Align consultants and culture for best results

The most successful recruitment companies are those that have a positive culture, alignment with their people, and "good intentions", according to performance expert Sally-Anne Cotton.

Accordingly to Cotton, people perform at their best - in a state of 'flow' - when they can bring "all of themselves" to the job, and when the company's needs - and that of clients - balance with the individual's needs.

Cotton, the managing director of Executive Alchemist, says there is "a growing body of evidence that suggests very strongly that we can balance hardline results and the people elements in organisations".

For example, she says, studies have found that:

• organisations with adaptive cultures (those that are positive, values-driven, respectful and supportive) significantly outperform non-adaptive organisations (those driven by power and competition);
• "good companies become great" when they are characterised by giving guidance and inspiration, and "living their values" (i.e. values drive decision making), performing 15 times better than the general market (in terms of shareholder return); and
• the values and drivers of top-performing companies include client satisfaction, collaboration, integrity and teamwork, while companies are more likely to fail when employees face a culture of blame, short-term focus, internal competition and information hoarding.

When people come to work feeling supported, it has a huge impact on their performance, she says.

But not only does a company need to have a positive culture, it also needs its values to be aligned with the people it employs.

For example, if a company wants its team members to collaborate, it needs to put in place a system to reward collaboration (as opposed to rewarding individual results), she says.

Finally, Cotton says, successful sales-based organisations are those that focus on a "common good" - they want client transactions to be win-win situations, rather than one-sided.

Gone are the days of "getting a sale across the line at all costs", because that behaviour doesn't foster long-term relationships and doesn't benefit the business in the long run.

Not a lot of people find real meaning and purpose in what they do, she says, but that's what organisations need to strive.

Source: www.recruiterdaily.com.au

Just for laughs!

Researchers' tool: eGrabber eMail-ID Extractor

This I thought is a very handy tool for anyone Researching/Resourcing for email ids and then perhaps for mailing campaigns. This extractor is basically a plug-in to capture email ids from web pages and is free of charge.

The Plug-in installs in your browser toolbar. Clicking it extracts email IDs from the page, de-dupes, sorts and displays them for you in an Excel and Outlook friendly format.

Go to this link and down load the plug-in: http://www.egrabber.com/freebies/emailidextractor/

***Happy Hunting folks***

Ever need a phone # quickly? Use Google!

Type in: phonebook: firstname lastname state abbr

Try it out - (if the person's is listed somewhere of course);

Also, while there are many ways & many tools to do this, if you need an email format for a company, type in Google:

"email * * companyname.com"

(Use quotes and replace 'companyname' with the actual co you are trying to find email address formats for. As you scan the results, it will give you email patterns/formats for that company - such as firstname.lastname@company.com or firstinitiallastname@company.com, etc)

- by Gary Cozin

Facebook Statistics!

While browsing through a magazine today I came across some statistics on Facebook and it got me really curious so I started googling on Facebook and came up with some interesting stats.

Some of them are listed below -

• FB is 6 years old (founded in Feb'2004)
• Over 400 million active users (Only China and India have larger population than FB has members)
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on FB.
• 700,000 new users everyday which amounts to 21 million new users every month.
• About 70% of FB users are outside the United States
• As of June 2010 there are 187 countries with registered FB member
• While USA tops the list with 123 016 580 members, at the bottom of the pile is Sierra Leone with 5400 members
• Indonesia has the highest number of users from ASIA with 24 722 360 members and they are just behind the US of A and England.
• As for tiny Singapore with a population of 4 million we are 38th on the list with 2 253 640 members and user growth of 4.52% from last year. Which is relatively high penetration rate(46.57%).
• The country with the highest user growth is Laos with an astonishing figure of 82.01% while the lowest user growth is in Namibia with a drop of minus 286.21%
• The top 3 countries with the highest user growth are Laos, Iraq(38.31%) and South Korea(20.07%)
• Lastly, the top 3 categories on FB that has the highest number of fans are (sex) Playboy on Facebook - 1 4110 189 fans, (news) CNN on Facebook - 840 628 and lastly (information) Google.com on Facebook - 696 883 fans.

It is rather intriguing that Playboy which falls under the category SEX has the highest number of fans considering the fact that women have always made up a larger share of the FB user base than men! Thats something to ponder upon ..... ;-)
/ta

Singapore banks on hiring drive!

What most of us in recruitment industry are in the know for the past few months became a headline news this morning as The Straits Times did a check on banks here in Singapore on their recruitment forecast for 2010.

On top of the pile was British-based Barclays Bank, which is leading the hiring resurgence with plans to add more than 500 staff here this year. Most will be employed in the bank’s technology section, in general operations and in finance.

Besides Barclays Bank, notable mentions are DBS with 500 positions, HSBC with 200 senior positions and ANZ Bank with more than 800 staff that will include the staff they will inherit from RBS' retail and commercial businesses.

From local to foreign, small players to big boys, almost all banks operating here have recruitment high on the agenda.

Morgan Stanley, State Bank of India, Standard Chartered Bank and OCBC Bank are just some of the others adding staff.

The outlook definitely seems very upbeat at least for the first half of the year and as for the rest of the year one has to wait and watch how the global economy sustains its recovery momentum.

For the moment, its happy billing days for the recruitment industry here in Singapore and here's wishing everyone a great 'Year of the Tiger' ahead.

*Happy hunting folks!*