With the start of 2016 we’re moving into the time of year in which the largest percentage of career changes take place. This also means many of us and our colleagues are faced with tough decisions which can have a significant impact on their careers. Those decisions come in the form of…
taking new jobs, quitting old jobs, and moving into new opportunities, …to name a few. Regardless of what group you may fall into at the beginning of this year making a decision that impacts your career and life is never an easy thing to do. In December we covered a three part mini-series on the 13 easy to implement steps for making a successful transition into leadership and doing so with wild success. If you are considering taking a leap of faith into your first leadership role this year you’ll want to heed these words as it’s crucial to your success to have a well thought out plan which starts you off on the right footing. Let’s imagine you have already made the decision to take that new leadership role. Following these 13 steps for transitioning into leadership will aide you in moving into the job with a clear head, focus and a plan for you future success. You can click on the links below to view each series in further detail. Part 1: Self Discovery
6. Schedule 1:1 (One-on-One) with Your Team 7. Create Performance and Professional Development Plans 8. Develop Time Management Structure 9. Develop Relationships With Other Leadership Part 3: Priorities 10. Create A Department Game Plan 11. Present Game Plan To Your Team 12. Create Systematic Communications & Follow Ups 13. Plan A Team Event It is my belief that anyone CAN be successful in leadership so long as they have the right attitude, mindset and care for others. This is the foundation for which you need to be successful in leadership. Having a leadership game plan along the way merely keeps you on track, increasing your chances for success and happiness, providing you the best opportunity to serve those lead. “Where there is no vision, there is no hope.” – George Washington Carver
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How does 2016 look for you so far? If you’re like 62% of the businesses out there you have plans to hire at some point this year. Based on recent global studies LinkedIn’s reported that this hiring growth is expected to be an increase from 2015.
Growth in hiring is typically a good thing. Hiring itself is another matter altogether. Successful hiring can make or break the performance of a company. Unsuccessful hiring on the other hand can create all sorts of fun challenges for folks like you and me. In fact, Harvard Business Review recently published information indicating that 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions. What does this mean? First, let’s look at the potential tangible repercussions. According to Dice, one of the larger online job boards, a poor hiring decision for a candidate earning $100,000 per year could cost, on average, $250,000, and that expense comes right off the bottom line. That’s scary stuff! Basically, if the hiring decision you make to ends poorly you can expect that mistake to represent 2.5 x the cost of whatever the salary is of the person you are hired. Now let’s look at the intangible costs. Turnover has a nasty habit of sullying a company’s culture. It also can damper the spirits of those that stick around while creating a poor company image within the eyes of the local market. Long and short, your ability to make the right hiring decisions this year will be crucial to the success of your business, your fellow employees, your newly hired employee and your own career. Rather than fearing the hiring process and potential consequences, let’s look at hiring as an opportunity to WIN by making the ‘process of interviewing’ say UNCLE! Going into hiring with an open mind, a plan and clear direction will enable you to succeed more often than not. These 15 tips can help you improve your chances of making better decisions for yourself and your company (for the full article and descriptions of each of these 15 tips click here): 1. Why Would Someone Pick You/ Your Company? 2. Character Over Competency 3. Behavioral Based Interviewing 4. Know What You Want Before You Interview 5. Consult Others 6. Make Sure You Know And Understand Your Vision 7. Best Foot Forward 8. Tell Them Your Leadership Philosophy 9. Interview Tests 10. The Reference Trick 11. Put Yourself In Their Shoes 12. Overqualified For The Job 13. Know Your Non-Negotiables 14. Challenge Your Own Mindset 15. Don’t Hire If It Isn’t What You Want Do you have your own tips for making a successful hire? If so, feel free to share in the comments section of this article. If you’re hiring or plan to hire this year it’s important you know two truths about present day hiring:
After a decade of working in the technical services and recruiting industry I’ve had few experiences, less than I can count on one hand, with companies that had onboarding programs which I would classify as amazing. Most companies fall short, way short, when it comes to providing a good onboarding experience to their new employees. There’s an important note to be made here. When people hear ‘hiring’ and ‘onboarding’ they have a tendency to think that those responsibilities fall on our partners in HR. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The leaders who make the actual hiring decision have much to do with this process and good leaders know firsthand that their involvement can make or break the success of that new employee. Employees, regardless of age, are looking for an ‘experience’ at work. Of course having a job is important to them but increasingly important, arguably more important, for a large majority of the professional workforce is the need to work at a place that provides an experience of comradery, meaningfulness in work, giving back, etc. and the list goes on. Part of that experience is a company’s onboarding program and these programs shouldn’t be taken lightly. Does your current employee onboarding program communicate the right message to the best candidates in the market? Forbes estimates as high as 20% of employee attrition occurs within the first 45 days on the job as a result of poor employee onboarding. In fact, new employees who attended a well-structured onboarding orientation program were 69% more likely to remain at a company up to three years. That’s a huge impact! According to iCIMS, a software company specializing in recruiting systems and software, identified that new hires meet their first performance milestone 77% of the time when a formal onboarding program is in place versus only 49% of the time when one ceases to exist. What that tells us is that when a good employee onboarding program exist BOTH individual performance and job tenure improve dramatically. I would also dare to say that the employees’ happiness and appreciation for the job are improved as well. What do you do if your employee onboarding program lacks an experience to capture the best of the best? Look no further – this article provides a complete overview of the only onboarding program you will ever need. Be prepared. There’s some work to be done here before you can just go hire someone and plop them in their bean bag cubby, or dungeon, whichever you’re working with. For the purposes of this article the ‘onboarding experience’ refers to the entire spectrum from when a job posting first gets released straight through to the new employees sixth month on the job. The SQR1 Six Month Onboarding Program: Step 1: Candidate Identification This is the employees’ first glimpse into your company, their experience during this time matters greatly as to whether or not you will have an employee for years or for a matter of months. - Job Posting – make them friendly and exciting; talk less about performance expectations and more about the opportunity and experience they will have in the role; create enthusiasm in candidates by sharing with candidates exciting things to come like new technology, new services, positive changes within the company, company culture or philosophies, etc. - Call Backs - ensure people receive call backs to their application; there’s nothing worse than when people apply to a job opening and don’t hear anything in return; automated responses acknowledging the resume submission are at a minimum a necessity, at which point an acceptance or notice of decline is appropriate and certainly better than not saying anything at all and sending people into a black hole. For the rest of the article click here... Have you ever felt this way on your first day on the job?
“Welcome to [insert your company name here]. We’re glad you’ve joined us. Now that you are an employee please note the following... We ask that you not ever leave your cubical unless it’s to use the complimentary copy machine or in case of an emergency. Bathroom breaks are two minutes long and can only be taken at, oh I’m sorry, you’ve already missed that window today. We discourage you from talking with the other people in your vicinity, so don’t do it. If you have a problem, please feel free to Google your own solution from your smart phone, but not your work computer. Your training will consist of, well we’re not sure at this point so we’ll keep you posted on that. Thank you for your unconditional submission of your body and soul and welcome to the team.” While that may be grossly dramatized, more for my own amusement than anything else, it is incredible how often employees on day-1 feel this same way. While their new employer might not communicate directly in this manner the end result is that they leave people feeling miserable on their first week of the job primarily because the company hasn’t put enough focus into their ‘onboarding experience’. I’ve experienced this directly myself. When I started with a company many moons ago I showed up on my first day to have no computer, no trainer/ direction and no workstation. As a result I had to use a computer in the office lobby for my first week completely disconnected from the rest of my new colleagues. Few times did someone come to check up on me. I was handed a large booklet and told that I needed to work through the various sections as quickly as possible. Once I was done I was to tell the office manager and they would think of the next thing for me to do. An awful first impression to say the least. The onboarding experience is a crucial first impression and we had mentioned last week that Forbes estimates as high as 20% of employee attrition occurs within the first 45 days on the job as a result of poor employee onboarding. When we started the discussion last week on SQR1 Six Month Onboarding Program the focus was to bring light to a full proof way of making sure your new employees were welcomed with open arms and given all the tools to be successful with their new jobs. As a reminder, we will reference the term ‘onboarding experience’ several times throughout this article which refers to the entire spectrum from when a job posting first gets released straight through to the new employees sixth month on the job. If you missed part-1 of this article from last week click here to view: Step-1: Candidate Identification Step-2: Interview Process The SQR1 Six Month Onboarding Program (continued): Step-3: Offer - Appreciation – when contacting the candidate who just gave their life to your tireless interview process it’s important to start off appreciating the time they spent with you and your cohorts. They most likely had to rearrange and adjust their personal lives and dodge their current employer in order to make your interviews. Taking a moment to say thank you is the least we can do. - Personal Touch – I’ve always found it odd that in many companies HR or a recruiter is the one that makes the offer to the candidate, not the direct hiring manager. I’m aware that this is done many times for legal reasons however it leaves a bit of a cold impression with candidates. As a leader I have always found it important to call the people I’m looking to hire directly and discuss the offer letter with them one-on-one. No one will have more enthusiasm and passion about wanting to hire the new employee than the actual hiring manager themselves. A key piece here is that if you are going to go this route and you haven’t had experience doing it before it would be good to take a moment to speak with your HR group to understand what can and cannot be said during these calls. - Spoken Word & Paper – it isn’t enough to verbally offer someone the job. Professional companies out there big and small follow up the verbal offer with a formal job offer which covers every aspect of their prospective employment. This offer should also require the candidate to sign off on the terms of their prospective employment so there is little room for someone to come back and say they didn’t understand what they were getting into. Email the offer letter on company letterhead as a PDF copy for quick follow through. - Open Dialogue – when discussing the offer letter make sure to ask the candidate for their feedback once they have had an opportunity to review the fine print. It’s important that all parties involved understand all aspects of the proposed new partnership between employee and employer. Step-4: Physical Onboarding - Greetings – a designated person within the company, preferably the hiring manager, should be ready to greet the new arrival on their first day on the job. There’s nothing more classy than for the new hire to walk into the lobby and see a friendly face there to greet them and get the day started. Click HERE for the full article. Over the past three weeks we've covered the six steps to implementing a solid and memorable new hire onboarding experience which companies can use to improve their process for introducing new employees to their company and culture.
Why is it important to have a defined onboarding experience?For starters, 20% of all attrition happens within the first 45 days of employment. What this tells us is that first impressions carry a lot of weight with new employees. It's also important to the success of your new employee for the company and hiring manager to do everything they can to ensure that person is set up for success. With the cost of hiring being quite steep the more time we spend up front making sure our new employees feel good about their decision to join the company the better our chances will be of retaining them for the long run. SQR1's onboarding experience consists of six steps which help company's create a formal program that is used to then tie in culture and consistency for each new hire, regardless of their job title. While this article is merely a cliffnotes overview of the past three articles, you can access the full details of the SQR1 Six Month Onboarding Program by clicking on the links provided here. (part-1, part-2, part -3) The SQR1 Six Month Onboarding Program: Step 1: Candidate Identification Step 2: Interview Process Step-3: Offer Step-4: Physical Onboarding Step-5: The 3 Month Experience Step 6: The 4-6 Month Finale “The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel.”– Sybil F. Stershic Graduating from college is a great life accomplishment. You’ve worked hard for years and now have the chance to finally put your knowledge to the test along with your wonderful self out there for the professional world to enjoy.
As the college parties and farewells subside new college grads inevitably come face to face with a sobering reality... ...the fact that finding their first career job isn’t easy!Ideally, students should start focusing on their careers and entrance into their industry of choosing in their junior year of college, but more than likely you’ve waited till the very last day of school to think about it. Regardless of the situation you are in as you start to look for work it’s important to head into the process of finding a job armed with the right mental attitude and a winning game plan. Before you start looking for a new job it’s important to understand how these common new grad thought processes below can hurt your chances of landing a job:
Now that you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and understand a bit more of how the professional workplace functions you’ll need to do the following:
About the AuthorTravis Smith is the founder and managing director of Square-1 Engineering, a medical device consulting firm, providing end to end engineering and compliance services. He successfully served the life sciences marketplace in SoCal for over 15 years and has been recognized as a ‘40 Under 40’ honoree by the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce as a top leader in Orange County, CA. Categories
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