Max Messmer

Mentoring among employees can be a great tool for fostering overall career development for your staff. It provides an eye toward career development that can last a professional lifetime. That means using mentoring to build attributes that are effective today as well as farther down the road.Some abilities, such as people skills, are not easily taught in the classroom or through online courses.

Your ability to get the most out of the interviews you conduct for your business invariably depends on how well prepared you are. Here’s a checklist of things you should do before you ask the first interview question: Thoroughly familiarize yourself with the job description, especially its hiring criteria. Do so even if you draw up the criteria yourself.

The job interview is perhaps your best opportunity to determine if a potential hire will succeed with your firm. But most applicants now have ready-made answers to standard questions such as "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Here are five questions that can help elicit more candid responses: "What interests you about this job, and what skills and strengths can you bring to it?

The use of computer-based and online technology to deliver employee training content has become commonplace throughout corporate America. The great payoff of e-learning is its flexibility and speed, delivering the real-time immediacy of classroom instruction without the need to actually be present in a classroom.

There's no substitute for the guidance of an attorney, but HR professionals need to have a basic understanding of the many legal issues and challenges that come with hiring and managing employees. Here are several important federal laws you should be aware of. Many states have enacted laws similar to those listed here, and some state laws provide more generous benefits and protections to employees than the federal counterpart.

Making your company a great place to work will help you attract — and keep — great employees. But creating an employee-friendly work environment involves more than just offering an attractive paycheck. Keep the following tips in mind to build an appealing and stimulating workplace: Invest in your employees. Offering a variety of training programs shows your workers that your firm is dedicated to helping them improve their skills and grow professionally.

When hiring, the résumé is your first contact with a job candidate. To get the most from this important document and determine if someone is worth calling in for an interview, you'll need to know how to read between the lines. Here are some telling characteristics. Signs of a solid résumé: Sufficient detail: Although you don't want an overly wordy résumé, you do want complete descriptions of the applicant's accomplishments in previous jobs and a sense of the skills she's gained over the course of her career.

Selecting the right test for an applicant to your business probably won’t be a problem because choices abound. Dozens of commercial test publishers collectively produce thousands of tests. You can find out about these tests by looking in two reference books — Tests in Print and Mental Measurements Yearbook, both published by the Buros Center for Testing.

Some businesses require candidates to take certain tests after being offered conditional employment. Be careful with these tests, though, as there are some laws that may influence what you can require. Personality and psychological tests What do they do? Measure certain personality characteristics, such as assertiveness, resiliency, temperament, or stability.