Smile :) It’s Customer Service Week!

Customer Service Excellence

For customer service week #CSWEEK17 the idea of smiling is all I could think of. Because I had a particularly tough week and often found that I had to psych myself up to smile.

At Duma Works we believe that is exactly where excellent customer service begins and ends with – a smile.

It is perhaps the most contagious and natural facial expression that comes to us humans. As a matter of fact, it has been proven in scientific studies that most people find it very difficult to frown when they look at someone smiling at them. So how is this relevant to customer service?

Here is a telling tale…

Turn Your Musical Passion into a Career …with Sauti Sol

It’s a great time in Kenya to be a musician.

The internet has increased the possibility to “be found,” and by local and international record labels. There are also opportunities to make money from music outside of the difficult process of being signed by a record label – Musicians can use popular venues like Youtube and Facebook to record videos and appeal directly to their listeners.

But let’s be honest. When you tell your parents you want to launch a career in music, the immediate response is that music is not a career and you should get serious.

We’ve spoken to the guys at Sauti Sol to see what it was that drove them to persist in their musical career, and to offer inspiration to other aspiring musicians.

The Future Of Recruiting In Kenya

In July, we held our first ever Future Of Recruiting event in Kenya! We were joined by some amazing professionals to share knowledge about how top companies are taking advantage of technology in the recruiting process, how job candidates can brand themselves professionally and tips on how to increase employee retention in your company.

What It Takes To Make It In Digital Marketing In Kenya

What it Takes to Make it in Digital Marketing in Kenya

How to Establish a Sticky Company Culture

Creating a “sticky,” or simply put – AWESOME – company culture is something we pride ourselves in having built at Duma Works. We’d like to share some of the tricks we learned along the way – what works and what doesn’t work – to build an outstanding company culture at your company.

Should Aptitude and Personality Testing Impact Hiring?

Should Aptitude and Personality Testing Impact Hiring?

Last year, Duma Works launched an aptitude and personality test feature as an additional tool for companies to use to screen talent for their organizations.

The question always comes up about how much weight HR Managers and Recruiters should place on these aptitude and personality tests, because after all, it’s very difficult to understand the intricacies of who someone is and their motivations from a 30 question survey. It’s also tough to knock candidates out for test scores – maybe they aren’t as good test takers, maybe the tests were developed in other markets, maybe they haven’t been trained as well in standardized tests…

We thought we would share how Duma Works uses the aptitude and personality tests in-house to help advise on how to fit aptitude and personality testing into the job candidate screening process.

How to Find and Keep Manufacturing Talent in Kenya

What it Takes to Land the Best Talent and Jobs in the Manufacturing Sector in Kenya from our Experts

In February, we held our monthly What It Takes Talent event, focusing on the newest talent trends in the Manufacturing sector in Kenya, namely how to find and keep Manufacturing talent in Kenya. The event was incredible and we were joined by some amazing young professionals and HR thought leaders to share knowledge about how top companies are retaining talent, hiring the leaders of tomorrow, and up-skilling their team to maintain relevance in a fast-changing sector.

We were joined by some incredible individuals for the panel event, including Khalil Anjarwalla from African Cotton, Asim Shah from Tarpo Industries, Nicholas Kasidhi from Diageo, Andrew Stirling from Brown’s Cheese, John Chege from Tru Foods, Hannah Karuru from Kenafric, and Agnes Mwanzawa from Kapa Oil Refineries.

Needless to say, it was an incredibly illuminating discussion! Please find our notes below.

**Quick note from the author: The Q&A is transcribed from the event, and I apologize for any grammatical errors or fragments as I was attempting to get everything done. To our panelists, I apologize if I’ve paraphrased anything.

What It Takes Talent: Finance Sector in Kenya

Our monthly #WhatItTakes Talent Event focused on the Finance Sector.

We brought in amazing panelists to lead the discussion about how HR and Talent Managers can recruit, train, and retain top talent in the Finance Sector in Kenya, and shared insights with professionals on how to position themselves for their career in the Finance Sector.

Our partner for the event was Invhestia, and our panelists were Stephen Gugu, Director of Invhestia, Kate Gathii, Marketing Manager at Direct Pay Online, and Joel Macharia from Abacus.

What It Takes: Talent in the Energy Sector

First of all, a big thank you to all of our panelists and guests who so graciously attended our #WhatItTakes Talent in the Energy Sector event last Thursday! It was a huge success and I think we all learned a lot.
Thank you Elizabeth from M-KOPA Solar, Tim from Sanergy, Patrick from Skynotch Energy Africa, and James from Brands & Beyond.

Bicycles and Roads to Opportunity

Imagine. A simple question:

Can You Draw a Bicycle?

…Led to an incredible, epic conversation about how people can approach life in order to open their hands to more opportunity.