Part II – Men

Last week in a Hire Up blog post, we discussed the importance of “dressing for success” in relation to women. Now, it is time to talk about MEN!

First things first. When going on an interview, looking presentable is A MUST! From styled hair to polished shoes, it all counts when meeting your possible employer for the first time. If you are unsure of what to wear, do some research on the company. We found that it is effective to dress like you are a part of the company’s brand. Look at the company colors and wear clothes that don’t distract from that. You want to stand out by looking well put together, and still look like a part of the team before you actually are.

One thing that men find difficult is purchasing professional clothing at a low cost. There is a way around this. You don’t have to spend every penny you have to Dress For The Job You Want. There are plenty of stores out there that sell nice clothing at reasonable prices such as Ross, Marshalls, Burlington Coat Factory and many more. Big labels and names don’t always equate to quality and value.

Here are a few things to consider when dressing for the job you want:

Don’ts

No bling! Keep it simple and classy. No chains, earrings, or facial piercings.

Don’t wear jeans

Do not have your shirt unbuttoned

Don’t look over stylish

Do not wear a hat

Dos

Wear a well-fitting suit of a solid color (Darker colors)

Wear a long sleeved collared shirt (Light colors and go with the suit)

Make sure to find a nice belt to go with your suit

Be well manicured (hair, nails, facial hair)

Find some nice dress shoes

You can never go wrong with  “Classics”

Iron your clothes!

If its cold wear a Pea Coat and if it’s warm still wear your suit jacket

For more outfit inspiration CLICK HERE

If you are in the process of looking for a job, we are here to help! Contact one of our recruiters TODAY and start Monday! Call (559)579-1331 or to see recent job openings CLICK HERE

Part I – Women

One of the first things that we all learn when entering the work world is to “dress professionally” when going on an interview.

In an earlier Hire Up blog post we researched exactly how important this is to interviewers and found that IT ONE OF THE TOP THINGS EMPLOYERS LOOK AT when hiring.

The question is, what does “dress professionally” actually mean? And how do we know what is acceptable for each position?

Imagine you are selling your house. You must first make it look nice for anyone to consider purchasing it. You also want to look at the type of people that may be in the market for your house and stage according to how they might like their house to look. The same principal applies to interviews. You must look like you are dressed for the job you are applying for! You should match the brand of the company and look like you belong there.

Here are some tips to help you dress to get the job you want!

Research the company you are interviewing at. For example, if the company is a financial institution, we highly recommend not wearing shorts or open toed shoes. The idea is to look at the company’s brand, and try to not distract from it. If the company colors are blue and gray, wear colors like grays, whites, blacks, and blues. Look at what employees are wearing and dress somewhat similar.

Present a neat, clean, and organized appearance. As an interviewee, you are a potential representative of the company and should appear that way. Clean shoes, styled hair, and manicured nails are just a few things you can do to impress. Showing up with purple hair and facial piercings may steer the company’s opinion in the other direction.

Pay attention to accessories and DON’T OVER DO IT! It is easy to go from classy to cheezy in a matter of seconds. For an office job, simple and stylish is the desired look. For an artistic position, fun and colorful jewelry would be appropriate.

Don’ts

Low-cut or see-through blouses

Leather pants or mini skirts

Visible bra straps or mid driftOpen-toed

Strappy sandals or stilettos

Dos

Nice shoes, manicure, roots (if you color your hair)

Fitted, not tight, silhouettes; conservative length and shapes for skirts and pants

Jackets in striking colors.

For more outfit inspiration CLICK HERE

Next week we will discuss Do’s and Don’ts for men!

Looking for a job? Call us TODAY!!! (559)579-1331

As a leading staffing agency in the Central Valley, Hire Up knows that performance reviews are favored by few and dreaded by many. We, as experts in the field are here to give you some tips about how to make this process less painful for your team and you! We want to share the key to successful performance reviews.

1. Ask your employees to complete a self-evaluation. This process will outline all that they have accomplished in the evaluated time period. The list should include goals met, completed and uncompleted projects, accomplishments, and challenges.

2. Gather all background information ahead of time. Be sure to study a copy of the employee’s last review, notes from any meeting held discussing their performance, and supervisor and or client feedback.

3. Write and appraisal narrative. This should communicate key points to each employee, including how the employee has performed over the past year, what kinds of obstacles need to be discussed, and whether additional training or access to resources are needed for the employee to do their work more effectively.

4. Set expectations and goals! Take some time here to think about performance and developmental goals that each employee should achieve in the coming year. Also think about how you, as their leader, can assist in helping them accomplish these goals.

5. Set a time, date, and place. Find the right spot for performance reviews. This place should be quite and private. Give your employees advanced notice of their scheduled review, along with a copy of their appraisal narrative so they have all the information ahead of time and can prepare. Make sure to allow enough time for each employee’s review, enabling you to cover all the information and not feel rushed.

Are you looking for a new employee? Hire Up Staffing can shorten your search of highly skilled, dependable professionals! Let us find the perfect team members for you today. Call a Hire Up team member now! (559)579-1331 or CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT US.

Have you ever sat through a boring meeting at work?

Mundane meetings are about as effective as walking on a treadmill while eating a slice of pizza, pointless. If the information given is not direct, interesting, valuable, and delivered in an organized manner, you may as well not have the meeting. People tend to “zone out” and get distracted if you don’t find a way to draw them in. We have developed 10 tips to help you run a great meeting at work.

1. To start, the meeting should begin and end on time! Starting anything late is attributing to bad habit building. People subconsciously start thinking that it is okay to be late if you are. Set a good example and show up early! This will give you time to prepare for the meeting. Ending the meeting on time is important because you want to keep people excited about being there. If you run over, give them a heads up by saying “We have only covered 7 of the 10 topics, so we may be an extra 15 minutes”. This way people know that there is an end in sight.

2. Don’t dive right in! Spend a little time in group conversation. This is very important and productive in that it gives a chance to relate on a more personal level before the serious topics begin. People in a work setting need to build friendships and have the chance to show their personalities. This process helps to establish rapport.

3. If people in the meeting are not into it, find a way to draw them out. Ability to grab the floor doesn’t necessarily correlate with capacity to contribute.

4. Meetings often involve blame-giving and blame-taking, and although it’s not pleasant to accept blame, it’s a necessary aspect of getting responsibility (if deserved, of course). This dramatically increasing organizational credibility on all sides.

5. Along with blame, a meeting is also a great place to give people credit for their ideas and accomplishments. Be quick to point out great work or to call for a round of applause for a colleague. For some reason, people often act as though credit is a zero-sum goody, and if they share credit, they’ll get less themselves. Sharing credit not only doesn’t diminish the number of gold stars you get, but adds to them – because people so admire the ability to give credit.

6. Have an agenda and stick to it. If possible, circulate the agenda in advance, along with anything else that needs to be read to prepare for the meeting. Make sure people know if they should bring anything. Along the same lines…

7. Standing meetings should be kept as short as possible and very structured. Have rules for canceling the meeting when appropriate – if such-and-such doesn’t happen; if only a certain number of people can attend, etc.

8. Don’t say things that will undermine or antagonize other people. Turns out they do in fact notice this, and they don’t appreciate it.

9. If a meeting is long, schedule breaks when people can check their email and phones. Otherwise, they get very distracted by feeling they’ve been out of touch for too long (for some people, this takes about ten minutes), and they start sneakily emailing under the table. As if no one will notice. Which they do.

10. Meetings should stay tightly focused. If people want a chance to discuss side issues, theoretical problems, or philosophical questions that aren’t relevant to the purpose of the meeting, they should set up a separate meeting.

Hire Up Staffing is here to help you with all your staffing needs! Looking for an employee? Looking for work? Call us today at (559)579-1331.

Change is never easy, but for companies to evolve and grow, it is import that company policies do as well. Hire Up Staffing wants to give you some simple tips and steps to properly implement a policy that will work.

First things first, Make sure the policy is necessary for your company! The last thing you want to do is implement a policy that doesn’t make sense for your organization or is unneeded. If you do, then you’ll simply wind up with more red tape and a greater chance that your team won’t stick to the policy once it’s created.

Think about the problem that needs to be solved. Does it really warrant a company policy to help solve it? If not, then find a different way. Perhaps you simply need to communicate an issue or a concern with your staff rather than creating a policy.

Next, determine what your goals are. Once you’ve ensured the policy is, in fact, necessary, the next step should be to determine what goals you’d like to achieve through it. Are you trying to improve productivity, reduce the number of customer complaints, or enhance the working environment? Whatever your goals are, make sure you have them clearly defined before working on your policy.

After that, do your research. Just like with any big initiative, it’s important to do your homework ahead of time. In this case, you should be looking at policies at similar companies and evaluating what worked and what didn’t. You should also be searching for sample policies to use as a launching pad for your own policy. And finally, you should be outlining how the new policy will impact the company and what changes will likely result from it.

The next step is to craft your policy. Creating a new policy takes more than just sitting down, spitting out a few words on a page and calling it a day. You’ll want to write a draft and then refine it as you go along. One easy way to get started is to think about the kinds of questions your team will have about the new policy and addressing them one by one. Also, get input from another party to ensure you’re not missing any important language or details.

Finally you get to enlist compliance or legal. Once your policy is in good shape, hand it off to your legal or compliance department to review. If you don’t have such in-house departments, then have your company’s lawyer review your new policy to ensure it doesn’t violate any workplace rules and that you’ve accounted for every possible contingency.

Hire Up Staffing is here to help you and your company find the right team. We are also here to help with any other questions you might have! If you are looking to hire, please call us at (559)579-1331

5 Tips to Make Yourself Essential

So you have yourself a temporary job, congratulations! Now, it turns out you like the company you’re with and you would prefer to stay put. You have the opportunity to turn your temporary job into a long term position, and we’re going to show you how. Here are five ways to make yourself too good to let go.

1. Research Time – The more you know about the company you work for, the more you’ll be able to help them, it’s as simple as that! If you invest some of your time learning about who your company serves, it’s competitors, and any problems it may face, you’ll be able to showcase that knowledge when the time arises and prove that you’re worth keeping around.

2. Know The Brand – Beyond learning about who the company does business with and their competition, get to know who they are behind the scenes. Get to know their values, their brand, what they stand for, and how they conduct themselves as a business internally. The more you understand the company’s inner workings, the more you will seem to belong.

3. Be Flexible – You may have been brought on to perform a certain job, but you should be there to fill in any gaps where you may be needed. You could go from low man (or woman) on the totem pole, to an integral part of the team in a moment of need. Keep an eye out for ways to help and you may just find yourself signing on for good.

4. Network – Chances are if you make a friends and get to know the higher ups (no pun intended) in the company, they are going to have a hard time sending you back to the staffing agency. Make sure to spend some time with these people, going to lunch or company events with them will get you a long way when it comes to building a relationship. Plus, when you’ve built this relationship and have the opportunity to spend more time with these people, you’ll have a better opportunity to show off your best qualities.

5. Remember The Basics – You know the drill, don’t be late, dress professionally, be respectful and provide the company with quality work. Make sure you are always showing off your best side and people will take notice.