Category Archives: Food for thought

Become a Dardis Career Partner today

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Successful companies reach their goals and achieve positive results because of the employees that make up their workforce.  They are the most effective brand ambassadors, the heart of the company and a key measure of success.  But how do companies find the best talent?

Dardis trains the best of the best every year and interacts directly with the leaders of today, as well as the leaders of tomorrow.  Through the Career Partner Program, companies and organizations have the opportunity to connect to those leaders who are trained, motivated and most importantly, proven.

All Dardis Academy interns complete an extensive skills-based training course before embarking on a summer internship that gives them invaluable sales experience that can apply to any field.

Companies that participate in the Career Partner Program can meet students from the Academy, and then work with our Recruitment Managers to fill openings through our resume database.  For only the cost of a few recruiting events, you can have access to people with executive-level training through Dardis Communications, as well as our interns with proven sales and marketing experience.

A 2012 study by the Center for American Progress shows just how costly it is to replace an employee –whether the employee is unqualified, a poor fit or lacks the skills necessary to perform the job assigned.

  • For all positions except executives and physicians, the median cost of turnover was 21 percent of an employee’s annual salary.
  • For workers earning less than $50,000 annually, which covers three-quarters of all workers in the United States, a typical cost of turnover is 20 percent of a salary, the same as across positions earning $75,000 a year or less, which includes 9 in 10 U.S. workers.

By hiring qualified individuals with a track record of success, you can eliminate additional costs and time by retaining quality employees.

Contact us today to learn more about the Dardis Career Partner Program, and be prepared to bolster your talent base with qualified – and proven – candidates.

 

Photo credit: Image courtesy of SOMMAI / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

The ultimate balancing act

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Have you ever attended a Little League baseball game and seen a parent pacing behind the bleachers on his or her cell phone spouting financials and business updates? Or have you personally rushed through a quick dinner at home to log-in for a webinar with colleagues in Asia-Pacific?

The business world becomes more global every day, requiring employees to stay more connected than ever, often affecting personal commitments and family time.

At Dardis, we regularly interact with business leaders who constantly struggle with maintaining a healthy work-life balance. While professional success requires time and diligence, a burn-out mentality of 14-hour work days and constant travel can have an opposite effect. When work interferes with one’s personal life, relationships can also suffer, leading to lower employee satisfaction and presumably less engagement.

So how can employees – from entry-level positions to the executive level – maintain that elusive work-life balance? To Caryn Seidman Becker, chairman and CEO of CLEAR, employees can have it all. She wrote in a LinkedIn blog post:

You can ‘have it all,’ but each person needs to define their personal ‘all’ (what makes you happy), because you can’t have everything. For me, my ‘all’ is quality time and focus for my family and my company. A lot gets eliminated—girl dinners, many gym workouts, me time—but I still love my ‘all.’ It is not work-life balance—it is all intertwined. It’s simply life.”

Balancing work and personal commitments is a constant juggling act, but here are five simple steps for moving you closer to a healthier work-life balance:

  1. As Seidman Becker illustrated, prioritize your commitments and define what makes you happy. When you must cut into personal time or eliminate activities, do not cut from this list.
  2. Read those around you. If your spouse consistently complains about your long work hours or if your kids suffer from your absence, it’s time to reevaluate and implement steps to achieving a healthier balance.
  3. Schedule downtime. No one can go full speed non-stop, so make time, even during the workday, for a short walk or lunch.
  4. Identify your go-to people. If you schedule is overloaded, know who you can delegate to, and if you’re on vacation, designate a trusted colleague to fill-in during your absence.
  5. Adapt to your work seasons. Most industries have busy and slow seasons. Take advantage of your slower seasons by dedicating more time to family and friends.

By making a commitment to a healthy work-life balance, you’re already on your way to being successful in the workplace and at home.

 

Photo credit: By KVDP, Shokunin, Aungkarns (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Four Steps To Achieve Your Goals

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One of the foundational elements of success is goal-setting. Without goals, leaders are left to navigate the business world blindly without clear direction and tangible next steps.

At Dardis, we teach our students early on the importance of goal-setting. Through the Dardis Academy, we encourage interns to set their own personal sales goals for the summer. In addition, we provide an extra incentive for them to reach their goals through a trip only obtained by a set amount of sales.

A Forbes.com article from January highlighted four key steps to achieving goals in 2013, and even though we’re more than halfway through the year, these goals from Nathalie Lussier, creator of The Website Checkup Tool, can still be applied:

1. Getting clear is the first step.
First, take out a sheet of paper or a blank document on your computer, and write out every single thing that you want to achieve in 2013 (and beyond)…Once you have a list of everything that you can imagine for your company in a the next few years, it’s time to prioritize.

2. Rate your goals by profitability and what excites you the most.
This prioritizing exercise allows you to clearly see what ideas don’t fit with what you want to create and achieve.

3. Meet your new best friend: your calendar.
Now it’s time to choose those things that are the highest priority for you and your company and slot them into your calendar. Schedule each of the projects and items that you want to achieve, month by month. Be realistic about what you can achieve in a given month and what steps it involves.

4. Don’t forget to plan for life events, too.
When you do step 3, don’t forget to take it one step further and write down any personal trips, holidays spent with family that you usually take off, or other personal events that you know about ahead of time. That way, you won’t be surprised when “real life” intervenes and you have less time to work.

These are only the first few steps needed to fully achieve your goals, but by following these initial actions, you’re sure to set yourself up for success in the remaining months of 2013!

 

Photo credit:  By Chris (originally posted to Flickr as DSC_0051) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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