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.

 

 

Related articles

Five Quick Tips on Social Media, Job Hunting and Recruitment

"Silver Bullet" Employees

Checklist to be an A Player from #IT18NZ

The IT18NZ Conference on IT careers and recruitment just took place in Auckland and the speaker lineup was a who's who of successful kiwi startups including Xero, Trademe, Vend, Movio and Orion Health. The speakers were all amazing but there was one strong theme for me:

 

Everyone has an opinion on what makes an A player but in my experience A players love what they do and tend to have deeper knowledge because of that. This means they can both do more and also do it without having to be asked.

There were some good tips and really concrete resources from successful managers at IT18NZ for technical people (in particular from @kalmanb and @cgarethc). I've listed some below so you can get to work on being an A player from this point on.

1. Join up to 25 Meetups for things you like, want to learn about.
2. Go to at least one a week
3. Find a mentor (you'll probably find more than one at those Meetups)
4. Talk to as many people as you can at the meetups to find out who's great and how they got that way. This will also help with the next step.
5. Improve your communication skills, A players want to be on championship teams and to get on one you need to be able to communicate. Go on and join Toastmasters.
6. Join Github, if you're a coder this is where employers really want to see what you do.
7. Do something on there, contribute to someone else! Too inexperienced? Just use something you like and point out the bugs for people.
8. Be a leader, organise something in your life. Even something small like a sports team or a meetup! Volunteer in a community group. You might need to a manager sooner than you think.
9. Check out the Australian Dept of Defense Core Capability Framework. Orion Health used it as a basis to create their own capability framework. It's extensive and extremely practical and if it's good enough for them it could really help you.
10. Read about the Skills Framework for the Information Age and see what it means for you and your career. Your employer may not be as specific but it doesn't mean you can't be.
11. Rinse and repeat. Measure and improve. Do these things early in your career or before you start and watch the results.

By the way, if doing even one of these things seems like a drag then that's not a problem either. Force yourself to do at least the meetups. It may be you don't love technology that much. But it's a huge industry and getting out there and talking to others may help you find an area that'll be exciting for you. There is no point in engaging in a long and meaningless career in an area that doesn't excite you because the reality is you'll also just be an average player if you're only mildly interested.

No one wants to be average and you don't need to be. We're all A players in something, the key is finding that thing that makes you want to get out of your car and run into work each day.

 

 

Why Having No Ambition May Kill You

Bad news from scientific studies on baboons and health workers that shows chronic stress raises mortality rates for those who are at lower levels in a hierarchy much more than for those at the top. This despite the stress being tougher on those at the top. Jonah Lehrer details in the WSJ article "It's Good To Be The Top Banana".

I think there is a simple reason for this: if you're at the top the rewards from chronic stress are much greater than if you are at the bottom. The rewards make the difference in counteracting the negative influence of chronic stress. Unfortunately that'll be a tough premise to prove. 

"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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Five Quick Tips on Social Media, Job Hunting and Recruitment

Social media is being promoted as the answer to a lot of problems in recruiting. Both from the perspective of employers and job hunters. I'm a pretty active user of social media, not a guru or expert as lot of people claim to be, but I think I have some quick insights that might help you. 

1. Don't rely on it exclusively. It's just not useful enough to be a primary method of recruiting or job-hunting.
2. Try to get involved before you need it. Whether you're a job-hunter or an employer, trying to dig the well when you're thirsty isn't going to be particularly useful.
3. Forget about measuring ROI at first, if you do you'll quit.
4. Don't expect your contacts to do much more for you at first or even ever. The relationships you build on social media sites like Twitter aren't the kind where you can ask for immediate help. 

Good luck with building your social media profile, first thing you can do is follow me.

 

 

Two Things to Start Doing in 2012

I just read an interesting article on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network from Dorie Clark. She's decided on a list of things to give up in 2012. It's hard to disagree with anything on the list, but for many people it's not enough. It's like telling you to stop eating donuts and pies when you're entire diet consists of donuts, pies, candy, soda and alcohol.

Instead of just giving up things and continung bad habits what are the things you should add to your list in 2012?

1. Develop your concentration. Are you jumping from activity to activity. Start stopping and really concentrating on what you are doing. It builds up your mental strength and helps you deal with difficult problems with less stress.

2. Investigate deeply. Why are you doing something? Do you really know the reason? Do you need to ask yourself why you came up with the first reason? One piece of advice I was once given was to ask myself "Why?" seven times. The discipline of asking "Why?" gets you to the bottom of all the excuses we give ourselves for acting in ways that don't produce the results we want.

Building these two things into habits will make a big difference for you. It takes a lot of discipline at first but like bad habits they get easier over time, and they produce big results.

 

 

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. 

 

Using Alternative Resumes to Develop a Competitive Edge in the Job Search (Guest Post)

Remember when there were only three kinds of resumes? There was the historical, the functional and, for professionals, the CV. Even then, everyone was encouraged to customize their type for the job they were after. However, these days the landscape has changed.

Alternative resumes accomplish the same goal - to stand out, get attention and hopefully get your foot in the door. Not surprisingly, these are just the sorts of things any marketer seeks to do; only you are the product for sale. And this has led to more techniques moving from the marketing and sales side over to the seeking-employment side.

Alternative Resume Basics

• Visual - Remember the pretty colored paper and scrollwork on the side of a paper resume? No more! The problem with that was it looked (and was) an unnecessary add-on to what should have been a clean and clear business document. It's still a bad idea.

  But what about a brochure or PowerPoint? The difference between these and the tacky pink- paper resume is that business people are used to the formats. Taken directly from the sales environment a brochure that looks like a professional tri-fold is a known quantity. It can highlight your strengths and lay out your selling points.

  Idealy, you want to create something that catches the eye and engages much more than text alone. Copy's of your past work or a powerpoint diagram, all capture attention. The downside? Because businesspeople are familiar with either format, they will be turned off by a poor presentation. You are judged by the quality of the presentation as much as by the content.

• Video - I would highly reccomend gettin professional help, unless you are a professional videographer yourself. The danger here is inadvertently exposing something you don't want - poor image quality, inattention to background scenes, music, a solid script - any and all of these can effect your potential employers view of you.

  The best use of video comes when you have a natural charisma and energy that won't come across any other way. But be mindful that some corporate HR departments are sensitive about images of prospective employees. They don't want to get accused of racial or gender preference and may reject any and all submissions that show a candidate's appearance.

• Website - A great choice for anyone who intends to market themselves on the Internet. A website can use visual and written text in combination to show you as a full person - a great advantage when the stats alone on your resume don't show off all of your talents.

  The problems come in when you want to customize a fixed site for a specific employer. Perhaps you need to appear like a hard-driving manager type to one and a soft-spoken, friendly advisor type to another. Along with this comes the problem of keeping it fresh. A blog helps present your "inner self", but it needs constant attention.

  Finally, a decent website should be more than a throw away template. Design and functionality might mean spending time learning the ins and outs of html and flash. Because Internet savvy employers are familiar with web pages, they will spot an amateur effort and that may not reflect kindly on you.

• Professional networks - Sites like LinkedIn or professional groups offer a middle ground for online applications. You can establish a good profile and resume at different sites and link to them. They work best when you are involved in a community in your industry and can actually participate in said community by way of a blog or other material.

  Be wary about what personal information you put up. The general rule is to have an offsite contact email that prospective employers can use to initiate contact.

• Gimmick - What's a gimmick? Anything and everything that straddles the line between acceptable and over the top. The 30-foot, arm waving inflatable man outside the car dealership is a gimmick. A gimmick gets attention. This can work for or against you, depending on what happens after you get attention.

  You can bet that a gimmick will either work wonderfully or fall flat. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground. If there is a lot of competition that is on par with you and the gimmick is well thought out, it can mean the difference between you and your competition. An exmaple of a resume gimmick may mean portraying yourself in a humorous way, and not in the standard "Education/Experience/References" format.

• Combination - There is no rule that says you can only use one technique. Sending a memory stick with a short video that has a link to your website - with the gimmick of a huge flash screen welcoming the person you contacted - can communicate your willingness to spend the time and energy to make your best effort.

Alternative Formats

Don't make the mistake of sending a CD to someone who doesn't have the time or interest in watching a half hour movie about how great you are. Keep it as simple as possible. There is one advantage paper has over electronic media - everyone knows how to use it.

That said, don't be afraid to push the envelope if you know you are dealing with a technologically savvy person or company. Showing you already know how to use the medium tells employers much more than a line on your resume that says computer literate.

Memory sticks are a better choice than CDs as they can be reused. They have a value all their own and people are less likely to just throw out a thumb drive.

Check your website and profile in different browsers. Pay attention to font and layout. An online resume is not the same as a paper resume. Bullet points and links give you the chance to shape the experience for readers.

Conclusion

The best case for alternative resumes is when you can demonstrate something the employer is seeking right in the resume itself. While you can rely on your alternative resume getting more eyeballs, you still have to deliver on your promises. Remember, the idea is to sell yourself to prospective employers/customers. Keep an eye out for anything new that might fit you. All the rules of marketing apply.

Brendan Cruickshank (Vice President of Client Services) - Brendan is a veteran of the online job search and recruiting industry, having spent the past 8 years in senior client services roles with major sites like Juju.com and JobsInTheMoney.com. He is quoted regularly as an expert in employment and jobs trends in major media outlets like the Washington Post, US News & World Report, and Forbes and has spoken at recruiting industry events such as Onrec and Kennedy Information’s Corporate Recruiting Conference.