Steps to Hiring the Right Employee

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It isn't always easy to hire the right employee. People come to the interview showing their positive side but often mask those issues that will later cause your business a problem. Selecting the right candidate is important for ensuring that you are getting the best person for the position. By following a few steps your chances of a successful hire increases.

Step 1: Narrow down your list of potential candidates based upon their skills, education, and experience. Some might divide their piles into leading candidates, secondary potentials, and discards.

Step 2: Review your interview notes and determine which candidates gave the best answers and seem to have the most relevant knowledge for the position. Look for critical and "out of the box" thinking.

Step 3: Review the resume for complementary employment experience that may make one candidate more valuable than another. Sometimes it is better go broad than specific.

Step 4: Think about the type of personality you must work with and whether or not you want someone who is open minded and willing to learn or you want someone who is more forceful and direct.

Step 5: Go with your gut feeling. Sometimes you might pick up on cues that tip you off to the potential nature and goals of the person.

Understanding How Emotions Influence Purchase Behavior

Customers  make most of their purchase decisions from an emotional point of view. Understanding customers emotions helps to obtain a better grasp on motivations and purchasing behaviors. Much of our activities are based in our subconscious about how we view and feel about ourselves. Those emotions push consumers to act that can improve sales.

Consider the average consumer that picks product based on its current trendiness in the market. They assess the value of the product based upon the impressions and images they have of it. Celebrities endorsing products make them sound valuable, advertisements creates images, and their social network confirms these impressions.

Even though a problem such as needing a new washing machine or a new tool may push someone to seek a solution it is often emotions that help them pick which product and then prompt us to make a purchase. This means understanding customers emotions helps us understand their motives for preferring one product over another.

Assuming that we control for price, features, service and convenience we are left with how the product makes us feel.

According to the Book Descartes Error most of our decisions are made subconsciously. Even though I have already read the book you can find a pretty solid description in an article by Psychology Today.  In summary, the book helps us understand that emotions give us the motivation to act on certain offers over others.

Companies use psychological profiles to understand who is interested in their products and what motivates them to act. By using the right kind of images and impressions they are capable of developing higher levels of response to advertising dollars. Sparking these emotions through proper imagery and impressions can create higher purchasing rates. Pulling the right triggers is part of marketing strategy.

Could San Diego's Climate Budget Open the Door to New Industries?

The Mayor Kevin Faulconer recently passed San Diego's Climate Action plan that slates $130 million for bike lanes, efficient garbage trucks, reducing land fills, improving public transportation and updating streetlights. The goal is to reduce greenhouse emotions in half by 2035. Change today is a proactive approach to dealing with future greenhouse legislation while keeping the city at the forefront of environmental solutions.

Climate change is a liability in just about every scenario you can imagine. However, in San Diego it is possible to start hedging current bio-tech, universities, and manufacturing industries to create new opportunities that lead to jobs while still improving the environment.

As the market changes and legislation gets more forceful there will be a growing national need for environmental ideas, solutions and technologies that come from cities like San Diego.

Treaties will also tie in pollution control mechanisms on a national level which means entire cities will need to reduce their carbon emissions. San Diego is leading the market when it comes to creating an eco-friendly environment that could create new opportunities. Leadership can think about turning momentum into an economic opportunity that is exportable to other nations.

Legislation changes markets. Encouraging eco-friendly companies to set roots in San Diego while adapting cost saving eco-based initiatives that are generated from those industries creates new possibilities.  Few can complain about long-term sustainability that also helps to balance budgets while fostering job growth.

Nothing changes over night and a few small steps in one direction can sometimes lead to greater opportunities in the future. The budget helps to secure San Diego as a eco-friendly city but greater coordination with interested companies could lead to new profit creating opportunities. Ideas become exportable and profitable when they are first successfully implemented in a city the size of San Diego and then sold to other places.

12th Annual Education and Development Conference

EDC 2017 - 12th Annual Education and Development Conference

Bangkok, Thailand

12th Annual Education and Development Conference will welcome distinguished participants form over 40 countries worldwide, coming from academic, corporate, governmental and NGO realms. We look forward to seeing you in Bangkok in March 2017.

Enquiries: contact@tomorrowpeople.org
Web address: http://www.ed-conference.org
Organized by: Tomorrow People Organization

Dear Scholars, Students, NGO and governmental representatives:

We are happy to announce EDC 2017, hosted by Tomorrow People Organization. This highly exciting and challenging international Conference is intended to be a forum, discussion and networking place for academics, researchers, professionals, administrators, educational leaders, policy makers, industry representatives, advanced students, and others interested in Education. Attendance of distinguished delegates from over 40 countries is expected from academic, governmental and NGO sectors. 

More specifically, it targets:

Scholars: Share your research, learn some new approaches, hear about others' experiences and pass on your knowledge and experience.

Government officials and policy makers: Learn about the best practices, educational development strategies and educational systems around the world; network with other policy makers and NGOs working in the field of supporting educational development.

NGOs: Network with other international NGOs, possible donors and colleagues from around the world and share your achievements and strategies with others.

Graduate students: Meet your colleagues from around the world, make new friends, and improve your knowledge and communication skills.

Company representatives: This is a chance to improve your leadership skills, learn more about the importance of permanent education in achieving the high performances of your organization, meet your colleagues, exchange ideas and establish new connections and partnerships.

Others: Anyone who is interested in making some positive changes around them and gaining new knowledge, skills and friends and becoming more useful to their own communities.

Education and Development Conference 2017 will provide unlimited resources and opportunities to interact with prominent leaders in the field of education and greatly expand on your global network of scholars and professionals.

We welcome: ORAL, POSTER and VIRTUAL presentations. Early submissions are strongly encouraged due to limited space in the venue, as applications are reviewed and accepted on a rolling admission basis - as long as space is available. 

The conference topics include, but are not limited to: Adult Education, Arts Education, Anthropology and Education, Curriculum, Early Childhood Education, Educational Systems and Policy, Educational Psychology, Environmental Education, Gender and Education, Guidance and Counseling, Health Education, Higher Education, History of Education, IT and Education, Language Education and Literacy, Lifelong Learning, Mathematics Education, Mentoring and Coaching, Multicultural Issues in Education, Philosophy of Education, Physical Education, Primary Education, Quality in Education, Race, Ethnicity and Education, Research and Development, Rural Education, Science Education, Secondary Education, Sociology of Education, Special and Inclusive Education, Teacher Education, Values and Education, Vocational Education and Training, Other areas of Education.

Papers presented at the conference will be published in a dedicated ISBN publication of EDC 2017 Conference Proceedings. 

Applications are accepted online at: http://www.ed-conference.org/apply.html

Outside the Ethics Vacuum - Metrics and Culture

Ethics is built within a context and doesn't exist within a vacuum. As one comes to understand the social, political, and economic aspects of unethical behavior we find that it takes a community of "blind eyes" and moral failure to allow such behaviors to persist. Where ethical crimes exist there is usually a wider social network involved. Dismantling social networks of dysfunctional thinking requires instilling a culture of ethical behavior and supporting it with incentives.

Consider the difference between an employee who steals cleaning supplies as a short-term opportunity versus someone who is engaged in kickbacks and fraud. The former may be an individual act rooted in one person's need while the later requires a much wider network of supporters. Those supporters might include the person paying the bribe, the receiver of that bribe, employees who engage in the behaviors but could also include a larger group of aware co workers and colleagues.

This makes ethics violation a social crime. The type of fraud makes little difference. In consumer fraud there are usually other individuals who are aware and don't take action. To change this requires changing the metrics within the organization as well as the culture that allows such behavior to exist. Where rampant ethical violations are occurring it is necessary to radically change the organization.

Performance Metrics: There are a number of people who will always seek to "game" the system. They don't care about the spirit of what those metrics represent but they do care about how they can beat those metrics to earn more money or prestige. Adjusting the metrics to include non-performance issues and changing metrics around keeps systems developing and changing while making long-term scams more difficult.

Organizational Culture: Ethical crimes happen in a social network and context. It is acceptable because others have also deemed it as acceptable. When these behavior are entrenched it is necessary to break apart departments, remove leaders, adjust cultures, and create better organizational structures. The internal organizational conversations and transactions must change.

The problem is ethical violations is that they damage the organization, victims and society. People are often afraid to report those violations because they are not isolated incidents and don't often get the support they need. In some cases the reporter could become a target for others who believe the person is self-serving or seeking to cause trouble.

It is important to remember that all business is based on trust. When organizations allow such behavior to persist they destroy the reputation of their firm as well as the natural trust with consumers. As these problems continue forward the organizations is inching toward default and potential harm to shareholders that cannot be recovered. In some situations companies go out of business, seek to rebrand, or force new legislation. Making sure that the company supports ethical behavior and has the right performance metrics is a statement about maintaining solid profits as it is about values.