Article contributed for Singapore Business Review. 2 Aug 2011

http://sbr.com.sg/hr-education/commentary/remember-post-you-wrote-about-me-facebook-you%E2%80%99re-fired

A lot of employees today complain about not being in the right place, not being treated or paid properly, and many other issues. Most of these problems stem from the management, since it is their responsibility to maintain a positive atmosphere and motivate their employees to work better. However, blaming the management is nothing short of passing the buck on to someone else. An employee needs to be a source of motivation as well, and you may find unmotivated co-workers to be the main source of a drab and underperforming office.

If that is the case, what can you do to motivate your colleague and get rid of the source of negativity in your office? Let’s look at the answer to this seemingly straightforward question.

1. Motivation is never one sided. You cannot motivate a person by showering him or her with positivity. For a co-worker to be truly motivated, you need to instigate the positivity within the person. To do that, you need to find out why he or she is feeling unmotivated. The best way to do this is to have a heart to heart conversation with the person. Take some time to talk to your colleague privately and ask him or her if there is any problem.

1. Sometimes, people can lose their motivation on the job due to some problems outside the office. Everyone has bad days, and people feel much better by simply talking about them to others. Your colleague might feel a lot better by just talking to you about it, and you may see a huge improvement in performance once you have a good talk with your co-worker.

1. If you are not very close to your co-worker or if you don’t share a good rapport with him or her, it is best to avoid the person as much as possible. Working with an unmotivated co-worker can not only push back your performance significantly, but also make you feel unmotivated.

1. Your colleague may be going through a tough phase or just be having some bad days in the office. In such a scenario, you may give him or her some time to recover and get back into work mode. Your co-worker may bounce back and become motivated once again in a short time, so it would be better not to raise a hue and cry about it immediately.

1. If your colleague has remained unmotivated for a very long period of time, and has been unresponsive in all the above scenarios, it is time that you inform your superior about it. An unmotivated employee can hamper the long term performance of the company, and in that case, your management needs to know the source of negativity. Talking to your superior about the cause of negativity may also instigate the management to set up or revise the system to give more rewards and recognition to the workers and motivate them. This can not only help your co-workers, but you as well.

Motivation is an important part of everyone’s work life. Without motivation, you can never aspire to grow in your workplace or in your career. You cannot put the blame on the management either. Motivation must come from within you, and you must spread it to everyone around you. That is the key to a happy workplace and a successful career.

The internet has allowed people across the world to communicate seamlessly with each other, and this has bridged physical barriers that existed earlier. One of the latest and biggest developments in the online sphere is the concept of social media.

Social media websites have become all the rage, with Facebook being the biggest player of them all. In fact, Facebook is not just limited to social networking today. With each passing day, new companies are entering the popular social networking website and using it to recruit employees.

Here are some facts about this surprising trend:

• Almost 80% of companies today are either using social networking websites such as Facebook for recruiting or are planning to do so.
• Facebook is responsible for almost 60% of recruitments done through social networking websites.

Why has Facebook become a hub for recruitment?

The reasons for Facebook and other social networking websites becoming recruitment hubs are:

• Facebook allows recruiters to catch a glimpse of the real personality of the candidate. A candidate is easily able to mask weaknesses or negative personality traits in a resume. However, social networking websites allow people to display who they really are without any barriers. Thus, Facebook allows companies to truly evaluate an applicant.

• Candidates may lie about their professional experience or educational qualifications in their resumes in a bid to impress the recruiter. However, most of these candidates post their true experience and educational details on Facebook and other social networking websites they are part of. By reviewing a candidate’s Facebook profile, a recruiter can check if the candidate is sincere and if his or her professional profile truly matches the requirements of the company.

What does this mean for a job candidate?

The use of Facebook as a recruitment tool speaks volumes about the (now) thin line between the professional and personal world. Things that you considered to be ‘private’ in your life are now clearly visible to recruiters and can play a huge role in shaping the success of your career.

• A lot of critical and extremely personal information that you would have liked to hide from recruiters are now seen by them. As such, you need to keep your profile private and hide sensitive information from your recruiter that may create a negative impression. The best thing to do is to delete any Facebook posts or information that could have a negative impact on your career.

• Facebook allows seamless and transparent connections between you and your friends. Unfortunately, this boon may turn into a curse with the presence of recruiters on social networking websites. Your friends may have written some inappropriate content about you on their profile. Recruiters can now view this information and mark it against your professional profile. Therefore, you need to be really careful about who is in your friends list and what they write about you.

The entry of recruiters into the previously private and personal world of Facebook may seem very inconvenient to job seekers, but it is a hard truth they need to accept. It is time you exercise caution on such social networking websites so that you can make a good impression on recruiters.

Your resume is a representative for you that gives the HR team of a company a glimpse of who you are and what role you could play in the company. If the company feels that there is nothing you can offer to them after looking at your resume, they will reject you.

On the other hand, if your resume is able to convey the right message to the company, you would be taken into consideration even if you don’t exactly fit the job profile. So, it is clear that the resume is a very important part of your job hunt, but how do you know if your resume is good enough for the job?

The biggest factor that makes a resume attractive to a reviewer is its length. Before understanding what length is right for your resume, let’s look at some of the myths related to the length of a resume:

• The resume should be limited to one page: According to this myth, you should keep your resume within the confines of one page, making your job profile and other details as short as possible. However, you may edit out a lot of critical information about yourself, which could have been a positive for the company while trying to fit everything in one page.

• The resume should be really long and detailed: This myth talks about putting whatever you have to say on your resume so that the company can review everything in it. According to the myth, any resume that is less than 3 pages in length is not considered long enough for bagging the job.

These are very common myths, and they have confused a lot of interviewees into making big mistakes in their resumes that have cost them a great job opportunity. Now, let’s unravel the mysteries of resume length and discover how long your resume must be:

When your resume must be one paged

If you are a fresher or a new entrant into an industry, it is obvious that you would not have enough experience or information to fit into more than one page. Making a long resume may seem a good idea to make yourself look accomplished, but it’s not. You need to keep away from resume stretching ideas, such as additional spacing between lines to fill up the page. In fact, a lot of interviewers and HR personnel believe that if you don’t have a huge amount of experience, it is better to keep your resume as short as possible by focusing on important points or professional achievements.

When your resume must be two paged

If you are applying for a position or in a company where experience is of prime importance, it is better to keep your resume at two pages. An HR executive would not read every line in every resume that is brought forth. The personnel would generally look at the length of the resume, and a one page resume might be considered to be that of an inexperienced candidate. A two paged resume, on the other hand, would be looked at as that of an experienced candidate, and therefore would merit a read-through.

When you are determining the length of your resume, you need to remember that it depends on the job you are applying for. However, irrespective of how long it is, your resume must be important and have specifically targeted information without any decorative words added.

Personality assessment has been the topic of debate for measuring the success of a profile as critically as that of a salesperson. There have been times when these assessments have dominated the process of selecting the sales staff for organizations. At the same time, these assessments have been surrounded by doubts and have been criticized by experts who take a closer look at the success metrics in the sales industry.

As per the majority of reviews, personality assessment should be a part of the selection process, but it should not be the sole driving force. Here are some reasons that support such reviews regarding personality assessments for filling the sales positions:

Broad and General Personality Assessments

One drawback of personality assessments for predicting sales success is the general and broad-fitting nature of these assessments. If the outcome of a personality assessment for a candidate is that he or she is assertive and gets along well with people, it should not form the basis for perfect personality traits required for a sales job. These broad and general personality traits are applicable for different job positions, and not just for those in the sales department.

A better approach is to assess the specific personality traits of the candidates that match the requirements of a particular sales job. For instance, selling a particular product requires a salesperson to have good presentation skills. This particular trait should be evaluated and preferred over the broader physical and mental traits of the candidates appearing for the job interview.

Not Capable of Measuring Sales Requirements

Personality assessments are capable of underlying those aspects of candidates that add to their individual personalities. These assessments are not capable of measuring what a particular organization expects from the candidate. The selections based on these assessments are of those individuals who have a wonderful personality, irrespective of whether they fit in the job frame or not. In other words, assessing personality generally overpowers the actual skills of the candidates desired for the job.

People with Different Personalities Can Be Successful

Those who have the experience of working with a big team of salespersons should agree with this. Those working in sales may have different personalities than one another, but they also have comparable success rates. This is because the concrete job skills matter more than the individual personality traits of different people. Competencies and behaviors of different people opting for sales positions should be excellent, no matter what personality traits they possess.

Personality Assessments with Social Context

The questions asked to candidates during personality assessments follow the social perspective. As a result, these questions are not specially related to the sales based jobs. The questions that must be asked for the evaluation of candidates for sale-specific jobs need to combine personality traits with the actual job-specific skills.

To conclude, the selection of salespersons should be based on the specific job-based behaviors and skills required. The belief that personality assessments are exclusively capable of predicting success at sales positions should be considered a myth and discarded.