It's Talent, Stupid!

Gareth Bale, Spurs and the Challenger Brand

My last night away after a year trotting around the globe is one that I’ll remember for years to come.  Sat in a bar on a beautiful Thai beach with Heather and Jamie, my two best friends from my trip, I gazed up at the big screen and watched my beloved Spurs take on Money City.  The penultimate match of the season, it was a huge game for both teams, the outcome would decide which team took 4^th place in the Premier League, and more importantly, that coveted Champions League spot!  I cheered in delight as Crouch headed the ball past the keeper; Tottenham had done it!

 

Fast forward 6 months and several thousand miles and Jamie and I are sat in a somewhat less glamorous bar, ready to watch the mighty Yids take on the even mightier Inter Milan!  Nervous, but excited I prayed that Armageddon wouldn’t occur at the San Siro, and that Spurs, the underdogs, would hold their own.

I’ve always been a fan of the underdog, or in business terms, the challenger brand.  Throughout my career I have always preferred to work for the smaller, less known companies, than a large, global corporation.  I have always held the belief, and I still do, that smaller companies push you harder, teach you faster and accelerate your career more than their larger counterparts.  I believe that challenger brands care more about their clients and will always go the extra mile to get results.

Take Chemistry, we are David facing a world of Goliaths, up against the likes of McKinsey, Hayes etc. Like Goliath, I think our global counterparts often underestimate what we can do; more fool them!  We might be small in size, but we know our stuff. We use our size to our advantage, it means we can out-pace the competition and we can react to change much quicker than our bigger rivals.  We understand what it’s like to be a challenger brand so our smaller, local clients know that they are just as important to us as our huge, global ones. We love all our clients and that shows in everything that we do!

At half time, 4-0 down I was ready to leave; I couldn’t bear to watch the crucifixion of my adored team at the hands of the European Champions any longer.  The best I could hope for was damage limitation.  But in the 52^nd minute, like a bat out of hell, Gareth Bale came tearing down the left wing to slot the ball home.  Inspired by his attack, the rest of the team suddenly pulled together and the match became a whole different ball game.  Inter, who were convinced they had it in the bag and had brushed us off like we were nothing, couldn’t handle the change of pace, didn’t know how to react now that they were no longer in control.  The wonderful Bale seized the opportunity and scored two more stunners! Result! I don’t think Inter will be so quick to dismiss us when they take their trip to White Hart Lane now!

We may not have won on the night, but the way we fought back and kept our heads against the giants made me proud to be a Spurs fan, just like I am proud to be a part of Chemistry.  I believe that while small, Chemistry has strength & courage that none of our big competitors can match.   And I believe that like Gareth Bale, Chemistry and all those challenger brands out there are ones to watch.  

Cheers

Cesca

 

 

It pays to do your research…

I recently made a big career move from the Telecoms industry to Management Consultancy. The decision was eased when I found a company with my core belief, “employees are their No.1 asset”  Chemistry believes employees give you the market advantage, drive your business forward, increase profitability and make your business first choice for attracting new talent.

So how do I know what isthe best company for me?  Do I review The Sunday Times Top 100 companies to work for, listen to my peers, scan the social media highway, review company website’s to understand their culture, or look at the endless list of benefits some companies offer? Do I do all of the above, or more?

The average woman will start working at 16 and retire at 62, living until she is 82 years old and spends 56% of her lifetime at work. The average man starts work at 16 and retires at 65 living until he is 78yrs old and spends 63% of his life at work.

56% of my life at work, whoa!  When I recant at 81 yrs old, I hope to say I spent the majority of my life working for the best companies, where I was valued and loved what I was doing. But I doubt a great deal of people would be happy to make this statement now or in the future. I’m not saying there aren’t 1,000’s of great companies to work for, but are you working in the best company for you?  How do you know it’s the best company for you?

How to get it right, all of the above and more?

I learnt more about what makes me tick after my several interviews at Chemistry. 

I know my Intellectual scoring for Verbal & Numerical Reasoning and I no longer doubt my decision not to study accountancy ;-) What else do I know? I know what motivates me, I know what values bring out my best behaviours, and I know which of my behaviours are beneficial to me and which ones I need to change.

So how do I know this?  Psychometric tools?  They’re all over the web so I can only reflect on the ones I did. Before joining Chemistry I completed 3 psyches and 2 interviews. With this army of information I know, I work for the best company for me.

So research, research, research not just about companies, it’s time to find out more about you?

Happy hunting

Lana

What The Hell is A Double Dip Recession - Part 1

Important Disclaimer:  Some of the information in this blog I have "lifted" from a conference I attended run by Shirlaws, their inspirational founder Darren Shirlaw used to be a fund manager, he spent a day explaining to 70 of us business owners what the hell was going on in the economy, i will be eternally grateful, read on and you may be too.

Read an article recently where Steve Ingham, CEO of Michael Page stated that he feared a double dip recession, well I have news for Steve, it's not a possibility it's a fact.  We are going in to a double dip recession, how do I know?  Well apart from the fact Darren told me, it's fairly obvious...cos' we have had 6 months of flat in the economy after a previous six month rise, which was preceded by a 20 month slide.  Previous recessions have been "v's"...you don't have a flat bit in a "v", you have a flat bit in a "w"...see image 1. below.  the reason we have a flat bit not a lovely "v" is cash, the difference between a "W" and "V" is simply cash.

Image 1. - Our Double Dip.

Image 1. shows a 20 month slide from Jan '08, followed by a short "bounce" from Sep'09 - March '10 and then 6 months in the doldrums, the rule is the doldrums will last at least 6 months and at most 2 years, so looking like a further 18 months of basically good "spikes" and bad "dips" news, which in fund management terms is a "flat trend".  Of course in these times businesses will fail and businesses will succeed but overall the effect will be neutral.  

Golden Rule No.1 - The economy lags the markets by 6 months.  So the markets collapsed in July '07, the economy collapsed 6 months later, Jan'08.  See Image 2. below.

Both Darren and a other more pessimistic monitors of the markets predict that the markets and therefore the economy will have another fall, the question is when and by how much?  Well given the previous rule, we can expect the flat to "run out of steam" 18 months from now...March '12, the markets collapse, the optomists say by 10% the pessimists by 60%, so let's say it's 30%.  That will mean your business and mine has been through 56 months of utter shite...nice...the point is that the markets will bounce 6 months later and we will have a minimum of five years of growth (it's a rule, don't ask me why, it just is!).

So 18 months of flat, followed by a tumultuous drop, followed by 5 years minimum of growth.  What's your plan for that?

In Part 2 - I will impart Chemistry's plan, it's right for us and maybe not right for you but if it can help I will be glad we shared.

Alex Ferguson Believes It's About The Parents - We Do Too!

OK, so not sure I was ever a fan of Alex Ferguson, don't know why, perhaps it's because I am a Liverpool fan or because he is really successful and I'm English, which means I envy and begrudge him his success but I've decided I'm not really English, because I love successful people and I am an unrepentant optimist, somewhere along the line I became American, except I own a passport and not a gun.

Anyway what has endeared me to the grumpy one? Well in his press conference yesterday he reminisced about the fact that he doesn't interact with boys’ parents anymore, (by boys he meant players Wayne Rooney's age) that agents had become the main influence in a players life and this has meant they lost their sense of perspective.  Now I am taking the slightly gullible stance that what he means is the boys values shift, not that he can manipulate parents easier but I could see why you might go there :-).

 

It was an interesting 30 second moment, because we believe the influence of parenting has a dramatic impact on performance at work, seriously we mean it.  We know from research and 7 years of doing this that the map for your future success is laid down between the ages of roughly 0-13, it's why early school learning in this country drives us up the wall, it's why attacking child services and benefits is a sure fire way of depriving future workforces with the attitude and talent to take on tomorrows challenges.  Forget secondary school and University in terms of impact on your son or daughter's potential it's like a drop in an ocean that you filled (or not) from the ages of 0-13.  There is absolutely no direct correlation between academic performance and potential to be a Linchpin at work, that's purely a measure of afforded opportunity.

I have a daughter, Kezia, she is 13 years old.  Her good luck was to have a mother who from the age of 0 challenged her, brought her in to adult conversations, played with her incessantly, showed her the world, told her she was smart, beautiful, courageous, read to her every night, then listened to her read every night, who pushed and cajoled her to try harder all the time...my daughter is 13 years old and if she quit education today, she would still be a Linchpin.  She already has the qualities, at school she is singled out, Student of the Year -Year 7, Student of the Year - Year 8, Netball Captain, published author and front runner for Head Girl...she already has a CV most Law Firms and Professional Services firms would kill for.  Thanks to an incredible Mum, my daughter is set.  We didn't have to send her to a fancy private school, she'd be fine wherever she went, I genuinely don't care which University she goes to, because if she never gets a degree, she'll be fine...except of course she won't, because the stupid bloody system insists that in order to get the opportunities she has to conform to the plan and the plan is great GCSE grades, followed by great A level grades, followed by the right Uni and the right degree.  The plan creates drones for the beehive of a corporate system and may well kill the Linchpin within Kezia.

The plan of course is perpetuated by ridiculous employers who can't see that what they should be doing is asking for a new CV, the 0-13 years CV.  The 0-13 year old CV is not impacted by opportunity, but attitude, it's not about money, great parents aren't wealthy, they just are great.  Great early schooling is not a "paid for one" but one that is delivered by parents and schools together.  Linchpins are made with love, not money or University education.

Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Neville Brothers, I’d love to see their 0-13 year old CV, is it different to Rooney's? I know it is, heard it in Ferguson's voice yesterday.

Roger

Dear Reader, if you are wondering where the hell the father was whilst the mother was creating a future Linchpin, simple, the father slipped in to the coma that is the age old excuse of I need to earn money to provide for my family and I'll do this by missing 0-6 by working 24/7 like the corporate drone I was schooled for...he now knows what a load of crap that is and how desperately lucky he is to be married to an exceptional and beautiful woman, some guys get all the luck ;-)

 

 

Our Passion for Culture!

Being a newcomer to the Chemistry office I was instantly aware of the difference in culture between here and my last job.  Simply put it’s ‘the way we do things around here’.  The most drastic difference that I noticed is that culture at Chemistry is, and should be, extremely important to make the business successful, and all employees need to believe in it.  While defining our own culture at Chemistry, it is clear that passion is a key and dominating belief. We are passionate about the work we do, we are energetic, we are insatiable and we all genuinely love what we do. While millions of people go to work every day, it’s surprising how many aren’t passionate about their job.

Keeping this firmly in mind, we recently had Danny Kalman, Global Director for Talent at Panasonic Corporation come and talk to us about Culture.  Danny gave us huge insight, especially into the Japanese culture, which is carried through all the work everyone does at Panasonic. Common practice in the workplace is for employees to sing a song at the beginning of the day to reflect their values and beliefs.  For me, this shows that they strongly believe in their culture, enough to declare it to their fellow workers everyday. The value of this is clearly shown as Panasonic was founded in 1918 and is still highly successful.  While we wouldn’t go so far in the UK to singing at work (luckily), it does make you think about how we practice our own beliefs and culture.

Thinking about Panasonic, I thought it would be a good idea to research other companies and their culture. Surprisingly I found that being passionate, fun and having pride in what you do as a company is a common theme in company culture. Other recruitment and management consultancy firms such as Michael Page, YSC are also proud of being passionate, which clearly is important in business and undoubtedly shows when working with your clients. If you are enthusiastic and zealous about your work, it makes it easier to create connections and lasting relationships. One of YSC’s beliefs is that ‘people want belonging and meaning in their work’.  To feel like we belong is human nature and therefore is something we all strive for in a work environment.

We are so proud of our culture and beliefs at Chemistry that our lovely Marketing team have entered us for the ‘Best Company to Work For’ Award. The judges commented that they could tell that we genuinely believe in our culture and it’s not just a poster on the wall.

We say thank you very much J and fingers crossed we win!

Cheers

Natalie

 

The Apprentice: Real talent or just “Cringeable?”

I’m new to the Apprentice. After news stories of supposed “Business Enthusiasts” rolling around with married men in a field, I wasn’t convinced. Lets leave that to Davina and the countries finest car crash TV creators – Channel 4.

But with hype in the office, I had to tune in – cue orchestrated, high suspense music and some cheesy opening lines!

After watching the first episode, I couldn’t help but think of what we do and how Lord Sugar could benefit from a little “Chemistrifying”.

Lord Sugar, one of the most successful businessmen in the country (or according to distasteful Project Leader Dan Harris, the world??) failed to disappoint.  What I love about Lord Sugar is his no-nonsense approach to people, which shone when dealing with Synergy, a team of what seemed like slightly inexperienced schoolboys.  But as I watched him seem to consider keeping JFDIY (Just f*@£$&% do it yourself) Dan on the team when he commented: “I’ve looked at your CV – you obviously know how to do something.”  It made me realize just how many companies are making this mistake.

    

The amount of times unsuspecting businesses get won over by a dazzling CV – oozing with experience and years of academic studies. Whose to say that because you have the experience at one company, you can be brilliant at that role somewhere else? We only find out about poor management skills and rude motivation techniques such as Dan’s after it’s too late. He may have run a number of successful companies, but how do you determine someone’s values and behaviours from a piece of paper?

We here at Chemistry know that Experience and Interview is the lowest predictor of success. So why does it keep happening?

In large corporate organisations, the chance of picking this up without considerable cost is extremely slim, resulting in a delayed reaction of “Your Fired”. The mistake of hiring the wrong person for a role is potentially 14 times their annual salary. Multiply this by 6 figures and that’s… well, loads. Even for Lord Sugar to deal with.

Unlike everyday life, The Apprentice is able to shadow their contestants and pick up on these behaviours.  In the real world, we simply don’t have time. But we can profile our candidates – so that we stop those that aren’t right before they even get to the boardroom. Take Stuart Baggs. If he can sell a rusk-rich banger by rudely shouting at people in the street – he could sell water to a goldfish. But his technique nearly saw him booted off.  It doesn’t mean they aren’t a great employee – but they need to go be great somewhere else.

The contestants prove that there is talent there,  just perhaps not with the most experienced.  “I’ve read all your CV’s, on paper you all look very good. But so do Fish and Chips.” Well said, Lord Sugar.  As for Dan – his management style was nearly as dodgy as his sausages and look where that left him... Knocking on doors with no answer.

Cheers

Laura

 

Talent management: could it be "next stop Westminster"???

Ah, Autumn. Season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and Party Political Conferences! The Liberal Democrat’s annual shindig appears to have passed by without causing too much of a media uproar, but the hullabaloo surrounding ‘Labour 10’, bringing with it the culmination of what amounted to a 5 month job interview has been impossible to avoid! (Even for me, who let’s just say would not normally be described as a ‘political animal’!) Anyway, as I listened to the reports of who will now be fighting for which job in the shadow cabinet, and all the horse trading and arguing about which MP will be best in which position it struck me – the country needs The Chemistry Group! 

You may think that my tongue is firmly in my cheek, but think about it!  Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and chums all filling out our psychometric assessments?! We’d find out who was REALLY suited to being Shadow Chancellor and who would fare better as Secretary for Climate Change!  I’m sure some egos would be bumped but this would be a small price to pay for truly filling these roles with the right people. And if it worked out for Labour and the Shadow Cabinet we could make a move on the real thing and sell the concept to David Cameron! Why not?! I think that the world of politics could only improve were it to abandon a little of its old boys network and the plum jobs going to the leader’s current favourites!

OK, seriously. As a newcomer to Chemistry, and to the world of talent managment, I’ve been so interested and impressed to learn more about the way we do things and that our processes can increase the chance of companies getting the RIGHT person in the RIGHT position from 25% up to over 75%. It seems incredible that anyone risks not using our methods! So while it might not be ‘next stop, Westminster’, I think that it shows how much Chemistry has managed to get under my skin that I can’t watch the news without feeling sorry for those poor old politicians who haven’t quite wised up to how to pick the perfect new Shadow Chancellor.

 

Cheers,

Fiona

The debt of poor service – parallels between debt management and recruitment

I heard on the radio the other day about the appalling state of the UK’s debt management companies.  An increase in demand brought on by the recession has meant that these companies can increase their fees and reduce their service.

I was shocked by the reported poor service many of these companies provide to their customers, a group who are over-indebted, vulnerable and in desperate need of clear advice from an expert.  I’m not saying they are all bad, but the survey suggested that 129 have been issued with formal warnings by the OFT.  The reasons for these warnings all followed a similar vein; the advice given was dished out by advisors who were lacking in competence, who had inadequate information and were focussing on their own fee rather than helping their customers.  This sounds all a little too familiar….

Exactly the same applies to the recruitment market, especially in the “good times”.  Recruitment companies are full of consultants with one thing in mind; do the deal and get the fee, there is little thought to service.  Having been in that environment, I have seen the chase for the fee, if the question of “what is best for the client?” ever comes into conversation, it is quickly quashed by “I got a 30% fee!”.

To draw another similarity many recruitment consultants are lacking in competence and have inadequate information (mainly because they don’t ask the questions in the first place!). They aren’t trained to do what they do, they aren’t coached to deliver, and worst of all, they view themselves as ‘sales people’.  Any good recruiter will tell you, recruitment is NOT a sales role.

The big difference is that debt management companies are governed by a set of guidelines that are enforced by the OFT; recruitment companies aren’t governed at all!

If recruitment companies were governed by a set of rules, if they did need to have licenses, and if these were enforced, wouldn’t the world be a better place, wouldn’t the service levels increase?

Unfortunately this isn’t the case, and probably never will be.  The governance, the rules have to come from the client, from the heads of resourcing.  It is up to them to insist on the best service possible.   If we all did this the ‘sales recruiter’ would fast be out of business and we’d be left with the recruiters who actually value providing a great service to their clients.

Cheers,

 

Colin

If you don’t love your job, leave!

A couple of weeks ago my cousin committed suicide.  He was a very clever and capable man.  He had a ‘fantastic’ job with a well-known consultancy company.  

He couldn’t cope with the stress at work and so decided he wanted out. 

The BIG question in my heart is…. “Why the hell didn’t he just quit?”. 

To me, it’s simple….

If you don’t love your job, leave!

There are 168 hours in every week.

We sleep an average of 56 hours each week, leaving 112 waking hours.

With many of us now working over 50 hours a week, add in the late nights in the office or entertaining clients, and we are easily up to a 55 - 65 hours a week.

That means work counts for around 49 – 58% of our waking hours!

That’s a massive chunk of our lives, so if we don’t LOVE what we do what is the point of spending our lives doing it? 

Here’s the difference….

I LOVE my job!!

People tell me I’m really lucky, that I must work for a great company.

Maybe I am lucky (and yes I do work for a FANTASTIC company), but every time I meet someone surprised by my statement I can’t help but think…

“Are you stupid?  Of course I love my job.  I wouldn’t spend 58% of my waking hours doing it otherwise, would I?” 

The big thing I have learned from my lovely cousin, who I miss dearly, is that life is just too short and too fragile.  It can be gone in an instant no one wants to be at the end wishing they had spent their time enjoying life instead of dreaming of what could have been. 

I thank my lucky stars that I love my job, I just hope that one day this won’t be such an unusual statement.

 

Cheers,

 

Cath.

Heads of Resourcing & Bankers, A Story of Zero Accountability - Notes From Smart Resourcing Part 2

So, it struck me that the bankers put us all well and truly in the shit and as we can see it appears they have learnt nothing and have in the main suffered no consequence for putting us there and are taking no responsibility for getting us out, which is nice...but actually then I reflect on my last blog and believe that we fickle, over reliant on credit, happy to put it off tomorrow consumers colluded in the whole damn fiasco, it was a choice both ours and theirs, we both danced with the devil and he quite rightly taught us a lesson...in accountability....

Now on to Heads of Resourcing, first thing and listen up...YOU HAVE THE COOLEST JOB IN THE F$@£ING WORLD, seriously you control the future business performance of your company, screw the CEO his levers on share price are nothing compared to yours.  You also have the ability to create happy families, wealth, more CEOs...of course the flip side is you can destroys peoples lives, as well as your organisations share price.

So tell me what makes you think it's OK to run the most important organisation in a business and not measure it's impact?  According to one speaker at the Smart Resourcing Conference, "it's too administratively difficult", an honest yet incompetent answer I suppose.  So if you go and spend £50K on an ATS, what's the return? Low recruitment lead times? Bollox that's not a return, it's an effect...Less administration for recruiters? Again it's an effect not a return...the only return to measure is DOES IT HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE FOR MY BUSINESS!!!!!!!!!  If bringing in the ATS means you will hire more of the right people more of the time, do it...of course it doesn't, an ATS is an inanimate object, it's you as the Head of Resourcing that decides how it is used that will determine the return.  

Does using Twitter/LinkedIn etc etc mean I will hire more of the right people for my business? It might do but all I heard at the conference was it saved money, made us look cool and meant we didn't have to use EVIL recruitment companies...utter nonsense, stop being obsessed with Cost Per Hire, be a LINCHPIN and let your business know that Cost Per Hire is not a measurement of success and that you want to be KPI'd and have your budget set on total employee contribution, are you hiring LINCHPINS or not?  It's not administratively difficult, your customer will tell you, ask them!

Measuring the impact of your hiring is not administratively impossible, it's just downright bloody scary, let's face it, like bankers you don't want to face in to the problems caused by your wild and unmeasurable punts in to the talent markets.  You want to spend £000's on the latest cool web thing and enter awards and go to conferences to talk about it.   Not face in to high attrition, swathes of under performers and crippling performance management costs (£24Billion in the FTSE 100 alone).  THESE ALL START WITH YOU...they might be amplified by poor management (but let's face it who hired the managers!) but you are responsible for the raw material, no one else.

So do me a favour, STOP spending money on funky new ways of sourcing, SWAG bags for candidates (really!) and flash fronts to everything and focus on the nuts and bolts, how do we source, attract and select the very best people for our jobs (Oh and Accenture I can tell you right now that's not hiring from "high flier" Universities, never heard so much crock in my life, a "high flier" University education is as much a predictor of future success as saying all "blue eyed" people are more likely to succeed than "brown", complete nonsense, capped off by saying "diversity is important to us", what's that we take a couple of 2:1's a year!).

So at Chemistry when we had our Search business we put a % of our fee at risk based on the individuals performance against expectation, it wasn't difficult we sent a survey at 6 and 12 months post hire, it wasn't sexy or complicated (actually it was simple and free using Survey Monkey) but we got a satisfaction measure, it told us we hired LINCHPINS 86.5% of the time, the return on the customers fee was quantifiable, which is why they let us charge 30% when our competitors were paid 20%. (BTW I am not saying we were perfect, we could never be accused of that, however we could never be accused of not trying to be either).

Here's an idea, why not calculate the upside contribution of a LINCHPIN employee in a job family, ask the business to help, it'll be there, you just have to want it to be.  Now put a survey (it's free) system in place that audits every hire, every 6 months against the LINCHPIN criteria (don't ask me what it is, you find it out for your organisation)...there you go simple and effective measurement of your performance.  

Or alternatively work with HR on where your hires currently sit in the 9 box Potential vs Performance matrix they will be using with the line managers...they all have one.  Are you responsible for the guys "top right" or "bottom left"...the ways of measuring your contribution to your businesses success are already there, you just have to want to know what the answer is!

That's it, YOU HAVE THE COOLEST JOB IN THE WORLD, I ENVY YOU but only if you hire the right people for your business most of the time and you will only know that if you measure it.  So you can deny accountability and have your Cost Per Hire reduced or step up, be accountable and potentially have your budget doubled...your choice.

R

PS: For definition of a LINCHPIN refer to simply the best book in the world today (coming to all hotel bedside drawers soon) Linchpin by Seth Godin