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Workplace

4 Habits That Kill Career Potential

The harder a habit is to acquire, the greater the reward that stems from acquiring that behavior. Rarely is the acquisition of desirable traits or the culmination of a successful career happenstance. Regardless of popular consensus, most individuals are not born with immense abilities. Rather, the actions a person takes and how often they engage in those habits will either propel or completely diminish abilities. On the flip side, harmful habits are easy to acquire, yet hard to live with. Below, the recruiters at KAS have listed 4 habits that kill career potential. 1.  Failing to take a sincere interest in others. The most effective way anyone can make themselves appear interesting is to take a sincere interest in what matters to the other person. Evidence has shown that the overwhelming majority of earth’s inhabitants is more interested in his or her own name more than any other name on this planet. This is not to mention that they are significantly more concerned in themselves, their problems and aspirations than they are you or anybody else for that matter. While each person is different in a myriad of ways, one thing that each individual who walks this earth has in common is that they strive to feel important. Part of making them feel important is listening – a simple, yet seemingly less frequently used tactic than years prior. As a matter of fact, many people fail to make a great first impression because they don’t listen intently and interrupt, thus not making the individual feel as if they matter. Regardless of how much formal education a person has had, excessive talking about themselves or interrupting all but renders even the most prestigious diploma worth next to nothing. 2. Folding during tough times. Opportunity doesn’t seek us nor does it only happen once in a lifetime. All too often, individuals quit or continually postpone crucial work due to a particular account or relationship going as they wish it had. Consistently, life furnishes the opportunity to improve. Any procrastination (or complete inaction) when times to better one’s situation present themselves, because of past failures forfeits any chance for success and allows another party to win. Character is not built when things go a person’s way. Rather, they are formed when even the biggest of problems present themselves. 3. Failing to engage in critical reading. We’ve all heard the phrase, “the blind leading the blind.” Each and every minute, individuals who are not qualified to speak about a subject provide advice to the masses via social media platforms.  Even worse, each and every minute, someone takes their diatribe at face value. All the time, our recruiters come across job seekers who have paid unqualified career coaches (who themselves make roughly $40,000 a year) to assist them in highly crucial decision making. All the time, I come across articles which discuss facets of business that define common sense. While everyone does deserve a voice, not everyone has to listen to it. 4. Failing to continually learn. The secret to anyone’s success is to constantly learn and improve themselves. Complacency depletes potential.…

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Talent Acquisition Timebound

How to Build a Better Relationship with Your Clients

How much thought do you put into rewarding your clients, not just for working with you, but for the work they do in their industry and communities?  It is all well and good sending branded tat that most clients don’t really want or need and hardly get used. Money well spent. To me that is…

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Workplace

How Should I Deal With Job Interview Nerves?

A job interview can make the most confident of us nervous, but there is no need to panic. A few simple techniques and good preparation can do wonders to greatly reduce your stress levels. You need to be confident and prepared in order to create a good first impression. Here are 10 ideas to appropriately…

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Talent Acquisition

5 Tips for New Recruiters

The world of recruiting can be a lot of fun and make you very successful early on in your career. However it of course comes with its fair share of headaches. As a new recruiter you have to be prepared for the world you are about to enter because while it can be very fruitful…

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Workplace

Public Speaking: 5 Ways to Combat the Fear

A fear of public speaking is quite common, and at times people can find the phobia very debilitating. Unfortunately, there are many times throughout a person’s personal and professional life where speaking in public may be required or expected, and if the fear is great, it can affect performance. Many people do their very best to avoid…

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Talent Acquisition

Tailoring Your Recruiting Communication to a Specific Location

Talking to people in different cities and regions is different. Take Kem for example… If I had sent the following invitation request to Kem in San Francisco, California: “You’ve got skills. Skills we need. Want to work on some cool stuff? Let’s connect!” He wouldn’t have replied. Instead, if I sent this: “Ok Kem, I think…

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Employer Branding Talent Acquisition

How to Make Authentic Recruitment Videos

“Cobb: You’re waiting for a train. A train that’ll take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you. But you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter. Now, tell me why? Mal: Because you’ll be together!” Inception, 2010 The candidate experience is more than face to face interactions. When…

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Workplace

Top 5 Things to Remember in an Interview

You worked hard on your resume and job application, and now you are called in for an in-person job interview. You are one step closer to your dream job. It’s time to understand how to succeed in the job interview, so that you can actually land the job. Here are the most important things you…

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Workplace

Interview Lessons from the World of Podcasting

I’m multi-tasking. Not something I’m particularly good at, but listening to Marc Maron’s podcast with President Obama I’m reminded how interviewing techniques, questions and the process employers have used for hiring over decades is broken. Employers know it. Job-seekers feel it. Stats confirm it. Maron starts the podcast rambling about how nervous he is, “I’m panicking all morning,”…