copywriting
Program Development
Snippet from intranet program page
The Knowledge Domain Expert (KDE) is a full-time role dedicated to knowledge advocacy and influence across the organization. Here at the company, KDEs will drive KCS content curation, activity, improvement and analysis within a specific product group. The value of the KDE program is primarily found in its focus on Evolve Loop activity, which identifies and builds continuous improvements to the business based on the organization's collective experience in supporting the internal and external customer. The KDE role will also be cross-functional, working with teams across the company, to utilize KCS data to enhance the overall customer experience and customer engagement with self-service tools.
In order to properly operate in the Evolve loop, KDEs also need to ensure that the Solve Loop activities are running at optimal levels. KDEs will offer content creation, clean-up, duplicate analysis, and readiness support to make sure the appropriate content is made available to all who need it. The KDEs should also work closely with the analytics, enablement, and search teams to understand both the current health of our content and the ability of our customers to reach it. Finally, we are creating and monitoring key benchmarks to help enhance the overall performance of KCS within each specific product group.
WEB-BASED TRAINING
Snippet from ‘How to Prioritize Effectively’
I’m sure that you, like many others, have set down at your desk, looked at everything you needed to do and felt like you had no clue where to begin. Whether you have too much to do, or too little, managing time appropriately can elude the best of us. This is why prioritization is so important!
Prioritizing helps us avoid feeling overwhelmed and lost.
When faced with an enormous list of projects, or when sticky notes have taken over your work space, everything begins to feel like a priority. It might seem impossible to know where to begin, and this alone can be paralyzing.
If you prioritize appropriately, you will usually have a better idea of your current bandwidth day to day, and this will help you respond to requests from others and avoid unimportant tasks. We’ve all heard the saying, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Knowing your time constraints and balancing the importance of your tasks will give you the ability respectfully respond to others’ demands in the workplace. Even at a supervisor’s request, prioritizing will give you the confidence to say, “I’m happy to complete this for you, which other projects would you like me to put on hold so that I can dedicate the time needed to get this done?”
Project management comes with its own needs as well. Taking the time to learn how to prioritize projects with larger scopes is just as crucial for success.
It can be so easy to get stuck in a cycle of responding to crisis after crisis. When you live in this mode, it is nearly impossible to allocate time to the less urgent, but equally important tasks that may be more worthy parts of your personal and career goals. Things like building relationships, or time for professional development, may always get put on the back burner.
There are so many beneficial elements to prioritization that in the long run, will allow you to make smarter decisions when saying “yes.” Not only will you will be able to allocate time for the important tasks, but you will also execute with timeliness and success.
INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING
Snippet from presenter notes in ‘Interviewing Successfully’
1 - What does “success” like to you?
ASK: What does success look like to you?
DO: See if you can draw any similarities between answers or shed light on more subjective terms for ”success.” You want to point out that the room isn’t necessarily speaking the same language – or using consistent terminology. Reflect on any potential effectiveness or time saving benefits that could come from utilizing the same terms to define “success.”
SAY: “You must first have a clear idea of what a ”successful” candidate looks like. If you don’t know what you are looking for, the chances of finding it are slim. There’s no point in structuring an interview and asking certain questions unless you know what the answers should be.” (Yeung, 2008) Unless you and your colleagues are using the same explicit model, you won’t be able to agree on what “successful” looks like. However, if you utilize a shared model for determining what strong performance might look like in a particular role, you can make informed decisions based on predefined characteristics.2 - Determine which traits, skills and behaviors the ideal employee would have in this role.
SAY: “The idea is to interview candidates against a set of criteria called competencies. They are, effectively, what it takes for someone to be successful at work. Typical competencies may focus on skills such as problem solving, teamwork, leadership, communication, influence, customer service, and so on. By identifying and articulating the competencies that are necessary for each particular job, an interviewer can decide on appropriate questions to find the best person.” (Yeung, 2008)
3 - Think about competencies that fit: the nature of the role, the culture of your team and organization, and the seniority and leadership needed for the role.
ASK: “What type of competencies are important for the culture here at the company?”
DO: Discuss briefly with the audience. Write these competencies on a whiteboard or flip chart visible to the group.4 - Only include the competencies that are job related and essential for the role
SAY: You want to ask yourself if the traits you’re looking for are required or purely desirable. They must make sense for the role and work required. For example, you may want to hire creative people, but if the job involves a lot of redundant tasks, they may get bored easily.
5 - Keep the competencies to a small number, you will need time to probe for depth in each area
SAY: During an interview you will need at least 10 minutes per competency to ask probing questions that will give you a good idea of the candidate’s abilities. It’s a good idea to narrow down to 3 - 5 core competencies for each role.
6 – Some example competencies
SAY: Let’s take a look at some example competencies. These might look familiar to you, and may be traits that you’ve looked for in the past.
ACTIVITY: (5-10 minutes) Instruct the audience to break up into smaller groups of 3 people. Ask them to come up with 1 or 2 job positions that they understand fairly well. Using the list on the slide or their own ideas, tell them to determine what competencies would make each position successful. Remind the audience to narrow the list to 3 - 5 competencies per role. If they want to create their own competency, tell them to create something that measures only observable behavior and includes a verb phrase. Encourage discussion amongst the groups. At the end of the activity, have a spokesperson share from each group the position title(s) and required competencies.
ASK: Did you find it useful to collaborate on these competencies? Was it difficult to narrow the list to 3 - 5 core competencies? Do you think it would be beneficial to utilize the same terms while interviewing candidates?
DO: You want the group to recognize that basing their questioning on these similar terms while interviewing will only lead to more consistency and comparable results. See if you can get them to understand the benefits of a more structured interview.