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#Leadership : Do These Things To #ReduceTurnover Among Your #BestHires …It takes Work to #Retain #StarEmployees . Here are the Steps you Can take to Stop Losing them to “Better Offers.”

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If there’s anyone more hopeful than a new employee showing up to her first day on the job, it’s the hiring manager who offered it to her.

Call us hopeless romantics, but we think there’s something really special about a candidate and a company coming to an agreement and choosing to embark on a relationship together–albeit a business one.

But what happens when the relationship goes south and the employee decides to move on? There may not be actual tears, but it can still feel like heartbreak to the recruiter, hiring manager, and leadership team that had high hopes for the future.

So, what can you do when you’re tired of losing employees to “better offers”? Here’s what five recruiting and hiring pros would do to reduce churn and improve employee engagement and retention:

1. BE HONEST ABOUT THE DOWNSIDES OF A POSITION

It makes sense to try to put your best foot forward in the first stages of the interview process. After all, that’s what job candidates are doing, too. But Chuck Solomon, cofounder and COO of LineHire, says that it’s in the best interest of long-term employee retention to be upfront about what a job is really like without candy coating the truth or trying to ignore potential challenges within a job.

“It may sound quaint, but I believe authenticity is key to reducing churn and increasing employee retention,” says Solomon. “Recruiters should be honest and accurate in describing both the pros and cons of the job–after all, once on board, the candidate is going to learn firsthand themselves. I’m not suggesting you should ‘air the company’s dirty laundry,’ but there are ways to tell a candidate that this is a challenging position. That way you’re only bringing in staff members that are up for the challenges.”

Related: Why MailChimp Doesn’t Let New Hires Work For Their First Week On The Job 

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2. CLOSE THE LOOP ON NEW HIRE DATA

Find the best person, hire them, and move on. Sound familiar? If that’s your approach to most of the positions you fill and you want to reduce churn, Mikaela Kiner, CEO and Founder of uniquelyHR, wants you to think about following up and tracking how your candidates work out in the role.

“Recruiters always believe we’ve found the absolute best candidate for the job, says Kiner. “After all, that’s why we hired them! But too often, we don’t know what happens once that person joins the company. Did that person become a superstar, did they plateau, or were they eventually let go for poor performance? If recruiters can work with HR and hiring managers to get data on the quality of the people they’ve hired, they can spot trends and then use that data to improve the screening and recruiting process.”

“For example, what skills and qualities are common to the most successful hires?” continues Kiner. “Failures are also a good source of learning, because if you make a note of red flags during interviews of people who don’t succeed, you can be on the lookout for similar candidate qualities in the future.”

3. LISTEN TO AND REWARD EMPLOYEES BEFORE THERE’S A PROBLEM

Brianna Rooney, founder of software engineer recruiting company Techees, works in a high turnover industry placing software engineers at tech-focused companies in the Bay Area. In her line of work, it’s common for people to leave every year, and if someone has been with their company for three years, it’s a downright miracle. Why? Because most companies say they don’t have time to deal with employee retention or simply don’t want to know the bad things about their company.

“I can’t tell you how many times a company will try to give a raise or actually listen to an employee when it’s way too late,” says Rooney. “Everyone wants to save money. It’s hard to keep giving raises. Yet, think about how hard it is to find good people. People you trust to work hard, honestly, and efficiently.”

“If you don’t have the budget for a salary increase, make sure they understand that,” Rooney continues. “Talk to employees, make them know how important they are. Don’t just wait for quarterly or yearly meetings. You need to care before you ‘have to,’ and it has to come naturally.”

Related: 5 Red Flags That You Made A Bad Hire

4. RECRUIT QUALITIES THAT MAKE FOR GOOD OFFICE POLITICS

Are office politics always a bad thing? No, says CEO and The Compass Alliance author Tim Cole. They can be good or bad for an organization depending on how they are directed. But if you’re in a position where you need to reduce churn, your politics are likely unproductive. It’s critical that you start screening candidates for qualities that are conducive to healthy office politics.

“Bad office politics implies backstabbing and conspiring for personal gain,” says Cole. “An organization that tolerates that type of behavior faces the long-term effects that always follow, like low engagement, loss of productivity, and attrition.”

Cole adds: “Companies that recruit for collaboration skills and capacity for problem solving can often direct office politics in a more positive direction and use them to streamline workflow with behind-the-scenes discussions and gain consensus on critical job decisions away from the boardroom.”

Related: This Nordic Company’s Four Secrets To Hiring (And Keeping) Great Talent Anywhere 

5. RALLY YOUR TEAM AROUND A COMMON “WHY”

Low employee retention and low engagement go hand in hand, so if you’re struggling with a need to reduce churn, you are likely struggling with employee engagement, too. Zach Hendrix, cofounder of the lawn service app GreenPal, grew one business from 1 to 100 using a simple but profound engagement strategy: rally employees around the central “why” of their jobs and the business as a whole.

In his first business, much of Hendrix’s operating core was comprised of Guatemalan immigrants who would come to the United States for several consecutive lawn mowing seasons and save as much money as they could to improve the lives of their families back home by building homes, ranches, and setting up farms stocked with cattle.

To fuel his team through the tough times, including the economic recession of 2009, he rallied them around their “why.” At weekly meetings, they would give progress reports on how projects back home were coming along and display picture collages of homes, farms, and businesses in Guatemala in the office and shop.

There’s nothing more frustrating than waving farewell to an employee you had hoped would stick around long-term. And while there are many reasons you’ll need to say goodbye to employees over the years–relocations, promotions, and career changes among them–there’s a lot you can do to make sure that your company isn’t the reason employees leave. Consider how you can apply these tips to your recruiting and hiring process to reduce churn to help your candidates stick around.

 

FastCompany.com | February 26, 2018 | BY SARAH GREESONBACH—GLASSDOOR 5 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : What To Do When A Key Hire Quits…TAKE A DEEP BREATH. It Always Hurts When a Key Contributor Leaves, But There are Ways to Deal with it That Can Ease the Pain.

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A great member of your team just came to you with an unexpected resignation. I’m sure you’re somewhere between being upset that you’re being deserted and worried about what you are going to do to handle that person’s contributions. Maybe you’re even more concerned that this will be the start of an avalanche—how many more people are thinking about leaving?+

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Sad businessman sitting at workplace and trying to find solution of problem

I know it’s a big loss and a big hassle to have to deal with a key hire departing, but, it’s totally normal and manageable.  Get through the pain quickly and elegantly, and get yourself back  as fast as possible.

TAKEA DEEP BREATH. If you’re successful, this is a scenario you’ll experience many times in your career. It always hurts when a key contributor leaves, but there are ways to deal with it that can ease the pain.

Here are my recommendations for when you hear that you’re about to lose someone who means a lot to the organization:

Find out why they are leaving.  Are they running away from something or running toward something?  Do they have their heads on straight regarding the situation?

Are they salvageable?  If there is something wrong, can you fix it?

  • I always use additional compensation as a last resort, as it’s usually not compensation that makes them want to leave.
  • If you can fix it, is the person mature enough to re-commit and be wholly engaged? You only want people onboard who are fully engaged.

 

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If you decide they are salvageable, still do a gut check and make sure you’re not getting gamed. Sometimes people use the threat of leaving as a way to angle for more money. Unfortunately, people sometimes do disingenuous things.

Be very careful not to build an entitlement culture where people think if they threaten to quit, they become eligible for a promotion. That makes costs go crazy and makes you powerless. Reserve the times you are willing to get gamed for one percent of the employee population—the true talent—not 30-50 percent of the people who are trying to get a better offer. Only go through heroics for the true stars. Everyone knows what’s happening and you have to be careful about how they see you responding. If not, soon everyone will be at your door with a counter offer and request for a raise and promotion. How can you tell what’s what? Probe where they are going, then tell them that it sounds like a great opportunity and that if it doesn’t work out, they are welcome to come back.

If they will definitely be leaving, can you negotiate a transition plan that is beneficial for both of you?  Can you get their agreement to help out in a pinch even if they are in a new job?

Treat them with respect and dignity on the way out.  Celebrate their contributions and let them know they are welcome back if things don’t work out where they are going.

But remember, you need to celebrate the people who stay and do good work as much as—or more than—the folks that leave.  Several times I’ve heard people say they only received recognition when they left (the squeaky wheel gets all the oil syndrome), which leads to very bad cultural dynamics.

  • Make sure the team knows that the departing person will be missed, but talk about the actions you and they can take to ensure that the company will still achieve its dreams.
  • Recognize that this is a great opportunity for someone else to step up and get a promotion.

Finally, look back and assess whether this was a surprise. Did you see it coming?  Make it a point to proactively know where all your key talent’s heads are and work hard to keep them motivated and in the game.

I know it’s a big loss and a big hassle to have to deal with a key hire departing, but, it’s totally normal and manageable.  Get through the pain quickly and elegantly, and get yourself back to terra firma as fast as possible.

 

Forbes.com | May 3, 2016 | Maynard Webb

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#Leadership : Why #Millennials Don’t Want To Work For You(& your Company)….Millennials will Represent 40% of the Total #Workforce by 2020. Like It or Not, They are Critical to the #Success & Sustainability of your #Business . If they Don’t Want to #Work for You, your #Organization will Die.

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If you want to attract and retain the best talent, you need to face reality and start thinking radically different. Don’t address the issue by trying to design more interesting jobs. Millennials don’t want jobs. They want lives.

Free- Man with Two Fingers

Instead of focusing on milking whatever you can out of the younger generation workforce before they move on in 1.5 to 3 years, you need to stop and listen. Organizations themselves are causing these low tenure stats, not Gen Y and Z.

Younger generation workers are not shy about telling you what they want. Their way of looking at the world and life is often misunderstood by later generation managers. They don’t buy into the concept of sitting at a cluttered desk ten hours a day trying to look busy for a boss. They see a bigger picture, leveraged by technology. This means the ability to add meaningful value from anywhere at anytime.

Despite what you think you can get out of this new talent pool in the short run, it is overshadowed by the benefits of a long tenured relationship. In all cases, a revolving door of good talent is expensive and disruptive to your business and customers.

Here are four ways you can attract and retain the best of Gen Y and Z and redirect low tenure trends.

1. Create An Entrepreneurial Culture

72% of Millennials would like to be their own boss. Being your own boss usually means you can work when, where and how you like as long as you are delivering results. It offers freedom, flexibility and eliminates the need for conversations around the dead notion of work/life balance. With current technology, work and life today are fungible – they look the same. Being your own boss is a lifestyle, not a job.

One of LinkedIn’s core values is “Act like an owner.” The statement is more than words to them. They built their culture around this tenet which mirrors the life of an entrepreneur: unlimited vacation in line with business needs, “inDays” one Friday a month where employees can work on personal projects, $5,000 a year for professional education, a platform called “Incubator” allowing employees to pitch ideas to executives, an opportunity to compete for up to a $10,000 donation to an employee’s favorite charity or to start their own, and personal grants to allow opportunities to be involved in independent charity work.

I recently had lunch with a friend of mine who works at LinkedIn’s Mountain View, CA headquarters. We ate at their on-site café. It reminded me of an expensive Las Vegas buffet I had paid for a week earlier. Here employees take what they want and eat for free. They don’t even need to checkout with someone before heading to their table. But it gets better. They also allow family and friends to visit employees for meals and eat for free, too. I was told that on Friday mornings employees have their parents, grandparents, children, and friends eating breakfast with them. LinkedIn does not track who eats the meals. It trusts its employees to enjoy the benefit as part of work-life integration, not balance.

If you embrace Gen Y and Z’s entrepreneurial spirit and build a culture to support, rather than crush it, they will not need to leave your company to fulfill this desire. In any case, results are all that really matter. If you are focusing on anything else, you have it wrong. Plus, in many cases outside pursuits enhances an employee’s ability to do their job and positively promotes the organizational brand to the younger generations desiring such flexibility. Arizona based software company InfusionSoft actively encourages employees to have side businesses to strengthen their ability to better serve the organization’s customers. From a customer perspective, it works.

Giving your employees the flexibility and freedom – where possible – to be their own boss with a focus exclusively on results, produces greater employee engagement, loyalty and ultimately better business results.

Don’t offer flexibility under a false pretense though. If you say it is okay to work from home, don’t make employees feel guilty for using the benefit. If you ask employees to forward you annual personal objectives along with business ones, read, acknowledge, address and support both. False and insincere organizational practices propagate the low tenure stats attributed to Gen Y and Z.

 

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2. Think Like A Trauma Ward

Over my career I’ve had the chance to work in many diverse industries, including 11 years in the medical industry. When I think of effective teams and the concept of true collaboration for a common purpose, there is no better example than a medical trauma ward. On such a team, competition, silos and politics are dangerous. Everyone must be unified and focused on a single outcome to achieve success. It is a matter of life or death.

88% of Millennials prefer to collaborate versus compete with others. This goes against the grain of many traditional organizations whose employees and departments spend more time competing internally against themselves versus their outside competition. Gen Y and Z don’t want to work in such an environment.

The new workforce is interested in working together to make the world a better place. An organization that truly embraces and lives a “one team” mentality will attract and retain the best of Gen Y and Z.

3. Facilitate Life Success

A critical step towards continuous organizational improvement and attracting/retaining the best of the younger generation workforce is the recognition that people’s lives matter on a whole. Gen Y and Z get this and demands it of their employers.

“Help people succeed in life” has been my motto since I started working in human resources 16 years ago. This means sincerely caring about the success of people beyond the job they are doing for you – 360 degrees – their job, career, personal interests, health, happiness, family and friends. When I was asked to launch an employee engagement initiative at Tesla Motors this year, it was with this goal in mind. Tesla360 – built on my Engagement360 platform – was aimed at enhancing the level of organizational care toward Tesla’s employees in order to facilitate success at work and at home. Such care has been proven to drive high employee engagement and business results.

Organizations are not special, but the way they care about the success of their people is. While Tesla is in the early stages of this transition, it understands the importance of creating a successful life for its people to maximize their engagement, retention, business results and ultimately their ability to change the world.

Supporting the life success of your employees requires leaders and managers who are strong coaches and mentors. They should focus on both short- and long-term career and personal objectives. 79% of Millennials say this is important to them.

4. Communicate How You Are Changing The World

I was recently honored to be the keynote speaker at AAPEX 2015, the world’s largest auto care industry event in the world, held in Las Vegas. It attracted around 150,000 people. At this event the industry spent a good amount of time talking about how auto care affects the lives of people around the world and keeps humanity moving.

Without this nearly $500 billion industry, many could not get safely to work and back home each day, drop off and pick up their children from school, enjoy family vacations or transport loved ones to deliver babies or to doctors to keep them healthy. This same industry also aids policemen and firemen in protecting communities. It helps gardeners and sanitation workers keep cities clean and maintained, and also ensures essential vehicles build roads, buildings and homes.

In order to attract and retain top talent from Gen Y and Z to career opportunities, it is imperative that you and they know how the required work is having a positive impact on the world. This understanding and alignment is what will excite the next-generation workforce and where the true magic happens when it comes to engaging people, fulfilling organizational purpose, and driving business results.

Most businesses are not established to make money. They are started for a higher reason. If you begin right, the money follows. Imagine if the visionary Walt Disney had stood in front of a group of potential supporters and said, “I want to build a theme park centered around an animated mouse to make money.”

Know your industry and organization’s purpose. Know how you make the world a better place. If you can’t connect the dots, Gen Y and Z will look elsewhere. 64% of Millennials say it’s a priority for them. GE’s current career opportunitycommercials proclaiming, “Get yourself a world-changing job” makes this clear.

To gain further clarity on your organizational purpose, ask and answer:

  • How does my organization positively affect the lives of others?
  • Why was my organization started in the first place?

One of my favorite quotes is, “If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.” The next generation workforce is not interested in work. They are not lazy. They don’t think the world owes them a living. They want more out of life and want to leave the world a better place because they lived. If skilled and trained leaders and managers effectively communicate and align organizational and employee purpose, focus on outcomes not office hours, sincerely care about the life success of their people, plus pull employees together through shared purpose, then organizations will experience greater employee and customer engagement, less short-tenured turnover, and greater business success.

If you let Gen Y and Z be who they are – what makes them great – and build a culture to support them, your talent pipeline will be plentiful and your retention high.

For more information about me and my new book How to Find a Job, Career and Life You Love and companion recording, Surrender to Your Purpose go toLouisEfron.com, Amazon.com and iTunes.

 

Forbes.com | December 13, 2015  | Louis Efron

#Leadership : Companies are Now Using this Strategy to Win the War for #Talent … How can #Employers Make sure Highly Qualified #Workers Choose Your Company over Your Competition?

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Recruiting top talent is a priority for every business regardless of location or industry. According to a report released by commercial real estate services company CBRE, 67 percent of multinational companies prioritize talent acquisition and retention over cost savings.

Free- Counting Abacus

There’s a good reason for that: Without skilled workers, companies would be lost.  And at the heart of the talent conversation lies real estate. In fact 46 percent of corporations’ global real estate decisions last year were driven by talent availability.

But even if you establish your business in a place where there’s a lot of good talent, securing it can be an outright war. So, how can employers make sure highly qualified workers choose them over the competition? Here are some ways to maximize real estate as a tool in the talent war.

Turn your headquarters into a community

If your company isn’t located in a major city, then offices can sometimes be pretty generic looking, often lacking any personality. Not so for ESPN. The company’s headquarters in Bristol, CT, aren’t a run-of-the-mill office park, but a full-fledged compound. After employees eat in the onsite cafe—which includes a brick pizza oven, vintage popcorn machine, and sports references like “Field of Greens”— they can get together to shoot some hoops out back. When they need a break from technology they can chat by a pond-side gazebo or visit the expansive gym, open seven days a week.

Obviously ESPN’s state-of-the-art, 123-acre campus makes it a desirable employer, but you don’t need a similar setup to attract and keep the best talent. Instead, you can infiltrate a community that already exists — whether it’s a desirable neighborhood in a certain city or an office park (an attractive one) in a suburb. Local restaurants, entertainment options, and other amenities play a big part in determining whether workers will choose you or sign on with a rival.

 

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Focus on wellness

How healthy is your business? Increasingly, companies are thinking of this question not in relation to revenue, but actual employee health. CBRE calls this the “wellness” agenda, where “the physical comfort and performance of the workforce come to play a growing role in building production and management.” In other words, services that were once viewed as a luxury—like on-site gyms and spas—are becoming commonplace, and failing to build them can leave companies in the dust.

CBRE reports that close to 50 percent of workers rank amenities like gyms as an important workplace feature, while more than half consider the indoor environment. These factors affect the modern workforce’s decision about which company to choose, and how long to stick around.

General Mills, the Minneapolis, MN, consumer packaged goods manufacturer, offers its workers access to an on-site health clinic. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Twitter provides staff with a rooftop garden for when they need some down time.

Dial up employee collaboration

A business’ ability to foster corporate connectedness is very much a product of its workspace.

That’s because certain workspaces encourage employee collaboration, which can create a more appealing company culture—something that’s sure to draw workers. When Steve Jobs was CEO of Pixar, he hired famed architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson to design a campus that included a central atrium and multiple gathering areas that “promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.” Teamwork and a positive atmosphere matter, especially when you consider many professionals spend more than 1,500 hours in an office each year.

Winning the talent war is about understanding what your target employees value in a workplace — from infrastructure to lifestyle perks — and delivering. When you can strike that balance between community and culture, workers will be lining up to sign on.

Find out more about how the right real estate can help recruit and retain great employees. 

This post is sponsored by CBRE. 

 

Businessinsider.com | December 8, 2015 | CBRE

#Leadership : We Don’t Need The Best People, We Need The Best Teams…Having the “Smartest Guys in the Room” Won’t Do you Much Good If they Can’t Work with Others Effectively. We Need to ReThink How we Approach Talent.

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All of this Points to a Major Change in How we Need to Recruit, Train & Manage People.  Many long-held practices, such as individual performance assessments and compensation will have to be reassessed. The best performers are no longer the hard driving executives that can impose their force of will, but those who can engender trust and encourage others to contribute.

 

The Navy SEALs, one of the world’s most elite fighting units, emphasizes teamwork over individual performance in its training and evaluation (image credit: Wikipedia)

In 1997, in a landmark article, McKinsey declared the war for talent.  The firm argued that due to demographic shifts, recruiting the “best and the brightest” was even more important than “capital, strategy, or R&D.” The report was enormously influential and continues to affect how enterprises operate even today.

Companies were urged to identify specific traits they were looking for, aggressively recruit and retain the very best performers and move quickly to weed out those who didn’t measure up.  Some companies, such as General Electric, instituted a policy of stacked ranking, routinely firing the bottom 10% of their workers.

Yet in a new book, Humans Are Underrated, longtime Fortune editor Geoff Colvin challenges this notion.  As it turns out, what it takes to compete in today’s world is not the best individual performers, but the best teams.  Having the “smartest guys in the room” won’t do you much good if they can’t work with others effectively.  We need to rethink how we approach talent.

 The Increasing Dominance of Teams

In the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA commissioned a study to determine what attributes made for the most effective analyst teams.  What they found was surprising.  As it turned out, what made for the most effective teams was not the individual attributes of their members, or even the coaching they got from their leaders, but the interactions within the team itself.

Managers have long sought to stock their organizations with great performers.  Hard working people who went to top schools, scored high on aptitude tests and had a proven track record of getting results were highly sought after.  Compensation schemes and retention practices were similarly geared to top performers.

However recent studies show that high value work is increasingly done not by individuals, but teams and those teams are increasing in size. Moreover, other research demonstrates that diverse teams outperform others that are more homogenous even if the more uniform units are made up of people with higher ability.

In fact, almost everywhere you look there is evidence that belies the central premise of the “war for talent” approach that McKinsey promoted and that so many organizations have adopted.  What’s increasingly becoming clear is the focus on individual performance was misguided. We need to shift our focus from individuals to teams.

 

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What’s Driving The Shift

At first, the new emphasis on teams, rather than individual performance, can be a little hard to swallow.  We’ve all seen great performers at work and marveled at their effectiveness, just as we’ve all seen real buffoons in action who can’t seem to tie their own shoelaces.  It seems far fetched, to say the least, that the former do not outperform the latter.

Yet in truth, very few people are stars or dolts, most sit somewhere in between and cognitive ability isn’t as consequential as it used to be. Consider the fact that an ordinary teenager with a smartphone has more access to information than even a genius working in a high-powered organization a generation ago and it becomes clear that talent is overrated.

So just as the industrial revolution devalued physical power, the digital age is reducing the importance of cognitive power.  Increasingly, we’re collaborating with machines to get work done.  Further, as the world grows more complex, expertise is becoming more domain specific, so we need to work with others to get things done.

The effect of teams is even becoming clear in fields that have long been considered in the realm of individual performance.  The National Transportation Safety Board, for example, found that 73% of fight incidents happen on the crew’s first day together, before they had a chance to build a team dynamic.  Another study showed that surgeons perform markedly worse at unfamiliar hospitals.

Building A Team Of Teams

Just as the individual capabilities of team members isn’t nearly as important as how they work together, overemphasizing individual team performance can hinder the performance of the organization as a whole. As he describes in Team of Teams, that’s what General Stanley McChrystal found fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2004.

Although as the Commander of Special Forces, he led some of the world’s most capable teams, the interactions between them left much to be desired.  Commandos would capture valuable intelligence, which would often sit for weeks before a team of analysts would get to it.  Insights from analysts, on the other hand, often weren’t getting to the soldiers on the ground.

McChrystal saw that his forces had fallen into an efficiency paradox.  In their zeal to field the most capable teams hell bent on accomplishing their specific missions, interoperability suffered and the shared mission of the organization was being lost.  They were winning every battle, but somehow still losing the war.

So McChrystal took steps to network his organization, even if that meant slowing the individual teams down slightly.  For example, he took top soldiers out of the field and made them liaison officers—usually a role for those past their prime.  He also embedded analysts in commando units and vise versa.  The result was that overall efficiency increased by a factor of seventeen.

What Makes A Great Team?

Managers have long relied on assessments such as the IQ test to identify high performers and those scores do correlate highly with individual achievement.  However, the work we do today demands greater collaboration and the same individual skills don’t necessarily transfer to a group setting.  In fact, some high performance traits, like assertiveness, negatively affect teams.

To understand how to create more effective teams, scientists at MIT and Carnegie Mellon have identified a collective intelligence factor that predicts group performance.  Rather than hard driving “A personalities,” it turns out that high performing teams are made up with people who have high social sensitivity, take turns when speaking and, surprisingly the number of women in the group.

Another study found that successful groups exhibited behaviors that engender trust, such as facing each other while talking and making eye contact.  Colvin also pointed to further research, still unpublished, which suggested that team performance was hindered when people believed that their work was being individually assessed.

All of this points to a major change in how we need to recruit, train and manage people.  Many long-held practices, such as individual performance assessments and compensation will have to be reassessed. The best performers are no longer the hard driving executives that can impose their force of will, but those who can engender trust and encourage others to contribute.

 

Forbes.com | September 5, 2015 | Greg Satell

Your #Career : Do #Employers Care About College Grades? … The Short Answer: Yes. Companies see GPAs as a Threshold to Manage their #Recruitment.

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Employers Want to see a GPA of 3.0 or Higher, & Many Put the Floor at 3.5.  Checked in with Dan Black, the Director of Recruiting for the Americas at professional services giant Ernst & Young, which Hires thousands of new U.S. grads every year. He says, Absolutely, he expects to see a GPA on a résumé. “Grades Certainly Do Matter when We’re Recruiting Students,” he says. “It’s really one of the only indications we have of a student’s technical ability or competence to do the job.”

workaholics-2

At the end of my son’s freshman year at UCLA, his grades are not what I would have hoped. I won’t print his average here but suffice to say it’s not a 4.0. He did get an A in a history course but his performance in two required science classes was sub-par. This summer he’s making good money teaching tennis at a local camp where he’s worked before, a job where academic performance doesn’t matter. But what about next summer or the summer after that, when he may try to land a paying internship at a consulting firm or ad agency? More important, what effect will his GPA have on his job prospects post-graduation?

I talked to career services directors at four schools—New York University, Brandeis, Rochester Institute of Technology and Purdue—and they all agree: Employers do care about grades. Students shouldn’t think that just because they’ve mounted the admissions hurdle, they can slack off in class. To be sure, many small employers won’t expect to see a GPA on a résumé, but most large companies will. According to a 2013 survey of more than 200 employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 67% of companies said they screened candidates by their GPA. NACE, A Bethlehem, PA non¬profit, links college placement offices with employers. Its members tend to be big companies with an average of 7,500 people on the payroll, including Kellogg, Procter & Gamble and Bank of America.

 

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I also checked in with Dan Black, the director of recruiting for the Americas at professional services giant Ernst & Young, which hires thousands of new U.S. grads every year. He says, absolutely, he expects to see a GPA on a résumé. “Grades certainly do matter when we’re recruiting students,” he says. “It’s really one of the only indications we have of a student’s technical ability or competence to do the job.”

The career services directors I spoke to all say that Employers Want to see a GPA of 3.0 or Higher, & Many Put the Floor at 3.5. But Black says there is no hard cut¬off. Even a student with a 2.1 could get a job at Ernst & Young if he had a good reason for his lagging marks, like being called up for military service in the middle of a semester. Or a student with a 3.2 could beat out an applicant with a 3.9 if the student with the lower grades were working 30 hours a week to put himself through school and at the same time serving as class treasurer. “I’m always looking for people who can juggle multiple responsibilities,” says Black. One thing Black says that startles me: he has gotten to know the schools where he recruits, like U. Penn., so well that he can evaluate what it means for a student to get a B in a class with an especially tough professor.

According to Trudy Steinfeld, head of career services at NYU, the companies that care the most about grades are investment banks, professional service firms like Ernst & Young and pharmaceutical companies. Even if a student is not applying in one of those areas, if he has a GPA over 3.0, she recommends he include the average on his résumé. Do include honors like cum laude and membership in Phi Beta Kappa, she adds.

Manny Contomanolis, head of career services at Rochester Institute of Technology, agrees. He also says it’s important to be honest because at least a third of the time, employers request a copy of a student’s transcript. Black of Ernst & Young agrees. “Nobody gets hired at EY from campus without an official transcript.”

At Purdue, career offices head Tim Luzader says many large manufacturing corporations like General Motors, Ford, John Deere and Caterpillar, recruit on campus and they all want to see grades.” They see GPA as a threshold to manage their recruitment,” he says.

What should you do if your grades are lousy? There are a few possibilities. At Purdue, students have the advantage of some 30 career fairs a year, where they can stand face to face with company recruiters and sell themselves. “They can tell their story, whether they were working while going to school or whether they had a disastrous freshman year but have done better lately,” says Luzader. Steinfeld agrees with Ernst & Young’s Dan Black that students can compensate for bad grades with a compelling story that they can put on their résumés, like describing an internship where they did an analysis of workflow issues and improved productivity by 20%. Another fix, suggested by RIT’s Contomanolis: If the GPA in your major is better than your overall grades, only list that, or list both numbers.

What about small employers or startups? Do they care about GPA? Not as much. But if your grades are good, go ahead and list your average on your transcript. Dean Iacovetti, director of recruiting at Apprenda, a software company outside Albany, NY, says he doesn’t expect to see GPAs on résumés, but if he does, and it’s a strong one, he takes notice. “If there’s an individual graduating with a 3.5 from Cornell,” he says, “that’s someone I’d like to see.”

 

Forbes.com | July 8, 2015 | Susan Adams 

#Strategy: The Best Way to Get the Truth Out of a Job Candidate…The Single Most Important Thing you Could Do as an Organization is #Hire the Right People.

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Last week hedge fund manager Jason H. Karp explained during the Milken Institute’s Global Conference that his company’s personality assessment helps reveal positive and negative attributes in job candidates. He went on to say that the personality traits he looks for the most in traders and analysts are openness to change and grit (or resilience).

Man in suit sitting in dark room illuminated only by light from a lamp and looking in camera

“I would argue that the single most important thing you could do as an organization is hire the right people,” Frederick Morgeson, an organizational psychology expert and professor of management at Michigan State University, tells Business Insider. And a key way to do that, he argues, is by investing time, energy, and money into properly conducting personality assessments.

Morgeson says what’s truly unique and commendable about Karp’s tactic is his clear understanding of what he needs for the job and the company. This is the crucial first step to conducting personality assessments the right way.

Why do personality assessments matter?

The point of personality assessments, Morgeson says, is to get an idea of what traits someone possesses and what types of behaviors they engage in so you can assess how well they match up to the traits you believe are really important for success in the job and in the organization.

Questions like, “To what extent do you like trying new or different things?” and, “Tell me about a time when you had to try something new,” for example, would indicate a job candidate’s level of openness to new experiences and change.

job interview

Morgeson points out that if a company hires someone who makes between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, over the course of a 20-year career, that’s at least a million-dollar investment in that person.

According to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University and CEO of personality profiling company Hogan Assessment Systems, when tests are scientifically validated, they are better at predicting future performance than interviews, references, and résumés.

Here are the steps you need to take to get the most out of your own company’s personality assessments:

1. Understand your needs.

The first step to personality assessments is figuring out your company’s values, missions, and the needs for the job.

“If you don’t do the work as an organization to make sure that those traits that you’re trying to find in your candidates are in fact the right traits for your organization and for the jobs they’re doing, you’re going to have problems,” Morgeson says.

Businesses need to ask:

  1. What is is going to take to be successful in the job?
  2. What is it going to take to be successful in the organization?

Only once these ideal traits are clear can a business proceed to the next step of assessing candidates’ personalities and their fit.

 

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2. Pick an assessment.

There are thousands of different personality assessments available on the market today. One most people have heard of is the controversial Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test.

Karp said his company looks for openness to change, which is one of the “Big Five” personality traits, another common model for assessing potential new hires.

Collectively, these traits are often referred to with the acronym OCEAN, which stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Even though Karp said that neuroticism could lead to what he calls a “nuisance hire” — someone that has potential, but could be a drain on the company — he admitted that he himself exhibits this trait.

Often people will exhibit a mixture of some of these personality traits, Morgeson says, but there are usually a few that stand out to assessors more than others.

interview

3. Beware of common mistakes.

Where companies often trip up, Morgeson explains, is not assessing these personality traits the right way.

“One of the things that the field [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][of organizational psychology] has struggled with is, we know these personality traits matter for how people perform, but how do we get at them, how do we measure them, how do we effectively assess them?”

Assessors could potentially ask the wrong kinds of questions to discern a personality trait.

“Even though they have an idea of what they want, they’re not engaging in a process that will really help them understand the candidates’ or the applicants’ standing on those characteristics,” he says.

Critics of personality assessments also claim it’s too easy to game these tests. John Rust, director of Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Centre, told the economist that because the expected answers to these assessments are often clear, companies wind up “selecting the people who know what the right answers are.”

Morgeson admits this is especially problematic when using these assessments for hiring, since job applicants are more motivated to lie and tell interviewers what they want to hear. But good personality assessors have ways to know when someone’s lying, he says:

  1. They build a lie/cheat scale into the assessment. One way to do this is to ask a candidate if they endorse something that doesn’t exist. If they answer in the affirmative, this raises the question, what else are they lying about?
  2. When a potential hire’s answers seem too good to be true, they follow up with them about it in some kind of interview process.
  3. They reach out to the candidate’s references and ask them to answer the same question about the job candidate and see if the responses line up.

“The whole point of the hiring process is you’re trying to learn the most you can about an applicant in as many different ways as possible,” Morgeson says.

Businessinsider.com | May 5, 2015 | RACHEL GILLETT

http://www.businessinsider.com/best-way-to-get-the-truth-out-of-potential-hires-2015-5#ixzz3ZIMTjJ5F[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Strategy: Why this Google Exec would Always Keeps 200 Random Resumes Lying around his Office…Former Exec used to Keep the resumes of 200 Current Googlers Lying around his Office

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Google values and invests in its employees.  It provides resources like free meals and in-house dry cleaning to save their time and improve their health and productivity.

Jonathan Rosenberg

Jonathan Rosenberg.

It “defaults to open,” to prove it trusts employees, and encourages them to work on projects they feel passionate about.

By investing in employees and giving them mission-driven things to do, Google attracts great people.

In fact, its employees can be one of the company’s best recruiting tools.

Former VP of product Jonathan Rosenberg used to keep the resumes of 200 current Googlers lying around his office.

“If a candidate was on the fence about joining Google, Jonathan would simply give them the stack and say: ‘You get to work with these people,'” Google HR boss Laszlo Bock writes in his new book “Work Rules!”

The candidate could then thumb through the pile, seeing that he or she would get the chance to work next to “Olympic athletes, Turing Award and Academy Award winner, Cirque du Soleil performers, cup stackers, Rubik’s Cube champions, magicians, triathletes, volunteers, veterans,” and people who had worked at some of the most revolutionary companies, developing landmark products.

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Rosenberg swears he didn’t select certain resumes to keep around — it was truly a random selection. But according to Bock, Rosenberg never lost a candidate.

Which isn’t to say that Google has an ideal work force. Last year, Google published its diversity statistics, revealing that it employs mostly white and Asian men.

Businessinsider.com | April 23, 2015 | 

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-2015-4#ixzz3YQ0ebyW9

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.

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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