How to hire the best talent

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Recruiting Talent|How to hire the best talentMost business leaders understand they need great people working for them to make their business a success. People are an organisations most valuable asset. Build a workplace where people are valued and you have a much greater chance of attracting talent.

In the current economic climate, if you want to hire the best talent you also have to understand these four things.

  • It’s an employees’ market
  • Salary isn’t the only thing employees care about
  • It’s hard to hire great people
  • The B word (Brexit)

So why do these things matter in the world of recruitment? Let’s take a closer look.

It’s an employees’ market

Unemployment is at an all-time low, which means today’s job market is tough …. for employers! Successful recruitment isn’t easy at the best of times, but with record levels of employment, the search for talent and retention are a huge challenge for businesses large and small.

So, what can businesses do to entice people who are already settled in another job? Well “If the mountain will not come to Muhammed, then Muhammad must go to the mountain”!

Businesses looking for talent can no longer rely on job boards to attract people (these forums only reach those actively seeking jobs). Businesses must understand they need to connect with passive job-seekers. Businesses need to begin by broadening their search. Using social media marketing and LinkedIn to publicise opportunities is a good place to start.

Ultimately, it’s about improving online branding to publicise the fact that you are a great employer (Glassdoor reviews matter). Old-school recruitment methods just don’t work in the current business climate.

It’s now critical that businesses adopt more modern recruitment strategies. Study your competitors so you can figure out what makes you different. You want to be able to tell prospective employees why they should work for you.

Salary isn’t everything

A report by The Psychology of Business on what people really want from their job says that culture is the new salary. While the report refers to American businesses, this shift in company culture appeal also applies to the UK. Business culture in the UK is an important currency for prospective recruits.

According to the Government’s business statistics there were 5.7 million SMEs in the UK in 2018, which accounted for over 99 per cent of all businesses. This is an important fact to consider when it comes to recruitment because most organisations competing for talent are small businesses that don’t have big budgets for large salaries. It’s where culture comes in.

For start-ups and small businesses, talent is an incredibly important asset. Culture is the answer as to how smaller businesses can compete for top talent. A report on workplace culture by LinkedIn says 71 per cent of individuals would consider taking a pay cut to work at a company whose mission and values align with their own. Professionals today just won’t work for leading companies if they have a bad workplace culture.

But what is a good culture? It certainly isn’t bean bags and bowls of fruit. Positive culture is all about giving employees a sense of purpose, providing opportunities for growth, supporting people but holding them accountable, offering flexibility, fostering trust, acknowledging achievements, showing appreciation and more. It takes effort and investment.

However, culture alone won’t cut it. People need to be able to live with financial security. Poor pay is a problem and a fair salary is still important. Small business expert Gene Marks reflects on why SMEs are struggling to find good people. The solution he says is simple – “we just aren’t paying enough.

“Some say that small businesses can’t afford to pay their employees more. I’m not so sure about that. I have clients that insist on paying low hourly wages to warehouse workers and below-market salaries to administrative and support professionals because that’s what they’ve been used to doing for the past decade. These clients are profitable and have the money to pay more. But they don’t.”
Salary isn’t everything, but it needs to be competitive and fair.

Talent scarcity

A recent survey by global business consultancy PwC, found that 72 per cent of CEOs are worried about the availability of key skills, stating that it’s not a lack of people that is the problem, but a lack of people with the RIGHT skills and abilities.

Millennials will soon make up over 50 per cent of the global workforce. They put training at the top of their list when starting a new job or evaluating an existing employer. SMEs have to acknowledge this fact. For the SME, training staff is critical. Millennials want to be in learning cultures. The SMEs grasping this fact will ultimately gain from growing their talent from within.

Brexit and recruitment

Brexit uncertainty has, according to James Stewart of KPMG, “been sapping business confidence for months, and now it is causing the jobs market to grind to a halt. With unclear trading conditions ahead, many companies have decided to hit the pause button on new hires.”

As a result, there has been a sharp increase in the use of temps and contract workers, with businesses choosing temporary recruitment solutions rather than taking on permanent employees until the Brexit dust has settled.

There is a fear amongst businesses around recruitment, particularly in sectors where there is a reliance on EU workers. When (if?) we eventually leave the EU, skill scarcity could potentially be exacerbated once free movement comes to an end.

So how can businesses mitigate against the effects of Brexit?

Aviation recruitment specialist, Ryan Abbott, advises on the UK skills shortage “In a globally connected world where students are bombarded with choices, we need to shout louder to reach potential talent who are unaware of what our industries can offer. Business leaders and recruiters can partner with colleges and schools to directly engage with students and show them the variety of successful careers open to them across UK industries.”

UK businesses need to widen their search and open their eyes to new ways of attracting talent into their organisations, as well as invest more in training from within.

Your Bad Leaders Are Driving Away Good Employees

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Employee Retention | Management and LeadershipThese days, it’s hard to keep a good employee in your ranks. Messages across the web tell young workers that the only way to get ahead is to hop positions frequently, even as much as once per year. In the modern job market, frequent relocations seems to be how employees get the titles, responsibilities and perks they crave.

So, employees are already poised to leave — and they will flee your offices even faster if your leadership isn’t up to snuff. Here are a few ways bad leaders negatively impact your employee retention and what you can do to stop it.

Poor Communication

Good communication is the number-one requirement for a leader. After all, it’s impossible to lead if you don’t know how to use words to direct your workforce. Still, many poor communicators make it to leadership positions, and from there, they wreak all sorts of havoc. Poor communication can take many forms:

  • Over-inflated — using too much jargon, too many big words or overly convoluted sentence structure
  • Non-specific — failing to provide clear instructions or guidelines for a project or situation
  • Abrasive — communicating with aggressive language and/or with anger
  • Selfish — communicating only to seek personal benefits, ignoring others’ needs or desires
  • Wrong method — employing an inappropriate means of communication

Fortunately, communication is a skill like any other, which means it is possible to retrain these leaders to improve their performance. It might be wise to encourage leaders to develop their communication through advanced education, like an MBA program, or else through mentorship or coaching.

Criticism

There is a fine line between healthy feedback and destructive criticism — and many leaders stray to the wrong side too often. Leaders are meant to coach, helping employees improve their skills and thus develop their careers. Bad leaders will nit-pick, taking every chance to degrade employees and make them feel ineffective and worthless.

Many employees become so downtrodden by the constant criticism that they do not report the bad behavior to HR or higher bosses, which means it is often difficult to identify overly critical leaders. If you receive any reports of an unsympathetic, judgmental leader, you should take them seriously and take steps to effect change.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to retrain leaders who develop this habit. Often, it is a clear and simple sign that someone is poorly suited to leadership and should be removed to a different role. However, you might also need to undo the damage of these leaders by being overly appreciative of employee contributions, perhaps even handing out employee awards to raise general self-esteem.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Employee Retention | Your Bad Leaders Are Driving Away Good Employees | Office Politics | Business PoliticsOffice Politics

Office politics is an unavoidable power and social networking system that develops in any organization, big or small. The manipulation of office politics by some employees is inevitable — but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for leaders to take advantage of the political atmosphere of an office. An overly political office often breeds fear amongst the workforce; fear causes employees to resent their employer, which drives up staff turnover.

Leaders might try to leverage office politics to encourage employees to work harder — but there is a delicate balance between positive and negative outcomes from political maneuvering. Plus, office politics always comes with ethical concerns, which certainly won’t boost your brand perception. It’s much safer to discourage leaders from inciting a political atmosphere in your workplace.

Dirty Laundry

Work only amounts to so much of a person’s life, and while it’s fine (even encouraged!) to share a bit of your home life with your coworkers, no one should be divulging unseemly personal drama in the workplace. Dirty laundry, much like office politics, breeds discomfort amongst your workforce; a proliferation of dirty laundry encourages people to spread rumors, with can reduce interpersonal trust and send employees looking for less threatening work.

Leaders need to find a balance between humanizing themselves with personal details and airing dirty laundry. Human resources can help train leaders who struggle to set boundaries. It’s also wise to build a workplace culture that allows for personal bonds between workers, so information about anyone’s personal life doesn’t seem quite so salacious.

Fear, discomfort, distrust — these are things that bad leaders can breed amongst your workforce, virtually guaranteeing that no good employee stays for longer than a few months. Your business can’t grow unless your workforce is stable and capable, which means you might need to take steps to change your leadership, stat.

The Qualities Of A Good Team

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Team Management|The Qualities Of A Good TeamAny business is going to be made up of teams, and the quality of those teams is going to determine to a large degree the success of the business. If you are hoping for the many myriad teams in your business to operate and function as you would hope them to, then there are many things you can focus on to be sure that they are as good as you would hope. One way to begin is to start thinking about what kinds of positive qualities you are likely to want or need in a good team. As long as you are aware of these, you can try to instill them a little more, and you should find that your teams are much more likely to do well and so improve your business performance in no time too. Let’s take a look.

Skilled Individuals

Any team is only as good as the people within it. That is a simple enough thing to realize, but it is something nonetheless which you are going to have to think about if you are to make sure that your teams are going to be as strong as you would hope. The matter of finding the best individuals you can for a team is complex and varied. First of all there is the initial recruitment process, whereby you need to make sure that you are filtering out those who are less than ideal for your team. Professional help from the likes of DSC Personnel could be the way to go here, as could having a clear image of what kind of individuals you are hoping to hire. Then it’s just a matter of ensuring that everyone is in the right team within the business, so that their skills are going to be put to the best possible use.

Shared Values

The more that these individuals have values in common, the easier they will find it to work towards a common goal. For that reason, you need to try and put people together who seem to want the same kind of result or output, as that is going to be a much more successful team on the whole. If you can encourage them to share their values and to discover their similarities here, you will find that it makes a huge difference to how well they work together, and the kind of results they produce as a team.

Delegation

Finally, any good team needs to know who is going to do what and why. As long as there is someone in charge who can divy out the tasks and delegate where necessary, you will find that the teams are going to work out much more successfully on the whole as a result of that. Delegation is an indication that the team is working well, and that everyone is in the right place, which is absolutely something you are going to want to aim towards if you want teams that work well.

How Much do Software Developers Make in 2019?

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | How Much do Software Developers Make in 2019?
 
Software developers have always been in high demand, but in 2019 the appetite for developers has just increased as new innovations and applications emerge. With this high demand comes a corresponding rise in salary expectations.

So how much can a software developer expect to make in 2019?

It’s not a simple answer. Not all software development jobs are alike; some are more specialized than others, which is reflected in their pay. But there are so many different types of software development specializations these days that it’s a challenge to keep track of them all and how much they pay.

That’s why we’ve put together a handy table below, with the most common types of software developer roles as of 2019 and what they earn.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | How Much do Software Developers Make in 2019?

*All figures based on Ziprecruiter estimates

Notice how in the above chart that the more specialized roles are able to receive a much higher average salary than the more general roles as they get more experience. The outlier seems to be blockchain developers, who receive disproportionately higher starting salaries due to both their rarity, the difficulty of the subject matter, and the current hype surrounding blockchain development.

AI and machine learning developers have similarly high salary prospects. The starting salaries mentioned in the chart are misleading. Actually, only a small percentage of jobs pay at this low range. Salary ranges begin to spike at $78,500 – $91,000 for AI developers (19% of jobs) and $70,500 – $100,499 for machine learning developers (17% of jobs).

The starting salary of cyber security engineers is also misleading. 30% of surveyed cyber security engineer jobs actually begin at the $83,000 to $108,499 range. This reflects cyber security’s vital role in an increasingly digital world, especially in large-scale enterprises with massive amounts of data.

Video game developer salaries in 2019 are also higher than in more general developer roles, however, there is a culture of overwork inherent in the industry which is a definite trade-off for anyone seeking a position in that field.

Note that engineering roles have slight but significant job differences from your standard developer: engineers don’t just code. Software engineers help develop processes and apply engineering principles to solve client needs, which means understanding the big picture and taking a strategic approach. It requires an additional skill set beyond mere programming and is reflected in the salary. The right software engineer will help ensure your development projects don’t fail, which attributes to their high demand and salary requirements.

So there you have it. We hope this chart will be helpful in either choosing a career in software development or switching to a different specialization in mid-career.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Shane ZilinskasShane Zilinskas is the Founder and CEO of Los Angeles software development agency ClearSummit, and the Co-Founder and CTO of TuneRegistry, a music rights SaaS platform. He also provides consulting services to startups and enterprise companies. Prior to working in the agency space, Shane built news media backends and part of the FAA’s air traffic control system. He has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from UVA. He has a passion for efficiency and combining the best tech and design to solve complex problems.

Twitter: @clearsummitapps

Benefits of Private Yacht Charter – Exclusive for On-The-Water Cruising Experience

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Benefits of Private Yacht Charter - Exclusive for On-The-Water Cruising ExperienceYou desire an undocked, strategic customer social engagement or executive team building event on a yacht charter with private crew and explore the South of France. Antibes is popular for yachting. As it is near Nice airport, embarking and disembarking charter yacht is easy for tourists cruising towards the South. Therefore, to book a private yacht charter Antibes look for a reliable charter broker. They will even offer expert advice about the key attractions you must see, while cruising.

A private yacht charter Antibes with a whole crew offers a lot of benefits, which you will not enjoy on commercial cruise line. It will offer an exclusive and memorable relationship building meetings on-the-water.

Leave concerns on the land

Before departure, you will need to discuss meal and activities with the crew. Everything from fully stocked bad, food and beverage selection and onboard water equipment [snorkeling gear, kayaks, paddleboards, fishing tolls, etc. will be taken care of prior you arrive.

Flexibility

There will be no itinerary dates or durations pre-planned. The time you go island hopping and come back will depend on you. It does not matter where you desire to undock, take the pleasure in cruising personalized itinerary according to your comfort and convenience. With every sunrise new story needs to be revealed and with every sunset extraordinary memory to be created.

All access passes

With a private yacht, you can easily gain access to pristine beaches and intimate coves, which commercial cruise ships cannot. Moreover, crewed charters can access secluded anchorages and hidden harbors, which self-skippered yachts cannot. It is an all access pass enabling you to enjoy unfiltered views, fresh air and minimal distractions. You can get closer to nature in a very personal way.

No stress of packing

You are accompanied with near and dear people, so there is no concern about dressing, so all-inclusive private charter meeting becomes less stressful in terms of packing. Moreover, you will dine most of the time onboard, so you get a chance to determine the dress code.

Customized menu

With personal gourmet chef to prepare meals onboard as per your preselected menu offers the freedom to dine without any concern about picky eaters, allergies, and dietary restrictions accompanying your meeting cruise. Moreover, all the spirits and meals are selected by you in advance, so you don’t need to struggle with choosing a menu. Just relax as reservation is also not needed.

No boating experience is needed

Fortunately, with private yacht charter you get a trained crew. You don’t need any boating experience because the crew does all the tasks onboard. You enjoy the cruise and VIP services offered.

Unlimited activities

While it is warm, you can go snorkeling and explore the underwater. Take spouses and significant others kayaking or you can even enjoy a cooking class from onboard gourmet chef. The yacht will also be equipped with latest technology for entertainment. You can even plan a wild night on the shore in some foreign city and return back but let the captain and crew know about your whim. They will cooperate happily!

With private yacht charter, indulge and relish a dream meeting!