Just How Messed Up is HR

Just How Messed Up is HR One of my favorite HR blogs is Punk Rock HR, written by Laurie Ruettimann.   Laurie just tells it like it is.   Lots of surprises, and tons of honesty. A few weeks ago she wrote a blog post about career options for HR professionals, based on a question she got from one of her blog readers.   The reader asks would she suggest HR as a career? Laurie leaves the question to be answered by her readers and this is where it gets really interesting.   Wonder why they say a job seeker should avoid HR?   Perhaps there is insight in some of these responses (you need to go to the original post to see all the comments, Im only putting snippets here): Ben Eubanks writes: If you are wanting to be in HR because you’re a touchy-feely person, then I wouldn’t advise it. Jen writes: I would advise her to think of it as a career in babysiting. I hold hands when people get boo-boos, give them time outs and sometimes have to send them home. You also must have a high tolerence for crying, fighting and cleaning up messes. HR Chick writes: There are many days that you feel like someone’s admin assistant, nurse, counselor, mother, and babysitter. The reality is it can be frustrating and can make you jaded (if you let it). Kerry says: HR is a people-watcher’s job, not a people-lover’s job. Theres a ton more go here to read the post.   The comments get pretty nasty not towards an individual but towards the profession to the point where Kerry says:   Wow. We’re a really disgruntled group. Perhaps we ALL need ice cream. They really say to avoid HR in a job search because HR isnt in a decision-making role, rather, they are in a screening role but this post gives insight into another reason why you might want to avoid HR in your job search. Just How Messed Up is HR One of my favorite HR blogs is Punk Rock HR, written by Laurie Ruettimann.   Laurie just tells it like it is.   Lots of surprises, and tons of honesty. A few weeks ago she wrote a blog post about career options for HR professionals, based on a question she got from one of her blog readers.   The reader asks would she suggest HR as a career? Laurie leaves the question to be answered by her readers and this is where it gets really interesting.   Wonder why they say a job seeker should avoid HR?   Perhaps there is insight in some of these responses (you need to go to the original post to see all the comments, Im only putting snippets here): Ben Eubanks writes: If you are wanting to be in HR because you’re a touchy-feely person, then I wouldn’t advise it. Jen writes: I would advise her to think of it as a career in babysiting. I hold hands when people get boo-boos, give them time outs and sometimes have to send them home. You also must have a high tolerence for crying, fighting and cleaning up messes. HR Chick writes: There are many days that you feel like someone’s admin assistant, nurse, counselor, mother, and babysitter. The reality is it can be frustrating and can make you jaded (if you let it). Kerry says: HR is a people-watcher’s job, not a people-lover’s job. Theres a ton more go here to read the post.   The comments get pretty nasty not towards an individual but towards the profession to the point where Kerry says:   Wow. We’re a really disgruntled group. Perhaps we ALL need ice cream. They really say to avoid HR in a job search because HR isnt in a decision-making role, rather, they are in a screening role but this post gives insight into another reason why you might want to avoid HR in your job search.

Do Employee Perks Translate into Employer ROI

Do Employee Perks Translate into Employer ROI Let’s revisit a subject I haven’t heard much about in a while â€" the subject of employee perks. Incredible employee perks aren’t as incredible as they used to be. Not because companies have let up on what they offer, but on the contrary, because so many companies are offering amazing perks that the novelty has worn off. The result is a new generation of entitled employees for whom a paycheck isn’t nearly enough of a reward for their work. But are the employers who are offering these perks getting an adequate return on their investment? Who offers what? Google seems to remain the undisputed king of employee perks with a vast array of free food choices cooked by professional chefs, in addition to oil changes and car washes, massages and yoga, a play room, child care assistance and concierge service. Deloitte offers employees sabbatical programs of up to four unpaid weeks off for any reason, or three to six months off, partially paid, to pursue career-enhancing opportunities. Discovery Communications offers free classes and events such as African dance classes, chocolate-making lessons, water color painting, fly-fishing and improv seminars, in addition to an in-house wellness center offering primary care doctors and a pharmacy. And finally, Facebook offers free transportation to and from work, free meals, a company gym, an onsite candy shop and free bike repair. (Incidentally, if you’re employed at Facebook with the title “Bicycle Mechanic,” I beg you to send me a LinkedIn invitation.) In an effort to recruit the top employees in any given industry, the bar is continually being raised. In today’s workforce, salary alone doesn’t speak as loudly as it once did. According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), benefits are the second most important driver of job satisfaction, with the first being job security. So when a handful of cutting-edge companies offer perks that are so enticing that they virtually eliminate employees’ mundane daily tasks and enable them to focus more time on work, other companies feel the pressure to follow suit. Presumably, the companies offering these fantastic perks aren’t sacrificing employee salaries, so are they paying off for employers? What effect do perks have? According to the Harvard Business Services (HBS) Blog, social and relaxing activities increase creativity. These activities cause a spike in the superior anterior temporal gyrus (aSTG), the part of the brain responsible for drawing together distantly-related information. This in turn enhances creativity, engagement and innovation. While many employers may view lavish perks as costly and a waste of company time, those who offer such perks will attest that the results can be seen in employees’ work. But creativity and innovation are subjective. What about those employers who want to see numbers and dollar figures supporting the ROI of offering employee perks? According to Incentive Magazine, since 1998, Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” have reported a 10.6 percent annual return. In contrast, companies with 40 percent or less employee engagement had a total shareholder return that was 44 percent lower than average. Highly engaged workforces generate an average of 29 percent more revenue and are 50 percent more likely to have above-average customer loyalty, and engaged organizations report 44 percent higher retention rates. A 2011 IES/Work Foundation Report found that a 10 percent increase in employee-engagement practices can increase annual profits by $2,400 per employee, while a one percent boost in employee commitment can increase monthly sales by nine percent. In one study conducted by Towers Watson, a highly engaged workforce improved operating income by 19.2 percent within a year’s time, while a 32.7 percent annual decline was reported by companies with low engagement scores. Reload Media, a small digital strategy company in Brisbane, Australia, was able to calculate its ROI based solely on its employee perks. For every dollar spent on massage therapists, iPhones, a game room, travel and similar items for about 40 staffers within a 12-month period, $11 was returned. The company spent an estimated $80,000 on perks, then factored in 20 percent lower turnover than the industry average, as well as an estimated $20,000 to train each employee. In addition, client revenue increased by $720,000. A 2010 Time magazine poll found that fewer than half of working Americans were satisfied with their jobs â€" the lowest percentage since 1987. However, according to Bob Nelson, Ph.D., the best-selling author of 1001 Ways to Reward Employees and 1501 Ways to Reward Employees, those companies whose employees report being more satisfied show a 700 percent greater shareholder return. The takeaway is that it benefits employers significantly to make the workplace enjoyable for employees, as happy employees result in increased creativity, work quality and profitability.

Get Out of Debt Now Perform Higher Call This Sunday

Get Out of Debt Now Perform Higher Call This Sunday I am so excited to speak about my journey getting out of debt this Sunday, October 14th at 9pm EST. Here is what I am going to share: The Agenda How taking control of your finances can influence your professional future Practical ways that you can get out of debt Steps to take if you are currently in a job just to pay the bills How to plan work around your life, not your life around your work Sign up Would love to have you join or listen to the recording later!  Click here for the link to sign up. Its free of course! So what is the perform higher call? It is a weekly call hosted by Jullien Gordon to help high performers learn how to be an even higher performer.  Here are some interesting questions that Jullien poses on his website that will get you thinking about where you are currently at: How did you perform in the past work week? Are you interested in learning how to perform higher? What difference could performing higher make in your work and life? What is the gap between where you are and where you know you could be? Hope to see/hear you on the call on Sunday!! Anna

Last chance to get the 90-Day Love Your Career Formula - Classy Career Girl

Last chance to get the 90-Day Love Your Career Formula Are you joining us? The 90-Day Love Your Career Formula is closing in a few hours… Here’s how to enroll in the program  and get started with us in class tomorrow. Got Q’s? Email me and my team at anna@classycareergirl.com. -Anna ??

What is Resume Writing For A Scholarship? - The Top Questions You Need To Ask Yourself

What is Resume Writing For A Scholarship? - The Top Questions You Need To Ask YourselfWhat is resume writing for a scholarship? This is the question many scholarship seekers are asking and the answer is a little different for each person. However, a common factor that most people can agree on is the ability to write a good resume.In fact, it is a good idea to begin with a list of questions that you will want to ask yourself when deciding what type of scholarship you are hoping to receive. Having these questions in mind before you begin to write a resume will make things much easier in the future and make it easier to find the scholarships that suit your needs.How much scholarship do you want? This is a question that all scholarship seekers will need to ask themselves and it will also be something that you should take into consideration when you are researching a particular scholarship.What are the requirements for the scholarship you are applying for? This is a very important questio n, as you need to make sure that the scholarship you are applying for has specific requirements that you must meet or fall short of.Where will you need to apply and what does it mean to be on the wait list? These are two questions that you should research as these are the two questions that many scholarship companies will ask you before accepting your application.How much will you need to pay and what is the general cost of the scholarship? If you know the cost of the scholarship before you begin your search, you will be able to better evaluate the cost of the scholarship and allow yourself to determine if the scholarship is worth it or not.What are the requirements and what is the timeline for getting the scholarship? Knowing these two details before you begin your search will help you make sure that you get the scholarship you need as soon as possible.As you can see, there are a number of questions that must be answered before you begin to write what is resume writing for a schola rship. Therefore, you will want to take the time to research each scholarship to determine what they require from you before you submit your application.

How thinking outside the resume box gets your resume trashed - CareerAlley

How thinking outside the resume box gets your resume trashed - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change Charles Darwin Author: Jarred Talmadge Chances are, if you are unemployed, you cant afford a thousand dollar resume writer. There is a great amount of frustration you are feeling, that if you could only afford that, you might be able to get a new job. Dont buy into this thought process. Getting another job is as simple as understanding what these high priced consultants are selling and doing it yourself. From my experience, most people who call themselves resume writers are actually just people who are really good at writing copy. That is, they write sales and advertising documents well, and in theory this should mean they are good at writing resumes. The premise is resumes sell you to the employer. Once upon a time, this was a true statement, when resumes were actually being read first. But your resume is being assaulted long before you ever have a resume writer work on it. These resume writers are great writers who can make your resume look shiny and new and fancy, but what are they really offering you? I am a former Wall Street recruiter. I can tell you, your resume has less than thirty seconds before a decision is made as to whether you move on or not. If you dont know what you are doing wrong, beware these fake professionals and their advice. If you arent careful, their advice is going to get your resume a one way ticket to the trash can. I recently read an article written by a resume writing guru who recommended thinking outside the box when writing your resume. Simply as a public service, I had to write this article to refute what he was saying. Your resume above all else is a business document. So you should treat it as such. This isnt a time to get cute and try things that are out of the box. Sure the news story about the guy who decided to take his family on a road trip while he was looking for a job is interesting and out of the box. But then you find out, hes paid over five thousand dollars to drive around the country for a month looking for a job. Yes, thats out of the box, its also not reasonable. So, in this article I read, the first couple of suggestions this supposed guru was offering was to put hyperlinks into your resume, linking back to your past companies as well as to your Linkedin.com page. If you do this, your resume is going to get trashed. Adding hyperlinks to a resume makes your resume look like spam mail, not a resume. If your resume is caught in a companys spam filter because it detects outgoing links, it will never make it to wherever you sent it. It will get deleted before its ever looked at. Strike one for the guru. Next on the outside the box suggestions, widen the margins and use an original font. Again, as a former recruiter, Im still trying to figure out how this helps your cause. By widening the margins, it makes everything smaller. Then using a fancy font, are you kidding? If you have Microsoft Word and you click the drop down buttons for your fonts, you can see all the different styles out there. By picking one that is fancy, you arent going to get noticed, you are going to get trashed. If you make your resume hard to read, it is simply easier for the reader to trash your resume then to try and figure out what you wrote. Picking a unique font is akin to sending your resume in a foreign language. It doesnt mean the person on the other end of the line is going to read it. Chances are they are going to trash it. Strike two for the Guru. Finally, the out of the box thinking this guru suggested was to put a border around your resume. Now, if you are a graphic artist and your specialty is doing things like this, then absolutely, you should put a frilly, interesting border around your information. Chances are you arent a graphic artist. This gurus suggestion is going to make the reader of your resume think you are a 12 year old, doodling on your paper, while you were bored. It short, unprofessional. Which means your resume just earned a trip to the circular file bin on the floor. Strike three for the guru. Resume writing now isnt about hiring someone for five hundred or even a thousand dollars, to rewrite your resume. First, if you are unemployed, you dont have that kind of money to spend. Second, you know you better than they do. So, dont be so quick to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars paying a professional to write a resume for you. It would be better to seek out professionals offering information for a small fee that can point you in the right direction. At the very least, if you spend less than $10 for information and that information helps you, you just saved yourself $490 to $990 in the process. Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/resumes-articles/how-thinking-outside-the-resume-box-gets-your-resume-trashed-5094688.html About the Author Jarred Talmadge, MBA is a professional writer and consultant. For more tips on resume writing, check out his website: http://www.SuperchargeYourJobSearch.com. For more information on Jarred, check out his other informational product and articles, check out his website: http://www.JarredTalmadgeMBA.com. Jarred is available for writing and consulting contracts. Good luck in your search.

How to Be Decisive and Move Past Uncertainty

How to Be Decisive and Move Past Uncertainty No matter where you are in your career, it’s important to be able to be decisive and to drive things forward with confidence. These characteristics are a sign of an effective leader, and the people around you will certainly appreciate your clarity and direction. Yet, these qualities are something I’ve often struggled with, probably because I’m a perfectionist and hate getting things wrong. Maybe you do too? I learned a significant lesson last week that highlighted the importance of acting decisively and with confidence. Don’t Mess Around with Trucks Now, the way I learned this was actually not in the context of being a leader or giving career advice. I was driving in my car on the way to an appointment. I was on a two-lane highway going into a curve in the passing lane and there was a huge truck right next to me. As I went into this curve I remembered one of my husband’s driving mantras: don’t mess around with trucks. But I couldn’t remember how to execute on that. Do I speed up and pass the truck even though the curve in the road makes it easy for the truck to swerve into my lane? Or do I slow down and let the truck pass me even though I’m in the “fast lane”? I became uncertain. I was speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, slowing down and finally I decided to put on the brakes a little bit and wait for the truck to pass me. Bad move. I saw in my rear-view mirror that the car behind me was getting awfully close. I realized that this was a time to be confident, to focus and to drive forward. I put my foot on the accelerator and literally drove forward. I easily passed the truck and traffic flowed smoothly. Crisis averted. But this potential crisis was completely of my own making. If I had continued to hesitate and hang back, I might have caused an accident. In so much of life, what really matters is to make a decision and confidently drive things forward. When you put your foot on the accelerator, literally or figuratively, you can go forward and move past that point of uncertainty. Decisiveness at Work I got the opportunity to put my learning into practice at the office that very same day. One of my team members had a question for me about an issue that they needed to resolve. And I didn't know the answer. Normally, I might have said something like, Oh I'm really not sure. Maybe we need to consult with X, Y, Z Let's think about it. This reply is the equivalent of that stop and go hesitation I had on the highway earlier. Instead, I made the conscious decision to be confident and do the equivalent of driving forward. I said, I think we need to understand the impact of this decision on the people involved in the next stage of the project. So let's talk about it on our team call tomorrow with those other members, so we can make a decision including their input. My team member said, OK, great. She felt confident that this item was moving forward. I'm so glad I didn't default to my, Ooh I don't know” but rather drove forward with confidence even when I didn't know the answer, which in turn gave me real confidence. Drive Things Forward in Your Life As my work example shows, your action doesn’t have to find the answer right away. It can be to take an action towards the answer, such as setting up communication with other people on your team. In times of uncertainty, act decisively, pick a path and go with it. When you drive things forward in your life and in your career as a leader, everyone around you will feel even better and you will feel better too. After I made that decision and set up a next action for my team member, I felt great! I felt strong. I felt like I had helped my team member and been a good leader. I want you to experience this feeling for yourself as well. So, the next time you’re faced with feeling uncertain, remember to be decisive and drive forward. Not only will you feel better about yourself, you’ll be modeling strong leadership behavior for those around you as well. What’s an example of a time when you faced uncertainty and took decisive action to drive the project forward? Leave me a comment and let me know.