Attracting Talent Over the Christmas Period

Attracting Talent Over the Christmas Period Christmas and the New Year can be notorious for low candidate numbers, as jobseekers look to take some time off the festive season. Permanent workers may be hesitant to launch into a new job so close to the end of the year, while temporary workers may reject work so they can spend an extended period with their families and friends. However, for recruiters, it remains a busy time of year. Job numbers continue to increase, as businesses still need staff throughout the period. It’s also the ideal time to check in with candidates, as January tends to be the busiest time of the year in terms of market movement. So how do you satisfy this demand? Finding candidates in the unlikeliest of places can be made easier with a few simple strategies: Networking and advocacy Every recruiter worth their salt should know the importance of networking. At no time of year is this more obvious than at Christmas, when having a strong contact list can make the difference between filling a role and not. Connections can provide referrals, suggestions and insights and possibly give you the headstart you need over the next few months. Christmas parties and Christmas candidate networking events are just two of the ways you can build and expand your network â€" you never know who you might meet! Employee advocacy can also prove incredibly effective in reaching candidates you might not otherwise be able to access. Research has shown that potential employees are much more likely to trust the reviews of a company when they’re written by existing employees, family or friends, so encouraging existing candidates to spread the word could result in a better-quality talent pool. 1 To do this, consider doubling the referral fee or incentive for existing candidates for the next few weeks, host a social media competition or introduce an initiative to encourage potential candidates to interview before the end of the year. Branding If a candidate recognises and appreciates your brand, they are more likely to approach you for work opportunities. Therefore, building a positive and established voice in the market will make it easier to attract talent and put you above competitors when contending for a candidate’s time. What’s more, with limited resources, it may be time to tap into your database of passive candidates. If your brand catches their eye, approaching them for potential opportunities could be a lot easier. It’s also worth remembering that this isn’t a Christmas-specific activity â€" keeping active in the industry is a year-round initiative and helps to build credibility. Social media 17% of jobseekers now use social media to find a new role2, so advertising across the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn could prove incredibly beneficial when looking to build a consistent talent pool for the holidays. These platforms have been shown to be incredibly useful for attracting passive candidates in particular, with 80% of employers noting that social recruiting helps them reach those that aren’t actively looking3. Think about creating a hashtag, using images and scheduling posts for maximum engagement. However, before embarking on your social media strategy, it’s also worth investing time in ensuring your social media accounts are up to date â€" there would be nothing worse than turning candidates off with inconsistent information or branding. It’s not just social media that can help. Consider using your external communications, including emails and blogs, to encourage candidates to apply over the festive season. Even if they aren’t available for December, it places your database in good stead for the January rush. Increasing the volume of targeted mail merge emails is also worth considering â€" you’ll be reaching right into their inbox with specific roles, encouraging applications. Go mobile Mobile recruitment continues to be one of the more pressing issues in the industry. With 45% of jobseekers searching for jobs daily on their mobile, and 89% thinking mobiles play a crucial role in the job hunting process4, it’s become an incredibly effective way to find new talent. It’s essential to make sure your careers pages are mobile-friendly and any relevant forms are optimized for the smaller devices. The easier it is for candidates to apply for a role, the better! About the author:  David Morel  is the CEO/Founder of  Tiger Recruitment, one of London’s leading secretarial/administrative recruitment agencies. David founded Tiger in 2001 and has written extensively in the press and wider media advising both employers and job seekers on best recruitment practice.

5 Steps to Starting a Legally Savvy Business - Classy Career Girl

5 Steps to Starting a Legally Savvy Business Starting an online business and becoming an entrepreneur is an exciting decision. As you are getting started, one thing to figure out ASAP are the legal components of your business to make sure you are getting started on the right foot. Once you make the decision to go for it, here are my top 5 tips to creating a legally savvy business. 5 Steps to Starting a Legally Savvy Business 1. Check The Name of Your Business On USPTO and Secretary of State Website As soon as you come up with your business name, you need to make sure no one else is already using it! To do this, look up your state’s business directory on the Secretary of State website (find with a quick internet search) and search the name you want to use. Next, search the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Electronic Search System (an internet search of “TESS” will bring this up) to make sure no one else has registered a trademark with the same â€" or similar â€" name. Once you confirm no one else is currently using this business name, you should be in the clear to move forward. 2. Set Up Your Business Entity Next, you’ll want to decide how to structure your business for legal and tax purposes: think about the vision for your company, and what you want it to look like. Within the U.S., the two most popular business structures for an online company are the Sole Proprietorship and the Limited Liability Company (LLC). The primary differences include costs and startup fees, and whether you want your business to operate as a separate legal entity (in which case, the LLC may be the best choice), or if you are ok with your business being one in the same with your personal assets (in which case, the sole proprietorship may work best). 3. Get Your Website Documents In Order You likely have (or will soon have) a website that allows visitors to enter personal information to “opt-in” to your newsletter or freebie. Once you allow this interactive feature, your website needs a Privacy Policy to be compliant with privacy laws. This document will explain how you collect, store, and use others’ personal information, and how members can remove themselves from your list. You will also want a Disclaimer on your site, advising visitors that the content on your site is meant for educational and information purposes, and does not take the place of consulting with a professional regarding their personal financial, health, or other situation. This can also limit your liability should someone misunderstand something on your website and have it affect them negatively. Lastly, you’ll want Terms and Conditions on your website, to lay out the ground rules for those visiting your website. This is where you will create guidelines to protect your content, provide additional limitations of liability, ensure any dispute regarding your website is resolved within your state, and more. [RELATED: The First 4 Hires For Your New Business] 4. Get Your Client Agreement In Order Once you start working with clients, you’ll need a solid Client Agreement that addresses the specific program this client has purchased and all relevant details, as well as information regarding payment, refunds, protection of content the client receives, dispute resolution, and other similar provisions. The purpose of this agreement is to ensure both you and your clients expectations align. The last thing you want is for a client to become dissatisfied with a program or service because s/he didn’t understand the program or misunderstood what you provide. If you are running a group program or have passive digital products for sale, you’ll want Terms of Use for each program. This document is located at checkout, next to a box that says something like “by clicking this box, I agree to the Terms of Use” that your customer will click prior to completing her purchase. This document is similar to the client agreement and allows the customer to agree to your terms before purchasing, rather than signing an individual client agreement. 5. Scaling Successfully: Releases and Waivers For Events and Testimonials At some point, you may want to expand your business model into hosting live events, retreats, and featuring testimonials on your website to show off client success! These are all wonderful additions to your business, but make sure you have participants or those who create testimonials sign a release prior to participating. This absolves you of liability and ensures you own the content/testimonial they provide.

Staying Personal While Expanding Your Business - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Staying Personal While Expanding Your Business - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to build a business large enough that they cannot manage every aspect of it themselves. For the few people that do succeed at doing this, however, there are unexpected challenges. For starters, the larger your business is, the more difficult it is to maintain a personal touch. Large companies quickly acquire an impersonal feel. Remain as Involved as Possible As your business grows, you might start feeling tempted to offload all management activities onto other people. Perhaps you want to spend more of your time on the creative, stimulating aspects of your business and less time on mundane management activities. There is nothing wrong with this, but you need to be careful to stay involved on some level with managing your company’s day-to-day operations. This will help preserve your personal touch and prevent the dilution of your personal brand. Even doing something as small as consulting regularly with management can help you preserve some of the more personal aspects of your business. It also helps if you can make time to interact regularly with all your business’ employees and some of your customers. The more time you spend with customers, the more they will feel a personal connection to you. Ignite Word-of-Mouth Marketing Pulling off effective word-of-mouth marketing is not as easy as it might seem, but there are few other advertising approaches that will enhance and preserve your personal brand as well. Word-of-mouth marketing is, quite simply, a more personal marketing method than almost any other. While television and print ads may ultimately reach greater numbers of people, they lack the personal element that word-of-mouth marketing has. One positive side effect of this is that customers acquired through word-of-mouth marketing tend to be more loyal than customers acquired through other types of marketing efforts. Send Personal Emails Think back to a time when you received a personal email from a company you had just purchased a product or service from. How did you feel? If you are like most people, you must have felt touched by the personal nature of the email. Nothing turns people off like computer-generated emails. Customers want to feel that the owner of a business they are patronizing cares about them personally. It’s true that sending personal emails can be very time consuming. Very few CEOs of large companies bother sending personal emails to customers. (Steve Jobs was a notable exception). But personalized emails have such a positive impact on customer retention that it is worth your time to send out a few on a regular basis. Remember Customers’ Names Most people are delighted to have their names remembered. Forgetting someone’s name always causes at least a small blow to their ego. If you want to maintain your business’ personalized feel, you need to make a regular effort to remember the names of your business’ customers. Of course, if your business has a lot of customers, this might not be easy. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. If you regularly make an effort to remember names, you will do a lot better than most people (many of whom make almost no effort). With time, you can even hope to improve your ability to remember names. Practicing remembering names will gradually strengthen your ability to memorize names. Fortunately, with a little bit of effort (and the help of a few strategies), it is possible to grow your business without making it into an impersonal corporation.

The Attractiveness Of Courage - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

The Attractiveness Of Courage - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career You surely must know by now that there are certain realities upon which you can rely. One such reality is that life is not an endless succession of forward progress. While you may enjoy success, at some point or another you will also encounter frustrating challenges and disappointing setbacks. You may have experienced a missed promotion. On the other hand, you may have lost a key client. Additionally, you may have had a relationship that abruptly ended for no apparent reason. Whatever the situation, you have experienced frustrating challenges and disappointing setbacks. It is during these moments of hardship that you have your greatest opportunity to build on your brand. When you stare down these frustrating challenges and disappointing setbacks with an attitude of determination, you establish yourself as courageous and draw others toward you. People cannot help but want to know, like, and trust you more because of this mind-set. Any challenge gives you three choices When you meet with frustrating challenges and disappointing setbacks, life presents you with three choices. You can completely withdraw and essentially quit, but would you want to associate with that type of person? The answer is probably “no.” You are no different from most people â€" they are not interested in associating with those who have given up or disengaged in some manner. On the other hand, when you meet with frustrating challenges and disappointing setbacks, you can choose to become jaded and bitter. Again, do you want to associate with this type of person? The answer is probably a resounding “no.” You have no interest in having the toxic attitude of someone else burden you, no matter how they came into it. Finally, when you meet with frustrating challenges and disappointing setbacks, you can choose to resolve that you will find a way to overcome and then adopt the actions to make that happen. Do you want to associate with this type of person? Absolutely. Hardship equals brand building opportunity There is little question that people love an underdog. Further, they cannot help but rally around one who is battling to overcome some sort of setback or hardship. By demonstrating an attitude of courageous determination, you cast yourself in this light. Others want to draw from this strength and they hope to take inspiration from it. In any event, they cannot help but want to get to know you better and cannot help but want to get to like you more. Author: Frank Agin is the founder and president of AmSpirit Business Connections. In addition, Frank is the author of Foundational Networking: Building Know, Like and Trust To Create A Lifetime of Extraordinary Success and the co-author of LinkedWorking: Generating Success on the World’s Largest Professional Networking Website and The Champion: Finding the Most Valuable Person in Your Network.

4 things nobody told you about what happens after graduating - Debut

4 things nobody told you about what happens after graduating - Debut University will probably be one of the best times of our lives. Its the place where we make friends, join societies, go on adventures, travel the world, and party.  ??  We will forever remember the ear-to-ear smiles on our graduation day, holding our certificates and throwing our mortarboards for our graduation photos, knowing that we have made our parents and ourselves proud to have come so far.  ?? However, now that youve finally graduated university, its inevitable that youll be swamped with questions from your parents and friends about what your plans are. If you havent quite entered that next stage of #adulthood yet (which is totally fine, there is 100% no rush to find a graduate job straight away), these are 4 things you should probably be aware of. Welcome to student debt, tax and mortgages This is it. University is officially over. No more crazy parties, midnight pizza feasts, and the independence of living far away from home. To many, post-university life is often challenging yet exciting. However, graduating also means facing impending adult life which involves paying back student debts, as well as income tax and rent. And dont forget those overdrafts too. According to The Guardian, student loan debt has risen to more than £100 billion in 2017, with each graduate having an average student debt of £32,220. And while this is an alarming figure, if you can manage to work out exactly how much youll be repaying a month, its not as scary as it seems.  You basically pay back 9% of whatever you earn over £21,000. So if you earn £25,000 youll pay back £30 a month which is probably not much more than you pay for your phone bill.   That being said, its still important that you learn how to budget and make sure you dont waste your hard-earned salary on pizza and pints like at uni.  Apps like YNAB (free for 1 month) or Monzo (free) are incredibly helpful for keeping track of your spending habits. Be prepared to live at home Due to sky-high rent prices (especially in cities like London) and a general lack of funds, many graduates end up moving back in with their parents after graduating.  Living at home at the age of 21 can be challenging and restrictive, especially with ‘helicopter parents’ and the lack of personal space. If you want to be able to afford those high rent prices, saving money is super important.  And on the bright side, living at home will help you to do just that, depending on how much board you have to pay and whether your parents are prepared to do the food shopping every week.   Work-life balance myth or reality? Work-life balance is a bit of a buzzword these days, with more and more companies emphasising how they encourage it in their employees. And while many jobs will enable employees to achieve this, with 9-5 working hours, socials on the weekend and casual Fridays, some still think work-life balance is an urban myth. If  a company is paying you a hefty amount of money, do employees feel obliged to stay later than 5pm?    Forbes contributor Meghan Bio believes the work-life balance is a ‘fallacy’ and is not possible to achieve in reality. Theres no denying that in adulthood work becomes a huge part of your life and it is often difficult to establish a clear divide between work and personal life. Thats why its so important to (if possible) find a job that is not only meaningful but enjoyable.   Butyoull still have fun! It can seem like adulthood is all grim and stressful, with an ever increasing amount of responsibilities. However, graduate life can still be fun, especially when youre able to find your own passion or a job that you enjoy. And if youre one of the many students who have yet to find a graduate job, its not the end of the world. There are plenty of productive and fun things you can do after graduating university  that will enrich your life and expand your knowledge and horizon.  A working holiday is a great opportunity to take a break and explore new cultures and opportunities. Volunteering is socially productive and will help you to establish new networks that may eventually help you with finding a job. In any case, being a graduate is another stage of your life which you should embrace with open arms, both for the challenges it brings and the potential for new adventures.   Connect with Debut on  Facebook,  Twitter,  and  LinkedIn  for more careers insights.