It's Your Career.

"No one is going to serve you a career on a silver platter. Your career will be what you make it. No more, no less."

Good Morning Folks,

Often I hear candidates say they want to leave a job, because their current employer is not ‘looking after my career’.

Sure, it’s important to work for a company like FSO where you can thrive, but you must above all understand this:

The person who will always care most about your career is you!

All of which reminds me of this post I saved from a recruiter I know...

==>  You Own Your Career, No-One Else! By: Alexey Fursov

The biggest mistake you can make in your work life is leave your career to your employer, or anyone else. You have to work at your career goal, plan it, and drive it where you want it to go.

Please understand that just having the qualifications is not enough anymore. Gone are the days where ‘getting the right degree will set up your career’. A degree just gets you the chance to get on the field, not win the game.

Ponder this. Success in your career will never be just a matter of qualifications or skills. It will always be a matter of motivation.

No one is going to serve you a career on a silver platter. Your career will be what you make it. No more, no less.

And so, as clichéd as it sounds, the starting point is to find what you like doing.

A career without passion and enthusiasm will have no meaning, no joy, and little hope of long-term success.

Indeed, does your career goal keep you awake at night?

If not, maybe you need to start to worry. You have 30 more years at work, and trust me on this.

No one else is having sleepless nights about what happens to your career.

So that means no one is steering your career ship.

Bottom line: You are always afforded a career, not just a job at FSO. But it's not a free ride.  Whether you have the motivation to apply and invest in yourself to learn and grow into future opportunities, is your part of the deal.

So, just a quick good morning. Great inspiration and motivation. Thanks for listening. Have fun and love life folks. We have lots to be thankful for. 

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time."
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Uncovering Your Company's True Culture

"Invest in individual mastery and market value . . . culture is to attracting high impact talent as a great product is to attracting good customers."

Good Morning Folks,

As you know I am a firm believer in continuing education by asking my team to read business books. Tom Peters is one of my favorites.

But now, thanks to the Internet, there are much shorter reads with just as powerful takeaways.

Here are a few I found in my library to share with the leaders among us this morning:

Jack Welch: Star Wars: When to Let a Top Performer Walk

How to Get Employees to Embrace Social Media

How To Uncover Your Company's True Culture

The Most Powerful Habit You Can Imagine

The Future of Work

Some thoughts on the culture article: Give me a team I can bring together in person now and then and watch the synergy pay off. 

As an people / talent professional, I have been astounded by how often senior leaders don’t “get” that culture is a living thing, unique to a company or organization. I once heard a fairly new leader describe the corporate culture of our organization to candidates but what he described was the culture of his previous company. He truly thought that if he said it, it would be so. As hard as I tried, I could not convince him that one organization’s culture could not simply be grafted onto a new organization and its employees.

The article linked above proffers that "... many companies have tried to adopt, say, the Zappos culture or the Google culture… but in most cases those attempts fail because culture is something that can be mimicked but almost never successfully copied."  

Within every organization, decision making drives performance. Every employee comes to work every day and makes decisions that impact performance.   The workplace has many temptations that employees must resist, from the petty impulse to claim credit for someone else's work, to the unscrupulous lapse of lying in a negotiation, to the criminal act of misrepresenting financial numbers.   

These decisions, at every level of the organization, define the corporate culture and drive performance.   

In 2008, Harvard Business School Professor Robert S. Kaplan and his Palladium Group colleague David P. Norton wrote The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage.   There are ten (10) steps to define the corporate culture and drive performance, including:  

Step 1: Visualize the strategy.   

Step 2: Communicate the strategy. 

Step 3: Identify strategic projects.   

Step 4: Align projects with strategy.   

Step 5: Align individual roles and provide incentives.  

Step 6: Manage projects.   

Step 7: Make decisions aligned with strategy.   

Step 8: Measure the strategy.   

Step 9: Report progress.  

Step 10: Reward performance.  

To make change, leaders must identify behaviors that are in line with the desired culture and find ways to reward or reinforce them

I will like to say these idea is common among young growing companies regardless of years in existence, they are still learning, but when they get to certain points in their growth, they begin to value employees much as the value the customer, quite really, they realize that the employees also make the hearth of the company much as the customer do, it's a matter of time, if the company as a future or big dreams.

Industry training, incentives, rewards, recognition and a TRUE career path sit at the heart of a successful company culture centered on service. At FSO, our Future Leaders Program (FLP) identifies and develops business leaders across the FSO enterprise and ensures a strong bench to fill our national expansion

Have a GREAT day. Love LIFE!

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

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“Never, never, never give up.” – Winston Churchill
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National Expansion; Future Leaders Promoted From Within And Other Thoughts For A Cold and Snowy Hump Day

Image: Forbes

"Matt has impressed me with his ability to dive in and learn the Records procedures and details of our system. When issues arise he consults me appropriately and together we resolve them. I look forward to further work with Matt. Thanks for hiring an experienced Records Manager who hit the ground running and brings a lot to the table."

Good Morning Folks

I hope you are all off to a WONDERFUL week so far.

I have been zipping across the country for the past few months and it has been wonderful to see our Personal, Passionate and Productive culture alive and kicking across the nation. Thank you to each and everyone of you for representing FSO with positive energy, smiles, amazing hospitality and customer service.

One of our 2014 goals is to have the most inspired, motivated and best trained employees in the industry. FSO is based on some very solid beliefs that are centered around building a career path for the passionate people who consistently do a great job for our clients.

Nothing is more important than having great people who care about the service they provide to our customers. Identifying and finding great people starts with knowing exactly what you are looking for - that fire in the belly, skip in the step and twinkle in the eye. Our Future Leaders must have the desire to grow and be a part of something amazing, something BIGGER.  

Everyday the Executive Leadership Team are thinking about how we can further expand growth opportunities, career paths, incentives and success with us. I am so passionate about the FLP Program and promoting from within, I want to ensure those who have grown and flourished with us are given the first opportunity to move up in their careers with us.

Another top goal of our organization is ensuring that we launch each new site with an FSO EM or Lead -- at a minimum! In other words, we will not open an account without an FSO person. Our goal  of ensuring perfect implementations will only be achieved by having as many FSO employees go to new sites as possible, and we will backfill them with new FSO employees in their current site. Simply put, this provides the opportunity for growth & advancement for all FSO employees.

You know that I am personally invested and CARE about every person in our company. It is part of the personal touch we brings to our prospects and FSO clients. Did you know that hundreds of our corporate and field staff were uncovered and/or promoted through me alone! Pretty impressive and we’ll only get stronger and better with a well-oiled FLP.

There are 2 ways for existing FSO employees to become a part of the FLP:

If YOU are a top performing employee, you have the fire, skip, twinkle, AND you are interested in being a part of the FLP (which will likely require leaving your current site), speak up! Call me or Denise directly and let us know you want to grow your career with FSO!  We want to hear from you to fulfill your dreams!  

If you are an EM, EAD, ED, RD, or a member of the PS or ELT and you know an employee who has the fire, skip, twinkle AND they are interested in growing their career with FSO, call me or Denise directly!

If this sounds incredible and impressive to the forgotten hourly employees stuck in dead-end jobs elsewhere, and the kind of career path and commitment you would like to be assured in return for your investment working hard every day, please send your resume to Kshepherd (at) fso-outsourcing.com.

I am personally committed to (re)IMAGING our FLP to enhance the FSO Employee Experience. 

I’m only one person and know I can’t do it alone. I need your knowledge, expertise and experience. 

We are family & it’s all about TEAM WORK!

Have a GREAT Day. Love Life.

I'll be a seeing you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

==> InspireME Friday: Ask For A Reference, Not A Job

"And by letting them know that you hold them in high enough esteem to potentially use them as a reference, you're actually paying them a compliment."

Good Morning Folks,

I can say that FSO has taken the industry by storm! Literally and figuratively.

We made it through another week of the worst winter weather on record, and what troopers the team at FSO are. A client writes: 

"I just wanted to send you a quick note regarding the FSO Team. They have made every effort to get into the office regardless of the adverse weather conditions we have been experiencing this winter. Charles, Harun, Gene and Kathy have made my job easier as I know they will always be in the office when I cannot get there. Knowing that they are always there to support me to make the office run smoothly has been extremely helpful. I just wanted to take this opportunity to “sing their praises”.

That's what we call going the extra smile. It comes standard with every engagement!

With operations in 57 major US cities and a clear focus on concierge service, our goal remains the same - to help firms improve operations & SAVE MONEY.

Now some inspiration for those seeking a job or a better job— there's an easy way to turn dreaded employment networking into deadly effective bonding: 

When you're networking, ask for a reference, not a job. 

Whether you're doing catch-up drinks or grabbing lunch to reconnect (and, hopefully, staying out of this horrible heat!), your main goal is to get an ally, not a tally of job listings. Adding another helping hand to your search is your aim. 

So don't ask your college buddy if he knows of any jobs for people like you. How would he? 

And don't ask your boss from two jobs ago if she has the names of any people who are currently looking to hire somebody like you. It puts her on the spot. 

No, instead, ask for a reference. Mention that you're going to be moving on, or you're already looking, or that you're actively out on the street. Let them know the type of positions you are and are notsuited for, and what you're hoping to achieve in your next opportunity. 

And then ask them if — when it gets to that happy place in your search — it would be OK to use them as a reference. 

By not putting them on the spot about specific job openings, you reduce the awkwardness inherent in the networking conversation. 

And by letting them know that you hold them in high enough esteem to potentially use them as a reference, you're actually paying them a compliment. 

You're also making it easier for them to say "yes", and to feel good about themselves for being a good friend and helping you out with this little favor. 

All of which means that you have a new buddy in your search — one who's going to be thinking about keeping an eye out for new opportunities and an ear open for fresh possibilities for their reference-able friend: you. 

It's wins and grins all around. 

Now, this doesn't work for just any old person you meet on the street. There's probably a pretty good match between people you'd take to lunch and those you could ask to be a reference. So my advice would be to stick to asking those you know well enough. 

Being realistic, the widely offered and deeply wrong advice from the past decade that you should try to extract favors, concessions, names, jobs, and career assistance from people you've only met over the phone is not only useless, it can be counter-productive to your aims by antagonizing your broader network. 

By making your networking about compliments, you'll find it pays dividends. 

Never lose that skip in your step, fire in your belly or twinkle in your eye!

We're on fire and this company is doing amazing things to build for the future. 

From our wonderful FSO Family have a GREAT weekend, be happy and… Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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“ Genius is eternal patience” — Michelangelo
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Why Isn't Anyone Reading Your Resume? Your LinkUP To Job Search Success

"As a trusted business partner and friend I am seeking your recommendations of highly motivated people who are looking for a new opportunity and bright future in the field of Human Resources.. ASAP"

Good Morning Folks,

Sorry to hear about the continued snow and cold around the USA. I myself had some major delays last night and had about 3.5 hours of sleep but I'm inspired and totally on fire.

Since FSO is conducting a nationwide job search for marketing and HR talent, and it's been too long between LinkUps— I thought I would share more broadly some of the career advice that I have been posting recently on LinkedIn.

It's not you: Why no one's reading your resume
Why isn't anyone reading your resume? Here are some ways to navigate recruiters' Applicant Tracking Systems and get yourself noticed.

Spending on Corporate Training Soars: Employee Capabilities a Priority
Corporate training is always a very good indicator of economic activity:  when companies slow down they often cut training spending, and then as business grows they ramp back up to train new hires, sales people, and leaders. This is among the most discretionary of all corporate spending areas, so it is an excellent bellwether for business confidence.

If I Had a Hammer
The automation of today and the future requires a (re)IMAGINED approach to job search and preparation

The Basics of Not Bombing and Interview
It doesn’t matter if you have 20 years of experience and a letter of recommendation from the president of the United States — if you bomb the interview, you’re not getting hired. Here’s what you need to consider

8 Tips To Dress For Interview Success
Struggling to decide on an outfit for your upcoming job interview? What you wear to an interview creates an image or perception of the type of person you are, so choosing your attire is critical to presenting yourself as the right candidate to hire.

These are the 50 best places to work for 2014 

6 Habits of Remarkably Likable People
Hiring Managers cite the number one reason in competitive races for one position, it's the Likability factor or as better known in singing competitions the "X" factor that decides.

5 Steps to Writing an Amazing LinkedIn Recommendation
Beyond what you provide a recruiter, they will go to your LinkedIn page to do reference checks. Are yours in order and the best they can be. The time to ask for recommendations is when you are ion your game not the day after you've been swept up in an unexpected restructuring that can happen to anyone.

Should you or someone you know of make a GREAT fit for FSO's Personal, Passionate & Productive culture, please contact me directly (mweiner at fso-outsourcing.com) or send resumes to Lindsay Gallagher (lgallagher at fso-outsourcing.com). 
 

When it comes to delivering our services, our people are the driving force in making the difference. Our goal has always been to ensure that the staff we have are so passionate and are armed with the tools and knowledge to succeed in their ultimate career and life goals. 

Have a GREAT Day. Love Life.

I'll be a seeing you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

Referrals Needed For HR Positions In Our Rapidly Expanding INC 500 Firm

"As a trusted business partner and friend I am seeking your recommendations of highly motivated people who are looking for a new opportunity and bright future in the field of Human Resources.. ASAP"











Good Afternoon Folks,

To everyone who responded to my most recent email regarding our Sales hiring needs, THANK YOU! Your support is invaluable and greatly appreciated. 
 


With that said, today I'm seeking your recommendations for strong candidates who will assist in strengthening our already robust People Solutions (HR) department. Most immediately we are recruiting for the following positions: 


==> National Director, Training & Development -
This person will be placed in NY and will be required to be available to travel 40% of the time. Reporting into our SVP of People Solutions, this individual will be responsible for increasing productivity per person by developing and implementing industry leading training and development programs. 

==> National Director, Recruitment 
Working closely with our SVP of People Solutions and our Operations team, this individual will own the strategy and plans for sourcing & hiring outstanding, passionate candidates who will deliver service with a smile and ultimately help support our growth across the country. This personal will also be placed in NY and will be required to be available to travel 40% of the time. 

==> HR Generalists for NYC, North East Region & South East Region
These individuals will be responsible for building strong relationships with our employees and clients, talent management, & employee relations. Additionally, they will be responsible for recruitment and training and development.   
  


Should you or someone you know of make a GREAT fit for FSO's Personal, Passionate & Productive culture, please contact me directly (mweiner at fso-outsourcing.com) or send resumes to Lindsay Gallagher (lgallagher at fso-outsourcing.com). 
 

When it comes to delivering our services, our people are the driving force in making the difference. Our goal has always been to ensure that the staff we have are so passionate and are armed with the tools and knowledge to succeed in their ultimate career and life goals. 

Thanks for helping us help you. 


Have a GREAT Day. Love Life.

I'll be a seeing you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

LinkUP Thursday: 10 Simple, Science-Backed Ways To Be Happier Today and more...

"Our commute to the office can have a surprisingly powerful impact on our happiness. The fact that we tend to do this twice a day, five days a week, makes it unsurprising that its effect would build up over time and make us less and less happy" from... 10 Simple, Science-Backed Ways To Be Happier Today

Good Morning Folks,

Please enjoy these articles that got the most likes and great comments when I shared them on social media.

Can You Be Found? Why You Must Personally Invest in Social Media

Coveting Not a Corner Office, but Time at Home

8 ways to turn passion into success

Superhero or Sidekick: Which One Are You?

Five Ways to Change Someone Else's Mind

10 simple, science-backed ways to be happier today

How to stop doing so much busy work

Thanks again for your amazing energy and support that is fuelling the FSO fire across the country. FSO did not get to this place by luck. With the market on our side, we have recognized the opportunity for limitless growth.  

Folks, there is so much awesome “stuff” happening in our great company. We have awesome leaders; awesome people; and a market that is in love with us and competitors that just cannot keep up! 

Good luck and feel it folks. It is real. Thanks for reading, sharing and supporting.

Have a GREAT day,

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

Learn more about what DIFFERENTIATES FSO here

LinkUP Thursday: Leadership's Biggest Challenges

"Invest in individual mastery and market value . . . culture is to attracting high impact talent as a great product is to attracting good customers."

Good Morning Folks,

As you know I am a firm believer in continuing education by asking my team to read business books. Tom Peters is one of my favorites.

But now, thanks to the Internet, there are much shorter reads with just as powerful takeaways.

Here are a few I found to share with the leaders among us this morning:

Jack Welch: Star Wars: When to Let a Top Performer Walk

How CEOs Can Transform HR into a Revenue Driver

How to Get Employees to Embrace Social Media

How To Uncover Your Company's True Culture

The Most Powerful Habit You Can Imagine

The Future of Work

Some thoughts on the culture article: Give me a team I can bring together in person now and then and watch the synergy pay off. 


As an people / talent professional, I have been astounded by how often senior leaders don’t “get” that culture is a living thing, unique to a company or organization. I once heard a fairly new leader describe the corporate culture of our organization to candidates but what he described was the culture of his previous company. He truly thought that if he said it, it would be so. As hard as I tried, I could not convince him that one organization’s culture could not simply be grafted onto a new organization and its employees.

The article linked above proffers that "... many companies have tried to adopt, say, the Zappos culture or the Google culture… but in most cases those attempts fail because culture is something that can be mimicked but almost never successfully copied."  

Within every organization, decision making drives performance. Every employee comes to work every day and makes decisions that impact performance.   The workplace has many temptations that employees must resist, from the petty impulse to claim credit for someone else's work, to the unscrupulous lapse of lying in a negotiation, to the criminal act of misrepresenting financial numbers.   

These decisions, at every level of the organization, define the corporate culture and drive performance.   

In 2008, Harvard Business School Professor Robert S. Kaplan and his Palladium Group colleague David P. Norton wrote The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage.   There are ten (10) steps to define the corporate culture and drive performance, including:  

Step 1: Visualize the strategy.   

Step 2: Communicate the strategy. 

Step 3: Identify strategic projects.   

Step 4: Align projects with strategy.   

Step 5: Align individual roles and provide incentives.  

Step 6: Manage projects.   

Step 7: Make decisions aligned with strategy.   

Step 8: Measure the strategy.   

Step 9: Report progress.  

Step 10: Reward performance.  

To make change, leaders must identify behaviors that are in line with the desired culture and find ways to reward or reinforce them

I will like t say these idea is common among young growing companies regardless of years in existence, they are still learning, but when they get to certain points in their growth, they begin to value employees much as the value the customer, quite really, they realize that the employees also make the hearth of the company much as the customer do, it's a matter of time, if the company as a future or big dreams.

Have a GREAT day. Love LIFE!

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

.........................................................................
“Never, never, never give up.” – Winston Churchill
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Monday Musings: Stop Holding Yourself Back

The takeaway: "When it comes to meeting their leadership potential, many people unintentionally get in their own way."

Good Morning Folks,

You know I'm a big fan of books about leadership and those authors have been my own mentors over the years before the Internet. 

But this weekend I stumbled upon another great take on leadership and you can download it for less than $7 from Harvard Business Review and be putting it's guidance to work for you before the end of the day.

After working with hundreds of leaders in a wide variety of organizations and in countries all over the globe, the authors found one very clear pattern: When it comes to meeting their leadership potential, many people unintentionally get in their own way. 

Five barriers in particular tend to keep promising managers from becoming exceptional leaders: People overemphasize personal goals, protect their public image, turn their competitors into two-dimensional enemies, go it alone instead of soliciting support and advice, and wait for permission to lead. 

Troy, a customer service manager, endangered his job and his company's reputation by focusing on protecting his position, not helping his team; when a trusted friend advised him to change his behavior, the results were striking. Anita's insistence on sticking to the tough persona she'd created for herself caused her to ignore the more intuitive part of the leadership equation, with disastrous results-until she let go of the need to appear invulnerable and reached out to another manager. 

Jon, a personal trainer who had virtually no experience with either youth development programs or urban life, opened a highly successful gym for inner-city kids at risk; he refused to be daunted by his lack of expertise and decided to simply "go for it." 

As these and other examples from the authors' research demonstrate, being a leader means making an active decision to lead. 

Only then will the workforce-and society-benefit from the enormous amount of talent currently sitting on the bench.

Check it it on: http://hbr.org/product/baynote/an/R1101P-PDF-ENG?referral=00505

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

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"People may not always remember what you said, 
but they will always remember how you made them feel."
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