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The top line on your income statement indicates how much your sales were at a particular period in time.  That figure is important to note as your expenses get deducted from your sales to calculate profit. By saving on expenses you will only be able to increase your profit up to a point.  But by increasing your sales there is no limit to where you can grow your business! How do you increase…

Why You Should Be Recruiting Year Round The job market has changed. There are numerous ways to advertise for available positions, but less skilled workers to recruit. Social media has become an essential part of the hiring process. However, even with technology to make things easier, we are busier than ever. Most businesses have limited time to engage in the fast-paced sphere of technology to utilize…

We're very happy to be teamed up with the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association and the Canadian Association of Mold Makers to help them become great at hiring. They explain it better than I ever could in their press release: APMA is pleased to welcome The Canadian Association of Mold Makers (CAMM) to their highly successful Auto HR program.  The APMA Auto HR System, launched in March 2013…

How many times have you told a job candidate that you'll "keep their resume on file"? Pretty much every time you contact them, right? How many times have you actually followed through with that? Not many, right? You had good reason to not hire them, too; they lacked the right education or didn't have the right experience or scored lower on their pre employment test than other candidates. You just had…

While surfing the internet, I came across the site woot.com. As I usually do, I checked out their Careers page to see how they do things (hint: this is how you get those passive job seekers to apply to your openings). *why this picture? Woot sells shirts, this was funny and the only other relevant image was romance novel and I wasn't going to have that on my search history I was truly blown…

By Jeff DeWolf - April 2, 2013 - Humble Leadership, Leadership, Organizational Health As part of my planning for an upcoming leadership book called Pretender – Confessions of a Crappy Leader, I was reminded of a behaviour that’s all too common among those claiming the mantle of leadership: problem avoidance.   Leadership Role: Chief…

Life’s too short to put up with a world class horse’s, uh, petute… You know the type. Work jerks. Tyrants. Aggressive types with little regard for the people around them. These are the ones that get stressed and snap at others. These types justify rudeness and abuse if customer demands or financial pressure begins to build. Whether for apparent politically acceptable reasons or…

I'm seeing a lot of buzz around articles from USA Today and CBS News about how the resume as we know it is dead (or very near death). Let me quickly address the sensationalism behind all of this and then we'll get practical.  The Sensationalism The stories being covered are for tech and marketing positions. Basically positions where the person will live on social networks,…

Information skews our perspective. Typically this is a good thing—the more information you have about something the more complete your perspective—but there's also a downside. Because it's so easy to find out about what other companies and people are doing—their success, their stories, the reports they publish—it's easy to get caught up in that world and think it's normative.…

Your company culture – its philosophy, values, behavior, dress codes, and unique style and policies as a company – can be both a positive and engaging element in your efforts to recruit new employees. New hires that fit well within your company culture are more likely to stay with the company longer and experience greater employee satisfaction. While your average background check will…

Every office has it. That one person who is consistently late for everything. A recent survey by CareerBuilder indicates that over a quarter of workers admit to being late at least once a week. 16% are late once a week or more. Traffic, children, and "broken" alarm clocks aside; what were some of the more interesting reasons for individuals being late? Let's look at the top 9: Employee dropped…

We’ve written before about the need for sleep and paying attention to hours worked in a week. Today’s post comes from Safety Services Company and looks at some of the risks of working tired. Being tired at work is just not the way life has to be, and there is a lot more to fix it than grab an extra-large cup of coffee. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) points out…

Have you ever tried to motivate employees but found that giving away free iPods or bonus vacation days just isn't paying off? You're not alone. Most employers struggle with how to motivate employees with limited to no budget. I recently watched a TEDx video (below) featuring Adam Grant, a tenured Wharton management professor (PhD, University of Michigan; BA, Harvard University). He gave a fascinating…

Ever have a friend that people naturally gravitate towards? No matter what the situation is, people in a room will naturally form a circle around this person and soak up everything they say. Chances are, that person was a great storyteller. A good friend of mine, Dave, is one such person in my life. I find myself talking less and really taking things in when he’s around. The guy just knows how…

I am often asked about best practice strategy for advertising your job postings online using the Prevue Applicant Tracking System (ATS), and it’s not necessarily as black and white as one may think. With thousands of free and paid online job boards across the globe, and social media marketing making the passive job pool more accessible than ever before, technology like the ATS Pro has allowed…

Prevue Assessments will be celebrating their 20th anniversary in 2014. In that time we’ve seen a lot of things change and a lot stay the same. The constant has been the Assessments themselves. How and what we measure has stayed the same. The delivery method has been what’s changed the most. What started as pencil and paper tests has now evolved to a fluid online delivery system. But…

A few articles have popped up that are trying to present Pre-Employment Tests as discriminatory and unfair, but completely miss the actual story at hand. Essentially, the ‘story’ is that Ms. Vicky Sandy tried to apply for a cashier job at Kroger Co., was given a pre-employment test, and was ultimately turned down for the job because she received a score of 40% for her ability to communicate…

Apparently many years ago, at FEDEX, they implemented what turned out to be a foolproof method to ensure 100% timely performance review participation. To set the stage, please recognize that at FEDEX, the roles and responsibilities of Managers were very clearly defined … developing/appraising their assigned employees was one of their primary duties for which they were responsible. At the time,…

The following was posted by a friend of mine on facebook recently (Thanks Erin) - my imediate thoughts were how true.    The hardest interview question I've ever been asked was not a question at all, but a directive.Tell me about yourself.Considering myself is a subject on which I'm fairly well-versed (and considering telling someone about yourself is sort of the WHOLE POINT of an…

Mike - I sincerely hope that Phil meant the executive team members! Most CEOs I know really don’t a great handle on their behavioral weakness and strengths when hiring people as leaders on their teams. Even if they do, they still really have to make an effort not to hire mini-me's. Like hires like. This role for a CEO is a HUGE mistake in the ET. If you charge the CEO with recruiting and…