The Most Important Aspect of Marketing

http://marketingscoop.com/marketingtesting.htm

One of my colleagues recently asked me, out of all the aspects of marketing including online marketing, marketing strategy, Web 2.0, market research, etc., what was the most important?  Without hesitation I replied, "Testing".

Many of my marketing friends might argue and profess that if you don't have the right message, reach the right audience, the right timing, or the right offer, you won't succeed.  And to that I say ABSOLUTELY!  In fact, those are the very elements of a successful campaign that can be identified through proper testing.  So how do you know that your messaging is optimized or that you're reaching your target audience in the most effective way possible?  Only proper testing can give you that information.

When someone on my team says that a particular campaign was a success I ask, "how do you know?"  The answer often has something to do with metrics around campaign performance.  But this information is merely releative.  If your click through rate was 20% and your conversion rate was 0.35% for an online campaign, it may have generated a positive return, but is 0.35% the best we could have done?  Did we test the campaign to set expectations before full launch?

By testing multiple landing pages, post cards, direct mail packages, keyword campaigns, and other marketing campaigns, you can find what resonates best with your audience and set proper expectations for performance.  Once you've established a baseline, continue to test and experiment with different messaging, timing, and offers and compare your results against your baseline.  Then, when someone asks you how well your campaign performed, you can say good, bad, or indifferent based on real data.

A great example of this was a recent email marketing campaign completed by my team.  They tested 3 subject lines - everything else remainded the same (the list, the email creative, the price, the timing, etc.).  During our test, one subject line outperformed the others 3 to 1.  Wow!  What a difference this made in our overall campaign performance when we sent the email to tens of thousands of potential customers.

Ongoing measurement and testing is essential for marketing success.  If you're not testing your marketing campaigns on a continuous basis, you're missing out.  Of course, once you establish a solid control (baseline), you'll have a hard time out performing it.  In general, you'll only improve your success rate about 10% of the time.  But continue to test, test, and test some more and you'll see your knowledge and results increase.

About the Author

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert and founder of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 13 years of marketing experience and has appeared on the TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Michael is also the author of SEO Made Simple: Strategies for Dominating the World's Largest Search Engine and The Webmasters Book of Secrets: Improve Search Engine Rankings.

©2008 MarketingScoop.

Job Design

http://www.brighthub.com/office/human-resources/articles/102861.aspx

Job design is the process of deciding the contents of a job, the techniques, systems, and procedures required to carry out the job, and the relationship of the jobholder with other workers. It determines the nature and number of tasks done, the way of doing such tasks, and the order of doing such tasks in a job. The key elements of job design include pacing tasks to machines, scheduling work and break hours, work layout and handling procedures, job rotation, job enlargement, and job enrichment.

The human factor is the science of understanding human capability and the application of the same to the design, development, and deployment of systems and services.

The process of job design entails considering all factors that affect work, and human factors guidelines rank paramount. A proper job design eliminates employee issues related to work overload or underload, repetitiveness and monotony, isolation, and comprehension of the whole job process.
Image Credit: flickr.com/Terry Ross

Physical Factors

Job design determines the extent of muscular energy required for the job. Human factors in job design strive to minimize the energy expenditure and force requirements, and they also accommodate considerations of human capabilities when designing the job. The ways of doing so include:

• Balancing static and dynamic tasks.
• Designing rest breaks.
• Providing task variety and job enlargement to avoid excessive static body positions and repetitive movements.
• Coordinating tasks to balance workload for the individual and the team.
• Providing allowance for adjustment periods for new employees and for employees returning from vacations or extended leaves to “get in shape”
• Designing work pattern and process to ensure safety of employee.

Ergonomics

An important consideration of job design is workplace ergonomics. Improperly designed jobs can cause various injuries such as carpel tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, and other conditions, arising out of repetitive movements, extreme temperatures, use of improper tools, and other work-related aspects.
Job-design ergonomics concentrates on optimizing the workstation and tools and ensuring that the worker remains aligned with the work process in the best possible way, eliminating awkward body positions, and ensuring minimal strain or musculoskeletal injury. Consideration of human factors also emphasizes designs that reduce the potential for human error.

Mental Factors

A good job design strikes a balance between mental and physical activity required for the work.
A good job design strives to incorporate human factors guidelines by allowing the worker to vary activities according to personal needs, work habits, and specific workplace circumstances. For instance, the job design may allow workers some degree of choice of time to do mental tasks, allowing them to perform such tasks during their best state of alertness.
Job design helps to strike a balance between boring and extremely difficult tasks through task variety, job rotation, job enlargement, and job enrichment. For instance, job design provides an assembly line worker some inspection or quality control jobs to alleviate the stress of repeated and monotonous work.

Human Factors

Incorporation of human factors in job design raises worker self-esteem and produces feelings of achievement and self-esteem, and also contributes greatly to eliminating stress from the workplace. This in turn reduces employee-related problems such as grievances and absenteeism and increases job satisfaction, leading to better efficiency and productivity.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/office/human-resources/articles/102861.aspx#ixzz1HRRLsHCR

Hiring Competent people leads to Organizational Effectiveness

http://www.contentwriter.in/articles/hr/hiring-competent-people.htm

Hiring Competent people leads to Organizational Effectiveness

Human resource management is responsible for the people dimension of an organization. It is responsible for getting competent people, training them, getting them to perform at high levels, and providing mechanisms to ensure that its employees maintain their productive affiliation with an organization.’

Human resource management involves the productive use of people in achieving organizational strategic objectives and the satisfaction of individual employee needs. Human resource managements execute diverse functions as recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management, compensation management, Managing diversity, industrial relation, labor laws, International human resource management, HRIS, career planning, employee health and safety, HR audit and managing human resources in changing world. Every one of these functions has their own importance in the organization.

Nevertheless getting competent people is the most important HR responsibility in my point of view. There is perhaps no more vital topic in HRM than employee selection, as right selection pushes the organization towards the right direction and trains them for competitive advantage over other competitors.

An organization fails to achieve its strategic business objectives without competent people and right training. The success of an organization depends on having the right people in the right job at the right time, the organization strategic business objectives and culture should determine the people selected. In others words, the selection criteria should be consistent with the organization's strategic business objectives. Companies today are facing revolutionary changes, complex technologies and global competition. Organizations that fail to have right person at right place at the right time are at risk.

A proper match between work and the employee capabilities are now an economic necessity. The pressures of competition, cost saving, downsizing and global skill shortages have made recruitment a top priority. The competition for talent means that skilled workers are today’s prized trophies. For many companies, talented people are the prime source of competitive advantage.Charles Goode, chairman of ANZ, says ‘Attracting and retaining the most talented staff and building a successful culture are critical to our future. It is true that organizations succeed or fail on the basis of talents of employees, then mangers directly influence that success by the people they hire. Regardless of whether the company is large or small, hiring the best and the brightest employees lay a strong foundation for excellence.

Alternatively, it is common to hear managers who don’t recognize this point lament the inordinate amount of time they spend trying to fix bad selection decisions. In addition, equal employment opportunity legislation, court decisions, and the Uniform Guidelines have also provided and impetus for making sure that the selection process is done well. The bottom line is good selection decisions make difference. So do bad ones.


The first step towards getting competent people starts with Strategic recruitment (the linking of recruitment activities with organization strategic business objectives and culture) and followed bystrategic selection (the linking of selection activities with organization strategic business objectives and culture) to accomplish organization business objectives. Strategic selection aligns employment activities with the organization strategic business to produce contribution to organizational performance.


Jaguar UK for example uses psychometric tests to measure independence of thoughts, team working and cooperativeness. Mazda (USA) uses aptitude test, written form, personal interviews, and stimulated work exercise to weed out druggies, rowdies and unionists. The success of strategic selection processes depends on the process of analyzing job and develops job descriptions and specifications. job specifications, in particular, help identify the individual competencies employees need for success – the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other factors (KSAOs) that lead to superior performance. This is often referred to as person-job fit. The process of graduate recruitment and selection in the UK has become more person-related than job-oriented because many employers are more interested in the attitudes, personality and transferable skills of applicants than the type or level of qualification acquired.


Research has demonstrated that complete and unambiguous specification of required competencies (via job analysis) reduce the influence of racial and gender stereotypes and helps the interviewer differentiate between qualified and unqualified applicants Research also shows that applicants whose KSAOs are well matched to the jobs they are hired for perform better and are more satisfied. The threshold competencies are the essential characteristics that everyone required in a job but the differentiating competencies are the characteristics that distinguish superior performers from average performers as superior performer utilize their skills and knowledge at their maximum level. Emotional, social and cognitive intelligence competencies predict effectiveness in professional, management and leadership roles in many sectors of society.



In addition, these competencies can be developed in adults. The use of selection methods such as interviews, references, psychological tests (interest test, aptitude test, and personality test) helps in identifying the required competencies for the job and in accomplishing the organizations strategic selection.


The execution of HR practices in relation to HRM activities helps the organization to function smoothly. The implementation of the systematic process of strategic recruitment, strategic selection, accurate job analysis, matching of competencies, using competency based selection procedures indeed helps the organization to get competent people which in return helps in accomplishing its strategic business objectives (mission).


In the rapid changing economy, organization restructuring, international competition, global outsourcing, deregulation, social attitude, legal requirement and industrial relations, training becomes the need of the hour as to take competitive advantage over other competitors and develop them for the better future. Therefore getting competent people and training are backbone of HR as strong foundation (competent people) and (training) builds up a strong organization and prepare to sustain the organization in changing economy.

Contributing Writer:  Dr Jaideep kaur, I am working as a faculty in Amity Business School in HR department. jaideep.god@gmail.com

Important of Third Language

Do you know why learning third language is very important to our student?  This is because when you learn a third language you have more communication skill and you are easy to seeking a job opportunity.  Now days, many people are interested to learn “Mandarin Language”. This is because if they know how to speak in Mandarin, they can easy to get job in Chinese business. 

Now, in UiTM syllabus student must to take a third language either to take Mandarin, Bahasa Arab or France Language. But many students are willing to take a Mandarin Language as a third language in their study. As a student in UiTM, we must to learn the third language until three semesters. This is because, UiTM want their student can speak very well. This is an objective why UiTM students must take a third language.

It is not easy to student to learn and catch up the third language very fast and very well. This is because the language is not familiar with the student. Other than that, student must past it the third language because it is one of the syllabuses. If they pass the first level, they can proceed to the next level in the next semester.

In UiTM many student are willing to take a Mandarin language compared to Bahasa Arab and France language. This is because they know that, the Mandarin language is the most important language after English language. That’s why, Mandarin language become as a third language in Malaysia after English. Is not meant that other language is not important but they must know that our related business in Malaysia is usually wanted the people know to speak Mandarin. This is because there are many Chinese companies in Malaysia.

As a UiTM student that takes a Mandarin language, we should able to speak in Mandarin. This is because it can give a benefit to them to catch the opportunity job in the Chinese company. Now days, it is not easy to work in Chinese company because they want their workers are able to speak in their language. It can make easy to them to communicate each other. This is because not all of Chinese people can speak in English very well.

Besides that, learn a third language is important to student because today, world economy is centered in China and most Chinese prefer to use Mandarin language for business rather than English. If we learn Mandarin language we will get benefits by giving assistance to companies dealing business with the Chinese country.

The conclusion is we can get more benefits from learning third language. Taking a third language among student are not to burden them in their study but to give more advantages to them in future when they want to seeking the best job that are need them to communicate in other languages.

Human Resources

Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets and the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. The terms "human resource management" and "human resource" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations. In simple words, HRM means employing people, developing their capacities, utilizing, maintaining and compensating their services in tune with the job and organizational requirement.

The Human Resources Management (HRM) function includes a variety of activities, and key among them is deciding the staffing needs of an organization and whether to use independent contractors or hire employees to fill these needs, recruiting and training the best employees, ensuring they are high performers, dealing with performance issues, and ensuring your personnel and management practices conform to various regulations. Activities also include managing your approach to employee benefits and compensation, employee records and personnel policies. Usually small businesses have to carry out these activities themselves because they can't afford part or full-time help. However, they should always ensure that employees have and are aware of personnel policies which conform to current regulations. These policies are often in the form of employee manuals, which all employees have.

The HRM function and HRD profession have undergone major changes over the past 20 until 30 years. Before this, large organizations looked to the "Personnel Department," mostly to manage the paperwork around hiring and paying people. More recently, organizations consider the "HR Department" as playing an important role in staffing, training and helping to manage people so that people and the organization are performing at maximum capability in a highly fulfilling manner.

An HRM strategy pertains to the means as to how to implement the specific functions of Human Resource Management. An organization's HR function may possess recruitment and selection policies, disciplinary procedures, reward/recognition policies, a Human Resource plan, or learning and development policies, however all of these functional areas of HRM need to be aligned and correlated, in order to correspond with the overall business strategy.

The implementation of an HR strategy is not always required, and may depend on a number of factors, namely the size of the firm, the organizational culture within the firm or the industry that the firm operates in and also the people in the firm.

An HRM strategy can be divided, in general, into two facets. There are the people strategy and the HR functional strategy. The people strategy pertains to the point listed in the first paragraph, namely the careful correlation of HRM policies or actions to attain the goals laid down in the corporate strategy. The HR functional strategy relates to the policies employed within the HR functional area itself, regarding the management of persons internal to it, to ensure its own departmental goals are met.

UiTM always in my heart

UiTM is a famous university in Malaysia.  As we know, UiTM is specialized for bumiputera only. It’s means that Chinese and Indian cannot enter to the UiTM. The main UiTM campus are located in Shah Alam. UiTM also have their branches at all of Malaysia state. It means that, UiTM can give their services to the student that wants to further their study.  

As we know, UiTM have taken a student that gets a best result in SPM to continue their study. To continued the study in UiTM, the student must have at least 6 credits in any subject but they must get at least C in Bahasa Malaysia and English. In UiTM, they offer their student with many courses. So they can choose and apply a suitable course based on their result. The courses that will be offered in UiTM are dsiploma or degree in accountancy, human resource, finance, engineering, medic, interior design, architecture, and so many.

Besides that, UiTM objective is to give the best education to their students. The best education will be given by UiTM means that UiTM wants their student get a lot of knowledge and information in their study. So when they have graduated and get a job, they can use and applied it into their work. Now days not all of graduate student can perform very well in the job.

Other than that, UiTM also give a good facility to their students. The facilities that will provide by UiTM are a hostel, allowance, Wi-Fi and so on. This kind of facilities that will provided to the student to give a better life when they are in UiTM. Student can use a Wi-Fi to do their assignment and student will give an allowance for the foods. In this case, student will give RM4 per day as an allowance. So they can buy food using the money given.

Next is UiTM have helped their student through the education fee. This is because UiTM student have pay a lowest fee compared to the other university. so student have study in UiTM is very lucky because the student are not burden to pay the high fee. This is because other universities have pay their fee is more than one thousand.

As a student UiTM, I was proud to be a UiTM student because UiTM  have helped many student that want to continue and further their study without to burden them. UiTM qualification education also standard with the other university.

The conclusion is UiTM is the best university among other university. So, if you have chance to study in UiTM you should catch it because not all have selected to study in UiTM.

ABOUT ME

My name is Farah Zalikha Binti Ruslan. You can call me farah or ika. I live at Pandan Indah,Kuala Lumpur. I was born at HKL on 16 October 1989. Before I study at UiTM Melaka, I was study at UiTM Perak in Diploma in Accountancy. My previous school is Seekolah Menengah Teknik Kuala Selangor and before i go to technique school, i was study at Sekolah Menengah Pandan Indah. My primary school is Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Nirwana. i have four siblings and i number two.  I have two sister and one brother. My father name is Ruslan bin Sulaiman and my step mother name is Herlina bt Yahya. My father worked as an engenieer and my mother worked as an english teacher at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Pandan Mewah. My father is 49 years old and my mother is 35 years old. My eldest sister name is Farah Zahidah bt Ruslan. She is 24 years old. She likes to reading and watching television. She study at UTHM in Bachelor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. She is loving and caring. My youngest sister name is Nurhazirah bt Ruslan. She is 18 years old. Now, she is waiting for her SPM result. She likes to surf internet. And the last is my youngest brother name is Muhammad Arif bin Ruslan. He is 14 years old. He studied at Sekolah Menengah Kebagsaan King George V, Seremban. He likes to playing rugby to much.