LeadingEdge Personnel Tag

As you go through life and your career, there will come times when you need a little advice. Everyone needs some help or some perspective from time to time, and knowing you’ve got someone in your corner to help steer you in the right direction can make all the difference. It’s important to find a good mentor, someone who knows where you’ve been and where you want to go and can help you achieve all your goals. But how do you find a mentor -- more importantly, how can you find the right mentor for you? 

Congratulations! After a long and sometimes frustrating process of applying for new positions, you’ve been asked for an interview. That’s wonderful! There are two classic interview styles: The in-person and the over-the-phone. In some cases, one type of interview might lead to the other, so it’s best to do all you can to prepare for either outcome. But as a job seeker, which kind is better? Do you want to go with the in-person, where you can see the responses to your answers, or the phone interview, where you can sit comfortably at home? 

We’ve all had bad days. Sometimes it feels like bad days stretch into weeks, and the next thing you know, it’s been a bad six months. It can be really easy to fall into a rut when nothing’s going the way you want, and it feels like the world, or at least work, is against you. Is it time for an attitude adjustment? Does that even make a difference? It might be -- and it can

Everyone gets to a point where they want to learn a little more or get some motivation, to do better in their career. But who has the time to go back to school, or take an online course, or read a bunch of books? Luckily, we live in the golden age of digital audio, with new podcasts coming out all the time to provide information on just about any subject under the sun. That could lead to another problem, though: Too many choices! Here are some suggestions to get you started. Grab your earbuds and give these a listen: 

A company is only as successful as its employees. A good manager knows this and wants to do all he or she can to make sure their team feels appreciated and valued. The good news is, appreciating your employees doesn't necessarily mean having to shell out bags of cash in the process. Here are some ideas on how to thank your employees without wrecking the bottom line: 

We've all been there. Searching for a new job can be stressful, frustrating, and lonely work. Whether you're in a position you're no longer happy with or breaking into the market for the first time, a job search can feel like a 10-mile slog uphill with the wind in your face. You've sent out dozens of resumes, maybe even had an interview or two, but nothing's coming of it. You're starting to feel stuck and discouraged. You wonder whether you'll ever get called on a job. Good news: It doesn't have to be that way! 

Hiring managers, HR reps, and team leaders know intuitively why it's essential to keep your best workers happy and under your roof. When a good worker goes somewhere else, it creates a bottleneck in production. It hurts efficiency, lowers morale, decreases institutional knowledge, and it brings on a period of reduced productivity until a new person is recruited, hired, trained, and ready to work. But when top talent is being contacted by other companies, or if someone's unhappy and starting to look around, what can be done to retain them? It doesn't necessarily mean cracking open the vault and offering a hefty raise (but that might be something to consider if the person is especially valuable or holds a set of rare skills). Here are some ways to keep your best workers on your team: 

Feedback doesn't have to be a dirty or scary word. It's of the utmost importance that employers, managers, and team leaders know what's going on with their subordinates. It's crucial for productivity, morale, and retention.  But why? Isn't feedback just another word for complaining? That might be the way it was in the past -- think of those old suggestion boxes that went overlooked and ignored -- but we're wiser now, more considerate and more interested in hearing from our workers. 

As you're polishing up the resume in preparation for looking for a new job, you'll want to highlight all the impressive skills and experiences obtained during your career. Most ads will indicate the skills that are key to the job, and for HR and administrative positions, organizational skills will be at the very top of the heap. Keeping things on track, on schedule, and budget could not be more critical for an office, and the sharper your organizational skills, the more you're likely to stand out from the rest of the applicants. 
But which skills are most important? And what, exactly, are organizational skills?