HR
Employers: Ten Things You Should Never Ask In An Interview
By Amanda at Sage HR Advice
A wide range of interview questions is essential to help find the right employees for your business. However, asking the wrong questions can bring discrimination claims against you, threatening your company’s finances and reputation.
Before you conduct your next interview, stop and check that you’re not planning on asking any of the following danger questions.
1. “Are you planning on starting a family?”
This question may seem fair enough, but it’s loaded with potential discrimination. You could be accused of not employing someone because of the cost and resource issues associated with their maternity or paternity leave.
In fact, avoid any questions about children, childcare or family commitments. If it comes up in conversation that an applicant is expecting a baby, for instance, stress that this will not be taken into account in the selection process.
Posted under: One Interview Question I Always Ask And Why
By David O’Reilly, Head Of Product Marketing at Sage
The interview process for many candidates is a very nervous one. I have conducted 1000’s of interviews over the last 10 years and the key to candidates being relaxed at an interview is being prepared as best they can for the process.
The question I always ask is “what do you know about the company you are applying for?” The basic mistake many candidates fall into is not doing enough research on the company they are applying for. Many candidates I have interviewed over the years have come so unprepared about the company they are interviewing for it’s embarrassing at times!
Some candidates go to the website of the company they are applying to and read up on them. Although this is a good start it’s not enough. Many times candidates have regurgitated line for line the company history from their site to me at an interview. Anybody can achieve this level of knowledge. What separates the good candidates from the great for me is a candidate who not only researches the company website but Googles the company and searches for articles about the company which gives great insight into how the company treats its people and how it does business with its customers. Candidates need to get under the bonnet of organisations as this will give them huge insight as they enter into the interview process.
How To Get Your Hiring Right
As published in the Sunday Business Post on 25th March 2012.
Getting more out of existing staff and hiring the best-possible new recruits becomes even more essential as businesses start to focus on the future.
Ryan Reid, field sales manager, Sage
Sage has built on its strengths within the business community, developing human resources (HR) management and payroll solutions that address the needs of larger companies in the mid-market sector of between 15 and 500 employees. The payroll function is naturally closely related to accounts management, but Sage’s HR software, which it acquired some years ago from a company called Snowdrop, enables tighter and more efficien tmanagement of the most important asset many companies possess – their employees.
‘‘HR and payroll are intrinsically linked,’’ said Sage’s field sales manager Ryan Reid. ‘‘HR software takes somebody from the point of job application through to retirement. Organisations in the mid-market are now looking for one solution to address these functions.’’
Reid said that in today’s challenging business environment, the number of applications for advertised posts is increasing rapidly. Organisations trying to make the best decisions onwho to hire are often swamped in applications which impose burdens of time and management on HR decision makers. ‘‘In these times, organisations can’t afford to make bad hires,’’ he said.
Work Smarter Not Harder
By Tony Leonard, Corporate Field Account Manager at Sage
Work smarter not harder, kill two birds with one stone. It’s all good advice and you hear comments like it all the time when people talk about life and business but how often do people actually do something about it.
I have worked in different sales environments for over 14 years and I’ve been around longer than I will reveal here so I have heard all the excuses.
People have ways of doing things and ‘that’s just how it’s done’ is one of the most common reasons people don’t move forward and embrace change despite all the benefits. They don’t always say it but it’s exactly what they are thinking.
Training and Accreditation
Ultimately, the way a business thrives regardless of the economic environment is by providing quality products, and a quality service, and perhaps more to the point, providing better products and services than their competitors.
With this simple reality in mind, training should be a consideration at the forefront of any business, and yet when there is financial difficulty, it is one of the early items to be cut.
Workplace training is not only beneficial for your business and revenue, it’s better for your employees too, as it helps promote self-actualisation, and can give a new lease on life to an employee who felt stagnant in their position, by enriching them with a new set of skills, and perspectives on the way they do their work.
Getting The Best From Your People
While business is becoming more and more computerised and automated, people will always be an essential part of any organisation. Making sure your employees perform to the best of their ability is more than just a matter of working them hard, or keeping them happy, it’s a matter of making them passionate about the work they’re doing and the company they’re doing it for. This passion can translate to pleasure in work, and higher morale leads to greater motivation. Here are some of our top five tips for making sure you’re looking after, and getting the most out of the most important resource you have; your people.
1. Inspire your workforce: People who are inspired in the work they’re doing and the company they’re doing it for are more productive, and more likely to stay with that business for longer. This means greater performance, and fewer turnovers, which means less money spent on training and recruitment to replace someone who wasn’t right for the job. Having an inspired and positive workforce can also mean greater group cohesion, which can lead to greater productivity through teamwork.
2. Invest in customer service: It used to be that if your customer had a bad experience, the customer would tell their friends, and a few customers might be lost. With the internet, it’s now possible for one bad customer experience to influence millions of people. The bad experience of small time country music singer Dave Carroll ultimately cost United Airlines shares to fall by 10% costing shareholders $180 million after his damning music video “United Breaks Guitars” became a YouTube hit and gained media attention. Regularly listening to customer feedback will help improve your customer service, which is one of the best advantages smaller businesses can have over larger competitors.
Dave Carroll, playing his guitar with a broken fret board after United Airlines broke it.
3. Know your employees rights: Ensuring that employees’ are fully aware of their rights (and of course, making sure that they are receiving everything that they are legally entitled to) is another way of ensuring that employees are happy in their workplace. Being unsure of their rights can sometimes lead employees to question decisions made by their employer, which can create tension in the workplace. An employee who is made fully aware of their rights however can be sure that their employer is treating them appropriately. Additionally, being aware of what they are entitled to can make employees more confident in their job, for example, knowing what will happen in the event that they become parents will help reduce uncertainties in what is a very stressful time for anyone.
Recruiting The Right People
If you have decided to create a business, be it large or small, one of the areas you should never cut corners on is hiring and retaining employees. Rushing the recruitment procedure could mean that you waste several weeks of improvement time once you realise a person does not really understand what it is you are attempting to do or does not fit in with your culture. All of this adjustment time, even if it is effective can wind up costing more than proper recruiting would. Even more so if the improvement time doesn’t work.
The people structure of your business is essential right from the beginning. You have to know just what you want to accomplish and get the best people on board to match that. Spend some time holding out for the correct individual for a position. The inclination is to bring in operations employees or salespeople, for instance, to get things started quickly, rather than investing sufficient time going through the candidate selection process correctly.
Maurice Mortell who is chief executive of Data Electronics explains, “We made that mistake years ago at Data Electronics, after a few months you realise people don’t fit in particular roles. We analysed it afterwards and saw we had been filling gaps, rather than sitting down and really trying to understand what we were trying to achieve by bringing particular people in.”
Data Electronics has now altered its entire hiring process; the vetting process, interview procedure, the kinds of questions asked at job interviews and also exactly what works and doesn’t work culturally.
Mr Mortell added, “It’s very important you get your people right. Apart from the automated part of what we do, the delivery of our service involves a huge interaction with people….”
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