Elite IT Services Business Blog

New Compensation Package!

By Sandi Hubert

Elite IT Services is adding two new benefits to the Compensation Package for our employees.  We are paying all full-time employees time and a half for Overtime effective July 1.  This is over and above the Fair Labor Standards Act directed by the Department of Labor requirement of employees with pay at $27.63 or below receiving time and a half pay for hours worked over 40 hours.  We're opening this up and allowing all of our employees eligibility for Time and a Half pay for approved overtime hours.  In addition, we are adding a 6 Paid Holiday Schedule to our Compensation Package to enhance our marketability as a key IT competitor in the marketplace.  The holidays include: Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Memorial Day.

Accountability – The Difference Between Average and Outstanding

By: Rob Hubert

Today’s IT Job Market has become very competitive between employers The best candidates are receiving multiple offers and are in favorable positions to make a choice. But our clients are not competing for average candidates; they are competing for the best candidates. What’s the difference between the average candidates and the best candidates?

Project Management Roundtable

Elite IT Services wants to put the word out that Washington Unversity's Center for Application of Information Technology (CAIT) is hosting a Project Management Roundtable forum for the delivery and exchange of leading edge professional ideas and practices.  To see pricing and to receive more information about this event, go to  CAIT Project Management Roundtable.

Like the previous Roundtables, this program has been specifically designed to allow participants to gain knowledge from experts, drive the agenda, and share learning and collaborate with colleagues throughout the St. Louis community. 

To help St. Louis' leading IT professionals gain immediate benefits from this growing body of knowledge, CAIT is offering Project Management Roundtable 2007, building upon the success of these series’ in the previous three years. The first of the 7 monthly half-day sessions will be Tuesday, March 20, 7:30-11:30 a.m. at the Eric P. Newman Center in the BJC complex, Central West End. For more information or to register, contact Bill Darte (billd@cait.wustl.edu , 314-935-7575) or Tom Browdy (tbrow@wustl.edu , 314-935-5138).

Quantifying Benefits - In Projects and in Life

By Sandi Hubert

I've spent many hours quantifying benefits and even teaching Project Managers and IT Analysts how to quantify a benefit to include as a dollar amount in a Return on Investment (ROI) Calculation, never realizing that I would be applying this same technique as a business owner.  Time Savings is one of the most challenging benefits to quantify because it seems so intangible.  Intangible savings can relate to savings in efficiencies, productivity, better service, and greater accuracy, to say the least.  You can easily convert efficiencies, productivity, better service, and greater accuracy to a value of time and then by assigning an hourly rate of dollars to that time, you can multiply out a cost savings.  You just have to ask a series of questions:   

“If How-To’s Were Enough, We Would All Be Skinny, Rich and Happy!”

By Sandi Hubert

What Do you Want? More Business Success, Better Relationships, More MONEY  Why Don't You Have It? How Will You Get It?  Join us for an incredible Champion's Workshop.

Learn the Secret Formula of Champions.  A Million Dollar formula that 100,000’s of people used to create more success in their life – personally and professionally!!!

You will learn to create results in your life, without a clue as to how.  This is Thursday, January 25th, from 7:00 - 10:00 PM.  Welcome & Book Sales 7:00 to 7:15.  Where: Sheraton in Clayton, 7730 Bonhamme Ave., St. Louis, MO (314) 863-0400.  Advanced Purchase Tickets are $20 SAVE 60% ($59 at the door).  For Advanced Purchase Tickets contact Brent Dearing at 314-749-7192 or email: brent@financialquarterback.com or register online.  K&A specializes in producing large change in a short period of time through shifting values and fundamental beliefs.  The unique experiential and interactive nature of K&A workshops produces both immediate and long lasting results.  K&A is a Leadership and Character development training company.  K&A clients include: GE, AETNA, Hewlett Packard, Walt Disney, L.A. Federal Credit Union, Suzuki, financial institutions, hospitals, and direct sales organizations: Mary Kay, Unicity, Isagenix, Mannatech, Prepaid Legal, Excel and more

Setting Goals

By Sandi Hubert

Did you set your goals for 2007 yet? If not, what are you waiting for? Setting and publishing your goals allow you to have clear focus and vision on accomplishing your dreams.  Every year during the New Year's weekend my husband and I sit down and figure out what we are going to accomplish in terms of our family goals, personal, spiritual and physical goals.  We determine our big purchases for the year, our vacation goals, and what goals we want to accomplish with our two children.  We unleash this powerful goal setting in our business here at Elite IT Services as well and we put visual and image to our goals.  For home, we are making a dream book or 2007 Goals scrapbook of cut out pictures from magazines that illustrate and materialize our goals in a visual manifestation.  We have cut out the swing set that we want to purchase for the boys to install in the backyard.  We have a picture of the deck that we want to build in our backyard.  We use cut out words and pictures to represent our spiritual and mental goals as well.  I am a firm believer that we must impress upon our minds what we want to achieve by stating, writing, and imaging our goals.  We laminate our written goals and post them throughout the house.  At Elite IT Services, I've created a beautiful background setting with our MASTER GOAL boldly stated in front of a beautiful sunset, along with our subgoals, trigger activities and causing ratios. 

Accidental Managers

By Sandi Hubert

I have long since had this theory that some of the technical experts are excellent subject matter experts but not necessarily the best are most qualified to be a manager of people.  I recently read an article from Human Resource Executive called "Accidental Managers" by Michael Felton O'Brien and I am in agreement that many managers become managers because of longevity, osmosis, technical expertise in their field, etc.  I have seen it time and time again where the technical guru on a particular application or system becomes the knowledge source and as the popularity and support for the system grows, the staff must grow to maintain it.  Many IT organizations promote their techie person that originally supported the system and hire on additional staff.  This is great to support the concept of promoting within but not so great if the people being promoted lack

Resume Videos

By Sandi Hubert

The jury is still out related to Online Resumes.  In one breathe Forbes.com illustrates the downfalls, pitfalls and sheer fallacy in their article called "How Not to Get a Job" when they describe a young ambitious Yale senior that sent his Impossible is Nothing resume video and his 11-page resume to a financial services company. 

Within hours, scores of investment banks noticed his application, as bankers e-mailed the seven-minute video and turned Vayner into the biggest joke on Wall Street. - How Not to Get a Job - Forbes.com

In the next breathe, Forbes reports that some large firms are embracing and accepting video resumes for internships or online contests for jobs:

Ebay's Feedback System in the Office

by: Rob Hubert

I had a conversation with a friend this morning about Feedback and how important it is. He said that he rarely gets feedback, good or bad. I asked him what he would do with it if he got it. "It depends on what the feedback is and who it's from", he said. Great, I replied - assume it was from someone that you trusted and admired. "I would use it to change my behavior or improve my performance", he said.

Feedback can be an incredibly powerful tool when used properly. I meet a lot of IT Professionals that tell me they never receive feedback. 

Thanksgiving Spirit

By Sandi Hubert

Elite IT made it in the St. Louis Small Business Monthly www.sbmon.com the Editorial section by Ron Ameln this month.  Ron did a section on the "Giving Spirit" and we had an opportunity to submit how we participate in our local community.  We contribute and volunteer regularly with Connections To Success www.connectionstosucess.org, which is a local non-profit organization that assists low-income men and women to enter the workforce and become economically self-sustaining.  I have been honored by Connections To Success invitation, to join their Board of Directors and have begun serving as an active Board member this month.  With my two boys in tow I delivered our first donated Thanksgiving dinner (frozen turkey with all the fixings) to Connections To Success on Friday which they in turn passed out to some very special families on Sunday.  I wanted to pass on my sincere thanks for the bountiful blessings at Elite IT, and for our employees, clients, and partners.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!