You have an open position at your company and your friend (or relative) approaches you about the job. Should you hire them? As a manager you need to decide if the pros and cons of having your personal and professional life mix is something worth risking.

Helios often works with clients when their recruiting process is broken or non-existent. When we conduct recruiting assessments, one of the most common areas we see overlooked is the candidate experience. With many organizations today trying to do more with less, the candidate experience is often neglected. However, the impact of both positive and negative candidate experiences can have far-reaching consequences on your organization. Studies show that when candidates have a positive experience with your firm, they are more likely to share that experience and encourage others to apply as well (even if they were not selected for the position to which they applied). Likewise, when candidates have a negative experience, they are more likely to discourage others from applying to your firm or even from being a consumer of your brand. Having a poor candidate experience can negatively impact your firm’s ability to be competitive in recruiting top talent.

As economic cycles go, the last 18 months have been a time of change for any company doing business with the federal government. Budgets have been cut across the board, and it often feels like the government is trying to get the same services for a fraction of the cost. For those of us working in Talent Acquisition or Human Resources, the pressure to do more with less has never been more tremendous.

Congratulations, you received a call from a recruiter to set up a phone interview! Maybe it was even from me or another one of my colleagues who recruit for clients around the Washington area. Preparing for a phone interview seems like it should be a pretty simple task, right? There is no need to get a haircut, or a Brazilian blow-out. You don’t need to get dressed in your best blue, black, or gray interview suit, and there is no gassing up the car to sit in traffic on the inner or the outer-loop during morning rush-hour. Instead, you are able to have a relaxed conversation from the comfort of your own home in whatever attire you deem appropriate for a telephone call. However, the actual act of the phone interview is just as important as an in-person interview, and the same preparation etiquette applies. In fact, because many employers use telephone interviews as a way to identify a narrow pool of applicants who will be selected for an in-person interview, it is in the best interest of the interviewee to prepare with as much thought as they would for an in-person interview.

If you’ve ever had a conversation with an HR professional, you’ve likely heard us go into detail about how important a positive onboarding experience is for your new hires. This is your organization’s chance to not only validate for the employee that they chose the right position/organization to join but to also energize them to help create an engaged and effective member of your team down the road.

Let’s say that your HR Director resigns unexpectedly. Or he or she goes on an unplanned leave of absence. What do you do?