When I first started interviewing candidates, I got the simplest and most impactful advice that I have received yet: Kill the Deal. I should not be looking to confirm that this person is the one I want to hire, but rather I should spend my time asking questions to figure out why they won’t work. …
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Hiring well is the single most important thing that a company can do to succeed. It allows for rapid development of capacity, increases diversity, and upskills the team quickly. It is the way to shape the culture and move the company towards its goals. It is how a company grows. When talking with job seekers,…
Last week, Kaydi joined Visual Thrive for their weekly business podcast, Business Over Breakfast. The full broadcast is here: If you are pressed for time, there is a 3 minute highlight recording that you can watch here.
“Burnout” is something that nearly everyone experiences at some point in their lives and careers. Periods of sustained stress can lead to the social withdrawal and decreased productivity that are characteristic of burnout. Burned out employees are negative, unproductive and hard on their colleagues. The factors at work that lead regular stress to develop into…
I grew up in New York, and while I never sounded like Bernie Sanders, I did have an accent. It was something that was frequently remarked on when I moved to the west coast. Not the biggest deal, but I gradually learn to say “coffee” without the “w” in the middle. After 20- odd years,…
A good manager will guide a company to success by setting goals, then organizing activity around reaching that goal. If this path is well thought out, the company will grow in the ways that are planned. That growth will form the basis for the next set of goals for the company to work towards. If…
Remember the first time you walked into your high school cafeteria? In those first few moments, your brain reeled! Where should you sit? What if they don’t welcome you and you feel left out? What if you don’t like them? How will you find your people? If you were lucky, you knew someone already, but…
Like so many businesses, we have found the need to communicate differently in our new Covid- shifted world. The networking events we had been using to meet potential clients have been paused for 10+ months. In-person trainings and site visits with clients have been replaced with webinars and zooms. While we are hopeful that we…
In case you missed it, here is the link to the video from last week’s webinar “Leveraging Company Culture to Improve Retention” presented at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce:
While a good business book can inspire, clarify, or articulate great ideas to put into practice, a lot of them are painfully boring to read. Even some of the best of the bunch can become repetitive by the end. When a new contact recommended The Dream Manager to me last month, I told her I…
Leveraging Company Culture to Improve Employee Retention January 21 at 10 am Join our own Kaydi McQuade as she presents a webinar with the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce designed to help business owners and leaders understand the role that positive company culture plays in attracting and retaining great employees. It is disruptive and expensive…
This Thursday December 10, 2020 at 10am, our own Kaydi McQuade will be leading a webinar on Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile with the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. This free presentation will be broadcast live on the Chamber’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, and will be posted to YouTube immediately after. These practical and applicable tips…
So much of every day is spent putting out fires (hopefully mostly of the metaphorical variety), that it can be hard to realize the patterns and causes of what we do. Add to this that we often use the wrong metrics to measure the effectivity of our work, and it is not surprising that we…
Cultivating awe in our lives is more important the more stress tries to give us tunnel- vision, and the book Awestruck does a great job of suggesting ways both large and small to experience it. Grounded in research, Paquette describes “awe” as an experience that “transcends our understanding of the world, which forces us to…
Roger Martin looks at the roots of our current understanding of business structure in When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency. He posits that the drive towards efficiency to maximize productivity and profit has caused us to think of business as a machine in which each department is the equivalent of…
World Gratitude Day seems like the perfect time to talk about some of the things we have going on because I am grateful for the time to work through them that Covid has provided. In addition to the continued support of our existing clients, Back Pocket Resources is launching a new consulting practice to help…
“QBQ! THE QUESTION BEHIND THE QUESTION,” written by John G. Miller is a quick read, and was well worth it. With the summer season coming to a close, and the hustle and bustle of the school year coming quickly back into view, a book on practicing personal accountability at work and in life was just…
With all the change and upheaval in the world this year, it has been hard to maintain focus. New patterns, interactions, and responsibilities have cropped up, and have led to other stressors and worries. It has not been an easy year for a lot of us, at a personal and at a professional level. The…
Great panel presentation last night at http://www.theguildri.com/ given by https://www.fountainheadri.org/! We heard a discussion about strategies for authentic leadership, and the creation of strong company culture over a delightful glass of craft beer!
There is a lot going on here at Back Pocket Resources and we wanted to let you know about some of the major highlights. First, let us tell you about who we are. Back Pocket Resources is a staffing collaborative based in Lincoln, RI. Back Pocket Resources was founded in 2017 as a service- and relationship-…
It is with great pride and pleasure that I announce the completion of this incredible program. The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program was challenging and rewarding. This journey started as a way to develop myself professionally and in the end will change the way I operate my business forever. The level of education and…
This Sunday, July 21 we will be at the mini- tournament match between St Columba’s CC and Colonial Cavaliers CC. We’ve been sponsoring SCCC for the past two years, and can’t wait to cheer them on again! This is the first time SCCC will host a sponsor/ charity match, and we are excited to participate…
Look for Chris Caccia at #Kscope19 next week in Seattle, WA. Chris is excited to see old friends, and meet new clients so keep an eye open for him or reach out directly chris@bpresources.com to set up a time to connect. With an expanded focus to include BI, Analytics, Data Science, Information Management & Security,…
Our very own Chris Caccia, was awarded the Partner of the Arts award for the State Ballet of Rhode Island. Here is is pictured with Senator, Frank Ciccone, musician, Gaston Malloy, and artistic director and prima ballerina, Herci Marsden. Chris is an incredibly generous guy with his time, and his muscles to the ballet. What…
Chris Caccia from Back Pocket Resources, and his beautiful wife, having a great time at the United Way Young Leaders Circle, “The Night Is Young” event this past Saturday. Chris joined YLC last summer as part of the Engagement Subcommittee and couldn’t be happier with the young professionals he has the chance to serve with.…
On this rainy, dreary Monday, we headed to a new service site, Project Hand Up http://www.btcsundaymeal.com/project-hand-up.html. What a surprise! A bright, cozy, and well- organized shop that repurposes donated food so it can be purchased by working families and others who are looking to stretch their budget. We joined several volunteers in preparing the shop…
After managing my children’s expectations at nearly every school event by telling them that “you’ll never win a raffle, you just enter for fun,” I now need to revise my message (or keep this a secret)! At this year’s Statewide Business After Hourshttp://statewidebah.com/, we entered our card to a raffle and won a one year…
We have a number of open positions that we need candidates for. If you are interested in any of these positions, or just want to get your profile in our database, contact is resumes@bpresources.com . These are typical jobs for us, with new stuff coming in daily. All positions are located in the MA/RI area. …
Consistently, one of our favorite days each month is when we close the office and head out to a local non- profit to help in whatever way is needed. Our team can interact outside of the office, and we can see each other in a different setting. Each member of the team can nominate the…
This candidate is bases in the Greater Providence area, available immediately, and has excellent references. With both Workday HCM and Financials experience this resource has an extremely hard to find skill set. – 20+ years of IT/HR/Finance experience– 15+ years of Project Management, PMO, Director experience– 4+ years of Workday experience– Workday module experience to…
This week, we have a Data Scientist who is looking to find something in the area. He has a Ph.D in Statistics and over 3 years of hands on experience. He has already been interviewing so don’t hesitate because the market is HOT. His areas of expertise:Machine LearningDeep LearningNLPA/B TestingPythonR If you have a position…
With our second year in the books, we couldn’t be happier with the progress we have made and the relationships we have built. We are looking forward to the new adventures another year will bring, and are thankful for the opportunities we have had. The people we get to work with every day are the…
We’re back again, with an oldie but goodie: do NOT dress like you are going to the gym. Or a bar. Or a nightclub. Or anywhere other than a professional space to meet people who can see you and who will be using your appearance as part of their first impression of you. Why, why,…
When a job has been open for almost a year, and several candidates have pulled themselves from contention, it’s a good time to examine your process. Are weak communications, lack of feedback, and scheduling problems to blame? This week’s heartbreak in the office came when an interested, available candidate pulled out midway through the interviewing…
Bear with us while we learn how to build WordPress websites. We really should have recruited someone to do this…
“It’s Not You, It’s Me” is back again, with a real time- wasting head- scratcher. If anyone can help us understand it, we’d love to hear back. We’ve had two candidates in the last month report that they were asked to do another video as they’ve progressed through the interviewing process. Same company, same position,…
To kick off our “It’s Not You, It’s Me” series on how to avoid chasing good candidates away with your hiring practices, we present this classic: Who’s on First? Candidates become justifiably frustrated and trepidatious when there is no clear continuity in the company’s hiring process. Notes from the phone screen should be given to…
We’ll be launching a new series “It’s Not You, It’s Me” to highlight some of the ways that good companies can look bad through broken hiring processes. The series kicks off tomorrow, make sure you follow us to see them all! hashtag#FixYourProcesshashtag#interviewerhashtag#interviewinghashtag#hiringhashtag#hirebetter