How Your Board Should Guide Your Hiring Practices
“The Great Resignation” does not seem to be letting up any time soon, so take advice from your board in order to revamp your hiring practices to retain and recruit strong employees.
Just as the remote work trend brought on by the pandemic never seemed to go away, “The Great Resignation” is starting to seem like a permanent shift in today’s business landscape. People left in masses and moved on to better pay, more perks and greater flexibility — and are unlikely to give this trend up any time soon.
For a company to keep up with the changing face of business, its leaders need to be frequently evaluating their company hiring practices to recruit, attract and retain the right employees for the job. This can take a lot of time strategizing that CEOs may not always have to spare while running a business. For support in uncovering otherwise overlooked areas to maximize advantages in hiring, leaders should turn to their boards to guide them.
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The Best Employees Display These 6 Characteristics
Good employees are rare and valuable. Here’s how to identify them.
When I sat for a panel discussion to go over my expertise in the board space recently, one of the main topics revolved around identifying a quality outside board member. To me, this is an easy answer: The qualities that make a great board member are the same ones that would make a great employee.
Like a great board member, a great employee has expertise and education, which are easily identified through the accumulation of credentials over time. But even without experience, good employees exist — people with untapped potential and the drive to work harder and excel at what they do — with a strength of character that’s challenging to build in someone when it doesn’t come naturally. To avoid letting these good employees slip through your company’s proverbial fingers, here are six traits to look for to identify them:
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You Can Think Yourself Into the Person You Want to Be
Use the power of thought for maximum success.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a mentor — someone to turn to for help, direction, motivation and the next big steps in your life. I know because I was one of those unlucky people, but sometimes you have to make your own luck. Even if you find yourself without a mentor, you can still establish that same relationship with someone that might not be as real through the inspiration they left behind.
What if you could turn to a roundtable of counselors that included powerful minds like Napoleon Hill, Augustine “Og” Mandino, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale and Orison Swett Marden? Imagine being able to call on any of history’s greatest success stories as mentors whenever you need help. Well, you can! They wrote everything down in their books with the very intent of having others find the answers they need.
Among my roundtable of mentors, the one who most influenced my life was James Allen. By picking up his book, I can call him any time and get the answers, life lessons and character-building I need. He may not be alive to know it, but James Allen’s mentorship taught me to understand the relationship between my thoughts and circumstances, which allowed me to become the leader I am today.
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To Become a Top Executive, Take Control of Your Personal Brand Today
Personal branding is the number one strategy you should employ in order to build trust in both you and your business.
In today’s search-engine era, numerous search platforms make it easier than ever to find out all you could ever need to know about products, businesses or even personal information about senior-level executives. At the same time, with so much information out there, it can be easy to go unnoticed — which is why companies dedicate entire teams to branding their image, mission, vision and values. This branding helps grow their business.
But when it comes to growing a career, personal branding is key.
If you aspire to greater things, it is more important to create a personal brand than anything else. Take your skill sets and make them shine in the places where everybody can see you. The stronger the branding, the better the chances of excelling and accelerating your career.
If your sights are set on becoming an executive or getting onto company boards, then personal branding is the best first choice you can make to get started. Here’s why.
Public profiles speak volumes
An overwhelming majority of employers say candidates’ social-media accounts affect their hiring decisions, meaning a poor public image can cost you a job. Before even scheduling an interview, the employers who work with my company to bring on board members do their own research on each executive outside of our platform. We analyzed years of this selection data from our clients and found that the common factor increasing an executive’s chance of landing an interview is personal branding.
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How Growing Up in a Communist Country Made Me the Leader I Am
Formative years in 1970s Poland impacted every aspect of my life, and taught me lifelong lessons that continue to enrich and empower.
I was born in Poland in 1971. Shortly after World War II, the USSR forced communism upon the nation, and it was basically under Soviet control. Essentially, anything extra that Poland produced was sent to Soviet Russia to line the pockets of or otherwise empower the elites. Meanwhile, the common people often hovered on the edge of starvation. This existence marked the first ten years of my life, and being raised under communism is something I’ll never forget. In part, the experience drove me to become an entrepreneur and a leader.
Lessons I learned from those formative days:
When life gets hard, work harder
By the time I was 10, I’d witnessed five years of my parents struggling under that oppressive system. Times were always tense, and for many, quite unhappy. We worried about having enough to eat, and there were no gifts at birthdays or on Christmas. When I was about 7, I had to go to the store in the early morning to stand in line, and there were frequently adults fighting around me. At times, it was terrifying.
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Stop Moving the Goalposts: Do You Recognize Your Own Success?
Here’s what you can learn from author Og Mandino’s self-help books.
I am a firm believer in personal development. Regardless of the cards that life deals you, it’s really how you play them that determines your level of success. In my journey, I have found many personal development books to be really helpful, but none more so than those written by author and speaker Og Mandino.
As someone who pulled himself back from the brink of suicide and alcoholism, Mandino is not your average self-help guru, and the lessons I have taken from his work are sometimes surprising.
Learning through stories
One of the things that draws me to Mandino’s work is that he doesn’t write like other self-help authors. For the most part, he writes stories, and within those tales lie the lessons. His work comes from a standpoint of sharing what he has learned and not necessarily teaching theory.
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5 Ways to Ensure You Have True Diversity Within Your Business
Diversity is complex and not as simple as some people may think, but having true diversity will improve every aspect of your business.
The government defines diversity as “the range of similarities and differences each individual brings to the workplace, including but not limited to national origin, language, race, color, disability, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, veteran status, and family structures.” Too often, I’ve seen this diluted to the introduction of one woman and one minority to the company board of directors. Is this really the pinnacle of a diverse company foundation? What about the rest of the workforce? Is diversity really just a matter of fulfilling quotas?
In my experience, true diversity enriches a company, but it must be the real deal. It has to be embraced from the boardroom to the mailroom if it’s going to thrive. After all, how diverse is your company, really, if all the diversity is sitting at the bottom of the pay scale while the boardroom remains unwaveringly similar to 19th-century men’s clubs, minus the Victorian suits? Here, I want to explore how companies can nurture diversity for a more rewarding and successful operation.
Opening doors requires open minds
I’ve always lamented how the government definition of diversity, which is really quite nice, often becomes distilled to employing a few representative “types” to achieve the “diversity-approved” rubber stamp. That’s just not the level of diversity that I’m hoping to foster. But, to create a truly diverse team that goes beyond employing a certain number of minorities and a certain number of women, you have to have an open mind and be willing to look at diversity from more complex angles.
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Hiring the Right Personality Matters, and AI Can Help
It’s important to find the right employees in order for your business to succeed. Here’s how AI can help you find the perfect match.
Between companies and departments, businesses typically have many different people running interviews. While not everyone is good at reading personalities, an interviewer should be — if he or she hopes to find the best candidate. Interviewing for the right personality in a potential employee gives you greater security in his or her fit for the role and within the company and in that person’s ability to build a long-term relationship. Combining human interviewers with AI systems allows you to find the best fit faster.
First, here are some ways you can start to identify ideal candidates.
Understand what drives people
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