Interviews can be a make or break scenario for people trying to get promotions. The most skilled computer analyst may miss out on promotions because he’s too nervous and therefore he doesn’t interview well. This means he’ll get overlooked in favor of someone else who has the gift of the gab and shines in interview situations.

There are many aspects to proper interview preparation. Regardless of the role, you need the same basic skillset if you’re going to succeed. This course covers everything you’llneed to handle any job interview. Preparation is critical. Know as much about the roleand the company as possible.

Know your resume inside out. This may sound simple but it’s easy to forget items on your resume if you haven’t had an interview for a while. Never lie because you never knowwhat may trip you up.

You need to dress appropriately for the interview. While this is another basic point, too often people have thought they either know the interviewer or the role isn’t one thatrequires a suit and so they “dress down.” It’s better to be overdressed than underdressed.

You need to behave appropriately during an interview. Arrive early which shows courtesy and respect for their time. Answer all questions honestly and listen to questions being asked properly. Have questions of your own ready as this shows you have thought about the role.

Another course that offers well-rounded skills to help you in any role is the course on Effective Relationships With Customers. Every role deals with customers at some level. How well you deal with customers shows how well you’ll deal with work colleagues, superiors and subordinates.

Developing long-term relationships with customers is a necessary part of any business.As you move up within an organization, if you understand how customers are treated, itwill be easier for you to make major decisions that affect the way your company handles customers in the future.

If you move up within a company, you’ll already know the company’s main policies. Ifyou move into a senior role within a different company without having come up throughthe ranks, this same skillset will enable you to hit the ground running and help you withyour steady climb up that corporate ladder.

The better you do any job you’re given, the more likely it is that you’ll be offered opportunities for promotion. Promotions are given to people who stand out, regardless ofthe job they’re given.

The combination of a strong work ethic, hard work and training courses can help youclimb up the corporate ladder faster than being lazy and only doing the bare minimum.

There are lots of areas they would have to look at. Did you offer them the support theyneeded to do their job properly? This can include written training material, group andindividual training, depending on the specific situation.

Did you live up to your employees’ expectations in terms of guidance when jobrequirements changed and new products were introduced? Were they sufficiently trainedto tackle objections when selling the new products? Is there anything you could havedone to teach them how to sell these new products you introduce?

If you know your staff are going to bring you in for an evaluation, what do you think theywill think of your overall performance throughout the year? Have you treated everyonefairly and equally? Are you guilty of playing favorites with certain staff members?

Has your attendance been satisfactory? This doesn’t mean just at work itself but withintheir specific work area so they could count on you if they needed to ask questions orwere you always “busy doing other things?”

Did you treat your staff with the same respect that you demand they give you? OR do youoperate in a “do as I say, not do as I do” world? Did you provide your team with enoughtraining so they could carry out a fair evaluation of you? Do they know their rights andresponsibilities that are part of this process?

Did you provide your team with access to exit interviews conducted with former staffmembers that are designed to help you become a better manager? Do your employeesknow this should be a fair and honest evaluation and not just a chance to complain aboutthings they may not be happy about without good reason? Do they know the results ofthis evaluation will be taken seriously?

The questions can go on and on. The whole idea of a reverse evaluation is to ensure thatmanagers are held accountable for their work, decisions and actions. If employees aregiven the opportunity to get involved in this process, it shows them that the companyrespects and trusts them enough to know they will do a good job.

This is a good opportunity for your team to give you honest feedback about yourperformance and where they think you can do better. Any decent manager wouldwelcome this process because nobody is perfect. If people can learn how to improve, then it’s definitely worth the time and effort it takes to carry out.

Are you curious about how you would rate if your team evaluated your performance overthe last 12 months?

The first one is Pinterest. This is basically a virtual pinboard. It’s enables you to share whatever you want with other people online. For example, you may want to share special photos of a special occasion such as a wedding, an anniversary, birthday or anything else.

Photos are everlasting and so this concept allows you to further enhance your enjoyment of such things. Of course photos aren’t the only you can use it for. You can organize recipes, plan the interior design of your home and loads of other activities as well.

The target demographic is women in the US that are 18-34 years old. Overall 54% of females use it and 46% of males. You can browse pinboards that other people have created. This is especially great if they’re far away from you. Pinterest focuses on design, fashion and décor bookmarking in a unique way.

Mobile marketing has boomed in the last few months to the point that people are often using it as their main area of marketing. You can do location marketing which greatly benefits offline businesses in a way that no other marketing opportunity has ever been able to do before.

As more people buy smartphones and other gadgets, the capacity for this type of marketing will only increase and be able to reach more people right around the world or in your local neighborhood. In the US, 46% of people own a smartphone. In the UK, the number is 59% and these figures will only continue to grow.

One third of all smartphone users have made at least one online purchase. Some do it regularly as the convenience of doing it increases. People are growing accustomed to browsing online and then making their purchases. Others browse online in their local area while out and then go to the store they found and make the purchase, especially if it’s clothing or other items that need to be seen before buying.

Content marketing, while not new in itself, is more important than ever before because of all the changes Google have made, including its famous Panda updates. There’s much more emphasis on the quality of website content than ever before.

People don’t want to keep reading the same old information that has been badly written or plagiarized from other online work. People demand to see accurate material on all websites they visit so they can make important decisions, whether it is buying ones or social ones.

Marketing will always change to reflect the times and business owners must move with the trends or be left behind in the dust of their competitors who are keeping track of what’s current in 2012 and beyond.

Proven Strategies for Addressing Unconscious Bias in the Workplace (CDO Insights)

Some powerful questions asked of us here:  “What if, more times than not, people make choices that discriminate against one group and in favor of another, without even realizing that they are doing it, and, perhaps even more strikingly, against their own conscious belief that they are being unbiased in their decision-making? What if we can make these kinds of unconscious decisions even about people like ourselves?” Great food for thought.

A Simple Formula for Business Success (John Spence)

As only he can do, John cooks up a recipe for business success based on his years of experience and research. John offers his view for combining talent, culture, and customer focus with disciplined execution to create business excellence.

Great Man Theory: A personal account of attraction (Helen L. Eckmann)

We discovered this captivating personal account of first discovering the possibility of leadership, “Even if I was not bred to be a leader I could still exercise leadership. Heifetz argued that ‘Leader’ may be a person, but ‘Leadership’ is an activity, and anyone, from a four year-old girl to a middle-aged white woman, can exercise leadership;” and then falling victim to the dark side of the great man theory.

7 Ways Leaders Inadvertently Say, “I don’t trust you” (David Peck, The Recovering Leader)

Trust and credibility are foundational for effective leadership. David serves up seven ways that leaders may be “telegraphing mistrust or doubt” to those around them.

The DNA of Dialogue (Lolly Daskal, Lead from Within)

If you think you’re communicating well yet not reaping the results you seek, perhaps the insights Lolly offers will help make your conversations meaningful two-way dialogues rather than one-way monologues.

Something to ponder. “Comparison, a great teacher told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game we can’t win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others we lose the freedom to shape our own lives.”  ~Jim Collins

Leaders inspire people to achieve greatness. They think outside the box and try to involve the team they work with to do the same. Great leaders assess every employee’s talents and skills to find out what makes them unique and how best to utilize their skills to benefit the team as a whole while bringing out the best in them.

Ongoing training can help employees hone their skills even further. Leaders command respect whereas managers demand respect. Managers do everything with this in mind. Leaders do nothing with this in mind.

The best leaders make their staff feel like they’re important, regardless of the role they fulfill. They know this makes people work even harder to live up to that trust their leader has in them. Everyone makes a difference to the company.

The best leaders ask for team input at every opportunity. Collaboration also makes people feel they’re part of the company, regardless of whether their ideas are implemented. The key is that they were asked!

Great leaders empower people to take on responsibility whenever possible. This is a mixture of delegation and demonstrating you trust your people to do their best work. It also means that you get to know your people so you can treat them as people and not as a collection of mindless slaves.
An excellent leader can laugh at himself and laugh with others without fear of weakness. They have a capacity for sensitivity, compassion and an inspiring humbleness because they don’t act as though they know everything.

Leaders know how to inspire others and to lead by example. No decent leader would ask something of an employee that they wouldn’t do themselves if necessary. In fact, many leaders have risen through the company’s ranks and so they have an innate understanding of the jobs being performed by their team.

Leaders are honest and have a great sense of integrity. They know the buck stops with them and won’t blame others for things they may have done wrong. That also sets a fine example for staff to follow. Nobody likes a boss who passes the blame onto others.

Leaders like to challenge their team to do better. If the work is boring, they’ll quickly lose interest so the leader finds ways to make the work challenging in as many ways as possible. This is also a key to keeping good staff because bored people tend to look elsewhere for more stimulating jobs.

There are many different ingredients that make an exceptional leader. People work harder for such people and it’s usually obvious if you’re exceptional or if you’re working with other people who are exceptional leaders. They can make or break a company.

The course teaches you how to market whatever products or services you wish to sell and the best ways to do it. It covers older style marketing rules and newer ones so you can make your own choice regarding the way you want to run your business.

It also gives you some powerful tools to help you create a website that stands out from the crowd by letting you carve your own specialized niche. You’ll learn the benefits of good public relations and Internet marketing and the rules that apply.

The course uses real life examples to illustrate some of the points raised so you can gain a better understanding of what you should be doing because it’s a very difficult area to get into, especially when you’re a beginner.

You’ll be taught how to devise a marketing plan. This is essential because you won’t achieve anything without a master plan to guide you. It’s like planning a road trip from one state to another. You’ll need a road map so you can avoid many of the problems you may encounter.

While this plan won’t eliminate every possible problem, it will help to make your journey somewhat easier to handle. You’ll also be taught how to write your marketing material so it relates directly to your target audience.

This course will teach you how to create a good quality, content-rich website. It’s essential to have your own site because that’s your “home base” as far as your business is concerned. It’s where your customers will go to check you out and is where you can link your squeeze and sales pages to as you create them as well as listing your products and having your shopping cart.

Good content is necessary because it helps to raise your site’s profile in the eyes of the readers and to increase its ranking in the search engines. Regardless of how much work you do on a website, if nobody can find it, then it’s pointless.

You’ll learn how to use blogs, social networking sites and relevant forums to make contact with potential customers and colleagues you can learn from. You’re never on your own because there are so many others out there also involved in the Internet marketing business. You can learn from their mistakes and help them learn from yours.

First you need to do proper keyword research. There’s no point targeting keywords that have too much competition because you’ll never succeed in getting your site to the first page of Google. Instead, look for similar words that have less competition.

You can use the Google keyword tool, or any others you may prefer, to give you the statistics for the words you plan to use. Then you’ll find the ideal ones for your campaign. It’s also essential you know your target audience. Never try to target everybody because people have different tastes.

When you’re using your keywords in your website or advertising campaigns, it’s critical you don’t use them too many times. This is called “keyword stuffing” and Google frowns upon it.

When your site is live, you need to register it with as many search engines and website directories as possible so the ‘spiders’ will start to crawl your pages and index them properly. It’s no good having great content and an optimized site if nobody knows you exist.

It’s also common sense. You don’t write a 500 article that has your keyword in it 10 times because that’s overkill. You should average a keyword density of 3-5% maximum. However, it doesn’t stop you from using related words to help boost your effectiveness. It’s important your website’s page titles, meta tags and all text headings also reflect your chosen keywords.

Link building is another aspect of SEO. You want as many good quality, relevant links as possible. Two-way links are ideal but one way incoming links are fine as well. This helps to boost your sites rankings, especially if you can get .edu or .gov sites or ones with a high PR ranking.

You can join relevant forums and include a site link in your signature file. You can post articles in sites such as EzineArticles.com and have a link back as well. The more different methods you use for links, the better it is for your site. You don’t want a lot of links coming from worthless spamming sites because that destroys your credibility.

When you write content for your site, it’s imperative that it’s unique. Never plagiarize material. You can check if something has been plagiarized by using copyscape.com or plagium.com. If you’re not capable of writing good quality content yourself, it’s one job that can easily be outsourced so you can focus on other areas of your business.

These are just some of the characteristics of an effective SEO campaign. Start the way you mean to continue and you’ll surely find some measure of success with a lot of patience and persistence.

The Act states that most employees can access a maximum of 12 working weeks of unpaid leave within any 12 month period for any of these reasons:
ï The birth of any baby and the care of this baby.

ï An employee’s involvement in the housing and foster care or adoption of a child.

ï Caring for a child, spouse or parent of any employee who has a severe medical problem.

ï If an employee has a serious medical problem that renders them unable to carry out the duties relating to their role at work.

There may be circumstances where leave may be needed intermittently for one or more of these reasons. This may enable employees to work on a schedule that’s less than their normal full-time hours.

An employee can choose to use paid annual leave or sick leave as an alternative if they have time owing to them but such time may be limited depending on the actual reason for the leave.

The FMLA defines the list of serious medical conditions as including: strokes, cancer, heart attacks, pregnancy, childbirth, Alzheimerís and severe injuries. It dons NOT cover short-term ailments such as: headaches, the flu, colds, earaches, an upset stomach, dental problems and other issues that generally only last a short time.

Sometimes a migraine may be considered a serious medical condition, depending on its severity. Other conditions may also be considered serious if a doctor declares them to be so because itís impossible to legislate against a complete list of medical ailments.

The military also have access to the FMLA. Coverage is available to employees who have children, parents or spouses who currently serve who have served in the military and have suffered from a serious injury as a result of this service.

An employee must give at least 30 days notice if possible or, if itís an emergency, as much warning as they can when taking leave. Medical certificates may be requested at any time to verify the seriousness of the problem.

The FMLA covers employers who have more than 50 staff who work within 75 miles from the office. Employees must have worked a minimum of 1,250 hours within the preceding 12 months to be eligible for this leave.

Employees are entitled to resume their current position when they return to work after leave and it canít be held against them in any way. If they canít give you the same job back, you must be given a similar job with similar or better pay.

As an employee, be sure you know your rights under the FMLA of 1993 so you donít miss out on leave entitlements you may need.

The BIG team recently participated in a rich discussion about leadership being an activity. This thoughtful post provides 20 leadership activities that burst with heart, soul and getting the job done. 7, 10 and 17 really resonate with us.

Seven Reasons Why Email Sucks (Samir Ghosh, WorkasOne.com)

Email…what a necessary evil. It’s been both a great boon to communication and a great drag, too. Samir serves up some good reasons for rethinking and reframing how we approach and use email.

Foolish Leadership (Bret Simmons, Positive Organizational Behavior)

As Bret so sagely writes, “Many leaders deceive themselves into thinking they are wise because they seek the trusted advice of carefully vetted advisers. Unfortunately, advisers that formulate and confirm their advice only with each other can never offer wise counsel.”

Is Your Target Success or Significance? (S. Chris Edmonds, Cool Culture)

Whether one defines and measures success by or with things or outcomes or via values, contributions and feelings, the choice is ours alone. Chris suggests considering your legacy – will it be one of metrics or significance?

Tell Your Critics to Take a Hike (Dan Rockwell, Leadership Freak)

Dan presents five simple truths for discerning the difference between criticizing-enemies and correcting-friends. Beware as sometimes one is camouflaged as the other.

Coffee and moment-of-reflection corner. “We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up in teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by re-organizing. And a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.” ~The Ancient Roman, Petronus Arbitor, Governor of Bithynia

Here’s to using your head to manage and your heart to lead!

Blog by Jane Perdue

Follow @thehrgoddess

Sexual harassment is one of the most common forms of harassment. The course is designed to educate managers and leaders about recognizing such problems, their responsibility and how to investigate such problems if and when they arise in an unbiased manner.

It also covers the material you need to teach your employees. They should understand what sexual harassment is and the procedures for filing complaints if it happens to them. It also covers reasons why many victims don’t lodge formal complaints and how you can make it easier for them to do so.

Sexual harassment is everyone’s responsibility. If you become aware that someone is being harassed and you do nothing to stop it, you’re partly at fault. It’s the employer’s responsibility to ensure the workplace is a safe environment for everyone to work in.

The employer should have a written sexual harassment policy and ensure all employees have a copy. However, it’s not enough to simply hand out information. You also need to have a training session so everyone can ask questions and fully understand exactly how harassment is defined because it’s not always blatant behavior.

Subtle actions can also be construed as sexual harassment. It’s important you make it clear to all staff that this behavior won’t be tolerated under any circumstances. Anybody who feels the need to discuss it can come to you or other managers at any time.

Sexual harassment isn’t the only form that can take place. Workplace bullying is also considered harassment and should be treated just as seriously. Whether it’s physical violence and intimidation, cyber bullying or discrimination of any type, you must make it very clear to all staff that this is also unacceptable behavior.

As a manager, you’ll naturally receive training on all types of harassment. But your employees don’t get the same level of training and so it’s your responsibility to make sure they understand all the definitions of harassment because they’re not always obvious.

Telling racial or sexual jokes can be considered harassment if even one person takes offence. Commenting on someone’s disability in a taunting manner is another example. Sending emails or showing other people pictures containing sexual or racial innuendos or insults is yet another example.
Give your employees a copy of this information and openly discuss it so everyone gets the same strong, clear message; harassment of any sort won’t be tolerated in your workplace.

It’s everyone’s responsibility to speak out against workplace harassment of any kind. Empower your staff because you can’t be everywhere. If you have a zero tolerance policy, your company will be a better place in which to work.