While posting a job ad online can generate a ton of responses and likely lead to identifying potential candidates, collection agencies should be looking outside of the traditional hiring pipelines to identify the best possible talent, a panel of industry executives shared during a webinar last week. The webinar shared tips and ideas for hiring in a difficult labor market, such as the one that much of the country is currently experiencing, thanks to record-low unemployment rates.

One of the most difficult things I have to do as a business owner is interview people. Whether I’m looking for a new virtual assistant, or whether I’m hoping to find someone to work with for an ad campaign, interviewing people can be tough. Among the most common things business owners start with during an interview? “Tell me about yourself.” What usually follows is a litany of career highlights. How will this help you find the right fit for your business? Well, the good news is that it can help. Standouts tend to provide you more than a checklist of the positions they’ve had before. Here are some things to look for:

Spam filters bogging you down? Use these eight strategies to make sure your sales emails always get read by your prospects. It's no secret that the marketing landscape has drastically transformed in recent years. Yet, one thing that has remained constant is the importance of email outreach in outbound marketing strategies. From Fortune 500 companies to scrappy startups, sending sales emails on a regular basis is a reality, so a large amount of time, strategy and effort goes into the process of sending these emails.

1. You’re stingy with gratitude.

2. Giving compliments is like pulling teeth.

3. No one’s work is good enough.

4. Mistakes are proof you’re a loser.

Taking a proactive approach to building a culture that matters starts with your hiring process. Then you’ll build trust by sending a consistent message every day that those values are more than just words. When I hired Jeff at Digital-Tutors, he seemed like a perfect candidate. He was a talented designer and he quickly fit in with the rest of his team and the entire company’s culture. One day, I was baffled to discover that he harbored a prejudice toward a black co-worker. It manifested itself through inappropriate jokes that only Jeff found funny.

Giving an opinion is a common way of interacting with other people in formal and informal settings. Unsolicited opinions may be unwelcome, but most leaders find themselves being asked to express an opinion fairly often - and those with a reputation for wisdom are asked constantly. Leaders are asked opinions about all kinds of things, from day-to-day affairs like What should we do about this situation? What’s the best way to handle this difficult client? Does this person look like a good hire?

Even in a tough economy, finding skilled workers can be difficult. In any economic environment, though, human resources professionals, hiring managers and the companies they work for need to ensure that the application, interview and hiring process is appealing, professional and geared toward selling the company and position to potential candidates. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. What are some job candidate turnoffs that may be hindering your hiring success?

I would roll my eyes when I heard that a company should know the cost of employee turnover. Okay, I thought, for a particular business the cost is $14.3 million. What would anyone ever do with that figure? An economist wants something a bit different: How much would the cost increase if turnover worsened by one percentage point a year? How much would the cost fall if turnover were improved by one percentage point? Now we have data for a profit-maximizing decision: how much is it worth spending to improve turnover?

In order to do anything meaningful, you have to know where you are going. Strategy and tactics are two terms that get thrown around a lot, and are often used interchangeably in numerous contexts. But what exactly do they mean, what is the difference, and why is it important? In this article, we will look at the contrast between strategy and tactics, and the most effective ways to use each. While strategy and tactics originated as military terminology, their use has spread to planning in many areas of life.

Companies tout their ability to come up with innovative products, services and ideas for clients, but managers are far less imaginative when it comes to handling employees not working up to par. Often, the knee-jerk reaction to an underperformer is fast termination, immediately followed by an interminably slow recruitment and onboarding process. Not only does this chew up time and resources, but it can demoralize departments. Plus, if the problem wasn’t the employee but the system itself, the next hire will likely fall into the same pattern of mediocrity, exasperation, or burnout.

Are you successful at coaching your employees? In our years studying and working with companies on this topic, we’ve observed that when many executives say “yes,” they’re ill-equipped to answer the question. Why? For one thing, managers tend to think they’re coaching when they’re actually just telling their employees what to do. According to Sir John Whitmore, a leading figure in executive coaching, the definition of coaching is “unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance.

The decisions we spend the most time on are rarely the most important ones. Not all decisions need the same process. Sometimes, trying to impose the same process on all decisions leads to difficulty identifying which ones are most important, bogging us down and stressing us out. I remember once struggling at the intelligence agency shortly after I received a promotion. I was being asked to make too many decisions. I had no way to sort through them to figure out which ones mattered, and which ones were inconsequential.

Finding your dream hire is close to impossible in the current environment - and it's only going to get harder. You've probably noticed that hiring for open positions these days feels harder than it ever has before. With the unemployment rate at a historic low - it fell to 3.9 percent in July - there are more open positions than there are job seekers for only the second time in the past two decades, according to the Labor Department. The percentage of American workers who quit their jobs is also up, reaching 2.4 percent in May, the highest level in 17 years.

A “wave” of tech startups, such as TrueAccord, are aiming to revolutionize the collections industry by applying machine learning and algorithms to create a kinder, gentler, collection experience for individuals, according to an article that was published by WIRED magazine. Putting aside the stereotypical descriptions of the collection agency that seem to grace any mention of the collections industry - aggressive, living nightmare, shady, sketchy, pushy collection agents -

Prospecting can be difficult. Ask any salesperson if they’re getting enough good, high-quality leads, and they are more than likely to say that they could always use more. A recent study on the state of B2B digital marketing reports that nearly half of marketers cite generating high-quality leads as their biggest challenge. The challenge isn’t getting any easier, either. With the inordinate amount of noise cluttering up our inboxes, voicemails, and overall mindshare, it’s becoming harder and harder for salespeople to break through to new prospects.

By delegating just 10 percent of your workload, you can grow your business more than 20 percent. Why not give it a try? When you lead others, it is important to know that there is an art to delegating. While some leaders think it takes too much of their time and attention to delegate work to their people, there's a big upside to this process. If done correctly, you will find that your staff are more productive and happier as a result. When your people know you trust them enough to delegate an important task, it boosts their motivation to get the job done.

I’ve been fortunate over the last several years to have clients who usually pay on time. There’s only been two — that I can vividly remember — who have paid late consistently. Managing late invoices are a drag, and it can also be discouraging. If you put in work for a client, you would hope they would show appreciation by sending you the payment promptly. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Here’s how I deal with my habitually late payer: Bill Twice Per Month or Upfront. Early in my career I made the mistake of only billing once per month.

In 2018, you cannot deny the importance of video. Video clearly works for business to consumer (B2C) companies such as car companies, video game studios and Dollar Shave Club. But business to business (B2B) companies, whether in the accounting, insurance or content marketing fields, should make use of video content too, given that 70% of B2B researchers base some their buying decisions on watching brand videos. And if your B2B company is already using social media, it's even more integral that video should be part of your strategy since every major platform - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even LinkedIn - use video in some way.

Studies show that people are far more motivated by positive reinforcement than by the fear of failure, yet many workplace cultures are still buzzing with the daily energy of “just not screwing up.” If you work in one of these offices, where employees are frequently distracted from the goals of the organization by anxiety about being called out for mistakes, what can you do? The good news is that no matter what level of leadership you currently hold, you can help to create a more positive workplace culture just by adding two words to your routine: Thank you.

Smaller companies are often touted as having better customer service than their larger competitors, something I've found to be mostly true. When you have fewer clients, you can devote more time to communicating with them. Quality customer service is undoubtedly important. Still, it can be difficult to rationalize how it trumps being able to offer lower prices or a more recognizable name. Quality customer service doesn’t directly bring in more revenue, at least, according to its traditional (and therefore criminally vague) definition.