Job interview & Getting Hired Guide

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Non-financial Engagement Factors to Motivate Employees - Course Link in ...

Course link: https://www.udemy.com/course/non-financial-engagement-factors-to-motivate-employees/ 

What Do HR People Do Every Day? Part 1 of 4 – Entry Level Jobs

As I have noticed a large interest in my article “Again…What Does HR Do Every Day?”, this also raising some controversial comments from readers who had had unpleasant experiences with unprofessional HR people, I have decided to prepare for you a series of 4 articles with more detailed information concerning HR jobs. 

This article presents main HR entry level jobs (up to 2 years of experience) – position name and main responsibilities as they appear on large recruitment websites and as they have been posted by large companies seeking for HR professionals. 

The list of responsibilities includes only those responsibilities valid for most open positions – I have tried to delete those that are specific to only one company. The idea is for you to understand that HR people actually are not all spies (as it has been suggested by some readers) and that compenies pay them to do real HR duties for their staff.

Junior Recruiter (area of expertise: recruitment and selection of new hires, either on new openings or back fills):

-          Build strong relationships with hiring managers, understanding recruitment needs;

-          Gather information on candidates, industry and market trends;

-         Select appropriate recruitment channels for optimum results to make sure that positions are covered within deadlines;

-          Recruit, screen, interview candidates and present the best to the hiring managers for final decision;

-          Prepare recruitment reports;

-          Plan and organize recruitment events (job fairs, presentations, workshops);

-          Create and negotiate candidate offers;

-      Administrative tasks: schedule candidates for interview, archive applications and tests, update recruitment database (candidates, feedback);

-          Provide background checks of candidates;

-          Offer feedback to all candidates that have been contacted;

-          Adhere to the recruitment policies and procedures at all stages of recruiting and hiring;

-      Proactive recruitment plan implementation – having candidates ready to be hired in advance;

HR Generalist (area of expertise: most HR areas, responsible for recruitment partially, administration of paperwork, legal aspects, payroll, training, a bit of everything; the HR Generalist is present mostly in smaller companies where one HR person does most of the HR duties):

-          Post job openings, review and interview candidates, offer support to hiring managers;

-          Present job offers to selected candidates;

-     Manage employee hiring paperwork (contract and other items requested by legal authorities);

-          Manage employee personal files;

-          Coordination of performance evaluations;

-          Set up training classes and workshops for employees;

-          Enter payroll information;

-          Conduct new employee orientation;

-          Administer corporate policies and procedures as well as local ones;

-          Administer employee benefit plans;

-          Prepare requested reporting;

-          Conduct off-boarding process for employees that are leaving the company;

-          Prepare employee communication campaigns;

-         Serve as primary contact and resource for employees and managers to address HR issues;

Compensation & Benefits Assistant(area of expertise: compensation and benefits, administration of main benefits that are offered to employees mandatory by law or optional; assist with the creation of benefits plans, suggesting additional benefits to engage employees to the Comp & Ben Manager):

-        Administration of employee benefits programs, such as medical, vision and dental, life, accident, disability, investments and savings, meal tickets, fitness subscriptions, movie subscriptions, glasses, company cars, other;

-     Maintain benefit plan eligibility systems and records and check them for accuracy, completeness, and compliance with administrative guidelines and company policies;

-          Serve as the initial contact for basic benefit questions from employees;

-          Comp & Ben reporting;

-          Prepare Comp & Ben communications for employees;

Payroll Administrator (area of expertise: payroll and all activities connected to paying salaries to the employees; sometimes responsible for only part of the employees, not having access to all salaries especially those of managers due to confidentiality reasons):

-   Data entry of all employee changes into payroll system – new hires, leavers, salary and position changes, type of contract (part or full time), other;

-      Files and maintains personnel and I-9 records to ensure all records are complete, accurate, and compliant to company, local, state, and federal regulations;

-       New hire and payroll related reports;

-      Reviews Audit reports to ensure changes were made and payroll is accurate before it is final;

-        Records sick, personal, and vacation time on payroll records;

-        Receives and processes child support deductions and garnishments;

-        Records night shift and week-end shift bonuses, cash advances, any other detail impacting salaries;

-      Communicates with employees to explain payroll details, replies to employee queries related to payroll;

Junior Trainer / Training Assistant (area of expertise: employee trainings, seminars, workshops):

-          Assists in tracking staff attendance at training;

-          Serves as back up to Training Specialist by assisting in identifying staff in need of training; scheduling of training and creation of class rosters; tracking training cancellations and reporting rosters to HR;

-          Assists department supervisors with questions related to scheduling staff/training;

-          Creates newsletters for employees related to training news;

-          Assists in maintaining training library (books, visual materials);

-          Manages training feedback from participants;

-          Assists with maintaining training room equipment/supplies;

-    Assists with development/revision of training handouts/materials and Power Point presentations, internal and external monthly training calendars;

-          Assists with revision of training curricula;

-          Assists with scheduling, greeting and preparing equipment for external trainers;

I hope you are starting to get a clear idea of what HR is really about. I will be back next week with the second part (out of 4) of the series – experienced (non-manager) jobs.

Take care,

Geo

I’ve Recently Been Promoted. How Can I Gain the Respect of Older Team Members?

This is a typical problem that young and ambitious managers that have just been promoted face.  It’s completely normal that at some point in your manager career this happens – whether you like it or not. You’re either promoted from your old team or you have just been hired into a new one – no matter which is which, you will most often have someone in your team that is older than you are. You may be in the lucky situation where this person doesn’t want your job (is either satisfied with his current one or doesn’t feel strong enough to lead a team) or you may be constantly watching your back as this team member was your competitor during the assessment and is waiting for you to make a mistake just to prove to your managers that your promotion wasn’t such a great idea.

My advice comes to help you in the latter situation. So, what to do? Quit? Reject the promotion you’ve been working for such a long while? Absolutely NOT. If they promoted you, you must be good and you must deserve it, so be proud of it and act as a manager – make the team work together with you and deal with their frustrations in a diplomatic manner. If you run away, you will learn nothing out of this experience and the next time you apply for a new promotion, your current fears will overcome you once again. So, here’s what to do:

·         Involve the team members you fear most in your projects – make them feel more important than the rest of the team; seek their advice, ask for their opinion and even try to implement their suggestions if they are good; if not, explain to them why they are not – make them realize that in your position you have a larger picture and they will understand in the end;

·        Transform these older team members into change agents – meaning that you should explain your vision to them, make them improve it and embrace it, ask them to implement it into the team and reward them constantly (individually and publicly where necessary) for their success;

·         Delegate important tasks to these team members – again make them feel important and make them get a taste of what your job is like; this will make your job easier and also they will understand the challenges you face and will support you more than if you impose some actions on them; dictatorship most of the times ends in a “blood bath” – this sounds war like, but you get what I mean – they will try desperately to sabotage your every decision and your image as a manager;

·         Whenever  you get the chance, show them your knowledge – if you got the promotion, then it was for a reason – identify your strengths (your manager or the promoting committee can help) and try to make these visible to the team – whether you have great decision skills, you are a great organizer, you are stronger and don’t fear a direct talk with the client, whatever it is, make sure the team know your strengths;

·         Be open minded and admit your mistakes if you make any. Accept constructive criticism and thank those team members that discuss openly with you about mistakes, change and solutions.

Please feel free to add any new suggestions to my list from your experience. I am looking forward to your comments.

Take care,

Geo

Who Is Better in Human Resources? Men vs. Women…

Since there’s a timeless dispute between men and women concerning who is better at something, I decided to fuel it as well by asking the challenging question of “Who is a better HR person – men or women?”  Tough one…

Well, to be able to decide upon that, let’s see what a real HR person should be like:

• Should be sociable since work involves people every day;
• Must like working with people;
• Must be patient and understanding of others’ problems;
• Must be empathetic and must easily sense people’s feelings;
• Must see below the surface and by that I mean being able to read hidden body language, gestures, expressions below standard verbal language – people don’t always say what they mean – an HR person must be able to get that;
• Must be well organized since the volume of work is quite high in all areas of HR;
• Must be a good mediator quite often; since a lot of people have trouble communicating, HR must help them do that;
• Must be a good listener;
• Must be always ready to help;
• Must be a good diplomat – do the job even if you don’t like the people you work with;
• Must understand that inside the company, the employees are your clients and that clients’ needs come first – I really dislike this one, but it’s true unfortunately so you must deal with it; you know –client is king, client is always right and all that;

That’s more or less all there is to it. Foreign language skills or PC skills are useful, but not always top priority in this job. There are people who can help you with reporting or translations. Working with people is your main job.

And to make it more interesting, I would like to tell you about men and women from Alan Pease’s perspective. This is a fragment from one of my articles on www.lady-driver.com:

“Allan Peasein Why men don't listen and women can't read maps (very smart and funny video showing years of experience in the field - you can find it on YouTube):
Women:

• focus more on relationships and feelings rather than on facts; better social skills than men;
• can't point North;
• have a brain that is more complex;
• are multitasking - can perform more simultaneous non-related tasks because their brain has more connections;
• have poor sense of direction;
• can't read maps; have the tendency to rotate them to face the direction they are traveling;
• estimate distances poorly and need great exercise to improve; 
• have parking issues and speed and distance estimation problems;
• can use both hands simultaneously without much difficulty;
• sometimes have difficulties telling left hand from right hand;
• see better at short distances rather than long distances;
• have good peripheral eye sight ranging up to 60 degrees;
• can't look at information three-dimensionally - poor visual skills;
• prefer to park in a large space and walk rather than squeeze the car in small dangerous spots.”

Some are not relevant, but I preferred to include all just for you to understand women better and look for Alan’s video.

Now, coming back, since there aren’t so many men in the field, women must be better, right? In all the companies I have worked for, I had only 2 men colleagues in HR out of around 20. Also, I have never been at a workshop or conference where there were more than 10% HR men. Well?

Women must be better since they have better communication and social skills. This however doesn’t mean that man should completely stay out. A lot of HR men are very good at what they do. But women rule in HR as men rule in jobs like air traffic controller, pilot or aerospace engineer. 

Just to make it fun, I have placed a small survey on the left of the article. Please reply with your opinion concerning this debate. Who do you think is better in HR? Men or women?

July 8th: Survey is closed - please find results below:

 

Thanks and take care,

Geo