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3 Reasons to Value the Power of Alignment When Hiring

There’s a moment that takes place within every hiring manager’s career: the moment they realize there are more positions to fill than they have employees. The panic. The stress. The expectation of doing their job well. Managing deadlines, and performance, and tasks. 

You may be staring at a blank schedule or lengthy project list or answering questions from those above you and find yourself wondering ‘how will I ever fill these positions?!’ So you take action in a similar fashion as many. You dig through applications, make posts on social media, call recruiting agencies, sift through resources and services trying to find warm bodies to fill the vacancies that have been created. 

If you have ever been in a position of hiring, you have felt this moment of stress and frustration. During these moments, what often takes place is what I like to call ‘settling.’ You settle for someone that doesn’t quite fit your culture because the project list continues to grow. You settle for someone because they have experience in the job at hand. You settle for someone because just knowing you will have a desk filled is better than the stress you have felt during this experience. But settling is never the way toward success and sustainability. Settling will have you arriving at the exact same place, walking through the same experience once again. When you settle in your hiring practices you guarantee your unhappiness, high stress, and constant turnover.

Q&A With Antoinet Van Dalen On How HR Departments Can Support Women’s Day

As everyone into the topic of Gender Equality knows, March 8th is Women’s Day. This annual event is dedicated to spreading awareness about gender equality and women’s rights around the globe, and as every Human of HR knows, it’s a great day to reflect on the issues women have faced throughout history in the world of work.

We had recently spoken to Antoinet Van Dalen, Founder of Fireside, on how we are supporting women’s employment and about the importance of Digital Entrepreneurship in times of Covid-19. Knowing she is an advocate for Gender Equality in European workplaces, we thought we would catch up with her again and ask her how Human Resources Departments around the world should support women at work on March 8th (and beyond) after a turbulent year for gender equality. Read the following Q&A to find out how you can take action.

Women, Work, and COVID-19: Why We Need To Rely On Sisterhood More Than Ever

2020 has been a year unlike any other. While the impact of the COVID-19 crisis is horizontal in a certain way (United Nations, 2020), as it affects the worldwide population from an economic, social and political aspect, it’s abundantly clear that it hits each one of us differently.

The impact of Covid-19 turns out to be worse for those who simply belong to certain categories: students of any age, fresh graduates, people living in underprivileged contexts, jobseekers, women (UN Women, 2020a). Being part of some of the above categories myself, I would say that I am quite used to feeling uncertain. We, people in our almost thirties (Hoffower, 2019) are living one of the hardest crises the world ever faced in the last few decades. But we also happen to be familiar with changes, agility, precariousness, not having long-term expectations: it’s just the ordinary for us. And yet, it is still hard to find daily motivation and cope with all of this. In many ways, knowing that we’re all in this together consoles me, and relying on people around me, especially other women, makes me feel better.

4 Things You Should Know Before Becoming An Expat

Moving abroad for work can be a great career move, but those that have been on an international assignment before know that the expat life is not as easy or luxurious as it looks on the outside.  

My first job in HR was in International Mobility, but that’s not where I gained my knowledge on expatriation. Above my professional and educational experiences, it’s my personal life experiences that have made me knowledgeable in the field. I started moving abroad when I was only 2 years old because of my family’s professional life and became what is known in the relocation world as a “Third Culture Kid.” By the time I was 25, I had switched cities, countries & continents 10 times, often going back and forth between them.