The job market is packed with job seeking hopefuls, and companies are placing an emphasis on higher goals to attract the best talent and keep them. Thirty-nine percent of 4,000 talent leaders surveyed in LinkedIn’s 2016 Global Recruiting Trends report agree quality of hire is the most valuable metric for tracking performance.

A high quality hire is defined as a new employee who receives positive reviews, and plans to stay onboard and grow with the company. Career coaches are striving to deliver these high quality candidates to employers.

Here are four traits of high quality hires and how to create them:

How many of your employees know the purpose behind your mission statement, how they contribute to it, or even what your mission statement is? A 2015 Achievers’ survey, The greatness gap: The state of employee disengagement, states a staggering 61 percent of employees don’t know their company’s mission statement. What’s more, of those who are familiar with their company’s mission, 57 percent are not motivated by it.

[Click to Tweet: “61 percent of employees don’t know their company’s mission statement (@Achievers).”]

The same survey shows only half of employees (49 percent) are happy at work. A greater number of employees are searching for new careers where they can identify with the company’s values and feel their role has a purpose.

Here’s how engaging employees with your mission statement can change these numbers:

As America continues to adjust to the impact of the pandemic, more and more employees are searching for jobs that will best fit their work culture needs. 

Thankfully, more and more employers understand the need to offer a flexible workplace culture considerate of today’s work-life balance. Deloitte surveyed nearly 9,000 professionals and found that building an organizational culture that celebrates growth, adaptability, and resilience ranks as the top priority for today’s workplace culture.  

With so many companies reexamining their culture, it’s hard to filter out which is the best option for you. Here’s why workplace culture is so important and where you should start looking when determining the best fit:

(This post was updated on 6/22/2020)

College graduates are quickly learning the high expectations for their first job out of college aren’t exactly going to be met the way they pictured. There are many perks they hope to find at their first job that end up missing.

It’s important for career counselors to fully understand the anxieties of college students and the extent of their expectations surrounding that all-important first job.

Once you know what those lofty expectations are, here are a few ways to handle them as their career counselor:

Even for those who have natural confidence skills, job interviews are stressful. 

Having the ability to walk into an interviewer’s office feeling confident about who you are and why you’re right for this position is hard enough. But what happens when those unexpected confidence blows happen during the meeting? 

Here are a few ways to boost your confidence skills and help brush off those interview jitters:

There are a lot of factors you must consider when looking for a new job. The salary, location, opportunities for the future, and more play into whether a position and company are right for you. But what about your health?

The truth of the matter is that even jobs we don’t consider to be dangerous can have a negative impact on employee health. Business Insider looked at data from the Occupational Information Network and compiled a list of the professions that were the most damaging to employee health based off factors like time spent sitting and possible exposure to hazardous materials. Surprisingly, jobs like dentist, flight attendant, and podiatrist topped the list of most unhealthy jobs.

Every job has the possibility of negatively impacting your health. Especially if you aren’t aware of what causes those health issues. Here are three common health problems that could stem from a job and how you can keep them from affecting your wellness:

It’s time to spice up your job-hunting strategy. You know the external routes to getting hired by heart: CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Indeed, and all the other search engines and job boards out there. But that ignores one very effective method to use in the job search: the employee referral. 

In SilkRoad’s 2017 Sources of Hire research, they found that hiring professionals prefer internal hiring more than external because it’s easier to find the right hire. And 45% of internal hires result from employee referrals. 

So, while Indeed does create the most interview opportunities, it’s employee referrals that remain the top source of hires. 

Of course, that begs the question, “Why isn’t everyone going wild over the greatness of referrals?” 

The main issue for job seekers is that they have no idea how to even receive an employee referral. After all, there aren’t job boards out there that just list opportunities at your friends’ companies. So you feel like to get referred for a job you have to sit and wait for someone to think of you. It gives you less control over your job hunt.

But in reality, there’s a lot you can do to move the process along and up your chances of getting an employee referral. You just have to know how to go about it. 

Here are three ways to get referred for a great job:

(This post was updated on 7/6/2020)

Going green. It’s a topic many people are concerned about nowadays. With so many people working remotely this year, we’ve had even more time to consider our environmental impact in both our home and work lives. So, how can we carry that mentality into the workplace once we go back to the office?

The chances are that even if you make an effort to incorporate environmental sustainability into your personal life, it might not be a big part of your professional life.

That means many employers are missing a huge opportunity to improve their employer branding. Even if you’re not overly going into the eco-friendly movement, there are a lot of benefits you can reap by incorporating environmental sustainability into your business model.

Here are three employer branding benefits that come along with being a greener company:

You spend hours crafting the perfect resume for each job you apply for. Careful thought goes into the words you choose to show that you are a professional and the right person for the position. But then you never hear back from employers.

Does this sound familiar? Chances are, you might be going about resume writing the wrong way. Job seekers and hiring managers have very different perspectives on certain words. A phrase that might seem perfect to you, could be meaningless to the person reading your resume, or worse, a deterrent from reading any farther.

Up your chances of getting your resume noticed by avoiding words that hiring managers and employers dislike. Here are four types of words you shouldn’t use in your resume writing:

There’s great news for job seekers: employers want to hire you! And in order to peak your interest about their company, many employers are starting to offer some creative and awesome benefit packages.

A 2016 Society of Human Resource Management survey found that between 2015 and 2016, 33 percent of companies increased the number of benefits they offered. And in many cases, those new benefits are more than the traditional health insurance and vacation policies

With so many great perks to choose from, it can be easy for a job seeker to get distracted. But it’s important to remember a job should offer you more than its benefits package. Avoid being mesmerized by the extras by knowing which ones will actually fit your needs or lifestyle.

Here are five trendy employee benefits and what they can tell you about the company offering them: