Filling out a job application isn’t as simple as just checking a few boxes on a form. In today’s job market, you need to set yourself above the competition. Stand out from other job applicants. One of the best ways to do that is by crafting an amazing cover letter. You can’t use the same generic cover letter for every application you submit. Rather, you need to be creating content that is specific to every job you are applying to.
5 Reasons to Consider Temp Staffing
Your workforce determines how productive and successful your company is. Without the right employees and associates, your company could be incredibly undervalued right now. So how do you get those employees in your office, on your manufacturing floor, or in your call center? Partner with a staffing firm that can help you find the best temporary employees possible. Temp staffing solutions are great ways to improve your business, reduce costs, and increase profitability.
Resume Best Practices: Writing Your Objective for Resumes
When you begin applying for jobs, there is one crucial thing you need to be thinking about: your objective statement. In order to set yourself apart from other applicants, your objective needs to be detailed, tailored to your career goals, and tailored to the job you are applying for. If your overall career goals don’t align with the company or position you are applying for, then you need to rethink applying. Crafting the perfect objective for resumes can be difficult, but with a few questions in mind, you have a great statement sure to capture and engage your future employer.
Writing an objective for your resume is actually more important than just putting a sentence at the top of your resume. It’s a process that needs time and consideration. Ultimately, this statement needs to reflect who you are and what your career goals are. Here are a few questions to help you get started:
What type of work environment do you thrive in?
While it may not be the most important question, you still need to know what type of work environment and culture you want to work in and be a part of. When you know these things, you can seek out companies that offer these settings. Accepting a position at a job in which you don’t fit with the environment can lead to unhappiness and eventually leaving the job. Be upfront with potential employers about the type of environment you work best in.
What skills do you hope to cultivate and develop?
Your job isn’t just about getting work done. It’s about advancing your role and your career. By telling a potential employer about the skills you want to develop and the skills you want to utilize, they get a better understanding of who you are as an employee. As an employee, you should always be looking for ways to be better at your job, gain valuable skills that transfer from company to company and increase your knowledge in special areas.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Looking to the future can be intimidating sometimes, but having some sort of career plan can help land you your dream job. By having a career plan, you set goals for yourself. Potential employers want to see that you’re motivated and dedicated when it comes to your professional life because that more than likely means you are motivated and dedicated to doing a fantastic job.
What type of work are you seeking out?
Your objective statement needs to have one overall theme: what type of work do you do better than anyone else? By answering that question you are establishing your personal differentiator. You’re telling potential employers what you do and why you do it so well. Maybe it’s your analytical mind or your own creative process. Whatever it is, be sure you explain what type of work you do well and the type of work you want to be doing.
Do you have any recommendations for writing objectives for resumes? Leave your tips and suggestions in the comments section below!
Retaining Your Employees
One of the most crucial things in business is keeping your top employees. Not only will your business be more successful with amazing employees, but your customers will be happier, production will increase, and your overhead costs will more than likely decrease. Retaining your employees is one of the best things for your company.
But sometimes that isn’t easy. Employees leave for several reasons. Commute times. Better pay. Disagree with management. The list for why employees leave goes on and on. However, with the right tools and strategies you can retain your employees and keep your business successful.
Recognition
One of the things top employees look for in an employer is recognition. If they’re going to work hard for you, then they want to be recognized for that. For many employees, this isn’t a question of pay. Sure, raises go a long way, but most employees are looking for more than that. If they do a great job with a campaign, make a top sale, or cover for a coworker who is on vacation or sick, then do something to recognize your star employee’s job well done.
Engagement
Employees are looking for transparency and understanding when it comes to their roles and the company they are working for. Managers, supervisors, HR, CEOs, owners, anyone who is in charge of someone else should be in constant communication with those who work under them. When you successfully engage employees, you can better understand them, their points of views, and what changes they’d like to see at the company. Engaging your top employees can help you retain your employees.
Development
While retaining employees is important, you should also focus on developing your employees. Give them the tools they need in order to grow
as an employee and as an individual. For some, this may mean a continued education program, budgets to attend conferences, or even a community improvement day. By helping your employees develop, you’ll end up retaining them.
Benefits
It’s no secret that a lot of employees leave companies for better benefits. This doesn’t always mean more money, but sometimes it does. Benefits can mean money, insurance, PTO, holidays, flexible hours, flexible schedules, and a lot of other things. When you offer these benefits to employees, they are more likely going to stick around. All of these things further employee engagement, employee happiness, and overall productivity.
Retaining your employees comes down to a few key things: recognition, engagement, development, and benefits. In order to keep your star employees from jumping ship, you need to assess these things and make the necessary changes.
What do you do to retain your employees? Leave your tips and suggestions in the comments below!
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Resume Best Practices: Things to Avoid on Your Resume Template
Writing your resume can be tricky. From things to avoid to things you have to include, there are several things to keep in mind. The ultimate goal of your resume is to convey to an employer you’re the best candidate. You want that phone call for an interview. You want that dream job. But you won’t get your foot in the door without a solid resume template.
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Why You Need an Onboarding Process
Making the decision to hire a new employee takes a lot of time and consideration. You have to determine what skills you’re looking for, how much you’re willing to pay, where they’re going to work, what type of benefits you are going to offer, and so much more. After all that time and preparation, you can still end up hiring a bad candidate, which is exactly why you need an onboarding process.
Having an onboarding process can help you determine if a candidate is right for the job. With an onboarding process in place, you can better engage with new hire, and create schedules for employee reviews. The onboarding process will help new hires better acclimate to their new work environment and in turn create a better work culture.
Onboarding is Cost Effective
No one likes to make a bad hire, but it happens from time to time. An onboarding process can help you in this situation a few ways. Through this process, you can determine early on if an employee is going to be a great fit. Rather than investing a few months’ worth of salary in a new hire, your engaging onboarding process, will help you determine if the new hire is a good fit. Another way you can save money is by having set plans in place. When you have set plans in place, each hire will go through the exact same steps, which means the process will become easier for you over time.
Onboarding Allows for Employee Engagement
One of the crucial steps often overlooked when a new hire starts is engagement. This step in the onboarding process goes beyond filling out paperwork and showing them to their desk. It involves making sure you’re prepared for them, helping them settle in, and introducing them to people in the office. By engaging employees during this process, you can help make them more comfortable in their new work environments. Check in with them a couple of time during their first day, and continue to check in with employees after 90 days.
Onboarding Helps Create Culture
It’s no secret that company culture is hot topic these days, but many don’t understand that it’s really a result of the onboarding process because when you help ease people into your company, they can more easily become part of your culture. When they are comfortable, they can expand your culture, transform it, and even improve upon it, which will result in a better work place and create happier workers.
What does your onboarding process look like? Do you have any advice about onboarding new hires? Leave your suggestions in the comments below!
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Choosing Your References
When you’re applying for jobs, filling out applications, sending out resumes, and even interviewing, one thing you need to have in mind is a list of references. Choosing your references is a crucial step in finding your next job or career. It might seem like no big deal to throw a few names and numbers down on a piece of paper and call it a day, but you need to put real consideration into who you choose to list as a reference.
What is Company Culture?
In the past several months, you’ve probably seen headlines, articles, blog posts, and even news stories surrounding company culture. If you’ve looked at any job postings, you’ve probably even seen some boasting a great work environment and company culture, but not all of those stories answer the question: what is company culture?
While company culture looks different in every office, there are a few things that are central to the idea of company culture. Something else you need to be aware of is that every company has a culture, but you need to cultivate a culture in which employees want to be a part of and feel included. When you do this, you can improve and grow your business because ultimately it is your employees who will do this for you.
Defining Values
The first step in creating, maintaining, and understanding your company’s culture is to define the values in which your company operates under. These values go beyond the mission and vision statements you have. Company values provide direction, support, and standards for employees, managers, and even owners of companies. Through values, you can begin to form and shape your culture into one of a successful company.
Work Environment
If you take a look around at articles discussing companies that have great cultures, you may notice high tech, design-heavy and creative offices. This might make you think that your company will never have a great culture, but the work environment is about more than pure aesthetics. Sure, having black walls and no windows probably isn’t a good idea, but work environment goes much deeper than that. Creating an environment where employees feel respected, trusted, and cared for is much more important. Provide employees with an environment that allows them to get their work done, but done in a way that allows for creativity and passion, and you’ll be on your way to improving company culture.
Engagement
A critical piece of the company culture puzzle is engagement. This goes beyond just talking to your employees every morning. Engagement is meeting with employees, discussing their work, their career development, their goals. Engagement is finding out what you can be doing better as an employer or manager. It also means being accessible to your employees. Create an environment in which employees feel comfortable talking to you about their work, issues, and ideas.
Employee Programs
Employee programs often get confused with fun things like ping-pong tournaments and beer Fridays. But what it really means is setting up beneficial programs for employees. These programs can include things like health initiatives, tuition reimbursement, community programs, monthly lunch, or annual company events. Employee programs serve to help you engage your employees and go above and behind to help them lead better, healthier, and happier lives.
How do you define company culture? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below!
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10 Common Resume Mistakes
Writing the perfect resume is nearly impossible, but if you spend the time and put in the effort, you can craft a great resume. The real trick is avoiding common resume mistakes that will cause someone to just dismiss you as a serious candidate. When a recruiter or hiring manager sees a resume with mistakes all over it, they will more than likely throw it away and move on to the next candidate. Simply applying for a job and sending in a resume isn’t enough to get you the job.
Even the best laid out resume with all the bells and whistles can be pushed aside if there are simple mistakes on it. Before you start sending your resume out, you should look it over and make sure you aren’t a victim of these 10 common resume mistakes:
1. Typos and Poor Grammar
One of the biggest mistakes your resume can have is typos or poor grammar. When the person reviewing a resume sees these mistakes, your resume is dismissed right away. In order to avoid these mistakes, you need to use a spellcheck tool, read, reread, and reread your resume. You also need to consider having someone review your resume for these simple mistakes that are often over looked.
2. Duties Rather Than Accomplishments
It’s easy to simply list the duties of your current job and any past jobs you’ve had. However, not only is this lazy, it doesn’t really tell a future employer anything. Instead, you need to list accomplishments, projects, and tasks that you undertook in those positions. By doing this, you show what you have done, what you are capable of, and the results of those actions.
3. Lack of Dates
You may think that dates just aren’t that important, but if someone reviewing your resume sees a lack of dates or an inaccurate account of dates, then a red flag will go off. Don’t try to hide career gaps. If there are gaps in your resume, then you need explain them in your cover letter. Remember, career gaps can be a positive thing on your resume and in your career.
4. Missing Contact Information
As you are reviewing your resume, double check your phone number, address, and email address. It might seem like a stupid mistake, but if you do happen to put in the wrong number or street name, then how is someone supposed to contact you? Be sure this information is accurate at all times.
5. Bad Formatting
You might think formatting isn’t an important part of your resume, but if you submit a resume that lacks flow in the format, then the person reading it might just end up tossing it aside. While adding boxes and using certain types of fonts can make your resume look great on screen, you need to keep in mind that you will be sending your resume in an email (more than likely) and someone will probably be printing it out. Keep it as simple as possible because in most cases, an employer just wants the information and nothing else.
6. Non-Functional
In attempts to hide resume gaps and make your resume stylish, you may end up turning out a non-functional resume. Instead, you should be creating a resume that is chronological and focuses on your accomplishments rather than anything else.
7. Long Form Resumes
For some, when creating a resume, they want to cram everything they have ever done or accomplished onto the sheet. However, when your resume spreads beyond one or two pages, you lose the interest of those reading it. If you are already working with a long resume, consider trimming it down. You have limited time to get to the point, so get there early.
8. Paragraphs
Your resume should tell a story, but it should tell it in short sentences, highlights, and bullet points. Paragraphs should be used on cover letters and career objectives, but your job summaries and skills sections should utilize short sentences and bullet points. By setting your resume up this way, you can get your main points across and answer initial questions. You will also have a better chance at intriguing someone and get that much anticipated call for an interview.
9. No Real Qualifications
It’s tempting to go after our dream jobs and we should always be working towards them, but you can’t apply for them unless you are ready. Your resume needs to reflect the proper qualifications when applying for a job, so make sure you have real qualifications that match the job you are applying for.
10. Unrelated Personal Information
You may want to include personal information to your resume to help someone learn more about you, but no matter how fascinating it is, unless it pertains to the job, you should leave it off. Some are tempted to include hobbies, interests, and age on their resume, but it’s just not needed and often not welcomed.
As you review your resume, make sure the information is accurate, readable, and relevant to the job to which you are applying. Avoid common resume mistakes by double and triple checking what you’ve included and having someone else review it.
What resume questions do you have? Leave your questions and suggestions in the comments section below!
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Why Employee Engagement Matters
There has been a lot in the news and online lately about employee engagement. It’s hard to talk about being a boss or an employer without mentioning employee engagement. There are a lot of theories floating around about what employee engagement is and what it looks like, but why is it so important?