How to Fast Forward your Employee’s Career

Your employees’ professional growth doesn’t happen overnight. Developing people’s skills needs investment of thought, time and love in order to create meaningful change. Ideally a manager becomes a mentor. They provide guidance and coaching to evolve employee skill-sets, knowledge and confidence. With managers acting as the catalyst for progression, we’ve pinpointed five ways to effectively advance your employee’s career path.

Align your business goals

When you’re working closely with your employees, don’t forget to feed back the “bigger picture” to them. You can coach people in leadership qualities all day long but it’s pointless if you’re not communicating why. Employees motivation to excel can diminish if they don’t feel valued or believe they can create an impact for the company. Realistically, how empowered would your employees feel if they’re given the freedom to make smart, informed decisions however they still need to run their ideas by you before making moves? Communicate the objectives and company goals before anything else, and provide freedom for them to actually reach these.

Create a career development plan

Having conversations around career progressions is the first step in gauging employee development, but it’s important to follow up with implementing achievable objectives. This encourages employees to formulate their goals so they can actively execute them. Create a space where you can collaborate openly on short-term and long-term career goals and most importantly how these can be achieved. If you’re not sure where role progression can evolve, check out Search Party’s Career Path Tool to see all possible options.

Articulate expectations

Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is a popular technique to setting and communicating goals and results in organisations. The main purpose for OKRs is to connect the company, team and individual’s personal objectives to measurable results, ensuring everyone is moving in the right direction. The structure is fairly straightforward.

• Define 3-5 key objectives on company, team or personal levels. These must be qualitative, ambitious and time bound.
• Under each objective, define 3-4 measurable results based on growth performance, revenue or engagement.

When OKRs are a place and remain transparent across all teams, employees have complete clarity of knowing what’s expected of them and have something to work towards. Defining these can take into account career progressions or onboarding new responsibilities or projects and when you’re able to measure you’re also able to mentor. No wonder OKR’s are loved by tech giants like Google, Twitter, and Oracle. It’s a proven process that genuinely works.

Actively identify new opportunities within the organisation

When employees begin to seek new experiences or want to build their portfolio of skill-sets, 9 times out of 10 they’ll leave their current organisation rather than take on a new role in a different area within their current company. And it’s no surprise that losing talent and re-training new starters is timely and costly for managers. However this behaviour can be avoided if there is real encouragement and facilitation of internal transfers. Speak with the individual about what skills they would like to gain or areas they wish to excel in and then identify all possible new opportunities and paths they can explore within the organisation. Mentors are those who can look beyond their own areas or personal needs for growth opportunities, even if it means they’re losing a great asset.

Encourage developmental assignments

Developmental assignments come from the opportunity to initiate something new that an employee takes the majority of the reigns with. Internal projects, new product lines or championing a change such as adopting new technology or a restructure in workflows are all great ways to allow employees to step outside of their comfort zones. These kind of initiatives are the gateway into harbouring new skill-sets and embracing areas not usual to their daily tasks. Enabling employees to lead or manage side projects or totally new initiatives are the stepping stones into project management fields and opens a huge number of doors into other leadership roles.

Although most CEOs understand the importance of employee development, the sad truth is that they don’t devote the necessary time into excelling them into greater things. But the proof really is in the pudding. The more effort you put into developing employees, the higher the employee retention, productivity, engagement, turnover…the list goes on!

If you’re unsure as to where career progression can take you or your employees, Search Party have developed a nifty Career Path Tool. Simply type in your current role, and see how careers of people who’ve been in your shoes developed. Or, type in your dream job and see which paths can take you there. Check it out and let us know what you think!

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Originally published by Search Party on 29 August 2016.

Navigating Recruitment’s Ever-Changing Landscape

Still struggling to hire the perfect employee every time?

If so, you’re stuck in an older recruitment model that doesn’t reflect the ways that technology has shifted the landscape. Fortunately, getting caught up can be easy, so long as you have built a positive company culture that you can identify and articulate.

Focus on creating a positive employee (and candidate!) experience.

Great employees look for companies they can support for a long time, regardless of how long they end up working there. Mediocre employees take what they can get. Great employees also pass on information to other great employees. If they’ve had a bad experience as a candidate they’ll make sure other candidates know it, which means you’re less likely to hear from the top performers you’re trying to attract.

Ironically, one of the best ways to set your company apart is also one of the simplest and least expensive. Contact candidates even when you don’t intend to hire them. That way, they can get on with their job search. You can also make sure that candidates are being treated with respect at every other phase of the hiring process.

Get proactive about building your hiring pipeline.

It’s hard to hire the perfect employee when you’re desperate or scrambling. Instead, you want to start conversations with interesting candidates long before you have an opening. That means sourcing candidates through social media, attending networking events and holding conversations.

When you find people who are going to be a good cultural fit then keep the lines of communication open with them. Contact them first when a position becomes available, rather than trusting your company’s fate to the job board slush pile.

Get super clear about the role you need to fill.

Don’t just throw down a list of qualifications that have nothing to do with the position. Understand the problems you’re trying to solve by hiring each employee. If you don’t have a problem, then you don’t need to spend money on an employee. It’s that simple!

After you’ve identified the problem, create a persona which tells you all about the type of person who might be perfect to solve these problems. This process is similar to the one the marketing department is already using to create the collateral for your organisation. Knowing exactly what you’re looking for allows you to spot that person from the moment he or she walks in the door. When going through this process, be aware of unconscious bias and your real “must haves” so you don’t just end up with a clone of someone else already in your organisation, adding zero new contribution.

Use data mining and predictive analytics to isolate success factors and eliminate unconscious bias.

Sometimes we don’t get the perfect employees because our own biased brains are incapable of recognising them. When hiring software is properly designed they don’t share those limitations. Hiring tools can help you shortlist candidates who will be perfect for the role. Some software packages even hide information which might taint the way you see the candidate, such as the candidate’s race, name, and gender. You only learn that after you call him or her in for an interview. It’s not a perfect solution for eliminating bias, but it does mean you’re giving the best people a chance to shine in person.

If you’re asking bold interview questions designed to pinpoint the employee’s ability to solve your problems instead of tired old repeats like “why should we hire you” then it will be even easier to spot employees who will be perfect for your organisation, now and in the future.

Want more insight into what you can do to hire the perfect employee every time? Visit this link to download your free copy of “How to Hire the Perfect Employee Every Time.” This comprehensive eBook shares tools, resources, and tips from top CEOs and hiring managers around the world.

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If you want to share this article the reference to Emma Hart and The HR Tech Weekly^® is obligatory.

How to Recruit Superstars: Hiring Best Practices

What if you could hire the right person for the job each and every time you put out a job brief? Sounds impossible, right?

Yet this goal is not unattainable. You simply have to change your assumptions about the hiring process and how it works.

Start by understanding your company culture

Every successful employer will tell you to hire for cultural fit. Yet if you can’t understand and articulate your culture you’ll never be able to do this. You’ll settle for hiring the people you “like” instead, and that mindset can cause problems.

Gene Caballero, Co-Founder of GreenPal, notes that “culture” is often misunderstood.

“Culture gets mislabeled as “perks” offered throughout an organisation. In its most potent form, culture should refer to the aligning values of the organisation; do you and your team members all believe in the same things? What is your team’s mantra?

The specifics of your team’s values are not as important as the fact of having the values ingrained that align each member of that team. This adds purpose to the mission, and passion is a product of purpose. These are the elements by which real culture is created. These values have to be installed at the early stages of a company, as it’s impossible to come back later and sprinkle in some culture and values into an established team.

Strong culture is created when each member of the team believes in the same things. When that is the case, trust emerges, and when you have trust you have loyalty. With these elements embedded in a team, no matter how big or small, there is no limit to what can be accomplished.”

What if your company isn’t in the early stages of development? Don’t worry. You have a culture. You simply have to discover it by observing and articulating the values your team is already following, and the traits that already make team members successful.

It’s true that you can’t just “decide” to create a company culture, but you can identify and strengthen the one that is already there. Of course, if there are problems in the culture that turn your workplace into a dismal place to be then you must address those before you can proceed.

Learn how to communicate that culture

Communicating your culture is the cornerstone of employer branding, which is all about telling the world why employees would want to choose your company over all the others. Employers aren’t the only one searching for cultural fit… that’s what good employees want, too.

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt to share details about your competitive salary, benefits, vacation and other packages.

Notice how all of this starts before you even identify an opening?

Most people believe the job brief is where the hiring happens. And while it’s vital to write a good one, and to know your must-haves for each position, the truth is that by the time you have an opening it’s too late to lay the groundwork for those truly stellar hires.

You can, of course, continue to use tools like ours to give yourself the best chances for success if you’ve got an immediate need, but until you do the harder bit you’ll always continue to struggle.

Remember, you should “always be hiring”

Even when you don’t have an opening you should continue to source and build relationships both with candidates, and with top-notch recruiters who can help put you in touch with more candidates.

One passive and effort-free way to do this is to use JobAdvisor. You can share your culture and your employer brand. You can collect CVs from people who already know you do not have a specific opening, but who may be interested in working with you because they feel, themselves, that your company offers a good cultural fit.

However, you should also be sure to take some of your efforts offline. Darin Herle, founder of Trackmeet, notes:

“I socialized a ton to allow me to meet a lot of people in the target demographic. I had to put myself in a ‘target rich environment.’ This meant going to mixers, tech events, and conferences. I never pass up a chance to hang out and chat with people.

Once I identify potential superstars I add them to my virtual bench, or pipeline. This is a sales process, so I will “touch” them every now and then with an e-mail or phone call, or send them info on our company. If I knew they were at a conference, I’d meet up with them.”

The goal here is to avoid traditional job boards altogether. You want to sort through 5-10 top notch candidates who are already likely to become an invaluable part of the team. You don’t want to waste your time sifting through the resumes of people who are hungry for a job (any job). People who take the time to apply to companies they love already have a leg up on job board job seekers, because they are taking conscious steps to grow their careers and seek organizations that will allow them to accomplish new and exciting things.

You never know when you’ll need someone

If you don’t build a candidate pipeline, develop great relationships with recruiters or use tools that help you reduce time-to-hire you could be hiring out of a sense of desperation yourself. And if you’re under pressure, you’re going to make mistakes that you will surely regret later.

Recruiting? Download our eBook “How to Hire the Perfect Employee Every Time”, and start building a superstar team today.

Use Search Party to find your next candidate quickly and easily. You can sign up for a free account and start searching today. Fill a role up to 5x faster at a substantially lower cost than traditional recruitment efforts.

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Source: How to Recruit Superstars: Hiring Best Practices | Recruitment & Hiring Blog | Search Party

JobAdvisor’s Coolest Companies Australia Competition Is Back

SYDNEY, September 26, 2016 — For the 3rd year running employer branding and reviews platform JobAdvisor (a Search Party company) is launching its Coolest Companies in Australia competition. JobAdvisor recognizes companies that offer game changing service, provide unprecedented benefits to employees, foster friendly working environments and are addressing workplace diversity.

Start­ups, small businesses (SMBs), and large enterprises are all very much encouraged to participate as the aim of the competition is to value companies that have put in place innovative and different working environments, and bring value to their employees no matter of the organisation’s size, geographical presence, or revenue.

“One of the things that makes Cool Companies different from other such competitions is that we encourage smaller companies to apply. We want to hear all the stories of great Aussie companies, not just the big or glamorous ones with big budgets,” – said Ben Hutt, CEO of JobAdvisor and Search Party. – “Our goal is to put the spotlight on amazing Australian companies and have them shine in the public eye, regardless of their size.”

Last year’s competition awarded winners for two categories: Coolest in Tech and Coolest for Women. Finalists included Buzinga, AdRoll, 99Designs and CommBank, while Canva and Envato took top honors.

This year JobAdvisor is looking for Australia’s coolest companies in four categories: Coolest in Tech, Coolest in Finance, Coolest SMB and Coolest Company for Diversity.

“We expanded the categories this year to showcase two sectors that typically have to work harder to be called ‘cool,’” – Hutt explained. – “We chose SMBs to help smaller companies have a louder voice and finance to shine a different light on what’s viewed as a rather traditional industry but is in the midst of the “fintech revolution”. We also expanded our Cool for Women category to become Coolest Company for Diversity in order to showcase the huge variety of diversity initiatives pursued by Aussie companies, including gender equality.”

Applications are now open and can be submitted at cool.jobadvisor.org. To participate, companies need to submit an application, have an updated JobAdvisor profile and get at least 3 new reviews from current employees.

Entries close on Friday, 21s t October and JobAdvisor will be announcing the Top 10 finalists in each category in November.

The winners will receive a JobAdvisor trophy, recognition on their JobAdvisor profile, extensive promotion through JobAdvisor’s and Search Party’s blogs and social media channels as well as media coverage. Winning the competition is also a great way for companies to promote their business, company culture and values to a wide range of external audiences, including potential new recruits!

Press contact: hello@jobadvisor.org