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Indiana Basketball And Hiring – What Can We Learn?

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I live in Indiana, where basketball is king. Whether you attended Indiana University or not (I did not–I’m a proud Butler University Bulldog), IU basketball is a mainstay of conversations throughout the state, especially this time of year.

This year, however, IU basketball is the topic of conversation for the wrong reasons.  Over the past few months, no fewer than 6 of the 13 scholarship players on the IU squad have been arrested or suspended for run-ins with the law…that’s almost 50% of the team!

Naturally, many of the discussions about this among Hoosier fans (don’t ask what a Hoosier is, as even those of us from Indiana aren’t 100% sure!) revolve around how much coach Tom Crean should be held accountable for these incidents.  Regardless of any personal bias one might have for/against Coach Crean, I find myself thinking about the following:

  • He recruited and signed each of these players.
  • They each interact with him on a regular (almost daily) basis.
  • How they perform on the basketball court ultimately determines his success as a coach. 

Sound familiar?  If you’re a business owner or hiring manager, it should.  After all, what do we do in those roles?

  • Recruit talent (i.e., employees).
  • Interact with employees regularly.
  • “Coach” employees to perform at a level that ensures success for the organization.

Given that, let’s look at the IU situation by placing things into a business situation.  Assume that you hire 13 people over the course of a year or so.  Then, assume that those 13 people perform at a fairly average level (if you’ve seen IU basketball over the past year, you know this is a generous statement).  Finally, let’s assume 6 of those 13 people end up arrested or suspended over a period of a few months for various alcohol or drug-related offenses.  As the manager of those people, how likely is that you’d still have your job?

My point here isn’t to pile on as it relates to Tom Crean.  It’s fun to draw these comparisons, as there are some parallels between the roles of a coach and a manager/boss.  But, my overarching point here is how important it is to recruit/hire the right people. 

I know that’s a very simplistic and obvious statement.  “Right” means different things to different organizations.  Talent is clearly important, but it isn’t the only thing.  How well will the person “fit” the organization, the role, the team, etc.?  Will they be a good teammate?  It’s true in sports, but it’s also true in business.

Let me finish my basketball-to-business comparison with two examples relative to IU: the Duke and Kansas basketball programs.  Both programs are run by coaches who  know how to recruit those who “fit” their programs. They also have the respect of their players.  As you get ready to hire for your next opening, be sure to think about what you can learn from Duke or Kansas to more consistently recruit the right people for your team.


ExactHire provides hiring solutions that help organizations find and hire the best talent and the right fit for their company culture. To learn more about how ExactHire can improve your hiring process, contact us today!

Image Credit: Basketball Goal by prettybea (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

New Mom Motivations – Increase Employee Happiness

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I have a new daughter, and she is amazing! I love having a baby in the house again. My two sons are six and eight, full of energy, and involved in everything. But having an infant in the house has reminded me to slow down and enjoy life a little bit more.

Although my husband and I are often sleep deprived, we’ve learned to appreciate the quiet times and enjoy the first smiles, snuggles, pretty dresses, and bows. It’s safe to say that being home and having the opportunity to enjoy all of this is motivating to me.

And my company knows it.

Motivate Your Employees

What Makes Your People Tick?

A successful company knows what makes people tick. People are driven in many different ways. Compensation is important, but it’s not everything. Companies need managers who know what it is that makes their teams happy and what motivates them to help the organization succeed.

I work for a company that believes in a work-life balance and provides flexibility to work from home and to change schedules if necessary. Two years ago, I preferred to arrive after 9:00 AM because I didn’t need to rush out at 5:00 PM (and because I wasn’t a morning person). Today, I arrive at work early so that I can be back home by late afternoon. I am motivated to be as efficient as possible at work so that I can be home to help my boys with homework, make dinner, and have time to hold my baby girl. I am telling you this to illustrate how employee priorities and motivations can change as they reach different stages in life.

Knowing more about what motivates your employees will also help you learn to manage them over the course of their employment within your organization. From the very beginning–as part of the hiring process–companies can utilize cognitive and behavioral assessments to determine whether an applicant is a good fit for both the position and the organization. Later on, you can use these assessment results to help manage and motivate the employee.

Maximize Employee Happiness

It’s About People

For long-term success, the happiness of your employees should matter the most in your organization. Be sure to assess new hires for job fit, get to know your team and what makes them happy through informal conversations, and use company social activities and events to to strengthen relationships. You will find that happy employees lead to greater work efficiency, and the work environment is more enjoyable for everyone.

 

How will you keep your employees happy so that you can retain the best team?

Learn more about applicant assessments tools and other people-pleasing HR Technology at ExactHire.com. Contact us today!

Image credit: mother&child01 by David Bleasdale (contact)

Perfectly Indispensable – 11 Ways to Impress Your Boss

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High unemployment rates, volatile markets, and the constant need for businesses to run leaner are all great reasons to become indispensable at work. Let the perfect employee that lives within you radiate through your office, and recession proof yourself!

Increase your personal stock value and make sure you get noticed with:

11 Ways To Win at Work…And Impress Your Boss

1) Be timely and accountable. No one ever needed an employee who was a day late and a dollar short.

2) Use communication properly. Make sure you listen as much as you speak. Communication must go both ways or it doesn’t work.

3) Develop team morale. Don’t just bring in doughnuts on Fridays, offer to help a colleague who you know is overwhelmed. Volunteer to spearhead the project that nobody wants to take on and develop a fun and exciting way to tackle it.

4) Solve issues with solutions, don’t complain. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” In this case, as long as you have a suggestion on the issue, you can bring it up. Otherwise, keep it to yourself until you have an idea.

5) Know the industry. Spend personal time reading relevant and reputable articles that are in line with your work.  By keeping up on the latest and greatest, you are sure to help the business succeed.

6) Pick the hard action-items. When you leave your comfort zone, you will get noticed.

7) Become a SME. Subject Matter Experts are important to your boss and your co-workers. If you are the go-to person for a system, procedure, or difficult client, nobody wants to lose you.

8) Be productive, not just quick. Sure Sally can finish five projects in a day, but none of them are completed properly. Put the extra time into the details and make your pizazz show–your boss and customers will notice.

9) Commit yourself. Sounds pretty straight-forward, but commitment is hard. Luckily, it is also worth the trouble.

10) Embrace and share a positive attitude. Nobody likes a “Debbie Downer” or “Negative Nelly”. Look for that silver-lining and share the positive vibes. It will make your work day happier and more productive, and it might rub off on your coworkers, too.

11) Be reliable. If your boss can’t trust you to turn in something by the deadline, you will quickly be replaced. However, if you have a reputation for always being on time and turning in quality work, that will be duly noted by your peers and management.

Be Indispensable

Once you have mastered these behaviors, you are sure to be considered an indispensable part of your team. Of course, you should know that you will be held to these high-standards that you have created for yourself, too. If you happen to fall short of expectations one day, it will surely be noticed. But all in all, that is a small price to pay compared to what you will gain in not only job security, but most likely in additional financial rewards too. Raises, promotions, special projects and accolades will be yours for the taking!

Image credit: the garden of forking paths by Snap (contact)

Simplify, Target, Attract Top Talent

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Let’s face it, your job posting is one of countless others.

And the perfect applicant is the needle in a haystack.

When you consider these two facts, it’s a wonder that applicants and companies ever find each other! So how do you get through all that hay and find the needle?

Download our hiring process questions guide

Know Your Audience

Attract quality job candidates by targeting ideal applicants

One key element to keep in mind when posting a job is your target audience. Do you write your job descriptions in industry specific terminology? If yes, then this conveys that you are only willing to consider those with industry specific experience.

In a similar way, let’s say for a sales position you only talk about incremental sales goals. Will you not then consider an applicant who has achieved additional sales targets and up-selling goals, or exceeded Tier 3 commission?  If so, then you should mention those points in the job description too. Opportunity can abound if we carefully consider how we are talking to applicants.

Make It Easy

Attract quality job candidates by simplifying the application Process

Now, pretend that you’re an applicant who has been out of work for a year. Every day you apply for a job or two. You like how a company states things in the job description, and you think you’d be a great fit. You found the job on a job board. You click apply. This job board redirects you to the company’s website where you’re asked to fill out your entire life story. “WHY, OH WHY!” You cringe…before hitting the close tab and moving on to something else.

As Human Resources professionals, we all know the reasons for the applicant’s dilemma above. Too many applicants, not enough hours…I need everyone in the system so that I can track for legal and/or reporting purposes… the list goes on.

But how can you address an applicant’s concerns so that they click that apply button?

Break up the application and tell the applicant what’s going to happen! Add a simple line to the job description that says something like: “If you are applying to this job from a job board, you will be redirected to our site, where you will be asked to complete a brief assessment of your qualifications for this position.  Applicants who meet the basic qualifications will be invited to complete the full application.”

You’re making it easy and keeping your audience in mind while writing this job description–these are two big keys to attract top talent and find that needle in a haystack.

 

 P.S. You could also address the applicant’s pain of  “Why can’t I even get a rejection email?” with these two features on ExactHire Applicant Tracking System: emailing applicants en masse and utilizing external statuses for applicants. 

 

Working From Home

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Most Americans wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, pack lunches, drop off the kids, drive to work, work, eat lunch, work some more, drive home and pick up the kids every day. The rat-race, Groundhog Day, déjà vu…. whatever you call it — it can be a drag. And if the employee is dragging, his/her work most likely is too. In this modern day and age, telecommuting is becoming a major benefit to employees and employers. Since the vast majority of the workforce is already using technology and SaaS (software as a service) programs, it is easy to transfer the daily workflow into the home office environment.

Gone are the days of loathing traffic every day! You can even work in pajamas!

You can mow the grass, go swimming, buy groceries, clean the house, or any other number of activities on your lunch break. Some practical benefits include reduced transportation costs, elimination of travel time, and comfortable clothing. These simple pleasures are translating into employees working longer hours, enjoying that work more, reducing personal stress-levels, and increasing productivity. To the dismay of some traditional thinkers, employees will work without micro-management. They might even work better that way.

Rush-Hour Relief

It is common to lose an hour or more each day during the commute to and from work. After an hour of public transit or driving alongside a myriad of road-rage, close-calls, and stop-and-go traffic the average employee can be grumpy or worn-out by 8AM. The employee has been up for hours without producing any work yet. On the other hand, an employee that telecommutes merely rolls out of bed and opens a laptop while brewing that first cup of coffee. Emails can be read in leisure while awakening the body and brain for a great day of working from home.

Balance

Job satisfaction is much higher when the employee has some control over the environment and daily schedule.  Working from home can make the joys of juggling children, a relationship, and work a lot easier.  Doctor appointments? Kids have school/ activity obligations? Need to get dinner started early? Somehow, these tasks are a lot easier to accommodate when you are operating from your home. Telecommuting is a wonderful way to ease the responsibilities of adulthood. However, going into the office two – three days a week can really improve the general office demeanor. Most of us like some personal interaction with our co-workers, at least when we aren’t missing our child’s game just to ‘show face’ at work. Workers are happy to get into the office and see their co-workers, maybe go out to lunch or meet up after work. And the office can be fun, especially on those days when Martha brings homemade cookies or Katie brings her famous lemonade. Balance can be just as important for the workplace as it is for the home life.

Technology

Smart phones, tablets, 3-D movies, touch-screens, and a little thing called the internet have all made our personal lives better. Businesses are also benefiting from the new technologies that are available today. Companies that utilize cloud-based data centers and SaaS applications are saving money on hardware and equipment. At the same time, these types of technologies allow employees to save time and money by working from home.

ExactHire provides SaaS recruiting and employee onboarding applications. For more information, please visit our resources section or contact us today.

Image credit: MySpace by Risager (contact)

Teaching Company Culture to a Newly Hired Employee

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I am not the newest member of the ExactHire team, but I still remember my first day well! Being the new kid on the block can be a little intimidating, especially at a small company. So, ease the fears of your new hires by teaching company culture from the start. You know…the informal, generally accepted ways of doing things in your company that the employee won’t necessarily read about in the employee handbook.

Times Have Changed in the Workplace

In most cases, workplaces are much more flexible and relaxed places to be than in decades past. If this is the case with your office, make sure the new hire is aware of dress code, lunch policy and other activities/tasks on which flexibility is given. This is true for companies that are still very traditional, as well. Think about how uncomfortable a new employee would feel coming to work way overdressed (or way too casual) on the first day of work. Let him/her know the expectations right away…especially since new employees may be hesitant to ask these types of questions directly when first beginning work at a new organization.

Part of the Family

If you utilized pre-employment testing during the hiring process, than you should already know a lot about what makes your employee “tick” and why he/she is well-suited for the role he/she has accepted. Keep that in mind when acclimating him/her to the new work environment and co-workers. If your company has any social media pages, make sure to invite the new employee to optionally view or participate in these pages. LinkedIn will provide a sense of the company’s industry presence or overall market view. Pages like Facebook, will allow the employee to see some of the fun activities your company has to offer (examples could include office parties or working retreats that the employees attend together).

Know Your Company History

It is helpful to teach the new employee about the background of the company, as well as the industry in which it participates. Knowing how the company started and what major milestones have been reached, paints a clearer picture of why the company is what it is today. Some businesses have traditions they keep in place to remind them of humble roots at the start of the company or even just reminders of the original owners. The new employee will more likely feel more in tune with the overall culture of the company as a result of knowing these facts.

By proactively instilling a sense of your organization’s culture with new employees, you are further helping to make the employee onboarding process a pleasant and informative experience. In the long run, employees who engage more quickly are generally more likely to be productive sooner and stay employed with your company longer.

Technology can augment your company’s employment brand which is certainly a key component of the organizational culture. For more information about ExactHire and how we can help, visit our resources section or contact us today.

Image credit: Say Geese by Vinoth Chandar (contact)