Determining how well a job candidate will mesh with an existing team's culture is one of the great challenges businesses face when recruiting and hiring talent. Some organizations, like Pinterest and customer experience software provider SPLICE software, address the issue by performing "culture interviews" to ensure their hires' strengths and attributes will positively impact team dynamics.
Building a successful team goes beyond hiring charismatic leaders. You need to balance strengths and weaknesses at the board room table. Kathy Harris, managing director of Harris Allied, a firms that provides executive search services, likens it to the "charismatic leaders" in the NFL. She noticed the similarities between a winning NFL team and IT team by watching her brother-in-law Franco Harris, former NFL player and Pro Football Hall of Famer, get recruited.
No two people are exactly alike, but people do they do share traits - and those traits aren't always positive. Some prefer drama or negative attention. They are everywhere, including the workplace. They might be on your team or sit in a nearby cubicle. It could be your boss, a vendor, direct report or a coworker. They're combative, critical or nonproductive.
Zappos made headlines in 2013 when it announced plans to transition to holacracy -- a management-free corporate structure. One of the biggest motivating factors behind Zappos' decision to restructure isn't that different from what plenty of other well-established companies are seeking: cultivating a startup culture.
There's good news for working parents and their employers -- it turns out, having kids makes some parents more productive, which can be a boon to a business' bottom line. And those organizations that go above and beyond in supporting working parents also benefit from a more loyal, engaged and happy workforce.
In the U.S. and Canada, workers seem conditioned to accept a new workplace reality: They're always on, always available and tasked with fulfilling the demand to do more with less. According to the Staples Advantage Index -- a new report from research and advisory firm WorkplaceTrends.com and Staples Advantage, the B2B arm of office products retailer Staples -- 86 percent of the 2,602 U.S. and Canadian workers surveyed say they are happy at work and motivated to rise within their current organization. However more than half -- 53 percent -- also report they are overworked and burned out.
Twitter conjures up images of funny celebrity tweets and corporate PR gaffes rather than job searching and recruiting. However, there is an emerging pool of job candidates on Twitter. In fact, 45 percent of job seekers report that they use Twitter, compared to 40 percent who use LinkedIn, according to 2014 research from JobVite. The same research also points to an increased interest in Twitter for recruitment, with 73 percent of companies reporting a focus on increasing social network recruitment.
"We've always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it's time to be candid about the issues."
With the 4th of July quickly approaching, it's time to look at the state of IT hiring for the first half of the year to try and build an accurate hiring plan for the remainder of 2015. To help us better understand the state of IT across the U.S, we spoke with David Foote, chief analyst and research officer with Foote Partners, to get insight into what's going on inside IT organizations.
Do you know the name of the marketing associate handling targeted email campaigns with Marketo? How about the name of the human resources assistant with the Workday account?
In these lean times, backups aren't what they used to be; it's inevitable that IT staffers will be called to help, especially when an important issue is brewing.
Salaries continue their modest rise, while demand for workers with key tech skills coupled with business acumen keeps employers scrambling to find and keep talent.
Thanks to factors ranging from BYOD and flexible work arrangements to the global economy, a broad range of IT roles demand around-the-clock accessibility. IT professionals say it's part of the territory and are devising strategies to cope.
While traditional incentives like salary and benefits still rule, IT staffers are placing more importance on intangibles such as corporate culture, challenging work and recognition -- a trend that employers ignore at their peril.
In managing human resources, people architecture is gaining popularity, says IT workforce analyst David Foote. He explains what it is and why it's on the rise.