6 Tips for Spring Cleaning Your Work Life

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As the days grow longer and the air feels fresher, it’s the perfect opportunity to declutter our spaces and take a renewed look at our world. Consider these practical tips and strategies to give your work life a good spring cleaning. Grab your metaphorical broom and let’s sweep away the cobwebs of winter stagnation to make room for growth and productivity.

Tidy Your Files (Physical & Digital)

From dusty filing cabinets to cluttered desktop folders, take time to organize your workspaces. Make finding your files a breeze by purging unnecessary documents, giving your digital files a consistent naming convention, and creating efficient folder structures.

Wipe Down All Tech Surfaces

It’s not just about tidying up, but also about keeping things running smoothly. Grab those microfiber cloths and give your screens, keyboard, mouse, and most importantly, your phone a good wipe down. Dust and grime impact your tech’s lifespan and your health.

Clear Out Office Clutter

A clutter-free environment fosters creativity and reduces stress. Consider recycling outdated tech, scanning physical files then disposing of the originals, or donating excess office supplies and furniture. Don’t forget to clean out the company fridge!

Scrub Your Online Profiles

Take a moment to review your social media profiles, LinkedIn, and portfolios. Update your bio, add recent accomplishments, and ensure your online persona reflects the professional image you want to convey. A polished online presence can make a world of difference.

Refresh Your Network

Reach out to old contacts, schedule virtual coffee chats, and explore new networking opportunities. Spring is a time for growth and renewal, and expanding your network can open doors to exciting career prospects and collaborations.

Dust Off Your Resume

Last but certainly not least, it’s time to give your resume a spring cleaning! Review your resume with fresh eyes, updating your skills, experiences, and accomplishments. Tailor it to reflect your current career goals and aspirations. A well-crafted resume is your ticket to landing that dream job.

Are you ready for a fresh start in your career? Now is the time to take action!

Contact us to get connected with a top-notch recruiter.

Learn How to Attract Marketing Talent

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Recruiting top marketing talent is not just about offering a job—it’s about creating an environment that appeals to skilled professionals. As a hiring manager, understanding what factors attract marketers can significantly enhance your ability to recruit and retain top talent for your organization and give you a competitive advantage. Let’s dive into four key factors that influence marketers and review actionable strategies for hiring highly qualified talent.

Social Proof & Employee Branding

As any good marketer knows, social proof often convinces people to buy a product or service. This goes for hiring, too! Leveraging social proof as a recruitment tool can have a significant impact on candidate engagement and employee retention. Positive commentary on employer review sites, active employee engagement on social media platforms, and showcasing employee events and testimonials can all contribute to building a strong employer brand.

When candidates see evidence of a supportive and rewarding work environment, they are more likely to be attracted to your company.

Technology & Innovation

Top marketing talent is drawn to technology and innovation. Forward-thinking companies that provide access to cutting-edge tools and platforms demonstrate commitment to staying ahead in the rapidly evolving field of marketing. Whether it’s advanced analytics software, marketing automation platforms, or AI-driven solutions, investing in technology can enhance efficiency and effectiveness in marketing campaigns.

Moreover, fostering a culture of innovation where employees are encouraged to experiment with new ideas and approaches can be highly appealing to creative marketers. Demonstrating a willingness to adapt and evolve with the latest trends and technologies can set your company apart and offer a competitive advantage.

Work-Life Balance

Marketers often work long and odd hours and spend a lot of their free time staying current on trends and learning new technologies. Consider offering perks that promote work-life balance to offset the demands of the job. For example, if employees work brand events and sales activations, or put in additional time for product launches, consider offering comp time in addition to standard PTO. Furthermore, flexible schedules and remote work are becoming the industry norm so including these benefits should be part of your standard package.

Promoting benefits and perks that support work-life balance shows that you respect employees and care about their well-being. Marketers often leave jobs due to burnout, so advertising work-life balance will help attract high-quality talent.

Consider Part-Time Positions & Consultants

In today’s gig economy, many marketers value the flexibility and variety that come with part-time or consulting roles. By offering opportunities for part-time work or engaging with freelance marketers and consultants, you can tap into a diverse pool of talent with specialized skills and expertise. This approach allows your organization to access specialized talent on an as-needed basis, enabling you to scale marketing efforts up or down more efficiently in response to changing business needs.

Partnering with a reputable staffing firm can streamline your contingent workforce by managing the back office components such as onboarding, timecards, payroll, and benefits, as well as save you administrative time and free up your marketing budget.

Attracting and recruiting highly qualified marketing professionals requires a strategic approach. Partner with Top Stack to assess your competitive advantage, source talent, and reduce the time to hire. Top Stack specializes in connecting employers with a vast network of marketing talent. We prioritize building long-term relationships with our candidates—connecting you with both active job seekers and passive candidates who are waiting for the perfect job to find them.

Contact us now to see how we can elevate your team!

Learn How to Attract Tech Talent

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Today’s leading companies are prioritizing recruiting and retaining tech talent to help drive innovation and growth. Regardless of industry, tech professionals are a highly sought-after subset of the workforce. However, building an adequate tech team remains a challenge due to immense competition and the ever-changing nature of technology itself. Organizations must build an aggressive hiring strategy to attract top talent and stay ahead of the curve. In this blog, we’ll explore the factors that influence a tech candidate’s decision-making and effective strategies to appeal to top-tier talent.

Flexibility

A flexible work environment has replaced compensation as the driving factor in job seekers’ decision-making, especially in the tech sector. Now that companies have mostly caught up to one another in terms of compensation, workers are looking for other perks to help decide their next career move.

Flexibility may look different based on an organization’s structure, but it primarily includes a combination of a hybrid work model, alternative work hours, and more autonomy when choosing projects. An Indeed Talent Report states, “hybrid working arrangements requiring at least three days in the office lead to stronger retention.”

Compensation

According to a Dice Tech Salary Report, salary growth slowed down in 2023, with the major US tech hubs feeling this effect the most. Despite this leveling-out, it’s still important for employers to offer at or above market compensation to remain competitive as some areas of the country such as a Philadelphia, PA, San Antonio, TX, and Orlando, FL saw salary growth.

Due to cost of living challenges, workers are leveraging remote work and relocating to more inexpensive areas. While flexibility may be the most important factor in hiring tech talent, do not trade high compensation for remote work as this has been found to lead to increased turnover. Companies that offer fair compensation that is aligned with skills and experience will remain competitive and attract more qualified talent.

Innovation & Purpose

If your organization cannot rely on flexibility or compensation, your recruitment strategy should focus heavily on your company’s innovation and purpose. Even without a lofty mission statement, a company can appeal to job seekers by communicating how their role will play a significant part in a project or help propel the company forward. Additionally, offering the opportunity for professional growth and tasks that allow employees to hone their skills can be a very attractive offer to job seekers of all levels. In fact, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that 41 percent of employees say they left their jobs due to limited career progression.

Efficient Interviewing

Lastly, an underrated yet highly effective recruitment strategy is simply having an efficient interview and feedback process. Tech talent goes on and off the market so quickly that it’s imperative that your organization have an equally fast interview process. To avoid top tech talent getting picked up by your competitor, develop an interview model that is limited to 1-2 rounds of interviews to access technical skills and personality and a responsive feedback loop between candidates, managers, and HR. Creating a respectful hiring process will help cultivate a strong employer brand for your organization.

Attracting and recruiting highly qualified tech professionals requires a strategic approach. To assess your competitive advantage, source talent, and reduce time to hire, consider leveraging the expertise of a reputable staffing firm. Top Stack specializes in connecting employers with a vast network of tech talent. We prioritize building long-term relationships with our candidates, so we can connect you with active job seekers and passive candidates who are waiting for the perfect job to find them.

Contact us now to see how we can elevate your team!

How Staffing Agencies Save Companies Time and Money

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Finding the right talent for your business can be a daunting and time-consuming process. Employers often face challenges such as difficulty in attracting qualified candidates, reviewing resumes and conducting reference checks, facilitating a complicated interview process, and managing the legal and administrative aspects of employment. Partnering with an experienced staffing agency can alleviate this stress. Let’s explore why employers should consider leveraging the services of staffing agencies for their hiring needs.

What is a Staffing Agency?

A staffing agency serves as a bridge between businesses seeking to fill vacant positions and qualified job seekers. These agencies specialize in recruiting candidates for various types of employment, including temporary, temp-to-hire, and direct hire positions. They utilize their expertise and resources to match the right candidates with the right job opportunities.

The Staffing Agency Process

To fully understand the benefits of using a staffing agency, you’ll need to become familiar with their process.

  1. Job Qualification: Once an employer reaches out to a staffing agency with their hiring needs, the agency will typically request a “qualification call” with the hiring manager and other stakeholders to learn about the company’s mission and culture, the job requirements and responsibilities, the personality of the team or department, position compensation and benefit parameters, hiring timeline and interview process, and more. If needed, the agency can help craft a job description and advertise the position while keeping the employer confidential. 
  1. Candidate Sourcing & Vetting: Next, the agency will source high-quality candidates through many channels, most notably from their exclusive database of candidates with whom they have built long-term connections. A recruiter will screen the candidates to determine if their skills, personality, and job search parameters align with the role. As requested, the agency can also administer skill assessments, reference checks, certification verifications, and social media audits. 
  1. Candidate Presentation: Only the most qualified candidates are presented to the employer for review. The agency will provide the hiring manager with a shortlist of candidates, along with cleanly formatted resumes, a brief explanation of why the candidate aligns so well with the position, and any additional vetting documentation.
  1. Interview Management: Once a manager has narrowed down which candidates they would like to get to know further, the staffing agency can manage the entire interview process. They will coordinate schedules and communicate details, provide access to video interviewing technology, help determine interview questions and structure, and handle sharing feedback between the interviews and candidates.
  1. Offer & Onboarding: When a candidate is selected to fill the role, the staffing agency can manage as much of the offer and onboarding stage as the manager prefers. If the employer is hiring a temporary worker, the agency handles all the administrative tasks associated with hiring, such as contracts, background checks, payroll, benefits, and taxes.

Advantages of Using a Staffing Agency

Now that you know what to expect, here’s what you stand to benefit from partnering with a staffing agency.

  • Fast Hiring: Staffing agencies streamline the hiring process, saving time and effort for employers. The primary goal of the qualification call is to get a holistic understanding of the company and job so that recruiters can quickly match a candidate’s skill set and personality to the role and facilitate a great connection. The top candidates that get presented to the client for review have already been vetted to ensure their hard and soft skills, location and commute, compensation expectations, and lifestyle and personality all align with the position. This means when the manager selects an individual to interview, they are spending their time getting to know a highly engaged and well-qualified candidate who is prepared to move quickly should they earn an offer.
  • Reduced Workload & Risk: By outsourcing hiring responsibilities to a staffing agency, employers can free up their internal resources to focus on core business activities. This reduces the burden on existing staff and increases overall productivity. The staffing agency handles the brunt of hiring tasks, including sourcing and recruiting, reviewing all candidate resumes and applications, performing pre-screening calls, coordinating interviews, and managing the flow of communication and feedback loop. For contractors, the agency will handle all new hire paperwork, background checks and related compliance, and timecard management. They also assume many legal and financial responsibilities, reducing the risk for employers. From payroll tasks to compliance with employment laws, agencies handle various aspects of employment, mitigating risks for employers.
  • Flexible & Specialized Hiring: Staffing agencies provide flexibility in hiring, allowing employers to adjust their workforce according to fluctuating business demands. Whether it’s short-term projects or seasonal peaks, agencies can quickly provide qualified temporary staff. For niche roles requiring specific skills, staffing agencies offer specialized expertise. They have access to talent pools with niche skills and can efficiently match candidates with specialized job requirements.

Top Stack offers valuable resources for employers seeking efficient and effective hiring solutions. By leveraging our expertise and resources, you can streamline the hiring processes, access specialized talent, and reduce administrative burdens. Top Stack specializes in connecting employers with a vast network of pre-qualified talent in Finance & Accounting, Technology, Marketing, and Supply Chain positions.

Contact us now to see how we can elevate your team!

Why Your Job Opening Isn’t Attracting Qualified Applicants

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In today’s competitive job market, attracting qualified talent is no easy feat. If you find yourself scratching your head wondering why your job opening isn’t getting the attention it deserves, you’re not alone. Let’s take a look at four of the reasons behind this common challenge and explore strategies to optimize your recruitment efforts.

1. Ineffective Job Description

A primary reason your job opening may be falling flat is an unclear or unappealing job description. Candidates want to clearly understand the role, responsibilities, and expectations. Be sure to also highlight the benefits and perks that the job or the company offers, such as growth opportunities, travel and meal stipends, and insurance and retirement plans.

2. Lack of Competitive Compensation

In today’s job market, compensation is a significant factor influencing a candidate’s decision to apply for a position. If your job opening offers below-market compensation, you’re likely losing qualified candidates to your competition. If you can’t compete with salary alone, consider marketing your total compensation package comprising of all forms of pay and benefits, including base salary, overtime pay, bonuses, commissions, the value of benefits, and any other cash or non-monetary compensation.

3. Limited Visibility

Even if you have the first two common challenges covered, if your job can’t be found by your target audience, you won’t attract qualified candidates. Maximize reach by listing your job on a variety of platforms, including job boards and social media. If your position is niche, consider where your audience typically spends time, either in real life or on the internet; attend industry-specific networking events and join online forums to authentically connect with talent.

4. Lengthy or Complicated Application Process

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 92% of applicants do not finish online applications. A cumbersome application process is a significant deterrent for potential candidates. Consider applying to your own job to learn the candidate experience, and then streamline your application process to make it more user-friendly and efficient. Avoid unnecessary steps such as having to create an account or requiring redundant information to be entered that can be found on the applicants’ resumes.

Attracting qualified talent is a multifaceted challenge that requires a strategic approach. Leveraging the expertise of a reputable staffing firm to determine why you’re not seeing results can be a game changer for your recruitment strategy. Top Stack specializes in connecting employers with a vast network of pre-qualified talent in Finance & Accounting, Technology, Marketing, and Supply Chain positions. Our team of recruitment experts will help you craft an attractive job description, provide market research to ensure your salary and benefits packages are competitive, and get your job in front of the right talent—fast and efficiently.

Contact us now to see how we can elevate your team!

Learn How to Attract Finance & Accounting Talent

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Attracting and recruiting highly qualified finance and accounting professionals is crucial for an organization to grow and thrive in today’s fast-changing economic environment. Strong candidates within this sector can get upwards of thirty recruitment messages a week, so it’s critical that your company can stand out from your competition. Let’s explore what factors influence a candidate’s decision-making process and effective strategies to appeal to top-tier talent.

Compensation, Perks & Benefits

If your company hasn’t reviewed its compensation packages lately, you may be losing in-demand talent to your competition. Offering top applicants an above-market salary and adding 5 percent to 15 percent for graduate degrees and professional certifications will help you attract and retain quality hires which saves you money in the long run. Performance bonuses are also common in these positions.

Competitive compensation is crucial, but additional perks and benefits can set your organization apart. As a standard, your company will want to offer medical insurance and a retirement plan. Consider other perks such as flexible work arrangements, and generous vacation policies, tuition reimbursement or continued learning stipends, gym and wellness memberships, employee discounts, and employer-sponsored charitable gift-giving.

Keep in mind that if you’re recruiting talent out of public industry, these individuals often earn high base salaries early in their careers, as well as earn annual bonuses. Attracting these candidates may require a different strategy.

Work-Life Balance

Creating a culture that embodies a healthy balance between personal and professional lives will always be attractive, especially to younger generations who are often seeking a more well-rounded lifestyle. Cultivating a work-life balance can be done by offering a combination of a hybrid work schedule, flexible work hours, and floating holidays.

For the finance and accounting sector, an increased work-life balance is most often sought after by those leaving public accounting for industry accounting. Public accounting is known for being a higher-stress environment with limited flexibility. By contrast, private industry is typically considered to have a lower-stress environment with flexible working conditions, especially compared to the high travel requirements that often comes with public accounting jobs. If you’re seeking candidates with a public accounting background, consider highlighting your company’s work-life balance and flexibility to attract high-quality talent.

Opportunities for Growth and Advancement

Highly qualified finance and accounting professionals are known to be ambitious and often seek opportunities for continuous growth in their careers. To attract these types of candidates, organizations need to emphasize professional development programs, mentorship initiatives, and defined career paths.

To appeal to growth-oriented individuals, communicate how the role contributes to the organization at large and how they can make a meaningful impact on the company’s success. Highlighting success stories of employees who have advanced within the company can be a powerful recruitment tool.

Technology and Innovation

Demonstrating a commitment to innovation by investing in cutting-edge financial technologies and providing training opportunities for employees can attract finance and accounting professionals looking to work with the latest tools and methodologies.

Fintech has given rise to many new roles that are now in high demand. These professionals thrive in environments that encourage experimentation, collaboration, and quick decision-making. Employers looking to invest in these emerging roles should emphasize that their culture values creativity and adaptability. A willingness to embrace change is an attractive factor to young talent who are looking for professional opportunities to use their skills for progress.

Attracting and recruiting highly qualified finance and accounting professionals requires a strategic approach. To assess your competitive advantage, source talent, and reduce time to hire, consider leveraging the expertise of a reputable staffing firm. Top Stack specializes in connecting employers with a vast network of pre-qualified finance and accounting talent. We prioritize building long-term relationships with our candidates, so we can connect you with not only active job seekers but also passive candidates who are waiting for the perfect job to find them.

Contact us now to see how we can elevate your team!

Using The STAR Method in a Job Interview

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Responding to behavioral questions during an interview may be one of the biggest challenges you will face. Behavioral interviews require you to share your skills by telling the hiring team about a time when you exhibited those traits. How you tell those stories will help land the job. But concise, compelling storytelling is a difficult thing to master. Fortunately, there is the STAR approach to help you nail the interview.

What is the STAR Job Interview Technique?

The STAR interview format can help guide your response to behavioral questions during the interview process. Following this framework will help you illustrate your skills by telling a real-life story about your work or life. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. When telling a story in response to an interview question, try to lay it out in the following manner:

  • Set the situation with the details of the work environment, team size, and responsibilities. Share the complexities of the scenario and the challenges your team faced.
  • Describe the tasks you were required to accomplish versus what your team handled. Be careful not to touch upon too much detail, or you’ll lose your audience.
  • Explain the action you took to change the course of the project. What steps did you take to achieve your goals or solve the problem?
  • Describe the result of your action, what you learned, and what outcomes occurred. How did the actions you took affect the overall outcomes of the project, your team, and the organization as a whole?

While you won’t be able to anticipate the interviewer’s exact question, think about some of your biggest accomplishments and the skills they illustrate. Have a few of these go-to responses in your back pocket in preparation for your next interview.

It’s very easy to go into a rambling monologue when asked a behavioral question. The STAR method helps you organize your thoughts and your response to an interviewer concisely and effectively.

When To Use STAR

Using STAR in response to behavioral questions is a great way to nail even the most challenging interview questions. You can spot these questions easily because they often follow a specific format that invites you to tell your story. For example:

  • Tell me about a time when you…
  • Describe a…
  • What do you do when…
  • Have you ever…
  • Can you give me an example of…

The last thing you want to do is get caught during the stress of an interview with no idea how to answer behavioral questions. The STAR method can help you practice your response before the interview so you can perform well under pressure.

Practicing the STAR Technique

Before going to your next interview, it’s a good idea to look at the company values if they’re posted on their website. Those values may be the kinds of examples you’ll need to answer questions during the interview. You can also think about the job you’re applying for and consider the kinds of skills you’ll need to exhibit to do the job well. Then use the STAR method to come up with a few concise stories that will illustrate you have the skills it takes to do the job well.

The best way to practice STAR is to get out there and interview. Top Stack can help you land your next interview. Contact our team today to explore your options.

Learn How to Answer the Interview Question “Tell Me About a Time You Demonstrated Leadership Skills”

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Interviewing is always hard, but it’s the behavioral questions that are probably the most challenging. Behavioral questions usually start with “Tell me about a time,” and they require you to tell your story to illustrate a relevant job skill. One of the most common behavioral questions is ones that require you to discuss past behaviors that illustrated leadership skills. Here’s how to answer these types of questions, even if you haven’t been a manager in a prior role.

How to Illustrate Leadership in an Interview

It’s difficult to answer the question, “Tell me about a time when you demonstrated leadership skills,” if you haven’t been in an official leadership position. However, no matter the job, you can demonstrate leadership skills. The trick is to recognize these skills in yourself and concisely find a story to share that shows when you took the initiative to help your team. But where do you start sifting through all of your work experiences to find the best story to share with an employer?

  • Step 1 — Define what leadership is to you.
    Leadership means different things to different people, so start by trying to figure out what it means to you. There are all kinds of ways to illustrate leadership. You can show that you’re a leader by decisively determining what skills you think a leader has. Do this by reflecting on what you admire in leaders and what qualities you embody that is similar. Try to make a list of those characteristics and then move to step two: Roadmap a situation from a prior role where you illustrated those qualities.
  • Step 2 — Roadmap the right story.
    When considering what leadership story to share, try thinking about the role itself and the company. Are there leadership skills that would be more important to the job? Does the project require working with cross-functional teams? In past jobs, have you lead these teams or help facilitate communication between different employees? Maybe you took the initiative somewhere other than work, perhaps at a volunteer event or other function. The point here is that you don’t need to have “leader” in your job title to be one.
  • Step 3 — Structure and practice your answer.
    Once you’ve figured out which story to share in answer to the question, “Tell Me About a Time You Demonstrated Leadership Skills,” you can use the STAR model to help guide your response:

    • Situation — What was the situation you were in when you illustrated leadership skills. Outline the details as clearly and concisely as possible.
    • Task — What was your responsibility during this situation?
    • Action — What did you do to make the result happen? What action did you take?
    • Results — Finally, what happened? What were the results of your actions? What did you learn as a result?

Questions about leadership skills are almost inevitable in every job interview. It’s very common because organizations tend to gravitate toward employees that illustrate these traits. Preparing now for these types of questions can help you succeed. Contact Top Stack today to find the best opportunities to suit your skills.

These Are The Qualities You Need to Be an Amazing Leader

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Companies are looking for leaders. You don’t need to be a CEO to exhibit leadership qualities that make you stand out to future employers. What are the qualities that employers look for in their future leaders and how do you measure up?

Top Leadership Qualities for 2024

What makes a leader? We believe that the workplace can hone leadership skills and that tomorrow’s leaders are within the ranks of today’s front line employees. Employers know this, too; that’s why top employers are always on the hunt for employees that they can count on to lead teams. But how can you know if you have the leadership skills that make you stand out to these employers?

Some of the best qualities include:

  • Empathy
    Understanding your coworkers and doing things that help them succeed is one way that empathy manifests in the workplace. Being a good listener and taking time to understand the needs of your boss and coworkers makes you empathetic and understanding.
  • Focus
    Having the single-minded focus to achieve a vision or even a set of tasks is an important skill that leaders exhibit. If you can see the prize, chart a path toward it, and then work hard to achieve it – it’s the kind of focus employers look for in future leaders.
  • Integrity
    Real leaders have integrity in their dealings with people and Integrity means that you try to always do the right thing and are respectful of others in the workplace and even in your life.
  • Mentorship
    How much time do you spend helping others? That quality of mentorship is a kind of give-back to your coworkers, but also to your friends and family as you make your way through life.
  • Presence
    Do people gravitate toward you? That presence is a quality evident in some of the greatest leaders of all time, and it means that your coworkers trust and will follow your lead.
  • Self-Improvement
    If you’re the kind of employee that always has goals to improve yourself or those around you, employers want to hear about it. The best leaders look around constantly to improve the organization and those within it. The best bosses work hard to support their team in growing and learning new skills.
  • Support
    Positivity in the workplace is an amazing skill set that can change the course of business. The best leaders lift others, supporting them in a goal or mission. It can inspire those around us to work harder to achieve goals and create change that can ripple across an organization.
  • Transparency
    Honesty is the human quality that translates to transparency in the workplace. It’s a form of credibility that takes responsibility and ownership for mistakes. Transparency is sincere, consistent, and it lets others know they can trust you.
  • Vision
    Leaders often have a clear-sighted view of what’s ahead and how to get there. They can communicate this vision and have a passion for the execution.

Leadership is crucial to every job, and employers always have their eyes out for individuals that exhibit these skills. If you believe you exemplify these characteristics, Top Stack, and the employers we represent, would like to speak with you. Contact us today.

How to Properly Use Social Media to Help Your Career

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Most people probably recognize that social media can both help and harm your career choices. These days most recruiters will track you down on social media and look for inappropriate postings that could disqualify you for a job. But social media can be a tool for good when it comes to your career. How can you use Internet social tools to improve your chances of landing a job?

R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find Out What it Means on Social Media

Building a positive social media presence requires exercising caution in what you post and what you respond to. Always be respectful in your dealings with other people. Be professional and consider if what you’re trying to say could be used against you in a job search. The most basic rule of thumb for social posts is never to use profanity or post something offensive. But beyond that, don’t take any controversial stance on social media that could hurt your career. Certainly, don’t post memes about how terrible your current role is.

LinkedIn is Your Friend

If you’re not on LinkedIn, now is the time. Make sure you have a professional headshot and a complete profile. Don’t use a selfie picture of you at a party or Disney World. Instead, keep it warmly professional and concise. Make sure if you post, you consider how it would look to an employer. It should be obvious that you don’t use the venue to trash your current employer. The benefit of LinkedIn, however, is that it’s a very active platform for recruiters. There is even a privacy setting on the platform that allows you to let recruiters know you’re looking for a position.

Speaking of Privacy Settings

You can certainly use social media like Instagram or Facebook to share your personal opinions. Still, you should always take advantage of their privacy settings, which allows you to lock down your settings. You can also change your profile name to a nickname or your first and middle names to keep things on the down-low.

Another way to keep things on the down-low is to be careful never to post during the workday. Certainly, don’t post any sensitive information about your company or the work you do. That’s a huge flag for potential employers. If you speak badly about your current company, many employers may wonder what you’ll say about them if you get the job.

Social Media for Job Seekers

The general rule for social media today is to post as if everyone is watching. Be respectful of others, and don’t post on controversial topics. Have a professionally polished presence on LinkedIn, and make sure your privacy settings for your personal, non-work accounts have the appropriate settings to keep these pages more private.

 

Talk with Top Stack for more helpful job search hints. Our team is here to help you find your next career opportunity.