To hire the best people they can, companies, like individuals, seek to develop a distinctive brand, one that will attract attention and talent. In developing a brand, you want to show what is unique and compelling about your organization. With the pervasiveness of social media, companies are using this platform create and disseminate their brand.

In doing this, however, brand expert Jody Ordioni says there are things you want to avoid as well, things that will blunt or distort your message.

One thing to avoid is portraying your company as something it is not, trying to tell prospective job candidates what you think they want to hear. A key component of your brand is your company’s culture, vision and values. These are not things you can fudge or downplay. If, for example, you have a fairly traditional, hierarchically oriented company, you shouldn’t try and market your firm as a freewheeling, entrepreneurial organization. Job candidates will sooner or later find out your true company colors

But to be effective at branding, you also need to make your company stand out, to tell job hunters why it is unique, why they would want to work for you. Simply telling people that they can advance their careers with your firm, or that they can join a company that is growing, doesn’t really do enough to differentiate you from everyone else.

Another thing to be wary of is avoiding the dull, dry recitation of facts and figures. Giving the history of your company, along with figures about size, assets, sales, earnings and profits, is acceptable as far as it goes, but that is not nearly far enough.  You need to tell a story, one that will connect emotionally with people.

What will make that connection is talking about how the company impacts the lives of people, how it makes a difference. Bringing people into the story can help make the connection as well. You can tell the stories of your employees and how they feel they are making a difference. You can talk about histories, accomplishments, awards, and volunteer work.

To sum up, you need to be truthful, set your company apart, and make connections to effectively brand your organization.

If your company is looking for top-flight professionals in the New York City area, Winston Resources can provide the talent you need in a variety of areas. Give us a call today.

Tired of the job you have now? Not getting any satisfaction or fulfillment from your work ? Thinking about making a change? Some people see a career change as just the thing they need to get them engaged and excited about their work. 

You hear stories about people who have made the transition from one kind of career to another. And it always seems like the person made the decision and, boom, it happened. They took the plunge and started something new.

But making these kinds of transitions is never simple or easy, and they seldom happen overnight, according to career strategists. There must be a lot of exploring done first. There are a few bold souls who will try to do it cold turkey – quit their job and take a tremendous risk to achieve their dream. But for most, the best strategy, the strategy most likely to work, is a more gradual, step by step plan.

That means kicking the tires first, so to speak, trying the new career on for size to see how it feels. So, for example, if you are thinking about starting a business, you might talk to people who have already done what you are planning to do, even work in the business on your days off. You might want to try an internship. These things might be tough to do if you already have a job and are devoting a lot of time to it, but just jumping in without doing any of this research is simply foolish.

Doing things with  a more gradual approach means you have to change your way of thinking, according to career advisers.

One change is that you should take a lot more time to explore your new career option than people generally do now before you make any decisions. In fact, you should not make any decisions too soon, but rather take the time just to try things out.

The other change in thinking is preparing yourself to put in a lot of work in identifying the opportunities available in the career you want to take. You can’t just do a cursory search and decide there’s nothing there. You need to be willing to learn about the new career, develop interests that coincide with the career, and spend a lot of time with the people who are doing the job you want to do.

Another thing to think about is making the jump all at once. How feasible is it? Is the new career something completely different from what you are now doing? If it is, a more doable approach might be to take a smaller step in the direction of that career first.

The hardest part of the whole job change process is making that small first step.

If you are looking for work, send your resume to a recruiter at Winston Resources. We can help you get connected with some of New York City’s best employers. Contact us today.

Job orientation, what is referred to as onboarding, is an important process and should not be taken lightly. It could, in fact, play a significant role in the success of a new employee at a company.

Bringing new people onboard should be done with care and planning. What you should avoid is a very long and very boring orientation session, something, for example, that usually runs for more than three hours. If it goes longer than that, says human resources specialist Meredith Soleau, you are going to fall victim to the law of diminishing returns. Some HR orientations run long because they show videos, some covering areas that may not even be all that important.

In fact, showing videos may signal to your employees that you don’t think their time is that important, especially if the videos are some generic, bland and boring production. More effective would be a presentation made by someone in human resources about the pertinent issues, presentations that have been well thought out, presentations that are simple, clear, and direct, telling the employees what they need to know and why they need to know it.

An effective and efficient presentation would focus on the major policies first – things like accepted norms of behavior, harassment issues, professionalism, and performance goals. Covering the benefits package should not take hours either. If it does, it is probably too complicated to make sense out of anyway.

For those employees who work on a shop floor, obviously safety is a primary concern, and there should be a safety manual to go over with the employees.

For job duties they will perform in their departments, those should be left to the managers to introduce.

This emphasis on streamlining the process is meant to increase efficiency, not to downplay the importance of the onboarding process, which for the most part does not get enough attention from employers. But a lot of the onboarding process should be done by managers – things like bringing the new hire up to speed on their job duties and what is expected of them, making them feel welcome and an important part of the team.

If you are a New York City-based company and looking for new employees, contact Winston Resources today. We can provide you with top-notch people in a variety of areas.

If you’re tired of making little money for your efforts and you’ve decided that you’re going to look for a higher paying job – possibly one that’s much higher – than the one you’re working at now, read below for some tips on how to land a position with better compensation.

• First of all, we’re going to assume that you’re not going to go back to school to get a higher degree or more skills training in order to get a higher paying job. You’re going to go after more compensation with the skills and experience you now have.
• Soft skills will help you move into management. Soft skills are such things as how well you communicate with others face-to-face. How well you write. How well you work as part of a team. How well you keep your cool when under pressure.
• Even if you don’t plan to go back to school for an additional degree or certification, always (always!) keep learning. Look for assignments that challenge and stretch you and add to your skills. For example, if you’re in marketing, go out and try some sales. If you’re in purchasing, see if you can work on a project in operations. The more responsibilities you take on, the more attractive you’ll be to employers willing to pay you more.
• If you’re already managing people, be sure you help them grow, too. Their performance is a reflection of you. Make sure they can, as the saying goes, be all they can be.
• Minimize the job hopping. Yes, you want to leave your current employer/position for a better paying one, but be very careful how often you leave one employer for another. Instead, find a position at a company you like (one that has promotion opportunities) and aim to progress in your career there instead of jumping ship at the first sign of your dissatisfaction.
• When applying to a company or getting ready for any interview, you’ll want to interview/talk to people who already work there to see if your personality and your style of working are a good fit for this particular corporate/departmental culture.
• Don’t forget to interview the interviewer. After all, since you’re going to be following the advice we give in Number 5 above, you’re going to want to stay with this company for long time. You’ll want to make sure its values and yours mesh.

If you live in or near Manhattan and you’ve decided it’s time to get a better paying position, contact a recruiter at Winston Resources. We’ll be happy to discuss some of the many opportunities we now have available with some of NYC’s top employers. We look forward to hearing from you.

Stress is something we all have to deal with, whether looking for a job or at work. We have to deal with deadlines, workload, coworkers and bosses.

But recent research has revealed something interesting about the nature of stress. It turns out that the impact of stress, whether bad or good, may depend to a degree greater than we imagined on how we perceive it, according to motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson. Moreover, by changing the way we think about stress, we can actually make it something helpful rather than harmful.

Stress is the array of physiological changes we experience that result from an encounter with some obstacle, or some type of adversity. Many of our responses to this encounter, Halvorson says, are pretty much involuntary. When we experience stress, our sympathetic nervous system kicks in, giving us the so-called fight or flight response. Our body releases hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. All of this has the effect of heightening our awareness and alertness, making us ready to respond both physically and mentally to the challenge we face.

If you look at it this way, it actually sounds like something beneficial. But, as we all know by now, too much stress can make us sick. It can compromise our immune system and lead to depression.

But, paradoxically, it can also strengthen our immune system, build mental toughness and build a sense of confidence through overcoming our challenges, Halvorson says.

Now, you might think the good or bad impact of stress depends on how much of it you are experiencing. But, as it turns out, that is not true at all, Halvorson says.

What makes the real difference whether stress is good or bad depends on our attitude. Many people believe that stress is bad, that it does bad things to us and that we should try to minimize it as much as possible. But others see stress as a good thing, as something that leads to learning and development.

A study by Alia Crum, Peter Salovey and Shawn Achor of 400 people at a financial institution showed that people who looked at stress positively actually were healthier, more satisfied with their lives, and better performers at work.

And, what is more, the study showed that even if you look at stress negatively, you can change your attitude about it.

The bottom line from this research is that stress is bad for you only if you believe it is, that if you develop the right attitude toward stress, you can use it to your advantage. You have to look at it as something than can spur you on to even better performance, something that can improve you  and your situation.

If you are looking for work, send your resume to a recruiter at Winston Resources. We can help you get connected with some of New York City’s best employers. Contact us today.

While the economy appears to be recovering, and the stock market has hit new highs, there is still one area of the economy that has not improved much since the recession, and that is unemployment. The number of unemployed still remains stubbornly high. It is a marked difference from other recoveries, when economic recovery also led to increased employement.

Some attribute the jobless problem to a mismatch between the skills people have and the skills companies are looking for. But others have pretty much disproved that theory by noting that the unemployment rate was much lower before the recession, and the skills mismatch could not have developed that quickly. Jobs have not changed so much over the past few years that they require an entirely new skill set.

The lack of hiring is due more to the way companies are now operating, says business analyst Peter Cappelli. Companies became more profitable in part by really clamping down on expenses, and a lot of that involved labor costs. So, companies are not spending as much on recruiting and hiring as in the past, which makes it a lot more difficult to find the right people for the job.

Moreover, managers, ever vigilant about profit margins, are reluctant to hire because of the increased costs involved. They take action only when overworked employees really push for some help. And when they do decide to hire, they take a long time to do it. Because there are so many unemployed, managers feel they can afford to be particular about whom they hire. As a result, they put candidates through a long process of interviews.

What exacerbates the situation is the fact that companies have cut back on recruiters as well, traditionally the voice of reason when managers become too idealistic in their search for candidates. So, there is no one there as in the past to ask the managers whether they really need someone with a graduate degree for a particular job, or whether they really expect to find the kind of qualifications they are looking for at the salary they are willing to pay.

The situation usually changes when the market adjusts, Cappelli says, when employers realize they need to raise their salary for the qualifications they want, or lower their expectations to get the workers. But this adjustment process is taking longer this time around because the people who are catalysts in this process, the recruiters, the ones who are on the front lines of the hiring process and the first to realize what adjustments need to be made, are no longer much of a factor.

If you are looking for work, send your resume to a recruiter at Winston Resources. We can help you get connected with some of New York City’s best employers. Contact us today.

Many companies are jumping on the social media bandwagon because they see the advantages it has. But social media is a two-edged sword – it can be used to enhance a company’s reputation, but it can also be used to damage a reputation as well.

One example of the second case occurred recently when an employee gave a play-by-play account of a big layoff at a company, tweeting her firing while it was happening – from the company’s Twitter account. It created a PR mess for the company.

This shows the new challenges human resources faces in the age of social media. It means that companies need to take a hard look at their HR policies and social media policies, taking into account that any kind of conflict in the workplace can end up in the public domain very quickly. And it’s more likely to happen when you have employees who are using social media a lot.

But the fact is that conflicts are unavoidable, and, from time to time, companies do need to terminate people. So, given these facts, it is important for companies to develop some social media safeguards.

One thing to do is consolidate all of your social media accounts so that as few as possible know the password for them. There are also social media management tools available that act as a gatekeeper for the accounts. These tools enable you to cut off an employee’s access to all of your social media accounts by cutting off his or her access to your system.

You also need to have policies about what kinds of online behavior will result in termination. These policies need to be clearly spelled out, and you need to make sure that all employees know what these policies say.

Another thing to keep in mind is that social media is constantly evolving, and so the legal and regulatory guidelines dealing with it are changing as well, so you need to keep up with these changes.

Also, when dealing with the termination of an employee who has a large social media footprint, you need to have a standard communications plan to handle any public relations fallout, in the event that the termination gets coverage on social media.  

If you are looking for top-notch professionals in New York City, Winston Resources can find just what you need. Contact us today.

It is common knowledge that people tend to exaggerate a little on their resumes. However, hiring managers are reporting that there has been a significant jump in the number of people who are making outright false statements. It is becoming a growing concern among companies.

Job candidates tell outright falsehoods, or they will leave out important facts about their background or employment history. The most common falsehood is extending dates of employment to cover up gaps in work history. The job seeker believes that these gaps would reflect on them negatively.

Job candidates also will include on resumes or applications degrees or certifications they have not earned, list a college or university they have not attended, list particular technical skills they do not have or exaggerate or lie about other accomplishments.

To head off these problems, employers need to include disclaimers about making false statements or omissions and that these fraudulent statements will automatically disqualify a candidate from consideration, according to Russell Thomas, an attorney specializing in employment law. Employers also should not neglect doing background checks. Naturally, the higher level the position, the more you want to do a thorough background check on the applicant.

Another way to verify statements made by applicants is to simply look at what’s in the public record, Thomas says. With all the social media that now exist, there are plenty of places to go to do this. You can check out MySpace, Facebook or YouTube for information. These sites can confirm what is on a person’s resume, or reveal false statements a person has made on a resume. 

The interview is also a key place to look for discrepancies or misleading statements and try to verify statements, Thomas says. That is why good interviewing skills are important. The best thing to do is ask the applicant questions that he or she will not expect. The interview should be set up so that the applicant is the one doing most of the talking, while the interviewer is spending most of the time listening and observing. 

Whatever you do as an employer, Thomas says, avoid the urge to overlook misrepresentations on an applicant’s resume. These misleading statements could be a sign of some deeper character flaw that may affect the person’s ability to do the job.

If you are a New York City firm looking for top-notch professionals, Winston Resources can find the talent you need. Give us a call today.

The job recruiting process is changing rapidly, influenced by social media. And technology is having an impact in another area as well with video resumes.
 
Many employers seem to be receptive to the idea. Almost 90 percent of them said they would watch a video resume. They like the idea because it allows them to judge a prospective employee’s presentation and demeanor.

But what they are seeing so far has been far from impressive. Candidates do not come across as very professional in the videos. There is inappropriate giggling, recitation of long lists of skills, discussion of hobbies not related to work. Moreover, the candidates are not dressed very professionally either. The videos also appear to be too long.

Employers generally still look at cover letters and paper resumes first, and if there is enough interest, they will watch the video resume for maybe one to two minutes. Less than 20 percent of employers so far have actually looked at a video resume.

There are also complications that arise with the use of a video resume. Because of concerns about discrimination, applicants are not required to send photographs of themselves with their applications. And, the fact is, that because an employer can see the person with the video resume, the hiring manager has to be very careful about discrimination, which may influence his or her judgement in subtle ways.

An employer may be more vulnerable to legal action with the video resume because it allows them to see things that they normally would not with a paper resume.

Some career specialists are not as concerned about discrimination with the video resume because they contend discrimination can still occur at different points in the application process, such as at the interview,  even without a video resume. They counsel job seekers to use the videos if they feel videos would be more effective.

Other attorneys counsel just the opposite, arguing that the videos open employers to charges of age, gender, or race bias.

Some also talked about the problem of the time involved with video resumes. Employers generally spend just a few minutes looking at paper resumes, and so it is unrealistic to expect them to spend more time looking at a video.

If you are looking for work, send your paper resume or video resume to a recruiter at Winston Resources. We can help you get connected with some of New York City’s best employers. Contact us today

If you have been out of work for a while, you are well aware of how difficult it is to find a job. And the longer you have been unemployed, the more difficult it is.

Employers have embraced the attitude – however misguided it may be – that something must be wrong with a person who has been out of work for an extended amount of time. Some employers, in fact, have refused to even consider such people.

This has even had an effect on recruiters, some of whom are now exclusively going after people who are already employed.

So, how can you overcome such a mindset? You have to focus your employment pitch to overcoming objections – objections that employers will have resulting from your unemployment. In other words, you have to put yourself in the position of the employer and consider what they might be thinking about your work history, and then work to counteract that mindset.

For example, if you were laid off, a potential employer might be wondering if there is something wrong with you.

To confront this attitude, you have to first be careful how you tell the employer about the layoff. Don’t focus just on yourself by saying you were laid off. Tell the employer that you were part of a layoff of whatever number of workers. If you survived one or more rounds of layoffs, let the employer know that. It shows that your former company valued you to the point that they tried to keep you as long as they could. Also, give the reason for the layoff.

Let the potential employer know that you are still on good terms with your former company. You can emphasize this by having former supervisors include comments and recommendations on your LinkedIn site. Even better, if you can persuade your former company to continue doing work for them in a consulting or volunteer capacity, this will also show how the company values you.

You should also have something on your resume that shows how you have been keeping your skills up to date. This is a big concern among employers – the erosion of skills of people who have been out of work for an extended period of time. You can keep your skills current through consulting, volunteering, working on a contingent bases or through continuing education.

If you are looking for work, send your resume to a recruiter at Winston Resources. We can help you get connected with some of New York City’s best employers. Contact us today