One of my best friends popped in for dinner last night. Over drinks we talked about how his business was managing with the financial downturn. Increases in unemployment, London riots and business difficulties were all discussed but I was delighted when he told me that his business was “Doing better than expected”. I heard about the new business plan that I expect will generate a healthy growth for the next year.

“What keeps me awake at night”
He’s managed to avoid laying people off work and whilst he wasn’t hiring people he was intending to restructure his team. The thing that was keeping him awake at night was that the restructure might cause some of his good people to leave. “I know jobs are hard to find right now but good people are still able to move quite easily” he explained.

5 Point Plan solution
After discussing much of the content of an article I wrote some months ago HERE for IQPC we talked about strategies for retaining his good people. In the end we settled on a five point plan. It would be specific to detail in this blog post but if you’d like to hear how we arrived at the solution then email me at stephen@assimilating-talent.com and we can arrange a SKYPE call and I can fill you in. 

As you know I spend much of my time advising companies on why their team restructure “just isn’t working as planned”.

Good people are always attractive to the competition
Too often it’s because good people leave. Their companies, however, are often unaware that some key staff are unhappy and end up screaming “What a disaster” when they do leave. Blindness to the impending situation is no excuse because there are always clues. The other thing to consider is that especially in poor economic conditions, good salespeople, good managers and well connected executives are ALWAYS attractive to competitors.

INfrequently asked questions
The questions I think more businesses should regularly ask themselves are:

• What is negative (financial, morale, targets) impact on the business if _____ left?
• What is the risk of ____ leaving? (1-10)
• Have we identified a successor?
• Is that successor able to do the job at 100% effectiveness NOW?
• If not at 100% what % could they achieve?
• If not NOW then how many months will it be before they will be ready?
• What would happen in the meantime?

I’m currently offering a video SKYPE conversation to discuss team restructure and if you would like to take advantage of this then email me at stephen@assimilating-talent.com to arrange a convenient time.  
 

Last week two people contacted me to discuss the “advantages of failed recruitment” that I mention in my business and conference talks. So I thought I would let my blog buddies benefit too.

Time-Line
Picture a business wanting to recruit a new team leader…3 Months
Time taken to induct and allow new leader to in-bed……..3 months
Time taken to identify failure and dismiss…………………..3 Months
Time taken to recruit new leader …………………………….3 Months

“That’s a whole year of lost opportunities that allows the competition to take advantage” and the competition can make huge strides if they know how!

If you’d like to have a consultation with me on SKYPE on the topic of
“Don’t risk another expensive recruitment failure…when you don’t have to” or
“How to take advantage of the competitions misfortune”
then email me at stephen@assimilating-talent.com to arrange a convenient time.

For further information:
HERE

I was at a meeting today at the IOD (Institute of Directors) and the discussion included a reference to the “Evil Twin Syndrome” which is the fact that one sees the best in a person at the interview. As my old boss used to say “They will always be at their smartest at the interview”

During the probationary period they will be perfect. Work hard and even do overtime. Then the day after a satisfactory probationary period there arrives “The Evil Twin”. The individual who is argumentative, difficult to manage and screams “unfair” at every opportunity.

However, having identified that most managers have suffered from the syndrome it’s also  true to say that at some time in one’s career one has probably also been “the evil twin” and caused some manager to go prematurely grey!

A number of friends are having a debate over the different emphasis that employers should place on qualifications and experience when looking for top talent employees.

Some place greater emphasis on a paper qualification such as an MBA and Degree and suggest that they prove capability and a level of knowledge to do a job. This group acknowledges the importance of experience but would automatically disqualify a job applicant without a qualification.

Those that support experience suggest that paper qualifications, whilst necessary, don’t demonstrate essential entrepreneurial skills such as imagination and drive. These can only be demonstrated by “past success in previous positions” and “related experience”. In addition, they point out, a twenty-year old degree is of little value in the current workplace!

The questions I have are these:

• When would it be appropriate or sensible to hire a person without a qualification?
• At what point do qualifications become less relevant than experience?

A couple of days ago I was speaking with a Sales Director who asked “why is finding good salespeople is so difficult”. In the new economy creating and retaining a team of good salespeople is a major differentiator, yet too often a new hire fails to live up to expectation. The costs can be enormous and the Sales Director seemed at his wits end.

Road to Damascus
The new economy means that recruiting and integrating salespeople the way it’s always been done is no longer going to work. With constrained budgets salespeople have to have heightened awareness of different but related areas of their performance. 

To illustrate this I showed the Sales Director the Transition Maps that my colleagues and I have developed over the last few years. “Oh my goodness, now I see where we are going wrong!”

It’s always gratifying when Road to Damascus revelations happen and I had to restrain the Sales Director from taking part of the solution and applying it like a sticking plaster to all his sales hire problems.
 
Main problems
We were able to identify a number of the problems that are common to sales team recruitment and development. The first is accepting what a sales candidate says about their past achievements at the interview without probing their actual involvement. The second is trying to clone a “current success”.

Review of process
Finally we reviewed how the company integrated salespeople into his team. Dispensing with the “one week induction” and replacing it with a transition map dovetailing all the required competences identified for their success.

On three occasions last week I found myself in a hotel lounge listening to a job interview being conducted at the next table. Given my interest in job transition I found it difficult to ignore what I was listening to.

What amazed me was the detail that some questions went into and forced the candidate to talk about “their weaknesses”, “failings” and so on in public. On one occasion I was even able to identify a past employer as well as the individual’s past boss.

I think that it’s time that head-hunters, recruitment companies and job search companies adopt a policy and practice that all job interviews or exploratory interviews are held behind closed doors.

It would be:

1. professional,
2. provide appropriate confidentiality,
3. deliver a better result in that the candidate would be more relaxed
4. Prevents head-hunters that do interview in public looking “Cheap”

I personally feel that if I were to recruit a search company to find suitable senior staff for my company I would question the professionalism of a search company and the fees that they were charging if interviews were conducted in public and believe that the industry should outlaw such practices.