From: Seattlepi.com
In 2009 Google, Inc. began an internal initiative called Project Oxygen in order to better understand what makes an effective Google manager.
They analyzed more than 10,000 observations about managers, including 100 variables on things like performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.
This data-driven method for improving managers was based on the premise that Google workers are different from other workers.
In the end, Project Oxygen’s statisticians came up with eight directives that separate good managers from bad managers. These include such common sense things like:
“Have a clear vision and strategy for the team.”
“Help your employees with career development.”
“Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.”
What Google found in its research is that employees most valued managers with people skills, not technical ones. Rather than being told what to do, employees want to be helped through figuring out problems for themselves.
“Although people are always looking for the next new thing in leadership,” says D. Scott DeRue, a management professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. “Google’s data suggest that not much has changed in terms of what makes for an effective leader.”
According to a recent article in the The New York Times, Google’s “people operations” group, led by Laszlo Bock, “found that technical expertise—the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep—ranked dead last” among the list of Google’s eight main habits of effective managers.
Bock admitted they had assumed managers needed to have deep technical knowledge in order to effectively manage other engineers. Turns out this is the least important of the top eight qualities.
Project Oxygen discovered that two of the most important things managers can do is make time for their people and be consistent. It turns out these two things are more important than doing all of the other things.
This is not unique to Google, of course. Today’s workers need to connect with their teams and especially their immediate supervisors. It’s not that we are especially insecure and need constant feedback on what we do, but we are often isolated from the end product or bigger picture and it’s hard to know whether or not we’re doing a good job and whether we matter.
Connecting with the people who work for you and giving feedback more often than an annual performance review can be a powerful motivator.
Research suggests that employees join a company due to its reputation and they leave a company primarily due to their manager. Google’s data confirmed that managers have a much greater impact on employees’ performance and how they feel about their job than any other factor.
Soft skills, the very things that are so difficult to quantify and aren’t easily recognizable on resumes, really do make a difference in how people manage others.
As I wrote in a previous post with regard to what employees say they want from their managers, the first three are all in the category of soft skills. These are:
1. Full appreciation for work done
2. Feeling ‘part’ of things
3. Sympathetic help on personal issues
Many managers reading this may find these are not at all consistent with their own employees who surely want more tangible things like good wages, job security and promotions. But these results have been consistent over the last thirty years.
Google has grown incredibly fast since its founding in 1998. They expertly navigated this growth by hiring smart technical people and let them figure out how best to get things done. Now they need to shift the focus on replicating the people skills of their most effective managers so they can continue this growth.
Referrals are the way people want to meet their advisor, says Bill Cates, president of Referral Coach International in Laurel, Md. and author of Get More Referrals Now. The best way to gain referrals is by making clients feel relaxed and confident about you.
“You don’t want to push people to feel uncomfortable,” he says.
Here are six tips to help you get more referrals:
1. Make sure you are referable
Whatever your referral strategy, make sure you have the brand in place to back it up.
If you don’t have a compelling message and marketing support, “you are way behind in the game” for maximizing referrals, says Kirk Lowe, chief branding tactician with Oshawa, Ont.-based TactiBrand Inc. Without a strong brand in place, including a website and a message, clients won’t know how to refer you.
2. Make a referral a service for clients
Frame your questions so clients feel referrals are a benefit for them.
In the past, advisors were taught to tell clients that referrals were part of the way in which they are paid, says Duncan MacPherson, co-founder and co-CEO of Pareto Systems in Kelowna, B.C. Instead, frame referrals as a value-added service for clients.
For example, tell your client that you often act as a resource for friends and family members of other clients, by helping with general financial and economic questions, he says. Clients will then be specific in whom they refer and will feel comfortable with the process.
3. Ask permission
Before getting into specifics, ask clients if they wouldn’t mind discussing the issue of possible referrals.
Don’t ask immediately for names of friends and family for you to contact, says Cates. Instead, ask the client about how he or she would feel about introducing you to someone. If your client is interested, then you can brainstorm together about whom to contact and how the introduction will work.
4. Answer your clients’ concerns
Part of making clients comfortable with the idea of referring you is dealing immediately with any questions and worriess they have about the referral process.
Clients often hesitate to give referrals because they are concrned about their privacy and how the referral will take place, Cates says.
Explain to clients that you will never discuss their personal financial situation with the referral, he says. Also, let clients know that you will work with them to find the best way to introduce yourself to the referral. For example, it could be through a phone call, an introductory information package or an in-person meeting — whichever the client prefers.
5. Put it in writing
Remind clients about referrals in your communication and marketing materials.
Use a post-script in a newsletter, email or a website as a “gentle reminder” to clients that you receive referrals, MacPherson says.
Just make sure that it’s only a reminder and not a formal request for a referral, says Cates. Any direct request for a referral should be done in person.
6. Be consistent
Once you establish your referral strategy, stick with it.
Mention referrals at every review meeting and phone call and in all communication and marketing materials, MacPherson says.
Don’t worry about bothering clients, he says. If you ask in a professional manner, they will perceive it as a gentle reminder, not an annoying sales pitch.
By Ruth Mantell, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The job hunt is on for college seniors set to graduate in the next few months, and the competition is intense — there are about five unemployed people for each job opening, and most young workers have comparatively little experience.
College grads may find themselves with a slew of career-related questions: Does it make sense to follow an employed significant other to a new city if you don’t have a job? How do you negotiate pay? Is it OK to take an unpaid internship?
To shed some light on these questions, I asked several career experts for their advice for soon-to-be college grads.
Should you follow a boyfriend/girlfriend to a new city if you don’t have a job?
“Love is a beautiful thing. However, being kicked out on the street with no money and no friends is not,” said Jason Levin, district manager for career site Vault.com. “Moving to a new city has a great deal of risk, especially if you are doing that just to be with one person.”
Before making a move, figure out how the bills will get paid, Levin said.
“You really have to have the ‘money talk’ on who pays for what until you find a job,” Levin said. “You would hope that your girlfriend/boyfriend would be patient until you find a job. Make sure you have money on the side as well as a clear exit plan, in case things go south.”
Graduates should make sure there are opportunities for them in their significant other’s new location, said Jennifer Grasz, a CareerBuilder.com spokeswoman.
“If you haven’t landed a job, but there are prospects for what you’d like to pursue professionally or for personal development, it may be the right move,” she said.
Is it a good idea to take an unpaid internship and for how long?
Working for free in the near-term can pay off, said Charles Purdy, senior editor at jobs site Monster.com.
“It’s important for younger people to take a long-term view of their career, and consider the benefits of an internship — experience, networking, and so on — over immediate financial gain,” Purdy said. “That said, how long an unpaid internship is possible will depend a lot on your financial situation and the nature of the internship.”
Certain industries only offer unpaid internships, Levin said. “They are a great way to get experience,” he said. “As long as you can afford to work unpaid you should do so, until you find paying work.”
Does it make economic sense to acquire a graduate degree?
While a graduate degree does not guarantee greater income, more education tends to improve earnings prospects and employability. But a master’s degree or doctorate isn’t for everyone, Purdy said.
“If you know what career path you want to follow, you should definitely find mentors in that field and schedule informational interviews, so you can get specific advice,” he said. “Depending on the career path…you may be better served by specialized or on-the-job training than by an advanced degree.”
Young workers need “professional self-awareness,” Levin said, and should figure out the sorts of conditions in which they want to work.
“As you start to answer these questions then certain occupations, industries and professions become apparent,” Levin said. “After you narrow down your criteria, then you can observe if people succeeding in those fields have a graduate degree and if they make a salary that makes economic sense for you.”
When should you take a job outside your desired field?
Looking longer term, recent grads might consider a job outside their field to gain needed skills, Purdy said.
“Thinking of your résumé or your personal work biography, the story you tell doesn’t always have to be linear,” Purdy said. “For instance, if you’re a journalist, taking a six-month contract job as a marketing copywriter could benefit you…Even if you’re forced to take a pay-the-bills sort of job, you can use your free time to advance your career: find part-time internship or volunteer opportunities, for instance.”
Some fields were hit particularly hard during the recession, and workers have been forced to repackage their skill sets, but change isn’t always a bad thing, Grasz said. According to a CareerBuilder survey, many of the workers who were laid off last year and then found new jobs entered new fields.
“What’s encouraging is the majority reported they are enjoying the new opportunity,” Grasz said.
By Michael Hickins
Apple’s “Joint Venture” program, a package of support services for small businesses rolling out iPads and other Apple computing products to their workforce, is one approach Apple is using to lure business users.
Another, less direct approach, is through the burgeoning universe of business-focused apps created by third parties. Unlike consumer-oriented apps, they are nowhere near the main driver of iPad adoption, but their number is “growing quickly,” said Jan Woodcock, an analyst with Wipro Consulting Services. There are already thousands of business-oriented apps available, with probably “a few hundred ‘high use’ mobile enterprise applications,” he added.
- InformationBuilders
- Dashboard of a business application seen on the iPad.
Woodcock told Digits that many apps are being developed by business software makers like SAP and Oracle to help executives access real-time measures such as inventory levels or demand. Software vendors make these apps free of charge to increase usage among existing customers and as a selling point to potential future customers.
Information Builders, which makes software that creates reports based on data mining, introduced a new iPad app for its software on Tuesday; a spokesperson for the company told Digits that the timing with the iPad launch event today is “fortuitous.”
The iPad is also having a significant impact on mobile workers like field technicians and salespeople, who can access best practice tips, as well as pricing and sales presentation applications to improve efficiency and close sales, said Woodcock. Compared to the laptops most of these employees have formerly used, the iPad makes presentations “very easy to see — you can speak and wave your hands and interface with it in a very fluid fashion,” he said.
Woodcock noted that other vendors will horn in on Apple’s currently overwhelming market share in the tablet space, but said that Apple has made it easier for business IT departments to adopt the iPad by allowing the device to interact with security and other IT management systems.
By Topny Gist KVAL News with KVAL.com staff
“The most important thing you can do for yourself in the job search is to clearly communicate: here is how I’m different from other people out there with similar experience,” said Doug Anders, founder of Purpose Works.
A resume can do just that.
Anders is a career counselor and professional resume writer.
“I help people try and figure out what they want to do when they grow up,” he said.
He said to think of your resume as an advertisement designed to sell your skills and individuality.
“It is a message-driven document,” he said. “You want to spark employers interest enough to make them want to talk to you.”
Work history and job skills are essential, but a resume needs to be more.
I let anders take a look at my resume.
“It’s not clear if it’s a one or a two pager,” he said. “It’s best to have your resume fit neatly on one page or two pages.”
A half empty page will appear unfinished.
“Many resumes will start with something that says I’m motivated, I’m hard working,” Anders said. “Those statements by themselves can be fluff to an employer who’s seen 100 resumes.”
Anders said to start your resume with highlights of qualifications that tell a story. You also should avoid templates that create a cookie-cutter feel.
“A good resume is consistent with the person that walks through the door,” he said. “A resume is not a historical document if it’s done right. That is the difference from being a job applicant and being an employee.”
Anders alo suggests making your online image consistent with your professional image.
Create contacts using websites like LinkedIn and Facebook, and let friends know you are interested in their line of work. Anders said often times its not who you know – but who knows you.