“There’s no such thing as a shortcut to success. But, if millennials want to do themselves a favor, they can learn much from those that came before them. Making an effort to learn career practices of those that have been in the workforce longer can prove an essential resource for those that are new to the business world”, reports Online Business Degree.

If you have a mentorship programme in your organization, perhaps some of this advice from Online Business Degree can be relayed to mentor and mentee, to make each realize what their assets are and what personal areas can be improved. As the dictum goes “with age comes wisdom”, we all have something to learn from the generations that precede us.

Read this article “8 Career Practices Millennials Can Learn From Baby Boomers” and determine how knowledge and experience can be passed down in your organization.

Having written “Employer Branding: 5 reasons why it matters & Five Steps to Action” in 2010, a lot has happened since then – Employer Branding has become of one of the most important strategic concerns for the majority of the world’s largest companies. Companies now realise that business success depends on the quality of one’s workforce and their ability to deliver on business objectives. Simply said, without the right competence companies will fail on their business plans. Read the rest of this entry »

By Joao Araujo

In today’s digital society not having a careers website is unthinkable! The internet has become the first place where people will search for information and candidates follow suit. But since every company has such a section on their website, how to differentiate from your competitors, how do you know which information candidates are seeking and which websites are very popular among students? Read the rest of this entry »

Vestas has built a new green head office that focuses on sustainability and flexibility, covering 23,000 m2. It is the first Scandinavian building that is LEED certified in the best category — Platinum; only around 150 commercial buildings in the world have achieved platinum certification. To highlight some of the environmentally friendly characteristics of the building: rain water is collected and used to flush toilets and water the grounds; Denmark’s largest combined geothermal energy system, with 36 km of piping, supplies the building with both heating and cooling capacity; all of the building’s waste is sorted, and kitchen waste is composted; the majority of the building materials are regional — acquired within a radius of 800 km, in order to minimize the transport associated with construction. An ambitious and highly successful accomplishment, Vestas opened the doors to its new headquarters in November 2011. To find out more about this unique and environmentally aspiring workplace, Universum interviews Jens Velling, responsible for Global Communications and Media Relations at Vestas.

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HSBC Tower, Hong Kong

By Kerrianne Lim Joon*

The world is changing rapidly, and on many fronts. It is now not uncommon to hear or read about economic turmoil, geopolitical unrest and more frequent and serious natural disasters. Moreover, we see new trade routes opening up, with predictions that by 2050, 19 of the top 30 economies by GDP will be countries that we currently describe as “emerging”¹.

The increasing focus on emerging markets provides companies with a complex challenge in terms of finding and retaining the right talent to help them and their clients succeed along the new southern Silk Road trade route that is connecting Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. However, these markets, while experiencing significant trade and capital flow, each possess their own domestic talent challenges. Take China, for example, it has a rapidly aging population, within which its workforce will shrink as a share of the population by 11 per cent between 2010 and 2050. China is already starting to face a shortage of cheap manual labour and will very soon experience a long-term “4-2-1” phenomenon (every one child will need to support two parent and four grandparents)² that will create serious social implications. Meanwhile, a different picture exists in the Arab world, where over half the population is under 30 and the region is experiencing the highest youth unemployment and lowest participation rate in the world³. In the next 10 years, tens of millions of Arab youths will be ready to enter the workforce but where, how many and what types of jobs will be available to them? Read the rest of this entry »

Attract people with cultural fit

The question for the weekly poll: “How hard is it to attract people who are a fit/match with your company culture?”

People were asked to select from a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 represents “easy” and 5 represents “hard”. The average result was 3.43.

The poll was conducted from 11 to 14 June 2012.

While recruiting videos can help your company establish and strengthen its employment brand, most fall into the typical recruiting video trap in which it introduces company executives, talks about the company’s mission, or includes other scripted scenarios that fail to give potential candidates an accurate perception of the employment brand.

Companies that effectively use video to promote their employment brand showcase their employees and work environment in the most realistic way possible. These videos highlight unique aspects of their organization, including some of the more subtle things that differentiate the company and make it authentic. The best way to establish an employment brand is to depict an authentic employee experience.

Jennifer King, HR Analyst at Software Advice, found three recruiting videos which do just that. Learn how Zendesk, HubSpot, and Rackspace showcase their employment brands to the max with recruiting videos on her HR blog: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/recruiting-videos-that-do-it-right-106051/

A lot of companies are weary to let their employees use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc during their working hours – what kind of employer are you? Do you permit or forbid social media use in your company? And what are your reasons?

By Sandy Jones

As millennials graduate from college and traverse out into the bleak job market, tension can build between millennials and their baby boomer counterparts. With both generations working alongside one another, their differences become apparent and may be a source of hostility and resentment. However, with the economic crisis, neither party necessarily gets the better end of the stick. Millennials and boomers may have to close the generational gap and resign to working together in spite of their varying business strategies.

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1. HR in the future

To be competitive in the future, HR leaders have to rethink their traditional roles and understand the potential key issues for the function.

 2. CEOs are more worried about talent question than anything else

CEOs are more worried about how to appeal and retain Generation Y than how to reduce costs and achieve growth.

 3. How to give effective feedback

By using four simple rules for effective feedback, you will get one step closer to getting the most out of your people.

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