Streaming your career

Some years ago a lot of companies referred to career ladders. This approach suggested that you simply keep on climbing the ladder until hopefully and eventually to you get to the top.

The reality was many people would hit a ceiling, either due to factors such as discrimination, lack of opportunity or internal politics (favouristism).

The concepts of career paths then followed, suggesting that a roadmap exists, and with the right development a person can reach their potential.

The reality is that career development is like trying to cross a raging river. You have little chance of reaching an exact spot on the other side.



Copyright: Raging River Painting by Priyadarshi Gautam

Using the concept of a career stream, a person should consider therefor various roles that may be lateral moves, sometimes even taking a lower level role to change from one function e.g. marketing to sales.

Another relevant aspect of a career stream is the dynamic flow of a person's experience and skills, similar to the movement of water, sometimes slowly over rocks, and other times as a water fall.

The key is to channel your career in the right direction.

Showtime - United States of Tara Home

Showtime - United States of Tara Home

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Not all roles are created equal

Life is just not fair. There are some roles that get the best out of a person, and then there are roles that were designed to make your life feel at times like hell on earth.

The best roles are those with a great company and with a great boss. However, some roles are just not equal. In two of my roles I only stayed for one year, but started looking around after one month, as I realized my unfortunate mistake.

To cope with the demands of different roles, you almost need to live in the skin of Tara, changing constantly to deal with different situations.

Here are some interesting roles that you may be recruiting for:

1. The Explorer. A new role is always risky. Often the business is unsure of what the role is all about. You need to shape it to fit the business. They will either love it or hate it. Usually takes leave at the end of a role. Ideal for adventurers keen to explore new territory. Must be a problem solver par excellence.

2. The Actor. Role has been revamped as the previous person failed to make it. Look for murder weapon. Role may have been vacant for years until need have finally been reestablished. Now includes all the odd jobs nobody wants to do. Takes leave every few months to look for another role. Ideal for those that still believes in fairy tales.

3. The Rower. This is an on-going role. The seat was still warm and everyone expects you to simply pick up where the last person left off. Works best if you share the same name as the previous incumbent, saves on working to create an impression, as well as email – charles@. Needs to take three weeks leave every year to recharge the batteries. Ideal for those looking for a comfortable role and keeping things steady.

4. The Diplomat. Your manager had too much to do and all delegated/unwanted tasks have been packaged in this role. Great title but no responsibility. Will spend most of your time in endless meetings. Takes leave one day at a time so job insecurity remains undiscovered. Ideal for a go-between. Previous marketers please apply.

5. The Slave. Often carries title such as Administrator. Low risk role but heavy workload. Previous person knew everybody. Need ability to write down long list of things to do. After every meeting will have an action list. Takes all their sick leave. Ideal for those who likes extreme sports.

6. The Player. Great role and you are part of the team. Your role is well-defined and every one knows your role and how it fits in with the rest of the team. Last incumbent was promoted. Leave is planned months in advanced. Ideal for hard-working and ambitious person.

All roles need to be filled. Badly designed roles will often do little to enhance a candidate’s CV or help the recruiter with more roles.

It has been said that people join good companies and leave bad managers. Most of my roles have been great, largely because I got on well with my manager. A good manager can make a bad role tolerable and will promote you if do a good job. A bad manager will quickly make a good role feel like you are part of a losing team.

Finding a great role with a great company is like finding a great script with a great producer. It makes for a great story!

Recruiting for the Future

There are two types of companies – those that are growing and those that are slowly dying. This was a key lesson that I learnt some years ago from one of my mentors.

Trying to pick out a winner is not always easy, as some companies are suffering from the "boiling frog" syndrome, and it requires an alignment of the stars to get your selection perfect.

When we recruit for key roles, it is also vital to ensure we appoint candidates that have the potential for further personal growth, in particular with the ability to be promoted in more senior roles. This is one of the reasons why I strongly favour one-over-one recruitment, as the Chairman or CEO will invariable assess for executive potential.

Recently, I was coaching a HR Director and he was debriefing the termination of a Simon as Marketing Executive. Simon was in his role for five years, but the new MD felt he did not have razor-sharp commercial skills and after a brief period of counseling his services were terminated.

This unhappy outcome can surely be traced back to the initial appointment, as commercial skills should have been identified from the outset as critical to achieve strategic marketing outcomes. For recruiters it is particularly helpful to understand the underlying competencies as it relates to a specific strategic goal.
This business is today more than three times the size when the Marketing Executive was initially appointed.

The key questions are:
- Was Simon able to grow with the business?
- Did he reach his ceiling?
- Did the business do enough to develop him to full potential?

As a Talent Manager one the most rewarding activities is to recruit a graduate that would blossom into a general manager. I have been fortunate to work with some very talented HR people that have been promoted into senior HR roles. This includes two PA’s becoming HR Managers.

When I interview candidates, I try and track their career to see if it a steady upwards curve, or if they have plateaud, or if their career suffered from the yo-yo effect. This provides some clues, but I also try to understand the support and influence of mentors, their managers and others.

Whenever I am asked to review a situation where an executive is a poor performer, I often find they were good or even high performers in other companies, but were unable to make the cultural adjustment, demanding perhaps more of a need to operate on their own, or working in a virtual structure.
For clarification sake, I am again not necessarily suggesting recruiting the best person that may want to look for a promotion in six months’ time.

The challenge is finding those high-performing and high-potential candidates that can grow with the business.

How long is your shortlist?

“What do you mean there is only one person on the shortlist?” Bob exclaimed as I discussed with him the recruitment process for the Environmental Engineer. Despite the tight labor market and war for talent, managers still expect and demand to see between three and five applicants on the shortlist.

One of the flaws in recruitment is that most managers tend to recruit on the basis of finding the best person for the role. Taking this flawed approach to the next level, they will interview their shortlist, to then compare these applicants through some sort of scoring process, to add some rationality and validation for their appointment decision.

But what if you are selecting the best person out of a bad bunch?

Good recruitment always starts by having a really good understanding of what the role is. Most recruiters would get a briefing by the recruiting manager, hopefully with an updated position description.

Role clarity is a subject all on it’s own, which I will expand on in a next blog. More than once I have been called in by a recruiter, after a frustrated stop-start process, as they find a moving target in trying to define the role.

Having a well-written role competency profile is critical - not a flowery or generic description of tasks that make it impossible to understand what the top two or three outcomes are for the next six to twelve months.

Armed with a clearly defined role competency profile, the real comparison is to take our one shortlisted environmental engineer and to determine if they are a good fit with the role requirements.

Sure, it is always possible to stack the shortlist with two other applicants, making sure the manager feels comfortable in their misguided recruitment decision. But how fair is it to waste the time of other applicants and the manager in spending hours on what is clearly a non-value added activity?

By developing a trusted advisor status with the recruiting manager, which started with a clear understanding of the real role requirements, there is no need to fall into the trap of a shortlist of five applicants. Talking through the list of interviewed or screened applicants will provide the recruiting manager with an appreciation of the process and context of the shortlisted applicant.

A shortlist is not a list of the top three or five applicants.

It is also not a checklist of the recruiting manager’s requirements: qualifications, experience, previous roles, industry experience or other general criteria.

Many managers have an incomplete understanding of the critical success factors for a role, particularly a new role. A high number of recruitment failures are in greenfield roles! Next time you have a recruitment failure, start by critically reviewing the position description.

In conclusion, it is quite possible to have a shortlist of one as you are comparing this person against the role competency profile, which is your baseline. And yes, Bob did appoint the environmental engineer and he is still working at the company.

Talent Sourcing should not be a mystery

Often recruiters would send you a good CV, or a thoughtful applicant would send you their CV, thus creating the challenge of figuring out where to place them. It is hard enough to identify and assess current good talent in any business, as well as to elegantly manage the expectations of high-performers and managers’ staffing needs.

Talent management is the balancing act of ensuring you have the right people at the right time in the right roles with the right skills.

This is a tough act in normal situations (if that condition actually exists) but try walking the tight rope when the circus tent is being blown away in a tornado. Most organizations are in constant change, either as result of new strategies or structure changes.

Amidst all this “surround” change, you receive your unsolicited résumé of an experienced sales manager. The recruiter highlights current experience, as well as the need to interview the applicant.

You have a few choices – you put the résumé on your long list of “to do” items; you reluctantly agree to interview the applicant; or you prefer to wait until a vacancy is available.

Because of time pressures you decide to use phone screening. You discover the candidate has already left their current job, having been retrenched, keen to find another sales role. After your conversation you are still unclear as to where the candidate will fit. You diplomatically decline to agree to another interview.

Neither the recruiter nor the applicant was really able to give you a clear picture of the skills and potential talent the candidate would bring the business, as their focus was more on what the candidate has done, rather than what they can do for your business.

At the end of a long day you reflect on the balcony, looking at the bright city lights. Talent sourcing should not be a mystery!

Control over chaos

All change starts with one small step.

The action of doing is much more than just thinking without doing.

We are surrounded by change, which is creating an overload.

It is just like all the emails sitting in your in-box. You can ignore it, delete it, read it or file it in a folder for later.

What are you doing with that unread email sitting in your in-box? Ignoring it until you are ready to deal with it, or disrupting your thoughts to ensure you can feel a sense of control by opening it.

Control, that is what it is all about. How can we have some level of control to manage the chaos around us?

Even if we only have some limited option of not doing anything, we still have some control.