Every morning you wake up wishing to quit your present job, but the moment you decide it’s time for a change, figuring out what you should be doing next becomes one of the hardest tasks to do. This could be a reason why many people don’t face it and stay at companies longer than they should. They waste months and years hoping that their next career move would come to them automatically in their dreams or, worse, they end up landing new jobs where they still lack work satisfaction.
But you should not make any of those mistakes and waste time just thinking. By just following few easy and uncomplicated steps, you can get a clear picture of your next career move sooner than expected, so you can finally move ahead in your career and get into a new role you will love. And on the brighter side, it doesn’t require setting up dozens of informatory interviews that sometimes leave you even more confused.
Step One: Self Introspection
I understand it’s tantalizing to quit your current job when you feel miserable working there. But instead of running away from a problem, you need to chase towards finding a solution, especially when you truly want to fix the issue of not finding peace and feeling fulfilled in your career. In simple words you should be willing to do self-introspection, asking yourself the hard and tricky questions to get to the root of what you would like to add or delete in your present career and what needs to be upgraded.
Here is a list of few questions you should ask yourself: What’s making you feel dissatisfied in your career right now? Is it the work you do, or is it your current work atmosphere including your manager or not so understanding colleagues? Is it the products, services or clients that your company serves? Next, recall the time when and about what you were most excited about in your career, was it some project or you enjoyed working with your team or manager who you think brought the best in you? What kind of work environment do you imagine yourself thriving in the most (quiet or lively)? What kind of organisation would you be proud and excited to work in? Are you passionate about any service or product or do you wish to try an entirely new industry?
Step Two: Go Window Shopping
Once you have taken some time to interview yourself with the above questions and you know your answers, it’s time to go window shopping to get more distinct on your next ideal role. Window shopping here exactly means how it sounds. But, rather than going out looking for clothes or accessories, it’s the dexterity of browsing for jobs without the stress of applying right away. It’s an ideology to go above and beyond just reading a job description just for the sake of applying to that job. It persuades you to take a deeper look and weigh every aspect of the opportunity and note what’s out there, so as to become more aware of your options, while also shrinking the list of roles and companies that incite you.
The fact is there are tons of organisations; plenty of roles and things which you might not even have heard of before that you can try as your new career. Taking a step back to gather details and becoming aware of what’s out there allows you to take an informed and calculated decision about the right next role for you so that you can be prescient, strategic and conscious about your career move.
Step Three: Key Out Your Sweet Spot
After gaining enough knowledge about different roles and companies that attract you and align with your career goals, the next step is to figure out your sweet spot. A sweet spot is a place where your interests and your skills meet. Just knowing what you want to do next is not enough. Making a note of your strengths and weakness will help you paint a clear picture of your skills and expertise. Knowing both will ensure that you can successfully excel at your new career and what exactly you should be doing to get hired for it. While discovering your sweet spot, you might even realise that you don’t even have to take a step back in your career to do what you love.
For example, you might have realized that you’re interested in shifting your career from HR to communications, and you like both media relations and internal communications. But do you have any relevant experience or transferable skillset for media relations or internal communications roles? Finding the answer to this question will help you position yourself as a top candidate for the right role thus increasing your chances of getting hired where you will most likely succeed and enjoy.
Conclusion
Careers moves don’t just happen. Most successful people map out their career moves wisely. If you’re feeling unmotivated or unenthused about your job, then it’s the right time to consider taking a new direction in your career. But making your next career move doesn’t have to be super perplexing. All it takes is a little determination and will to take a step back and think through. By following the above three steps, you’ll quickly discover clarity and a sense of confidence in pursuing your next career move.
Despite the growth and the eminence of mobile chatting applications, e-mail still playing a vital role in one’s online life. According to the figures published in 2019, the number of global e-mail users was about 3.9 billion. It is expecting to elevate to 4.48 billion users by the end of 2024. Many online users use e-mail for e-mail marketing, websites, and newsletter signups.
Email marketing is coming up as a vibrant and robust way to connect with people all around the globe. Take your example; you will be receiving several emails every day related to work, promotional advertisements, newsletters, etc. You will read most of them, get inspired, and look forward to the next one. It is best when it is personalized i.e. it is customized to the actions of the customer so that every communication is pertinent to their interests.
You may ask why e-mail marketing so important for an organization? . Let’s discuss few points which make it an important channel which you should not be ignoring.
More Potent Than Social Media
Social media is playing an important role in a business’s marketing strategy. It’s a platform where you can interact with your audiences. It also helps to strengthen your relationship with them. Hence, it is proving to be a crucial step in ‘conversion’. But email marketing is very useful when it comes to transforming people into prospective clients and members.
For example: When recruiters are looking out for a quality hire, there are so many ways to reach out to potential candidates. But email is an excellent way which is helping recruiters to succeed.
Economic And Cost-Efficient
E-mail marketing is very easy, effective, and cost-friendly. It helps organizations in reaching a large pool of customers and is economical as well. It is turning out to be a better choice for small businesses. Because they would not be required to set aside a significant amount of profits for advertisements.
It has been observed that email is one of the channels which are generating the highest ROI for marketers. With the correct maintenance of the email list, the cost-benefit increases as does the ROI with close relations being established with clients. With higher positive responses that you receive via email marketing at a lower unit cost is a Win-Win situation for the enterprise.
Personal And Tailor-Made
E-mail marketing aims at sending a tailored email message that resonates with the reader and helps provide them with something of value. When you are writing a post on social media you address your audience as a whole, but in email marketing, you use software that allows you to address people individually. Email does not have to be SPAM- it should never be. It could be used benevolently to build loyalty and trust towards the organization. It even helps in building relationships with prospects, leads, current, and past customers.
Measurable
There’s no guesswork in email marketing. When you are running an email marketing software, you can track who all have opened your email, which links were clicked, and how many people have unsubscribed. You can get a clear view of how your email campaigns are performing, where to make adjustments and improvements.
Mobile Phones Enable People To Check On Emails Constantly
Since every person has a mobile phone today, people can check their email all the time regardless of where they are. Some people might think with the growth and advancements of social media, emails should be pushed to the back seat, but the statistics show that 91% of people are using smartphones to access their emails.
Hence not using email as a part of your internet strategy means you are missing out on a channel that a majority of the world uses and which could affect your economies of scale in the future.
While we are working day in and day out at our job, we all feel stuck with our jobs at some point of time. However, it can be difficult to decide whether it is just a phase or you are stuck in a dead-end job. Maybe you felt that you had landed your dream job when you joined there, but soon your career advancement path seemed to be a blur, and your skills are rusting under routine work. Finally, you realize this job has nothing to offer you except a paycheck at the end of the month.Let’s be frank; we all expect much more than a paycheck from our jobs.If you have been waiting for a change in the situation at your job, you must re-evaluate with these possible red flags to determine whether you are stuck in a dead-end job and plan to chalk your way out of it.
1. Your boss continually ignores your opinions
As a competent employee, you have to participate in multiple decision-making discussions. But if you have noticed that your superior has been ignoring your ideas and did not give a second to reject them without even hearing the idea completely, you are in a dead-end job. However, you must not evaluate this with just a single instance.
2. You cannot view your career advancement path
When you start working at a company and have a career goal to grow, you must analyze if the job is serving the purpose. If you have been denied a promotion twice or more, you can be sure you are not going to get the promotion in the near future as well. No doubt, such situations build up frustration. The wisest thing to do in such circumstances is to look for better opportunities and quit the job as soon as you find it.Your career advancement is only possible if your company is growing. If your company’s growth has come to a halt or sliding down in terms of revenue, you will hardly find any scope for growing your career in that company. Therefore, it is definitely the time to expand your horizon in search of better opportunities.
3. You are not handed with challenging or meaningful work
As we age in a job, we expect challenging tasks or tasks that hold more responsibility. But if you feel that you are not being trusted with meaningful work or being handed assignments that your superior does not want to do, there is a serious issue. Such circumstances hamper your growth and may make you feel that your potential is being wasted. This clearly raises the red flag that you are stuck in a dead-end job.
4. Frequent rebukes and discouragements are on your daily routine
Obviously, you need a positive environment at your working place to grow. Suppose your superior is constantly rebuking you at every step or openly criticizing you more than once. In that case, you may not have the chance to grow professionally amidst such a hostile environment.
5. Overwork and no value for your contribution
Usually, bosses do overburden you with work initially. But if your life is being dominated by work and your superior does not value your efforts, you are surely at the wrong place. However, even if you are being praised, it does not mean you overwork and become unhappy to miss out on your personal life. If you are valued at your company, you have the ability to draw boundaries about work and personal life. Otherwise, it is better to leave respectfully.
Final Thoughts
It is indeed a hard decision to quit your job even if you realize it is a dead-end one. Therefore, make sure you re-evaluate your decision by chalking out every possibility that can actually improve the scenario. Communicating to your superior about your career goals can be the starting point. You must also consider challenging questions like will you still quit if you are offered a promotion at the same place.Changing jobs can be a difficult choice, but you must remember most people did not land their dream job at the first attempt. Therefore, if you still feel that this job has nothing to offer you, go ahead and search for better opportunities that help you grow personally and professionally.For more blogs, Do visit Pragna Technologies website.
When recruiting employees, every company analyzes the cost per hire. It not only involves the salary of the candidate but also the expenses associated with the use of internal resources used during the hiring process. As a hiring manager, you are responsible for the cost of hiring, and it can be a challenging job to reduce the cost of hiring while recruiting high volume talents.
Here are a few tips and tricks every hiring manager can utilize to increase their efficiency to reduce cost per hire and also save some time and effort.
Offer a clear Job Description
When you are advertising for a vacancy, most candidates read the Job Description to get a clear understanding of the responsibilities or tasks he/she needs to handle for a job. Suppose you are providing a clear job description with full disclosure of eligibility criteria, expected experience level, hours of employment, type of job (remote or in-office). In that case, you screen away candidates right away who do not have the required criteria. On the other hand, a job description containing details of training, additional benefits to the job and portrays the employer brand image has the higher chances of attracting the top tier talents.
Use of Atomization and AI
Instead of running through thousands of applicants, every candidate, use suitable recruiting software to screen qualified candidates with suitable parameters. 78% of employers have said that recruitment technology makes finding great talent easier than ever.
Moreover, it helps to speed up the hiring process, thereby reducing the cost per hire. Using artificial intelligence also ensures that the criteria of the candidate align with your business goals. Consequently, it is a great way to avoid bad hires and undergo the rehiring process.
Make use of Telephonic and Virtual interview
The cost per hire also depends on travel costs. You can cut off the travel cost by conducting the telephonic and virtual interview. After the onset of the pandemic, most hiring processes have been undertaken through virtual interview.
The telephonic and virtual interview helps you to analyze the candidate, and the two-way communication ensures a better understanding of each other’s expectations and requirement, facilitating the screening of candidates. Moreover, you can save time, energy and hassle of travel and yet select the most suitable candidate.
Reduce the Hiring time
One of the best ways to reduce cost per hire is to move the entire hiring process quickly. If you are undertaking or dragging long hiring process, you are increasing the cost of hiring by increasing the expense of recruitment technology, administrative cost, perhaps travel cost, and other internal resources. The longer the hiring process drags, the higher the cost per hire rises.
Moreover, in this cut-throat competition of talent acquisition, you may lose a high performing candidate if you delay the final announcement. The best way to reduce the hiring time is by setting deadlines or closing date for every step of the hiring process.
Appoint a Staffing agency
If you are looking for a way to hire talents without exhausting your company’s internal resources, the wisest decision is to outsource it to some reliable staffing agency. There are several staffing agencies that are expertise in recruiting talent for their client’s firm within a given period.
By hiring a staffing agency, you can reduce cost per hire by not hampering the productivity of internal resources as well as minimize the productivity loss due to the open position. Pragna Solutions is one of the leading companies that can offer you excellent outsource recruitment solution so that you can acquire talents and also save time and effort.
The Bottom Line
Hiring the right candidate within a short time frame can be challenging but not impossible. These tips and tricks of reducing cost per hire can save you from rendering the cost of bad hires and rehiring. Reports and analytics of cost per hire help you realize the strengths and weaknesses of your hiring strategy. Therefore, you must monitor your cost per hire to develop the most effective hiring strategy.
Pragna Solutions lends you a helping hand to acquire top-tier talents without undertaking the headache of the hiring process. Our expert consultants are experienced HRs who can pick out the best candidates for your business from the target pool to fulfil your business requirements and move you one more step towards your success.
Do visit Pragna Technologies website for more blogs on Recruitment, Hiring and other related topics.
In the cut-throat competition of talent acquisition, the job descriptions play a significant role in attracting and landing top-tier talents. As a hiring manager, attracting talents with catchy job descriptions is essential if you want to hire high-performing candidates for your firm. If you are struggling to attract better talents, here’s a quick guide for you to write job descriptions.
Points You Must Not Miss Out
Most job descriptions usually contain details about the job role, location of the company, and compensation. But if you want to focus on attracting top-tier talents, never miss out on including the following points while writing a job description.
Job Title
Instead of being creative with the title, just be specific and clear about the job title. You do not need to be fancy with this part. Just mention the job position as the job title. For instance, mention the words ‘Marketing Executive’ instead of writing ‘Looking for people to handle marketing operations’.
Opening Hook
Since you have already attracted the attention of potential candidates through your job title, it’s time to be creative. Add a line or two that can hook your potential candidates to read the whole job description. Make use of some excitement to provide possibilities that can intrigue the readers.
Brief about Company and Company Culture
80% of HR leaders vouch that employer branding plays a vital role in attracting talents. Therefore, you must make the readers aware of the company culture and scope of growth in your company through your job description. You do not want to attract candidates who cannot fit into your company culture, and you end up trapped in endless hiring cycles. In fact, making the candidates aware of the employer can help you in improving the retention rate.
Duty & Responsibilities
Of course, every job description contains this part. While writing the duty and responsibilities for the open position, you must keep two things in mind. First, always use plain language, avoid jargon if possible. Second, use the right keywords. If you are posting your job ads on an online platform, the right keywords provide you better results and visibility online.
Eligibility and Preference Criteria
Nothing is a better preliminary screening process that being clear about the eligibility and preferences. You must mention the degrees, skills, and expected experience of the candidates who are supposed to apply for the position. Moreover, do not forget to mention about soft skills required for the position.
Compensation & Benefits
Most candidates jump into this section after finding a suitable job post. Do not forget to mention the approximate compensation in your job description. Highlight any benefits that come with the job, such as health insurance, travel allowance, etc. If you are looking for a remote employee, do not forget to mention that. In most cases, this is the section that helps the candidates decide whether to apply for the position or just pass.
Clear Call to Action
Once a candidate has completed reading your job description, you have to provide him the information about applying for the job. Ensure that your call-to-action is visible and clear. Be specific about the mode of further communication. You may mention dropping CV at this email address or something like walk-in for an interview at (time, date, and place).
The Bottom Line
Attracting the right type of employees can become your game if you know how to write compelling job descriptions. Even though there are several templates of job descriptions in the market, you must stand out from the crowd. Ensure that the job descriptions are in lucid language, uses the right keywords, and are not just cold and detached messages.
If you want to attract the top-tier talents with the job description, you must add some sparks to it by including benefits that a candidate can avail from this job. The last and most important thing to do before posting the job description is to read it yourself and honestly answer the question ‘would I apply for this job after reading it?’. If your answer is yes, go ahead and post it. If the answer is NO, find the reason why and then add that point to enhance the quality of the job description. Hiring the top-tier talents can be a piece of cake if you can attract the best candidates with your job description.
As organizations are moving over the initial layoffs, lost business, and crick that came with the outset of the pandemic, they’re also wondering what’s next. As the pandemic resets major work styles, leaders need to reevaluate workforce and employee planning, management, performance and experience blueprint.
The current pandemic will surely have a long-lasting impact on the future of work. Companies are now moving to what is being called the next normal. Organizations are steering a return to the office, stepping up operations, and engaging more contingent employees.
But that’s not looking far enough ahead. Organizations are considering the post Covid world, but now is also the time for planning for the post-vaccine future. Success in the future will depend solely on how companies will change their workforce strategies based on lessons learnt during the pandemic.
Many of these lessons come from the shift to working away from the office. How do we re- consider our view and grasp new opportunities that remote work will afford? We see answers in the below five areas of advancement and opportunity: geography, cost control, data, competition, and engagement.
Trend 1: Removing Barricade to Talent for the Future of Work
The run towards digital transformation has changed the traditional recruiting methods which were a limiting factor when it came to talent acquisition from any part of the world and virtual on-boarding. Organizations’ that always had a limited talent pool can now be bold and consider candidates in any geography.
Many work aspects where physical presence was considered mandatory have turned out to be negotiable as far as onsite demands. And studies prove that remote work has always resulted in productivity gains. By having an anywhere mindset, a company can utilize global networks of candidates. A remote talent acquisition strategy not only attracts great talent but will also result in boosting retention.
Trend 2: Remote Work Opens Creative Approaches to Cost-Control
Should companies hire new talent or up-skill existing talent? In the Pre Covid world, organizations had to build strategies based on recruiting conditions in their immediate markets. If the talent with a particular skill or learning resources were unavailable, they had to shift their approach in a different direction. Now they can exercise more control.
The flexibility to tap into talent pool in various markets across the globe can result in cost-containment opportunities. This cost factor includes the total cost of engaging all flexible talent and not just at the individual employee level. The best strategy today would be to utilize both options. A broadened market to acquire talent, combined with anywhere-anytime learning, allows organizations to strike a balance between hiring and developing new skills with their current workforce.
Trend 3: Data Analytics and Communication Become a Survival Skill
Access to data is a value addition if analyzed and presented meaningfully at the right time and to the right audiences. The pandemic has stressed enough on the importance of data and analytics in leading a company through such uncertain times. To establish a calm and positive work environment, all you need is engaged leadership ready to communicate consistently at all levels in the right way.
This type of communication requires hard data, also needed to manage flexible workforce. Transparency and visibility to employees are considered to be even more important, and many companies grappled in the pandemic because they lacked these parameters. Companies that were not considerate about these issues earlier now realize that what you don’t know can hurt you.
Trend 4: Leveraging Competitive Advantage Comes in New Forms
The pandemic forced companies to act in ways no one ever thought of. Remote working was not a choice, but this made organizations to get smarter, quickly make work from home a core part of the business. In future, companies will have a better understanding of what it takes to run the business smoothly and reliably while changing their strategy rapidly and effectively.
There is no single proven formula for change. Every company is unique and different in its own ways, but change will happen, nonetheless. Smart organizations are looking to leverage this change they had to make as a competitive advantage in the coming future.
But now is not the time to follow the crowd. Ask the factual questions others are not asking. Preserve and practice the culture you need to grow. The reward is a future where right decisions can boost real relationships with the workforce which you need the most.
Trend 5: Employee Engagement Becomes a Core Priority
How well did you communicate and foster relationships in a virtual work environment? Organizations that had a focused effort on sustaining relationships and were open, transparent, and intentional about what “good” meant to their people will excel in the post-pandemic world.
An employee’s take on a company is multi-facet, and it can make or break an organization’s brand on places like Glassdoor and Indeed. Companies knew the importance of employee sentiment before the pandemic. But now, the attention on worker employee engagement and experience has increased.
Finally, as organizations and work cultures evolve in this unforeseen global crisis, you cannot avoid the quality-of-life conversation. Can someone focus on both their work and life priorities in your company — for a career or even just a temporary assignment? Are you opening windows of opportunities to advance and up-skill?
Don’t run away from these questions. An organization’s future relationship with its workforce solely depends on the actions it takes today to develop a positive work culture that focuses on making lives better among employees and the community at large.
Finally: Learn What to Do When You Don’t Know Something
You cannot fully predict what post pandemic world of work will bring. You can only try to interpret the signals of today. Be rigorous in your approach and commitment to learn from what you see. See and try what works the best for you. And don’t give up looking for the opportunities to get better.
With a combination of flexibility and planning, you can future proof your workforce strategy to keep your organization ahead while navigating the road ahead.
