5 Ways to Inspire Your Employees

5 Ways to Inspire Your Employees Weve heard the usual tricks and tips for motivating staff quarterly bonuses and flexible working hours. But what employers often forget, is that one of the key ways to motivate staff is to truly inspire them with what you do. If staff are feeling inspired, then not only are they more motivated in the workplace, but they also care more about the causes and values at the core of your brand. This naturally leads to a deeper understanding and trust to be felt between employee and employer which is always a good thing! So what are the key ways you can inspire your staff? Here are my top 5  tips: 1) Dont impose fear: If youre making your employees feel fearful and uncomfortable in the workplace, youre obviously doing something wrong. Fear-mongering in the workplace is a way that bad bosses get the results they need. They use incentives, pit employees against each other and  even use the threat of being fired to boost productivity. It may work in the short term, but your employees will feel no loyalty to your brand and employee retention rates will be low. 2) Encourage growth: Giving your employees the opportunity for growth and training is a key way to inspire them. Learning should never stop, no matter what age or experience level you have. Bring in external trainers, hold internal academies run by the employees  themselves, or even take an afternoon off work and bring in a yoga teacher. A good worker should be well rounded! 3) Brainstorm like crazy: Ask employees for their  thoughts on a new project or idea. Something that I always think is that you can learn something from everyone even if its the office intern or the receptionist. No matter what employees experience level is, they may have an idea or a few inspiring words which spark off a breakthrough in your work. So brainstorm with teams of mixed experience. Its always worth it, and will leave employees feeling like theyre valued. 4) Instill optimism: Nothings more contagious than a smile (and a positive attitude!). Spreading positivity in the workplace will inspire your colleagues and make the workplace a little lighter and happier. And whats more inspiring than a group of happy people! 5) Show your gratitude: Nothing leaves you feeling more inspired than being thanked for your hard work. Just a simple pat on the back for a project or a well done for a piece of work can make a whole lot of difference to employees outlook. Recognising the hard work that your employees do will inspire your team to continue working hard and creating brilliant work, as they know theyre appreciated. Have any other inspiring tips? Let us know!

Free Libyan People - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Free Libyan People - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career It was a cry. It was a verb. Now it is simply a statement of fact. It is a noun. Free Libyan people. This is what happens when people rise up against the worst odds. It’s people who make nations come together, even the ones that don’t like each other. Miracles happen. Cancer will be cured. Fresh water will be man-made, cheaply. Power will be supplied by something plentiful and inexpensive. And, if someone doesn’t corner the market on that, then the water and power will raise everyone’s boat. Wars will cease. Good healthcare will raise the quality of everyone’s lives. People who applaud the death of rights to others will be scorned. The one percent won’t be able to pay for a voice louder than they are due, which is one percent of the sound and fury that 6 billion plus people make. Children’s birthday parties won’t mean ponies for some and another day of hunger for others. Access to the cloud will be a right. What does this have to do with business and jobs? The last four people I hired all cried during their job interviews.   That kind of burst out crying, the kind that comes when you don’t expect to get what you need, much less what you deserve. Some people I haven’t been able to hire cried too, when I said let me see who I can refer you to, because you are surely a good fit for another company. The willful indifference paid to regular people and their families is destroying the fragile patina of sanity that maintains a civilization. You and I know that all the miracles we need to be cancer free, war free, poverty free, and every other kind of good free can only come when people are paid to think and create. When managers have great administrative staff, enough colleagues to really get the job done, and real people who answer phones or otherwise represent companies in all the small ways that make us want to do business rather than loathe trying to order a product or get service. People who work in markets: real markets that sell food and the small farmers who grow food, should be at least as important as people who speculate in markets like oil and gold that they never touch. So why are we letting individuals who are all about firing and not hiring control what happens in business and thus on the planet? Why are we giving up the right to care and share? How did we elect or let rule the despots who are hoarding or stonewalling financial resources that should be used to put regular people back to work doing great things that only people can do? Investments don’t cure cancer. Off shore accounts don’t buy toasters. Polluting one area of the world to make a battery one dime cheaper isn’t creating consumers able to purchase one. It’s time to join forces with like-minded people, make a drum circle or a phone tree or however it is you feel like you can organize to be heard.   Collect voices to create a greater impact for your cause. If you are a #OWS, then tell the rest of us what you need to keep dry or warm or just going. Take some small action every day. Call your bank and say if you charge me and people like me $5 to use our debit cards, then loan the gargantuan profits to small businesses that can hire us. My personal brand leverages the facts that I am a capitalist and a business owner.   That same brand platform demands I say aloud: I don’t want companies to make record profits and still have people cry in my conference room because they got a job. We helped free Libyan people against all odds after decades of enslavement. Now is the time to free us all to contribute and prosper. Make jobs not war on the working class. Author: Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers. Read more at NanceRosenBlog. Twitter name: nancerosen

How to Get More From Your Colouring-in Department (aka Marketing)

How to Get More From Your Colouring-in Department (aka Marketing) I recently had dinner with a recruitment leader (anonymous) and we were talking about her goals for 2016. Profit, Effectiveness, ROI, CRM Upgrade, Marketing… Or rather she said: “I want to get more ROI from my colouring in department!” Translation â€" ROI from her Marketing department. Marketing and Sales are Disconnected I do often come across Marketing departments who are disconnected from Sales â€" disconnected enough to warrant a (healthy) scepticism.   This is often demonstrated by graphs showing community sizes rather than fees generated from marketing activities. Why? I often find that this is due to a complete lack of understanding (by Sales) of what Marketing is there for. Marketing are often not expected to generate leads, and if they do, Sales sometimes don’t stop cold calling long enough to convert them, or feedback to Marketing on improving the lead criteria. Who cares about your community? I want money! We all know Greg Savage. We even had a webinar dedicated to (our invented) Greg Savage day.   He has numerous sound bites, one of which is so pertinent to this: “Those of you getting your staff to compete over cold calls are competing over who can piss off the most prospects…  Cold calls? Warm calls are better.” Now warm calls are not generated by radiators or working in hot climates â€" they are generated by marketing (delivered by Sales and Marketing). Marketing is all about being in the peripheral vision of your talent and clients â€" content, events, great job adverts… Marketing should rule lead generation â€" not simply colour it in! If you agree with Greg (as my clients do) that 2016 is about recruiters being more focused marketers, and you agree with me… “If you’re a marketer it’s about recruiters… if you’re a recruiter it’s about marketing.” Then you need to either radically change your perception of your colouring in department, or hire a new more sales-focussed one. It’s all about ROI! 5 things you can do to get your Marketing Department to put their Crayons down: Tell them who your target clients are â€" seriously, they’ll love knowing and they’ll get super giddy when they see these clients surfing your website and engaging with their content. Give them a budget to generate leads. Even as an IT Director in my younger days, my Commercial Director said “I’ll give you £1 as long as you make me £2!” Put down the cold call and demand a list of warm calls. Stop jumping out of your cave with your club looking for the Woolly Mammoth and start looking to be stroked. Are you so busy chasing that you can’t see who’s looking at you? Get a lead from your marketing department and it’s not worth your time? Feedback and demand better (nicely). ROI is about Perception and Expectation Recruitment marketers need to “get” Sales, generate leads, demonstrate value and get into the thick of growing a business. Recruiters need to “get” that Marketing (with a big and small m) is intrinsically part of the sales process, not simply a pretty logo, website, LinkedIn Recruiter Licence sign off, etc… And when Marketing generates super leads for you, convert them into sales please, then tell Marketing how much money they have helped you take home that month, say thanks, and don’t be surprised if they log that somewhere and remind you of it regularly. Love your Marketer, recruiters!

Writing a Resume - The Complete Guide - Classy Career Girl

Writing a Resume - The Complete Guide Writing a resume.  What? You think that sounds boring? Don’t worry, I’ll make it fun.  This article  will help you polish up your resume and optimize it for your dream career so that you can truly shine on paper. The details really do matter here so we’ll focus in on the key elements so you can stand out from the competition and land your dream job.   Note: Make sure you get your hands on our 2 proven free resume templates.   Here is the complete guide to writing a resume: Step 1: Create Your Resume Branding Strategy Let’s get started by creating your resume branding strategy. What you might find a little funny though is that we are not even going to look at your resume yet! This is the step that is often missed by job searchers. One of the biggest mistakes is not doing this pre-work and really thinking about your branding strategy before you start updating your resume. Start asking yourself some questions like what is the first thing that you want the interviewer to know about you? Remember, often a recruiter only spends 5-7 seconds on your resume so you must be ready to convey the most important part first! Also, what makes you unique and what makes you awesome? (remember it’s ok to brag now! Don’t be humble ladies!!) Once you have the answers to these questions, it will be time to create your resume branding strategy and we will break your brand into five different categories: 1. Who are you? 2. What is your career target and job title? 3. What is your goal? 4. How do you want to stand out? 5. How do you want to be known? These are all the questions you want to think about before you start updating a resume template. [RELATED: The 10 Most Common Resume Mistakes] Step  2: Keywords and Job Descriptions If you miss this task today you might not actually even get your resume seen by a live person if you don’t pass the computer system! When you apply, you are competing with on average 250 other resumes and a computer system is weeding out the best resumes. What are the computers, otherwise known as application tracking systems, looking for? The right keywords! We don’t want you automatically disqualified because you don’t have the right keywords. So let’s focus on one career target for now. We are going to create one resume for each career target title that you have. Then, we are going to find 2-5 job descriptions for that career title. I recommend checking out indeed.com because it takes all the job search sites and puts them onto one place for you. Another site I love to find job descriptions from is LinkedIn. Then, look at those job descriptions and highlight the common skills, requirements and education. You are highlighting the common keywords on those job descriptions so we can make sure we include those on your resume. Remember, two other job sites onetonline.org and mynextmove.org to do more research on keywords for the career you want. These sites will give you so much detail on the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for keywords in your resume. Step 3: Accomplishments and Results This lesson is crucial so you better listen up! Your work experience is the number 1 most important part of your resume. First make sure you dust off those work experience stories. You are going to use them here! Your work experience should not be a list of tasks you have done. If you look at your resume right now, you might just see a long list of tasks. That is what I often see when I do resume reviews. I want you to instead share positive results from previous employment and education. So your work experience is instead the performance, accomplishments, achievements, rewards and actions you helped make happen. Paying careful attention to add a lot of numbers, percentages and dollar amounts whenever possible. Tell me about how you saved money. Tell me about how you improved client satisfaction. Tell me about how you improved productivity. Really dig deep and think about those results you helped make happen. This will make you stand out!! Step  4: Pick Your Resume Structure and Template I’ve got a question for you. Would you take my course  if I told you that my objective was to make a lot of money? Nope, I didn’t think so and that’s not really my objective anyways. I am pretty sure that you be much more likely to buy my course if I told you it would benefit you and how I could help you. Now, let’s apply the same logic to writing a resume. Do you want to start out your resume by telling them that your objective is to get a good job? Or do you want to start out your resume by telling them how you can benefit and help the company. Let’s do the latter and focus on communicating your benefits as much as possible in a summary section at the top of your resume. I would strongly discourage the objective statement since it is all about what you want and doesn’t communicate what you can bring to the company if they hire you. Many companies don’t care what you want and their number one priority is finding a candidate that fits their job requirements. A summary statement should be about 4-6 lines and include the top 5 things you want them to know about you. This is where you are going to highlight your most relevant strengths, results that are unique to you and the job you are applying to. It’s also time to pick out which resume format and template you want to use. There are four types of resumes you can choose from so pick what works best for you: 1. Functional Resume. This resume is focused on your skills and experiences rather than your chronological work history. It is used most often by people who are changing careers or who have gaps in their employment history. 2. Chronological Resume. This resume starts by listing your work history, with the most recent position listed first. Employers typically prefer this type of resume because it’s easy to see what jobs you have held and when you have worked at them. 3. Combination Resume. With this type of resume, you can really highlight the skills you have that are relevant to the job you are applying for and also provide the chronological work history that employers prefer. 4. Non-traditional resume typically includes photos, graphics, logos and any other images. This could be web-based or an online portfolio. This type of resume is perfect for non-traditional roles where the job description requires creativity and thinking outside of the box. This is the resume if you want to stand out and the company you are applying at is not conservative. Another common question I get about writing a resume is whether you should put your education or experience first? The general rule is that if you have recently graduated and have no work experience, put your education first. If you have more experience than education, then start off with the experience. Speaking of education, when you are writing a resume don’t just limit it to the university name and date you graduated. I challenge you to also list any special awards or honors you earned, courses you took that would be helpful in the job you are applying for, special projects, internships and achievements while you were in school, scholarships and academic awards and even sports and extracurricular activities. I was on the tennis team when I was in college and for an entire year I committed to working on my tennis game and traveling around the country with my tennis team. That showed a lot of commitment and also displayed my teamwork and leadership abilities so I was happy to share it on my resume and talk about it in job interviews. Another common question I receive is how long should the resume be? The answer is 1-2 pages but never 1 and a half pages!! Either fit everything tightly on one page or if you have a lot of experience feel free to list it onto page 2.  And remember, if you are very experienced, your education section can get shorter. Alright, it’s time to pick a template and start writing a resume. Make sure you register to get all the best free Resume Templates. So, were finished talking about writing a resume. Next up: Your cover letter! Wait, is that even required? Learn more about cover letters here.

How to Land, Brand and Ace Executive Job Interviews - Executive Career Brandâ„¢

How to Land, Brand and Ace Executive Job Interviews

Never ask employees what would make them happy. Heres why. - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Never ask employees what would make them happy. Heres why. - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Most managers have realized by now that happy workplaces are more productive, more creative, attract better talent and make more money. So if you were a well-meaning manager or HR person looking to capitalize on this and create a happier workplace, you might be tempted to start by asking your employees some version of this question: What would make you happier at work? It seems like a great place to start. To make people happier, ask them what they want and them give them that. Right? Wrong. Heres why: We know from the research that people are notoriously bad at predicting what will make them happy. Stop random people on the street and ask them what would make their lives happier and a lot of them will reply Winning the lottery. But studies of lottery winners show that they are actually only marginally happier than all of us non-lottery millionaires. Similarly if you ask employees what will make them happier at work you will most likely get responses like: A raise A promotion A bonus A gym in the office Free fruit Free lunches But while all of this sounds perfectly reasonable (indeed, you might give some of the same answers if asked the same question), we know from the research that these factors dont make employees any happier at work. Just to be clear: We cannot ignore them when making workplaces better, because these factors can absolutely make people unhappy when theyre unfair. But once they are fair, increasing them further does not increase happiness at all. This explains why many organizations spend a ton of time and money on every perk imaginable and employees are still not happy. Quite simply: giving employees what they ask for is doomed to fail, if they dont know what to ask for. And they dont. What we need to do instead, is help people discover for themselves what really makes them happy at work and theres a much better question for that: Tell me about a recent good experience at work that made you happy. This may look like essentially the same question as the one above so why is this one better? With the previous question (What would make you happy at work) we only get at the things people think will make them happy. With the latter question, we ask about specific previous experiences that caused happiness. This means that we get directly at what really works. I have used this question in hundreds of speeches all over the world and never once has anyone told a story of getting a raise, a promotion or a perk. Never once has anyone said I was really happy last Thursday because I got a free apple. The one exception was when I did a workshop at Lego and an employee shared this example: Every week our team gets a new box of fruit and theres always only one banana in it. If I get there in time to get that one banana, it makes me really happy! Im 98% sure he was kidding! Invariably, when people reflect on this question their stories fall into two categories. They either talk about doing good work, achieving great results or making a positive difference for others. This includes things like: I had a complicated problem on a project and found a really creative solution for it. A customer liked my work so much they sent me an email with tons of positive feedback. I helped a coworker by sharing advice and knowledge. Or they talk about moments of personal connection at work, like: I came back to the office from parental leave last week and so many people on my team welcomed me back with smiles and hugs. I had a bad day and my manager noticed and did her best to help me. We celebrated a team members birthday last week with cake and coffee and had a great time together. Very often their stories contain both elements. Thats why we talk about results and relationships being the two main sources of happiness at work. The upshot Dont ask your employees what will make them happy because they probably have completely the wrong idea and giving them what they ask for wont work. Instead, help them connect to past positive experiences because those are a much more reliable predictor of future happiness. And then work on doing simple daily actions that promote a feeling of results and relationships. Related posts 5 reasons why Danish employees are the happiest in the world 10 steps to build a strategy for happiness 5 reasons why more money doesnt make employees any happier Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Extra Activities On Your Resume

Extra Activities On Your ResumeExtracurricular activities are often listed on your resume. Even if you aren't involved in any organizations that are listed, you may still be awarded one of the prestigious awards from them.The first type of field events that will show up on your resume is your college's athletic teams. These are often listed on a separate page so that they do not take up too much space. If your school has multiple teams, those listings should be listed at the end of your resume.Any type of event that you played in during college will show up on your resume. This includes special events that were given a lot of publicity. To be on the safe side, the list should only include events that have been announced to the public.Many students will choose to take part in local community groups. These can be organizations like the YMCA or the Chamber of Commerce. It doesn't matter if you played on the sports team, helped to organize the events, or were simply there to cheer on you r fellow classmates.Volunteering is also often listed as one of the best ways to show how involved you are in community work. There are many organizations in the U.S. that will pay students to volunteer their time to help others. The volunteer work will show that you want to give back to your community.Other kinds of extracurricular activities can include service organizations. These groups are designed to help the needy and sometimes their actions are publicized. These types of events should be listed on your resume as well.One of the greatest advantages of working for a service organization isthat it shows off your ability to work independently. This type of work does not require the same amount of research that a job requires. You can usually find a volunteer position within an organization, if you are good at asking questions.Always list the field events that you participated in. This way, employers will have no problem recognizing them on your resume. Because of this, it is rec ommended that you take your time when writing your resume and list all of the important jobs you had throughout college.