This years big personal challenge

This year I am running an ultra marathon for charity. You can read about it here and if you’d like to sponsor me, great and thank you.

http://www.justgiving.com/reynoldsruns

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to candidates, clients and partners one and all.

2013 has been full of hard graft and toil as I am sure it has been for you. It has been a very enjoyable year at Storm towers and I very much appreciate that Storm wouldn’t be nearly 5 years old without your ongoing support. So with the festivities nearly here I just wanted to say thank you and wish you a very Merry Christmas.

As is the tradition here, I am donating to charity again this year rather than sending out Christmas cards. This years chosen charity is Macmillan Cancer Support as they do fantastic work improving the lives of people affected by cancer.

I look forward to seeing you in 2014.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

I’ve been to see lots of clients in November. It’s been something of a roadshow to say the least and I’ve really enjoyed catching up with people to see how the year has gone with regard to our relationship and the wider connotations of what I do for them.

I think it is fair to say that the market place in which I work continues to change and evolve. I have been fascinated by the stories that clients have relayed about other recruiters and the lengths they will go to in an effort to get a conversation going with a decision maker. I even heard yesterday of a recruiter who phoned up and pretended to be a decision maker’s lawyer representing him in court in an effort to get put through.

Whilst sadly amusing I think these phone jockeys should stop focusing on the quantity of calls they need to make and start focusing on the quality of the calls they should be making. If you don’t understand the needs of a client you can’t sell a solution, indeed there may not even be a sale to be made.

So for me these days being different to the rest is all about unique candidates or sadly as candidates seem to have been anonymously tagged, talent. As a recruiter, this is what makes the difference I feel in today’s job market. Yes, you still need the tools such as job boards in general but you need to have your own referral networks that allow you as a recruiter to tap into candidate pools that aren’t visible in the very social world we now live in. Pitting myself against agencies in a timed race to represent the best job board candidates is not a business model that works for me so it is something that I choose not to be part of.

In order to find these unique candidates I think you need a really good understanding of your client, their business opportunities, their culture and their belief system. I feel you need to do your research and spend a bit of time on their chalk face in order to achieve this. If you do this you’ll be more able to identify who is right and who is wrong rather than just playing buzz word bingo and job board roulette and then hoping for the best.

On the flip-side, being well briefed and prepared as a candidate also strikes me as a rarity these days. In my eyes you cannot have too much information when preparing for interview and surely as a recruiter you want to offer this service to candidates you represent to give them every opportunity to succeed at interview.

To start a conversation about how Storm may be able to help you with your recruitment needs as a candidate or a client, please do get in touch initially through the website.

I’m running for charity in 2014

Next year I am running an ultra marathon for Macmillan Cancer Support. You can read why at http://www.justgiving.com/reynoldsruns

Leadership through truth. Done well it will help you build a great team.

I was talking to a contact yesterday who is about to set out building his own company. He’s going to be employing staff and we were talking about my experiences with startups that do well and those that don’t.

In my opinion it takes a certain type of employee to join a business let alone a start up. I look for candidates that are prepared to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in. They have to be prepared to take responsibility. More than sometimes they have to be prepared to work long hours and they have to be able to communicate the good and the bad with equal enthusiasm. They have to be passionate about what they do and they have to be able to navigate towards end goals where they may not be recognised individually. Teamwork and all that, you know where I am coming from. On top of that they have to have the right technical footprint to benefit the business with some room for self development so that they remain engaged.

My contact was saying how he dreaded picking up a poor performing employee which is understandable, but in my view, just as important in the employee eyes, is that he or whoever he designates responsibility to, doesn’t turn out to be a poor leader. That will potentially be far more damaging.

It turns out that my contact hadn’t given leadership much thought but then he isn’t alone there. He is now though as he starts his journey. Alone I mean. Time to get thinking about leading then.

I think in truth any business is only as strong as the relationships that hold it together. These can be client relationships or staff relationships. You can plan and create and even deliver really well documented ways of engaging with people but if you don’t know how to, you don’t have very much at all.

So being a leader of a team or a business is simply about building, developing and retaining relationships interlinked with your business strategy. Simple yes? Not really, no. It’s as much about what you do as a leader as what you don’t do.

So what do I mean by that…

Taking it right back to a personal level we can all relate to, I would imagine that we have all observed at least how in our own friendships going as far back as the school playground, gossip will weaken and even destroy relationships. Gossip is about power and in the playground we all remember someone without power, gossiping to get some. I think you could argue that twisting the truth and speculation are a reaction to feeling powerless and I’m sure if we are all completely honest, we’ve all done it at some stage in our lives. Some of us grew out of it, some of us didn’t.

So as a business team leader you really don’t want to inspire gossip within your business or your team. How do you inspire gossip you ask? Well you inspire gossip in my eyes when you withhold information or avoid difficult conversations. If you have secrets you will invite gossip whereas trust and transparency will end gossip.

My strategy has been to default toward transparency and assume everything is public until someone says it isn’t. I have learned that after conversations, I need to ask, “What was said that can’t be repeated?” and by doing so then build a culture where openness is the rule not the exception. Team members do have the right to expect transparency. As a leader you will expect team members to communicate the good and the bad with equal enthusiasm as I said in the second paragraph so it has to be a two way street.

Before you tell me you can’t share everything I do need to add that the guideline for all conversations of this type is, “Is it a useful conversation?” If it doesn’t serve a useful purpose, don’t say it. If you don’t prioritise according to usefulness you will just create an information overload. So if the conversation strengthens your relationships, clarifies a situation, reinforces your ethics and beliefs as a business or simply kills gossip it has to be the right strategy and you should have it. Your team members will respect you for it.

The goal for all conversations of this type is to build. As a leader, even when you are tearing down gossip, building for the future must be your goal. Don’t fear the truth. Embrace it.

It’s not about the money, money, money.

I have met over 100 people in the last three weeks who were interested in talking about moving roles. Over 50 of those people said they were looking to move roles simply for money reasons.

Now I appreciate that the economy and price of living has gone up considerably over the last few years, I know it affects us all, but the next question I always ask if met with this answer is, “Are you happy at work?” I could do this over the telephone but you don’t get to look people in the eye on a telephone and I believe that these kind of conversations need to be face-to-face where possible.

If you love getting up in the morning to go to work, love the work that you do and the people you work with, can see a career path and are locked into the company culture, believe me, you’re in the right place. I would argue all day every day that you shouldn’t be talking to someone like me, not about a career move anyway.

Talk to your boss about it. If you’re good at what you do the chances are they won’t want to lose you and there may be things that you could work together on to unlock greater earning potential. Finding a fulfilling career is so important to your wellbeing in my opinion and hindsight is a wonderful thing.

If it is just about the money though then be realistic and align your career objectives accordingly.

Company attitude and company landscape. What’s yours?

I’m meeting a lot of passive candidates on my travels at the moment. These are different conversations to the normal hiring process that starts with “why are you looking?” As a result, a lot of these candidates will stay passive as the things they are looking for potentially can be solved where they currently work, or can’t be solved by a specific potential employer.

I think it important that regardless of whether the candidate is active or passive, you make the most of meeting candidates when they rock up for interview at your business. The bottom line for me is that hiring managers develop strategies that are consistent with their cultural values so that they can bring the right people on board. I have a number of clients that work very hard at this and I think it is something we should all be doing. The right candidates are not always just those who have skills; for me they have the right attitude as well. So define what the “right attitude” is and look for it in the candidates you meet.

As the digital age has taken hold I have seen very bright young people bucking the traditional trend that says you have to be older and more commercially experienced to get the top jobs. More and more I am seeing that the top candidates are recognised and respected as a result of their contributions. The rest is just noise. These candidates are thriving in environments that are structurally flat or fairly flat in makeup. I can see that this landscape would give employees the opportunity to add value and prove their capabilities without having to win approval first to work on things that they are clearly passionate about.

I think there is no surprise that these companies understand that if they make it hard for their people to collaborate together in groups, they quickly fall behind the competition and ultimately these people leave.

So when you’re next hiring, hire for attitude and remember that skills can be taught but passion can’t. Once you’ve got your hires make sure that they can thrive in your environment.

Candidate Interview Questions. Yes you really need to have some.

Moving house, getting married, changing jobs. It is fairly safe to say that they are all up there in the stress stakes. What interests me though is just how many people need help with preparing or fail to prepare “under the bonnet” interview questions for an employer interview ahead of that meeting. These are life changing events and I really believe you should make sure you do your homework. You wouldn’t marry someone or move house without asking the difficult questions now would you? Fail to prepare and prepare to fail.

Over the years I have collected the best of these types of interview questions I have heard being asked by candidates and clients alike that I have represented. I’ve got pages of them! These sometimes go out to candidates ahead of interview if they are struggling to get into the right frame of mind when we prep or if they haven’t been to an interview for a number of years and genuinely need some help.

Regardless of whether you have a copy of my list of these interview questions or you have your own list of questions, the important thing is that you have a list of questions. I know I get turned off when candidates don’t have any questions for me when we meet up and I am sure prospective employers are the same at interview.

So my must have top five candidate driven interview questions are as follows…

1. Why should I leave the job I truly love to come and work here?

2. What was the profile of the individual who was in the role previously and why did they leave?

3. What are your first 6 months expectations of the person who will be appointed?

4. How does my experience match with what you are looking for?

5. What do you tell people about why you love working here?

Feel free to use them or even better, spend some time developing your own if you don’t have any. See you soon…

My best guy just resigned and I don’t know what to do.

Yesterday I took a call from a client who was panicking because his lead software engineer had just resigned and to use his words, said “I have no idea how I am going to replace him”. Now I don’t doubt the said employee was and is a great engineer and employee but it is a myth to think that the world stops when people move on. It doesn’t and as soon as you accept this you will stop living in fear of it. It has to be better to have fully engaged staff than staff that just go through the motions uninspired and connected to what you are trying to achieve. I’m not saying this guy is going through the motions but he has to be disengaging if he is going to leave.

Once it has happened though, what is important in my opinion is not to hire the first potential replacement you meet just because you are still panicking and think this is the best way to go. When you are in a small business such as the one I am using in this example key hires will determine the course of your company evolution. Take your time to understand what made this employee so great and put it down on paper. Take the emotion out of the process and try to harness what you may need moving forward.

Job boards are also not really the answer in my experience when you look at the world of recruiting today. Recruiters like me do use them but they are now a very small part of the process. The best people are generally employed already so if you just use job boards or a recruiter that just uses job boards you and your company are going to be pretty much invisible. What you really need is to be part of the community and engage within it. In my opinion, networking and knowing the right people makes all the difference and it will help your brand enormously.

This is the bit where you tell me you don’t have an employment brand but believe me you do. Good ones are built on great candidate feedback from interview whether the candidate did well or not. Giving people constructive feedback is so important. Not bothering to feedback is so destructive to your brand so please do take the time to feed back on candidates. Candidates talk to one another in online communities, tell friends in similar roles and people they don’t really know at networking events.

On top of that you should share your passion and energy, your vision and your goals when you meet potential candidates. Let candidates know that you are also going to share the responsibility as well. If you do this at interview and have the right questions for them, you’ll be able to see the candidates that want to be loaded up rather than candidates that say they want a challenge but really just want a ride to pay day at the end of each month.

Whilst I am on the subject of pay, pay well and let people know you do. If you want the best people make sure you can offer a great salary and if you can, great perks. If you can’t pay the best give some thought to how you can make the opportunity and perks good enough to get candidates attention long enough to sell them your vision. If you are offering down the line incentives though, make sure they are time bound and when they are achieved make sure you deliver on your promises. Failure to do so will switch people off in a heartbeat if those promises turn out to be false.

Lastly, make sure a potential new hire fits with your current team and involve them where you can in the process, however small or insignificant the gesture may seem on your part. Do it anyway. It is important. You shouldn’t spend your life worrying about what might happen. Most of the things I worry about never happen. Accept that good staff will sometimes move on and have a plan for what happens if they do.

Becoming future proof

I spoke to a friend in recruitment last week and as normal the economic down turn that we have all witnessed over the last four years or so came up. He made an interesting point that whilst everyone is keen to talk about ‘when’ things improve, what if they don’t? What if what we see and feel now in terms of economic performance is the new normal? What if this is as good as it gets?

It is an interesting thought and it got me thinking about how businesses could and should be looking at their recruiting plans if this is the case. My last blog piece did talk about ‘when’ things get better so this I hope gives you a different perspective and more food for thought.

I have always been someone who aspires to the ‘hire on attitude, train on skills’ mentality when it comes to hiring staff, where possible. Sometimes you do need an expert to build something around, but time and time again I have gone for a great attitude and a solid foundation over a poor attitude and great skill base.

So given the current climate, now more than ever is potentially a great time to be hiring future talent given the lack of top end talent from a skills perspective. To give an example of this, I met with a client before Christmas to talk about a new hire and last week they decided to switch focus from finished article to great potential. I did talk about doing this at the original meeting but accept that sometimes you just have to see for yourself in order to fully appreciate the recruiting landscape.

Finding the best people will always be the most important deliverable from my perspective. So I think that if businesses were to spend more time looking at, understanding, and even where necessary translating their future business strategies it should be possible to identify and generate a pipeline of talent that can be developed and ultimately enrich the businesses they join.

If the UK doesn’t address the need to hire talent for the future we do run the risk of falling even further behind our global competitors. The resistance to hiring future talent has to change, and soon. These people are committed, full of energy and fresh ideas. In order to stay ahead of the tech curve, you need to feed your business fresh ideas and therefore the opportunity to explore untapped markets whilst also addressing your long-term concern regarding skills shortages.