Leadership: How To Recover From Failure…”First of all, You Should Have the Confidence Yourself. But if You Can’t Transfer That to Your Teammates, You’re in Trouble”- Roger Staubach

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Great leaders have a profound relationship with failure. Where others might stop, shrink back, or give up, those who achieve great success move forward, undaunted in the face of failure.

Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, left, talks to quarterback Russell Wilson. (Credit: AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Last week, an avalanche of criticism fell on the Seattle Seahawks for failing to punch the ball in the end zone in the final seconds of Super Bowl XLIX. Critics of professional and amateur ilk took umbrage with the Seattle play call to pass the ball on second and goal from the one-yard-line as time ticked down to below half a minute in the game. Instead, the second-guessers called for the Seahawks to hand the ball to running back Marshawn Lynch. By now you know, quarterback Russell Wilson threw an interception and the New England Patriots won the game.

 

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How does a team come back from that failure? The thought of being unstoppable and just moving on is great conceptually, but what specific actions are needed from head coach Pete Carroll and, the de facto leader in any locker room, the quarterback?

Carroll took to Twitter, quickly looking to reshape the loss into the foundation for the team to grow. As the criticism continued, he sat down for an interview with Matt Lauer of the Today Show.

“One thing Pete Carroll did is he owned this,” said Paul Baard, a professor of communication and management at Fordham University. “It was a judgement call. You’ve got to make those and you’ve got to feel free to make those and go with your gut and he explained his rationale and it made sense.”

Baard, who holds a Ph.D. in psychology with a specialty in motivation, has worked with a professional league, athletes and coaches. He said in order to recover from failure leaders have to be at forefront in taking responsibility.

“And not with the silly talk where it doesn’t seem sincere, where there’s a comma, but. ‘We had a great game plan. It could’ve been better, but.’ You hear that all the time,” Baard said.

In 11 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys, Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach won two Super Bowls and 75 percent of the games he started. Whenever he lost, he said he couldn’t wait to get back on the field to make up for it in the next game. In a phone conversation from his successful post-football job, Staubach focused on two elements in talking about a quarterback’s role in a team recovering from failure – confidence and work habits.
“First of all, you should have the confidence yourself. But if you can’t transfer that to your teammates, you’re in trouble,” he said. “If they don’t believe in you, you’re toast as a quarterback.”

Staying after practice to put in extra reps and working out alongside teammates is key, Staubach said. He constantly showed teammates his competitive side, challenging them during the mundane routine of running laps. In his off seasons, Staubach worked as a real estate broker, but he also made sure to head to the practice field at night.

“They can see your work ethic,” Staubach said of any quarterback’s teammates.

Sports Leadership Notebook

Remembering Dean Smith
I spoke to former North Carolina players about what leadership lessons they learned from Dean Smith. This John Feinstein piece from the Washington Post details the difference Smith made for people in the way he lived his life.

A Zen Master Opens Up
The man with 11 NBA championship rings as a coach, Phil Jackson, is having a tough time building success with the New York Knicks. “So far, my experiment has fallen flat on its face,” he told Harvey Araton of the New York Times.

National Champion Runner with Autism

In the words and video on Mikey Brannigan, Sports Illustrated’s High School Athlete of the Month for February, Ali Fenwick captured the inspiring story of an autistic young man whose parents were told he would need to live in a group home. Instead Brannigan found running and became a national champion, who will now train for the 2016 Paralympics. If you’re looking for more than inspiration, take note of those around Brannigan, his parents, his coach – the people who never gave up on him.

What Not to Do Dept.

1a. Your word is supposed to matter. South Carolina’s Mr. Football Matt Colburn gave his word to the University of Louisville, committing to play for the Cardinals last June. Two days before national signing day, Louisville informed Colburn his scholarship offer had been pulled. Colburn will play college ball elsewhere, but Louisville strung him along for seven months, toying with the future of an 18-year-old.

1b. When an angry fan sends an angry email because the team he has supported for decades is the worst team in the NBA, don’t berate them in your response. New York Knicks owner James Dolan did that.

Jerry Barca is the author of Unbeatableand the host of The Jerry Barca Podcast. He can be reached at jerry@jerrybarca.com.

Leadership: Replace Your Bad Leadership Habits In 2015..Leaders Become Micromanagers & Bottlenecks Abound When This Habit Goes Totally Unchecked

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Contrary to popular belief, leadership isn’t always a natural born trait. It’s possible to learn leadership and to become increasingly skilled at leading others in both personal and professional capacities. The flip side of this is that if one is a natural born leader (i.e., they have the traits that are commonly associated with leaders inherent in their personalities), it’s very easy to fall into poor leadership habits.

Change

This can be counterproductive and dangerous. Since the beginning of the year is so often about creating new resolutions, let’s focus some of that energy on quitting the really harmful leadership habits that often arise as the result of using tactics that worked in the past, a general ignorance of how to lead or being placed in a leadership role without proper training.

1- Bad Leadership Habit 1: Poor Communication

You know the type. One minute, they’re dashing off an email that makes virtually no sense and the next they’re requesting a three-hour phone call to go over a relatively minute project that you’re not even working on. Or they ask you to make something the very highest priority and then tell you to scrap the plan next week, just as you’re finishing your project plan.

Seventy percent of small- to mid-size businesses claim that ineffective communication is their primary problem. Poor communication usually stems from poor organization; it can lead to inter-office frustrations, dropped deadlines and missed opportunities. Leaders become micromanagers and bottlenecks abound when this habit goes totally unchecked. According to 360 Solutions, a business with 100 employees spends an average downtime of 17 hours a week clarifying communication, which translates to a cost of $528,443 dollars per year. Plainly put, this isn’t a habit you can afford to keep.

 

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Prone to affect: Managers/ Startup founders, skilled contributors moved into management

Replace with: Better organization. You don’t have to be a naturally organized person to organize your work life so that it works for you AND your employees. There’s no shortage of productivity hacks and note-taking or recording platforms that can help clarify your intentions. The examples listed above stem from poor time management and the erroneous assumption that employees can read minds. Practice by taking great meetings notes and having staff repeat instructions back to you.

Reduce communication by email if possible and allow employees with organizational skills to create processes that make it easier for them to do their jobs (even if that’s not the way you’ve always done it).

 

2- Bad Leadership Habit 2: Hoarding Knowledge

Do you have a star player on the team? Is she constantly coming up with new and innovative ways of doing things? Does she take initiative instead of waiting around for you to tell her twice? Congratulations, you’ve hired and trained this valuable employee well. So why are you so threatened? Some leaders fall into the trap of thinking like a line worker who doesn’t want to get passed over for a raise.

You’re not in competition with your employees. Yet you feel that if they become better than you at a given task, somehow you won’t be “king of the hill” — so you hoard knowledge in order to keep that star employee in her place. A study from the Academy of Management Journal discovered employees have nothing to gain from hiding their insights from co-workers, and just end up hurting themselves by doing so. Leaders have even more to lose by hoarding knowledge, as this can cause direct reports to become discouraged and disengaged when they find their efforts unappreciated or worse, criticized.

Prone to affect: Middle managers promoted over coworkers, those in performance-based cultures

Replace with: Knowledge sharing. We’ve all heard the platitudes that you should never be the smartest one in the room. What if leaders really began living it? Instead of trying to keep all the interesting knowledge to yourself, leaders should start giving away as much as possible to their employees while seeking out new information. Inexpensive internal tools like Evernote and Yammer are incredible ways to get over your perceived place at the top of the mountain.

 

3- Bad Leadership Habit 3: Doing It All

If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Right? This bad leadership habit can make your employees completely dependent on YOUR expertise, crippling their potential for growth. Do you find yourself correcting every social update, writing every job description, personally handling every slightly thorny case that comes across your desk because “they simply don’t do it properly”?

Trust me: If your organization, department or company could run with just one person, it would. And your employees will never be able to step in and assist in any meaningful way if you keep pushing them down. In fact, putting the smartest guy in the room in the middle of every important decision can result in entire teams, departments and even companies grinding to a halt.
Prone to affect: Change management alums, those managing entry-level staff, entrepreneurs

Replace with: Delegation the right way. Micromanaging is a bad habit, but sometimes it’s important to know how to tell a team how to do things specifically and exactly. Those times include: training and onboarding, during a merger or acquisition, serious complaints or quality control issues and new product or service lines. If none of these are the case, learn the fine art of delegation and in turn, actual leadership. When leaders focus their time on leadership-worthy tasks, a team usually rises to the occasion. You can help by allowing your team to have meetings without you, giving them guidance around the goal of a project rather than specific execution advice and by setting clear expectations.

 

Bad Leadership Habit 4: Equating Activity With Progress

This is one of the worst habits of all. Creating an environment where one must “roll the silverware” (former server-speak for looking busy) can create a lack of focus in your staff and take their eyes off the real goals. Look, not everyone can be “heads down” all the time. Humans need breaks in order for creativity to flourish. If you insist on a nose-to-the-grindstone mentality, you may burn out your employees before the afternoon slump.

Prone to affect: Everyone over 30 years old

Replace with: A better understanding of time management. “Turns out, the secret to retaining the highest level of productivity over the span of a workday is not working longer — but working smarter with frequent breaks,” wrote Julia Gifford about a study done by The Draugiem Group. By understanding how time management works and the importance of non-work-related breaks, leaders can allow their employees to be more productive and perhaps pick up a habit for how to be more creative and refreshed.

Are you ready to drop your bad leadership habits and become the very best leader you can be?

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry who leads Red Branch Media, an agency offering marketing strategy and content development.

Leadership: My Picks For The Top 10 CHROs & Why It Matters…Today’s CHROs Don’t Gate Progress; Rather They are Often the Change Agent Fueling Growth & Development

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Before I get to my picks for the Top 10 CHROs, I want to give some background on why this list is important, and how you should use it to shape your enterprise moving forward. While every member of the executive team plays a critical role in successful organizations, aside from the CEO, a strong case can be made that the chief human resources officer (CHRO) is the real game changer.

playmobil-lego-handshake-hand-shake

“HR” has evolved, and so to have the people leading human development and performance. Long gone are they days when power hungry administrators place a death grip on all things necessary and rational. Today’s CHROs don’t gate progress; rather they are often the change agent fueling growth and development.

The modern CHRO is a sophisticated, yet eclectic mix of experience and skills, which often span many core functional areas such as strategy, brand, operations, IT, and finance. In fact, in my work with CEOs it is not at all uncommon to find successful organizations where the CHRO is the closest and most trusted thought partner to the chief executive – this was not the case even a few years ago.

CEOs have grown to understand that regardless of the business they are in, they are always in the people business. Understanding they cannot afford to get that wrong, they have sought out a new and different type of HR leader. Whether you are a CEO trying to build a world-class company, or someone trying to decide where they want to work, my message is a simple one – don’t gloss over HR. Whether you like it or not, people, culture and community matter.

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So how do you judge the success of a chief human resources officer? The simple answer is you look at how badly people want to work for their company. I’ve often said that culture is that ethereal “X” factor that all “It” companies possess that other organizations so desperately desire and so rarely achieve. The CHRO is often one of the chief architects of culture, and they are most certainly its main steward, curator and guardian.

So the longer answer to the question of how you judge the success of a CHRO is as follows:

Examine the talent they’ve helped to attract and retain

Observe the culture they’ve had a hand in shaping

Take stock of the progressive development plans and programs they’ve made available to the workforce

Evaluate the creativity, reasonability and effectiveness of the compensation programs in existence

Look for (and find) great workforce dynamics, engagement and satisfaction

Find a strong and well positioned employer brand

Find HR’s hand (in a good way) in everything as an enabler and contributor to operations flowing all the way through to customer satisfaction.

While the above list is certainly not all-inclusive, it does start to paint a picture of the critical roles CHROs play in the success of any business enterprise. For a chief human resource officer, leadership, team, succession, purpose, culture, governance, and diversity are not just buzzwords – they represent who a CHRO is, what they believe, and where they work everyday. The depth and breadth of the skills and talents possessed by this next generation of CHROs have taken them from not having a “seat at the table” to often making them a logical choice as a successor candidate to CEOs.

So, who are my picks for the Top 10 CHROs?

  1. Tim Huval, CHRO at Humana (NYSE: HUM): #1 because the results speak for themselves. Huval was the first key C-level hire made by CEO Bruce Broussard when he took over the helm at Humana. I’ve had the pleasure of working with him in the two years since he assumed the CHRO role. During his short tenure, Humana has completed a cultural transformation, which should serve as a case study in change leadership, succession, organizational design, team building, talent acquisition, and stock performance. He is the total package – a team player people love to work with and for. With a diverse background in human resources, information technology, and operations, his business and leadership acumen are only exceeded by his commitment to make others better. Huval refuses to take credit for any of the many successes Humana has achieved over the last two years, quickly giving the credit to his colleagues and teammates. But those who know him will quickly point to the critical nature of his role in Humana’s transformation into the enterprise Broussard envisioned.
  1. Laszlo Bock, CHRO at Google (NASDAQ: GOOG): A true innovator in human performance, Bock has taken his MBA from Yale, and stints with McKinsey and GE to help create what is arguably the strongest employer brand in the market. Many of the latest trends in talent management have been incubated, implemented and validated under Bock’s 9-year tenure at Google. Bock’s relentless pursuit of cracking the code on what makes people tick, makes people fit, makes people contribute, and makes people happy will likely keep him breaking new ground at Google for year to come.
  1. Russ Hagey, Partner and Worldwide Talent Officer at BAIN & Company: BAIN is what I like to refer to as the culture company. I’ve never met someone from BAIN who wasn’t smart, talented, and truly likeable – that’s saying a lot when you’re talking about a consulting firm. Whether you look at employee engagement, Glassdoor reviews, or the fact that Consulting Magazine has ranked BAIN as the “#1 Best Place to Work” for 11 years in a row, it’s hard to deny Hagey’s impact on the firm, its culture and its brand.
  1. Lisa Buckingham, CHRO at Lincoln Financial Group (NYSE: LNC): Ask anyone who knows Buckingham and you’ll find out why Lincoln CEO Dennis Glass is thankful she’s on the LFG team. Tough, creative, smart, insightful, compassionate and very accomplished, Buckingham is a walking human omni-channel brand. In addition to serving as Lincoln’s CHRO, she is also the company’s Chief Brand and Communications Officer. LFG has established itself as a powerful employer brand, and a company with a strong and stable culture. A solid strategic mind, and innovative thinking around talent and leadership will likely carry Buckingham all the way to the CEO chair assuming she could be pried away from Lincoln – she is fiercely loyal.
  1. Tony Galbato, CHRO at Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN): The Amazon brand is synonymous with innovation, which means it must maintain a robust talent pipeline and a rich culture. Talent and culture are not things Jeff Bezos takes lightly, and the person he entrusts with leading Amazon’s global HR organization is Tony Galbato – not a bad endorsement. Like Laszlo Bock, Galbato has driven many forward thinking HR practices that have set the chinning bar for the CHROs of the future. Galbato has helped Amazon to be widely regarded as one of the best places to work, with one of the strongest employer brands on the planet.
  1. M. Susan Chambers, EVP, Global People Division at Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT): Given Chambers is in charge of the nation’s largest private workforce of more than 2 million associates, it’s no wonder she has been named to Fortune magazines “50 Most Powerful Women In Business” 5 years in a row. Keeping a motivated, high performance workforce spread across more than 26 countries is no small challenge, and Chambers has proved more than worthy of the task at hand.
  1. Ellyn J. Shook, CHRO at Accenture (NYSE: ACN): It’s a rare CHRO who oversees more than 319,000 employees in 200 cities in 56 countries responsible for generating more than $30 Billion in net revenues. That said, it’s one thing to be responsible for supporting the global HR needs of a sizeable enterprise, it’s quite another to do it well. Shook has created the engine known for attracting, developing and retaining great talent who enjoy Accenture’s collaborative, innovative culture.
  1. Anne P. Byerlein, Chief People Officer at Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM): Yum! Brands has had its fair share of success over the past few years, and Anne Byerlein is the talent genius behind David Novak’s fast food juggernaut. More than 41,000 restaurants in more than 120 countries create levels of people/talent complexity that few can imagine. Byerlein has a well-deserved reputation for being a true triple threat (strategic thinking, tactical precision, and a nose for talent) HR leader.
  1. Diane Gherson, SVP of Human Resources at IBM (NYSE: IBM): What do you get when your CHRO holds a patent in predictive analytics, has a Master’s of Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell, and is working toward a PhD in Management at the M.I.T. Sloan? You guessed it – Diane Gherson, a CHRO capable of overseeing all HR related functions for more than 400,000 employees worldwide. IBM is not the old Big Blue of days gone by, but rather one of the most sophisticated and innovative people businesses on the planet.
  2. Susan P. Peters, SVP Human Resources at GE (NYSE: GE): Few organizations understand internal development and succession like GE, and Peters now leads the culture she is a product of. Joining GE in 1979 in a divisional HR role, later being tapped to serve as IBM’s chief learning officer responsible for all training and development, and now having responsibly over HR globally for GE – Jack Welch would be proud. With Peters at the helm of HR, the legacy of leadership at GE will remain intact.

    So, there are my picks for the best HR minds on the planet – who did I miss?

    Follow me on Twitter @mikemyatt

 

Forbes.com | February 11, 2015  |  Mike Myatt

Strategy: 3 Things Anyone can Learn about Damage Control From the Brian Williams Debacle…I Rarely see Advice that Will Help People Who have Been Caught in a Temporary/Permanent Reputation Failure, Indiscretion, or Outright Lie

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I travel a lot, and that means I spend time in airport bookstores.  At these shops, a big percentage of the selling floor is occupied by racks of self-improvement books with clever, compelling titles and handsome book jackets.

Brian Williams

It’s a lucrative phenomenon in the publishing industry — a universe unto itself.

We’re actually drowning in what has become a new industry of its own — from the iconic Ann Landers advice columns of the last midcentury to the writers, speakers, and thinkers trying to gain credibility and an audience by telling you how to live your life and develop your career.

These books are selling, so they must be inspiring people. I think to myself: The world must be getting better and better with all these human beings who have become residents of the improvement zone.

Do you think if you read all these books you could make yourself into the perfect human being? The perfect leader? Could you outpace your peers?

The real question is … Will these books help you immunize yourself against the pitfalls of reputational catastrophes and personal indiscretions?

I rarely see advice that will help people who have been caught in a temporary or permanent reputation failure, indiscretion, or outright lie.

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These may be people who have been highly successful, or at least on a hard-earned upward trajectory. They could do no wrong in the eyes of their employees, industries, communities, or the general public. A sudden nose dive and loss of oxygen in a career can be unnerving, unsettling. Sometimes it’s even fatal to a career.

But reputational management companies can engineer solutions and PR firms are at the ready. And for those who hire them, rehabilitation begins the minute the indiscretion finds an audience. Damage control begins, media assessments are conducted, review committees are formed, life-lines are extended, and the salvage operation is underway.

Newscaster Brian Williams landed in his current situation with a reservoir of good will and has been generally well-liked. That is more than can be said about some people who find their integrity challenged.

But now the noise about his mistake is deafening. Everyone has an opinion about what should happen as a result of his admission that he did not really fly on a combat mission helicopter in Iraq that took enemy fire. Here’s what he should do now — and what you should do if you ever find yourself in need of damage control.

1. Be honest with yourself.

This is the first and most critical step. This is fundamental to everything that happens next. There is nothing that will ever be more important.

Get quiet. Spend some time alone. Be wary of advice — it may be mercenary. Remember everything about the episode and write it all down.

So much is riding on your clarity about what happened and your willingness to accept the truth for yourself. Explain to yourself why you did it — and be brutally candid.

Self-deception often haunts the famous and can cause irrational decisions. There could be tremendous fear of loss — loss of stature, standing, money, and future. It is that very fear that could either ennoble the person charged or conquer him.

2. Thank the people who revealed the truth.

Show an attitude of genuine appreciation that these facts have come to light. Express relief, not anger or irritation, for the airing of the correct information.

Do so completely authentically, because that is the position you have come to on your own. Then you could say, “I am glad that these folks have come forth with the plain facts. Anything incorrect has gone on too long and it’s time to put a stop to that.”

People are more apt to be exonerated in the light than in the dark. So position a floodlight over the situation. The fact that your reputation has been tarnished by revealing wrongdoing is actually going to improve you — though it might not appear so at the time. Face into the head winds and they will carry you if you embrace them.

3. Take responsibility.

People do not react well to someone placing blame on another individual, group, or system. But they tend to respect strength that comes from shouldering responsibility for one’s actions.

Man up. This is not the end of life. You will go other rounds and regain your respectability if you do not try to make excuses or cover anything up. Don’t hide, but moderate your appearances.

For example, Brian Williams must regain enough credibility to as to be taken seriously as a journalist — and especially as a newscaster who is telling his listeners what is supposedly the truth every day. This is the breach that must be mended.

Situations like this — and very often they are vastly more severe — happen to leaders at every level.

Keep this column tucked in your mental pocket and take it out and follow it if you ever find yourself in a situation where your veracity is being challenged. It will start you off with a leadership strategy that just might lead you to a positive solution.

James Rosebush was a Reagan White House official and is now the CEO and founder of GrowthStrategy.us. His leadership column appears on Business Insider every Tuesday.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-regain-trust-after-a-failure-2015-2#ixzz3RMbVVKTi

Leadership: Cubicles Are the Root of So Many Problems at Your Company…That’s Why it’s Important for Leadership to Have ‘Big Ears’ & Be in a Constant Listening Mode to Keep a Pulse on Our Workforce

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Employees remain extremely unsatisfied with their careers, which impacts their performance and productivity.

office space cubicle milton

A January Gallup poll reported that only 31.5% of workers in the U.S. were engaged in their jobs in 2014, a slight increase from 29.6% in 2013. A majority of employees (51%) were still “not engaged,” and 17.5% were “actively disengaged” in 2014. The current level of 31.5% is the highest level of employee engagement since Gallup began the measurement in 2000.

Engaged employees as ones who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace, Gallup said. The group with the highest proportion of engaged employees is managers and executives at 38.4% while employees who work in manufacturing or production jobs recorded the lowest levels of engagement (23%).

Millennials reported they are the least engaged group at 28.9% and the dissatisfaction might be the result of not working at the jobs they had expected after graduation from college, the report said.

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Employees might be more engaged now than compared to 2000 because of improvements to the economy, unemployment and job market, the Gallup report said. The levels of engagement started to decline in 2008 during the financial demise, continued to fall in 2009 and did not improve until 2011.

Many employees are not engaged at work, because they feel a lack of a connection while their bosses continue to ask them to spend more time and energy at the office, said Gretchen Spreitzer, a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“It’s not about pay and benefits, but to thrive, a connection is critical,” she said.

Connection occurs when employees feel connected to the work and to colleagues, clients or customers, Spreitzer said.

Employees who are thriving believe their work has a purpose. They not only care about it, but the work has meaning in some way, she said.

“People matter and are often the source of meaning at work,” Spreitzer said. “If employees believe that they have strong relationships with at least some colleagues at work, colleagues who they care about and who care about them, then they are more likely to thrive. Caring colleagues create a safe space for employees to take risks, have courage and grow.”

Once employees stop feeling engaged in the work they do, a “negative domino effect starts,” said Phillip Wilson, president of Labor Relations Institute, a Broken Arrow, Okla. employee relations consulting firm. If you are not satisfied at work, you don’t make as much effort and your work quality may start to slide. Your manager notices, and you start receiving negative feedback; in turn, your engagement starts to decline even more.

Effective bosses can stop this domino effect from going too far by creating an environment where employees feel comfortable bringing up concerns because the leaders are approachable, he said.

As employees are growing increasingly unfulfilled at their jobs, many bosses are taking notice to prevent additional turnover and headaches.

Managers should focus on developing the strengths of their employees and watch as their internal motivation grows, Wilson said.

Employees remain unhappy, because too many of them remain tethered to constant work email, are forced to work more because of a leaner workforce and possess an inability to focus on what one does best, said Cheryl Palmer, a career coach based in Silver Springs, Md.

Bosses can find solutions to these issues easily by giving employees an opportunity to recharge at work and create boundaries for when they are expected to respond to email, she said.

“Doing something as simple as allowing employees to take a break every so often without fear of reprisal can help employees stay engaged,” Palmer said. “Employees also will not feel as though they are always at work, because their personal boundaries are respected.”

Even though employers may not be able to always give people a position that aligns with their talents, “they can make an effort to find out what those talents are and try to assign them as much of that work as possible,” which will boost their productivity and engagement, she said.

What it often boils down to is what type of leadership exists at the company since there is no indication that the current level of employee dissatisfaction will improve, said Kevin Berchelmann, president of Triangle Performance, a Houston-based management consultancy.

“Engagement can’t be bought,” he said. “There is hope, and it’s not paying more money for benefits or compensation.”

Employees who receive genuine recognition for their work tend to thrive.

“I don’t mean a pat on the back with the perfunctory ‘good job,’” Berchelmann said. “I mean a face-to-face or phone call, explaining what they did in detail and how it improved the business. Be specific.”

Giving feedback is paramount. Many managers neglect to provide feedback often, and employees don’t know where they stand.

“Feedback is sorely missed by employees today, so find a way to make it happen,” he said. “Give frequent, relevant feedback to everyone you come across, even the high performers. They know they do a good job; they just don’t know if you know it.”

Employees want to know where the status of their performance, and a review of their work should occur more than once a year.

“They want to know where they stand, how they are doing, and they want to know what they can do to improve,” Berchelmann said.

Even something that appears insignificant such as knowing the employees’ first names can make a difference, said Wayne Bolio, a senior vice president, law and human resources for Nautilus, the Vancouver, Wash. exercise equipment manufacturer.

“Even with a company of over 300 employees, everyone is on a first-name basis as a result of our internal communications programs that keep us connected,” he said. “We know that in order to be successful, it’s critical to create a company culture where people are motivated and where collaboration is fostered and healthy lifestyles are encouraged.”

Nautilus has a low turnover rate, which is an indicator that regular meetings and two-way communication encourage employees to bring up issues or problems and or provide input for solutions, Bolio said.

“While voluntary turnover can be a by-product of disengaged employees, we also see an equal or greater risk in disengaged employees remaining employed,” he said. “Nothing can be more harmful than having a significant portion of your workforce actively disengaged and not fully committed. That’s why it’s important for leadership to have ‘big ears’ and be in a constant listening mode to keep a pulse on our workforce listen and solicit feedback in a non-threatening way.”

This article originally appeared at MainStreet. Copyright 2015. Follow MainStreet on Twitter.

http://www.mainstreet.com/article/why-working-in-a-cubicle-is-so-demoralizing-and-workers-are-demanding-more#ixzz3RLU0WwRU

 

#BestofFSCBlog : #JobSearch -Five Things Your Recruiter Won’t Tell You. When You’re Working with a Recruiter, you Have to Ask a Lot of Questions.

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If you work in business or the professional world, it will be helpful to you to have a relationship with a third-party recruiter, sometimes called a search professional or recruiter. Not every job-seeker has a recruiter-friendly resume, but many job-seekers do.

Some bosses inspire to be your best self, both professionally and in your everyday life. Others make every day seem tense, dreary and frustrating. Learning how to deal with a bad boss is an important step to career happiness. (image credit: William (Tactum Macula) Walsh on Flickr)

What’s a recruiter-friendly resume? It’s a resume that looks like what the hiring manager expects to see, or as we say at Human Workplace, ‘a resume that makes you look like you were born and raised in a petri dish to do this job.’

Recruiters are paid by employers to find them candidates they can’t find on their own, so if your resume is less conventional, or if it’s off-beat or quirky, you might not be a recruiter-friendly candidate. If not, that’s okay! There are plenty of other job search channels still available to you. 

 

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What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Article continued …

A well-established, credible and human recruiter in your corner is an incredible asset. That’s not only true for job-seekers. It’s true for hiring managers and HR leaders, too! When I was an HR leader, I relied on my search partners to fill jobs we couldn’t have filled on our own. They were an extension of our team.

In every field you’ll find solid and upright folks and people who have no business handing out business cards. We hear from job-seekers way too often who have horror stories to tell about unscrupulous or not-ready-for-prime-time recruiters who wasted their time, steered them wrong and crushed their mojo — but only temporarily!

When you’re working with a recruiter, you have to ask a lot of questions. You can’t blindly follow your recruiter’s advice. You have to determine whether your recruiter is a credible advocate for you, first.Here are questions to ask a recruiter when you’re contemplating allowing him or her to represent you in your job search.

Here are five things your recruiter may not tell you unless you ask, ask, and ask again. Don’t take ‘no answer’ for an answer!

1- They Won’t Tell You Their Client Has a Toxic Workplace 

One Monday morning I saw a new job opening posted in my news feed. “This is a great company!” said the recruiter who posted the ad. I had heard his name before. I wrote back to him right away. “I might have the perfect candidate for this job,” I said in my message. “What is it that makes this a great company, in your opinion?” The recruiter wrote back. “Are you kidding or serious?” he asked in his message. “It’s a job opening. It pays you money that you use to buy things.”

I wrote back. “I’m serious,” I said. “Do you just put ‘It’s a great company?’ in all your job ads, automatically?” The recruiter wrote back again. “Grow up,” he said. “Everyone knows that is filler.”

Imagine being so cynical that you’d add “Great company!” to every job ad, call it ‘filler’ and expect everyone to know that it’s not true? You deserve to work with people who deserve your talents.

Ask your recruiter to tell you why you should consider taking any job s/he’s proposing to you. What makes the company great? Ask for specifics! As my friend Marla says, “Whenever a company’s recruiting literature drones on about trust, that means there’s no trust. When they have it, they don’t need to talk about it.”

Let’s remember how recruiters get paid. They get paid to fill job openings. They get paid when you accept the job offer. You only have to stay for ninety days. If you bail within ninety days, the recruiter has to find someone else. Are they going to tell you it’s a toxic work environment? Not if they want you to take the job, they won’t!

The recruiter will not have to sit in your chair and do your job. That will be your burden, if you walk into the wrong place. Ask a lot of questions about culture. Ask about turnover. Ask the recruiter why the job is open, and don’t get all your research from your recruiter! Check out the organization’s Glassdoor reviews as well.

2- They Won’t Tell You If The Company’s In Trouble

We had a client years ago who went on a job interview and was surprised to walk through row after row of empty cubicles when she got there. The cubicles weren’t the sort of empty cubicles that scream “We’re trying to find people to fill these cubicles!” They were the kind of cubicles that say “Don’t work here! Three-quarters of the staff has already been laid off, and no one has taken the time to get rid of all these empty cubicles!”

Our client asked some pointed questions about the company’s future. The in-house recruiter was huffy. When our client got home, she called the third-party recruiter who had sent her to the interview. “Well, they’re going through a restructuring, and you’ll help them turn the corner,” her recruiter said.

Our client got suspicious. She started digging around and found the employer on every analyst’s list of companies most likely to declare bankruptcy. She cut her interview process short. The last thing the headhunter said to her was “You’re making a big mistake.”

The company went out of business a few months later. You can’t blindly go on a job interview assuming that because someone is hiring, they must be doing well. Organizations hire for a lot of different reasons. They sometimes hire new people to wind up the business and turn out the lights. That’s fine if it’s a consulting job at a healthy hourly rate.

Nobody wants a full-time job that’s not only going to end in a few months but also that’s going to elicit the question from every interviewer you ever meet in your life going forward, “Why did you go to work for those guys just as they were tanking?” Good question!

3- They Won’t Tell You It’s a Dead-End Job

When my youngest was a baby, I had a regular babysitter, Emily, who was a student at our local university. She moved to Chicago and got a job right away when she graduated. One day Emily got a call at work from a headhunter. She called me to tell me. “So exciting!” she said. “He told me about a better job at a company in downtown Chicago.”

“What makes it a better job than the one you have?” I asked her.

“He asked me some questions about my current job and said this new opportunity is a better job,” Emily said.

“Oh dear!” I said. “He will say that to get you to go to the interview. That’s how he gets paid. It may be a better job, or it may not. Most jobs don’t have six weeks vacation and free grad-school tuition at a top university the way your current job does.”

“I didn’t think of that,” said Emily. “The headhunter said one thing that was odd, I thought.”

“What was that?” I asked, my maternal instincts going on full alert.

“He told me not to mention the words ‘career path’ at the interview,” said Emily. “Evidently at this company they don’t like to have their job applicants ask about the career path.”

“What!?” I snorted. “That means there is no career path. That means it’s a dead-end job. They want you to take the job and come to work at the same desk for the next fifty years. Maybe you should go on the interview just for the learning experience. If you do, I have one suggestion. Make sure and use the term ‘career path’ at least once in every sentence, just to see what happens.”

Emily did just that. She said the interviewer nearly fell out of her chair. Emily never heard from the company or the headhunter again, but she got a tremendous job with a consulting firm soon after.

4- They Won’t Tell You When The Employer’s Requests Become Unreasonable 

Remember how third-party recruiters get paid. They don’t get a dime unless you accept the employer’s offer. An unscrupulous recruiter will encourage you (or even browbeat you) to stay in a broken and mojo-crushing recruiting pipeline. If you drop out, they lose.

They’ll tell you to do whatever the employer asks you to, down to creating free work for the employer and interviewing four, five or six times with different people. They’ll tell you to take endless online tests and putting up with delays and weeks of radio silence. They’ll tell you ignore red flags that scream “Believe me, you don’t want to work here!”

Know before you get into any recruiting pipeline how many interviews are reasonable (three visits to one employer is the limit we suggest — if they can’t make a decision in three visits, they’re too wimpy to be mentors who can help you) and what you will and won’t do before you see an offer letter.

I don’t want you to perform work for free. A good rule of thumb is this: one request for one one-hour project to see how you operate is reasonable during a hiring process. That could be the creation of a writing sample or some lines of code. After that, you can meet any additional requests for free work with the soft reply “I’d be happy to complete that project on a consulting basis. Shall I fill you in on my hourly rates?”

5- They Won’t Tell You To Refuse A Lowball Offer

Last on our list, a skeevy recruiter who’s trying to shove you into a new sardine can won’t tell you when a job offer is below market. They’ll tell you just the opposite. They want you to accept the job, so they’ll tell you the offer looks great. Way back in 1979 when I first hit Chicago as a nineteen-year-old punk rocker, I went looking for an office job.

I didn’t realize when I moved to Chicago that the drinking age there was 21. In New York the drinking age was 18, so I could work in good restaurants that served alcohol. I made great money waiting tables. I did the same thing when I got to Chicago, but when the outdoor cafe where I worked closed up for the winter, I needed a new job.

That’s when I got the bad news: I couldn’t work in any restaurant with a liquor license. I had to go indoors to type and answer the phone.

I walked into an employment agency and filled out some forms. Right away they sent me to interviews — one miserable environment after another. They said “It will be wonderful if you can get four dollars an hour” even though I saw tons of jobs in the Chicago Tribune advertised for five dollars an hour or more.

“Why are you diminishing my experience?” I asked my employment counselor. “Is it to prepare me to take the first offer I get, whatever that offer is?”

She nearly fainted in front of me.

Remember how recruiters get paid. If you don’t take the offer, they don’t get a penny. There are recruiters who will tell you that you have nothing of value to offer and that they’ll have a hard time placing you. Walk away from anybody who insults you or denigrates your background.

They will tell you that your skills are a dime a dozen. Don’t believe them! The first person who has to believe in you, is you.

Whether we’re talking about employers or recruiters, you have to remember that only the people who get you, deserve you. Take a huge grain of salt with everything you hear from a person whose financial interests lie in getting you hired into a new job, and keep your B.S. meter close at hand!

 

 Forbes.com | February 6, 2015  |  Liz Ryan 

 

Leadership: Half Of Your Company Is Looking To Leave: Four Retention Strategies To Keep Your Best…50% See their Current Job as a Placeholder

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Jobvite, a recruiting platform, just released its 2015 Job Seeker Nation Study, and results point to a renewed interest by the gainfully employed to look around for new opportunities. Jobvite’s survey of over 2,000 employed adults revealed:

45% of job seekers are satisfied in their job, but looking for a new one; 50% see their current job as a placeholder; and 60% are equally or more optimistic about job prospects this year compared to last year.

 

 

ChineseArmy
I interviewed Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite, about his reaction to the findings, advice for both employers and job seekers, and his story on how he became CEO of Jobvite. You can hear the 15-minute interview with Dan Finnigan HERE. In the meantime, if you are a manager and don’t want half of your team to leave, here are four retention strategies to keep your best:

Involvement

I once coached a rising star who was managing a team of managers for the first time. She was great at ensuring her direct reports knew their performance goals but she didn’t involve them in the broader vision and goals of the company so that they could then galvanize their own teams. Not only did she have to manage her team’s individual contributions (which she did well) but she needed to support them as managers and leaders in their own right. How enrolled is your team in the goals of their department and the overall company? Do they understand how their individual activities contribute directly or ripple through? Are they galvanized and informed enough to involve and enroll others? Employees who are involved in the bigger picture will be more invested in staying.

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Autonomy

This same manager was so strong technically that she knew her approaches were most efficient and shared that loud and clear. While she could do everyone else’s job more efficiently and effectively than they could, it wasn’t her job anymore. She needed to allow her team to find their own best approach. Do you give your staff the autonomy to make decisions, execute against their goals, and experiment? Employees who are given autonomy feel respected and invited to stay.

Equity

I don’t mean stock shares, though the Jobvite study also pointed out that compensation was the leading decision factor in taking a new job. Yes, pay your employees their market value – your team will definitely appreciate if you go to bat for them during raise and bonus allocation time. Even more importantly, be equitable and fair in how you make raise, bonus, promotion and assignment decisions. Employees who see they have a fair shake at advancing won’t feel the need to leave to get ahead.

Introductions

The best employees want to continually learn and grow. One area where you can help is to make introductions to broaden your staff’s network. It’s hard to know who to meet and how to make that contact, so broker these introductions for your team. Find out what areas of the company they’re interested in. Find out who else outside your group is involved in promotion decisions. Help your staff get an audience with these key players. It will be much appreciated by your team, and it will also help you expand your network throughout the company.
Even if you offer a great opportunity, culture and environment, good people may still leave. In that case, stay in touch! Former employees should be a welcome part of your network. One of my strongest direct reports left my group for a promotion at a competing firm. I helped her with that search because I knew my employer at the time wouldn’t move as quickly as this strong performer deserved. We’re still in touch today, and when I started my company, she was one of the first people who hired me. Former employees are future customers, information leads, or professional and personal allies. Do your best to retain but keep the relationship warm even if they leave.

Caroline Ceniza-Levine is a career and business coach with SixFigureStart®. She has worked with executives from Amazon, American Express, Condé Nast, Gilt, Goldman Sachs, Google, McKinsey, and other leading firms. Follow Caroline’s weekly leadership column on Forbes and take advantage of SixFigureStart® free toolkits on Negotiation, Networking, and Personal Branding, including a free download for entrepreneurs.

Leadership: The 3 Most Powerful Ways To Change People Who Don’t Want To Change…Dieters in the US Spend 40 Billion Dollars a Year, but 19 out of 20 lose Nothing but their Money

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Have you noticed how incredibly hard it is to change a habitual behavior, even though you know full well that it’s in your best interest to do so? Have you worked so hard over six months to lose 20 pounds, only to see it creep back in a matter of days or weeks? Or have you tried everything in your power to help your child perform better in a particular class, only to have all your efforts – and hers– fail?

As a therapist and career success coach, I’ve learned a lot about motivation, and how to help people change. In my coaching work, it’s about uncovering the root causes of their behavioral roadblocks, and helping people see these challenges differently (and stimulating new actions that are different from how they habitually operate.)

I caught up with David Maxfield and asked him what I wanted to learn about how to help people change their behavior (or change our own), in ways that will bring lasting success. David Maxfield is Vice President of Research atVitalSmarts and coauthor of the three New York Times bestsellers — Crucial Accountability, Influencer and Change Anything. For 30 years, David has been a leading social scientist for organizational change and delivered engaging keynotes at prestigious venues around the world.

Kathy Caprino: David, why, exactly is personal change so hard for so many of us?

David Maxfield: Personal change is difficult and rare. For example: dieters in the US spend forty billion dollars a year, but 19 out of twenty lose nothing but their money; two years after coronary bypass surgery to save their lives, ninety percent of patients are back to their old behaviors; and a personal favorite—two out of three people can’t even get themselves to floss!

It’s no wonder that many of us admit defeat, give up, and stop trying. Then it falls on our family members and loved ones to convince us to try again. But their pleas often come across as lectures, sermons, or rants, which undermine the relationship instead of helping us change.

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Caprino: What specifically gets in the way of our changing others’ behaviors – what are the problems and pitfalls?

Maxfield: Here are the three most important pitfalls and success factors we’ve discovered. Our research shows that these three elements can make you and your loved ones ten times more likely to succeed.

Mistake #1: We attack people with information.

We assume that, if the person only knew what we knew, they’d change. The problem is, often they already know what we know, plus more. In addition to the facts we have, they have personal information about their own successes and failures. They have usually created a personal narrative—what we call a “clever story,” that explains why they’ve failed, and explains it in a way that lets them off the hook for trying again.

For example, suppose you want your spouse to improve his or her fitness. How is he or she likely to respond to a lecture? Doesn’t he or she already know why being fit is better than being unfit? In this situation, most spouses become defensive. If you present one side of the argument, they feel compelled to present the other side. The result is you pushing for change, and them pushing against. And, since they are the ones who have to do the changing, guess who wins?

But there is a way around this dilemma.

Solution: People need to examine their own narrative.

When you’re trying to influence people who need motivation, but not information, don’t offer more information.  Instead, work to create a safe environment where they can explore motivations they already have. People need to re-examine their narrative, especially any self-defeating or clever stories they are telling themselves to justify the status quo.

Motivational Interviewing is a tried-and-true method for getting people to re-examine their stories, and it works by asking questions that allow people to explore their own motivations without feeling pushed. Below are a few examples:

“What is it that makes you even consider changing?”

“If things worked out exactly the way you want, what would be different?

“What are the pluses and minuses of changing or not changing?”

“If this change were easy, would you want to make it? What makes it hard?”

The video above demonstrates the power these influential questions can have.

Mistake #2: We fail to see why we’re stuck.

Getting someone to make a commitment to change is not the same as getting them to actually change.  The problem is that people overestimate the power of their own willpower. They fail to see the risks in front of them. So, they put their heart and soul into an effort, but it’s not enough. They are tripped up by obstacles they never anticipated.

I’ve often say to clients that, “your world is perfectly organized to create the results you are currently experiencing.” The problem is that we’re like the fish that discover water last. We are swimming in a sea of influences, and we don’t even know it. A lot of these influences are designed by sales and marketing experts or food scientists who are more interested in our money than in our well-being.

Solution: We need to educate our eyes.

We need to recognize the hidden influences around us, the influences that are keeping us stuck.Once we see them, we can deal with them. We group influences into six sources: three that motivate and three that enable. Suppose your teenager says he wants to succeed in math, but isn’t doing his math homework. What are the influences that could be keeping him stuck?

1. Personal Motivation: While his motivation to master math is sincere, it’s too vague and distant to affect his behavior. His short-term motivation is directed by videogames, social media, his girlfriend, and other more immediate motivators.

2. Social Motivation: You and your spouse go to his basketball games and concerts, but you don’t show similar encouragement for his math.

3. Structural Motivation: There are serious carrots and sticks tied to every basketball game and music lesson, but not as much for math homework. So, math becomes a lower priority.

4. Personal Ability: Your son isn’t very good at estimating how long it will take him to get his math done. He schedules an hour, just before bed, and then runs out of time.

5. Social Ability: You and your spouse coach your son on sports and music, but leave him to his own devices when it comes to math.

6. Structural Ability: Your son has several convenient distractions in his bedroom, where he does his math homework. His phone, laptop, and TV all distract him from his math.

Most stubborn problems persist because of unseen or overlooked influences that are keeping us stuck. Once we see them, we can change them. However, if we don’t change them, we’ll remain stuck.

Mistake #3: We rely on quick fixes.

We often pick the most obvious obstacle to our success, and direct all of our efforts toward overcoming it. It feels intuitive, like a quick fix. We make some progress, at least at first, but this early promise fails as unseen and unaddressed obstacles take their toll.

Another mistake is to have favorite solutions, and to use them in isolation. For example, we assume carrots and sticks will solve every problem, or that training or technology will. As a result, we create one-sided solutions that address only a few of the obstacles that are keeping us stuck.

Solution: Overwhelm the problem with all six sources of influence.

It takes solutions in all six sources to change a status quo that is held in place by all six sources. We ask people to develop at least one robust influence strategy in each of the Six Sources of Influence. Here is an example, aimed at helping your son complete his math homework.

1. Personal Motivation: Get him some direct experience, such as an internship in an organization that uses math and science. He will see for himself why math is important.

2. Social Motivation: Show your own commitment to his math. Spend as much time with him on his math as you do on his sports and music.

3. Structural Motivation: Work with him to create small rewards, based on daily and weekly progress at math.

4. Personal Ability: Increase deliberate practice, just as you would with sports or music. Make “doing your homework” the start, then add beyond.

5. Social Ability: Become your son’s math tutor. If you aren’t good at math, become good at it. Your example will speak volumes to your son.

6. Structural Ability: Create a comfortable time and space for math. Make sure it’s at a time when your son is at his best. Remove distractions. Make the place bright and cheery.

 * * * * * *

David’s tips show us that while change isn’t easy, it’s doable, when you want it and are ready, and when you address the key influences that have been keeping the behavior locked in place.  I’ve seen even the most resistant people finally experience transformation because the pain and cost of how they were previously operating in the world had become too great, and because the motivational structures and personal accountability were finally in place to facilitate growth.

For more information, visit David Maxfield, VitalSmarts and Crucial Skills.

(To build a happier, more rewarding career, visit the Amazing Career Project, and take my 6-day Amazing Career Challenge.)

Finance: Loaded Question: 1099 Or W-2?… For many Reasons Employers have Big Incentives to Use Independent Contractors

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Companies were supposed to mail IRS Forms W-2 and 1099 by February 2. Some are still scrambling to mail them. They have until the end of February to transmit them all to the IRS, so there’s a bit of wiggle room. Surprisingly, some workers don’t think about their status until they get the form, either W-2 or 1099. Companies and workers everywhere may not think about it but they should.

IRS

If you’re an employee, taxes have to be taken out. That means you’ll receive an IRS Form W-2. In contrast, if you’re an independent contractor, you’ll get full pay with no deductions. Of course, you are liable for your own taxes. Assuming your total pay was $600 or more, you’ll receive an IRS Form 1099.

But what if you’re the employer not the recipient? This is one of the more momentous decisions in business. It goes beyond taxes and covers workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, state and federal wage and hour laws, pension laws, nondiscrimination laws and more. It also impacts liability, since employees are agents of the company. It’s hard to think of a more pivotal issue. Yet this decision is made thousands of times a day all over America.

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Sometimes it is done without much thought. Some employers ask “1099 or W-2?” as if they were asking how you take your coffee. If you’re the worker, you may be tempted to say “1099,” figuring you’ll get a bigger check that way. You will in the short run, but you’ll actually owe higher taxes. As an independent contractor, you not only owe income tax, but self-employment tax too. On the first $118,500 of income, that’s a whopping 15.3% rate. Beyond $118,500, the rate drops to 2.9%.
In contrast, if you’re an employee, you pay only one-half the Social Security tax (your half is 7.65%) on wages up to $118,500, plus one-half the Medicare rate (your half is 1.45%) on all wages. See IRS Publication 225. Your employer pays the same. If you have income over $200,000, you’re subject to an additional 0.9% Medicare tax withholding. The additional Medicare tax does not apply to employers.

Apart from tax law, employee status carries a host of nondiscrimination laws, pension and benefits laws and wage and hour protections. They all apply to employees but not to independent contractors. For all of these reasons, employers have big incentives to use independent contractors. Many start ups and tech companies rely on the branding that uniformity can provide, but don’t want all of the costs and liabilities of employees.

The answer in many cases is independent contractors. Done carefully, such arrangements can work fine and be legitimate. However, some employers push the envelope to treat workers as independent contractors who are clearly employees if anyone bothers to look. That’s where the IRS and many other agencies come in.

Government entities and private parties in lawsuits have reason to ferret out the truth. There are several prevailing legal standards, but many boil down to how much control the company has over the worker. Even so, some control won’t convert independent contractors to employees. The area is heating up, with many believing that inappropriate worker status determinations are a major tax loophole. If you’re an employer, be careful.

For alerts to future tax articles, follow me at Forbes.com. Email me at Wood@WoodLLP.com. This discussion is not intended as legal advice, and cannot be relied upon for any purpose without the services of a qualified professional.

 

Your Career: 5 Things Recruiters Look For on Your Social Media Profiles…Did you Know that 93% of Recruiters Currently Use or Plan to Use Social Media to Find Candidates?

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It’s no surprise that recruiters are turning to social media to scope out potential employees. Therefore, it’s essential that candidates understand what recruiters are looking for online. These elements of your profiles are making a big impression on recruiters — for good or for ill.

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93% of recruiters currently use or plan to use social media to find candidates

93% of recruiters currently use or plan to use social media to find candidates

Did you know that 93% of recruiters currently use or plan to use social media to find candidates? That little fact should make you think twice about posting that potentially career-ending rant or pic online … hopefully. Here’s a list of how recruiters are using social media to find qualified candidates in today’s digital and social age.

1. Searchability

First things first, you want recruiters to be able to find you easily online, so help them out by keyword-optimizing your profiles, but also be wary of listing some of the most commonly overused buzzwords that turn recruiters off. In Jobvite’s 2014 Social Recruiting Survey, 82% of recruiters consider “their social recruiting skills to be proficient or less,” which makes your job as a qualified candidate trying to get discovered a bit more difficult than you’d expect. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. To learn how to attract more recruiters to your LinkedIn profile, see this post.

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2. Who You Know

Just as in real life, the better connected you are in the business world, the better your chances are of getting noticed. Recruiters use social sites to see whom you’re connected to, as well, so it’s wise to be strategic about whom you’re connecting yourself with on and offline.

First, look to expand your online network by using LinkedIn’s Get Introduced feature and start reaching out to your immediate contacts for referrals. You’ll also want to consider following some well-known influencers who can lend some expertise in your field of work. The bottom line is, recruiters like to see that you are well-connected and active in your given industry. Think about it, a recruiter is probably more likely to consider a candidate that is already a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree connection to someone within his individual LinkedIn network or the company’s network, than someone who isn’t. So, get connected, people!

3. Personality Is Key

Recruiters are looking for someone who is a good fit technically, but, more importantly, there needs to be a great cultural fit, too. Nadine Motaweh, a Recruiting Manager at The Creative Group, indicates that she looks for candidates who have personality and who are able to articulate that effectively online and in person.

“I typically feel most excited about presenting the candidates who I know would go in and show their personality, because technical skills can be taught — being someone I want to spend my whole day with five days a week is not,” Motaweh tells PayScale.

The lesson here is to express your personality in a way that is appealing and professional. Don’t fake the funk and pretend to be someone you’re not. Instead, convey tidbits about your professional and personal life that make you relatable and interesting.

4. Red Flags

Yes, it’s true that we live in the land of the free, but if you’re a job seeker looking for employment, you might want to reconsider the wisdom of practicing your right to freedom of speech on social media. According to Jobvite’s survey, an astonishing 55% of recruiters have reconsidered their decision about hiring a candidate based on their social media profiles, with 61% of those being negative decisions. Keep in mind that hiring personnel are searching for red flags such as posts with profanity, spelling and grammar mistakes, poor lifestyle choices (e.g. drugs and alcohol) broadcasted for all to see, and sexual references. Rule of thumb, if you don’t want your parents to see it, then don’t post it — chances are, a recruiter definitely doesn’t want to see it, either.

5. Engage

Last, but not least, continue to stay engaged with your networks. What does this mean? It means you’ll want to find conversations online that you can participate in and lend your expertise, whether they be industry-related or part of your personal interests.

Staying engaged with your community allows you to expand your network, keep up with the latest and greatest in your industry and hobbies, and provides an open forum for you to offer your expert advise, and so much more. Simply listing your skills on your resume isn’t enough anymore. Recruiters want concrete examples of how you utilized those skills in a real-life setting. Some great avenues to do so are: directly on your profile/resume, in LinkedIn recommendations, and in the conversations you participate in online.

Important note: be sure you know what you’re talking about in your discussions and not trolling, because the last thing you want to convey is that you’re an immature know-it-all. Let’s be smart about it, folks.

To learn how to land a job in three months, read about the seven smart habits of successful job seekers, here.

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