It's Performance Review Time!

It's that dreaded time again, and no we're not talking about taxes or anything, we're talking about employee performance reviews! Right about now, we start to see employees fidget, maybe up the productivity ante, or simply drag their feet on hitting that performance “submit” button. Generally, there's a negative aura encapsulating the tried and true performance reviews, but why? There seems to be a lack of transference as to why we do performance reviews and the good that can only come through these exercises.

Performance Review Is Communication

For example, an unbiased and effective performance review should open conversation and communication flow between you and your employees. During the quarter, things can get hectic, time is limited, and communication can be disjointed. Performance reviews are designed to tear down those barriers, allowing honest opinions, suggestions, and comments to increase employee engagement. We all want to feel like our time is valued or that our needs our met on both ends of the table, whether you're an employer or employee. This review gives both sides a chance to openly discuss how to improve this mutual gratification in the workplace.

Performance Review Stirs Competitive Nature

Deep down, we all (maybe secretly or further down than others) crave some competition. We want to feel valuable or successful in whatever we do. In the workplace, the same stands true. Constructive criticism and praise is key to keeping that positive, competitive flame burning. We all strive to better ourselves, but how can we do that without feedback and potential criticism? Performance reviews are the perfect way to ignite your employees' natural competitive nature. Not only are you helping to align your employees' performance with your vision, but you're creating this drive to surpass prior performance.

Encourage your managers and employees to see performance reviews as a mutually beneficial process. Employees get a chance to air out frustrations or to ring praise towards the organization, and employers and managers can better align performance and goals, while strengthening the relational infrastructure. It's not meant to put anyone in the “hot seat” or create tension, but performance reviews should motivate and encourage employees while unifying the goals and initiative between managers and their employees. Perhaps they should rename performance reviews to pep talks, but then the stress relief market would probably sue us for their lack of sales. Oh well, until next time, HR community!

Veterans Day: There's More Work to Be Done

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We got a little excited when we learned, leading up to this past Veterans Day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the past year had seen a decline in the unemployment rate of veterans from 7 to 6.5%. Unfortunately, this is still noticeably higher than the national unemployment rate of 5.8%. Therefore, as the holiday season is just on the horizon, sparking in us a generosity to towards humanity, may we not ignore a deep gratitude toward our veterans. What do we mean? Allow the meaning of this past Veterans Day to resonate with you as you're heavily focused on end of the year recruitment. Veterans are the perfect hires for so many more reasons than you may realize.

We've been in the business of distributing jobs for veterans for quite some time now. So, we tend to hear through the grapevine about the success our customers have had. Constantly, we hear how their new veteran recruits:

• Take initiative: Under high pressure constantly, vets understand the need to start and complete tasks with the least amount of collateral interference.
• Are excellent contributors: Vets are keenly aware of the concept of teamwork and how important that is to complete tasks at hand.
• Maintain excellent attendance: Veterans are trained to perform in any condition and circumstance, and excuses for absence or poor performance are unusual for this group.
• Are technologically savvy: Vets are trusted with some of the most cutting edge technology in the world, with many fields interrelated, training is easier with this group.
• Learn and adapt quickly: In combat situations, there's no time to waste. Veterans are quick learners, light on their feet, and quite flexible to adjust to their environments.

This feedback provides a glimpse into workforces that hire veterans. Our veterans have been unwaveringly deployed into battle for us, so let’s have some faith and show our gratitude by continuing to lower the veteran unemployment rate, and allowing our vets to show us even more of what they're made of in our workplaces.

Source: TLNT

Hiring for Fit and Your Company Culture

As we mentioned last week, there's a lot of talk on the "right" way to recruit. As we also said, there's always going to be a debate, because nobody is the same and we all have opinions based on subjectivity. This next controversial hiring tip follows the same beat. What if we hired based on pure skill level and leadership potential? That is to say, what if we threw "hiring for the right fit," right out the window? Now that's an interesting concept.

Hiring for Fit: Wrong Approach?

Laurie Ruettimann has been known for her controversial standings on HR issues. Her latest opinion criticizes hiring for fit. Personally, we here at SourceCast find this quite intriguing. For an organization to continue functioning, can we completely throw out the notion of finding an employee that can fit into a well-greased machine of a company? The concept seems somewhat flawed, doesn't it?

If We're Not Hiring for Fit...

Suffice it to say, we're not sure what we believe. On one hand, no leader was ever born as a mere follower, someone acknowledging and accepting ideas and truths without question. There's something to be said with employing the "thinkers," those who are always thinking about new ideas, ways to critique and strengthen current practices, and those who seem to just shake things up. However, hiring an entire workforce with their own unique mentalities could cause friction, allowing nothing to get done without painful amounts of idea gridlocks. In our minds, there has to be a single direction, a line of focus to a goal. That means hiring people who mesh into the organization's culture (i.e., the CEO's vision) but also hiring those that have their own vision, who can enhance the company's goals or vision and take leadership to get you there.

Instead of hiring for fit, HR, as Ms. Ruettimann says, "[has] an obligation to advocate on behalf of the cranky, grouchy, unlikeable employees who question everything and don't go along with the flow." HR also has the obligation to advocate on behalf of those passionate, obedient, and loveable employees who also act like worker bees, coercing together beautifully to accomplish goals. Our workforces need both these types of employees. This calls for a shout out to the surge of non-discrimination laws: we don't discriminate in hiring practices or towards those who do or don't follow a company's "culture or fit."

Source: TLNT

4 Tips to Job Descriptions That Attract the Right Talent

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As we sip our morning coffee, scouring our multiple newsfeeds, we see things like "5 tips for landing a job" or maybe "3 ways to set apart your resume," all aiding the jobseeker. However, we don’t see as many tips aiding us employers in areas such as successful job listings, maybe. Why is that? We're people too! So, as we skim through the typical jobseeker-focused tweets and posts, here's a post shouting out to us employers!

4 Simple Job Description No-No's

As you read the tips below, you may think to yourself how simple these are, and sit there idly, waiting for that "ah-ha" moment. Truth is, you may not feel that moment with this post. The reason being, these tips sound so simple and things you've heard before, but we're hoping that posing them from a jobseeker's aspect, you may feel more inclined to turn thought into action with these. Today's tips relate to your job descriptions. This is the first thing a jobseeker is going to see: the portrait of a company they cannot see. Therefore, you need to lure them in given a limited amount of time the potential applicant will give the first few lines of your description.

1. Avoid confusing job titles: As a jobseeker, they most likely know nothing about you, the company, the products, or anything. So, having a non-universal job title does nothing more than read: "This job title is as confusing and complicated as the work you’ll be doing if hired." Not only does it cause applicants to turn away, but things like SEO suffer, because let's face it, Google is as clueless as we are when it sees job titles such as: "Remedy Engineers," (yes, these are real job titles, people).
2. Eliminate grammatical errors: This ranking high up there on our list of hates, along with spiders and snakes. As a jobseeker, this job description looks completely unprofessional and sloppy, leading to the applicant believing that's the type of environment to be expected in said organization. Remember, both the employer and applicant are being evaluated.
3. Please nix jargon or industry buzzwords: Please, please don’t eliminate your chances of a great hire because they read the word "thought-leader, go-getter, robust," and the list goes on in the job description. What do these words even mean? To tell you the truth, they have multiple meanings to different people, and probably not the ones you're intending. So, if you can't clearly define a word without background context, it has no business being in front of an applicant's eyes.
4. No gimmicks: We mean, give them specifics. We can all relate to being let down by a clever marketing ploy using generics. For example, "Big sale" signs that don’t hint at the staggering fine-print or the want ads that say "Hair apprentice," when really you come to find out that you're signing up to apprentice with everything but hair. We've all fallen victim, so to increase application and retention, be very upfront and specific about the duties your new hire is to perform. Plus, this helps strain the worthwhile applicants from the broad, maybe candidates.

While these items almost seem too simple, they are all-too common mistakes that we see in job descriptions daily. While this won't solve all of your recruiting conundrums, the right job description can get the right people, at least, in the door. Stay tuned as we uncover more tips to increase applications and to retain the right employees for your business.

Millennials, the Military, and Denials

What do millennials, the military, and denials all have to do with one another? Well, according to reports from the Pentagon, 71% of military applicants are denied entry into all U.S. branches of the military. Typically, simultaneous military branch cutbacks result in 70% of applicants being weeded out as each branch is allowed to be increasingly more selective. In and of itself, this 1% is not news, however, coupled with the fact that 21% of all military applicants are high school dropouts, contributing to the increased turn away rate, this is indicative of a real problem.

Uneducated Millennials?

However, education isn't the only culprit in the military's selectivity. Things like weight, drug use, psychological abnormalities, and even new tattoo and piercing regulations play a hand in denying young applicants. Gone are the days where the military caught your career fall. Joining the military is as hard as obtaining any job in today's job market. Speaking of job market, along with the difficulties that millennials are finding in joining our military, the job market has also plagued this generation as the hardest hit in noncombatant unemployment. So, what do our youth do in these times of employment crisis?

Advice Regarding Millennials

Undeniably, the first words of wisdom would be to complete the highest education curriculum, abstain from the potentially harmful party scene, and be mindful of career-hindering body art. Also, recognize the untapped resource of our national workforce professionals. These professionals' jobs revolve around finding jobs for others! Hence, employers, reach out to your local employment centers to locate all the top talent that is irrefutably out there, especially our veterans and military applicants. These nationwide employment centers are an answer to increased unemployment rates as well as enable employers to find the most well-equipped talent, locally.

Source: USmilitary.com

Mobile Workforce: The 6 Most Effective Apps to Mobilize Your Workforce

As it's been not so gently massaged into our brains, mobile workforce strategies are the here-and-now way to brand your business, recruit, and telecommute. However, let's face it, most companies want their employees on-site to better communicate and collaborate to perform their tasks (a la Yahoo). Unfortunately, there's this thing called life that sometimes get in the way and we can't always occupy our usual fluorescently-lit cubicle each day. Instead of taking a personal day, what if there was a way to convince your boss or staff that working from home or remotely was just as effective as making a physical appearance in the office?

A Study on Mobile Workforce Apps

Hootsuite did a comparison of a large list of different mobile apps, and came up with their top 7 favorites. After doing some independent research and taking into account our own bias due to utilizing most of these products in the office, we decided to just hop on the bandwagon instead of trailblazing this topic. Below is the list of 6 top-rated apps for you busy bees out there in desperate need of organizing your mobile workforce, or just your own work life.

Evernote: Evernote is like the chest at the foot of your bed. It can store everything: from notes, to pictures, voice recordings, and practically any digital memorandum can be saved in Evernote, accessed by multiple users or even offline. Using tags and notebooks, everything is searchable and easily for later usage.

Hootsuite: In layman's terms, it simply manages all of your social media networks, allowing you to post (now, or schedule for later) to all your media sites simultaneously on one platform. While this alone may not sound compelling, their capacity to track your social media efforts is surely a deciding factor.

UberConference: In the past, meetings and conferences required physical presence, but UberConference makes that a thing of the past. UberConference uses your phone's contact list as a way to select attendees, and the software emails, calls, or texts the attendees to accept the meeting. Everyone is displayed onscreen, so you get the physical presence, remotely. Need we say more?

Trello: If you're a fan of Scrum and the Agile methodology, you need Trello. With this organizational software, visually show tasks on a digital board; assign team members, deadlines, and priority levels to specific tasks; show progress and communicate with Trello members to perform tasks more efficiently.

Dropbox: All of your files. In the cloud. And you can access them offline via multiple devices. Your hard drive is literally able to go wherever you go.

Brewster: Think of your smartphone's address book where contact information from your social media merges. Instead of banging your head against the wall after you left your client's contact information at work, rely on Brewster. It merges your contacts onto a single platform, pulling information from social media, email, and your personal address book. Finally, you don't need to drag every device and notepad with you when you want to telecommute.

With these helpful mobile apps, telecommuting can slowly lose the negative connotation that it's been plagued with for so long. Finally, we live in an age where the mobile workforce is attainable. Stay tuned for next week where we continue our “mobile-first focus” and discuss recruiting based on your telecommuting policies.