How to Use Personality Traits to Recruit an All-Star Team

How to Use Personality Traits to Recruit an All-Star TeamHow to Use Personality Traits to Recruit an All-Star TeamNo one hires in a vacuum filling an open position requires strategy and research. You are placing a new hire onto an unfamiliar team and into a new professional culture. You want to make sure that you maximize the opportunity and onboard a candidate with the skills to do the job and to enhance the functionality of your unit.A team operates best when fueled by an array of talent, including the soft skills that support its internal operations. Soft skills such as flexibility, diplomacy, empathy and likability are to people operations what lubricants are to machinery. They reduce friction while enhancing cohesion and harmony.Soft skills help individuals predict and snger others behavior by intuiting their feelings. This skill set is increasingly in demand, because soft skills can help defuse interpersonal issues and they strengthen relationships.In order to fully embrace the opportunity your open position presents, first analyze what you soft skills your team needs. Then create a recruitment strategy that seeks out those qualities. Identify gapsA team might encounter certain communication obstacles if it is largely comprised of the same types of communicators. If thats the case, it may be obvious what your team is missing.If youre not sure, examine performance appraisals or other devices that you use to chart your teams successes and areas of challenge. Do you find common areas that need to be strengthened? For example, would your team benefit from a candidate who drives projects along, is creative, incorporates different viewpoints, slows everyone down and encourages the team to think through their decisions or someone who has a strong track record for successfully collaborating with other units? It may also prove helpful to have the members of your team take turns leading a meeting while you observe so that you can watch your teams dynamics in action . Observe how they interact with each otherwho dominates? Who facilitates? Who seems engaged and who does not? This exercise will give you a sense of what soft skills you team has and what capabilities could enhance the mechanics of the group.Target soft skills Gear your interview approach towards finding a candidate with the soft skills you are missing. Use your own soft skills to get your applicants talking about theirs during interviews. Ask about volunteer work they undertake, teams they play on, or any extra activities they do. Find out what they like about this workwhy it excites them.This can be an informal conversationan ice breaker. But it will also clue you into what motivates them. If they are volleyball players, for example, they may have a good sense of teamwork. If they serve as mentors or volunteer as Big Brothers/Sisters, they may have a care-taking or community spirit that is just what your group needs.PromptsAnother helpful way to learn about your candidates soft s kills is to use prompts that give you a sense of how they use soft skills at work for example Example (Empathy) Describe a time that you had to help a customer or client who welches disgruntled for reasons that you thought were understandable. Were you able to calm that person down? Were you able to win him or her over? If you could do it again, what would you change?Example (Team player) Describe a time that you had to help out a coworker who was struggling. How did you do that in such a way that your colleague felt supported but not embarrassed? These prompts are open-ended. They leave plenty of room for candidates to discuss processing and feelings. You want them to discuss both so that you can get a sense of how they intuit others feelings and how they operate from those assumptions. RememberSoft skills may be subtle, but with some careful analysis, you can target and track the ones you need to round out your teams skill set.

A Fair Vacation Policy Can Help Prevent a Summer Staff Meltdown

A Fair Vacation Policy Can Help Prevent a Summer Staff MeltdownA Fair Vacation Policy Can Help Prevent a Summer Staff MeltdownA Fair Vacation Policy Can Help Prevent a Summer Staff Meltdown RossheimSummertime - high season for sunburns, cookouts and vacations - can mean high anxiety for managers. Nearly every employee wants to take a good chunk of time off, but most geschftlicher umganges cant allow customer service or any other core function to lapse just because its beach weather. Not to mention who will helpmanagethe business while youre on vacationThese tips will help you keep the trains running through summer without alienating the rank-and-file.Codify your vacation policy. Even if business in your industry slows in summer or you offer unlimited PTO, its wise to maintain a formal vacation policy. Be aya to put it in writing and then distribute it to all employees annually and whenever a substantial change is made.Structure is important, says Nancy Saperstone, senior HR busines s partner at Insight Performance, a menschlich resources consulting firm. Fair vacation policies are not loosey-goosey.Dont be arbitrary. Make sure that vacation requests are granted or denied judiciously. Managers reviewing time-off requests must be consistent to avoid the perception of favoritism, says Jennifer Gunter, secretary of the HR Florida State Council.At small companies in particular, its important that all employees vacation requests are solicited before any summer time off is granted.Be transparent. If you want to keep your employees, dont offend them by handling their vacation requests with a because I said so attitude.Transparency is key, says Saperstone. You have to let people know how youre making these decisions, so people understand and respect how its done. David Galic, a spokesperson with employee-scheduling software vendor Humanity.com, gets to the heart of the matter of a well-managed vacation policy Managers should give reasons for declining vacation requests .Enumerate the criteria for reviewing vacation requests. Employees will be more likely to make workable vacation requests if they understand the deciding factors in your vacation policies. You dont want to only reward senior employees, says Saperstone.You might, for example, prioritize requests that come in early, or reward high performers with first choice of vacation date, or set up a regular rotation to determine whose requests will be considered first.Encourage communication among team members. We have an HRIS system where employees can make vacation requests, and also a shared calendar, says Loni Freeman, vice president of human resources at public relations firm SSPR. We ask employees to communicate with their account team to ensure client coverage.Make flexibility a two-way street. If you give employees some flexibility in the workplace, youre in a position to ask them for flexibility of their vacation arrangements.We have core hours, but otherwise employees can decide at wha t time they arrive at the office and leave, says Freeman. Because we allow daily flexibility, employees may be willing to take a 15- or 20-minute client call on a PTO day, says Freeman. But take care to strictly define responsibilities that carry into vacation time and to limit work during vacations to the absolute minimum.Consider summer Fridays to build good will - and cooperation. Some 42 percent of employers will give employees Friday afternoons off this summer, according to a recent CEB survey. Given that many employees minds will already be at the beach after lunch on TGIF day, formalizing this bonus time off may cost little in productivity while keeping employees engaged all summer and help generate cooperation to manageeveryones PTO requests.Be upfront with your vacation blackout policy. Unless your business depends on seasonal hires, a vacation policy with blackout periods is likely to sow employee discontent. What do you do if an employee has a family wedding during the blackout? You could create an exception, but that might breed additional resentment among other employees.If you must ban time off at certain times of year, its really important to let employees know during their onboarding that the company sometimes needs to have a blackout period for vacations, says Galic.Offer rewards for those who work sought-after days off. Consider giving employees special consideration if they agree to work certain days that most people want to take off. This can be especially important at small businesses, where co-workers are familiar with the comings and goings of people, which can easily develop into time-off envy.You can pay time-and-a-half for certain days, such as July 3rd this year, which falls in the middle of what many employees will see as a four-day weekend, says Saperstone. Or give them an extra day off think creatively.Consider summer stay bonuses for high-turnover hourly jobs. Small businesses who depend onhourly workerscould suffer high turnov er. Its wise to offer bonuses to workers who stay with the company through the summer and take time off only when it has been requested and granted well in advance.Regulate unlimited PTO. Frankly, when it comes to summer vacation, unlimited PTO has its limits.Our guidelines say that the time off must not be detrimental to the business it must be scheduled in advance, and is subject to denial, says John Sickmeyer, president of marketing agency Postali. But we havent had this happen yet. Our shared vacation calendar creates a sense of group accountability. Managers look at the vacation calendar regularly to ensure nothing could be problematic for the company.Cross-train in anticipation of heavy PTO periods. Cross-training, which goes hand-in-hand with professional development, can be a tremendous boost to your vacation policy.Cross-training is particularly important with our largest clients, where there are two or three people on the team who know as much about a given client as the l ead person does, says Freeman. Cross-training is also critical at small companies where many tasks are often carried out by just one employee.

From the President February 2015

From the President February 2015 From the President February 2015 Resetting the Future in 2015 This year, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals will enter their next phase of seeing major improvements in alleviating poverty and improving quality of life globally. Technology itself is central to many of these efforts with broader public use of 3D printing and its revolutionary influence on manufacturing, the application of newer technologies in urban centers, and favorable trends in renewable energy technologies and sustainable practices. From May through October, the city of Milan will host the Universal Expo, displaying technologies for developing economies aimed at poverty reduction, food production, water management, and health. Exciting breakthroughs in recycling systems, solar-powered water desalination and other green energy technologies will be a part of the first fully sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste city, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Demonstrated technologies will include upgrades in mass transit and personal rapid transit technologies. Also expected in 2015 is the first large-scale solar updraft towers to become operational in Arizona, combining the technologies for wind turbines and greenhouse chimney effects to drive them, working in any weather condition and at night. Other visionary technologies will contribute to more efficient automation combining micro-electromechanical systems with wireless devices, machine-to-machine communications and advanced sensors, smart homes and advances in medical care. To keep pace, engineers will need more exposure not only to the trends themselves, but also to the bigger (and tougher) questions. In other words, engineers will need to keep an expanded worldview that gives shape and form to integrated systems and broader understanding of risks. ASME conferences, publications, and digital platforms, including ASME.org, are keys to keeping us linked to these evolutionary technologies. For ASME, engineering remains the heart of essential improvements in the human condition. We function best at the crossroads, linking multiple industries in a cross-pollination of ideas and their applications. The focus of our strategic themes in energy, advanced manufacturing, workforce development and the global view helps engineers bring practicality to tomorrow's solutions. What can ASME look forward to through the coming year? We can get a glimpse of the future through events such as ASME's Innovation Design Simulation Challenges, which lets students showcase their simulations at the ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conference / Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE) and the Additive Manufacturing 3D printing (AM3D) Conference in Boston in August. IDETC will also host more Social Meet-ups and Mini-talks, similar to those now online. Just as the ASME Human Powered Vehicle Challenge has continued to grow globally, into Latin America and India, ASME's Innovation Showcase goes global in significant ways this year beyond the United States (in May) and to India and Kenya in June. You can follow its progress on Twitter @asmeishow. The IShow focuses on hardware-led social ventures for individuals and organizations bringing physical products to market. Exploration of the universe will also continue to inspire and awe as probes reach unexplored destinations beyond planet Earth. Part of this universe, the winners of NASA Making Tools, were recently announced, wherein students are creating 3D models designed for use on the International Space Station. The ASME Foundation provides key support for this initiative. Through my travels and correspondences, I am enjoying the work of engineering that shapes the future and the role of engineers as co-creators of how we live, in both urban environments and developing economies. As engineers, I hope you are engaged and helping to shape the larger worldviews that are being envisioned today. J. Robert Sims ASME President