Blog Archives

A case of a Blinding Flash of the Obvious

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Laurie Serafini — No Comments ↓

Only last Saturday, I was settling in to read the weekend paper while sipping a long black at my local cafe, when I was again reminded of the world famous BFO principle… that’s a case of the Blinding Flash of the Obvious!

I was reading Greg Callaghan’s entertaining piece in The Saturday Age #GoodWeekend Magazine where he interviewed Sydney psychologist Dr Tim Sharp, an adjunct professor at both UTS and RMIT University, about “the importance of small, daily face-to-face interactions”.

What a timely reminder. These exchanges contribute to people’s overall wellbeing, longevity, and even improve mental health.

Here in the Southern Hemisphere, as we bunker down for what is predicted to be a long  winter with endemic colds and flu, it’s been scientifically proven we can actually draw a lot of energy – and in fact warmth, by reaching out to others. Getting out of your headspace and talking to friends, family, colleagues or even strangers on the street, releases endorphins – your wellness hormone, which can actually be good for you.

Dr Sharp, who is also the founder of the Happiness Institute in Sydney, went on to say that, “Brief, micro interactions on a daily basis can have amazing benefits, leading to even reduced rates of depression.” Who would have thought?

While this may have been going on since Moses walked the Earth, I challenge you this week have a chat and reach out to someone new. Whether it’s at your next business meeting, a job interview, the train station, on the street corner or at your local… You can tell them I sent you!

Social media doesn’t count. No Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or texting… You gotta go live.

Experts call it positive wellbeing. Others may say it’s a BFO. Whatever, I think it’s fantastic and those little interactions really work. Everyone’s a winner, if you’re up for it. Just use your judgement when approaching others, keep it safe.

Let me know what happens when you have a ‘small talk’ with someone new.

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Posted in Slade Executive

My three biggest career regrets

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Sophie Pusz — No Comments ↓

If you were to look at most people’s career trajectory, it generally rises over time, but zoom in a little and you’ll probably see some dips or a drop along the way. The upside to those dips is that a set-back in life can be a fantastic opportunity for learning and growth. In hindsight, you may even come to see that the valuable learning opportunities provided by the drop gave you the tools you needed to achieve something amazing, or the confidence to try something out of the box that really paid off.

Here are my three biggest career regrets to date, and the lessons I learnt from each of them.

  1. Look after yourself. I turned down a phone interview for an incredible sounding job with an arts organisation in Hobart because I didn’t think I could sneak out of work for the call. It was in my early days in the workforce and I just didn’t understand that you need to look after yourself when job hunting is at play. Of course I always advocate leaving on good terms when you do move on, but I didn’t realise in that scenario that I needed be less passive if I was ever going to get another job.

Lesson: Nobody is going to look out for you in the same way that you will look out for yourself. You need to be your strongest advocate and do whatever is in your power to make things happen. 

  1. Never under-prepare for interviews. I have done this on a couple of occasions, by underestimating the advantage of interview preparation in helping you to successfully win a role. I went in full of boundless enthusiasm and thought that would carry me through to success (and, to be fair, that has often been enough). I hadn’t really done any research on the role or the company, and I certainly hadn’t done any preparation in terms of practising typical interview questions, in order to get a feel for what my key strengths were and why I thought I would be a good fit for the role.

Lesson: You can never be over prepared. You won’t know exactly which questions you’ll be asked in an interview, but if you have spent some time contemplating the proffered role from several different angles, and how it may relate to your skills and experience, then you’ll be well placed to answer any questions on the fly that you hadn’t expected.

  1. Think carefully before turning down a job. I had just started university and in my search for work, I submitted my resume to a nearby chocolate factory (yes, really) because I had heard from a friend that if you worked there you could eat as much chocolate as you wanted. They called me up, but I had too many contact hours at uni, so I wasn’t able to take the job. It was almost twenty years ago, but to be honest, I am still heartbroken over it!

Lesson: If you have a dream/goal/vision, then chase it with every particle of your body. Perhaps I could have gone part-time, or considered dropping out of uni altogether. In any case I should have done WHATEVER it took to get that job and fulfil my dream to eat all the chocolate I wanted.

What are some of your career regrets? What lessons have you learned?

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Posted in The Interchange Bench

When Temp is the Word: 5 points for a positive experience

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Ligier Caddy — No Comments ↓

Temp.

I often hear the word uttered in a mildly objectionable tone – and I get it, there’s some horror stories out there… I’ve heard plenty about snaky recruiters slithering their way through businesses, tarnishing the profession one careless placement at a time. They’ve done a great job of making the temporary contracting process completely exasperating for businesses and candidates alike.

Hiring a temporary resource should never be a case of simply finding someone with a pulse to fill a chair and hoping for the best. Thankfully, most of us aren’t like that. As a recruiter who cares about the talented people and the organisations I represent, let me tell you our Temps can save your butt in times of need.

Here are five things to look for when it comes to temporary recruitment to ensure it’s a positive and productive experience:

  1. Find a fantastic recruitment business partner. It’s like any relationship, if your significant other/life partner/hairdresser doesn’t take the time to get to know you, understand you and respond to your needs, you wouldn’t stick around, right? (Hair flick and walk away). Your relationship with your recruiter should be no different. So do your homework, find a provider who actually listens to you, asks the relevant questions, and understands your business and your people.
  2. Trust is everything, so be honest with your recruiter. Talk about your company culture (the real and ideal). Be upfront about your management style. Let them know the reasons behind recent staff turnover or changes to the team. A major dislike of PowerPoint? We understand, the more information the better! With this knowledge we can find a candidate with the relevant skills and experience required for the job, as well as someone who shares your company values.
  3. Go steady. Once you find a great recruiter, don’t be a commitment-phobe. Partnering with a single agency will streamline your recruitment process. Repeating your brief to multiple providers is time consuming. It’s also inefficient when you receive duplicate candidate resumes. So, put your time into making your business relationship work with someone who works well with you. Not only will you receive a more tailored approach from your recruiter, you will enable them to focus on your organisation.
  4. Keep it real. Sometimes we just have to face the facts and as much as we would all love to find the perfect unicorn/human hybrid temporary resource, available to commence tomorrow on a part time basis with relevant industry experience, with the ability to play the ukulele and work their way around Adobe Photoshop at an advanced level, unfortunately this may not always be possible. So, be open to options, let your recruiter come up with short-term and long term solutions to help fill your current gaps.
  5. Temps are people We take pride in our flexible, adaptable and switched-on temporary and contract talent. Please remember to treat them with the same respect as your permanent employees; we want them to feel comfortable in your work environment. And you never know, we often place permanent employees through a temp assignment!

There is no greater feeling in this role than matching a temporary candidate with a workplace, finding out that they are absolutely nailing it and sitting back like a proud parent, and watching their working relationship blossom.

Find a recruitment partner that you trust and communicate with them. Be straight with them and don’t be afraid to work together to achieve a resourcing solution that really works for you – not just a person with a pulse!

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Posted in The Interchange Bench, The world @work

‘Bitty Learning’ overtakes MBAs as the new Career Cache.

Posted on May 4, 2018 by Anita Ziemer — No Comments ↓

Why would The Wall Street Journal report that MBA applications across the world are down three years running? Isn’t an MBA a sure ticket to a high paying and interesting career?

At Slade Group we’re very interested in labour market trends and skills matches, but it’s been a long time since we’ve heard the phrase ‘an MBA would be highly desirable’ as a criteria for hiring.

There seem to be three indicators for the decline in the attraction of MBAs:

  1. Follow the money
  2. Currency of skills
  3. ‘Value Added Ratio’

Follow the money: The money’s left Wall Street, Collins St, Pitt St etc and is headed for wherever the Technology sector lives. While MBAs are useful in the tech sector, software engineers, mathematicians, systems engineers, machine learning skills are in more demand.

Currency of skills: Big jobs data tells a rich global story. At the recent Nous Group forum, Burning Glass Technologies’ Matthew Sigelman, joined the data dots to build the picture for skills, education and employment.

Skills are the unit of currency and they’re on the move. Traditional degrees can now carry less weight than relevant skills based learning like Lean Six Sigma or PMP Certification.

The big question raised at the Nous forum was how do we, as individuals, employers and governments reskill more often, and take charge of our future? Read more here.

Value Added Ratio: MBAs cost a great deal so when the ‘added value ratio’ doesn’t add up for someone who failed or nailed their GMAT, the attraction to an MBA course also declines. In lockstep, huge hikes in course costs have matched flat lining and declining salaries for MBA graduates. From 4:1 first year salary to course cost to a 1.8:1 ratio, the MBA flavor has soured.

The fact is that an MBA can now be worth less than the sum of its bitty parts.  It all trends towards upskilling for in-demand expertise throughout our careers as a pathway for growth and success. In response universities are finally starting to unbundle their degrees and allow for macro and micro learning programmes.

We’re in the middle of interesting times!

What is your experience in your world of learning @work?

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Posted in The world @work

How to attract ‘in demand’ talent in a candidate short market

Posted on April 27, 2018 by Kylie Rutherfoord — No Comments ↓

Highly capable jobseekers always have options when deciding who they want to work for, but now it’s more important than ever for your organisation to sell its benefits to prospective employees.

If you’re serious about attracting the best talent, the days of the “It’s a privilege to work here” mentality are long gone.

What’s changed?

In Australia’s major cities, professionals are lifestyle conscious and a significant portion of the working population fall into a demographic with an established career who don’t have to take a job out of desperation and can afford to be selective when deciding where to work.

Companies that candidates are currently employed in have adapted, adopting flexible working arrangements and they are expecting their new company will be as progressive as the one they are leaving. The 2017 Deloitte Millennial Survey showed that 84 percent of millennials reported some degree of flexible working in their organisations.

Here are my five top tips to land the perfect candidate:

  1. Ensure you are familiar with your EVP and leverage it at each stage of the hiring process.
    HR and Recruitment teams have been working hard to implement Employee Value Proposition (EVP) programs to further enhance the brand and jobseeker experience.
    Update yourself on everything on offer that makes your organisation attractive to prospective employees (you never know there might be something that you are unaware of, and can take advantage of yourself).
  1. What are the other benefits of working with you and your team?
    If you are a hiring manager, think about some of the other selling points you can use to attract the best candidate to your company and team… social activities (sports teams, team events), technology, fruit box, interesting projects, etc.
  1. Be a brand ambassador
    Being a brand ambassador for the organisation should be part of your personal branding in your day-to-day business activities anyway, but it is critical to share that vision with a prospective employee when you have the opportunity to do so face-to-face, at interview. Don’t forget the employer branding can have an effect on future perception and sales of the business.
  1. Don’t be surprised if candidates are forthright with their requirements
    Candidates may ask you about flexible working hours, working from home options, career progression, along with learning and development opportunities. Five years ago these questions were less likely to be asked; fast forward to 2018 and these are the commonly asked questions, which you must be prepared to talk about with candidates.
  1. Corporate social responsibility is high on the millennial agenda
    Younger generations are socially aware, so working for an organisation that helps to give something back to the community is appealing and will attract talent to your team.

If you are struggling to find good talent to join your business, maybe it is time to revisit your EVP so you can ‘sell the company’ more effectively. Be more flexible in your thinking on working hours and consider hiring on potential, rather than current skills and experience.

How has your organisation evolved over time to the changing nature of the world @work? What are some of the features of your EVP?

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Posted in Slade Executive, The world @work

Spoiler Alert. You can’t always get what you want.

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Anita Ziemer — 1 Comment ↓

We’re again experiencing a real shortage of capable talent at every professional level and if I could tag this post with ‘High Importance’ I would. For those who weren’t around, or who have already forgotten what it was like nearly a decade ago, here’s a story and some hot tips.

Always keen to innovate, we started Final5 as a shortlisting service in 2005; employers could brief us on a role, detail the five critical SKEs (skill, knowledge and experience) and receive a shortlist of five people in around 5 days. Five was the magical number. And it worked beautifully for around 5 years; that was until we couldn’t find 5 people who fit in five days. We couldn’t even find them in 50 days.

Embarrassingly we had to change our Terms of Business to say an acceptable shortlist from Final5 would comprise a Final 3+! And ultimately we changed our name to NextHire. Those were the years of critical shortages of capable talent. The term ‘War for Talent’ was in every second article we read.

Peeps, we think those days are back and we all have to respond accordingly.

Six Recruitment Tips for 2018.

  1. Different numbers

It may take 2x longer that than you expected to source high performers and you may only interview ½ as many candidates as you expected.

  1. Be clear up front

What are the critical capabilities and skills? What are the absolute ‘must haves’ vs what can be taught and learned?

  1. Don’t target 100% skills fit

Skills can always be learned and even better, your new hire will be trained in the latest best practice rather than relying on what they learned 10 years ago, or picked up by osmosis. It’s as true for a Claims Clerk as it is for a CFO.

  1. Do target culture and values

Improving self-awareness is hard to achieve once we’re adults. Spend time making sure the person will fit the organisation. If they’re smart and have an aptitude for learning they’ll quickly meet their accountabilities.

  1. Follow your instinct and act fast

You’ll know when you meet a good candidate. And so will everyone else she’s interviewing with. Don’t wait until you’ve met five more candidates before you make your decision. By then she’ll have three offers on the table and as you weren’t that interested early on…

  1. For specific expertise don’t overlook contractors

A Spot Market does exist for skilled employees – but it’s an interim/temporary solution rather than permanent. Our spot market is via interchangebench.com.au which has candidates with specific skill sets for fixed periods of time across most roles and industries.

How are you managing the talent shortage in your world@work?

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Posted in The Interchange Bench, The world @work

Nowadays, flattery will get you nowhere

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Kelly Camilleri — No Comments ↓

How the pendulum has swung! Just ten years ago when making approaches to potential candidates by phone, I could virtually hear their flattered voices. In 2018 those potential candidates are fielding calls from numerous consultants for multiple roles, and in those voices I now sometimes detect the sound of annoyance.

The market is as tight as ever with organisations needing top technical talent yesterday. The ever-expanding landscape in Victoria and NSW particularly driven by major infrastructure projects, means that technical specialists and executives are constantly in high demand.

As a recruiter, change is something we encourage. One of the reasons I am proud of the brand we have at Slade Group, is that we thrive on our ability to swim upstream in an industry where it can often be easier to go with the flow… We work with our clients and candidates so that even though we’re headhunters, nobody we work with ever feels they have been randomly targeted to end up as ‘professional roadkill’.

How do we break away from the pack?

We don’t expect candidates to move quickly. Would you? If someone called you out of the blue asking if you wanted to look at another job, would you blindly give your details? I wouldn’t. We take the time when we reach out to candidates to get to know them, their career aspirations, their likes and dislikes, and what they do for fun. We figure out if the candidate is the right fit for an organisation’s culture, and if a certain company culture is the right fit for the candidate. It goes both ways for the candidate and the client. Success and growth should be attainable for both parties, and it’s the long-term picture that we look at when we’re recruiting for a role.

We retain our work. Slade Group work with a large majority of our clients on a retained assignment basis, which is when we take a part payment from engagement to placement of the candidate. I know, you’re probably wondering why someone would pay up-front for a service they can get from a number of others, but it’s because when we take a retained assignment we see it as a project: If you paid someone to do your homework, you’d expect to receive an A+. This is exactly how we approach our retained assignment projects.

We take a thorough brief from the client, we take the time to understand what they need and don’t just guess what they need. We commit our reputation, time and effort just as much as we ask the client to commit to us, and with that commitment we do it properly. We have the best research team in the business who we engage to map the market to help establish your strategy. We want to get this right for you, as if we worked at your company.

We set realistic expectations. When we engage with our clients, we set expectations and we don’t take an assignment we can’t fill. We work with you and guide you through our shared journey. You receive a detailed schedule on what to expect when, and we leave you to get on with your day job.

If you’ve been headhunted, what was the experience like? What would you look for when considering the best way to recruit for your business?

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Posted in Slade Executive, The world @work

Learning is so much more than just getting to school.

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Andew Barr — No Comments ↓

It’s not pretty, but the latest iteration of the MySchool website, published by ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Reporting and Assessment Authority) has revealed (once again) the growing disparity in school attendance rates across the country and across major cities. At least some of these disproportionate statistics must be associated with cultural competence levels within our schools.

As The Australian reported, education experts generally believe that 90 per cent attendance is the minimum benchmark for a student to progress in their learning. Of course, quality of that learning extends way beyond merely getting to school. But, The Australian also recounted that up to half of the students enrolled in some schools in Tarneit, Flemington, Dandenong and Sunshine fall well below that 90 per cent figure. These schools and suburbs have a large population of African migrants.

Similarly, the attendance rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students across the country fall well below that 90 per cent attendance rate. In some areas, only 45 per cent make it through to Year 12 from Year 7, compared with 77 per cent of non-indigenous students.

It’s hard not to see the correlation between a lack of cultural understanding and these stats.

The issues are similar – attendance and the retention in education.  As a result, there are ever growing divisions in educational outcomes and social inequities. When cultural inequality begins as early as in a child’s secondary education, you can bet that those cultural inequities will continue on later in that child’s life.

The cultural competence of schools, their staff and their communities is so very important. ACARA is currently recruiting, with the support of Slade Education, a Director, Curriculum to guide the next iteration of the Australian Curriculum which must of course be one element towards inclusion of all students in the advance of learning outcomes across Australia. A lack of cultural understanding, shown by any one staff member, can stifle badly the learning of children and adolescents.

Do you look for multicultural experience and training in the recruitment of your staff and/or create opportunities for cultural learning to better engage students in your school?

 

Featured image: Engagement officer Wally Elnour with students Junior, Alady, Anei and Siena at Sacred Heart primary school, Fitzroy VIC. Picture: Aaron Francis. The Australian, 6 March 2018

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Posted in Slade Education, The world @work