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The Elusive Sweet Spot: It’s Really There!

August 14, 2019September 15, 2022 by Melissa Chacon

When two givers indulge in a connection, it’s like magic. It’s alchemy. I water you, you water me, we never drain each other, we just grow. —Unknown

From the first moment you start looking for that open door into the active working world, you begin by selecting the companies you think mean the most to you—perhaps the big brands you’ve seen yourself working for ever since you started college. Once you start applying and interviewing, it’s time to evaluate the other determining factors: compensation and benefits package, for the most part. But should you really be limiting yourself to these two criteria only? What if there’s more to look for before deciding to get on board a company?

I’m going to let you in on a secret that might take you a decade to find out on your own, which is understanding the value of a healthy, feel-good work culture. It’s unfortunate, but true, how rare a good work environment is, and for this reason, you might not even think they exist. You think that work, more or less, sucks, and that is just the way it is. But then you meet someone who loves going to work, or you read an article like this one, and you realize that that doesn’t have to be the case. Once your eyes are opened, it’s still going to take time to find a great place to work, but at least you are on the right path.

When a newly minted graduate gets her first job, the celebration is, well…just about getting the job. We’ve all been there; I know I have. Then you start thinking “professionally,” trying to work as hard as you can to earn a higher position with the salary you’ve dreamed of having. You can likely relate to this experience, and it’s understandable, as in the end it’s a process of gaining experience, improving as professionals, and getting rewarded. We can think of it as the “regular working cycle.”

But what happens when all the boxes are checked—great position, generous compensation, strong benefits package—but you still don’t feel completely fulfilled, and you’re lacking a connection with your employer? I can start listing reasons why this lack of connection might translate into discontent and a sense of being unfulfilled, but for the most part, they are obvious.

Instead, I’d rather talk about the opposite: the healthy relationship and positive working bond between employee and employer. At SweetRush we refer to it as the “sweet spot,” where both parties are fulfilled and content and both are motivated to support the other.

With any relationship, we should invest a great deal of care and attention, and the working relationship is no exception. In fact, given the time we spend at work (a lot!), it just makes sense to ensure you’re spending all that time and energy on something that’s more than just a 9-to-5 job that gives you a paycheck at the end of each month. Your values and your vision should definitely be in line with your employer’s, but most importantly, you should be looking for a company that actually cares about you—and one that you care about as well. That’s right: caring.

The first time I heard the word “caring” in a work environment was when I started working for SweetRush. For me, it was a word that didn’t belong at work, like it was out of place. Family, friends, church? OK…but work? It didn’t take me long to realize that not only was caring one of the strongest foundations of the company, but it also was the perfect definition of how I was going to feel every single day: cared for. When you are embraced by a company that cares about you, both as a professional and as a human being, everything changes: the relationships with your coworkers, your daily tasks, and just how you feel in the morning knowing your work day is about to begin. And, as a result, you strive to be better and to do better for the team, and the balance between your professional and your personal lives seem to fall into place.

Studies have shown that people are more stressed at work than ever before—though you don’t need studies to tell you what you already see and feel around you. In reality, it should be—and can be—the total opposite. You might need to try working at other companies, and it could take some time to get there (OK, yes, it can be like dating to find that perfect match). But, if you understand that there is that perfect work match out there, and you look for more than just a paycheck, the reward once you get there will be enormous. Always seek a healthy, fair, and feel-good working relationship… Look for the sweet spot and you will find it.

Melissa Chacon (Meli) lives in Costa Rica, is part of the Talent Solutions team, and is passionate about connecting great people and SweetRush.

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How to Conduct a Virtual Interview for a Remote Position

How to Conduct a Virtual Interview for a Remote Position

May 21, 2018June 28, 2023 by Melissa Chacon

Know how to best conduct a video interview? One of SweetRush’s top recruiters shares her experience and advice for conducting a successful virtual interview—including job interview questions and other interview tips.

Have you ever experienced an interview process that makes you want to sign a contract and join the company immediately? On the contrary, have you interviewed with a company and left never wanting to hear from them again in your life? We’ve all had positive and negative experiences when it comes to job interviews.

This becomes a particular challenge when conducting a virtual interview. But as organizations shift toward supporting virtual teams and remote workers, the need to develop remote interview skills is becoming vital. As a virtual company, SweetRush is all about creating a positive experience—ensuring that every interview is enjoyable for everyone involved! I hope these tips help you to develop a remote interview process that is as fun and successful as ours.

Simulating Face-to-Face at a Virtual Company

I’ve been a recruiter for nearly 10 years now, and although I enjoy the entire process of my work with candidates, one of the most exciting steps for me is actually meeting a candidate. Every interview process is a whole different experience! After a few email exchanges, if it feels like a good mutual fit, I finally have the opportunity to get “in front” of (at least virtually) the potential new hires for the role I’ve been working so hard to fill.

In the past, I’d interview people in person, but a number of years ago I shifted from an onsite position to a remote role with SweetRush. When I started at SweetRush, I said to myself, “How am I going to have these ‘final’ and ‘decisive’ interviews via a video call? It won’t be the same as having the candidates in front of you.” Getting to know SweetRush’s culture and core values did help me get a better sense of how I wanted to share the information with everyone I spoke with. But what really hit me was a message shared by Arturo Schwartzberg, our Chairman and Cofounder, on interviewing “SweetRush style.” (You can find a few of his main points from that communication later in this article in bold.) And immediately after reading his message, I realized I was more than ready for it!

So what happened when I began interviewing remotely? How was I able to interview candidates by applying the SweetRush style?

The Shifting Landscape of Virtual Work

Let’s start with the highlights of managing the remote interview process. Today, more and more people are seeking to change their work mode from on-site to remote, taking advantage of all the benefits it can offer them (no commute, flexibility, proximity to family, etc.). Emerging technologies have a great deal to do with this increasingly common trend. These apps and tools—including Skype® and Google Hangouts™—make us feel more connected than ever and, even more importantly, they make communication far more personal by allowing us to see each other’s faces and expressions during a conversation.

The convenience of conducting an interview from almost anywhere is undeniable for interviewers and candidates alike. Interviewees definitely need to be discreet—especially when they don’t know if the company is a good fit or if they’ll be offered the job in the end. Bottom line: There’s more flexibility and availability during the whole process, which makes everything run much smoother.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff: interviewing “SweetRush style.” How do we ensure that every video interview is an engaging, fun, and always-respectful encounter?

How We Approach the Virtual Interview

We are equals. This means acknowledging that both the candidate and I as the recruiter are on the same level. Being the interviewer doesn’t give you a special power; rather, it gives you the opportunity to be a kind and helpful guide through the conversation. Understanding this really is a change in mindset. We’ve all been on the other side of the seat, and no matter what the final outcome might be, we want everyone to end the remote interview feeling respected.

It’s a conversation. We like to have an actual conversation instead of asking a list of common interview questions in a formal setting. You might be wondering, “What’s the difference?” The reality is that one really stands out from the other. Being able to break the ice and make someone feel comfortable when conducting a virtual interview is always a must. But when you can reach a point where you have a fluid, enjoyable, and engaging exchange of ideas while gathering relevant information, you know you’ve nailed it. For us it’s not about what you asked; it’s about how you asked.

Make it human. We genuinely care about every single person we talk to. Taking the time to read their résumés, pore over their professional and portfolio sites, look into the little details, find out more about the person outside of their work experience—these are all things we enjoy doing. It also lets us break the formal interview structure by exchanging points of view and getting to know the person on a different level.

Find the sweet spot. For almost every single work interview, of course we have to ask the candidate, “Why are you a good fit for SweetRush and this role?” And, yes, nearly every time the candidate is prepared with a clear answer to that query. But we also like to ask the other way: “Why are we a good fit for you?” This is a question that perhaps candidates haven’t even asked themselves. It’s an eye-opener for both parties. In the end, it’s not only about our success; we want you to be happy and excited about joining SweetRush and for this to be the best job—for you the individual—you’ve ever had. (And if you are perfect for us, and we are perfect for you, then indeed we have found the “sweet spot” and our mutual success is likely to follow.)

We’d Love to Hear from You

Interviewing for a job can be stressful and nerve-racking. Having to join a video call can make things worse! We understand that. But we also understand the value of a good conversation with talented and creative people from all over the world. We love to hear about your work, your ideas, and your objectives. We love when we find that sweet spot, and if it’s not the right fit at this moment for whatever reason, we hope the candidate feels respected and ideally has grown through the process—and we sincerely wish each of them well.

And guess what? After these many years at SweetRush and being immersed in our culture, interviewing “SweetRush style” feels perfectly natural!

Melissa Chacon is a talent sourcer at SweetRush, working in the Talent Solutions team. If you are interested in open positions at SweetRush, please visit our Join Us page!

Our Secret Sauce in Sourcing Learning and Development Talent

October 18, 2017June 28, 2023 by ann.carthers

What is our secret ingredient for sourcing learning and development talent at SweetRush? Is it our unique culture? The prestigious awards we win? Our crazy, creative, and innovative team and the work we produce? Well, these may be part of the formula, but I think it’s much simpler than that.

It all begins with the Golden Rule: treat others how you want to be treated. It starts by taking the time to read a candidate’s résumé. It’s about being someone who cares about people’s careers and what the next best step is for a candidate and not about going through the motions, sounding like a robot, and forgetting we are working with people and their lives, livelihood, and aspirations. It’s about relationship recruiting, not transactional recruiting.

When candidates apply online, we always respond with an empathetically written email that ensures them that a real person, not a machine, will review their résumé. It’s amazing how that seemingly simple act stands out. So many candidates respond with warm notes of appreciation.

Communication is a major part of what we do daily. It’s crucial to keep candidates posted on where they are in the hiring process when sourcing learning and development talent. If their résumé has been reviewed but not selected for a prescreening, we let them know in an email that also acknowledges the trials and tribulations of job searching and landing that next awesome job. Again, empathy and caring infuse all our communications.

If candidates advance to interviews but are not selected for the position, they get a personal phone call. So many recruiters allow this critical conversation to go into the proverbial black hole because they don’t want to have difficult conversations or disappoint people. Our philosophy is the exact opposite. People deserve to have closure, and though it’s not the message that they want to hear (or that you want to deliver), they do appreciate the respect you are showing them by delivering the message personally. I wish we could hire all the worthy candidates, but we can only hire one. You know that feeling you get when you see the high school coach playing only the top athletes and leaving a bunch of kids on the bench? You want all the kids to have a chance to play, but that does not happen. Well, that’s the feeling I often have when we select one candidate and disappoint the others.

In some cases, after we have selected our one final great candidate and the engagement is taking longer than expected to start, we send a little something, such as a Starbucks gift card. Caffeine seems to heal a lot of things. Kidding! It’s about taking that extra step to say thank you and acknowledge that candidate’s effort and flexibility. Sometimes we do this when a candidate applied for a role, went through a lengthy, difficult interviewing process, and did not get selected. Again, we’re showing our appreciation for his or her time and acknowledging the difficulty of finding a great job.

At SweetRush, the way we act—which is so much a part of our culture—is not revolutionary. But a little humanity, kindness, and empathy seem to stand out these days. As I was writing this, I received an email from a candidate we had presented to a client of ours in the hospitality industry; she had not been selected for the job. She wrote, “Working with recruiters hasn’t always been the most positive experience for me, but your quick communication, honesty, and positivity have all helped make this a great experience from which I will continue to grow.”

So, in the end, I think our secret sauce for sourcing learning and development talent is communication, honesty, empathy, and truly caring for the candidates we work with.

Ann Cathers is a Talent Solutions Consultant at SweetRush, helping clients with their temporary L&D staffing needs. If you are interested in open positions at SweetRush, please visit our Join Us page. If you have staffing needs and would like to engage SweetRush, please contact Ann at her email.

Why You Need a Specialist to Find the Right Learning and Development Consultant

August 22, 2017September 15, 2022 by Rodrigo Salazar

When you’re looking for the perfect learning and development consultant for your team, it makes sense to work with someone who knows the job inside and out.

For most of my adult life, I had difficulty breathing through my nose. This dramatically affected my health and state of mind—I couldn’t sleep well, I suffered from severe allergies, and I had to breathe through my mouth all the time. (Take a moment, breathe in, and give thanks.) And as you can imagine, the accompanying heavy snoring and sleep apnea did not win me any fans.

Finally, overcoming my own inertia and fear of medical procedures, I decided to get this part of my life under control and scheduled my first visit with a doctor. I asked family and friends for recommendations, and coincidentally my brother had surgery a couple of years ago and strongly recommended that I see his otolaryngologist, Dr. Campos, a specialist in disorders of the ear, nose, and throat (ENT).

On my first visit, Dr. Campos asked me a few questions, checked a few things using her ENT gadgets, and then diagnosed me. The ideal solution for me was to have surgery, which consisted in not one, not two, but three different procedures. Though nervous, I could tell she was an experienced professional (she had probably done this hundreds of times), and she was confident yet warm and empathetic. I knew I was in good hands.

A couple of months after my initial consultation, I had surgery. After two weeks of a less than fun recovery, I am happy to say I can breathe like a normal human being. My quality of life has improved significantly!

Now, imagine for a moment that instead of going to an ENT, I went to a cardiologist or a neurologist. Sound scary? With a different kind of specialist, I might have been misdiagnosed and sent down the wrong path, spending time and money, worrying, and not finding a cure. A lot of frightening scenarios—and a far greater chance that things wouldn’t go as well as they did.

This leads me to the business world, and what I do here at SweetRush. I often talk to clients who are interested in filling a temporary role for a learning and development consultant on their team. Many of them are already working with other companies to fulfill those needs, and often I discover they’re working with an IT staffing firm or a general recruitment agency. I am always shocked that they are seeking mission-critical talent from folks who do not specialize in learning and development. That would be as if I had gone to the neurologist to treat my breathing conditions!

A couple of years ago, one of our clients, a Big Three consulting firm, came to us with a very specific need. The firm was looking for a senior instructional designer with a focus on eLearning, a business background, and excellent project management skills—a top-caliber learning and development consultant. Even for a specialist, filling this profile is a challenge.

But for the IT recruiter, this would be an exercise in futility and waste a lot of client time. At SweetRush, we understand that instructional designers and other learning and development consultants come in all different flavors, and we can recognize those flavors and select the right one for our clients. In less than a week, we could find and submit seven candidates who were well matched to the requirements. The client selected five candidates to interview and finally chose one to join its team. This person ended up engaging with our client for almost two years, which speaks to how well this learning and development consultant fit in and performed with the firm’s team.

If you’ve been using an IT recruiting firm to find temporary talent for your learning and development team, I think you’d be far better served with a learning and development–focused firm like SweetRush. With SweetRush, you can expect faster candidate submissions, a higher-quality bar for talent, and unsurpassed support during the engagement. And the best part is that you’ll be able to sleep better…just as I did after the surgery.

Do you have a position open for a learning and development consultant? Find out more about SweetRush’s staffing services, or contact Rodrigo. It would make his day to hear from you!

Rodrigo Salazar is the Manager of Talent Solutions at SweetRush.

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Hire a Temporary Learning Consultant or Outsource to a Team? How to Make the Right Choice

April 9, 2015September 15, 2022 by Rodrigo Salazar

If you want to remodel your home, sometimes hiring an individual, such as an electrician or a plumber, is the right thing to do. However, if you have a larger project that requires a team effort and lots of coordination, then you will likely want to hire a contractor and a crew.

After speaking to many learning and development managers, I discovered that they face a similar decision when it comes to outsourcing learning and development consulting. Should they bring in a learning solutions vendor-partner to take on a fixed-bid project, or work with a staffing partner to augment their team with a learning consultant for a fixed period of time?

When we at SweetRush present to a client, we always show both services. Sometimes the client asks: “When should I have you place a learning consultant within my team, and when should I outsource the entire job to a vendor like you?”

Fortunately, looking at just a few considerations can illuminate the right path. Below I offer up the guidelines we use when advising clients on whether to staff up or outsource.

First, however, let’s briefly define staff augmentation and project outsourcing.

Staff augmentation: Sometimes called contract labor, contingent labor, or temporary staffing, staff augmentation is when an organization like ours, or a staffing agency, places a learning consultant (or multiple learning consultants) to work under your direct management on an hourly basis. From an HR perspective, you receive many benefits in this arrangement since the learning consultant is not working for you, but for the agency that has placed him or her. Usually, you will be billed monthly, based on the hours worked, at the agreed-to rate for those hours.

Project outsourcing: With project outsourcing, you contract with a vendor-partner to take on a defined project, often at a fixed bid. You will not directly manage the learning consultants on the project team—rather, you will communicate with a few key team members, such as the project manager (or program manager for very large engagements), and perhaps the instructional design and visual design leads. You will review milestone deliverables at predetermined dates (as per the project plan), and be invoiced at milestones as defined in your agreement with your vendor-partner.

Six Guidelines for Whether to Hire a Temporary Learning Consultant or Outsource to a Team

Now, let’s get back to the question of bringing on a learning consultant versus outsourcing the project to a team. Here are the guidelines I share with clients when navigating this decision.

Tasks versus definable projects: If a project can be fully defined and a fixed bid developed, you should outsource the entire project. If, on the other hand, you have a series of tasks that are coming down the pike and you need a learning consultant to take them on as they arise, then working with a company like SweetRush to temporarily provide a learning consultant for your team is the right way to go.

Project size: If the project is large and beyond the scope of what one learning consultant can realistically handle, we recommend outsourcing to a vendor-partner that has a large enough team to take on such an initiative.

Of course, if you have learning consultants in-house to take on this project, but are missing just a particular expertise to complete the team, you should consider it as a perfect opportunity for staff augmentation.

Quality: If you need a learning consultant who is a specialist to take on a focused effort, staff augmentation talent can provide excellent quality. However, if you have an entire project that requires several different skills, you would be better served by a team. Even if your instructional design consultant is a generalist and can take on the project from soup to nuts, he or she simply will not be able to offer the same quality an entire team of specialists can offer. (My apologies in advance to you generalist instructional design consultants, for whom I have the greatest respect!)

Mature vendor-partners have teams of highly focused and expert learning consultants, including project managers, engineers, quality assurance staff, copyeditors, and multimedia specialists (which, on our team, includes graphic designers, game designers, 2D and 3D illustrators and animators, user experience designers, and more!). These vendor-partners come to the table with proprietary tools, processes, and support systems. Instructional designers benefit from the guidance of lead instructional designers and peer reviews. So, if the project demands quality, outsource the entire project to a vendor.

Good-enough quality and speed: However, sometimes you have a smaller project where speed (time to delivery) is an issue, and “good-enough” quality will suffice. In this case, a generalist learning consultant is likely the right answer. A single individual generalist can often move more quickly than a team of specialists. Why? There is no passing of the project back and forth—one person embraces the entire project with the mandate to get it done. As discussed, the overall quality of the deliverables will not be as high, but this may be good enough for the situation at hand.

Your time: Another important consideration is your time. Do you have the bandwidth to manage a learning consultant directly? If you do, and the variables presented above point toward staff augmentation, go for it. But if you (or someone else on your team) will not have the time to spend directly managing this resource, you’ll likely be served better outsourcing to a vendor-partner.

Cost: Deciding whether to choose staff augmentation or to outsource the entire project is actually not a cost-based decision. If you follow the guidelines above and consult with your vendor-partner, you will make the right decision for the situation. The right decision will also be the most cost-effective, and it will provide you with the best ROI.

Most vendors offer one service or the other. SweetRush is somewhat unique in offering both, and we will always advise a client who approaches us for one service about the other service if we think they will be better off with another option. I hope this blog has provided a foundation for you to make an informed decision on which path is best for you.

Rodrigo Salazar is our Manager of Talent Solutions at SweetRush. His true passion is the world of talent management: how learning consultants progress in their careers, how teams are built, and how engaged, motivated people are the secret formula organizations need to thrive.

Do you have a question for Rodrigo about learning and development consulting? Feel free to get in touch with him at [email protected]. He would love to hear from you!