Editors Note: This is a guest post written by Heidi Holmes, Managing Director of Adage.com.au – Australia’s leading job board for mature age workers. Her opinions are her own.

Spoilt, lazy, flippant, needy, disloyal.

As a Gen Y employee, these are some of the first assumptions an employer could potentially make about me if I were to go to a job interview tomorrow.

While we are acutely aware that age discrimination and negative stereotyping does exist in Australia, it is not fair to assume that only older people experience this. For most of us, in either our career or general life, we will be faced with other peoples’ biases. Unfortunately it is a fact of life.

Generational Stereotyping

Putting personal biases and stereotyping aside, how can we ensure as a nation we are proactively engaging with all segments of the community who are willing and able to make a productive contribution?

Through my own experiences with Adage.com.au, it has become more apparent for the need to commercialise the benefits mature age workers bring to the table. Mature workers will reward you with loyalty, reliability, IP, knowledge and lower employee turnover. Yet these benefits seem to only resonate with a few employers. Many chose to focus their attention to building a younger workforce and in the process neglect the mature worker in their recruitment and retention strategies.

There is no doubt that the past decade has seen employers take a frantic flight to youth, often at the expense of mature workers. The rationale: Gen Y, despite some of the negative stereotypes I mentioned at the beginning, are viewed as tech savvy, energetic, cheap and more malleable to taking on a company’s way of doing things.

However, as this younger workforce has matured, organisations have come to realise, as just like any other generation, they present their own challenges in continuing to keep them motivated and managing them effectively.

For the first time in history an employee today could potentially be working with colleagues from four different generations

While this does present some organisational management issues, it also presents a number of opportunities.

Whether you are Gen Y, Gen X or a Baby Boomer, the fact remains that we are all intertwined. It is naïve to assume that Gen Y or X are ignorant or disinterested in the plight faced by many mature workers – some are actually their parents. Many have also benefited from working directly with older workers who may have mentored them or guided them in their careers. Yet this is a phenomenon rarely discussed or celebrated.

Inevitably, what will drive employers to change and embrace mature workers, is a tangible commercial benefit,  which I believe is achievable through a coordinated intergenerational approach.

Productivity and leadership: articulating the connection

In the most recent Productivity Pulse report released by Ernst & Young in early May, Australian workers said they could be up to 21% more productive every day if they could change just one or two things at work.

After a period of cost cutting and restructuring, employers can no longer rely on these methods to improve productivity as there is simply little left to cut. The next wave of productivity improvement will need to be driven by innovative initiatives focussed on people and processes.

The Australian Institute of Management’s recent Skills Gap Report, found that despite a ‘two-speed’ economy, and an overwhelming number of organisations restructuring their workforce in the past couple of years, 77% of Australian organisations still reported a skills gap.

However, what is interesting is where these ‘skills’ were lacking. It was not in the area of vocational skills but rather middle management and leadership filling the top two spots.

If we cross-reference and compare these results to the EY report an interesting story begins to develop. EY found that the least productive workers (dubbed the lost souls) who tend to be junior employees aged between 25 and 34 and have been with a company less than three years, are the most disengaged workers wasting up to one and a half hours a day. Their disengagement is attributed to poor people management and a failure to take personal responsibility, suggesting a need for better engagement and leadership from middle management.

However, these are the very skills identified by employers as the hardest to find, so there is no wonder junior employees are floundering.

The Mature Age Workforce

Who better to provide guidance and leadership than those who have the ability, gained from hard experience, to make good decisions when information is limited, have the capacity to stand back and evaluate a situation based on the issues at hand; and, possess the ability to cut through ‘noise’ and focus on the things that really matter?

All of these skills can be used to guide younger employees in their careers and provide them with a source of teaching that can’t be accessed at university or via an online course.

Unfortunately more often than not the employer makes the assumption that culturally in the workplace, young and old do not work efficiently together.

Yet research has shown that younger generations, particularly Gen Y share similar values to older generations such as sense of community and loyalty to friends and family. There is a willingness to want to learn and work closer with older, more experienced managers and colleagues.

Not surprisingly a respectful organisation is a productive one. In order to better facilitate communication and interaction between more junior and more senior employees, organisations need to invest in a number of people strategies.

The Power of Mentoring

One of the least expensive and most effective strategies organisations can deploy is mentoring. Studies show that there is a positive correlation between a positive mentoring experience and an increase in productivity, employee retention and job satisfaction.

When generations work together in strategic, business-related activities such as mentoring, everyone benefits.

Organisations that choose to embrace an age diverse workforce will be rewarded with lower employee turnover, more engaged and motivated workers, a sustainable talent pipeline and effective knowledge management.

If we can demonstrate to employers that mature age workers are the key to unlocking future productivity gains with their younger workers, we will eventually see the mature workforce embraced rather than ignored.

Heidi Holmes is the Managing Director of Adage.com.au a mature age job search site and online community for jobseekers aged 45-plus. If you would like to find out more about the benefits of mature workers please contact Heidi directly at Heidi@adage.com.au.

Editors Note: This is a guest post written by Caroline Gilroy – Principal Consultant at Purple Lightbulb. Her opinions are her own.

Ever since I was a small child I have seen the benefits of networking.

My father worked in mass market retailing and he used his well-honed networking skills to engage with clients, suppliers and prospects to build his business. Some of my earliest memories of my father are being with him at corporate events when he was meeting new people and building trusted relationships with them. He was very successful in business because of it.

He was a great role model and through him I pursued an early career in corporate hospitality. My first jobs were at White Hart Lane, Tottenham Hotspur’s homeground and then at Twickenham Rugby Ground. Through these part-time roles I witnessed networking on a larger scale.

I have lived and breathed networking all my life and I highly value its importance for business people. Investing your time in building and developing long-term relationships won’t necessarily translate into immediate profits but it will build strong businesses in the medium- to long-term and provide many other additional benefits.

How powerful is the statement: “I know someone who can …” when someone says it to you?

If you want it to be you that everyone knows, thinks of and recommends, you have to be a good networker and be comfortable building relationships.

Here are the eight key reasons to network:

1. Driving word-of-mouth recommendations 

This is the essential reason for networking. The more people you know who know what you do the more recommendations you will get. Successful businesses are built on referrals.

2. Encouraging mentors 

Networking helps you to find people with lots of business experience who are often very willing to share their knowledge with you. Successful business people are usually generous with advice particularly with people open to listening.

3. Finding suppliers

Networking is a great way to find the best suppliers and to build value-for-money relationships.  Whatever sort of supplier you are looking for, whether it is an accountant, copywriter, recruiter, web designer, or insurance broker you will come across them all in your networks. Finding suppliers that network often provides opportunities for two-way business.

4. Understanding market opportunities

Networking is a great way to broaden your thinking and to find new ideas to find potential clients or see different target markets that you hadn’t thought of. People you meet networking often can help you to identify new market opportunities you might not have thought of. Some people you meet may offer synergies with what you do.

5. Getting new ideas and innovations

Meeting other business people and talking about business is a fantastic way of learning new ways to do business. Every business is different and all business people have their own ideas. Finding out how people in other industries, other markets or with different products get business helps you to generate new ideas and perhaps adapt other people’s innovations to your own business.

6. Finding inspiration 

Entrepreneurs share a common energy. Mixing with people who have to rely on their own resources to survive and who have to think outside the square to get the edge on their competitors is always an inspiration. Meeting business people who have the same difficulties but are willing to share their solutions is a great encouragement.

7. Improving your communication

Getting out there and introducing yourself and your business to strangers soon teaches you the best way to get your message across. At first it can be very hard but practice and familiarity soon makes it second nature. I have seen some people transform from shy beginners to confident crowd-players as their experience builds.

8. Making great new friends 

Although we focus on business, networking can also bring you wonderful new friends. It can’t fail to! You share your ideas, your goodwill and your enthusiasm for business with like-minded people. Strong friendships combined with strong business alliances are very powerful forces in building your network.

Purple Lightbulb is a business advisory firm working with small businesses and not for profits to support them in the areas of strategic development, marketing, business and client relationship development, and operations. Purple Lightbulb acts as an extension of a team on a short- or long-term basis to enable business owners to focus on what they do best, whilst also building their business smartly and confidently.

I’ve never been a fan of the chaos at a suburban shopping mall on a weekend or a public holiday … until now!

After spending nearly half an hour driving around at a snails pace looking for a parking spot, I gave up and threw my money at valet parking!

Somebody else could park my unashamedly branded car.

Mayhem would be an understatement as literally thousands of people battled the mid-year clearance sale madness; kids being dragged from store to store screaming as their sugar highs from too many donuts or cookies kicked in …

What on earth had possessed me to go today?

Valet Parking Vacancies

I was minding my own business – a man on a mission. It wouldn’t take long.

Every now and then I heard announcements over the centre’s PA system … someone had left their car headlights on; a car alarm had been activated; an unidentified sports bag had been found outside Coles and had been taken to security on level one …

Then …

“Could the owner the white Corolla … ‘RecruitLoop – a Smarter Way to Hire‘ please return to Valet Parking” …

At first I thought “What have they done to my car?” … but that quickly became “Maybe they’ll repeat it if I don’t go back down straight away.”

Five minutes later … ”Could the owner the white Corolla …”  I couldn’t have asked for a better branding exercise!

I went back down to the car park.

The valet parking manager came out and introduced himself to me before letting me know that in the new financial year he’d be looking to hire a few more parking attendants and wanted to know if we could help him recruit them!

Absolutely!

When I asked him why he hadn’t called the number on the back of the car and he told me he was about to finish his shift and figured I’d be in the centre and he wanted to meet me!

Nice one!

Car Park Candidate Cover Letter

The attendant brought my car around and I drove out of the car park.

When I got home I noticed some folded paper lodged under my windscreen wiper. I was about to throw it out thinking it was just the valet parking ticket when I noticed it was a supermarket receipt with some scrawly hand writing on it.

“I figure you must be a recruiter. I’m looking for a part-time job during school hours. Please call me on 0407 38…” I couldn’t quite make out all the digits.

I couldn’t believe it. A stranger was asking me to help find her a job!

I guess I should point out here that RecruitLoop doesn’t work directly with candidates like a traditional recruitment agency might. Our recruiters work with employers with live vacancies and will then advertise or search for specific candidates accordingly. So our recruiters work with immediately available candidates on a project by project basis.

On second thoughts … if you’d like to be a valet parking attendant in the new financial year, I might just have the perfect role for you!

Editors Note: This is a guest post written by Phil Preston, motivational speaker, facilitator and innovation practitioner who is also a Co-founder and Director of Presentability. His opinions are his own.

As Dan approaches the stage, clutching his autocue (iPad) like a drowning man would a life vest, he says he has to sit down because he has shaky legs. Plus he hasn’t given a speech since high school so he tells us he’ll probably be ‘crap’. The audience has a moment of reserved but heightened anxiety and prepares for the worst. Ten minutes later, we find ourselves roaring with laughter.

What went wrong with this scene – or should I say, ‘What went right?’

Dan is what I call a Dark Horse Speaker.

This is the name I give to speakers who knock out audiences, although based on a technical analysis they should have died an agonising death on stage. When I think about big impact speeches I’ve heard in my lifetime, I find that I’m drawn to ones that, on conventional measures, should have failed.

Another example: the best man’s speech at my friend, Wayne’s, wedding. There was no fanfare, no polished gestures or amusing rhetorical advances. No PowerPoint slides, remotely funny jokes – not even eye contact. It was read from a scrappy piece of paper. What you saw was what you got.

The reason I remember it so distinctly though is because he relayed three instances from his childhood days that were significant to him, and at the end of each one he used a refrain to emphasise that Wayne had been there with him. For example, he ended one story with “When I got in my first fight, Wayne was there”.

By the end of his short speech, we were touched and there was barely a dry eye in the house.

I thought, that was a great mechanism, using examples and then finishing with a similarly structured refrain after each one. But there must be more to it than that! The other speaker, Dan, didn’t use this structure – he used a list of ten things he’d abjectly failed at and was funny and memorable for very different reasons, including his sharp, dry humour.

What is the common denominator here? How do we make sense of this?

The answer came in the form of a TED speech by Brené Brown, an expert in the area of … wait for it … vulnerability and shame.

In it, she talks about the personal success she experienced after her first TED speech, taking calls from businesses, schools and conference organisers all over the US who wanted her to come and speak to them. Except many of them asked if she could speak on something other than vulnerability or shame!

Brené enquired as to what they would like her to speak about, and the three top answers she received were creativity, innovation and change. To this she replied, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity, innovation and change”. It all started making sense. It clicked inside my head that I had unlocked the secret, or gained possession of the saddle, bridle and reigns, of the Dark Horse Speaker.

The common thread between Dan and Wayne’s best man – and to the handful of others I would add to my ‘great speech’ list – was the presence of vulnerability. They didn’t own the stage; they didn’t have polished skills; they were vulnerable. It put us, the audience, on edge. And as their speeches unfolded from their tentative beginnings, their imperfect but authentic character shone through. We felt relieved and exhilarated, we rooted for them as we would an underdog and we shared in a special celebration of communal joy when they overcame the odds and succeeded.

Not everyone is, can or needs to be a Dark Horse Speaker. I suspect that we would find they are intelligent, introverted and willing to take just enough risk to push themselves close to the edge.

What we can take away from this as budding or accomplished speakers ourselves is:

1. The power of showing our vulnerability, we don’t have to be in total control to make an impact and become memorable;
2. The benefit of amplifying our own style rather than trying to conform to a standard or behave like someone else; and
3. How simple speech structures will often suffice, it’s what you bring to the table that counts.

It is vital that, when it comes to showing our own vulnerability, we are careful not to fall into the trap of ‘over-sharing’, where we tell our own personal stories to gain sympathy – they must always be relevant to our speech purpose, our message and our audience.

Next time we see a speaker who is seemingly abysmal turn in the performance of the night, we may be witnessing the phenomena of the Dark Horse Speaker, who manages to turn speaking anxiety into runaway success.

Phil Preston, along with Michael Neaylon, is a cofounder of Presentability. They are entrepreneurs who facilitate influential and persuasive presentation skills programs, webinars and coaching to equip you with the skills and confidence you need to stand out in today’s business world.

We’ve studied the leaders in Facebook Recruitment to bring you the 14 ingredients needed for a killer recruiting presence on Facebook.  Implement these elements immediately to cook your Facebook recruitment page into a Michelin Star performer, attracting top talent, spreading your brand message and connecting with potential recruits.

 1. A Wide Variety of Engaging Media

Facebook was recently redesigned to provide greater space to visual media such as photos and videos.  If more than three posts are simply text and even just a web link, you’re missing the point.  Text just doesn’t cut it anymore.  The best websites are constantly posting photos, videos and visual quotes, making the page attractive and exciting from the very first click.

2. A Glimpse Into The Life Of The Organization

Potential recruits want a glimpse into the life of your organization.  Content doesn’t need to be limited to job postings or information about how to apply.  Your Facebook recruitment page should be a celebration of the culture around your organization; this is best done by sharing stories from within your organization.  Stories don’t mean long paragraphs of ‘how I came to work here’ but rather short quotes, pictures or videos of events and happenings focused on a particular individual or team.

Verizon Careers on Facebook

3. Posting Every Day

The best websites post information every day, sometimes more.  The competition for space on a person’s newsfeed is fierce and quantity is one of the ingredients to winning attention.  If you’re worried about whether you’ll have enough content to post, consider Ingredient 2: just provide a daily glimpse into the life of your organization.

4. Celebration of People

The Veteran Affairs Careers Facebook page has the highest percentage of engagement of all five of the top five government recruitment websites.  Why is this?  They are relentless celebrators of individuals and constantly asking their community to celebrate and encourage others.  Of course, this fits with their brand and culture which aims to attract people who enjoy encouraging and improving the well being of others.  Sweeten it up with a little sugar by positively celebrating individuals!

5. Never Ending Patience on Responding to Comments

The number one Facebook recruitment presence is maintained by Marriott Hotels.  Nearly every post by Marriott gains at least 5 people stating they would like to work at Marriott and every single one is replied to by name and a link through to the applications website.  The very best recruiters use Facebook as a valuable method of communicating with their potential recruits, even more so because the interaction is public.  A Facebook page is not a webpage; by its nature Social Media is a two way street and if the information and connection is only flowing one way, your page will lose engagement quicker than an imploding soufflé.

6. Training and Tips

Speaking of two-way streets, check out the Royal Marine’s Training application.  It’s a Fitness Tool designed to help potential recruits get into shape to pass the physical examinations.  Consider what you might be able to offer your potential recruits in way of helping them and utilize your social media platform to spread the love!

7. Contact Information On Front Page

What’s a chocolate cake without chocolate?  What’s a Facebook recruitment page without information of where to apply?  Not a recruitment page is the answer.  Put the two basics up in the About Us section where people will find them easily: the phone number to call and the website to visit to search and apply for jobs.

8. Brand Consistency

There are many different recipes for a great Recruitment page and the right one to use will depend on who you are targeting.  Army and Airforce web pages focus on hard challenges and group mentality whereas technology related pages celebrate geeks and new innovation.  Consider the culture, passions and behavioral tendencies of your target group and design your content towards that.

9. Invite Your Employees To Participate

UPS encourages its employees to participate in the recruitment process, not only by sharing job vacancies but also by answering questions and commenting on the recruitment page.  This is another way to tie in real life stories and allow potential employees to connect with your future ones.  Check out Dave Manning’s comment below:

UPS on Facebook

10. Share Your Website

Keep the connection between your website and the Facebook page dynamic by consistently sharing pages that may be relevant to your audience.  The British Army does a great job of utilizing pages about the skills its recruits learn to engage and inspire.  Each skill is given it’s own page and a colorful photo.

British Army on Facebook

11. Post Available Jobs Direct To the Website

Something about a job description makes people want to read it, to see if they’d be a fit for it.  Selectively choose job descriptions, preferably those that are generic and often open for applications to profile the type of work a person can expect to be performing in your organization.

12. Use Direct Calls To Action

People respond to direct instructions.  The US Airforce’s Facebook recruitment page, one of the largest recruitment communities online with huge levels of interaction, asks its community to perform an action with every post.  “Like this if…”, “Share to show…”, “Time to vote!”, “Tell us about…”.  Create opportunities and reasons for your audience to engage and respond.

US Air Force

13. Provide Opportunity For People To Interact

Marriott Hotels, (a reminder: the clear winner in Facebook recruitment techniques with over 890,000 likes) focuses its recruitment campaign around creating a feeling of belonging, like family.  A specially designed app allows current employees to upload a photo with the caption “Marriott – Where I Belong”.  This is not only a powerful insight into the culture of the Marriott, it puts real faces to a work environment, connecting powerfully with the audience.

14. BUT… Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth

We love Unilever’s huge number of likes and clear links but their recruitment page is littered with other people’s posts about subjects not related to working at Unilever.  While you want the communication to be a two-way street, you still need to maintain control over your brand and keep the discussion on topic.  Your readers expect it of you.  The easiest way to do this is to limit your fans posting ability solely to comments and shares.

Unilever – littered with unfocused posts

How many of these are ingredients in your Facebook Recruitment page?  All of them are easy to implement and will make a huge difference to your reach and connection with your future employees.  Take the time to push your organization to the top of the pile by getting the right mix on your Social Media recruitment efforts.

Want to meet the leaders in social media recruitment? Check out our infographic: 

Over the last few weeks I have met with literally dozens of business owners.

I was having a conversation with one particular client about the importance of up-skilling when it comes to staff retention and I happened to ask her what investment her organisation placed on training and development.

I was quite surprised by her response.

“Now come on, Paul”, she said. “We both know too well that ‘training’ is what people have to do to dogs, to circus animals, or to those poor dolphins at Sea World.”

Once we had moved beyond any reference to pet dogs and theme parks, she told me that her learning and development budget would be a key investment in the new financial year.

From a staff retention perspective

From an organisational perspective I have always recognised the importance of keeping staff up-skilled and aware of the latest techniques, industry trends and initiatives. However if you ask employees today within any organisation (large or small) you will get a very mixed opinion around the notion of learning (or training) and development.

Some employees will seize the opportunity to be up-skilled as part of their professional development; others will simply see the chance to attend an in-house training course as a welcomed distraction from their day-to-day tasks; while others will roll their eyes at the mere thought of even half a day away from their desk seeing it as a complete waste of time.

You can’t please everyone

Despite these differing views, in almost every single pre-appraisal questionnaire I received over the years from my staff as part of their preparation for their performance reviews, in response to the question “What further training and development do you feel you would benefit from in the coming six months?” they would always include a wish list.

The reason I raise this point is that it’s coming up to performance review season in the next few weeks. For some organisations it will be annual appraisal time, while for others it might be time for a mid-year check-in.

When did you last think about what further training and development opportunities could benefit your staff in order to give your organisation that leading edge? When did you last discuss up-skilling with your team members?

Offering your employees additional training can reinforce your commitment to wanting to develop them professionally and to help them excel within the business.

However it’s important to distinguish between what your organisation is willing to offer its staff in terms of learning and development as opposed to the idea of further education.

I once had a staff member ask me whether the business would support her in a diploma in organisational psychology. This was more of a personal interest and so while she certainly received my (moral) support, the company wouldn’t pay for her to go “back to school” as her request lay beyond the realm of training and development and was more around a desire to gain a formal qualification.

Larger organisations vs SMEs

Within larger corporates, the learning services or training ‘department’ typically exists to ensure that all staff members are given sufficient levels of training and professional development.

But not every business is large enough to justify having a team dedicated solely to staff training. In SMEs in particular often the training and development hat is worn by the owner of the business.

How your staff might perceive training vs professional development

It’s important to think about what you are offering your staff members from their perspective.

Would they think you are offering them training to help enhance their skills just to improve their work performance? If so, they may interpret this as a fairly selfish tactic from your perspective since in their eyes the training provided might ultimately benefit the business more than the individual team member.

Or could they view your offering as a genuine investment in their personal or professional development? This gesture is likely to result in more respect towards you as a manager or business owner since you’ll be seen to be taking a vested interest in their career aspirations.

Internal vs external opportunities

If your organisation doesn’t have a formal learning services team, then there should be somebody within the business responsible for liaising with external course facilitators who would be involved in training staff as and when required.

You also need to ensure that anyone who has been working in your business for a while understands that training and development doesn’t exist solely for new or less experienced staff. Encourage longer standing staff members to talk to you about an ongoing professional development plan.

Remember also that training and development courses do not have to physically take your staff away from their desks. In this day and age there are so many recorded conference calls, podcasts or webinars from  external industry experts that they can download and work through at their own pace and in their own time.

We hosted the first #hiringhacks event, with LinkedIn in San Francisco this week. It was a great turnout for a first event, and showed real appetite for ideas and tips to improve the hiring process at companies of sizes. Thanks to everyone who came along!

What are hiring hacks? Practical, tactical tips for getting better hiring results. Avoiding the theoretical, they should be specific ideas and experiences you can try in your company immediately.

We were joined by an awesome panel, bringing a diverse set of experiences and views, including:

• Christine Eckhaus, Founder/CEO of Greenstreak Consulting
• Dino Lamela, Lead Sales Recruiter at Box
• Jeff Miller, Founder/CEO of Wheelz
• Katie Hughes, Head of Talent at DFJ.

MAJOR INSIGHTS

One of the overall messages from everyone involved, is that recruiting is a discipline that requires real practice.

Many startup founders believe the are (or should be) great at recruiting. But without building up the discipline through real focus and experience, that’s a low probability! Would you expect to be a black belt in karate without years of structured learning? But that’s OK.

As founder or CEO recruiting is a major part of your job, but it’s OK to ask for help; from investors, advisers, and other professionals.

In the spirit of the event, here are 11 hiring hacks shared by the panel. For other ideas, see this list of 88 hiring hacks for startups.

11 SHARABLE HIRING HACKS

Building a scalable recruiting process

1. Touch 100 people to make one great hire  (Katie).

2. ‘Flirt’ with people on LinkedIn, to boost response rates. Browse profiles of target candidates, and if someone browses back ask for connection.

3. Recruiting is a process, requiring measurement and metrics. Think of it like a customer conversion funnel, and address the weak points. (Christine).

Sourcing great talent

4. “All our best early hires came from our personal networks” (Jeff)

5. “Your team knows great people. If they care about your mission, they will share them. Give them opportunity and incentive to do it” (Dino).

‘Converting’ great talent

6. Give rockstar candidates access to your investors and major problems. It’s a pitch; you need to excite them  (Jeff).

7. With great candidates, give them full info/scope of the problem, and let them write their own job description  (Katie).

8. At early stage, hire people with very different but complementary skillsets  (Christine).

9. Don’t focus on salary. Find out what motivates someone, and pitch to their passion. You might find them willing to budge; and also that they’re worth more than you think  (Dino).

Working with recruiters

10. Don’t haggle on price. You’ll only lose the best candidates to other companies (if working with contingent recruiters)  (Jeff).

11. Work with different, specialist recruiters depending on the role / niche. You only want to work with the best, and they are worth the cost – (Jeff).

Did you pick up other tips? Share them in the comments below, or Tweet #hiringhacks

And let us know your other pain points and questions so we can cover them in future events.

Looking for more ideas? Checkout this list of 88 Hiring Hacks for Startups.

I’m graduating soon.

My family and friends assume that I must be so excited to finally graduate and to step out into the real world.

But I’m not. I used to be. But now I’m seriously worried.

Of course I’ve prepared in advance. I’ve scoured through hundreds of online job postings and newspaper advertisements; I’ve asked around; brushed up my résumé; signed up for graduate program newsletters; applied for internships, mentor programs and countless jobs.

OK so I did score an awesome internship

But there’s just one major problem. The majority of entry level and graduate job postings frequently scream two bolded and disheartening words: “Experience Essential”.

How are we supposed to get the experience required if no one is willing to give us the chance?

What frustrates me even more is when the job description states ‘This is a junior role for someone with a minimum of 2 years experience in a similar role‘.

If we’re ‘juniors’, how on earth are we supposed to gain the required two years experience when every other job posting says exactly the same thing?

Another thing which confuses me is when the job posting states that experience is essential, but the list of benefits for working for the organisation includes ‘extensive employee training’. (I’ve often applied anyway hoping to get lucky, but to no avail).

To my potential first employer … if you’re going to extensively train me anyway, why not just give me a chance? I’m a hard-working, creative, determined team player and I am willing to work extremely hard. I know that any candidate could just write that and you want actual evidence that I’ll be able to successfully contribute to the role. But I’m willing to prove that to you.

I completely understand that I may not have much experience in your field so you may not believe that I actually do possess the ‘excellent written communication skills’ you require. But I can show you several reports and major assignments I’ve written throughout my university course.

You may not trust that I really am the ‘creative person and team player’ that you need. Let me showcase the marketing posters, plans and research projects I’ve worked on (including one which was recently nominated as a competition finalist).

On top of this, I’ve also done other professional-style presentations and pitches.

Just because I might not have had a chance to gain the work experience required, this certainly doesn’t mean I am not employable.

After being defeated by this vicious cycle for too long, I’ve even tried broadening my job search. I realised that the more flexible I am, the more opportunities there could be to work with different departments and eventually score a permanent role in a company.

I’ve applied for telemarketing, receptionist and administrative roles hoping to simply get my foot in the door. But even these job postings are emblazoned with the disheartening words “Experience Essential” (and, let me tell you seeing these words is not a fun experience).

I’ve asked around and my friends who are also graduating soon are all facing the same problem.

Leaving university and trying to figure out which career path to pursue is daunting enough, but now we’re all left fretting over everyone else’s experience level. Apparently everyone with more work experience than us will perform better on the job.

Is this actually true? Has every single employee you’ve hired with previous experience actually been as incredible as you expected?

After talking to many of my fellow discouraged graduate-to-be friends, it appears that no one is taking any risks recruiting graduates without experience. But why? Some of us do have other sought after skills and can demonstrate this, plus we have an appetite for challenge and have pretty realistic salary expectations because we’re just grateful to finally get our foot in the door!

Hiring a graduate with little or no experience isn’t a reckless decision.

You still have the power over my work performance.  I may have little or no proven work experience but this is actually what gives you the power and opportunity to train me and tell me exactly how you expect the job to be done.

Why not take a risk? The next graduate with little experience could potentially astound you and be moulded into your organisation’s next best employee.

Milica Djukanovic is an awesome intern working with RecruitLoop on marketing and community management. She graduates from University of Technology Sydney at the end of 2013.

Editors Note: This is a guest post written by Malcolm Peak – Regional Director of Talent Code. His opinions are his own.

Let me ask you … What is sales enablement? Is it training? Is it coaching? Is it research? Is it gadgets? Is it big data?

It’s all of these things and more. But one thing it is not is sales training alone.

I’d like to put forward 3 tenets of sales enablement:

1. It’s about the relationship … stupid!

Selling is about relationships and there is broad acceptance in industry that ongoing business success is built on strong relationships.

Miller Heiman in their 2013 Sales Best Practices Study highlight that relationships matter, and world class sales organisations put customers at the core of everything they do. The Corporate Executive Board also references anecdotal evidence that traditional sales training has short-lived results, and a change in the ‘cultural’ foundation of the organisation is required to achieve sales success and growth.

Without relationships, you might make one sale but you won’t make another. In the current economy it’s important to have annuity income to smooth over the typically bumpy ride experienced by most SMEs.

Relationships also need to be across multiple planes. You can’t run a successful organisation with what I call ‘single-point-sensitivity’ where one account manager has responsibility for all correspondence and interaction with the client. Relationships need to be ‘many to many’ so that both organisations stick better to each other in good times and bad meaning lots of people in your business need to know lots of people in your client’s business.

2. It’s about readily available useful information – not just reams of data

I was speaking with an industry contact recently, and they were lamenting that they have a great sales team but they don’t know how to use the information provided to them.

My first thought was about the incomprehensible instruction manuals that often accompany furniture/electrical equipment and wondered if my contact’s sales team was provided with too much confusing information.

My second was George Miller’s “Magical Number Seven – plus or minus two” referring to his 1956 article in the Psychological Review where he argued that people can remember seven things (plus or minus two).

How many things was my contact asking his salespeople to remember?

Information overload is a common issue in business, whether it be the number of emails you receive, the number of key points you need to get across in a conversation/presentation, or various passwords. Our brains are struggling with perspective and balance and this is where we should be focusing our attention.

We don’t have to remember the information. We just need to know how to get it when we need it.

Modern Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs) have the capacity to store huge amounts of customer/client data but it needs to be translated into information before it is useful.

The guide for what is useful information is context. If you enable the people that speak with your customer to readily access information that’s relevant to the context of their discussions, then you have provided them with good information – not just data. This is what will enable your sales organisation/teams to work more closely with their customers/clients and give them information that they see as really valuable.

3. It’s about the whole organisation – not just the pointy end.

One key component of enabling your business to be successful from a sales perspective is to remember that it’s not just your sales people that are your sales people.

Your website is your new reception, and the social media posts (both your corporate ones and those by your employees) are the conversations your customers hear and listen to. The person chasing unpaid bills could be speaking to a consumer of your products and the customer service representative could do great damage if a dissatisfied customer takes to the online world to vent their frustration.

Whether people actively acknowledge it or not, in one way or another, in the modern economy every person in your business is in sales whether they like it or not. So you have to enable them to understand this in a way that resonates comfortably with them.

Everyone in your organisation needs to understand how what they do impacts the enablement of the business to achieve its goals. In a recent post, Trudy MacDonald (a colleague at Talent Code) introduced the concept of ‘Great’ and how everyone in a business needs to understand what ‘Great’ means for them.

This concept is central to sales enablement in your business as it helps people understanding what they need to do, how they need to do it, and what success looks like. Without line of sight to what the business is aiming for people can’t make judgement calls as to what they should be focusing on first.

Before you think about spending money on that sales training course to help your sales team close more business, take a moment to think about whether the mechanisms and processes that support the sales team are aligned with the direction this training will take them. If it’s not, you might get a short-term lift in sales numbers but your relationships (both internal and external) may suffer.

A few quick points to take away:

• Don’t underestimate the importance of relationships, particularly in this economy;
• Provide useful information and not data to your people who interact with customers and make it easy for them to find all the information they need; and
• Don’t forget that your sales people are not your only sales people.

Malcolm Peak is the Regional Director of Talent Code Pty Ltd, helping businesses become “Great” by improving the quality and performance of their people.

As if last week wasn’t bad enough, yesterday our Regional Director Desmond sent out an ‘All Staff’ email to let us know he’d be “making a few changes”.

I read the first few lines of the email …

“We are lucky enough to have some great clients that constantly are in need of awesome candidates.”

Blah blah blah …

“To help us close more deals faster, we’ve got a new consultant Belinda Frankston joining us today”.

You can’t pay my bonus, but you’re hiring a new consultant?

I just hit ‘delete’ and got on with my morning.

About half an hour later a tall blonde woman walked up to my desk.

“Hi I’m Belinda, but everybody calls me Bindi!”, she said in a Minnie Mouse voice. (No one actually has a voice that annoying, right?)

Bindi!? Is she serious?!

I politely introduced myself.

Bindi tilted her head to the side like a perplexed cocker spaniel and spilled the beans. “I’ve been assigned to help you with your clients. Desmond explained that you have been doing such a good job that you deserve some help”. I looked at her very suspiciously, as she explained that we would be splitting my desk alphabetically and she’d be taking over my accounts with last names L-Z.

Splitting my desk?

I couldn’t believe it. Half of my accounts! Just when I have spent the last 18 months of my life painstakingly building my client base from scratch and I am finally (supposedly) starting to make a decent commission, I have to hand  half of my portfolio over to a Bindi!

The worst part is I apparently have to help her with the transition and introduce her to my clients!

I wanted to burst into Desmond’s office swearing. But I thought it better to calm down and formulate my thoughts first. I emailed Desmond asking for a time to catch up and he agreed to midday.

I got very little actual work done. Instead I played political ping pong in my head all morning. Would he at least pretend to listen? Or would he just lay down the law and reiterate that ‘it is what it is’?

When the time came, I marched into his office with as much dignity in my eyes as I could muster. I was all prepared to unleash my wrath, but he anticipated my anger and side stepped the situation.

He gave me his boyish smile, and suggested we grab an early lunch. “There’s this great new sushi place I’ve been meaning to try.”

I wasn’t hungry for sushi, I was in the mood for justice.

We sat down to lunch outside in very cool (but very uncomfortable) modern lounge chairs. Clearly, he was trying to butter me up. We talked about the weather, his weekend plans (ugh) and anything else to avoid what needed to be discussed.

He finally opened up. He gave me the same sob story from last week about how the Agency has so much potential and how we are just on the cusp of great things, but money is still tight, and we all need to work together as a team to weather the storm.

What … we’re a pirate ship now?

He insisted that hiring Bindi wasn’t his idea, although he wished it was because she is “smoking hot”.

Where is HR when you need them?

He refuted each one of my points before I had a chance to air my issues, and left me with nothing more than a splitting headache (and I hadn’t even drunk any sake!)

As we walked back to the office it hit me that I’ve really been left with two (terrible) options. I can either suck it up, hold my head high and continue to grind. Or escape the agency.

I definitely do not want to give up recruiting altogether but I’m at a crossroads.

What should I do? #EscapetheAgency