Author: Blog

Ask a stupid question….

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Applying for jobs is hard work and particularly so if you’re graduating in the current environment. It is hard for other groups too, I know, but it isn’t that many years since I was coming out of University and trying to get my foot on the career ladder. So I have a lot of sympathy.

Job seeking is a pretty soulless process. Time consuming, expensive, depressing and often fruitless. But you have to keep going and you have to keep positive. Despite the stupid application forms you need to complete, the ridiculous processes that are created, despite the, oh so clever, questions you have to answer.

Because yes, that question that you wrote that you thought would sort the creative wheat from the non-creative chaff is being met at best with an eye-roll and at worst with utter contempt. As one job applicant said recently to me, “[it] makes me feel like I’m not being taken seriously as a hard-working student who wants to show my skills and talents”.

Seriously, have you looked at your recruitment process from the other side of the fence? Sure there may be more candidates than there are jobs, for now. But does that make the applicants less human? I’m not talking about candidate journey – there are recruitment bloggers out there who will cover the subject much better than me. I’m talking about common decency and respect.

If you ask a candidate to complete pages and pages of answers as part of their graduate application, don’t you think you should show them a little respect back? If you’re going to ask them question after question, then at least make them relevant to the applicants and respectful of the time, hard work and financial commitment that they have already put in just to be deemed worthy to complete your process.

We all need to make selection decisions, of course. But can the candidate see the relevance of it and do they feel that they are being judged on criteria that feel fair and transparent?

“Describe a unique experience you’ve had over the last year” (are you testing me on my descriptive abilities or the quality of my experiences?)

“Where would you like to be in 5 years time?” (geographically, existentially or financially?)

“Why do you want this job?” (because medical science rejected my body and a corporate career was all that was left open to me)

So yes, ask questions, pull your application processes together, design your assessment centres, do the do. But try to put yourself in the candidate’s position too. This probably won’t be the only job they’re applying for, they’ve seen hundreds of similar processes. Make it relevant, make it easy for them to shine and make it reflect well on you, both in the short-term and for your longer brand perception.

I still have all the rejection letters that I received, somewhere in a file….I’m not against grudge bearing….I know who you are…..

Continuous learning is your own competitive advantage

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We’re all looking for that extra something. Those of us in the corporate jungle know, that at one time or another, we will come up against someone else, someone powerful. Head to head, face to face, nose to nose. You get the point.

When you come up against someone, the question that you will ask yourself is, “what is my advantage?” But, by then it will be too late, because by then you will be pushing heavy stuff up a hill against a downhill wind. And that, my friends, is both an uphill struggle and a blow off in one simple sentence.

So the question is, or the question should be, how can I gain that advantage now?

A lot of my free time is spent cooking, I love the challenge of creating dishes that surprise, entertain but also simply nourish people.  I love providing people with things that they really want. That they enjoy.

And you know what? That would be the most amazing way to approach the world of work. What if we strived every day to dish up something to our co-workers that surprised, entertained and nourished them? What if we constantly tried to learn, improve and deliver delight?

How about….

1)    We absorb technique. We read, we learn, we are inquisitive. We look to others for knowledge and understanding.

2)    We experiment unremittingly. We try, we serve, we receive feedback, we improve, we try again. There is never a sense of “that will do”.

3)    We learn from others, unafraid to listen, taste, learn and accept the knowledge of others that may have been there first.

4)    We constantly seek to amaze.

This is all about continuous improvement, about continuous learning, about striving to improve, to excite, to surpass our history.

All of us know that one time or another, we will come up against someone else and at that point, we will have had a couple of choices.

But the most important ones, will already have passed.

If we can be good, be strong, be wild and be focussed on being amazing every day. Well then, the rest, it can work itself out.

Why I’m not listening. And nor should you.

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Would you buy a cookbook from someone who hadn’t been near a kitchen in anger for decades? Or learn to drive from an instructor who last saw a car when they had someone walking in front with a red flag?

How about someone teaching you to shoot, who only had a track record in making bullets? Or have your house built by a plumber?

How about a mountain guide that had never been outside of Holland?

I’m sounding ridiculous, right?

When you’re looking for advice, when you’re looking for someone to help, when you’re looking for a friendly hand to guide, when you want expertise…..when you NEED expertise. Then, you want someone who has been there, taken the blows, dodged the bullets and made it out the other end. You want someone who, themselves, has done the hard miles.

So why in the world of work do we take advice from people who have come no closer to running a business than I have to running a marathon? I could tell you how to run after a bus…but that would be the limit of my experience. And you’d be foolish to listen to me on anything further.

On a daily basis, I hear lawyers telling me how to run a business. Now anyone who has ever provided HR support for a legal department will tell you that lawyers are amongst the worse people managers since Attila the Hun hung up his axe. They are great at providing legal advice, but after that….not so much.

And how about the consultants that have “worked” in HR. The ones that when you check their Linkedin profiles haven’t actually been in any organisation of any size since Margaret Thatcher was in power.

Or they just had a sucky job in a sucky company.

I don’t want to beat up on consultants, or lawyers, or anyone. Well maybe a few people, but I’m going to shelve that now and focus on my professional persona.

For the best part of 20 years, I’ve been slogging my butt in to organisations and trying to make them a better place to be for the people who work there. From the CEO to the cleaner. For everyone. And I do it because I honestly believe it makes the world of work a better place.

So I completely resent being told how to do my job better, by people who have no idea of the realities of an organization, of my daily life, of business in the 21st century.

I don’t mind thoughts, I don’t mind suggestions, I don’t mind specific points of knowledge. I am not against collaborative working. That is all good.

I’m an HR Director, I have skills, I have experience, I have knowledge, I have expertise. Every day I hone these as I work to do the right thing for my company and my employees. I bring something to the party.

And if you work in HR, so do you.

So next time someone is telling you that you should be doing this, that or the other. Ask them….when did you do that? When was the last time that you succeeded in deploying that in an organisation? What was the result?

What experience do you have that can complement MY experience?

And if they can’t answer that question to your satisfaction, then show them the door. They add no value.

And I tell you now, I won’t be listening to them. And nor should you.

HR: A 10 point agenda for change

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If you ever wanted proof of how dismally most people view the HR profession, then you need go no further than this piece from the Guardian online on Friday. What started as a question about working hours, turned in to a free for all regarding the standing of the HR profession. And by far the majority of comments were negative. Here are just some examples,

“…in my company, it’s often the victims of HR that have to stay late to fill in even more paper work, to generate the paperwork that HR needs to dispel the rumor that they have nothing to do all day but generate pointless paper work.”

“Everyone else in your building hates HR for the ludicrous and pointless self-assessments we’re put through each year.

“HR is the weak link in every company; an industry whose only purpose is to justify its own pointless existence. 

Get out while you still can, or face an entire career of being sniggered at behind your back by your co-workers.”

“We all hate our HR department, they send out pointless memos about equality and diversity, and reminders to complete your appraisal/quarterly review etc, just so it looks like their jobs are essential.”

“People in HR departments exist to preserve their pointless jobs by creating work for others to do !
Does anyone know anything worthwhile that HR has done ?”

“my experiences with Human Resources were neither humane nor resourceable. [sic]”

I could go on, but you get the gist. Everybody hates HR.

Now I could put up a stream of arguments that would point out the value of HR, indeed I and a few others did tentatively point this out, but in reality that is an utter waste of time and completely misses the point. It doesn’t matter what WE think, it matters what THEY think and if we are serious about our profession, then we need to take that in to account.

I admit that, in common with a number of other functions, we are in a situation where people don’t understand the value until they really need it and we are often associated with “bad things” that happen in companies. But that is the fact of the matter, we can’t get away from that. We cannot deny reality, we need to tackle it face on.

  1. We need to be resourceful in bringing the right mindset into the profession. We are not a policing function, we are not an administrative function, we are here to provide solutions and facilitate not provide problems and barriers. This mindset is more important that technical skills. If people don’t have it then don’t hire them.
  2. We need to de-clutter our processes and procedures. Enough of the forms, the polices, the bureaucracy. 90% of it isn’t needed and 100% of it is hated, resented and not understood by employees and managers alike.
  3. We need to stop saying “no”. Our language, our communication to the business needs to be positive, not negative. We need to be owners of good news. Deal with problems individually, not by memo. Stop sending out dumb emails, if it isn’t positive, don’t send it.
  4. We need to accept that you don’t get influence through control, you get influence through other people’s positive experience of you. Get influence through people wanting you involved not by telling them you have to be.
  5. We need to cut down the initiatives. Every time we look at something we should clearly be able to articulate why we are doing it and why our organization (not our HR department) wants it. If we can’t, we shouldn’t be doing it.
  6. We need to listen to our employees and our managers. We need to stop seeing them as being “the problem” and start seeing them as being the people that we are here to help. They are the reason we have jobs, so stop moaning about them and start listening.
  7. We need to stop focusing on alleged best practice and start focusing on “best fit” solutions. If our organizations only need a simple solution, then just give it to them. This isn’t about winning prizes at the CIPD awards, or standing up at conferences, this is about making your organization better.
  8. We need to be more human. We need to get out and talk, interact, spend time with people, we need to be empathetic and understanding, we need to feel. Sitting in the HR department bitching is not going to change anything.
  9. We need to stop focusing on cost and start focusing on value. These two things are not the same. Even if cost reduction is on the agenda, look at the value you can get from the budget, the resources. Cheaper and faster do not equate to better.
  10. We need to tell people who do not believe in this agenda that they have no place in the profession. They should find another career voluntarily or we should help them to find one involuntarily. There isn’t a choice to stay the same, there is only the choice to change.

Every single one of us has a responsibility for raising standards and calling others to account when they do not meet high enough standards. Those of us in leadership positions need to set the example. We need to be all over and we need to start now.