Books and Articles by 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?

Advances in technology and more sophisticated online search capabilities have increased the popularity of reference checking via the Internet. The practice will undoubtedly grow as more record holders create databases that employers can easily access. Everyone knows about the practice of searching for a person’s name online to see what comes up.

A workplace that’s designed to keep employees happy and productive helps pay for itself in many ways, such as greater retention and a sense that the company genuinely values the people it employs. Although the snazziest perks may be beyond the reach of many small and mid-size businesses, following are examples that a number of companies offer.

One major trend in wage systems in recent years is to base pay on what workers can do — the skills, knowledge, and talents they bring to the company — and not the nature of the positions they fill. To do so, the company adopts a pay structure that best supports the compensation philosophy and job valuation method used.

Smaller companies can’t afford all the employee perks larger firms can provide, as a rule. But attractive employee perks don’t have to expensive. Here are some inexpensive but no less appealing perks: Movies: These can either be a group outing or complimentary tickets. Game time: Some companies provide foosball, table tennis, or pool tables in their break rooms.

In many cases, particularly if your company is small, you don’t have a hard time getting a good read on the general atmosphere among employees. But if your company is larger, periodically conducting a more rigorous employee survey can be exceedingly valuable. It can help you gain a comprehensive sense of how employees feel about your company and convey the message that you genuinely want their opinions and feedback.

No set rules exist for evaluating potential employees. The important thing is to have a system in place before résumés begin to arrive. The process should include a set of hard criteria to use as the basis for decisions so that you don’t end up making choices based on factors that may have no bearing on desired work performance.