Hiring the Right Consultants for Your Recruitment Business

Hiring the Right Consultants for Your Recruitment Business When I first started life as a recruitment consultant my manager and mentor at the time told me that there are only three things that are important in the hiring process: Personality. Personality. Personality This advice is so simple and so true. In professional sales there is no bigger truth than people buy people, and in recruiting this is even more so. When matching someone to a job vacancy the skills required are a matter of fact â€" a potential hire can either do the job or they can’t. So after that box is ticked, you must decide whether that person will fit with the other people in the business, and its  core values. This decision is subjective. But get it right and you are onto something very special. How do you know? To understand how to get this right you not only need to understand the core values of the business, but also the personalities and behavioural traits of the people in the team your potential employee will be working with. Then, you must be able to assess these. In his book ‘Zero to One’, Peter Thiel (of Paypal fame) takes this concept to an extreme but highly logical conclusion â€" PayPal hired only people who fitted the cultural values of the business â€" and this meant if they liked Star Wars they were in, and if they liked Star Trek, they were out. You see, if they liked Star Trek then they just weren’t PayPal’s kind of people. And before you laugh, they sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5billion. Another great example of this working in practice is the US business Zappos. Founded by the now legendary Tony Hsieh, Zappos are well known for their amazing customer service and use a very similar philosophy in their hiring process. At Zappos, interviews are separated into two parts: a skills interview and a cultural interview. A candidate must pass both to continue to a job offer. They have identified 10 core values that are non-negotiable, and if during the interviews anything flags up a potential issue, the process is terminated there and then. For your information,  Zappos sold to Amazon for $1.2billion. What are your core values? Businesses who understand their business and cultural core values, and are able to enunciate these clearly and concisely, are also able to hire against them. The result is a more effective hiring process, a better team fit, and ultimately, a stronger and better long term business. Why is it then that so many companies I meet (and sadly a lot of recruitment businesses who should know better) don’t have their values nailed. They talk about the culture and how they want it, but they can’t clearly define it. And if they can’t explain it to me, then they certainly can’t explain it to a potential employee, let alone hire against it. If you don’t understand your businesses values, or haven’t taken time to define them, then it really is time to get your senior management team together and thrash them out. Get off site, have some fun, work together and come away with possibly the most important output you will have ever produced.  Or don’t. But please don’t blame me when you are always replacing mis-hires! About the author: James Nathan runs the James Nathan experience; the Business Development, Sales and Service Excellence Expert for Professional Recruiters.

Technical Interview 7 Tips For Crushing The Whiteboard Interview - Algrim.co

Technical Interview 7 Tips For Crushing The Whiteboard Interview - Algrim.co Whiteboard interviews are a core part of any technical interview process. The process is simple, yourself and another engineer are standing in front of a whiteboard. The engineer will ask you programming challenges. They'll ask you to take over and write down how you would solve the problem. This can be daunting because you are probably the most comfortable writing code behind a computer. The reason the interviewer is doing it this way is to determine what your process is like for solving engineering problems vs. seeing you write actual code. Our guide covers seven easy to follow tips that will help you ace your technical interview and whiteboard interview. 1. Practice problem solving the weeks leading up to your interview. Whiteboard interviews can be daunting because you’ll usually have no insight into the types of problems you’ll be asked to solve. However, with the right sort of preparation, you can significantly increase your chances of passing your whiteboard interviews. General problem-solving practice is one of the best ways to prepare for a whiteboard interview. This can seem counterintuitive; how could solving general sets of problems (which are most likely not the same ones you’ll solve in your interview) help you solve problems which are totally unrelated? While answering programming problems to practice your skills, the problems you find will very likely contain concepts within their solutions which also exist in the solutions for those in your interview. For instance, to solve an arbitrary problem from a site like projecteuler.net or a book like Cracking The Coding Interview, you will likely need to rely on concepts of data structures like Hashmaps or Lists, and rely on the consideration of computational complexity in your solution. Practicing these universal programming concepts will better prepare you for any sort of whiteboarding problem you encounter. 2. Communicate with your interviewer. Ask questions. Collaborate. A whiteboard interview usually isn’t meant to assess your programming skills “in a bubble”. Most organizations understand that programming is a collaborative effort, and a whiteboarding interview is used to assess your programming skills as well as your ability to work with others. Do not shy away from explaining your line of thought; even if you fear it is naive. Do not fear to ask questions if you are stuck on small syntax issues or a full memory of a Language’s native features. Often, this is exactly what the interviewer is looking for; a candidate who is honest and humble in his approach to problem-solving. Use whiteboarding problems to showcase your ability to work well with others! An interviewer who leaves the room having had fun solving a problem collaboratively is likely to give you a thumbs up at decision time. 3. Examine the naive solution first. Most problems you’ll see at a whiteboard interview have a solution or approach that is “optimal”. Perhaps it leverages the advantages of a certain data structure to make the problem solution output more efficiently, for example. However, interviewers know that very rarely do even the best programmers land on the optimal solution during their first pass. Starting with the naive, brute-force type of solution that solves the problem correctly (but perhaps in an unreasonable amount of time), shows your interviewer that you understand the difference between an optimum solution and a naive solution. The first step to implementing an optimum solution is understanding that optimum solutions exist. It is worthwhile to communicate to your interviewer that you understand this concept. After briefly discussing a naive approach, dive deeper into the problem and find the optimizations that really show off your preparation and deep understanding of programming concepts. 4. Make dedicated efforts towards your mental health and relaxation leading up to the interview. Most of us are familiar with the way anxiety and nerves can impact our performance, especially when we’re required to showcase our skills in front of strangers. There are many practices that are well established to have a positive benefit on anxiety levels and improving performance in general. Healthy, consistent meals leading up to and on the day of your interview can provide an enormous benefit. Low blood sugar or general malnourishment during a coding exercise is sure to harm your performance. Even if you don’t typically exercise much, get moving during interview season! Even mild exercise like daily walks are shown to boost confidence and mental acuity. Relaxing activities like massage or yoga pre and post-interview are well deserved and also well-studied paths towards increased performance and mental relaxation. Get outside! Interacting with nature can be a pleasant change from the stuffy interviewing room you’re preparing to enter. Nature walks, even in a city park, are also well established to increase mental clarity and decrease anxiety. In all, taking care of your mind and body will provide significant performance advantages when its time to showcase your skills. 5. Practice what you “know”! Take time to review the types of material you already feel very confident in your understanding. The devil is often in the details, and a quick refresher can be the difference between absolutely nailing a problem you’ve seen before, and forgetting a small nuance which may bring doubt to your understanding. An added benefit is that practicing and finding ease in solving problems you are accustomed to solving provides psychological confidence that will serve you well during a whiteboarding session. 6. Edge cases. Edge cases. Edge cases. When it’s time to actually hit the whiteboard, remember that programming is almost never about solving for the happy-path alone. Constantly audit your own work, and proactively think about edge cases. What happens if this function is passed an undefined value? What if the function is passed a value like 0? What happens in the first iteration of the loop, is there special behavior that does not exist in the last iteration of the loop? By focusing on edge cases in your solutions, you are showing your interviewer impressive attention to detail that will have huge practical benefits to the organization. 7. Take your time, write neatly. Make your answer look beautiful. Write legibly. Write small. And do not fall into one of the biggest traps seen in whiteboarding interviews: scribbling or abbreviating the names of variables in order to get your thoughts on the board faster. Whiteboarding is a common practice in interviews but perhaps more so in actual engineering work. Being neat, careful, and legible with your solutions shows your interviewer that you are comfortable creating detailed work, and concerned with not only your solution but its ability to be understood by those reading it.

Book Excerpt How to give a compliment

Book Excerpt How to give a compliment My book, Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, is shipping from Amazon! Here is tip #21 from the book: Mud Slinging Means Youre Losing Ground If you want people to like you, give them compliments. I know, that sounds like Im telling you to brownnose. Instead, Im telling you to find genuine ways to compliment people, which requires spending a lot of time looking for the good in people. The difference between a genuine compliment and a desperate brownnosing attempt is empathy and insight, according to Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Harvard Graduate School of Education psychologists and co-authors of How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation. If you understand what worries someone, and what he is trying hardest to achieve personally, then you will easily spot opportunities for praise. Dont just say good job for the sake of it. In fact, dont just say good job. The most effective compliments are very specific. And creative words are more memorable than standard words, according to Mark Knapp, communications professor at University of Texas. The most common types of praise are about possessions Nice car or about actions Great shot. Praise of character is the most rare and most memorable praise of all. But its also the most difficult because it requires you to understand the person youre praising and be thoughtful about how you talk to them. For example, I appreciated the compassion you showed for the team when you were canceling the project. To increase the weight of your compliments, establish yourself as a trusted resource. This means you need to be able to give people bad news as well as good news. I will never forget the employee who told me, You know how everyone laughs at your jokes at the staff meeting? Well, the jokes are not that funny, but since all those people report to you, they laugh. You should stop with the jokes. I was crushed to hear that I was not funny. But it would have been worse if I had been allowed to go on and on. (Though sometimes I tell myself that I really was funny and that particular employee just didnt get my humor.) Still, this persons subsequent compliments meant more to me because I knew she was honest. Complimenting your boss is an important part of building a good relationship. Dont be shy because you have less experience. In fact, powerful people think that people who praise them are smarter and more likeable than those who dont, according to Knapp. On top of that, powerful people receive fewer compliments than the rest of us. I never knew how important it is to compliment a boss until I complimented mine, mostly by accident. My boss gave a speech packed with bad news to employees, and I knew it had been hard on him. So after the meeting, I stopped by his office to tell him privately, You delivered the bad news really well. People were shocked, but they listened to you, and you made them hopeful. His face brightened, and he said, in a surprised voice, Really? I realized immediately how much my input had meant to him. How surprised he was to know I thought he did well and how much he respected my assessment. It seemed pathetic, really. I had thought he was a more confident guy than that. But thats the thing about complimenting your boss: Its disarming and makes your boss think of you as an equal. To make a genuine connection, give genuine compliments, but balance them with insightful criticism. With the right balance people will view you as a smarter person and theyll take all your comments more seriously. So concentrate on the good in people, and compliment it throughout the day, you just might feel like youre actually surrounded by kind, competent, and interesting people. And the research shows that they will find you to be more kind and competent as well.

Why Your Boss Probably Hates You - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Why Your Boss Probably Hates You - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career As a career coach specializing in communication, I’m presented with a wide spectrum of work stories. Some end in, “I don’t know why my boss hates me.”   Variations on this are: My supervisor hates me The project manager hates me The recruiter seemed to hate me Everybody at work hates me Of course, hate is an awfully big and painful word. Most often given some details, I realize hate isn’t the appropriate word. It’s more accurate to describe the situation as: I get a weird feeling from her There’s a lot of tension at the office I don’t like the way I’m treated I don’t get recognized for doing my job So it’s not hate, but there are a lot of negative feelings between managers and staff, or business owners and employees. A lot of suspicious, unfriendly recruiters. Where do these negative feelings come from? What could be the origin of so many employees feeling underappreciated and undervalued? You probably have never done anything wrong at work, but consider all the people who have come before you. They trained your boss to be skeptical, distrusting, and irritated by the mistakes, waste, slacking and even outright lies some employees dole out. I got a call on Sunday evening from a business owner as he was getting off the roof of his building, taking care of the endless chores associated with running a physical therapy practice. He had cleaned the exterior of the building, swept out the parking lot, folded towels, put away piles of files that were laying behind the front desk, and was about to take a shower before completing the charts he prepares each evening before he meets clients the next day. “I pay a lot of people,” he said. “When they’re broke or in trouble, they come to me for loans â€" and I always say yes. I accommodate their school schedules, friends’ wedding plans that take them off shift, sick days and everything else they feel free to ask of me. They ask me for advice, and I always make time for them.” “Now, I’m doing maintenance and chores that the cleaning crew left, my staff overlooked and it’s all things my clients see. Some days it’s really clear that no one really cares about me or this company. Maybe a few people do on occasion, but four years is a long time to learn that unless you’re hard on people, they take it easy.” No, this doesn’t mean YOU take it easy at work. It just means people who can’t avoid being held accountable like a manager or business owner may be worn out by the staff who came before you. Getting a weird vibe at work? Make a contract with yourself to do a really good job everyday and to look for one more thing to do, that’s outside your specific duties. Let your boss or the recruiter learn that you are that one in a million, the person who really understands that work is more than a paycheck.

6 Ways to Find a Career MentorAnd What to Look For

6 Ways to Find a Career Mentorâ€"And What to Look For Photo Credit â€" Flickr.comWorking with a career mentor is an important investment in your future. No matter your professional goals, a great mentor can provide feedback, advice and insight that only comes from experience.While the search for the ideal candidate may seem overwhelming, here are six ways to find the right mentor for you.1. Consider Current ConnectionsA co-worker in a senior role, one you currently work with or have worked with in the past, can make an excellent mentor because his or her advice and experience will be specific to your industry, which is critical to your career success: “Perhaps the most important step in pursuing a dream job is to find someone who already works in that field who can offer guidance and advice as you proceed,” according to Allison Doyle.evalIf you already have a rapport with someone, start there. But, don’t ask right away.Instead, sit down for lunch or coffee to explain your career goals, get a feel for their career values, and deter mine if it would be a good match. Just because you get along, doesn’t mean they’re the right person to mentor you.2. NetworkFace-to-face networking is one of the best ways to find like-minded professionals and potential mentors.Sign up for events where you’ll be able to connect with professionals from your field or an industry you’d like to break into. Before signing up, research to see who will be in attendance If you’re uncomfortable at networking events or you simply haven’t found the right person, there are several online tools you can use in your search. Start with LinkedIn, where you likely already have an accountâ€"along with 500 million other users.Chris Spurvey, a Linkedin Influencer, recommends scanning Linkedin Pulse to find leaders in your niche: “Browse LinkedIn Pulse channels to see who is writing about the areas for which you want mentorship. Most mentors are leaders. Most leaders are readers, and many readers are also writers.”Spurvey suggests followi ng these people before sending a connection request. Comment on their posts and interact with their circles. Once you’ve done this and feel comfortable, you can connect with the person and see if they’re willing to have a one-on-one meeting.Other useful tools include websites like Score.org, Mentoring.org and FindaMentor.4. Ask Your BossevalThis doesn’t mean ask your boss to mentor you. Instead, let your boss or manager know you want to work with someone who can help you learn, grow, and improve and see if he or she can recommend a mentor.Your boss will be happy you took the initiative and he or she can connect you with business professionals who may be of help. Want your boss to mentor you? Read this first: Your Boss? Your Mentor? Why You Should Know the Difference.5. Check With Your SchoolRegardless of how long it’s been since graduating, you can always tap into useful alumni and career resources from your University. Check online or contact your school’s career center. Most school host alumni networking events, seminars and more.Many even have mentorship programs and alumni networks where you can connect with other alumnus who are working in your industry. The best part: as a fellow alumni, you already have a way to break the ice when reaching out to potential mentors.6. Small Business Development CentersSmall Business Development Centers Use these ideas to start your search and don’t settle for someone who doesn’t feel like the right fit. Be clear about your goals and you’ll find the person who can help you get where you want to go.

Resume Preferences Straight From the Mouths of Recruiters

Resume Preferences Straight From the Mouths of Recruiters Last week when I was in Annapolis at the NRWA conference, I listened to a panel discussion with five recruiters representing the corporate, not-for-profit, and government sectors who shared their preferences regarding resumes. Their preferences are consistent with those of other recruiters I talk to. Here are the key takeaways:1. Include both months and years of employment for any positions that you held for less than 2 years. 2. Use bulleted lists to show accomplishments rather than blocky paragraphs of text. 3. Create a brief paragraph under each job title to explain the position responsibilities. 4. If listing multiple roles in one company, only list the company name and full employment dates once and list the individual position titles underneath. 5. Include embedded links such as LinkedIn url or other links if relevant. 6. Keep the resume to one or two pages unless applying for a federal job where a longer resume may be needed. 7. Explain any employment gaps on the resume. 8. Pa ste your cover letter into the body of the email rather than as a separate attachment. 9. Make sure all company names, job titles, and keywords are easy to spot on a quick scan. 10. Use a chronological format whenever possible; alternative formats can raise suspicion with some recruiters.

What Does Cum Laude On Resume Mean?

What Does Cum Laude On Resume Mean?A lot of people may wonder what does Cum Laude on resume mean. While it is not a common job title, it is nonetheless very much in demand as employers in the corporate world are always keen to choose a highly qualified individual for the post of executive secretary. Most of the senior executives may have encountered this sort of job on the job and they may have to face challenges when they were first appointed with the job description. A C-grade executive secretary may have many bosses and may have to face situations that require him to look up for a solution.When you look for a job application, make sure that you use your skills as well as learning with the final grade. This will help you get higher positions and avoid any further revisions when you receive a rejection. In order to land a job, one has to be committed and this means that you must be ready for the whole process. If you get rejected from any of the jobs, do not fret because you can alw ays go in search of the very next job. If you have the right job descriptions, you can easily land your dream job.All the companies will have an easy time in hiring a highly committed employee and you may have to face a difficult job in applying for the jobs. However, make sure that you do not put forth the application to more than a single company. Make sure that you have a few simple but direct questions regarding the company and make sure that you are properly prepared to answer the queries. You should not just use your knowledge on the job but also your communication skills.When you have all the right questions ready, you should ask the specific details about the company so that you can also get information. As soon as you start getting the answers, you can contact the company and provide them all the necessary information. You should also include in your application details regarding the number of years you have worked in the company.Your data would help you get a better positi on and would help you land that job that you have been dreaming of. You have to keep a few things in mind when you are preparing your application. Make sure that you are properly prepared before you submit the application.You should never rush into making the decision and only remember that you need to be prepared and also a leader. You should be able to come up with a plan that could turn out to be successful. Since you may have to keep all the candidates and the companies to look into, it is also important that you select the most suitable candidate and give your best to get that job.It is because you know that there are going to be few companies that may reject you, but this is why you have to make sure that you are prepared for every aspect of the job. It will help you in the long run and you will be able to land the job that you have always dreamed of. It is true that a C-grade executive secretary may have to face tough times but there are still opportunities in the market and if you learn and work hard, then you will surely be able to land the job that you have always dreamt of.