Straight out of college, I signed up for temp work just to pay the bills while I searched for my first career opportunity. Freshly scrubbed and green as could be, I presumed my days as a temp worker would be short lived, that a great company would rush to snatch me up and launch my career. All told, those temp days didn’t last long, yet some of the lessons I learned during that time have lingered with me all the years since my career really took off with that first, permanent position.
On one of my first temp assignments, I worked as receptionist at the front desk of a spartan tool and dye shop smack dab in the middle of an industrial park. Suffice to say, I was a bit of an outsider in my flowered dresses without hardly a clue what tools or dyes were all about. Nonetheless, I settled in for a two-week stint greeting customers and taking calls.
How fast can your business enter a new market? Need employees, office space and fully functional operating system? Look first to the world of “
“Mobile” is an oft-repeated word these days. In my corner of the world, it’s most frequently used in reference to technology. We’re an increasingly mobile society thanks to technology that keeps us connected no matter where we are or what we’re doing. Being “mobile” means we can be functional whether at home, in an airport, nearly any point on the globe. Brands and corporations are constantly developing mobile applications in order to be present alongside us in the ‘moving experiences’ of our fast-paced lives.
Surely we’ve all seen one lately…a company that decided to weather the economic downturn by pulling back on everything. It’s one thing to pare down extras, the non-operational niceties that better times afford. However, it’s a whole other deal to pare down necessities such as staffing, training for staff and service basics. How a company defines “battening down the hatches” reveals much about the strength of its infrastructure and its vision for the future.