Jay Hollowell

In the career college setting, we place considerable focus, and rightly so, on helping to prepare our graduates for the professional job interview. On the other side of the coin though, as employers, we must also address how we can best prepare ourselves for conducting our own interviews. What needs to be in place to help ensure that we select the best applicant for the position?

Here is a checklist that can help when an employer prepares for a job interview:

• Before each interview, in addition to listing the technical skills needed for the job, determine which critical skills are
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Setting strategic goals is the joint responsibility of all members of your career school's team; each employee should be part of the goal-setting process. In our last two blogs, we looked at six questions to help ensure that our employees develop goals that are effective and obtainable. In today's blog we address the last three questions to ask about a goal. Please note that it is not an exhaustive list, however, the nine questions we have now addressed in Parts 1, 2 and 3 of our blog at least lay a foundation for developing accomplishable goals. 7. Is there… >>>

Setting strategic goals is a major step in the ongoing process of managing and evaluating organizational performance. In our last blog we began addressing nine questions to help ensure that each developed goal, embedded in an organization's strategic planning process, is, in fact, obtainable. We looked at the first three questions: Is the goal SMART? Does the goal align with the mission and core values of the organization? Does the goal address both opportunities and challenges? In today's blog we address the next three questions (stay tuned for additional blogs that will continue our topic). 4. Does the goal… >>>

This blog addresses the first three questions (stay tuned for additional blogs that will continue our topic)! 1. Is the goal SMART? Most of us may already know what a SMART goal is, but the acronym still proves to be important to goal realization. First the goal must be Specific. A general or broad goal is harder to evaluate, more difficult to implement and leads to ineffective results because there are no specific parameters to define what the goal is suppose to accomplish. Second, the goal must be Measurable; this characteristic goes hand-in-hand with Specific. A goal that is… >>>

Greetings to all Faculty Coaches/DOEs, Deans and Administrators who are responsible for faculty development initiatives at their institutions!

It has been quite a while since I entered a blog in the Faculty Coach Consortium, but I have charged myself with again blogging on a regular basis - and I hope to have your help too! No doubt, in the midst of so many changes in our career education sector, our instructors remain on the front lines with our students - teaching skills, helping adult learners accomplish career objectives and dreams, representing our institutions and being an example of their disciplines, subject matter… >>>

Conflict is expected in the workplace and our career colleges are no exceptions. Though conflict is rarely resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, it still can be positive as long as it’s managed effectively. A few basic pointers can help:

7 Tips for Managing Conflict in the Workplace

1. Balance your battles – stand your ground on issues that are important to you, but avoid fighting every workplace battle
2. Focus on the issues and not on the personalities - concentrate on solutions to the problem rather than on who’s at fault
3. Be respectful of your employees’ positions and opinions
4. Encourage… >>>