Career Tools

All too often, simple acts of human kindness are often overlooked and under utilized by people in leadership roles. Advising mutual respect and recognition of accomplishments, Encouraging the Heart shows us how true leaders encourage and motivate those they work with by helping them find their voice and making them feel like heroes. Recognized experts in the field of leadership, authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner show us that, through love, leaders can encourage, and indeed allow those around them to be their very best. Both practical and inspirational, Encouraging the Heart gives readers a thoughtful approach to motivating individuals within an organizational structure.

Over 2,700 Job Descriptions Make This One of the Most Useful, Comprehensive Career Resources Available. Using these rich information sources together was not practical or convenient- until now. The Enhanced Occupational Outlook Handbook combines descriptions for all jobs from the OOH, 800 descriptions from the O*NET, and another 1,700 from the DOT?plus another 5,700 titles of more specific jobs from the DOT. It's Big, But Very Easy-to-Use Just use the table of contents to identify major jobs that interest you. Then turn to the page where that job is described. Go to Social Worker, for example, and you will find the complete description for that job from the current OOH. This material discusses the nature of the job, working conditions, education and experience required potential earnings, skills required, and employment projections to 2008. This is followed by descriptions of one or more related jobs from the O*NET- and then even more specific descriptions and related titles from the DOT. With almost 2,700 job descriptions, this book is a powerful, thorough, and easy-to-use career reference tool.

More than any other factor--capital, technology, or resources--executive ability is an organization's most precious asset and its most valuable competitive advantage. Written for human resource professionals, executive development specialists, and senior managers, Executive Resource Management introduces a proven executive resource planning process that can help any business create, develop, and sustain a high-performing executive leadership team. Using this new executive resource paradigm, an organization can link its business requirements to the key leadership abilities of its executives. Author Robert Barner outlines how to assess and select top-level personnel and manage relationships with external search firms that will improve the overall success rate of executive hiring ventures. He presents a practical approach for targeting the strengths of individual executives and offers an effective method for cultivating their long-term potential. Addressing the turbulent nature of the business marketplace, the book also shows how to maintain corporate performance objectives while overseeing the disruptive process of executive transition. Executive Resource Management is a must-have resource for anyone charged with ensuring an organization's competitive edge in the new century.

Fast Answers for People Managers features tips and insights that act as handy references and review materials for all managers and supervisors. Seven topics are addressed, with compliance information on one side and management tips on the other. A must for every manager!

This concise, affordable guidebook explains the best management practices in plain English, not legalese, to help your managers be more effective in their critical hiring practices. It?s a quick, engaging read that combines conflict management training with recommended do's and don?ts placed in common scenarios every supervisor encounters. Expertly written and fully attorney-reviewed for legality, it helps both new and experienced managers deal with everyday hiring issues by providing a constant reference guide on hiring employees they can always rely on.

What makes an employee great? According to Harris and Brannick, great employees are those who match the culture of the company they work for and whose personal values align with the organization's core purpose. Finding and Keeping Great Employees identifies four basic organizational purposes-operational excellence, customer service, unleashing technology, and spirit. By focusing on one of these as their core purpose and using it to drive their selection and retention strategies, organizations will gain a long-term competitive advantage and create a workplace full of self-motivated employees who are highly-purpose-driven.

Every manager or business owner knows that the most precious and scarce commodity is talent. And it's a seller's market?with scrappy dot com start-ups vying with traditional corporations for the best and the brightest, while traditional competitors lure them away with flexible benefits packages, stock options, and opportunities for advancement. On the front lines are managers, who are rarely trained in the finer points of hiring, but whose decisions are playing an increasingly crucial role. In the author's trademark no-nonsense, from-the-trenches style, Finding, Recruiting, and Keeping Peak Performers offers valuable ideas for winning the talent war by seeing the hiring process from the candidate's point of view, exploring non-traditional recruiting sources (including the Internet), and motivating people to stay with the company once they've signed on.

This hefty three-ring binder contains forms collected from 55 companies in the US and Canada, and selected to represent good variety, design, and general interest.

This how-to guide, designed for both the general business person and the corporate recruiter, gives readers quick tips that produce a higher-quality applicant pool. With recruitment strategies outlined in an easy-to-reference format, readers will be able to quickly review the sections that explain how to put on an open house, how to attract nontraditional workers, how to put together a direct mail campaign, or any of the more than 150 ways to hire the best.

Internationally known motivational author and speaker Barbara Glanz provides managers and supervisors with innovative techniques for engaging, developing, and motivating employees. Glanz outlines a framework based on the CARE model ??Creative Communication, Atmosphere and Appreciation for all, Respect and Reason for being, Empathy and Enthusiasm?? for understanding what employees really want from managers. The book is based on research with 1,200 employees at dozens of organizations and includes hundreds of practical ways managers can motivate employees to peak performance while creating an organizational culture that is supportive instead of cutthroat, enjoyable instead of intimidating, and profitable on every level.

hese "what if's" are not pipe dreams, but conditions found in high-performing teams. The book has a simple premise and promise. The premise: Organizations based on the traditional "command & control" management model do not optimize the level of creativity, commitment, and performance required for long-term survival in our more competitive world. Coaching is emerging as a significantly more powerful approach to leading people in today's flatter organizations by bringing out the best in teams, leaders, and the results they create together. We must do more with less, and coaching is the requisite skill to gain inspired performance. The promise: To the extent that leaders and teams embrace the mind-set and skill-set of being a coach, they will create the "high-performance, feedback-rich" environment essential for long-term, sustainable, superior results. Organizations with coaching skills and a "feedback-rich" environment will out-perform their competitors, hands down!

Challenging traditional attitudes about retaining workers, author and consultant Gregory P. Smith outlines the new rules for dealing with worker shortages, the high cost of turnover, a diminished work ethic, managing a diverse workforce, and the increased importance of job satisfaction. At a time when the workplace environment is critical to keeping workers, here are proven ideas for having fun, communicating, rewarding employees, and building loyalty.

While the morale of an organization is an intangible element composed of feelings and attitudes of individuals and groups, the effects of morale include tangible and extremely important factors such as profits, efficiency, quality, and productivity. Low morale and it's costliest indicator, high turnover, can be a tremendous drain on a company's finances. Managers often view morale as mysterious and unpredictable, when in fact it is a measurable, controllable expense. The High Cost of Low Morale explores the underlying causes of low morale and offers you field-proven, practical methods for increasing morale and reducing turnover in your organization. This book is packed with simple, effective ways to keep employees satisfied and productive. Dozens of interviews with top business leaders reveal inside tips for keeping good employees motivated to do their best. The book also includes a variety of today's best methods for boosting performance, increasing profits, and beating the negativity that saps employees' energy. And there is time-tested advice for you as a leader - advice to keep you energized and on track as you initiative improvements. Regardless of the type or size of organization you lead, these proven strategies can help you reduce the high cost of low morale.

"Tell me about a time...." The words evoke a child?s fairy-tale innocence. Yet when used by an interviewer, they can help to determine the suitability of a job candidate by eliciting real-world examples of behaviors and experience that can save you and your organization from making a bad hiring decision. High-Impact Interview Questions shows you how to use competency-based behavioral interviewing methods that will uncover truly relevant and useful information. By having applicants describe specific situations from their own experience during previous jobs (rather than asking them hypothetical questions about "what would you do if..."), you?ll be able to identify specific strengths and weaknesses that will tell you if you?ve found the right person for the job. But developing such behavior-based questions can be time-consuming and difficult. High-Impact Interview Questions saves you both time and effort. The book contains 701 questions you?ll be able to use or adapt for your own needs, matched to 62 in-demand skills such as customer focus, motivation, initiative, adaptability, teamwork, and more. It allows you to move immediately to the particular skills you want to measure, and quickly find just the right tough but necessary questions to ask during an interview.

Learn how to hire the best people. Writing job descriptions, designing compensation plans, employment testing, and much more is included in this 50 - minute series book.

Brian Tracy draws on over 20 years of training managers in the art of employee selection to pinpoint the 21 most important, proven principles of employee recruitment and retention. In a single, brief, easy-to-read volume, Tracy summarizes the essential information every manager must know to attract the most capable, committed employees and to make sure they continue to be active contributors to the company for years to come.

This entertaining management training video covers every phase of the hiring process, from recruiting and interviewing to background checking and new-hire training. It is a powerful tool for teaching the basics of a legally compliant hiring process, and is valuable for anyone who hires. New and experienced managers, HR pros, and small business owners will all benefit from this video. Using a compelling and educational storyline ? narrated by an attorney ? HIRE Education clearly illustrates the most common hiring errors by depicting one interviewer?s experiences throughout every phase of the hiring process.

Hire Tough, Manage Easy is for people who hire front-line, hourly employees. The book delves into recruiting, selection, and interviewing, with a toolkit of forms completing the volume. Each chapter is filled with many ideas that can immediately help you hire better employees. The book can be comfortably read and absorbed in a couple of hours, with numerous tips enhanced by illustrative examples. It's recommended as a worthwhile guide for the uninitiated and as a refresher and idea bank for more experienced hiring managers. practical, hands-on guide, this 190-page paperback covers everything you need to know about recruiting, screening, interviewing, and selecting hourly workers. The information is not only real-world practical, it's also fun to read.

Written by veteran headhunter Lou Adler, this resource arms you with the tools necessary to sidestep potentially costly mistakes by judging more accurately who fits the bill - and who doesn't. In this new guide, Adler illustrates how to Hire with Your Head, showing you how to focus more on candidate performance, and less on your own impulses. Covering the fundamentals of sound hiring, including proper interviewing and assessment techniques, he presents his POWER Staffing System method developed to address all of the problems and inconsistencies typically involved in the hiring process. # Based on Adler's extensive experience as both a headhunter and an executive-level manager, this practical and easy-to-follow approach consists of five distinct steps: performance-based job descriptions - defining superior performance # objective evaluations - conduct a complete objective assessment with only four questions # well-developed sourcing plans - you need to see top people to hire top people # emotional control - overcoming emotional reactions and remaining objective # recruiting effectiveness - negotiating and closing an offer on your terms. Hire with Your Head is an indispensable, hands-on guide every manager can use to attain hiring success.

Grappling with how to best attract, interview, and select the right candidates for critical jobs in your organization? Plagued by doubts and anxieties over how to weed out problem employees - without trampling egos or getting slapped by a lawsuit? The Hiring and Firing Question and Answer Book comes through with quick and reliable answers to more than 100 questions that confound and overwhelm managers, human resources professionals, and recruiters.