Intelligence to Run With

To be honest?  I hate recruiting and try to get out of it any way I can.  Unfortunately, I’m really good at it which is why so many of my small companies are willing to pay my high hourly rate for this service.  Not being a certified HR recruiter I’ve amassed some harsh observations.  Harsh?  maybe because I’m jaded about the process, maybe I’m just becoming cynical, maybe the lack of formal training but here are some interesting things to consider when you are recruiting next:

Resumes.  Fact or fiction?  Really, isn’t this just a piece of marketing collateral?  We’re trying to “sell” ourselves and use all those power words (drove the initiative, delivered in three weeks, developed, created, maintained … action verbs ‘r’ us!) to reassure potential employers we’re the best.  We did it all.  Lately I’m starting to see resumes as just spam and I’m spending more time, and frankly more emphasis, on the cover letter.

Writers.  I hate to say it but I have a bias for people who write well.  If your cover letter is poorly written I’m going to pass, regardless of your stellar qualifications.  Why?  Because good, logical writing - the flow of an idea - is an incredibly good sign for how they think, communicate, make things and their point of view understood.  If you haven’t won me over in the written word, well, it is unlikely you will during the interview. One of my last recruiting jobs was for a Product Manager and each candidate had to write a market requirements document.  The managers looked at it for content - I looked at it from a writing/flow/point of view.  It really made a difference in the candidates we went forward with.

Assignments.  I am now becoming increasingly more adamant that finalists have to do some kind of assignment or test.  I’m finding that lately candidates can really talk a good story but when you test-drive them you find out they are not really as good as they are on paper.  At this stage I’m still just on skills assessment or assignments (nothing that takes longer than 4 - 6 hours in aggregate).  However, one of my colleagues goes further and insists on contracting for a mini-assignment if possible to see what a candidate is like.  Interesting way of getting to know them.

Experience.  My clients give me laundry lists of what kind of experience they are looking for but, really, at this juncture candidates should know what “software programmer” means.  I’ve been getting really cheeky in my job postings of late and have been including the following that seems to suit me just fine:

We could (and perhaps should) list a bunch of specific requirements, years of experience in particular languages and all the usual job posting type stuff but, really, we’re looking for people with the right spark of intelligence, personality, development experience and drive (and communicates and plays well with other humans).

Yes, some baseline level of experience is required but as you know most people master a role in 12-18 months and then start to look at what’s next in their career development.  I don’t really care how long they’ve been doing a role - just that they’ve been doing their job well.  And isn’t the above paragraph more accurate than “5 years experience in ….”?

Speaking of experience: my thoughts on formal education.  Almost every post I write includes a college degree, certification, or some other formal requirement for the position.  Really?  It seems a bit hypocritical as I am a CFO that doesn’t have an accounting degree.  Yup, it is definitely possible to find intelligent people who do their jobs exceptionally well that didn’t get a formal eduction (I have an undergrad in International Finance - I learned accounting at Sun Microsystems).  Again, I get it is an indicator as to the level of experience required but most CFO’s know, as do other roles, what level of accounting understanding is required to do their job well.

These are just a few things that I have observed.  Maybe the recruiting world is moving forward or maybe not.  But I feel it necessary to challenge the old school requirements and approach to recruiting so that we can find innovative talent to take us into the next decade.

It sounds like a bad latin dance-floor move.  Pecha Kucha (pronounced “peh-cha koo-cha”).  But it seems to be all the rage in presentation styles these days: 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide.  Or, for those in the know: “20×20″.  Yup, 6 minutes and 40 seconds to get your point across.  It ties in nicely with some guidance I was given a long time ago regarding making presentations:  be brief. be brilliant. be done.  But why now?  Why this?

Why Pecha Kucha?

Pecha Kucha Night started in Japan in 2003 as a way to attract people to an event space.  Initially it was for young designers to meet, network and show their work - quickly.  Of course, all things cool emanate out of creative fields and the masses followed.  These days people talk about travels, research projects, hobbies, collections, well, just about anything really.  It’s a real social environment, not just a bunch of presentations, and can be found in most cities.

Pecha Kucha has made its way into business because internal meetings are increasingly becoming a time suck without really getting anything done.  By implementing the 20×20 format the hope is to force presenters to focus their message, reduce interruptions and avoid “death by Powerpoint”.

I can’t help but wonder: is this the new Toastmasters?  I mean in a world of Twitter and no one able to concentrate on a thought for more than 10 minutes, it seems, is this how we become great speakers?  leaders?  concise and to the point?  Toastmasters-lite?  Or is this the evolution/expansion of the “elevator pitch”? - conveying your idea in the time span of an elevator ride: approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.

Regardless of the presentation style the underlying theme is certainly the same:

get your point across concisely in a way that will stimulate thoughts and further discussion.

And if you don’t - solicit feedback after your presentation to help you hone those skills.  Good luck!

As you may have noticed my clients have been on a hiring spree which is why I’ve been writing so much about different facets of the recruiting process.  Unfortunately, during the interviews, more than one candidate has asked me:

what’s your exit strategy?

Fair enough question, I guess.  But why aren’t they focusing on what the company is currently building instead of wanting to know how they are going to leave it (before they’ve even started!)?  I mean, seriously,

would you go into a relationship planning the breakup? would you write the prenup on a first date? would you meet with a divorce lawyer the morning of your wedding? that would be ridiculous, right? Rework, building to flip is building to flop, Page 59

I want to hire people who are jazzed about what the company is offering today and they’re *so* excited they want to be a part of delivering that vision.

And as many of the candidates don’t have a financial background perhaps they don’t know that they way you run a company to be acquired is substantially different than building something great.  For acquisitions you are always looking and contorting your offering to the company you guessed may want to buy you.  What about your customers? building long term relationships? doing anything for the success of the venture?

What if I said we were planning on being bought by Microsoft?  Google?  Would that make them take the job?  If they didn’t follow up with (a) how much of the stock option pool do I get? and (b) what percentage of the outstanding shares is the pool? - well, then, even though we were bought they may still get nothing.  But no one every asks me *those* questions so they haven’t really thought this “exit strategy” question through - other than the idea that it is kinda like winning the lottery.

I usually answer that we are trying to be the best little company we can be.  Because we are.  However, the exit strategy question is a bit of an indicator for me that their priorities are a bit out of whack.  Just sayin’.

There was a common theme amongst my friends this past holiday season: assessing their lives, work situations, relationships, etc.  It wasn’t just a new year it was a new decade! - and time for some big shifts.  A lot of them wanted to hear about new ventures I was working with in hopes of being inspired by my passion because, really, I love what I do.  Which begged the question to them:

do you like your job?

I recently stumbled upon a book The Three Signs of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni.  You may recall I reviewed one of his books before and I must admit I like the story telling aspect of how he presents his management thesis.

The fable in this book is around Brian Bailey a successful CEO that decides to test some of his management theories on a tired local pizzeria, with a motley crew of staff, he has invested in.  The basic premise of his theory is that dissatisfied employees have a direct impact on productivity, staff turnover and morale all of which hit the bottom line hard.  So, why not identify what makes the job miserable for the employee and fix that and in turn increase profits!

so what is a miserable job?

According to Lencioni, a miserable job is: “the one you dread going to and can’t wait to leave.  It’s the one that saps your energy even when you’re not busy.  It’s the one that makes you go home at the end of the day with less enthusiasm and more cynicism than you had when you left in the morning.“  To be clear, a miserable job has nothing do to with the actual work a job involves … it’s about not feeling rewarded or fulfilled while doing the work.

ok, what are the three signs of a miserable job?

1. anonymity - people cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known (we want to be understood and appreciated for who we are!);
2. irrelevance - everyone needs to know their job matters … to someone. anyone. or why bother?
3. immeasurement - staff need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution themselves - how else can they measure their own success or failure? people have a need to control their fate and feel good about it.

Yes, it really is that obvious and it makes one wonder why these things aren’t addressed naturally.  Lencioni suggests that too often managers are slow to recognize they have an employee satisfaction issue and when they finally do their attempts to address the issue focus on the wrong things.  Most often they only find out when an employee is exiting and typically they say they are leaving because of pay - but what made them think of leaving in the first place?

right then.  how to make a job rewarding?

Well, that can only come from the employee/manager relationship.  I am a firm believer in the adage: treat staff the way you want to be treated.  As well, managing people effectively requires some degree of empathy and curiosity about why that person gets out of bed in the morning, what is on their mind and how you can make them succeed.  Lencioni gives some basic guidance on how to turn a miserable job around for your staff:

• get to know your staff!  seriously, this is just basic human decency.  You spend so much of your day with your staff shouldn’t you know them better?
• make sure they understand who they are helping and how?  of course for some roles it’s obvious (e.g. sales is helping the customer) but think of other roles.  For instance, the Controller helps me immensely as the CFO!
• find effective measures that an employee can directly influence and that are connected to the person or people they are meant to help.  So, ya, don’t pick that corporate revenue goal as a target.

Great!  Seems straightforward but …

what if I am the employee with a horrid manager?

Well, perhaps you should both read this book as a starting point for discussion so that together you can turn things around.  Or, as the book suggests, you will probably start looking for another job soon.  One that is rewarding.  But, my only request is, please be honest in the exit interview: if you didn’t feel fulfilled or rewarded then let them know.  Oh ya and tell them how much more you’re going to get paid.

Here’s to rewarding work in 2010 and beyond!