Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom Strategic Onboarding is Essential for Vulnerable Financial Institutions

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom Strategic Onboarding is Essential for Vulnerable Financial Institutions In the financial world, failing to effectively onboard new employees can be catastrophic. There are the usual costs associated with new hire turnover (nearly a million dollars a year for the average organization), but in addition, unprepared new employees may unknowingly commit expensive and illegal accounting and compliance errors and may feel so frustrated with their jobs that they depart for better opportunities. Today’s Onboarding Is So Much More Than a One-Day Orientation We refer toonboardingas the period of time that organizations enculturate, engage, and train their new hires. According to the Brandon Hall Group’s new report,The Evolution of Onboarding: Trends and Opportunities, the best onboarding initiatives confirm and exceed expectations set during recruitment, introduce new hires to how their contributions impact their organizations, helpnew hiresassimilate and navigate the culture of the organization, train new hires on basic logistics for job performance and career path, optimize engagement with the organization, and introduce new hires to key people who can facilitate performance and growth. Unfortunately, not all financial organizations possess this level of onboarding sophistication. Not surprisingly, Brandon Hall found that organizations with lower onboarding maturity have higher first-year attrition rates. And quick quits, or resignations that occur within the first six months of employment, account for a large percentage of all turnover. Technology Can Solve Issues Stemming from Underprepared and Underutilized Hires Why are financial professionals so sensitive to the effects of poor onboarding? The natural complexity of these roles and the need for new employees to get up to speed and work with others quickly are two reasons. Also, organizations fearing the errors we discussed earlier may underutilize new hires, and as a result, they may feel undervalued enough to leave. It doesn’t help that the job market for financial professionals is strong right now, especially for those with accounting and legal skills. Organizations can do a great deal to stop the immediate brain drain of new financial hires. First and foremost, they should develop a comprehensive, technology-driven, and learning-focusedonboarding experience.Brandon Hall found that organizations with higher onboarding maturity are using a combination of strategies including electronic forms, document management, dashboards, portals, and learning content support. These features hit exactly what financial organizations need to keep their new hires: effective allocation of resources, seamless knowledge transfer, and risk management. In fact, Brandon Hall’s survey respondents said that these technologies drive improvements such as process management (73 percent of respondents), automation of manual tasks (70 percent), better new hire experience (60 percent), support for a dispersed workforce (52 percent), and decreased time-to-proficiency (49 percent). And 73 percent who use onboarding technology to train new employees do so to address critical legal requirements and compliance practices, while 63 percent do so to address differentiating product and service knowledge. For more where this came from, check out the SilkRoad blog.

4 Ways To Avoid Letting Fear Control Your Career - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

4 Ways To Avoid Letting Fear Control Your Career - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career For some people’s careers, fear is public enemy No. 1. They overanalyze even the most minuscule of details, are afraid of speaking their mind, and never try to take that next step in career advancement. If this sounds like you, then stop settling for mediocrity and confront your fear head-on. Next time when all you want to do is retreat into fear and stay in your comfort zone, think about these four ways to break free once and for all: 1. Tell yourself you can One of the most common things people do when they’re afraid is make excuses to themselves about why they can’t do something. In fact, you may even be pretty good at it justifying our failures is a negative skill, but a skill nonetheless. The thing is, it’s all in your head! Next time you get caught up in this mindset, try thinking about all the reasons why you can. For as many reasons you can think not to do something, there are just as many on the flip side. Your mind just tends to focus on the negative more so you believe those are the only options. Think of similar or relevant previous experiences where you’ve had success, list the skills needed to get the task done, and look up resolutions to your problem online; do anything you can think of to combat the dreaded ‘I can’t.’ 2. Follow a plan Fear feeds off of unpredictability. To combat this, create a plan for yourself regarding what you want to accomplish in your career. Figure out the path to take in order to reach your goals, and do some research on the best way to accomplish them. It could be five years or two months, but whatever the goal, make sure you challenge yourself to stick with it. Having a step-by-step course to follow is the best way to stay organized and on-track. There are even a ton of apps out there designed to keep you focused! 3. Take a deep breath and relax Whether you believe it’s silly or not, relaxation exercises, such as yoga or meditation, do wonders to combat fear. If you’re reluctant to try it out, check out one man’s testimony to meditation. There’s bound to be a yoga class near you, but if you don’t want to be around a bunch of people, meditation works just as well. To help you meditate, clear a small area in your living space and turn off all your electronic devices. Turn on some relaxing music or sounds of nature and sit, criss-crossed and barefoot, on a mat or blanket. Then, for the next 25 to 30 minutes, close your eyes, listen to the music, and just breathe. Doing this may seem strange when you think about it, but it actually puts you into a state of relaxation and causes you to think clearly about resolving any career fears you may have. Do it regularly and you’ll be on your way to conquering your fears in no time! 4. Gather support Many people have learned the hard way that facing fear alone only magnifies it. If you’re afraid to go for that promotion or to move to a new company, it helps immensely to talk to people about it. Be honest with a friend or colleague about your problems. You might be surprised at the emotional support or practical advice they provide to help you through it. It never hurts to have your fear constructively analyzed from a different perspective than your own, and taking their words to heart could very well be the push you need to overcome your career fears. What do you think? Do you have other ways to overcome fear?

Careers in Public Relations - VocationVillage

Careers in Public Relations - VocationVillage Careers in public relations can be extremely dynamic and creative. PR expert Allie Osmar shares what it is like to work in public relations.Alie, how would you describe the main responsibilities of your position as Partner and Digital Insights Lead at Loudpixel?Allie Osmar, PR ProMany companies are starting to become interested in what consumers are saying about them online. My job involves using specialized tools to gather conversation data and analyze trends in conversations that can be used to shape future programs or campaigns, measure ongoing programs, address potential crises, keep an eye on competitors and spot the conversations worth engaging in. It’s sort of a mix between new-age brand planner and PR professional.What does a typical day look like for public relations professionals?During my time working for a major PR firm, I put together a Video of A Day in the Life of a PR Professional but that’s not to say that was always typical. Now that I’m a partner at Loudpixel , I typically work from home or with a co-working group. Any given day could be a mix between executing monitoring and analysis programs using Radian6 and Loudpixel’s own proprietary tools, working with partner agencies to help them develop new research and monitoring programs and working on business development or marketing for Loudpixel.What do you like best about your work?I love that I am helping to shape the future of an industry. The field of online conversation research and monitoring has really only started to emerge in the past few years, so companies are still looking for guidance on how to approach it.What are the most challenging things about working in public relations?The technologies and tools are always evolving. It’s important to constantly stay on top of things so that we’re always prepared to share a point of view with clients.Tell me about Loudpixel. How did you get started with this company?Loudpixel started as a Web development company between my fiancé and a good friend. It didn’t take us long to see that we all had skills that could complement each other and meet the demands of a growing market. They worked together to develop custom tools to make conversation analysis more efficient, along with brand dashboards to deliver that analysis in a succinct way rather than sending loads of emails and documents back and forth. We’ve started partnering with communications agencies to help them deliver to existing clients. It’s really a win-win. Brand managers get an unbiased look at what is being said about them, and the agencies get useful data and insights to help them plan future strategies.What was your professional background before you came to Loudpixel?I started out by working for large PR agencies in the Chicago area. I was actually recruited directly by the digital team of one agency through PROpenMic, a network for PR students, professors and professionals.What is your educational background?I received a double bachelor’ s degree at Michigan State University in advertising and telecommunications with a specialization in digital media arts and technology. Internships were a large part of my education as well because learning in the classroom is one thing, but this field is all about practical application.What skills are most important to succeed in public relations?It takes a person who can pay close attention to detail, but still look at the big picture.What advice do you have for someone interested in careers in public relations?Don’t be afraid to call professionals in the field and schedule informational interviews. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions and build relationships. (Note from VocationVillage.com:   Not sure how to do this? Read our article, Informational Interview Tips.If a mid-career professional decided he/she wanted to make a career change into your career, what are the steps he/she should take to make a successful career transition?This field is really based more on real e xperience rather than specialized formal education. People working in PR and digital insights have very diverse backgrounds. It’s important to take a look at the experiences you already have and highlight how they can apply toward a new role.Are there any commonly held misperceptions about public relations careers that you would like to clarify?I don’t think there are misconceptions so much as lack of knowledge that this career path exists at all. As Richard Riley said, The Top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 may not have existed in 2004.What is the income range for careers in public relations?Starting out in PR in a big city after college, expect to take a post-grad internship for around $10-15 per hour, plus overtime. If all goes well, this typically leads to an assistant account executive or account executive role at around $30-$40K, depending on where you are and what specialties you have. This range expands a great deal after a few years of experience. Check out Glassdoor.com for more details on specific cities and agencies.What are your long-term career goals?We have a great model with Loudpixel, and I think there’s definitely an opportunity to scale it. We’re hoping to grow our staff this year and help to define best practices for online conversation research and insights.Any other recommendations for people interested in careers in public relations?Always be flexible.Thank you, Allie! This is great information..You can visit Allie Osmars blog at The Creative Career.. Read more career profiles. .

How to Cut Costs and Improve Cashflow in Your Recruitment Business

How to Cut Costs and Improve Cashflow in Your Recruitment Business There may come a time when you have to start cutting costs to ensure the business continues to flourish. This is never an easy thing to do but it is essential if you want to improve cashflow and avoid accumulating debt. With a recruitment company, there is no stock to worry about so, naturally, costs start low. The most important part of your business is your staff as they are the ones who are on the front line searching and securing the very best employees for clients. By providing great customer service, they keep the clients happy and bring in those contracts. Bearing that in mind, if members of staff are continually failing to understand clients’ briefs or failing to find suitably matched people for the job, this is when clients will lose confidence in your company and will start to look elsewhere. Ensure you provide sufficient training and encouragement to your team and if there are any problems, address them straight away. No matter how good your marketing campaigns are or how state-of-the-art your office is, if you don’t have the right people, your business will struggle. If you have the best possible team on board, you’re off to a good start. One you have a star team in place, you should look to ways of saving money, whether it’s moving to smaller premises, budgeting office supplies or using in-house skills, like online marketing and social media, rather than outsourcing. It’s also very important to monitor daily cashflow to spot any non-essential costs â€" it can be surprising how many things you don’t actually need. Here are a few ways to cut costs: Ensure you have a daily cashflow model so you know exactly what is going in and out every day. You’ll soon be able to pick out costs that not essential. Consider moving to a smaller office space in a cheaper area. This can hugely cut down costs. When petty cash needs collecting, go yourself. This gives you a chance to decide whether it’s actually needed and you can make absolute sure every penny spent is worth it. Review expenses claimed by staff members and decide which ones are necessary. Explain your reasons for taking this action if there are complaints. See if you can pay your accountants in monthly instalments as opposed to an annual payment. Ask your landlord if there can be any flexibility on rent. Instead of paying quarterly, can you pay monthly? This can help to ease the pressure. Landlords will likely want to keep you on so don’t assume they’ll say no if you ask. Make certain you, as a director, or the owner of the company agree to all and any purchases. Get as much advice as you can from friends and trusted mentors of the business. Consider using a factoring or invoice discounting company to improve cashflow. This is where you can get paid the majority of an invoice straight away when you create an invoice rather than waiting for a client to pay you. If you’re running up debts with HMRC, you may be able to have a Time To Pay deal arranged. This will let you pay back the debt you owe in affordable instalments of up to a year. Do you have a company car? Consider giving it back to save money for the company. You can save a great deal on your personal tax too. If you cannot afford to keep all of your staff on, however good they are, you may need to make redundancies. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills Hardship Scheme can help. Buy anything you can online, like office supplies, as this is generally cheaper than elsewhere. Not everyone will like it but you may have to cut overtime pay to save money. Again, if there are complaints, explain the situation. Don’t forget, you can save quite a bit by looking at the little things, like turning down the office temperature slightly to save on heating bills. You could even cancel subscriptions to trade magazines why pay for expensive magazines each month when you can get the inside scoop from free online blogs (like Undercover Recruiter)? If your company is getting into serious debt, don’t panic. You will need to re-evaluate the situation, find out what your options are and go from there. Act as soon as you can and you’ll have a fighting chance at bringing your business back to life. Author: Keith Steven of KSA Group Ltd has been rescuing and turning-around companies since 1994; he has worked for insolvency firms, turnaround funds and venture capital investors. He formed his own turnaround practice, KSA Group Ltd in 2001, and he is acknowledged as an expert in the delivery of CVAs for SME companies faced with financial difficulties.   He is the author of the site www.companyrescue.co.uk.

How to Choose the Best Co-working Space - CareerMetis.com

How to Choose the Best Co-working Space Are you part of the new economy?Do you no longer have a designated office? Then you have a number of choices.evalYou can either work from home, find a nice café where you can hog a table all day This goes at the top because it’s both the most important and the easiest to check out. Most co-working spaces do a good job of listing what they do and do not have on their website. And what you can’t work out from there, you can work out from the pictures.There are nice amenities and vital amenities. Vital amenities are obviously such things as internet stability and speed. You can obviously ask for that, though they won’t always be completely honest about how shaky it is.For that reason, don’t just listen to what they say as well as how they say it. Do they hesitate before they tell you it’s great? Then perhaps it’s not so fantastic after all.It’s always a good idea to do a second check in the reviews. Don’t just look at the star ratings Much harder to see before you get t here, but just as important to the amenities is the atmosphere at the place. A co-working space with a good atmosphere can be hugely conducive to your work and can even generate a slew of new opportunities.A place with the wrong atmosphere, in the meantime, can actually cost you a great deal of your precious time.Again, you can check the reviews to get an idea of how the people are who work there. Even better, ask people who you’ve worked within the past for their advice.Often, as you know how they work and what they need, you’ll be able to form a much better opinion than some random on the internet this way.Security and accessevalIf you don’t want to be lugging your stuff home after every work session, you’ll want to make sure that the security of the co-working space is up to scratch.This is particularly true for creating a good security system for a co-working space where the people coming and going are liable to change day by day is much harder than in a regular office. For that reason, this is an important area to consider carefully.Another important question, particularly if you like to work outside of the regular business hours The costsSome places are cheaper than others. Naturally, that will make a difference to your choice. That’s rather obvious. The thing is, there are a lot of secret ways that places that seem to be cheap at first glance will try to raise the prices for you.For that reason, be aware of hidden costs. These can be all over the place. Do you have to pay for using their meeting rooms? Does printing cost you money? What about coffee and tea? Do they have extra costs for things like security, data usage or accessing the facilities at odd hours?These things matter in the same way that luggage charges on airplanes matter â€" they can make places that seem cheaper actually more expensive than a step up. Often, while offering worse services than you otherwise might pay! So yeah, that’s important.The trial periodevalMake sure the place has one! It’s important that you can change your mind quickly when you realize the place isn’t living up to your standards. Of course, if you book day by day you don’t need one of these, as then you’ll be okay canceling whenever you want So weigh your options carefully and apply a lot of the same logic you would when getting a space for your company. In that way, you won’t end up choosing something that you don’t enjoy.Also, don’t be afraid to try a few places on trial before you commit. After all, if they’ve got this kind of setup then why not take advantage of it and find something you really like?

Sometimes You Have to Take a Step Back in Order to Step Ahead - CareerAlley

Sometimes You Have to Take a Step Back in Order to Step Ahead - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. In your career, and in your life, it never hurts to take a step back. Its never a waste of time to take some time to evaluate your current position, no matter how much of a waste of time it may appear to be. It is never a bad thing to go back and do something that wont necessarily provide you with any physical reward, but will educate or enrich you. Its not a crime to go backwards, especially if youve been trying with all your might to go forward and have been failing to do so. Going backwards can provide you with everything you need to in fact go further forward in the long run. Going back to education will boost your career two-fold. Going back to school will provide you with in-depth lessons that just cant be learned in the world of work, but will help you in the world of work once you graduate. The best thing of all? You need not take any time off of work to achieve this. Today, its not all about lecturers, Powerpoint slides and textbooks. Its not all about just studying and practicing. In this day and age, more and more universities and colleges are offering courses that both educate in regards to knowledge, and in regards to practical demands. And this is all done online. The Lean Manufacturing online degree provided by Kettering University, for instance, focuses on mechanical engineering as well as the practical application of its theory. And this is all done and focussed solely through the Internet. Stepping back doesnt just have to mean stepping back into education, however. It can also mean just taking a step back in order to take some time out and observe where you and where you are going in your career. Taking a step back in your career is okay if it means you are going to use the time you free up in doing so to try and distinguish who you are and what you want to do. In this time you should take some time to explore all possible avenues and paths in the career market. This needs to be done as you dont want to reach old age and regret the fact that you devoted so much of your time to a job you hate just for the pay you received. So, take a step back in your career and take control of it whilst you still can, before its far too late to do so. Taking a step forward in your career is circumstantial. Its about the circumstances you find yourself in at a certain point in your life. And if your current circumstances are stopping you from progressing forward, why not change your circumstances by going backwards for a while? Going forward in your career can even be about merely being in the right place at the right time. But, you know what they say. You make your own luck in life. Maybe you can make your luck by stepping back a bit? We are always eager to hear from our readers. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions regarding CareerAlley content. Good luck in your search,Joey Google+

Finding Veterans Careers Help Resume Writing Services

Finding Veterans' Careers Help Resume Writing ServicesVeteran help resume writing can be crucial in getting your resume noticed by prospective employers. However, it is equally important to note that, these days there are many professionals who specialize in helping veterans and the best way to find these specialists is through personal referrals.Professional veterans will know all the relevant organizations that will help you stand out among the crowd. You will also have to meet with a few of these groups and assess your skills. The group that you join may also help you choose the right one for you.Carers provide a range of services which include training veterans how to properly write their resumes. Carers are most skilled at interpreting and highlighting critical information about job qualification. It is necessary that you are able to give a concise description of your work experience so that it can be reviewed by potential employers. Carers understand the difficulty experienced by veterans because they also have worked with veterans themselves.Carers also understand that the mindset of an employer is different from that of a veteran and hence, carers try to suggest to veterans that employers often do not want a 'drama' when reviewing their applications. Carers are very much familiar with what the job-seekers want and tend to highlight the most relevant information as well as offer insightful suggestions to veterans.Carers understand the anxiety and stress of not being able to move on with your life after serving. They will give veterans the opportunity to speak to a few people whom they feel are close to them and will make them realize how hard the job really is. The most important thing that a veteran can do is to be positive and remain positive because, if you are able to do this, then you are a lot more likely to get the job.Veterans who seek help at writing resumes should always keep in mind that, they are writing a job application and therefore, have toput their best foot forward. Carers are generally the ones who try to convince veterans to use appropriate spelling and grammar as well as proper punctuation to ensure that the resume reflects a sense of professionalism.Carers are also aware of the fact that the future of a veteran is dependent upon the type of person that the individual is. Thus, they ensure that the individual's resume matches the job profile they are trying to attract. There are many veterans who do not understand the importance of this as they do not realize that a good resume is a key factor in convincing employers to interview them.Carers understand the need for military veterans to create a more positive image. They understand that a written resume should highlight how well you can perform in the job and on top of that, they should highlight your leadership qualities as well. It is very important for them to highlight the fact that you have been able to overcome adversity and have stood up for yourself and that no one can replace the individual's experience.