Monday, November 30, 2015

What are Managers Comparing Between Candidates??

There is already so much pressure when you walk into an interview, competition is always high. You are more than likely to be compared with other people interviewing for that same position! THIS is what managers are mainly comparing. KEEP this in mind when preparing for your dream job!

-Worlco


4 Questions Managers Ask to Better Compare Equally Qualified Candidates


A bona fide sweets enthusiast will have no trouble selecting the chocolate lava cake, extra sauce, over the cheese plate on a dessert menu. But what if there’s a lava cake, a strawberry rhubarb pie with ice cream, creme brulee and beignets, this time with gelato? Each dessert option is well-suited to be your next post-meal obsession — and for very different reasons. All of a sudden the decision becomes a little trickier.
Just as some (this writer in particular) belabor the age-old, cake-versus-pie conundrum after dinner, hiring managers, too, are put in a similar position when they’re down to their top candidate choices.

Select, don’t settle

Hiring the right candidate for your open role is easy when you have a clear winner in the interview process (lava cake will beat cheese plate any day of the week). But what do you do when you're torn between equally qualified job candidates? Flipping a coin might seem tempting, but settling doesn't just put a less-than-ideal person in the position, it can actually lower employee engagement.
Gallup discovered 82% of hiring processes didn't pick the person with the right talent, resulting in lower employee engagement. Another problem with choosing the incorrect candidate is the impact on employee turnover. Add the wrong person into your employee mix, especially at management and executive levels, and you could be looking at the cause of 80% of your turnovers.
So how do you make the final decision, ultimately arriving at the lava cake (or creme brulee, depending on your taste) of job candidates? Ask yourself these four questions.

1. Which candidate is better suited to meet performance metrics?

Ask candidates to provide or discuss performance data in the interview. 
Getting to the cold, hard facts and figures helps you determine whether a candidate can meet the performance metrics you're expecting.


Let's say you're hiring for a position that will be judged based on a specific metric, perhaps the number of sales qualified leads handed off from marketing to sales. If one candidate can prove she has consistently set and met goals around SQLs, and another can simply use sales qualified lead in a sentence, well, the proof is in the pudding, as they say.

2. Do you know the "secret weapon" skills a top candidate should have?

Sometimes job descriptions end up being a laundry list of skills and qualities loosely related to the position, failing to encompass what the job actually demands. Think about the difference between writing "seeking a big-picture, strategic thinker" versus "sending one or two emails per week to a segmented list" as job responsibilities. Both are great to mention and seek out, but the latter is more day-to-day while the former borders on nice to have.
Or, perhaps worse, the job description doesn’t make mention of the "secret weapon" skills that a candidate really needs to succeed in the role. For example, consider writing: "Ideal candidate can talk with both engineering and data science teams, then translate into engaging stories."
Talk to employees working in the department or holding the same position to find out what the most important skill sets are in handling the workload. Or, if you’re hiring the first person in this role, reach out to someone from your network who has hands-on experience in the same role.

3. Are you dealing with a cultural mismatch?

Culture mismatch is a major factor that separates a candidate with great potential from an actual great employee. According to Leadership IQ, 46% of employees fail before 18 months with a company. These failures are rarely due to the wrong skills, as only 11% fall into that category. It’s important to remember that technical competence is not the only factor to focus on in an interview.


Make sure potential employees align with your company’s culture, including workspace — whether it’s a traditional cubicle sprawl or an open floor plan — as well as have the right temperament and emotional intelligence. The candidate who fits in better with your existing culture will more likely be one of the 19% who achieve unequivocal success.

Save room for future hiring needs

In a perfect world, you'd have room for all the desserts. However, in the real world of hiring, you have to pass on some — but that doesn’t mean you can’t revisit your options in the future.
Let other candidates know that it was a tough choice and that you’re planning to keep their resumes on hand for new positions that may open up. You’ve already handled a big chunk of the screening and interviewing process, so there's no reason to throw all that work away.

Find #4, and the full article, here!

Monday, November 16, 2015

8 Keys to Making a Great First Impression

It's hard to come back from a bad first impression, and you clearly only have one. Here are some tips  from Mashable.com to help you dominate first impressions!

-Worlco

8 Keys to Making a Great First Impression


It can be challenging to put your best foot forward all the time, so we’ve gathered up some quick tips and tricks to make sure that from now on, you’ll knock the socks off every person you meet.
    Article found here!

    Thursday, November 5, 2015

    Is It Too Late to Change Career Paths and Become a Programmer?

    It's not uncommon for one to assume that it's too late to switch career paths, but it happens all the time! Read this inspiring story that was posted on www.Mashable.com about a woman who took her future into her own hands and became a programmer! You can find the rest of the story here!
    -Worlco
    Is It Too Late to Change Career Paths and Become a Programmer?
    This question originally appeared on Quora.
    I am 24 years old and just started learning coding. I want to be a programmer. Am I too late in the game?
    Answer by Erin Parker, founder of Spitfire Athlete.
    It's never too late. So much can happen in a year, it can amaze you.
    I majored in economics. When I was about 23 years old, I randomly decided to go to aRailsbridge Meetup, where you learn how to make a basic Ruby on Rails app in a day. I made a basic Rails app and very much enjoyed it. A seed was planted that day.

    Months later, I had an idea for a website I've always wanted to build. Although my idea was vague, I imagined [this website] would inspire women to be kick*ss go-getters. I thought it would either be a career website, or one in the health and fitness space. And I definitely wanted to call it Spitfire. I strongly felt such a product was sorely needed, and I felt I had a pretty good perspective and vision to create it.
    Although I hadn't committed to learning programming just yet, I would sketch out mocks like this:







    QuoraSpitfire1
    IMAGE: QUORA, ERIN PARKER

    I would email these mocks to my friends and get their feedback.
    At the time, I was getting pretty hardcore into lifting weights and I was seeing a lot of results. I was also having a frustrating time finding high quality, trustworthy resources for women who lift weights, and had this continuous nagging feeling that maybe I should actually do something about it.
    Finally, I decided to do it. Friends were asking me how I was getting in shape, how to lift weights, how to eat healthy. I decided to commit to learning Ruby on Rails and building out [my idea].
    I figured if I learned to program — even if I failed — I would have at least failed while building something that could help scale what I'd learned to potentially millions of people. And that in itself is a worthy pursuit.
    At the same time, however, I decided failure was no longer an option. I wasn't going to let myself stop until I'd built what I'd envisioned in my head Spitfire could truly be. I knew that if I just persisted through the pain (like an athlete), that the end result would be well worth the temporary pain.
    I started teaching myself Ruby on Rails by voraciously consuming every free resource I could, like Learn Ruby the Hard WayTry RubyCodecademyMichael Hartl's book Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, the Rails Guides, and my absolute favorite, RailsCasts.
    I was relentless, If I didn't get something the first time, I didn't care. I would go through it again and again until it started to make sense. I would look for different explanations of the concept. I would ask my friends. When I was coding in coffee shops, if the person sitting in front of me looked like they were an engineer based on the stickers on their laptop, I would kindly ask them if they could help (I have made so many friends this way, a few of them are still really good friends).

    I would go to lots of developer meetups, and particularly liked Women Who Code because of their "teach a new tutorial at each meetup" format, and all of The Ruby Group meetups; it was easy to get help [if I was stuck].
    I stuck with it for months and, little by little, "banged out" the ideas in my head. You can still see many of my early projects here:

    I worked the most on this one:


    READ MORE HERE!