Even buildings can have careers?!

I’m so sick of airports that we’re ‘staycationing’ this year and having mini-breaks instead of a holiday abroad. Anyway, we’ve just been to stay over at The Yew Tee Inn, Marco Pierre White’s lovely pub in Berkshire. It doesn’t look much from the outside to be honest and it could do with a lick of paint but the food is quite fantastic (as you’d expect), the service is warm, friendly and low key and serves the best English breakfast I’ve ever eaten. What strikes you about the place after a while, however, is that is a complete shrine to the great man’s career and others he admires.

Most of the walls upstairs are covered in brilliant and original drawings by JAK the famous Evening Standard cartoonist. Every wall, every nook and every cranny downstairs has a framed menu (including those created for Royalty), an award or a photo of himself with one his heroes and mentors (the Roux Brothers) or a famous colleague like Heston Blumenthal. There’s also this photograph of him with Gordon Ramsay’s head on a platter! Having left school in Leeds without any qualifications and going on to become the youngest ever chef at 33 to receive 3 Michelin stars, he’s certainly got plenty to be proud of career-wise. Now The Yew Tree Inn has become his ‘career showcase’.

The following day, we had a wander around Hughenden Manor, the former home of Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria’s favourite Prime Minister. He became PM despite not being from the traditional class and background of the time and bought the house to secure his political career. As he wasn’t from the landed gentry, he felt that he needed to buy his way in. During WW2 it was code-named ‘Hillside’ and was a secret intelligence services base dedicated to aerial photo reconnaissance and making maps for RAF bombing raids on Germany. It’s now owned and operated by the National Trust and is open to the public. As I wandered round looking at all the memorabilia and drinking in it’s history, it struck me that buildings can have careers too; Hughenden Manor has has a career in politics, military espionage and now tourism.  It’s certainly had a much longer and more fascinating one than the rest of us mere mortals can ever aspire to!

PS: Despite all the ‘staycationing’ we managed to get Emma’s first publication up on the mygraduatecareer.com site thisweek ‘From Facebook to LinkedIn’ is essential reading for anyone who knows how to ‘social network’ but not how to ‘career network’. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Career dealbreakers?

I was listening to Jane Garvey and her guests on Radio 4 this morning discussing bad breath, dirty toenails or calling women “laydeeeeez” – the deal-breakers that ultimately spell doom in a ‘romantic’ relationship. Anyway, as I was wondering what to put in the blog this week, it got me to thinking about the deal-breakers of the working relationship between employee and employer.

The consulting community have, as usual, assigned a number and letter descriptor (that Tom Peters has a lot to answer for with his seven ‘S’ model!) to help corporate types understand what is after all a pretty simple idea, but it probably makes them feel much better about paying thousands in fees for the privilege of being told the blindingly obvious. Anyway, it’s known as the four ‘Cs’ of employee engagement – culture, commitment, communication and compensation. In other words, if you’re unhappy about your pay, ‘the ways things are run around here’ and how you get to find out about stuff, you’re probably much less likely to be satisfied/happy and productive at work (see, I told you it wasn’t rocket science).

Productivity at work (which is what bothers employers after all, not your ‘happiness’ as such) has long since been understood as a combination of ‘skill x will’. It takes effort and time to build expertise and talent at work and the will to apply it effectively, but motivation is highly fragile and can disappear in moments. Deal-breakers are highly personal and, rather than it being something big and obvious like bad pay and prospects,  it can often just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back that has people running out the door before you can say ‘Headhunter’. It could be the boss who demands constantly but never says thank you; it could be a promotion deemed unfairly denied or the retraction of a perk of the job like free parking or Business Class travel. If people like the company and have a greater connection with their employer’s brand, a perceived failure to live up to their ‘promises’ by the company and it’s officers can feel like even more of a betrayal. Like disappointed and disenchanted lovers, disengaged employees don’t always physically leave the company (marriage/partner/husband/wife), they can keep miserably going through the motions for quite a long time. This is why CEOs and HR departments the world over always seem to have ‘engagement’ on their agenda but few seem to pull it off, especially in a recession.

According to some ‘research’ conducted with 1,326 respondents by HireScores, they found that American companies are the most appealing work places to Brits, with US brands topping the poll. The study also showed that UK brands are desirable to many of the  respondents – companies such as British Airways (really?) and Virgin. Coca-Cola is seen as the ‘dream employer’ by more than three quarters of UK job seekers. According to the response to the question ‘which of the following companies would be your dream place to work’ the following constitute their top 10 most desirable employer brands.

1.    Coca-Cola – 76%
2.    Microsoft – 69%
3.    Google – 66%
4.    Apple – 61%
5.    Virgin – 57%
6.    Vogue – 54%
7.    Facebook – 51%
8.    Disney – 48%
9.    Kraft foods – 44%
10.  British Airways – 41%

When asked why, the research found that 76% of those polled ‘dream job’ would be at Coca-Cola, with 23% admitting it is for the ‘freebies’ and 42% saying the salary is the main reason for Coca-Cola being their dream job. Of the 48% that dream of working for Disney, 34% say it is because they believe it will have a ‘fun atmosphere’ while 28% claim it has been a ‘childhood dream’. When asked ‘do you think you will ever achieve your dream job in your dream company?’ only 16% said ‘yes’.  38% admitted that it was just a ‘fantasy’ and 21% feel it is ‘unachievable.’ So, I guess their deal-breakers could be finding that a day’s work at Disney doesn’t consist of going on any of the rides, or that if you work for a mean boss even free sugary drinks won’t make him or her any sweeter to work for.

So, what would my deal-breaker be? I’ve thought about that a lot and I can honestly say that I can pretty much work my backside off for just about any company that hires me, but what I can’t abide is a boss I don’t respect. I don’t have to like them or agree with them all the time, but I have to respect them as leaders. I have left jobs I’ve enjoyed, for companies that I liked because my old boss had gone, the new one wasn’t up to much in my book and frankly, life’s too short to put up with idiots. Funnily enough, it’s a common deal-breaker that many people identify with although it’s hardly ever one that is dealt with openly in the recruitment process (because no one wants it to look like they were the one who is difficult to get on with or rubbish at their job) or, where they exist, exit interviews (because people still want to know they can count on a decent reference).

How highly, I wonder, does this figure with any current ‘engagement’ or employer branding programmes that are currently going on? If anyone does measure employee turnover and the exit patterns of talented employees, what do they really do about that most insidious of deal-breaker – the bad boss?  Let me know if you come across any great examples, I’d love to hear about them.

The nicest thing I ate this week: A pistachio macaroon at Comptoir Gascon in Smithfield.

Most useless fact I learnt this week: The dot that appears over the letter “i” is called a tittle.

Why do ‘ghost’ jobs exist?

It’s been a bit of a slow news week at Cottage HQ, but it’s given us a chance to get on with some of our new publications for the grad site – ‘What Next? Smarter career choices for graduates’ is now available for download, but what I’m really looking forward to is Emma’s (our intern) publishing debut next week - ‘From Facebook to LinkedIn’ - which is designed to help students move from the world of social, ‘fun times’ networking to ‘getting on the first rung of the career ladder’ networking.  She’s taught me a whole bunch of stuff about Facebook that I certainly didn’t know about (do you know what a ‘frape’ is?) and I’ve taught her a thing or two about the power of LinkedIn. Well, more of that next week hopefully.

So, what’s all this about ‘ghost jobs’? A new myexecutivecareer.com member wrote to me this week in despair. “I have become disillusioned with online recruitment agencies and the volume of ‘ghost’ opportunities readily available for unsuspecting individuals to apply for, only to become disheartened when I investigate to find the position had been filled or withdrawn.  Even worse, so many agencies are advertising the same position that they are inundated with applicants. Why does it happen and what advice do you have for job seekers?”

OK, well, it happens for a number of reasons. Successful recruitment, a little like banking, is essentially a matter of confidence and risk management. If the job boards didn’t look like they had many jobs on them, candidates wouldn’t register. If candidates don’t register, recruiters don’t advertise because they don’t think anyone will see their jobs, they won’t find suitable candidates and their client won’t pay them their finder’s fee. Employers, believing that they shouldn’t put all their ‘resourcing eggs’ in one basket i.e. giving one recruitment firm exclusive rights over finding candidates to fill a particular job, put it out to several firms. It’s a classic competitive tender scenario. So, what happens then is a vicious cycle of duplication, and some might say duplicity. The job boards have duplicate entries from a number of firms all assigned by a client to track down suitable applicants. The job boards want to look tempting to candidates and advertisers so jobs stay on job boards well past their sell-by date. The recruiters place ads, even if they have already identified their short list, because they want exposure for their brand in order to attract more assignments from employers. Recruiters race to get candidate CVs to employers before their competitors (often without proper screening or interviews) because otherwise they won’t get credited with the ‘find’. All in all, this results in a miserable and soul destroying experience for candidates. So much for all that chatter about ‘Employer Brand’. In a recession/buyers market, there is seemingly no incentive for anyone to improve their standards. So, that’s why it happens. Rubbish isn’t it? That’s partly why we decided to set up myexecutivecareer.com to try and improve the candidate experience whilst also delivering on the needs of recruiters and employers. We don’t have a big enough candidate database yet, or a big enough pool of reputable employers and recruiters advertising real jobs but it’s early days for us. Join us and we’ll try our level best to deliver a better deal for everyone.

In the meantime, until we achieve our Utopian vision of better practice, what can candidates do? Firstly, if you suspect it’s a ‘ghost’ job, call the recruiters and sound them out before you commit to hours of crafting a CV that falls into a black hole along with your will to live and your self-esteem! Also, if they approach you, ask them if they are the only recruiters involved so at least you know the score upfront. Secondly, don’t just rely on applying for advertised positions to get your next great role. It’s reckoned that 70% of roles are never advertised, so learn how to raise your profile, network properly, scent your trail and target firms where you think you could approach them directly to sell your proposition. The myexecutivecareer.com website and network group is full of advice pages and useful resources on how to create a plan that works for you. Oh, and please keep checking into the blog, I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last time we touch on this topic.

Things that made me laugh this week: Cadbury’s ‘Spots vs Stripes’ video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-s3auYdK. Heineken’s ‘walk in closet’ ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIutgtzwhAc&NR=1

Useless fact I learnt this week: the ‘pie chart’ beloved of data nerds around the world was invented by none other than Florence Nightingale! Not only was she a visionary healthcare icon, she was also a gifted mathematician and a member of the Statistical Society. That’s what you get from watching reruns of Qi on Dave!

Good cause of the week: The charity, the Education and Employers Taskforce, is planning the first ever national campaign for business leaders to visit state schools and colleges during the week of the 18 – 22 October 2010. This ‘call to action’ is a chance for bosses from private, public and third sector organisations to hear first-hand from head teachers and young people ages 5 – 19 about they can actively help shape their skills, achievement and employability. Taking part in Visit our Schools week is free to everyone and only requires 1 or 2 hours of your time in the week of 18-22 October to visit a school/college in your locality. For further details and to register to take part visit: http://www.visitourschools.org. I’ve registered (if they’ll have me) – will you?

When I grow up I want to be ……..

As I no longer have children of school age, I’m not forced to take holidays in August that are overpriced and in resorts that are overcrowded. I can also ‘enjoy’ using commuter transport because I can actually get a seat and catch up on some of my reading. This week, I’ve been sent an advance copy of ‘How to get a job you’ll love’ by John Lees who has been in the careers advice field for what seems like a zillion years – it isn’t a brand new title but one that he has updated quite a lot in order to fully reflect the times.  Nonetheless, even for someone like me who thinks they’ve heard it all before, I found it an interesting read because he has a similar ‘no BS’ approach to career management to my own and some practical ways of looking  at perennial problems such as ‘What do I want to do with my life?’

It’s hard to write a careers book that appeals to everyone, but I’m pretty sure that most people will be able to find something in it that’s thought-provoking and of personal value.  I particularly identified with his idea of the ‘one step at a time career breakthrough’. He says that most career and self-help books are written around the idea that we all have a hidden ‘real’ self, and if we unlock this secret then what we want to do with our lives will  magically become crystal clear. It’s an appealing idea and many coaches have made a good living from cultivating it and so do the media. What he says is more common is that people progress by gradual steps and ‘try on’ different careers – sometimes through choice,  sometimes through necessity and quite often by complete accident.  Now, you might call that drifting or opportunistic but in a modern society like ours, I think we’re lucky to be able to try things out and have choices. I think it’s only regrettable if you look back on your life  and realise that you never enjoyed anything you did, or never took any chances to try out something new or different.

Like most people, I remember being subjected from a very early age to that dreaded question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Well, as a very little girl, I wanted to be a vet actually. I was brought up on a farm and I had lots of pets – assorted lambs, chicks, piglets, mice, hamsters, cats and dogs but my mother says I went off the idea once I realised I might have to put an animal down if I couldn’t cure it. Then I wanted to be a pilot and, like most children, I also fantasized about owning a sweet shop (eating in it rather than running it of course!). By my teens, I wanted to be a travel writer or work in the fashion trade and I chose to take a quite unusual degree in marketing that was allied to the textile industry; I did my industrial placement with the childrenswear brand Ladybird. Sadly, my career in the rag trade was derailed by a recession that saw the industry decimated, so I ‘tried on’ some different things in finance and HR before I finally got to pursue a career in marketing.  I’ve worked in marketing for over twenty years now and I’ve enjoyed ‘trying on’ lots of new aspects of that field too, not least those brought on by the advent of the internet and the subsequent revolution in communications technology that has so completely transformed our lives. Well, I don’t know about you, but I haven’t finished growing up yet and I still can’t wait find out what else I might be able to give a whirl……………..

How forward thinking recruiters find people who will love working for them

Every week I get a newslink on recruitment trends in my inbox from my very good friend Mr Keith Robinson. He knows all kinds of interesting people in the recruitment business and he also conducts ‘roving reporter’ style video interviews which he posts on one or other of his two websites – careersiteadviser (a site that helps job seekers find the careers information pages on employer websites) and jobsiteadvisor (a site that helps recruiters find the best places to promote their vacancies).

When we had one of our regular working lunch sessions a couple of weeks ago (a euphemism for our good natured and impassioned rants about the careers industry and exactly how it could all be much, much better than it is currently!!!), he was full of praise for a bright young woman he’d interviewed recently – Helene Williamson, Head of Resourcing at Monsoon Accessorize. I saw the film clips today and it was so refreshing to hear someone actually talking sensibly about about how their brand and the values of their company were not just important for attracting their customers, but also as a key component of their recruitment strategy. Also, for the uninitiated, it was great to hear how forward thinking recruiters are using new technology channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn and mobile technology to target/attract candidates effectively. Now, I found it really interesting to hear how they were doing that in practice from a business perspective, but it also underlines one of my core themes for this blog; to find a job you love, not only do you need to be passionate about the job role you are interested in, but you also have to find (or build) a company that is proud of what it does too and will allow you to channel that passion effectively when you work for them.

So, when you are looking for your next role, or deciding whether to respond to that headhunter who is trying to lure you away from your current employer, start by thinking not just ‘Could I/do I want to do this job?’ but also ‘Would I be proud to work for this company and help it to grow?’.

You can see the video clips here anyway. Enjoy!

Part One -Helene discuss why in-house recruiting is so successful for Monsoon.
Part Two- Helene’s top tips on moving into the International market, what makes a great in-house recruiter, and how she uses LinkedIn in the hiring process.
Part Three -Helene’s views on HR, Talent Management and Social Media in recruitment.
Part Four- Helene talks mobile recruiting.

Why having a job you love is good for business

I’ve been wanting to go to Ronnie Scott’s, the famous jazz club in London’s Soho, for ages and I finally got to go there on Friday night. The excellent James Hunter and his band were playing (you may have seen him on Jools Holland’s Later programme) and the lovely Natalie Williams. As soon as you walk into the club, you just know that you’re going to have a good evening and they take a lot of trouble to ensure that your experience as a customer is a good one. The artists entertained us royally and the staff seemed to be enjoying working there too. When the club manager came over to our table to ask if we were having a good time, there was no danger of him hearing anything other than enthusiastic and positive feedback. I felt sure that if we’d had any complaints at all, he would have made every effort to put things right. You could see how passionate he was about the club, how proud he was to work there and how that was rubbing off on the customers, the staff and the ‘suppliers’. I started off in the leisure business in my early career and I know what long hours it involves and what hard work it is to keep up consistently high standards; as we were chatting away, he nevertheless told me that he thought he must have ‘the best job in the world’.

I’ve worked with and for a lot of organisations over the years and listened to endless discussions about what does or doesn’t make a business successful; it usually boils to down to something very simple – passion and pride. The passion that comes from the leader of a business affects everyone who works there and everyone who does business with it. The pride taken in the execution of every detail and every employee chosen to be part of that team is what sets it apart from its competitors. This doesn’t mean that employees are coddled and cossetted – if you love your job and you’re proud to work for that company, it usually means that that you’ll go the extra mile whatever it takes and without there necessarily being any kind of direct financial incentive or reward. Unfortunately, however, I come across a lot of disengaged employees and leaders who don’t understand their own personal accountability for their organisation being a great place to work or do business with. If we want a job we love, what do we have to do to make that happen? It’s a topic I’m going to keep coming back to, so stay tuned………………..

Our new intern starts today

I’ve written before about internships and how important it is for students to get some solid work experience behind them to help get their careers off to a good start. Well, today I shall be practising what I preach – our new intern Emma starts today. We’ll be working out what her own career goals  are and then developing a project that will (hopefully) not only support her future prospects, but also help lots of others too by creating the right content for the mygraduatecareer.com site, building awareness and driving traffic.

How the student/graduate community operates in career terms these days is a whole new ball game compared to when I was a student in the eighties. It really makes you appreciate just how completely the internet has changed everything. We had hardly any information to go on and everything took ages because you had to hand write applications, post them by snail mail and mobile phones, texting and Twittering hadn’t even been dreamt of. It was expensive, time consuming and frustrating. Now, it’s relatively cost free, but there’s almost too much information to sift through, complex applications and tests are completed online (more on that later!) and arrive very quickly – if only the same thing could be said about feedback from recruiters and employers!

I started featuring graduate career resources some time ago on the newlifenetwork.co.uk site initially because parents coming to the site had started to ask for it. They came to find career advice for themselves  and then, having seen how different the online job hunting landscape had become,  wanted to know how to help (or at least be on the same page as) their sons and daughters.  Naturally, once my own daughter became a student I developed a much greater insight into the difficulties they faced, and how young people access and use information quite differently to older job seekers. It also made me realise that accessing good careers advice in schools and colleges is still a bit of a lottery unfortunately.  So, it’s going to be a lot of fun, watch this space!

Should the PM’s salary be the benchmark for everyone else?

Some 170 civil servants are paid more than the Prime Minister. Yet again, we hear more outrage regarding salaries for Public Servants such as Head Teachers being higher than that of the PM – this BBC article puts a very interesting slant on it; they ask ‘Have prime ministers ever been well paid? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8715505.stm. It’s an interesting read – past PMs have been left heavily in debt with many needing to be bailed out by the monarchy. In the 16th Century, parliamentary wages were paid in fish.

So, are certain public servants paid too much or is the PM simply not paid enough? Are these protests fair or simply the politics of envy?

When the going gets tough……

….the tough get going. If you’re graduating this year, the current news headlines can seem a tad depressing. More employers insist on selecting candidates with a 2:1 or 1^st class degree. Male graduates are faring less well than women in the employment market. Graduate unemployment is up by 25%. Student debt has reached record levels. There’s no two ways about it, it’s a bit of a car crash out there and ‘adapt and survive’ is the name of the game.

When I graduated, the economic landscape was also pretty grim. There was no such thing as the internet and companies didn’t worry too much about their customer brands let alone their employer brands. When the company who had sponsored my internship decided to withdraw their graduate programme, I was left high and dry with no ‘proper’ job to go. The thought of going back to live with my parents (lovely as they are!) filled me with horror and spurred me 0n to find an alternative pdq. So, I went to the Norfolk coast and managed to get a seasonal job working in the accounts department at Ladbrokes (I have many colourful stories to tell about my time there but here is not the place to discuss them!). It wasn’t exactly my dream job in marketing but from there I was offered a full-time financial controllers job at Trust House Forte that paid a good deal more than I would have been earning on a grad scheme. I eventually managed to get the career in marketing I’d always wanted, and having got there the hard way, I think I valued it more and worked even harder at it. So, even if your prospects are looking less than rosy at the moment and getting into your dream job isn’t turning out to be a straightforward route from A to B, don’t be downhearted; you just need to be more creative and adaptable.

That’s why I’m full of admiration for the number of companies and websites that have sprung up where students are taking matters into their own hands; setting up as freelancers (freelancestudents.co.uk and studentgems.com) and organising work experience groups (enternships.com). So, if you’re looking for a way to get some valuable work experience – sign up. If you’re looking for some great young talent check them out. After a lively discussion on this topic on the British Library entrepreneurs group on Linkedin, I took everyone’s top tips and compiled them all one one page here mygraduatecareer.com – do let me know if you have any more suggestions and I’ll add them to the collection.

Silver linings

After the terrific heat we’ve been suffering these past few days I thought I’d be glad of some rain……….unfortunately, the heavens decided to open this morning on my way to a meeting in Ipswich and I virtually acquaplaned all the way down the A14. Anyway, the clouds certainly had a silver lining because I had a great morning courtesy of Enterprising Women who were holding a session on the benefits to entrepreneurs of entering business awards. It never ceases to amaze me how many very talented people I get to meet in the most unlikely rural locations – really high flying women who have decided to give up their big corporate jobs so that they can spend more time with their children but then  decide to set up their own businesses. This morning I met Claire Martinsen, a former Mars Executive, who in a few short months has set up her own ‘Posh Pop’ business (Breckland Orchard.co.uk) in deepest Norfolk and has already won three prestigious business awards. Adapting her substantial commercial expertise gained managing the likes of Tesco and Sainsburys, she now sells her delicious soft drinks to Harvey Nichols, boutique Health Stores and Farm Shops. She has started a brand new career that uses her skills from a past life but offers her the flexibility to work on her own terms. Good luck to her, she’s made a fantastic start. I also met a former Burberry Accessories Executive who is running a great new online retail business selling handbags also from deepest Norfolk (I feel a trend developing here) called Bagshowpiece.com and lots of other women who have decided that the end of a traditional executive career can mean a brand new one can develop in its place.  No one is pretending that it isn’t still very hard work but it just goes to show how adaptable we can all be when it comes to creating fulfilling careers that fit in with our lives, not the other way around.