The majority of us don’t need to have it explained to us. We understand the benefits of having a holiday. We LOVE holidays. But many of us do need convincing when it comes to prioritising our time to make a holiday happen.

Repeat after me - You are not indespensable.  If you did happen to fall off the face of the earth tomorrow, your job could and would be managed by someone else. So why is it we all feel like we can’t take leave???

You just need to manage your time so your work can manage without you.

Some jobs do require you to be on board over the Christmas/New Year or on certain dates eg. for Board meetings etc so you will need to work around this and plan your holidays accordingly. But the majority of us can go and take time off.

Need more convincing? Holidays help you to live longer. A Survey by the State University of New York found that men who took annual holidays reduced their risk of death by 20%. That’s a bonus.

We screened our staff here at Nexthire and here is their shortlist of benefits of taking regular holidays:

• There’s a whole other world out there besides your day to day.On holidays you get to think of and experience other things
• You can take time to set goals. Whether it be long term or short term, holidays give you time to think about it.
• Rest & recuperate. You get to sleep in and not be woken by an alarm clock.
• Revitalise your relationships. A break from colleagues is healthy. Time with loved ones is vital.
• Holidays are a great time to read. Fast Company has compiled this list of best books of 2012 to help you find fulfillment, get productive and create healthy habits.  Or if you you’d rather just relax with a book, here’s Reading’s Summer Reading Guide to whet your appetite.

We could list more but that’s not the point of a shortlist.

So are you going to be one of the 58% of people that work during the Christmas/New Year break to catch up on unfinished business? (Source:Vecci) Or are you actually going to switch off and take a break?

If you are going to take a break, here’s some of the best things to enjoy about summer – cricket, Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, Australian Open Tennis, outdoor cinemas, twilight BBQs with friends, Fish & Chips on the beach and one of my favourites, the feeling of exhilaration as you dive under your first wave at the beach.

Happy Holidays!

It can be very costly hiring the wrong people but often this is not considered from the outset when
calculating the cost of recruitment.

So how can you ensure you make the best hire? There’s no sure fire answer but there are ways to
increase the likelihood of hiring a star candidate that fits well into your organization.

One readily available and increasingly accepted means of screening candidates in through psychometric
testing.

Psychometric testing gives employers the ability to look behind the friendly façade of an interview and
get an in depth view into the behavioural patterns of an individual before they entrench themselves in
an organization.

There are three key types of Psychometric tests that are commonly used in recruitment:

Cognitive Ability – this test provides a very strong indicator of future work performance by focusing on
aptitude and a general intelligence assessment.

Cognitive ability tests measure verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning and the resulting score reflects
the person’s ability to acquire, retain, organise and apply information.

Behavioural Profile – being able to determine how a candidate is likely to behave in any given situation
is a powerful tool when recruiting. The Behavioural Profile test enables clients to assess how a candidate
is likely to problem solve, interact with others, and respond to the pace of the environment and its rules
and procedures.

Emotional intelligence – is a person’s capacity to effectively reason about emotions and to use emotions
to enhance thought and solve problems.

Individuals with high levels of emotional intelligence (EI) are generally better able to perceive, identify
and manage emotions in themselves and others, making them more effective at achieving goals when
emotional based information is important. This is particularly important in activities involving team
work, dealing with others on a one-on-one basis and displaying leadership behaviours.

Source: OneTest

For a relatively small investment during the recruitment phase, potential conflicts with employees can
be identified and managed appropriately without tears and the loss of time and money. Sometimes it’s
better to invest a little more from the outset to ensure you get the desired results in the end.

Most people have lied in an interview. While the degree of deceit varies, it is very likely that a future employee has atleast embellished a story during the interview process. Some common ‘little white lies’ that I often see in resumes include:

1. Padding education & qualifications

2. Omitting gaps in employment history

3. Inflating previous titles

4. Exaggerating sales figures

The cost of a bad hire can be significant.  A bad employee can have a negative impact on a company’s morale. Strong negativism, a poor attitude and incompetence can spread quickly within any organisation. This is why you want to stop such a person before they get into your company.

There are a number of techniques you can utilise to try and ensure that your next hire is your best hire. I’ve listed a few of these below.

1. Undertake psychometric and skills based testing on job applicants.  This will give you an idea of the person beneath the façade as they are impossible to ‘fake’

2. Use LinkedIn to cross check the experience of candidates with their CV

3. I often get a feeling that a person is just ‘not quite right’ when interviewing them.  Simple intuition will sometimes be more accurate than any hard data. A good way to test a candidate is to throw them a few slightly obscure questions during the interview. This will help you see how they behave when they are pushed to find an appropriate answer.

4. Perform a comprehensive background check and if possible include any contacts you may have in at companies that the candidate may have worked at. You don’t have to limit yourself to the stated referees of a candidate (although you do have to ask the candidate permission to do this.)

5. The most obvious of these is very simple…hire a professional.  Recruiters and shortlist providers like nexthire interview candidates day in day out and are highly experienced in weeding out the star candidates from the bad.

The techniques for doing this are invariably learnt over time, and even the best hiring managers will let a bad hire slip through the cracks from time to time; so don’t be alarmed if you find after some time that a new hire is not as good as first thought.  Learn from your mistakes and try to not let it happen again.

Jason Snell.

1. Have clearly defined Values within the organisation that are relevant and have meaning.

2. Prepare questions that are linked to each Value and invite candidates to provide examples.

3.  Ensure more than one person is in the interview- it’s always beneficial to discuss the suitability of a candidate with a colleague that attended the interview

4. Become connected on LinkedIn. Does your potential candidate have any testimonials, who are they connected with and is there a match with your business/culture

5. Conduct reference checks and focus more on character than skills as skills can be learnt.

Jason Snell.

Team cohesion is increasingly important in the current business climate.  Ask any room full of managers and they’ll tell you the same thing. Good people are hard to find and even harder to keep. It takes more than a salary and benefits to keep your team in place.

In addition to the loss of IP, there are large costs associated with losing staff.  A recent report by Deloitte detailed the potential costs of high employee turnover “Companies that lose key talent to new opportunities must bear the costs of attracting, recruiting, and training new employees to replace those who have left. These expenses can mount quickly. In fact, after accounting for these costs plus the loss of intellectual capital, client relationships, productivity, and other job skills, the ultimate cost of replacing a lost employee can be two-to-three times that employee’s annual salary”. As you can see the dollars and time really do rack up if you have high staff turnover.

As I’ve written before, one of the most impressive turnarounds in sport (and in the corporate world for that matter) in recent years has been at my former hunting ground the Geelong Football Club. Their success has been well documented, but what really impresses me is Geelong’s ability to maintain a cohesive team on and off the field.

I was able to talk to Geelong CEO Brian Cook and pick his brain about how he manages to keep his team so successful.  Cook has built a highly skilled, corporate team at Geelong and is passionate about maintaining it well into the future.

While Cook is the first to admit that there is no magic trick to assembling a solid business team, he does strongly believe that “talent is important but character is even more important”.

“I have no doubt that respecting good character has helped build a club environment that people want to work in and enjoy coming to work.” Says Cook.

Cook credits a number of different strategies with the strength of his team.  Shortlisted below are the key techniques Cook uses to keep his team together. The essence of which is that a happy employee is a loyal one, and in order to have cohesiveness you need loyalty.

Cook’s Shortlist of techniques for a Cohesive Team

• Setting mutually agreeable goals

• Being supportive and helpful and providing opportunity

• Being there for his staff

• Not being afraid to give his staff ‘the big jobs’

• Paying well and ensure the range of remuneration is not at extremes but at a high average

• Aiming to enjoy the company of staff both individually and as a team

• Developing trust by being honest, sharing and be as inclusive as possible

Of course each organisation has its own nuances when it comes to people management, and each individual invariably has to be managed differently.  Having said this, by utilising some of the above tips and adapting them to your situation, you should find that in time, your team will become inherently more solid and an asset for the business.

Jason Snell.

When I meet with clients I invariably mention my “push/pull theory” in relation to Social Media Recruitment.  At present, the vast majority of the recruiter market are pushing jobs out to candidates via newsletters, SMS, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and job boards which were a major leap in our industry 8 years ago.

These are all great and play a significant role in the way we do business, but the next step is to utilize social media to facilitate two-way communication and establish a working relationship. By doing this, businesses are actually pulling candidates in with relevant information that is of use to that individual candidate.

No more ‘post and pray’ but rather engaging with your candidates is the only way to truly get the full benefit out of social media. Easier said than done I hear you say and you’re right. Using social media to advertise roles and recruit candidates is the easy part. The hard part is the regular engagement and on-line relationship building.

LinkedIn is the master of this by not only creating the platform, but for also creating a cosy space for Groups to form, express ideas and engage.

A recent survey by Jobvite found that 89% of the businesses surveyed planned to use social media to recruit staff this year. Social media recruitment is clearly catching on but how you use it is the key!

(source: Jobvite.com)

My favourite graphic at the moment is by Bullhorn Reach that shows just how recruiters are using social media. It’s an impressive diagram and includes big numbers, brace yourself!

Here at nexthire we are about to embark on the next phase of our social recruitment plan.

Our Blog – hirethinking, is set to become a treasure trove with insights and anecdotes from industry gurus and will be linked with our Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin use. This is the start of our conversations with candidates.

Whether you “Like Us”, “Follow Us” or “Connect With Us”, we will be investing more time in social recruitment to deliver you your nexthire.

When you run an incentive or employee recognition program, care needs to be given to all details to ensure the individual and company gains maximum benefit and the participant is inspired by their reward to continue performing.

Cash incentives are often not the most effective way to reward staff and may actually hinder employee performance.

Goodyear Tyres in the US undertook an excellent example of the effectiveness of different rewards programs when they ran a sales incentive campaign to improve sales of tyres.

Two groups were formed; one was offered cash, and the other an equivalently priced selection of merchandise and travel-related rewards. The group receiving lifestyle and travel rewards outperformed the cash group by 46%.

Following this trial the research found that extra cash is viewed as part of a salary and is generally spent on bills and other household items.  Non-cash rewards however, were remembered more fondly by recipients and led to increased productivity and loyalty to the employer.

In order to attract and retain talent, smart employers will need to identify the ‘hot buttons’ for particular groups and gear their rewards accordingly.  While cash may well be attractive to Gen Y’s, Baby Boomers might prefer free financial advice, Gen X’s may appreciate subsidised child-care and men and women will likely enjoy different incentives.

If you are considering or are currently in the process of implementing an incentive program for your employees, it is critical to consider the needs and wants of individuals in order to achieve a return on investment for your program.

With the world teetering on the brink of a double dip recession, I’ve noticed that many companies are already freezing their hiring or starting redundancies. In hindsight, many of these companies may end up viewing these actions as a knee jerk response to circumstances.

Whilst it’s important to review recruitment at regular intervals, particularly during tough economic times, the solution may be to hire differently rather than freeze recruiting altogether.

While a recession or downturn in business certainly isn’t a good thing, it will give you an opportunity to have a good look at your recruitment processes and see how you can do things better and in a more cost effective way.

If you examine your recruitment activities and quickly realise that you have high cost per recruit, coupled with extended period of time to employ;  then it’s time you did something about it.  Too often I see companies paying through the teeth for bad performing recruiters.  Have a look at your list of recruitment suppliers and if you can, straight away cull the ones that are charging high fees for poor performance.

Now’s the time to also consider the  way in which you undertake your recruiting. If full scale recruitment agencies aren’t meeting your needs then you have two options – either take an alternative, new approach to outsourcing recruiting;  or do it yourself,  in-house.

Shortlisting companies such as the one I run, nexthire, are a great way to bridge the gap between full-scale recruiters and DIY. In general, shortlisting companies charge a fixed fee on delivery of a shortlist of candidates ie. a list if candidates that meet your criteria, which you can then further screen and employ. Fees are not determined by the salary of the employed candidate. They are pre-stated, transparent and up-front.  So when your recruitment budget is being tightened, trying a different approach to your recruitment could be the answer.

Alternatively, if you decide to advertise a role yourself, be prepared for a lot more applications than usual.  Invariably in a recession, the talent pool will get larger, and as a result you will find yourself sifting through hundreds of CV’s in search of that elusive perfect candidate.  Again, a shortlisting company can help you get through these CV’s and let you get back to running your business.

Jason Snell.

We often get asked here at nexthire what shortlisting actually is, so I thought we should put together a little video explaining exactly what it is we do.

Fortunately Luke Peary, one of our gun Account Managers was an actor in a former life so we were able to put his skills to good use.  Click below to see him in action!

We’re an avid bunch of AFL fans here at nexthire, none more so than myself having played for Geelong before starting nexthire. I’ve been particularly pleased with the performance of the Cats over the last five years (four grand finals & three premierships). While clubs traditionally run through a peak and trough cycle over the period of ten years, Geelong has managed to stay at the top of the game for over six consecutive years.

Many are intrigued as to why some clubs flounder at the bottom of the ladder for long cycles while the top teams like Collingwood and Geelong are able to sustain their success for so long.  The secret to their success is simple…people. Without the recruitment of both the best players and the best management, Geelong would not have been able to maintain this success for an extended period of time.

Things weren’t always so good down at the Cattery but in 1999 the Geelong Board made an astute recruitment decision, appointing Brian Cook as CEO.  Cook has an acute understanding of organizations and business and an insightful appreciation for the importance of recruiting the right people.

Prior to 1999, Geelong was described as being “very good at being average” but with Cook atthe helm, things started to change for the better.  Credited with overhauling Geelong’s business operations and clearing debts, Cook freed theclub up to appoint great people off the field, to develop great players on the field.

It seems simple, but in the football world it seemed quite radical at the time. To identify off-field staff as having as significant a role as the players themselves – seemed almost un-Australian Such notions were usually reserved for the coaches. Not anymore. Brian Cook shook up the Geelong Football Club with his new approach to recruitment providing us with a new way to think. Get the right people in all positions and success will flow.

Jason Snell.