You sent out the resume – you’re a perfect fit – and yet no one calls. Sound familiar? In fact, a majority of candidates today do not receive a response on a submitted resume. So the big question is, “When is it appropriate to follow-up with an employer on my submission and how do I do it?” There is no answer that will fit every scenario, but there are some good rules you should follow.

Here are some general rules.

Follow-up one to two weeks after you have submitted your resume. That is generally the amount of time most employers take to review all applicants and contact candidates of interest for an interview.

Make contact during the early morning hours when you have a better chance of reaching someone before she or he is bogged down with other tasks to do for the day.

Don’t follow-up just to ask if your resume was received – that can turn off an employer and does nothing to distinguish you. Instead, use this chance to distinguish yourself and build rapport. Identify the appropriate contact person and CALL them so you can have a conversation and emphasize your strengths. This is your opportunity to impress them with your insights, knowledge and intelligence and they love it when you demonstrate you have researched the company and know a lot about them.

For example, “Is this position for the new plant you announced in your latest press release? I should mention I have been the plant manager at two start-ups and beat production goals on both occasions.”

See the difference? Instead of being a nudge, you have reinforced your value proposition to the firm. It might make all the difference.

Following up is an opportunity to bring your candidacy to the top. Use these tips to help you stand out from the crowd.


Source: careerealism.com

I modified my previous post entitled, “LinkedIn is Sharing Your Private Information with Their Business Partners” based on information that I received directly from a LinkedIn representative. Apparently there has been some misunderstanding as to exactly what information is being used in LinkedIn’s social ads and it is NOT private information, it is only information available in your public profile. None-the-less you can still opt-out of your public information being shared in social ads by following this procedure:

* Hover over the user name in the top right hand corner of any LinkedIn page and click “Settings.”
* On the Settings page, click “Account.”
* On the Account tab, click “Manage Social Advertising.”
* Uncheck the box next to “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.”
* Click the “Save” button.

Users also may want to opt out of receiving e-mails from LinkedIn advertisers. This setting also allows LinkedIn advertising partners to spam users with promotions during e-mail marketing campaigns if the user follows the brand. To opt out of this setting, click the “E-mail Preferences” tab and click on the “Turn on/off partner InMail” link to locate the check boxes.

Feel free to read the entire post from LinkedIn regarding this issue entitled: Privacy, Advertising, and Putting Members First

Anthony J. Fasano, CEO and founder of Powerful Purpose Associates and author of Engineer Your Own Success, is a nationally recognized professional coach, author and inspirational speaker specializing in the areas of career growth and development as well as leadership.

By Jan Masaoka

Nonprofit board members are often puzzled when it comes to setting the salary of the executive director. On one hand, we want to keep our talented staff; on the other hand, we know the budget is tight. Some legal and practical guidelines:

It’s maddening and ironic that the press focuses on the extremely rare cases of high salaries for nonprofit executives, when salaries in nonprofits are typically 20% - 40% less than their counterparts in foundations, local government, and the business sector. Mistaken public perception that nonprofit salaries are high has even led to New Jersey now limiting the amount [4] of state funds that can be spent on nonprofit executive salaries.

But despite the press, community nonprofit boards are more frequently worried that they are paying their executives too little, a feeling shared by many executive directors themselves.

Unfortunately, survey data is often of little use, because of small sample sizes, samples weighted towards universities, and the reality that all surveys show enormous variation in salaries for nonprofits of the same fields and sizes. An example of the inconsistency of data: one recent national survey showed average executive director salary to be $60,000 while another reported $158,000.

“Under $50,000, people aren’t going to move,” says Karen Beavor of the Georgia Center for Nonprofits, publisher of the online nonprofit jobs site Opportunity Knocks [5]. “But any search at $100K, $150K is recruiting from a national pool. Look at a number of surveys, including both national and local.”

On the web, salaries for “key employees” who are paid $100,000 a year or more are posted at Guidestar [6] in the Forms 990 that US nonprofits (with annual revenues of $25,000 or more) are required to file. (If the executive is on the board the salary will be in the board section.) In other words, by going to this website anyone can find out the salary of the top staff in most nonprofits.

Legal guidelines

As part of preventing “excess compensation,” U.S. federal law (Prop. Regs. Sec. 53.4958-4) notes that nonprofits should pay “reasonable compensation,” defined as “an amount as would ordinarily be paid for like services by like enterprises under like circumstances.” Not exactly the clearest statement. Regrettably, it’s not hard to find law firms that always seem able to discover that the proposed compensation fits these imprecise guidelines. We know one nonprofit with five staff that pays its CEO $375,000 . . . blessed by an expensive legal report.

In California, nonprofits with non-governmental income of $2 million or more are now required to have the board approve the salaries of the CEO/executive director as well as that of the CFO. A good idea in any event, but with a median salary of $75,000 for nonprofits with budgets between $1 million and $2.5 million, excess compensation hardly seems like the biggest problem.

Men still get paid more at the same size organization (surprised?)

More disturbing than generally low salaries are the gender differences in salary. Despite the predominance of women in nonprofit executive positions around the country, male executives make significantly more than their female colleagues do. This is true at five of the six sizes of organizations studied. The gender gap is especially wide at agencies with budgets of more than $5 million. In one study, the average salary nationally for women executives of nonprofits with budgets between $5 million to $10 million was $82,314. At this same budget size, the average salary for men was $98,739.

Relative to whose salary?

In this era when people discuss their sex lives on TV talk shows, information about salaries is still very, very private. Most of us don’t know the salaries of our siblings, our neighbors, our colleagues, our best friends. As a result of such a meager data set, people fall back on our own salaries as the main comparison.

To a board member who makes $40K a year, paying the executive director $90K a year seems exorbitant and unnecessary. A board member on the same board who makes $300K a year may feel that $90K is too low to get anybody competent. And to another board member with a government job, the $90K might seem too high, but this board member hasn’t taken into account that she’ll get 60% of her salary every year for the rest of her life once she retires . . . while the executive director will get 0 when she retires.

Executive director salaries are often very close to the salaries of other employees, in a phenomenon called “compressed salaries.” In contrast to Walmart, where the CEO makes more in an hour than low-level employees make in a year [7], an executive who makes $75,000 is often making just twice that of the lowest paid employee.

Why executive directors are so bad at asking for raises

One executive director told us about steeling herself mentally for an upcoming discussion with the board about her salary. She was determined to ask for a 10% raise. But when she got to the meeting, the board told her they were giving her a 25% raise! She was thrilled! But as she was driving home, it hit her: Now I have to RAISE the money.

Because the executive director’s salary typically acts as a ceiling, keeping the executive director’s salary low also serves to keep other salaries low. Executives know that a raise in their own salary of, say, $10,000, will mean $50,000 in raises across all other positions . . . $60,000 more to raise next year.

This question of how much to pay usually arises in one of two quite different settings: when hiring a new executive director and when discussing a raise for a current executive director. When hiring a new ED, boards typically choose a salary designed to attract strong candidates. Later, the same board may end up ignoring salary as a retention tool, and instead focus only on percentage increases. Some of the objectives and factors to take into consideration:

1. Competitive: The executive director’s salary should make the organization competitive in the market for talent. To where is your executive director most likely to leave? From where are you most likely to recruit your next ED? If the answer is a similar nonprofit, look at the salaries of comparable nonprofits in the area. (But keep in mind that salaries at very similar nonprofits can be different by factors of 10 or more.) If the answer is government, look at the kinds of positions your ED might take, and what salary and benefits are being offered.

2. Fair internally: The salary is fair in the context of other salaries in the organization. How much are other employees making? How distant or how close a spread do you think is appropriate?

3. Future-looking and strategic: The ED’s salary for the coming year reflects the contribution we expect the ED to make this coming year, not as a reward for past contributions. Performance in the last year gives us the best clues about how well the ED will do next year, but this year’s salary is not a reward for last year’s work. If an executive is underpaid, recruiting his successor will be more difficult within the budget. Even more importantly, if all wages have been kept under a low ceiling, you may find it difficult to recruit and keep a qualified, committed workforce. There are many more reasons than salary why people go to work at a nonprofit, but low salaries narrow the pool of applicants to those who can afford low salaries . . . often inadvertently meaning that only upper middle class people can afford to work there.

4. Sending a message: The ED’s salary should send the appropriate signal to the ED, to the staff, and to others. Words are important, but so is money. Praising an executive director while keeping her compensation flat ends up conveying a message that the board doesn’t really value her work. In the same way, giving an inadequate executive a raise while quietly considering her termination sends a mixed signal you may later hear about in a wrongful termination lawsuit.

5. Don’t over-pay a so-so executive because you’re a large or prestigious organization. Over-paying a so-so executive can encourage “cooking the books,” and an over-paid person will fight more aggressively against termination.

6. Within the budget: Neither the ED’s salary — or other salaries — should cause undue financial stress on the organization. The board has a responsibility to keep the total costs of the organization (including the executive director’s salary) in an affordable range.

Sometimes when hiring a new director it may be appropriate to invest “venture capital” to offer a higher salary. In an experiment by the Neighborhood Investment Corporation, $5,000 and $10,000 grants were made to local groups to raise the salary offered to a new executive. The theory was that by offering more, a better qualified person could be hired and such a person could raise enough money to meet the new costs as well as bring up all salaries. In some cases, boards did succeed in hiring at a new level of competence and the model was proven correct. But in other cases, boards still were unable to attract talent with which they were satisfied.

7. Consider other aspects of compensation:
Retirement benefits, an extra week of vacation, dental insurance, or other benefits are important to attracting and keeping talent. “We’re even seeing people pay more attention to benefits than to salary,” commented Regina Birdsell of the Southern California Center for Nonprofit Management [8], which maintains a job site and publishes wage and benefits surveys. “Be sure to put retirement benefits, longer vacations, flexible work hours into your job advertisement.”

Whatever you pay your executive director, it’s a good idea to have the salary reviewed and approved by the board annually, preferably in the context of performance evaluation and the budget for the upcoming year. The simple step of assigning one person to look up the salaries of comparable organizations can set a helpful context for the board.

Given the importance of the executive director to the organization’s success, boards often spend very little time thinking about his or her salary, and perhaps even less talking it over with the executive. Setting the top salaries is a strategic choice that boards should not be shy about bringing into the open and discussing with candor.


Blue Avocado
This article was reprinted with permission from Blue Avocado, an online magazine for nonprofits with practical, timely and fun information. Subscribe free by sending an email to editor@blueavocado.org

By: Aine Creedon

In this job market a nonprofit may receive hundreds of resumes for a single position. The people who screen these resumes have to distinguish the promising from the less promising and even the seemingly insane.

Last week, after a few months of recruiting for our own needs and reading the same stock phrases over and over again, we at NPQ decided to ask our readers to advise job applicants on how to craft winning cover letters and resumes. The responses were many, some briskly curmudgeonly and some lovingly helpful, but everyone cited something that made them cringe. We learned what employers hate (grand but vague statements about why you are great) and what they love (specificity and authenticity).

Some respondents to our question, as we said, were largely sympathetic to the plight of job seekers in a job market overrun with hopefuls and where digital communications are the norm. As one executive director wrote,

“Sometimes people are advised to put silly things in their resumes because, at least initially, when it is sent to a larger organization a real person may not read it. They now have software that scans resumes looking for key phrases and they will reject resumes that don’t have them, or have too few of them. I think it is why so many resumes sound so ‘canned’—they are. But job applicants should understand they need to tailor their resumes for the job and not just send the same one over and over. . . . We recently hired a receptionist and we received 110 resumes. I think at least 100 of them had ’strong organizational skills’ and would have been ‘an asset to your company.’”

The boilerplate approach, while safe, does not distinguish one resume from another, and you do want to be noticed (in a good way, not for mentioning your pet by name in your cover letter – true story).

What potential employers are looking for in a cover letter and resume should be no surprise: a clear description of your accomplishments and how they relate to the job being advertised. Educational accomplishments are nice but nonprofit leaders, like most employers, want the straight dope: When have you done a job or a task like this before? What were the results? Descriptions of your attitude, personality, and massive self-esteem aside, what have you done that prepares you for this position?

And it would be nice to have a sense that the job seeker knows to whom they have sent the application. Avoid submitting a general resume for a specific job. Tailoring resumes and cover letters to the job description is essential. Mentioning what you know about the company’s reputation and why the company’s mission is important to you and to the world is a great way to entice an employer. Sending out dozens of carefully customized letters and only hearing back from half can be discouraging, but those letters are the only way to show that you “get” the organization and understand their mission. Stating that a job will fit in with your family schedule or career path is nice but does not speak to the employer’s end of the deal. What skills can you bring to this position that will advance the organization’s goals? As another reader wrote,

“I appreciate when an applicant talks about the organization’s mission, and how it has meaning for them and why they want to work toward achieving that mission. That will win big points with me over ‘multi-tasker’ and ‘results driven’ any day!”

And remember that sloppiness can and will destroy any letter or resume. Who wants to hire an “enthusiastic go-getter” who addresses Ms. CEO as “Sir” or who cuts-and-pastes cover letters while forgetting to replace the Tri-City Mental Health Center with the Sunshine Food Co-op? Not the best way to show that you and the organization are meant for one another. It’s a little like being called “Sally” by your significant other when “Sally” ain’t your name. Inform yourself about the organization, and when you write the letter mention things that will make the reader believe that you know what they do.

And be careful to proofread—especially if you are claiming to be an exacting perfectionist. Reread your work, then edit again, and after that look it over twice more. Done proofreading? Give it to a friend, family member, or co-worker to look over—or better yet, give it to all three. If you are raving about your amazing grant writing or editing skills, don’t undermine your case with misplaced apostrophes, and beware of trendy language that apparently irritates the heck out of some screeners, one of whom pleaded, “Avoid the disturbing trend of turning nouns into verbs.” Tasked, impacted, messaged: these are all words that can be replaced.

Some additional terms to stay away from, just because they are outrageously common and may end up having little meaning to the readers: multi-tasker, enthusiastic, expert, visionary, collaborative work style, listening skills, passionate, impactful, accountable. Most of these words are just filler jargon and don’t say anything to differentiate your skills from the rest of the crowd. And don’t say you will be “the ideal candidate for the job,” because you can bet 25 others have as well, and in any case the organization will be the judge of that.

What’s Your Track Record?

Employers don’t want to hear about your “exceptional organizational skills” unless you can back them up with concrete examples. A concise list of accomplishments is always appreciated.

One manager provided a list of words he thought would be useful to see in relation to specific achievements. They were: created, increased, reduced, improved, developed, researched, accomplished, won, on-time, and under-budget.

Another reader said, “I like to see phrases that are evidence-based, such as ‘increased grant funding by 15% over three years,’ or ‘developed and implemented a program to improve parenting skills,’ etc.”

Yet another wrote, “I get excited when I see things like ‘Increased membership from 2,000 to 5,000 over a 7 year period through direct mail programs, Facebook campaigns, and board member parties.’ A nice bulleted list of accomplishments really gets my attention.”

If you don’t have a track record yet, describe what you bring to the table. If your skills don’t exactly match the particular position being advertised, express the willingness and capability to learn. And even if you don’t get the job, saying “Keep me in mind – I love your organization” might very well be noticed and get you a call back at a later time.

Now that NPQ has examined the pet peeves of resume screeners, let’s turn this conversation around. What hiring skills do managers need to improve on? We’d like to hear some interview horror stories. What’s the best and worst way for employers to handle potential employees?

Source: Nonprofit Quarterly

Any hiring process takes thoughtful planning. But for nonprofit organizations, which often face time and money constraints, and whose staff are highly driven by passion and commitment to a cause, the planning process takes on new meaning. It becomes even more important in this type of environment to ensure that the hiring process is done efficiently, and reaps the best candidates for the senior roles that nonprofits seek to fill.

To explore how to run a good process, we spoke to Tom Friel, the retired chairman and chief executive officer of Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. Friel is a senior advisor to The Bridgespan Group, and a longtime nonprofit board member. Here he shares his top 10 tips on running a hiring process.

1. Assess your existing team and talent against the mission.
The process of hiring a senior person is time-consuming and often expensive, so understanding what talent already exists on your team can provide an important lens into what your organization really needs. “A lot of organizations hire for a perceived need without doing it against the background of understanding what the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and the staff are, particularly against that need,” Friel said. Failure to do an assessment can lead an organization to hire for skills it might already have or for abilities that are not as critical to the organization.

2. Determine whether you can meet the need by promoting someone or changing job descriptions.
“All good organizations look to promote first before they look to hire; it’s smart business, it’s good for morale, and it’s cost effective,” said Friel. However, as organizations get bigger, promoting gets more difficult. “The bigger the organization gets, the more likely that the talent will get hidden away,” said Friel. Organizations can lose track of “young stars” or department heads may not be willing to give up exceptional talent. “In a good organization, you look across the organization and move people around to their greatest need, and you give people opportunities to get promoted.”

3. Create a realistic compensation and benefits package.
“Never say, ‘We’ll pay what it takes to get the right person’— that’s nonsensical,” Friel warned. Instead, set a top limit, and then explore other, non-monetary opportunities that could help you attract the best candidates. “Force your organization to be clear and precise,” Friel said. If your organization feels challenged by what it can offer in salary, there are a number of ways you can deal with compensation apart from absolute salaries and/or bonuses. “There are benefits that have great value to a candidate,” he added. The ability to work from home once or twice a week, daycare, extra vacation time, and education assistance are just a few of the options nonprofits can offer. Even openly stating that a candidate will have the flexibility to earn additional income doing something apart from his or her job can be a benefit. One such opportunity could be allowing an employee to join a for-profit board or to do some consulting for which s/he could get paid.

Be creative in how your organization deals with gaps in salary. “The key to a successful negotiation is to find something that has great perceived value to one party and low perceived cost to the other, and give them that with great fanfare,” Friel said.

4. Agree on “must-haves.”
You have “CPA required” for the role you wish to fill, but is a CPA really necessary? “If this question gets answered with two paragraphs of explanation, it’s really not required, it’s desired,” Friel said. Stress the point that your organization needs to come to clarity on what is required, what is highly desired, and what is just nice to have.

Add to this part of the process an “acid test.” Determine those few, absolute must-have experiences or capabilities, and then agree with the team that these are no-compromise items. “These must-haves become the three or four things that your team or recruiter can use as absolute filters to take a big bunch of resumes down to 50,” Friel said. The list of must-haves should be small—three, four, or five—according to Friel. They can be degrees, compensation ranges, etc., but they need to be thoughtfully chosen, as they will serve to help your organization filter candidate resumes into A and B piles. “There might be some wonderful people in the B pile, and if you’re screening them out on things that aren’t critical, then you’ve made the wrong choice on one of these acid test items, and you have compromised the search,” warned Friel.

5. Next, create a second “nice-to-have” list. What other qualifications does your organization feel will make candidates an asset, but which aren’t critical capabilities? This second list will provide another filter with which to screen candidates and help your team reach consensus on what and who it really needs.

6. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
Now that you know what you want in a candidate, you have to make great candidates want to apply for the position. Create a list of selling points and test it on someone objective from outside the organization. “There’s an old adage, sell the sizzle not the steak,” said Friel. “When you deal with a good car salesman, they’re not talking about the features of the car; they’re talking about how you’re going to feel about yourself in that car,” he added. “Until someone makes a feature real and personal, it doesn’t have any value.” “This also is where an organization has to project its passion about its mission among other things,” said Friel.

In creating this list, ask yourself:

What would a great candidate want, and can we provide it?

What might be frustrations that candidates are feeling in their current roles or with their current organizations?

How might our opportunity address those frustrations?

What can make this opportunity stand out among others the best candidates might see?

“Clearly, hiring someone isn’t all about selling; it’s about evaluating candidates against the mission as well,” Friel said. “But the best jobs and best hiring is done when an organization is really tough on qualifications, which means you’re only looking at really good candidates who probably aren’t desperate for this job. Then you have to find a way to convince the best candidate that he’s the one you need to hire, for a position only he can really fit,” Friel added. “That’s pure selling.”

Warned Friel, “You can always come back to things to evaluate, but if you didn’t make the sale, you won’t have the opportunity to go back, they’re gone—once you stop selling, your opportunity to do any more evaluating is over.”

7. Establish a search strategy, budget, and timeline.
How are you going to find the best candidates? Will you advertise in newspapers, use job boards, leverage personal networks, and/or recruiters? If your organization will handle recruiting internally, determine how much time it will take and who will be involved in the process, and then calculate how much it might cost to engage those internal people in the process. The sooner your organization can establish a strategy for finding the best candidates, the sooner you can budget time and money for the process. In the case of a timeline, Friel said it can take about 90 days to find and close the right candidate for a senior-level position at a nonprofit. “It could be 45 days on the low end if you get lucky fast, and it even could be six months if you don’t,” he added. 8. Determine who will interview candidates and to what end. Oftentimes organizations are unclear about what roles current staff will play during the interview process. “A candidate comes in and she interviews with five people, all of whom ask her the same questions. Or all of whom sell the organization and ask her no questions,” Friel said. Besides frustrating the candidate, this type of inattention to process can result in hiring the wrong person for the job.

When assembling an interview team, be sure to be clear about the time commitment individuals will need to make and their roles in the process.

For instance, determine:

What are the team members being asked to do? Express opinion, play an advisory role, sell the organization?

Who on the team will be part of the decision-making process when it comes time to choose a candidate?

Who will negotiate and close?

Who will manage the process and communication with the team and with the candidates?

If four or five people are interviewing, it is important that the core interview team commit to interviewing every serious candidate so there are fair comparisons. “If you’re going to be part of the process, you need to be available and committed to see all candidates,” said Friel. “And everyone on the team should have something specific to do to avoid redundancy.”

9. Stay flexible…not everything goes according to plan!
As important as good planning is, recruiting is a very human process, often influenced by many unpredictable factors. Some can help you, as when the perfect candidate appears early and is an easy sell. Some will hurt, such as a long negotiation that falls apart for unforeseeable or trivial reasons. It’s important to keep a sense of balance and even a sense of humor. You can’t control everything. Stay flexible, but keep everyone focused on the goal, not the frustrations of the process. In the end you’ll get it done.

10. When the search is completed and announced, close it out professionally.
Say thank you to those who helped and to the candidates who weren’t chosen. “You may want to go back to both in the future,” said Friel. A well-conducted search should make the organization friends, not enemies.

Source: Bridgestar

By Carol Gee

Every organization has them: those employees that make work life difficult for us. Maybe you currently work with a few of them. Maybe you’ve worked with a few of them in the past. Perhaps you (gasp) even work for one of them.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous if everyone you worked with or managed got along well day in and day out? I’m talking no theatrics, bickering, or complaining. I’m talking simply nonstop productivity from the start of the work day to close of business. Okay, I admit I frequently exist in a dream world. What writer doesn’t?

Many of us recognize these individuals below:

The Know-It-All. This individual has an opinion on everything. They can be male or female. When they are wrong, they tend to get defensive.

The “Yes” Person. Again, gender does not matter. These individuals agree to anything, to any commitment. However, while they agree with the consensus, they frequently fail to follow through on commitments.

The Dictator. In truth, these individuals are bullies. They try to intimidate. They are often demanding and can be quite critical.

The “No” Person. These individuals are quick to point out why something will not work. They also tend to be inflexible.

The Griper. This person may also go by the name, complainer. Is anything ever right for these folks? Frustratingly, these individuals prefer complaining instead of trying to find solutions to whatever is the problem.

The Blamers. They blame others for everything. Nothing is ever this person’s fault. Blamers always see others as responsible for their difficulties. Blaming others for their poor choices or decisions is one way for these individuals to avoid taking responsibility for their lives.

While the following may not actually have a name, they too can make us crazy. These include:

People who always take everything personally. These folks can remain in ‘hurt’ mode for days.

Those individuals who like to practice one-upmanship. With these individuals everything turns into a competition. For instance, you share your latest travel horror story. (Who among us hasn’t had one)? Without fail, this individual will have a bigger, more horrible version of their own trip.

Why do these folks act the way they do? The truth is there may be many reasons. Learning the why and then how to work with or alongside these individuals, other employees will be less of a target for these folks’ dramas.

One way to do this might be to try to find some common ground with the difficult individual. Better yet, why not take them aside and try to find out what is causing the behavior? Often work colleagues are dealing with a problem in their private lives for which colleagues may be unaware. A loved one’s illness or other stressors can affect a person’s entire demeanor.

Another way might be acknowledging the contributions of those who helped you to accomplish a task or made a project a success. Doing this, coworkers will value you as a colleague. You’ll have accomplished your own work goals, and perhaps even helped them during the process. An added bonus– your supervisor or other management will see you as a team player.

Managers who have or have had to deal with the above or other employee antics also have their work cut out for them. The big question: how to motivate a change in these folks? One way may be through helping these employees to identify their particular strengths. After all, everyone has a particular strength or a specific talent or skill. Building upon an employee’s strengths in a manner that will enhance productivity within the company is a smart investment to make.

Complimenting, recognizing and praising their specific contributions may go a long way in motivating a change within these negative Nellies. Helping employees harness their best abilities also benefits the organization immensely. And you don’t have to be a manager to do this. However, this recognition and understanding will also help those in charge to improve their leadership skills.

Sadly, dealing with difficult colleagues will always be a factor throughout our working lives. How skillfully we deal with them will reflect both upon our professionalism and career success.

About the Author
Carol Gee, M.A. has worked in education for 28 years in positions ranging from teaching to administration. Currently she is an editor and business writer at Goizueta Business School at Emory University. She is also the author of books, The Venus Chronicles and Diary of a ‘Flygirl’ Wannabe (Life Lessons of a Cool Girl in Training)
www.venuschronicles.net

Comment below if you deal with difficult coworkers in your office.