You've heard the old adage "don't judge a book by it's cover." Well, I'm here to tell you that many hiring managers don't pay attention to that!

Like it or not, most employers (conciously or not) are judging you by how you present yourself. So, before going on your interview, follow these tips:

Dress the part.
Dress for the job you want, not the one you have. That doesn't mean you have to go out and buy an Armani suit, but you should dress professionally and make sure your clothes are clean and pressed.

Groom yourself well.
Make sure your hair is combed and neat. Consider visible tattoos and piercings and adjust your appearance appropriately for the position.

Spit out the gum.
Fresh breath is a good thing. Nervous and loud gum chewing isn't! Before you go in for the interview, ditch the gum. You'll talk more clearly and won't distract the interviewer.

Be prepared.
Bring extra copies of your resume and references printed on nice, unwrinkled paper. Ask the interviewer if they would like a copy of your resume or references. Even if they already have a copy, it will show that you thought ahead and prepared.

At Personnel Preference, we have helped thousands of people find great jobs throughout Weed, CA and beyond. If you're looking for a job or a little advice on resume writing or interview prep, just give us a call!

If you're anything like me, you have the best intentions of crossing every single item off your to-do list each day. Then, before you know it, it's lunch time and all the distractions from that morning have pulled you away from each and every item on that list!

So what can you do? Here are a few tips that have helped me:

Focus.
Get up from your desk and go to a quiet place. Take 10 minutes to plan out and visualize your day.

Reflect.
At the end of your day spend 10 minutes reviewing how well things went throughout the day. Think about ways you could have better managed your time and begin to plan out the next day.

Don't procrastinate.
Use the rule "touch it once." Once you start something, make sure you finish it. Respond to emails right after you read them and stop filing things to take care of later. You're wasting precious time when you touch it more than once.

Set goals.
When writing your to-do list, don't be ambiguous. Set specific goals. If working on a larger, long-term project, break it up into small goals and put those on your to-do list. It will help you feel like you're making progress and keep you on track.

Just do it.
Think like Nike and "Just Do It!" The more you think about and worry about your to-do list, the longer and more stressful it will get.

I hope you find these tips as helpful as I have. And if you do need a helping hand to make sure you and your team get through everything on your to-do lists, Personnel Preference can help. Just call us today!

Need a little down time from all the hard work you've been putting in lately?  The annual Weed Carneval may be the answer!

The 57th Annual Weed Carnival will take place July 7-10, 2011. 

The four day event features a variety of great musical acts, food, carnical rides, cold beer and refreshments and vendors.  Other fun events during the carnival include softball tournaments, bocce ball tournaments and the Top of the State Race. 

For more information about the events taking place, or to apply to be a vendor visit the Weed Chamber of Commerce website.

FMLA stands for the Family Medical Leave Act. The law's intention is to give people more medical recovery time or time to care for a loved one.

But, the law is sometimes referred to as the "Far More Leave than Anyone Intended Act" and the "Slacker's Protection Act." Officials at the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, VA, said many companies grant FMLA requests even if they do not believe the reasons are legitimate because they are worried about compliance.

If you're concerned about FMLA fraud, follow these 10 steps:

1. Obtain a medical certification for each request for leave due to a serious health condition. It's important that your sick leave or attendance policy requires a doctor's certification for all absences of three or more days for the leave to be excused. If there's no such requirement and you intend to require paid leave to run concurrent with FMLA leave, you might not be able to require a medical certification, which is the first step in an anti-fraud program.

2. Enforce a policy denying the leave request if an employee fails to submit certification within 15 days. In each instance, assess any appropriate penalties for failure to be at work.

3. Examine the certification closely to ensure it's been properly and fully completed. If the medical certification is incomplete, specify in writing what information is lacking and allow the employee at least seven days to cure the deficiency. If the employee fails to do so, deny the leave request. If the medical certification doesn't support the existence of a serious health condition, obviously you should deny the request.

4. Require a second opinion if the circumstances are even slightly suspicious.

5. Once the certification is approved, make a limited inquiry each time the employee requests more leave, particularly in the case of intermittent FMLA leave. Is this leave related to the original qualifying reason?

6. Watch the schedule of absences closely in cases of intermittent leave to determine whether a suspicious pattern develops (e.g. immediately before and after weekends or days off) or whether there's a change in the frequency or timing. Such actions could suggest a change in condition that enables you to request a recertification.

7. Request recertification as often as the law allows. The frequency of recertification permitted will differ depending on the type of leave and the type of serious health condition.

8. Require accrued leave to run concurrently with FMLA leave when allowed by law. When an employee realizes that taking leave today will affect future vacation time, he or she is more likely to take FMLA only when the need is legitimate.

9. Ask the physician to verify that the medical certification is exactly as he or she signed it and has not been altered.

10. Aggressively pursue potential fraud, and if concrete evidence of fraud is discovered, take appropriate disciplinary action. Always follow up on tips from fellow employees or other sources that the employee does not, in fact, need leave.

Q. "I wasn't happy with my last performance review. Should I dispute the review? Write a letter for my file? Talk to a lawyer? Or just let it go?"

A. Most professionals feel you should offer some kind of response. But whether to respond, and the way to respond, will depend on your company's culture, the unwritten message, and your own career goals.

1. Assess your report in light of the company's culture.

In some cultures, anything but glowing praise will be viewed as negative. In others, tough reviews are the norm.

Often your boss will be expected to come up with at least one point of constructive criticism. After all, nobody walks on water. But if you're being attacked or unfairly criticized, you must explore further.

Sometimes you'll win more points by taking the review in stride than by fighting. But in some cultures, a single negative review means you need to start job-hunting right away.

2. Calculate your boss's strategy.

Sometimes your performance report has nothing to do with you or your performance. Your boss might honestly want to see you leave the company or make sure the next promotion goes to someone else.

Your boss may be a new hire who is still learning your company's culture. She may combine good intentions with weak implementation.

Or maybe your boss wants to get your attention: he's dropped hints and you've ignored them. Or he wants to help you progress but doesn't know how to communicate tactfully.

3. Listen for unwritten messages.

Does your company have a category where a low score means you're headed for disaster? Does your boss try to tell you, "It's a great review!" when you know otherwise?

Suppose you've been getting terrific reviews -- and now you get slammed with a truckload of criticism. Maybe you really did have a bad year. Or maybe there's an agenda you need to understand.

4. Get the facts without getting defensive.

Ask your boss to explain each criticism.

For example, if your boss said your project was delivered late, get dates and times. If you're criticized for interpersonal skills, ask for specific instances.

But give your boss a chance to save face.

Anyone can make mistakes. An overworked, harried boss can skimp on her own data collection. You can say, without confrontation, "My records show I managed six projects, not four. Can we go over this point?"

5. Delay your response.

Ask for a second meeting, explaining calmly that you need time to think. Use the time to collect your backup file. Consider a consultation with an outsider: career coach, consultant, human resources professor -- even a lawyer if the situation warrants.

Do not discuss your report or your decision to seek help with your peers. Ever.

6. Back up a rebuttal with facts, not emotion.

Assemble your own evidence of performance. Collect letters of appreciation, dates and times of project completion, statistics showing how you helped the company.

Often simply placing a rebuttal letter in your own file will defuse the impact of a negative evaluation. When you've had a strong track record, your company will ignore an occasional negative, unless there's a new agenda.

Your boss may be ordered to grade on the curve, i.e., assign some employees the "low" category even if everyone's doing great. And, being human, he may assign those ratings to those who are least likely to speak up. A strong, carefully written rebuttal will clarify your strength of purpose.

7. Avoid jumping to conclusions - or to a new job.

When clients ask, "Should I look for a new job?" my answer will be, "When you work for any organization, keep yourself marketable. Maintain your network. Identify reputable recruiters and build ties with them."

It's rarely a good idea to share your career change plans with your colleagues or boss until you have a written offer in hand. And it's rarely a good idea to accept a counter-offer from your present company. (Over half the workers who accept a counter-offer are gone within six months, one way or another.)

But if your company wants to send a "Go Away!" message, they may be happy to give you a good reference that reflects your real contribution.

Writing effective job descriptions is part art, part science. The difference between a good job description and a great job description can mean the difference between recruiting average and exceptional talent.

So to steal a line from author Jim Collins, how do you go from "Good to Great"?

Here are a few essentials to crafting "Great Job Descriptions":

1. Start with "the end in mind."
   As you get ready to craft a job description, ask yourself the following questions:
   If you could find the perfect person, what would you want that person to truly accomplish in the position? If you need a web developer, for example, how many websites do you hope the person to build in a month/year? If you're looking for a merchandiser, how many displays do you expect that person to build and set up each week?  From the accomplishments you wish the position to make, you can then work "backwards" in your job description.
2. Be specific.
   When specifying the tasks the person will be performing, be sure they are what the employee will actually do; don't let these become confused with what the person's qualifications should be. Qualifications are the skills, credentials and experience a person has.
3. Include priorities.
   Don't just list the tasks of the position. Be sure to include the position's priorities and be sure to identify them as such.
4. Specify required vs. desired qualifications.
   If you specify certain degrees, credentials or licenses, be sure that they are absolutely necessary to the position. These qualifications should have a direct bearing on a person's ability to be able to perform the position's duties and tasks.
5. Don't be too specific.
   Okay, I know this goes against an earlier tip so let me clarify...avoid placing several tasks into one job description. Doing so may see you creating a position that very few people could actually perform.
6. Avoid cliches.
   Be specific in your language. For example, instead of "good communication skills," use "Needs to be able to communicate comfortably with executives and other high-level customers."

If you're looking to bring on new staff, Personnel Preference can help.  As the leading employment agency in Siskiyou County we help companies write outstanding job descriptions, attract top talent, and retain top performers.  Discover about our staffing services.

Everyone is looking for ways to do more with less. Unfortunately, often we are so focused on stretching an organization's financial and other resources that we become less effective in managing our human resources.

Why do you think that is? A lot of the time, it's just a matter of focusing on the tangible rather than the intangible. If you can improve a machine's output by 10 percent, that's obviously a good thing. But improving an employee's productivity...that's much more difficult to turn into a percentage (or a dollar figure).

Regardless, it is the manager's job to get the most out of his or her employees. And that goes far beyond counting hours or studying performance evaluations. How do you get them to want to do more with less, work harder, and actually care? You engage them in the process.

Engaged employees are invested in what they do and are committed to their own success and to the success of the company. A disengaged employee will do what is necessary to keep receiving a paycheck. An engaged employee will go the extra mile. And the gap between the two can be the difference between the success and failure of an organization.

Read on for five ways to build a more engaged - and thus more productive - organization:

Regain focus. When you are under pressure to produce results, sometimes you just need to step back and acknowledge that you and your team can't do everything. And chances are many activities eat up time but don't add tremendous value to the organization. Be merciless as you get rid of low priority tasks that aren't advancing the big-picture objectives of your group. The better your team is able to focus on activities that are at the heart of what they do, the happier, more engaged, and more productive they will be.

There's a good possibility that regaining focus is something you've been struggling to accomplish anyway...maybe for years. The recent perfect storm of bad economic news might be a good opportunity to finally make it happen. Minds are open. Limitations are being acknowledged. Hard choices are being made. The timing might finally be right to make the case for getting back to basics.

Empower your people. Nothing kills engagement like not having the authority or resources necessary to do the job at hand. Of course if your staff feels powerless, frustrated, or micromanaged, they'll be less effective. But also consider how those feelings will influence morale, day in and day out.

Eliminate as much needless bureaucracy and as many levels of approval for things that you possibly can. Weigh the importance of double or triple-checking every task against what would happen if a mistake were to slip through. You've hired people to do a job. It is important that they be allowed to do it without feeling like they aren't trusted or seen as capable.

Sometimes being a good manager means realizing that sometimes it really is better to ask forgiveness than approval.

Communicate. Uncertainty will eat away at productivity from the inside out. Keeping your folks in the dark about what is happening with the company will lead to problems ranging from general anxiety and gossip to infighting and résumé polishing. None of these are conducive to an engaged staff or a productive working environment.

Even if there is nothing particularly consequential going on at the corporate level, it is important to repeatedly communicate with your staff about how things are going, what level of performance is expected, and what might be on the horizon. Keeping them in the loop shows that you value their perspective and respect their feelings. That makes them much more likely to be there for you when you need performance that is beyond the ordinary call of duty.

Ask the experts. When it comes to employees' everyday responsibilities, nobody knows the subject better than they do. Never underestimate how much there is to be learned from your team.

And don't just observe. Interact. Ask questions. Let them speak.

Hold a small, informal, low-pressure meeting where your people can tell you what ails them. Ask about their big frustrations. Then ask about their small ones. Not only will you develop a more intimate perspective on the work they do, you can also find opportunities to identify and tear down productivity roadblocks that you might not even realize are there.

Just remember, your job is to listen, guide discussion, and find ways to use your position to advocate for better ways of doing things. Doing so can lead to great, innovative ideas that save money, eliminate waste, and improve productivity at every level.

Manage the clock. Asking people to put in long hours is a great tool but a lousy way of life. If you overdo it, your team will end up tired, resentful, and burned out. There will always be more to do than hours to do it, so turning a 60-hour workweek into the norm isn't going to solve problems in the long term.

The time to rally the troops with longer than normal hours is when you have a specific, tangible objective that can be met in a reasonable timeframe; a particular project that needs to be done; or a specific goal that needs to be met. Make sure that everyone understands what you are trying to accomplish with the longer hours and get them working together towards that end.

Once the need for extended hours is met, take the time to acknowledge success, celebrate accomplishments, and show your people how much you appreciate the effort.

So what's the bottom line here? Engaged employees are more motivated, better focused, and more likely to buckle down and perform when you really need them to. It's easy to see why improving engagement is good for the bottom line, especially when the ideas that I've mentioned here tend to cost little, if anything, to implement. If your goal is to get more than 40 hours worth of value out of a 40-hour work week, a happier and more engaged workforce is priceless.

I'm not sure if you noticed yet but it seems like the holiday decorations are already starting to pop in stores (even earlier than last year)!

If you're in the customer service, administrative/clerical, shipping/delivery, or manufacturing industries, you're probably headed for a busy - if not your busiest - time of year. If you're going to require extra help this holiday season, it's definitely not too early to plan for your staffing needs.

Here are just a few reasons why:

• Prevent rash hiring decisions. If you wait until the last minute to recruit and hire, you may find yourself "up against a wall" when business suddenly surges. Waiting until your needs are urgent may force you to make hasty hiring decisions.

• Get a jump on your competitors. Many companies will wait until next month to gear-up. Why not start your efforts now and reach the most qualified candidates before other seasonal employers get them?

• Avoid being overwhelmed. This year's seasonal job market will be flooded with applicants. With so many job seekers competing for positions, the sheer volume of résumés and applications may bog you down. Give yourself as much time as possible to find the best candidates by starting the search process early.

If just reading about seasonal hiring makes your stomach churn, relax - you don't have to do it alone. Staffing firms specialize in helping companies like yours effectively manage the highs and lows of business cycles. Plan your workforce needs now with your staffing partner to:

• Get the flexibility you need. Seasonal temporaries can handle surges in demand without impacting fixed expenses.

• Say "goodbye" to post-holiday layoffs. Since the staffing service is the seasonal employees' employer of record, you can avoid the hassle and expense of letting workers go once things slow down.

• Access the talent you need, right when you need it. Planning your workforce needs now gives your staffing firm time to locate the most qualified staff for you, especially when you require a large number of workers - so they're available right when you need them.

• Shorten learning curves. Your staffing provider will recruit seasonal workers with the specific skills and experience you require. The provider can also, at your request, develop customized orientation materials to help reduce training costs and get workers up-to-speed more quickly.

• Eliminate additional administrative and legal burdens. By using temporary employees, you avoid the social security, payroll and other tax and legal burdens associated with seasonal employees. Freedom from these hassles will give you more time to focus on other important priorities.

• Cut back on overtime. Temporary employees help you minimize the additional cost and burnout overtime causes.

Plan Your Workforce Needs with Personnel Preference

If your business has frequent or predictable surges in demand, a planned staffing option may be right for you. Planned staffing is the strategic use of temporaries to accommodate workloads known to vary in seasons or other cycles.

An expert from Personnel Preference will work with you to examine year-round fluctuations in workload and identify peak demand periods. Next, we will create a customized staffing plan for your business that: provides temporary employees to handle your busiest times; reduces or eliminates your need to lay off employees during slow periods; frees you to focus on the most critical parts of your job. Contact Personnel Preference today to discover more!

Temporary employees can bring great flexibility to your workforce and offer a huge competitive advantage. But, in some cases it can take a while for your internal team to adapt.

Here are a few suggestions for improving the working relationship between temporary and direct employees to achieve even better staffing results:

• Make temporary employees feel welcome. While temporaries are, in fact, a separate part of your workforce (and must be treated differently because of co-employment laws), you and your staff can still make them feel welcome in your organization. By encouraging social interaction (e.g., formal or informal introductions) among all workers, you can foster social ties that are essential to a cohesive workforce.

• Educate your direct staff. Take the time to clearly explain the role and value of temporary workers. The better your direct employees understand the benefits temporary help provides, the more likely they'll be to work productively with them.

• Take advantage of training. If you use large numbers of temporaries, many staffing services will develop customized orientation and training programs for specific positions. This shifts the time-consuming burden of getting new temporary employees up-to-speed off your direct employees' shoulders.

Bottom line, there are a number of steps you can take keep relations between temporary and direct employees positive. And the more positive their working relationship, the better your results will be.

Some people are just happy to have a job. Others are really struggling with being overloaded and overworked.

While some would say that "too much to do" is merely a sign of job security in today's economy, it won't do you any good if you can't cope with the stress. Over time, being chronically stretched too thin can take a toll on your job performance, state of mind and physical health.

So if you feel like the pressure is too much to bear, here is some advice on effectively broaching the tricky subject of job burnout:

• Make sure you're not part of the problem. If you procrastinate or have other bad work habits, your boss may not be sympathetic to your plight. So before you go pointing fingers, examine your own performance to see if you could make changes that would improve your situation.

• Do your homework. Before approaching your boss, document your situation in writing. Detail what your job entailed originally and contrast it with what you're doing now. Track the hours you work (both at your company and home). Preparing yourself with these details will provide a clear picture of your workload and keep you from sounding like a complainer.

• Broach the subject gradually. Your concerns will be better received if you introduce the topic of feeling overburdened as part of a series of discussions with your boss. Keep him or her informed of your current responsibilities as well as additional work requests. Once your boss understands what's truly on your plate, he or she will be less likely to add more.

• Enlist the help of others. If co-workers are also feeling the pressure, approach your boss as part of a team. Develop and present a plan to remedy the situation by: bringing in temporary employees or increasing headcount; reorganizing responsibilities; delegating outside your department; streamlining processes. Offering well thought-out solutions may help you gain your boss' support in alleviating the problem.

And, if you really need some help, Personnel Preference can help.  Whether you need temporary support to just get through your to-do list, or you're looking to bring on a new staff member just call!