What Comes Before Workforce Retention?

Last week, I attended a seminar on workforce retention.  Just the notion of having such a meeting topic sparked the question:  Is this a sign that the job market pendulum is shifting in the other direction?

Actually, the pendulum shifted back in candidates’ favor early last year.  It’s just that virtually no one was willing to proclaim such a milestone.  It seems that such declarations are done while looking in the rear view mirror.  Over the recent months, a substantial number of the long-term unemployed and underemployed have gotten hired into new positions and this trend appears to be accelerating.  Many of those who have been employed all along, albeit under duress, are now seeking better opportunities in a highly selective fashion.

No doubt, the job market is tightening in the other direction.  High growth companies with aggressive hiring objectives are already hitting pain points around not finding enough qualified talent to support their growth plans.  It strikes me as both humorous and disingenuous that companies are now scrambling to address workforce retention.  Not that they’re off base in doing so.  After all, it is far less expensive to retain your good employees than it is to be forced to replace them.  And that doesn’t even take into account the invaluable tribal knowledge embedded in current employees that could easily walk out the door at any time.

The last three years saw companies hold employees hostage.  Given the stormy economic climate, employees were, to a fair extent, afraid.  After seeing many of their colleagues caught up in workforce reductions, they could envision being next on the chopping block.  On top of this enduring angst, employees whose jobs were saved were rewarded by inheriting additional workloads and work hours.  Their positions were transformed into ones they did not sign up for, all the while not being compensated at levels commensurate with the additional load and responsibility.

That’s why workforce retention talks that are occurring now come off as disingenuous.  During the last three years, why didn’t managers and executives reach out to their front lines, listening to their concerns and ideas?  Why didn’t they offer more flexible work schedules to offset increased workloads?  Why didn’t they step up their recognition programs?  Why didn’t they promote a culture of loyalty?  Sadly, the answer to all these questions is because companies could get away with it.  There is no loyalty.  And now, in an environment that enables sweet revenge for all those pent-up feelings of being unappreciated and exploited, it’s the employees’ turn to vote with their feet.

Yes, let’s talk about raising the game regarding employee retention.  But first, let’s do it with consistency, regardless of the economy.  Let’s do all we can to protect our most valuable asset – people.  But first, let’s make sure we get the recruitment, hiring and onboarding phases right.  What good is an employee retention plan if your front-end processes are marred with delays, unresponsiveness, empty promises, and incomplete, inaccurate job descriptions?

Addressing workforce retention now implies that it wasn’t valued before.  It is being instituted reactively to put out preventable fires.  Where there’s no loyalty, there’s no trust.  One of my very first sales managers told me that the mark of great sales professionals isn’t how they perform during good times, but rather how they think and act during tough times.  That always stuck with me.  So why shouldn’t that adage apply to companies?

It’s all too easy for organizations to proclaim their care and concern for their employees’ welfare and thoughts during good times.  The real test is how adept they are at employee relations during tough times.  Better times may indeed be at our doorstep.  But before rushing off to avert unwanted employee attrition, put some serious thought into why people may want to leave.  In doing so, you may gain actionable corrective insight that ultimately may help encourage people to join…and stay.

 

Action items:

1.  Before you fully address employee retention, make sure to get all that comes before that tightened up.  This includes solidifying roles & responsibilities, interviewing & hiring, and onboarding.

2.  Workforce retention should be a company initiative that is ever-present and worked on consistently, whether in good or challenging times.  Otherwise, it can come off as disingenuous and ultimately backfire.

3.  Make sure that workforce retention strategies are ones that can be sustained and followed through on.  To not deliver on retention programs is far more deleterious to employee morale than not having any such programs at all.

Life Tips and Interviewing

Knowing how much my wife and I appreciate cactus flowers, my cousin in Tucson emailed us a PowerPoint presentation of many different cactus photos along with inspirational tips for living a better life.  The photos were beautiful.  I’ve never seen so many different kinds of blooms.  As you can well imagine, though, some of the tips were outright schmaltzy.  Do I really need to be reminded to eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar?  The daily arguments I have with my pants make it abundantly clear that I’m doing just the opposite.  And no, I’m not always going to smile while I walk.  I live in Boston.

Cheesiness aside, I thought about some of the sayings and how they apply to the wonderful world of interviewing.  Since I eat, sleep and drink recruitment, I can’t help but see how other facets of life apply to recruitment, job hunting, candidates, hiring managers, and interviewing cycles.  I’ll bet at times, you see the world through your line-of-work glasses, too.  Call it passion.  Then again, call it not taking enough time off.  Regardless, here are some recruitment related interpretations of these self-help tips:

“Life is a school and you are here to learn.  Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like Algebra class, but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.”

Interviews are all about learning.  As a candidate, your job is to prepare for the interview by researching and learning as much as possible about the company, the space it plays in and the people with whom you’ll interview.  In the interview, you should come prepared to ask a number of thoughtful and poignant questions.  You’re also chartered with studying the many nuances involved in interviews and how  interviewers conduct themselves, the kinds of questions they ask, how genuinely interested they are in learning about you, their ability to establish rapport, and how accommodating they are in answering your questions.

In Algebra class, you expect to be picked on to answer questions and subjected to pop quizzes.  Same thing in interviews.  It’s part of the curriculum.  In these circumstances, you tend to do well if you’re well-prepared, in a state of constant learning and adapting, and view challenges in positive terms.

This tip applies to hiring managers as well.  Hiring is a necessary evil.  It’s problematic because your plate already runneth over.  You don’t have time to interview, hire and onboard.  Yet, it’s critically vital to your business that you strive to meet your hiring needs and in turn, attain your business objectives.  If you don’t commit the time needed for successful hiring, the timelines will invariably become stretched.  What should have been a 6-week recruitment campaign swells into a 3-month albatross.  You can’t escape it.  Interviewing is part of the curriculum, so you must prioritize it, give it the time it requires, and be ultra responsive and trusting with your recruiting resources, whether internal, external, or both.

One thing that applies to both candidates and hiring managers is that ideally, you should come away from interviews with newfound knowledge about yourself as an interviewer or interviewee.  After all, it’s not like we had the luxury of taking courses on interviewing in college.  Get introspective and think about what went well and what could have gone better.  Seek feedback and learn from these experiences.

“Live with the 3 Es:  Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy.”

As a candidate, you’ll rarely lose points for exuding energy and enthusiasm.  It translates into being engaged.  It implies that you’re an upbeat go-getter and the kind of person who makes things happen.  And empathy can manifest itself by demonstrating superior listening skills and truly relating to the challenges and issues being discussed.  More importantly, if your mannerisms don’t convey these attributes, you can be labeled as disinterested, negative and plagued with poor interpersonal skills.  People will not gravitate towards you.  As I’ve counseled many candidates in the past, don’t try to be someone you’re not.  You must be yourself.  No one expects you to arrive at the interview dressed in a clown suit, swinging from the chandeliers while belting out your most heartfelt rendition of Sinatra’s “My Way.”  Instead, use common sense to think about what an interviewing manager would likely prefer to see from a candidate.

Once again, this tip applies to hiring managers as well.  Regardless of the current economic climate, the pendulum has already begun to swing in the other direction.  Attracting and engaging with strong capable candidates is getting tougher and tougher.  You must remember that interviewing is a two-way street and thus, it behooves you to sell candidates on the opportunity just as much as they are selling you on their candidacy.  The best way to do so is to describe the company, its people and environment with passion, optimism, and excitement.  Tell candidates what attracted you to the company.  Give examples of how new hires, who went on to do a stellar job, were rewarded with acknowledgement, appreciation, and career advancement opportunities.  Remember, you’re not the only high flying, innovative, market breaking solutions company around.

“Don’t compare your life to others’.  You have no idea what their journey is all about.”

That’s the beauty of life, or as a microcosm, our careers.  We all have taken our own distinct paths and thus, everyone brings a unique perspective along with a particular set of skills and experiences.  As a hiring executive, you’d be doing your organization a disservice if you sought out individuals who thought and acted just like you or your highest performing employees.  True, some personality traits and intangible qualities may make for a stronger fit, but last time I checked, you cannot breed employees.  Please be open to differences and the potential strengths those differences will bring to your organization.

As a candidate, you have seen others in your area of specialization land an exciting new position, advance to a role of greater responsibility, or remain in a job while others were laid off.  You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t at least a little bit envious.  Yet, you’re special and gifted in your own way.  It’s just that the right people (at the right time) haven’t yet discovered all you bring to the table.  Forget about comparing yourself to others.  It’s time to work on your own brand.  For hiring companies to pay attention to you, you better get the messaging right.  Why (what purpose) do people hire you?  What specific combinations of things do you do well?  What problems do you solve?  These points need to be stated emphatically on your resume and must come across in the interview.

Between holiday thoughts and New Year’s resolutions, this seems to be the time for heightened reflection.  The next time you hear a saying, think about how it applies to job hunting or hiring.  It may seem trite and irrelevant at first, but you just might surprise yourself at the flash of insight it provides.

 

Action items:

1.  Over the years, we’ve all had to learn life lessons.  Shouldn’t the same be true of interviewing and hiring?  Seek out those everyday life lessons and tips to see how they apply.

2.  Remember, nobody’s an expert at interviewing.  We’re all works in progress.  Thus, we need to proactively seek out opportunities of improvement (i.e., constructive feedback) or at least thoughts that inspire improvement.

3.  “The best is yet to come.”  Then again, “However good or bad a situation is, it will change.”  This must mean that both the best and worst are yet to come.  Hmmm… Better batten down the hatches while preparing to celebrate.

Gratitude Begets Attitude

You’ve probably heard that hiring managers should hire for both aptitude and attitude.  Yet, for both candidates and hiring executives, the aptitude side of the equation usually gets the most attention.  Aptitude comes in many forms, including domain knowledge, critical thinking skills, communications skills, resourcefulness, and educational pedigree.  These are all areas that candidates regularly work on throughout their career.  Whether it’s taking courses or breaking into a specific field and becoming a subject matter expert, aptitude gets top billing.

Interestingly, attitude, as it pertains to interviewing and hiring, can carry just as much influence.  However, it seems that attitude is deemed one of those nebulous attributes – almost subliminal in nature.  As a result, hiring managers pay attention to it more as an afterthought as far as the candidate is concerned.  And they don’t even ponder the notion that attitude can affect their ability to run an effective interview.  On the other side of the fence, candidates often don’t even try to bolster their attitude.  It falls into the “it is what it is” bucket.

Well, it is what it is because of outright neglect or lack of awareness.  With all our everyday worldly challenges in this rapid-fire world, we often resign ourselves to powerlessness in overcoming any negative effects on our demeanor.  This phenomenon can do a serious disservice if you are trying to present yourself favorably.

People want to hire those who exude a positive mental attitude – who overcome adversity or at least make the most of difficult times.  Candidates want to go to work for hiring executives who emanate optimism and belief in their convictions.  In this annual season of thankfulness and gratitude, how can we find ways to exercise our attitude muscles more often than once a year?

In a recent study conducted jointly by the University of California at Davis and University of Miami, researchers discovered that if subjects identified and listed just 5 things they were grateful for each week, their attitudes improved exponentially.  Granted, the stop-and-smell-the-roses society has long since passed.  Yet, by doing this simple exercise once a week, participants in the study were less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, were generally more optimistic, felt happier, reported fewer physical ailments, and slept better at night.  If people could take a pill once a week that produced these benefits with no side-effects, who wouldn’t want to take them?

Far too often, I’ve seen top tier candidates blow interviews because their attitude was in the toilet.  Similarly, I’ve witnessed strong candidates turn down great career opportunities because hiring managers put off negative vibes.  A well-managed attitude speaks to people’s emotional intelligence along with the existence of strong intangible qualities, such as self-awareness, restraint, tact, rapport, and resilience.  When all things are equal, a candidate with strong intangibles will nearly always win out.  Naturally, too, a candidate who is being courted by multiple suitors offering equally compelling opportunities will gravitate towards the executive team with strong intangibles.

So go ahead and enjoy that turkey.  Go around the table and talk about what you’re grateful for.  Crash on the couch with a well-earned, tryptophan-induced food coma and nap.  But what about next week and the week after?  What will you be grateful for then?

 

Action items:

1.  Especially in tough times, a well-managed attitude will invariably enable you to present yourself in a more favorable light.  No matter the difficulty, it could always be worse.  And with that, you have something to build on.

2.  People gravitate towards others who are upbeat, receptive and forward-looking.  Believe me, you want to be one of those people who others gravitate towards.

3.  In the interview and hiring cycle, attitude is equally important for candidates and hiring managers alike.

Social Networking for Recruitment Reveals More of the Same…and Then Some

Similar to individuals, both recruiters and hiring companies are advised to get on the social networking bandwagon and do more with it.  As the old axiom goes, better get on that train before it leaves the station.  Great.  So we’re all on the train.  Now what?

Interestingly, despite the ongoing pervasive gloom, doom and uncertainty that surrounds all of us, recruiters and hiring companies are scrambling to hire for multiple positions.  Yet, they’re still coming up short in identifying and engaging strong prospective candidates.  In the past, they resorted to posting jobs on Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, etc.  Then came Craigslist, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  Now, there are job posting aggregators that help spread the word by canvassing nearly all the venues.  Woopty doo!  Does this mean we’ve reached the recruitment promised land?

Hardly…In fact, most recruiters and hiring companies are simply using these additional sites to do what they’ve been doing all along – engage in reactive recruitment (posting a job opportunity and simply reacting to the incoming barrage of unqualified applicants).  Granted, they have the ability to reach a broader audience, but the method and messaging hasn’t really changed.  In some cases, the messaging has deteriorated, leading to unintended consequences.

Thanks to the get-to-the-point nature of social networking sites, we’re able to see just how desperate and lost hiring companies can be in this brave new world.  Here’s a recent example taken from a LinkedIn group:

“How do you recruit great staff? Do you have a successful strategy? Share it with us.  One of our biggest challenges is getting staff, both with experience who can hit the ground running, as well as junior staff with potential to learn. Job postings…have been largely ineffective. Are you using great recruiters who work for you? What else are you doing? If you are using a recruiter, how much are you paying? We need to hire a lot of new staff and are looking for advice.”

Better yet, check out this tweet:

“CompanyX is hiring six #SharePoint professionals asap. Work on the best projects & train to be an #MCM. Ping @xxxx to learn more!”

Let’s say you’re a SharePoint consultant and you happen to come across this tweet.  What are some plausible knee-jerk reactions you’d likely have?  How about these:

• “So they’re hiring 6 of us asap, which likely means we’ll be thrown into projects with little or no training.  There certainly wouldn’t be any time to train for MCM certification.”
• “Hmmm, I’ll be 1 of 6 hired into this small company.  What resources could they possibly have to ensure effective onboarding for 6 people all at once and how special am I going to feel there?  This reeks of instability!”
•  “They’re boiling down what should be a set of critically important hires down to 140 characters?  I don’t think so.”
• “How do you define ‘best projects’ and besides, they’re doing nothing to extol the virtues of the company.”
• “It might as well be a job posting for McDonald’s – ‘Work on the best burgers & train to be a late shift Assistant Manager.’”

What are these companies actually saying about themselves and the jobs they’re looking to fill?  Ultimately, the messaging gets cheapened while the position lacks importance.  The company comes off as desperate, like the last two minutes of a 30-minute infomercial.  It certainly evokes questions about how such a company runs the rest of their business.  For some reason, this reminds me of Mr. Subliminal on Saturday Night Live!

Companies are good at the things that prompted them to form their company in the first place.  I can assure you that for most companies, taxes, telephony, web access, legal counsel, and recruitment are NOT on the list of things they’re good at.  So in the spirit of saving time and money, companies adopt a DIY mentality around recruitment that invariably costs them significant time, getting them way behind on their hiring objectives, all the while suffering an unforeseen opportunity cost compounded by delayed or poor hires.

The advent of social networking hasn’t changed this dynamic.  Instead, it has exacerbated the syndrome by airing out recruiters’ and hiring companies’ frailties, which in turn, tarnishes their brand.  Talk about unintended consequences!  When reviewing a job posting, candidates should turn a critical eye and think about what it’s really saying about the company.  It’s amazing how much more you can deduce from what appears to be an ordinary message.

At the end of the day, you can put up as many fast-food restaurants in the neighborhood as you wish, but it’ll never replace home cooking.  As it pertains to recruitment, home cooking means trusting vitally important hiring needs to a search professional who knows how to effectively leverage social networks, bolster your company’s brand equity, and engage in proactive recruitment methods.

 

Action items:

1.  Using social networks to promote your cause can all-to-easily backfire as it exposes everything and positions you in ways you hadn’t intended.

2.  Your tweets, blog posts, Facebook comments are lasting reflections of both you and your company.  If you mess up the messaging, there are no mulligans or pencil erasers to bail you out.

3.  Concentrate on what you and your company do well and seek out trusted advisors to conquer the rest.

4.  For candidates, try reading between the lines to gain insight on what these job postings might be saying about the company.

Put the Gun Down!

We all commit lapses in judgment.  All of us.  Even you.  The question is how can we reduce the frequency of these occurrences while minimizing the negative impact when they take place?  This especially bears significance during the interview cycle.

Yesterday, I had to give a candidate the unfortunate news that the position he had been vying for was offered to another candidate.  This is a conversation I never relish, even when the chosen candidate is also one of mine (not the case this go-around).  After I reached out to convey the disappointing news, this is what I receive via email for a response:

“Do you really think I believe what you wrote??  Come on man, I’m much more clever than that.  Have you ever watched the show The Mentalist?  I see right through everything…Patrick Jane is me in a nutshell.  Good luck!”

Of course, I didn’t dignify his email with a response.  Instead, he goes into the universal DNU recruitment category (Do Not Use).  This live wire freakazoid will never have me or anyone in my network as an advocate.

Recently, a candidate was turned down early in the interview process due to a less-than-favorable behavioral profile assessment result.  Without checking with me first, the candidate fired off flame-o-grams to the CEO, CFO, and two other key execs, telling them how their basis for decision-making is flawed, pathetic and doomed to failure.  That certainly didn’t get him into anyone’s good graces, least of which mine, as that put me in a compromised position with the hiring client company.

I remember the first time this sort of thing happened to me.  I broke the news to a candidate that he didn’t do well in the initial interview and was not moving forward in the process.  Trying to provide specific constructive feedback, given in the spirit of helping him improve, I was met with surprising belligerence.  It ended quickly with:  “Don’t you ever present me and my resume to anyone ever again!”  Though flustered, I found it was by far, one of the easiest promises I’ve ever had to keep.

This type of misguided reaction occurs often enough to warrant some reflection.  Why do people blow up and ultimately shoot themselves in the foot?  We can only surmise that several forces are at play.  First, acute insecurity is a likely trigger.  After all, these candidates’ all-too-delicate self-esteem has been undermined.  To them, being turned down is in effect a personal affront.  Instead of viewing the situation as a potential learning and growth experience, they suddenly transform into injured wild animals.  And there’s nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than an injured wild animal.

Shooting oneself in the foot can be much more subtle.  How many times have you finished a round of interviews, believing that you aced each meeting, only to be turned down for no explicable reason?  Sometimes, it’s something you did or said while other times, you could be a victim of circumstance.

For example, some years ago as VP for a small software company, I was looking to backfill a Marketing Manager position.  The incumbent was terminated because she didn’t accomplish her projects or objectives satisfactorily, all the while annoying the entire staff with her relentless know-it-all attitude.  During the interview process to replace her, one candidate appeared competent, but was talking too much and going off on tangents.  There was one moment that crystallized it for all of us on the interview team when this candidate proclaimed in matter-of-fact terms:  “I’m well-known as an endless source of useless trivia.”  Painful memories of the terminated Marketing Manager suddenly plagued our collective consciousness and that was all we needed.  On to the next candidate.

Generally, something happens in interviews that turns people off.  The challenge, of course is gaining specific actionable feedback.  In this highly litigious and vindictive business environment, hiring companies have become less and less forthcoming about their real reasons for passing up on candidates.

Instead of relying upon sketchy feedback, candidates are better served to build up their self-awareness muscle group.  How can you do this?  Not easily and certainly not quickly.  As a career coach, I have often given candidates the homework assignment of discussing their communication tendencies openly and honestly with trusted friends, colleagues and family members.  When nervous, do you talk too much, go off-topic or come off as stiff?  Do you struggle to maintain eye contact or establish rapport?  Do you sometimes demonstrate a lack of preparedness, trying instead to do things off the cuff?  What are some of your idiosyncrasies?  Vulnerabilities?  The more you learn about the delta between people’s perceptions of how you interact and your own perceptions, the more you’ll be able to recalibrate your own self-awareness antennae.

Candidates are not alone when it comes to deal-breaking gaffes.  I had a client company who was in serious discussions with one of my candidates.  The Board of Directors member who met with the candidate then turned around and told his network outside the company about this candidate, including his name, and why they were passing on him.  Well, sure enough, the news traveled fast and soon made its way right back to the candidate, who was both mortified and irate over this flagrant disregard for confidentiality, let alone the divulgence of negative information about him.  Of course, none of his positive attributes was shared, but even if they were, all interviews must be conducted in full confidentiality – a point that is specified in most recruiter search agreements.  As a result, that company is likely getting its name tarnished for its lack of professionalism and trust.

In this relentless fast pace world, where nanoseconds are the new minutes and getting off the grid is reserved only for sleep, it’s all too easy to commit errors in judgment.  We simply don’t have the luxury of time to think things through.  Yet, when faced with the possibility of forming conclusions that could very well be premature, spouting off to executives or recruiters over issues you should hold yourself accountable for, or divulging confidential information, STOP!  Take a deep breath, vent with a friend or therapist, or better yet, sleep on it.  Give your better judgment and sense of tact a chance to catch up to the heat of the moment.  Put the gun down and step away.

Action items:

1.  As much as you want to lash out at someone over an unfortunate circumstance, stop and compare what you may gain in short-term gratification vs. the long-term negative ramifications it may cause with that person and presumably, many people in that person’s network.

2.  When you receive disappointing news, your first impulse should not be to adopt a victim mentality, but rather a desire to learn, improve, and become stronger.

3.  We are our own worst enemies.  So as the saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”  Self-awareness is key to effective interpersonal skills.

Proactive Job Hunting on Steroids

As a follow-up to last month’s blog post, I want to further delineate between reactive and proactive job hunting.  I’m amazed by the number of actively searching candidates who are under the belief they are taking the bull by the horns and proactively working on finding their next career move.

Just this morning, I was on the phone with an intelligent and talented individual who has been job hunting for 18 months.  He lamented how he’s been searching for relevant job postings and has applied to no fewer than 75 positions, resulting in only 2 callbacks.  “What else are you doing?” I asked.  Pregnant pause.  You know the rest of the story because there is no rest of the story.

Applying to umpteen job postings does not constitute proactive job hunting, nor does it establish momentum.  Each submission of your resume equates to buying a lottery ticket:  If you don’t play, then you can’t win.  But the chances of winning are absurdly low.  This is reactive job hunting.

I’m not saying to give up on reactive job hunting entirely.  Rather, it’s vitally important to complement it with other tactics that enable you to assert yourself, gain momentum and better control your destiny.  Here are some suggestions I’ve been giving candidates to help bolster their chances of making headway in their search.

First, research companies, not for their job postings, but for identifying organizations that intrigue you and are relevant to your background.  Read their press releases and news stories.  Then, make a list of these target companies.  At the same time, identify all the people that make up your network and assess the heath and well-being of those connections.  Who belongs in your network?  Just about anyone you’ve crossed paths with who can potentially help you.  This could include former co-workers, bosses, industry-specific contacts, customers, vendors, business consultants, recruiters, friends, and family.

Now that you have your target company list and network base established, it’s time to go to work.

1.  See if anyone in your network works at any of the companies on your target company list and contact them.

2.  See if anyone in your network has a connection to someone who works at any of the companies on your target company list and see if they can make an introduction.

3.  Contact the C- or VP-level execs at your target companies directly via phone (likely a voice mail) and email (go online to figure out the company’s email naming convention), expressing interest in their company and notable news (e.g., press releases, articles, white papers) with the goal to gain an informational meeting, lunch, or call.

It might go something like this:  “I’ve been reading with great interest about XYZ Corp., in particular the news of your latest funding event, but also about the press release from last month on…  Given my background and expertise in…, I’m quite interested in discussing potential new applications of your innovative solution.  I’d like to learn more about your go-to-market strategy and product roadmap as I have some ideas I’d like to share.  Can we set up a brief introductory meeting or call?   Please get back to me with your availability.”  Obviously, use your own words.  Also, if the press release or article you’re referencing includes a quote from the CEO or other executive on company initiatives, priorities, or challenges, you can piggyback that in your message as well.

4.  When the companies in your target list hold regular events, such as webinars, podcasts, exhibits at trade shows, product demos, etc., attend them if you can.  Afterwards, contact those involved to compliment them and perhaps ask a follow-up question or two.  See if you can engage with them.

5.  Research and identify customers or vendors of the companies on your target list that happen to be prior customers or vendors of yours.  For those in common, with which you’ve had a good relationship, contact them and see if they’d be willing to make an introduction to their primary contact within the company, vouching for your credibility and expertise while making it clear that a meeting with you would be a good use of their time.

6.  Contact recruiters that play in your space and see if they can get you in the door at any of the companies on your target list, even if there’s no current opening that’s appropriate for you.  Often times, growing companies will create a position opportunistically for an individual they deem valuable to their organization and integral to its key initiatives.

These proactive measures represent just a handful of suggestions.  I’m sure that if you sought out career mentoring from trusted resources, you’d come across other formidable ideas as well.  And naturally, they won’t always pan out.  But don’t let that discourage you.  By employing these tactics, you’re increasing the odds of getting a foot in the door.  Of course, you need to have the other components to job hunting ready to go.  In particular, an industrial strength, professionally written resume along with compelling interviewing chops are must-haves.  Put on your sales & marketing hat and make something happen!

 

Action items:

1.  Know the difference between reactive and proactive job hunting, making sure not to fool yourself into thinking that you’re doing all you can.

2.  Remain positive and don’t lose hope.  And whatever you do, don’t subscribe to a victim mentality (i.e., tough job market and nobody’s calling me back).

3.  You’ve always heard about the power of networking.  Now here’s your chance to make the most of it.

4.  Seek objective advice and mentoring during your career search.  After all, you’re right in the thick of it, so you stand to benefit from others’ perspectives.

Before You Apply for that Posted Position…

Earlier this month, a good friend of mine was laid off from his long held position.  Over the years, he received accolades, promotions, and salary increases.  Yet, the company, acquired two times over, was now subject to consolidation by its gargantuan parent company.

I give my friend a lot of credit.  He didn’t panic.  He didn’t become belligerent or jaded.  In short order, he picked himself up and started the journey to seek his career’s next chapter.  Naturally, he updated his resume and perused the job sites, just like anyone else in his predicament.  Without any coaching, he did two other things that all newly minted job seekers should do.  First, he let his network know of his status as well as the kinds of roles that would make sense for him moving forward.  Secondly, he researched companies and formed a target list.  This is where the story gets interesting.

One of the companies on his target list had a posting on the Careers section of their web site that would make for an ideal fit.  What would you do at this juncture?  Of course, you’d apply for the position.  Luckily, that’s not what my friend ended up doing.  Instead, he first reached out to several well-connected members of his network, including me, and asked if we had any additional insight into the company.

That was a good question to ask, but not the best.  He was about to submit his resume when I stopped him.  Before applying for the position and having his resume thrown into a virtual pile along with 50 or 100 other suitably qualified candidates, he went back to his trusted network and asked a simple yet critical question:  “Do you, or someone in your network, happen to know anyone at the company?”  For all he knew, one of us might know a recruiter that had an established relationship with the company.

If not, there are two viable alternatives.  There may be a recruiter who works with similar companies and may be able to prospect their way into the company.  But if the recruiter angle doesn’t pan out, how about contacting someone who actually works at the company and seeing if they’d be open to advocating for you?  As we all know, most companies have an internal employee referral program in place, providing a financial incentive for employees to recommend people for open positions.  Why not try to engage with an employee, since they’d have a vested interest in your getting hired?

This is precisely what we did.  We reached out and connected with a 6-year employee at the company who was more than happy to speak with my friend.  After their phone call, the employee was convinced that my friend could indeed make for a compelling candidate for the open position and he delivered my friend’s resume personally to the powers that be.  The very next day, my friend had a phone interview with the HR Manager, who, like our internal advocate, agreed that there may be a fit, and moved the process forward by delivering the resume to the hiring manager along with the recommendation to interview my friend.

Will my friend get the job?  Time will tell.  Regardless, we got him in the door, breaking through the resume “noise” and enabling him to stand out.  Needless to say, a recommendation by an internal employee in good standing will invariably carry significant weight.  Naturally, if you go with this tactic, you certainly run the risk of hooking up with an employee who is not well-regarded in the company.  In this case, the employee who engaged with us has been with the company for a while and during that time, has been promoted twice.

The point to all of this is that job seeking necessitates not only preparedness and research, but also resourcefulness and creativity.  There are many ways to initiate contact with a target company – informational meetings with executives or employees, trade shows, recruiters, social networking, and your own network.  Bear in mind this can only be accomplished well by maintaining a positive mental attitude, a common sense quality yet one that, during challenging personal or professional times, often melts away like an ice cube on a sidewalk in July.  The other point is you don’t have to break any rules or do anything outlandish to get your foot in the door.  It’s all about making the most of your network.  So before you apply for that posted position, consider your options and ask for advice.  You’re not alone.

 

Action items:

1.  Keep people in your network aware of your job-seeking status, along with what they should be looking for.  The more people who become aware of your goals, the more likely it is that your goals will come to fruition.

2.  Remain vigilant on preserving a positive mental attitude.  Every day, do something to keep the job-hunting momentum moving forward.

3.  On a regular basis, research companies and update your target list.  Whether or not these companies have posted a position that’s right for you, seek out ways to initiate contact, whether it be an informational interview, a lunch, or a member of your network helping to create an in.

4.  Applying for a position directly should be your last resort, not your first.

Two Strong Candidates, One Position

Two qualified and capable candidates are vying for a position with an exciting high-growth company.  Both candidates want the job.  Both candidates can ramp up quickly and do the job.  This is a common scenario, played over and over.  Despite their matching competency, someone has to come out ahead. On what basis will the decision be made?  While there are many pieces to the hiring decision puzzle, let’s look at some of the intangible deciding factors likely to sway a hiring executive’s preference towards one candidate over the other.

1.  Preparation

What does preparation entail?  To one candidate, it means reading the company’s website and studying the job description.  As a candidate, can you do this and still get the job?  Perhaps.  Is there more you can do to prepare and perhaps stack the deck in your favor?  Absolutely!

To another candidate, preparedness means taking the initiative to ensure that you’ve left no stone unturned.  You’ve researched the space the company plays in, including learning about the competitive landscape, industry trends, and latest news.  How do the chief competitors position themselves differently from the company you’re interviewing with?  What does the analyst community say about the companies as well as the space in general?

For a candidate who is truly passionate about the company and the space they play in, conducting this research should be a labor of love and thus, ought to spark an insatiable thirst for knowledge.  As a result, this exercise will surface a myriad of thoughtful questions to ask the hiring company – how they’re differentiated from their competitors, why they win deals against their competitors, why they lose deals, how they see the market evolving along with their readiness to capitalize on that direction, what their business objectives are and how they’re performing against them.

Other ways to set yourself apart is to exploit your network to try and get the inside scoop on the company itself.  Use LinkedIn to read up on the employees, not just the executive team.  Perhaps someone you’re connected with on LinkedIn is connected to an employee at the company.  Why not reach out and see if they’d be willing to spend 15 minutes with you on the phone, describing the culture, the people, their general take on employee satisfaction, and the company’s financial condition.  Ask them why they joined the company and what has surprised them the most since they joined.  This is a good question to ask anyone, including the hiring manager.

2.  Energy, Engagement and Rapport

In the interview setting, engagement could simply mean answering the questions effectively.  A candidate could block out all other parameters for the sake of concentrating on answering the questions well.  But, there is more to the picture than merely formulating technically correct responses.

To another candidate, energy, engagement and rapport represent several intangible, yet powerful, elements that could make all the difference in the mind of the hiring manager.  Energy denotes sitting upright, near the edge of your chair.  It means matching the interviewer’s pace and using active language that is delivered with a voice that incorporates vocal inflections, animation, or emphasis where needed.

Engagement means invoking strong listening skills and eye contact while exuding genuine interest – all necessary to stay in sync with the interviewer.  Rapport involves establishing a connection and bolstering chemistry, enabling the interviewer to feel comfortable enough with you to envision you fitting in.

The only way energy, engagement and rapport work to your favor is if they’re real.  You’ll know that they’re real because you’ll find yourself in that zone where the opportunity feels so much more than a job.  It makes you feel like this is your calling.  This is a special opportunity to make a huge difference with an organization that truly resonates with your DNA.  In fact, much of your past experience supports this potential career move, like a story that makes sense.  Anything contrived or forced will come off that way and is likely to backfire.  This can serve as a litmus test for you.  If you’re not feeling it, then perhaps this isn’t the optimal career opportunity for you.

3.  Do the Ceremonial Interview Dance

Some candidates feel they are above having to put up with the interview process – they can see right through all those typical interview questions.  They’d rather gain control and run the meetings their way, especially since they’re interviewing the company as well.

True, interviewing is a two-way street.  However, astute candidates will put aside their ego and go along with what seems to be unnecessary protocol.  Why do you have to fill out an employment application if all the information already exists on the resume you provided?  Why do you have to answer the “What are your weaknesses” question for the third time in a row?  Why do I only get 5 minutes at the end to ask my questions?

If you scribble your way through the employment application out of sheer frustration, leaving some redundant parts blank, doing so can easily say something about your willingness to follow directions, let alone attention to detail.  If you don’t provide an answer to the weaknesses question, it can appear that you may have a deficit around self-awareness.  If you scoff at an interview question like the weaknesses one, then you could be justifiably accused of having little or no sense of tact combined with too much attitude.

At the end of the interview, you aren’t given enough time to ask your questions.  Feeling a bit testy about it?  Just remember, your objective is to close on a next step in the process.  As long as you excel in the interviews and keep moving through the process, you’ll have ample opportunity to ask follow-up questions.  If you shoot yourself in the foot, however, you’ll never have that chance.

Virtually no one enjoys being interviewed.  In our scenario, there are two candidates vying for the same position.  One of you will get to the Promised Land.  It behooves you to be a gracious and accommodating contestant, even if the game isn’t to your liking.  Either way, you’re committing to hours of scrutiny.  As many of our grandparents used to say, “If you’re going to do a job, you might as well do it right.”  In that spirit, I encourage you to go all out and apply yourself.  After all, which of the two candidates do you want to be?

 

Action items:

1.  Preparation portrays many positive intangible attributes in the eyes of interviewers – sense of initiative, genuine interest, strong committed work ethic, passion, resourcefulness, inquisitiveness, determination, and organization of thought.

2.  Interviews will vary widely, from company to company and interviewer to interviewer.  Be prepared for either a conversational interview style or a more draconian interrogation.  Don’t get lulled into a false sense of security with a conversational interview and in a similar vein, don’t get put off by an interviewer who makes you feel like you’re on the witness stand being cross-examined.

3.  Do the interview dance.  You may not particularly like the dance, but there are many things in life that we must prevail through despite how they run counter to our own preferences.  Following the protocol shows your ability to be graceful and poised under pressure.  Go with the flow and keep reminding yourself of the end-game – close them on a next step.  Besides, it’s their dance.  Let them lead.

Cost or Opportunity Cost?

On both sides of the hiring fence — hiring companies and candidates, there is no escaping the need to set yourself up for success.  Yet, as it pertains to the hiring process, how do you define success?  For candidates, it would appear obvious that success is marked by landing a job.  Similarly for hiring managers, success comes with filling an open position.  But we need to dig a little deeper.

Let’s say that as an unemployed, underemployed, or underpaid candidate, you have nothing to wear to an interview.  On what basis will you decide which clothes to wear and how you will obtain them?  Hypothetically, here are some possible options:

1.  Although you’re not a clothing designer or a tailor, you decide that cost is the ultimate factor and you buy the raw fabric yourself, trying to stitch together a home made suit.

2.  You’re not going to make your own suit, but cost is still the prevailing factor, so you go to your local Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift store and buy an out-of-style ‘70s polyester suit (if you’re a guy) or an ‘80s suit with the shoulder pads (if you’re a woman).

3.  Your highest priority is to appear professional and sharp with clothes that are flattering, so you invest in a new suit and have it tailored.

Could you still land a job if you opted for the first or second option?  Probably…eventually.  But it may take many months longer and along the way, you will likely have lost out on more optimal positions than the one in which you were ultimately hired.  So you spent next to nothing on the clothes, but you spent tens, if not hundreds of times the cost of a new tailored suit by enduring many additional months of not moving your career ahead.

Amazingly, I come across many highly intelligent and capable candidates every day who stack the deck against themselves, all in the name of saving money in the short term.  No, I’m not referring to their clothing, but rather their resume.

Many candidates, including MBAs and executive level individuals, simply don’t have the competency to build and present their own brand.  This alone is not the crux of the problem.  Rather, it’s the people in this large group who don’t tap into their own self-awareness long enough to realize that resume writing and brand building is not their forte.  Worse yet, there’s another subset who don’t seem to value the importance of hiring a professional to develop a well-crafted resume that bolsters brand equity.  Going back to the clothing analogy, these are the folks who would choose options 1 or 2 above, all in the name of saving a buck in the short term.

Hiring companies are not impervious to this myopic mindset either.  Many would rather rely on their highly esteemed, yet limited network to find candidates.  It doesn’t take long for that well to run dry.  Besides, this is not a scalable hiring strategy.  Next, they resort to reactive recruitment by listing postings on job boards because it’s cheap and seemingly easy.  Several months and hundreds of unqualified inbound resumes later, they’re back to square one.  Once again, this has cost significant wasted time, effort, and burden.

Generally, companies outsource payroll, benefits, telecom, and PR.  You’d think that for recruiting human capital – a company’s number-one asset in terms of both cost and value, they would seek out professional services as well.  Talent acquisition is only getting tougher and more competitive.  For a company to meet its hiring objectives, which in turn will better enable it to achieve sustained growth, spending money on a quality tailored suit (i.e., a professional, proactive recruitment resource and strategy) is tantamount to success.

These depictions of candidates and hiring companies are not exaggerated.  They are happening every day all around us.  This is worse than “penny wise, pound foolish.”  It’s really “penny foolish, pound foolish.”  Advancing one’s career and building one’s team are major life and business issues that deserve a committal of prioritization, budget, and trusted professional resources.  Spending wisely does not mean avoiding costs.  Instead, spending wisely should equate to doing all you can to avoid opportunity cost.

Action items:

1.  Of course, we’re all watching every dollar like never before.  But whether you’re a candidate or hiring executive, please don’t short change yourself.  This is too big a deal not to stack the deck in your favor.

2.  Just as you serve your business community with your subject matter expertise, invest in trusted advisors for effective interviewing and hiring.

3.  Whether it’s a poorly crafted resume or an ineffective job posting, both will cheapen your brand and cost you plenty over the long haul.  Buy the nice tailored suit!

The Competition We Neglect

In the gym at 5:00am, I look around and wonder about people’s sense of competition.  Is it me or did that guy with the red trunks and shaved head add an extra 10 pounds to the barbell the other guy just finished lifting in order to outlift his competition?  Did that woman with the iPod strapped to her arm increase her pace on the elliptical now that another equally fit woman got on the machine next to her?  It is a natural part of the human condition to compare oneself to others.  But to what extent and at what cost?

For a hiring manager in this rapidly changing talent market, I can assure you that it’s wise to remain acutely aware of your competition.  That goes without saying.  Sure, there are those head-to-head competitors that play in your space.  But I’m referring to the many other companies that aim to hire the same kinds of individuals you seek.

Granted, you may be a high growth company that’s taking on more new customers than you can count.  And your environment fosters a “do what it takes” mentality, embracing perpetual change (mainly because you haven’t had the time to enact a tangible plan).  The entire management team consists of straight-shooters and they don’t care how long employees work each day, as long as the job gets done.  Then again, each individual is taking on a workload big enough for two.  Candidates are lucky just to gain an interview with you, waiting endlessly for you to come up for air long enough to move forward with a delay-ridden hiring cycle.  Do you really think you can outlift (read outhire) your competitors?

Meanwhile, your most formidable competition boasts of a high growth track as well, but has a balanced, committed plan to help mentor new employees as they get ramped up.  They execute their hiring process with responsiveness, clear communications, and minimal delays – ready to attract and move quickly to hire talented candidates.  They offer a distinct and time-bound career advancement path.  They offer strong benefits combined with a compensation plan that is truly commensurate with the market demands.  They haven’t deluded themselves into believing they’re the only enticing high growth game in town.

In this portrayal, you are your own worst competition.  To be fair, you will attract some candidates.  If you’re lucky, you may even hire a few in spite of yourself.  But what can you do to outhire competing companies?  First, let’s get introspective and think about the candidate experience with your company.  They may see a high flying company, but it’s coming in the context of a scatterbrain dysfunctional hiring process that doesn’t seem to prioritize candidates first…or even pretend to!  And this is just the interviewing phase.  It doesn’t take much forethought for a candidate to extrapolate this out to their potential life as a full-time employee.

When you finally manage to interview a candidate, are you selling them on the opportunity or are you taking a holier-than-thou attitude, in which candidates are expected do all the selling on why they should have the privilege to work for your esteemed company?  A little humility and self-actualization can go a long way to make your company more competitive in a tight hiring market.

Second, let’s compare your offering with that of other companies seeking similar talent.  How does your compensation plan stack up?  Benefits?  Culture?  Advancement opportunities?  Understandably, you may not have your finger on the pulse.  Yet, there are resources available to help gain insight, including recruiters, peer groups, trusted networking contacts, and perhaps your own recent hires.

Candidates are certainly no exception to this competition blind spot.  I’m amazed by the number of candidates that ask me questions ad nauseum about the other candidates interviewing for the same position.  In my book, they don’t lose points for asking such questions.  But if these same candidates put as much concern into the health and well-being of their resumes, grammar in their follow-up thank you emails, quality of their references, and knowledge of interviewing best practices (along with the desire to improve), they wouldn’t need to be so obsessed with other candidates.

My competition at the gym comes in the form of a worn out rotator cuff, bone chips in the elbow, and lifelong asthma.  It reminds me of an adage:  “You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.”  I’ll take it one step further.  Since we tend to be our own worst enemies, there’s no better sparring partner than ourselves.  Whether a hiring executive or candidate, the next time you experience an unfavorable interview result, take a closer look at your most nightmarish competitor.  Hold up a mirror.

Action Items:

1.  We are our own worst enemies.  This applies to companies as well – in particular their challenge to attract and hire top talent.  Improvement starts by looking inward and seeking counsel from those who have their finger on the talent market pulse.

2.  Competition comes in many forms.  Become aware of them all.

3.  Don’t start by trying to outdo others at the gym.  After all, there will always be someone who is stronger or faster.  Sure, you can become aware of those around you for comparative purposes.  But focus on yourself first.  You are your own best sparring partner.