Tag: hiring

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

 

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.

2020 has certainly turned out to be a year that nobody could have predicted. One of the few positives brought on by COVID-19 has been the downtime we’ve all inevitably had while in lockdown, which has given many of us the chance to refocus and reprioritise things.

If you’ve spent any of that time either job hunting or reconsidering the job you’re in, now could be the perfect time to consider a career change. We’ve pulled together our top tips to help you brush up on your skills and make sure you’re putting your best foot forward when it comes to securing a new role.

  • Fix Your Resume – if it’s been a while since you last updated your CV, now’s the time for a refresh. Be sure to include the four key elements recruiters and employers look for too; a personal statement, up-to-date work experience, a skills section (which should always be tailored to the role you’re applying for) and details of your educational or training qualifications.
  • Let your network know you’re available – update your LinkedIn profile and put up a post letting people know you’re looking for a new opportunity.
  • Use your free time to strengthen your skills – look back through your job reviews to see what has been highlighted as areas for improvement. Or, compare your skill set against the skills mentioned in job descriptions you’re interested in to see what you’re missing. Find an online course or resource to help strengthen that skill.
  • Research sectors that are hiring – while hiring has slowed down across many industries but there are some sectors on the rise.

Focus on Transferable Skills

Transferable skills are those that can be applied across different roles. They may be personal attributes that you’ve developed over time, or they could be skills you’ve acquired through training.

While the range of skills an employer or recruiter will be looking for depends on the role, there are some fundamental transferable skills that will help you stand out.  Why not take the time now, while you have it, to think of some really good, real-life, examples that demonstrate the transferable skills you have. Spend time planning out the best way to talk through your background and experience, and prepare and practice giving answers to commonly asked questions that demonstrates your skills in the following five areas.

  • Communication – Express yourself clearly and with confidence. Demonstrating proficiency in written and verbal communication is a sure-fire way to impress an interviewer.
  • Listening – Answer the question asked. Listening is more than hearing what is being said, it’s about being able to interpret the message and act accordingly.
  • Teamwork – Teams that work well together, achieve more. Employers are typically looking for people who work well and get along with others.
  • Organisation – Demonstrate that you’re able to organise your own work schedule and can adapt to and deal with unexpected issues that arise.
  • Leadership – Leadership is a skill that most employers look for in all employees, regardless of seniority.

The amount of time you have in an interview is limited, so make sure you prepare to give yourself the best possible chance of success.

Identify what skills you have; you might even ask friends or colleagues for their input. Then determine what skills the recruiter or employer is looking for.

Finally think of examples that show how the transferable skills you have will add value to their business.

Good luck!

 

If you’re actively looking for a role, get in touch with our team to see how we can help you find your dream role here.

 

Written by Ebony McCabe for Discovered People