HR Nuggets

A lot have been said about hiring experienced staff to get the jobs done, but very little attention is paid to how to encourage fresh graduates in gaining the highly expected work experiences. Neither the society nor organizations seem to think of the importance and benefits of investing in internship programs to develop the desired skills and experiences.
Unfortunately, our educational systems seem to be more theoretical rather than a blend of theories and practical. The question that remains unanswered is “where are fresh graduates expected to acquire these experiences from?” Universities produce millions of graduates every year with little or no job opportunities out there, little do we know that the longer one stays out of school without a job or further self-development the more difficult it is for the fellow to get hired.
It is very discouraging to see thousands of graduates with good grades on the streets looking for employers to absorb them but all to no avail. If getting educated does not position one well for employment opportunities, it is then difficult to convince the younger generations on the importance of getting educated. This in no way justifies implies that all forms of education must lead to a white collar job, but how well does our educational system prepare one for the challenges ahead, through entrepreneurship teachings and programs.
In addressing the gap between graduates and the required number of years experiences, a few organizations have started investing into some form of internship programs, how well this is done or the intentions of establishing these programs is yet another research to be carried out.
Interns are hired and trained to perform the organizational duties that will launch them into higher roles and responsibilities in future either within the organization or outside the organization, and not “tea making” interns, in fact it is a training ground and organizations are not obligated to hire them if they do not seem fit after the training.
It is worthy to note however, that this program is very beneficial to the interns. While there are a lot of arguments on its benefits to the organization as regards the worth of the investment, whichever way the dice rolls, either in favour or against the program, the establishing organizations have a lot to consider prior to taking a final decision.

Advantages of Internship Program to an organization

Having established that it is a “win” situation for the interns, the following are a few of its glaring advantages to the internship providers:

• Recruitment and maintenance of interns are far cheap: So many interns are eager and willing to offer their services at little or no cost to the organization, especially when it is an avenue for them to receive organizational standard training rather than roaming the streets. Even when organizations pay, their overhead cost is usually very low compared to the cost of recruiting and keeping full time staff. 
• Introduce Fresh ideas and energy to the system: No matter how fresh and naïve the interns appear, there seem to be an aura of fresh energy, zeal and idea to contribute to the organization. Especially if there are some form of evaluation that may lead to retention or dismissal after the program.
• Corporate Social Responsibility: Internship program are mostly viewed by the community, universities and society at large as a way of giving back to the community, it greatly strengthens the bonds that exist between the organization and its environs. 
• Conversion to full time employment: The period of training usually serve as observational period, and upon completion, the process of conversion to full employment is most likely hitch free as the organizations wouldn’t go into long and expensive recruitment process. 

Disadvantages of Internship Program to an organization

•  Obligated to hire: Organizations sometimes are torn between keeping and letting an intern go. It has been clearly stated that organizations are not mandated to retain their interns and if this must happen, the intern must have demonstrated the capacity and required skills that warrants retention. 
• Associated Cost of training interns: Despite the fact that the cost of recruiting interns are relatively cheap compared to hiring full time staff, the productivity of the interns being trained should be justifiable to the cost associated with their training. This is however difficult to determine prior to investing in them. 
• Vague or no Guarantee of acceptance: There is no guarantee that the expected outcome of the training will be suitable for the experience an employer requires. Neither is there a guarantee that the intern will accept an offer of employment even if extended. 

Overtime simply means work performed outside the normal or agreed working hours between an employee and employer. What constitutes the amount to be paid or the excess hours worked are determined by a lot of factors. It is easier to determine how much an employee’s overtime amounts to in countries or organizations where there are spelt out hourly minimum wages.
In the United States for example the normal "work period" according to Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA) is the "work week" -- 7 consecutive days -- and the normal FLSA overtime threshold is 40 hours per work week. Some jobs might have a different FLSA overtime threshold.  In this instance therefore, any additional hours worked, outside the 40 hours per week is considered over time and must be paid for, only if the company is covered by FLSA Laws. Although this was prior to labor department new overtime rule of May 18th 2016, which according to The Fiscal Times “requires employers to pay white-collar workers overtime if they earn less than $47,476 annually, instead of less than $23,660, the case at present”.  This law however, has raised a lot of questions regarding its effects which include; increased costs to employers thereby discouraging employment; elimination flexible working time for employees; and reduced productivity and economic growth.
Similarly, under the laws of England and Wales there is no minimum statutory level of overtime pay but the average pay rate must not fall below the amount stated as the National Minimum Wage.
Nigeria Labour Law on the contrary does not provide specified minimum hourly wage, hours, days and wages of work are usually collectively determined by both employers and employees in the employment contract, so also is overtime payment.

Company’s Overtime Policy:
Most organizations are usually not specific as to how much their workforce are entitled to for an overtime work performed, this does not mean that employers do not expect workers to work for longer hours anyways. Even when organizations decide to pay for the oovertime, rates will most likely vary between different employers. For example some employers will pay extra for working on weekends or over bank/public holidays whereas other might not offer to pay anything.
Whatever the policies of a company are regarding overtime payment, it is morally right to compensate employees adequately for the jobs done, as this goes a long way to boost employees’ commitment and increase productivity.


Employees may get easily obsessed with working overtime due to some of its associated benefits like making more money or just to impress management and pave way for future promotion. For whatever reason employees get into this, it is important to evaluate the cons associated with overtime as a way of work life.

• Working late or adding additional hours could be very detrimental to your family and social life. It might be worth evaluating the amount of money one makes on overtime vis-à-vis its effect on your family life.
• Love of job vs Burnout: If one derives joy from his job, burnout effect might not be very obvious but health is important. Therefore, while you enjoy the said job and not the money that comes with it, it might be vital to pay attention to its effect on your health. Why not conduct a self-check, would you still put in more hours whether it is paid for or not? If your answer is “no” then you aren’t working out of love for your job but for the proceeds that comes forth from working overtime.
  
• Organizations that encourage overtime are exposing themselves to a lot of expenses. These expenses have to be planned, sustained and justifiable otherwise they become financial waste to the organization.
• Attention has to be paid to employees who willingly volunteer to work overtime, as some intentionally lag behind on their jobs wishing to get paid for a job that should long have been completed.

Lastly, overtime can make or mar an organization, workforce as well as productivity level. It can easily be abused but constant review of its benefits, costs as well as acceptable standards might help put all the necessary stakeholders on the right track. “What is worth doing, is worth doing well”.
What Overtime Policy is applicable in your organization? Let’s hear your views…

Organizational cultures are the commonly shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which directly or indirectly govern how employees behave within an organization. These shared values could be intrinsic or extrinsic, and have a strong influence on employees in an organization. These organizational cultures could include the dress code, choice of language, addressing colleagues by their first name or last name and ways of performing one's job in the organization.

While some of these cultures might be spelt out explicitly, others most often are unspoken, thus making adaptation a bit difficult for new intakes. Although close observation and association with old colleagues seem to be the easiest ways to follow suit if not discussed during the orientation processes.

There are different reasons why organizations tilt towards particular ways of doing things, which could be to stand out amongst the crowd or to easily be identified and associated with the nature of their business or sector. Size is relatively irrelevant when it comes to organizational culture as both small and large sized organizations have their cultures. Whatever the reasons are, these cultures have its benefits and downsides.

BENEFITS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Means of identity­: Organizational culture directly or indirectly has a way of making employees within an organization easily relate to each other because they have a common means of identity.

Fosters Unity amongst colleagues:Employees with shared values and beliefs are easily united because they have a lot of things in common, believe in almost the same thing and collectively work together towards achieving their organizational goals.

Improved productivity­: Favorable organizational culture enhances employees’ morale to work to their fullest potential. This hitherto increases the productivity within the organization at large. Once productivity is improved, cost of production is invariably reduced. Thus, healthy culture within an organization have a positive impact on the growth as well as profitability of the organization.

Increased marketability: Recruiters often claim to easily identify job seekers who have shared values with that of the organization. While this might be true to an extent, it is however difficult to correctly decipher someone’s personality within 30 minutes or 1 hour interview.

Positive image amongst employees and society­: Good organizational culture has a way of making the society or community have a positive image about the organization. Although “good” might be relative to the way the society perceives the culture but a culture that does not interfere with the community tends to be viewed favorably than any one that interferes.

Attracts and retain the right people:­ The saying that “like minds attract” comes to play here, job seekers who believe in an organization, its cultures and values tend to strive towards getting into such organization with minimal exit rates.

CHALLENGES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Less attention is paid to productivity: Human resource managers are unconsciously geared towards concentrating on promoting and enforcing organizational culture than productivity. What an employee wears to the office does not automatically transcend to what he or she can bring to the table. It is very important to constantly try and balance these two as concentration on one may lead to decline on the other.

Difficulty in adaptability­: New recruits very often find it difficult to easily adapt to some of the said cultures which leads to constant struggle with every other thing happening within the organization including work relationship with colleagues.

Hire for skill and culture fit: When the right people are hired it leads to easy adaptation, increased productivity and less time wastage in inculcating these cultures to employees, but getting the people with the right skills as well as culture fit might be an uphill task.

Affecting individual personalities­ In this time and age when securing a job is the most difficult thing everyone experiences, job seekers could simply wear a behavioral mask to simply get in and remain in the organization. Although their real personalities often show in a very short time.

Inability to involve all team members: “What is good for the goose and good for the gander”. There should be no exception to culture, everyone within the organization, irrespective of sex, class, race or age. In actual sense however, most management staff are indirectly not questioned for not doing what is expected of them, leaving room for abuse of status.

Kindly note that there are much more benefits as well as challenges, but the most important advice for employees are to seek employment in organizations they sincerely respect and value their culture, or organization that have similar or same values with you. Jobs are hard to come by right? But sanity, peace of mind and retention should be worth more than just any kind of job.

We could discuss this further, hit me up on the comment section……

A lot of job seekers concentrate so much on writing a good resume and pay less attention to writing a decent cover letter. Gone are the days when applicants just forward their Curriculum Vitae (CV) to a recruiter’s email address, expecting to be singled out for an interview invitation. There are usually so many qualified and even more suitable applicants out there, therefore you need to make yours stand out.
Despite having written a wonderful CV (which of course is very important), job applicants should strive to have their resumes accompanied with a good and well-articulated cover letter that depicts professionalism and excellent communication skills.
Cover letter simply means a letter of application, this can be used when applying for any position, except when a job seeker is physically taking his/her CV to a prearranged interview. Cover letter acts as an introduction to your person, skills, experiences and goes further to appeal for an opportunity to be met with the employer or recruiter. Cover letters are very vital and could be major determining factor towards your resume being reviewed or shoved aside.
Employer centric or personalized cover letter is more likely going to attract an interview than a generic cover letter, strive to use either the advertisers last or first name if found on the advert. It is therefore imperative to follow this simple guideline when writing your cover letter.

Guidelines to writing a good Cover Letter

• Cover letters should be concise, direct to the point and a maximum of one page. This is not the time to display your story telling skills. You simply have to say what needs to be said to endear you to the recruiter. If your fishing skill as a hobby has nothing to do with the vacancy in question, then there might be no point filling up space with such information. Simply say what needs to be said and say it well too.
• Introduction- Every cover letter must have an introduction, where a job seeker indicates how he/she got to know about the job opportunity; through advertorial publications, research on the company (sincerely too), unsolicited etc. This portrays the applicant’s sense of seriousness and acts as a means of reviewing the traffic generated from a particular or all channels of advert placements used by the recruiter.
• Body- here is the point where you need to say all you want the recruiter to hear, of course in relation to the skills and vacant position in question. Desist from lifting or repeating your resume but strive to bring your resume to life. Ensure to make a subtle argument on your strengths, weaknesses and how the organization can leverage on your strengths to achieve their organizational goals. It is worthwhile explaining why you have chosen to apply for the position.
• Closing-It is apparent to link your closing to your introduction. For example if the application is unsolicited, you most likely would close with remarks that you will follow up on them after a few days or weeks if there’s no feedback from them. On the other hand, for advertised position kindly indicate that you will be looking forward to hearing from them soon, to discuss further on how you will be an asset to the company.

In writing your cover letter, you must sound very professional but yet very self-confident and less desperate. Generally, focus on what the employers want and not what you can offer irrespective of what recruiter’s desires are. Would I rather invite you for an interview because you have an excellent knowledge of Microsoft package? When in actual sense I am on a look out for marketers who possess excellent interpersonal skills?
In the course of my research, I came across this cover letter (the job seeker has ended up not selling whatever skills, education or experiences he/she has that might be of great benefit to the organization). For pictorial example of a good cover letter, it might be worth it having a look at this corrected Cover letter here.

Do all you can to get your dream job closer to you!!!

How to Nail the Interview!!!

In assumption that your application is considered for a job interview, there are basic things a job applicant is expected to have done prior to the interview date. We often assume that there are basic interview questions that are usually asked by default but these are merely assumptions and might not always turn out as planned, hence the need to prepare to nail the interview.

Basic Expectations:

Research on the company: The importance of researching the prospective organization cannot be over emphasized. Often time’s job applicants aim just to get into a job without taking adequate time to carry out a proper research on the recruiting company. While we most likely blame this on “lack of job” or when the “needed is not available, the available becomes the needed”, we fail to realize that researching on the recruiting organization gives you an insight on not just what the organization does but also if the organizational goals and objectives tallies with yours. Similarly, proper research into an organization, its board of directors, mission, goals etc., prepares you to demonstrate your level of preparedness for the job as well as the interview, and will most likely give you an edge over other applicants.
Dress for Excellence: I guess the saying that one should dress as he/she wants to be addressed comes into play here. Dress to suit the job, organization and your personality. There are a lot of unspoken words during interview that recruiters observe, which includes your appearance, countenance etc. Some recruiters are kind enough to advise you on the mode of dressing, others however expect that you would have carried out your research to understand the nature of their business as well as the dressing that suits their business. Why would you therefore flaw this simple but yet important aspect of the interview?
Strive to make a good first impression: Let us assume you walk into the organization chewing your gum or talking on the phone loudly simply because you are at the front desk and haven’t been called in for the interview yet and hoping to end the call or throw the call once you are called in. What makes you think the lady seated at the front desk isn’t the interviewer? The bottom line of the story is that, one must always comport him/herself very well irrespective of where you are, because the interview can take any form and shape.
Common Interview Questions: Even if this were to be your first interview, ask questions and read up some common interview questions and how best to approach them. For example practically every interviewer wishes you tell them about yourself, what you can bring onboard and how you intend to achieve such. However, questions an experienced applicant might be asked would most likely differ from a fresher’s interview questions, so it is very important to consider the requirements of the job in question, and your expertise. You will never be over prepared for an interview! Another important point to note is that, some interviewers would ordinarily wish to know why you intend leaving your current organization (known) to a new organization (unknown), while you might have all the opportunity to vent your anger and disappointment on your current or former employer, please DO NOT fall prey to this. Flee as much as possible from the temptation of bad mouthing your employer. Trust me on this, no employer or recruiter will have a second look at your interview sheet after you are done.
Arrive early: Arriving late for an interview is indirectly a lead towards failure, therefore this is inexcusable. Early arrival gives you time to settle in, organize yourself and be less tensed before the commencement of the interview. Mind you, you never know what you are been observed on, would you rather burn the cable? So gather all the documents you most likely will need for the day, head off early to avoid unforeseen circumstances.
Be concise, confident and honest: Answer what you are asked, sincerely without beating about the bush. If you can give an illustration, do so but in a very concise manner. Your manner of responses go a long way to depict whether you are well experienced for the job or you are just a bunch of storytelling garbage, also know that when your answers are not sincere experienced recruiters have an incline that something isn’t right about you.
Display good body language: Why do interviewers constantly aim at having an eye contact with the interviewee? The simple answer is because every part of you is being interviewed, while spoken words are observed, the unspoken ones are also very important, so display the right body language all through the interview and do away with bad habits e.g rolling your eyes, having anything in your mouth, avoiding eye contact, picking your nails, flinging your hair etc. (Except if you are applying for bill board advertorial position). Therefore the nature of the job application and its requirement should determine your bodily expression.
Ask intelligent questions: This can only be achieved if proper research has been carried out by you. Most interviewers give an opportunity for questions, this is the time to showcase your intelligence, ask questions that are insightful and exhibit to the interviewer that you are not just as vague as any other person. Recruiters are often thrown aback when a job seeker simply has no question to ask. You just have to ask some questions. The people who get hired are not usually the most qualified or most intelligent but those who are able to exhibit that they are the best fit for the job at hand. Give me the excuse as to why you cannot nail the interview and I will let you have a thousand and one reasons why you missed out. Always try to do things the right way.
Thank You: Just as it is, say thank you. This has been my personal weapon as I progressed in my career. I have always gotten commendation by simply thanking the interviewer after the interview by word of mouth and a follow up email for giving me the opportunity and hoping to hear from them soon. You do not have to say much. “Thank you” does the trick.
Your success to getting job offers are determined by how much time, effort, research and persistence you invest into your interview. The more the better.