Good Leadership Starts Before Your People Do…Is it a Question of Respect?

I’ve been thinking about Leadership quite a bit over the last week or so, since the Leadership track at TruLondon 2, which provided some thought provoking, controversial and animated debate.

The discussions arising from this track, and in particular from one person discussing their own leadership style, have already started developing on 2 excellent blogs by Jon Ingham (a vlog, actually) and Bill Boorman – I recommend that you read them!

I often interview candidates who cite a lack of clear leadership as reasons for dissatisfaction with their jobs, and quite often that dissatisfaction seems to set in soon after starting their roles. What strikes me is that many leaders seem to get it wrong from the very beginning.

If you’re going to hire someone in to your team or company, then I believe you owe it to that person to give them every opportunity to succeed.

Five areas where leaders often come up short for new employees are:

Managing Expectations – do they really understand what job you are hiring them to do? Have you made it plain what will be expected of them? What their deliverables are? What resources will be at their disposal?

Onboarding – what happens from the moment they accept the offer? Do they feel part of the team? Is anything done to include them before they start? What induction programme have you in place? How will they be integrated into your team or your culture?

Clear vision and strategy – do your people know where the business is going? And how you want to get there? Do they know what their team has to achieve, and how they are going to achieve it?

Consistency – once there is a vision and strategy is it consistent? Nothing is more confusing than leaders who don’t think and contemplate, but who have a tendency to draw quick conclusions, act and move on.

Recognise your people as human beings with emotions, feelings and a life outside work – self explanatory, but decisions that you make that affect your new employees will also inevitably affect their families and friends. For me, one of the saddest things I heard at the TruLondon Leadership track was when a guy who seemed to run a hire and fire culture seemed almost proud that he had fired someone after 5 days as he didn’t think the guy would make it, even though this person had resigned from another job to join him…well that person had to go home and face other people (possibly a partner, maybe even children) and tell them he’d lost his job…and why.

For me it’s a question of Respect…Respect your people and they will Respect you.

What do you think? In what other areas do leaders sometimes not come up to scratch?

Networking, Learning but I still got Those Talking Gen Y Blues – TruLondon thoughts

Following last Thursday’s adrenaline rush of a blog I’m now looking back on TruLondon from a slightly more reflective angle!

There’s no denying that it was great event, and it enabled me to meet and engage with so many interesting and passionate people, from the UK and US, Canada, Holland and Switzerland. Whilst day 2 was certainly more ‘organised ‘than day 1, nothing could detract from the fact that overall there were some very insightful debates.

Three things struck me about the whole event.

Networking… it provides a fantastic networking opportunity. With a mix of HR professionals and recruiters, sourceologists and technologists, job boards and journalists, there is always someone interesting to talk to. My favourite parts are always the ‘break outs’ or the mini tracks where 2,3,4 or 5 people leave a track and start their own discussion. Through this you really get to talk ideas and experiences, sometimes without even knowing who it is you’re talking to!

Learning… there is a lot to learn. Some of it from listening and some from asking. There is also variety between different tracks, from listening to track leaders debate amongst themselves, to debating with them and finally to those tracks where the leaders often pass their knowledge on. I sometimes wish the attendees would open up more on these and get involved, but then maybe that is something that we all need to work on in this embryonic format. I’m certainly keen to attend unconferences elsewhere to see if there are cultural differences in how we absorb information and ideas.

Got those Talking Gen Y Blues…without doubt my favourite comment of TruLondon came from Charlie Duff when her headline for Day 1 was ‘HR practitioners claim that Gen Y talk is nonsense, but can’t stop talking about it’ …and indeed they can’t!

Talk of Gen Y, the uniqueness of their position, the skills they bring to the workplace, their audacity, creativity and expectations, seemed to permeate through many tracks…and when the debate finally got its own track, then things got quite feisty – an agenda of technology, economics, sociology and geo-politics in one mass of opinions, hopes, fears and convictions.

Without getting shouted down, I’m not sure that their position is so much different to any other generation. Every age group has wanted it all, and every age group has often had a far sharper and detailed knowledge of current technology and societal mores than their elders. (Dare I say that some of the social and political talk of change sounds not dissimilar to that we’ve read from the ‘hippy’ generation?)

What they do seem to have though is a conviction and confidence that has often been lacking before, but I think are in danger of turning themselves into a cause. However with over 20% of their age group in the UK unemployed, and with companies needing to find ways to best utilise and harness their talents and attitudes, I somehow feel I’ll be Talking Gen Y for some time yet…

All in all TruLondon was an extremely successful event, offering the chance to meet so many new people and learn so many new ideas…and leaving you wanting more. Just reading the tweets and blogs since Friday has made me realise how many people I never really properly got to talk to…

…hopefully I will next time!

Trains, Planes and Automobiles – #TruLondon and the Power of Twitter

If you organise it, they will come. And they did, from far and wide…representing recruiting, HR, technology, job boards, branding, marketing and many other disciplines. Some had laptops, some had smartphones, some had cameras, and all had a lot of ideas and passion.

I met loads of great people today, and there were plenty more that I didn’t get time to talk to. Hope to put that right tomorrow.

So exciting to put faces to names, personalities to tweets. And for me, Twitter is what today was all about. Without Twitter there wouldn’t be a TruLondon and I wouldn’t have met so many great people. I know them all from Twitter, and whilst they all feel like friends and contacts, you can’t beat meeting in person. Real face time.

As for today, it was by turns chaotic and thought-provoking, disorganised and inspiring…exactly what an UNconference should be!

I talked candidate experience.

I talked job boards.

I talked Gen Y (when do we not!)

I talked blogging.

I talked employer and employee branding.

I talked social learning.

And I met loads of intelligent, fascinating and inspiring people!

I was called a rockstar!

I was called enigmatic!

I was told I was talking BS on HR Happy Hour!

I was shouted down for making a ‘political rant’ in the Gen Y debate!

And I didn’t mind one bit!

And that’s not all…

I popped out at lunchtime and had coffee with 2 Twitter buddies, one of whom I’d never met before…she happened to be in Central London today.

This evening I went to a gig with three friends that I first met through Twitter. Turns out we all liked the same band. Midlake – an evening of glorious, cosmic country folk from Denton, Texas.

February 18^th 2010 – a day when I did so much with so many people, all of whom I met through Twitter.

Friends tell me that they don’t ‘get’ Twitter. They don’t have the time and they don’t see the point. They’ve got enough friends and contacts without spending time online meeting new ones.

They’re wrong…

They should have spent today with me!

Generation Bowie – the original flexible workforce?

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it” (George Orwell)

“Talking ’bout my generation” (Pete Townsend, 1964)

‘Trying to forget your generation/I say your generation don’t mean a thing to me’ (Billy Idol, 1977)

I’m reading a lot of blogs lately concerning generational demographics, particularly looking at how the attitudes of Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y differ. Now here’s my view…

I don’t believe Generations are a state of mind; they are a question of influences and experiences. Whilst we may often try and use these demographics to define workplace behaviours, their real raison d’être is to define age groups by their cultural, socio-economic and parental influences.

The cultural historians will look at the outside influences during adolescence, specifically the years 13-19, to define generational traits, and see how they impact on a whole range of behaviours, including attitudes to work. Hence the generational type they belong to is usually governed by the decade in which they were teens.

The Baby Boomers were born into post-war austerity, usually to parents who themselves had grown up in the Great Depression (the original one) and they matured during the 60s, whilst Generation X are usually seen as the ‘slacker’ generation, growing up with constant access to TV and with lives shaped by Thatcherism/Reaganomics and the rise of home computing in the 80s/early 90s. Their title, Generation X, was popularised in the novel by Douglas Coupland, written in 1991, which concerned American and Canadians who became young adults during the late 80s, yet the actual expression ‘Generation X’ was first used in 1952 and then again in 1964 to describe teenagers of loose morals and little respect in the mid 60s!

Standing back for one moment, and trying hard not to vainly squeeze oneself into the next generation down, it’s clear that these 3 ‘Generations’ cover 70 years…7 decades which have seen incredible changes and advances, with each one bearing little similarity with the last. Generation X, for example, allegedly contains everyone who will be between 30 and 50 next year. In my opinion 3 generational classifications are not enough, and are misleading as they ignore age groups who have shown their own identities.

After all, in my quotes at the start Billy Idol clearly felt he was a different generation to Pete Townsend, yet both are considered to be Baby Boomers.

So let’s accept that the Baby Boomers grew up on the 60s, and Generation X in the 80s…yet in between there is a whole decade of very different influences that are usually ignored as being a crossover between the two. Yet meet anyone who grew up in that decade and you will find someone who is flexible and adaptable.

Anyone growing up in the UK in the 70s will tell you that this was a tough decade, underpinned by constant change, fluctuating fortunes, unrest, violence and cultural extremes…4 elections, 4 Prime Ministers, 3 day weeks, bombs on the streets, mob violence, industrial unrest and a whole spectrum of music and fashion trends..Glam, Punk, Disco, Electro…flares and drainpipes, big collars and big statements.

In a decade of such change it’s hardly surprising that people who grew up then have had careers underpinned by change…interview someone who was a teen in the 70s and it’s likely that they will have had many different careers, utilising a whole range of skills and competencies, and their development has been marked by change and a restless quest for new experiences.

This generation has no badge, no obvious name, neither Baby Boomers nor Gen X; yet in the workplace they have shown themselves to be the original flexible workforce. Adaptable, open to change and new ideas, hard working, constantly looking to improve and gain new experiences, not scared to take a step into the unknown…restless and always looking for something new.

Well, I’ve decided to give them a name… a tag that recognises their unique influences.

I’m going to use a cultural icon who defined the 70s…high work rate, constant change and re-invention, always ready to try something new and never standing still.

Ch…ch…ch…ch…changes

From now on I will call them Generation Bowie…or BowieGen if you like…the original flexible workforce!

What do you think?

I Got a Headhunt Call…Lucky Me? Not!

I say a headhunt call, but maybe just saying I was approached would be a better description, mind you I daresay that the guy doing the approaching probably thought he was headhunting.

Not sure that any of what follows would be overly familiar to the track leaders at TruSource but unfortunately too much ‘sourcing’ goes like this….

It was a depressing experience. Switchboard had a call for me. Someone who would only give his first name and who claimed he knew me. They put him through…

…and he introduced himself and launched straight into a pitch, how he was recruiting for a client who was looking for an HR recruiter to join and grow their business at the senior end…he gave me a range of basic salaries (I commented that it didn’t sound a particularly attractive range and he DISAGREED with me, saying ‘from what I hear it’s good for the market’)..the commission scheme is really good (he said this twice) his client had recently merged with another group (so I kinda now knew who they were) and now had more clients to whom they could offer HR recruitment (but he also said that it would suit a strong sales person), apparently I could join as a solo recruiter or I could manage a small team it was up to me (hey they’ve really nailed their structure and talent development programme) and then he asked if he could take my mobile number so that he could ring me outside work and discuss it more. He never actually asked me if I was interested or if I actually WANTED to talk about it more, he just presumed…

The interesting part for me was that he said he found me on Linked In, thought I had a good profile and was the kind of person he was looking for, so I had 2 questions for him:

What made me so relevant?

What did he think of what I wrote on my blog and did this fit in with his client’s values?

He couldn’t really answer either. What made me relevant, apparently, was that I was an HR recruiter who had previously also worked in Recruitment to Recruitment (though he couldn’t explain the relevance of that) and as for the blog, well no he hadn’t read it…and where was it? Er, well it’s there, on my LI profile.

Had he bothered to properly read my profile and follow the link he would have seen that my most recent blogpost opened with ‘I really love working as part of the Stopgap Group, not least because…’ now you would have thought that if someone REALLY wanted to headhunt ME then they may find this fairly relevant.

Surely if you want to try and seriously approach someone who has just written publicly about how much he loves the company he works for, then I suspect you need a slightly different opening than the scattergun headrush of basics, commission, selling in to new clients etc.. For a start it may actually require a MATCH between me and what the client could offer.

A cursory read of some of my other blogposts would have further enlightened him to the fact that values, service, reward for feedback and a move away from the traditional sales model were all important to me…his time could probably have been more profitably used seeing if his client could offer these to me.

I blogged a couple of months ago about whether recruiters really get social media as most just seemed to think LinkedIn and Twitter were there to find more candidates to headhunt…and 2 months on I’m still wondering!

Now, I’m not looking for a headhunt approach and I’m very happy where I am, but had I been in a position where the call was more welcome then I would like to think that through Linked In, this blog, Twitter and participation in events like TruLondon, there was enough readily available information on me, my thoughts and my style, to enable a rather more intelligent, engaging and personal approach …

Maybe I’m expecting too much…

5 Guiding Principles for a Modern Recruitment Business

I love working as part of the Stopgap Group, not least because it’s a values driven business that places the welfare of its people and the quality of service given to clients and candidates at the very top of its priorities. Consultants have always been rewarded on feedback – since the day the business was launched 17 years ago – and we always look for consultants with who have compassion, a real interest in people and a genuine desire to make a difference, rather than just sales skills.

We’re empowered too, and all encouraged to contribute to the future direction of the business…a group of us will be embarking on a series of Blue Ocean Strategy planning exercises with the management team, and a similar group have recently been entrusted with redefining our core values.

That’s right, no-one is hitting us with harder targets, tightening KPIs and threats over not making fee forecasts…they’re asking us to help shape everything that the business stands for and how it will operate in the future.

And we’re now looking to the future with a new set of Guiding Principles which I believe should be at the heart and soul of a successful modern recruitment business:

Daring

Passionate

Integrity

Collaborative

Agile

Here’s my view of how we can use them in recruitment:

Daring – Audacious and bold, not afraid to challenge, be it career expectations or a client brief. Actively taking a path less travelled if it helps you get where you want to be and not being afraid of change if it is needed to help you get there.

Passionate – Need to feel a passion about the whole process, candidates’ careers and clients businesses and be committed to finding the right cultural fit and the right career development. Always be prepared to go the extra mile and have the drive and determination to succeed.

Integrity – A genuine interest in people as human beings, and appreciation of the need for honesty, openness and respect. Brave enough to challenge but in a sensitive, caring way. Building lasting, sustainable relationships. Basically, it’s about genuinely caring.

Collaborative – Our Company isn’t a place that is interested in ranking boards, competitiveness or egos but is an inclusive, all-embracing culture which helps us communicate. Whether dealing with a client, candidate or colleague, there should be a commitment to an unfaltering, consultative approach.

Agile – Adapting, evolving, flexible and not tied to any tired processes. Ready to respond to any issue. This constant evolution is needed to meet the demands of clients, candidates and colleagues in a fluctuating, demanding market.

So what do you think?

What principles have you adopted, and what principles would you like your recruiters to adopt?

I’ll be co-hosting the ‘Future of Recruitment’ track at TruLondon and it would be good to share your thoughts.

All Tomorrow’s Parties – what TruLondon and Unconferences mean to me

The first time I read about unconferences three words sprang to mind – ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’

Those three words mean two things to me (and no doubt a lot of other rock fans) – an iconic song from the Velvet Underground debut album and an alternative music festival, which runs every year as an antidote to more corporate music festivals.

Both encompass the spirit of everything that I believe unconferences should be, and none does it better than TruLondon.

I will explain…

The Song

One of Lou Reed’s greatest early songs, its lyrics were inspired by Reed watching the groups of people who gathered around at Andy Warhol’s parties, particularly at his studio The Factory.

Reed said : I watched Andy. I watched Andy watching everybody. I would hear people say the most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things….

Now if you were at TruLondon1 you have to admit that this conjures up a recognisable mental picture…one bought to life by the pictures of Sara Headworth and Jill Elswick…

Could it be that Bill Boorman is the Andy Warhol of social recruiting…??!

Still need convincing? Try…

The Festival

This was named after the song and was founded in 1999 as an alternative to larger, more corporate festivals like Glastonbury and Reading. It takes place in a holiday camp, an environment much more intimate that the usual stadium or large field. An artist, usually a musician, but also visual artists like Matt Groening, curates the festival, inviting their favourite bands and artists to play…crucially the organisers and bands stay in the same accommodation as the fans, mingling and talking, a truly multi-national experience. Setlists are usually driven by the fans. It’s a bit like an unfestival!

Any of this sound familiar?? To me this attitude represents the essence of an unconference, and TruLondon represents it best. Everyone mingling and talking, no pre-determined agendas..

and guess what…

the ATP format is so successful that it now takes place twice a year in the UK, and in the US, and last year travelled to Australia…still sounding familiar??!!

To mark the 10^th anniversary of the festival a film was released. It was put together using material generated by the fans and musicians themselves, on a whole range of formats including Super 8, camcorder and mobile phone…’to capture the uncompromising spirit of a parallel music universe’

So on 18/19 Feb come and enjoy, talk and mingle, debate and challenge, meet as many people as you can, indulge in the uncompromising spirit of a parallel HR and Recruitment universe…

..and don’t forget to smile at the camera…

because I’ll see you all at the movie launch in 2020!!…

Do People Still Buy People First??

“People buy People first and everything else after…”

That was the very first piece of advice given to me on my first day in recruiting, also my first day in professional sales. The role was in a candidate driven sector, a niche market with about 100 potential major clients and a lot of potential candidates. Oh, and a lot of competitors too! Developing relationships with candidates, from the time they first make contact with you, through their first meeting with you and the process of arranging interviews, briefings and feedback, to the eventual decision, meant taking time to build up the relationship and trust. I quickly realised that in a specialist sector your candidates become clients and your clients become candidates.

Last week I interviewed 2 very strong, senior candidates, both had contacted me speculatively with their CVs, and at the end of each meeting they both thanked me for having called them and arranged to meet them. I found it strange, as I would have assumed that candidates of their calibre would be on the radar of most HR recruiters, but both told me that they had difficulty even getting their CVs acknowledged, let alone getting phone time with a recruiter. To get a face to face interview, without a specific role to discuss, was impossible… except for me. Now both these candidates have had recruitment as one of their functions, and both have hired many HR staff in the past, yet even recruiters who they have briefed before don’t seem to want to talk to them.

One of them then said….

“I’m not sure if recruiters realise that candidates want to interact with a person, not a website”

Which kind of takes me back to my starting point…people buy people first…and I’m wondering if, in this social media driven, job board oriented, brave new recruiting word of communities and networks, this is still true.

Maybe we need to personalise our processes more…our Candidate Care Team recently sent an e-mail to a candidate whom they couldn’t reach by phone to let him know why he wasn’t suitable for a role he had applied for…he replied…

“Thank you for taking time to write to me, honestly this is the first time a recruitment company has spared time to personalize an e-mail, especially when this person will have no value for them.”

So what do you think??

Do we still buy people first?

Do we still trust the judgement and advice of people that we know well? Those we have a relationship with?

And if so how do we now establish that personal relationship?

If we swap messages on Linked In, or tweets (which we can now show on Linked In too), or comments on blog postings, are we establishing a relationship that will encourage dialogue and trust?

What will it take to get recruiters to interact face to face with candidates?

I’ll be co-hosting the ‘Who Cares What the Candidates Think?’ track at TruLondon and would love to be able to share your thoughts…..

Customer Experience and the Importance of Making People Feel Special

Every morning I stop on my way to the station to get a coffee…my Soya Latte is very much a part of my commute, even in summer! I have stopped for a couple of years at one particular coffee shop (Cafe Nero, for those in the UK) initially for their loyalty scheme which basically gives you every tenth coffee free – a free coffee every other Friday seemed like a good idea!

I say initially because they started charging extra for soya milk. Other coffee shops didn’t, but I stayed loyal. That was because I had got to know the 3 or 4 baristas who worked the morning shift. They were friendly, warm, engaging, always smiling and went out of their way not only take the time to indulge in some small talk but also (very important for coffee fans) they remembered what you liked to order. I was only in the shop a minute or two, but for that minute or two they made me, and no doubt anyone else stopping for a coffee, feel valued and important.

Now they probably didn’t earn much, and I don’t know what customer service training their company did, and they may have only done it to make a repetitive service sector job more interesting…but the thing is they got my custom because they made me feel special and valued, even though their product now was not the cheapest, and to be honest, the coffee was probably no better or worse than any other shop I could have gone to.

Now I’m not a master of suspense, and I’m writing in the past tense, so I’m sure that you can guess what’s coming next!

Yes…they’ve all moved on. One left completely to do something different, and the others were promoted to different branches. Unbelievably, management just let it all happen within a week or so…one week they were there, and within what seemed a few days there were different baristas.

And guess what…I don’t go there anymore. The new baristas most certainly did not make me feel special or valued. In fact, with possibly one exception, they made me feel the opposite, as if serving me was a chore. There were a couple of specific instances of rudeness and off-handedness (I won’t bore you with details) that made me think – enough is enough, I can get better value elsewhere.

When the experience is good, factors like cost can often come second…but when the customer experience is bad…

All businesses can learn from this, but I wonder how many of us really put their heads on the block and find out how we’re doing?

It reminded me of a customer satisfaction survey that I got handed on a plane on my way home from a holiday last year. The tour company usually performs well in independent reviews. The final question was…

‘Did we make you feel special on your holiday??

If so tell us what we did to make you feel special, and if not please tell us how we could have improved, to make you feel special.’

Clearly they want to get feedback, and aren’t afraid to give their customers a voice to find out how they are really performing.

Which makes me wonder….

Are there any recruiters out there brave enough to ask those questions of their clients and candidates?? Willing to find out from their community what they could do to create a special experience?

The new 4 Rs that Recruiters should try and master in 2010

I’ve been reading some excellent forecasts for trends and developments in 2010 that certainly excite and encourage me to think that this could be a very interesting and challenging year. I’m too much of a social media and technology amateur though to try my own predictions!

I do know, however, that recruiters will need a whole different set of skills, goals and targets if they are to succeed and profit from all the predicted advancements and developments.

Building and maintaining communities will be the key as they will provide the framework for our success, and to achieve this you will need…

Relationships

This year will be all about relationships, how we grow and develop them, how we manage them, monetize them, use them to deliver the best results for the clients, candidates, contacts and collaborators who make up our community.

I don’t think that this year’s top performing recruiters will be the classic ‘salesmen’ who pound the phones in search of leads and disgruntled candidates willing to jump ship, but the ones capable of growing two way collaborative relationships.

It won’t be all about the deal, but increasingly about how you engage, support, share information and add value at all stages of the recruitment process. You will need credibility with and access to the best talent and the hiring manager offering the best employee propositions.

To do this, though, it helps if you’ve got a positive…

Reputation

There are way too many information channels out there in cyberspace to enable the ‘cowboy’ recruiter to hide. If there is one change I can see to the way that social media is used in business, it will be the peeling away of the sheen of peace and love and an increasing tendency to tell it like it is.

Candidates and clients will expect a service and level of care that meets demanding expectations.

From LinkedIn groups and recommendations to Twitter threads and lists, I can see a lot of information around performance and delivery being shared…and please recruiters, let’s all do away with these mutual back scratching love fest LinkedIn recommendations, and let’s try to have a proper, quantifiable referral based on project/outcome delivery.

And if you want to be on the lists or in the groups of recruiters that clients and candidates recommend then it will help if you’ve got…

Respect

It really is time more recruiters started to ‘put yourself in their shoes’ and try and understand a) what it’s like to be a jobseeker in the worst recession for over 70 years where new permanent openings are scarce and people are being encouraged to be proactive (yep, that means keeping on our cases recruiters) and re-invent, and b) what it’s like to be a hiring manager in a company that’s struggling to keep afloat, asking a lot of their staff (from productivity to wage/benefits restraint)on a tight budget who needs our support and market knowledge in the recruitment process and not just a bunch of CVs and some sales patter. Believe me, this is not a square peg/round hole market!

The recruiters with the strongest communities and networks will be those who respect those communities and networks, who treat them honestly and to successfully do that you need a healthy dose of…

Realism

Tell it like it is not how you would like it to be. Beware false prophets (they’ll be more about them in a future blogpost!)…talk to, and listen to, the people who are currently active in your market, not business commentators and managers desperate to promote an air of optimism.

Improve your knowledge of the markets that you operate in, take time to find out about your candidates, clients and collaborators – what challenges they face, what they are doing to overcome them, what their motivators are and what they don’t like – and share this information.

If you do, you’ll be able to develop great…

Relationships…

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