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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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IT Talent: 4 Smart Ways to Recruit the Right Software Engineers

Software engineers are among the most sought-after employees today. And they’re some of the most difficult employees to get in touch with.

To get the attention of software engineers, your recruiting strategies need to meet these professionals where they are while also laying out what you’re looking for in a candidate. It can be a delicate — and stressful — balancing act.

Here are four proven strategies to help your organization attract and hire the right IT specialists without spinning your wheels or wasting time on the wrong candidates.

1. Use a multifaceted, personalized approach

To hire the best IT talent, you need to think like they do. Software engineers think differently than salespeople do, for example. But you’ll also want to avoid making the mistake of assuming every tech candidate thinks alike. That’s why you’ll want to take a multifaceted, personalized approach.

Software engineers are constantly deluged with terrible recruitment spam from LinkedIn and email. So, start with a phone call. As crazy as that sounds in our instant-message era, there’s no replacing voice-to-voice (or face-to-face) conversations when you’re building relationships.

Here’s what a typical call might sound like:

Hi, [Name]. My name is Carol Schultz, and I’m the founder and CEO of Vertical Elevation, a talent equity and leadership coaching and advisory firm. The reason I’m calling is to ask if you’d be open to scheduling time with me to have an introductory conversation. I’m certainly not making any assumptions about your current situation at _______, or that you’re even open to hearing about other opportunities. In fact, I don’t know enough about you to have an intelligent conversation about the positions we’re looking to fill. If anything, we’ll begin to build a relationship for the future.

Dive into ZoomInfo and other online databases to source a candidate’s phone numbers. Follow up with personalized emails. Start conversations on GitHub. Get creative. But avoid using LinkedIn InMail unless it’s your absolute last resort.

2. Set up a ‘get to know each other’ conversation

You don’t want to just pitch candidates jobs, even if that’s what they want you to do.

[ Also read Retaining IT talent: 5 tips for better training opportunities. ]

Instead, start with a “get to know each other” conversation. Make it clear that the call is about them, not you. Explain that you want to understand their background and what motivates them, the kind of culture they desire, their career goals, and so on.

By asking these questions, candidates will begin to understand you’re not just some recruiter trying to wrench them out of their current situation, and they’ll start to listen.

3. Share how your company invests in its people

I’m always talking about the importance of a talent-centric organization. To hire the right talent and keep them, you must always put your people first.

Talk with candidates about how you invest in and grow your people. Do you offer customized coaching for teams? Do you send employees to conferences, offer learning allowances, or pay for continuing education? Are your people incentivized to pursue professional development — and do you promote those who do?

[ Related read: Software developer: A day in the life ]

Similarly, offer your recruiting team and hiring managers training and development opportunities to help them successfully hire the talent you need. Use executive, leadership, team, and career coaching for individuals to foster this growth.

4. Know when to move on

I once conducted an engineering search for a high-profile national client. I placed two amazing people there, and the company was so appreciative that they awarded me Series A stock options as a bonus.

It was the most difficult search in my entire career. I spoke to one young man who said he’d already received an offer from a well-known online retailer for $110K with a $50K sign-on bonus. He said he’d be happy to speak with my client if they offered more money. I told him, “No, thanks.” My client wouldn’t be interested in someone with that attitude.

Why? Because the next recruiter who called with more money would have him looking for greener pastures all over again. My client was interested in software engineers who wanted to do great work, not engineers who could be bought.

This is something we’re dealing with again in the current market. You’ll sleep more easily knowing that your software engineers are working for you because they want to — not solely because of their paycheck. You risk losing them sooner than later if the latter is true.

The bottom line

A one-size-fits-all talent strategy won’t cut it if you want to hire the right software engineers for your organization. Instead, develop a multifaceted approach geared toward each candidate you’re attempting to connect with. Start a conversation and get to know a candidate’s needs. Share what you offer beyond the position. And don’t be afraid to cut your losses if the fit isn’t “just right.”

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Why Technology Won’t Solve Your Recruiting Problems?

With the vast amount of available technology today, it’s not surprising that recruiters are relying on tech to streamline the hiring process. As someone who’s spent 30 years working primarily with tech firms, I get it: Technology is valuable and useful. It’s brought success to many companies and helped them save time and money. But when it comes to recruiting, technology is not the save-all answer to your problems.

Tech Tools That Won’t Be Game-Changers

Many tech companies will try to sell you on the idea that technology is a panacea for every recruiting woe. But that’s just not the case. Here are some widely used digital tools that are touted as recruiting “game-changers” and why they won’t make that big of a difference:

One-Way Video Interviewing Apps

Video is big in the recruiting world. Talent acquisition thinks they can save valuable time by having candidates complete a one-way video interview. The way this works is the applicants log into the program from a computer with camera capabilities. They’re then presented with one question on the screen at a time, which they answer verbally using the camera. In some cases, candidates can “redo” their answer, but in other instances, the first recorded answer is automatically saved. The prospective candidates have a window of time to answer each question.

Why is this tool unhelpful for recruiters? The recruiters and interviewees have no opportunity to talk back and forth about any of the questions. In “real life,” these one-way conversations don’t exist.

In limited circumstances, an interactive questionnaire or a printed application may be appropriate. Still, when hiring someone, you need to communicate with the person face-to-face. One-way video interviewing stifles the natural, free flow of thought and communication. Also, not everyone will excel in these types of interviews. A candidate might be the perfect fit but feel awkward talking to a blank screen. So, you might miss out on the opportunity to make a great hire.

Bulk Messages

In the recruiting world, it’s common for recruiters to blast out mass messages to individuals on LinkedIn. Some use e-mail marketing programs to curate targeted lists and send mass mailings to candidates. But these methods tend to fall flat. Most people will sniff out the message’s generic language because it sounds impersonal. These messages often end up in the trash — and rightfully so!

Applicant Tracking Systems

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a program recruiters use to help narrow down a pool of candidates and improve the search workflow. The more applicants a company has, the more heavily it tends to lean on ATSs.

ATSs scan a candidate’s résumé for keywords that match what the recruiter has plugged into the system, which could include key terms, specific phrases, and more. The ATS then scans the database and rejects all the résumés that don’t include the keywords the recruiter seeks.

The problem with this approach is that good candidates easily slip through the cracks simply because they didn’t use the recruiter’s exact phrasing or a specific keyword. This is why good recruiters don’t rely solely on this technology; they incorporate old-fashioned headhunting to complete the job.

Recruiting Tips That Never Fail

While tech tools may assist recruiters in some ways, you shouldn’t rely on them as a panacea. Instead, incorporate these proven tips into your recruiting workflow:

Pick Up the Phone

It might sound old-fashioned, but talking on the phone is a tried-and-true way to know whether you’ll “click” with a candidate. Give every candidate a call. Take time to get to know them and find out what their goals are for the future. This is what I like to call a “get to know each other” call because that’s really what you want to do. You can ask them about what worked (or didn’t work) at previous jobs. You’ll also determine whether it makes sense from their perspective (and yours) to move forward. Is a particular candidate someone who would be a good fit for a position you’re working on?

Build a Relationship

While you’re talking with a prospective candidate, you’ll be building a relationship. This may seem novel these days, but it’s essential to operating a successful business.

We are human beings and thrive on human connections with one another. Besides, even if you decide you don’t need the person for this position or don’t need the person right now, you may need this candidate later. Build that relationship now.

Ask Questions

Research every candidate, and look for information you might not see on a résumé. What are these candidates’ values and career vision? Where do they see themselves in the future? You want to ensure there’s a cultural fit right from the very beginning. You need to dig deeper than a list of skills and abilities.

Next Steps

Many tech tools help recruiters do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, but none replaces good old relationship-building and communication. As an old partner of mine told me many years ago, “If sales were so easy, they’d give a dog a note.” Recruiting is sales; the sooner you see it this way, the better off you’ll be. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Utilize this approach.

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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People: The Key to Success

Years into my career as an executive recruiter and coach, I woke up one morning and had an epiphany: The recruiting system was broken.

“Our HR is terrible.”

“Our internal recruiters aren’t getting the job done.”

“Recruiters aren’t trained to fill so many positions.”

These are just a few statements I’ve heard throughout the years I’ve worked with leaders. Many were under the impression that they had a recruiting problem when in reality it was only a symptom of a deeper issue within their organization. They didn’t have a recruiting problem; instead, they had a strategy problem.

A TCO is a business that concentrates on employee engagement, autonomy, creativity, and advancement. In other words, it must be focused on its talent, and led by people who realize the key to their company’s success is every single employee in it.

That’s what led me to coin the term Talent-Centric Organization (TCO) to define and detail the process of becoming a company where the executive team is aligned and a talent strategy that supports that alignment is in place. But like many forward-thinking ideas, the solution was disruptive to the traditional system companies used, and it’s hard to alter people’s thinking and set ways.

Years went by and I continued to see the issue get worse, so I decided to go all-in despite having a well-paid career in coaching and recruiting. I focused all of my efforts on educating the world on what a TCO is and why it’s critical to be one.

I wrote a book, started a podcast, published articles on the topic, and centered my business around building TCOs. Every day I continue to spread the word hoping to see more and more companies fix their “recruiting problem” by redesigning the way talent fits into their company.

What is a TCO?

TCOs stand out in their alignment at an executive level; their culture, where any and every employee feels comfortable voicing feedback; and their diverse team. It’s simple: When you have better talent, you’ll generate more revenue. And TCOs attract better employees, have lower turnover rates, and are proven to outperform competitors on the S&P 500 by 211 percent.

Elements of Being a TCO

1. Alignment of the executive team. As a TCO, you must have an executive team that puts the company as a whole before themselves. Every member of the leadership team needs to learn the vision of the organization and be on the same page in order to communicate it consistently to the rest of the staff.

Although it may seem like just a small detail, in my experience, if a leadership team operates with different visions in mind the whole company is likely to stray from its original purpose. If they all work with the same vision in mind, not only will the company stay on track, but the employees will feel connected to the greater purpose and have more motivation in daily tasks.

Only 22 percent of America’s employees agree that their company’s leaders have a clear direction for their organization, according to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report. If you can be a part of that percentage, your business will reap the benefits.

2. Effective communication from the top down. We all know how easy it is nowadays to misinterpret a message with so many external distractions, not to mention the rise of multitasking. For this reason, in a TCO it’s important to be intentional about how your staff communicates and listens to one another. By learning how to communicate clearly, you can drastically improve the way your organization runs.

I’ve seen a pattern in organizations where the CEO thinks their company is running smoothly, when in reality it has a culture where no one — not even their closest team members — feels comfortable giving feedback. It’s not until I come in and communicate with their employees that many problems arise, not new problems but hidden problems.

It’s important to realize that talking is only half of the equation — listening is the crucial other half. You must not only speak your points but also listen.

And listening occurs with intention; just hearing is unintentional.

Then, there’s how communication happens daily. Say you need to announce staff cuts. Do you send one email out informing the entire company? *Cough cough* Elon Musk. Or do you call an in-person meeting where you can be honest and open with your staff and take questions?

Also keep in mind that different people require different methods of communication. Are you communicating in a way that the receiver will clearly understand? For example, I have terrible trouble understanding instructions that are provided by chat. It takes longer to get my questions answered due to so much misinterpretation. I understand better and more quickly by having a verbal, back-and-forth conversation.

You need to ask your employees what methods of communication work effectively for them. The best way to talk is always in person; no matter how many technological advances take place, this will always be true. The next best method is to hold a Zoom meeting. You can still see facial expressions and body language even though you aren’t physically in the same place.

If neither of these is possible, a phone call will suffice. And lastly, text and email are the least effective. Written messages open the door for miscommunication because of a lack of tone, body language, and facial expressions.

3. A culture of feedback. At TCOs, employees at every level must feel comfortable giving feedback to those below, above, or across from them. For example, in a TCO a lower-level worker can call a meeting with the head of their department to openly discuss an issue with their manager, and the department head will actually listen because they see it as a contribution to bettering the company.

This helps employees feel empowered and like they have a voice. Not to mention they may have a point of view you haven’t considered or useful information you didn’t know previously.

Building a culture of feedback begins with you, the CEO. In my experience, CEOs who hold an all-hands meeting to declare and describe what it is to have a “culture of feedback” (and provide examples) build more successful companies.

You as the CEO should practice what you preach so the rest of your executive team, as well as individual contributors in all departments, can follow suit.

4. A clear talent strategy. Once you have an aligned team leading your organization, you can begin to create a talent strategy. How are you hiring new people? Why are you hiring them? The strategy behind finding and bringing on new talent is often overlooked and done in a traditional but inefficient way.

It starts with conversations. Bring in an expert to do discovery and talk with each department separately. Then create a talent strategy that aligns the company.

You as the CEO should practice what you preach so the rest of your executive team, as well as individual contributors in all departments, can follow suit.

Along with having a talent strategy, it’s important to have the recruiting team report to you, the CEO. It’s time to do away with the old system where they report to HR. HR has nothing to do with recruiting talent. In my experience, companies that leave hiring up to HR rather than aligning at the executive level first and building a talent strategy that supports alignment are the same companies complaining that they have a recruiting problem.

5. A diverse group of minds. From my perspective, this is a no-brainer. It’s important that everyone in the room is not from the same background, race, age, gender, etc. But also keep in mind that diversity means not hiring your friends. Hire people from all walks of life. Especially in leadership positions, this will ensure that many ideas come to the forefront and lead to the growth of your business.

Over two-thirds of CEOs with diverse cultures reported increased profits, according to a survey. And those with women in top positions proved to have higher profits.

In order to successfully navigate this rapidly evolving operating environment, organizations must be dynamic, nimble, and above all, well-aligned regarding intent and action.

Why be a TCO?

Increased growth and productivity: Paying attention to your employees and their needs will make them more passionate and productive when it comes to your organization.

Less turnover: By focusing your business on talent, you’ll retain more people and save precious time and money otherwise spent hiring. The average cost of replacing an employee ranges from one-half to two times the employee’s salary.

Interest from top talent: Top players will notice you. They will hear from those who already work there how great the environment is and want to be a part of it.

Becoming a TCO

There is no denying that our operating environment has been dramatically altered, and it appears the shifts will continue with no end in sight. In order to successfully navigate this rapidly evolving operating environment, organizations must be dynamic, nimble, and above all, well-aligned regarding intent and action. Becoming a talent-centered organization will not only improve your company culture and therefore employee satisfaction, but it will also improve your organization’s prospects for a prosperous future.

If you’re interested in transforming your company into a TCO, the first step is to hire a third party to come in and do discovery, identify gaps in alignment, and train and coach your executive team. Once everyone is speaking the same language, you can begin to create a talent strategy and go from there.

#business #career #growth #mindset #leadership #hiring #coaching

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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5 Questions to Ask Before You Hire Your Next Executive Coach

Over the years, businesses around the world have hired executive coaches as a corrective measure. These “professional fixers” would come in to assess and clean up a company’s most pressing issues. Once they sorted out the problems, they’d move on to the next client.

But this transactional relationship has changed. Amid ongoing and tumultuous shifts within companies, in industries, and across entire sectors, businesses have realized they need ongoing expert help.

Is your own company struggling to address short-term issues, let alone its long-term goals? Are company leaders on the same page regarding the organization’s vision? Have they developed a talent strategy to stop employees from leaving during the Great Resignation and Great ReShuffle? Do they have a plan to weather the looming economic storm?

An experienced executive coach can help with these issues and more.

What is an executive coach?

Executive coaches specialize in helping company leadership — including C-suite executives and management — uncover blind spots, fix communication issues, cultivate talent, and increase productivity and profitability. They ensure that the company’s leaders are working toward a vision and organizational alignment that will allow the business to hire top talent and thrive.

If you’re just starting your search for an executive coach, you need to do your due diligence — or you’ll risk wasting the company’s money and your team’s time.

As you reach out to prospective coaching candidates, start by asking these five key questions:

How long have you been coaching?

Executive coaching has a low barrier to entry, which means anyone can claim to be a coach these days. It’s crucial to know how long someone has been in the field.

After all, if you needed neurosurgery, would you schedule surgery with someone who’s just out of medical school or with a neurosurgeon who’s been practicing for years?

Where did you get your training?

What are the coach’s credentials? Where did they earn them from? I’ve had people flood my LinkedIn messages claiming to be an executive coach like me because they’ve taken a course from Tony Robbins. Newsflash: This doesn’t make someone an executive coach.

What’s your experience in the field?

People tend to think they can be a coach even if they have no — or next to no — experience in a specific field.

Here’s an example: Years ago, I attended a meeting held by the International Coaching Federation. A woman stood up and introduced herself as an interview coach. As she did, the seasoned professionals in the room gave each other knowing looks: they understood that interviewing is just one part of helping people with their careers. Having conducted interviews in the past doesn’t make someone an “interview coach.”

Along these same lines, many people call themselves career coaches because they once worked as a manager and hired people. (This doesn’t make a person a career coach.)

The only qualified people in career coaching are those who’ve spent time working as professional executive recruiters. These people get to know candidates, determine what will be of interest to them, and know how to find positions that align with a candidate’s career goals.

According to Harvard Business Review, many professionals representing themselves as executive coaches are former athletes, lawyers, business academics, and consultants. While these professionals might have some degree of expertise in their respective fields, if they aren’t experts in your industry, they’ll likely do more harm than good.

How do you define coaching?

Many people who claim to be coaches are advisers, not coaches. Coaching is about asking questions, listening, looking for blind spots, and working on mindset shifts. A great coach will understand that their clients have blind spots because they’re too close to see the issues themselves.

Experienced coaches can help you uncover areas of weakness and put the right structures in place to move forward in a positive direction.

How do you define success with your clients?

Success is defined by a client’s specific goals. For example, it might involve significant growth in the company’s ROI. Or, it could mean retaining employees for two years longer than the company had been able to before, thanks to more effective communication strategies.

Share what you want to achieve to determine whether the coaching candidate has succeeded in this area before. Then, ask for details about his or her experiences and successes.

The benefits of hiring a qualified executive coach

When you find the right coach, you’ll enjoy success in:

Determining and managing your organizational goals

Mapping your leadership team members’ direction forward

Improving communication skills to engage with everyone in the organization effectively

Helping executives and leadership teams manage challenges

Uncovering and developing the business’s shared vision and organizational alignment to create a talent strategy

Boosting relationships, productivity, and performance

Earning back more than your investment in the coaching

The upside to great executive coaching is clear. Let these five questions be a guide as you get your search started.

#business #career #leadership #growth #recruitment #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Why It’s a Mistake to Leave Talent Acquisition to HR?

Recruiting should never report to HR. As much as HR and people operations leaders may bristle at this declaration, it’s true: HR should never be responsible for managing recruitment strategies.

Before diving into the “why” behind this truth, let’s look at why so many companies feel compelled to make this common mistake. You definitely won’t hear recruiters say how much they love reporting to HR. The push always comes from the company itself. Here are three reasons for it.

IT’S THE WAY IT’S ALWAYS BEEN DONE

Companies get stuck in a rut of doing things, even if it doesn’t produce results. Sure, they may throw in a few new recruitment tech tools, but the reporting structure stays intact. When building a company, a CEO or founder may not be aware that there’s a real difference between HR and talent acquisition: The two are related to people, they reason, so why shouldn’t they be linked in the org chart? The fact that each department should separately report to the CEO may never come to mind.

IT’S A SHORTCUT

HR departments have their own protocols and do things by the book. In contrast, successful professional recruiters know that building a talent-centric organization — finding the right people, hiring them, and then putting them first — involves relationship-building, employee-centric strategies, and time. By pushing recruitment to HR, companies bypass these vital steps and take a shortsighted shortcut.

THEY WANT TO KEEP THINGS MOVING ALONG

It’s easy for companies to get into the mindset of churning through the hiring process. They see a chair waiting to be filled and their goal is to find a warm body to occupy that spot. That way, they can just keep things moving along. However, this never works out well.

THE CTO SOLUTION

So, what works better? The answer: Hire a chief talent officer who reports directly to the CEO.

Your CTO should be a highly trained executive recruiter or headhunter. This person will work to staff your company in partnership with the executive team and every manager down the line.

Talent strategy is the engine that will keep your company humming — which means your chief talent officer is just as critical as the other executives on your team. Consider these four facts:

CTO'S HAVE CRUCIAL RECRUITING EXPERIENCE

In my many years of research and working directly with human resources officers, 98% had zero experience in recruiting. And the other 2% had only a minimal amount of recruiting experience, either with recruitment agencies or corporate recruiting, but not enough to have mastered “the art of the search.”

To be a top recruiter, you must put in years of work and undergo extensive training. Even then, it’s not for the faint of heart. There are many setbacks. Hence, only 2% of all recruiters make it to the top. Recruiting isn’t something you can read a book about and just “get it.” It takes being on the ground with candidates, doing the searches, going back and forth, negotiating, knowing when and how to give offers, and more. Without that skill and knowledge, you won’t see lasting results.

RECRUITING REQUIRES RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

Quality recruiting takes years to master. You need a recruiter who’s not only experienced but also excels at long-term relationship building. Recruiters need emotional intelligence for the deep communication that’s required to get candidates to open up. Some candidates may be teetering between a “yes” and a “no” and need an authentically good listener to understand the hesitation. That requires years of understanding people and the human condition.

CTOS ARE NOT BOUND BY HR’S RED TAPE

Yes, budgets are important and red tape often exists for a reason, but too much concern for either can hinder the recruitment process. HR, by its very nature, isn’t inclined to color outside the lines. In many organizations, HR reports to the chief financial officer, which turns HR teams into bean-counters, not recruiters. Landing the right candidate may require workarounds HR won’t be likely to approve — or even think about — allowing great candidates to slip by.

GENERATE REVENUE WITH THE RIGHT RECRUIT

Although HR may appear to be moving things along and filling empty positions, a company won’t be building a talent-centric organization. Hiring people who aren’t the best fit fuels employee turnover; you’ll end up going through the hiring process all over again (and drain your budget in the process). When recruiting reports to HR, talent acquisition and recruitment become a cost center instead of the revenue generator it should be.

Choose the wrong team members, and you’ll end up with a revolving door of employees. So, why not give your talent recruitment and acquisition the autonomy it needs to succeed?

#business #growth #leadership #mindset #career #recruitment #hiring #coaching

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Stop Letting the Latest Trend Dictate How You Run Your Company.

QUIET QUITTING. Quiet firing. Quiet thriving. What will be the next viral workplace term?

Today’s businesses aren’t plagued by these “new” movements — except for the reactionary movement of buying into the latest buzzword and letting it affect their workplace culture.

As talked about in this Business Insider article

, these trends have caused panic among leaders in all industries, who are now looking to combat these “new” issues, and consultants are right there with them, offering all sorts of “solutions.” A quick search on LinkedIn will bring you to the pages of coaches and consultants who claim to solve “quiet quitting,” using the keyword to garner clients.

The truth: These aren’t new problems. These are age-old issues with trendy, new names. “Quiet quitting” is a rebrand of employee disengagement, describing workers who choose to coast through their work hours instead of putting in the effort. “Quiet firing” came about in response to it, describing the passive-aggressive behavior of managers who withhold opportunities from quiet-quitters instead of firing them altogether.

The list of new terms goes on and on, but the point is that while these problems can’t be ignored, they aren’t new trends. There’s one common denominator behind them:

The majority of today’s organizations aren’t talent-centric.

If a company puts its talent first in its strategy and decision-making, these problems won’t arise in the first place.

THE “WHY” BEHIND THE TRENDS

Rather than looking to protect your company from the latest viral movement, look at why your employees are disgruntled, disengaged, or quitting in the first place. Chances are, it’s for one of the following reasons: They don’t feel connected to the vision of the business, they don’t feel heard or appreciated, there’s a lack of communication, or there’s a lack of opportunity for growth.

The simplest way to ensure these needs are met is to center your company around your employees.

START AT THE TOP

Asking questions is the best way to start changing your company. Where are your company’s decisions primarily being made? Usually, they’re being made within your executive team. So, when thinking about your employees and talent strategies, that’s where you must start: at the top.

Ask each person on your executive team what the vision is for your company. Then prepare to be surprised: Your CEO, CFO, and COO may very well give different answers. When your executives have different visions, you have a problem.

Multiple visions make for stagnant companies, with each member of your team rowing toward a different destination. There’s no way to reach a goal when everyone is rowing out of sync. How do you work for a company where your leaders each want to achieve something different? You don’t. This is what leads to employee turnover.

Company leaders and managers must be able to communicate the same vision. It sounds minute, but this one statement sets the tone for all subsequent actions.

When your leaders are aligned, your talent will hum at the same frequency, and you’ll notice more engagement and connection to the greater purpose of your business. When your talent doesn’t know the company’s vision in the first place, disconnection can easily become the norm.

VIEW FEEDBACK AS A PLUS

As a business committed to focusing on your talent, you must commit to hearing from employees. Being talent-centric isn’t about posting “we put employees first” on your website or on a placard on an office wall; it’s about making time to hear from your employees and truly listening.

I call this a culture of feedback. This, too, starts with the executive team. Those in leadership positions set the tone for the entire organization, so everyone must openly show their commitment to wanting feedback from any employee and also giving their own. Feedback must be offered without fear of repercussions. Open your schedule — and your team’s schedules — to allow one-on-one meetings with any worker.

Listening to your staff will establish trust among peers, managers, and higher-ups, which leads to loyalty and engagement. Plus, these one-on-one meetings provide a great time to check in with employees and ask what they need, what their goals are, and how you can help them reach them. Maybe all they need is a mental health day or advice on a new project. By having proactive conversations, you’ll prevent disengagement on their end.

COMMUNICATE EXPECTATIONS

Putting your talent first starts at the very beginning: the interview process. Stay true to the position you’re offering. Don’t embellish or leave out significant (or unsavory) duties the job requires. Most importantly, don’t downgrade the hours needed for the position.

Imagine you’ve accepted a 10-hour-per-week position. After the first month, you realize you’ve been working 30 hours to keep up with the workload. If there’s any way to cause an employee to disengage at work, this is it. Be honest from the very first conversation. It will ultimately lead you to weed out workers who don’t fit your expectations.

IT’S TIME TO REFOCUS

It’s time to look within — and not outside of — your organization for solutions to your problems. Once you take the steps to refocus your company on the people within it, these problems will start to fade.

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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To Empower Women At Work, You Need To Address These Core Issues

Early in my career, I attended an all-hands meeting with 20 other people — four of them women, besides me. It was my first meeting with the executive team, including the president of the company.

He asked everyone for suggestions (for exactly what escapes me). But what I do remember is having something to say. I hesitated, then decided to speak up. I told the group my idea. In response, the president made a dismissive, condescending comment and proceeded to move forward.

His reaction made me question myself. Was my idea stupid? I remember wondering. After that incident, I never opened my mouth in another group meeting with him.

I didn’t know at the time, but my suggestion wasn’t stupid. Instead, this was a case of mansplaining: when a man explains something to a woman in a superior or patronizing manner.

Mansplaining is just one workplace issue that’s often ignored. Ageism and lookism — discrimination based on age or looks — are two more that disempower women in every industry.

It’s no secret that women in most companies suffer from these issues, yet we gloss over them and simply hope that men at work will “turn a new leaf.” But hope isn’t an effective strategy.

Yes, it’s a daunting task to inspire men to change, to make them aware, and get them to care enough to do the work to be better. Yet I know where we can start: at the top.

The Core Issues

Mansplaining takes many different forms. There’s the classic example: A man explains a woman’s job to her, thinking he knows more than she does about a job he’s never had. But it can also be a manager not acknowledging an issue brought by a female employee. Or a woman’s higher-up not giving her credit for her work in completing a successful project.

A recent research study by Caitlin Q. Briggs, Danielle Gardner, and Ann Marie Ryan reveals how women are affected by mansplaining. It can cause a woman to question herself, devalue herself, and stop giving input. Eventually, it fuels job dissatisfaction. Another common issue is ageism: discriminating based on someone’s age. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators, female workers aged 35–44 earned 30% less than men, and that gap in pay increased with age.

But ageism isn’t just a pay gap. It can be a company that hires a younger, less-qualified candidate rather than an older, highly qualified candidate. It can be the pressure a company puts on an older employee to retire. According to an AARP survey, close to 80% of older workers say they’ve seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace.

Then there’s lookism, the discrimination of someone based on appearance and attractiveness. As you can imagine, this is a very real problem in workplaces that affects not only women but everyone. It can mean a more attractive-looking woman getting the job over a less-attractive one. Or one worker garnering more attention and guidance than another based on looks.

Case in point: When’s the last time you saw an average-looking or older woman delivering the news?

Addressing the Root Causes

There are many causes of workplace discrimination. Here are a few that, if addressed, will start to remedy problems for the women in your workforce.

Leadership Misalignment

Fixing the issues that disempower women starts at the top. Your organization’s entire leadership team must be aligned on its vision, goals, culture, business strategy, and talent strategy.

If your team is aligned on its talent strategy — how the company is going to find and retain the best people — you’ll determine how candidates treat women before they even set foot in your door.

One way to accomplish this is through psychometric profiling during the hiring process. Asking the candidate to take the personality assessment will help you better understand how their mind works, and how they treat others.

To ensure the information is accurate, seek blind references. A blind reference is one not provided by the candidate. Talk to a past peer who was a woman; this usually indicates the person’s future behavior.

Lack of Gender Diversity

Let’s be honest if the CEO of a company is mansplaining, how likely is it that no one else in the company does? Not likely. They’re only following his example.

Creating a diverse team, especially at the top, will set a better example and empower the women in your workforce. Keep in mind, diversity doesn’t only refer to race. It includes gender, age, and background.

Is your C-suite all men and one woman? Are your managers men? Are your female workers younger or older? Giving women a seat at the table will ensure their voices are heard. It will also influence your company culture, setting the tone for employees’ day-to-day interactions.

Ineffective Communication

Do your male employees know what mansplaining is? Or ageism? As a leader, you must continuously educate yourself on these issues and adjust how you lead accordingly. In doing so, communication will always play a pivotal role.

Communicating effectively refers to more than using big words and practicing good email etiquette. It means the ability to relay a message accurately and listen attentively to feedback and concerns. This must be done with intention. Through training and coaching in effective communication, you and your team will become aware of the issues that are dragging your female workers down — and how to address them.

Moving Forward

If you’ve read this far, you’ve got more than hope; you have the tools to make changes. Empower the women in your workforce by employing talent that doesn’t actively disempower them. Place more women in positions of leadership. Create a culture with a woman’s point of view in mind and communicate these policies effectively. Women will thank you for it.

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Great Ideas and Cultivating Them

Where are your great ideas coming from?

This post by Eric Jackson in 2011 remains relevant and useful today: Top Ten Keys to Building a Talent Firewall in Your Organization.

Building a “talent firewall”, or what I call a “sustainable talent strategy”, takes time, effort, and a commitment to being the best at what you do. There is no panacea for building a great company. You must look at every piece of your organization beginning with the Board of Directors, which the CEO sits on, and determine what you’re committed to accomplishing. Are you looking to eventually have an IPO? Are you looking for an exit at all? It doesn’t matter which of these you want. What makes the difference are the processes and talent strategies you’ve put in place to make your company more valuable than it would have been otherwise.

You may be thinking that this is too much work given how busy you are building your company. But have you considered the consequences, financial and sustainable, that neglecting these items will cause? Have you considered the strategic advantages you’ll gain from implementing these types of processes? I’ve been speaking to a number of VCs recently and so many have begun to see the difference in their portfolio companies when they take this type of holistic, proactive approach to building healthy, sustainable companies. Keep up the good work!

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Is Your Organization Optimized?

Our country has gone from conversations about how to recruit and retain quality employees in a market with low unemployment just a few short years ago to conversations about how to find a job in a market with record unemployment. What’s missing is the most important conversation, regardless of our economic situation. No one is talking about what needs to be done by companies to optimize their organization with the highest percentage of top talent possible.

So what’s possible?

If done properly, 90+%. Regardless of our economic climate it is important to move away from mediocrity. The 80-20 rule, as it relates to sales, is just not acceptable if you truly want to be successful in today’s market. For those who aren’t familiar with the 80/20 rule, it says that 20% or your sales organization will produce 80% of your revenue. Is this really what you’re company is committed to? Have you considered the possibility of what your revenues would look like with 80-90% of your sales organization achieving quotas vs. 20-50%?

Optimization Checklist

The questions below are just some of the questions you need to be asking yourself, and if you’re not asking these questions you are headed for mediocrity or possibly even failure.

Have you calculated the costs of your hiring errors over the past 2-5 yrs? This is truly the only way to know how many millions of revenue dollars you’ve lost.

Do you really know what types of people you’re looking for? Have you created a specific, measurable job profiles using your current employees as the benchmark? Is the executive team aligned with regards to strategies, revenue and growth plans and how your revenue and non revenue generating employees helps to bring this revenue plan to fruition? Are you clear on your corporate culture and have you put a process in place to assess candidate fit with your culture?

Do you have a plan in place to assess your current employees and remove all your under-performers, as well as a time line in which to complete this task? Have you determined if your under performers are not succeeding because of something that can be changed?

How are you finding candidates? If you employ an internal recruiting organization, are they posting ads on job boards or actively searching out quality candidates? Are you using contingent recruiting firms to find your candidates? Have you retained a firm for the search?

Are you paying your internal recruiters at the same level you pay you’re top sales people? If not, do you actually expect a 60-80k/yr recruiter to have the ability to find and attract a 300-400k/yr performer? If they had that ability they’d be working for themselves, not for you.

Do you have a plan to retain top talent?

Have you created a list of questions, both open ended and closed, to qualify the competencies you require of your sales executives and management? Labor figures will affect optimization

The Bureau of Labor Statistics updates their figures every 2 years in December and the next report will be released December 2009. Their most recent numbers tell us that:

“Over the 2006-16 decade, total employment is projected to increase by 15.6 million jobs, or 10 percent, slightly less than the 15.9 million jobs, or 12 percent, during the 1996-2006 decade. The labor force filling these jobs, while becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, is projected to grow more slowly than in the past. This slowdown in the growth of the labor force is expected, in part, because of the aging and retiring of baby boomers. As a result, the need to replace workers who retire or leave the labor force for other reasons–called replacement needs–is projected to create a significant number of additional job openings.”

What does this indicate? There may only be a limited number of A players available for hire as the economy improves. Do you want an effective structure in place to improve the probability that you’ll be able to attract and retain these candidates or do you want them to end up working for your competition?

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Is Your Organization Optimized?

So what’s possible?

Optimization Checklist

The questions below are just some of the questions you need to be asking yourself, and if you’re not asking these questions you are headed for mediocrity or possibly even failure.

Have you calculated the costs of your hiring errors over the past 2-5 yrs? This is truly the only way to know how many millions of revenue dollars you’ve lost.

Do you have a plan to retain top talent?

Have you created a list of questions, both open ended and closed, to qualify the competencies you require of your sales executives and management? Labor figures will affect optimization

The Bureau of Labor Statistics updates their figures every 2 years in December and the next report will be released December 2009. Their most recent numbers tell us that:

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Is Your Organization Optimized?

So what’s possible?

Optimization Checklist

The questions below are just some of the questions you need to be asking yourself, and if you’re not asking these questions you are headed for mediocrity or possibly even failure.

Have you calculated the costs of your hiring errors over the past 2-5 yrs? This is truly the only way to know how many millions of revenue dollars you’ve lost.

Do you have a plan to retain top talent?

Have you created a list of questions, both open ended and closed, to qualify the competencies you require of your sales executives and management? Labor figures will affect optimization

The Bureau of Labor Statistics updates their figures every 2 years in December and the next report will be released December 2009. Their most recent numbers tell us that:

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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The Single Most Incorrectly Answered Interview Question

Every career professional has an opinion about the do’s and don’ts of interviewing and how to interview effectively. I frequently see terrible advice from people giving job and interview coaching and have to wonder where, or even if, these people had any training in this subject matter.

I saw a video in 2016 that was linked to a group I belong to that gave some of, what I believe is, the worst advice to the most misused and misunderstood question asked in an interview. Throughout the 30 years I’ve been coaching professionals on interviewing one thing has remained constant. When I ask how they answer the question, “Tell me a little bit about yourself”, 95% of my candidates/clients launch into a prepared answer similar to what was said in the video I referred to above. The people I’ve worked with over the years range from young salespeople earning 125K/yr to executives earning in excess of 1M/year. I find this issue very interesting. Many people I coach have spent time in some professional sales capacity and should know exactly how to answer this interview question. This troubled me for a long time until I realized that these pros are so good that they often go on automatic pilot in an interview and forget their “Sales 101 Basics”.

So let’s review the most basic tenet of “Sales 101”. When asked an “open-ended” question how should it always (I don’t use “always” lightly) be answered? With another question that qualifies the first question. For example, in the case of “Tell me a bit about yourself”, the only correct and safe response is “I’d love to. Where would you like me to begin?”, or something similar. Answering this trip up question in any other way has the candidate assuming what the interviewer wants to hear. Do I even need to talk about the word “assume” and its dangers? I hope not, but would be happy to if someone wants further clarification.

In the video I mention the author says, “They don’t want to hear about (he goes into a litany of personal items). They want to get a feel about your skills, your experience…”. Additionally, he says “You can be pretty sure they want to hear about…”. Is this guy omniscient? I doubt it. How can he profess to “know” what’s in someone else’s head? If I’m in an interview I don’t want to be “pretty sure” about what the interviewer wants to hear. I want to be completely clear about what the interviewer wants and needs to hear such that I rise above all the other candidates. You may be better served by asking a second qualifier like:

“How far would you like me to go back?” “Would you like me to cover my professional progression?”, or “Are there any specific topics regarding this position that I may focus on to better answer your question?” Of course, if the interviewer wants to hear about your professional background then you can launch into your 90-second prepared speech. I would caution however that even your prepared speech may not be what the interviewer is looking for, so make sure you qualify until you can provide the interviewer with an answer to the question he/she is really asking. An example of this might be the interviewer responding to your question by saying, “Tell me about your professional job history.” We teach our clients to thoroughly research each company prior to the interview so that when an employer asks you about your professional job history your past experience will align with the potential employer’s corporate culture and goals.

One final note that I’ll cover in-depth in another post is how a company’s interview strategy would further debunk the author’s advice. When we take on a client for Visibility, Talent-Centric Organization offering, I put together a list of Behavioral Based questions that specifically address the skill and culture fit of the candidates we’ve determined they need to hire to be successful within each type of role. It is difficult, if not impossible, to identify in advance what’s important to the employer if they are interviewing using this tried and true technique to predict the future performance of the candidate in which they hire.

Some of the dialogue from this post is on LinkedIn. The following is a list of responses from these groups not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but to illustrate what other hiring managers think:

Carol, you are right on with your assessment! I believe two elements of consultative selling are applicable to the interview question you wrote about in your blog: 1. Seek first to understand before being understood. 2. Prescription without diagnosis equals malpractice. Posted by Tom Mangini

Well done, Carol. Earlier in my career, I worked for a large outplacement firm that was always right. I was caught giving the same advice as you; answer the open probe with a question. My manager set me straight immediately. Posted by Dennis Tarrant

Yes Carol, as the interviewer I hear the blah blah blah coming. If I am hiring salespeople I would expect a conversation and probing from them, not information dumping. If they do, what are they going to do with the potential customers? The answer on the video would send up red flags for me hiring sales professionals and would create concern about communications ability in other positions. Posted by Harlan Goerger

Carol, I could not agree more. I often ask this question and I am actually looking for the candidate’s approach to handling the question. When I interview, I often care more about the way he/she handles questions than I do the content. Another question I ask is: Tell me about a major challenge you faced in your life and how you responded. The most important thing I am actually looking for is what they view as a major challenge. Secondly, I want to understand how they responded. The really good candidates will, of course, ask me to qualify before answering. They will ask if I am interested in a professional or personal challenge. Asking these qualifying questions is a strength, not a weakness!

Posted by Kevin Lynch

Hello Carol, Very good article and well-placed comments from all of you. Tom your comments are very essential and to the point! Posted by stamatis alamaniotis

I like the idea of clarifying the question so you know you are providing the answer they are interested in. Another tip that I once read was as early as possible in the interview ask about the qualities and skills required to do well in a position. That allows you to highlight your fit for the position. Posted by Michael Black

This was a great article. Thanks for the link. When recruiting professionals in the past I’ve found that by asking something along the lines of “What do you know about our company?” you get a good idea of how much (or little) effort the candidate has put into their preparation and research for the interview.

I stopped being surprised at the sheer volume of people whose main response was “I had a look at your website” and left it at that.

While the website is a resource, it will not give the whole story. Current relevant items in the news and major recent activity of the organization are also important.

If the website is the candidate’s only research, then that gives an indication as to how well they might be prepared for actually working within that organization. And these days you need professionals who are willing to dig deeper than a 2-minute flick through the company’s own PR.

Posted by Hala Thompson

Every company I’ve ever had a face-to-face with has asked “What do you know about our company”. To me, this is a given as to how interested you are in the company. I’ve also interviewed with people who probably couldn’t tell you much.

I think bottom line is that your knowledge of the company and what you can bring to them to benefit their bottom line as well as your enthusiasm, skill base, and education is what gets you in the door. If you interview face to face or by phone then include a personality fit as well.

#business #career #leadership #growth #recruitment #hiring #mindset

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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The Perilous Employment Market

5 Key components to navigating the constantly evolving and ever perilous employment market

In 2009 unemployment reached 10% nationally and entire regions of the country lost industries, which comprised the backbone of their economies for a century; the employment market was, in the very least, perilous. As we’ve all seen by now, there are no clear answers out there for the best way to successfully navigate a highly complex job market. What would arise from the ashes of that economy was anyone’s guess. I believe that there are certain trends, processes and best practices that the job seeker should learn, practice and execute, regardless of what happens in any economy if they hope to have any chance of being successful.

Lean & Mean Workforces: Gone are the days of gluttonous workforces. Companies are going to learn to accomplish the same, or more, production with fewer employees. These employees will all be elite athletes within their job function and possess a history of success. The more skills you possess and the more functions you execute, the more value you can present to a prospective employer.

Less is More: Do you buy one 100k racehorse knowing that he will win races or five 20k racehorses on the chance that one may win? Smart companies with forward thinking business plans will survive the current market by hiring fewer qualified people, and paying them very well. You need to start thinking of yourself as an unsigned free-agent, looking for the right team and situation that will provide you the best opportunity to succeed.

When it comes to hiring, the best companies plan their work and work their plan: Companies regularly put together multi-year plans that address financial growth and product development. They leave out the most important criterion, without which the company won’t see their plans come to fruition. It is imperative that companies make a plan on how they are going to hire.

Transferable Skills: When I first heard about “transferable skills” many years ago I thought this was a great idea, but how do you get employers outside your industry to believe that your skills can be a match to what they are looking for? A candidate must effectively learn how to market his/her skills to the potential employer not only on the resume, but through effective verbal communication.

A More Entrepreneurial Environment is Upon Us: More and more individuals are considering going into business for themselves. Whether it’s taking your prior knowledge and hanging up a shingle, to building a business around your knowledge, or maybe even investing in a franchise. Know your skills, your market, your competition, and what makes you unique and different.

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring #coaching

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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The Perilous Employment Market

5 Key components to navigating the constantly evolving and ever perilous employment market

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #hiring

0 notes

vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Opportunistic Outsourcing

Business coach Peter Drucker was known for dispensing some sage advice that still rings true decades later:

“Do what you do best and outsource the rest.”

What comes to mind when you hear that mantra? An immediate list likely appears of all the tasks you know are not the greatest use of your efforts and energy. In the 15 seconds you’ve spent thinking about what pops to mind, you may already have vowed to no longer waste time on select mundane projects or responsibilities that fill your plate, leaving room for much else. “I really need to hire someone to manage my schedule” or “someone else should be responsible for compiling our weekly reports” are certainly reasonable, but the outsourcing I’m going to cover is far more strategic.

Instead of viewing outsourcing as a chance to create more time for you, shift instead to think through how outsourcing could actually create opportunity for others within your team.

The Shift

Stop thinking of outsourcing as the things you no longer want to do and look instead at the opportunities you could create for others. A great leader is always one step ahead of career path advancement for key contributors. Take a moment (or a few hours) to evaluate each direct report you have; what do you know each is capable of becoming over the next few years and beyond? What do you need to teach each of them in order to advance their responsibilities and skill sets?

You have now defined your first round of opportunistic outsourcing.

Think less about performance management and think more about professional development. Do you spend the same amount of time talking about where you see a key contributor’s career going as you do talking about how they are doing with deadlines or quotas? Is your coaching equally dedicated to skills that will help them achieve in their current role just as much as preparing them for the next step you believe they could grow into? Do you purposefully put key contributors in situations in which they may fail, but that failure propels growth?

At times, you may need to believe in others a little more than they believe in themselves. The best leaders help their team members discover their genius.

Survivorship Bias

When you focus too heavily on the “survivors” of a given group, you tend to ignore important qualities about the rest of the population. Take entrepreneurship; we tend to gravitate toward the most successful entrepreneurs in the world when we study examples. Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of school; learning about them, many people conclude that you don’t necessarily need a college education to succeed.

But for every Branson, Gates, and Zuckerberg, there are thousands, if not millions, of other entrepreneurs who dropped out of school and failed in business. We just don’t hear about them, and so we don’t take them into account. The misconception? You should focus on the successful if you wish to become successful.

How does this relate to our topic at hand? Until now, we have been focusing on key contributors — those whom you feel strongly will continue to play an integral role in the success of your organization. What about those who hover just below that line?

One option is certainly to optimize and perpetually focus on proactive hiring that improves the strength of your bench, not just hiring that fills empty seats. Spend less time addressing reoccurring performance issues and instead craft a hiring plan that proactively attracts the “A” or “B+” contributors to the team. This takes commitment to discovering what’s not working and determining what’s truly necessary for successful performance.

An additional option is to opportunistically outsource. Give others the chance to take on tasks and responsibilities they succeed with and are passionate about. Be sensitive to the skills and interests of individuals; match the dreamer with more creative tasks and the perfectionist with the detail-oriented projects. Just think how much more would get done if people only did jobs for which they had a talent and a passion. Don’t focus only on the already successful individuals within your team, but outsource thoughtfully to those to whom you are still trying to uncover their fullest potential.

Just Ask

Not sure what to outsource, and to whom? Challenge yourself to truly get to know those on your team. Ask questions to assess the present and design the future:

When you come to work each day, what things do you look forward to?

What are you learning here? What have you not yet been given the chance to take on, that you’d like to?

Is this what you want to do?

What can I do to make your experience here better?

What would you be excited to take on? (projects, responsibilities, clients)

When was the last time you feel like you massively over- delivered on something? What was it and why did you work so hard?

What would make you listen to a call you’d get from a quality recruiter? Be honest; no judgement!

What’s on your personal and professional bucket list?

Fast-forward a year (two years, five years) from now; what would you be most proud of having accomplished?

Even when individuals are assigned difficult challenges, when they are involved in the decision, there is a huge increase in performance. Those who volunteer look at projects as developmental, while those who are assigned regard the task as hard labor. Take the initiative now to truly engage the hearts and minds of your team, so they one day will have the ability to opportunistic outsource to the next generation of future leaders within your firm.

#business #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment #career #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Being Comfortable with the Uncomfortable.

No matter your role or how long you have been in it, we all have situations we would rather avoid. Scenarios can range from taking on a project in which you are not sure you will excel, having a difficult conversation with a client or colleague, or even simply interacting with coworkers in a social setting outside of the workplace. No matter the situation, most would agree that leaving your comfort zone can create the opportunity to flourish professionally, personally, and financially. Yet that comfort zone can be a cozy blanket of security quite difficult to shed!

So how do you become comfortable with the uncomfortable?

Embrace It

Think back to your days as a child; in your neighborhood you may have had a community pool with a diving board that (especially in your youth) seemed about twenty stories tall. And each summer, during swimming lessons, the instructor would force you to you climb those stairs, teeter out to the end of the board, and basically push you off the end. Do you remember how that felt? Your whole being was screaming at you not to do it, because you knew that the inevitable would happen and you were most certainly going to plunge to your death. As you fell for what seemed like eternity, suddenly you would hit the water and have the realization that you had survived and, in fact, it was not that bad at all.

As children, our parents or our swimming instructors or our teachers were obligated to give us a gentle nudge over the edge. Embrace the fact that now, you are the only one who can take that leap of faith. We know how the story continues with those summers at the swimming pool; you throw yourself off the diving board once, and then realize that it’s pretty fun and you actually enjoy proving to yourself that you can do whatever you set your mind to. You then jump off enough times repeatedly that it’s no longer an intimidating challenge. So, the first step? Embrace what makes you uncomfortable; professional growth comes from new experiences and often distressing ones.

Understand It

If you want something in life that you have never had, you will likely have to do something that you have never done. However, knowing what needs to be done and understanding what is holding you back from doing it are two different tasks. It might be completely evident to you what the looming task or situation is; what you may not be able to immediately recognize is why you’re feeling the way you are. What is it about the situation that is triggering the feeling of fear?

More than likely, it is a fear of failure or a fear of not being good enough. Simply summarized, most paralyzing situations stem from one of those two roots. Reflect on the uncomfortable scenario you envisioned when first reading the opening paragraph of this article; would you agree that the underlying originating fear is one of those two roots?

When you start listening to the doubts of yourself and others, the voice in your head becomes a breeding ground for negativity. People will always have an opinion. Understanding that those people are entitled to their own thoughts, yet disassociating yourself from those opinions, is an important step in moving passed any fear of being judged.

Coach To It

As comedian George Carlin stated, “If you’re looking for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else? That’s not self-help, that’s help!” In short, let go of the need to try to solve your challenging situations all by yourself! When faced with a situation that seems overwhelming, seek out an individual who you respect in terms of their ability to handle similar situations. Ask for guidance; pursue coaching from a more veteran individual or perhaps even role play in order to make the foreign seem less intimidating.

If we acknowledge that people’s words and perceptions of us can actually shape our own beliefs about ourselves, identify someone who can provide positive mentorship and feedback as you work through whatever it is that is creating the intimidating environment. In time, positive reinforcement can be the catalyst for courage.

Act On It

At some point, you must make the choice to step off the high dive. The battle is half won by that small step! If needed, “fake it until you make it” and simply pretend to be confident. When you have come through to the other side, you will likely realize that it was not as bad as you thought it would be, and you are proud of yourself. Remember that fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.

To make change a constant and not a singular event, consider investing in your own personal and professional growth and well-being. Go ahead and get the membership to the gym that you have talked about for months, research therapists or personal coaches and sign up for an exploratory conversation, book the vacation you’ve been wanting to go on, splurge on a massage, or ask others for suggestions of personal development books they have enjoyed – the key is to act on something! If you are not taking the necessary steps to have a plan for personal and professional growth, the road ahead may not seem so uplifting.

We all have the right to live our best life; anything else is mediocre – and none of us were put in the roles we are in to simply be mediocre.

#business #career #leadership #growth #mindset #hiring

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vertical-elevation · 2 years ago

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Creating a Culture of Retention.

Offices everywhere are full of employees who may be poised for fresh starts as we approach 2020, which is only two and a half months away. There will be recharged enthusiasm for conquering previously unconquerable projects. Time with family and friends allow for the creation of elaborate dreams to assist in the accomplishment of elaborate goals. In corporations around the world, the New Year brings a revived optimism for all of humankind.

Amongst all of this upcoming joy and good cheer looms a rarely talked about issue that can wreak havoc on an organization…there are two times per year when individuals ponder the concept of a career change. One of those times?

You guessed it. The New Year.

Though this is critical for any industry it’s particularly important for the InsurTech sector. Given the disruption and hiring necessary in this booming market, InsurTech founders, executive, managers and VCs will need to pay close attention to this or they may end up losing their best employees.

The War for Talent

In most industries, the days of the Gold Rolex for 25 years of service have come to an end. Hoping your employees will stay with your organization out of sheer loyalty or to prove a resolute amount of intestinal fortitude is no longer the key to retaining the vital leaders within your team (or the future leaders waiting-in-the-wings). Hope is NOT an effective strategy, and the war for top talent has created a pendulum effect that fluctuates between a candidate-driven and an employer-driven marketplace. Despite this pendulum, there are organizations that consistently secure and retain the best and the brightest and create a thriving culture that engages, enriches, and fulfills the employees within their walls. Coincidentally, these organizations are some of the most successful; for example, Southwest Airlines’ year-end results for 2018 marked the airline’s 45th consecutive year of profitability!

An organization like Southwest is not created by some magic elixir; they actually engage in best practices that are replicable. They have chosen to make a “culture of retention” a priority and to develop programs and initiatives that promote this core belief.

Whether you have just recently hired an essential player on your team or are dedicated to retaining the current team you have, the following are just three out of dozens of best practices that we have gathered from partnering and studying great organizations and great leaders around the world. Simply put — we know why individuals leave organizations, and we know why individuals will likely never leave an organization. We can provide additional insights and suggestions regarding your own culture and are ready to assist in design and implementation; please do not hesitate to contact us.

Clear and Quantifiable Career Paths

Seems relatively straightforward, right? Ask an individual what his or her next step is in their career, and they’ll more than likely share with you the specific title that is one rank above where they are currently. However, what would their answers be to questions like the following:

What is your organization doing proactively to get you to that next step, or to train and equip you with the skills necessary to excel in that future role?

Has the company outlined exactly what you need to do in order to take that next step? Do you think those are realistic milestones?

What skill set, or sets, separate you from the individual you report to? Are you capable of filling those shoes? In what areas do you need additional experience in order to be qualified for that role?

If the answers to these questions aren’t clearly defined, it is reasonable to expect that quiet complacency will only last so long. Most tend to get stuck in the routine of performing a role — versus stepping back and looking at the big picture of how to remain a viable asset to the organization. There might be a gap between what they are capable of doing currently, and what they need to know in order to advance — but nothing is being done to bridge that gap. There might be critical limitations in place in terms of the department, the scheduled growth of the company, or even with the skills and capabilities of the individual performers.

Invite your key employees to proactively play a role in the development of their careers — as opposed to sitting back and patiently waiting for someone else to train them, promote them, and shape their futures. Think about the critical members of the team; the more difficult an employee is to replace, the more dedicated the effort should be to challenge, inspire, and lead that individual’s development.

Now, what if a next step does not exist? What if an individual truly is limited by the available layers above them? Do not wait for that realization to come to them; be creative in offering alternative paths, or innovative challenges, or new responsibilities. Most people do not realize the circumstances prohibiting them from career advancement — until they do.

Consistent Reviews and Feedback

The end of the year is commonly associated with reviews and (possible) financial raises. Because these two seem to go hand-in-hand, most employees sitting through an evaluation are probably thinking “How is this review going and how does it impact the bonus or raise that I believe I deserve?” They tend to be focused more on the financial implications of the feedback than the feedback itself. In addition to separating these two events, consider shifting the entire dynamic of the evaluation process.

Instead of sharing immediate feedback, consider seeking first to understand that individual’s perspective.

How do you feel about your progress to date? Are you where you thought you would be?

How have your responsibilities changed and evolved as you’ve grown in this past year, as opposed to a year ago? What are you taking on now, that you weren’t able to previously?

How are you limited? How could we (as a team or as a department) help you overcome those limitations?

In the past year, what achievements are you most proud of?

At what point in your career were you most challenged? What circumstances were at play at that time to challenge you, and how can we replicate that in the coming year?

Who is your mentor? Who pushes you to be more, learn more, accomplish more, take on more, and grow more?

Given your strengths and talents, how do you think you could use those to serve, or to help, others or our organization?

Asking questions rather than simply telling feedback will allow a manager to learn that individual’s perspective, which can help effectively guide the person’s thought process in the right direction. If you tell someone what you think, it can be met with skepticism. Instead, ask questions to help them arrive at the conclusion on their own. This not only allows them to play an active role in shaping their career, but take responsibility for areas of improvement and creatively stretch themselves in areas you may not have thought of. The purpose here follows the proverb of ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ You want to instill in your team not just the most effective perspectives, but the ability to understand the mindset behind arriving at those perspectives.

Two-Way Street Leadership

Not only should every individual create an annual professional plan that highlights what the organization can count on from them, but it should be made abundantly clear what they need from the organization. It is the role of any leader to serve the team around them, but without asking tough questions and being able to receive the honest responses, this open dialogue will rarely exist organically.

To create this type of experience and environment, a leader needs to extend a proactive invitation on a consistent basis. The underlying fear that is not commonly discussed? This open dialogue will result in a long list of new initiatives, programs, and work. With the overloaded plates of most leaders, it is easier to hope (again, hope is NOT an effective strategy) the issues solve themselves. The irony is that the complacency of an employee can be mirrored by the complacency of the manager, until such time as at least one individual is open to taking the step to create alternative solutions.

Creating a “culture of retention” is a journey, not a destination! Building a clearly defined career path for each employee, constantly evaluating progress based on measurable milestones, and crafting an environment of constructive feedback is just one step in that journey.

For those of you curious as to the other time each year when individuals ponder the concept of a career change? The answer is on their birthday — hence why we suggest giving each employee a hand-written birthday card!

The Opportunity to Make a Difference

If you have the dream team for 2019/20 already hired, Vertical Elevation can help you retain that team. If your dream team needs some work, calling us before the New Year should be the first proactive resolution you make!

“The opportunity to make a difference” is the goal of every search assignment conducted by Vertical Elevation. Making a difference is at our core. Our executive search consultants have in-depth industry specific knowledge and take the time to understand our clients’ needs and unique culture. Finding the candidate who not only possesses the requisite skills for a position, but is also a “cultural fit” is crucial. The Vertical Elevation search process allows our search consultants to drill deeper and match (1) the client’s expectations for the position with those of the candidate, (2) the technical requirements for the position with the candidate’s education and background, (3) the candidate’s experience and personality with the company’s culture, (4) the chemistry between the hiring manager and the candidate, and (5) the candidate’s experience and prior results with the client’s expectations for the major, measurable initiatives of the position. Engaged employees can play a tremendous part in the growth and success of a company, and for nearly 30 years, Vertical Elevation has been committed to “Making a difference for our clients and finding people who make a difference for our clients.”

#business #career #growth #leadership #mindset #recruitment

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