Month: July 2020

Categories
Business Trends

5 Recruiting Techniques Worth Considering

5 Recruiting Techniques Worth Considering - The Collection

If you’re looking to hire high quality employees, who will grow your business and make a positive impact on your existing team, then it’s best to keep these recruiting techniques in mind. Read below for more details!

 

Recruitment is one of the most important things a business can invest in. Not only is a business’ product and/or service tied directly to the quality of the work put in by its employees, but a business’ reputation is entirely based both on how employers treat their employees, and how employees treat their customers.

 

No matter what you do or what you sell, the success of your company is tied to the abilities and smarts of the people you hire. There are two ways to develop quality employees:

 

      1. Hire quality people.
      2. Help inexperienced workers develop new skills.

 

Recruiting Techniques and Strategies

 

Recruitment strategies are critical to helping businesses fill their desks and positions with motivated, incentivized workers. It’s critical for any business to be hypercompetitive (as well as hyper-analytical) with its recruiting techniques.

 

In other words, in a candidate-driven market, it’s important to take the initiative and play a more proactive role as a recruiter.

 

Here are 5 effective recruiting techniques that aim to either increase the number of potential workers asking for a position, or help you specifically target the workers you are trying to find.

 

1. Take Advantage of the Gig Economy

 

The gig economy is growing, not in small part because more and more people are seeking ways to supplement their full-time or part-time income or support a better lifestyle. Combined with the ease and convenience of beginning a freelance career through successful and large platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and PeoplePerHour, more and more people are flocking towards temporary positions with flexible pay and terms.

 

That might pose a problem to recruiters, but it can be turned into a benefit instead. Consider the advantages of hiring a freelancer to fill a crucial position for a short-term period of a few months as they:

 

      • Can be paid per project.
      • Pose a reduced risk.
      • Require less commitment.
      • Don’t need benefits.
      • Allow you to draw from a global pool of workers from all throughout the world.

 

It’s not all rosy – there are downsides to hiring a freelancer, and it’s not always applicable – but for short-term projects, they often can’t be beat. And if you manage to snag a superstar, you can always try to make them an offer to become a full-time employee and reap the benefits of having extensive proof of the quality of their work.

 

 

2. Advertise on Platforms Where Your Targets Are

 

Programmatic marketing refers to designing and deploying adverts in places and spaces where the people you’re trying to target are more likely to see them. Some examples of programmatic marketing include:

 

      • Targeted ads through data-driven ad programs developed by Google and Facebook.
      • Aiming to gain recruits from specific age and gender demographics by making use of specific apps, like Snapchat, Instagram, and even Spotify.

 

Simply marketing your job opening on common networks like LinkedIn is no longer innovative enough. To further narrow down your candidates to those you’re more likely to hire, consider an approach that tries to find the candidates where they’re most likely to hang out.

 

Thinking outside the box will garner you plenty of potential ideas for finding resourceful workers – for example, Amazon successfully made use of Tinder to find engineers, while Virgin Trains recruited former felons to take advantage of a group of quality yet stigmatized workers, doing society a service by giving them a better shot at reintegrating into society, while garnering a better chance at picking the best and brightest from a series of potential hires most other companies wouldn’t consider.

 

Think physical, too. Many potential candidates are spending their time getting close to companies by working where they work – visiting coworking spaces and shared offices, searching for potential clients through entrepreneurs and companies that work from these spaces. The benefits of collaborating through coworking cannot be overstated, and it’s also a great place to recruit new workers.

 

3. Reach Out to Passive Candidates

 

We’re living in a day and age where more people care about their personal brand than ever before – and for good reasons. As our lives become continuously connected in ever-growing ways, it becomes more important to tailor how we appear to others – not just our friends or colleagues, but to respective employers as well.

 

Recruiters can take advantage of this trend by making use of many workers’ existing information to take note of particularly interesting and talented workers. From there, develop strategies to potential lure them over into a better position at their own company.

 

Sometimes, snagging the perfect hire is a long-term process – and everything from a potential hire’s Twitter account to their LinkedIn, to their projects on GitHub or their articles on HuffPost can help you develop the right strategy to reaching out and offering an attractive position at your company, even if they aren’t actively looking for work.

 

4. Don’t Forget Referrals

 

In many cases, a company’s best hires will come from quality referrals through existing employees. While this shouldn’t replace your recruiting techniques, it can be an effective supplemental strategy to help get more potential hires. However, to effectively make use of employee referrals, you have to build a strong employee referral program.

 

Start with the basics: your employees need to know what you’re looking for, and they need to know what they’re getting out of this.

 

      • You don’t just want your employees to refer their friends – they need to refer excellent potential coworkers.
      • There’s a clear difference between the kind of friend you can work with, and the kind you can grab a drink with; and while we all need a healthy mix of both, companies want the former rather than the later.

 

Having incentives is crucial for success – yes, if you’ve got an amazing company culture, great atmosphere, excellent management and plenty of opportunities for career growth, then just letting your employees know that there’s a job opening available can be enough to start getting a few referrals rolling in.

 

However, to get the input of employees who are less likely to go the extra mile out of sheer hype, you will want some form of incentive. Cash incentives work best, but there are other options – such as extra vacation days, or maybe recognition. Rewarding good referrers doesn’t just incentivize other employees to work on referring more people, but it also helps your existing employees feel appreciated.

 

5. Look to Present and Past Data

 

Perhaps the most important and critical part of building an effective recruitment system is to reflect on the information you currently have, in order to create a strategy for the future. Before your HR team sets out on the recruitment cycle consider the following:

 

      • Where have your best hires come from so far?
      • What unites them?
      • What do they have in common?

 

Once you can identify where you’ve been getting the most bang for your buck, consider investing the majority of your resources and effort in finding more potential hires in a similar way.

 

 

Conclusion

 

You’re sure to find exceptions to the rule, and exploring a variety of recruiting techniques is crucial to finding great and unexpected talent – but why waste a good portion of your budget on ads that aren’t bringing in any quality hires, when you could instead invest in avenues that have brought in the best results?

 

Read More:

The Current and Future Trends of a Remote Workforce
Categories
Business Trends

The Rise of Solopreneurship: Is it Right for You?

As business trends evolve, we’ve come to hear terms like solopreneurship. But what does it mean exactly and is it possibly a new career path for you? Find out below!

 

While the technical opportunities to become an entrepreneur have grown rapidly in the digital age, entrepreneurialism is arguably less attractive than it has ever been. The United States has been in a startup decline for the last few decades. Millennials are more risk-averse and less ambitious than Baby Boomers, after years of economic decline and crisis after crisis. They face much greater debt, bigger living costs, and lower wages. An aging population and slowed population growth also affect the supply and demand of entrepreneurialism.

 

Meanwhile, larger firms have grown at a much faster pace domestically and internationally, soaking up talent and taking ownership of young companies and potential startup ideas. Venture capitalists and investors are favoring mature and proven businesses more so than innovators, and the rapid growth in tech is crowding out competitors, rather than calling on a rising tide to lift all boats.

 

With a pandemic snapping at our heels, it’s understandable to be frightened of failure and the risks associated with taking the plunge towards a business of your own.

 

However, it’s also important not to be consumed entirely by this bleak outlook. Just because fewer people are starting businesses doesn’t mean it’s gotten any harder – it’s actually gotten easier.

 

The Internet remains the great enabler, and it doesn’t take much capital to start a brand-new business. This is especially true for solopreneurs, who are taking advantage of the way the Internet has enabled many to begin a venture of their own without the need for a team to produce and market their idea, product, or service.

 

Furthermore, while startup businesses have certainly become less common, “side gigs” and “hustle culture” definitely haven’t. Younger people in general are picking up more jobs and ventures, from flipping furniture to making jewelry on Etsy, as a source of extra income. But solopreneurship takes it to another level, taking the “hustle” and turning it into a one-person business.

 

What’s a Solopreneur? 

 

A solopreneur is an entrepreneur working independently as the sole human element in his or her venture. Solopreneurs may network with others, socialize with potential business partners for separate ventures, and seek funding, but they ostensibly create and are entirely responsible for every aspect of their business, assuming all the risk and all of the rewards without employing anyone else.

 

Solopreneurs differ from entrepreneurs in that they don’t hire others to work for them – but they will still work with them, outsourcing jobs they can’t do effectively on their own or commissioning work that requires extra hands. A solopreneur may eventually expand into an entrepreneurial venture, but solopreneurs start their business with the intention of being the only one involved.

 

It’s arguably easier to be a solopreneur, especially if you know what you’re good at and know how to market it. You’re limited entirely by your own work capacity and talent but can make up for it by forming the right alliances to score lucrative opportunities and develop and expand your customer base. But it’s still hard work. If you think you’re ready to be a solopreneur, read on.

 

 

It’s Not Just You vs. The World 

 

Being a solopreneur is lonely, even more lonely than it already is to be an entrepreneur. But that doesn’t mean the life of a solopreneur is one of total isolation. Solopreneurs crash and burn when working entirely alone, as do we all.

 

While it is a solopreneur’s goal to set up a business they can run on their own, businesses never exist within a vacuum. The success of a startup is entirely reliant on correctly identifying an existing or unseen demand. Businesses also exist in competition with one another, improving and innovating often based on those around them. And finally, many businesses exist only because of the cooperation between multiple ambitious minds working together on separate yet related problems.

 

One of the most important elements of “making it” as a solopreneur is recognizing how you can best work with those around you to survive, and eventually thrive. You come to see those around you as valuable contacts and friends and connect with customers on a personal level as well. Authenticity is the key to longevity in the startup world.

 

Networking and Coworking as a Solopreneur

 

Many solopreneurs work from home, especially given the ongoing public health crisis. But working from home for too long can be very isolating, not just in a mental sense, but also from a business perspective. You need to interact with others to get a better understanding of the local startup scene, and to identify potential partners and competitors.

 

Coworking spaces are a natural fit for solopreneurs, providing them with accessible and affordable space to be productive outside of your own home, free from domestic distractions, and in the middle of an environment filled with networking opportunities and professionals eager to exchange ideas or seek out work relationships.

 

Coworking spaces eliminate the need to worry about technical difficulties, unreliable internet service, needless distractions, and the crushing feeling of being stuck within the same four walls for weeks on end. And all without the costs and hassle of setting up an office of your own, and with the benefit of working within a melting pot of local talent, including independent contractors and other solopreneurs.

 

Is Solopreneurship Right for You?

 

Just like being an entrepreneur, solopreneurship offers you the opportunity to be your own boss. And given the technical opportunities around us today, it’s easier than ever to get started.

 

Competition is stiff, there are no guarantees, you’ll be working hard for most of the day every day, and it’s something you have to be in for the long haul if you expect to make any money back. You may have to borrow money to get started, you may go into debt if your idea fails, and many entrepreneurs talk about the emotional hardships that come with being at the helm of your own business venture.

 

But ultimately, it’s worth it when you do succeed. You get to be proud of every step you’re taking in the name of something you believe in and are 100% responsible for.

 

Categories
Work Environment

5 Ways to Boost Employee Wellbeing Remotely

Working from home has its benefits, yet can also be a little too stifling. And in order to be productive, we need to be sure we are in good mental and physical health. Read below on different ways to boost employee wellbeing.

 

Remote work has been growing in relevance for years, but it remained relatively niche in 2019. Then COVID-19 gripped the world, and for the past few months, over half of the American workforce spent most of their workdays getting things done from home.

 

Though not an ideal showcase of the benefits of remote working, surveys have been able to capture how this spontaneous and sudden shift in working conditions has affected productivity, wellbeing, and more.

 

80 percent note that they’re better able to handle and manage interruptions from coworkers. 80 percent like being able to spend more time with family. Two thirds feel more productive. Two thirds also say they still prefer the office (or any workplace, like a coworking spot) from the casual atmosphere of home.

 

While the freedom to choose to work remotely has been a big perk for millions of Americans in the past few years, it’s not any easier or harder than working at the office. It is, however, substantially different. COVID-19 has thrust millions of Americans into a position where they and their managers had to work together quickly to adapt to a completely new set of circumstances and continue to serve clients and customers.

 

As a result, many have been working longer hours while struggling with loneliness and isolation. In turn, companies have stepped up to the plate to improve their employees’ wellbeing remotely.

 

Here are a 5 ways they have been doing so.

 

1. Promoting Physical Health

 

One of the best things to do for the mind is to take care of the body. While most American workers aren’t as physically fit as the surgeon general recommends, they were still getting more exercise in the pre-COVID-19 days as a result of frequent commutes, walking through the office, taking the stairs, and having access to the gym. Easier access to fresh food and produce via farmer’s markets and supermarkets also meant an easier time eating healthy.

 

Ever since COVID-19, however, the likelihood of relying on online food delivery services (particularly takeout food) has greatly increased. The combination of poorer food choices and far fewer options for movement and exercise help contribute to the isolating and negative mental effects of lockdown.

 

Some companies have taken the necessary steps to encourage their employees to get active with at-home alternatives, offering workout regimens (with stat tracking for competitive employees), and online yoga and HIIT classes, as well as helping employees organize online grocery purchases and share recipes.

 

2. Frequent Breaks from the Screen

 

For every hour of productive work, take a quarter hour of time off. That rule of thumb only serves as a broad guideline for how to make effective use of breaks, but it’s common knowledge that people don’t work through their entire shift remaining perfectly focused, but instead break their day down into a series of tasks with a few minutes spent “refreshing” between tasks.

 

Rather than refreshing on a Slack channel or on Facebook, however, managers would do well to encourage their workers to take their breaks away from the computer and phone – looking out a window, taking a short break to walk around, exercising, grabbing a snack, or just taking a few minutes to read something or stand on the balcony. If you enjoy working in shorter spurts, take shorter breaks.

 

If you’re taking a break every 90 minutes, consider taking a few more minutes off. The key to being productive with a break is to clearly separate work and break time. And to learn to “turn on” and focus solely on the tasks at hand whenever break time is over.

 

3. Minimize “Presenteeism” By Assessing Employee Needs Individually

 

Presenteeism is a phenomenon typically described at the office, where a worker shows up for work but is barely “there.” They may be distracted by problems at home, or by mental or physical discomfort, or by a sense of disenchantment with the work they’re doing.

 

To minimize presenteeism, maximize communication. Managers and leaders can consider taking the time out of their day every few weeks to communicate individually with each employee, and get an update on how they’re doing, whether they’re bothered by something at work or at home, and whether they need help in any shape or form.

 

Not only does a personal conversation with the boss help show employees that you care, but it also serves to give you a better sense of what every member of your organization needs to perform better.

 

4. Offer Comprehensive Telehealth Services

 

Research shows that mental telehealth services can be just as helpful as face-to-face conversations and therapies in cases of depression and other common mental health issues.

 

As workers face an increasing risk of developing stress-related problems as a result of the sudden shift towards quarantine and total isolation at home, many will continue to need both physical and mental healthcare, and telehealth services are often a great way to help workers deal with their most immediate issues.

 

5. Create an Environment for Organic Watercooler Talk & Virtual Happy Hour

 

Another way to combat isolation, loneliness, and boredom outside of work is to create an environment for virtual interaction. Established teams won’t have a hard time switching to a virtual way to communicate and stay in touch, through collaborative and communications tools like Skype and Slack. Teams that have just been formed during the COVID-19 days can still network via organized online events, such as a Friday night quiz or a virtual happy hour.

 

Final Employee Wellbeing Tip

 

There are other ways to boost employee wellbeing and morale, including basic gratitude and recognition. Many strive to feel like they’re part of something greater, and it’s harder to do so remotely. By awarding recognition individually and encouraging other managers or leadership within the organization to take special interest in every one of their employees, you foster a culture that shows it understands the role every employee plays in making a company’s success possible, and recognizes the value of every team member.

 

Categories
Business Trends

Innovation Ecosystem: What is It & Why Your Business Needs It

What is an innovation ecosystem and how does it exactly work in the business world? It has proven to provide great value and success. Read for further details!

 

There have never been better opportunities in the world for value creation. A business’ capacity in the modern day to leverage technology to assess situations and develop solutions is unparalleled in history. Never have we been at this level of data accumulation and analysis, automation, and communication. Never have we had the opportunity to witness how technologies can scale seamlessly from the smallest startup to immense multinational corporations.

 

But in order to make full use of how technology has and will continue to drive innovation, we need an environment that prioritizes said innovation – one that does not stifle it. And one that can lead, manage, and network in such a way that we continue to keep moving towards creating better value for customers and clients.

 

To understand how an environment can be shaped to improve innovation, it’s important to understand the concept of innovation ecosystems.

 

What is an Innovation Ecosystem? 

 

Work on innovation ecosystems attempts to identify the factors that influence innovation in a given field (whether it’s an industry, a nation, a city, a region, or even a firm). The sum of these factors is described as an ecosystem.

 

In ecological science, an ecosystem can be defined as the flow of material and energy – the transit of nutrients between different organisms and their respective life cycles within an environment. Ecosystems also attempt to explain and observe the relationships between living and non-living components within an open system (from small ponds to entire biomes).

 

The concept of an ecosystem attempts to summarily define all factors contributing to life in a given area. And in much the same way, an innovation ecosystem is an attempt to identify the outside and inside factors that work towards fostering and harnessing ideas and helping them mature into solutions to existing or even unidentified problems.

 

On a larger scale, an innovation ecosystem attempts to understand and potentially optimize an industry’s capacity for new ideas with tangible usefulness. Depending on the scale, this might include funding, education, and policy changes on a national or regional level, and incremental changes that lead to results over the course of many years.

 

On a much smaller scale, evaluating a company’s innovation ecosystem, for example, would help a business identify whether their decision-making and management style are optimally conducive towards pulling the best out of their existing employees, while attracting the kind of talent into the business that would continue to breathe life into the industry.

 

Coworking spaces are a great crucible for innovation, and a showcase of how the individual components of an innovation ecosystem meld together.

 

The Components of an Innovation Ecosystem

 

To better understand how to leverage the idea of an innovation ecosystem within a smaller scale like a business or a local industry, it is important to identify the factors that are commonly discussed within various different definitions of an innovation ecosystem.

 

These are:

 

      • Actors (the individuals within the system)
      • Activities (from research and development to sales and marketing)
      • Artifacts (products, prototypes, technologies, services, and projects)
      • Institutions (established groups, rules, or policies that set the stage)
      • Relations (the interactions and networking between actors, as well as groups of actors)

 

Beyond these critical elements exist other important layers, such as the degree to which an ecosystem is collaborative (fostering profitable relationships between separate groups of actors working together) or competitive (wherein the drive to compete fuels innovation between actors), and whether artifacts are being developed either on a complementary level (to build on existing ideas and provide auxiliary products and services) or as substitutes (attempting to replace an existing product or service with something better).

 

Where innovation is the development of something new or novel to a system, an innovation ecosystem attempts to identify how innovations are made and improve upon existing factors to drive more innovation.

 

 

Harnessing Innovation Ecosystems Through Coworking

 

Just as in nature, innovation ecosystems are not consciously built – they can only be modified or fostered. The ecosystem is already in place, if not within a smaller scale then on a larger scale, often outside of the control of any one business or individual.

 

Managers and employers are tasked with finetuning the factors that remain within their control to drive innovation within their own ecosystem, whether through hiring methods aimed at attracting the right actors, or through improved relations. In addition, by seeking funding to help fuel activities that may lead to innovation, by changing the way workers are motivated, and by collaborating with other companies capable of providing complementary artifacts.

 

Coworking spaces are a great example of an innovation ecosystem, particularly its central point: the environment (the institutions) that set the stage for the process. Avoid rigidity, especially in a day and age where innovations are occurring rapidly, and where companies are often encouraged to move with the times – which is to say, very quickly.

 

Another prolific example is how Apple worked with the music industry and complementary technology companies to develop content for the iPod and iPhone, kickstart the App Store, and dominate the mobile industry in the late 2000s/early 2010s.

 

By being aware of and recording the factors contributing to the development of a company’s successes, that company can learn to prioritize what is useful, and shed what is not.

 

Fostering and Enabling Innovation in Your Business

 

Identify and take control of the factors that contribute to innovation in your industry or company. Leverage what you can to find and promote strong actors. Empower them to focus on the activities that lead to profitable artifacts.

 

Find ways to cut down on demotivation and disengagement within your own team or company, identify and reward talent and initiative, and be a business that positions itself to attract the best talent in your industry going forward.

 

Conclusion

 

At the end of the day, the key goal is to improve a company’s value proposition by identifying all the key factors that go towards creating the products or services that customers want or need. The degree to which contributing factors can be changed or affected differs from situation to situation, based on existing factors and the proposed scale of the innovation ecosystem. But the key factors usually remain the same across all cases.

 

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