Be Inspired.

I had the honor to meet three very inspiring women: Bonnie St. John, Leigh Ann Tuohy and Wendy Bird. After learning more about these women, it was clear that anyone can contribute to society no matter who you are, where you came from or what profession you work in. You can overcome obstacles and negative environments to make a difference in the world. 

In her book How Great Women Lead, you can experience Bonnie’s amazing journey with her teenage daughter, Darcy. 

Bonnie St. John is the first African American to win medals as a ski racer. She competed in Winter Paralympics, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. Bonnie has co-authored three #1 bestsellers. Her mother was a High School principal, her father left before she was born and she had her right leg amputated at age five. 

Anne Tuohy is the Real Women from The Blind Side Movie.

Leigh Ann Tuohy is an interior designer. She is best known for being the legal guardian of Michael Oher, which inspired the best-selling book and movie “The Blind Side.” Leigh Anne inspires audiences to recognize the full potential of individuals in their community—and to find value in those who society has deemed valueless. 

Wendy Bird is changing women’s lives across the globe.

Wendy Bird founded Pearls with a Purpose in February 2002 with the intent of selling handmade pearl jewelry to women in America. But within a few months of working with Amara Flordeliza, her pearl supplier in the Philippines, Wendy became aware of the dire circumstances of families in Asia. Together, Wendy and Amara established the Pearls with a Purpose Foundation, a 501c3 tax exempt organization dedicated to helping the families of Asia.

I learned four principles all of these amazing women utilize to win at life:

1.       Not afraid to take risks to reach their goals

2.      Meek, coachable and willing to ask for help

3.      Givers, not takers

4.      Balance their lives between self, family, profession and community

The mission of DaMar Staffing is to empower people to do the next big thing in their career.  This company was built by applying the principles to shape deep engaging relationships and experiences with individuals and companies. I believe the above four principles are applicable to each person we work with. DaMar provides direct access to industry professionals, networking, and develops mentoring opportunities to generate leaders.

I am thankful to be a member of NAWBO and to have the opportunity to support women business owners. NAWBO has helped women evolve their businesses by sharing resources and providing a single voice to shape economic and public policy.

For more information about DaMar Staffing or NAWBO, contact me at 317.566.8320 or TThompson@DaMarStaff.com

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How to Become a Super Brand

Learn to manage your career by making good choices to ensure you still are valuable and relevant as your career progresses.  It is important to focus on your fundamental skills, but you must also develop new abilities that will help extend your career.  Learn to reinvent yourself as you grow. Keep promoting the "new and improved" you. By planning a well-designed career path, you won’t need to rely on luck to be successful.

You must become keenly aware of the things you need to do to keep your star shining in your career. Don’t become passive and complacent thinking that everything will be OK, because things change. If you stop learning and managing your career things will not be OK.  Staying the same will cause your career to hit a dead end, and the last thing you want to say to yourself is "I Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda." 

Many people believe their company will take care of them as they mature. The last few years of downsizing should have exposed that misconception. But some tenaciously cling to "It won't happen to me."  If you want to remain valuable, you can’t afford to be lazy. There's neither room nor hope for the lazy in a rapidly changing business world.

This article is for people who want to learn how to achieve a respected and valued personal brand. Here are seven tips you can use to establish a powerful career brand.

1. Start keeping a personal brand diary to map out and review your strategy. Keep track of your plans, thoughts, and notes weekly. At the end of each a quarter, evaluate your progress.

2. Establish two to four things you want to be known for in the business community. Now, what's required from you to own these items.

3. Get involved in two challenging projects, either at work or a volunteer project. List the things that you find most challenging about the projects.

4. Think of four things you’ve learned in the last 90 days. It could be new information about the world, your industry, or yourself.

5. List three to five things you can do to increase your visibility (locally, regionally, or nationally).

6. Add three to five new names to your contact list. Note two things you can do to cultivate and nurture these relationships.

7. Revise your resume three times a year. Add the appropriate items from your quarterly reviews. Your resume should never be more than 90 days old. Doing consistent revisions will keep your resume fresh and you prepared for any new opportunity.

Remember, it’s important to keep growing, stay fresh, expand your scope, and be known for your value. 

You may enjoy this article also. http://bit.ly/BrandMindSet

DaMar Staffing believes everyone has a right to grow professionally to improve his or her life. DaMar helps people by making new connections. Our team has a passion to serve. We do this by matching great people with great companies. DaMar Staffing Solutions is a small staffing agency specializing in finding unique individuals and passive candidates for both temporary and permanent needs. Through a diverse network of contacts, the DaMar Staffing recruiting team can find the perfect job match quickly.

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Grow from the Inside Out

Invest in your existing staff.

Many CEOs say “our people are our most important asset;” the truth is there is a major disconnect between what they say and what they actually do.  If CEOs are serious about the value of their employee’s, they should be spending most of their time and important resources educating, developing and advancing their people. Very few CEOs actually do that.

 The job market is tight; high quality talent is limited. So, senior leaders must spend more money and quality time on nurturing and encourag-ing the talent in their departments. The “we value our people” mind set should be top-down driven. It’s critical that every department head genuinely believes their people are special and supports elevating [arguably] the company’s most important asset. The winning strategy is to improve what you have.  

The big question for CEOs is how much time is spent on improving and developing the company’s current asset? “I have yet to see chief executives get deeply involved in personnel issues,” said Tiffany Thompson, President of DaMar Staffing. “There are plenty of other important things they [CEOs] are required to do with their time.”

Developing a sustainable pool of high quality employees should be a high priority for CEOs. Very few firms are actually investing sufficient resources to evolve their existing staff; that item usually falls to the bottom of the list.

 The biggest challenge for most corporate chiefs is time and resource allocation. This is the most significant thing leaders need to work on. Every company should ask its CEO  and department heads to do a time and resource audit, to evaluate how much energy they spend on improving staff? The results are usually surprising.   

 Leaders need the time to focus their advice and support on internal career development. It’s important to work with your staff, within normal course of business, to improve their performance and define their corporate goals. The key is to manage people in a way that fits their personality types. Build a dynamic workplace, where the investment you make in your people will blossom into business success for many years to come.

 The most successful businesses nurture talent from the inside and great leaders don’t recruit super stars, they grow their own.

Build a Company that Has Magnetism.

Business and society is moving at a very fast pace and large scale. The result from this dynamic shift is a culture that has lost the little things like respect, personal attention, and customer service. Large and small companies have fallen into the trap of treating people like objects. While most people feel fortunate to be employed, treating employees with a general lack of respect will not endear them to your company. 

This impersonal approach may not impact your company’s bottom line in the short run, but in the bigger scheme of things you will be damaging your firm’s brand and reputation.  To be competitive in years to come you will need to attract and hire quality people.  Happy employees are your best recruiters. They are more likely to encourage friends and family to apply; in essence they become advocates for your company’s future.

Building a corporate culture that’s more considerate, respectful and personable will give you an advantage and help you stand out from the competition.  So, build a company that has magnetism. 

The three keys to attraction:

1.    Company culture: develop an environment where people want to work and can make positive contributions to society.

2.    Develop young talent: help employees grow, provide training, and offer advancement opportunities.

3.    Corporate engagement: turn your mission and purpose into relevant collaborative social projects your organization can do well. 

Magnetism takes work, but it is worth it. Build a reputation for being a good company to work for and your firm will see multiple benefits.

Three Steps to Avoid Bad Hires.

Imagine if you only interviewed individuals who met a stringent set of qualifying skills, selected by an independent professional with no emotional attachment. It’s not hard to see how that could save time and reduce “bad hires.” The problem is typically managers select people to interview that are like them.

Next, the classic one-on-one interview comes down to you vs. them; your goal is not to hire anything less than the perfect candidate, and their goal is to convince you that they are perfect. The entire concept is faulty and that is why it fails more often than not. To avoid bad hires your goal should be to uncover the “real person” you are interviewing. The big question is, are you interviewing a real producer or a fake?

Many bad hires are exceptional interviewees and on average can do a better job interviewing than quality hires. You can be fooled, and your impression can be wrong. Bad hires have learned how to look perfect. The goal of every candidate, good and bad, is to impress and dazzle the interviewer. Therefore, it is important to develop a strategy that changes the “hiring game” and minimizes the costly mistakes of hiring bad workers. To increase your chances of hiring quality people remember the point is simple; the way to avoid bad hires is to change the game.

DaMar Staffing has hired hundreds of individuals and tracks their performance outcomes. The recruiting team uses this data and experience to guide how they evaluate candidates; this process offers a much better way to select the right individuals for your interview list. DaMar proposes three steps to avoid bad hires. 1) Go beyond the interview; 2) Demand evidence; 3) Examine their character.

Step One: Do your homework and go beyond the interview. It is important to follow the traditional process including checking references, assessment tests, and a good-old face-to-face interview. Now, go deeper and ask the candidate to complete a set of technical questions; their answers should be clear, direct, and short. Last, set up a team interview with the people the candidate will possibly work with.

Step Two: Challenge the candidate and push him/her outside the lines of a typical interview. Prepare and plan your interview direction, questions, and objectives; all should be designed to uncover hard-to-find skills and qualities. Engage in a “life” conversation; do not just talk about the job. Last, summarize your key points from the interview and provide the opportunity for you and the candidate to correct or add to the information.

Once the interview process is finished, the information gathered must be evaluated in the context of its importance to making a positive hire. The goal is to uncover the “real person” and to ascertain if that (real) person is beneficial to the company. Now, get your team involved in the evaluation; you, the supervisor, and one other person should review the information and offer an opinion. It is simple, yet profound.

Step Three: The last step in the process is to review your information from steps one and two and consider the other opinions, and answer these three questions: What makes the candidate tick? Why did the person make certain decisions? How did the individual come about interviewing with you? These answers should give you a solid profile of the person’s character. Character is equal if not more important than qualifications.

Think about it, what is the total cost and consequences of hiring an unqualified person who may poison others in the company? A great interviewing process will help you avoid bad hires. Winning at the hiring game simply requires investing the additional time to develop your three-step plan—it works. Quality individuals are available to take the time to discover them.

You may enjoy these two articles, how to recruit talent, and the importance of brand culture.

http://bit.ly/Openeyes

http://bit.ly/TalentBranding

DaMar Staffing Solutions of Indianapolis is a full-service, contingency-based recruitment firm, focused on administrative and professional staffing for all industries. There are many staffing agencies, but you want a staffing agency that will work for you. With over 20 years of experience, DaMar Staffing Solutions has built a reputation for providing quality service, top-notch professionals, and flexible recruiting solutions for Indiana companies.

Hire Real People.

In today’s world, it is easy to (quickly) judge people based on how they look, talk and at times—smell. The truth is it’s hard to determine a person’s potential and value without taking the time to connect with them.  DaMar Staffing takes the time to really meet people.

If you're looking to hire a quality individual, it's important to determine if the candidate has the necessary skills to add value and meet your specific needs; not to judge their facade. Some job seekers are better at presenting a great profile than actually doing the work.  Consider diversifying your work force. Diversity is an advantage, not a limitation.

Human resource professionals work hard seeking individuals they consider to be “perfect.” These individuals, undoubtedly, put in a lot of time and effort identifying the best person (possible) to add value to their company. And, that is noble. The truth is a job candidate doesn’t need to be perfect to be a quality hire.

The team at DaMar Staffing works hard to uncover the specific skills and character needed to match the perfect position. DaMar Staffing endeavors to connect quality candidates with great companies.

There are emerging changes in hiring standards. Office professionals today need skills that go well beyond basic computer abilities. Many companies expect new hires to be proficient in specialized software programs, have an upbeat personality and a squeaky clean background. Every new hire today is vital. That’s why DaMar guarantees each one.

The job market is very competitive. Now, more than ever before, each individual needs to be a quality hire. This raises the bar. It’s important to make sure each candidate is fully qualified, tested and checked out. DaMar guarantees each person recommended is ready to go.

Now is the Time to Make Your Move.

The job market is very competitive. Each individual seeking a new position needs to be prepared to “standout.” Companies looking to hire staff today have set their bar high; experience doesn't guarantee success. It’s a tough job market out there, so follow these four hunting tips to improve your success:

1) Keep your profile information current

2) Do your homework

3) Challenge yourself and the interviewer

4) Ask yourself and the interviewer why?

 Tip No. 1: Keep your profile information current.  You hear repeatedly that it is important to network and be present on social media. But, it does you no good if you don’t have current and correct information available. When was the last time you updated your information? It isn’t good enough to do a resume and put online and leave it there indefinitely. If you move or change jobs, it is vital that you update your information. People don’t realize how many potential job opportunities they’ve missed out on because they weren’t keeping their profiles up to date.

Tip No. 2: Do Your Homework. Do not send out mass resumes.  Select 3-5 companies you would really like to work for and target that group for employment. Gather background information; learn as much as you can about the products/services the company offers. Get the mission statement, how many employees are there, etc.; take a trip to visit each company and tour the offices before you set up an interview. 

Tip No. 3: Challenge yourself and the interviewer.  Be prepared to standout and nail your interview. Most people don’t tell the truth during interviews; the interviewer or the interviewee. People will say whatever they think the other person wants to hear. Each person plays a role during the job interview. That means the interviewer may oversell the job position and the interviewee kisses up to the interviewer. “Pretending and lying” doesn't help anybody; it doesn’t help the company or you. A poor job fit is miserable for everyone. Challenge yourself and the interviewer to “keep it real.”

 Tip No. 4: Ask your interviewer why? When you secure an interview, be prepared to ask great questions. Don’t simply become a talking head, but get involved in a discussion. Ask the interviewer to explain how the hiring process will work. Ask him/her to describe the perfect candidate who would succeed in the role; and why? Inquire how the last person (in that position) handled the job? Listen and offer good and thoughtful answers to the interviewer questions.

 Job seekers today face increased challenges and companies feel that each new hire is critical to its success.  If you follow these tips it will help you stay at the top of your game.

For more information on career opposition, contact Tiffany Thompson, DaMar Staffing at Tiffany.thompson@damarstaffing.com or 317.566.8320.

Avatar of the Year Celebrates a Positive and Inspiring Entrepreneurial Spirit

 Tiffany Thompson is the 2013 Avatar of the Year Award Winner.

Indy—December 17, 2013, National Association of Women Business Owners, Indianapolis chapter presented the 2013 Avatar of the Year award to Tiffany Thompson, president of DaMar Staffing Solutions. The award was given during its 10th annual Celebrating Women Awards Luncheon to honor this dynamic, up-and-coming NAWBO-Indy member who has demonstrated creativity and innovation.

Avatar of the Year winner must be between the ages of 25-40, an active member of NAWBO-Indy, and started her own business within the past 3-5 years. Tiffany Thompson demonstrates an uplifting spirit and willingness to help others, while showing a passion for the Indianapolis community.

“I’m really excited, because this is my first business award. Being a business owner is tough and I work hard to do it well; to receive recognition from NAWBO for the work I’ve done is special,” said Ms. Thompson.

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