On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Are Outside Innovators the Key to Success

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Are Outside Innovators the Key to Success In 2013, Campbell Soup Co. launched its Hack the Kitchen contest to challenge innovative developers to create web or mobile apps for mealtime solutions. The winner, FoodMood, tapped into users emotions by asking Whats your mood? and the app then suggested recipes based on the users feelings and food preferences. FoodMood, developed by Pollinate Inc., received a $25,000 cash prize and a $25,000 contract to bring the idea to market. But perhaps more important, Campbell Soup with more than 19,000 workers decided that it wanted outside innovators to create new ideas. Campbells is not alone. General Electric is partnering with students and entrepreneurs to help them create new products. The first lesson we learned was dont just talk about it, meet about it, think about it just go do it,saysVenkat Venkatakrishnan, GE Appliances Innovation Leader. Its something we dont do very well. We tend to evaluate all the risks, look at everythingthe local startup community goes and builds something, does something, and figures out the rest. Campbell and GE are big companies looking to adopt a more innovative,agile mindsetthat permeates start-ups, and more organizations realize they need to do the same in order to survive. Truly creative business leaders engage less-conventional partners, such ascitizen developers, and entrepreneurs to help drive innovation, notesVentureBeat. In addition, anIBM trend studyof more than 1,500 companies found that those who excel in business goals partnered more creatively with outside organizations and recruited less traditional partners for their efforts. Driving change Clearly, there are challenges for big organizations that want to become more entrepreneurial and respond quickly and efficiently to new ideas in order to stay competitive. Brad Smith, president and chief executive officer at Intuit, recentlynotedthat implementing change is not easy, partly because teams seek routine and repetition hoping to avoid (read more here) Photo: Bloomberg

Creating Employer Brand Content that Moves People

Creating Employer Brand Content that Moves People What content pulls on the heartstrings and really moves people? This week we chat with Will Staney, founder and CEO  Proactive Talent all about creating engaging content for employer branding. Have a listen to our chat below, keep reading for a summary and dont forget to subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast. What is your approach to employer branding content in recruitment? Its all about content. Its what feeds the engine. Its the fuel. Without great content, its harder for candidates to really select in or out of your hiring process. Its harder to attract top talent in your company, and engage your current workforce. Without content, you cant tell your story. It takes a mix of content as well. It needs video and  pictures to really give a transparent look at your company content, really good, authentic content is essential. But its not always easy to do. What is a  step-by-step guide to achieving success with employer branding? Tip 1: Is developing your content strategy. This is being very intentional about what kind of content is going to resonate with our audience. That includes building out talent personas, and doing some research, talking to your current employees. Where do they go to get their news? What are their interests? What bands do they listen to? All these interests help you to develop the kind of content, and the persona that does well at your organization. You can then take that data, and other  data like, what kind of roles are we hiring for? What are our high priority hiring initiatives right now? You take all that and you start to build your content strategy that helps fuel those initiatives. Employer brand and recruiting marketing strategies should tie into the actual business initiatives at your company. You align talent acquisition to the true strategic mission and objectives of your company, and you get proactive about it. You start to notice that talent acquisition and employer brandi ng starts getting more of a seat at the table because the business starts to understand. With content, you take this and then you start to build out an editorial calendar. Tip 2: Is to engage and build excitement. Your content should be something that is helping to elicit an emotional response, both internally with your own employees where it gives them that warm feeling of  pride when they watch that cool employee highlight video, or someone externally  learns something new about the company. When you can change perceptions or really engage and pull peoples heart-strings around the mission of your company, that is when you win. And so, Tip 3: Is providing accessible content and an experience. In other words, look at the different channels where youre posting certain content. Some content works well in other channels and not in others. For example blogs. People read maybe 28% of the words in a blog post. So you have to make sure that the content is very concise and that they can pull your key points in six seconds. Then you want to make your content really consumable. So maybe thats a video. Or maybe, you want to do a quick Facebook Live, or Periscope, or Twitter Video of a live, real event thats happening. That makes it really accessible  and youre giving people an experience like theyre right there watching it. Tip 4: Make it visual. People remember images six times easier than text. So whenever you can add really great, humanizing photos or videos in the blogs that youre talking about. Visuals are really powerful for helping to elicit that emotional response and to really give people an inside look. Tip 5: Is leveraging employee-generated content. The great thing is you have all these employees, especially if youre a bigger company and you have a lot of different offices. If youre an employer brand person, or a recruiter whos tasked with doing employer branding, you cant be everywhere at once.  So youve got to build an army of ambassadors, an army of employer brand agents that are out there capturing some content for you, and sending it in to you. This does two things. It allows you to get a variety of real content from real people, and your content starts looking like the other content that your friends see in their social feeds. It blends in, it doesnt look like marketing, it looks authentic. The other is that it empowers employees to be a part of telling what your employer brand and what their experience is. Employees love it. They like seeing the content they created being featured on a major corporate account, its really exciting for them. So leveraging employee-generated content is awesome. Have fun with it, create campaigns, and  competitions. When I was at SAP, we did this big selfie competition to really promote our new Instagram page when we launched it for life at SAP. And it was a huge hit. We did the same thing with our client GoDaddy where they did a #GoDaddylife. And now, there are hundreds of awesome employee photos about what they love about working there, all over Instagram. Tip 6: Is measuring your results. When it comes to employer branding, tracking your engagement rate is really important. What percentage of your audience thats following you on social, LinkedIn,  Glassdoor, are actually engaging with your content? That tells you how good and how engaging your content is.  Are your employees engaging with that content? Are they liking it? A  main goal of employer branding is to increase awareness of you as an employer. The total number of reach is good way of measuring this. Whats the number of people who have been exposed to our employer brand on a monthly, quarterly, annual basis? Overall shares are a really good metric to look at the quality of your content. If it was so good that they shared it with their whole network, then thats awesome. When it comes to the effectiveness of good employer branding and your organization, looking at things like retention rate is a really good indicator of the strength of your employer brand and your culture, that people are engaged, staying longer, and theyre enjoying the experience. That can be a really strong correlation. If the number of applicants go down, but the quality of each applicant is getting better, thats a good indication that youre doing a great job of employer branding, thats giving them enough information that they can really self-select in or out of your process. Youve probably seen some of the employer brand videos by our client GE.  They did one that went out on the Oscars. This is just a good example of a company whose corporate marketing and employer branding teams are coming together to help change the perception of them not only as a company, but change perceptions as an employer. They did a video that  was like imagine a world where female engineers and scientists were treated like movie stars. What if they were on the cover of the magazines and they were the ones that you see in the news. It really pulled the heart-strings when they announced they were committed to hiring 20,000 women in STEM by 2020. View this post on Instagram The women of #GE Aviation Headquarters in Evendale, OH are giving us major #SquadGoals. Currently, technical and #engineering sectors still have a significant gender gap. To meet future needs, improve productivity and transform the industry, a gender diverse talent pool is necessary. Join the GE squad on our journey to #BalanceTheEquation with 50:50 gender representation in entry-level technical roles by 2020. Lets sky-rocket the quality of #innovation. Head to our story to see what advice women across GE have for others interested in STEM. Happy #InternationalWomensDay. Photo by @seenewphoto A post shared by General Electric (@generalelectric) on Mar 8, 2017 at 8:59am PST Theres going to be a whole series coming out in a couple of months that we did for GE Digital, where its just real employees in a documentary style, talking about their experience, what they do, and how the products that theyre building has real world effect. I interviewed for a video, at GE Digital, an engineer who grew up in Haiti. And he was in high school when those massive tsunami and earthquakes happened. It was devastating. And after that happened, he was really interested in STEM and engineering, and he made a commitment to himself that he was going to go out there and try to use and build software that would help predict these disasters better in the future. Now  hes an engineer at GE Digital, building the IoT mobile platform that allows people in these third-world countries that have little access to electricity or internet to have better predictability of natural disasters. It was amazing. I cried interviewing this kid because hes telling me Im here and I built this. And he won this huge innovation award. And he got to go home to his parents and say, I went and I built something that will make life better for my family and friends in Haiti. I thought  Wow. I want to work here. I want to be a part of something like that. Its just amazing. Those are the type of stories that are real, and they exist in your company if you go out and ask the right questions. Pulling at the heart-strings is totally doable. Every human being has a great story. Follow Will on  Twitter @willstaney, and remember to subscribe to the  Employer Branding Podcast.

Join a social network before you need a job

Join a social network before you need a job The more you like your job, the more you should network. If you have a great job, you probably have a lot to offer people. Do all your favors now, when you dont need any in return. The problem with networking to get a job is that you are not that attractive when you need a job. Who wants to network with unhappy people? Recently I interviewed a bunch of recruiters for my column, and they were absolutely gung-ho about social networking. Recruiting advisor John Sullivan told me that referred candidates have a 50% higher retention rate than candidates who come to the company via a job site. To land that referral, he recommended, among others, LinkedIn. This surprised me. In the past, I have delete emails from people who ask me to be in their network. I never considered that the networks were so useful. So I took the advice of the recruiters and I checked out LinkedIn. I was immediately impressed. To get a job, if you are qualified for the job, all it really takes is a third-party connection. I was shocked at how quickly the world opens up to you with a social networking site. And I was surprised by how much we can help each other by offering up our networks to friends in a searchable, useful way. My first instinct was to search for who has the most contacts, but I couldnt figure out how to do that. So I filled out a cursory profile, which the recruiters say is a no-no. (You should fill it out in great detail so people know what you have to offer.) Then I started trying to figure out who I knew that would be on the site. The first few names I tried did not work. But that was because I tried the people Id be most comfortable asking to be in my networks (its a request that seems a little weird to me, still). Instead, I started trying the email addresses of the people I know who are comfortable with technology and good at networking, and the first four names I tried were listed. One is Dylan Tweney. After about an hour of dealing with LinkedIn, I had four contacts. Dylan has 150. I asked him how he does it, and he said he sent email to everyone on his email list. I had contact envy. There were some people who have more than 500 contacts. I wondered how they did it. Then I heard that the CEO of Linkedin who has more than 500 contacts will not speak to analysts unless they can get to his network. One senior banker at a top firm has been trying for months. It gives me hope: It seems that people who have large networks are not those who make the most money, its those who offer the most to their friends.

Is Confined Space Training Right for Your Business CareerMetis.com

Is Confined Space Training Right for Your Business Original Image Source â€" Depositphotos.comHaving consistent workplace training is one of the most important things a business can implement. It does not matter which line of work you’re in â€"training should be required for growth, safety, and employee progression.Some professions have an increased risk of danger, so always make it a top priority to evaluate the area of work. Working with confined spaces can cause a long list of potential hazards for employees; being adequately prepared can be a matter of life or death.High-risk industries such as construction, mining, and transportation require employees to work in confined spaces on a very regular basis. Aconfined spacecan take shape in the form of a chamber, tank, vat, silo, pit, trench, pipe, sewer, flue, well or similar space with an enclosed nature â€" many of which can be found within those high-risk industries.evalIt’s important to outline the risks in your line of work to determine whether your workforce would benefit f rom confined space training, or any additional health and safety training that’s relevant to working in confined spaces.It might sound obvious, but it’s paramount that a workplace understands exactly what a confined space is. Some spaces of work are small, but by law, they might not qualify as a being ‘confined’.A confined space is typically defined by the following characteristics:An area that that limited means of entry and/or exitSomewhere that is large enough for a person to enter and perform a taskSpace is not designed for continuous occupancyIf any of these statements describe the type of work that your employees perform, it could be time to reassess any current methods of training, think about the kind of activities you perform day-to-day that might relate to confined spaces, or implement some important required-by-law training for your workforce. Employees must be aware of the dangers that face them when working within confined spaces â€" equipped with the knowledge on how to look for hazards and how to respond quickly in dangerous situations.OSHATherefore, it’s continuously emphasized that having a fully trained workforce will save lives and better manage the health and safety of themselves and those who work close by, especially in emergency situations.A risk assessment should always be carried out to determine the level of risk when attempting to enter or work within a confined space. Being aware of the potential hazards can help preparations for what kind of dangers you might face, or alternatively if the risk of danger is far too high to attempt to carry out a job.As an example â€" ways of determining great risks can be shown by using a video camera to look before entering or possibly testing the air to see if it’s free from harmful toxins. If you were to then find the quality of air to be damaging, employees will be required to wear adequate breathing apparatus as protection.A thorough and thought-out confined space risk assessment sh ould aim to highlight the following:The duration of the workWhat kind of tasks are to be performed?The training requirements of the employeesWhat kind of physical effort is required?Whether the employees are physically well enoughHow many employees will be involved â€" inside and outside the confined space, and rescue teamsEnvironmental factors should also be considered â€" including, access, lighting, oxygen levels, and evacuation proceduresThese risk assessment steps are aimed towards predicting potential dangers and minimizing risks when a job is carried out. Risk assessments help to carry out a safe system of work and are used within many, if not all, hazardous industries. A method statement can also be carried out prior to a job.evalMethod statements detail exactly how a job will be executed in order, highlighting safety and detailing how a safe system of work will be performed. It will usually give some background information about the job, who will be working at the site and how steps will be implemented throughout the duration.Adequate confined space training will mention how these can be written out in an advantageous way. Method statements aren’t mandatory, but they provide another way of assessing and planning situations.What You Can Learn on a Confined Space Training CourseevalConfined space training courses should offer practical and written assessments for employees to learn about the various hazards and safety procedures that are involved.A well-equipped training center can offer a mobile training unit for practical assessments, giving the opportunity to learn how to properly enter and exit confined spaces.High-risk equipment is often provided to emulate an authentic confined space situation, this allows trainees to experience what it would be like to work within realistic and hazardous conditions. Training courses can range from low risk confined spaces to high risk, tailored to the line of work you are in and what dangers you would face with in the line of work.Managerial training is also vital, as these are the people responsible for the employees entering potential dangers. In this case, you can expect the training to involve the use of environmental monitoring equipment, documentation associated with confined space entry and an emphasis on dealing with hazards.Regulations and standardscan depend on the country the confined space work training will be taking place in. The training course you choose must be compliant with any relevant legislation to be law-abiding and should be in partnership with a recognized examination board.Without these qualifications, you should never attempt to enter this line of work for your safety and others. In the UK, theConfined Space Regulations 1997exists to make sure that there is a safe system of work in place. evalEntering a confined space must be planned beforehand with emergency arrangements in place with resuscitation equipment. In the United States, the previously mentioned OSHA p rovides the guidelines for maintaining safe work environments‘by providing training, outreach, education, and assistance’.Training should be given to everyone that is involved in the process of confined space working.This includes workers who â€"Enter or work within confined spacesIssue entry permitsImplement risk control measuresMonitor conditions while work is being carried outActs as a standby person with those working in a confined spaceBuy equipment for confined space workThis is important to remember, as it’s not just those entering the confined spaces that need to be trained and this could be something that’s forgotten about.The BenefitsThe obvious benefit of providing confined space training is keeping your workforce safe â€" but another key factor in business is saving money.Accidents that happen in the workplace often equate to time off, costing the company’s money in sick pay. Taking the time to train your staff might be costly, to begin with, but spending money on something as worthwhile as employee training is likely to save thousands in the long run.evalTraining your staffencourages leadership and confidence â€" with common sense being one of the most useful health and safety tools it’s important to give employees this kind of recognition. Showing that your employees are valued by enrolling them in training can give them incentives to stay with your company on a long-term basis. Not only this, but legislations, laws and industry requirements often change, meaning regular employee and employer training must be up to date with modern-day business needs.Confined space training is not only taken by businesses; industries such as farming should have a trained workforce as they enter manure pits or water tanks on an often-daily basis. You should think carefully about the tasks your industry carries out either regularly or non-regularly, as it can be easy to forget that yourself and others are entering potentially dangerous confined spaces i f it’s part of a long-standing routine.If any of this sounds like the industry you’re involved in, it could be time to double-check if your workplace training is up to date, whether a refresher course is needed if it’s been a while since you last trained, or maybe your workplace has no training at all â€" make a point to contact your local training provider.

The Black Hole Employee Debacle

The Black Hole Employee Debacle What is a Black Hole Employee? Last week was the first time I heard the term ‘Black Hole’ employee as I was attending a talk given by Tony Hsieh and Fred Mossler of Zappos.com. The term was coined, I believe, by Fred. Little did I know I was likely considered a Black Hole employee by former managers. What is a Black Hole Employee? The term refers to employees who you give a task to and you don’t need to worry about it anymore because the employee will get it done. Managers love Black Hole employees. These individuals make the lives of a manager much easier. The managers don’t need to worry about the task, check-in on the task, etc. It frees up the managers’ time and energy. The Downside of Being a Black Hole Employee I believe at times, though, the Black Hole employees unintentionally get overlooked by their managers. Managers only have so much time in the day. There are employees who do not perform as well, who don’t take care of tasks and who take up much more of a manager’s time. These individuals get the time and attention of their manager because it is necessary for business success. However, carving out time for the Black Hole employee is necessary for business success too. They are already strong contributors, but don’t overlook their goals and ways they can and want to develop in their career. A Big Impact on Your Business While the Black Hole employees are likely very engaged in their work, you will want to spend time with them to make sure they continue to be engaged. The loss of a Black Hole employee will have much more of a negative impact if they decide to leave. While it’s easier to overlook spending time with strong employees, make sure to schedule it into your regular routine. The impact of this time spent could be enormous to the individual and your organization.

Confidence. - When I Grow Up

Confidence. - When I Grow Up Go Confidently print from Sarah Frances Art. Ill admit it and risk the big head you might think I have: Ive never had a lack of confidence. In fact, my mother has said its the #1 thing she wanted to install in my brother and me when we were children, and I think my parents succeeded in spades (although it shows itself differently in my brother, which is a whole different post to be written by someone else). Growing up, I was told I was smart, pretty, talented, special, sweet, and pretty much The Best. As both a child and an adult, Ive had my fair share of failures: careers, relationships, you name it. But the thing isI never really let it stop me from believing that I could do it. Sure, I picked the hardest things to pursue: acting and then, of all things, life coaching. And I knew they were gonna be  hard. And I knew they were gonna take  time. And I knew that not everyone was gonna  understand. And I knew that there was gonna be a chance I could  fail. And I knew that thered be people who thought I was  crazy, a hippy-dippy, flaky, ADD, indecisive or all of the above. But that confidence Ive always had? It gave me permission to discover, to try, to work, and  to believe. I think thats what happens when youre encouraged to dream, and make those dreams come true, throughout your whole life. Even when its not  practical. Even when its not likely. Even when its not responsible. Even when its not traditional. But the experience of chasing those dreams? Of the wins and the failures? Of learning what youre made of, what lights you up, what you trust and what brings you joy? Thats what confidence is made up of, and what Ive found to be the most important way to build the grown-up, passionate, lucrative business of your dreams. See? This video I made last summer proves it: This post is part of the Jump Blog Tour hosted by Stephanie Hall and Ashley Wilhite, the co-creators of Jump: Into your business, your life, your dream, a must-have digital guide for new coaches creatives. They believe in the transformational power of taking the jump and creating a business you love. This all-inclusive eBook will teach you how to start a business, find your niche, brand like a pro, and make the jump with confidence. Find out more here.

Network Engineer Resume Writing Tips - What Can You Do?

Network Engineer Resume Writing Tips - What Can You Do?A network engineer is responsible for making sure that your computer network runs smoothly. They have to be familiar with all of the different pieces of equipment and how to set them up properly to ensure that everything runs as it should. All of these skills are important, but the resume writing part is a large one.It's vital to see if your resume fits into a certain niche. This means that you need to consider what you want in a resume before you begin. Are you the type that likes to think about what you would like in your resume? Or is there another way to write about this important part of your life?There are several different things that you can do in order to make sure that your resume has more than one job listing. One of the first things you can do is to put in a lot of details in the bullet points of your resume.When you make all of the information in your job descriptions as simple as possible, you are giving yourself an extremely important part of your resume. You don't have to go over-the-top to make your details stand out, you just need to focus on the essential parts.It's also a good idea to keep the resume brief. That doesn't mean you should use all of the same format that a job opening uses. There is no reason to have a long resume when the most important information is just two sentences at the top.Your name is the most important thing in the resume, so make sure that you put your name in the first sentence. Most of the other information should follow this basic rule. Also include your contact information, if you have one, and maybe your educational background.By following these tips, you have a good chance of landing that job you've been searching for. If your resume isn't focused enough, then start adding in all of the details you have that you don't know that you can put in there.