Guest Article: The unemployed: Sending 29 million job applications your way by Ross Clennett

Could there be a worse time to be unemployed in Australia? The plethora of statistics and policies released in the past month would suggest not. Earlier this week the Australian LNP Federal Government, through the Assistant Employment Minister, Luke Hartsuyker announced their new proposed AUD$5.1 billion jobs placement program and expansion of the Work

Article source:Ross Clennett - The unemployed: Sending 29 million job applications your way»



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Giving Employees Feedback – how to tackle it the right way

You don't have to be a business owner or manager to find yourself in situations where giving well structured feedback can be the difference between positive work results, or work that leaves much to the imagination where nothing is learnt. While not rocket science, there are certainly ways of giving feedback that are more effective than others, and to make sure you're helping yourself by helping your colleagues it's important to work on your feedback skills!

Here are our top four tips for giving feedback the right way:

1. Give feedback in person

Giving feedback face-to-face, as opposed to via email or phone, can make things much more personable. It also allows both parties to clarify any misunderstandings if necessary. Imagine an employee is feeling particularly swamped for time and pressure one day, then checks his or her email to discover some feedback but, worst, it’s all negative! Understandably, many people could see this approach as a personal attack, and could end up feeling overwhelmed.. Moreover, it’s much easier to make sure you convey the appropriate tone or specific examples, when you do so in person.

 2. Emotional Intelligence is crucial

When providing constructive feedback, pay particular attention to your colleague's  body language. Actively listen and be happy to hear them voice their opinion. Be willing to adapt your language or tone accordingly. If you’re giving feedback on behalf of someone else (e.g. another manager), be very careful with your choice of wording – make sure it’s delivered in a meaningful and accurate way. When discussing a mistake or a problem, be sure to first identify the issue and then ask "what do you think could have changed to gain a more desired result?" rather than jump to "what did you do wrong?" Creating any feelings of shame or blame are barriers to constructive and open feedback, and may come back to annoy you later.

 3. Choose the right time and place

This is absolutely crucial. Generally, giving feedback as soon as you can (e.g. soon after an incident occurred) is the best time to do so. There is, however, one main exception. If emotions are running high, it might be better to wait until yourself, or your recipient, has calmed down first, to ensure you remain level-headed. Otherwise, rushing to give feedback can be more detrimental than beneficial – which is far from ideal! Decide whether feedback is best given in a private or public place. Sometimes it is nice to be publicly recognized for doing something well (positive feedback). However, everyone is different so be sure to cater to individual preferences. If a particular employee doesn’t like to be drawn out in a crowd, take note. You can guarantee that if giving constructive criticism, in stark contrast, it will be much better received by an employee if you do so in a private atmosphere in order to minimize potential embarrassment for them. 

 4. Be specific, provide examples and be future-oriented

Have you ever tried to give someone feedback, be it a friend, colleague, or family member, only to get the classic response: “Give me one example of when I did that!”. If this sounds all too familiar, you won’t forget this last point. Make sure you keep your feedback specific, to avoid any confusion or uncertainty. Whether it’s good or bad news, using the STAR method is a very effective approach. That is – Situation, Task, Action, Result. For example, if your employee has been successful in a task let your employee know how their actions gained an effective result. If giving negative feedback, allow your employee to gain awareness of how to improve their actions in the future when faced with a similar situation, give them a chance to make suggestions for their own improvement. This makes your feedback more constructive than negative, and can help increase productivity, consistency, and efficiency for future projects.

Finally, don’t dwell on the past! Allow feedback to be seen as a useful strategy to improve employee performance. If you do this effectively, you will add value to your company.

Tailoring your resume to the position - best practice

Many people use the same resume to apply for different jobs. However, to show your potential employer that you actually want the position at hand, a resume needs to be tailored to fit the job description. Job ads actually provide a wealth of information related to the job, and if you know what to look for they practically write your resume for you!

It is important to include the typical resume features such as personal details, education, employment history, awards, professional development and voluntary or community work if relevant. The hardest part for most people is highlighting their skills and framing these skills in the most impressive way possible.  For specific positions there are generally key skills indicated in the job ad, such as IT and programming experience for an IT specialist, or registration as a psychologist and experience with children for a job in child psychology. It is essential to highlight these key skills in your resume, along with relevant experience.

However, for many jobs there are common skills and qualities that are in high demand.

If a job ad states that the successful candidate needs to:

·          

     "Be enthusiastic, dedicated, driven or have a passion for the job"

You should highlight your skills and experience by identifying your dedication to your previous work. Rather than just stating that you worked as a Dietitian and gained experience in X, Y and Z, it is beneficial to sell yourself and your experience. This can be done by stating that you ‘Committed yourself to’, ‘persevered in’, ‘took opportunities to’ and ‘volunteered for’. It is all about the language you can use to sell yourself! When talking about achievements, it is important to phrase them in an exciting way, for example ‘I exceeded expectations’ or ‘I led the company to succeed in’.

·         "Use initiative, be proactive, candidate should think for themselves"

You should identify your leadership skills and provide examples of times when you have worked in an ambiguous environment and worked well individually or led groups. Indicate any ideas that you had that were new, creative, resourceful or imaginative (be sure to detail their success if they were successful). 

 ·         "Work well with others, have sound communication or interpersonal skills"

Most jobs require you to work with others and to be able to communicate well, and your ability to demonstrate these skills will be looked upon favourably by employers. If these are skills relevant to the position you should identify instances when you have worked in a team. To enhance the appeal of this skill, use language such as ‘liaised’, ‘coordinated’, ‘reported back to’ ‘collaborated’, ‘partnered with’ or ‘interacted with’. Demonstrate your enjoyment for being around people, and your drive to communicate effectively with others (providing examples of this is always good).

Don’t forget to write a cover letter that makes employers want to read your resume! It is important to express your interest and passion for the company and the area they work in, and use examples of the tasks or requirements stated that link to the value you can deliver. As recruiters and employers have piles or applications to get through, something engaged and relevant will always put you far ahead of a standard application that is more about using fancy words than actually addressing key requirements!

Guest Article: Projected US job growth until 2022: health care swamps everything by Ross Clennett

Although there are clearly large differences between the US and the Australian workforces (the sheer size for starters; the US employed non-farm workforce is 138.7 million compared to Australia’s total employed workforce of 11.6 million) there’s still something to be gained in seeing what interesting data the US Bureau of Labor Statistics throws up. Every two years the

Article source:Ross Clennett - Projected US job growth until 2022: health care swamps everything»



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Good Stress Vs. Bad Stress

Stress is often a dirty word surrounded by the thought of last minute deadlines, juggling a career and family life and even sleepless nights. However, that’s only half the story as stress can also be the drive to complete tasks on time and push you beyond your comfort zone toward new achievements.  In essence, stress occurs when there is a perceived discrepancy between the demands of a tasks and an individual’s perceived ability to cope with the demands of the task. Though when properly managed and understood, stress can actually act as a positive pressure that motivates us to push ourselves and achieve our potential. As long as the gap between perceived ability to cope and demands of the task is not too overwhelming! Here’s how you can identify between good and bad stress, and use good stress to your advantage:

Good Stress

Stress is necessary for survival, hence why your ancestors survived; they saw the big bear and ran! Stress can often be a good thing, it helped your ancestors survive and now it can help you perform in your job. Such stress is called ‘Eustress’ which helps one make those difficult decisions, meet deadlines, get over a rejection letter, and help you prepare and work towards goals. Good Stress is what stimulates us to go out and get things done. Good stress is what adds that fuel to our fire, and keeps your thought process on its toes for those activities that require that little extra effort such as presenting to colleagues or a job interview.  So stress can be ok in safe amounts.

Bad Stress

Distress is when the level of stress begins to be harmful where we perceive that a task is just too much and we go beyond just pushing ourselves a little. This is when stress should be dealt with through positive coping strategies such as talking about it with others who will listen. If negative coping strategies are used (such as too much caffeine during work or alcohol afterwards ) and the distress is not dealt with that when things can get ugly, resulting in higher blood pressure, unforeseen aggression, and loss of sleep.

Negative coping strategies allow stress to build upon itself and there are long term negative psychological and physical consequences of elongated periods of stress.

Optimal stress is a healthy balance between ‘keeping busy’ eustress and avoiding overload distress stress and is what needs to be focused on in the workplace environment, as it allows peak performance and gives you or your employees paramount work levels.

Guest Article: Republic Wireless: I’m a Convert by Ben

Today I’m doing the raving fan thing and bragging on my new cell provider. I love these guys and have been recommending them to people around me for weeks!

I just passed one month with Republic Wireless, and I’m definitely a convert. When I left Pinnacle to join the Brandon Hall Group recently I had to transition to a new phone. My wife was with Verizon and I was with T-Mobile for work, and I knew two things:

1. T-Mobile coverage is awful where I live


2. Verizon is entirely too expensive

So I started looking at other providers and found Republic Wireless.

The company offers an amazing price (my plan is $25/mo), unlimited talk/text/data, and the service is pretty darn good where I live/work. Win-win-win!

How it works

• Republic uses the Sprint network to provide cell coverage, but you never actually interact with Sprint. It’s seamless.


• The phones Republic offers are hybrid phones: they can use wifi for texts and calls. That allows them to keep costs down.


• No contracts or bait and switch pricing. The phone is yours.


• They have 4 simple to understand plans. No tricky options or other gimmicks.


• You buy a phone. You pick a plan. You smile as you cut off your gigantic cell phone bill.

My favorite features

• The Moto X is an excellent phone. Easily the best phone I’ve ever owned.


• Change plans up to twice a month with no penalties. For instance, while at the SHRM conference in Orlando I was able to upgrade to the 4G plan to ensure I had the best/fastest service possible. Now that I’m home I changed it back to my regular 3G plan. I’ll be charged the 4G rate only for the days I had the service active.


• Wifi calling! I work a few days a week from a small office near my home. Signal is spotty in the building, but I’ve held calls on wifi up to 30 minutes without issue.


• My wife has the less expensive Moto G and likes it. She is more of a casual user, so we settled on that one and dropped her old $100 a month plan for the $25 Republic option.

As I said, I’m a convert and would encourage you to check them out if you are paying an arm and a leg for your cell service. Any questions? :-)

The post Republic Wireless: I’m a Convert appeared first on upstartHR.

Article source:Ben - Republic Wireless: I’m a Convert»



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Guest Article: The Flanagan/Myer resume fraud: what have we learned? by Ross Clennett

The case of the mysterious Andrew Flanagan becomes more intriguing as further information is uncovered. Certainly the mainstream media have had a field day, providing plenty of expanded coverage in the days after Mr Flanagan's deception was first uncovered. Here's what else we know, thanks to the investigative efforts of various Fairfax Media, Smart Company, and News Corporation

Article source:Ross Clennett - The Flanagan/Myer resume fraud: what have we learned?»



Check out more of Ross Clennett's work at hisblog