Saturday, May 30, 2020

What is Your Social Media Personality

What is Your Social Media Personality Our friends down at MyLife have done an interesting social behaviour study looking at 890 adults ages 18 and older the results are presented below in this infographic. Takeaways: 36% admit to posting TV or movie spoilers 10% have been defriended due to prolific political posting One quarter of adults 18-35 are guilty of vaguebooking 88% of young parents post pics of their kids 24% of young men admit to creeping on exs profiles What is your social media personality? Please let us know in the comments! RELATED: How To Dazzle Recruiters with Your Social Media Profiles

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

What Time Does Work Start

What Time Does Work Start The employee manual says that your work day runs from 8:30 â€" 5:30 every day.     Here’s a simple question: what time does work start? a)           You should be sure to be coming in the door by 8:30… 8:35 at the latest. b)           You should be visible in the break room, getting coffee, by 8:30. c)             You should be sitting at your desk at 8:30. d)           You should start work by 8:15, so everyone sees you’re dedicated and motivated.  It doesn’t hurt to work through lunch, either. The best answer, according to supervisors: C.   Be sitting at your desk and ready to work at start time.   Arriving a few minutes early means you can have a hot cup of coffee and say hi to your team and still be there when the first phone call comes in. According to supervisors we interviewed, they expect you being ready to work and at your desk at 8:30. If you need to get coffee or do other tasks before starting work in earnest, it’s best to arrive a few minutes early.     Planning to arrive early every day also has the added benefit of providing a cushion for you if you run into traffic or other problems on the way to work.   If you’re in a customer-focused environment, such as retail or a call center, you can bet that some customers will be expecting you to be available when the clock ticks over to start time.   Nothing looks more forlorn than a customer waiting in the cold for the clerk to open the store.   Showing up early demonstrates that you take your customers seriously and appreciate their business. Showing up a few minutes early on a daily basis builds what Stephen Covey calls the “emotional bank account.”   According to Covey, “It’s like a financial bank account into which you can make deposits and take withdrawals. And if you get into a situation where you are constantly making withdrawals…you get an overdrawn Emotional Bank Account. ..It kills your freedom, your flexibility, and your credit capacity.” Making deposits into other peoples’ emotional bank accounts consists of doing what is valuable to them.   Showing up on time, or a few minutes early, shows your manager and your team that you are serious about your work.   On the day that you get stuck in traffic â€" and everyone gets stuck once in a while â€" you can relax a little, knowing that you’re built credibility with your boss. So if on time is good, isn’t starting very early â€" and working through lunch â€" better?   Not necessarily, according to HR experts.   If your work day consists of eight hours of paid time, and 30 or 60 minutes of unpaid lunch break time, you should be taking the break.    The extra hours that you work over 40 will qualify for overtime, and your employer is responsible for making sure you get paid correctly for the hours you work.   You’re creating more problems than you’re solving by adding hours to your work week.   Related Article: Fewer Workers Say They are Late to Work This Year Than Last Year, Finds New CareerBuilder Survey http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/prnewswire/press_releases/national/Illinois/2010/03/17/CG71448

Saturday, May 23, 2020

How to Apply Storytelling to Employer Branding

How to Apply Storytelling to Employer Branding Ever heard of the power of storytelling? Of course, you have. Want to know how to apply effective storytelling to employer branding and/or recruitment marketing? Well, then you wont want to miss this episode! Lauryn Sargent is a founder at Stories Incorporated, a company that is half story consultancy and half creative studio. She has been a co-creator of a company currently working with best-in-class and emerging employer brands like Dell. Have a listen to the episode below, keep reading for a summary and be sure to subscribe to the  Employer Branding Podcast. Listen on  Apple Podcasts,  Stitcher Radio,  Google Play  or  SoundCloud. In this episode youll learn: What role storytelling has in a recruitment and employer branding setting. What makes a good story in the context of employer and why candidates should always be able to see themselves in the role through that story. How to figure out what the specific topics should be for candidates. About some tactical  tips to help give candidates the insights they are looking for. What to do when employees leave the company and you have used those employees to tell stories about your business. How to calculate the return on investment of your storytelling efforts. What employer brands inspire Lauryn and why. Whats next for employer branding and why storytelling plays a huge part in the future of employer branding. Connect with Lauryn on Twitter.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Personal Branding Interview James Hamilton - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding Interview James Hamilton - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today, I spoke to James Hamilton, who is the Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics and Political Science at Duke University.   He is also the coauthor of You Are What You Choose.   In this interview, James talks about what shapes our decisions, explains how decision making impacts marketing campaigns, and goes over a lot of the research in his new book. What are the six core traits that shape every decision? When you make choices you face decisions about whether to focus on today or tomorrow, on the possibility of a bad outcome, and on the spillovers that your decisions could have on others. You need to decide whether you’re going to gather a lot of information, look to others for guidance, or simply go with what you’ve always done before. In You Are What You Choose, Scott de Marchi and I show that a person approaches decision making in the same way across many different areas of life. We call the way that people make decisions their TRAITS, an acronym for Time, Risk, Altruism, Information, meToo, and Stickiness. In our research, we use decisions people make every day to measure their decision-making approaches. We capture a person’s preferences about Time by looking at whether they’re willing to take actions today that bring benefits tomorrow, like going to the dentist or working out. We measure a taste for Risk by studying whether a person gambles, smokes, drives fast, or plays risky sports. We measure Altruism in part by whether people give blood, donate to charity, and believe in jury duty. People score high on our Information measure by buying more books, consulting more sources for financial information, and searching out news on the web and cable. Rating whether a person is high on meToo depends on the degree they look to the brand and product decisions of others and are part of a large network of friends. A person’s Stickiness rating depends on factors such as the number of cars they considered when shopping, how many fast food or casual dining restaurants they go to, and the number of different cuisines they eat. Using information on 30,000 survey respondents gathered by the Knowledge Networks firm, we’re able to study how you can use the TRAITS to predict how people shop, drive, invest, and vote. What is the most fascinating part of your research that you came across? Before Scott and I did our research, I thought that people’s decision to live a green lifestyle would be heavily influenced by whether they were Democrats or Republicans. It turns out, however, that the TRAITS have a great deal of power in predicting who is likely to be driving a Prius. We find that people who shop and drive green are folks who score high on our Time measure. They think about the future in their daily lives, and this translates into concern about the planet’s future. They are high on our Altruism measure. They show up at the blood drive, and they recycle. They love Information, and living the green lifestyle in part involves gathering data and learning about choices. Why is the gambler always a gambler? People who are high on Risk are easy to spot. They may smoke, drink, and be more likely to be speeding on the road. This taste for rolling the dice in life also translates into other areas. Even after you take into account a person’s age, gender, education, and income, if they score higher on our risk measure they’re more likely to be invested in stocks and more likely to be trading those stocks. People high on risk are willing to experiment with new ideas, which also translates into being early adopters in product markets and being political independents in elections. How does learning how we make decisions impact marketing campaigns? Knowing a person’s TRAITS gives you insight into how you should frame marketing appeals to that person. If you’re selling a car, for example, you can talk about safety if the person is low on Risk, about environmental impact if the person is high on altruism, and about performance stats and quality ratings if the person is high on Information. Realizing that the TRAITS span different types of choices can also open up how you think about what groups to target. If you have a high tech product targeted at people in their thirties, you might be looking for people who like risks, enjoy information, don’t look to the decisions of others for status or acceptance, and are much less likely to stick with previous decisions. If you add in a dose of Altruism, this describes political independents. So you might want to target political independents in your search for early adopters. Can you relate any of your research to personal branding? Part of developing a personal brand is knowing who you are and how you make choices. Before you can convey your skills to employers, for example, you need to analyze what your strengths are. If you’re interesting in learning more about how you make choices, you can go to our website youchoosebook.com and take our TRAITS test. You can even share the results now on Facebook, so that your friends can see your style of decision making. James Hamilton is Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics and Political Science at Duke University. With a PhD in Economics from Harvard, he has done prize-winning interdisciplinary research about the environment and media policy. His last two books about the media (Channeling Violence: The Economic Market for Violent Television Programming and All the News Thats Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News) both won academic awards for best media book of the year. For his overall work in the environment and media policy, he received the David Kershaw Award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, an award given every two years to a researcher under 40 who has made distinguished contributions to policy research.     His latest book is called You Are What You Choose: The Habits of Mind that Really Determine How We Make Decisions.

Saturday, May 16, 2020

How to Resume Your Way Through the Resume Writing Bullets

How to Resume Your Way Through the Resume Writing BulletsMy classmates and I were given a test where we were supposed to list our strengths and skills on a sheet of paper, but instead, we were instructed to write a 1-sentence 'resume' for each of our prospective new hires. We all knew that the purpose of the exam was to train new employees how to write a resume, but we didn't expect it to be this intense.During the actual training, a supervisor sat down with us, explained the job description, and the instructions for writing a good resume. He then asked us to read the first page of resumes for each job opening. He asked us to highlight all of the strengths and skills listed in that particular resume and write a one-sentence summary of those attributes on our own resumes.Don't Panic: The first step here is to take everything that you've learned from your supervisors seriously. To help with this, I've created a list of guidelines that you can use. Although this is not a comprehensive l ist, it will help you avoid common resume mistakes.Bullets: Keep everything short and simple. Don't make your resume longer than necessary because it will have to scroll down the page. Start off by listing your strengths and skills in bullet points.Use Numbers: Add a '-' before your strengths and skills, and use numbers to list your titles. For example, you can list your Sales Experience at X, Y, and Z. In this example, you might have listed your Title as Sales Manager. If you're using a numeric field, choose the field type that gives you the most options for describing your abilities.Field's Title: This is important when you want to capture your strengths and skills in a one-sentence summary. It should summarize your goals and accomplishments in a way that makes it easy for potential employers to quickly learn about what you do best.Use Conditional Statements: Instead of just listing your titles and skills in bullet points, make a simple, single-sentence statement like 'I have x, y , and z.' You should still include a number, but this time use a comma after the value.Don't Forget To Use Paragraphs: At the end of your resume, you need to include a paragraph about why you are an ideal candidate for the job. You also want to use strong, compelling language to demonstrate your ability to perform specific duties. After the summary of your accomplishments, you can start to explain why you are an ideal candidate for the job.

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Book review The art of happiness at work - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Book review The art of happiness at work - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog The Dalai Lama knows a thing or two about how to be happy. Not only has he studied buddhist philosophy, psychology, history etc. all his life, hes also a terribly nice person who has devoted his life to serving others his own people (the tibetans) as well as the rest of us. In The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living his insights into what makes people happy were paired with those of Howard Cutler an american psychiatrist, to give us a manual of happiness based on eastern and western thought and science. For their second collaboration, theyve decided to look at how to be happy on the job. The Art of Happiness At Work is an exploration of the major issues confronting those of us who have jobs: Topics like stress, boredom, anxiety, meaningless jobs are given a new twist through the insights of the Dalai Lama a man who has never held a real job. It speaks to the depth of the buddhist knowledge and his ability to apply it, that he can offer profound insights and useful advice to people in circumstances so different from his own. One of my favourite parts of the book is when Cutler asks about how to handle stress when faced with work overload. His answer is classic: What is this work overload, what do you mean? asked the Dalai Lama. The genuine curiosity in his voice suggested that he had never heard of the concept. Well, you know, I said, struggling for words, where you are overloaded with work, and it becomes a source of stress. I still dont know what you mean by this term overload. For example, your boss could give you some work which you could probably finish within a certain amount of time, but thats not overload because it is something you can accomplish even if it is difficult. Or he could give you an amount of work that is impossible to finish in a certain amount of time, in which case you simply have to say I cant do this. So, what do you mean? Cutler does a great job asking the right questions and remaining open to his own biases and the result is fresh insight into many workplace issues. Of course the topic of workplace happiness is extremely interesting to me, since thats what I work with every day, and it was wonderful to me, that what the Dalai Lama says, is essentially the same as what we say in the happy at work project. For instance, when Cutler asks what the most important factor is in creating happiness at work, the Dalai Lama replies Your attitude. The most important thing, is how you relate to your job. Its not your carreer, salary, colleagues or your boss its you! The book is an easy and enjoyable read, and the combination of Cutlers questions, the Dalai Lamas answers and little stories from Cutlers own experiences conveys the message beautifully. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Friday, May 8, 2020

A master - at work and in life - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

A master - at work and in life - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog This article is about Maurice Franklin, a wood turner who is now in his 90s, having only left his lathe to fight in world war II. From the article: ?Are you happy?? I queried, provocative in my eagerness to seize this opportunity of learning something about being a nonagenarian. ?I?ll tell you why I am happy.? said Maurice, with a grin of unqualified delight and raising one hand to count off his blessings, ?I?ve got a wonderful family and wonderful children. I?ve been successful and I?ve got an appetite for life, and I?ve eaten every day and slept every night.? Maurice was on a roll now. ?I was going to write a book once,? he continued, ?but there?s no time in this life. By the time you know how to live, it?s over. This life is like a dress rehearsal, you just make it up as you go along. One life is not enough, everyone should live twice.? Read the whole thing its excellent! It reminded me of one of my favorite books, Harpo Speaks, the autobiography of Harpo Marx, another virtuoso. Heres a passage from that book: I can?t remember ever having a bad meal. I?ve eaten [] in the finest restaurants in Paris, but the absolutely most delicious food I ever ate was prepared by the most inspired chef I ever knew ? my father. My father had to be inspired, because he had so little to work with. I can?t remember ever having a poor nights sleep. I?ve slept in the mansions of the Vanderbilts and Otto H. Kahn and in the Gloverville jail. I?ve slept on pool tables, dressing-room tables, piano tops, bathhouse benches, in rag baskets and harp cases. I have known the supreme luxury of snoozing in the July sun, on the lawn, while the string of a flying kite tickled the bottom of my feet. I can?t remember ever seeing a bad show. If I?m trapped in a theatre, and a show starts disappointingly, I have a handy way to avoid seeing it. I fall asleep. This is the attitude we must cultivate in life, if we want to be happy. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related