How to write a job ad

With such a large number of varied job ads online and in print, if you want to attract the best people you have to make your ad stand out. It is also very important to properly convey your workplace culture in the ad, so that you do not have to waste time interviewing inappropriate candidates.

Great job ads are appealing but also honest. If you oversell the job, your new employee will quickly become disappointed. If you undersell, you may reduce the scope or quality of applicants applying.

You should make sure that you write your ad in a way that clearly reflects the personality of your business and also conveys a message to your applicants about the type of person will suit the role. Getting a person who is a good personality fit to your company is equally as important as getting someone with the right skillset.

If your ad is reflective of your company, applicants will be in a better position to judge whether or not they should apply.

You should always include a detailed list of duties that the role entails and the types of skills and qualifications that you are looking for. A little attention to detail here can save you a lot of time when it comes to sorting resumes.

Finding new customers

If you’re new to business, marketing can seem overwhelming and frustrating. There is no one activity that brings a wealth of customers to your door. Marketing must be an ongoing activity with a number of complementary approaches.

What typically happens when you first start your business, you pay a lot of attention to marketing, but once you reach a satisfactory level of sales or a sufficient client list, you slowly let marketing slide. That’s a recipe for long-term decline. There’s always a certain amount of natural attrition in your customer base, as well as new competitors attracting some customers away. You have to keep marketing just to retain a constant level of income.

But before you go out and spend your money, sit down and plot out at least a mini-marketing plan. Make sure your marketing activities are a good fit for your type of business. Come up with a budget. As importantly, remember you need repeat exposure to potential customers to get results. So, don’t blow your entire marketing budget on one direct mailing

Here’s are five tried-and-true marketing activities for small businesses:

Advertising
Advertising often brings quick results, especially if you’re announcing a special sale. But advertising works best when you maintain an ongoing advertising program because ads keep your name in front of customers.

Direct mail
Direct mail can be expensive and must be repeated at least quarterly to be effective, but it definitely works.

Cold calls
Want fast results? Pick up the phone, knock on the door, visit the prospect’s business.

Website
Having a website won’t generate sales, certainly not immediately. But it helps support your other sales efforts and gives your business credibility.

Referrals
Everyone wants “word-of-mouth” advertising, but this takes time. The best way to generate referrals is by ongoing networking, but you can also institute a reward program to encourage current customers to recommend you to their friends.

Turning complaints into compliments

Employees frequently concentrate on the positive side of their conversations with customers, and often fear management disapproval if a complaint comes to light. This can often hinder what otherwise might have been healthy and useful criticism.

Complaints can show a business what needs to be changed, so owners should work hard at generating honest feedback from their customers, be it positive or negative.

One way to solicit feedback is by simply asking customers to provide it. An example would be sending a personal letter to customers that includes a questionnaire, or invites them to call if they have any complaints or problems.

If a customer complaint concerns a specific employee, it is often best to speak directly to him or her about the problem, and try to determine what can be done to rectify it.

Generally, complaints are best handled by the people that can do the most about them, which is usually the person in charge of the particular area. A complaint about the business’s telephone system should go to the business administrator while the personnel manager would handle a complaint about a secretary’s rudeness. However, customers can complain to any member of staff, so handling them should be everyone’s responsibility.

If a business decides upon this approach, adequate employee training is critical. Employees must be made to feel that they play an important part in customer service, and it is the responsibility of management to encourage this company ethos.

Business should present customer service training to employees in a way that puts them at their ease. Let them know that it is healthy criticism, which should not be taken too seriously. Do not blame or praise, because this could lead to resentment or low morale. Feedback should always be presented in the context of, ‘How could we do this differently?’

Businesses may start to see improvement in a very short time, but this process can take as long as a year. Training your staff to look at customers more closely is an easy and effective way to measure customer satisfaction on a daily basis.

Dealing with difficult employees

Having to deal with someone who isn’t coping in the office is not a pleasant situation for anyone.

There may be a variety of reasons for this, such as personality clashes, the employee having a bad work ethic or the workload proving to be too much for the employee to handle.

Whatever the reason, it’s a situation that no employer wants to find themselves in, for it can severely affect the working environment of your office, as well as the quality of work expected from your clients.

Although discussing the issue may be daunting to some, the sooner action is taken, the sooner a solution can be reached. Here are some tips to get you started on what you should prepare before addressing the issue with your employee.

Be specific
It is no good just telling an employee that you’re unhappy with their work attitude or quality of work produced. Make sure you are clear with what is displeasing you.

Record everything
Try to maintain a record of the problems that have arisen due to the employee. This will then form the basis of your evidence if the employee denies anything that has happened. Or it could even give you a better understanding of why they behave in a particular way if you see a pattern forming.

Take the time to listen
If an employee has been underperforming for quite a while, many employers may eventually find themselves focusing solely on the bad behaviour or quality of work produced. Instead, they should be stopping and paying attention to what may actually be the cause of the bad work. Sometimes just listening to your employee can make all the difference in the world. Perhaps they noticed a change in their quality of work as well and were too afraid to say anything, or perhaps they just needed a quick chat with the boss to let them know what was going on in their life.

Hiring graduates

Hiring recent university graduates is a great way to bring fresh ideas and energy to your business. Other advantages include the potential to shape their work habits to suit your company and the possibility that they will have some exciting technical skills to offer. Graduates also have far lower salary expectations, meaning that they can be an affordable source of talent.

Here are some tips for recruiting top tier graduates:

Show them what the role involves
Throughout the recruitment process, you should be aiming to show potential recruits why working for you is in their best interests. Being able to give them a crystal clear understanding of what the role will entail will go a long way in boosting your credentials.

Hold group interviews early on
Group interviews are a time efficient way to assess the interpersonal skills that are so crucial to a successful professional life. You will quickly be able to get a feel for their natural aptitude, communication abilities and capacity to work as a team.

Clearly demonstrate the potential for career progression
The number one thing that graduates are looking for in their first job is an opportunity for career progression. You should explain what the different options for them within the company would be, and also aim to demonstrate why experience with you will look great on their future CV.

The art of effective negotiation

The key to success is remembering that everything is negotiable, and that to get a deal you must ask for one. Many people stop there because negotiating makes them uncomfortable. They view the process as a contest of wills in which power determines outcome, each party seeks to best the other, and the little guy doesn’t stand a chance. That kind of positional bargaining may produce some short-term results, but it is a distasteful, win-lose process that can leave both sides exhausted, resentful and dissatisfied with the outcome.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Effective, principled negotiation will efficiently produce an agreement that meets the needs of both sides while improving or at least maintaining personal relationships. In negotiating the key is to focus on four areas:

People
Separate the people from the issues to avoid personalising them. Make sure each party understands the other’s perception of what is involved. Identify the underlying emotions on both sides and acknowledge them. Listen actively and speak to be understood, not to argue a position. Don’t debate-cooperate.

Interests
Focus on interests instead of positions. Behind each position lie compatible interests as well as conflicting ones. To identify the interests, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Why would he take such a position? Does any aspect of your proposal conflict with those interests?

Options
Work with the other party to generate a variety of options. Separate the brainstorming from the decision-making process. Look for areas of agreement by identifying shared interests. Look for ways to dovetail differing interests by exploring options that are of low cost to you and high benefit to the other party and vice versa.

Criteria
Insist upon negotiating within mutually-agreed-upon standards of fairness. These criteria may range from current market value to procedures for resolving conflict, and will bear directly on your ability to come to an equitable final agreement. Standards such as these are also crucial to establishing a foundation of trust on which to build a relationship.

Interview questions to find the perfect employee

Picking the wrong employee after a long interview process ultimately results in wasted time and lost money for a business.

To avoid this kind of situation, below are three kinds of questions employers should consider asking during the interviewing process to help identify and distinguish the best person for the job amongst a range of potential candidates.

Fact-based questions
These questions helps the interviewer confirm whether or not the potential candidate has the skills required for the job, as well as provide information that can be cross-checked against their resume to verify accuracy. Some fact-based questions include:

• How long did you work for at your last job?

• How long have you worked in the industry?

• What university did you go to?

Situational questions
These questions are a bit different to the fact-based questions. While fact-based questions provide the interviewer with valuable information, they don’t provide any insight into how the candidate would handle situations that may arise in the business. Some situational questions include:

• You’ve received a call from a customer who claims that she hasn’t received her shipment, even though the business confirms it was delivered. What do you do?

• A customer has posted a negative review to the business’s Facebook page. Since you are in charge of responding, how would you reply?

Behavioral questions
Knowing how a person behaves will help determine whether or not they will work well with others and be a good fit for a business. A person’s past behavior also tends to be an accurate predictor of how they will act and react to situations in the future. Some behavioural questions include:

• Tell me about how you handled working with a colleague who was different from you or difficult to work with?

• Tell me about a time when you received criticism and how you reacted to it.

The pros and cons of employing telecommuters

The workplace environment has changed dramatically over the last decade, with the practice of working from home becoming a more accepted workstyle.

Telecommuting refers to employees who work exclusively from home, but also includes those who part-time at home, and part-time in the office. While this workstyle has been found to provide a number of benefits to a business and its employees, there are some circumstances where it may not always be the best approach for a business to take. Certain positions, such as ones that don’t require a large amount of collaboration, are better suited to telecommuting. Businesses should also be aware that for telecommuting to succeed, the right technology and the right structure must be incorporated.

To help decide if telecommuting is right for you, here are some pros and cons of the practice:

Pros

• Hiring telecommuters means employers are not limited by geography. Many businesses miss out on a lot of potential talent purely due to potential employees living too far away from the office.

• Telecommuting has the power to remove the stress of commuting to and from work and increase employee flexibility.

• Employers may actually save money since they don’t have to spend money on buying office equipment or essentials for employees in the office.

Cons

• Employees who telecommute must be extremely self-motivated, focused and driven to be able to work from home. From an employer’s perspective, it can be quite hard to gauge whether a prospective employee has these skills. Employees who like structure and routine also may not thrive in an environment that provides an extra level of flexibility.

• Trying to manage telecommuting employees can be difficult for managers. Working with telecommuters requires patience, more communication and understanding.

• Telecommuters may feel lonely working away from everyone else, and are more likely to be overlooked for career advancement opportunities. If they are out of sight, they are probably out of mind too.

Top 3 valued employee skills

While the majority of today’s job roles do require employees to have some form of qualification or specific skill set, there are other certain attributes many of today’s employers consider to be just as important.

Here are three valued skills employees should work on developing to help them stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs:

Self-discipline
Many employers are beginning to move away from a supervisory model towards a more team-oriented approach. Therefore, they are on the lookout for people who are capable of working independently. This means employees need to have the ability to prioritise, plan, problem solve, organise and make decisions. As departments continue to shrink as a result of improved IT systems, employees who don’t need to be supervised often are becoming highly sought after.

IT skills
The rise in technology use over the years has created a bigger demand for employees who have a high degree of proficiency with computer software and technical knowledge. The ability to write reports, build and maintain databases, access and analyse data all require computer software skills. And with more people working remotely, it is a big plus for those who have the technological skills to troubleshoot and problem solve without the help or guidance from their employer.

Communication skills
The ability to communicate effectively with people within and outside a business is high on the list of an employee’s desired skills. Being able to liaise effectively with clients or customers and contribute successfully to a team requires strong interpersonal and communication skills. Being able to actively listen to those around you while also being able to contribute is a talent that helps a business grow and succeed.

Encourage employee engagement

Employee engagement is more vital than ever before to a business’s success and competitive advantage. Employees have greater flexibility on where, when and how they are working, so businesses need to keep their workers motivated and engaged. It is also more cost efficient for businesses to retain valuable employees, rather than having to pay the prices associated with recruiting new workers.

There are many factors that can impact an employee’s engagement; however, there are three key drivers. Engagement is affected by the employee’s:

• relationship with the immediate supervisor

• belief in senior leadership

• pride in working for the company

Traditional employee engagement programs involved surveys and reports which quizzed employees on whether they found their work meaningful, and were engaged in what they were doing for the business. However, employee engagement should be a stronger focus in business. It should not be a monthly survey; instead it should be a goal that managers and employers work towards every day. There are four key areas that managers and employers can focus on daily to encourage employee engagement:

• treat all employees with respect

• give credit when it is due

• communicate clearly, consistently and often

• offer benefits