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5 Tips to Manage Talent Acquisition Effectively

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A lot has been changing since technology has seeped into almost all processes and changed the whole dynamics of how they function. Talent acquisition is no exception. The workforce demographics have changed, the demand for talent has increased, and the knowledge marketplaces have gone highly competitive. These changes have made talent management a highly discussed topic in the conference rooms of many organizations.

One of the major challenges the talent acquisition departments faces is ensuring that the right talent is hired for the right role. In today’s candidate-driven and resource-conscious market, to develop a competitive edge in talent acquisition, recruiting strategies have to be revisited to optimize them to bridge the skills gap. In order to stay at the top of the game, implementing a robust talent acquisition and management strategy is the key. Here are top 5 tips to help win the talent war, boost the recruitment process, manage the current talent and prepare for the future.

  1. The Recruitment Process on Auto-mode

Manually screening through thousands of resumes is not only time-consuming but also a tedious task. Most of the valuable time is lost, leaving very less time to concentrate on other important aspects of the hiring process. The end result: the whole process becomes slow and the risk of losing a candidate increases. Embracing new and innovative technologies in recruitment through automation of time-consuming tasks can – lower the recruitment costs, filter better quality hires, free up resources – all at a faster pace. The new landscape of talent acquisition has brought in innovations, which are driving the evolution of automation in the recruitment process through the use of recruitment software. With automation, the recruitment process becomes simpler, faster and effective, thus saving a lot of time to carry out other important tasks. The software can screen resumes, perform low-level administrative tasks, recommend candidates on the basis of data, and make bias-free recruiting decisions.

  1. The Use of Social Media

The largest pool of most talented, top quality applicants are on social media. Therefore, recruiters need to be present where the most potential candidates are. Social media presence is a must and the most effective marketing tool to attract and hire top talent. However, not all social media channels are great for social recruiting. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter harbor the potential talent. The key to use social media to its optimal potential is to be consistent and post regular updates.

 

  1. The Complete Package Offer

Salary is not the only thing candidates look for while considering a job application. They’ll look at the complete package the company has to offer. The package may include salary, growth opportunities, responsibilities, bonuses, perks, reputation of the company, etc. If the candidate is a right fit, determine what they are looking for in a prospective job position and offer a complete package that meets their requirements, not just the salary.

  1. The Boomerang Employee Advantage

In a talent starved market, a boomerang employee can be a boon. Hiring an ex-employee has its own set of advantages – the candidate is aware of the company culture and can easily settle in. However, the decision of hiring boomerang employees has to be taken with due diligence. The best way to decide is to treat boomerang employee as a first-time applicant through which an unbiased decision can be made and that will help in deciding whether the boomerang employee is a good fit or not.

  1. The Power of Employee Referrals

An employee referral programs not only boost the morale of the existing employees, but are an excellent way to reach potential talent. Research says that employee referred candidates make better hires and stay with the company for long.

  1. The Plan to Retain Employees

Recruiting new talent can be an expensive affair. A lot of HR activities, such as job posting, advertising, screening, interviewing, follow-ups, etc., demand investment of time, manpower and money. Training new employees also adds up to the investment.

The overall recruitment costs can be lowered, if a robust employee retention plan is in place. Usually, employee retention rates are influenced by salary, work environment, growth opportunities, benefits, etc. A great retention plan will offer great promotion opportunities, vertical as well as horizontal while enabling them to apply for them.

Author Bio: Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager specializing in HR and is responsible for leading Jobsoid’s content and social media team. When Kelly is not building campaigns, she is busy creating content and preparing PR topics. She started with Jobsoid as a social media strategist and eventually took over the entire digital marketing team with her innovative approach and technical expertise.

 

Everyone Wins: Treating Clients Like Team Members

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At M. Grisafe Architects, we’re passionate about architecture. It’s what we do. We’ve been in business as a boutique architecture firm in Long Beach since 2005, and while we obviously love the challenges of designing spaces that inspire our clients and improve their home or work lives, it’s our love for people that truly drives us.

If you were to ask any of us how our firm has grown and remained successful over the years, we would probably all have a similar answer: Because of the people involved, and that includes each other as colleagues as well as our clients. Our approach with clients, which we sum up with

three words—advise, advocate, and collaborate—not only results in finished projects that fully address clients’ needs and solve their problems, but that also drives our inspiration and creativity as a firm.

When the Client Wins, We Win Too

We’ve learned over the years that our clients are at the heart of what we do. They’re the most important part of our business. We’ve also learned that when we go above and beyond for our clients—when we really dazzle them—our job is more fun! It’s so rewarding for us to know that a client is thrilled with their new space, and that goal keeps us excited to come to work every day.

When we begin a project, our very first step is to get to know the client we’re working for. Whether we’re working on a residence or a commercial space, meeting the people who will be using the space and understanding them on a deeper level is essential for us.

And we understand that not all architects agree

! Plenty of architects enjoy designing spec homes (which are designed and built without a specific buyer in mind), and plenty of architects enjoy doing large-scale commercial work in which there may be multiple intermediaries involved and not much direct interaction with the person or people who end up using the space on a daily basis. Those types of projects simply aren’t our preference because we believe we achieve better end results when we work with our clients rather than for them.

Relational, Not Transactional

Everyone has had the experience of feeling like “just a number” or “just a consumer” when interacting with a business, and it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t matter where it happens—getting a fast-food burger or navigating a car insurance claim—if a company is treating your interaction like a transaction to “get through,” you’re probably going to think twice about spending your money with that company in the future.

Because of the personal and permanent nature of what we do, that attitude is unacceptable for us. For one thing, it creates unhappiness all around. If our clients were repeatedly unsatisfied, we at the firm would all be unsatisfied, too. People generally don’t enjoy working for companies that don’t treat their clients well.

But more importantly, our clients have to live and/or work in the space we create. We might be able to get to “good enough” without inviting them into the process, but to get to their hearts and leave them with a space that inspires them for years to come? That requires building a strong relationship with them. It’s not the easy way, but it’s far more rewarding in the end, and it makes clients more likely to work with us again and refer us to their friends and families!

Advise, Advocate, Collaborate

Every business is different, but there’s always a way to invest in building relationships with clients. It takes time and energy, but the payoff is well worth it. For us as a Long Beach architecture firm, we have developed a three-pronged approach, and we’ve found it to be a good balance between establishing our expertise, which makes clients feel confident in choosing us for their project, and treating clients like valued members of the team who can provide input and participate in the process:

  • Advise: This is essential to building confidence and trust. We provide information and transparency right from the beginning, and we continue to do so throughout each phase of our work together. We believe well-informed clients ultimately make the best decisions, so we make communication a top priority from day one.

  • Advocate: As we gather information and fully understand what the client wants and needs in their new space, we work towards it wholeheartedly. We strive to reach the finish line with as few complications as possible and while meeting every client need. If problems or complications arise (which is not uncommon in our line of work, especially dealing with permits and codes), we jump in and solve them. It’s our job to navigate those stressors, not the client’s.

  • Collaborate: Just like we work with our clients throughout the scope of a project, we also have to work with agencies, city governments, and other various stakeholders to keep a project on time and on budget.

This may all sound novel or even crazy. We know that our exact approach may not be appropriate for every business—after all, different types of businesses require different levels of closeness with clients. What we are saying is that we create win-win results when we treat clients like team members, and we believe that most businesses would benefit from finding ways to do so too.

How Planning Your Goals Professionally Can Help You Have a Successful Career?

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All our life, we try hard to be successful. But, what we do not realize is that in our careers, we cannot attain long-term success by just performing daily work chores without focusing on professional growth.

If we plan our professional goals in life meticulously, no matter which office we work at or which field we have chosen to work in, it can play a significant role in our endeavor towards professional development.

Creating a development plan for your career goals will help you accomplish your ambitions whether you are looking for your progress in a particular position or if you are trying to land a better job. And this planning of career goals essentially relates to the skills and knowledge that you have acquired from both your personal life and your workplace environment.

So, let’s see how you can effectively plan your professional goals that will help you achieve success in your career:

Know Your Goals Properly

A successful career is not an overnight thing—neither does it happen by itself nor can you develop it in a day, week or month.

Knowing your career goals is critical, as otherwise, you will keep confusing yourself when you are trying to get a promotion or looking for a new job in a different field of industry, with regards to what you want to achieve and how you think you are going to go about it.

So, when you have a proper plan in place, it will guide you throughout, so that you can choose a career that suits your skills and knowledge and you get the maximum value for your talents.

Sharpen Your Focus

When you are trying to shine in a career that suits you, proper focus and attention towards attaining your goals is crucial.

If you lose your focus, you will not be able to attain your career goals and you will have to stop pursuing your dreams in the middle of your way. Therefore, having a proper career development plan that sums up your goals, aspirations, and objectives, will help you stay focused on your journey.

When you are focused and determined, challenges on your way will hardly trouble you, and you will be in total control of your journey as well as your destination.

Assess Yourself Personally

The beauty of having a professional development plan is that it also helps you immensely in carrying out your personal assessment.

This is very important when you make a decision to follow a particular career path as well as to find success in that career. When you assess yourself personally, it gives you a perfect idea about where you are in your life at that point in time, where do you want to go from there and how you want to be in the future.

When you set clear career objectives, you will know perfectly what needs to be done, what steps need to be taken, to reach where you would like to be in the future. Then you can easily work your way around all challenges and reach your goals in a seamless way—as you would know what needs to be done, when it is to be done and how it needs to be done.

Be Confident

A lot of people lack confidence and optimism in their life. The main reason is they don’t have a proper plan in place and an idea to believe in.

A proper goal-oriented professional development plan will give you the confidence that you require to be successful in your career.

When you know what to do, how to act on it, when to take the next step, what to choose and more importantly what not to, you will be confident of the fact that you have all your bases covered. You will be ready to encounter any big hurdle on your path to success.

CONCLUSION

In order to achieve success in your career, you need constructive planning, strong determination, and unfragmented focus. The more efficient you are in your planning, better are your chances of success. So, put everything down on a paper, evaluate the pros and cons of every possible situation, work hard and be disciplined. Do these and professional success will come knocking at your door.

How to Handle Being Bullied at Work

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So often we think that when we leave high school or university, the turmoil of bullying is left behind upon entering the real world – the truth of the matter is, no matter how old one gets, bullying never ceases. Bullying is one of the few things that no matter how old we get, no matter where we go or what we do, will always exist.

When we enter the workplace, we go in with, at times a sense of naive as we think any bullying we experienced when we were younger will stop now that we are older and wiser. Though we can wish and we can hope, sometimes we find ourselves in situations that are not only uncomfortable but also unwarranted.

In America, it is estimated that 60 million experience some form of workplace bullying while 61% of those claim their bullies were upper management. From that staggering number of 60 million victims, 40% will go on to experience stress-related health problems, such as anxiety or panic attacks and even depression.

Set Your Limits

It is not always easy dealing with bullying – for some it is hard to know the lines between jovial and office banter to workplace bullying. At times, it can be a fine line but that is where one must set the boundaries and limits to what they consider to be bullying and what they consider to be just locker room talk. Though at times it can be intimidating and hard, it is important to set the limits of what you tolerate and consider bullying. Sometimes openly expressing what makes you uncomfortable is the first step to preventing if not stopping workplace bullying.

If openly expressing your limitations and what you consider bullying is still not respected then its important to start documenting.

Keeping Record and Keeping Track

With many identifying management as their workplace bully – it can be hard to not only stand up to them but to also report the bullying itself. Sometimes the best thing that can be done is to record and document the instances of workplace bullying. Keep a journal with the dates, times and instances of the bullying. It may seem as though this will do nothing – but when you need to file a report with union reps or to confront your bully, it wont be just your word against theirs, it will be documented and proven.

Bullying isn’t just verbal – it’s emotional and psychological

We often associate bullying with words; however, some of the worst forms of bullying and the ones that can have the most impact is the type of non-verbal and emotional bullying that is often associated with women in the workplace. More often than not, women are subtle with their bullying unlike men who tend to be explicit and direct.

The stress we experience in work can sometimes be enough to drain a person, add in bullying and sometimes you can find yourself exhausted emotionally and physically. Sometimes the best thing a victim of bullying can do is to ignore the bully’s advancements. Easier said than done but trying to keep your head up and ignoring their words, their actions can be a step towards silencing the bullying.

You aren’t alone – Don’t tackle bullying alone

With 60 million victims of bullying it’s important to remember one isn’t alone. In a workplace environment, we often may feel ashamed or even embarrassed that we, as an adult could be a victim of bullying but what one has to remember is that bullying does not discriminate. Bullying does not stop because we enter to workforce or that we are no longer on the playground – bullying can actually be worse as adults. More importantly, bullying when it happens in adulthood can have more repercussions on our health, especially with regards to our emotional and mental health.

Sometimes we don’t always know or want to deal with bullying – we think that it’s below us or that no one will want to help but the reality of it is, bullying is as much a mental health matter and issue and the impacts of it can have consequences that not only impact the workplace but also ones personal life. From esteem to confidence, bullying, when it is not addressed can push a person to their limits.

Bullying in the workplace can slowly break down one’s moral and it can be poison to the environment. If you feel as though you are a victim of bullying or maybe you know someone who is a victim of bullying it may be time to reach out to management to put a stop it to it. Depending on the severity and the situation, you may find yourself needing to take a mental health break, which could result in you looking into social security disability.  Don’t wait for things to escalate and don’t risk your well being for a joke – you never know when it may be too late.

Why Your Mental Health and Physical Health are Equally Important

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Health practitioners always seem to remind their patients to exercise as well as eat healthy all the time to keep up a healthy body.  Though this is great, they forget one more significant aspect that unless the patient is mentally healthy, physical health does not matter.  The World Health Organization describes health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not the absence of disease. This brings us to the conclusion that mental health is as important as physical health.    Without it, people are unable to live their lives to the fullest due to the mental health struggles.

Why is Mental Health Important?

Mental health is a critical part of a daily healthy lifestyle, because:

  • It is the very crucial factor behind the rational decision-making process that each person has.
  • It is equally as important as the physical health, but most people do not know or understand this.
  • It is part of what everybody uses for their daily lives without even recognizing.
  • It is good for business – mental health is associated with better performance, higher productivity, and lesser workplace accidents.
  • It eliminates absenteeism from ailing employees.

What Causes Mental Illnesses

Mental illness is caused by stressful conditions that the patient has been living under.  All these conditions depend on how we receive them and the thoughts we build up in our minds.

These conditions may include:

  • Anxiety and stress
  • Addictions and compulsions
  • Panic
  • Anger
  • Loss, bereavement, and grief
  • Depression
  • Infidelity, divorce or marriage issues
  • Sexual problems
  • Domestic violence or physical abuse
  • Fertility issues
  • Insomnia
  • Life choices, e.g., career choices,
  • Phobias
  • Chronic pain or illness
  • Eating disorders

The Stigma behind Mental Illness

Mental illness is highly associated with suicide with many people not seeking treatment.  This is because, in the 21st Century, mental illness and suicide attempt patients still face a lot of stigmas.  The stigma is openly played both at home and in the workplace making it hard for the patients to get help.

  • In the workplace – Anxiety and stress in the workplace are commonly known to affect the physical health.  This is physically evident with the patient losing or gaining weight depending on how they deal with this kind of stress.  Stress and anxiety that affects the mental health are not visible until the adverse effects have taken a toll on the patient.     
  • At home – Both younger and older adults are affected by mental illness.  It is shocking to discover that younger adults are mostly the ones encouraged to seek a mental health professional compared to the older adults.  Older adults are prone to committing suicide or living with the psychological illness condition because most do not get the attention or help they require from those around them.  Older adults who are rejected by their close loved ones always feel ashamed to open up to strangers and speak about their mental health. Fear stops them from getting the assistance they require ending up destroying their lives.      

How to Take Care of Your Mental Health

Most ordinary people have been ignorant of their mental health until something drastic happens that awakens them to the truth.  Do we care about what we can do to keep ourselves mentally healthy? Just as we work out our physical bodies, do we work out our mind to ensure it remains healthy throughout?  Doing so is important! But how would you work out your mind?

There are plenty of ways available to improve your mental health especially if you are already ailing.   They include:

  • Meditation – in Yoga training is highly recommended for the better functioning of the brain making it an essential tool to deal with the mental health.  Joining a Yoga center where you can be motivated by others can be of great help.
  • Counselling and professional help – When someone is going through a rough phase of mental health, it is essential to go for counseling.  Such treatments can help those who are suffering from emotional and behavioral problems or even those with mental health disorder. This kind of professional help also known as talk therapy or psychotherapy.       
  • Care and Concern – People dealing with mental illness have been hurt, rejected or physically harmed.  It would be ideal to love them, care for them and show concern over their health. Be the one to encourage rather than stigmatize!  
  • Medication – Though most do not want to be subjected to a daily dosage, it gets to a point where the patient cannot do without medication.  At this point, the doctor prescribes something to help them come down. It is essential to follow the doctors prescription to get treatment.  

For those who are not suffering from mental illness, the best way to take care of your mental health is by:

  • Maintaining a healthy lifestyle every day – A healthy lifestyle means eating well, sleeping enough hours, developing healthy coping skills, staying positive and connecting with others to keep the optimism.