Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

6 Tips for Planning Your Next Move

Whether you’re fresh out of college or you’ve been in the workforce for 20 years, determining your next career move can be intimidating. At CFW Careers, we are in touch with individuals at every stage of their career, and we understand your plight. Cynnie King, President of CFW Careers, weighed in with a five-step process.

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Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

Reference Check Questions You Don't Want to Skip

If you were thinking of going to that new, expensive restaurant in town and knew of someone who had just been there, would you ask for their review or rely solely on the content in their web page? The chef calls it his finest culinary project to date!... The professional food photography looks amaaazing!... You’d probably ask that acquaintance for their take, right? Why not apply that same logic to reference checks?

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Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

2024 Workplace & Leadership Trend-Tracking from CFW Careers

What lies ahead in 2024?  In this blog post, our team shares the top trends that we see set to redefine the pathways for talent development, and we offer insights into navigating the evolving landscape of career growth in the coming year.

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Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

How to Lose a New Hire in 5 Easy Steps: Classic Onboarding Mistakes

In our coaching, we often work through all the potential eventualities of leadership actions, including the negative ones. The negative consequences tend to be the most memorable. So today, in our onboarding coaching tip sheet for managers, we’re going to tell you what NOT to do, so the mistakes of others can forever stop you from making them yourself. So here goes!

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Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

How to Write a Cover Letter, in Three Simple Steps:

Cover letters! Do they even matter? Does anyone read them? Can you write an effective cover letter quickly? Why are they such a miserable part of the job application process? In our career coaching work, we hear some version of each of these questions ALL THE TIME.

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Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

A Prescriptive Approach to Career Pathing

Career growth within an organization is often akin to a winding road, lacking the clarity that both employees and managers desire. As we delve deeper into the realm of career pathing, we recognize the need for a prescriptive approach—one that goes beyond the traditional career ladders and places the power of intentional career advancement firmly in the hands of individuals, managers, and organizations.

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Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

5 Key Workforce Trends in 2023

As the year 2023 draws to a close, we’re looking back at some of the trends that shaped the professional landscape this year. At CFW Careers, we have witnessed these shifts and have been integral in helping our clients navigate and thrive in the face of change. Have you experienced any of these in your organization?

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Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

3 Lessons on Becoming a Ripple Effect Leader™ How to Build Inclusive, High-Trust, Human-Centered Teams

The world of work is constantly undergoing transformation.

The challenges we face today from building diverse, inclusive, equitable work environments (while not new, ever more pressing) to navigating rapid changes in technology require innovative solutions.

When you look at these challenges in the context of how polarized our workplaces and our world have become, the call for change becomes even more urgent.

From a leadership standpoint, this means innovation in our thinking, the frameworks that guide us and ultimately how we show up as people.

As quickly as we need to be adapting to and incorporating new technologies like generative AI, we need to be even more intentional and deliberate about reconnecting with our humanity.

That’s where The Ripple Effect comes in and why I’m so grateful to be sharing this message and experience with leaders and organizations from all over the globe.

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Hiring Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Hiring Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

Reference Check Questions You Don't Want to Skip

If you were thinking of going to that new, expensive restaurant in town and knew of someone who had just been there, would you ask for their review or rely solely on the content in their web page? The chef calls it his finest culinary project to date!... The professional food photography looks amaaazing!... You’d probably ask that acquaintance for their take, right? Why not apply that same logic to reference checks?

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Career Advice Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Career Advice Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

Ensuring the Right Match: How to make an accurate assessment in the first interview

One of the greatest challenges we hear from hiring managers is “How can I be sure I’m hiring the right person for the job?”. The desire to make the right decision, as well as trepidation about making a bad hire, can lead to a prolonged hiring process (multiple weigh-ins, aptitude tests, role plays, etc.). These delays often mean losing a top contender for the job.

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Sales Careers, Career Advice Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Sales Careers, Career Advice Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

Breaking the Employee Turnover Cycle

In the fast-paced world of sales, employee turnover can be a persistent challenge. High turnover not only disrupts operations but also incurs significant costs, both in terms of lost business and the expenses associated with hiring and onboarding new talent. It's a cycle that many sales teams find themselves stuck in, losing sales talent far too soon after ramp up. Many sales orgs try to engage and retain with temporary strategies–using President’s Club trips, introducing sales SPIFFS, or short-term accelerators. But these strategies rarely work for long-term success.

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Career Coaching Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Career Coaching Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

Get out of your own head! How career coaching can jumpstart your job search.

Career transition at any stage of one’s career can be challenging, fraught with concerns about making the right move (and implications of making the wrong move); the process can feel overwhelming, and there can be a frustrating lack of ROI on search efforts. Moreso, it’s often a solitary exercise, and can be hard to do on one’s own. There’s a resource you may not have considered.

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Career Advice, Changing the Conversation Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Career Advice, Changing the Conversation Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

Career Stories: Michelle Levine

While studying marketing at Lehigh University, I secured an HBO advertising internship through family connections. Inspired to independently attain my next opportunity, I leveraged alumni contacts to secure an internship at News America Marketing. This experience was pivotal, cementing my career interest in sales and leading to an entry-level account executive role at The New York Post, their sister company. As one of the youngest salespeople there, I developed creative strategies to reinvigorate dormant accounts, earning three promotions. After five years, I transitioned briefly to another newspaper before being recruited by Amazon for an exciting, undisclosed project – Amazon Local. Hired as the first salesperson, I played a key role in shaping the business, hiring team members, and establishing meaningful relationships with leadership. My efforts led to international expansion opportunities and a promotion to sales team manager.

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Industry Insights Rachel Fagnant-Fassler Industry Insights Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

Managing (not just the people kind) is core to Success in Revenue Operations

With a strong foundation in Sales and Account Management spanning eight years, Mariya's pivot into Sales Operations and then Business Operations aligned with her passion for process refinement, scalability, and innovation. Her sales background uniquely positions her to support revenue teams, armed with a comprehensive business perspective and a sharp focus on the bottom line. Today, Mariya is the Head of Business Operations at PebblePost, the leading marketing technology platform for the Programmatic Direct Mail channel. We asked her to share some of her thoughts on what makes someone a successful Revenue Operations leader, a role that is increasingly in demand.

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DEI, Changing the conversation, Hiring Rachel Fagnant-Fassler DEI, Changing the conversation, Hiring Rachel Fagnant-Fassler

CFW Careers Best Practices: Hiring Toward Diversity & Inclusion

A critical component of building diverse and inclusive organizations is around recruiting and hiring, and it often presents one of the greatest challenges. “How can we build a more diverse candidate pool?” “How can we diminish drop off through the hiring process?” and, ultimately, “How can we improve our retention statistics?” The implications are significant, not only relevant to fulfilling a corporate commitment, but fundamentally impacting long-term employer brand.

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