The Asia Pacific Headhunter

Mind the (Generation) Gap: The Hunt for Talent in Asia - Pharmaceutical Executive

 

Mind the (Generation) Gap: The Hunt for Talent in Asia

The key points to take from this article and for any kind of executive search in Asia.

1. You can't ignore cultural realities - too often foreign firms, especially startups and tech firms want to hire for THEIR culture. When the reality is the culture of the country they're going into often dictates the kind of talent that will be successful there.
2. You can train your culture into employees, but it will take time and effort. Candidates in Asia realise they take a risk working for a firm who's only partially committed the country and/or region. They will hedge their bets if you hedge yours.
3. The more you invest in the region from an education, marketing and employment development aspect the more you will return.

 

 

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Five Quick Tips on Social Media, Job Hunting and Recruitment

"Silver Bullet" Employees

"Silver Bullet" Employees

I have a new term to describe what a lot of companies want in a new hire. It's prevalent across the world, across industries and organisations. It's called the Silver Bullet Employee. 

What is a Silver Bullet Employee?

• They're self-motivated and hard working. They look for ways to solve problems that they aren't asked to solve yet.
• They're learners and doers, they continue their own self-development while having a bias towards getting things done in their organizations.
• They are super easy to manage as they're getting things done for their bosses without supervision.
• They outperform their colleagues and they become profiles for what the company wants in a hire.

Why are they popular?

• The cover up mistakes and make the company money.
• They don't need managing to succeed and deliver.
• The company doesn't have to deal with their processes that don't work because the Silver Bullet covers them with their effort and smarts.
• Managers can blame problems that are in other areas on not having a Silver Bullet rather than using other problem solving techniques.
• Hiring one doesn't require a job description.
• You can hire one with a very general idea of what you want them to achieve but no plan for how to help or measure that success.

Why they fail in new jobs?

• They burn out.
• They're hired as a Silver Bullet and often the problems they're hired to solve haven't been framed correctly from the beginning making it impossible to evaluate their achievements.
• They start to feel like they're being taken advantage of by their peers and management.
• Current employees work actively against them as they're seen as a dropped in superstar to fix problems caused by current employees.
• They can't deal with internal people working against them.
• They're unfairly evaluated by managers who haven't defined success in the role other than "getting it done".

The Silver Bullet is attractive to managers because they don't need managing and they make you look good. But another useful point about them is they hide bad management practices. How? Because when they fail it's so easy to say, "well I guess they weren't as good as we thought they were" rather than deal with the root cause of the failure.

Of course we can all deal with reality by creating an imaginary alternative, but I think if we're going to self-evaluate honestly we'll start to give the Silver Bullets in our midst a fairer chance. They will out-perform but you can't hobble right from the beginning by trying to use them as superglue for all the breaks you have.

 

 

Worst First Interview Question Ever

"Why do you want to work for us?"

It seems a lot of employers still ask this question, but I personally can't work out why. It may be appropriate for graduates who are looking at a variety of companies and are basically choosing based on brand names at a job fair, but here is what goes through the mind of an experienced candidate with choices when they are asked this question:

1. You think I need this job and want me to beg you for it.

2. You think your company is so great I should want to work here before you tell me anything and you want me to explain to you why.

3. You think I'll give you some new ideas as to why you should stay.

4. You're not sure how to sell me on this job or company so you really hope I already want it so badly that you don't have to tell me why to take it.

5. You're on an ego trip because you get to choose who gets this job and asking this question makes you feel important.

 I guess a good candidate could have a serious answer to this, but what could you possibly learn from it? You might learn that the candidate has done some serious research on the company before arriving. But you could find that out from asking them, "what do you know about us?".

I've had feedback from other recruiters that the question is used to make sure candidates are serious about their organisation. But at a first interview with candidates that have choices it's too presumptious to ask this question. A lot of times in recruiting we use the analogy that recruiting is like getting married. Asking this question is the equivalent of asking someone, "why do you want to marry me?" on a first date. Anyone tried that with any success?

If the position is important enough for you to get the right person then getting them to join for the right reasons for them is just as important. That kind of symbiotic result is what produces success, a meeting of equals. But the question of "tell us why you want to join our company" isn't the kind of question that demonstrates a meeting of equals, it's a question that demonstrates the power of interviewer. Most candidates don't want to feel dominated at work. They want a place that will be fair and allow them to achieve while helping the company achieve.

Employers can go on asking this question when times are tough and when they feel the upper hand, but it'll backfire when you need intelligent candidates with choices to join your company.

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Need intelligent candidates? Email me: [email protected]

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You're No Longer An Employee - Can You Be A Business?

Seriously, you're a business like every other business now. The world of work has changed to the point where if you just judge yourself as just an employee at some point you'll be disappointed that people treat you like a business. 

So what does this mean to you? It really empowers you. It means you can decide the training and development you need. It means you can decide where you invest in your business, and it means you can decide your target market.

At the same time it opens you up to the same kind of treatment you currently give other businesses. You vote with your feet and money; your own customers can do the same. You need to hustle to keep them and to provide them with reasons to stay with you, in the same way the businesses that sell to you do.

So as an employee try asking the following, if you can answer them then you're thinking like a business:

1. How much money has the company made this month and was my role important in delivering that?
2. How much profit did we make and what was my role in delivering that?
3. What am I uncertain about at work that makes me worse at my job?
4. What can I influence to make myself a key part of the business?
5. What do the customers think of our business and of the part I play in delivering it?

And one little extra to think about:

1. If my company went bust tomorrow would my personal brand currently be good enough to convince a current customer to work with me personally?

 

How to Build a Better Boss and Why It's the best recruiting tool

Link: New York Time's: Google's Quest to Build a Better Boss

What's the new next thing in leadership? Nothing quite so new, but definitely some reaffirming qualities that should be focused on (but usually aren't focused on enough). Leave it to Google to mine through tens of thousands of their own HR data - employee feedback, surveys, performance reviews, promotion nominations, etc. to come up with a succinct 8-Point Plan. Their findings in a nutshell: deeper technical expertise is not as important as it was thought. Being a good coach, empowering and stretching your employees and showing genuine interest in them as people makes a team that is happier and performs consistently better. 

Why is a headhunter writing about this? Because when I work with clients, I need to be confident that they are, indeed, a good company people like working for: a company with happy employees that perform well. That's my leverage in getting the best people for that company. It's known that hard-to-find/highly-sought-after people (like at Google) leave their jobs for three most common reasons: 1) they don't feel a connection to their company or their own purpose 2) they don't get along with colleagues, and 3) they have a bad manager.  What's interesting with Google's Project Oxygen, is that they found the the last reason - how employees viewed their manager, had the most impact on employee happiness and performance. Happy employees are the biggest recruiting tool a company could ever use. If you want to hire the best, make sure your current employees have a great manager or team leader. 

 

NZ Business School Sex Education

 

Okay this made me laugh this morning. The Times of India obviously love a great headline to grab attention. But at the same time check out the Google Ads just beneath the title. It's a ad for the University of Auckland. I guess for some people it might be attractive to get sex education while they study business.

It's important to note that this is NOT really Business School in the way it's used globally to mean post graduate MBA study. It's for undergraduate classes so really this doesn't amount to much more than an article about sex education on campus. Something that is fairly normal throughout the world. 

 

Making Shift Happen

I find most people characterize events in their life in basically two ways, things that happen to them, and things they make happen.

 Normally you'll find the bad things are the ones that happen, while the good are the ones they made happen.

 A major illness happens to them, being made redundant, that happened to them, the recession happened to them. 

On the other hand they got the raise, they got their MBA, or they made a million dollars. 

The language is subtle, but specific. 

One points to themselves and the other points away from them towards somewhere else, although where exactly we usually can't tell.

When it comes to being happy at work I'm going to suggest you stop using any term that describes things happening to you. 

Even up to the point of ridiculous. 

Why? Because I think that sometimes when we describe things happening to us, we forget about our ability to react to what happened.

That's where I see a problem. Your reaction is your chance to make things happen. 

Don't throw that chance away, open your mind to the fact that there is a real opportunity there for you. 

When you tell yourself you want to be great at something what does life give you? Does it make you great, or does it give you chances to practice being great? 

When you tell yourself you want to be someone people respect, does life give you that respect, or chances to do things people will respect you for doing?

When you tell yourself you want to be rich, does life give you money, or chances to work hard and earn it?

Are you starting to get the picture?

Some time soon at work life is going to give you a chance to be the person you want to be, wise, wealthy, intelligent and successful. 

At the time you're almost guaranteed to NOT think that life is giving you a chance to be those things, you're more likely to think it's kicking you in the ass.

But when you have that moment try open your mind, relax, be with it. And then react, right at that point it's going to be what you make happen that makes the difference.  

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Are you a software developer in Auckland, want to be happier at work? Click here!

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Forget Career Success What About Some Career Happiness!

I've spoken to a lot of people about success in their career, but more often I speak to people who are straight up unhappy. They haven't lost interest in being successful in their career but they know they aren't happy where they are right now, or happy doing what they are doing. These are smart people so if you quiz them on career success they'll answer intelligently about what they want to do and where they'll be when they succeed. Unfortunately, they rarely get that success because the real problem is that they aren't having any joy in their journey.

What's more important career success or career happiness? I've decided it's the latter and so I've started advising my candidates and clients that they need to spend some of their time really investigating where they find the joy and happiness in their career. For some of them focusing on this area has helped them engage with jobs they thought they were sick of!

So, how do you focus on finding more joy at work? Sometimes a problem defined is half way to solving that problem, so you need to investigate yourself in order to find job happiness. Asking the following questions might be a nice way to start exploring your thoughts:

1. What are the jobs/projects you've done in the past that you've felt the most engaged in?
2. When do you feel most happy at work?
3. Why do you think you felt engaged when doing those job/projects you identified?
4. Why do you think you felt most happy in the times you did?
5. What are the obstacles to me doing more work like that?
6. What are the opportunities to doing more work like that?

Good luck with finding that happiness at work, it'll make a huge difference to your life.

Working Women Discriminate On Appearance

U.S. working women see appearance as key: survey | Lifestyle | Reuters.

According to a survey conducted by PINK magazine women in senior leadership positions see appearance as key to their success at work. A more eye-opening result was that one in five female executives say they have withheld a promotion or a raise due to the way an employee dresses.

That kind of discrimination is hard to believe especially coming FROM women who face discrimination themselves when it comes to leaving work to raise families and in other areas. I think there is a fair number of woman who feel they have to show a tough persona to succeed at a high level in business, I wonder if surveys like these reflect the result of taking on that persona.

Recruiting Software Overview

A lot of businesses, small and large alike, are turning to applicant tracking systems to make the recruiting process a little easier, faster and more cost-effective. But have you ever thought about just how secure those recruiting software systems are?

 

Cytiva Software Inc., which provides on-demand talent management solutions, recently released a free white paper that explores ATS security and offers tips for vendors.

 

Most SaaS applicant tracking system vendors are able to provide levels of security that most organizations can't match internally, but some ATS users mistakingly believe that all vendors can offer the same amount of data security.

 

“Ask any applicant tracking vendor about security and you’ll get a laundry list of security measures, mostly concerning their physical data center,” Cytiva CEO Jason Moreau said. “But security is an ongoing process that involves not only your data center, but the code base of your application and the execution of ongoing policies and practices to make sure your application, your servers and your security systems remain secure in the face of an ever-evolving threat.”

 

Every company should be focusing on the importance of security, with more and more cases of it being compromised cropping up. Since early 2006, there have been about four to six HR data breaches per month, according to HR Privacy Solutions.

 

One problem is that privacy laws vary from state to state. On top of that, employers are often required to notify any affected parties, even if they only suspect that some data may have been compromised.

 

In example, in 2009, Aetna had to notify 65,000 job applicants that their personal data may have been accessed in a suspected security breach; in 2007, the Gap announced that a laptop containing Social Security numbers of some job applicants was stolen from the company's third-party vendor; and in 2007, Monster.com announced that 1.3 million users had personal information stolen by criminals who hacked into the Web site.

 

So what should you look for to make sure the software you're getting is secure. First of all, make sure the data center can offer you 24-7 secure entry, secure cabinet and cage space, round-the-clock technical staff, data-grade HVAC, advanced fire suppression system and optimized and redundant power supplies.

 

You also should make sure your software provider has the right hardware and software protections in place, which include everything from firewall protection to enforcing strong passwords to server monitoring.

 

In addition to everything else mentioned, your software provider should be able to offer you regular updates and provide new features to avoid any potential security risks.