Today's post is part 2 of a 3 part series on the career myths that can hold you back professionally. Part 2 focuses on managing yourself at work.

Myths About Managing Yourself at Work

You need to be outgoing and liked by everyone to succeed.

You need a mentor to be successful. 

Networking is most useful when you're looking for a job.

  1. Familiarize yourself with professional associations - national and local  - where people in your field get together.
  2. Talk to your manager about paying for your attendance at these professional conferences as part of your development plan.  If you can't attend in person, you may still be able to access conference presentations in online forums connected to the event.
  3. Make sure you're a member of online communities that are active in your profession.  This can be a great way to “meet” people.  I've made some great connections by complimenting people on their content in forums then connecting with them by phone or in person later.
  4. SOCIAL MEDIA! You have LinkedIn - you can find your way to just about anybody you'd like to meet.  Twitter is another way to connect with people.  Share interesting information on your feed.  Compliment others on theirs.
  5. Actively look for ways to contribute back to your network - send people information you think will be useful to them, make introductions for them.

You need to focus on becoming the best functional expert possible.  Success means knowing all the answers.

Taking risks can be bad for your career.

Today I've had the opportunity to participate in the Emerging Leaders Event of the Association of YMCA Professionals (AYP). This event is a gathering of young Y professionals who've been identified by their leadership as rising stars, and this event is an investment in their development. You can see a few of the participants enjoying themselves below.

I was invited to speak at this event, and asked to focus on career management strategies. I put together a talk titled The Top Ten Career Myths and How They Hold You Back. Today's post is part 1 of that talk, myths about getting started in your career. I'll post parts 2 & 3 over the next couple of days.

Getting Started in Your Career

Your twenties “don't count”.  You can get the job you really want later, just take what's available now.  You just need to try a lot of different options to figure out what you want to do when you grow up anyway.

The best way to find a job is to search online job postings. 

It is impossible to advance in a large organization.

 

 

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successToday's guest post is courtesy of repeat guest blogger Nicole Neves, a former Kronos intern who has joined our HR department as an employee. Nicole will be guest blogging here on issues that are relevant to Millennials in the workplace.

When entering the workforce, Millennials often have this idealistic vision that we can find the perfect job and organization that will cultivate and mold our professional development.  Our drive and ambition is a double edged sword, we will do whatever it takes to be successful but appear high maintenance and disloyal. The stereotype is beginning to break as we prove ourselves in the workforce but there will always be a stubborn bunch that doubts us. Still, we need to demonstrate dedication to an organization and an undeniable commitment to our work to assure employers we are in it for the long haul. If you are genuinely interested in winning a position with an employer,  you need to plan and prepare in order to set yourself apart.

Here are a few tips:

  1. Define your value. In order to choose an employer you must understand your own underlying values. When an employer asks the infamous question: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years” don't just give a generic answer. Consider what you are passionate about and express it in your answer. There is no wrong way to answer this question but an answer reflecting your values will be a lot more telling than an entire outline of how you are going to climb to the top in that short period of time. Especially if it took that hiring manager 20 years to get to where you expect to be in just 5.
  2. Do your research. Check into your network to see if you know anyone that is working or has worked at an employer you are interested in. References are great but do not rely on them. The internet is also full of information, try GlassDoor for candid employee reviews of their employer.
  3. Get an internship prior to senior year and even consider an internship after graduating. There is no shame in wanting more experience before searching for an entry level position. It is better to spend post grad interning than sitting idle at home waiting for the opportunity. relevant internships are vital to demonstrating to a prospective employer that you are a serious candidate.
  4. Read a book and improve your communication skills. No matter what field you are in you will need to write some sort of report and constantly communicate with those around you. It is easy to improve writing skills by reading and you can even kill two birds with one stone by reading a book that will also improve your communication skills such as Emotional Intelligence 2.0.
  5. Detail, detail, detail. When you are asked a technical question in an interview give as much detail as possible. If you are too broad they might think you don't know what you're talking about no matter how knowledgeable you are on the subject. Whether it is a question about a project you worked on or how to use a software, don't skimp on details.
  6. Push for what you want. You will not be handed the career of your dreams. If you hear the employer you are interested in will be on campus, go speak to them. If you hear the employer you are interested in will be at an event such as TechJam, go speak to them. Persistence is key. Even if you are initially denied a position, take the news gracefully and keep in touch. Ask if there is anything you can improve next time around then take that advice to better yourself. Another position will likely open up in upcoming months and if they notice a drastic improvement they will respect the effort you put in.
  7. Once you get the job, stay loyal. An employer hiring a new grad is taking a risk. If you did your research and are genuinely happy at the organization, show them your loyalty. Entering the workforce full time is an overwhelming milestone that sometimes results in rash decisions. If you chose the company you were hired at for all the right reasons do not leave simply because you were offered higher compensation at another organization. It will surely come back to haunt you in the future if you are unhappy at your new job. Money doesn't buy happiness. Always consider work/life balance, culture and the responsibilities you are given before making the decision.

Kronos is hiring. Check out our career site to see if you're a fit for one of our positions.  Kronos is a great place to work!

 

October 5-11 is Emergency Nurses Week here in the US.   At Kronos, our single largest customer population is in healthcare.  From standalone long term care facilities to the biggest healthcare networks in the world, we are helping healthcare providers help their patients.

In the latest installment in our 1 in One Hundred Million video series celebrating workers, we talk to Vanessa, an ER nurse in Massachusetts.  Like most nurses you meet, her overwhelming focus is on providing care.  Watch, enjoy, and share with a nurse who's made a difference in your life.

You can watch Vanessa's story here:[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRGQ32hbKyI&w=560&h=315]

Prior Posts About Why We Value Nurses:

Kronos Video Tributes to Nurses

Thank You Post to Dad's Nurse, Katy

zeynep tonRecently I had the pleasure of talking to Zeynep Ton, adjunct associate professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, about her book "The Good Jobs Strategy".  I've written about this excellent book here before.  Zeynep's core message is that excellent financial returns don't have to come at the expense of employees.  In fact, her research indicates that investing in  employees as a driver of strategic advantage vs. treating labor as a cost to be minimized will ultimately drive higher returns for all stakeholders.   You can listen to a podcast of our discussion about the lessons from her book  below:

 

Zeynep was kind enough to invite me to MIT Sloan School last night for a symposium on the recent Market Basket story - wherein loyal employees and customers successfully organized and disrupted store operations in response to the ouster of  their trusted CEO.  Market Basket is widely known for applying many of the principles Zeynep reviews in her book.  In fact, Zeynep and some of her colleagues will be writing a case study on Market Basket for aspiring business leaders to study.  Several hundred students, faculty (and members of the public like yours truly) packed a sold out auditorium to hear management and labor experts talking about the lessons to be learned from Market Basket.

One of the more interesting observations last night came from MIT finance professor Andrew Lo, who said the Market Basket approach proves "Finance doesn't need to be zero sum game."  His point, and that made by others on the panels, was that Market Basket employees act like owners.  They care about their bonuses and profit sharing - and they understand that maximizing their personal returns is dependent on doing right by their customers. They've been empowered to do what it takes to keep those loyal customers coming back, a "distributed leadership model" as one professor noted. In the end, those ties that bound the Market Basket employees to their embattled CEO and each other during the standoff were also connected to their customers.  And ultimately it was the customers' willingness to boycott the stores in order to preserve the brand they loved that turned the tide.

Relevant Links:

News coverage of the symposium on Boston.com

Seismic Shift - Waking Up to the Strategic Value of Workforce Management

New York Times article “Thinking Outside the (Big) Box”

Good Jobs Strategy = Happier Employees = Better Customer Service

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

experience you expectIn addition to my Workforce Institute responsibilities, I also manage the voice of the customer program at Kronos.  The image to the right expresses our core service message.   We do a great job with customer service at Kronos, and have the awards to prove it.  We keep it that way by by actively and constantly soliciting feedback through multiple channels.  We receive over 20,000 customer surveys a year - and we review all of them.  Of course we hear about problems through those surveys, but we hear a lot more feedback like this:

"Your representative was very easy-going & informative - made having to call in about the ticket a pleasant experience. Has very good customer service skills!"

We use this feedback to identify and prioritize improvements needed in our products, services and processes.  We help different parts of our business do ad hoc analyses to dive more deeply into specific areas.  Today, I got a question about what constitutes the ideal cloud customer experience.  Here's my response - the top ten expectations I believe that cloud customers have of their vendors.

From what I've seen from Kronos customer feedback, my own experience as a VP of products and services for a SaaS company before I came to Kronos, and my experience as the manager of two SaaS vendor solutions for Kronos, the following are key expectations of SaaS customers:

  1. If there's a problem with my environment, tell me.  Don't make me stumble across it.
  2. When there is a problem, tell me when and how you're going to fix it.
  3. Your privacy and security measures meet objective standards and protect me and my organization from any compliance issues.
  4. Upgrades are friction-less events; i.e. no disruption in my environment.  Adding new features that become available in a release should be up to me  and easy to configure.
  5. The more I can control my environment through self service measures, the better.
  6. It should be easy to get my data out of your solution - for reporting, integration, or other use cases I need to support within my environment.
  7. I am likely to be a non-technical user.  Speak to me in my language.  I probably don't care how you make the sausage, I just want it to work - all the time.
  8. Provide me with a test environment so I can vet new features, and so I can update training and documentation materials that support user adoption of your solution.
  9. You know how I'm using your system, you have my data.  Can you provide real time analytics to help me use your solution more effectively?
  10. You have lots of people's data. Can that be used to help me benchmark my organization against others like mine?

Do you use cloud solutions?  What criteria for a great experience would you add to this list?

1inonehundredmillionToday's guest post is courtesy of Nicole Neves, a former Kronos intern who has joined our HR department as an employee.  In her post below, Nicole reflects on the impact her internship had on her decision to join Kronos and how her new position will allow her to make an impact on the workforce of the future - who, according to this article from the New York Times, need all the help they can get.

Will Smith said in an interview several years ago, "If you're not making someone else's life better, then you are wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other people's lives better."  That quote instantly came to my mind after viewing the “1 in One Hundred Million” video. In the workforce there are millions of people contributing to making someone else's life better. Whether you are a developer, a salesman, a firefighter, a chef, an engineer or a recruiter, you are giving back to the organization you work for making their lives and their customers lives better.

This quote made me appreciate my job and the technology Kronos has to offer. We cater to the needs of nearly any industry to make managing their employees easier. At Kronos I was recently hired in the College Relations department. During the interview I was asked what interested me in the job. I told the interviewer that I wanted to help mold the lives and careers of students entering the workforce by giving them an unbelievable experience in the Kronos Internship Program. At that moment it dawned on me that the program can truly impact the future workforce and that's a remarkable feeling. Take a second to reflect on the organization you work for and how you contribute, you'd be amazed how much more rewarding your projects and everyday tasks at work will become. And don't forget to appreciate the work done by others because together we are all making a difference.

 

 

Today we are launching the Kronos “1 in One Hundred Million” video series to celebrate US workers. Our technology touches over 35 million people around the world every day - and every one of their stories is different. This video series will focus on how each of the individuals featured feels about his or her job - and the ways in which those jobs shape them as individuals.

Our first story features Chris Merrick, a 34-year veteran firefighter from Brookline, Massachusetts. You can hear about Chris and his love for his job and his firefighting brothers below. I dare you to get through this story without getting a little teary.

The series features interviews by Lea Thau, a Peabody Award-winning producer and director, who created The Moth Radio Hour and produces and hosts the podcast “Strangers”. The series is directed by five-time Emmy® award-winning director and producer Alan Chebot, founder of Parallax Productions and best known for the nationally syndicated TV series “The Wild Wild Web” and acclaimed documentary “Song for New Orleans”.

You can view a trailer for the series at 1in100Million.com and get a preview of the first three episodes that will be released. Tell us what you think about these stories. And is there somebody whose story you'd like to see us include in this series?

As the week winds down, you may enjoy checking out this video of our fun and fond farewell to our 2014 summer interns.  I know they learned a lot while they were here, but we also learned a lot from them.  The Kronolympics is a series of silly contests that they complete as teams, with time and quality being important.  Kind of like the world of work, hunh?  We refer to our culture as Work Inspired.  I hope we inspired these terrific people as much as they inspired us.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNCicKMFpe0&w=560&h=315]
What We're Reading This Week:

No one said it was going to be easy -- 5 job-hunting survival tips for recent grads http://ow.ly/AbUUT via @FastCompany

Tech Insights: How New Systems Help Managers Manage in the Moment http://ow.ly/AbPtx via @TLNT_com @dcreelman

Why Asking for Help Makes You a Stronger Leader http://ow.ly/AeBNO

5 Tips Robin Williams Taught Us About Career Transitioning http://ow.ly/AeESc

You have to get lighter as you get older http://ow.ly/AhsWC via @SteveBoese

Training Millennials: 4 Keys to Look For (But First, Let Me Take a Selfie) http://ow.ly/Ahthr via @TLNT_com

The best 'Out of the Office' message might be this one from Germany http://ow.ly/Ak7rt via @SteveBoese

Kronites are Writing About:

New Time Well Spent #Cartoon: http://ow.ly/AbOiU #scheduling #overstaffed

#MarketBasket According to @hrbartender: What Does Employee Engagement Look Like? This. http://ow.ly/AbWR5 via @WF_Institute

RT @SmarterCafe: Latest post: Zen and the Art of Customer Experience http://ow.ly/AkRU0 #cx @KronosInc

Tech as Art - Simplified http://ow.ly/AhtFl via @SmarterCafe

Sometimes getting ready for vacation season can be stressful http://ow.ly/AjSoc via @SmarterCafe

Learning from your neighbors: http://ow.ly/AjYW2

Workforce Fantasy (Football) http://ow.ly/AkRWN via @SmarterCafe

Learn how you can save $200 off #KronosWorks registration if you book before September 5th! http://ow.ly/AeGql

Pioneer Metal Deploys Kronos in the Cloud to Manage Rapid Expansion http://ow.ly/Ahh2B #KronosCloud

[VIDEO] At Kronos our interns do meaningful work and have fun! Check out our 2nd annual Intern Kronolympics: http://ow.ly/AhuJB

MT @NRNonline: FREE WEBINAR (Thu 8/21- 2pmET) "Employers of Choice Discuss Technologies" w @KronosInc. Register: http://t.co/EIpqlSumUh

[EXECUTIVE REPORT] Must-read, @SHRM research highlights hidden absence costs: http://ow.ly/AkQGx

 

 

women techYesterday I had a conversation with our board member, Jeanne Meister, about the future of the workplace.  Jeanne is a Founding Partner of Future Workplace, LLC, a firm that provides executive education to HR leaders and high potential managers to build the skills they need to prepare for success in the workplace of the future.  Our far-ranging conversation covered social media, gamification, and workplace flexibility among other topics.  You can listen to the podcast to hear how organizations like Zappos, American Express and USAA are dealing with the following issues:

 

If you're interested in learning more about how gamification is being used in forward looking workplaces,  you can check out this cool infographic from Future Workplace on how organizations are using gamification at work:

Meister Gamification Infographicfinal06-24

You may also be interested in learning more about the HR Innovation Lab that Future Workplace is hosting with the Drucker Institute.  You can find more information about how innovation impacts HR practices here.

What's your organization doing to embrace (or avoid) the future?

 

World Cup popcornToday, Team USA lost to Germany in the World Cup, but still advances to the knockout round.  Whether the US advances any further remains to be seen, but lots of employees worldwide will continue to follow these matches with interest, including during work hours. Employers will ignore the potential workplace disruption of the World Cup and other summertime distractions at their peril.  We know the summertime crunch is one of the peak seasons for unplanned absences - those absences that have the highest impact on workplace productivity.

If you'd like help thinking about how to mitigate the impact of unplanned absences in your organization this summer, read on for our advice about how to balance employees' need for time off with the demands of your business.

  1. Implement an absence policy. If you do not have one already, an absence policy to balance employee and employer needs is the first step in addressing the potential problem.
  2. Communicate the policy. There's little point in having an absence policy if you do not communicate it to employees. Highlight any specific rules around time-off requests during the World Cup.
  3. Encourage proactive communications between managers and staff about requests to take time off, or to work a different schedule.  Unplanned absences are more expensive to manage than those you know are coming.
  4. Support flexibility.  Consider early starts and early finishes for 5:00 p.m. kick-offs and late starts/late finishes for staff who want to sleep in after a big game. But make sure that you have a system in place to cope with monitoring the flex hours.
  5. Consider unpaid leave. Planned absence is always easier for a business to manage than unscheduled absence. Accept that staff will find a way to watch key matches - unplanned absence is expected to be high during the World Cup. Offer staff the opportunity to book unpaid leave up to a maximum number of days.
  6. Make controlling absenteeism a business priority. There's no excuse not to be in control of absence. Business tools are available to control and monitor absence levels and trends - you can even set the parameters to alert you to all unscheduled absences on match days, or on the morning after a big game.
  7. Enforce the absence policy. Any absence policy needs to be monitored and enforced consistently and fairly throughout the organization to curb unscheduled absences - more than half of employed adults believe that their work performance is negatively impacted when attendance policies are not fairly enforced.
  8. Provide incentives for excellent attendance. In large organizations, time and attendance systems are an invaluable tool for tracking and reporting on attendance levels. Many organizations effectively use perfect attendance bonuses as an incentive to reduce absenteeism.
  9. Be realistic. Rather than hindering staff enthusiasm over the World Cup, go with it - install a TV in the staff room; sit down and enjoy the matches with your staff - and with a bit of luck, you'll improve staff morale for long after the ref blows the final whistle. The picture above was from the Kronos cafeteria today where the game was on the big screens, and free popcorn was available for all while we enjoyed the game together.
  10. Make absence management part of your long-term business plan. Managing absenteeism isn't simply a tactical activity for the duration of the World Cup. Organizations can benefit from a well-designed, consistently monitored absence policy.

 

I learned recently when checking out a new Tesla that its fully equipped dashboard includes a web browser.  Since I had the chance, I couldn't resist the opportunity to load the Workforce Institute site on the car's dash.  At the same time, I ask myself if this capability is such a good idea.

Now I'm all for electric cars - I drive a Chevy Volt - but this feature seems like it would be a monumental distraction. One recent study says that 54% of the content Tesla drivers are viewing is news sites; i.e. not how to get from point A to point B.  The article in which this study is referenced  goes on to say that the law in most states hasn't caught up to the Tesla capabilities.  Some states have distracted driving laws now that prohibit hand held cellphones, texting, and/or TV screens or the like for the driver.  The Tesla browser falls in a grey area in that it's similar to a GPS system (allowed everywhere, I think), but certainly just as distracting as texting.

I love new technology - generally the more the better for me.  But as we approach these new frontiers of capability, they need to be assessed for their risks as well as their benefits.  Are Tesla drivers browsing while driving?  Maybe you should assume they are and give them a wide berth for now, just in case they're making purchases on Amazon instead of focusing on the road.

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