• Networking venues.
• Recommendations of trusted colleagues.
• Lunches, dinners, etc.

Give It Away

Have you tried giving away an inconsequential, yet important piece of information? The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is giving you just such an opportunity. In two weeks, a law will go into effect in Massachusetts governing the protection of information. The law has far-reaching effects, in that it also applies to businesses residing outside of Massachusetts but doing business with Massachusetts consumers and businesses. The law applies to both brick and mortar and online businesses.

How It’s An Opportunity

Self-employed human resource consultants can use this new law as an opportunity to showcase their expertise to potential clients.

• If you have email addresses for potential clients, send them an email alert about the law. Include a brief explanation of the law, compliance dates and penalties for non-compliance. Last paragraph of the email alert should include a call to action, something along the lines of “if you have any questions or would like help complying with the new law, please contact us at __________.”
• If you have telephone numbers for potential clients, call them and alert them to the new law. Give them the information outlined in the above item, and include your call to action.
• If you have the postal addresses of your potential clients, postal mail a pdf copy of the law to your potential clients. Paper clip or staple your business card or a compliment card to the pdf and include a handwritten call to action.
• This is an ideal opportunity for a teleseminar or webinar, which is a bit more work than any of the above listed items, but a teleseminar or webinar enables you to showcase your expertise to a large group of potential clients all at the same time

If you don’t have the time to do any of the above, a new-fangled careerist known as a Human Resource Virtual Assistant (HRVA) can do all of the above (and more) for you. An HRVA will also track the number of responses you receive relative to this marketing campaign as well as design (draft the email message, pretty-up the pdf with your logo and consultancy information, etc.) the elements of the campaign.

A pdf copy of the new law is available at: http://mass.gov/Eoca/docs/idtheft/201CMR1700reg.pdf.

If you would like to know more about HRVAs, and how they can help self-employed human resource consultants create the levels of success they’ve always dreamed of, please email hrva@extra-assist.com.

P.S. Remember to notify your current clients about the new law too .

=>Donna Caissie, the ExtraOrdinary HRVA
hrva@extra-assist.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/donnacaissie
http://twitter.com/donnacaissie

Easy to Implement

Lifestyle benefit programs are relatively easy to implement and surprisingly no-cost or low cost to the employer. For example, here in the northeast there is a chain of dry cleaners called Zoots, and they pick up and deliver dry cleaning for FREE. Don’t have a Zoots in your area, talk to your local dry cleaner and see if he’d be willing to pick up and deliver your employees’ dry cleaning on a weekly basis.

Negligible Cost/FREE

If you’re a self-employed human resource consultant, designing and implementing lifestyle benefit programs for your clients could be a huge, value-added service you provide to your clients, especially those small or micro businesses. Do you have startup companies among your clientele? Employee-paid benefits can be the answer. There are many companies that provide medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance at group rates without an employer contribution. 401(k) plans can be instituted without an employer contribution too. Some of these plans may require administration fees, which can be rolled into the cost to the employees, but hey, the administration fees are negligible compared to what an employer would have to pay if he used traditional benefit plans.

Perfect Timing

I realize that with the job market the way it is now, there’s no motivation for employers to even think about benefit plans, never mind implement them. In today’s job market, employers can cut back on benefits and not worry about employees jumping ship. What you and I, dear HR consultant, know is that the job market isn’t going to be this sad forever. It will bounce back, and employers will be competing for workers again. If they want to be competitive in that job market, employers will have to beef up the benefits they cut back, or they’ll have to find another way to lure candidates. Imagine how perfect your timing will be, if you can suggest a lifestyle benefit program all ready to roll out. If you do the work now, while things are slow, you’ll be at the ready when the time is right.

Lifestyle Benefits Resource

Want to know more about lifestyle benefit programs, or want help designing a lifestyle benefit program for your clients? Contact me at hrva@extra-assist.com. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have or to send you my one-page document with tips for designing a lifestyle benefit program.

What do you think about a lifestyle benefits program? Got your own ideas for lifestyle benefits, let everyone know by leaving a comment to this blog posting.

=>Donna Caissie, the ExtraOrdinary HR Assistant

Is Proofreading is Out of Style?

It’s not hard to write like a professional. All it takes is a little proofreading. The problem is that, thanks to technology, proofreading is out of style. Before everyone had a computer, most writing was proofread by a secretary, administrative assistant or a publishing house’s proofreader or editor. You didn’t need to proofread what you wrote because a secretary, administrative assistant, etc. would proof it for you. They also made the necessary corrections. Your grammar’s not up to par? No problem; the secretary will fix it. Don’t know your “to” from your “too”? No problem, the secretary does, and she’ll fix that for you too. Mistakes in grammar, incorrect word usage, spelling errors, typos and incorrect capitalization and punctuation were caught by the secretary, administrative assistant, etc.

Typos, Misspellings & Incorrect Word Usage, Oh My!

With the advent of the computer, word processing programs and spell checking software, everyone can write and self-publish a book, a blog, an ebook or whitepaper or just comment on someone else’s blog. Unfortunately, many of these writings are so riddled with typos, misspellings, incorrect word usages, etc. that one begins to despair about the quality of education our citizens are receiving.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a grammarian, but I do take the extra steps necessary to eliminate obvious mistakes.

Technology is the Culprit

After chewing on the subject for a while, it began to dawn on me that the problem wasn’t that people are uneducated and/or illiterate; the problem was that people were relying on technology to correct their mistakes. Instead of proofreading their writing before publishing/submitting/posting, they were running them through a spell checker and assuming that the spell checker would find everything that’s wrong. As any professional virtual assistant (VA) can tell you, that’s not so. (Sorry, but I had to slip that in there; it’s an important keyword for me.) LOL!

Spell Checkers Alone Won’t Cut It

A spell checker doesn’t know the difference between to, too and two; their, there and they’re; here and hear; your and you’re; whose and who’s; and a rash of other commonly misused words. Spell checkers won’t find grammatical errors unless you tell (set) it to find grammatical errors.

Tips for Professional Writing

So that your writing always portrays you well, here are some writing tips that will help you look like a professional in everything you write.

• If English isn’t your native language and you’re writing for an English-speaking audience, hire someone to proofread everything you write.
• If English is your native language and you’re writing for an English-speaking audience, proofread or hire someone to proofread everything you write.
• Don’t just rely on spell checking programs; spelling checkers don’t find instances of incorrect word usage. They don’t find all misspellings, and they don’t find all typos. Proofread as well as spell check.
• Set your spell checking program to check grammar too.
• If you’re going to blog, write articles, write ebooks, whitepapers or reports, invest in grammar checking software.
• After you’ve spell checked, grammar checked and proofread, put your writing aside for ten minutes, and go do something else.
• After the ten minutes is over, go back to your writing and proofread it one more time, or ask someone else to proofread it for you.

Now you’ve done everything (short of hiring someone to do your writing for you) in your power to make sure your writing portrays you as a professional and not a hobbyist.

When I first became aware of the FTC’s new ruling governing the use of endoresments, testimonials, etc., I thought that everyone must be aware of the ruling, but during my travels around the Net, I found that many were not aware of the ruling so here goes.

In December 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the U.S.A. established a set of guidelines regarding the use of endoresments, testimonials, opinions, reviews, etc. on the Internet. Although the FTC’s intentions are good, the ruling is vague and overly broad. Take for example the ruling’s title, “Guidelines Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” gives the impression that the new ruling covers only advertisers, but as you read through it, you’ll find that the ruling covers bloggers, review writers, opinion web sites, etc. As a result, different readers of the ruling have different interpretations. Some say the ruling doesn’t apply to them, others say it applies to everyone and the FTC itself says it will enforce the ruling as it sees fit which begs the question:

How do you know if you’re in violation of the rule? Do you wait for the FTC to hit you with a fine?

The best, plain english explanation I found was on ClickNewz, and I invite you to go over there and read their blog posting about the new FTC ruling, “The FTC Update — In Plain English” (http://www.clicknewz.com/2061/ftc-update/) and then decide for yourself if the ruling applies to you.

After you’ve read about the FTC’s new ruling, please hop on back here and tell me what you think.

• The ability to categorize candidates by job title, ranking, salary requirements, etc.
• The ability to get a listing of candidates that fit specific criteria vs. depending on your memory or rummaging through boxes or piles of paper.
• The ability to get rid of all those boxes or piles of resumes and put the space they were taking up to better use.

Let’s look at an example of how a candidate database will help your recruiting efforts. Imagine a client calls you to say she has an opening for an IT director. Before you had a candidate database, you would tell your client that you’d look through your files and get back to her. Now, if you’re super organized, you’ve got all those candidate resumes filed by job title. If you’re not super organized, you’ve got all those candidate resumes filed alphabetically. If you’re not organized at all, you’ve got a hodge-podge of resumes, in no particular order, scattered everywhere. If you pull an all-nighter, you might be able to get back to your client the following day with some candidate names, but chances are that you won’t be able to get back to your client with candidate names for a few days. That’s the pre-database scenario.

The post-database scenario is that you tell your client that you’ll search your files and get back to her within the hour. You go into your database and pull a list of IT director candidates sorted by A-ranked candidates, B-ranked candidates, C-ranked candidates, etc. You call your client back within the half-hour and tell her that you’ve got ten A-ranked candidates that she might like to talk to, and you offer to setup the interviews for her. Not only does your client agree to talk with the candidates, but she’s impressed that you were able to put your fingers on the information she wanted so quickly.

Don’t have the time or expertise to create a candidate database? I do. As your Human Resource Virtual Assistant (HRVA), I can create and maintain the database for you. Because I subscribe to the KISS method, your candidate database will be functional as well as simple.

In the post-database scenario, above, you email or call your HRVA and ask her for a listing of IT director candidates, which she emails to you. After your client agrees to talk to those A-ranked candidates, you email your HRVA and ask her to set up the interviews for your client. Your HRVA consults with your client to get dates and times for the interviews, and she sets up the interviews.

To find out what else an HRVA can do to help you, email me at hrva@extra-assist.com for an appointment for a FREE telephone consultation.

=>Donna Caissie, the ExtraOrdinary Assistant

Why I hadn’t thought of supporting human resource consultants long before now is simply a matter of being so close to the forest that I couldn’t see the trees. As a matter of fact, if the trees had been any closer to me a tree limb would’ve reached out and swatted me. LOL.

Back in my corporate days, the part of my office manager jobs that I loved so much was the human resource portion. I enjoyed helping my fellow employees with their benefits questions and cutting through the red tape, advising new managers regarding hiring practices and disciplinary issues, etc. In a nutshell, helping my coworkers so that they could focus on the job at hand was a rewarding experience.

As a Human Resource Virtual Assistant (HRVA), what can I offer you, the busy human resource consultant? Not only do I offer experience in human resources, but I also offer you a virtual partner who is as interested in your success as you. When you partner with this HRVA, you not only get administrative and secretarial expertise, you also get someone:

• you can brainstorm with
• who can suggest ways to market your consultancy
• who will help you automate repetitive tasks
• who can free you from the tedious, daily admin work
• who can help you find the time to build and expand your consultancy and
• who can help you focus on what you do best — human resource consulting.

What do you think; if you could create the perfect human resource assistant, what would she do for you?