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Hiring for the Holidays? 10 Ways to Find Great Hourly Workers | Jared Atchison, Business.com

With the busy holiday season approaching, you’re going to need to hire new hourly employees to keep up with demand.

As you’re looking for people to join your team, make sure you always look for quality and experience. Even if you are offering a part-time, holiday position, you don’t want to sacrifice quality for fast employees.

Below are 10 of the best ways you can find great hourly workers for your business.

1. Post on relevant job boards.
Some of the more popular job boards are Indeed, Monster and Zip Recruiter. You can post both remote and local positions on these platforms. You’ll get the ability to look through everyone who applies before contacting them. What makes this method ideal is the fact that you can set up deal-breaker questions on the application to save you time.

2. Use social media.
You can use your social media presence to entice followers to apply if you have an opening. A benefit of this method is that the people who are applying to the job are already familiar with your product or service. They follow your brand because they’re interested in what you sell or your brand’s identity – meaning they may be more likely to catch on if you decide to hire them.

3. Create an employee referral program.
When most companies set up a referral program, they usually offer a cash reward to get new hires – with stipulations, of course. For example, if you get an employee to refer someone new and that new employee works there for 60 days, both the new hire and employee who gave the referral get a $75 bonus.

Employers prefer this method because they know their employees better than anyone. If a superior employee offers a referral, they can have confidence that the person they referred to them is also a good worker.

4. Reach out to colleges.
There are plenty of colleges that will happily advertise your job to their students as a means for them to get an internship or a potential hire after their graduation.

Some colleges offer programs for students even if they graduated years ago. The students can come back to the college with their experience and see if there are any job advertisements. This is the perfect chance for you to reach out to fresh-faced potential employees with lots of energy.

5. Use Craigslist.
It takes just a few minutes to get online and post an advertisement every morning. Make it a routine until you fill the positions you have available. Wake up in the morning, get on your smart phone while you drink your coffee or orange juice, and post a quick ad letting people know that your company is looking for either seasonal or permanent employees.

6. Consider previous employees.
If you still have contact information of previous employees (and you should!), consider making phone calls to these employees to see if they would consider coming back to work on a part-time basis.

If former employees return, you could potentially save money on training time because they already know how the company works. A refresher course is a much less time-consuming process than a full training routine.

7. Contact job agencies.
Some people don’t like the fact that they have to work through a middleman. However, some prefer this method because it gives them a chance to look at the potential hires without directly contacting them. You get to pick the person you think best fits your needs.

8. Rent out billboards.
When you consider that hundreds of thousands of people live in moderate-to-large cities, you can totally get people to apply for your position if you put your billboard somewhere smart, such as a busy intersection.

9. Advertise on your website.
The most common method is by adding a “We are hiring!” button to your homepage. If a potential employee lands on your page, they can click the button and get right to the application and apply.

You can also add a “careers” page to your sitemap. If you’re constantly hiring, this is a great choice. As job opportunities become available, you can upload them to your careers page and hopeful employees can see what jobs are opening, view the requirements, and access the application.

10. Hire internally.
Do you have multiple employees who work on an as-needed basis? Perhaps they get online and take care of your social media. Maybe you have an employee who just manages your customer care emails for a flat rate every month. Look to these dedicated employees to see if they would be interested in coming aboard full time as hourly employees.

When it comes time to hire this holiday season, make sure you take advantage of all of these different opportunities. There are benefits and disadvantages to all of these methods, it all comes down to your business model and how many people you want to hire. Before your next round of hiring, consider the hiring technique that will save you time and find you the best employee. There are plenty of qualified candidates out there. All that’s left is to go out and find them!

5 Life Hacks to Get Ahead and Launch Your Own Startup Business | Richard Agu, Newsmax.comStarting a business can be a scary undertaking since there are no guarantees of success.

Keeping it afloat is another daunting task. However, if you’re troubled and confused about startups, embrace these five life hacks to getting started and getting ahead.

1. Start a Business From the Resources Within You
One way to achieve this is by having an ownership mindset or adopting ownership approach to whatever we do. This will avail you the opportunity to start up a business with the resources at your disposal.

2. Engage in What You Love Doing and Be Patient
If you love what you do and the people you are with, the two (work and life) should be integrated. To remain sustainable, you should strive for work-life integration as an end result.

3. Be Immune to Fear and Criticism
Being gullible to fear and criticisms is a sign of weakness. You have to turn your fear into your advantage. An entrepreneur should be brave in the midst of turbulent and unpredictable nature of today’s business environment.

4. Don’t Be Content With Your Current State
Getting ahead requires not only having access to vital information, but harness such info in order to enhance your capacity to make critical business decisions. This could be in the area of service delivery, personnel management, sales promotion strategies, organizational culture etc. Seeking for ways to enhance your business performance to remain relevant in the industry. This can’t be achieved without having enormous info.

5. Have a Set Routine to Remain Healthy
There are times that the weights of your responsibilities and schedule can become overwhelming, you need to have specific strategies in place to combat that stress.

Make sure to take care of your physical health through daily exercise, mental health through daily meditation, and stay connected to family and friends each day to maintain a relational health.

Most importantly, don’t allow your business to revolve around you. Delegate tasks in order to raise leaders who can pioneer your business to greater height in your absence.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Firing a Remote Employee | John Rampton, Entrepreneur.com

Startups with small teams are like families. Firing a member of that family is rarely easy — especially when the person in question works remotely.

Even with generous performance plans and every benefit of the doubt, sometimes a remote worker and company just aren’t the right fit. Once you decide to terminate one of your remote employees, follow this guide to keep the process as fair and painless as possible.

1. Get your documentation in order.
After you commit to the firing — take the afternoon to make sure all your paperwork is in order.

Do you have documentation to support the firing? Have you consulted with HR to ensure you won’t run into any logistical problems? Lawsuits are rare — but don’t let your relationship with your employee prevent you from following proper procedure.

2. Book your flight.
Even if you only see your remote employee a couple times a year — do the noble thing and conduct the termination conversation in person.

The person being fired might not be the right fit for your company — but that doesn’t mean he or she won’t find success elsewhere. You can limit the pain of the blow, and potentially turn a rejected worker into a brand ambassador, by delivering rejection with respect.

3. Keep it personal.
It might not be personal to you — but to the person losing the job (even under justifiable circumstances), the decision is highly personal. Enter the conversation with the understanding that this person will take the news as a personal indictment.

If the termination is financially driven, explain why. Offer to provide a recommendation for future opportunities. If the termination is performance-based — outline the reasons for the decision briefly. There’s no need to belabor the point — anyone being fired for performance knows what went wrong.

4. Collect equipment and disconnect access.
This part can be tricky. You don’t want to treat your exiting employee like a criminal. You also want to protect your assets from retaliatory deletion or destruction. The correct policy when firing a remote employee is to assume the best but be prepared for the worst.

Let your head of IT know what time to terminate the fired employee’s access to company servers. When you meet with the employee explain that you need to collect any company equipment, like laptops and monitors, when you leave.

5. Communicate to the rest of the team.
Speak to your team the same day of the termination to stop gossip before it starts. Leave out the details regarding how and why you fired the worker. A few employees close to the situation probably know what happened. Even on a small team, there’s no reason to drag the person’s performance or behavior into the open.

Firing a remote employee might be unpleasant and difficult but don’t let the potential problems dissuade you from offering remote work options. Modern employees seek flexible benefits like remote work. You can attract higher quality talent by keeping remote options on the table.

3 Traps Work-From-Home Workers Need to Avoid | Daniel B. Kline, Fool.com

For those who work at home, there are some traps to avoid. It’s easy to be taken advantage of or to make mistakes that hurt your career (or just waste your time).

1. Beware of needs from friends and family
Protect your time. Make it clear to anyone who asks for a favor that any time you spend not working will be time you have to make up in odd hours. That doesn’t mean you always have to say no. You just have to be the one making the decision.

2. Don’t lose touch with workmates
Staying connected takes work. Take advantage of any communications tools your office uses to make sure you engage in water cooler talk, not just work talk. It’s important to ask about people’s kids, talk about the game, or chat about mutually liked TV shows. If an opportunity to see people comes up, go out of your way to take it, whether it be a work event or a social opportunity.

3. Don’t take advantage of those with regular hours
Just because you have freedom and flexibility does not mean everyone does. If you work with people who maintain a traditional office schedule (or actually work in an office) you should roughly conform to their hours.

That does not mean you can’t do work at weird hours. It does mean that you should respond to email or calls when other people are working and at least be available during parts of the traditional workday.

It’s all about flexibility and balance
To make it work you need to be flexible and find the proper balance. For example, you may take a day off but still answer email or respond to messages. You might also attend a meeting or mix other work tasks into time spent not working because it’s convenient for other people.

Be considerate and open-minded, but also make sure to protect your own interests. Working from home does not mean you’re always working, any more than it means you’re always off.