ISHOW USA Provides Financial, Design and Business Support for ...

ISHOW USA Provides Financial, konzeption and Business Support for ... ISHOW USA Provides Financial, Design and Business Support for ... ISHOW USA Provides Financial, Design and Business Support for Three Winning Teams July 14, 2017 Paul Scott (left), director of the ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW) program, kicks off the competition in Washington, D.C. Social entrepreneurs addressing eye care, cooking and food preservation in low-resurce settings were the winners among 10 teams competing as finalists at ASMEs recent Innovation Showcase (ISHOW) in Washington, D.C.The Washington competition, which took place June 21-23 at the District Architecture Center, was the third ISHOW this year, with earlier events held in Nairobi, Kenya and Bangalore, India. ISHOW is ASMEs annual showcase and competition for hardware-led social innovation. In each city, three teams were chosen as winners. Each winning team received $10,000 in cash, plus 20 hours of design consultation from ASME ISHOW partner, Catapult Design. The BioLite team describes their HomeStove. From left to right Noel Wilson, creative director, Catapult Josh Heitsenrether, managing director, Marketing, ASME Amish Parashar, Venture Capital Ethan Kay, managing director, Emerging Markets, BioLite Energy and Ryan Gist, director of engineering, BioLite Energy. If its only up to me, Im going to hire a sales manager in Kenya to work on scaling distribution of our home stove, said Ethan Kay, explaining how he planned to spend his teams cash prize. Kay heads the emerging markets unit of BioLite, which makes the BioLite HomeStove, a small cook stove that generates electricity to power a fan for improved combustion as well as to power consumer devices, such as cell-phone chargers. BioLite designs and markets stoves for campers and other users around the world, and also provides cooking and energy solutions in developing regions. The company has sold 20,000 HomeStoves in Kenya, Uganda and India, and Kay said that a new sales manager would work with microfinance partners to help expand sales further across East Africa.The two other ISHOW USA winners are not as far along in their business trajectory as their colleagues at BioLite. Ethan Kay of BioLite with the BioLite HomeStove, one of the three winning entries at ISHOW USA in Washington, D.C. Every bit of validation helps us move forward, said Jeremy Fryer-Biggs, part of a team developing a lightweight and efficient evaporative cooler that uses no electricity. This is your vote of confidence. We are a tiny little company. We dont have a lot of money. And every bit of validation helps us move forward from an amazing but crazy idea to something that will actually provide real-world help to people.Fryer-Biggs, CTO of Evaptainers, said the cash winnings will go immediately for tooling to facilitate manufacturing in China. Quang Truong, the companys COO, said Catapult Design would help Evaptainers greatly expand its markets. Right now, our unit is really made for the U.S. markets, Truong said. And I think that Catapult Design will help us go a long way toward creating a unit with much lower costs. And that will ultimately help us with distribution in developing markets. The Evaptainers team answers questions about their evaporative cooler from the ISHOW judges. Left to right Spencer Taylor, chief executive officer Quang Truong, chief operations officer Jeremy Fryer-Biggs, chief technical officer. For the third winning team, receiving a top prize was a long time coming. Weve been doing this for six years, and weve done a lot of competitions, said Shivang Dave, CEO and co-founder of PlenOptika, maker of QuickSee, a portable device that can provide eye glass prescriptions in low-resource settings. And I think this is the first time weve won one of the top prizes. Were always second, third, or fourth.... So its like wow, weve finally done enough work to get over that hump. So were really excited.PlenOptika is just now finishi ng its first mass manufacturing run. The money will be very valuable for us, Dave said. We are finishing our manufacturing soon, and were trying to fundraise and write grants to do our safety testing, and this money will go directly toward that. So we can then register with the FDA, and then move toward commercial sales. Shivang R. Dave, CEO, PlenOptika, shows how the QuickSee displays prescriptions for eyeglasses.The teams in Washington spoke of the value of a competition focusing on hardware, with judges who recognize the challenge of designing, manufacturing and testing a hardware product. Competitors also said they valued the insights of experts who held four formal sessions with each team, on customer and user knowledge, hardware validation and development, manufacturing optimization, and implementation strategy.What I find powerful about ISHOW is that everyone wins, said Ethan Kay of BioLite. Either we win the prize, or we have an incredible day together with a bunch of indus try leaders and thought partners who in the half hour sessions can make our business and products better. To me that has been extremely valuable and really unique about ISHOW.To learn more about the ISHOW program, visit https//thisishardware.org. - Roger Torda, Public Information

30 Payroll Interview Questions

30 Payroll Interview Questions30 Payroll Interview QuestionsNow is a great time to be a payroll specialist. Many growing companies need payroll clerks, managers and more operational employees to support their expansion. If youre a job candidate, you may be wondering about the payroll interview questions that may be asked of you.First of all, to land a new job in this field, your cover letter and resume must combine for an eye-catching one-two punch. Passing that touchstone, you need sharp interview skills to impress hiring managers. The somewhat unpredictable nature of the latter is where many applicants trip up.To land that coveted payroll position, you need to do your homework. The following are some practical ways to prepare for all the possible payroll interview questions.Do lots of legworkAccording to an Accountemps survey of CFOs, the top mistake people make during the interview leiter is not knowing enough about the company theyre seeking to join. So be sure to click through t he organizations website and conduct some company research. Pay special attention to pages on recent news, staff biographies, the companys history, and its products or services.Dig into the job descriptionDoes the posting seem to emphasize teamwork and customer service? Then part of your preparation should be coming up with anecdotes about how you tend to apply ansicht career skills. On the other hand, if the description focuses on technical aspects of the job, such as garnishments and tax legislation, brush up on those types of details. And it never hurts to prepare to talk about both hard and soft skills.Read more about payroll job descriptions and see what jobs are out there.SEARCH PAYROLL POSITIONSPractice, practice, practiceYoure in the hot seat during job interviews. To avoid being tongue-tied on the big day, rehearse your delivery of answers to all the payroll interview questions you can think of. Here are some you may encounterInformational questions. Managers often start in terviews with these queries as a way to get to know you and gauge your interest in the position.What can you tell me about yourself?Why did you choose payroll as a career?What interests you about this position?Why do you want to work for this company?Functional questions. After finding out who you are, the next set of interview questions may deal with your knowledge base.Which payroll systems have you worked with?What are some differences between an employee and contractor?Can you describe Fair Labor Standards?What is FICA, and how is it calculated?What are some examples of voluntary deductions?What are some examples of involuntary deductions?What benefits are taxable?What Excel skills do you use as part of your payroll duties?Behavioral questions. How youve handled work issues is a good indicator of future performance, so interviewers will want to know more about situations in your past jobs using behavioral questions.Have you ever had to deliver bad news to someone? How did you ap proach it?When have you make a mistake on the job, and how did you resolve it?How do you manage your time so that you meet payroll-related deadlines?Can you describe a time when your ethics felt challenged?How do you stay current on regulatory and einhaltung changes?Situational questions. These are similar to behavioral questions, but with a hypothetical component.An employee is angry because payroll made a withholding error. What are your next steps? An employee asks for reimbursement for a questionable business expense. How do you handle it?What would you do if you discovered a mistake on a coworkers year-end report? Due to something that is not your fault, payroll will be late this pay period. How do you deliver this news company-wide?Questions about workplace fit. To avoid a bad hire, organizations want to make sure new employees will get along well in their corporate culture.How would your colleagues describe you?Do you prefer to work alone or as part of a team?What is your pet peeve at work?What do you do to beat stress in the payroll department?How do you prefer to communicate with colleagues? With management?Curveball questions. Some hiring managers like to see how you think on your feet, which is the rationale behind questions that have nothing to do with the job itself.Which Hogwarts house would the Sorting Hat place you in?How many Peeps are made each year?If you could be any animal for a day, what would you choose and why?Theres no good way to prepare for wacky questions, and thats OK. Just relax and give a creative answer. A sense of humor can definitely help. The worst response is to go silent or get flustered.Compensation-related questions. To gauge whether the company can afford to hire you, some managers will flat-out askHow much do you hope to make in this position?Dont get caught off-guard if this happens, even in the first interview. Use a resource like the latestRobert Half Salary Guide for Accounting and Finance to findstarting salary ran ges for more than 190 positions with your experience level. Tags

Ways to Minimize Employees Wasting Time at Work

Ways to Minimize Employees Wasting Time at WorkWays to Minimize Employees Wasting Time at WorkThe easiest option for any manager is to blame their employees for welchesting time at work through poor time management that results in quality slips and missed deadlines. This translates into poor customer service, strained internal relationships, and ultimately loss of business. If left unchecked, it can become a nightmare for the Human Resources staff, who are then overwhelmed with performance and disciplinary issues, higher than normal turnover, and continuous recruiting to fill the vacancies. This is why it is so important to realize first why employees are wasting time, then taking the correct actions to prevent it from happening in the future. Where Employees Waste the Most Time In back-to-back surveys conducted by Salary.com in 2012 and 2013- the most recent data available- regarding the wasted time at work, the following was discovered Sixty-four percent (in 2012) to 70 percent (in 2013) of survey respondents admitted wasting time at work on a daily basis. Time wasted ranged from 30 minutes to several hours each day.Top time-wasting activities were 43 percent talking with co-workers, 34 percent online activities, and 4 percent each on texting and personal calls.The most significant reasons given by workers for why they waste time were 35 percent were not challenged enough, 32 percent felt that there was no incentive to work harder, 30 percent got no satisfaction from what they do, and 23 percent were just downright bored. The Reasons Why Employees Waste Time at Work In both the 2012 and 2013 surveys, employees identifiedtoo many meetingsas the biggest waste of time within their workplace. Other interesting responses to the survey question, Whats the biggest distraction in your workplace? were Inefficient co-workers 17 percentOther co-workers 17 percentOffice politics 13 percentBusy work 13 percentOther 11 percentAnd finally My Boss 8 percent Blaming your employees may be the easiest way to explain the time wasting. It is easier, but much less productive in the long run, which is why more kollektivs need to look inward for the source of their employees dissatisfaction. Optimization Starts With the Leadership Team An effective leader is only as good as the kollektiv they develop (properly train) and lead (set expectations and goals). If the leader is not effective, the team will not perform well on a consistent basis. Its no wonder that when surveyed as to why they waste time, dissatisfied employees give answers like not challenged enough, no incentive to work harder or lack of job satisfaction. Leaders get paid to produce results through the combined efforts of their team members. When the leader does a poor job of leading, the team decides what they will do and when they feel like doing it. Heading Off Employee Time Wasting at Work The solution to the wasting time challenge starts at the time of hire. If a leader doesnt have a clear vision of where they want to take their organization in the future, then there is no way they can hire the right people. Many large companies have clear methods of delivering the leadership employees need in order to maximize productivity. Team Members Need Clear Expectations Once employees are hired, make sure that each of your team members knows specifically what they are supposed to do and how and when they are supposed to do it. Most importantly, each team member must understand why they do what they do. They need to know how what they do fits into the vision you are creating. When people see how what they do contributes to the total effort, its easier for them to rally around the cause and see their purpose. Teams that have a purpose, and perceive their contribution to the purpose, tend not to get distracted and waste time at work. Set, Communicate, and Measure Performance Expectations The leader needs to recognize how to set and communicate realistic performance expectations for what needs to be done. This needs to occur in such a way that the leader and the employees share a mutual picture of what constitutes the desired outcome. Follow Up and Hold Team Members Accountable for Accomplishing Required Goals Once set and communicated, the leader must follow through and hold the team accountable for meeting those expectations. If employees know that their performance is being measured objectively, consistently and in a constructive way, they are less likely to wander off and waste time. Adopt these three major measures and you will significantly reduce the time that your employees waste at work.