Having a unique corporate culture, as I have said previously, can be a strategic differentiator for your organization. But the thing is, there’s no “one size fits all” culture. Some will draw you in like a magnet, and others will repel you. There’s no “good or bad” really, it’s just different. In this video I talk about why you should be okay that some people hate your culture.
This week I’ll be running a series of videos on culture topics, from defining culture to leveraging it in the hiring process and more. I’m a culture junkie and believe that organizations that use it well can differentiate themselves from the competition. It’s a strategic competitive advantage. Use it well.Â
Today I’m going to dispel the myth that culture is a form of hiring discrimination. Well, I’ll actually prove that it’s true, but in a different way than most people would expect. I use culture to discriminate against candidates  in every interview for every job we post. I look at how we do things, what attributes we find valuable in a candidate, and how well the person fits into those categories. In the video below I explain this in more detail.
This week I’ll be running a series of videos on culture topics, from defining culture to leveraging it in the hiring process and more. I’m a culture junkie and believe that organizations that use it well can differentiate themselves from the competition. It’s a strategic competitive advantage. Use it well. Other videos in this series:
Okay, so we discussed how to define it, so now how do you go about hiring for culture fit? As long as you’re following the steps properly and not just randomly making up questions, then it’s pretty simple to do. In today’s video I discuss how to develop specific questions tailored to your core values. Hiring for culture fit doesn’t have to be difficult, you just need to take the time up front to make sure you’re doing the right things.
This week I’ll be running a series of videos on culture topics, from defining culture to leveraging it in the hiring process and more. I’m a culture junkie and believe that organizations that use it well can differentiate themselves from the competition. It’s a strategic competitive advantage. Use it well.Â
Today we’re going to discuss one of the methods I use for defining corporate culture. If you’ve never taken the time to define what it means at your organization, I think you’ll find the exercise interesting and potentially valuable.
This week I’ll be running a series of videos on culture topics, from defining culture to leveraging it in the hiring process and more. I’m a culture junkie and believe that organizations that use it well can differentiate themselves from the competition. It’s a strategic competitive advantage. Use it well.
The only people who seem to know about getting entry level HR positions are those who already have an entry level HR job.
It’s a crappy system, and it needs to change.
As I said yesterday, we have to stop setting people up to fail. We need to help the next generation understand what it will take to break into HR and getting entry level HR positions. College isn’t preparing them. For the most part, parents aren’t preparing them.
Who will take up the call and join me?
Today I’m going to teach the newbies in the audience about entry level HR positions. Everything I know is based on my own experience over the past few years, both my own and helping others with getting entry level HR positions. In the short video below I share some basic ideas that have helped me immensely any time I had to look for a job change within my HR career. The three keys?
I have developed a video course to help entry level HR pros find and get their first entry level HR positions and then knock them out of the park. If you are an entry level HR pro or someone looking to get their first HR job, I highly encourage you to check it out!
The course is made up of over an hour of video content, several bonus eBooks, and weekly articles and assignments to help the training “stick” for the long term. These skills will carry you through your entire career; you just need to take the time to learn them!
Learning how to prioritize work projects isn’t something you pick up overnight. I was reminded of this when a friend reached out recently and was looking for information on how to make use of a very limited time frame and what equated to an endless list of projects.
How to Prioritize Work Assignments (Video)
In this short video (embedded below; subscribers need to click through to view) I discuss some of the keys to prioritizing work while keeping your managers and project stakeholders happy.
In case you weren’t making notes, those three key points in the video were:
Setting deadlines (and asking for them)
Getting manager feedback
Communicating more often than normal
Nothing earth-shattering in the video, but you’d be amazed at how often the little things like this will make you look like an outstanding professional compared to those who don’t take the time to do this well.
CEO’s Speak Out on How to Prioritize Work
In a previous book review (Perform Like a Rock Star) I pointed out the results of a survey of numerous CEOs:
CEOs rate the top two qualities they say will help someone advance in their career quickly as:
1) the ability to separate the relevant from the irrelevant
2) the ability to get the job done quickly
So, in other words, being able to prioritize and do work quickly will (statistically) be something that your CEO would appreciate. Keep that in mind–it’s a skill you must develop.
How to prioritize work in HR
In the above examples I was talking about some fairly straight forward items. But I’d like to think that HR has a unique twist. How do you prioritize between a safety training class, conducting a sexual harassment investigation, recruiting for a key opening, and answering open enrollment questions?
Yeah, welcome to HR.
Let’s take a consulting role with an outsider’s perspective. Assuming no serious safety or critical legal issues, how do you prioritize work that is a big, jumbled mess? Check out this short paraphrased conversation I had with a friend this week for how I would start approaching a large number of competing priorities.
Hey, Ben. I am about to fly to an out of town location to meet with some of our remote HR people. The last time I spoke to someone in HR there, they indicated that help was needed in their recruitment, onboarding, health/safety, employee engagement and retention, etc. The trouble is that I don’t know where to begin since it sounds like EVERYTHING needs an update Any advice? -P-
It’s a fairly common problem in the HR field to have this sort of thing, so I tried to offer a valuable response without prescribing too much since I am making judgments from a thousand miles away.
This is such an amazing opportunity for you! Wow. The hard part, of course, is prioritizing the various needs and working on the highest impact items first. And how do you prioritize between recruiting, health/safety, and retention? That’s the real question.
Since you’re coming in from the outside, you’ll have to rely heavily on what the people on the ground know and think about the situation. Ask them what key area you need to start with and go from there. One of my favorite questions to ask in that scenario is “What is your biggest frustration with how things are going now? If we could wave a magic wand to change it, what would be the ideal outcome?”
Sometimes with that pair of questions you’ll hear them tell you exactly what you need to start with. It isn’t always that simple, but I’m amazed at how many times it’s worked for me. Most of the time it just takes the right person to ask the right question at the right time. And I think that’s your role in this!
You might also point them to some of the resources on this page. If they are serious about making improvements then I can guarantee they’ll find at least one idea for making positive change within their work group.
Let me know if that helps or if I can answer more. This is such an amazing opportunity for you and I can’t wait to hear how it goes.
Again, that’s my view from outside the organization, but I think it’s a safe place to start and still have the opportunity to get the local HR staff working in the same direction.
Do you have a specific method for how to prioritize work projects? How do you do it?
Vendor management guidelines? What? Isn’t this an HR/recruiting/leadership blog?
Well, yes. Yes, it is.
However, all of us have to deal with vendors, consultants, and other service providers at some point in our careers. I’ve been talking with our own Contracts/Subcontracts management pro at work, and we were discussing ways to help our vendors understand what we need from them. No, you don’t have to create a 50 page set of vendor management guidelines and rules to force them to align with your every desire (good luck with that if you try).
So the question remains. How can you communicate the importance of your core values and what matters to your organization in a way that your vendors, consultants, and suppliers understand and want to partner and support your goals? We talk about all that and more in this video.
So, what do you think? Are a set of vendor management guidelines in order, or would we be able to carefully and intentionally share our core values, culture, and interests in a way that helps to develop a strong partnership with our external resources?
