Month: February 2017

Employee Spotlight: Catherine Harlamert of Gapi USA Inc.

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Learning curves are intimidating. No doubt about it.

“I’ll have someone call up and need a three-eighths inch rod that specs to an ASTM D-1710,” says Catherine Harlamert of Gapi USA Inc. in Clayton.

“I basically moved from jacket sales to high-molecular plastic and it’s a totally different world,” she said.

Indeed it is, but Harlamert caught on. Now her responsibilities are increasing and she may start traveling with a sales rep to meet distributors face-to-face. A trip to Italy may be in the works.

BarryStaff placed Harlamert at Gapi after she approached the company looking for a change. She knew she could do the job … if she kept the faith.

“It’s really been one of the smoothest transitions I could have asked for,” said the former salesperson of school jewelry and athletic wear.

Gapi is a manufacturer of custom molded polyurethane products. The company has a presence in many countries around the world.

In spite of its global status, what’s impressed Harlamert the most has been the family atmosphere in Clayton. When new decor was needed for the walls, management took employees to Hobby Lobby to pick out pictures for decorating. Then they were treated to dinner.

“It’s nice to see a company include the staff in these types of changes, it really shows how much the management respects the employees and wants to make sure they are happy and involved at work on all levels” she said.

The road ahead is bright for Harlamert. And she credits BarryStaff with giving her a nudge in a new direction.

“BarryStaff has been awesome,” she said. “If I have any questions, my emails are always answered quickly.

“I wouldn’t be here if not for Barrystaff,” she said.

Click here to watch a short video featuring Catherine Harlamert.

 

Employers Reveal The One Thing Someone Did During An Interview That Got Them Hired On The Spot

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By

Content Writer

Via Tickld.com

Employers of Reddit were asked: “What is one thing someone has said or done in an interview that made you want to hire them on the spot?” These are some of the best answers.

But one guy said “Well…..I like enchiladas a lot…..and I have IBS….so I may rack up your toilet paper expenses”

Hired him on the spot, honesty and hilarity in one package. I figured in the very least he would be entertaining to work with.

MadameInternet

2. On the way to the conference room for the interview, interviewee instinctively picked up a gum wrapper off the floor and threw it in the nearest trash can. I just caught this peripherally, and he made no effort to show off his “insignificant good act.”

Honestly, I have never hired a single person on an impulse or based on something clever they said/did in an interview. It’s about qualifications and overall leaving a good impression. Trash-boy did get hired, and his simple act was really representative of him being pleasant and thoughtful. He also had several years experience in field.

I’ve been hiring for years, I do pick up on little things… sometimes a gum wrapper can distinguish one candidate from the others.

3lazycats

3. I never “hire on the spot”, as I always give some thought to the decision even when I’m very positive about someone.

However, I usually give screening tests to candidates. I had one young, inexperienced candidate that did not even pass the first screening question. Afterwards asked me to show him the correct answer and said something along the lines of “Thanks for showing me that I have a lot to learn.” I asked if he wanted some pointers & ended up lending him a book on the subject. A few days later I decided that that’s the attitude I’d like to hire and gave him the green light. Did not regret.

PoisonTaffy

4. One of my hiring questions is, “Tell me about a time you made a mistake doing a job. Tell me what happened and what you learned from it.” One girl said, “Well, this story is kind of gross and might not be what you want, but it’s what comes to mind right away.”

Then she told me about a time during her medical internship at a local hospital where she tried to prove herself to a skeptical doctor by taking a large dead body down to the morgue by herself, even though she had never gone down before and was supposed to take someone else with her. She was a tiny girl, but in good shape and apparently when she got down there she was supposed to move the body from the gurney to a slab (which is why she was supposed to go down with another person). She tried to move it on her own, but failed to lock the wheels on the gurney first and ended up on the floor, pinned under a large dead body for over fifteen minutes before anyone found her.

She said that from that she learned to follow procedures and to not be too cocky to ask for help when she needed it. I didn’t see how I could not hire her after that story. Because it was so genuine and atypical from the usual answers I heard for that question.

5. On a technical interview for computer stuff…

Me: if you come across a problem you’ve never seen before, how to approach it?
Soon to be new employee: I’d Google it.

This is the best answer. Most people go crying to vendors or support contracts before doing a simple Google search, and I find that offensive.

threeLetterMeyhem

6. We were hiring for a specific position and had arranged a number of interviews for it from pre-screened applicants. As we had to play with real people’s real schedules, we ended up with the strongest candidate (UC Berkeley PhD) going first. He did very well in the interview and it was kind of a given that we’d hire him.

This left us in an awkward spot with one very interesting interview of someone completely without a degree. However, there were budget restrictions so this was a long shot.

Meanwhile inside the company we had a fairly complex technical problem going on. Instead of just having a “hi… bye” interview with this other guy, we threw our complex problem at him about 24h before the interview. The [guy] solved it before the interview, and did it really quite brilliantly.

At that point I was willing to go to the ropes to get him.

Delheru

7. I was hiring for a graphic design position, and had a number of resumes on my desk. One guy had actually reached out to me personally through our website, and I just told him to email his resume to our job inbox.

We had just moved to a new office, and I posted a photo one morning to our Facebook page showing the new view off to our fans. That afternoon, he showed up at our office in a suit and tie, asked for the job, killed the interview and got it. He figured out the general area we were in from the photo, called the various office buildings to ask ahead, found us, and just showed up. 2 years later, he’s still there and doing an absolutely fantastic job.

kranzmonkey

8. I hired someone for giving me a dirty look in an interview.

Allow me to preface this by saying I really despise the interview process; I find that a person’s resume generally tells me everything I need to know and for me the interview is merely a formality to insure the applicant doesn’t have any personality or hygiene issues.

That said, I was hiring a desktop tech. I had a really stupid question that went something like “If I give you this, this and this piece of information would you be able to connect a PC to our domain?” The correct answer was yes.

Three applicants stammered and stuttered and said they figured they could but might need a little practice. The fourth applicant looked at me like I was insane but answered in the affirmative with no hesitation.

I hired her on the spot.

wizard10000

9. Post most of the interview, when we’ve turned to “Do you have any questions for us?”, the guy said, really matter-of-fact and not at all obsequiously, “Well, I’d like to know if there’s anything that we’ve talked about that has left you with doubts about me, so I can be sure you’ve got the information you need when you’re considering my fit.”

It was so simple, but so honest and effective because it was phrased as, ‘i want to help you be thorough’, but also quite self-serving because it got out in front of those doubts — we were immediately amazed that no one asks this. I’m never going to not ask it again (not that I’m looking, in case my boss has a line to the NSA).

hnice

10. Hiring for a programmer position and I decide to just Google his name. Turns out he also owns a Darth Vader outfit and puts it on to go visit sick kids in the hospital.

I hired him so fast it would make your head spin.

artformarket

11. He stalked me and found out my birthday was that week. Came to the interview with a cupcake from Georgetown Cupcakes and awkwardly sang me Happy Birthday in front of all the other interviewees.

I ended up firing him a month later for being terrible at everything.

skimble-skamble

12. I was interviewing people for a seasonal outside job, and I was doing the interviewing inside the marketing dept in an available office. This young kid with long hair, a spiked dog collar, upside-down crosses for earrings and a trench coat was my next interview and as we were walking to the office I was using, I noticed several marketing staff whispering and staring with shocked expressions at this kid. He walked with confidence and waited for me to sit down before he did, he was very polite and made excellent eye contact and gave me the best interview of the day.

When I explained that since this was a position dealing with the public and children and told him the earrings and dog collar would have to go, should he be hired, without hesitation he removed them and gave me this charming grin and I hired him on the spot and told him he was the most genuine person I had interviewed so far. He turned out to be one of my best employees and was hired full-time and stayed with me for 5 years.

astepUPfromperving

Continue reading here.

63% Of Employees Don’t Trust Their Leader — Here’s What You Can Do To Change That

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By Christine Comaford, CONTRIBUTOR

Forbes.com

Trust is toast, according to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer.

It’s worldwide, it’s pervasive across business and government, and trust of CEOs is at an all-time low.

CEO Credibility plunged by 12 points this year. Sixty-three percent of survey respondents said CEOs are somewhat or not at all credible.Whoa. Wow.

How Trust Is Broken…

Lack of trust creates an environment where concerns quickly evolve into fears. And when fears collide with a belief that the system is failing, trouble results. Also as distrust and fear increase, the negative impact on employee morale, engagement and performance accelerate. The end results are disengaged employees, frustrated management and lower profits. And the problem comes from four key emotional experiences.

1. A sense of injustice – the experience of unfairness tamps down the insula, the part of the brain responsible for emotional hurt and intuition. If a person is experiencing unfairness they will be spending more time in critter state, which will impact performance, decision making, collaboration, overall peace and happiness.

2. Lack of hope – the experience of hopelessness is even more painful than unfairness, and it’s below Critter State on the emotional range. In neurolinguistics the states of hopeless, helpless, worthless, and grief/terror are consider Baseline States. It doesn’t get worse than this.

3. Lack of confidence – depending on the person and degree of lack of confidence we’ll likely see procrastination, reluctance to take risks, playing “small”, and yes, more Critter State.

4. Desire for change – this is encouraging as there’s some energy here. Desire for change means we can envision a possible future where things are better. This lights up the Ventral Striatum where we anticipate reward. If we can increase this experience we can get into Smart State.

A few more key findings are that with the experience of distrust Edelman found that facts matter less to people and bias becomes the filter. 53% of respondents stated they do not listen to people or organizations with whom they often disagree. Further, people are 4x more likely to ignore info that doesn’t support their beliefs. Wow.

…And How To Fix It

So what’s the solution? Edelman’s survey respondents said that a shift from a top-down approach to a more participatory model is needed. In a word: collaboration, communication, transparency and mutual respect. This means deeply listening to and strategically acting on insights from employees. The report also concluded that rebuilding trust is a shared responsibility. We’re in this together.

And sustainable trust is key. This means taking employee engagement and empowerment to a new level, and ensuring leadership is engaged and empowered too.

Engage Everyone

Engaged employees have better work performance and increased likelihood of fulfilling personal lives. In previous blogs we have discussed proven and trusted neuroscience-based tools that will increase employee engagement, the real reasons your team is not engaged, how great leaders build trust and increase employee engagement and the one mistake leaders make that kills employee engagement.  Engagement starts at the top where the culture of the organization is formed–leaders must build a solid foundation where employee engagement can thrive. The C Suite must work on leadership engagement intentionally now more than ever. Leadership engagement = employee engagement.

Candid candidates: The 10 weirdest interview mistakes

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by The HR Specialist on January 30, 2017 10:00am
in Hiring,Human Resources

Step Brothers, Columbia Pictures 2008

It’s like Christmas in January—that most wonderful time of the year in which CareerBuilder.com releases its annual list of job interview quirks and missteps committed by candidates in the preceding year.

The employment website polled 2,600 HR pros and hiring managers late last year and whittled the interview weirdness down to the following 10 “winners” in which a candidate:

  • Called his wife to ask her if the starting salary was enough before continuing the interview
  • Brought childhood toys to the interview
  • Said her hair was perfect when asked why she should become part of the team
  • Bragged about being in the local newspaper for alleged theft
  • Ate a pizza he brought with him
  • Ate crumbs off the table
  • Asked where the nearest bar was located
  • Invited interviewer to dinner afterwards
  • Stated that if the interviewer wanted to get to heaven, she would hire him
  • Asked interviewer why her aura didn’t like her.

CareerBuilder also asked about candidate behavior that would prompt an instant “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” rejection.

Job interview deal-breakers

Being caught lying: 66%
Answering a phone call: 64%
Appearing arrogant: 59%
Dressing inappropriately: 49%
Lacking accountability: 48%

Source: CareerBuilder.com survey, January 2017