FORTIFY YOUR OASIS

Even though it's not Friday ...

2009-10-15T12:59:00.001+01:00

I got an email from a nice man called Randy in Perrigo's PR firm (remember Perrigo? They're the guys with the dancing scientists):

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Anyhoo, apparently they're still at it at Perrigo. I usually bin these emails after the first generic, badly-written paragraph ["Dear space space Rowan. I have readed your blog and think ..."], but Randy's writing style held my eye and I was glad I clicked through:

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Not your typical corporate video. I do hope that Perrigo's CEO is in there somewhere (maybe doing the card trick?) Also, they need a new strapline as the usual corporate-speak at the end detracted from the whole effort. Other than that – happy not Friday. Serious harumphing will resume as soon as possible.

PowerPoint turns 25

2009-10-14T16:05:00.000+01:00

[click to enlarge]

Robert Gaskins wrote a proposal for PowerPoint (then called 'Presenter') and the product was released into the wild in 1984. Three years later, his company was acquired, kit and caboodle, by Microsoft because they reckoned that the market for "desktop presentation" had the same potential as the "desktop publishing" sector.

In the meantime, we have all been subjected to a gazillion bullet points and most audiences reflexively wince and brace themselves for the onslaught when they see a person fiddling with a laptop, a USB stick and a data projector.

Last week, I had the surreal experience of delivering a PowerPoint presentation to an audience at a business breakfast while simultaneously trying to make any sense at all to a national radio audience. Let me know if you thought it worked - you can click over to the piece on my presentation blog here.

Finding a job is a full-time job - Part 2

2009-10-05T07:30:00.003+01:00

A good chat with Mr Tubridy on RTE Radio, talking about where to find a job to apply for – because recruitment advertisements seem to be elusive little beasts these days. You can find the entire programme here or just listen to the job-hunt piece (about 9 minutes) below:

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Low-key, passive, private job-hunting is not going to cut it any more folks. As Mr T. says, "Where hope once came seeking you out, you must now seek out hope." Waiting with bated breath for the perfect job to appear in your favourite newspaper, or on your favourite jobsite, is unlikely to bear fruit right now. You can't ignore these routes, but you really, really cannot rely upon them either. Remember the old Steven Wright quote?

"There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot."

He was so right. This is no way to job-hunt folks - because your CV is unlikely to stand out from the crowd in the same way as a lure/spinner/feather is unlikely to stand out for the one little fishie that's swimming past this rather scary crowd.

Skip the queue! Get upstream of the crowd and drop a very shiny lure in front of a relaxed, unstressed fishie, because if someone else does and you don't, guess who's getting hired?

From 2008 - Research, Networking & Route of entry

Wisdom

2009-09-28T12:32:00.000+01:00

Really liked this

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Education - 3Rs + ...

2009-09-25T08:00:00.001+01:00

Fabulous

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Finding a job is a full-time job

2009-09-24T07:50:00.009+01:00

I don't know who coined that old saw but nowadays, it is truer than ever. Two consistent worries that clients present us with:

"It's a tight market and there are now jobs to apply to."
"How should I divide my time on the job-hunt to keep all the plates spinning?"

Here are some thoughts based on lectures and seminars we have been conducting in the past while. I hope you find them applicable for your situation.

Job-hunting in a tight market

View more presentations from Rowan Manahan.

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Related posts:

Routes into a tight market

Finding a job in the 'hidden jobs market'
Job-hunting in a recession

Downsizing – dealing survivor guilt

2009-09-18T07:00:00.001+01:00

Interesting to see two very cruel thoughts on this both from the same source. The first is a comment on "the most inappropriate thing you ever said out loud" post on Scott Adams' blog:

We recently had a company meeting where it was announced that an employee had been let go. He had a really nice, new dual core machine, so I when the leader of the meeting asked, "Are there any questions?" I said, "Can I have his computer?" Apparently, this was in poor taste.

And then management's perspective on this, from the inimitable Mr Adams himself:

Childcare in the workplace - a follow-up

2009-09-17T18:00:00.001+01:00

I suspect that provision of childcare facilities within workplaces is going to be a growth area for the next few years. Whether both partners want to have fulfilling careers or not, dual income families are going to be an economic necessity for the majority of families in perpetuity, so any employer who can offer the additional piece of mind of an onsite crèche is going to be more attractive in the market.

In recessionary times, the pendulum has swung firmly back to the employer’s side and they can call the shots during the selection process, but abusing that power is a fool’s game because job-hunters will smile insincerely, bow their heads and take whatever is on offer and start looking for a new job the second they arrive onsite with what they perceive to be an unreasonable or unaccommodating employer. You want the best people to come and work for you and, more to the point, to stay with you in these difficult times?

Look. After. Them!

I don't hear the, "We're really more like a big family here at Widgets Inc." line so often these days; but it never fails to make me barf. The gulf between word and deed on that topic would be laughable were it not so unfunny. This doesn't have to cost employers money. I’ve seen large companies ‘leasing out’ their HR expertise to smaller firms in the vicinity, so that Human Resources Department isn’t just an expense line any more, it’s a revenue-generator. Surely the same could be accomplished with an intelligently-run, onsite crèche facility?

From the employer perspective, this is fundamentally a productivity issue. Neuroscience has now demonstrated that multitasking or distraction has a significantly adverse effect on productivity. If a parent is worried about their child, worried about leaving in time to beat the traffic or whatever, they cannot be focused on the task at hand. They just can't. As our economic reality now demands dual incomes for the majority of households, it behoves large corporates to conduct some research on this. Canteens are provided in large businesses because it is the most efficient solution to the productivity-draining issue of feeding large numbers of staff quickly and efficiently. Those employers are satisfying their staff’s biological needs in a way that has the most benefit for that employer’s productivity needs.

Now, I hope this doesn't come as a shock to you, but reproduction is one of those biological imperatives. Large numbers of your employees are going to reproduce. It’s a simple reality in the workplace and if you don’t help your employees out in some way, they are going to get more distracted than they need to be and you are going to feel that pain. Alternatively, you may never gain the benefit of these bright young things, as they will seek to work with an employer who is more cognisant of their needs and who provides peace of mind to staff with young children.

The millhouse and workers' cottages at Rathfarnham, Dublin

Mines, mills, factories and breweries built houses for their workers because it made economic sense. Large companies provide canteen facilities because it makes economic sense. I’d like to see some creativity in this area – perhaps something tied in with the local Chamber of Commerce? Childcare for the younger age group is massively expensive, but there have to be economies of scale that can be brought to bear on this with a bit of original thinking and some collective procurement. What do you think?

Common Interview Questions: #3 Do you have any questions for us? (Part 1)

2009-09-16T07:47:00.007+01:00

At some point in the interview process, someone inevitably smiles at you and says, "I am sure you must have some questions for us?" Most candidates hate this part of the interview, regard it as being very difficult to do at the end of a tiring, stressful process and trot out one or two trite little questions that utterly fail to impress the interviewers. And that last point is the key – if you have intelligent, well-researched questions to ask, you have yet another chance to impress the powers-that-be and distinguish yourself from the herd. The three most common mistakes I see in reponse to this question are:

Having no questions at all to ask, either due to amnesia, fatigue, lack of preparation or because they answered any concerns you had as the interview progressed.
Asking needy, self-serving questions about salary, benefits, working hours, training, holidays, etc.
Asking clichéd questions.

Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If "needy" were a turn-on? [Albert Brooks in Broadcast News]

What does a clichéd question look like in its natural habitat? Well, I have just come across yet another piece on this topic in the 'Advice for Job-Hunters' section of yet another jobsite. The questions they suggest asking are:

Do you have any concerns, now that the interview is coming to an end, as to my ability to do this job?
Are there any concerns I need to expand upon in order to become your first choice for this job?
What is the next stage in the selection process?

I would not recommend asking any of these questions if you want to be taken seriously by any, even semi-skilled, interviewer and I would guess that the person who wrote these has little or no experience in conducting selection interviews. Allow me to give you a peek as to what is going through the head of a tired interviewer when you trot out rubbish like the above:

"Do I have any concerns about your ability to do this job? Well, let me put it this way; if I haven't drilled down on your basic ability to that extent, it is either because (a) you patently don't have the skills, knowledge or experience to fulfil the role at the level I require here or (b) I just don't like you. Either way, do you think there's any chance that I'm going to tell you that now, so you can get into a whole huffy, defensive piece about how you'd be perfect for the job? Get real dude ..."

"Do I have any concerns that I want you to expand upon? Lord no! I want you gone. Now. (see above)"

"The next stage is the next stage. It will happen when it happens and when we decide it's going to happen. At that point, we will communicate our intentions to you, so please don't waste my time with this kind of nonsense."

The first two clichéd questions are sales-y, 'trial close' questions. That approach can work when you are seeking to identify if someone has any worry about buying your uberwidget, but it does not work when you are selling yourself. If you are applying for a Sales, Marketing or Biz Dev role, you might want to ask a question of this nature – particularly if you get the feeling that the interviewer is 'Old School', but I would preface it by saying:

"I was always trained to asked for the business when I was coming to the end of a meeting, so let me ask – am I in the frame for this job? Is there anything I need to offer reassurance or more evidence on? Because this looks like a great company and I'd really like to be your preferred candidate for the role."

That will probably elicit a smile from any seasoned Salesperson, but the way the questions above are framed, they are likely to do nothing other than irritate the interviewer.

So what should you ask? The starting point, as always, is to look at it from their perspective – why do interviewers ask this question of all candidates? It would be understandable if they just asked it of those they were seriously thinking about hiring, but they don’t – everyone gets asked this one. So clearly, it tells the interviewer(s) more about you which can help them in the weeding-out/selection process. What, then, does it tell them?

Baldly and simply, it signifies that the back-and-forth part of the interview is over.

It allows them to cross-check your answers as to why you want to work for the organisation (usually asked very early in the interview).

It helps to identify, or confirm, self-serving candidates who are looking to join the organisation, extract as much training and good experience as they can out of it for their CV, and then quickly jump ship.

Likewise ill-prepared candidates. This question helps the interviewer to assess the level and quality of your preparation for the interview – very important these days. If you won’t work hard in preparing for interview on your own behalf (and here, we again make the not unreasonable assumption that you do actually care about yourself), what chance is there that you will prepare well for an important element of the job on their behalf? This is an obvious question. You know they are going to ask it. What do you mean you don’t have some decent questions ready to ask? You obviously don’t care whether or not you get the job – what else are they going to think?

If you are being interviewed for a mid-ranking or senior position, the questions that you ask enable the interviewers to assess your professional mindset. Are you a general or a foot-soldier, do you have management potential? In other words, are you a player?

We'll build some sample probes to ask in Part 2; in the meantime here's a noted Career Advice Guru* discussing this subject in a useful back-and-forth 3 minute podcast.

* I love that word "Guru," I really do. It always reminds me of Peter Drucker's wonderful observation: "I have been saying for many years that people use the word ‘guru’ only because ‘charlatan’ is too long to fit into a headline." The word 'Guru' has the dubious advantage of being both shorter and easier to spell ...

A singular honour

2009-09-15T18:14:00.000+01:00

Click to enlarge

I just got word that we've been nominated for a National Radio Award here in Ireland for the Seminar we ran back in the Spring with Q102. A huge thanks to Scott and the team on the QT Phone-in Programme – especially Venetia, who grabbed the idea and ran with it, putting in a massive amount of work to ensure the success of the event.

You can find our discussions from that time starting here.

Talking about dress code here.
Job-hunting in a 'dry' market here.
Downsized and not sure what to do next here.
The Spring workshop details are here.

Tomorrow ze vorld!

Bringing up baby

2009-09-14T07:30:00.070+01:00

The Irish Examiner on the challenges of finding balance once children come along. Extracts:

Having a workplace creche like Cois Laoi at UCC means you spend more time with your children and it’s comforting to know they’re only minutes away.

BRINGING THE BABY IN WITH THE BRIEFCASE

Parents are struggling with the work/life balance. So is it ever ok to bring your kids
to work, asks Kathy Foley

Is it ever acceptable to bring your child to work with you? Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, a member of the minority opposition Green party in Australia, thought it couldn’t hurt once in a while. Earlier this month, the senator was at work in Canberra and saying goodbye to Kora, her two-year-old daughter, who was about to be taken back to Adelaide by her nanny.

In the midst of the fond farewell, Hanson-Young was called into the Senate chamber for an on-the-spot vote. Once the bells ring for such a vote, the senators have just four minutes to get to the chamber. Kora’s nanny was in the senator’s office, a floor up and more than four minutes away. So the senator did something she had done before and took her daughter into the chamber for the vote. The Senate President, John Hogg, promptly ruled Kora should be removed from the chamber by a staffer, as she was technically a “stranger in the house.” As the senators voted, Kora could be heard screaming loudly outside the door of the chamber. Her mum said it was the “most humiliating” moment of her life, indicating she hadn’t found herself in too many mildly embarrassing situations prior to that. The senator, a vocal campaigner for more childcare provision, was later forced to deny the episode was a publicity stunt. “I think it’s an issue that affects all parents,” she said. “I just happen to be the one that’s in the spotlight at the moment, but the constant balance juggling family and work is always going to be an issue.”

It’s so rare for children to be allowed in any workplace that a small creative consultancy in Pittsburgh was featured in Fortune magazine, precisely because its employees may bring their babies into the office whenever they like. “Babies at work, four-week vacations, continuing education — it’s important to strike a good balance between work and life,” Mickey McManus, the CEO and president of Maya Design, told Fortune. McManus is certainly an exception among bosses. Irish experts say it is almost never seen as acceptable to bring your child to your workplace.

“I can think of only two instances when it is acceptable,” said Rowan Manahan of Fortify Services, a career and workplace consultancy. "First, it is bring-your-offspring-to-work day at your office. Second, your company is conducting focus groups with kids in your offspring’s age bracket. Most workplaces just aren’t suitable places for children. The facilities are designed for adults and there isn’t usually a whole heap of things for kids to do, unless they persuade someone to let them photocopy their face or play in the stationery cupboard. To be fair, I have seen instances of self-sufficient pre-teens tootling away on their Nintendo or being parked in a spare cubicle to do their homework with no apparent interruption to the working day; but unless your place of work operates some kind of after-school care facility, I wouldn’t recommend doing that more than a couple of times a year," said Manahan.

... Whether you work in a surgery, a shoe shop or the Seanad, bringing your child to work is just not the done thing, unless it’s a dire childcare emergency. What about bringing work to your children, however? Is it okay to work at home while there are children in the house? President Barack Obama, in an interview with The Today Show, said he is delighted his new job allows him to see more of his children. "It turns out I’ve got this nice home office and at the end of the day, I can come to do, I can have dinner with them, I can help them with their homework, I can tuck them in and if I’ve got to go back to the office, I can."

... Some fortunate parents have the opportunity to take their child to work, after a fashion. Those working for a handful of Ireland’s largest employers including RTE, UCC, the ESB, Eircom and Trinity College, can avail of workplace creches provided by the organisations concerned. These are often subsidised and can give parents peace of mind. If their child is sick, for example, they are just a few minutes’ walk away. Workplace creches usually discourage parents from dropping in during the day, however, as it can disrupt the children’s routine and stop them from fully participating in creche activities. Although a good idea in theory, workplace creches are not for everyone, says Manahan. "Some parents like the company and the chance to interact with their children on the way to the creche and get panicked at the thought of being late in the evening because of traffic difficulties or a slight overrun in the working day. An onsite creche, or one close to the workplace, satisfies those needs. But for commuting parents who want, or need, to be able to take calls in the car, that’s obviously not going to work."

... Manahan advises companies to think laterally when it comes to childcare at work. "From the employer’s perspective, this is fundamentally a productivity issue. Neuroscience now tells us that multitasking or distraction has a significantly adverse effect on productivity. If a parent is worried about their child, worried about leaving in time to beat the traffic or what have you, they cannot be focused on the task at hand. Large numbers of your employees are going to reproduce. It’s a simple reality in the workplace and if you don’t help your employees out in some way, they are going to be distracted and you are going to feel that pain. Or, they will seek to work with an employer who is cognizant of this and who provides peace of mind to their staff who have young children," he said.

Let's do a reorg!

2009-08-07T09:00:00.002+01:00

The wise men of the Dakota Indians reckoned that the optimal approach when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, is to dismount.

Phshaw! How unimaginative! I stumbled across some much better ideas and combined them with another raft of wisdom from a recent email:

Invest in far more powerful whips.
Change riders – find someone who is really serious about reaching this destination.
Initiate disciplinary proceedings against both horse and rider for missing a clearly identified goal.
Reclassify the dead horse as a "living-impaired equine."
Restructure the horse's incentive scheme to contain a significant performance-related element.
Encourage the horse to work late hours and perhaps a few weekends, until he has "caught up" with the shortfall.
Appoint a committee to study the horse. [So obvious! How could the Native Americans have missed that one?]
Arrange for the Tribal elders to visit other countries to see how other cultures overcome the issue of living-impaired equines.
Revisit the targets and role standards so that living-impaired equines can be accommodated. [No dead horse left behind?]
Appoint outside contractors to ride the dead horse – and set really clear milestones for the journey.
Convene a dead horse productivity improvement workshop.
Harness several living-impaired equines together to increase speed.
Conduct a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve a living-impaired equine's performance.
Note in the next quarterly conference call that, as the living-impaired equines do not have to be stabled, fed or watered, they are less costly, carry lower overhead and therefore contribute substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do the equines used by our competitors.

Or my favourite:

Promote the living-impaired equine to a supervisory position, citing the historical precedent of Emperor Caligula ...

Just because it made me laugh out loud

2009-07-31T07:00:00.001+01:00

And it's Friday

Worst Studio Session Ever

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Now repeat after me ... #3

2009-07-27T08:02:00.001+01:00

Then/Than

When did this one start happening?

"It's better to do it this way then that way."
"I'd rather do a phone interview then do a face-to-face interview."

Then? Whaaaaaaaaaaat!? It's than! With an "AN." ... THAN!

Than is usually used for introducing the second part of a comparison, or for introducing exceptions or contrasts.

"John is bigger than Paul."
"It's preferable to do a phone interview than a face-to-face interview."
"How did Jim get promoted? He knows less than I do!"
"He had nothing in his hand baggage other than a PC."
"They sit and watch rather than participate."

It can also be used as a conjunction indicating when something happens immediately after another:

"The foundations were barely finished than the site was completely abandoned."

Then means "at that time" or "afterwards" or "next/subsequently." Occasionally, then is used to mean "in addition to" and it can also be used as a substitute for "in that case" or "therefore"

"By then, Joan was at her best."
"They took the first and then the second set."
"I earn a decent salary and then there's the bonus and car ..."
"Listen carefully to me and then there will be nothing to worry about."
"Well if Robo says it, that must be okay then."

Then can also be used at the end of a sentence to indicate that an inference has been taken or to indicate that a conversation is concluded:

"So you're still here then?"
"So that's it then."
"See you tomorrow then."

Up with this I will not put!

Vizzini: "He didn't fall? In-con-ceiv-able!"
Inigo: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Mass discrimination

2009-07-24T07:16:00.000+01:00

That is, discrimination on the basis of mass.

Apparently, Dr Regina Benjamin, Barack Obama's selection for Surgeon General, is coming under fire because of her weight. The logic, it seems, is that she won't be a good role model - for anyone! - on the subject of health, because she is ... generously proportioned.

The Washington Post says:

"... some voices have wondered whether a person who is on the heavy side is the best person to lead the nation's health agenda, particularly as we attempt to wage war on obesity."

Well, considering the success of so many of America's "War on ..." efforts (the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on poverty), I'd have to say it really doesn't matter what size the Surgeon General is, seeing as the War on Obesity is never going to have any appreciable effect whatsoever on the average waistline. Perhaps the dissenters would prefer Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie or some other pipe-cleaner to represent the paragon of what a healthy person should look like?

I shall watch this dog fight unfold with interest.

And, speaking on behalf of circumferentially challenged people everywhere, I'd just like to say it would be nice to see a skinny, athletic creep get his comeuppance every now and then:

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I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal

2009-07-24T07:15:00.003+01:00

Hoo-ahh! First, I made the Fistful of Talent top 25 most-likely-to-take-over-the-world list [oh all right, it's the Talent Management Blog Power Rankings, but I like my title way better]. Many thanks to the FOT team of sound, right-minded judges.

And then today, Jerry Weissman over at Power Presentations (he of the amazing Presenting to Win and The Power Presenter) invited me to guest blog my Appalling Presenter Manifesto as the culmination of his week of posts on presentation graphics.

A huge thank you to both Jerry and the FOT team for these singular honours. "It's twue! you wove me, you weally, weally wove me!"

Quote of the year

2009-07-22T09:02:00.001+01:00

From the TED Global conference:

"I thought it might be helpful to cut five years from retirement and intersperse them in my working years."

(Stefan Sagmeister talking about taking a sabbatical every seven years)

Can you make yourself recession-proof (2)?

2009-07-22T09:00:00.002+01:00

More cheerful discussion on surviving in recessionary times. Imagine this – the management team have locked themselves away in the ~~bunker~~ boardroom to discuss cost savings, including the inevitable headcount reduction, following five consecutive loss-making months.

Here's the key question: what is going to make your boss fight to the death to keep you? Can you even envisage that? Because I don't think it is going to be something as simple as merely working longer hours or being seen to be some kind of model corporate citizen. I had an interesting back and forth on this with Jim Curran from the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises association (ISME) and Matt Cooper on Today FM.

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Presentation and Speaking blog

2009-07-20T09:01:00.004+01:00

After much consideration, I have decided to place the ongoing discussion on public speaking and presentation skills in its own blog. All of the 130+ posts from the Oasis blog are there now and all future posts on that topic will appear only on that blog. The blog is called:

PRESENTING IS SIMPLE
(It's just not easy)

Forgive its rudimentary appearance for the house-warming party; we were primarily concerned with getting the content transferred over, fixing all the links and re-tagging all the posts. The re-tagging was particularly interesting, in that we realised that large chunks of thinking on this topic were missing from the discussions here at the Oasis. So do pop on over and we'll be updating with more of the juicy goodness you've been getting here, plus thoughts on slide makeovers and workarounds, presentation critiques and techniques for wrestling your slideware into submission.

Job hunting - how much preparation is enough?

2009-07-20T09:00:00.004+01:00

The most common feedback I get across the board - from outplacement, career management or presentation skills clients - is, "I had no idea how much preparation it took to get this good."

Ask anyone who hires other human beings and they will tell you that the number one failing of job-hunters is underpreparedness. And yet, once again, we see a survey indicating that job-hunters, even in these straitened times, simply don't get it:

1 in 4 spend less than an hour preparing for an interview.
Just over half spend two hours or less.
A quarter of respondents thought a few drinks the night before an interview was not a problem, as long as they hit the sack "at a reasonable hour."

And this survey was conducted in the midst of a global recession ...

Was there any vestige of reality intruding on the consciousness of these job-hunters? Some:

40% of employers reported seeing and improved level of effort being made by job seekers (although 23% said they had seen no visible difference).
58% of job-hunters said they had increased the amount of effort they were putting into their preparation.

Oh lordy lord.

Allow me to share two thoughts I constantly reiterate in talks and seminars. First, how much is this interview worth to you? How much of a change can it effect in your life? If you're pitching for a job that pays €5,000 a year more than you are currently on, then over five years, with zero pay rises, you are looking at a return on time and effort invested of €25,000. Surely that is worth more than a couple of hours' work? If you are about to be, or if you have just been, downsized then the numbers get a lot bigger: a €40,000 a year job is worth €200,000 over five years with no promotions, bonuses or pay rises factored in. Have you got anything else going on in your life right now that is going to drop that sort of return in your lap?

Second, you have to remember that for every job to which you apply, there is another applicant for whom this is the dream job. He or she has been waiting for this opportunity for months, or years. He/she has all the background research completed, knows all the ins and outs of the company and of the sector, has built a dossier on each of the interviewers and is fully cognisant of their leanings and disposition, and knows the politics of the company inside and out. Do you seriously think you can compete with this Terminator of a candidate on the basis of a couple of hours of desultory Googling?

Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Time to get real folks. You simply cannot be overprepared for a modern job interview; I wrote about the degree of control each side exerts here. Besides which, what are you going to do with the hours you save by not preparing – cure cancer maybe?

Related Posts:
Job-hunting in a recession
Elevator sales pitch interview
Counting down to an interview
Amateurs VS Professionals - the difference

If graduates were honest ...

2009-07-17T08:00:00.000+01:00

... they'd all be wearing this T-shirt on Graduation Day.

R.I.P.

2009-06-26T08:44:00.001+01:00

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Digging up dirt on Job Applicants

2009-06-23T07:30:00.002+01:00

I spotted this on Techdirt ...

The city of Bozeman, Montana is getting serious about digging up potential dirt on its future employees. As part of the application form, you have to sign a waiver allowing city officials to probe into: "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records." Okay, nothing particularly unusual there.

But the the form goes on to require you to: "list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,"

Oh and did we forget to mention? Also all your login details and passwords. Hmmmmm.

Isn't it almost always government agencies who leave the unencrypted laptop on the bus with all the details anyone would need to pull off a full-scale identity theft on you?

Would you be happy to provide all that access to, say ... your mother?

Now that web users are so interconnected through social networking sites, wouldn't there be a problem in terms of the privacy of all of my contacts? People link with me on Linkedin on the strict understanding that I'm not going to provide their details to anyone else without their explicit permission.

It's hard to use Al Qaeda to justify this kind of intrusiveness and I'd be interested to see an audit that demonstrated that the quality and integrity of government employees went significantly upwards as a result of using hiring methods like these. In the past, I've come across situations where companies used private detectives to probe into senior executives' backgrounds prior to hiring them. I have no idea if that information was then ever used, or distributed, inappropriately. But in the analogue world, it was unlikely that the investigation would extend into gathering private data about those executives' friends and colleagues.

This is a very thin line and I'm not sure where it should be drawn. In Singapore, where there are state-monitored CCTV cameras everywhere, there is little or no crime and the line taken is, "I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide." But what if the good Burghers of Bozeman started noticing a trend toward hiring only devout followers of a certain Belief? We might note that the Mayor and the Aldermen [or whatever] were staunch followers of this Belief and appeared to be populating the City Hall with like-minded folk. Would that be okay? Or how about if we noticed that blue-eyed, blonde, caucasian people of a certain minimum height were the only ethnic group ever hired by City Hall? [I love the line in Willy deVille's Southern Politician: "Cos his brother, the sheriff, is head of the Klan ... "]

The reason this kind of thing is not a good idea is that it is simply too open to the operation of unconscious bias. We've all seen the surveys about facial hair, heavyset candidates and Grace Kelly look-alikes. We are human; present us with too little information and we will make bad choices. Present us with too much information, or information that is inappropriate to our decision-making process, and I wonder what kind of choices we'll make?

RSS Readers may need to click through to the post

UPDATE: Mr Murph informs us that the rocket scientists at Bozeman have now backed down on this stipulation; but not before we got a bunch of very thought-provoking and hilarious comments – treat yourself to a little read below.

Father's Day

2009-06-22T08:00:00.002+01:00

It was Father's Day yesterday and I had a lovely fuss made of me by all the women in my life, apart from the dog, who still seems to be convinced that I am going to tear her throat out with my teeth any moment now. Breakfast consisted of Wine Gums and Jaffa Cakes, delivered by Jane, aged 9. Actual breakfast was a big fry-up plus scrambled eggs with lashings of butter made by Lynn, aged 11. Then I was handed another cup of tea and the newspaper and carefully directed to the couch. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it never did. A gentle, floating and happy day.

My Pop missed Father's Day by a few weeks in the year that he died and I can't remember the one before that. His birthday was three days before he died and I do remember that, but rather painfully. Sage words of his have come back to me in dribs and drabs over the years since he died:

Measure three times, cut once, you'll probably still get it wrong but at least you will have a good reason to be annoyed.

When in doubt, cut less rather than more – adding timber back on to a plank is a tricky business.

It is perfectly acceptable for a gentleman to shout, "FUUUUUUUUCK!" when he hits his thumb with a hammer, even when ladies are present. [Pop never actually passed this maxim on directly, I picked it up through osmosis and observation].

When you are working at the top of a ladder, bring an extra screw/nail/bolt with you, unless it's a tall ladder, in which case bring two.

Jazz must never be listened to quietly. Speaker drivers can always be replaced.

Do not place loose glazed ornaments on shelves near speakers.

In a garage, never complain to the guy with grease under his fingernails – this is not snobbery, this is simply recognising who has the power to help you.

Always be nice to the guy with grease under his fingernails, along with everyone else you meet. Ask them their names, tell them yours and get to know them over time.

Be a gentleman and a gentle man. [Again, he never said that one out loud, he just demonstrated it every day].

The Peter Principle turns 40

2009-06-15T07:00:00.001+01:00

From the Sunday Times:

BEWARE THE ACCIDENTAL MANAGER

People are still being promoted beyond their abilities, 40 years after a book highlighted the problem, writes John Cradden

It's hard to view the Zune as anything other than a product of Pointy-Haired-Boss thinking.

The timing is probably a coincidence, but it's remarkable all the same. Just as we are witnessing the fallout from a prolonged period of disastrous financial management, a ground-breaking business book about incompetence has been republished in a 40th anniversary edition. The Peter Principle, written as a satire by Canadians Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull, argued that in a typical workplace hierarchy, most people will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent. The implication of this is that productive work is only ever managed by those who have not yet reached their full potential.

"People have been poking fun at the concept of the worthless boss for a long, long time," said Rowan Manahan, a consultant and founder of career management firm Fortify Services. "I've seen cartoons from the Victorian era in Punch deriding the uselessness of the top-hatted factory manager. Peter's genius was that he took a commonly observed problem, gave it a memorable name, and built a following for the concept on that basis."

Since the book was first published, the corporate world has changed beyond recognition and management structures are far more flexible that the old, rigid hierarchies of the 1960s, but it is widely agreed that the book is actually more relevant today than ever.

... Manahan says the job of management has evolved into a role that also requires leadership, team-building and coaching – skills that are hard to measure. In terms of explaining how financial institutions around the world lost the run of themselves, management experts agree that straightforward incompetence was a factor, but not the only one.

... Manahan says it was likely that many in senior management positions simply did not understand the complex financial instruments that brought about the troubles in the banking sector, but felt under pressure to "join the race" anyway. "The Peter Principle had a role in all this, but greed and fear were probably larger contributor than simple incompetence," he said.

... Manahan says competency-based interviewing techniques can help to weed out unworthy candidates. "Modern behavioural interviewing techniques, particularly when built from the ground up for each defined role, are far better at eliciting a candidate's mindset when it comes to the typical tasks and problems they will face in the new role," he said. "For example, it is amazing how few people provide a good answer to a basic question about how to deal with an underperforming employee."

Although it has stood the test of time over 40 years, The Peter Principle may be in danger of being usurped by The Dilbert Principle, in which cartoonist Scott Adams states that organisations promote their least competent employees into management, "where they can do the least harm."

"I think Adams has taken on Laurence Peter's mantle very comfortably," said Manahan. "He holds up a clear mirror to modern corporate life and I'm sure I could run very effective management seminars using only Dilbert cartoons as my teaching tools." He says the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, seemed to accept The Dilbert Principle because of his 'Rank & Yank' approach to culling middle management. This involved replacing 10% of the employees in an organisation every year as a matter of course. "If those middle managers had been truly competent, GE should have collapsed. Interestingly, it did quite the opposite," said Manahan.

Related Posts:
Impostor Syndrome
Michael Wade on 'should' versus 'reality'
Stress due to promotion