I recently read about the upcoming release of Sheryl Sandberg’s new book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead”. As the COO of Facebook, she talks about Mark Zuckerberg (her boss) and the advice he gave re her desire to be liked by everyone and his belief that it would hold her back in her…

I have already discussed the importance of …

One of the biggest bugbears by job seekers is not winning an interview because they don’t have the industry experience for the role they have applied for.  It seems that every job ad wants ‘industry experience’ – you must have worked in the wine industry or have banking or financial services experience.  This criteria and restriction make it pretty hard for you to join new…

Entrepreneur, venture capitalist and professor Josh Linkner believes that there are 5 essential personality types that anyone needs to help their business grow:…

Take a look at the results from our survey last week, the responses are surprising...

Ben is the Chief Executive Officer of Employment Innovations (EI), he is also a qualified solicitor with a passion for business.

Attention Business Owners & Managers - if people are your No 1 asset, then make sure you do your due diligence!

Recently I have been working with several SME clients in the professional services sector. Whilst all of these firms have teams of 10 plus staff and in all cases have been operating for five years or more, I was very surprised at their lack of talent acquisition (yes, fancy new term for recruitment)…

Not ownership in the financial sense, but ownership in the emotional sense.

 

Create a working environment and a team ethic that encourages your employees to take on emotional ownership of the business, as if it is their own. This way, their…

I have recently returned from speaking at the International Recruitment Conference in Fiji where the theme was “Recruitment at the Speed of Tomorrow”.  It was an inspiring…

Recruiting – What you already know:

-          You want the best

-          You need to advertise

What you may not have considered:

-          Going for the big culture sell

Attracting top talent through promoting your company’s culture enables you to build up relationships with candidates before you even need to recruit them. Then, once there is a position…

This week I met with a promising new client. They have a handful of vacancies, one position that has been vacant for 3 months and another that they have interviewed 30 candidates for (yes, face to face) and still haven’t found the right candidate. Hmmmm…. Houston we have a problem!

The managers are pulling their hair out as it…

There is no doubt about it, the Australian workplace is going through massive structural changes.  Wage costs are high. The cost of living and working in the major capitals is also high. In case you hadn’t noticed, Sydney is the seventh most expensive city in the world. Melbourne is the eighth.

So it’s no surprise that organisations have been…

Since the emergence of social media as a recruiting tool, I have heard a number of people comment and read articles that suggest recruiters now need to think like marketers. This is very true, but please tell me something new!

Whether you are working in an in-house recruitment or agency role, without doubt much of what you do and have done for ever requires good old fashioned marketing principles. I remember one of the toughest things I had to learn when entering the…

Over the past few months I have been giving advice on executive CV’s and how to improve them. What I’ve learnt is that just because you earn a six-figure salary shouldn’t assume you have a great resume – in fact in some cases, these have been the worst!

The resume is a sales tool – it is a preview document with…

I had a bad experience last week. A bad experience which quickly rebounded into a good one, I am happy to say.

It was Friday 6 pm. I was rushing to wrap up things at work. Last minute emails to complete. A call from our Director in Asia with a client issue. A Skype call from our Europe MD. And then my wife on the phone saying don’t forget to pick up the kids.

I race down the elevator to the under-building car park, juggling laptop, gym gear, mobile phone and security pass.…

In my recent blog “head in the sand vs action junkie ….what’s your mantra?” I wrote about a Consultant who worked for me who didn’t enjoy prospecting new business as she felt that she was annoying clients when she rang. This generated a range of comments and…

When it comes to recruiting a new staff member, most organisations focus heavily on attracting and then selecting the best possible candidate for their team. A great deal of time and effort goes into selling the organisation, and then once a strong pool of candidates have applied for the role, the focus moves to interviewing, reference checking and finally making an offer of employment to the preferred candidate.

Once the preferred candidate has accepted the job offer,…

What I’ve learnt over the years is that there is no one secret ingredient to retaining staff. In my early days of running a business, I had high staff turnover and it used to drive me crazy the amount of money, effort, time and emotional energy I would invest in new recruits only to lose them within a 12-month…

The recruitment industry is notorious for high staff turnover. Statistics range from 43% (Staff Turnover: A Recruitment Industry Crisis) to the average length of service of a new Recruitment Consultant being 8 months! Ironic for an industry that specialises in recruiting the right staff for their clients to make a buck!

So interesting as I reflect on my recruitment career, that I too left my…