Candidates

Some days start with such promise, but one emergency meeting after another, and your to-do list quickly becomes hijacked, and you find yourself struggling to keep your head above water. It seems impossible to clear some mental space and progress on larger goals when you’re moving from task to task regularly. 

 

But one minor adjustment in your schedule could make the difference between assuredly accomplishing your strategic objectives and scrambling to keep up with the day-to-day. 

 

Here’s a potential solution: Meeting-Free Days 

 

Time management coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders offers these steps to your next focus day:

 

Step 1: Make the Commitment

Look at your calendar weeks ahead of time and set aside one day as UNTOUCHABLE. Commit to leaving the entire day, yes that’s right, open for focused work. 

 

Block out time in your calendar to decline any meeting requests. And do the same for your team. This will increase your chances of setting boundaries and following through. If you want to earn bonus points, put your cell phone in airplane mode and enjoy a distraction-free day.

 

Step 2: Tell Others

Share the news of your meeting-free day with your team and boss. Set clear expectations of the amount of communication others can expect from you on this Focus Day and explain why you’re doing it. Maybe you’ll set some time aside to quickly scan emails for emergencies on a break or at the end of the day so your colleagues know you’re not entirely off the grid. 

 

 

Step 3: Plan

Planning what’s on your to-do list before your meeting-free day is just as crucial to blocking out the time in your calendar. Choose work that requires deep focus and high-level critical thinking. Some examples Saunders provides are; writing, strategic thinking, analysis, coding, designing, or a complex project. She recommends picking a single big project or picking two or three discrete deliverables. Then write those goals down on paper or record them in your calendar. 

 

Step 4: Block out the noise, aka routine emails and tasks

So here’s the hard part. Your instinct will be to answer that Slack message or respond to that email. Stepping out of your comfort zone here will take some time. But once you start realizing the productivity results this focus time yields, it will get easier and the daily tasks will still get done. 

 

Research has shown those received a big boost in productivity by building in more focus-time into their day. Give it a try and let us know your results! 

Tech industry salaries were up 3.6 % last year to an average of $97 860 despite the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The annual Dice 2021 Tech Salary Report features in-depth intel on tech salary and compensation trends across the United States.

The results offer good news for technologists looking to understand their market value better and position themselves for career growth.

Dice administered its 2020 salary survey online among registered Dice job seekers and site visitors. More than 9,000 respondents completed the survey.

Hot Jobs

The occupations and skills that saw the most significant salary increases between 2019 and 2020 helped organizations organize and analyze data, digitize and otherwise evolve their product offerings, and ensure that their organizations remained efficient, profitable, and secure during the pandemic.

Cybersecurity Analysts saw their average salaries increase to more than $103,000, up more than 16%.

The prevalence of remote work likely also impacted Technical Support Engineer wages, which rose to almost $69,000 in 2020, up 8%. As many organizations swiftly reacted to changing conditions on account of the pandemic, the need to develop and implement long-term strategies has positively impacted Business Analyst salaries, which increased 5% to $97,600 in 2020.

Cloud Engineer positions grew more than 6% to $136,500.

As data is becoming increasingly valuable to businesses across nearly every industry, the demand has swelled for those who can successfully analyze data in ways that executives and employees can use to drive growth and business development. Data Scientist salaries rose by almost 13% to $120,000. Similarly, the same trend is seen with Data Engineers. Those responsible for building out and maintaining data infrastructure increased by nearly 5% to $119,00 last year.

Hot Hubs

Salaries in California’s Silicon Valley and Boston rose 2.4%, in line with the national average. But they exploded in several tech hubs:

• Charlotte, N.C., saw a 13.8% rise in salary to $99, 700
• Orlando saw a 13.4% rise to $88,600
• New York City saw an 11.6% rise to $114,275
• Austin, Texas, saw a 9.7% rise to $104, 344
• Philidelphia saw a 9.3% rise to $96, 512

Salaries declined in the Pacific Northwest, Portland, Oregon, saw a 4.6% drop in wages to $98,026, while Seattle saw a 2.6% decline to $106,723

Hub Battle 

Texas continues its rise to prominence as a premier tech destination at the state level, with salaries up nearly 6% year over year. This rise is sparking conversations about competition with California – with wages up about 2% – as a primary hub. While both states’ tech centers saw high salaries and steady increases, Texas boasts an influx of prestigious companies – including Oracle and Tesla – building new headquarters.

Are you looking for a career in Tech? Contact us today to discuss our variety of exciting opportunities.

 

Oh, the dreaded email inbox. Or can it be a career booster? It depends on how you look at it.

If you move beyond the transactional function of email and shift to a more mindful approach, you can use it to help fuel your success. Here are a few simple emails you can send each week that isn’t a time suck but can help you stay top of mind for opportunities, strengthen connections, and act as a motivational tool.

An email to yourself.  

Even after a long week, the last email you send on a Friday should be to yourself. In the subject header, write in capital letters one of your core values or your power word. Now when you open that baby up first thing Monday morning and see the word “INNOVATIVE” or “STRONG” staring back at you, it can set the tone for the week ahead.

Or write down a weekly rundown. List off your wins, what you learned, and the goals you met.

The Thank You email.

This tip may be our favorite. Take the time each week to email one person who deserves your unsolicited praise and appreciation. We all love to feel appreciated. Think about the last time someone went out of their way to show that you are valued.

“I’m so glad we get to work together. Thanks for being my sounding board” is all you need to say to make a lasting impact.

The Mentor email

Is there somebody that you admire and is where you want to be a few years? Send them a message and let them know how their work has impacted you. You never know those emails can lead to great phone calls and mentoring opportunities, which leads to your personal growth.

Don’t be a burden on others; make the requests small and easily doable. But don’t underestimate the potential here; establishing a steady cadence of micro-learning is an easy investment you can make in yourself.

The Stranger Email

Just met someone at a conference or a training session? Send them an email. Expanding your network enables you to have diverse conversations and get new viewpoints. According to Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habit, when it comes to learning about new opportunities, “weak ties” trump “strong ties”. We tend to have similar discussions with the people we see regularly. By striking up a chat with someone you just met may lead to new learning opportunities and open yourself up to different ideas.

Give these emails a try and let us know your results!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been about a year since tech companies sent their employees home for remote work as a mysterious flu-like disease made its way through the world.

It marked the beginning of a radically altered how and where people do their jobs. As some tech companies have embraced this change and other employees can’t wait to return to an office setting with physically present co-workers, employers are wrestling with when and how they will return.

Big-Tech companies are taking varying approaches. Amazon is monitoring the situation as the vaccine continues to roll-out and is keeping an eye on case-numbers. The tech-giant told employees they can choose to do remote work until the end of June.

Meanwhile, Facebook is taking a measured strategy and opening offices with a limited capacity (10%) to provide an alternative to workers struggling with remote work. Voluntary work from home is scheduled to continue globally until July 2.

Google’s 132,121 full-time employees will work from home until September. CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google and Alphabet will require employees to return to the office at least three days a week, starting this fall.

In the fall of last year, Microsoft unveiled a “hybrid workplace” model laying out how employees can have a more flexible remote work schedule and even relocate elsewhere in the country.

In addition, Microsoft launched a research initiative, ‘The New Future of Work,’ at the start of the pandemic – a cross-company initiative to coordinate their efforts to better understand the impact of remote work and identify opportunities to support new work practice. Here are some of the key findings.

Remote Meetings

The idea of meeting fatigue rose to prominence during the pandemic. The research supports the assumption that video conferencing technology constraints, combined with an increased cadence in meetings, contribute to fatigue perceptions.

The lack of physical cues, body language, and ability to gauge emotions was significant hurdles to productive disagreement and decision making. At the same time, some found online meetings more inclusive. Another challenge, ‘reading the room’ – knowing what people are attending to, what activities are taking place, and perceiving non-verbal interaction – is difficult in remote sessions, especially as group size increases.

Productivity

Workers with little prior experience with remote work, a shorter tenure at the company, and fewer pre-pandemic collaborations reported a decrease in productivity. At the same time, the average workday started earlier and ran later.

Physical Environments

The sudden shift to remote work left little to no time to consider the implications of home workspaces. Two key factors deeply impacted a person’s ability to be productive: the size and layout of their living space and their living situation’s social makeup.

Remote work provided flexibility during the pandemic while also blurring the work-life boundary in problematic ways.

There is still a lot we do not yet know about what this last year will have on society. Yet, companies have to decide now about their work practices, workforces, and workspaces that will have implications for years to come. There is work to be done to develop a complete picture of how things have changed and find the best ways to help create meaningful positive outcomes regardless of what ‘return to the office’ approach is adopted.

 

You see a job posting and can’t help but start to wonder about the number of applicants, who your competition is, and how your skills stack up against them.  Are there great high-paying jobs out there that don’t get flooded with a mountain of applicants? Have you chosen a highly competitive path?

 

Well, we’ve got some research for you—the Highest-Paying Job with the Most and Least Competition. The report used data from PayScale and identified roles with an average base salary of $75,000 or higher. To assess which positions tend to be more or less competitive, they used LinkedIn data to calculate the average number of applicants per opening. 

 

The report found overall, the highest paying job with the least competition is an Assistant City Attorney (average wage: $76,028), with an average of 1.2 people applying for each position. The most competitive highest-paying job in the US is a Senior Vice President of Operations ($170,674), with 159 applicants per opening. 

 

While the study is slightly flawed, it didn’t consider applicants outside of LinkedIn; it does offer a general sense of which roles might fall into that coveted sweet spot of “high-paying” and “least competitive”. 

 

Working with an INNOVA recruiter, we can help position you for the right job with the right company. You can search for all of our openings here! 

 

We pulled out some roles that seem to fall into that sweet spot from the report in healthcare, IT, and human resources. 

 

Healthcare:

• Acute Care Nurse Practioner (Average salary: $103,010; Average applicants: 4.2)
• Family Nurse Practioner (Average salary: $96,092; Average applicants: 9.8)
• Pharmacist (Average salary: $115,311; Average applicants: 5.1)

 

IT:

• Technical Services Manager (Average salary: $78,820; Average applicants: 4.9)
• IT Consultant (Average salary: $118,563; Average applicants: 5.9)
• Lead Software Engineer (Average salary: $118,322; Average applicants: 7.2) 

 

Human Resources:

• Compensation & Benefits Manager (Average salary: $88,056; Average applicants: 19)
• Compensation Director (Average salary: $88,321; Average applicants: 16.7)
• Human Resources Information Systems Manager (Average salary: $90,342; Average applicants: 18.4)

 

Whether cultivated purposely or not, your organization has an employer brand, and it’s narrating the impression your past, current, and future employees have about working for your organization.

According to LinkedIn’s Employer Branding Playbook, more than 80% of leaders feel that having a strong employer branding strategy is necessary for this competitive market. Since companies today face unique challenges in attracting technologists, many of whom are in high demand, employer branding is an increasingly crucial differentiating factor in a candidate’s decision to join an organization or leave it for a competitor.

Here’s the bottom-line impact of having a strong employer brand:

• Reduces turnover by 28% 
• Reduces the cost per hire by 50%
• 50% more qualified applicants
• Time to hire is 1-2X faster

How to Shape Your Employer Brand Strategy

Start with your existing employees. Characteristics like purpose, culture, leadership, working environment, opportunities, and benefits strongly influence your current and incoming employees, their focus, the work they do – and how they do it. A strong employer brand works hard inside and outside of the company to get the best from the people you have – and attract top talent.

• Ask your team basic questions to develop your brand story:
• What do you do?
• What makes your company unique?
• How do you differ from your competitors?
• Define your ‘why.’

Who are you trying to hire? 

Develop a candidate persona. Who is your ideal candidate? Identify the characteristics of the perfect tech hire.

• What are their pain points?
• What stage are they at in their career?
• What do they value? Business-sponsored training? Or benefits that enrich their lives outside of the office?

Get the word out

To build a strong employer brand, you must craft a comprehensive, multi-channel content strategy to engage your target candidates. You have to know your target audience to compete. Know where they hang out, serve them compelling content that highlights your unique culture, empower your employees to do the same, and show them why they should want to work for you.

The number one obstacle candidates experience when searching for a job is not knowing what it’s like to work at an organization. Let Innova People help you develop an employer branding strategy and shine a light on why you’re a great organization to work at, and ultimately attracting top tech talent.