Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

8 Unconventional Recruiting Strategies

Are you relying on HR or search firms to find you new team members?  If that’s not working out so well, why not take the road less traveled?  These little-known strategies might work wonders for you:

1. Research and contact the social service and private nonprofit agencies in your area – many have employment programs that match disadvantaged candidates to jobs.  Try outlets like the Lincoln Training Center in South El Monte, CA.
2. You might already be familiar with your state’s Department of Labor, but did you know that many will assign you a dedicated staff member to search for registered workers that suit your position?
3. Individuals coming out of the military and into the business world often make conscientious, loyal employees.  Check out websites like the Destiny Groupto recruit ex-military job seekers.
4. If traditional third-party search firms don’t meet your needs, you might consider the temporary-help option.  Employing temps allows you to “try before you buy” – deciding if a potential employee is a good fit before paying all of the costs associated with bringing him or her on full time.  Just make sure you understand the conversion cost, or how much you’ll have to pay the temp firm should you choose to hire the person.
5. If you’re looking for creative or technical types, devise a contest that will allow talented candidates to compete for the chance to win a job at your company.  Partner with your marketing department to promote the contest and turn it into a branding exercise for the company as a whole.
6. Employee research firms are paid to do the dirty work of scoping out the best candidates currently working for your competitors.  A well-regarded firm of this type is WorkStream, which locates appropriate individuals for your open requisitions and prescreens them for you according to your exact specifications.
7. Use Google AdWords or other search engine paid marketing programs to buy combinations of key words or phrases that your target candidate might be searching for (for instance, you might purchase the phrase “engineering excellence” to attract top engineers looking to improve professionally).
8. Layoffs are all too common in today’s business world, and you can often find highly-qualified candidates as a result of contacting the human resources professionals in affected neighbors and competitors, and working with them to hire displaced individuals into your organization.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

What Does Being a Mentor Mean?

I received this e-mail from a reader, and it’s not the first time I’ve gotten this question:

Dear Alexandra:  A college graduate asked me to be her mentor.  What does this mean?  I have two kids in high school and I’m a little worried that I don’t have time for such a thing.

Attached at the Hip?

It’s a valid concern.  You want to help out a young professional, but you also have a day job and a family.  You don’t want to spend several hours every week helping her navigate through every minute aspect of her job search, college-to-career transition, or problem at work.

Lay out the Relationship Clearly

Fortunately, a good mentor relationship doesn’t necessarily entail that you become your mentee’s third parent.  The key is to concretely establish the parameters at the beginning of the relationship so that you and your mentee are on the same page.  What are her expectations, and will you be able to meet them?  What is she looking for help with specifically? How often will you meet, and how/when will she contact you outside of those meeting times?  How long will the engagement last?

It’s Easier Than it Sounds

You don’t have to turn a mentoring engagement into your next giant project.  In fact, you may well find that you have the ability to help your mentee meet her goals and pursue her path with confidence simply by occasionally sharing your own experiences and what you learned from them.  This can often be done over one or two lunch meetings.  Most of my mentoring relationships have been relatively short-lived, and it’s a pleasure to see that the few hours I invest on the front end often significantly influence my mentee’s future.   You can make a difference without having to replace the time and care you spend nurturing the important individuals in your life.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

How to Get People to Read Your E-mails

If you see an e-mail with four paragraphs, do you read it?  My automatic response is to either skim it really quickly or close the message immediately.  Here are some thoughts from Zen Habits’ Leo Babauta on why writing long e-mails is a fruitless exercise:

Why Long E-mails Are Irritating

They take too long to read: I don’t have a lot of time to read, and by sending me an essay you are saying your e-mail is more important than the other things I have to read.

They don’t respect my time: When you send me an e-mail, you’re making a request on my time (to read, process, respond). If you send a long e-mail, you haven’t edited. You haven’t decided what’s most important. You are saying, in effect, that I have to do that instead. You’re sending a message that your time is more important than mine.

You don’t get to the point: What’s the main point you’re trying to make? What’s your main question?  Spit it out, or it will get buried.

You ask too many questions: I won’t be able to answer all of them without half an hour of my valuable day. So don’t ask so many.

I won’t respond: If you’re looking for me to read the e-mail right away, or worse yet, do something for you, good luck with that. I’m not a diva, but I also have things to do and can’t get to every long e-mail. And there are many of them, not just yours.

Guidelines for Effective E-mails

Again courtesy of Leo Baubata:

Keep it to five sentences: No more. I stole this from five.sentenc.es of course, but I’ve used it for years and it works.

Figure out your main point: If you think you need more than five sentences, you haven’t figured out the key thing you want to say.  Take a second to figure it out, and stick to just that.

Ask one thing: Don’t ask 10 questions, just ask one. Or two at the most.  You’re much more likely to get an answer quickly.

Edit: If you stretched it to eight sentences, cut out three.

Link: If you need to refer to information, include a link to it on the web.

Post it: If the information you need to share isn’t on the web, put it there.  Create a long answer or long background document (then edit it to the essential info) and post it online. Use your blog, or one of the many available free tools.  Create an FAQ if it’s useful, and link to it in your e-mail.

I especially like this last tip, which comes in handy for teams with wikis, project management engines, or other collaboration tools.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

How to Ask for a Favor

I get asked for favors all the time, and I’ve noticed that there is definitely an effective and ineffective way to do it.  Here are some tips for getting the best results from this mundane but extremely important business task:

Be Direct

You’ll want to be straightforward and transparent about what you need.  Sending hints in an attempt to get the other person to volunteer to help may fall on deaf ears, or worse, irritate him.  It’s also not a good idea to say you want to spend time with a person socially and then ask for business advice (or some other favor) the second the two of you are sitting down.

Don’t Downplay

Be honest about the fact that the favor will involve a little – or a lot – of effort on the other person’s part.  For example, a colleague wrote to me the other day asking for a recommendation letter.  He said that he understood how busy I am with a new baby and how my time is scarce.  I really appreciated that acknowledgement.

Be Okay with No

If something truly is a favor, it should be all right for the other person to decline.  Instead of putting subtle pressure on the person to accept, which could lead to resentment, communicate that you only want him to help if it’s doable right now, and if it’s not, that you can approach someone else.

Understand That Assignments Aren’t Favors

Along leadership lines, as a manager, a task that you ask your employee to do is not a favor.  She has no choice – it’s part of her responsibilities.  Therefore, don’t say “Can you do me a favor and finish the status report before you leave for the day?” when what you really mean is “Please finish the status report before you leave for the day.”

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

Do You Use Mobile Learning to Your Advantage?

John Hollon, Vice President of Editorial for TLNT.com, reports on a recent research study by Bersin & Associates, which says that “mobile learning finally has gone mainstream, driven by consumers in both the developed and developing worlds, and by mobile-technology oriented industries including high-tech, business services, and health care.”

Rising Global Use of Mobile Devices

According to the Bersin study titled “m-Learning: Mobile Learning is Finally Going Mainstream – And It Is Bigger Than You Might Think,” the use of mobile devices for learning has risen from 9 percent of U.S.-based organizations in 2007 to an estimated 20 percent or more in 2010.  In addition, more than a quarter of the world’s population now uses a mobile device, and frequent mobile Internet use has almost doubled in the past year.

Informal Use is King

The research also notes that the informal uses for mobile learning (referred to as m-learning) vastly outnumber the formal, and that these new applications increasingly empower today’s workers to access the information they need on demand.  Says Josh Bersin, chief executive officer and president, Bersin & Associates:

“Today’s enterprise learning functions risk becoming irrelevant if they do not rapidly respond to the power of new mobile technologies to both deepen and hasten the sharing of information across organizations, and to the changing needs and expectations for learning by new generations and geographies of employees.”

Examples of Mobile Learning in Practice

• Accenture created a uPodcast program that enables subject-matter experts and the organization’s leaders to share knowledge at a minimal cost. To date, 180 podcasts have been created and more than 20,000 employees – 11 percent of the total workforce – have accessed them.
• Coca-Cola turned to Kelley Executive Partners to create an alternate reality game that combines social and mobile technologies – including GPS and smartphones – along with collaborative and competitive team problem-solving. The game was designed to drive understanding of how millennial consumers use Web 2.0 technologies.

John reminds us that if our organizations aren’t making use of mobile learning, we’d better take another look and see how it can fit into our training and development programs, because this study makes it clear that employees are using their mobile devices for everything…including workplace learning.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

Reduce Your Team's Dependence on You

Brett Snyder, who’s Founder and President of Cranky Concierge air travel, writes over at Intuit’s Small Business blog.  Brett has some terrific thoughts for leaders who need to reduce the organization’s dependence on them:

I’ve been on two trips in the past week, and I’m tired.  Every time I travel, it reminds me how important it is to get the business to a point where it can run without me.  When you start a business yourself, too much of the knowledge automatically resides with you.  Finding someone else with similar skills just provides a backup and doesn’t add much benefit, so the key is finding someone with other areas of expertise who still has enough overlapping skills to be able to fill in.

Although Brett’s advice is geared to small businesses, it has value for leaders in large companies as well. If you are involved in every aspect of your team’s operations, you risk burning out, or allowing the business to become incapacitated if you should have to temporarily remove yourself due to a personal or professional issue.

In addition to hiring team members who complement your strengths and fill in your areas of weakness, it’s critical that right-hand men and women are people who you trust implicitly and who know almost as much about the organization and team as you do.

Decision Making Authority

You should regularly bring these individuals up to speed on everything you have your hands in, and allow them to independently manage important initiatives without your constant input.  Encourage them to make decisions on their own so that if a day comes when you aren’t there to act as a sounding board, they will be able to handle things seamlessly.

Supervision of Team Members

Instead of having to personally manage the work of the entire team, assign your right-hand men and women to supervise both the daily responsibilities and the long-term career growth of junior members. This approach will prevent you from becoming too indispensible as a manager and mentor, and will also help to ensure tight integration.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

If You’re Unemployed or Underemployed, Consider an In-Demand Field

As a founding member of the Career Advisory Board presented by DeVry University, I’ve been closely following the Employment Situation data issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  Unfortunately, as of the end of June, we’re continuing to see minimal improvement in job market health.  Because employment gains in 2011 are not occurring as quickly as initially anticipated, job seekers must be more proactive than ever to ensure that they can earn a living.

If you are unemployed or among the 8.6 million involuntary part-timers in the U.S. right now, you may want to revisit the fields in which you’re seeking work.  According to BLS, employment in professional and technical services continued to increase in June (+24,000). Health care employment continued its upward trajectory as well (+14,000), and in fact, employment in this industry has risen by an average of 24,000 per month over the prior 12 months.

Heading into 2012, healthcare will continue to grow exponentially.  Due to an aging population and expanding healthcare to those who previously could not afford coverage, one in 10 U.S. jobs expected to be in this sector by 2018.

If you don’t have experience in an in-demand field, that doesn’t mean you can’t move into one.  Be aware, though, that career change doesn’t happen overnight and for most people, it involves a gradual process of increasing commitment.

In developing a resume and other promotional materials for the field you want to pursue, think about how your current skills and talents apply to the responsibilities you’ll hold in the new job.   Then, ease into a new career one foot at a time.  Perhaps this means earning a paycheck at your current job while doing a part-time internship in your new field.   Alternatively, you could pursue a degree program from an accredited university like DeVry that offers flexible online and in-classroom learning options to accommodate current work and family obligations.

Finally, don’t limit your search to large, established companies.  According to payroll processing company ADP, small and medium-sized businesses were largely responsible for the 157,000 private-sector positions added in June.

Break Into a Clique at Work

In order to make your time at the office more enjoyable, it's a good idea to get to know teammates personally.  However, this can be intimidating and even somewhat difficult if your office is full of cliques.  It’s possible that a group of your coworkers will go out to happy hour and leave you sitting in your office feeling like the new kid in third grade all over again.  You might feel that as a manager, you should be over it, yet it still bothers you.

The One-on-One Approach

The only way to break through work social groups is by one person at a time. Zero in on the most approachable person in the group, find out what interests him, and then weave these things into a conversation. For example, if you see that your next-door neighbor has Red Sox ticket stubs on his bulletin board, you might ask him if he caught the game last night.

People love to talk about themselves, so encourage potential friends to tell you about their lives. Listen to what they say, and talk about yourself only if asked. Doing someone a favor is also a good friend-making strategy. Suppose one of your teammates is frantically looking for a last-minute pet sitter while she goes out of town on business. If you live in her neighborhood, graciously offer to feed her cats. Your teammate won’t forget it and will be likely to view you favorably in the future.

If Efforts Fall on Deaf Ears

Sometimes team members will be nonresponsive to your gestures of friendship. Don’t take it personally. Your organization's culture might encourage people to keep to themselves, or you and your coworkers might not have much in common. If this is the case, expand your search to the rest of the company.  Maybe you could get to know the woman you interface with in accounting a little better. What about that guy who always rides the elevator with you in the morning?  And don't forget about participating in work-related extracurriculars, like volunteer initiatives or the softball team.  These activities provide a terrific opportunity to meet friendly people you wouldn't run into otherwise.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.