K-10 Assn. seeks award nominations

David Dunfield, president of the K-10 Assn., is seeking nominations for the 11th annual K-10 Corridor Awards program.

The association, which promotes the highway corridor stretching from the East Hills Business Park in Lawrence to its junction with Interstate 435 near the border of Lenexa and Overland Park, presents two awards: one for service and another for development.

The Service Award is presented to an individual or organization who has made an outstanding contribution toward promoting the goals of the association.

The Development Award recognizes an individual, company or institution that has significantly contributed to the successful economic development of the corridor through establishing a new or expanded business, enhancing the design character of the corridor or otherwise contributing to the development of the corridor.

The awards will be announced June 10, during that association’s annual meeting in Lenexa.

Nominations will be accepted until May 27.

For more information, contact Rich Caplan at 841-7166 or e-mail smartcorridor@aol.com.

Survey

Staffing company offers tips for hiring

Hiring is hardly simple in most fields, but what’s the trickiest part?

It’s reviewing resumes to ferret out the best candidates, said 34 percent of executives in a survey. Posing the proper interview questions was the second most-difficult task, cited by 27 percent, and negotiating salaries was third.

“Many executives receive hundreds of resumes in response to classified ads, for example, and may feel overwhelmed,” said Tracey Fuller, executive director of The Creative Group, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based staffing service that queried 250 executives on hiring. “An established evaluation system can make the task more manageable.”

The company offers a few tips for this area:

• Use the correct criteria. Create requirements that will apply for the position you’re filling, including technical skills, educational requirements and other skills for the job.
• Make the system uniform. Review each resume against the criteria you’ve developed. Also, keep interviews the same length and ask the same questions of all the people you summon.
• Prepare questions. Use a uniform list, without asking a variety of off-the-cuff questions for each interviewee.
• Start at the end for resumes. Most people tend to bury or minimize the least flattering or useful data. Start there.

Motley Fool

Name that company

I was born in Brooklyn in 1938. My chewing gum was considered a “change-maker,” as it was positioned near cash registers, encouraging people to spend their pennies. After World War II, I introduced Bazooka Joe bubble gum, after “Atom Bubble Boy” failed to take off. In 1951, I introduced baseball trading cards. At first, they played second fiddle to the gum, but now it’s the other way around. Today I’m an international marketer of collectible trading cards, confections (such as Ring Pops, Push Pops and Baby Bottle Pops), stickers and more. I take in around $300 million annually. Who am I?