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Category: Online PowerPoint Training Course
ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW Microsoft Office Training Course BUNDLE now available
Learn Microsoft Office — Word + Excel + PowerPoint + DropBox + Much More! = $VALUE
MICROSOFT BUNDLED ALL THEIR Office Productivity Suite software programs decades ago for many reasons.
The MAIN reason was so that all businesses, big or small, could use these software programs to improve their productivity and make them look more professional.
We’re now bundling them together for students who want it all.
Continue reading ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW Microsoft Office Training Course BUNDLE now availableThe Perfect Job; the Ideal Employee
And the online training to help you get there
I WAS BROWSING THROUGH my contacts on LinkedIn and found an advertisement by a company that was looking to hire people.
They were in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) space and their headquarters were in Europe.
However, the ad looked like it could be for any company including trades, professional services etc.
Here’s what the ad contained:
Executive Assistant / Office Manager
Overview
The Executive Assistant / Office Manager will be primarily responsible for helping to keep everyone (and everything) working at peak performance. We’re a growing company, and there will be new and interesting challenges every day. Ideal candidates are curious and interested in learning more about what we do, and always interested in learning new skills and taking on new challenges.
Tasks
- Manage all aspects of office administration
- Coordinate team schedules and events
- Manage executive schedules
- Handle payment of invoices and associated bookkeeping
- Order supplies and equipment
- Arrange travel
Skills
Required
- Excellent verbal and written English communication skills
- Strong organizational and time management skills
- Ability to work with minimum supervision, prioritizing work as needed
- Strong knowledge of office applications, including Word, Powerpoint, and Excel
The training you need
Apart from the soft skills like good time management, communications, speaking and writing the software skills you can learn to apply for this job are:
Microsoft Office Applications:
Office Admin and Bookkeeping:
Organisational and Time Management:
My thoughts on this ad?
Why I’m sharing this ad is that I reckon it encapsulates “the perfect” administrative or executive assistant, or office manager. What I mean is that anybody possessing all the skills and capabilities listed above would be well qualified for almost any job in this area — for pretty much any type of company.
And they wouldn’t be limited to any particular industry either. Any intelligent person who is a quick learner would be able to pick up the nuances for various different industries and apply their skills as necessary.
Online courses to help you
The other positive thing about this ad is that it reinforces the fact that so many of our EzyLearn online training courses are geared towards people who want to do office administrative-type roles or office management positions. They are also perfect for people wanting to run their own business in any industry.
At EzyLearn we offer online training courses to help you up-skill and find employment. Choose from our range of cloud-based online accounting software courses, to business start up and management courses, to marketing and sales courses, or update and further your skills in a range of Microsoft Office programs (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) or social media and WordPress web design).
Who Do You Trust More: Real Estate Agents or Tradies?
Still unsure whether you can trust online ratings and reviews?
IT CAN BE HARD to know whether you can really trust online ratings and reviews, whether these reviews and ratings are objective and even relevant and how they compare to recommendations and testimonials. By recommendations we mean word of mouth referrals from your friends and family and so forth, and testimonials that have been written by real people — with real names and real locations!
In our recent post about recommendations we suggested that you ask a friend, relative or colleague if they’ve ever had experience with a business you’re thinking of using — chances are, if your friends live locally they may well have; or if the business is a chain or franchise operating over a wide area.
Also ask other businesses
When seeking a professional recommendation you can also ask other businesses. Find out what their experiences have been, if any. Often businesses will have a relationship with each other even if it is not, at first, apparent.
For instance, a symbiotic relationship tends to exist between real estate agents and tradespeople. Agents will regularly draw up a list of preferred tradespeople that they work with and recommend to their tenants, landlords and vendors.
And there are plenty of tradespeople who do the same for real estate agents that they’ve had professional dealings with. There are plenty of other examples of these sorts of professional recommendations.
Beware professional bias
Of course, just as you should be wary of overly positive or negative ratings and reviews online, you should be likewise when soliciting professional reviews. If one business regularly referred work by another, even if they don’t think they’re a great business to deal with, neither party will necessarily say anything bad about each other.
In the end, when looking for a tradesperson, real estate agent or some other professional service, be sure to do all your research. Ask around for personal referrals, check them up online, and get in touch with each business directly to see which one is the best fit for you.
Real people, real locations
At EzyLearn we provide testimonials from our students, which include their full name and location, and why they chose EzyLearn to study in the first place. We also offer a money-back guarantee and free samples of our course content, so students know they can trust they’re making the right choice. Visit our website for more information and to see our wide range of courses.
At EzyLearn we offer online training courses to help you up-skill and find employment. Choose from our range of cloud-based online accounting software courses, to business start up and management courses, to marketing and sales courses, or update and further your skills in a range of Microsoft Office programs (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) or social media and WordPress web design).
A Great Trick for Getting Rid of Nerves on a Job Interview
Who’s interviewing whom?
DO YOU KNOW THERE is no reason to find a job interview nerve wracking, even though so many people do. It’s simple enough to understand why. People put a lot of pressure on themselves to give the best impression and come out as the successful candidate. And look, these things are important, no argument there, but together the pressure to give a good impression AND win the job itself, can conspire to turn you into a “yes man” (or woman).
A job interview is about finding a suitable candidate for a position available at a company. This is not a one way street. As much as you need to give a good impression, so does the company, and if you look at it that way — that you’re interviewing them as much as they are you — it takes the pressure off A LOT.
Ask questions
I don’t just mean at the end when they ask if you have any questions — honestly, you’re probably not likely to have any questions by this point, because if you’ve been paying attention, you should have covered any of questions you had going in.
When you’re asked how you would handle a particular situation or what your approach to something might be, ask for more information if you need or qualify the situation they’re referring. People are often afraid to do this in case they look silly, when actually it makes you look quite smart, and show that you’re not afraid of authority.
Take your time
Don’t rush to answer a question. There’s no real way to prepare for an interviewer’s questions, and they know that. However, your answers should also be rooted in some previous experience you’ve had, so while it may take you a while to wrack your brains for a previous example, you shouldn’t be unable to answer either. If you can’t think of an exact experience, discuss a similar one and how you handled that.
Be yourself and relax
This is so important, because as much as the interviewer may be looking for the most skilled candidate, they’re also looking to make sure you’re not a robot. Show your personality, show you’re a human, establish some rapport with your interviewers. Some of the interview process is confirming you are what you say you are, but mostly it’s finding out if you’re someone they want working for them.
In the IT and engineering industry, interviews aren’t even set up to determine skill sets, but rather personality traits, because many companies today are looking for programmers and engineers who can communicate to stakeholders in plain English, rather than tech talk.
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Remember, who you are in the interview should reflect and expand on who you are in your resume and cover letter. You can learn how to use PowerPoint to create a resume in our PowerPoint training courses. For more information, visit our website.
You can also brush up on Word for your resume presentation by enrolling in our Microsoft Word online training courses. You’ll be amazed at the things you can create with a comprehensive understanding of Word.
Gone are the days of excruciatingly dull PowerPoint slide presentations… Nowadays PowerPoint is the hidden gem used to generate animations, videos, movies, advertising and graphics. It’s a great ally to the marketer or social media person in your organisation. This creative program can also be used to conjure up the most beautiful and modern pictorial slides to enhance any presentation or induction.
Find out more about our 2016 version PowerPoint courses.
The Do’s and Don’ts of a Compelling Resume and Cover Letter
Is your resume up to speed?
STARTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS does not mean you’ll never need to write a resume or cover letter again. We’ve written about this topic before — indeed, when you first start your own business you’ll probably spend a lot of your time applying to work with other businesses directly or through a recruiter.
And the truth about being a freelancer or contractor is that you’ll most likely spend the rest of your working life applying for work. If you don’t like the idea of this, well then maybe being self-employed isn’t for you! Why? Because in order to find the best work; the kind that you’ll love, you need to be always looking for it — or always be closing, if there any fans of Glengarry Glen Ross in the house tonight.
The truth about being a freelancer or contractor is that you’ll most likely spend the rest of your working life applying for work.
Do pay attention to design
I’m choosing to exclude the “grammar, spelling and punctuation” portion of this list, because if you don’t already know that’s important by now, then oh boy, I can’t help you. But formatting and design are important, whether you’re looking for work in a creative industry or not.
The key is to grab attention in less than half a minute. You can use different fonts, for instance, a larger plain font for headings and a smaller (perhaps serif) font for the body text. You can type your resume up in Word or use PowerPoint or some other design tool. But just don’t get ahead of yourself and use something too fancy that you don’t have a proper grasp of and end up with a resume that is hotchpotch and messy.
These days, some recruiters will even upload your resume into their own “system” which “parses” your content and basically re-formats it all into plain text. If this happens, your gorgeous CV will look very different on the screen of the employer. The simpler the design and layout of the original resume, the easier it will be for them to read if they indeed use this system for getting through the applications of hundreds of job applicants. But don’t feel disheartened, there are others ways to get spotted amongst the crowd.
Don’t use jargon
The next hurdle, once you’ve got the recruiter or hiring manager reading your resume or cover letter, is to urge them to call you. Do not, I repeat, do not use jargon of any kind in either your resume or cover letter. The minute someone reads a sentence that starts with or contains “experienced in”, “team player”, “responsible for”, etc, etc, they switch off.
These phrases mean literally nothing. Nothing. Telling someone you’re a team player: redundant. Everyone should be a team player, and there is no one, not a single person ever, who has written on their resume that they’re not one. Instead, tell the employer what you like about working in a team. (On a similar note, also avoid the term “able to work autonomously” by explaining the times you’ve had to and how that’s gone.)
When you go to use the words “experienced in” try to remind yourself that this is something that happens to you — not something you proactively go out and do. Instead refer to your background in terms of achievements. Search “typical jargon to avoid on a resume” for more.
Do show your personality
Remember that employers are people too. Work culture is important to lots of businesses, so they need to know that any potential new hire, freelance or otherwise, will be able to fit in and work with them. And if you can make the person reading your resume laugh, oftentimes you’ll get a call back.
Don’t list silly interests
I should add a qualifier to that, which says that it’s okay to list a really silly interest if you know and make a point of noting that it’s a silly interest. This makes you seem thoughtful, and definitely not as dumb as a person who says they like reading or sports on their resume. Reading what? It implies novels, but it could also mean signposts, Aldi catalogues, Post It Notes. And if you like playing cricket more than once a year on Boxing Day, then for the love of all that is holy (cricket on Boxing Day), say that. Otherwise, put down interests that you actually are interested in — they reveal a lot about the type of person you are, which again, goes to help with the point above.
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If you’d like to learn how to create a resume in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, or if you’d like to learn more about starting your own business, you can be enrolling in our PowerPoint training courses or our online Word training courses, or our Business Start Up Course.
At EzyLearn you can choose from a range of XERO online courses, depending on your skill level — or you can access ALL courses for ONE LOW PRICE. All our courses are accredited by the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) and can be counted towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points. Find out more about our Xero online training courses.
PowerPoint Case Study: Selling Safety and Compliance Systems
How PowerPoint helped sell a solution to major hospitals
A WELL-CRAFTED POWERPOINT presentation can turn your staff into salespeople — and turn your salespeople into sales superstars!
Our PowerPoint online training courses will show you how to create your own persuasive and compelling PowerPoint presentations. In this PowerPoint case study, we’re going to show you what our partner, EzyAccess, included in their sales presentations. These sales presentations were then shown to chief executive and senior managers at some of Australia’s largest hospitals.
Explaining “The Problem”
Hospitals are busy places that have lots of people coming and going every day, and a very ad-hoc way to manage them. In most cases, few hospitals policed their visitor and contractor management policies, which exposed them to many risks.
Explaining “The Risk”
Almost anyone could walk into a hospital and have access to its most sensitive areas — operating rooms, for example.
Likewise, contractors hired to perform work could subcontract it out to a person or entity unknown to the hospital and unqualified to perform that work. If that subcontractor or someone else — a patient, say — was injured, the hospital would held responsible.
Explaining “The Solution”
EzyAccess provided a cloud-based safety and compliance system that businesses could use to track visitors and contractors who were visiting their premises. It enabled businesses to stay compliant with Australia’s WHS laws, and to also ensure each person was familiar with the business’s own process and procedures to eliminate the business’s liability if someone was injured.
Chief executive-level presentations
Directors and chief executives are primarily interested in increasing their business’s efficiency and reducing financial risk to the company.
EzyAccess’s chief executive-level presentations explained how the EzyAccess safety and compliance system helped hospitals stay compliant with Australia’s WHS laws, kept their hospitals safe from unknown, unqualified entities, increased employee efficiency and reduced the financial risk of litigation.
Senior manager-level presentations
Unlike chief executives, who could be held personally liable if the business was found in breach of Australia’s WHS laws, senior managers were concerned with how implementing a new system would help (or potentially, impede) their direct reports.
Every business is resistant to change, particularly the implementation of new technologies that could require more time and effort on the part of their staff than the previous system. If this were to occur, there’s the additional risk that adoption would be slow.
The EzyAccess presentations to senior managers explained the adoption strategy in full, and how the system improved staff efficiency by eliminating the need to contact contractors about compliance documents.
Tailor presentations to stakeholders
Just as it’s important to target your ideal customer with your PowerPoint presentations, it’s also important that you target particular stakeholders within a business to ensure they see the value your product or service brings them.
It’s no use focusing an entire presentation to a chief executive on how easy the system is to use — this will certainly be a consideration for any chief executive, yes, but it won’t be the primary one. Just as it’s no good telling the staff on the frontline — the employees actually using the system — how much money and potential litigation it’ll save the company.
Our PowerPoint training courses will teach you how to create persuasive PowerPoint presentations that you can use to target key stakeholders within a business, to help you make a sale or get hired. Alternatively, our sales training courses will show you how to identify and target your ideal customer.
At EzyLearn we are constantly refreshing the content of our online training courses. Where possible, we draw on real-life case studies as examples, to help you learn, and apply your skills, in a relevant way that makes sense. Visit our Micro Courses page to learn more.
Using PowerPoint to Convey Your Business ‘Culture’
WHS training and staff inductions using PowerPoint
POWERPOINT IS AN EXCELLENT way to show prospects your sales process or how your business operates to help convert them into customers. It’s also great for your employees.
Many businesses have started to include videos on the ‘careers’ section of their websites, which demonstrate to potential new people the culture the company values and encourages.
In the past, it’s only been larger businesses that have done this, but it’s becoming more common among smaller businesses too.
Use PowerPoint to train new people
Aside from creating a ‘culture’ video that can be used to show applicants what it’s like to work in your business, a PowerPoint presentation can also be used to train new staff in your processes and procedures once they’re employed. All of this has been proven to help staff productivity.
An on-boarding presentation created in PowerPoint can be used to deliver Work Health and Safety (WHS) training — which is mandatory for all businesses employing staff, whether they’re permanent employees or freelance contractors — induction training, and also explain how your business operates.
Modern employee training for modern times
In the past, on-boarding training — be it WHS, induction or otherwise — has been delivered in person. Sometimes a new employee would be sat in a room to watch a company video and complete a written test on their own.
Other times, companies would gather all new hires (often people who’ve been working at the company for as much as three months, by this point) and have someone from their HR department lead a day of training.
However, both these methods come with flaws because neither one shows much commitment to workplace culture, safety or operating procedures.
Train staff in-house or offsite
EzyLearn offers induction training packages for businesses keen to use our learning management system to deliver training, quizzes, short courses, etc. But you can still use PowerPoint to train staff at your premises, as well as remote workers.
Creating an on-boarding training course in PowerPoint will increase employee engagement, and also ensure each employee understands their role in the business and how it operates. Or for more help on figuring out what you need to include in an online induction, read here.
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Our PowerPoint training courses will teach you how to create persuasive PowerPoint presentations that can be turned into training courses and uploaded to your website. Alternatively, learn more about EzyLearn’s online induction training.
At EzyLearn we offer online training courses to help you up-skill and find employment. Choose from our range of cloud-based online accounting software courses, to business start up and management courses, to marketing and sales courses, or update and further your skills in a range of Microsoft Office programs (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) or social media and WordPress web design).
Present Your Sales Process on Your Website
Use PPT to “teach” your clients how you do business
PowerPoint has many different uses, chief among them being a sales presentation for prospects. Another excellent use for PowerPoint is to illustrate your sales process, and then add it to your website.
If you’re a bookkeeper or real estate agent or someone else who sells professional services, rather than products, providing valuable information about your business or explaining the way it operates can help convert more visitors into customers.
People scan for valuable information
Most of the time, when someone comes to your website for the first time, they’re scanning it to see if you meet a certain criteria they have for a potential supplier.
This could be based on price, services, turnaround times, or something else. If they can’t find this information quickly and easily, they’ll generally move on somewhere else.
Use PowerPoint to convert visitors
Creating a PowerPoint presentation that contains this information, which you can upload slide-at-a-time, or altogether as a video, is an excellent way to present this information to visitors of your website.
How you determine what to include in your presentation depends on how well you’ve identified your ideal customer.
Explain how your business operates
This is very useful for bookkeepers and other businesses that have a particular way of working with their clients. Take prospects step-by-step through your process, so they know exactly how your operate and what to expect before they even contact you.
This helps demystify the process, which makes people feel more at ease with the practice of hiring you, and also shows you’re transparent about process, and that makes you trustworthy.
The fewer questions prospects have about you and your business, the more comfortable they will feel about contact and hiring you.
You can use PowerPoint to explain any of your business’s processes that involve the customer, whether it’s your returns or refund policy, setup procedures, or technical support.
Our PowerPoint training courses will teach you how to create persuasive PowerPoint presentations that will convert visitors. Alternatively, our sales training courses will show you how to identify and target your business’s ideal customer.
Honing Skills in PowerPoint Can Turn Your Staff Into Sales People
A simple fine-tune of a PowerPoint presentation saw this employee achieve sales success
WE HAVE TALKED ABOUT the many different ways you can use PowerPoint (for resumes, business plans and more), but for many people in business, its primary use is as a sales tool.
Even though a well-crafted PowerPoint presentation is a vital component to any successful sales presentation, very few people know how to create one. In our PowerPoint training courses we show students how to create and structure slides that will take their audience on a journey that’s fundamental to the sales process.
Sales presentations should illustrate a story
The most common mistake even some of the greatest salespeople make is to turn their PowerPoint slides into a transcript of their verbal presentation.
This is boring. And it only distracts the audience from getting excited about your products or services, because they’re just trying to keep up with, or read ahead, of you.
Instead create a PowerPoint presentation that illustrates the “story” you’re telling, or complements your presentation by providing additional information — a graph showing the figures you’re talking about, images of your products, audio etc.
Make your PowerPoint presentations sell for you
If you’ve honed your sales pitch, all it takes is a well-crafted PowerPoint presentation to do most of the selling for you.
One of our team members tried to resign on two occasions, not long after he started working for us, because he thought he wasn’t a good salesperson.
It later turned out that the reason he wasn’t making much headway with prospects was because his sales presentation was unstructured, and frankly, uninspiring.
After he took our PowerPoint training courses he was able to create a structured, compelling PowerPoint presentation. His sales track record notably improved and he’s been with us ever since!
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Our PowerPoint training courses will teach you how to create persuasive PowerPoint presentations that will turn you and your staff into sales people. There are a host of other fantastic uses for PowerPoint in everyday business — find out more.
Making PowerPoint “Speak” with Audio
When Should I Use PowerPoint Audio?
BEING THAT MOST PowerPoint presentations are created as a visual aid to accompany a speech — although there is just so much more you can do with PowerPoint — you may find yourself wondering when it’s ever appropriate to use audio in your PowerPoint presentation, and if it is appropriate, what kind of audio?
First off, there are two kinds of audio you can use in a PowerPoint presentation: pre-recorded audio and audio you record yourself. You’ll learn how to record and insert your own audio files into PowerPoint in our PowerPoint Training Course.
When you might use pre-recorded audio
If you’ve ever fiddled around with PowerPoint, you’d notice there are a few audio sounds you can use insert into your slides. They’re mostly generic sound effects, like the sound of waves or a bird chirping. To be honest with you, none of these are ever appropriate in a PowerPoint presentation, except in some really obscure instances. Or less obscure ones, like a training course teaching you how to insert pre-recorded audio into PowerPoint!
You can also add pre-recorded audio that you have on your computer, like a song from your music library. Again, there are few instances when this is necessary, but it’s another option nonetheless.
Adding audio you record yourself
And here is where the answer to using audio in PowerPoint really lies. You can record your own audio, using QuickTime if you’re an Apple user, or Sounds Recorder if you’re using an older version of Windows; otherwise you can also record it on your mobile or digital recorder and import it onto your computer.
You would use this audio if you were going to upload your presentation to your website for a webinar, or for people to watch online afterwards. EzyLearn uses it in some of of online training courses. You could use audio in your induction training courses, too.
Brush up on your PowerPoint skills, or learn how you can use PowerPoint to create your own online induction training courses with our PowerPoint training courses.
At EzyLearn we offer an abundance of online training courses to help you up-skill and find employment.
Choose from our wide range of:
- cloud-based online accounting software courses
- business start up and small business management courses
- marketing and sales courses OR
- update and further your skills in a range of Microsoft Office programs: Excel, PowerPoint, Word or social/digital media training courses and WordPress web design.
Enrol today!
What Happens if You Have Backlog of PAYG and Super Payments?
Don’t get lumped with penalties when you don’t need to!
A LOT OF SMALL BUSINESSES have trouble managing their payroll, especially when they only have a few employees and paying to access a payroll system in their accounting package is an unnecessary expense. You’ll learn how to use Excel to manage your PAYG and super contributions in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel Training Courses. However, sometimes you may have a backlog of PAYG and super payments. Let’s take a look at how to manage these.
Rescue bookkeeping
A backlog of PAYG and super payments that date back more than three months is known as rescue bookkeeping, although it can often include other bookkeeping issues, like bank accounts that don’t reconcile with statements.
PAYG payments
For businesses that only withhold up to $25,000 each year, you’re supposed to make PAYG payments and file a withholding report each quarter. You have 28 days from the end of the quarter to do so, after which time, you may incur a Failure To Lodge (FTL) penalty.
Superannuation payments
As with PAYG payments and reporting, you can also incur a FTL penalty for not lodging or paying your employees’ superannuation contributions in time. All businesses, regardless of size, have to make superannuation payments each quarter — the ATO sets out the due dates for each period on their website.
Lodging late PAYG and super payments
The ATO only applies penalties for failure to lodge reports or make payments for each period of 28 days (or part thereof) that a document or payment is overdue. Each period incurs one penalty unit for each document, up to a maximum of five penalty units.
From 2015 onwards, the value of a penalty unit is $180 (previously it was $170) for small businesses, which are defined as entities with an assessable income or GST turnover of no more than $1 million a year.
The maximum penalty a small business will pay is $900 for each document or payment that is overdue. Note too that FTL penalties will also incur a general interest charge (GIC), applied on top of the penalty.
Managing late PAYG and super payments
Use the Ad Hoc Payroll Guide, a new case study that is included in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel Training Courses to determine the rate of PAYG tax to withhold and the required super contribution amounts in Excel. Once you’ve worked out the required amounts (visit the ATO website for tax tables prior to 2017), lodge the necessary PAYG payments and reports to the ATO; pay super contributions using the SuperStream super clearing house.
The ATO will write to you if you are required to pay a penalty — sometimes they are waived for first-time offences, or if the amounts are small.
Our courses now include real-life case studies
Our Intermediate Microsoft Excel training courses will also teach you how to create a payroll spreadsheet from scratch to suit your own business, so you can easily work out your PAYG and super obligations. Visit our website for more information on all of our Excel training courses.
Create brilliant presentations and graphics for all kinds of business purposes.
Gone are the days of excruciatingly dull PowerPoint slide presentations. Nowadays PowerPoint is the hidden gem used to generate animations, videos, movies, advertising and graphics. It’s a great ally to the marketer or social media person in your organisation.
This creative program can also be used to conjure up the most beautiful and modern pictorial slides to enhance any presentation or induction. Find out more about our 2016 version PowerPoint courses.
EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.
You Can Use PowerPoint to Create Online Induction Training
Create an Online Induction with PowerPoint
At EzyLearn we have a bit of a soft spot for PowerPoint. It’s the oft-overlooked program in Microsoft Office that is typically associated with slideshows and presentations, and often boring ones at that. But it can do so much more.
You can generate animations, videos, movies, advertising, web design embellishments and graphics using PowerPoint. It’s a great ally to the social media or design person in your organisation. This creative design program can also be used to conjure up the most eye-catching and modern pictorial slides to enhance any presentation and keep people absorbed.
But did you know PowerPoint can also be used to create an online training induction course? Induction training is imperative for any business that hires contractors to perform work for them, either onsite or elsewhere. Induction training is necessary that any contractor or employee understands your company’s policies and procedures, whether they’re going to be working at your premises or not.
Our PowerPoint Training Course takes you through how to create your own induction training course using PowerPoint, which you can then deliver to your staff and contractors using a learning management system, or we can deliver your induction training for you.
Simple inductions that work
The end goal of an induction course should be to have all your contractors complete it, and learn something from it. You need to strike a balance between an induction that includes every last bit of information about your business, how it functions, its policies and procedures, and one that only covers the bare essentials.
Use images to illustrate risks and scenarios, as opposed to describing them. This is easy when you’re using PowerPoint to create your induction training. And remember the PowerPoint golden rule: One idea per slide.
Authenticating students
After you’ve created your induction training course in PowerPoint, it’s vital that your contractors actually complete it. This is why it’s important to authenticate each contractor or student who takes your induction training course — it also helps if you include a short quiz at the end, so you can see whether they paid attention.
There are a couple of different ways you can authenticate students to ensure the correct person is taking the induction course (and not their mum or friend or partner, for example). We talk about the different authentication methods you can use on our website, but keep in mind that only inductions delivered to students via a learning management system can authenticate students.
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PowerPoint is, quite simply, fabulous.
Brush up on your PowerPoint skills, or learn how you can use PowerPoint to create your own Online Induction training courses, with our PowerPoint training courses. Read more about PowerPoint and how it can help you with your social media and design work.
Hiring Someone New? Why You Need to Personally Check their References
Why It Pays to Call the Switchboard When Doing a Reference Check
I recently had a conversation with a colleague who said she’d never once been asked to produce a copy of her university degree or her transcripts, despite stating on her resume that she’d graduated with a high distinction average.
Gee, I thought, not once? Not a single recruiter or employer had ever requested a copy of her degree? I found this fact astonishing, particularly since more professions require, by law, certain qualifications — as BAS agents are, for example. So how people know my friend wasn’t fibbing in her credentials? Fact is, they didn’t.
Check, even if you use a recruiter
I wrote a blog some time ago about recruiting on LinkedIn and why it’s so important to check references for yourself. People often underestimate the importance of checking a person’s credentials, so long as they get a reference from their last employer. Often, though, most people only provide a mobile number for their references, so whether you’re speaking to the candidate’s former employer, a co-worker, or their mum is sometimes anyone’s guess.
I was reminded of how important reference-checking is again, when I was reading a couple of articles on Longreads, and I found myself utterly fascinated by two of the biggest cases of journalistic fraud ever committed (though I admit to having never heard of them before the weekend, despite one occurring more than 30 years ago).
Sometimes people don’t just lie on their resume
In the first instance, a journalist named Janet Cooke fabricated a story for The Washington Post about an 8-year-old heroin addict. She won a Pulitzer Prize for it in 1981, and then had to give it back when it came out that there was no such 8-year-old. In the second case, Jayson Blair, a journalist for The New York Times, was found to have fabricated or plagiarised 36 out of 73 stories written over a 6-month period, in what turned out to be the biggest scandal in the newspaper’s hundred-plus year history.
What I found most intriguing, though, was that neither Cooke nor Blair had been properly vetted before their employers hired them. In fact, it was Cooke’s falsified resume that was ultimately her undoing when, after receiving the highest honour in the field of writing, a former employer noticed something was amiss with her Pulitzer biography — her education and professional achievements had been grossly overstated. (Rather ironically it was Bob Woodward, of Woodward and Bernstein — the journalists who uncovered the Watergate Scandal — who signed off on hiring Cooke.)
The same would prove true for Blair, who, it turned out, never graduated from university, and had a murky work history with the Times’ sister publication, The Boston Globe, where his superiors had been less than impressed with his less-than-high standard of work.
(Of course, the equally interesting case of Australian author, Helen Demidenko, who won the Miles Franklin Award in the early 1990s, only to later be dubbed by the Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘literary hoax’ also springs to mind.)
Benders-of-truth almost always get caught
Plenty of people lie or embellish on their resumes, and while a good majority of them go unnoticed, others are caught out — sometimes very publicly, and often only after the organisation has been very publicly embarrassed, as in the case of Cooke and Blair.
My advice, then, is to always check the references of new hires meticulously. Rather than calling the mobile numbers or direct lines of the candidate’s references, call the main switchboard and ask to speak to that person’s manager or superior.
And always ensure to ask for a copy of any credentials, like university degrees. If you’re employing someone where, by law, they’re required to hold a certain qualification — as is the case for BAS agents, for instance — it’s imperative you can verify the person’s credentials.
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