If Your Company Is Going to Succeed Today, It Needs to Leverage Intellectual Diversity
Imagine you are sitting in a conference room. You and various other members of the company are discussing a major new marketing initiative (or any sort of business strategy or plan, really). Now, imagine that, out all the people sitting in this room with you, two stand out to you in particular: Person A is quick with their words, a loud, passionate speaker. It is clear that, whenever Person...
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Who Should You Hire First at Your Startup? 6 Entrepreneurs Weigh In
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: When your startup is just getting off the ground, you need to make some careful hiring decisions. You probably don't...
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5 Statistics That Prove Women Are Impacting Business at Unprecedented Levels [Infographic]
Women are shaking up the status quo and bringing more diversity to the corporate world. As leading ladies at larger corporations and startup pioneers, women are making professional strides at work. From founding businesses at 1.5 times the national average to pursuing higher education in record numbers, many women are proving to be confident risk takers and champions for the advancement of women...
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Managing Global Talent: Is a Remote Team Right for Your Business?
In my role as cofounder and CEO of a company that helps businesses attract and retain remote talent in emerging markets, I often get asked about the future of work. Specifically, people ask me about best practices for managing diverse remote talent bases and whether or not it's a good thing to let employees work from home. However, there is no perfect practice, because people around the world...
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4 Ways to Make Your Staff Love — or, at Least, Not Loathe — Performance Reviews
For most organizations, performance reviews have become part of the furniture. Managers and staff join firms assuming that appraisals have always been there and always will be there, and they have no reason to question the existence of or need for these appraisals. Employees and managers just get on board the performance review train without a second thought. But perhaps appraisals should...
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When Resources Shrink and Demands Grow, Managers Get Caught in the Middle
Last week, author, leadership expert, and Recruiter.com contributor Dr. Jesse Sostrin published a piece on our site about "leaky" talent pools. According to Dr. Sostrin, a "deep bench of emerging leaders" means nothing if your company routinely places impossible demands on the shoulders of those leaders. These impossible demands are part of what Dr. Sostrin calls "the manager's dilemma,"...
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4 Ways Employers Can Build Big Career Pathways in Small Companies
Smaller companies are not usually able to offer the highly visible, varied, and extensive career pathways enjoyed by the employees of larger organizations. In small organizations of 10-20 people, which employ nearly 20 percent of the U.S.'s working population, it's likely that there are only one or two management positions available and few (if any) opportunities to move sideways into another...
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Forget Entrepreneurs — Let's Get 'Intrapreneurial'
"We live in an age of entrepreneurship and imagination," said Menlo Innovations CEO Rich Sheridan at a Google for Entrepreneurs Hangout last year. One would be a fool to argue with Sheridan on this point. Research suggests that more Americans are becoming entrepreneurs than ever before, and it often feels as if not a day goes by without some new company springing up to "disrupt" an industry...
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15 Hiring Tips for Startups
Is your startup expanding? Are you looking to make a few new hires? Or maybe you're just starting out, getting ready to build your team. Whatever the case may be, entrepreneur and recruiting expert Clinton Buelter is here with some tips to help you find -- and hire -- the best talent for your business: 1. Don't Hire Just Because Only hire because you cannot physically complete the...
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The 5 Morning Rituals That Make Me Successful
The start of your morning sets the tone for the next 24 hours. As a businesswoman running several different companies at the same time, I've learned that mornings are a valuable opportunity to get things done before the workday officially begins. Maximize your abilities with these five morning rituals for a successful business day: 1. Wake Up at the Same Time Every Day We are creatures...
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How Exercising Employees Builds Muscle Mass for Your Business
If, as you read this, you're slouched over in an office chair in front of a computer, with your head perched on your palm, then you're the rule, not the exception. This is how most of us spend our days at work now: seated. Unfortunately, sitting in a chair for eight hours a day is proving to be quite costly for our overall health. Evidence is starting to indicate that this seemingly...
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How a Comic Book Can Teach Kids About Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship may be all the rage among certain sets of society -- and I must confess that I often feel as if 90 percent of what I write is about "entrepreneurship" -- but some sources suggest that the youngsters aren't terribly into. To me, that isn't surprising. I don't think I knew what entrepreneurship actually was until I was maybe 18. (Full disclosure: I spent most of my life...
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How to Brand Yourself as a Thought Leader in 5 Easy Steps
Today's question comes from a busy professional: How do I personally brand myself as a thought leader in my field? 1. Put Yourself Out There The first steps is to simply put yourself out there. There are many opportunities to gain visibility. Offer to speak at professional organizations and conferences. Search the Internet for "calls for papers" and "calls for speakers" -- then...
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How to Keep Your Turnover Rates Below 1 Percent
The average turnover rate for a healthcare organization in 2013 was 16.8 percent, and more recent reports suggest similar rates persist today. And then there's Aero Jet Medical, an air-ambulance transport company that has seen turnover rates of less than 1 percent for the past 10 years, according to CEO Danielle Wilson. Such a turnover rate is so low it's practically obscene, but Wilson,...
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New York Is Driving the Next Wave of Technology Innovation
The tech energy in New York is driving a new kind of startup culture that's unique to the city. Entrepreneurs are choosing the New York City ecosystem in droves because it meets their needs in ways that Silicon Valley, Chicago, Austin, and other emerging U.S. tech hubs cannot. When I first moved here five years ago, it was hard to get someone to move to New York for a tech position. The...
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10 Audiobooks to Sharpen Your Business Skills
Looking for a book to help you boost your career? Sanjay Singhal, the entrepreneur behind Audiobooks.com, shares his top 10 picks with us. 1. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds -- Carmine Gallo TED Talks are the new gold standard for compelling presentations. This book gives readers the inside scoop on what makes a great presentation, analyzing popular...
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How Should You Handle an Employee Resigning at a Critical Time?
Today's question comes from a busy business owner: How would you handle an employee resigning during a critical time period? My client came to me desperately when an employee of his resigned last week with only one month notice. His resignation came very suddenly, and a little suspiciously: this employee had a lot of critical deliverables on his plate for the next two months. The...
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5 Signs a Job Seeker Is Ready for the Startup World
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! This Week's Question: Working for a startup comes with its own unique challenges and rewards, and not everyone is cut out for the startup...
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How to Keep the Right People at Your Company
You have an open position and a list of finalists who match your requirements. The candidates are well-versed in your company, its mission, and its products/services. They even clearly understand the drawbacks that may go along with being an employee at your organization. How do you know that the candidate you choose is going to stick around for several years to come? How do you know that...
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Starting a Business: 4 Things Female Founders Should Keep in Mind
Starting a business can be daunting. I've often said that if you want to know what you're made of, there are three ways to find out: have a child, write a book, or start a business. For women in particular, there are special issues to consider before taking the plunge. Here are four key things that every woman should do and consider before she starts a business. 1. Define Success for...
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6 Reasons Why Some Successful Business Owners Become Entrepreneurs
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! This Week's Question: Why did you choose entrepreneurship? The answers below are provided by members of FounderSociety, an...
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Should I Separate My Business Values From My Personal Values?
Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose. I am a speaker, an author, and an expert in time and project management. I help busy professionals and entrepreneurs create effective systems so that they can comfortably delegate to others, be more profitable, and have time to enjoy life. At the end of the day, I transform the way you run your business into a business you love to run. Today's question comes...
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5 Ways to Save on Business Travel and Make Employees Happy
In a business culture obsessed with more revenue and lower costs, we can fall into the trap of believing that more savings are always better than less. However, there's such a thing as spending too little on business travel. Road warriors know that travel is mentally and physically exhausting. When a college kid says, "I'd really love to have a job where I travel all the time," the...
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How to Make Your Company Your Family
I've worked at many places, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Most described themselves as having a "family-style culture." They had happy hours, brought cake into work for birthdays, and hosted bring-your-kids-to-work days. In my mind, those activities are commonplace and loosely categorized as family-like. When my cofounders and I started Enplug, we wanted to create the...
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6 Ways to Revitalize a Toxic Workplace Culture, Part 1
The "2014 Employee Engagement and Organizational Culture Report" from TINYpulse found that only 36 percent of the 200,000 survey respondents rated their organizations' company cultures as "strong." This means that, even if you look around your office and see what you believe are contented faces, there's a good chance that roughly two out of three of your workers regard your company culture as...
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My Manager Is Better Than Yours! 5 Things That Make Managers Great
Things don't change in the workplace. We give things different names, but they don't change. "Employees" have become "people", "staff", and "talent". "Personnel" became "Human Resources", "Organizational Development", and "Employee Relations". "Employee Morale" became "engagement" and "happiness". The "hiring and orientation" process became "onboarding". Things don't...
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5 Important Lessons in Empathetic Leadership
When a devastating magnitude 7.9 earthquake hit Sichuan, China in May 2008, my late father Dr. Rongxiang Xu was the first person to assemble a team of medical professionals and head into the disaster zone. These heroic actions didn't surprise me in the least. Dr. Xu devoted his entire life and career to helping other human beings. He made great advancements in the world of organ...
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How to Protect Your Online Reputation in the Social Media Age
As an entrepreneur who has spent a lot of time building a positive and powerful online reputation for myself, I need to make sure I'm working alongside others who have done the same. Thanks to social media and Google, it's quite easy to find personal and business histories on nearly anyone -- especially if they aren't careful with their social media activity. I'm not the only...
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Why You Should Be Worried If Employees Aren't Quitting Your Business
Most employers live in fear of high turnover rates -- and, in many respects, these fears are justified. Surveys suggest that as much as 51 percent of all employees in the U.S. are either actively seeking or open to finding new jobs. About 20 percent of full-time employees want to quit their jobs outright. That being said, we should not allow our fear to blind us to the benefits -- yes,...
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5 Tips for Managing a Remote Team
If you're used to managing an office full of employees, the idea of managing a remote team might seem a little daunting. How can you tell who is working, and when? How can you keep track of everyone's schedules, much less their productivity? The truth is, managing a remote team does require you to think outside of the, well, office, but it's fairly easy to do -- and you'll have...
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Social Media Myths, Realities, and Mistakes
I have a confession to make: I am not on Facebook, nor do I tweet -- and I still consider myself a marketing and communications expert in 2015. I own a (dumb/flip) cell phone, but I only turn it on to make phone calls. I have many friends and colleagues who think I am crazy. I love technology, but I do not want it to run my life. I prefer to manage it, and not the other way around. Call me...
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The Executive's Checklist for Business Success in an Era of Constant Change
I've interviewed a lot of people during my tenure at Recruiter.com, and all of those people have shared what feels like literal tons of (sometimes conflicting) opinions on the states of business, talent, and the economy today. But of all the insights from all the thought leaders, none has stuck with me as much as Guy Kawasaki's assertion that "a five-year business plan is kind of...
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7 Rules for Employee Engagement
Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter Q&A! This Week's Question: How do you engage employees at work? These answers come from the members of BusinessCollective, a virtual mentorship...
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Want to Boost Employee Engagement? Empower Your Team Leaders
On Monday, and again on Thursday, we explored The Marcus Buckingham Company's (TMBC) StandOut Global Engagement Index (GEI) and the reasons why employee engagement levels are so low these days. We concluded yesterday by saying that we only have ourselves to blame: employee engagement levels are dismal because "we haven't equipped the people who facilitate engagement with the tools they need...
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The 'Really Weird Irony' of Low Employee Engagement Levels
On Monday, we wrote about The Marcus Buckingham Company's (TMBC) StandOut Global Engagement Index (GEI), a new tool for measuring employee engagement levels. According to Marcus Buckingham, founder and namesake of TMBC, the GEI differs from traditional methods of measuring employee engagement in two important ways: The GEI's results are calibrated according to country. The GEI measures...
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5 Tips for Writing a Meaningful Mission Statement
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to job market experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! This Week's Question: Entrepreneur calls mission statements "a key tool that can be just as important as your business plan."...
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Could a No-Fire Policy Boost Your Business?
A no-fire policy -- in which an employer agrees from the outset not to fire employees – is the kind of off-the-wall HR policy that has the potential to be both an employer branding dream and an employment law nightmare. Staff would love you, and your legal counsel would loathe you. This kind of policy sounds completely impractical in the contemporary era of the contingent workers and...
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Embrace Your Oft-Criticized Management Traits — They Just May Be Your Best Attributes!
We often see articles condemning management's procrastination, scheduling of meetings, identification of generalized-vs.-SMART objectives for their teams, and even its habit of being away from the office when team members need assistance. These traits are normally viewed as destroying the average manager's effectiveness and wasting the precious time of the modern workplace. I would agree...
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Three Ways to Effectively Engage and Attract Millennial Customers
Nowadays, for companies and sales teams to more successfully engage, attract, and develop new customer relationships, it's important they're aware of this interesting fact shared by J. Walker Smith, Ph.D., and Ann Clurman, coauthors of the book, Rocking the Ages: "Generationally determined lifestyles and social values exercise as much influence on buying and purchasing as more commonly...
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3 More Ways to Be a Great Boss
Yesterday, we ran a post about four ways you can be a great boss. In keeping with that theme, here are three more ways you can improve your management skills and lead a happier, more productive workplace. 1. Expect Great Things From All of Your Staff Members This particular management technique is not technically difficult to administer, nor does it require any specific skills, but it...
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4 Ways to Be a Great Boss
When you finally reach the level of management -- or perhaps even senior management -- the sense of personal validation can be so strong that you mistakenly believe your professional-development journey is complete. The problem, of course, is this means you'll be a manager with the same skills that got you to the top in the first place -- but not a manager who continually develops their...
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3 Ways to Gamify Your Business — and Make Employees Happier
By now, you're well aware of the deplorable state of employee engagement in the U.S. To wit, slightly less than a third of workers (31.5 percent) say they are engaged in their jobs. Sure, this represents a 14-year high, but it's still pretty dismal when you consider that 51 percent of employees are not engaged and 17.5 percent are "actively disengaged." But lets not belabor the point....
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4 Easy Ways to Improve Boring Meetings
There are many reasons a meeting can be boring: the culprit may be the configuration of the venue itself. It's possible that your surroundings aren't conducive to developing new ideas or having profitable discussions, and it may be time to make some changes to your meeting settings. Creating a setting for inspiration and creativity is not as hard as it sounds. A few simple changes can...
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UTO Spotted at Indianapolis Startup
No, that's not a spelling error. UTO stands for "unlimited time off." It's the same policy, or lack thereof, of unlimited vacation, but we like the acronym coined by our marketing rep, Matt. In this era of cost-cutting, companies increasingly focus on the bottom line. To many managers, it seems reducing the number of employees is the way to go. Others try to limit the benefits of those...
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How Much Does Pay Level Affect Motivation?
If you're a hiring manager, recruiter, or HR professional, you'll have to deal with the question of payment at some point -- as in, "How much should I pay this employee/candidate?" Because pay levels and salary budgets are such thorny issues for employers and employees alike, it's easy for everyone to become a little obsessed -- but to treat pay as if it were the "Alpha and Omega" of...
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Want to Give Holacracy a Shot? Get the Right People on Board
By now, you're likely familiar with Zappos's latest push of the envelope -- or whacky stunt, depending on how you feel about the company's approach to organizational culture: instituting a holacratic management philosophy. And how has Zappos's radical transition turned out? The company is still in the process of fully implementing holacracy, but word is that 14 percent of Zappos's employees...
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5 Ways to Make Quora Work to Your Advantage
The era of social media, online communities, and self-publishing platforms has made it easier than ever for HR-tech companies to connect with their audiences. One site that's rising in popularity with everyone from job seekers to company CEOs to your grandmother is community-fueled question-and-answer site Quora. While question-and-answer websites aren't anything new, Quora's creative...
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Use Your Office Environment as a Way to Retain Top Talent
Advertising-technology startup AdBoom Group, Inc., has only been around for about three years now, but in those three years, the company has moved offices three times. It's not that AdBoom can't commit -- just that the company was outgrowing its offices quickly. As more and more employees joined the staff, the company found itself needing bigger and bigger spaces. In the midst of all...
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