Clearly, Santa’s achievements and the success of the North Pole-based Workshop® are only possible because of his exemplary leadership skills. Were it not for Claus’s ability to inspire, organize, and effectively manage his workforce, Christmas would be an annual kerfuffle.

So how can you be the kind of leader that elves look up to, while ensuring the success of a globally-recognized company for over 2,000 years? Check out Santa’s Top 5 Leadership Lessons:

1.  Communicate your vision and get your employees excited about it!

A vision that isn’t articulated isn’t much more than a dream. So you want to make sure that your vision, your values, and your goals are clear throughout your organization. For example, Santa has regular meetings with his elves to make sure that everyone is aligned with his mission of spreading joy and cheer all over the world. During these meetings, Santa not only talks – he LISTENS to his elves to get their ideas on how to best approach this formidable yet hugely rewarding mission.

2.  Develop and motivate your workforce

When Santa first hired Rudolph, he saw a lot of potential in him. Even though Rudolph looked a lot different than the other reindeer and was a bit of an outcast, Santa saw past that and decided to teach Rudolph how to take a negative and turn it into a positive.  Nowadays, Rudolph’s brightly lit nose can be seen guiding Santa’s reindeer caravan all across the world. Santa also provides professional development courses for the elves. For example, “No More Wooden Toys: What Kids Really Want” is a popular course each year.

3.   Listen to your Customers

While Santa doesn’t have “customers” per se, he does make a point to keep an ear to the ground and stay current with today’s toy trends.  Many a modern day Christmas would have been ruined if Santa was still giving out wooden cup-n-ball toys in today’s world of 3D tv’s and dolls with real human emotion (slight exaggeration – maybe).

4.  Delegate Responsibility & Give Purpose

No one wants to feel like they’re dispensable, just a warm body to fill a space. Santa recognizes this and takes measures to ensure that each of his elves has a clear purpose. For example, each elf in the Workshop has their own area of responsibility whether it’s making toys, packaging toys, taking care of the reindeer, or conducting research as part of the Elf on the Shelf program. Whatever department/area they work in, each elf has a clear set of responsibilities and knows that their performance is integral to the overall success of the Workshop and the mission.

5.  Have fun.

Despite the enormous amount of pressure he’s under, Santa genuinely enjoys what he does. Think about it, when have you ever seen this guy not in a good mood? Santa’s position is a great example of one that’s stressful and highly visible, yet he’s able to have fun with it. His spirit and enthusiasm permeate the culture of the workshop and inspire the elves to do their best every day. And ultimately, this is what makes Christmas a success each year.

So next time you find yourself dashing around to catch this flight, make that meeting, or close that deal – wondering how in the world you’ll ever be able to do EVERYTHING that needs to be done, remember to take a minute to appreciate and enjoy being a leader. And before you complain about yet another layover on your business trip, remember that Santa makes approximately 132 million stops each Christmas Eve, and does it all with a smile

The post Santa’s Top 5 Leadership Lessons appeared first on PageUp People.

Talent pooling has become common place in the talent acquisition landscape, and though it may not  be the end all, Holy Grail or answer to all of your recruiting dilemmas, it can go a long way in supporting a targeted, multichannel sourcing strategy.

Take it from us: PageUp People’s internal Talent Team has established a talent pipeline across business critical and tough to fill roles with great results – talent pool candidates were our 3rd largest source of hire last year!

Talent pools will vary between industry vertical and organization, but allows sourcers and/or recruiters to be much more focused on quality in specific crucial job functions. You can even create catch-all or overflow pools for great candidates that come your way but might not be on that critical list. This allows you to keep viable candidates in mind for other opportunities in future.

So, how do you begin to build the Talent pool you need?  Let us show you how we did it:

Determine your talent pool strategy

The first thing our Talent Team did was look at our previous quantitative data and talk with our business leaders to identify key roles. We were able to determine which roles:

• Took longer to find great people
• Have higher attrition (and why? Perhaps pipelining is just one answer but not a long term solution)
• Have the biggest bottom line impact

The post A How-to Guide for Getting the Most Out of Your Talent Pool appeared first on PageUp People.

Just as print has become less relevant, it appears the same is coming true for some of those initial and more traditional online mediums. More and more recruiters are finding that they need to react to the changing habits and expectations of potential candidates, and for many target applicants this means going mobile.

These days, candidates are not likely to be weekend job seekers trawling through job boards and newspapers looking for their next career move, typically they are from varied industries, frequently on the move and as a result short on time; cue the handheld device, enabling a busy professional to make quick but informed and accurate decisions.   Where does this leave a company that cannot provide a mobile friendly careers site application form or referral solution though? They may very well lose out on that potential candidate because they’ll only spend 5 minutes on their phone or tablet to browse and apply for a job.

To put into perspective how mobile usage has grown, recent research from Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers (KPBC) indicates that 10% of all internet traffic now comes from mobiles vs. 1% three years ago.

Further research from Beyond.com Career Network indicates that 77% all job seekers use mobile job search apps.  With such strong growth rates, and adoption of job searching trends, PageUp People wanted to ensure that our client’s careers sites could capture that candidate audience rather than turning them away or losing them due to an unfriendly, non-mobile optimised experience.

As part of the PageUp People Careers site product, potential candidates are able to engage with your careers site via their phones or other mobile devices. Candidates will also see an optimised site adjusted for a smaller screen that it is easier to use when tapping versus clicking with a mouse.

At certain points our mobile experience now provides candidates a way to easily send themselves an application reminder and explains why some parts of the application process may still be better completed from a desktop or laptop.

Other enhancement that have been made for mobile users, include the ability for:

• Ability for candidates to use their phone’s geo-location capability to find jobs near them
• Quick job alert subscription
• Enhanced mobile device detection so candidates land on the mobile friendly site, not the standard website (where they need to zoom in & in & in & in….)
• The ability to share a role via email, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Yammer and more!
• Increased usability updates for small screens
• Ability for clients to add additional icons to their configuration for sharing and bookmarking on the phone’s home screen.

Even with a mobile optomised site, there are technology constraints for a candidate who wants to apply right then & there.  Most recruiters want to see the candidate’s resume but the iPhone & iPad have technology limitations which do not allow a file to be attached.   Hopefully this will change in the near future although the question remains… does a candidate have a copy of their resume on their phone? With the mobile careers enhancements, we’ve added the ability for a candidate to easily send themselves the job information and are encouraging them to use a computer to apply.This way the candidate has the required information and can easily complete the application form you’ve selected.

Your careers site is now even more mobile friendly than before! Candidates can search & view roles, sign up for job alerts, easily search for roles nearby & apply. If you haven’t moved to the new careers sites yet…then contact your technical account manager to find out about all the benefits for doing so.

As always if you have any further queries around this product or any of our other Integrated Talent Management Solutions please feel free to contact our Customer Support Team on 1300 30 60 41.

Stay tuned for our next post…

Regards,

PageUp People Team

The post Recruitment & Mobile appeared first on PageUp People.

As is customary after each live deployment, the PageUp People Development Team takes a few days to assess areas of the business where they can see and create high value changes through quick, innovative and unique changes. Although these changes are for the benefit of the business, our competitive nature takes over and for 2 days the challenge is on to sell our judges in only 10 minutes. This quarter some great work was done in areas such as:

• Improving Speed through cache and memcache
• Creating a new .NET framework for the entire business
• Waging a war on JavaScript errors, and
• Standardising business logics.

All teams delivered great presentations and the judge’s panel were impressed with some great degrees of difficulty and achievement ratings being dolled out. In the end only 2.84 points separated our top 3 teams.

Below are some thoughts about the Tune-up event from participant and in-house Product Architect:

‘I was impressed that all of the projects suggested by team members were to improve our existing systems & processes. It highlights the team’s passion for working smarter and considering long term gains. 

My team in particular focussed on improving our business logic standards. It was great to step back from the daily project work and think holistically about things – which resulted in some really good ideas.’

Anthony – Product Architect

Keep your eyes peeled on our blog for future updates on enhancements, news and other areas of interest.   For any further queries please feel free to contact our Customer Support Team on 1300 30 60 41.

Kind regards,

PageUp People Team

The post Tune Up is back! appeared first on PageUp People.

Insights

Facebook Insights is a very useful tool and very much advanced since Pages were first introduced. Insights allows you to export data based on data type, date range and a specified file format. Among many things Insights tell us that PageUp People Careers has a reach of approx. 5,000 Facebook users. This comes from the friend connections of everyone who likes our page. Imagine, if you are a large multinational organisation the reach you could have through social media? What an opportunity to engage potential employees and garner referrals.

Our reach has extended to over 14 countries around the world and covered more than 25 different languages…not all of them are based in the bustling metropolis that you might expect. The value of this is understanding the importance of each viewer regardless of area, not only because they might relocate closer to your HQ or you might expand into that region but because social media allows them the ability to influence other users beyond their geographical location.

Of interest 30% of our unique Facebook visits came from mobile sources. Is mobile the way of the future? The data suggests it is!

(An example of Insights from the PageUp People Careers Facebook Page)

Content

The Facebook timeline is the gateway to engagement, the Facebook insight statistics show that your pages timeline is the most proficient tool for engaging potential site visitors. It is the content you share that will draw people in, the more you create yourself, the better. According to Universal McCaan, a global online media agency, online video is the fastest growing medium ever because of its ability to entice people to click through far more than via a link or image.

We have also been able to see significant spikes in site views based on industry specific events such as webinars, conferences and usergroups. This indicates that campaigns impact the reach and engagement. Of note was our SVP of Innovation, Simon Cariss’ address at the recent Austraslian Talent Conference, covering BIG Data and how we harness it in our Career Path product. During and after the event our page received one of the most significant spikes in terms of viral reach, lasting almost 8 days!

Generating interest through varying content has worked in our favour, the next place people visit on our Page is our Job App. So at this point they have gotten to know us better and if they like what they see it prompts them to look at career opportunities with us. Naturally this is our ultimate goal!

Admin

As a page administrator you are able to comment, like, share or post as your company. Want to shout about your grad program? Go onto your target Uni’s Facebook page and post a link with a call to action from your ‘Careers’ page.

What Next?

Heaps! Too much to cover here, we want to get more of our people involved, we want to create some more interesting content that effectively shares who we are as a great place to work with our audience, ultimately we want to grow our followers and reach more potential candidates. We’ll keep you posted!

http://thesocialskinny.com/100-more-social-media-statistics-for-2012

http://mashable.com/2012/05/24/facebook-reach/

***With thanks to Danielle Berto for contributing to this blog.

The post A New Insight into Facebook appeared first on PageUp People.

You might have seen a post at the start of the year by Simon Cariss explaining the two day developer innovation frenzy that we call Tune Up. Our team just finished another TuneUp, the perfect time to ask some of our developers what it means to them.

TuneUp is a chance for any member of the technical team to try out a new technology, improve an existing process or build a tool that can make their day to day just that little bit easier. We do it because we love to innovate and build new things and we don’t always get the chance to do this sort of stuff on top of our regular workload.-Scott

TuneUp is a chance for us to…work on the “wow” factor of our software, and make people’s lives easier. It helps us learn about new things and gives us the chance to spend time on things we’re willing to experiment with, rather than our usual day-to-day work. –Daniel

TuneUp is about spending some time on something that we’re passionate about. Teams get together and spend 2 days working on a problem and presenting on their solution….We do TuneUp’s so that the innovative ideas that developers have can be brought to life. This TuneUp my team used AppHarbor to host the application that we wrote and discussed with the floor how it could be used for future projects.-Dale

For those among us who are not developers, what is exciting about TuneUp is understanding how these ideas and creations will be brought to life inside our products. What we learn from TuneUp is that there is such amazing value in making time to innovate and that applies to any business function!

The post The Tune Up Round Up appeared first on PageUp People.

Unfortunately, while customized dashboard reporting is a dream for filtering data and creating meaningful information, I have found that is used less than expected. So why is it that we don’t spend time creating customized dashboard views for our stakeholders? Well, based on the facts, there is no good answer. Below, I have outlined how easy it can be.

The Pre-Step: RESOLUTION: EARN LOVE & DRIVE CHANGE. Pledge to shift away from a one-size-fits-all data dump, and use your web analytics tool to create a customized dashboard.

Step 1: Log in and just click on the Home icon in the orange top navigation. Then click on
Dashboards, and what do you see? Oh yes! + New Dashboard. Click!

I love that phrase “Blank Canvas.” So open. So full of possibilities. So much hope and wonder.

Step 2: Name your Dashboard: Now just because you can do anything does not mean you
should. Revisit your Dashboard Resolution and give your dashboard a purpose. Purpose
requires asking questions and focusing. And great, relevant, dashboards spring from asking.

I have named one of my dashboards: VP, Global Marketing. It now has a specific audience and a purpose. Rather than data dumping, I’m now forced to go talk to the VP of Digital Marketing and ask this question: “What are my business priorities for the next six months?” That will lead to: “And how will I know if we’ve successfully executed on priority x?” That will lead to: “Awesome, I know exactly which critical few Key Performance Indicators I’ll be showing in my dashboard.”

Pro Tip: Always, always, always let the Acquisition, Behavior and Outcomes framework be your guide. After you’ve created a dashboard, check to see that you have all three elements. If you don’t, you are not showing the end-to-end picture. Without this you fail in your duty (and the data recipients will make poor decisions).

The cool bit is that in addition to standard widgets and simple tables, you can also bundle along your smarts into the dashboard and delight your users.

Wha-laa – you are earning love from your colleagues by turning loads of data into meaningful information which can DRIVE CHANGE for your company! Great job.

The post Google Analytics – A Response! appeared first on PageUp People.

The post Google Analytics appeared first on PageUp People.

A Big Thank you to all PageUp People that contributed to this quarters upgrade, especially those in early to ensure a seamless deployment.

It’s all about speed. With today’s deployment we improve the usability of PageUp People and increase the efficiency of the most common tasks and workflows.

System performance has also increased by as much as 500% for the most commonly used actions and the display elements have been re-designed to provide a more straight-forward user experience.

Social Media has certainly changed this employee’s use of the internet in recent years, and as social media continues to saturate all markets, we are now making sure that you’re maximizing what the potential hubs like Facebook, LinkedIn and Broadbean have to offer when it comes to building and maintaining relationships, engaging your potential talent and also increasing your reach in regional or industry specific talent pools.

In addition to the re-skin, other upgrades this quarter include:

• Seamless posting jobs to the corporate linkedin accounts.
• New search fields on the Facebook app
• Broadbean integration for posting to 2,000 job boards.
• Global Gateway speed and language upgrades, including improvements to French, Malay, Thai and simplified Chinese.
• A mobile performance journal.
• Autosaving and more configuration options for performance reviews whilst rating.
• Plus a bunch more minor tweaks and improvements.

Up and Coming-

PageUp People is very excited about the release of Global Gateway. Global Gateway is a fantastic tool that can be used to balance your current local and international issues, leapfrog technical constraints as well as handle high turnover and massive candidate volumes.

Now, to get to work on next quarters release.

The post Feb 2012 Release appeared first on PageUp People.

To help all of our clients promote their jobs on Facebook, we have built a cool Facebook app.

The goal was to help clients engage with social media channels with controlled and approved job content directly from PageUp People with no manual effort.

Many clients are challenged with the effort and uncontrolled space of facebook, adding this careers application taps the facebook value easily in a way that makes sense.

The site (PageUp’s show here). Looks and feels like a familiar Facebook app and ingeniously works with your own job search results.

Buttons such as ‘Like’ and ‘Send’ take on newfound value when directly linked to people  social friends.

We’ll be tracking the effectiveness of these new channels and benchmarking their performance against companies own careers sites and other advertising initiatives.

Right now, use of the application is limited to PageUp People clients although technically, any company can leverage this app via our RESTful API and our Microsoft Azure hosting of it to power a social careers site especially where emerging market candidate attraction is important.

The post Facebook appeared first on PageUp People.