2020 has been a year of big changes for most people. If you’ve been lucky enough to keep the same job you had at the beginning of the year, there’s no doubt that many aspects of the role have likely changed since the pandemic started. If you’re one of the many that lost their jobs throughout the course of the year, there’s a possibility that you had to take on contract work or a role that perhaps wasn’t exactly what you’d been doing before.

No matter what the next step in your career is, or what your goals for 2021 are, it’s always good to have an up-to-date resume handy that properly represents your achievements as a professional.

So whether your 2021 goals are to find a new job, finally get that promotion or change career paths completely, we’ve put together our top 3 tips to make sure that your resume is ready for whatever 2021 holds. 

 

Personalise it to your future goals

A lot of people spent the forced downtime in 2020 completely reassessing what they wanted from a company, team, manager and ultimately where they wanted their career to go in the future. This could be within an existing industry or field, or a completely new one altogether. 

When writing a resume it’s always important to make sure it’s tailored to the job that you’re applying for. If you’ve had a change in role or industry, or intend on changing it in 2021, start personalising your resume to make sure that it fits the exact type of roles that you’ll be applying for. 

Add any new technologies you’ve worked with

I’m sure by now that everyone has seen the jokes about how the best leader of technological innovation in 2020 was COVID-19. There is no doubt that despite how awful the pandemic was/is, that one of the best positives to come from it was the forced shift to remote work, smart technology and companies having to learn how to effectively communicate and run online.

If you’ve become a webinar expert, video conference pro, learnt how to use a new program, technology or popular software throughout the pandemic, be sure to add it in the relevant skills section of your resume or LinkedIn profile. You may think that it’s just a piece of software or tech, but your ability to use a particular program or technology may be what separates you apart from the competition when going for other jobs or promotions. 

Include any new certifications or qualifications 

A lot of educational and learning organisations have been quite generous throughout the pandemic, offering free courses and certifications to up-skill your resume throughout lockdown. From Google to LinkedIn, Apple and TAFE there are a significant amount of companies offering free, or very cheap resources to become certified in a new area. 

Many of these free or reduced price courses are still available for you to take advantage of now. So, if you haven’t quite made the jump yet and picked up a new skill in 2020,  have no fear as there’s still a month until 2021 starts. Have a look at the list we prepared here and see how you can easily up-skill to improve your resume and impresses recruiters. 

 

 

Looking for your next role now? Get in touch with the Discovered People team here for a confidential chat. 

 

Written by Ebony McCabe for Discovered People

 

Feedback can often have negative connotations associated with it. While getting unplanned feedback can sometimes be stressful, actively seeking constructive feedback the right way can help improve your overall career development. Also often stopping those unplanned awkward feedback sessions before they happen! 

In a survey conducted by PwC, they revealed that 60% of polled employees said they would like feedback from their bosses on a daily or weekly basis. While that number jumped up to 72% for those under the age of 30. So it’s very clear that feedback is overwhelmingly what employees want. 

While in a perfect world we’d all get proactive feedback given to us on a daily or weekly basis by our bosses, it’s not always a reality for many teams or companies. So if you’re looking to help improve your own development and seek out the best ways to grow and learn, here’s our 6 top tips on how to ask for feedback at work. 

 

  • Timing

Timing is everything when asking for feedback. Make a decision on a definitive time and date that’s not too busy in your organisation and put a meeting in the calendar of the person you’re asking feedback from. 

If you’ve got a big project or tight deadline coming up, perhaps wait to book it after completion so neither of you are distracted. When possible, be sure to book it either as a video call or in person so there’s no chances of answers being misconstrued. Emails or texts can often come across not as intended and it’s better to avoid any chance of misunderstandings. 

  • Find the right person

While this could be your direct boss, it can often be valuable to speak to other teams you’ve worked with on projects, peers, higher-up managers or others within your organisation whose careers you admire. Everybody has different perspectives and career goals and the more feedback, the better chance you have to get honest and impactful critiques. 

  • Be Specific

You should instinctively have some clue on where and how you can improve career wise. It’s no use going into a feedback session with no goals or specific direction, so be sure to go in with a plan, or at least some generic questions to guide the conversation. 

Depending on the type of feedback you’re hoping to receive, be more creative than just saying ‘Can I please have some feedback?’ and structure the conversation to allow for answers to the questions you have. A good example question to ask is ‘What is one thing I could improve on …’ and so on. 

  • Don’t Take It Personally

While naturally feedback isn’t always positive, don’t ever look at it as a personal attack. Feedback is a gift and opportunity to grow as a person. If somebody is taking the time to provide you with feedback, they will generally care about you and want to genuinely help with your career path. Think of it like having something stuck in your teeth, you’re always glad somebody points it out and gives you the chance to fix it, even if it’s a little embarrassing or awkward for the first few minutes after. 

  • Create Actions

If you go out of your way to seek feedback and then do nothing with it, it’s unlikely the person will want to share feedback with you again in the future. Listen and learn to the feedback you’re receiving and make your own actionable goals working towards them. 

If you’re not sure how to action something, maybe clarify with the person how they’d address the area themselves and ask for further recommendations on what they think would be the best approach. 

  • Consistency

People change constantly and asking for feedback just once will hardly help you the rest of your career. Make sure you set aside time for your own professional development regularly and make time to chat with anybody who can help you grow through the sharing of feedback. 

 

Looking for your next role? Get in touch with the Discovered People team here for a confidential chat. 

 

Written by Ebony McCabe for Discovered People

 

In our recent survey of those currently working in startups, we found that 34% of all employers found that the biggest challenge they faced was a lack of technical skills amongst potential employees. 

While Covid-19 has forced a lot of us indoors, it’s the perfect time to take the initiative and use your spare time to upskill and add some great certifications and new skills to that resume. 

We’ve put together some of the best places online that we’ve found to upskill in order to help improve your employability and set you apart from the competition when going after a promotion or new role. 

Best Ways to Upskill

Google Digital Courses

Google’s Digital Garage has some fantastic free courses you can do at your own pace to upskill in some in-demand digital areas. From mastering and becoming certified in their own range of core products, to learning about Online Strategy, SEO and Time Management, their courses are a fantastic free way to upskill in your downtime. View their full range of courses here

Facebook Blueprint

Social Media is a skill that’s becoming rapidly more in demand by more and more employers. Explore self-paced and step-by-step tutorials by Facebook that can help you build your digital marketing knowledge and bring your business online. Facebook Blueprint has free training and certifications for their suite of products and services. 

Twitter Flight School

Master your use of Twitter with their free online training portal. Like Facebook and Linkedin, Twitter offers a range of free online courses that not only cover their own product, but also a range of other useful topics. These include things like campaign reporting, managing agencies and creatives, to advertising strategy. You can view their whole range of courses here. 

LinkedIn Learning

Acquired from educational platform Lynda.com several years ago, LinkedIn Learning and now have a huge range of courses available for anybody with a LinkedIn profile to learn from. LinkedIn Learning has relevant courses available across business, creative and technology fields that give you a certification upon completion. So whether you want to learn about SEO, Cryptocurrency or Data Analytics, there’s something for you on LinkedIn Learning. 

Harvard University Free Courses

Learn from one of the most renowned and respected Universities in the world. Harvard Online has 100+ free courses you can complete ranging from Game Design to Python and Javascript. With free courses ranging from 1 week to 24 weeks long, there’s something for everyone available here. 

TAFE NSW Free & Subsidised Courses

Earlier this year TAFE NSW started offering free online courses for Australians to upskill during the pandemic. Depending on the individual, they’re offering a wide range of industry recognised free and subsidised courses. Browse the available courses and subsidies here. 

Get a Diploma or Masters Degree Online

If you’ve ever thought about getting a Postgrad certification, now could be the perfect time. While it can be a big commitment, education is always a good investment for your career. You can choose between single subjects, a graduate diploma or Masters degree from a range of universities around Australia. Browse all the Universities in Australia offering online education through Open Universities

 

Looking for your next employee with great technical skills? Get in touch with the Discovered People team here for a chat. 

 

Written by Ebony McCabe for Discovered People

 

These days it’s pretty fair to say that everybody at some point in their lives has taken a personality test, either just for personal knowledge or when employed with a new company.  

In a workplace environment, it’s common for many companies to look at these different personality types within a team to help support and embrace how they all work, learn and communicate together. While this is still useful in a team setting, when recruiting it’s important to look far beyond just personality types and to create teams built with broader diversity.

Compared to teams that are made from similar types of people, teams that are built from a varying mix of genders, races, ages and nationalities are often higher achieving. This is for two main reasons. We’ve highlighted just why it’s proven that your team and wider company will benefit from diversifying your staff when hiring below. 

Innovation

Try and name a company that doesn’t want to be more innovative. We’re not sure that one exists. It can be really easy to hire people that you think will instantly match your existing team or wider company. Whether it’s a friend of a friend, a relative, or Karen from Finance’s niece. While hiring these types of people you already know can and often do work out, by not hiring outside of this group you miss the opportunity to enrich your employees with the opportunity to work directly with people who will think differently, work differently and challenge them intellectually. In fact, hiring people that are all very similar is proven to actually discourage innovative thinking. 

As discussed and shown in research by Rock & Grant in the Harvard Business Review, making sure your talent pool includes a wide mix of different genders, nationalities, ages and races plays directly into your companies joint intellectual potential and the overall ability they have to achieve as a team. 

Teams rich with diversity are far more likely to be critical and double check the work of their peers. This keeps everybody accountable for their own actions and ultimately makes sure they each produce their best work. By hiring diverse people you’ll be helping your team to work with those from a background they may not have worked with before. Additionally giving them the opportunity to become more aware of their own potential biases while looking at how they work in a team, finding opportunities for them to grow individually. 

Creativity

Creativity is one of the most valued and sought after skills in many employees. Several companies will go out of their way to create an environment where teams can think openly and creatively in order to do their everyday jobs better.

When you bring together a group of people from varied backgrounds and experiences, everyone will have their own unique way of thinking about your company’s products or services. By sharing past knowledge and working with a diverse group of people, it’s been proven again and again that it improves creativity amongst teams.

Rampton from Entrepreneur Magazine found this when speaking to Duke Energy Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Joni Davis, with her clearly stating ‘The main reasons you’ll gain productivity and a boost in creativity is that you’re bringing together individuals from different walks of life.’ 

 

All in all, by looking outside your existing talent pool and diversifying your hiring process, you’ll do nothing but benefit your employees, help them work better, expand their knowledge and produce more innovative, creative work. 

Looking to diversify your team and hire your next employee? Get in touch with the Discovered People team here for a chat to find out more. 

 

Written by Ebony McCabe for Discovered People

 

We recently conducted a survey consisting of those currently working in startups to get their takes on the current state of recruitment in 2020.

With COVID-19, market and industry challenges it’s been a rough year for both startups and recruiters. See the key takeaways and insights we found below.

Be sure to follow our blog for more information like this and other helpful tips for both candidates and employers.

 

  • All data shown is the property and findings of Discovered People and is not permitted for reuse by third parties. 

Telephone interviews were once used as a way to speed up the hiring process. Now we’re all for that, but with the rise of video interviewing platforms we believe that telephone interviews are a thing of the past. Here’s our three main reasons why.

Never Miss a Candidate 

First off, we’re all super busy. Which means it’s not always possible to find half an hour or more to have a conversation with a candidate over the phone or in person. It becomes even more difficult if the candidate is still in a different role or interviewing at multiple places. 

This is where video interviews can allow flexibility for both parties via a link for candidates to answer at a time that suits them. It also means that you’re able to screen a higher volume of candidates in a shorter timeframe.  

Improved Screening

Next up, there’s the added advantage of being able to actually see shortlisted candidates over video before deciding whether to progress them to the next stage or not. Unlike with phone interviews, video will give you a much better indication of the candidate’s fit. 

You’ll be able to assess their mannerisms and gauge how confident they are, or if they’re struggling to make eye contact. You can see how they’re dressed and if they’re smiling or not, none of which can be done by phone. Yes, in a phone interview candidates will answer your questions and it can help speed things up, but the added advantage video offers takes the screening process to a whole new level. 

More Control, Less Investment 

With video interviews you have complete visibility and greater control of the entire interviewing process. At Discovered People we use software that can easily record and create a shortlist of candidates that have been through our video screening and best meet your criteria. You don’t have to take our word for it that the candidate is a good fit for the role, you can see for yourself through recorded video interviews. 

The shortlisted candidate videos will appear in your own dashboard, with their CVs and any other documents you’ve requested attached. You can then watch their videos and read all accompanying documents at a time that suits you. By the time you’re ready to meet the candidate yourself, you’re already way ahead of the game. Which means avoiding spending an hour with a candidate who you’ve discounted in the first five minutes, but feel obliged to meet.

Don’t Get Hung Up

So when weighing up the pros and cons, it’s clear phone interviews have had their day. Video interviewing allows us to provide a much better service to you, plus it gives your candidates a better experience too.

 

Looking to hire? Get in touch with our team here

 

 

With the new norm of self-isolating and non-essential travel in place, remote recruiting, hiring and onboarding is the only way to go for non-essential workers to carry on business as usual.  

As recruitment experts we’ve pulled together some tips and tricks below on how to best help your new staff get onboarded.

 

  • Set Expectations from the Interview Process

The recruitment process is the beginning of the onboarding experience for the candidate, especially for remote employees. It’s really important that expectations are set from the interview stage. 

Be aware of the common struggles for remote workers and share your ideas for solutions to these problems. Managing workloads, ill-defined hours of work, and lack of accountability are always amongst remote workers’ top negative feedback. 

Be transparent and honest about workload, hours of work, and any key performance goals for their role. Defining these at an early stage will help you avoid confusion or conflict further down the line. 

  • Create a Process

Take some time to create a foolproof remote onboarding checklist. While you may already have one for new hires, be sure you have a seperate one for remote hires. While some points may remain the same, others won’t be relevant and others will have to be created especially.

You always want new staff to feel comfortable as soon as possible, so think about what tools and information they’ll need to get up to speed and always be as detailed as possible. If your office manager, or the employee themselves are responsible for fulfilling a checkpoint, they should know exactly what they need to do. Be clear about this so your employee can have a much better experience as a new-starter.

  • Make Them Feel Welcome

While some things like your company handbook, offer letter and contract can be sent digitally, others need some advanced planning. This is a great opportunity to also send a welcome package in the mail. Little things non-remote employees would have, such as branded hoodies, notepads and pens will help them feel appreciated in their new role from day one. It doesn’t have to be huge, but something a little extra that says ‘Welcome to the team!’ will make them feel included with your company.

  • Connect Your Team

Helping your new employee meet the team is easy when they’re in the office. This definitely is a little trickier with remote workers, but don’t let that be a reason to not do it. It’s a better experience for them to do this over video, so the new starter can still put faces to names. This will also help curb the feelings of isolation and nervousness about reaching out to others with questions, while also helping them get a sense of the company’s culture. 

Not feeling properly part of the business can be really disheartening for a new start, which in turn is likely to hinder their performance. So make sure they know the social calendar so they can join in on events, even if it is just on a video platform.

  • Ask what works for them, accommodate and adapt 

Take the time to ask your new hires about their preferences for things you are prepared to be flexible on as a company. This can be things from how they’d prefer to hear feedback, take meetings, or be issued tasks. Taking the time to hear their thoughts gives them confidence that as a company you’re prepared to listen to them and consider their specific needs. 

  • Keep Learning

Since remote onboarding is looking like it will become the new norm, make sure you continually nail your onboarding process. A great way to do this is by asking your new starters for feedback on how they found the onboarding process and if they have any suggestions on how to improve for future remote employees.

 

Looking for more tips and tricks on hiring new staff? Be sure to stay tuned and check in with the Discovered People blog.

If you need help finding new staff, be sure to contact us here

Those in the startup world know all about the elephant in the room when it comes to talking about mental health and wellbeing. It is not something that is openly spoken about – and it should be.

To encourage speaking openly about mental health, especially within startups, our partner Tank Stream Labs put a special panel together which included veterans in startup land and near specialists to discuss their own personal experiences as well as:

  • #startuplife mentality: why this is detrimental to your success
  • Cultivating an excellence team culture, without fatigue and burn out
  • The power of vulnerability
  • How to overcome obstacles when things get tough

The panel included Shelley Laslett, CEO & Co-Founder, Vitae, Bradley Delamere, CEO, Tank Stream Labs and our own Ryan Halson, Co-Founder & Director, Discovered People.

Watch the full series discussion below

This week we’re excited to have Matt Cook join us as our new Practice Lead. With 5 years recruitment experience across both Australia and Europe, he’s bringing a wealth of knowledge to our growing team.

We sat down with him to go over his background and reasons for joining the Discovered team!

 

  • Matt, where were you before Discovered? 

TheDriveGroup

  • Why did you want to join the Discovered team?

I was very interested in joining a business at such an early stage, where my input and ideas will be listened to, and everyone has a say in how we can all make Discovered People as good as it can possibly be.

  • What are you most excited about so far?

The business is very heavily focused on high quality work, to match the high quality service we aim to provide. This goes hand in hand with the sort of approach I love to take.

Of course, as a recruitment business, our main aim is to find great talent for our clients, but if I look at the clients I’m most grateful to work with, the relationship is a true business partnership, a real two way street, where we both add value to each other’s businesses on so many more levels than just the recruitment front.

At Discovered, our aim is to have this level of partnership with all of our clients.

  • What’s your favourite part of being a recruiter?

For the most part, it’s mainly about working with companies that are building and providing really exciting products and services.

Particularly in technology, and even more so in the tech start up space, almost every company I get to work with is developing something the world hasn’t really seen before, on the cutting edge of technology.

When you’re speaking to these businesses, as well as the people that run and work for them on a daily basis, its very hard to have a dull day in my world!

 

To get in touch with Matt or the Discovered Team, reach us here.

 

There are a lot of stressful things to consider when starting a small business. From finding people who care about your vision as much as you do, to making sure you’ve got the right internal skillset, the recruitment process is definitely one of the most difficult and time consuming parts.

Anybody that’s gone through this process will confirm just how important it is to build a team with the same values, ethics, drive as you do.

Helping numerous startups and small businesses form their teams has allowed us to make some recommendations to help you build yours. Here’s four of our top tips to do just that.

 

  • Think carefully before hiring friends or family

While it’s easy to turn to friends and family when starting a company as there’s existing relationships and trust, think very carefully before going ahead with employing a friend or family member.

Be sure that you’ve considered how your existing relationship may change when bringing them in as an employee. Make sure you’ve both set clear boundaries within a contract just like any other employee so there’s clear expectations made for both sides.

There are many famous companies throughout history which started based as either a family or friend collaboration that didn’t  work out, so take this as a warning that it can happen to any company. While this may not be the case for everyone, be sure that you’ve properly thought out the situation and all possible outcomes prior to going ahead with hiring anybody.

 

  • Write a good job description

To make things easier for you and the person you’re searching for, it’s really important to make sure that you write a detailed and accurate job description. This will help you find the exact person that you’re looking for, as well as help them find you.

Make sure that you include all responsibilities and desired skills for the role and think in detail about how this person will fit in with the wider team. It’s much easier to make sure that you’re 100% across this before hiring them, rather than figuring it out once they start.

 

  • Culture

Culture is what truly defines a company and sets them apart from their competitors. How your employees and customers view the business will become a large part of how and what your company grows into over time.

While skills can always be taught, personality and culture fit can’t be learnt or changed. Make sure you hire people with the same values and enthusiasm as you to make sure they will always be an asset to your business no matter what the skills that may have.

A great example of this in practice is Apple Retail. They hire their technical staff based on their personality and ability to be compassionate, enthusiastic and explain things to customers without jargon. They intentionally don’t hire overly technical or IT qualified staff in their retail teams and instead train them on everything they need to know once they start. As one of the most successful companies in the world, this is a clear indication that culture is often far more important than experience or skills.

 

  • Look for those not looking

When hiring for a small team or startup, it’s really important that you find the best people to help build your company. Often the best candidates aren’t actually looking for jobs, so you have to go and find them rather than letting them come to you. It’s helpful to look beyond the obvious talent pools in order to find that dream candidate that fits in perfectly with your team and has the same vision and goals to align with your brand.

This is where we come in at Discovered People. We’re experts at finding those unicorn candidates that perfectly match into the role you’re hiring for.

 

Looking for a recruitment agency to help you hire for your startup? As Tank Stream Labs recruitment partner we know exactly how important it is to find the best person for your company. Get in touch with us here.