Five Steps to Close More Deals

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BY RITA PATEL JACKSON,

Employees With This 1 Quality Are High Performers. Here’s Why

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By Maria Haggerty, CEO, Dotcom Distribution

When it comes to soft skills, this might be the most valuable employee asset there is.

Employees with This 1 Quality Are High Performers. Here’s Why, Plus How to Identify It

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By Maria Haggerty

When it comes to soft skills, this might be the most valuable employee asset there is.

The purpose of “purpose”

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by Adam Bryant

It’s the buzzword of the year, but discussions about purpose require rigor to make them meaningful.

If 2020 was all about crises—the pandemic and the outrage in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, to name two—and companies’ resilience and ability to navigate disruption, 2021 feels like it has been the year of “purpose.” Companies are issuing purpose statements with great fanfare, and the phrase purpose-driven company is so ubiquitous that it risks joining the ranks of strategic and going forward—words and phrases that are added almost reflexively to every sentence of corporate-speak.

There are plenty of reasons for the big push for purpose. As part of the shift from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism, employees are demanding that their work, and their employers, stand for something. The pandemic made many people reflect more on the “why” of their jobs, and their unsatisfying answers have led in part to the “great resignation.” To win the war for talent, companies are focusing their recruiting pitches on goals and ambitions that are loftier than simply making money for investors Continue reading →

Don’t hire someone because of their résumé. Look for this instead

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BY STEPHANIE VOZZA

Advanced degrees or years of experience aren’t always good predictors of future success.

When you’re hiring someone for a job, it’s natural to make a decision based on applicants’ résumés. But experience isn’t always a good predictor of the future. Instead, it’s important to hire based on behavior, which requires a different hiring process and mindset, says Omar L. Harris, author of Be a J.E.D.I. Leader, Not a Boss: Leadership in the Era of Corporate Social Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

“A lot of times, we ask for advanced degrees or certain years of experience, but none of that is ultimately relevant,” he says. “You can probably find examples in your own company of people who had far less experience than you’re requesting in a job description, but they learned the job and did very well. You can take people from all walks of life and help them thrive.”

BEHAVIORS OVER EXPERIENCE

Arbitrary skillsets and a certain amount of experience aren’t objective measures of how someone will perform on the job. Instead, Harris says managers should rethink the hiring process, going back to the basics and reexamining job descriptions.

Continue reading →