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#JobSearch : How To Find A Job That Makes You Happy. Great Read for All!

April 29, 2024/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Happiness is something we all want and deserve in our work—but unfortunately it may be more elusive today. Engagement is at an 11-year low, people’s trust in leaders has declined and wellbeing continues to suffer.

But amidst the struggles, it’s possible to find a job that makes you happy—and also have colleagues you appreciate and an organization you actually want to show up for (either in person or virtually). These are the things to look for.

How to Find A Job That Makes You Happy

You can seek and evaluate which opportunities will bring you the most joy—and there are plenty of variables that make a difference. These are the factors that are especially significant and can move the needle on your level of happiness at work.

1. Look for Culture

One of the first things to consider when you’re looking for happiness on the job is a constructive culture. Every culture is slightly different, and the match is key. Your ideal culture will be different than others’, so pay attention to whether you feel aligned with what the organization values and how they get work done.

Any of these cultures can work for you, depending on your own preferences and priorities. Just be sure you know what you’re getting into and feel in synch with the people and the organization.

In addition, you can assess elements of culture that are important no matter what kind of character it has. Overall, organizations will make you happiest when they have a strong vision, mission and direction in addition to meaningful ways for employees to participate and get involved.

In addition, the cultures that are most effective tend to have clear processes and norms to handle conflict, as well as the ability to learn, adapt, grow and change over time. In any kind of culture, look for these traits and you’ll increase the chances that you’ll be happy with working there.

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Article continued …

2. Look for Your People

Feeling connected to your colleagues is one of the primary factors that drives happiness at work. You don’t have to be BFFs with your co-workers, and you don’t have to always get along—after all, disagreements are natural and can be constructive. But when you respect colleagues and feel respected in turn, it affects your satisfaction significantly.

As you assess your next position, get to know team members, and ask questions about how they work, how they interact and what they value about the team and the organization. These will give you important clues about the people and behaviors you can expect.

In addition, you can increase your happiness by building relationships with your co-workers—no matter where you’re working currently. Ask them questions, listen to what they’re going through, share things about yourself that you have in common, invite them to coffee and invest in getting to know them.

Being more familiar with people and knowing them better tends to increase understanding and acceptance—as well as feelings of happiness and satisfaction. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, you will have greater joy and wellbeing when you feel more connected with even just a few people.

3. Look for Growth

Another way to find happiness at work is to look for jobs where you’re challenged today and can grow tomorrow. When you’re seeking your next position, prioritize roles where there is a problem to solve or an innovation to develop. Especially consider jobs in which you can bring your own sense of curiosity and creativity to how the work gets done—and express your individuality in the role.

In addition, look for jobs where you don’t know everything already. Give greater consideration to roles where you’ll need to stretch in order to perform effectively. Pursue a role when you’re 70% ready for the responsibilities—not 100%—so you have room to grow and develop.

Also look for work where you’ll be able to grow over time. Some organizations are especially good at providing a path for your career or having a predictable progression for promotions.

Look for companies where people tend to have longer tenure and move throughout the organization during their careers—advancing across different jobs and departments as well as levels.

4. Look for Leadership

An additional factor in your happiness is the leaders who surround you. We all want to be inspired and motivated to engage in where the organization is going. Look for leaders who are energized and who energize others.

As you’re considering your next role, assess the hiring manager and whether they are someone you connect with. Look for someone who demonstrates they value and appreciate you—and who will set clear expectations and then provide the just-right amount of coaching and support for your efforts.

Also look beyond your direct boss to full group of leaders who are providing direction, advancing the company and shaping the future that you’ll be a part of.

5. Look for Alignment

You can also help ensure you’re happy at work by pursuing the set of responsibilities that align as much as possible with what you like to do. It’s a myth that you can find a job that you’ll love every minute. Instead, you’ll positively influence your happiness when you have greater overlap between what you love to do and what you have to do.

Ask questions about the content of the role and how much time you’ll spend on various tasks or responsibilities. If a huge part of the job is analytical and you can’t stand detail, it won’t be the role for you. But if the role is mainly creative with just a bit of analytical work as well, you may enjoy it very much.

Think about proportions—how much time you’ll spend on different types of work. If the job is mainly a match, then jump in.

6. Look for Work that Matters

Another key to happiness is feeling like your work matters. You don’t have to be solving world peace or world hunger (although if you are, we thank you)—but you need to know that what you’re doing makes a difference to someone else.

As you’re assessing your next role, consider how your responsibilities contribute to the team, the organization, the customers or the community. Choose opportunities where there is clarity about how the role matters within the organization and in which you can see the bigger picture and how you make a unique contribution to it.

Find a job where you can make a commitment and dedicate yourself to doing your best. And look for employers in which there is a culture of appreciation and recognition.

Happy Choices

No situation is perfect, and every job will have things you enjoy and things you don’t. Your team will have people you click with and those you don’t. And the organization will always have things you appreciate and it will have warts as well.

But you can invest in doing your best, staying optimistic and then assessing your next move—so you can create the conditions for the greatest happiness as you advance your career.

Forbes.com | April 28, 2024 | Tracy Brower, PhD

#Management : Questions To Ask Before You Lay Off Your Employees: #2- Are you Treating People as Well When you Fire Them as When you Hire Them? Your Experience(s)?

February 25, 2023/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Workplace culture has reached a new low with the advent of the digital pink slip. Last month alone, tech companies laid off more than 100,000 workers, many of them by email or text. Or in the corporate equivalent of ghosting, people found out they were fired by being locked out of the company email system.

When Google fired 12,000 workers with a click of the send button, a terminated 20-year employee named Jeremy Joslin sent this viral tweet: “What a slap in the face. I wish I could have said goodbye to everyone face to face.” The tech industry’s high profile makes their layoffs particularly loud, scaring employees well beyond the sector. Their digital pink slips are already shocking your company’s system, leaving 89% of American workers fearing they’re going to be next.

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Article continued …

It seems as work has gone remote, so has empathy. Layoffs are difficult. But even with the recession looming, they don’t have to be cruel. How you let people go says everything about your organization’s culture and commitment to respect, trust and fairness. Yes, it may be faster and easier to do it digitally. But it lacks basic humanity and does way more damage in the long run. In fact, it can be a cultural apocalypse, destroying trust, inclusion, productivity and innovation.

In all likelihood, more layoffs are coming. A recent KPMG survey reports that 91% of American CEOs predict a long, hard recession and 51% will respond with layoffs. But before you resort to the digital pink slip, ask yourself these three critical questions:

What does this say about your culture?

No company sets out to be a place that treats people as dispensable. It’s unquestionably been a rollercoaster as companies fought to survive the pandemic while also acclimatizing to the conundrum of remote work. In this seismic shift, missteps are inevitable. What seemed an opportunity for companies to reinvent the future of work has been complicated by the Great Resignation and a host of other issues. What employees hoped would be a workplace renaissance with new levels of balance, flexibility and digital connectedness has largely not materialized. Instead, people are left feeling lonelier and more isolated than ever.

The digital pink slip is a symptom of this larger problem. If you’re even considering laying people off by email, it means people are no longer at the center of your culture. Now is the time to change that before it erodes any further. Culture is a muscle that builds slowly but atrophies quickly. Take the time and make the space to exercise your collaboration muscles and restore the deep workplace connections that help you work better together. Your goal should be a rock-solid culture that is so people-focused that you would never even entertain the idea of firing someone in an inhumane way.

Are you treating people as well when you fire them as when you hire them?

Hiring is a little bit like dating. You put your best foot forward and show off your company and culture in the best possible light. In the tech world you might even shower your employees with sleep pods, bowling alleys and free Michelin-starred food. But if it all ends in a toxic break-up, you’re living a lie. The true test of a healthy workplace culture is exhibiting the norms and values that matter most – in good times, and in bad. In fact, culture matters even more in tough times. That’s when people see what’s real and what’s window dressing. That’s when you need your culture to work for you, to motivate your people and delight your customers.

Staring into Zoom all day and endless talk of technology transformation and ChatGPT sometimes makes us forget that no matter what business we’re in, companies still run on people, not machines. And people will never forget how you treat them. Say thank you. Honor their contribution. Let people have closure by saying goodbye.

Having people leave on good terms is also an investment in future employees because the next time you start dating and want to hire, you won’t be dogged by a messy breakup. This matters because 71% of candidates learn about job opportunities and company culture from current and former employees.

Are you poisoning the well?

Survivor guilt is real. Ill-managed layoffs destroy psychological safety. If your friend in cubicle 3A wakes up to a digital pink slip with no warning and no explanation, you’re going to fear being next. And when your frontal cortex is consumed by fear it’s hard to do good work. In a recent study of 4,000 layoff survivors, 74% reported lower productivity and 69% report declining product or service quality.

When productivity plummets, so does innovation and teamwork. When your employees no longer trust you, they will hesitate before they take a risk and think twice before they speak up about a problem. If you don’t treat people with respect and kindness, you’re poisoning your own well (and risking your profits). If you think it’s time consuming to have real conversations with people to let them go, think about how much more time it will take to manage the digital pink slip fall out. Reassuring remaining employees, restoring lost tribal knowledge, rebuilding trust and repairing disrupted social networks will be far more arduous.

Fire people the old fashioned way (face-to-face or voice-to-voice, with care and humility). Just because you can use technology doesn’t mean you should. Technology is a tool that makes things faster and easier. But people are not tools or numbers or widgets. Digital pink slips are an alarming sign that we have lost sight of this. Your actions today – in one of the most stressful, awful moments a worker can experience – will reverberate in the hearts and minds of your people long after the short-term benefits of cost cutting expire.

Layoffs may be inevitable. But they can be handled in a way that doesn’t cripple your culture. Delete the digital pink slip. Choose a kinder method that demonstrates the very best of your values. Transparency, dignity, gratitude and a human-delivered message will go a long way to helping people feel respected and less devastated by these disruptive changes, whether they’re leaving or staying.

Forbes.com Author: Ann Kowal Smith Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Forbes.com | February 22, 2023

#Leadership : #WorkPlace -We Need to Change the Conversation Around Motherhood and Work.

May 29, 2019/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Motherhood, by definition, is all-encompassing. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that defines you. I’m an entrepreneur, and I’m always pushing boundaries. I’m also a mother.

While I love my sons fiercely, motherhood is not my only defining trait. Like many mothers, I am so much more. We’re badass career women, dreamers, creators, partners, homemakers, business builders, mentors, and leaders. The role of “mother” is one I’ll never outgrow, but I’ll always remember that there was a point when all of us were something else. It’s something that society often forgets when we become a mom.

THE CHALLENGES OF BEING A MOTHER TODAY

Some things will never change about motherhood. But many things make 2019 a different time to be a parent than previous generations. For starters, we have more tools and information at our disposal. In the U.S., we have more laws in place to protect our time while pregnant, take leave from work, and breastfeed than in previous generations. But we still lag behind the rest of the developed world, and those rights don’t speak to the core of the challenges inherent for mothers, especially those that choose to work.

The isolation and identity shift that come each time a mother has a baby has a profound impact on her life. As an entrepreneur in the parent-tech space, I am fortunate to hear from moms and dads alike about their experiences navigating newborn and infant feeding. I’ve listened to moms whisper about why their job wouldn’t accommodate pumping milk, which forced them to stop breastfeeding before they were ready. I’ve spoken to moms who are on mute during work conference calls so that their coworkers wouldn’t hear the whir of the pump on the background. I’ve also heard dads talk about cleaning pumping parts or hearing the noise emanating from offices at work.

For others–the “lucky” ones who’ve cobbled together an arrangement that works– it’s an ongoing series of hacks. The challenges are universal and affect women at all income levels, though there is undoubtedly a considerable disparity between women in blue collar and white collar jobs. Even stay-at-home moms often choose to isolate themselves during pumping time, and we shouldn’t minimize or ignore the effort and strain involved in this forced isolation.

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WE’VE MADE PROGRESS, BUT WE STILL HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO

Despite the progress in paid parental leave law and offices adding lactation rooms, moms who breastfeed still face a stark gender pay gap. Moms give up breastfeeding because they can’t find time to pump on the job. Some moms speak up about breastfeeding rights and face retaliation, or even lose their jobs.

We need to make the motherhood experience better for moms. For too long, we’ve overlooked the fact that moms are people too–with unique needs–and a fully formed person from well before they had children. Here are three ways we can do that.

1. WE NEED TO SHIFT THE CONVERSATION

What’s working for moms and what isn’t? What support do moms need to make the choices they want? If moms want to breastfeed and keep working, what is holding them back? Do the right tools even exist yet? Are we doing all we can to ensure advances in technology are reaching every woman?

The challenges around breast pumps weren’t even really part of the conversation before 2014. We’ve made plenty of progress since then, but there is still a massive opportunity to do better. Statistics help and uplifting stories do wonders for the soul, but we need to continue to raise our voices on these topics. More importantly, we can’t leave this work and conversation to mothers alone. There are real-world impacts here, in terms of societal benefits, economic improvements, and something that has the potential to impact an entire generation. There is plenty of evidence that shows how offering paid parental leave helps companies retain and attract the best people. Creating a culture that is inclusive to all employees–including working mothers–makes companies more innovative.

2. WE NEED TO FOCUS ON MEETING THE NEEDS OF MOMS

I know I’m biased because I run a company that is building new parent-tech products, but we need to stop making outdated assumptions about mothers. Companies also need to ask moms what they actually want before designing products for them.

Let’s take the breast pump as an example of a piece of technology that isn’t getting the job done. No one wants to hear the whir of the pump through cubicle walls or over the phone, and not everyone wants to strip down in their workplace. A quiet pump, controllable by an app, with a small enough breast shield to fit in a nursing bra, goes a long way toward easing that experience.

3. WE NEED TO STOP SEEING PARENTING AS A MOTHER’S ISSUE

Parenting should concern dads, partners, grandparents, workplaces, healthcare experts, and legislators. There are many issues surrounding parenting that transcend party lines: returning to work, childcare, feeding, and work-life balance. We can’t isolate mothers as the ones to be the primary beneficiaries and victims here. Too often, we minimize the experience of dads and partners. Creating better products for mothers helps the entire family–as does closing the pay gap between working mothers and working fathers. If we want more parents to feel supported in their choices during the early childhood years, then we have to deepen the pool of people who feel invited to sit at the decision-making table.

We’re living in an age of unprecedented flow of information and adaptation of technology. More people feel empowered to come up with creative solutions to the obstacles of parenting. But we can’t do it alone. To make significant progress, we have to work together and change the conversation. That means seeing mothers as more than just mothers, and acknowledging that their identity outside of being a parent is just as important.

Author: Samantha Rudolph is the cofounder and CEO of Babyation.

FastCompany.com | May 29, 2019

#CareerAdvice : #JobSearch -How to Tell if a #CompanysCulture Is Real, or Just Lip Service. A Must REad!

March 8, 2019/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

As company culture becomes increasingly important to job seekers, promises from employers like flexible work schedules and bottom-up management are becoming commonplace.

Yet while these descriptions sound nice on paper, sustaining a positive environment in the office isn’t always easy. As a job seeker, how can you tell whether the assurances an employer makes about their company culture don’t stop at the job description?

By doing your research before you click “submit” on a job application or accept an offer, you can truly understand the work environment of a future employer and dodge any unwanted surprises before your first day.

1. Be Critical of What a Company Promises

Check both the “mission and values” and “employee benefits” sections of company websites and see how much detail they provide. Companies with good benefits and strong values will take the time explain how they move forward with their aspirations and what, in particular, they offer to employees. For example, Patagonia doesn’t just call itself a sustainable company — job seekers can read in depth about the company’s investments in reducing its green footprint on the company website. Corporate blogs are also great places to investigate company culture, as often those are where a company will go more in depth about how they execute their goals. On the other hand, if a company is vague and provides no game plan, then there’s a good chance it’s only talk.

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2. See How the Glassdoor Reviews Stack Up

While an employer can promise change, employees are ultimately going to be the best judges of their work environments. Reading Glassdoor reviews gives you insider access into the workplace, so you can determine whether employer incentives actually come to fruition. See how often employees mention perks you’re interested in (e.g. parental benefits, PTO) and if employees have had uniform experiences. If there’s little similarity between reviews, then it might be a red flag that the experience isn’t quite what an employer has promised. For even more information, reach out to current or former employees via LinkedIn or mutual connections to grab some coffee and chat about their experiences.

3. Look at External Rankings

If companies are truly the cream of the crop for company culture, other organizations will validate them. Here at Glassdoor, we release an annual Best Places to Work list based on employee reviews. Other organizations provide rankings for more specific aspects of company culture. For example, the Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign rates companies based on LGBTQ inclusivity in the workplace, and FertilityIQ advises job seekers on the employers with the best fertility benefits. Through external rankings, you can get an expert opinion on how a company’s culture really stacks up compared to the competition.

4. Ask the Right Questions in Your Interview

An interview can be the perfect place to learn more about culture from a direct source within the company. In order to get the answers you want, however, you have to be careful about how you phrase your questions. As Henry Goldbeck, President of Goldbeck Recruiting, notes, “If you are asking… about the culture, [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][recruiters] will know that and attempt to tell you what you want to hear.” Inquiries such as “How long have you been with the company?” or “What do people on the team that I’d be joining do for lunch every day?” give you insights into the office environment without triggering a recruiter’s automatic people-pleasing response.

5. Take a Walk Around the Office

If you’re in later rounds of interviews, ask if you can have a tour of the office to see firsthand what a position at the company would look like. This will give you an opportunity to meet your potential team, get a peek at office amenities and see how you like the work environment before you make any commitments.

GlassDoor.com | March 8, 2019 | Posted by Andy Talajkowski

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#CareerAdvice : #ChangeManagement – How to Deal with These 4 Types of #ChangesAtWork …From Getting a #Promotion, #CompanyRestructure, #Layoffs, to Working with a New Boss.

August 6, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When it comes to your career (or life, really) very few things are certain. There is one thing you can count on for sure though. Throughout your professional life, you’ll continue to encounter change, big or small, positive and negative, voluntary and involuntary.

When you experience these changes–you have two choices. You can either actively resist it, or you can accept it and figure out what you can learn from, and how to, leverage the situation. In most cases, the latter is usually the smart option. As Jennifer Harvey Berger previously wrote for Fast Company, in a world that’s only going to become more complex, “shifting your mindset is the only way to not only cope but also make the journey more fun and successful.”

Here are five of the most common changes you can expect to see at work, and how to deal with it so you can continue to thrive in the workplace.

GETTING A PROMOTION

Congratulations! After over-delivering on project after project, and exceeding all your goals that you set with your manager when you started your job, your employer is finally rewarding you with a change in title and an increase in compensation. You’re exhilarated, but you’re also a little confused. What do you do now?

First off, start with figuring out what you will no longer take on, time coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders wrote in a previous Fast Company article. Assuming that your promotion comes with more responsibilities, you will probably need to learn how to master your new tasks, and you won’t be able to do that efficiently if you have to do that on top of your old job. This requires trusting other people, which can be difficult if you have controlling tendencies. But as Saunders pointed out, the higher you move up, the more you have to depend on others. So start to learn to let go of your micro-managing tendencies, and trust that you’re not the only one who knows how to do everything.

It might be counterintuitive to prioritize personal well-being like sleep and exercise. But as Saunders noted, when you are required to perform at a high level, you need to be stricter about making these things a priority. After all, they have a major impact on your productivity. That’s not something you can compromise when you’re required to perform at the next level, Saunders said.

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COMPANY RESTRUCTURING

Very few things make employees as anxious as a company reorganization. Regardless of whether or not you survive the re-org, you’re sure to face some big changes. The first step, whatever the outcome, is to acknowledge what you went through, Neil Lewis, co-founder of Working Transitions, told Gwen Moran in a 2017 Fast Company article. If you survived the re-org and felt “survivor guilt,” give yourself permission to feel them. Then slowly rebuild your confidence by assessing what kind of opportunities you can take on to grow, and whether there are any gaps in your skills that you can fill. Lewis also urged that you shouldn’t be afraid of reaching out to your colleagues who have left the organization. After all, they’re a crucial part of your professional network.

If the re-org results in a layoff, The Muse’s Jenni Maier recommends that as soon as you’ve had time to process the news, let your network know you’re looking. When Maier was laid off from her role, she desperately wanted to keep it quiet, but because she was unhappy with (and wanted to change) her situation, she decided to be open about the fact that she was back in the job market. She wrote, “The majority of the interviews I went on after being laid off came from friends-of-friend leads. Leads I never got before I lost my job because no one knew I wanted them. And the position I ended up getting at The Muse? That “in” came from a former manager’s friend.”

GETTING A NEW BOSS

Your happiness and success in your job has a lot to do with the relationship that you have with your boss. You might spend a long time building this relationship, but people move on, and one day, they might leave. You find yourself reporting to someone new, and you want to establish their trust and respect, quickly.

How do you do it in a way that doesn’t come off as bragging? As Gwen Moran previously wrote in Fast Company, the first step you should take is to build in some “networking” time with your boss–whether it’s coffee, or scheduling some time in a calendar for focused discussion. This way, you can start to learn their goals, working styles and any new ideas they might have, and work to amend your priorities where appropriate. Be proactive in terms of identifying where they might need help–that’s an easy way for you to secure some quick wins to help them shine, which builds goodwill quickly.

A CHANGE IN COMPANY CULTURE AND PROCESSES

Sometimes what the company looks like when you joined looks nothing like the company you’re still working at 2 years later. This especially common in a startup–which tends to start without structures and systems in place. As the company scales, those things become necessary, and sometimes, it can change the company culture, entrepreneur Matt Barba previously wrote for Fast Company.

The first step is acknowledging that structure isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and simply accept the fact that it comes with company growth. If you feel like there are some cultures that the company used to have that you want to reinstate–there are ways you can do that without needing approvals from the higher-ups. As SYPartners’ principal Joshua-Michéle Ross said at the 2017 Fast Company Innovation Festival, you can create deep transformations with tiny steps. He went on to say that one of the ways to do this is to create “rituals that solve a problem.” In the case of Airbnb, for example, the home-sharing company found itself with far too many internal meeting as the company grew. Their solution? they started filming the meetings and editing them into digestible content–which solved a problem and got rid of unnecessary bureaucracy.

Your brain might be averse to change, but with time and a shift in perspective, you can learn to accept it. And if you train yourself to be comfortable with uncertainty, you might just see opportunities as a result of those changes that you might not have had otherwise.

FastCompany.com | August 6, 2018

#Leadership : How To Build A #Community Around Your Business (And Why You Should)…You already Onboard #NewHires . Why Not Do the Same with Customers, Users, Fans, and other Stakeholders?

May 3, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Whether you know it or not, your business has a community. It could be a formal membership–maybe you offer a subscription-based product, for instance–or just a collection of loyal fans or customers that you should be treating like a community, if you want to stand apart from your competitors.

How you treat new community members within the first 30 to 60 days will determine whether or not you keep them in the fold. And for every growing business, customer retention is the holy grail: According to Bain researchers, increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by as much as 25%–95%. For this reason, I geek out on the onboarding experience we offer our clients. Here are some favorite strategies every business, large or small, should consider trying out.

CONNECT WITH MEMBERS’ “PYRAMIDS OF INFLUENCE”

Most brands don’t think beyond collecting phone numbers and email addresses. At The Community Company, which helps brands build communities around their products and services, we find we’re able to boost engagement by at least 25% just by requesting contact information, not just for our immediate clients, but also for the people who impact how they spend their time or money. In other words, to turn customers into community members–and to grow the community overall–ask not just, “Who are you?” but also, “Who do you know?”

For example, a personal assistant can help you get an entrepreneur’s attention for a task that needs completing or a benefit you’re offering. We’ve also found that community members’ public relations and marketing people are often eager to take advantage of our services. It’s not about nagging your existing customers to do word-of-mouth marketing on your behalf–it’s about asking for an opportunity to leverage relationships that already exist. To cultivate them further, consider sending these influencers handwritten notes to make them feel valued and connected to you.

OFFER INSTANT OPPORTUNITIES

After a member joins your community, its your job to keep them engaged. Don’t bombard them with emails. Opt for few strategically spaced-out messages on how to navigate your platform or take advantage of special features. And if you have additional products or services, now is the time to offer them.

At Young Entrepreneur Council, for example, we immediately direct new members to a web page featuring deals and discounts we’ve negotiated, knowing that they’re most excited about reaping the benefits of membership after they first join. But you need to think of this as an onboarding process–a means of helping people who’ve already opted into your services figure out how to get the most out of them. We’re careful to avoid the hard sell (or, worse, the upsell), which is always counterproductive.

ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS . . .

The one question our Member Concierge team is prohibited from asking members is, “How can I help you?” It’s well-intentioned but rarely gets a response with any meaningful data. People often feel too vulnerable to ask for help, or simply don’t know all the ways you might be able to lend a hand. If you’re dealing with a group of ambitious executives, better questions (depending on what kinds of products you offer, of course) might be, “What are you working on right now that you’re really excited about?” or, “What skills do you have that may be useful to your fellow community members?”

These open-ended questions will give your members a chance to build social capital in your group. The responses will also give you meaningful insights into your new members, particularly if you learn to read between the lines. Connecting the dots is a fundamental element of any community-building effort.

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. . . AND SPECIFIC ONES

After all, the more information your members share with you, the better you’ll be able to serve them. So don’t hesitate to get into particulars (the worst that can happen is a community member declines to respond).

If you have a community of business owners, you might ask them to share revenue (or at least a range), or ask if they have venture funding. Even a less confidential metric, such as number of employees, will allow you to estimate the size of their company. For, say, a community of rock climbers, you may ask how advanced their climbing skills are, what their most challenging climbs have been, or where they plan to climb next.

All this can help you arrange offline interactions among your most passionate fans. You should also ask your new members where they frequently travel. If you’ve got members who bounce between new York and Los Angeles quite a bit, wouldn’t it be to everyone’s advantage to connect those members with one another?

Collecting this kind of information–always with consent from your members, of course–allows you to make connections between people in your group, know what additional services you can offer them, and how to communicate with them as an ongoing member of your community. You can’t do most of that just by tweaking a sales funnel.

Ryan Paugh is the COO of The Community Company, an organization that builds community-driven programs for media companies and global brands. He is also the coauthor of Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships That Matter.

FastCompany.com | May 3, 2018 | Ryan Paugh

#Leadership : Three Ways To Improve Your #InterviewProcess So You Can Make Better And Faster #HiringDecisions …These Things Might Not be Rocket Science, But they are Surprisingly Not Done with as Much Consistency or Rigor as you Might Think.

April 25, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Interviewing may not be the most effective way to evaluate candidates, but it is still the most common. There are other better predictors of job success, but some of those methods require more resources to manage than your company many have.

If the interview is all you’ve got, it doesn’t mean that you are relegated to a life of bad hires or lots of first year turnover. It just means that you have to get really good at interviewing.

Some of that comes down to building your skills as an interviewer, which can only really happen with a lot of real skills practice (Effectively “probing” a candidate for more information is easy in concept but is far from easy in reality).

Beyond building your skills, some of it comes down to building the right interview process.

The Point Of The Interview

As my wife frequently complains about, I’ll start with a bold statement of the obvious:

The purpose of the interview is to facilitate a discussion with the candidate so that you leave that discussion with the right information you need to make a hiring decision.

I’m certainly not going to win any business innovation awards for that statement. Here’s the thing, though. Everything that happens in the interview should directly help you achieve that purpose. Unfortunately, in my work with clients on their interview process, there are often parts of the process that aren’t actually helping them achieve that purpose, or there are key parts of the process that could help but are missing.

Three Ways To Improve Your Interview Process

These aren’t rocket science concepts, but doing them well requires some focus and diligence:

1. Have a pre-interview preparation meeting with whoever is involved in the interview

This important step is often overlooked. It is understandable. Business life is always busy. Many of us are cramming interviews into already over-booked calendars.

The problem of not taking a few minutes for a team preparation meeting is that it doesn’t give you and other interviewers the opportunity to get aligned on what you are all looking for. This often results in different expectations of the candidate, how he or she answered the questions, and ultimately whether the candidate was what we were looking for.

When combined, these often cause frustration with the process, delays in making hiring decisions, bad hires, or letting good candidates move right past you.

A good preparation meeting gets in front of these problems. Here are three key things to do during your preparation meeting:

Do a quick group review of the candidate and the resume
Do an overview of the role the candidate is interviewing for
Get alignment on the key questions you want to ask – both technical and cultural – and what kinds of answers you are looking for

To do it well only takes a few minutes but is invaluable in going into the interview aligned and focused.

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2. Have a post-interview calibration discussion with all of the interviewers

Post interview calibration sessions often don’t happen for the same reason that pre-interview preparation meetings get pushed aside. It feels like we just don’t have enough time. The interview is over, and you’re running to the next meeting (or interview).

When you don’t do them, though, you miss valuable opportunities to get multiple perspectives about the candidate from co-workers who sit in different roles. You also lose the opportunity to sort out and gain alignment on what was good or bad about a candidate so that you can apply that to others you are interviewing for the same role.

Without calibration, I’ve seen clients continue to miss opportunities to refine their candidate search process or criteria for who makes it to the face to face interview stage. And all of this equates to an unnecessarily elongated interviewing process, frustrated interviewers, and a belief that interview process just isn’t working.

3. Focus the interview on personal attributes and culture fit

There’s an important quote from Jim Collins, business consultant and author of the New York Times Bestselling book, “Good-to-Great.” In his work around what separated great companies from good companies, he noted:

“In determining the right people, the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.”

Even with that, many interviews today still focus primarily on technical skills, knowledge, and abilities. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t care about those things because there are certainly required baseline capabilities to do the job. You can, and should, still assess those.

But use the bulk of the interview to focus on assessing attributes like learning agility, interpersonal effectiveness, and cultural fit, which have been shown to be much better predictors of short and long-term job success.

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The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

PUBLISHED ON: APR 25, 2018

Inc.com |

By James Sudakow

Author, ‘Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit … and Other Stupid Stuff We Say in the Corporate World’@JamesSudakow

#Leadership : Hiring Remote Workers Made My Entire #Team More Productive…One CEO Explains How Surprised he was to Find the #RemoteTeams he Hired Reshaping his Company’s In-Office #WorkCulture for the Better.

January 14, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

“Want to get lunch?” This is a phrase you’ll rarely hear at our office. It’s not that we don’t eat or spend time together, but it’s physically impossible for our entire team to be in the same place at the same time. Sixty percent of our team works remotely, so for us, grabbing lunch is, “let’s meet on Google Hangout.”

It wasn’t always that way. Originally at Traitify, our entire workforce was based in one Baltimore office. We had a two-floor space and separated teams by department–developers downstairs, business and data upstairs.

Before long we noticed those two teams ended up forming separate cultures; the space literally caused a divide within our company. We tried intermingling the teams, but new floor members took on the same behaviors as those we moved. To cut down this friction we decided to look for a larger space on a single floor. The company was growing–and we didn’t want culture issues to bite us later on.

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Around this time we were also expanding our development team, and kept finding great talent outside our physical geography. We didn’t want to lose excellent talent based on location, so eventually we decided to give remote workers a shot. It was a risk considering the culture issues we were already dealing with onsite, but it paid off–and then some. Here’s how.

REMOTE WORKERS IMPROVED OUR ONSITE CULTURE AND PRODUCTIVITY

We started slow at first, by hiring our first CTO into a remote role. This led to the hiring of another remote developer, and another. Many of our hires came through referrals, so they had ties to the company already. And to our surprise, integrating them was incredibly easy.

In fact, we realized after a few months that hiring remote workers helped lessen our office divide. The remote workers we hired displayed high levels of self-motivation and responsibility, and were generally less antagonistic and better team players. Over time, those traits ended up rubbing off on other team members. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you can measure an applicants’ personality before hiring them; we build a product that lets us do exactly that.)

Productivity is a top concern for companies considering remote workers. But we found that they actually made us more productive overall. For starters, we’re forced to use Slack to its maximum potential to make that sure our team members, whether they’re in the office or around the country, feel like they’re sitting next to each other all day.

While Slack can be a distraction, it can lead to fewer interruptions if your whole team uses it properly (i.e. not for every single thing). For instance, we have a policy that if an update requires more than a quick Slack message or email, we get on a video call. Facetime makes it feel similar to being in the same room as your colleagues, but it forces the requestor to think about priority level (Is it urgent? Can it wait until my colleague says she’s free?) and ultimately boosts efficiency.

There are challenges, too. If you’re not sitting across from someone, you can miss nonverbal communication like body language, facial expressions, eye contact, and posture, all of which build camaraderie and trust. But we’ve worked to mitigate that risk by planning team off-sites, work-away trips, and occasional company-wide gatherings, which we hope to make more frequent over time.

THE BENEFITS OF A HYBRID MODEL

For Traitify, the remote workforce concept has been a swinging pendulum. We’ve learned that while some roles, like developers, can work well remotely, there are certain teams–like sales and customer success–that benefit tremendously from being physically together. Still, we’ve chosen to embrace this arrangement that we’d initially just stumbled across.

Having a physical “hub” creates and reinforces the core element of Traitify’s company culture–a place where customers and investors can see “who” your company is and experience the energy firsthand. However, in order to attract the best talent, we also recognized the need to be open to hiring candidates outside our immediate geography.

Some founders insist on an all-or-nothing approach, but we don’t believe that’s the only way to make remote work successful. Instead, we’ve set explicit guidelines to reinforce the benefits of both remote and onsite work so our in-office and far-flung teams can work well in tandem with minimal impediments.

All our staff in our physical headquarters now work on the same floor. And when we hire remote workers, we screen their personalities to make sure they’re self-motivated and responsible, then we train them to use collaborative tools in a way that optimizes their productivity.

I believe companies need to embrace remote workers, but they don’t necessarily have to resort to an exclusively remote workforce. It’s a great model to source talent, but the benefits of a physical hub are hard to overstate, especially when it comes to building a work culture. If our experience is any indicator, you really can–and maybe should–have it both ways.

Dan Sines is co-founder & CEO of Traitify, the company behind image-based personality assessments for employers and personal career growth.

FastCompany.com | January 14, 2018

#Leadership : Does Your Company’s Purpose Resonate With Everyone, Or Just Senior Leaders?…If your Own Employees Write Off your Shiny New Mission Statement as Just Another Marketing Trick, So Will your Customers.

November 7, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Discovering your company’s “purpose” is tough. Sustaining it can be even tougher. Even if you’ve zeroed in on a mission that your executives love, it won’t do your company much good if the rest of your team doesn’t share the same sentiment.

PURPOSE COMES FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT

The challenge is to make sure your entire organization is willing to buy into its stated purpose. The consulting firm Radley Yeldar, which ranks brands according to “social purpose,” gives the top spot to Unilever for its sustainability efforts, among other causes beyond the company’s bottom line to which it has shown commitment.

The fact is that not all of your employees will embrace your new values as readily as your executive team does.

Other big-name companies, though, have dropped noticeably on Radley Yeldar’s annual list, like Johnson & Johnson (which settled a series of health care fraud cases this year for a record $2.2 billion) and Samsung (whose devices, from smartphones to washing machines, have been riddled with dangerous manufacturing problems). A company’s failures in the marketplace can undermine how consumers understand its purpose. But there’s more to it than that.

Purpose isn’t just backing up a do-gooder marketing angle with action. A company’s values—and subsequently its purpose—also come from its culture. For businesses trying to regain or redefine a sense of purpose, embedding newvalues into their cultures takes both top-down and bottom-up efforts. Brands that have seen a significant drop in their “purpose” rankings may have employees who simply don’t feel on board with their company’s purpose, or just see it as another rebrand.

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TIMING MATTERS

So how does a brand, armed with a purpose, motivate its employees to also believe in that purpose—even when they aren’t as passionate about the idea? It’s partly a timing thing.

The problem many companies face is figuring out how to incorporate purpose into a company’s culture without coming off as inauthentic. Try to rush the process, and it’ll likely fail. Purpose is often abused by marketers who try to showcase a brand’s supposed values superficially, rather than nurturing them internally to make sure they take root before launching the next campaign. Slapping a slogan on your website or printing off a series of ads that use a new catchphrase isn’t purpose-driven marketing.

In order to be successful, your entire organization—from your newest hire to your oldest associate—needs to live and breathe your mission. If a talented, capable employee finds that purpose to be just another boring corporate initiative, it’s time to press pause and reevaluate. The fact is that not all of your employees will embrace your new values as readily as your executive team does. But it’s up to management to find ways to make that purpose relevant to those who may not share the same beliefs.

Unsurprisingly, one company found that simple transparency can help fend off some of these risks. Precision Software, a logistics solutions provider, recently introduced a newfound purpose into its organization, kicking off a company-wide initiative to get all of its employees involved. “In our industry, our ‘why’ is what differentiates us from our competitors,” says Robert Clesi, VP of marketing and partners at Precision Software. That may not sound earth shattering or world saving, but that wasn’t the point; excellence was simply the most authentic value the company arrived at. It didn’t try to shoehorn in another one that didn’t fit.

“We really did a lot of due diligence up front and made sure everyone, especially on the management side, bought into our purpose,” Clesi explains. Well before sitting down with a marketing agency, Precision sent out several surveys to get an understanding of how employees and customers felt about the brand. By gathering feedback and taking the time to have those conversations, the company was able to craft a new mission statement that arose organically from within. And if someone wasn’t completely sold on Precision’s values, Clesi said management would sit down one-on-one to discuss that individual’s concerns and work toward a solution that satisfied both parties.

TELL REAL STORIES, NOT FABLES

If your team initially lacks that same enthusiasm your executives share, you may want to consider opening up a dialogue strictly around purpose.

“Purpose” only means something when your entire company is on board.

In 2013, Forbes contributor Carine Gallo points out, Southwest Airlines deftly used storytelling in order to drum up that enthusiasm. The airline began to publish accounts of employees who were doing exemplary work in its monthly Southwest magazine, in effect offering public praise for excellent customer service. There’s no doubt that this was also a marketing move, but it felt authentic both within the company and without, because its culture—and the employees who lived and breathed it—was now front and center.

But the effort wasn’t just consumer facing. It ran in the opposite direction, too: Southwest also circulated internal corporate videos filled with real-life stories from actual Southwest customers to help employees visualize purpose in action. This helped the airline instill its brand values in every one of its employees while eliminating doubts that the effort was just a superficial corporate gambit.

“Purpose” only means something when your entire company is on board. Instead of pointing fingers at a broken corporate culture, try reexamining your organization’s purpose—not just to discover if it’s an effective marketing strategy, but to make sure it actually reflects what your team values and responds to.

FastCompany.com | BARRY S. SALTZMAN 11.07.16 5:00 AM

#Leadership : Why My Company Started Helping Our Best Employees Quit…This Company Sits Down with Every Employee who’s Stayed for Three Years to Plan their Career Options—within the Firm and Without.

October 26, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

The reason, Finkelstein says, is simple: It’s difficult to acquire and hold onto outsize talent, but far better to house it within your organization for a short time than not at all. Rather than fight turnover, companies may do better to embrace it—and instead focus on improving the quality of the people who cycle through its doors, as opposed to reducing the quantity of those who do.

THE CASE FOR BUILDING AN EXIT DOOR AND OPENING IT WIDE

This a concept my own company is taking to heart. After all, more money and bigger titles can only go so far, particularly for talented employees who aren’t primarily motivated by extrinsic incentives like those. Sometimes the next level up simply doesn’t match an employee’s aspirations, skills, or career timetable.

We work with our employees to define three potential paths: two within the firm and one beyond it.

So the best thing for an employer to do is to help them find another great opportunity, instead of pouring time and resources into trying (and failing) to get them to stay. The companies that succeed will build reputations for launching leaders’ careers, which can help them attract the next wave of promising talent.

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That’s the theory, anyway, that recently led us to formalize the exit route as a key part of our staffing plan. The way it works is this: Throughout their tenures, we ask our employees to consider (and reconsider) their desired career goals for the next five to 10 years. We discuss possible paths to help them achieve those goals, and the skills and experiences they’ll need to acquire along the way.

Because we hire many younger professionals with limited work experience, we often have to invest heavily in developing their skills and expertise. Generally speaking, we hope that all high performers will stay with us for at least three years, both so our investment will pay off and so they’ll have time to thoughtfully consider what they want next in their careers. After that period, though, we work with them on advancement opportunities—inside the company and out.

To do that, we work with our employees to define three potential paths: two within the firm and one beyond it. If they choose the exit route, we make introductions to potential employers, serve as references, write LinkedIn recommendations, and even coach employees through the search process. Sure, these are resources we could be putting into retention efforts instead, but the preliminary results suggest we’re doing the right thing.

WHAT COMPANIES GAIN BY HELPING EMPLOYEES MOVE ON

Here are a few of the benefits we’ve already begun to see.

Increased employee engagement and retention. Being able to openly discuss career routes is a great relief for many employees, and this openness contributes to a supportive, transparent culture. The program also encourages managers to think more like career coaches than micromanagers preoccupied by short-term needs. Managers learn how to engage with team members in thoughtful, authentic ways, building trust and loyalty and improving overall employee engagement.

And since managers actually understand their employees’ career objectives, we’re better equipped to assign meatier projects—even if they’re not directly tied to employees’ roles—to help them build their desired skills. This can help increase the odds that our most talented employees stick around longer, because they feel valued and see tangible advantages to doing so.

When exit paths are discussed forthrightly, managers can gain more time to plan employees’ departures.

More predictable succession planning and smoother transitions. When exit paths are discussed forthrightly, managers can gain more time to plan employees’ departures. There’s plenty of runway to document all their projects and processes. There’s also more time to think carefully about contact changes for customers and partners, making the handover smoother and more thoughtfully carried out.

Outgoing employees benefit as well, getting to leave the company on a high note, feeling celebrated, appreciated, and grateful to the company for helping them land their next big role. Nobody’s blindsided or left feeling bitter.

Employer branding and recruiting benefits. In the age of Glassdoor, Yelp, and Quora, it’s more important than ever that employees leave feeling like their time with an employer was well spent. Companies that have built reputations not just for hiring well but for supporting talented people can get a major recruiting boost. Former employees are potentially some of your most powerful assets—people you can leverage for referrals or even consider rehiring later in their careers.

It’s far from intuitive for most companies to invest heavily in recruiting and professional development, only to actively facilitate employees’ departures. But after years of thoughtfully considering our employees’ needs as well as our own, we’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes the best path forward is out.

FastCompany.com | MATHIDLE PRIBULA | 10.25.16 5:00 AM