KJ

Everyone wants to be seen as eloquent, intelligent and credible. Whether it’s through emails, phone calls, meetings or interviews, we have a daily opportunity to support this goal or detract from it. To ensure you’re being perceived in the way you want, begin eliminating these words from your professional vocabulary. Honestly . Many job seekers use this word when they’re hung up on how to kick off an interview answer. However, beginning a sentence this way can give hiring managers the impression that maybe your previous responses weren’t so honest. Just . This seemingly simple word is often used but rarely needed. It also packs a big punch to detract from your credibility and confidence and negates from the importance of your message. Instead of sending an email that begins with “Just wanted to check in…” say “I’m checking in on X, Y and Z.” The adjustment is small, but there is a big difference in the resulting impression you leave. Things . This is a valueless word that can

A mismatch between what a job candidate expects and what the company offers can contribute to a poor fit. About half of UK professionals have left a job in the first 12 months because of mismatched expectations, a new survey report shows. Incorrect or misleading job descriptions and training below an expected level were two of the leading causes for a role’s failing to meet the employee’s expectations, according to the What Workers Want Report 2018 by UK recruiting firm Hays. The research suggested that both candidates and organisations must work harder during the recruitment process to ensure a better fit and avoid disappointment. FOCUS ON VALUES Recruiters say this mismatch, as it relates to accountancy candidates, could be caused by a trend towards focusing more on culture and values than primarily on monetary rewards. Marcus Williams, associate director at global recruitment firm Morgan McKinley, said that as a younger, more values-oriented generation moves into quali

Here’s how to hone your emotional intelligence to benefit your team and your career. All leaders need some way to evaluate their current performance so they can continue to grow as decision-makers, managers, and colleagues. But what is the best way to find a full, honest account of one’s strengths and weaknesses—and then to act on it? Many leaders have the same questions, "How do I assess myself? How do I become more self-aware? And how can I turn that self-awareness into an effective leadership style?" Here are their four steps for becoming a more self-aware leader. 1. Look beyond assessments. Agreed that assessment tools—and there are many—can be helpful. They see these tools as a way for leaders to gain new perspectives on themselves, their values, and their motivations. “Anything that gives you a language to understand your thought patterns and behaviors can help crystallize self-awareness,”. “Leadership is dynamic, and sometimes you need to break out of th

The humble curriculum vitae has come a long way since Leonardo da Vinci reportedly prepared the first one more than 500 years ago. Over the past decade or so, however, the CV has continued to evolve from a mere snapshot of our qualifications and past careers to a statement of personal branding. At the same time, the advent of artificial intelligence means that employers can use applicant tracking software (ATS) to wade through thousands of CVs and sort applicants without having to individually thumb through each page. To make it through the first round of the application process and ensure that they stand out in subsequent stages, candidates need to understand more fully how the process works. Beating the bots. Even the best candidates may have a difficult time breaking through to a human. A vast majority of jobs listed online today are built within an ATS system, enabling employers to screen candidates initially using algorithms based on keywords. “If you don’t have the rig

“The best offense is a good defense.” This saying gets drilled into every athlete’s mind before any contest. Fight the competition by always taking a step ahead and outsmarting their every move. That’s where their daily training, exercises, and strict diets come into play. Job seekers are not much different from athletes, in the sense that they are also in a competition with others to win a highly-coveted prize. The game in this case is the job interview, with the job offer as the trophy for the winner. How does one succeed in the job hunting game? Like athletes preparing for a competition, job seekers must do practice drills before going to interviews. They’re not the usual type of athletic drills, of course, but the following exercises will help any interviewee win big and score the touchdown at their respective interviews. The Warm – Up: Once you get an invite for a job interview, learn as much as you can about the company who contacted you. Check out the company’s we

Imagine attending an opening meeting for a scheduled audit. The audit topic is somewhat controversial and there has been pushback on the review’s timing. The auditor-in-charge worked hard to find time to get everyone to attend (8-10 people). The meeting is held in a huge conference room, so people are waving across the room and jokingly asking, “How’s the weather over there?” There is anticipation mixed with nervousness and anxiety as the auditors introduce themselves. The auditor-in-charge turns on the projector and forwards through the 12 slides in the opening meeting slide deck in about five minutes. She asks if there are any questions (there are none) and thanks them for their time. The group proceeds to exit the conference room feeling deflated. Everyone thinks, “What was the point of that?” Now imagine attending a closing meeting for a different audit that went well. The clients are engaged with the issues internal audit finds and want to use the audit to help drive improve

I f you occasionally have doubts about the impact of internal audit on your organization, you are not alone. According to Deloitte's  2018 Global Chief Audit Executive Survey , a staggering 60 percent of chief audit executives (CAEs) believe the internal audit function does not have a strong impact and influence within their organization. And, while that's obviously bad news for internal auditors, it was actually an improvement from 72 percent in Deloitte's 2016 survey. Internal audit's impact and influence are strengthening at many organizations, but obviously there is still a lot of room for improvement. When I saw the survey results, I posted a question on LinkedIn asking whose fault was it if internal audit did not exert a strong influence on the organization. I assumed that most would say it was the CAE's fault. To my surprise, many responses pointed to management or the board. It's not always easy to admit our faults, but I was dismayed to see how

When you give your next speech, how do you think that your audience will be judging you? It turns out that, not unsurprisingly, a big part of how your audience will be judging you is going to be based on how your voice sounds to them. You may not be aware of it, but as humans, we are wired to have our emotions, memories, and in some cases even thoughts automatically triggered when we hear someone else’s voice . What this means for you as a speaker is that you are going to want to make sure that your audience likes listening to your voice so that they can experience the importance of public speaking. How can you go about making this happen? Evaluating Your Own Voice In order to understand how you sound to your audience, the very first thing that you are going to have to do is to take the time to evaluate your own voice . After you’ve given a speech, you need to think about how it went. Ask yourself if your voice came across as being influential or was it ineffective? When you w

Anyone who spends time with internal auditors will quickly learn there is a quiet passion that drives many of the best practitioners. It is built on genuine desire to help our organizations, the well-earned respect from those we interact with, and unwavering pride in the service we provide as internal auditors. Yet, as a profession, we often struggle to explain what it is we do. This challenge is so commonplace, we've learned to joke about it. One of my favorites is about the man who instructs his child to tell his classmates that he works at McDonald's, because it's easier than explaining he's an internal auditor. This self-deprecating attitude among internal auditors is pervasive. In my many travels as president and CEO of The IIA, I have seen this humility and reticence among my peers all over the world. This may be at the heart of why we struggle to explain what we do.  The next time someone asks: I am an internal auditor! I serve my organization to p

Managing people is hard. Among other things, it typically involves filling out tedious amounts of paperwork and dealing with office politics on a whole other level. But it’s especially difficult for first-time managers, who don’t have the benefit of years of experience to help them navigate inflexible institutions or complicated work relationships. For those people, mastering five crucial skills early on can help. 1. How to run a meeting Meetings are an unavoidable aspect of the modern workplace, particularly so for executives, who by some estimates spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings. According to one survey, 11 million meetings are held every day in the US alone. And about a third of those are unproductive, reportedly costing companies $37 billion a year. So, as a manager, respect your team’s time and your own time, and don’t fall into the trap of organizing too many ineffective meetings. Here are some tricks that can help: Make sure the meeting has a purpose. Bef

Risk defines the world of the internal auditor. Ultimately, risk is what shapes our audit plans, directs our stakeholders, and determines our success or failure. That is why we spend so much time and effort helping our organizations identify, understand, and mitigate or leverage risks. Understanding the unique mix of risks our organizations face, and the risk appetites of our stakeholders, is crucial to internal audit adding value. A number of organizations produce annual reports that attempt to peer at the horizon to identify risks in the coming year. Sometimes, it is easy to predict what those risks will be, as some major ones are long term, if not perpetual. The challenge is to identify or anticipate unexpected, emerging, or atypical risks that may mature in the coming weeks or months, in hopes of preparing to gird against them or use them to benefit the organization. Two recently published reports, one from Gartner Inc. and the other from the European Confederation of Insti

In today’s world where corporate scandals often make front page news, fraud prevention and detection are becoming a priority for management and decision-makers. An alarming fact reported by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (“ACFE”) stated that an average organisation loses an estimated 5% of its annual revenue to fraud, hence fraud is posed as one of the major risks facing an organisation (both financially and reputationally). Typically, a large majority of midsize to large organisations consider their internal and external auditors as the pivotal tool for uncovering fraud and taking preventive measures to minimise the risk of loss incurred due to a fraud. However, this doesn’t imply that independent auditors often identify fraud, in fact, the opposite is true in many cases.  ACFE’s Report to the Nations  points out the fact that auditors rarely find fraud – internal audit detects fraud 15% of the time, while external audit merely 4%. One reason auditors rarely fi