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In over 7 years of recruitment and hiring, I've met and spoken to all types of people for all types of roles. Roles I hire for can range from graduate development positions, administration positions, and digital marketing coordinators, all the way to corporate law positions, engineering managers, and C-level executives. While these roles may vary, a few things remain constant. 

Up until now, I haven't put pen to paper to examine the distinct traits, practises, and behavioural patterns both myself and other key recruitment leaders across Australia have found in successful candidates. So, the goal of this article is to provide you with a few valuable techniques that you might not have considered when applying for a job or interviewing for your dream role.

I'm going to break these tips down into a series of articles covering the entire hiring and recruitment process. In today’s article, I’ll take a closer look at resume submission, while future articles will cover the initial phone call, first round interview, second round interview, and finally, the offer. In these articles, I'll also provide additional insights into the routines I follow as a prospective hiring manager during each phase, to give you more context on the process. 

Let’s get started with step one of the hiring process: 

Most of us have probably only been on one end of the resume submission process. You find your dream job listing on Seek, click through to submit your resume, and cross your fingers for good news. I thought it would be valuable to provide some insight into what it’s like on the other side of the resume submission process. 

Depending on the role, I could be receiving hundreds of resumes per day. Keep in mind I'll likely have multiple active positions at one time. Hundreds of resumes for multiple job listings is a lot to keep on top of. As such, there simply isn’t enough time to devote 5 to 10 minutes to read each applicant’s resume in depth. Instead, I'll read most resumes within the first week of a roles' creation. Then, out of potentially hundreds of applicants, I will have a shortlist of around 10 preferred candidates.  

To improve your likelihood of making it into the top 10%, here are some things that will instantly hurt your chances of reaching the 'initial phone call' stage. To me, these things can make all the difference between standing out and being overlooked:  

Make a good first impression with your resume 

Resumes are a glance into your life and career. Just like your home, a messy resume indicates that you are potentially unorganised and lack attention to detail. To stand out, spend quality time making an eye-catching resume. You don’t need to be a graphic design whiz; as long as it's easy to read and well laid out, you'll start things off on the right foot. 

It’s better to apply for 10 jobs where you know at least 4 to 5 relevant facts about the business, rather than 20 jobs where you know nothing about them at all. This point applies to the ‘initial phone call’ stage as well, but it’s something you should do prior to submitting your resume -  or at least very soon after resume submission.  

When you take the time to learn about a business and retain that information for a prospective call, you demonstrate a level of proactivity which sets you apart from applicants who are too lazy to do some basic Googling. The more you know and retain, the more impressed a hiring manager will be in an interview. 

Triple-check your grammar: Grammar errors in your resume show me you lack attention to detail.  


Don't include a photo in your resume: This is a question I get a lot: "should I put a professional photo in my resume?" As a rule of thumb, I would say no. In my opinion, they are non-essential page fillers. A photo of you detracts from what's really important to a hiring manager, which is your professional experience, goals, education, and professional/extra-curricular achievements.  


Don't include your referees’ contact information: While this is certainly not common practise and something I rarely see in resumes, it’s still worth pointing out. I would advise against including your referees’ contact details in your resume. This is because your referees may receive unsolicited calls from internal hiring managers and external agents willing to break Australian resume confidentiality laws and approach them directly regarding the same vacancy or other vacancies. 


I hope this has given you a few helpful pointers to consider next time you submit your resume. Make sure you keep your eyes peeled for the next article in this series, where I’ll take a closer look at the ‘initial phone call’ stage of the recruitment process! 

Until then, be sure to check out our articles on Tips you need to read before your next interview and How you can improve your job prospects with online learning for more helpful insights on becoming the successful applicant. 

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Most of us have probably only been on one end of the resume submission process. You find your dream job, submit your resume, and cross your fingers. So, I thought it would be valuable to provide insight into what it’s like on the other side of the resume submission process. 

Resume submission: tips to improve your chances of being the successful applicant

Remote workers have become increasingly common in today’s workforce, with more and more businesses supporting and encouraging the idea of employees working from home.

These days, many organisations are made up entirely of remote team members, working across different continents and time zones from their home offices, co-working spaces, city libraries, or local cafés!

While remote working has many benefits, for both individuals and their employees, it also has its challenges. Practicing clear communication, staying up-to-date with collective goals, and maintaining productivity are all key to remote work.

If you’re managing remote employees, it’s important to know how to make the arrangement a success for the worker, as well as your team and organisation.

Here are some tips you might find helpful when it comes to managing remote employees.

While working from home has its definite perks, over time it can make you feel a bit disconnected from the team and regular office life.

There’s no doubt that collaboration technology is making remote teams just as efficient and productive as traditional workplace environments. However, as a remote worker you’ll no doubt be missing out on face-to-face interactions with colleagues and managers.

A recent article in Forbes discussed how important it is for remote workers to remain networked as closely as possible with peers and leaders in the office. To achieve this, managers of remote workers should be scheduling regular face-to-face time with team members working away from the office, through Skype, FaceTime or Google Hangouts.

Having this ongoing contact between manager and employee will help anchor the employee back to the company, while also maintaining a positive working relationship between manager and team member.

Use collaboration tools to connect remote teams

In addition to face-to-face time over video calls, you’ll want to invest in collaboration tools that allow remote workers to stay connected to the team.

Slack is a very popular and handy collaboration tool, suitable for both small and large companies. Through Slack, you can link all of your remote workers together, allowing them to easily communicate and share files in real-time.

Programs such as Slack boost transparency and a feeling of team connectivity, giving employees the ability to chat with colleagues about their projects (or anything really!) and see what their team members are working on at any given time. You can also quickly and easily jump onto a voice or video call through the Slack platform, so your team mates are only ever as far away as the call button.

Invest in the development of remote workers

As a manager, you’re no doubt invested in the professional development of your staff. After all, helping employees to boost their skills, knowledge and experience is a key part of being an effective leader. It’s also highly beneficial to the business, as a company is only ever as good as its people!

Unfortunately, however, remote workers can sometimes be neglected when it comes to professional development – even though this is most likely unintentional. In the same way, employees who work away from the office on a full-time basis can often be overlooked for recognition or promotion. It’s harder to be noticed when you’re less visible.

To avoid this from happening, managers must make a conscious effort to include remote workers in ongoing training and development opportunities. Which is easy to do these days with the help of online learning.

Schedule quarterly sessions, to check in with their progress and identify any learning needs or skills gaps. Enrol them in relevant online training courses and modules. Let them know that you are invested in their development and growth, and keen to support their career goals.

Keep your remote team members in the loop

On that note, it may seem quite small and trivial, but one of the biggest challenges of remote work is feeling left out of the loop and distant from colleagues and team mates.

As a manager, it’s important that you make an effort to keep remote employees up-to-date with things going on around the office – large and small. Keep them informed of organisational news, such as recent hires, internal job postings, milestone events, exciting awards won… all of this will help remote workers to feel more included and connected.

Why not end your regular Skype meetings on this kind of catch up note? You might be surprised at how many good ideas come out over these less formal conversations.

Establish trust and communication with remote workers

To be effective at working remotely, employees need to be clear and proactive communicators. Being able to communicate well with managers is absolutely essential for remote workers. And vice versa.

For most managers, it’s easy to see when an employee is just having a bad day, as opposed to genuinely struggling with their workload. When your team members are right there in front of you in the office, you’re able to get a pretty good sense of how they are tracking.

However, when managing remote employees, especially those working in different countries and time zones, it’s much harder to know what’s really going on. That’s why it’s important to build a positive and trusting relationship with remote staff.

By establishing trust and honest communication, you’re letting remote workers know that they can come to you if they need help with their workload, deadlines, clients, or any factor that could be affecting their job. All of the steps above will help you to build that trusting working relationship.

Want to read more about working remotely? You may also like to check out our top tips for being a successful remote worker.

In the last 30 years, research shows that the number of companies offering remote working options had tripled. In this rapidly shifting workplace environment, autonomy is becoming a necessity, rather than a nice to have. 

This need for a more autonomous approach also applies to workplace learning. Traditionally, facilitators led professional development opportunities and guided groups of employees to develop knowledge or set of skills. 

In the digital age, learning opportunities are available to participants as and when they need them, which presents the opportunity for employees to lead their learning, and drive progress from the bottom up. Research suggests that informal rather than formal learning accounts for up to 75 percent of learning within organizations. 

The question is, how can those responsible for workplace training help employees develop the skills needed for autonomous learning? 

What are the benefits of autonomous learning?

The Ethics Centre describes autonomy as “the idea that every person is in control of their thoughts and actions and can be motivated by ‘internal’ forces like choice and reflection.” 

In this sense, autonomy is a philosophical concept, rather than a skill that employees can develop. However, individuals can become more autonomous in their approach when they develop specific soft skills, such as self-confidence and problem-solving.

On a systemic level, this level of independent thought can be challenging, particularly in a large organization. Nevertheless, autonomous work is a necessary part of progress, and organizations need to embrace it to keep up with the pace of change. 

While sometimes difficult to manage, encouraging autonomy also gives employees the headspace and confidence they need to make creative contributions - an equally essential skill in today’s work landscape. 

How to encourage autonomous learning in the workplace

Before learners can start to direct their learning and make the process autonomous, organization leaders need to develop the appropriate learning culture. This process includes building trust between team members at all levels. 

Towards Maturity (now Emerald Group), an organization assessing the effective implementation of learning innovation describes how organizations can achieve this using their “Transformation Curve” roadmap. They summarise the journey into four stages: Optimizing Training, Taking Control, Letting Go, and Sharing Responsibility. 

When organizations make learning and development a priority, ensure that the appropriate systems and processes are in place, and train employees in using these systems, they can begin to relinquish control. They can trust employees to make appropriate decisions for their development that will also benefit the organization as a whole. 

Perhaps the most important soft skill to develop in becoming an autonomous learner is problem-solving. In schools, teachers aim to strike a balance between encouraging students to ask questions and making their way forward independently. As adults, we continue this balancing act: developing problem-solving skills is a lifelong process. 

Autonomous learning isn’t the same as independent learning. While an employee may have identified an area of their work that needs development, they may need to collaborate with others to learn new skills or find answers.  According to the 70:20:10 model for learning and development, 20 percent of knowledge acquisition happens through speaking and interacting with others. Encourage employees to ask questions and speak with their team members about the courses they are taking, or skills they are developing. 

Professional discourse can also be an excellent marker for whether or not employees are both engaged in learning and benefiting from it. Listen in to the informal conversations in the corridors (where appropriate!) and gauge the level of interest. 

Being open to learning something new is about having the confidence to take risks. If you fear failure, you are unlikely to engage with learning, because the risk of not understanding a new concept is high.  When we don’t know how to do something, we need to put ourselves out there to build the skill or find answers. 

Failure and learning from mistakes are all part of this process, and making learners aware of this can be helpful. When those in leadership model and openness to failure and making mistakes, this will filter down to the rest of the organization.   

5. Provide engaging, personalized content

Personalizing learning is the difference between content being engaging or boring. Content needs to address an individual’s learning needs as accurately as possible, and advancing technology is helping to simplify this process.

If employees have access to learning content that is both engaging and appropriate to their needs, autonomous learning becomes a natural process.  As ideas or questions spring to mind, they will have the necessary tools and information to hand.

If they can select content and develop in areas they have chosen themselves, they will be more motivated and interested in the subject matter. The success of any learning and development strategy rests on how engaged employees are in the process, at it is crucial to keep track of this continually. 

A one stop shop for all things training, Go1 makes it easy to compare the best training options available, and find the right resources for your professional development, compliance and business training needs. 

Encourage your learners to own their personal development training, by giving them the flexibility to search and select courses that reflect their professional interests. This helps your employees take the learning outside of the workplace, so they can access it whenever and wherever they want.

Supporting employees to become autonomous learners

Let’s get straight to the point. Optimising your employee lifecycle is all about improving your employee experience so that you improve employee engagement. Improving employee engagement results in happier and more productive employees, and this, in turn, produces happy customers, which subsequently generates more revenue. That’s a win for your customers, a win for your employees and a win for your business. In a world of increasing complexity and demands on our time, having the right systems and processes in place to enhance the employee experience is essential.

 In this article, we will be exploring the critical ingredients for improving your employee experience via two under-leveraged pathways: 

1.     Implementing intelligent HR automation for the right tasks and processes during the employee lifecycle, and

2.     Providing learning and development opportunities in the flow of work so that employees can fit it into their schedules.

 Iron Mountain have conducted a significant amount of research into how automating HR processes provides a means to create the time HR needs to focus on more strategic work. Results indicate that respondents from highly automated HR departments are about twice as likely to enjoy above-average productivity and considerably more likely as those from the least automated HR departments to say they enjoyed above average HR effectiveness (38% to 25%).

 Learning is the top-rated challenge among Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report. People now rate the ‘opportunity to learn’ as among their top reasons for taking a job, and business leaders know that changes in technology, longevity, work practices, and business models have created a tremendous demand for continuous, lifelong development.

We’ve outlined 4 considerations below for improving your employee experience through HR automation, learning and development. The positive results available to HR professionals will flow on to benefit the organisation as a whole to enhance overall performance and long-term growth.

1.      The model of the employee lifecycle

 The proven model known as the employee lifecycle (ELC), is a powerful way to visualise the journey your employees take and how they interact with you. Understanding this model helps you ensure that you’re engaging them at every touchpoint they have with your organisation.

By optimising each stage of your ELC, it is possible to attract and retain a top tier talent for your business.

Here is the framework for the employee lifecycle model:

1.     Attraction: Build the right brand and culture to attract the best candidates to your business.

2.     Recruitment: Develop a multi-channel recruitment strategy and don't forget referrals when assessing who is the best fit for both your company and the role.

3.     Onboarding: Provide an engaging employee experience is essential to the retention and the success of new team members, existing employees and the organisation.

4.     Development: Foster ongoing professional development and continuous improvement across your business.

5.     Retention: Develop strategies and processes to ensure you retain your top talent. A positive company culture is essential. 

Separation: All good things must come to an end. Put a process in place to learn from the experience, continue good morale within your team, and ensure that departing employees leave on good terms. 

2.     Leverage HR automation to enhance employee performance

 Did you know that almost 70 per cent of HR work is still unstructured, relying on excel, email and calls? According to the study on The State of HR Automation in Mid-Sized Organisations, 59% of respondents said the HR professionals in their organisation spend over half their time on manual administrative tasks. Essentially that means that if you don't have the right automation in place, manual, unstructured HR tasks will result in unnecessary complexity, time wasted, and a productivity drain for both HR (and other employees). 

The work required to map, assess and automate the right tasks and processes in your organisation (so as to optimise productivity and minimise complexity), can seem daunting at first. But it doesn’t need to be.

According to Willis Towers Watson’s research, once the decision has been made to adopt automation and artificial intelligence technologies, leaders have to consider the following questions about how to implement that decision:

How, when, and where should we apply automation in our organisations? 

How do we stay on top of technological trends as work and automation continue to evolve?

 Help is at hand, however. Based on decades of experience helping companies transform approaches to work and leadership, Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work offers a new set of tools for applying automation and artificial intelligence in today’s organisations.

 Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director at Willis Towers Watson, and John Boudreau, Professor and Research Director at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Centre for Effective Organisations have written Reinventing Jobs to help HR professionals, managers and business leaders tackle the challenge of intelligent automation.

To achieve the optimal combinations of humans and automation, leaders must implement the following four-step framework: 

1.     Deconstruct existing jobs into key tasks and categorise them.

2.     Determine the payoff of each task: Estimate the relationship between the performance and strategic value of each task.

3.     Identify automation options: Consider the different types of AI and robotics capable of performing each task.

4.     Reinvent the job by optimally combining human and automated work: Create new jobs by determining which human tasks should be substituted, augmented, or transformed by automation.

When viewed through the above lens, human-automation collaboration feels more logical, less scary, and more like a process that can have positive benefits for workers. Ultimately, the aim of HR automation is to enable businesses to improve the employee experience and optimise the employee lifecycle resulting in increased efficiency and reduced costs. By designing, streamlining and implementing solutions that transform manual work into digital workflows HR automation can deliver significant benefits.

Reduce unstructured work that relies on excel, email and calls.

Reduce errors related to data entry and misplaced/lost documents.

Mitigate compliance risk and meet regulatory requirements through digital filing and record keeping.

Enable faster processing and easier data sharing to improve productivity.

Make intelligent, strategic business decisions based on real-time data with actionable reporting.

Encourage collaboration by removing silos between departments and teams.

Improve employee engagement and reduce employee turnover.

Identify the best use of your employee talent through HR data.

Ensure your employees have time to focus their talents on more complex tasks like strategy and using their soft skills to do the work that matters.

 The Harvard Business Review reports that companies which offer comprehensive employee training programs can increase sales by up to 19 percent and profits by up to 29 percent (while also reducing employee turnover by as much as 72 percent). But that’s not the only reason why providing the right learning and development for your employees is important.

Learning and development are major enablers. Education and skills are perhaps the biggest drivers of an individual's own personal earnings potential throughout their career, so organisations that offer training, lots of developmental assignments, and a coaching culture, are now the premium places to work. As more and more robotics and artificial intelligence enter the workforce, Bersin's learning research indicates that for individuals, the 'learning curve is the earning curve.' 

If you want to develop a culture of learning and development within your organisation, Britt Andreatta (PhD), an expert on developing a learning culture makes the following recommendations: 

Honour the ever-present nature of learning.

Use blended learning to maximise options.

 Andreatta says that a learning culture could positively affect organisational productivity and profit in the following ways:

A growth mindset takes root yielding ever-higher levels of performance.

Enhanced creativity and innovation drives individual and team success.

New technology skills are easier to obtain.

4.      Build a self-developing organisation

The 'self-developing organisation’ is an organisation that has the capacity, the technology and the operational agility to develop, train and empower employees on the fly. With the rise of the need for real-time learning and empowerment on the rise, rather than think about your learning and HR strategy as one of 'delivering training,' think about it as 'building a self-developing organisation.'

 Here’s a roadmap for how that might look in your organisation:

Ensure that education and learning content is readily available to anyone, and it’s easy to find and use.

Develops teams where people make time to teach and coach others, and they are rewarded for it.

The company stops and investigates its mistakes, making sure teams learn from failures.

Formal learning programs are easy to access and highly regarded, so people regularly use them.

Leaders at all levels teach classes and workshops (professional, technical, and senior executives).

Onboarding is a serious and formal effort, with a focus on making people productive regardless of where they come from.

Every job has a transition management program to help people learn the job from internal transfer.

Learning technology is modern, easy to use, and fun.

Individuals are rewarded for self-development.

Books, magazines and other external research are readily available.

People are hired for their 'learning agility' and the ability to teach themselves.

Learning is valued as part of the culture and remains in place during good times and bad.

Finding the right training solution for your organisation doesn’t need to be difficult. There are solution providers that provide the right resources for all your professional development, compliance, onboarding, performance management and business training needs. Go1’s training and development courseware provides access to more than 50,000 courses from over 100 of the world's trusted and most respected content providers.

Selecting and implementing the right HR software to automate the types of manual, repetitive and time-consuming tasks that result in unstructured work can be a challenge, but to celebrate the partnership between Go1 and Subscribe-HR, we’ve created a FREE guide to make it easier for you.

 If you’re ready to discover the difference HR automation, learning & development can make to engagement and performance in your business, then this guide is for you. Discover which HR solutions you can use to automate which tasks and the courses you can share at each stage of the employee lifecycle to provide the right learning opportunities for your employees.

Download the free HR Automation, Training & Development guide here. 

This blog post was written in collaboration with Go1 partner Subscribe-HR. 

 In a world of increasing complexity and demands on our time, having the right systems and processes in place to enhance the employee experience is essential.

Optimise your employee lifecycle through HR automation and learning in the flow of work

An article from one of our partners, Roubler.

Automation is frequently seen as the answer to business efficiency. But can it really be applied to all aspects of onboarding new employees? Is it possible to influence an employee’s success using online onboarding tools?