Jan 20, 2011

In all honesty, I’m not quite sure how many seconds it takes for someone to form an often lasting first impression of you. All I know is the answer is not very many. These days, the first thing most people will do when given an introduction or recommendation to work with your firm is check you out online. When I talk about people I’m meaning, new and...

Nov 4, 2010

In the last three posts we explored the problems uncovered from an initial conversation about how to manage a technically brilliant manager but poor people manager. In this post, we are going to look at what a professional practice can do, to make sure that this problem doesn’t happen in the first place. 1. Know what you need from each role within your...

Sep 27, 2010

In another guest blog, Catrin Mills of Longmores looks at what new employers need to think about when taking on their first employees: Taking on your first member of staff can be a little daunting.  Becoming an employer brings with it responsibility (as well as potential liability) and as you grow your workforce your obligations become more onerous.  But,...

This was a question which has recently been posed in the The Executive Village, and I thought I would share my answer to the question here: Firstly, be clear about the staff that you want – and have a full job description for each vacancy. Secondly, have a rigorous hire process, so you can weed out unsuitable people. For example, use an application form...

I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that the UK economy is coming out of recession. The bad news is that as a result the jobs market will start to hot up again. The people that you are most at risk of losing are not the people you are happy to lose, (because you trimmed your deadwood when you restructured or down-sized your...

I was reading an excellent article in the People Management magazine on ‘how to filter job applications’. Whilst the article made great points, it was primarily aimed at larger companies who had specialist in-house recruiters & HR managers. It got me thinking how small business owners can efficiently recruit in staff. I even heard of one recruitment...