spray and pray" doesn't work. Today's effective alumni networking techniques are far more focused, with specific targets, goals and actions. When you learn how to leverage them in the right way, alumni networking contacts can represent tremendous inroads into employers.

5 Best Practices to Use When Networking With Alumni

1. Find the right alumni: Use alumni networks to gain information or access to hiring managers in departments of your target companies to give you the widest reach. Too often, job seekers use their alumni networks to try to directly reach hiring managers and HR managers. Contacting HR managers is not the best use of networking efforts, since their job is to keep candidates away from the hiring manager — they're gatekeepers who may not have good information about the hiring manager's real problems. If you're looking for hiring managers in your alumni directory, you'll limit the reach of your networking. Alumni directories only list limited numbers of hiring managers in your area, representing a small number of companies, even in huge schools with large alumni networks. By combining your alumni directory and Linkedin into your networking research, you can find exponentially more alumni who can lead you to the right person.
2. Ask for information: Reach alumni who can provide company/department/hiring manager inside information. Why would you ask these valuable contacts about what jobs are open when you can find that on the company's Web site? Instead of asking for something your fellow alum probably can't provide (a job), ask for something they can provide that's far more valuable to you — information. Most candidates don't have a clear idea what you really need in order to be ready to meet a hiring manager (besides just a positive attitude). To make your best first impression, you need to be ready by already knowing what's on the hiring manager's mind, and what the biggest problems, most difficult obstacles, greatest opportunities and priorities are.
3. Build bridges: The right alumni to reach are often ones who aren't easy to contact because they're busy people. Find alumni (often outside your target company) who know and can lead you to someone else within the company that can provide inside information. Of course this information isn't listed in your alumni directory — this will take some digging and groundwork using Linkedin and (gasp!) your phone.
4. Have an alum vouch for you: Vouching can be one of the most valuable ways a fellow alum can assist your job search. When you're trying to reach a contact within your target hiring organization, it's tough to build trust because you're a stranger. We've been taught not to trust strangers from when we were young children, so why would you expect adults to suddenly act differently? Vouching changes this because when a common acquaintance tells your company contact that you're OK, that you're trustworthy, the walls come down and, usually, quick trust is built.
5. Get an introduction to hiring managers: While most job seekers make this the most immediate alumni networking goal, it should be one of the last. At this point, most of you are asking "why?" Most candidates rush to set up sessions with hiring managers prematurely, before they are ready. You only get one chance to make a first impression ... why would you want to put yourself in that situation before you have the necessary information to wow the hiring manager (see #2 above). Only after you understand the hiring manager's most pressing issues are you ready for an introduction. Once you've prepared in this way, you'll give the hiring manager two main impressions: That you've already solved his/her most important problems, and that you're somehow a mind reader.
   

Alumni networking can be one of your best networking opportunities — it's important to know how to maximize the effectiveness of these opportunities. You may be tempted to go in for the quick kill, immediately asking for a job or to be introduced to the hiring manager. It's not your fault — job search used to be easy. When there were candidate shortages, you could make all sorts of mistakes and still land a good job in a reasonable timeframe. Businesses from the 1940's until 2007 faced slow growth unless they could find reasonably qualified candidates ... the businesses who could find candidates would grow, while those who were too picky would stagnate. A market with job shortages changes what works and what doesn't.
So be careful in how you network with alumni, so you make the most of this valuable resource and create the maximum help for your job search.

9 Metrics Every HR Must Know

1. Desired Action Percentage (DAP):
   It is similar to conversion rate. It can be calculated by the formula DAP = visitors who execute the desired action / total visitors.
   It depends on how good your market in targeted visitors. Analyzing your results over time is a great way to evaluate DAP
   
   2. Monthly Turnover Rate:
   (Number of separations during month / average number of employees during month) x 100) gives the Monthly Turnover Rate. In a HR context, turnover is the rate at which an employer gains and losses employees. So if an employer is said to have a high turnover relative to its competitors. This makes the employees of that company have a shorter average tenure compared to other companies in the same industry.
   
   3. Revenue per Employee:
   It is the total revenue / total number of employees. Evaluating the cost of a lost employee due to voluntary or involuntary turnover is the main purpose of this. "Revenue Per Employee is the only metric that makes sense when viewing the performance of an HR Leader If it's about the business, there's no better measurement than revenue" as written by Kris Dunn back in his article Revenue Per Employee: The Only Performance Goal You'll Ever Need for HR Leaders published in the web site hrexaminer.com
   
   4. Human Capital Cost:
   Pay + Benefits + Contingent Labor Cost / Full Time Equivalents is the formula to evaluate Human Capital Cost. Equilibrium can be achieved in between the required resources. The reason is Quantification of the Human Resources value helps the management to cope up with the changes in its quantum and quality.
   
   5. HR to Staff Ratio:
   It can be calculated by the formula Employees / Human Resources Team Members. During Recession times when employ number is greatly reduced this ratio is very important.
   
   6. Return on Investment:
   (Total benefit - total costs) x 100 is the formula to calculate this. The investment should not be undertaken if an investment does not have a positive ROI, or if there are other opportunities with a higher ROI, then the investment should not be undertaken. So ROI plays a crucial role.
   
   7. Percentage Female at Management Level:
   Female Management Level Employees/Management Level Headcount gives the Female Percentage at Management Level. HR's need to examine their levels of support offered to women to fall in line with quotas on female board representation, a solution currently in discussion in some countries as written by April Mackenzie, Global head of public policy and external affairs in the News article Proportion of women in senior management falls to 2004 levels published in the web site of internationalbusinessreport.com
   
   8. Promotion Rate:
   Promotions / Headcount is the formula to determine Promotion Rate. "Promotion of qualified employees is a people-management strategy used to retain staff as a direct response to continuing improvements in the economy." according to the SHRM 2006 U.S. Job Retention Poll Findings published in shrm.org
   
   9. Visitor Engagement Degree (VED):
   The formula is VED = unique visitors/ total pages viewed. It a metric intended to determine how "engaged" site visitors are.
   "If the visitor arrived with the intent of getting your phone number, the fewer pages they have to click the better" says Jeff Haden in his article "2 Web Metrics Every Entrepreneur Should Know" on inc.com.
   

10 Ways to Tell if You're Confident – or Arrogant

There's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. This is especially true given both entail a strong belief in one's own abilities. When it comes to the responses they provoke, however, that's where the similarities end.
Confidence is inspiring; arrogance is a turn-off.
Confidence gets hired; arrogance is shown the door.
Building confidence takes work; arrogance is simple. In fact, it's easy to come off as arrogant. Avoid these 12 behaviors so you don't leave the impression of being a Class-A jerk people would rather avoid instead of the confident leader they want to follow.
1. Drop names out of context.
The name-dropper is a character who frequents many local Chamber of Commerce mixers. Name-droppers are a dime a dozen. Completely unsolicited, they will jabber endlessly about who they know, who they met and who they pal around with. As a journalist, I interview many great business leaders, one of whom was Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Bringing up his name in a presentation about leadership is appropriate; talking about Schultz with a barista at my local Starbucks is arrogant.
2. Avoid eye contact.
Arrogant people could care less about others. They're only interested in themselves. The arrogant person will constantly be looking past you for someone else to talk to — someone they think will benefit them more than you. Confident leaders look you in the eye and make you feel as though you're the most important person in the room.
3. Arrive consistently late to meetings … and don't apologize.
Arrogant people think their time is more important than anybody else's. Being late means nothing to them. Confident leaders are timely and quick to apologize when they're off schedule.
4. Use condescending phrases and put-downs.
Some well-known business leaders have been known to put down others with phrases like “that's stupid” or “you're a bozo.” These particular leaders are supremely confident, of course, but they've crossed the line into arrogance. I worked for one famous broadcast executive who routinely demeaned his employees and colleagues. Before long there was a massive brain drain from his department. He was bright; ambitious; and yes, confident. But his arrogance turned so many people off that he lost the loyalty of his team (and ultimately his position).
5. Strut or swagger when you walk into a room.
The best way to describe arrogant body language is “dominating.” Examples include pointing a finger at someone's chest, hands on hips or waving someone off with a flick of the finger. Confidence is open and less intimidating.
6. Interrupt conversations … frequently.
Since arrogant people are only concerned about themselves, they're not really listening to you. Not only are they always on the lookout for someone else to talk to, they interrupt the conversation frequently.
7. Have an answer for everything.
Psychologists say that arrogance is a compensation for insecurities and weaknesses. An arrogant person will rarely say, “I don't know the answer, but I'll find out.” Confident people admit mistakes and learn something from those experiences.
8. Always one-up the other person.
The other day I was speaking to someone who has a reputation for arrogance, and I noticed a common theme in his conversation with me — he always tried to one-up everything I said. For example, when the conversation turned to a documentary that I had recently seen on sharks, this man said, “That's nothing, I swim with sharks.” This trait in arrogant people is so common that the famous Dilbert cartoon strip has a recurring character named “Topper.” Confident people don't feel the need to brag. Their accomplishments do it for them.
9. Blast competitors.
Arrogant people can't see the strengths in their competitors, and if they do, they seek to minimize those competitors by bad-mouthing them. This simply makes the arrogant person look even smaller. I recently overheard a woman talking to a recruiter and saying vicious things about her former company as well as other companies in the industry. The recruiter listened patiently. When the woman left, I leaned over and asked the recruiter what he thought. He simply rolled his eyes. Take the high road so you don't get the eye roll.
10. Blame someone else.
Arrogant people can't 'fess up to their own mistakes. Watch "America's Next Top Model" with Tyra Banks. The most arrogant young wannabes are the ones who blame others for not taking a good photograph — it's either the fault of the photographer or the makeup artist. Needless to say, they don't last long, even in an industry that has more than its share of divas.
Some famous business leaders are unquestionably arrogant — people about whom you may have heard or for whom you work. But the vast majority of inspiring leaders are confident, not arrogant. Be a leader people want to follow and not one people would rather avoid.

Do You Interview Like a Pro?

I often hear how nerve-wracking and uncomfortable it is to go to an interview, but, I promise, it doesn’t have to be that way. We’re going to look at three strategies to re-frame and prepare for an interview that will seal the deal and get you that job offer.
More often than not, job seekers go into interviews with the totally wrong objectives. They seem to think that the goal is to sell themselves and to make themselves look great. They are afraid to show any weaknesses and are so uptight that they don’t showcase their personality.
Many find the questions that are asked in interviews unnerving and the idea of asking questions even more intimidating.
So we are going to break it down and cover the keys to successful interviewing one at a time.
In fact, we’re going to cover three main ideas:
How to re-frame an interview in a way that makes you feel empowered and confident
The how (and why) of introducing candor and authenticity into your interview
The whole gamut of questions — why they are so important, what you should ask when and why they frame your entire conversation
Reframing Your Interview
You can toss everything that you think you know about interviewing out the window. This is your new framework.
Your No. 1 Goal in an Interview
Have you forgotten everything you previously thought you knew? Good.
Your No. 1 goal in an interview is simple. It’s to make the other person (the interviewer) comfortable. You want to put that person at ease and make them feel like they are having coffee with an old friend.
Tall order? Here are three strategies that will help immediately:
Smile and start with small talk —just like "real life," ease into the meeting
Mirror them (sit in the same posture, if they look at something, look too!)
Laugh! Share a joke or a funny story — just make sure it makes you look good

What an Interview Really Is
This can come as a shocker, but it will totally change the way you approach interviews, giving you much more power and confidence, making you far more desirable to the company, so listen up!
An interview is a conversation between two people trying to figure out if the opportunity is a good fit. It's like a first date — neither should have all the power.
It's easy to feel powerless in an interview, but, remember, this is as much your decision as it is theirs. Treat the interview like that! Here are two ways to assert your power in an interview:
Ask to meet the team you will be working with primarily
Ask questions throughout the interview — don’t make them all softballs
Questions, Questions, Questions
Asking the right questions at an interview can be the difference between a dream job and a dread job.
10 Great Questions for Just About Any Interview
Early in the Interview:
What would your dream candidate skills and characteristics be?
What are your financial goals for the coming year? How does my department/position impact them?
What are the two biggest challenges you hope that the person in this position will alleviate?
The Middle of the Interview:
What would a person in this position likely be doing on a Tuesday morning?
What is the meeting culture of this organization? (frequency, length, etc.)
Is there any travel? If so — how frequent, for what durations and locations?
Late in the Interview:
Who is on the primary team that I will work with? May I meet them?
What kind of exposure will I have with the leadership team?
If there is a challenge, what is the chain of command? What kind of support can I expect?
What is your greatest reservation about having me fill the position?
Well, it's official, armed with your new mindset and questions that will make you stand out, you are officially ready to interview like a pro!

7 Ways to Move Up by Moving Over

Are you looking for that next career challenge but unsure how to get there? Climbing the corporate ladder might not be the only way. Today more than ever, a career detour just might lead to your career destiny. At every level — including the top — professionals, managers, and executives-in-waiting commonly zigzag through several lateral lurches before stepping up to their destination position.
Why has lateral become the new way to the top? The recession is partly to blame — the hierarchy in many companies flattened and compressed during the recession, effectively eliminating rungs that were previously part of the expected climb.
Because of this reality, it has become more important to “think sideways.” If you don’t plan ahead by considering lateral rotations as part of your career development plan, you may end up stuck on your current ladder rung indefinitely, unless you find a way to take a larger-than-usual step up. Yet paradoxically, exceptional advancement is less likely if you haven’t taken the time to boost your experience and confidence with lateral moves.
Cheryl Palmer, career coach and founder of Call to Career, suggested a helpful analogy: “If you’re stuck in a traffic jam and it may be hours before you’re able to move forward, it makes sense to change lanes and exit on a side road where you can more quickly navigate around it. Sitting in the traffic jam and fuming doesn’t get you anywhere.”
For advice on how to effectively turn a side step into a step up, TheLadders asked several career-development experts to weigh in:
1. Make It Make Sense. Without a strategic career path, lateral moves can become merely a merry-go-round. Joanne Cleaver, author of the new book The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent, suggested you must proactively plot your own career plan to make sense of diagonal and lateral moves. “Your employer won’t do it for you, so the first thing to know is that it’s up to you to pursue and land opportunities that advance your career agenda,” said Cleaver.
A great place to start is to envision your next “up” move, and then reverse-engineer the qualifications you need to make a serious run for that position. Cleaver recommended assessing your current experience and skill set to determine what you might need to get where you want to go.
“Ask yourself: Am I lacking hands-on operational experience? Proven expertise in a business skill, such as client retention? A working knowledge of a relevant slice of technology? What skill set would tee up my success in that position?” suggested Cleaver. By comparing the skills required by your next-step job to the skills you currently have, you’ll quickly see the gaps that a lateral move can fill.
2. Do What Needs to Be Done. Your informal self-assessment will likely uncover areas where your skills could be stronger to get you to the next level. Determine specific strategic actions that will help you reach your career goals faster.
“If you are a project manager who wants to become a department manager, you might need two things: a stronger network outside your department so that your reputation is already established with your potential new peers, and broader exposure to customers and clients so you can show that you can drive growth as well as get work accomplished,” said Cleaver.
In this case, she suggested considering a short-term rotation to cultivate relationships with other departments and functions, or working on an assignment that puts you and your team on a customer-facing project.
3. Volunteer Strategically. It can be difficult to find time for volunteer projects in the midst of your primary career responsibilities. But strategic volunteering can be a powerful way to rapidly expand your network of influencers and to backfill business skills, according to Cleaver.
To spin community service into an opportunity for lateral rotation, Cleaver suggested joining an organizational committee whose volunteers complement—yet don’t duplicate—your existing network. Look to your current skills for a logical toehold (for example, if you work in marketing, join the marketing committee).
“Your end game is to transition to an assignment that builds your business skills, once your credibility is established,” explained Cleaver. “So a marketing exec, needing operational and financial management experience, might volunteer to co-chair an annual appeal.” Such assignments tee up results-driven case studies for employees to bring back to their day job, illustrating business skills that prove their qualification for general management.
4. Ensure You’re Still Learning. While sometimes taking a few steps sideways — or even back — can help you move forward, not all lateral moves or career detours will take you in the direction that you ultimately want to go. The trick is knowing which will and which won’t.
According to Melissa Llarena of Career Outcomes Matter, it can be detrimental to take a detour if you’re unlikely to learn anything new in the next position. “If you are switching to gain different skills or expand your network in the company, then a sideways turn could be helpful,” said Llarena. “However, if you are switching into a role where you cannot leverage any of your existing skills, then you should hear an internal alarm go off.” To help avoid a dead end, Roy Cohen, career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional's Survival Guide, recommended evaluating any lateral move in light of whether it will expand your skill set or neutralize what may be viewed as outdated or “legacy” experience.
Stacey Hawley, Career Specialist at The Credo Company, noted that career detours can be beneficial if they round out your overall experience and practical education. “Some detours enhance your understanding of an industry or related industries—for example, industries that are vertically integrated,” said Hawley. “When determining whether a career detour is beneficial, consider how you will use your newly acquired skills for subsequent roles.”
5. Decide for Yourself What ‘Up’ Means. Part of effective career planning is knowing what’s right for you. If you reach a career crossroads where a move feels wrong based on your own goals and vision—whether it’s sideways, up, or down—listen to yourself. Not everyone’s path makes sense as a vertical trajectory. “We often enter the workforce thinking it’s a straight path to the top,” says certified professional coach Laurie Battaglia. “Usually it’s not.”
Workplace coach Darcy Eikenberg described working with a senior leader who knew that the next available step up on his organization’s traditional ladder would force him to spend more time traveling — something he dreaded with a young son at home. But after he spent time redefining what career advancement really meant to him, he discovered that his current post gave him the flexibility and true advancement opportunity that he wanted.
“He chose to stay put, to recognize that growing in his current role would not be a detour, but sacrificing his personal values would be,” said Eikenberg. “He’s been happily succeeding personally and professionally ever since.”
6. Leverage the Lattice. Whether your lateral move comes about by design or decree, there are ways you can maximize time spent horizontally. One advantage of latticed moves is that they allow you to experience different viewpoints and perspectives.
“Instead of looking down my own ladder, I’m going to look across the lattice of the organization,” said Halley Bock, CEO and president of Fierce, Inc. “Rather than asking for input from people who share my perspective and experience, the question becomes how to embrace and leverage the different vantage points, including those of different generations.”
Career Advice from TheLadders

• 5 Steps to Effective Alumni Networking in a Job Search
• Oh Sandy...
• Fire the boss!
• So if not me, who did get the job?
  

Offering lateral moves as an alternative to straight-upward movement can be particularly important for the younger workforce, according to Bock. “The opportunity to work among different teams can give variety and depth to employees’ work experience,” said Bock. She added that Millennials bring a strong desire to share their experience and make a difference—so offering multiple avenues to learn and grow can be essential for retaining top young talent.
7. Create Your Own Promotion. With the collapse of mid-management roles in many companies, an employee with 10 to 15 years of experience may suddenly find there’s no next level in sight—their leaders may be in the same age range with no plans to retire or leave any time soon. Eikenberg said that in cases where you can’t expect a promotion, it may be time to orchestrate your own with a few key strategies:

• Identify the pain in your organization and how you are uniquely suited to help calm that pain from your current position.
• Build a business plan for a new role, department, or service you might lead.
• Communicate with key players in your organization to let your intentions be known.
• Take your efforts as seriously as you would a new job search.
  

“It takes creativity, persistence, and confidence to create your own next step,” said Eikenberg, “but if you’re truly hungry for advancement in a flat world, make it yourself.”

How to Know When Your Personal Brand Isn't Working

Attention to detail and small tweaks can get you back on track.

By Heather Huhman

You’ve taken all the right steps. You've come up with your personal brand, made business cards, customized your resume, wrote cover letters, accumulated recommendations, compiled a portfolio/blog/website, completed your social media profiles, and set up your professional, brand-compatible e-mail account. You’ve networked, applied for jobs, and put yourself out there.
But after all that work, you’re still sitting at home, twiddling your thumbs and drumming your fingers. Why?
Maybe your social media profiles aren’t presenting your brand the way you want, or your resume doesn’t accurately reflect your top skills. Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: your personal brand isn’t working.
So what can you do?
Review your resume. Look over it again. Make sure your experience is up to date and all your responsibilities from each position are clear. Eliminate wordiness and try to avoid padding your resume. Get rid of summer jobs and leadership positions from high school. If you’re more than five years out of college, toss out your freshman and sophomore years of college as well. Unless the experience really highlights something essential, drop it off the resume. While resume pruning can be scary and seem unnecessary, future employers will thank you when they don’t have to weed through padding and extraneous information.
Revisit social profiles. Take another look at your social profiles and how they present your brand: you. Are all your college photos — you know, the one of you bonging a beer that your best friend added out of nostalgia — hidden? Have you made sure to remove yourself from groups that might present you in a negative light? It’s okay to remove yourself from that group your freshman hall made in solidarity when they stopped serving fried chicken. Weed out groups that don’t represent who you are anymore, or that might appear in conflict with your brand.
Also, go through your LinkedIn profile. Are you a member of your industry’s group in your community? Most groups are open to join, and if not, requesting an invitation can never hurt. Join professional groups to build your network but also to demonstrate to employers your different interests. Make sure any volunteer experience or unpaid positions you may have held are listed on your profile. Even helping your friend’s mom set up the website for her new business counts as experience and builds your resume. You want to position yourself as an expert in your field, so the more experience you have visible to potential employers, the better.
Proofread! Proofread everything. Make sure your cover letters don’t have typos, your electronic signature shows up properly at the end of each e-mail, and your portfolio or webpage layout displays correctly. These may seem like little things, but to employers, theese types of errors display a lack of followthrough and potential sloppiness. Always, always, always proofread everything you send out or post to the Internet. Have a friend, or a few friends, look over any new content or work samples. Keep in mind that potential employers are looking for you to prove yourself, so don’t let a little mistake keep you from landing that dream job.
And, when all else fails, talk to a professional. It is perfectly acceptable to ask for help — encouraged even. Ask your boss from your last internship, a connection you have in the industry, even your parents, for help setting up your brand. While it should be someone who knows you, professional connections with less one-on-one contact can still have helpful tips. Whoever you ask, give them everything. They can look it over with a fresh set of eyes and tell you from an objective perspective what your brand says about you. If it’s not the image you want to present, ask them how you can fix it. Ask them to advise you on what social media sites you should, if you’re not already, be on, which niche communities you should be joining, and who you should be networking with. See if they can set up any introductions with people they think may be helpful in furthering your career.
So take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to look objectively at your brand. Chances are, if it’s not working, it’s because of something little. Follow these steps, and get ready to build the greatest brand of all: you.

How to Answer the ‘Tell Me About Yourself’ Interview Question

Don’t be afraid of this question; instead use it as an opportunity to position yourself for success.

By Lee E. Miller

When I was a human resources executive doing hiring interviews, I almost always began my interviews with candidates by requesting, “Tell me about yourself.” I did that for a number of reasons, the most important of which was to see how the candidates handled themselves in an unstructured situation.
I wanted to see how articulate they were, how confident they were and generally what type of impression they would make on the people with whom they came into contact on the job.
I also wanted to get a sense of what they thought was important.
Most candidates find this question to be a particularly difficult one to answer. That is a misplaced view. This question offers an opportunity to describe yourself positively and focus the interview on your strengths. Be prepared to deal with it. These days, it’s unavoidable. Like me, most interviewers start off their interviews with this question. A lot of interviewers open with it as an icebreaker or because they're still getting organized, but they all use it to get a sense of whom you are.
The Wrong Response
There are many ways to respond to this question correctly and just one wrong way: by asking, “What do you want to know?” That tells me you have not prepared properly for the interview and are likely to be equally unprepared on the job. You need to develop a good answer to this question, practice it and be able to deliver it with poise and confidence.
The Right Response
To help you prepare, I spoke to a number of career coaches on how best to respond when faced with this question. Heed the career advice that follows to ace this opener:
The consensus of the coaches with whom I spoke:

• Focus on what most interests the interviewer
• Highlight your most important accomplishments
  

Focus on What Interests the Interviewer
According to Jane Cranston, a career coach from New York, “The biggest mistake people being interviewed make is thinking the interviewer really wants to know about them as a person.
They start saying things like, 'Well, I was born in Hoboken, and when I was three we moved …’ Wrong. The interviewer wants to know that you can do the job, that you fit into the team, what you have accomplished in your prior positions and how can you help the organization.”
Nancy Fox, of Fox Coaching Associates, agrees. She notes that “many candidates, unprepared for the question, skewer themselves by rambling, recapping their life story, delving into ancient work history or personal matters.” She recommends starting with your most recent employment and explaining why you are well qualified for the position. According to Fox, the key to all successful interviewing is to match your qualifications to what the interviewer is looking for. “In other words, you want to be selling what the buyer is buying.”
Think of your response as a movie preview, says Melanie Szlucha, a coach with Red Inc. “The movie preview always relates to the movie you're about to see. You never see a movie preview for an animated flick when you're there to see a slasher movie. So the ‘tell me about yourself” answer needs to directly fit the concerns of your prospective employer.”
Previews are also short but show clips of the movie that people would want to see more of later. They provide enough information about the movie so that you could ask intelligent questions about what the movie is about. Hiring managers don't want to look unprepared by reading your resume in front of you, so Szlucha advises that you “provide them some topics to ask you more questions about.”
Highlight Your Most Important Accomplishments
Greg Maka, managing director at 24/7 Marketing, advises job seekers to "tell a memorable story about your attributes.” For example, if you tell an interviewer that people describe you as tenacious, provide a brief story that shows how you have been tenacious in achieving your goals. “Stories are powerful and are what people remember most,” he said.
One great example is that of Fran Capo, a comedienne who bills herself as “the world’s fastest-talking female.” She offers the following advice: “Whenever I go on auditions or interviews, I have a "set" opening I use. ... I tell the interviewer what I do in one sentence and then say, ‘And I also happen to be the Guinness Book of World Records’ fastest-talking female.’ Then I elaborate.” According to Capo, the main thing in anything you do is to be memorable, in a good way. Your goal when you answer the ‘tell me about yourself’ question is to find a way stand out from everyone else.
And, Be Brief
Maureen Anderson, host of "The Career Clinic" radio show, stresses the importance of keeping your answer short: “The employer wants to know a little bit about you to begin with — not your life story. Just offer up two or three things that are interesting — and useful. You should take about a minute to answer this question.”
To make sure it is succinct and covers what you want it to cover, she suggests that you “write your answer out before the interview, practice it, time it and rehearse it until it sounds natural. Then practice it some more. The goal is to tell the employer enough to pique their interest, not so much that they wonder if they’d ever be able to shut you up during a coffee break at the office.”
Rather than dread this question, a well-prepared candidate should welcome this inquiry. Properly answered, this question puts the candidate in the driver's seat. It gives her an opportunity to sell herself. It allows her to set the tone and direction for the rest of the interview, setting her up to answer the questions she most wants to answer.

How to Use Google to Make More Direct Hires

Here are a few ways you can increase the amount of people visiting the jobs listed on your website. More visitors means more jobs filled directly… and that’s a good thing. I’m going to give you some tips on how to optimize your career website so it gets indexed by search engines and once the likes of Google start showing your job, then job seeking traffic is sure to follow.
1. Make sure the url of the front page of your careers site is correct
Basically, ensure the word jobs is in it, for example: www.bigfirm.com/jobs. Not careers or current vacancies… just the word ‘jobs’. The reason for this is because job seekers searching on search engines type in a job title, location, some key skills and the word jobs:
Finance Manager jobs London management accounts
If the word jobs is in the URL of the page, you’re more likely to be indexed by a search engine.
2. Separate pages for every job
Make sure the job you’re advertising has a separate page dedicated to the full details of the role. If you list all the jobs on 1 page, that’s fine but don’t then allow the text to also appear on that page. The job details must open up as a separate page and (here’s the crucial bit) ensure the job title and location are in the url: www.bigfirm.com/jobs/marketing_manager_miami
or something like that. If a job seeker does a search for Marketing Manager jobs Miami, a search engine will rank a page much more prominently if the search terms are all in the url.
3. Don’t be shy with the keywords
So if the job is a Marketing Manager role and you’re looking for someone with skills in online work, banner advertising, SEO and maybe basic HTML, make sure you mention both the job title and the keywords several times each in the job details on your careers site.
The easiest way of doing it is to have a keyword box at the bottom of the job details:
Keywords:  Marketing Manager HTML online SEO banner adverting
4. Mention all possible job titles and keywords
If you’re job is a Business Development Manager, it will never appear if a job seeker is searching for a Sales Manager job. Similarly if you’re hiring a Digital Marketing Manager, it may not be very high up the ranking on Google if a job seeker has searched for Online Marketing Manager jobs.
So make sure cover this problem but mentioning all possible alternative keywords or job titles in the advert text to maximize your chances of the job being indexed high up.
5. If you’re regularly hiring for a certain job….
Make sure you have profile pages of similar people who work for you listed on your careers site under a separate section ‘What our staff think”. Then get them to write a brief profile on themselves and describe what they do, ideally packing their profile with the job title/keywords that relate to the role you’re trying to hire (and don’t forget the url as well – point 2).
Also, here’s a great tip: on their job title, hyperlink it back to the jobs page of your website (see point 6 below as to why !). If this appears on someone else’s site it will become a back link (more on back-links in point 6).
The more your careers site contains details relating to the role you’re trying to fill (and not just the actual page containing the job details), the more likely your careers site will be indexed high up by Google and others.
6. Create a blog
Get new starters to write articles on your blog about what it’s like to work there, or any topic that relates to your business, then make sure their profile is listed at the bottom of it crammed full of relevant keywords and their job title.
James Smith is a Java Developer at xxxxx. He designs our software in Java and has vast experience in building platforms based on SQL, HTMl etc etc.
Obviously you don’t have to reveal the person’s name if you don’t want to, but every week ask a new member of staff to contribute a brief article.
A blog has several benefits. Articles can be circulated around the internet. The more back links you have to your site from external sites, the more likely a search engine will index your careers pages and if you create a back link relating to a specific search term a job seeker might use… say Java Developer … Google and others rate that highly, thus indexing you even higher. So for example, if you’re regularly looking for Java Developers and one of your existing Java Developers writes an article, as per point 5, their profile at the bottom should have their job title, Java Developer, linked back to the front page of your careers section. The more these articles get published around the Internet, the more back links you’ll get.
Also a blog is a great way of telling job seekers about the business and about the staff which will attract more people to apply.
7. Be smart how you advertise the role on job boards
Again, it’s all about back links. If you advertise the role on a job board try and get the job title into the text linking back to the specific job page on your careers site.
Posting it on a group on LinkedIn or anywhere else… make sure there’s a back link underneath the job title.
Google loves back links from content relevant sites i.e. the sites are connected to the search term put in. So if you advertise the role on Monster, create the job text in a word document making sure that nice little back link is in there, then just copy and paste it into the text editor and on quite a few job boards they’ll allow the link to appear. Links back to your site from relevant recruitment sites, not just job boards, but blog sites, industry bodies, industry sites… all this is great for making Google love your careers pages.
8. Make it easy for people to socialise your job
Get your IT guys to add “Add this” to your job posts and pages and make it easy for people to forward your vacancy to their friends via their social networks. Remember, the more external sites it appears on (provided you’ve got a nice back link or 2 in there), the higher up the search engines it will appear and that’s not even counting the positive effect of having more eyes see your job on their friends’ Facebook and Twitter pages.