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The Tale of the Fish and the Bicycle – Part 2

[In Part 1 we heard about how Frank the fish had started working for a rival company. We pick up the story as he goes home to tell his wife about his pending transfer to the cyclists’ team]

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‘You can’t be serious Frank!!’ His wife was crying; she was frustrated and scared. Her job at the farm had gone and she was only able to get a few hours’ work filling in at another farm.

‘How are you going to ride a bicycle?? And not just ride it, but ride it fast? What about all the things you’ve told me about the other cyclists. How they don’t like to spend time with the customers?? You’ll never be able to do it. You’ll have to try and get your old job back’

‘I can’t‘ said Frank ‘I saw one of the old guys after work. They’ve trained up a new fish and he seems to be doing well. They don’t need anyone else. Let me give it a go…it may be good for me. Maybe I can ride a bicycle after all. The HR manager said they’d give me all the help I need over the next three months…’

‘THREE MONTHS!‘ his wife shouted ‘You’ll never master it in three months‘.

‘Well that’s the time they’ve given me. I’m not thinking about what would happen after that. Met my cycling coach today, he told me it was all in my mind. That if I really put all my positive energy into thinking like a cyclist it would happen…’

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It was a harsh autumn on the Island. Hard enough for the regular cyclists who were used to bad weather, but for a fish it was almost impossible.

Frank tried. He tried very hard. He had to change coach after a few weeks as the original one got himself a better assignment with Frank’s old company coaching the fish in customer engagement techniques. He put in a good word for Frank but that door was closed.

Frank’s new coach believed that anyone could achieve anything and spent ages getting Frank to concentrate on the tyres going round. When that didn’t work he got him to focus on the people at the end of the journey ‘if you feel their joy at seeing you it will inspire you‘ he used to say.

But it was all to no avail. The end of Frank’s three months came and he went to see the Regional Director and the HR Manager. They explained to Frank that they had given him all the support that they could but that he hadn’t been able to meet his target to be an operational cyclist. He argued his case that he had met his targets when he was swimming but they said that wasn’t relevant to this assessment meeting.

‘It’s only four weeks to Christmas‘ he pleaded ‘the busiest time for you. Let me deliver parcels by river. I’ll swim night and day; I won’t stop to talk to the customers. Just let me show what I can do for you‘.

They told him to wait outside whilst they had a short meeting but at the end of it they told him that his position was terminated. It seems that there were also cultural issues; that he didn’t really seem to fit in with the other cyclists.

‘We’ve invested enough time and money trying to get you up to speed here Frank‘ said the Regional Director ‘we’ve been more than fair to you’

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Frank hadn’t realised that because his termination was down to poor performance then his notice period was only 1 week. He hadn’t really read the contract before he joined as the Regional Director had been so persuasive about his vision for a two tier offering. The clause about 3 months’ notice for his role at the premium service, but if that was closed his contract would revert to a traditional cyclists contract had passed him by.

He promised his wife he would move boulder and driftwood to get a new position. He knew that he would have to get a job on the adjacent Island but at least there was work there. Some new village communities had been built and they had just expanded the Port. There were also many more delivery companies than on his own Island.

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‘I don’t understand. You were a swimmer but then you decided to become a cyclist. Why?’ The recruitment consultant who was interviewing Frank seemed very perplexed. Frank had already explained twice about how Parcels4U had changed their business model, and how he wanted to show he was a fighter, a resourceful fish who could overcome any challenge (surely exactly what a new employer would want, he thought) but the recruiter still didn’t seem to get it.

‘I’ve got jobs for swimmers but they want people who are swimming at the moment, not slow cyclists who want to swim again’ he said.

‘Can’t you just forget the last few months and explain that I was the top delivery operative at my previous company. That I was headhunted by Parcels4U to head up their new premium service but that they changed their business model and only had a job for a cyclist’ Frank was getting exasperated. This was the fourth of fifth recruiter interview that he had sat through this week and they all went the same way.

‘Look Frank, I’ll try to explain. It’s a Catch 22 type thing. Most employers are interested in what you’ve been doing most recently, and for you that’s cycling. To get round that we have to say that you tried it as something different but you really want to swim. And they will say to me – Why? Why would a fish want to try to ride a bicycle? If I say that the company made you then they would want to know why you didn’t just leave. If I say that you wanted to take on the challenge then it looks like you wanted to try something new so your commitment to swimming is in question. It’s a very competitive market out there. They want either swimmers or cyclists and you’re, well…you’re kind of in the middle now. Do you understand?’

No, Frank didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. He was the number one delivery fish on the Island and less than 6 months later he’s a has been. Washed out. Of use to no-one.

‘Why don’t you freelance?’ said the recruiter in a Eureka moment ‘I may be able to get a client interested in you on a pay as you swim basis’.

Frank was unsure but went for the interview. He got on very well with the interviewer, who happened to know one or two fishes from Frank’s old company. He said that he knew of Frank’s reputation and he felt sure that there was room for someone of Frank’s experience in the company. He even talked about giving Frank a month’s trial after which he would take him on permanently, not on a freelance basis. He said that he would speak to HR and get back to Frank the next day.

But the next day became the next week, and Frank found himself contacting the recruiter every day but was unable to ever get through.

And then he heard from the company. The HR Director wanted to meet Frank. The original interviewer said that he felt it should be a formality but that the HR Director would need to be convinced that Frank was focused on swimming and that he hadn’t tried cycling because he had lost his swimming mojo. It was important to the company that every hire was effective.

By it was now almost Christmas and the interview wouldn’t be taking place until the New Year.

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Frank and his wife talked to their children that night and explained that there wouldn’t be any Christmas presents this year, but that if Frank got his new job then there would be New Year presents. The children understood. They had taken it well and had been making things at school to help cheer Frank up. He really liked the Christmas card they made him and their attempt at painting a picture of him holding a ‘Delivery Operative of the Month’ award like he used to win at his old company.

The fishes faced an uncertain few months but were drawing strength from their friends and family who had rallied round and showed support. Some of Frank’s old customers, who really missed his regular visits, had started a collection and they had bought him and his wife a Christmas hamper.

So will Frank be able to overcome objections and prejudices, show that he is a focused delivery operative who can add great value to a new company, and be able to buy his children New Year presents?

That, dear readers who earn a living in HR and Recruitment, is for you to decide……

The Tale of the Fish and the Bicycle – Part 1

Once upon a time, on a distant Island, there lived a fish called Frank. He was a very sociable fish, who loved swimming and meeting people.

The Island was a lovely place to live. It was self-sustaining and had a small number of village communities all situated at one end. In the middle was a large hill, and on the other side a port where all the nice things that the Islanders couldn’t grow or make for themselves were delivered.

If you didn’t have a particular craft yourself then there was work delivering the parcels and packages that came into the port.

Frank worked for a small business that delivered parcels. As they only employed fish, they had to use the river that meandered its way around the hill. To compensate for not having the fastest delivery service (the river did meander quite a bit) they made sure that they employed people who took pride in spreading happiness. You see, the fish that started the business had realised that these parcels bought something good and happy into people’s lives and he wanted delivery fish who could be part of that experience.

Frank loved this part of his job. People were so happy when they saw him swim up to their homes or businesses, as they knew that he would be bringing with him something they wanted. It could be a DVD, book or CD, some clothes, or even a voucher to try out a new restaurant in the village.

When he was small, Frank had watched lots of episodes of Postman Pat and he now saw himself as a similar character, an important member of the community, enjoying his work, and bringing happiness in to people’s lives.

The biggest rivals to Frank’s company were called Parcels4U. They were a very different kind of business, hiring the strongest and fastest cyclists to do the deliveries.

Whilst Frank’s company were able to charge more money per delivery, as they believed they were offering much more than just the delivery, Parcels4U charged much less. They believed that the important part was getting the parcels there quickly, so they employed cyclists who could navigate their way around the hill as fast as possible.

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The Regional Director of Parcels4U who looked after their operation on the Island was not happy. His bonus had been reduced as he had missed one of his key metrics. One of the findings from the annual customer satisfaction survey that his company conducted in every region was that, whilst Parcels4U were praised for the speed of their deliveries they came out very low in the ‘service you would recommend to a friend‘ category.

He was in a meeting with his Delivery Operatives Manager for the Island. Neither was happy, as neither could see quite why the company had placed so much importance on this metric. After all, their company statement, which was pinned to the wall of every room, clearly stated ‘The Fastest Service You Can Get. No Hill Too Big‘ – nowhere did it mention being nice to the customers. If the customers were too lazy to go to the port and pick it up for themselves then what did they expect.

‘If we give them a bonus for being nice to people instead of how many deliveries they complete in a day then they will all leave‘ said the Delivery Operatives Manager. ‘They’re athletes who train hard to be fast cyclists and like to be rewarded for that.‘

The Regional Director was staring out the window, ironically at the River which ran past their offices. ‘OK, we don’t want to unsettle them. I’ve got a bit of flexibility in the budget so why don’t we hire one of the fishes and set up a bespoke service? It will pay for itself. I’m sure we’ll be able to charge a lot for it. If they want a slow service with a smile at the end then they can pay for it‘

And so the plan was hatched. Find out who the best delivery operative fish was and make them an offer.

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Frank was quite flattered, and more than a little excited, to get the call. He swam home quickly to tell his wife and children.

‘I’ll get more money, my own team, and a real challenge to make a difference. Just think..‘ he was talking quickly and enthusiastically ‘…how great it would be for me if I was the fish that got Parcels4U known for a giving a great service‘.

His wife wasn’t so sure, but with her job at the neighbouring farm looking in jeopardy the extra money would come in useful ‘OK then‘ she said ‘if you think you can make it work, why not go for it!‘

She gave him a big hug and they made plans for a short family holiday during the time off he would have between jobs. Continue reading “The Tale of the Fish and the Bicycle – Part 1” →

HR, Social Media & Punk Rock

I’m chairing the CIPDs Social Media in HR conference next week and so I’ve been thinking about how the conversations around social have grown and developed in the space at the apex of social networking, HR and recruitment – pretty much the bubble I live and work in.

I wrote in one of my blogs about CIPD12 of how the questions have clearly been moving from ‘why‘ to ‘how‘ and this is clearly a shift which informs much of the writing and speaking that I see and hear. Sure, there will be many who are going to need some evidence before taking teams and businesses on the social journey, and rather than stamp off in a strop I think more of those who do ‘get it’ need to raise the conversation away from statistics on usage and reach, and talk more of outcomes.

The more I think about the rise of ‘social‘ the more I seem to think about punk rock. Not sure why, but there are similarities.

Punk wasn’t enabled by technology but by attitude. Coming at a time when you needed an ology to be in a rock band it was a clear shout by a ‘forgotten’ generation who felt they had no voice.

The link here is that it started with a younger generation but quickly became more widely adopted. Just as with today’s social media consultants, gurus and evangelists who climbed on the bandwagon quite early, back in 76/77 you had many journeymen rockers getting a spiky haircut, skinny jeans and a few tattoos and ripping out some three chord thrashes to sudden acclaim.

Of course you had the doubters, those who thought it was a fad and would never really catch on. In music broadcasting, for every John Peel you had a Nicky Horne.

Nicky H was the serious ‘rock’ DJ on Capital Radio. He broadcast regular shows that we’re ironically called ‘Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It’ – ironic because it featured just the type of corporate rock music that most people’s mothers WOULD like.

He was quick to rubbish punk, famously and proudly proclaiming that his shows would be punk free, that you wouldn’t hear any punk music on them.

And guess what. Less than a year later you couldn’t move for the punk and reggae that he was playing on his shows!!

How many social engagement naysayers and doom mongers are now evangelising? Even the PM (he of the ‘tweeters are a bunch of twits‘ sound bite) now has an official account. Though I accept he may not have much input!

And just to square the Punk circle, here is part of an interview that the Sex Pistols gave to NME in the summer of 77. You can read more of the interview on this website – complete with the famous Sid Vicious ‘The definition of a grown-up is someone who catches on just as something becomes redundant”

Just read though this excerpt and substitute mentions and references to ‘punk rock’ with ‘social media’….

…uncanny!

 

Punk Rock

A Question of Ambition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Being ambitious is like being thin. It’s nice to have in your youth — but hold on to it into middle-age and you’re going to end up with a sour little face. Let yourself go — it’s later than you think” (Julie Burchill)

“Ambition makes you look pretty ugly” (Radiohead)
 

We talk a lot about ambition.

We write a lot about ambition.

We look for it in our children, colleagues, leaders and friends.

We want to work for businesses that show it.

We sometimes confuse it with aspiration.

Politicians and business leaders talk about it a lot.

Coaches, commentators and career advisors also talk about it a lot.

But there’s a big difference between Having Ambition and Being Ambitious.

The first is about talk and the second is about action.

So next time you hear someone speak of ‘ambition’ look at what they do not what they say. Do they live it or talk about it? Do they aspire to it or achieve it?

Do they mean it?

The Elephant in the Room for Tomorrow’s Workforce

As you may have gathered from my previous blog I was impressed with CIPD12s first day session on unlocking the potential of tomorrow’s workforce. On the afternoon of day 2 I was at a keynote panel session on a similar theme – Building the Workforces of Tomorrow. This one left me feeling a little flatter.

Don’t get me wrong, the panel was good – Peter Cheese, CEO of the CIPD, Michael Davis, CEO of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, Anne Pickering, HR Director for O2, Toby Peyton-Jones Director of HR for Siemens UK & North West Europe and Jo Swinson, Minister for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs – and the right noises were made early on about the need to train and utilise the skills of the new generation. O2 look for digital savvy people, Siemens believe that apprentices stay with you for life and big businesses should get involved in training their supply chain.

There was also some good insight from UKCES – I like their work, and used some of their research in a previous blog.

If I’m honest it was Jo Swinson who first gave me an uneasy moment which set a train of though off in my mind. Initially it felt like watching Question Time and she made the right noises about government concerns. Then she made an important point about workplace mindset not keeping pace with technological change…but then, almost as an aside, she referred to people applying for jobs and starting their cover letter with ‘hi’ instead of ‘Hi’. This was the reason they were getting nowhere in their job search she said, somewhat (in my mind) dismissively.

And then I thought about the previous half hour and the good intentioned comment from UKCES about the need for companies to invest 15 minutes in giving their rejected candidates feedback – as it would help them in their search if they knew where they were going wrong.

Jo’s comment was another instance for me of the up and coming generation being judged against standards of an older time (though Jo is almost still Gen Y herself)

  • Does the applicant need to write in their role?
  • With so many speakers across the two days talking of a shift from e-mail to social platforms does this grammar matter?
  • Given that no-one seems to write letters in business any more, and anything that is written will have been spellchecked, will anyone know that the original note started with h instead of H?

On the first day we heard of the positives of the Google Generation, how smart and savvy they were, but they are also the Spellcheck Generation – maybe some people see this as a negative.

We need to take their enthusiasm and encourage them, not dismiss them.

This wasn’t the only thing troubling me though. Laurie Ruettiman’s tweet – ‘I chuckle when a bunch of older white people attempt to deconstruct youth unemployment’ – also indicated something else about the conversation.

The panel were talking around the edges ignoring the elephant that was taking up a lot of the room.

The aren’t enough entry level jobs. There is a generation growing up who will probably never know proper full time work, never be truly economically viable.

We talk about skills and attitudes but the youth unemployment rate was rising long before current economic difficulties – and it’s a stubborn statistic that won’t reverse. Low skilled jobs that a 17 year old with precious few qualifications and social skills could do in a service sector dominated economy – stacking shelves, making sandwiches – are now done by unemployed graduates.

Kudos to CIPD for getting the conversations in the open and on to the keynote list. But I don’t think you can truly talk about building tomorrows workforce without also talking into account those who may never be part if it. And working out how you can use their abilities.

Whether they start a sentence in upper case or lower case really shouldn’t matter.

(For an interesting take on the discussion, including a proposal that many may think a bit radical, see Neil Morrison’s blog)

CIPD12 – Unlocking the Potential of Our Future Workforce

Day one at the CIPD Conference and I attended a really strong presentation from David Fairhurst of McDonalds. It seems that understanding the future workforce and unlocking their potential will be a key theme over the course of the three days with several sessions linked to it.

It’s something that I’ve been particularly interested over the past year, and I’ve written about education, youth unemployment and the problems that we may be storing up by under-utilising skills and cutting back on training.

Today’s session was engagingly delivered and rich in soundbites and tweetable phrases. The use of video clips of Gen Y and millennial workers talking about their experiences, hopes and fears provided powerful evidence. This had been put together by engaging them through the @OurYoungPeople twitter account – an attempt to find out what young people are saying and why HR needs to listen to them.

Here are 5 key points that lend themselves to further thought and discussion…I’m looking forward to adding to this list over the next 2 days…

  • This is the ‘Google Generation’ – they are used to getting instant answers at their fingertips. They are confident and know how to find things out.
  • They’ve been raised in an age of scams and fakes and are more adept than older generations at spotting them and avoiding. Loyalty therefore has to be earned – they won’t buy it just because you say it. They need to experience it.
  • Too often entry level roles fail to stimulate or engage them, and give them a poor experience of the workplace. They need variety, challenge, teamwork and customer interaction – try to give it to them; it will bring out their best.
  • Young people remember how you treat them for their whole lives, as customers, consumers and employees. In particular many spoke at their frustrations at not getting any replies or acknowledgements to job applications…seeing it as rude and damaging to confidence and aspiration.
  • They thrive on collaboration and co-creation and gain most benefit from learning that is collaborative, visual and uses information to solve problems. Yet we often ignore these and offer learning through memorising.

I always leave these sessions energised by the potential of the future workforce…I only hope that their enthusuasm and appetite for contributing isn’t strangled bya a failure to understand what motivates and them.

If You’re Not on The List…

I’ve written before of my love of lists, mainly from the perspective of my own life and experience – favourite albums, movies, books, goals, holidays etc. I am also an avid reader of end of year media lists in magazines, papers and online that chart the best moments and cultural artefacts of the previous 12 months. I’m often dubious as to how they rank them but always glad of the chance to check out something that I may have missed.

My journey on Twitter was kick started by a list. It was one from Louise Triance in March 2009 entitled something like ‘Recruiters who Tweet’. Up until that point I was a bit of a lurker, looking for conversations around politics, football and music, but this list helped me see that there was a work angle to what social networking could offer.

I didn’t know if these were the best recruitment tweeters, or the most insightful, but I followed them all and started following who they spoke to and began to build the network that I have today.

So, where’s this going?

Well, earlier this week the re-launched People Management magazine published their list of the Top 20 ‘HR Power Tweeters’ – in their words the ‘HR Twitteratti who are must-follows if you want to stay at the forefront of HR news and views on the microblogging site’.

There are many such lists published all the time and I usually treat them as a bit of fun. Journals and blogs are always highlighting the people they think their readers should follow. Twitter positively encourages anyone with an account to create lists and share them – apparently I appear in 309 Twitter lists, Lord knows who and why but I do. The People Management list seems to have caused offence though. There was much angst on my timeline last week.

I don’t think it was just thrown together as they have taken the trouble to offer their readers a description of each person’s engagement style. But once you commit to producing a list such as this, and rank it, then critique becomes more about who isn’t included then about who is.

As part of the day job I sometimes have to produce similar content – in this case bringing to the attention of digital newbies some of the people that they should follow – and a bit like the list I first followed nearly 4 years ago the focus should always be to highlight a spread of opinions and tweeting styles, enough to raise the curiosity of a new tweeter and encourage them to investigate further.

This, after all, is what we really want. Right?

To get more people using social networking platforms for business – linking, following, engaging, sharing, commenting and generally participating in the conversation that never sleeps.

In my view there were some notable exceptions on this PM list – but then there will be on any list. My ConnectingHR tweeters list runs to well over 100 and it would be difficult to recommend just 20 from it. But the PM piece does include the line…

“Is there anyone we have left out who you think deserves a place in PM’s top tweeters power list, then let us know who and why on Twitter @peoplemgt”

…so whilst it may be a bit of a disclaimer they also give you the opportunity to interact with them over it.

Here are my thoughts on the niggles that this particular article seems to have created…

Should HR sharer par excellence Michael Carty (also the ‘nicest person on Twitter’ I should add) have been on the list?

Yes, of course he should be on any list of top HR sharers but then let’s get real and accept that he works for a business that has a rival online publication to the one that drew up the list. Anyone who follows the people on PM’s list will inevitably also be following Michael within a few hours…he is pivotal to the daily engagement of almost everyone else on the list. Continue reading “If You’re Not on The List…” →

Recruiting Like Carla Connor!

Turn on the TV any weekday at 7.30 and during the next half hour’s soap you’ll almost certainly see someone either looking for work or starting a new job, or a small business looking for staff.

Have you ever seen anyone in Weatherfield or Albert Square register with a recruitment agency or scour a CV database? No...they recruit by asking around.

Who do you know who can do this?
Who do you know who’s hiring?
My old school friend’s moving up here – are there any jobs going at the factory?

Its good old fashioned community recruitment, you recruit who you know or who your employees know. It’s always been that way for small local businesses, hasn’t changed for generations.

Ah but that’s not real life you’ll tell me.

But it is.

Presenting the Evenbase quarterly recruitment review to conference attendees recently, this graph of the route to market for different sized businesses stood out…

For SoHos – Small office, Home office; businesses of up to 50 staff – personal, social and business networks are the main recruitment channels. Was ever thus!

With cost, technology and time pressures it’s probably no surprise that small businesses continue to recruit in this way. It also helps with on-boarding and integration if a new member of staff already has connections within the business.

I can’t help feel that recruitment agencies have missed a trick over the years. By not focusing on a service for small businesses that makes it easier for them, that takes into account their limited time and budgets, they have lost out on a potentially lucrative market – after all, these are the businesses that are supposed to be at the forefront of job creation and the Evenbase research I referred to earlier also shows that this is the size of business that is seeing an uplift in recruitment.

I haven’t yet seen Carla’s factory set up a Facebook page, nor Lucy Beale’s café tweet out the specials of the day – but there’s little doubt that anything that enhances and widens the extended personal networks of a small business will only further strengthen the community aspect of the way they recruit.

HR, What’s on Your Mind?

Yesterday I had the pleasure of moderating a TruLondon6 Livestream chat from the Jobsite studio with John Sumser and China Gorman talking about emerging trends in HR.

From workforce planning and creating value to skill shortages and making sense of data, the conversation was lively and varied… and, as you would expect with those two participants, insightful and thought provoking too.

You can watch it here…click on the image below and let me know what you would have added if you had been on the Livestream.

 

 

Now We Are 3!

Three years ago I hit the ‘Publish‘ button for the first time on this blog.

145 posts later (ok, so I’m not that prolific) I’ve had a lot of fun and learning, and a little angst too. I look back at some of my old posts and think about how I would write them very differently now, but then I also think some of them are better than some more recent stuff.

I came across this post on why we blog from the now (sadly) defunct My Hell is Other People and was struck by all the reasons people gave for their blogging. I wonder if any would express it differently now, nearly two years later…no doubt some blogs have moved on from hobby to gain more of a business or branding purpose.

My most read blog by far is this one from early 2011 when I was blogging as part of a job hunt. I think its popularity is less to do with the quality of writing and more as a result of the first 6 words in the title being a heavily searched phrase! Barely a day goes by when a few Googlers haven’t visited TRecs through that search…hope they aren’t too disappointed. (For more on the searches that lead to a blog read Doug Shaw’s recent post).

My least read blog is this one from June 2010 on how the interview process you create can send the wrong signals to potential new hires. I felt quite strongly about it so will admit to being disappointed that it didn’t get a wider reach…maybe I’ll re-write it as a rant, as rants always seem to do better!

Most of us blog about our opinions on different things, giving our take on business, or life, as we see it and are happy to debate, either IRL or through the comment sections, but I rarely see anyone post an ‘I’ve changed my mind‘ or ‘I see it differently now’ piece.

Maybe we haven’t needed to, but I was struck by this honest blog from Tory leaning political commentator Tim Montgomerie – recently voted political columnist of the year – on 3 big things he’s got wrong since he started blogging and commenting. OK he is a political blogger who follows an agenda, and has influence over the thinking of people who are passionate about his party, but I still found it a refreshing change.

No grand theme or statement to end this post…but if you have a minute do share your most and least read blogs, and any views you’ve held and blogged about, and which you have since changed…