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.

 

 

Winning Systems That Work

The world is full of systems that work for almost every problem. You have a lot you use yourself. We all feel the rush of excitement when we discover a new system that produces a great result for us. It might be a recipe, getting something done online or a fix on the computer. Or even a shortcut on the way home that cuts five minutes off our commute. 

But how often to you honestly look for new systems? And do you look for systems that deal with the biggest problems you have? I recently read that people in one study had a bias to take more physical action that produced no results than spend more time on a problem they were struggling with that was solvable. The study concluded that the participants dedided it was less energy to do the physical work than the thinking.

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.

 

 

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. 

 

Shift Happens

It seems 2010 is going to be a massive year of career shift for many people. Surveys in most developed markets point to massive numbers of skilled candidates intending to change jobs this year. Some of the results include:

• 60% of US Workers intend to leave their jobs in 2010 (link).
• 25% of employees believe organization morale is low (link).
• 20% of workers plan to switch careers and/or industries within two years (link).
• Only 45% of US employers are satisfied with their jobs in 2009 down from 61% in 1987 (link).
• Only 53% of Singapore financial workers are satisfied with their jobs (link).

It makes you wonder what really happened with all these people, what is it that causes them to have so much suffering at work? I talk with a lot of people in regards to their situation at work, most will admit to wanting more of something. Sometimes when we flesh it out their needs are quite realistic. Other times they are looking for an easier path to a better reward, which unfortunately, rarely exists. Meshing reality with what the person wants is often the biggest part of understanding whether someone really needs to make a job change in order to improve their satisfaction.

This can be really difficult to do alone, even for the most experienced candidates. After all, if you're good at your job you are busy doing that, not analyzing the marketplace and/or your skills and abilities to see whether you are ready for a big move. In order to make the decision on whether the time is right I recommend answering a few of the following questions. Be honest with yourself, anything else is pointless.

• What are my biggest achievements in my current position?
• How have I grown in the last 2 years?
• Am I giving 100% of my effort to the work I'm doing?
• If not, why am I holding back?
• If yes, then is the work satisfying me?
• If it's not satisfying me despite my effort, what are the areas that are holding me back?
• Can I improve on those areas in my current position?
• If I made a job change what are all the areas I need fulfilled to make me happy in a new position. 
• Being that nowhere is perfect. What would I be willing to give up/take on to make that move anyway?

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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.

Online Workshop From Japan: How to Attract the Right Job Candidate

My friend Bernd Kestler has another online workshop coming up soon, if you are interested details are below:

Online Workshop: How to Attract the Right Job Candidate - Bernd Kestler

The reason why finding that great talent can be so challenging is very simple - great people aren't job hunting. They already have one. The magic is reaching not just a lot of candidates, but the one great talent that will make your search a success.

Details:
Date: October 9th, 2008 (Thursday)
Time: 9:00PM Japan Time (room open from 8:50PM)
To join, click on the "Join now" button below

You will need at least speaker or a headset.

Online Seminar - Attracting and Sourcing Candidates in Japan

Bernd Kestler is giving a free online seminar on attracting and sourcing candidates in Japan and thought it might be of interest to APH readers. Please find details below from Bernd:

I have schedule a web-seminar titled: "Japan - Sourcing and Attracting Job Candidates" The seminar is free of charge and takes about 45 minutes. I am using a virtual classroom to deliver the presentation. Please use the following link to attend. You do not need to download any application to take part.

http://www.wiziq.com/tutorsession/session.aspx?JuX%2bgH%2b2GbZ8vZ%2f5CB3YhJ2NIlMdlK3OZAKjiEiwD8uXzOeeGkHfWSxCjgqg5o8ZF0o8nGkSip0%3d

You will need a headset to listen to the presentation. The session will be recorded and is available later in a flash format.

Details:

Title: Japan - Sourcing and Attracting Job Candidates
Date: May 23rd, 2008
Time: 3:00pm German time (10:00pm Japan time) - The classroom will be open from 9:50pm
Duration: 30 -45min.
Location: Internet www.wiziq.com
Language: English

Content:
- The Japanese hiring system
- Labor demographics
- Sourcing Channels
- Q&A

About Bernd: I have been living in Japan for over 10 years and work as a trainer mainly with multinational companies. In a previous role I worked with a recruiting agency and currently get requests for trainings on sourcing candidates in Japan. If you know someone, who might be interested in the presentation, please pass on the information.

Sincerely
Bernd Kestler

Why The Buddha Doesn't Give Referral Fees

Image Via Flickr

The Buddha states there are three gifts you can give a person. The first is a material gift. Perhaps if someone is suffering you give them some money or food to help them, which is truly a wonderful thing. The second is know-how. The gift of know-how is one that eases suffering by teaching so a person can stand on their own two feet and support themselves.  This is also a wonderful gift. But the third and greatest gift is the gift of non-fear.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese zen monk, peace activist and mindfulness teacher explains in the excerpt below (link) the gift of non-fear:

  In 1991, I visited a friend in New York who was dying, Alfred Hassler. We had worked together in the peace movement for almost thirty years. Alfred looked as though he had been waiting for me to come before dying, and he died only a few hours after our visit. I went with my closest colleague, Sister Chan Khong (True Emptiness).

    Alfred was not awake when we arrived. His daughter Laura tried to wake   him up, but she couldn't. So I asked Sister Chan Khong to sing Alfred   the Song of No Coming and No Going: "These eyes are not me, I am   not caught by these eyes. This body is not me, I am not caught by this   body. I am life without boundaries. I have never been born, I will   never die." The idea is taken from the Samyutta Nikaya. She sang   so beautifully, and I saw streams of tears running down the faces of   Alfred's wife and children. They were tears of understanding, and they   were very healing.

  Suddenly, Alfred came back to himself. Sister Chan Khong began to practice what she had learned from studying the sutra The Teaching Given to the Sick. She said, "Alfred, do you remember the times we worked together?" She evoked many happy memories we had shared together, and Alfred was able to remember each of them. Although he was obviously in pain, he smiled. This practice brought results right away. When a person is suffering from so much physical pain, we   sometimes can alleviate his suffering by watering the seeds of happiness that are in him. A kind of balance is restored, and he will feel less pain.

  All the while, I was practicing massage on his feet, and I asked him whether he felt my hand on his body. When you are dying, areas of your body become numb, and you feel as if you have lost those parts of your body. Doing massage in mindfulness, gently, gives the dying person the feeling that he is alive and being cared for. He knows that love is   there. Alfred nodded, and his eyes seemed to say, "Yes, I feel your hands. I know my foot is there."

  Sister Chan Khong asked, "Do you know we learned a lot from you when we lived and worked together? The work you began, many of us are continuing to do. Please don't worry about anything." She told him many things like that, and he seemed to suffer less. At one point, he opened his mouth and said, "Wonderful, wonderful." Then, he sank back to sleep.

  Before we left, we encouraged the family to continue these practices. The next day I learned that Alfred passed away just five hours after our visit. This was a kind of gift that belongs to the third category. If you can help people feel safe, less afraid of life, people, and death, you are practicing the third kind of gift.

The gift a Recruiter can give to their candidates and all the people they deal with on a daily basis encompass these three gifts. They can provide actual jobs, the know-how to get a job, but the third and least acknowledged gift is the gift of non-fear. Encouragement to those on the journey, encouragement to those trying to push through a fear. That fear might be unemployment, but it may be something else. I know that many Recruiters get caught up in the money side of the business. But I truly believe that you'll not REALLY enjoy this business until you see the opportunities you have to practice all three gifts.

So remember this next time you are asked to pay a referral fee. The reason the Buddha doesn't pay for referrals is because the Buddha has other gifts to give that are much greater. You also have the opportunity to give these gifts. If you are only seeing this business as one to exchange material gifts you are missing out on giving so much more.