The Asia Pacific Headhunter

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.

 

 

"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.

 

 

Senior Data Analyst, Auckland

Have you outgrown your current job?
What excuses have you been making to yourself about staying there?

How would you like:

1. a stable company that is growing steadily internationally.
2. lots of opportunities to grow personally.
3. close interaction with customers.
4. products that have social value and benefit everyday people, not just businesses.
5. international travel.
6. the opportunity to part of an amazing team changing the world from New Zealand

Our client is only growing bigger and better - join them on the way up and get your chance to dig deep in a broad range of technology with an incredible amount of space for career development and growth. If you have at least 6 years commercial data analysis experience with the following

• Excel
• VBA
• possibly MySQL, R, SAS. 

as well as the following characteristics

• attention to detail
• ability and comfort in communicating and working with others towards common goals
• the ability to do some international travel 

then email me NOW!

Don't miss out on this opportunity. It won't last. Give us a call on 09 306 8950 or send in your CV to [email protected], or get in touch on twitter @stevenkempton

Also, if you think I'm some faceless Recruiter who will ignore your application check out some of the quotes from candidates about me:

“I used Steven as my agent to help me find new employment. From the very beginning to the very end I really appreciated Steven's integrity as a recruiter. He really wanted the very best for me. When I am next looking for work I will definitely be speaking with Steven again.”

“Highly recommend Steven as a recruitment agent. Has a much more hands on approached compared to the standard recruitment agent. Can count on him to be there with you each step of the way as a friend and advisor. Very personable, approachable, very honest and forth coming.”

"Steven is a pleasure to deal with and is always ready to listen. If he is unable to help, he will tell you straight up and will endeavour to provide some direction.”

Senior - Intermediate Microsoft Developers - Auckland

 

 

.Net Developers - Intermediate to Senior

Outgrown your current job? What excuses have you been making to yourself about staying there?

How would you like:

• a stable company is that growing steadily here and globally.
• lots of opportunities to grow personally as a developer or into other areas.
• competitive pay and perks to make you feel like you’re cared for.
• interesting software products that have social value to benefit everyday people, not just businesses.
• international travel and relocation opportunities.
• smart team mates who'll challenge you and help you be the best you can be
• the opportunity to part of an amazing team changing the world

Our client is only growing bigger and better - join them on the way up and get your chance to dig deep in a broad range of technology with an incredible amount of space for career development and growth.

If you have at least 5 years commercial .Net experience, in particular :

• C# (.NET 3.5), Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server,
• Team Foundation Server, ERWin, WCF, MSMQ, WF 3.0,
• a passion for technology
• an inquisitive nature and proactive attitude towards work and personal development
• ability and comfort in communicating and working with others towards common goals
• the ability to do some international travel 

Don't miss out on this opportunity. It won't last.

Give us a call on 09 306 8950 or send in your CV to [email protected], or get in touch on twitter @stevenkempton, to find out more NOW!

 

 

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.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

Career Success Resources

I'd like to put together some pages and/or blog posts to review and list career success resources. I get a lot of questions on career management and career success and while I have some strong opinions and ideas myself I'd be really interested in any readers thoughts on books, blogs, podcasts, speeches, guide books or anything else you've read or seen that you felt made a difference for you in your career. So please leave a comment with the resource, and if possible a couple of reasons why you like it and I'll let you know once I've put together the final list. I think in particular if you have resources that you feel are more relevant to motivated employees in the Asia Pacific I'd really be keen to hear about them.

Trademe Jobs Up and Running

Trademe Jobs has hit the market in NZ with a real roar on their first day offering job postings for $25 until Thursday night. On the TV One News tonight the GM for New Zealand's current number one marketshare job board, Seek, put on a brave face and said that price wasn't their only focus. But I know they will be worried. Seek isn't as user friendly as they like to think they are. And their continual price increases coupled with lower effectiveness of their listings has many advertisers looking elsewhere. Trademe also have such huge reach with their traffic that they represent a challenge that Seek have never had to face in the New Zealand market.

IT jobs is a big part of Seek and they currently have 2,800 jobs online for all of New Zealand. In one day Trademe has already added 357 IT jobs. In comparison JobUniverse which is a dedicated IT job board only has 632 after being in the market for as long as I can remember (hardly a "universe" is it). Search4jobs which is apparently the "2nd place" job board in the market has 680 IT jobs advertised at the moment. While I think Seek might catch a cold from Trademe's aggressive entry to the marketplace there is a real chance that Search4jobs and JobUniverse will get terminal pneumonia.

New Zealand Salary Survey & Tax Freedom Day

So the good news is, New Zealanders are getting paid more. According to the just released 2006 Hays Salary Survey, which covers 13 sectors in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington: 58 per cent of employers increased salaries by 3-6 per cent and 25 per cent increased by less than 3 per cent.  Some 13 per cent of employers raised salaries by 6-10 per cent and 4 per cent lifted salaries by more than 10 per cent.

The bad news is, since January 1st, those hard earned pay rises went straight to taxes. That's right - today (June 1st) is this year's Tax Freedom Day - the average New Zealander has had to work 151 days to pay off taxes - 6 days longer than last year, and about 3 weeks longer than Australia's.  From here on out Kiwis can actually keep what they earn!

Seek Vs. Trademe

So the online job board war in NZ is looking to take off soon as Trademe has announced that recruitment advertising is their next target. I'm a big supporter of Seek and admire them for their focus on getting their brand out in front of candidates, which is really what the job boards main focus should be.

The reality is the average job seeker is not looking for brand new tools to help them find a job, and the average employer and recruiter aren't really looking for tools to screen candidates. Both sides want a good group of strong options to choose from, especially in a candidate-short market where job seekers get multiple options anyway, while employers have to fight to get multiple candidate choice. As long as Seek continues to be foremost in the candidates' vision with their widespread advertising campaign, I think they will be able to offer value to both parties.

With that in mind though, it means Trademe should really be able to compete. They have huge coverage in NZ and with the opportunity to offer target marketing to their customers (wouldn't you love to serve up "Sales Executive" job ads to people looking to buy books about Sales?), I'm really keen to see what they come up with as an offering.

On another note, I'm kind of surprised at Sam Morgan's quote at the bottom of the article: "The internet space is changing really rapidly and we are continuing to hire people in their 20s who can try to inform us about what is happening on the Web". So if you aren't in your 20s you can't know what is going on on the Internet? Knowing the NZ media, he was probably misquoted. Not a good look though.