Top 5 Priorities of a Newly Appointed CEO

Top 5 Priorities of a Newly Appointed CEO Recently I undertook some work with a client  who is a newly appointed CEO of a large company. He had been working in the company for a number of years and when the previous CEO resigned he threw his hat in the ring for the job. To his surprise, and indeed others, he got it! He really immersed himself   talking to staff, clients, his direct reports all laudable things to do. But the result? He felt completely overwhelmed and was becoming increasingly frustrated as he felt he was not making any progress. To his credit, he recognized that he needed some external help and that is how he and I started to work together. Interestingly, we first connected on LinkedIn the power of social media! His first conversation with me started with him bemoaning his time management which always raises a flag to me. I genuinely believe people blame time management, when the management of time is not the issue. Poor use of time can be a consequence but I digress! He said: To be honest, I am not totally clear what are the really important things to do now that I am CEO. A brave admission, and one I really admired him for saying. For the purpose of this article, lets call my client Tom (obviously not his real name!) and I thought the work we did together was worth sharing with you, as I think it will help others in similar situations. So, I asked Tom to share with me what was on his list. The answer to his challenge was in his response. He shared his list with me and it ran to over 30 items! It is no wonder he was suffering from overwhelm and frustration. The consequence of his list was that Tom was splitting himself into little pieces and sharing that around the organization, and was simply dipping in and out of situations. There was no real focus to his work. So, we set about creating his dashboard of the important things to do. Research has clearly proven that for any business, no matter how large or small, there are only 5/6 things that need to be on your dashboard to ensure that your focus is on the right things.  Those 5/6 items will be different depending on your role â€" whether it is CEO, CFO, Sales Director or COO. So, back to Tom â€" what are his important things to do? What must be on his dashboard? Having worked through a process we ended up with 5 items that would shape his planning and solve his “time management” challenge. They are: 1) Figures: Tom will now review the top line figures on a weekly basis. We agreed what figures he will be focusing on and developed reports to keep a focus on those figures alone. We also made certain that these were the key figures not all the figures! 2) Strategy implementation: We created reports that clearly showed progress on the implementation of the key strategic initiatives, where any deviation was occurring, and the remedial action being taken. Again, the focus was on the key initiatives. 3) Tom’s team: Tom now has a weekly meeting with his direct reports that lasts no more than 45 minutes to update him on any key issues. We also agreed that every month Tom will have individual coaching sessions with his people â€" and the emphasis is on coaching! 4) Organizational culture: We all know that having the right culture has a direct impact on the performance of a business, so Tom needs to spend time on how he influences the culture of his organization, and how that culture is cascaded down the business. 5) External market: As CEO Tom must spend time analyzing and researching the market so that he is fully aware of the external environment he and his business is operating in. Tom committed to focus on these 5 items as his important things to do for a month, and his schedule reflected that. (Will tell you how we did that in another piece, but it worked wonders for him!) Why a month to start with? Well after a month of doing it every day you have developed a habit! His results? Well, Tom is now clearer on what is important and what is not. His diary is worked around these 5 key items and he is now feeling a lot less overwhelmed and his “time management” has greatly improved. He really feels much more in control, and the feedback from his team has been so positive. Most importantly, Tom is now operating as a much more effective CEO. I am working with quite a number of CEOs right now to help them get absolute clarity on their dashboard and how to make it really work for them. This is a simple, straightforward process that, if adhered to, ensures that you are not overwhelmed in your role and will be much more effective in the process. Would love to hear your thoughts! Leave them in the comments below.

Tips For Writing a Stay at Home Mom Resume

Tips For Writing a Stay at Home Mom ResumeA stay at home mom resume can be difficult to write. You have a great deal of responsibility, but you want your child to grow up without your leaving them.Keep in mind that this is a guide for those mothers who want to work while raising their children and it will make your job of writing a professional resume easier for you. If you read on you will find some great ideas that you can apply to your stay at home mom resume.Do not list any job descriptions or skills on your resume that are not related to parenting. If you do this, your employer will simply see you as a stay at home mom who was a medical assistant before taking a job at McDonald's. That is not going to look very professional.If you are lucky enough to have a place that is desirable and you are trying to get your children into it is a good idea to list this as a reason for wanting a fresh start. For example, if you are selling your house and have a nice income why not look for a p osition working with kids in a daycare center? This will give you the flexibility to work from home while still keeping an eye on your kids. This is going to help you out when applying for a job and it will help your children feel more like they have a home to go to as well.You might consider spending time volunteering or even joining a club to get yourself and your children into a community service project. This will give you a feel for how you are going to react in situations such as this. In addition you will also be exposed to other adults that are helping your children and this can make you more willing to help them when they need it.Even though you may think that being a stay at home mom is not really a job, most employers will want to hire you on the basis of your work experience as a professional person. You can take advantage of this by listing all of your work experiences. If you were able to create websites for children or if you were able to become a nanny you can use th ese experiences on your resume.There are many different reasons why women are trying to get into jobs that are not considered traditional or considered to be career oriented. In most cases the reasons are for work-related reasons such as to be able to spend more time with their children or because they are seeking a more involved and less demanding job. These are both excellent reasons to put on your resume.It is always a good idea to be flexible with your resume. When you sit down to write a professional resume there is no reason for you to not be prepared. Try not to focus on your situation and concentrate on what you can do to improve your situation by focusing on the things that you love to do.

10 Ways Recruiters Can Use SlideShare for Branding

10 Ways Recruiters Can Use SlideShare for Branding Ever heard of SlideShare? Its a site that hosts your slide decks from Powerpoint or Keynote. Its one of those great content marketing platforms most people have never heard of, let alone recruiters. Some impressive stats first of all: SlideShare is one of the top 150 sites on the web, they get 60 million visitors per month and have 3 billion slide views a month (thats 1,140 slides viewed per second). So the traffic is good but its also the right type of traffic for most content marketers its highly professional. According to ComScore, SlideShare has five times more traffic from business owners than other popular websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. And the most impressive of all: LinkedIn just acquired SlideShare for the princely sum of $119 million. This of course bodes very well for further integration of the two products. I wont delve further into why its a useful tool, instead Id like to give you ten ways to use it successfully: 1. Use existing content Chances are that you will have a number of Powerpoint presentations kicking about on your hard drive. What company doesnt have a sales presentation? Your recruitment process outlined? A few slides about your technology practice? As long as they dont contain any confidential information, go ahead and upload these to SlideShare and you immediately have content. You can of course change them before you upload, you might want to change images, update figures or cut out a few slides in the deck. 2. Keep it simple When I upload a presentation to SlideShare, Ill typically take out about half the slides. I leave the visually interesting and self-explanatory ones, as the viewer wont hear me talk about the content. Nobody wants to sit through a 70-slide deck in an auditorium and nobody wants to see even half than that online so keep it simple instead and get your message across in a brief manner. Some of the best presentations Ive seen are only about 10 slides long and contain very few words. 3. Be sure to add clickable links I only realised that you can add hyperlinks to a SlideShare deck a few months ago. This means that you can add a link to your website or Twitter on the front page and last page, in case anyone loves your presentation you want to make it easy for them to contact you of course. When I put slides up about LinkedIn for instance, I of course link that to our LinkedIn training workshops in London. 4. Use the right keywords for  SEO SlideShare has an internal search engine where visitors pull searches every day, most of these will be researchers out on a fact-finding mission. On top of that the content also ranks really well in external search engines like Google and Bing, use this to your advantage. Just like a YouTube video, its important to use the right title, description and tags in order for it to be found online. Instead of calling your presentation Annual Salary Survey, try London Technology Salary Facts and Figures by Profession and Seniority the latter one is full of keywords that people will use to searches. 5. Embed here and there A great feature with SlideShare is the fact that you can embed your presentations on websites, blog posts or anywhere else you can think of. This mean anyone can host your presentation on their blog but with a link back to your SlideShare account. This can work really well when writing a blog post about a topic, you add more weight to your argument with a presentation embedded. In fact, I write a quick blog post around every most public presentations I give, an example is How To Build Your Personal Brand on Social Media [Slides]. 6. Link up to LinkedIn LinkedIn offers its users very few cool applications but thankfully the SlideShare integration is one of them. By adding the SlideShare app on LinkedIn, you can automatically display your most recent presentation on your LinkedIn profile. Or you can set it to whichever presentation you feel represents you the best, you can even show two decks on your profile. Everytime you upload a new presentation to SlideShare, it updates your profile and it sends out a notification to your networks homefeed indicating theres new content to have a look at on your profile. 7. SlideShare surprise My party trick when speaking at a conference is to upload my deck to SlideShare early in the morning. I then schedule a tweet linking to the presentation to go out when I should be up on the podium speaking (using the event hashtag of course). When I do speak I mention something like right about now a tweet is going out linking to this presentation by the way. This has generated thousands of views of my presentations from all around the world. 8. Check the stats of your presentations By having a look at how many views, comments and shares your presentations get youll get an idea for what people out there are interested in. And perhaps what they arent interested in. Just like with any content marketing strategy, its about monitoring what works and try to do more of just that. Youll get even more interesting stats if you upgrade 9. Go pro if you want leads OK if you are really serious about your presentations and feel that they will lead to solid business, you can upgrade your account. This will then give you analytics of whos viewing your decks and SlideShare will present you with up to 30 leads per month. You can get your own branding on your account and you can do private uploads as well. My rule of thumb is as with all freemium models, only go pro when youve mastered the basics. 10. Check out other peoples decks for inspiration Finally, youll probably get into the whole presentation thing now after realising what SlideShare can do for you. This raises the bar and you now want to make even greater decks for your audience. If you find yourself stuck for what to put on your next slide, fear not. Have a look at similar presentations on SlideShare to get ideas from your peers. Or check out the Most Popular Today section on the site, this is where some of the best presentations in the world are featured. Pick and mix your ideas and transform it into your content. Any more ideas around SlideShare? Please let me know in the comments!

How to Decide if Youre Ready to Move for A New Career

How to Decide if Youre Ready to Move for A New Career In today’s society, it’s getting more common to move for career opportunities. The fact is, if you want to work in a field that doesn’t have a presence in your hometown or desired community, then there’s almost no other option. But moving for work takes a serious financial commitment. So how can you decide if you’re financially ready to move for your career? I’ve been down this path twice myself and I can say that it never gets easier. That’s why I’m sharing a few points to think about to help you make this important decision. Do You Have the Job? First things first: do you already have an offer on the table? Or are you going to move to interview for jobs? You don’t need to have an offer to move, but you will need more of a financial cushion if you don’t have one. Here are the things to consider if you already have the offer: Are they paying for your move? What salary are they offering? How does the salary compare to the cost of living in the new city? Here are things to consider if you are going to search for work: Do you have an emergency fund of at least six months to cover your expenses? This should include the cost of rent, groceries, debt, entertainment, and actual emergencies. Are there other work opportunities available in the new city that you can take while you search for your dream job? Are there ways to minimize your expenses, such as living with a roommate? Are There Opportunities Where You Live? Before you pack your bags and head off the new city, remember that the career landscape in the US is always changing. As cities offer tax breaks to companies to move them in and new industries grow in unexpected places, your city might offer more opportunity than you realize. So take a look at your city with brand new eyes and see if your industry has suddenly sprouted up! If you do find companies, even one company, that is involved in your industry, seek out informational interviews with people who work there. That’s the best way to get any inside scoop on the potential for career growth in your area both with this company and any of their competition which may be popping up. Bonus: those you speak with will also be able to share how they broke into the field and this new connection may even lead to an unexpected job opportunity for you! Do the Cost-Benefit Analysis This works if you have an offer or not. Take either the salary you’re being offered or the starting salary for your field in the new city and compare that with the living costs. Typically you shouldn’t spend more than 25% of your income on rent, although in a large city this ratio may not even be possible to achieve. You can find the average costs of rent by simply doing a Craigslist search for apartments and seeing what size and condition of an apartment you would be willing to live in. Next, take a look at the income potential in your job. Is the salary you’re being offered close to the top of what you’ll ever get? Or is there a lot of room to grow? If you’re going to hit the salarys ceiling early, that means the apartments you’re looking at now are the same size and condition you could be in ten years from now. If there is room to grow, then this move can be considered more of an investment which will hopefully pan out to a better lifestyle in your future. Finally, look at your current financial situation. Do you have an emergency fund? If not, you probably shouldn’t move until you build one (unless you have offer and moving costs in hand). What about debt? It’s best not to move with debt, but if your current city truly doesn’t offer work in your field or work that pays well enough to save up money, then make sure you have a plan for how to get out of debt that can be worked into your new budget. Finally, do your budget based on the offered salary or a typical starting salary in your field and make sure those numbers add up! Make Your Decision And Stick to It! Once you’ve made a decision to stay or go, commit to that decision for at least one year. I know from experience how difficult it can be to stay in a new city when times get rough and how hard it can be to stay in your current city when you want to move. But if you don’t have the emergency fund you need to support yourself when you move, then staying until you have that is what you need to do. Likewise, if you move for a new job and are having a hard time getting acclimated, you’ll lose a lot of money on this investment if you just go back. Whatever decision you made, you came to it for a good reason so stick to it and make sure you’re working towards your goals. This time next year, who knows where your life may be headed! As long as you’ve moving forward and taking steps each day to achieve your dreams, then you won’t have to worry about regretting where you are now. Image Credit: qthrul

How to Find the Best Resume Writing Services in Atlanta, Georgia

How to Find the Best Resume Writing Services in Atlanta, GeorgiaIf you are looking for an Atlanta resume writing service then you have come to the right place. Many people in Atlanta GA are currently looking for a great resume writer so they can have a chance of securing a job in their chosen field.Finding the best resume writing services in Atlanta, Georgia requires you to know where to look and how to select the right one. A resume can change the way you will be perceived by your prospective employer so it is imperative that you look professional. When you are faced with so many different job opportunities, the last thing you want to do is waste precious time filling out useless application forms and sending them out.Resume writing services in Atlanta offer solutions to address this problem. A good resume can help you land that dream job you always wanted. A professional service can help you do a perfect job as well as get you that perfect job.Before you can find the best resume wr iting services in Atlanta, you need to take a look at your situation. What skills do you have? Are you currently employed or are you self-employed? Are you a senior, an entry-level or are you a mid-level employee?These are some of the questions you should ask yourself before deciding which resume writing service in Atlanta to use. Your situation will determine the answer to these questions.When you compare the resume of different companies, you will find there are differences in style and content. To avoid making the mistake of using the same resume to all the different places, it is important to check the samples carefully. These samples are normally provided free and it would be wise to get the sample from different samples. This will enable you to make a comparison between the samples and thus find the right service to use.To ensure that you are getting the best service from the best writers, take the services of a hiring firm. Hiring firms understand the needs of individuals and therefore will put an emphasis on giving their clients' best services. They will work with you to ensure that your resume is perfect for the type of job you are looking for. With their help, you will not only land that job you are looking for but also find the best job in your desired career.To avoid wasting your time and effort looking for the best Atlanta resume writing services, it is best to simply search for the services on the internet. If you go through these resumes, you will not get caught up in a useless writing process.

Police Situational Judgement Test How To Ace Your Police Exam

Police Situational Judgement Test How To Ace Your Police Exam One of the most essential elements for working as a successful police officer, is good decision-making. Every single day, police officers in the UK will be placed in positions where they need to make logical, lawful and politically correct decisions. While these decisions won’t always be life-or-death, it’s imperative that officers are able to behave in a way which:Maintains a good image of the police service.Does not endanger the health and safety of the individuals concerned, nor of the officer.Complies with the police code of conduct, values and core competencies.To this end, the Metropolitan Police and certain other constabularies are now using a Situational Judgement Test as part of their selection process. In this blog, we’ll outline what the Police Situational Judgement Test is, how it works, and give you some example questions!What Is The Police Situational Judgement Test?  The Police Situational Judgement Test will provide candidates with a series of passages. The pass ages will describe a policing-based scenario, and each will be followed by a series of answer options, relating to how the officer should respond to the scenario. For example, you might be given a passage about seeing two men get into a fight, and will then be given answer options such as, ‘Interrupt the fight and arrest the men’ ‘Ignore the situation altogether’ or ‘Ask someone else to deal with it.’ Your task is then to rank the answer options in order of how useful they are.Below we’ve listed the categories under which you should list each answer, and what they mean:EFFICIENT. The best/most productive response, which is most likely to lead to the best possible outcome. It’s worth noting that the test will sometimes make it difficult for you â€" sometimes you won’t get any answers which are entirely efficient, but you still need to select the most efficient option of the answers provided to you.FAIRLY EFFICIENT. A reasonable but slightly flawed response â€" one w hich could be improved upon, by making small changes to particular actions or behaviours.INEFFICIENT. A response which does not help the situation, often a result of inaction or failing to change the circumstances in a positive way, without making things inherently worse.COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. The worst response â€" one which not only fails to improve the situation, but makes it worse, and leads to more problems.When answering situational judgement there is technically no right or wrong answer â€" the assessors want to see how you would react in that situation. However, there are certain responses which will make you less favourable with the assessors. For example, if you select ‘punch your colleague’ as efficient, then this could raise some red flags for the assessors! #image_302797584{width:100%}Police Situational Judgement Practice QuestionYou are on evening patrol with another officer. As you pass the local pub, a man staggers outside. He is bleeding from the nose. Another man f ollows him out and knocks him to the floor with a punch. The two begin to scuffle on the ground.Fellow officer: ‘Oh dear. Let’s call for backup, there’s no point in endangering ourselves by getting involved.’Now take a look at the below responses to this passage, and rank them in order of efficiency.  1. Inform your fellow officer that it’s your duty to protect the public, and immediately intervene.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / Counterproductive2. Allow your fellow officer to call for backup, while trying to intervene yourself.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / Counterproductive3. Agree with your fellow officer. There’s no point putting yourself in danger.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / Counterproductive4. Encourage your fellow officer to intervene, while you call for backup.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / CounterproductiveAnswers1. Inform your fellow officer that it’s your duty to protect the public, and immediately i ntervene.Answer: EfficientExplanation: As a police officer, you have a duty of care for the public. You need to step in and stop this fight from escalating even further.2. Allow your fellow officer to call for backup, while trying to intervene yourself.Answer: Fairly EfficientExplanation: This is fairly efficient, as at least you are intervening in the fight. However, something of this nature should really not require more than two of you (unless things seriously escalate) and therefore it’s better if your partner assists you in intervening.3. Agree with your fellow officer. There’s no point putting yourself in danger.Answer: CounterproductiveExplanation: As a police officer, you have a duty of care to the public. By refusing to intervene, you are neglecting this duty.4. Encourage your fellow officer to intervene, while you call for backup.Answer: InefficientExplanation: Although this is technically the same as option 2, encouraging your partner to intervene whilst you make the call to the station is not particularly bold on your part; particularly as your partner believes that you should ignore the fight altogether.Situational Judgement Practice Question 2Police have been called to the scene of an accident at Ficshire Zoo today. A young man aged fifteen climbed over the wired enclosure to the Gorilla Den, where he attempted to take a selfie with the Silverback. The gorilla â€" named Ernie â€" did not take kindly to this.When you arrive at the scene, with your fellow officers, you encounter a scene of absolute bedlam, with park keepers desperately trying to administer medical attention to the young man, and Ernie standing in the background furiously beating his chest.Your senior officer has asked you to go and police the zoo canteen, whilst he and your colleagues deal with the fallout from the accident. You do not feel that this would be an efficient use of your time.Rank the following responses in order of efficiency A. Inform your senior officer that if he wants someone to go and police the canteen, he should do it himself.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / CounterproductiveB. Ask your senior officer to clarify what exactly needs to be done at the zoo canteen.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / CounterproductiveC. Ignore your officer’s instructions and do what you think is best.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / CounterproductiveD. Immediately agree to go and police the canteen.Efficient / Fairly Efficient / Inefficient / CounterproductiveWrite your answers to this question in the comment section, and we’ll mark your score!Practice More Police Situational Judgement Test ExercisesIf you’re looking to perfect your police situational judgement test skills, then we have the perfect resource for you! Our guide on how to pass the police situational judgement test is jam-packed with incredible tips on how to:Ace any situational judgement test, police and non-police.Rank answers, in terms of efficiency.Se lect the best answer, for different kinds of situational judgement test.Put yourself across in the strongest possible way, and impress the assessors!So, don’t hang around. Check out our incredible guide on how to pass the Police Situational Judgement Test! This entry was posted in Police. Bookmark the permalink. Jordan Cooke Civil Service Careers â€" Part 2: Find Your Dream DepartmentJoining The Police With Dyslexia: How To Apply And Pass! 2 thoughts on “Police Situational Judgement Test: How To Ace Your Police Exam” Kerry Williams says:D B C A November 27, 2019 at 3:30 pm Reply Jordan Cooke says:Hi Kerry,This is a really good answer, and it seems like you’ve really grasped the fundamentals of the exercise. Just make sure, when answering these questions, that you’re confident in explaining why you’ve picked certain options.Sincerely,The How2Become Team November 29, 2019 at 4:14 pm Reply

Book review Getting past no - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Book review Getting past no - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog The next lot of books arrived from Amazon yesterday, and I speed-read the first one in a couple of hours. This book is the sequel to getting to yes. The first book outlines the classic techniques for skillful, issue-based negotiations. The sequel, subtitled Negotiating with difficult people, presents strategies you can use when the methods from the first book dont work. The books only 140 pages long, but well presented, well structured and with lots of illustrative case stories from difficult negotiations. And hey, its 6$ at Amazon. Read the two books, if negotiation is a part of your life and isnt it always? Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related