4 Ways to Create a Successful Graduate Scheme in Your Business

4 Ways to Create a Successful Graduate Scheme in Your Business Graduate schemes play a pivotal in many of today’s organizations, with employers increasing the number of graduate roles in their companies by nearly five percent in 2017 alone. This trend suggests employers are realizing the huge business value qualified young professionals can bring to an organization, as they grow to become our future leaders. In light of such findings, it’s also clear attracting and retaining top talent is becoming increasingly more competitive and a key question being asked by organizations is: “How can we create a successful programme ensuring we are top of the list of graduate talent?” 1. Be targeted Business leaders should work closely with their HR teams to differentiate job packages for ambitious graduates. To be competitive, they need to be distinctive, from what you would normally offer a potential candidate who already has a few years’ experience under their belt. Millennials look at a job package as a whole, and it’s about more than just the money. They place high-value on holistic well-being and work-life balance, so make sure your offer includes details on company health insurance, flexible working, and greater holiday allowance. Building strong connections with universities is fundamental to promoting a successful graduate scheme. Partnering with them closely will provide insights on the most relevant students to target and the best university fairs for your company to attend. Career fairs and scheme talks will give you face-to-face time with the students most interested in your business. This allows you to build personal connections, giving a better idea of whether someone is a good fit for your team. Additionally, having universities certify your scheme will boost your credibility. 2. Give graduates the experience they desire Offering experiences which your competitors can’t, instantly mean you stand out from the crowd. It may be this is through a rotational system, which offers the chance to “try before you buy” and test run certain positions. Rotational schemes may seem like a lot of effort to organize, but the long-term benefits can make up for this. By allowing graduates to get a feel for different roles they can understand what interests them most and where their skills lie. Or you could provide graduates with greater levels of involvement and make them accountable for certain projects, new research or launch one of the latest products. This is all great experience which might not be readily offered elsewhere. You must be mindful though. A ‘sink or swim’ approach rarely works in business and can leave new recruits feeling demoralized and reluctant to take on future projects. While you want graduates to experience responsibility and creative freedom, you must also provide enough guidance and support to help them thrive. Providing them with a mentor who is separate from their day-to-day manager will give graduates opportunities to raise concerns and identify ways to progress, while still allowing them to use their newly acquired skills in practice. 3. Make it cost-effective Investing large sums into programmes does not always guarantee success. To achieve the best ROI, you must develop schemes which nurture employees and encourage them to stay with the company long after it ends. Even if you can’t afford to offer high salaries, there are ways around this to make you just as appealing as larger corporate competitors. Younger employees seek more flexibility and control over their benefits. They’re also strongly interested in programmes including support for stress and promoting physical health. In response to this, you could provide more choice to appeal to these needs. Sparking wellness-related challenges, with a fun and friendly approach can be an effective and inexpensive way to appeal to younger generations in the workplace. The craze for fitness trackers has been well noted by larger corporations, but smaller businesses can also benefit from this trend without a huge financial investment. The mobile app Walkingspree promotes fitness aspirations encouraging people to reach step goals, either individually or as part of a group. It works by using employees’ personal fitness trackers, so it means businesses don’t have to shell out for costly gadgets. You can offer health and fitness prizes for top job performances every quarter or six months such as free sportswear, a set of PT sessions or massages to drive business performance and healthy behavior. Again, you don’t need big budgets to do this in order to appeal to graduates. 4. Be mindful of recruitment processes New research has found evidence data-driven recruitment algorithms have the potential to learn prejudices. Unless carefully monitored, their patterns can even detect patterns of underrepresentation and reproduce them. So how can you ensure online graduate screening is accurate and you’re not missing out on strong candidates? Firstly, invest budget on a reliable, digital platform. For example; algorithm-driven recruitment platform Headstart matches graduates to job opportunities based on psychometrics and mutual needs rather than which university they attended. Make sure you include a face-to-face meeting early in the interview process. Even if a candidate does not perform well in an online test or telephone interview, if their CV stands out, it’s still worth meeting them. In person, they might show raw talent which just requires a bit of training and support for them to shine. Perhaps try widening the pool from which your graduates are sourced. Many companies typically go back to the same handful of universities, meaning they end up hiring from the same socio-economic backgrounds. This potentially creates an environment lacking diversity of thought, which can be detrimental to business. To create a more diverse workplace,  companies like Deloitte have started implementing “university-blind interviewing”  ensuring whoever is recruiting isn’t unconsciously or consciously favoring a person who attended a certain university. Graduates have huge untapped potential and can be an asset if their skills are harnessed intelligently. Business leaders must provide graduates with the freedom to think for themselves and combine this with enough support to help them learn and thrive. About the author: Emma Davidson is the Area Retail Manager for Express, a top five graduate employer amongst SMEs in the  UK and voted top graduate employer in the Consumer Goods Industry.  

Get Your Commodity Pizza Box Here - No Brand Name Included - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Get Your Commodity Pizza Box Here - No Brand Name Included - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Selecting a pizza place When it comes to deciding where to eat pizza, there are two things that happen: 1) People will make a quick decision based on whats available at the time or what they are near. For example, if Im driving on the main street of Waltham and get hungry, I probably wont drive 10 miles to get a slice of pizza. 2) People go online, find a phone number and order delivery to their house, dorm, condo or apartment. In both situations, there is emphasis placed on convenience, but if the quality isnt there, people would rather drive longer to find something they like. Have you ever been with your friend and said nah, lets go somewhere else? The product I just got home from a nearby pizza place and looked at the box. I started to think a lot about the box before, during and after I ate the entire pizza (I can eat a lot, its a family trait). This examination is what happens when you become crazy about branding. To no surprise, the pizza box had no brand on it. It didnt say Waltham Pizza. There were no logos or catch phrases. Nothing! I could have gotten this pizza from a Colorado pizza place and no one would know the difference. Without the brand you cant stand out! The brand Brand name: Waltham Pizza Logo: See right Target audience: Citizens living in or around Waltham, MA Price: The cheapest in all of Waltham at $7.95 Quality: Average Website: www.walthampizza.com Brand analysis There is a lot of competition. There is a lot of competition in Waltham for pizza places, such as Upper Crust (my favorite), Dominos Pizza (a known entity with many franchises), Bertuccis (where isnt there one?), Unos, Annas Pizza House, and many more. Wherever you turn around here you can get pizza. The goal of each of these places is to attract more customers, possibly steal from the competition in doing so. In order to do this, they must stand out. They need to be recognized for something AND be remembered. A lost opportunity. Pizza places need to be top-of-mind in this area. When you think of pizza in Waltham, you need to think of Waltham Pizza. If not, it doesnt exist in your mind and youll turn elsewhere for hunger relief. A branded pizza box reminds people where they got it from. If I had 30 friends over, who lived in Waltham, they would notice the branded pizza boxes and the likelihood they would purchase from Waltham Pizza would increase substantially. Their website. When you go to their website, you hear Thats amore by Dean Martin, which is an Italian song that seems to be used by many pizza places. Their FAQs consists of fast facts that are very general, such as 93% of Americans consume at least one pizza each month. Honestly, how is that going to make me buy a pizza there instead of another place? Beats me. When you first enter their flash website, it says welcome to Waltham Pizza in an Italian voice yet when you walk into the store, no one has an accent or is even from Italy. Also, as a web guru, I dont like how they have someones voice shouting menu and specials as your mouse hovers over a link. Personal branding takeaways 1) Your offline and online presence must be consistent. The appearance and personality of what I see on your website should be legitimate or I will question you, as will everyone else. 2) Everything you produce should be self-branded. Dont leave a pizza box without your name on it if you want to build a brand instead of a commodity. This goes for anything. Your branded so everything you touch should contain your brand name. 3) Build brand to build premium. Do you want to charge companies the bare minimum for hiring your brand? If you are an average candidate, then dont expect much. In this world, you get what you pay for. Just like with the pizza, you need to be worthy of a higher premium price. 4) Stand out for survival. When there is a lot of people to choose from, that makes things very difficult. You need to work harder, smarter and be better than everyone else. When you do that, you will be sought after, rather than just another Waltham pizza place.

Ramit Says What do you NOT care about spending money on

Ramit Says What do you NOT care about spending money on By, Nicole Crimaldi If youre like most twentysomething females, balancing your personal finances is sometimes a tough job.   Not only do we have the normal expenses of food, rent and utilities,we have the temptation of fabulous beauty and fashion  products looming over our heads.   In Ramit Sethis book, I Will Teach You to be Rich, there is a section  about identifying what you value so you can allocate your funds properly in order to afford it.   Well lets be honest, its so easy to come up with things to spend money on.   I could name a 25 things I value within 10 seconds.   For example,  living in a safe AND fun neighborhood in downtown Chicago, having my car in the city, having a dog, getting my hair colored, spending time with friends outside of our apartments (ok, ok- going to bars and restaurants), just to name a few. In Ramits July 28th, 2009  blog post, he asks: What do you NOT care about spending money on? What a simple question that is so tough to answer! When reading the comments, a lot of people said that they didnt care about beauty products, manis/pedis, spa treatments, or going out to bars.   Ouch.   Why do I have a feeling so many of these readers were men?   As women, we can easily get caught up in the temptation of new shoes, new clothes, a trip to Sephora, and a new look at the hair salon. This is also why we should identify what we DONT care about spending money on so we can afford to color those dark roots. What could  YOU give up in your budget?

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese How to Survive Working for a Jerk

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese How to Survive Working for a Jerk I used to have a boss I detested so much I used to envision her falling down a manhole -- not to kill her, but just injure her enough to put her in the hospital long enough for me to find another job.After I interviewed Kathi Elster and Katherine Crowley for my Gannett column, I realized I wasn't alone in feeling so desperate when it comes to a bad boss. Here's the column:There is probably nothing that impacts the quality of a job like a boss. Get a good manager, and you like going to work every day. Have a bad boss, and you dont even want to get out of bed in the morning.If youve ever had a bad boss, you often dream of how to get out working for a jerk, ranging from winning the lottery to getting a better job somewhere else. But in this job market? Youre feeling a bit desperate.People who are employed right now and work for a bad boss know they cant immediately leave, because they know jobs are hard to come by, says Kathi Elster, a business strategist and consultant. Its frustrating and depressing for them.Elster spends a lot of time listening to people gripe about their bosses, along with her partner in K Squared Enterprises in New York, psychotherapist Katherine Crowley. They recently put together some strategies for helping employees manage their boss called Working for You Isnt Working for Me, (Portfolio, $25.95).The fact is, you need to manage the relationship, Crowley says. People often feel they dont have power, and feel victimized. But you do have power in this relationship.Adds Elster: The key is to manage yourself to minimize your bosss behavior on you.In the book, Elster and Crowley say there are four keys to improving a bad boss relationship:1. Detect. You first must identify exactly what it is that drives you bonkers in a bad boss, such as verbal attacks or unwarranted criticism. Once you can detect it, the authors say, you can correct it.2. Detach. By learning to see the boss for who he is, and educating yourself on how not to react so strongly to the annoying behavior, then youll be able to eliminate the stress a bad boss brings to all areas of your life.3. Depersonalize. No matter how miserable a boss may make you, youre not the first person to go through this and you must realize its not about you, the authors say. By understanding the bosss behavior existed long before you arrived on the scene and that one of the reasons it is so upsetting to you is because its triggering your worst fears, then you can learn to view the behavior more objectively.4. Deal: This involves creating a customized plan so that when the boss acts out, you can defend yourself and take a more objective and constructive approach to your job and career, they say.Crowley says that the bad economy may be triggering even more bad boss behavior, as the stress only emphasizes poor management skills. In other words, the over-controlling or checked out boss may become even more so, increasing worker tension.The authors note that employees typically will try to cope with bad boss behavior with tactics that dont work such as: avoiding the boss at all costs; sulking; becoming full of self-doubt; obsessing about how to handle the boss; wishing for the bosss demise; gloating over the bosss behavior; bad-mouthing the boss; confronting an annoying manager; retaliating; or giving the boss the silent treatment.But employees need to understand that unless they take steps to resolve problems with a boss in a more constructive way, they may continue to have problems no matter where they work, Crowley says.People tend to attract recurring situations unless they learn to resolve them, Crowley says. Sometimes bad boss behavior feels familiar its like youre drawn to that kind of person.Elster notes that employees should also learn to take back their power in a difficult situation by taking care of themselves physically. She recommends coping with the stress by exercising, eating right, spending time with supportive family and friends, doing enjo yable activities and learning relaxation breathing for tough times.How do you deal with a bad boss?Social Bookmarking

Has Your Network Aged Out and Abandoned You [Updated] - Career Pivot

Has Your Network Aged Out and Abandoned You [Updated] - Career Pivot Has Your Network Aged Out? Copyright: dolgachov / 123RF Stock Photo I am hearing over and over again about how people’s networks have “aged out”. I was working on a brand story with one of the members of the new Career Pivot community (look to hear a lot more about this in the coming weeks) who told me that new positions always came to her. She never needed to look because her mentors and other leaders were always looking out for her. What has happened to her in her 60s is her network has aged out. The people who had her back for so many years have either retired, are not in a position of power, or are in the same boat she is in â€" underemployed or unemployed. This post was originally published in October of 2017 and was updated in January of 2020. When she was telling me the story of her career, it was pretty obvious that she did nothing to cultivate or care for the network. Rather, it was always there for her and she never paid attention to it. On the other hand, she is mentoring a lot of young professionals and her connection to them is strong; but they are not nearly as influentialas the people who had mentored her over the years. Her network has aged out and left her abandoned. Has Your Network Has Retired or Aged Out? I had a similar discussion with a gentleman who is now in his late 60s. He was forced into retirement and has since formed a consulting group with 5 or 6 of his former colleagues. Throughout his career, opportunities just came to him through his network. He never really needed to find work and hedid little to cultivate his network or even grow his network. He did not see the need to grow his network as it was feeding him and his family just fine. That was until he hit his 60s â€" and his network either retired, became unemployed, was downsized, or passed away. His contacts within his industry greatly diminished. It did not help that he was on the manufacturing side of the business, which had been shipped offshore for cost savings. He now needs to reinvigorate his network but this is not something he is comfortable doing. At the same time, he is not social media savvy. Listen to the most recent episode His network has aged out and left him abandoned. Strategically Examine Your Network For those of us in the 2nd half of life, our next job will come through a relationship. That relationship may be an existing one, a dormant one that you will reinvigorate (weak ties), or a new relationship. Youshould carefully examine your existing relationships or network. How many are of a similar age? How many are much older? Will they still be around to assist you in 10 years? Zero in on those who are connectors.Connectors are those people who know lots of people and enjoy making connections. If you were let go from your job today, who could you depend on to help you? Will those same people be in a position to help you in 10-15 years? If not, you need to replace them NOW! You want to examine your network NOW to see how much of it will age out. Industry Shifting? How stable is the industry where you are currently working? If you are in a shrinking or dying industry now is the time to make the shift. I want you to look at your industry through two different lenses. Automation, AI or Robots â€" Is your industry and skill set replaceable and vulnerable to automation? Creative Destruction â€" Will creative destruction either eliminate or greatly shrink your industry. Automation, AI or robots will continue to break down and eliminate jobs. I recently had a client interview with a company that will be using deep learning to replace thousands of service personnel. The chatbot they were developing will be able to answer 95% of all customer service questions. Creative destruction is accelerating. Think of the industries that have been affected by the creation of the iPhone just 10 years ago. Just imagine what drones will be able to do in 10 years and what jobs and industries will be eliminated. Are You Age Segregating Your Network? When I interviewed Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, we discussed how we naturally age segregate ourselves. We tend to hang out with people who look, taste and smell like ourselves. When our network is shrinking we need to network with people who are younger than ourselves. I gave a presentation at Launch Pad Job Club last March on the topic of Ageism. I discussed how as we age we need to expand our network to younger demographics. Afterward, a gentleman came up to me and told me that he had volunteered for the Beto O’Rourke for Senate campaign. He volunteered with hundreds of young Millenials and was totally impressed with their intellect and passion. This is a natural example of networking outside of your comfort zone. The odds of you working for a younger manager is highly likely. Check out my interview with John Tarnoff when we discussed this topic in the podcast episode called â€" John Tarnoff Teaches How to Work for a Millennial [Podcast] Our society naturally drives us to age segregate. As your network ages out you will have to form new contacts that will be significantly younger than yourself. Next Steps Once you have examined your network and industry, you will want to create a plan to replace and/or augment your existing network. If you need to shift to a different industry, who do you need to develop relationships with? How are you going to garner street cred within that new industry? If you’re in a stable industry, who are the ‘up and coming’ individuals that you need to develop relationships with NOW â€" such that your network will not age out? If you are in your 50s today and plan to work until 70 or beyond (yes, that is a large percentage of the 50 somethings) you need to plan on your network to age out. I am now into my 60s and many of the people I worked with at IBM in the 1980s and 1990s are no longer in the workforce. Many of the people who I worked with after the dot-com bust are still working but are no longer in a position of power or influence. My network has aged out. Has your network aged out? What areyou going to do about it? Marc Miller Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above. Like What You Read? Get Career Pivot Insights! Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast Do You Need Help With ...

Why You Need To Streamline Your Companys Recruitment Process

Why You Need To Streamline Your Companys Recruitment Process You have spent the last few years updating your IT department, moving your data and software onto the cloud, and generally transforming your business into the modern, streamlined, tech-savvy company it needs to be. And yet, you’re still hiring new recruits in the same way you always have. If this sounds like your company, then it may be time to take steps towards modernizing and streamlining your company’s recruitment process. Read on to discover how you can achieve this.   Why You Should Streamline Your Recruitment Process If you’re still interviewing potential new recruits in the same old way, you may be wasting far too much time and money on your recruitment processes.   You post the situation vacant online and receive hundreds or even thousands of replies. You then have to trawl through every single application, and the attached CVs, to find the candidates you are looking for.   Next, you have to organize initial interviews, and arrange meetings to discuss all the candidates after the interviews. After all that, you have to go through the entire process again for the second round of interviews and by the end of it, you hopefully have one candidate who fits the bill. The problem is that your interview process is so cumbersome that, not only have you taken up a disproportionate amount of time looking for the right person, but by the time you finally offer them the job, they’ve decided they’d rather work for a slightly more technologically switched-on company! So how can you do things differently? How Top Companies Recruit in 2019 If the above process sounds familiar, then you need to join the ranks of companies such as Cisco, Michelin, FedEx, Siemens, PG and many other Fortune 500 companies who have turned to highly effective recruitment software to streamline their recruitment process. A simple example of how this software can produce results and a return on investment, is when a questionnaire is used as a tool to find out the qualifications, experience, and personal qualities of candidates. The results can be funneled into the promising, and the not-so-promising candidates who can be automatically rejected. Meaning that the time spent looking through applicants can be whittled down from days, or even weeks, to just hours. After the right candidates have been found, all arrangements can be made by text messaging or chatbots, with interview times being automatically sent out to your candidates, along with links for video interviews.   Additionally, by using a centralized system, your national or international business can ensure that the qualities your company seeks in its employees are uniform throughout the entire company, no matter if the office looking for new recruits is in Los Angeles, London, or Lahore. These are just a few examples. By using recruitment software, it is possible to put your entire recruitment procedure online. This not only speeds up the process dramatically but also saves time for the people who are involved in the recruitment process.   This, of course, means that your company will also save money. In some cases, the savings can be substantial, over $1.5 million in one case. Summary To summarize, if you want to take your company’s recruitment process into the 21st century, keep up with your competitors, save wasted hours and wasted money on processes that could take you half the time and cost half as much, then it is time to look to recruitment software to streamline your operations.

Operations! are open {surgery not required}

Operations! are open {surgery not required} Do you thrive while  working alongside other like-minded creatives  who have similar goals, challenges, dreams, wishes, and favorite ice cream flavor?  (all sharing the same favorite ice cream flavor is not guaranteed, but would be amazeballs.) Want some  guaranteed personal coaching time  from yours truly each and every week, but without the one-on-one prices? Looking for  24/7 support  with above-mentioned similarly-goal-oriented, big-dreamin’, likeminded-creatives? Don’t wanna be treated like a number, ever ever ever ever ever? Then you want my Operations! Screenshot of the private Facebook page for Operation!: Creative Career Cheer, taken during our last week of sessions, Aug 2011 Don’t know what you wanna do when you grow up?  Click here. or Do you know what you wanna do, but not how it can be done?  Click here. or Are you doing what you wanna do, but it just ain’t as successful as it can be?  Click here. Thisll be the last time Im offering Operations!  in 2012, and it saves ya almost $1000 from working with me for 12 sessions one-on-one. If you wanna make the most of the rest of this year and welcome 2013 with clarity an action plan youre so gonna want in on Operations!* *Many apologies if the old theme song for the board game Operation! is now in your head. I promise its the only bad side effect of these sessions.