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North Carolina’s Economic Forecast

Jan 06 2017 by Greene Resources

It was our tremendous pleasure to sponsor the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce’s 2017 Economic Forecast on Thursday, January 5^th. The Economic Forecast provided insight on the direction of both our regional and national economy in the upcoming year. A video of the discussion, led by Mark Vitner and John Graham, is available at the end of this article, courtesy of WRAL.

Mark Vitner is a Managing Director and Senior Economist with Wells Fargo. Mark’s responsibilities include tracking regional and national economic trends. He is a regular contributor to Wells Fargo’s Monthly Economic Outlook as well as the Weekly Economic and Financial Commentary. Mark’s slideshow presentation from the Economic Forecast is available online.

John Graham is the D. Richard Mead Jr. Family Professor of Finance with the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He also serves as the Director for Duke University’s Global Business Outlook, a quarterly CFO survey that assesses the business climate and topical economic issues around the world. John’s slideshow and survey results from the Economic Forecast are also available online.

As a native Raleigh business, Greene Resources cares deeply about the growth and development of North Carolina. As experts in recruiting and hiring, we monitor hiring trends as they develop and use this information to help advise our customers as they consider their recruiting needs. According to Mr. Vitner and Dr. Graham, here are some of the trends to expect regarding the local and national economy.

Local Facts and Figures

Raleigh’s employment rates are expected to grow, with an estimated 12,000 new jobs coming to the Triangle.
Raleigh has the second highest GDP growth across all metro hubs in the nation.
Job growth has steadily gained momentum across North Carolina, specifically in professional services, construction, retail, and the leisure and hospitality sectors.
The IT sector in the Triangle is growing 1% faster than the rest of the United States.
Jobs in manufacturing are growing at a slower rate, but are expected to continue growing, especially within in the aviation industry.

Predictions and Trends for 2017

The era of low interest rates is coming to an end; interest rates are predicted to rise twice in 2017.
Economic policies are expected to be focused on economic growth.
When surveyed in the past quarter, CFOs in the United States are more optimistic about the national economy than any other quarter surveyed in the past 15 years. North Carolina’s optimism index is even higher than the US average.
Wages are expected to rise 3.1%.

Potential Concerns for Employers and Businesses

The two greatest concerns of United States and North Carolina businesses are economic uncertainty followed by the cost of benefits.
Another concern continuing to climb up the list is the difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified employees. As the economy improves, it becomes harder to attract and retain employees as more and better opportunities become accessible to job seekers.
70% of businesses surveyed were not sure how the recent election will impact their business with regards to corporate tax policies or regulatory policy changes.

Overall, optimism in the economic climate has jumped significantly in the past year with economists anticipating improvements in the regulatory and tax environment as well as continued employment growth. Even if significant changes or improvements are made to the economy, the actual impact it will have on businesses and individuals will be delayed and it will take some time before the effects are felt.

Much like the optimistic outlook shared at the Economic Forecast, at Greene Resources, we approach every day and every experience with optimism. Our vision is to connect people and companies in such a way that jobs become purposeful, impactful, and long-term careers. It’s not about filling a job opening. It’s about finding the one person who will make a lasting impact on your company’s team and culture as well as feel accomplished through their work. We would love the opportunity to work with you and are optimistic that we can help your business attract, locate, and land top talent in 2017.

4 Professional New Year Resolutions

Dec 29 2016 by Greene Resources

As New Year’s Eve approaches, many of us will begin to reflect on the past year, think about the year ahead, and determine the kind of changes we want to make in our life. While many people will be making personal resolutions to go to the gym more, lose that extra weight, or commit to a budget this year, it’s important to ensure career goals do not get lost in the shuffle. How do you make sure that your career continues to develop and your professional skills and achievements continue to grow? Here are four professional new year resolutions you can make as you enter into the upcoming year.

Create a clear vision.

Do you want to grow your client base? Want to start or finish a certain project? Maybe you want to get out of your current role and start something new? It’s great to have goals and ambitions, but the more specific your goals are, the easier it will be to turn them into a reality and determine if you were successful or not. Saying “I want to get better at Excel” is a great goal, but one that’s not very specific and will be hard to track. Instead, say, “I want to learn how to create pivot tables and learn four new shortcuts that will make compiling and analyzing data easier in the next six weeks.” This will be much easier to track and acknowledge when you have succeeded.

Ensure your goals are challenging.

Studies have shown that people are more motivated to successfully reach a goal when the goal they’re trying to reach is challenging rather than a goal that is simple or realistic. According to Mark Murphy, the founder of Leadership IQ,

“If you want to set a goal that will inspire people to achieve great things, that goal must be so vividly described that people can picture how great it will feel to achieve it; they must learn new skills to achieve the goal; and the goal will push them out of their comfort zone, among other factors.”

Make a plan to reach your goal.

Planning isn’t fun for everyone. It can be boring and require a lot of time and effort to get a mediocre plan put together that you may or may not completely abandon after two weeks of halfhearted effort. However, a key to successfully turning your vision into a reality is often found in putting a basic timeline in place to ensure you are continuously making progress. If your goal is to run a marathon, you have a calendar that tells you how and when to train, and when to rest. Similarly, if you have a challenging career goal you want to achieve, you need to map out what will be necessary to accomplish it.

Prepare ahead for setbacks.

No matter how prepared, dedicated, or motivated you are to meet your goals, setbacks will happen. Dealing with unanticipated events is a part of life, but these setbacks should not allow you to lose focus on your ultimate goal. Whether the setback is a departmental change you weren’t expecting, a larger-than-normal workload that suddenly appears, or simply a mistake, don’t give up! By working through those difficulties and keeping your eye on the target, you may find that you’ve grown beyond even what your initial goal entailed.

At Greene Resources, our professional new year resolutions every year are to connect people and companies and to help turn jobs into purposeful, impactful, and long-term careers. We are excited to see how we can help make your professional new year resolutions a reality.

Making An Impact

Dec 09 2016 by Greene Resources

Greene Resources had the wonderful opportunity to not only sponsor the Chamber’s December C-Suite Perspectives breakfast but also to hear from our own president and founder, Gary Greene. Gary provided us with insight on how leaders (or anyone!) can truly make an impact in the lives of those around them. He also demonstrated how practicing these habits will change the way we communicate, establish relationships, and do business.

To make an impact, you must do five things:

Show You Care
Success comes down to individual moments with individual people and ensuring the people in your life know that they matter. As part of the Greene Team, I can personally say that our Leadership Team works hard to show they care about the individuals on our team every day. At Greene, there are a variety of traditions that our team participates in to help spotlight the impact made by each individual on the team. When you first start working at Greene, you walk the “Greene Carpet” through a tunnel of high-fiving coworkers. On your three-year anniversary, you’re presented a custom written children’s book celebrating you and looking back at your first three years at Greene. By showing employees that they are valued, the team who works at Greene Resources is more engaged and committed to the company’s mission, leadership, and each other.

Change Your Point of View
Gary recommended never approaching a conversation assuming the other person is interested in what you want to say. Whether you work in sales, management, or another field, you will have greater success with effective communication if you approach a conversation from the perspective of the other person. What are their fears? What drives their decisions? How can you help them? Changing your point of view will affect everything that you do and make you more committed to the success of others than your own.

Be Present
Being accessible and engaged is perhaps the hardest part of being a leader. There are always multitudes of tasks to complete and people vying for your attention or needing you to make a decision. Nevertheless, when you show up to a meeting, take a phone call, or are responding to an e-mail, providing your full attention and being present with others will make all the difference, because “people will forget about what you said, people will forget about what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Create Memorable Moments
Find a way to be different, not only in the way you do business, but also in the way you develop relationships. At Greene, our team is always encouraged to change our interactions and business practices from being programmed, general, and traditional to instead becoming more spontaneous, individual, specific, and unique. By taking the time to get to know your coworkers, customers, and employees, you can create a more memorable and positive experience.

Find and Follow Your Passion
Gary did not start Greene Resources because of an entrepreneurial drive, but because of a desire to provide a better customer experience than what was currently present in the market. Greene Resources was founded on the idea that you must love what you do every day (or at least most days) and you must love the people you are serving. When you are passionate about what you do, and you surround yourself with people who share that passion, anything is possible.

It’s been almost seventeen years since Gary started Greene Resources, and the foundation of our business is still the same. Greene Resources is committed to putting people first and exceeding expectations through purposeful talent solutions. By valuing people above all else, we make a lasting impact in the careers, businesses, and lives of those we serve.

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