For most people, searching for a new job has never been easy. Add to this, the difficulties the current pandemic brings and now job seekers have to double up their efforts to find work. Some of the practices that have always been a part of the job search process haven't changed though. 

Conducting proper research and doing your due diligence to vet companies that are a good match for your skill sets and personality type is still true. The difference here is that many organizations are not hiring, and further, they are reducing the number of people working in their business. This is where the roadblock begins for some job seekers. Also, the preparation and execution of how you present yourself during an interview are complicated by the fact that most interviews are being conducted via virtual platforms powered by technology. Some people don't feel comfortable speaking in front of a computer screen. This adds another dimension to the preparation. Job seekers now need to practice how to get comfortable with a virtual interview. 

And the use of social media has become even more important. It has now become a major networking vehicle for most people. Ensuring your social profiles present you in the best light is essential in these times. 

It may seem like a herculean task to find a new job during the pandemic or in times when one is unemployed. The fact is companies are still hiring and unemployed people are hirable. The advent of remote work is a fact of life for most companies. In the past, some companies, though desirable, may not have been considered because of geography, but this has now changed. The world of work has opened up many more opportunities for job seekers, so finding work in places not previously considered is no longer a job search factor. 

Additionally, the rules and customs of looking for work are still in place. Job seekers need to be organized and use their network to help them identify opportunities. Resumes need to be targeted to the job you want and easy to read by recruiters and hiring managers. 

Ultimately, there are pros and cons, so tenacity and a strong desire for your dream job still count. 

The job candidate experience is a topic gaining momentum as younger generations enter the workforce. In modern times and with the advent of advanced technologies, people have access to more information than ever before in our history. This ability to access information has led people to seek out potential employers' inner workings and delve into what comprises their culture, how they follow the company mission if they live up to the values, and how they aspire to the vision. These self-purported statements made by brands are under scrutiny by the public and most certainly by job seekers. Today's job seekers are not just looking for a source of income. They seek out employers whose approach to conducting business and views on human interaction are well aligned with their own approach. Many also consider how well an organization co-exists in society and if what they give back is equal to what they take. Research has produced mounds of information to support these actions by job seekers which has led companies to revisit their interviewing techniques and subsequent interactions with job candidates.

Today I’m welcoming Quincy Valencia, Vice President - Product Innovation at Alexander Mann Solutions. We’ll be talking about the importance of providing a great candidate experience not just to any employer, but to hourly employers, who often get short shrift in that department. We’re going to lay out the central factors in a positive hiring experience for hourly candidates, and look at an innovative solution in hiring that transforms the journey, end to end. Alexander Mann’s Hourly is a platform that locates the entire hiring process within mobile, providing more communication, more connection, more interaction, and smarter and more effective ways to run assessments that really engage the candidate. It brings a sense of dignity and respect to the hiring journey, making hourly candidates feel valued. These days, that’s more important — to both the employee and the employer —  than ever.

Today I’m welcoming LaFawn Davis, Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, Indeed to look at best practices for cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels like they belong. It’s not enough to aim to improve diversity or inclusion on its own — it’s when you strategically focus on all three factors that you can really transform your workplace. We’ll also look at some common mistakes leaders, managers and HR teams make when trying to address diversity and inclusion in their workforces and why they don’t work. And we’re going to lay out what to do instead.

Blending personal and professional goals into a comfortable mix is gaining ground. As more and more people seek gratification in their personal lives, finding satisfaction in one's career is equally important, if not more important, than some aspects within a person's personal life. According to a research study conducted by a team of academicians at Purdue University, they discovered that some people considered their employment more important than their marriage. Ultimately, though, most people's goal is to find the intersection where happiness lies at the crossroads of their personal life and work life. 

Attempting to create strict boundaries between one's personal life and work often meets with disappointment. Given that we live in a world where communications travel fast and people are easily reachable, distancing oneself from personal life when at work and work when on downtime is becoming increasingly difficult, but not unacceptable. In actuality, it is possible to blend personal time and work hours into a finely balanced lifestyle. However, with some concerted effort, people can find ways to balance satisfying personal and work goals. 

The pandemic state of 2020 has taken its toll on everyone, everywhere, and for many, it has thrust them into working conditions they did not anticipate. Millions of people who were once driving to work and being in an environment where collaboration and face-to-face contact was a common practice are, for the most part, no longer doing this. So now that we are working from home and cannot lean over the cubicle with a quick question or ask for assistance and feedback, how can we effectively put ourselves in a position to get what we need and maintain our productivity levels along with the need to be heard? Simply, honing and using finely tuned communication skills. 

According to many pundits on this topic, our ability to communicate any time, especially now during the pandemic, is our best way to stay actively engaged with our business associates. Some experts take it further and encourage people to be over communicators, especially when engaging with their supervisors. This action will help people set the stage for what they need and how their new work-life balance has changed. For productivity to be maintained, both employees and leaders must understand how the new work-life balance will affect workloads and prepare themselves accordingly. 

Today I’m welcoming Dawn Mitchell, Vice President, Human Resources, Appian

to look at effective strategies for supporting your workforce and their mental health during and beyond the pandemic. Appian was a fully in-house, open-door, come-together work culture that found a way to take that work culture remote — and also make sure its employees get the support and help they need. And that includes mental health: we’ve all seen anxiety levels jump over the past 9 months. The key is to acknowledge it, and find ways to discreetly remind employees they have access to help.

Corporate integrity is not just a buzz phrase; it sits at the core of an organization's business dealings and how the organization conducts itself, both inside and outside the company. Corporate integrity applies to all organizations, whether it be a non-profit or profit-gaining business. It's like doing the right thing when no one is looking and knowing that the right thing is the most integrity filled way of conducting business. Companies that conduct themselves using intentional integrity and do so for the greater good of the organization and its employees, are leading the way in revolutionizing how smart companies are changing the landscape of business. However, outside (and sometimes inside) unforeseen forces can lead companies astray. 

Enter the pandemic of 2020. If ever there were a time when corruption could rear its ugly head, it would be now. Given the confusion, lack of face-to-face contact, loosened controls, and opportunity for fraudulent activity, the time is ripe for integrity to take a nosedive. In fact, according to a 2020 survey conducted by EY, they discovered that 90% of employees believe that the pandemic puts their employer at risk for unethical business dealings. 

Today I’m welcoming Natalie Baumgartner, Chief Workforce Scientist, Achievers 

to talk about the challenge of alignment in workforces right now. Achievers’ Workforce Institute just put out the 2020 Culture report, based on their June survey of over 1100 people around the world. Culture alignment now is just as important as ever — but as with so many facets of working today, COVID-19 has had a profound effect. Culture alignment plays a key role in recognition as well as engagement. We’ll talk about the study, and the best strategies to promote alignment now.

Today I’m welcoming Brad Sutton, Strategic Accounts, EightfoldAI, to talk about how talent management — and talent acquisition as well —  are being transformed by AI. AI is changing the game in everything from recruiting to team building to succession planning, and proving a powerful ally in retention and engagement initiatives as well. 

Today I’m welcoming Dickens Aubourg, Paycom Director of Client Learning, to talk more about the power of reskilling, retraining and upskilling when it comes to engaging, retaining, and developing your talent, and why that’s a key business strategy right now. Developing from within is always a smart approach, but it makes even more sense in the context of remote workplaces — and the need to engage our people and motivate our top performers.

Today I’m welcoming Chris Wakely, Executive Vice President, Global Sales, Benify, to #WorkTrends to talk about benefits in general. We mean everything besides compensation — the perks, culture, health plans and other offerings that the employer offers. The best way to deliver them all is via a digital platform that meets the needs of employees today.

Today I’m welcoming Guibert Englebienne, the Chief Technology Officer & Cofounder of Globant, to talk about the power of AI-driven collaboration. This is absolutely on the leading edge of how we work, and how we manage and engage our people — using data and AI-driven tools to boost collaboration between teams and foster company culture, and enabling us to work together efficiently and creatively from anywhere in the world.

Love them or hate them. Job descriptions are a fact of business life. The problem with many job descriptions is that they are boring, lack the essential information a job seeker needs to assess a company's workplace culture and are, all too often, written to benefit the hiring company and not the person considering the job. 

Information such as "a day in the life" is rarely provided, nor is enough information about the position and team or department where the new hire will be working. In essence, they are static, one-sided statements that create a challenge for engaging job seekers. This neither benefits the employer nor the job applicant. It potentially increases the risk of applications from unqualified candidates, along with confusing job applicants with poorly written descriptions. But thoughtful companies are making strides to improve their job descriptions by writing them to attract and engage interested, qualified job seekers.

Today I’m welcoming Liz King, the CMO of gThankYou, LLC, to talk about the importance of workplace gratitude. Sharing gratitude with employees and peers may actually be the special sauce of workplace culture. We’re going to hear about the science behind gratitude, and how it transforms the workplace. We’ll talk about how to shape a whole culture of gratitude, and what to do for the holidays that will make everyone smile.

Today I’m welcoming Justin Holland, the CEO and Founder of HealthJoy to talk about health benefits — and why it’s so important for employers to deliver a quality healthcare benefits experience for their employees, wherever they’re working, remote or on-site. Healthcare has changed radically — it’s far more complex than it ever was. And right now, employees need more help and guidance than ever. 

Sexual harassment is not an easy topic, and with the advent of most employees working from home, it has taken on a new dimension of difficulty. Identifying it with concrete evidence is sometimes a feeling you get because you know the other person's behavior or comment was not appropriate. Still, the question is, was it sexual harassment. 

Keep in mind that sexual harassment does not always occur through physical contact. The spoken word, emails, texts, and video conferencing can all serve as vehicles to deliver sexually harassing messages. 

Further, sexual harassment can be delivered in various ways. Comments targeted to your gender, wardrobe, hairstyle, or even an inappropriate joke can be construed as sexual harassment and under many legal jurisdictions can be reported as such. 

Working with virtual assistants can be a great benefit to organizations of all sizes and industries, and especially useful for start-up companies and small businesses looking to grow. Using virtual assistants can take many burdens off of a business owner and can do it in an economical way. Often, business owners will take on the tasks and duties associated with all aspects of their business leaving them to become overwhelmed and over burdened, which can lead to burnout and the potential demise of their business. Hiring virtual assistants of varying specialties can help streamline the processes and procedures established for a business and provide the expertise a business may be missing. 

In this episode of #WorkTrends, entrepreneur Nathan Hirsch, the co-founder of OutsourceSchool, describes the myriad benefits of hiring virtual assistants. He explains how to properly hire, onboard, train and manage virtual assistants to get the most from the skills they bring to an organization. He, also, shares advice on when the best times are to hire virtual assistants with specific skill sets during various business growth milestones.

HR is navigating endless changes right now, including how to best advise and equip employees with the savings and financial planning they need. What’s different: we’re not face to face. The tools and information need to be online — and in a platform that makes sense, offers simple and clear navigating, and presents the best savings opportunities there are. Employees are under enough pressure as it is. And they need a way to better support the financial stresses they’re under. And with the world changing so quickly, we need a platform that can leverage the power and the scope of automation. And while we’re at it, let’s make it trustworthy, reliable, scaleable, and easy for both employers and employees to use. 

Today I’m sitting down with Augie Smith, Founder of Otherhood, to talk about how his company partners with employers to help their employees with a pressing challenge today: saving as much pre-tax income as they can for what matters: healthcare, education, and retirement. We’ll be looking at the role of automation and AI in this innovative platform, and talking about why employee self-service is so important when it comes to benefit management.

Reflektive’s new report on performance management shows like every other aspect of how we work, there are major changes afoot. The 2020 Performance Management Benchmark Report, as it’s called, is hot off the presses.It surveyed over  1,000+ HR professionals, business leaders and employees, on the state of performance management, including trends, employee needs, and sentiment about the future. 

Jennifer Toton, Chief Marketing Officer at Reflektive, joins host Meghan M. Biro to download some of the more compelling trends that the survey uncovered. The report sheds light on the present and the future — and how the shift to remote working has changed our views and expectations on performance, as well as our desire for feedback, reviews, coaching, communication, and time.

The pandemic has thrown a curve ball to many people in the workplace. What was once normal is now the old way of doing things. The new normal came quickly and it didn’t give people a chance to catch up. Many employees were faced with working from home or someplace else that is not optimal for many reasons. Some find the noise distracting, the workspace inadequate, the routine disruptive or the technology lacking in ways that is causing people to fall behind in their work. 

In this episode of #WorkTrends, I’m spending time with two veterans of remote working, Maria Orozova and Scott Thomas. They own and manage a creative services agency and do this successfully as a married couple. Many of the struggles employees and businesses are facing now are challenges they overcame in their many years of learning how to divide child care, finding ways to create “alone” time, delineating between work and home hours and using good tactics for interactions that don’t create communication fatigue.

You’ve worked hard to create an engaged, loyal workforce. Then 2020 hits. Overnight we are sent to at-home workspaces working in physical isolation. We balance the stresses of health and wellbeing with maintaining performance in our jobs. Civil unrest has quickly heightened emotions and anxiety. All this and we’re barely past the mid-year mark. In a work world where our teams are distributed physically and mentally, how can we build and maintain trust among our workforce? Further, how do trust and belonging drive sustainable performance? 

Today I’m sitting down with Iain Moffat, Chief Global Officer of MHR International, to talk about the importance of safety, relationships, and purpose as the cornerstones for building real trust in today’s workplace — and radically strengthening the company culture. These may be uncertain times, but creating a sense of trust and belonging in your workforce and your workplace gives people an anchor we all need — and it’s an incredibly effective way of sustaining the kind of performance and engagement that, in turn, sustains your business.

Before COVID-19 one of the most popular ongoing discussions at #WorkTrends was about the gig economy — which was already breaking open the traditional 9-5 model of working and shifting the perspective from payroll to project. Coworking, freelancing, independent contractors — we were looking at generational preferences and realizing that it was highly likely that we would not be bringing talent into the workforce the same way we had before. 

Then came the pandemic, and suddenly we shifted to remote working and flexible schedules out of necessity — which as more than one colleague of mine has said is, after all, the mother of invention. And with that shift came the realization that we really can break out of the 9-5 mold, undo our adherence to staying in cities in order to be near our workplace, and detach from the need to stay on salary for being independently affiliated. There are, of course, tangible matters to address, including how we best source and hire freelancers with the chops and skills we really need. But here’s another revelation: HR is a great opportunity for hiring freelancers – and being a freelancer. Freelancers with HR talent are on the rise and for a number of reasons, we’re going to see more organizations turning to freelancers — and finding that both strategically and practically, it’s a win.

Today I’m welcoming Chris Russell, Founder, HR Lancers, and Jim Stroud, VP marketing, Proactive Talent, to talk about the enormous shift we’re seeing in how people work and how organizations hire — from salaried to gig. And that includes HR as well, which may surprise some of you. But with millennials leaving major metropolitan areas and remote working becoming the norm, freelancing is becoming a viable way to build a great HR team. We’ll talk about effective strategies for hiring the best and the brightest freelancers for HR, from best practices to best resources.

There’s so much uncertainty about what will happen to the workplace — whether we will wind up staying remote or mixing it up, or be able to return to a physical workspace. Will it be safe, will it be a best practice? There are a lot of questions facing us and we’re not going to have the answers for a while now, given what’s happening in the country with COVID-19. 

Against this backdrop, we still need to hire people. And we need to find a way to onboard them into a work culture that inspires and engages them. Just how to do that has always been a challenge. But now it’s even more so — because we can’t rely on proximity to transmit behaviors or a sense of shared purpose, or energy, or enthusiasm. It all has to happen in a way that transcends physical boundaries and is effective nevertheless.

Today I’m welcoming John Baldino, President and Founder of Humareso, to talk about the best practices for onboarding your new hires into your workforce, no matter where you are — and how to uncover the blind spots in your onboarding process as well as your workculture to make onboarding a success.