Is a reservation about an employee a deal-breaker? | Mashable.com

May 13, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Hiring isn’t easy. An interviewer must consider a candidate’s potential in light of the future of a department and a company (sometimes with little guidance). In the absence of certainty, it’s not uncommon for a hiring manager to pick the applicant who possesses what Lily Zhang of The Muse describes as “sparkle.” It’s easier to like a top candidate who doesn’t simply excel over the course of the job search process, but who manages to outshine his competition.

But sometimes, when you’re leading a hiring process, you’ll find that an applicant who is strong on paper doesn’t “sparkle.” Instead, something feels a little off. Here’s what you should do when you’re uncertain how to proceed.

1. When it’s something the candidate could overcome

A candidate might not stand out simply because he’s not a strong applicant. Interviewing is a skill, and just like there are poor test-takers, there are people who study hard and then freeze up when the big day comes. In other words, his interview performance — while less than ideal — wouldn’t bear any correlation to his future job performance.

Want Leads? Use YouTube Remarketing | Small Biz Trends

May 12, 2015May 11, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Remarketing on YouTube has become almost as commonplace as remarketing on the Web. YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine with over 1 billion active users each month. Perfecting your marketing strategy for such a large platform can have huge benefits for companies, and what many are realizing is that the remarketing aspect of YouTube has huge potential.

It’s ultimately a great way to get a viewer — whether they clicked on your video, subscribed to your channel, unsubscribed from your channel, viewed your in-stream ads, etc. — coming back to your channel as you upload new videos. In the end, this is a great way to generate more quality leads to help you drive your business growth forward.

Seven Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Small Business | All business

May 12, 2015May 11, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When you’re running a small business, it can be difficult to pull yourself away the day-to-day responsibilities, take a breath, and examine what you can do to drive growth over the long term. As summer approaches, it’s likely you’ll devote some time to clearing out the clutter in your personal life, like cleaning out the messy garage, so why not do the same for your business?

Of course, you won’t be cleaning out your garage (unless that’s where you work), but scheduling some time to examine the progress you’ve made toward meeting your annual goals and identifying the actions you need to take to meet those goals can be beneficial.

Below are seven tips to guide you.

Until We Meet Again Part 4 | Peter Mehit

May 11, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Where does the time go? No seriously, why can’t you store it up? Why can’t you borrow it from the future? Probably because we’d all be dead, having spent our future in replays and do-overs.

But fortunately, you can’t store or borrow time. You can only spend it. Instead of launching into a piece on the nature of man and time, I’ll instead supply you with some ideas on its wise expenditure when it comes to meetings.

You’ve done your agenda and selected the right participants, sending them the agenda early so they can have time to look at it. What’s next? Actually, we’re going to look at your agenda again.

Continue reading “Until We Meet Again Part 4 | Peter Mehit” →

2 Unusual Secrets To Keep Your Customers Happy | Page 19

May 11, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Don’t be afraid to take action if a customer is holding you back. Here’s an argument for why you should cut ties with problem customers, and what you can do to keep the ones who are loyal.

As a business owner, you naturally love your customers – that is, all of them except that one bad apple who seems to be leading a grand mission to take you down. You plan and stress and lose sleep over the bad apple’s demands, and you even consider changing your policies for them. But here’s the truth: you should quit that relationship while you’re ahead.

“The customer is always right!” is a common expression you’ve heard many times over, and most often, it serves as a great mantra for conducting daily business operations. However, as Noah Fleming writes in Evergreen, all customers aren’t always right all the time. At some point, it becomes your responsibility to cut ties with the customer who is bringing you down.

How To Attract Talent To Your Small Business | Getentrepreneurial.com

May 7, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It’s safe to say that to a large extent the success of a business depends on the talents involved in running its operations. In order for your small organization to expand, you’ll need both strong, responsible workers and individual talents that will help you push your business offer into the next level. Here are 5 smart tips on how to attract talented employees to a small business.

Offer a wider responsibility scope

In smaller companies, employees wear many hats and have much more influence over company policies. And that’s something that should serve as your main selling point – talented employees are ambitious and when choosing between two opportunities, they’ll pick the one that offers a wider scope of responsibility.

When talking to prospective employees, make your expectations clear and delineate their daily tasks and long-term goals. If you spot a real talent, try to get to know this person to learn what their background and career goals are – only then you’ll know how to make an offer that is too good to be true.

Should Your Shop Purchase a .Agency Domain? | Adweek

May 7, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This month, hundreds of new domain names went on sale for the first time—and quite a few famous people and businesses are going out of their way to make sure those websites won’t tarnish their brands. For example, when .nyc debuted last year, lawyers for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg bought everything from BloombergBlows.nyc to MikeIsTooShort.nyc.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers “released” these new domains after hundreds of parties argued the online community needed more options and submitted their own requests over a period of several years.

In addition to jokes like .sucks and .ninja and practical entries like .technology, one new domain seems designed for the advertising industry: .agency. But should advertising shops invest in the new domain?

Until We Meet Again – Third in a Series | Peter Mehit

May 4, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I remember one time when I was going to go do ‘stuff’ with my friends. You know what ‘stuff’ is, right? Anyway, as I was going out the door, my mom called out, “Take your brother with you!” The presence of my little brother made sure that we would have to substitute different ‘stuff’ to do, much to the consternation of my buddies.

The fact that I don’t have a little brother shouldn’t take away from the main point of my anecdote; the participants in an activity will determine its outcome. Meetings are no different.

When you’re building your agenda, consider the participants you need to make the meeting work and only invite them. How do you know if they are the right participants? If the agenda topics are related to their ability to perform their job, then they are the right people. If they only have minor involvement, they should not be invited.

Continue reading “Until We Meet Again – Third in a Series | Peter Mehit” →

Don’t Let These Barriers to an End-Client Mentality Ruin Your Consulting Firm | Business Tips

May 4, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In the consulting world, one rule reigns supreme: It’s all about the end client.

If you’re not scrutinizing your client service, satisfaction, and delivery on a daily basis, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to survive and thrive in the business world. Still, catering to your end client can be more difficult than it appears, especially when you’re juggling both buyers and influencers.

As a result, many consulting firms think they’re focusing on client satisfaction when, in reality, they’re just hiding behind rhetoric. It’s amazing to see the huge variations in quality, process, responsiveness, and overall experience among individual consultants.

For example, one consultant I work with excels at collecting feedback and clarifying expectations with all parties involved. He has formal and informal processes in place to gather this information, and he uses it to refine his engagement strategy with a client. On the other hand, I’ve seen consultants make empty promises on savings they can generate and problems they can fix without any input from the vendors involved. Not only does this create friction, but it also shows your client that you don’t value her relationships.

This disconnect between a consultant and a client can take many forms, including:

Need a Better Way to Confront Problem Employees? | Biz Action

April 30, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Understanding how to have a productive confrontation begins with a quick self-assessment. Do you:

Shy away from the problem and hope it will solve itself, or, the other extreme,

Take employees to the proverbial “wood shed” and vent your frustration or anger, without thinking it through carefully in advance?

The former requires living in fantasy land and will get you nowhere. The latter will only make matters worse.

Motivating yourself to become skilled at productive confrontation begins by thinking through the nature and impact of the problem(s) you seek to address. Sometimes they run deeper than you might think.

For example, if an employee fails to give you a report you need in time to prepare you for meeting with a big customer or prospect, what is the impact? If it’s that you hold the meeting without the facts and analysis you need to make a successful presentation, and you lose the customer or prospect, that’s a high price. But it’s not all that’s at stake.