Tag: recruitment

Enshrining business stupidity

A book by two London academics looks at how organisations enshrine stupidity

“In a world where stupidity dominates, looking good is more important than being right,” writes Professor André Spicer of London’s City University in Aeon Magazine.

Spicer and his fellow author Mats Alvesson described their results of studying dozens of organisations for their book The Stupidity Paradox.

What they found is the smartest don’t get ahead in most organisations, but those who conform with the prevailing culture which usually sets a low bar.

We started out thinking it is likely to be the smartest who got ahead. But we discovered this wasn’t the case.

Organisations hire smart people, but then positively encourage them not to use their intelligence. Asking difficult questions or thinking in greater depth is seen as a dangerous waste. Talented employees quickly learn to use their significant intellectual gifts only in the most narrow and myopic ways.

The tragedy is these organisations squander the talent of those working for them. In many respects management is destroying value rather than adding to it.

Probably the most dangerous type of organisation though are those run by managers who want to be leaders.

They see their role as not just running their business but also transforming their followers. They talk about ‘vision’, ‘belief’ and ‘authenticity’ with great verve. All this sounds like our office buildings are brimming with would-be Nelson Mandelas. However, when you take a closer look at what these self-declared leaders spend their days doing, the story is quite different.

Spicer’s article is well worth a read, if only to nod in agreement with many of the organisations and managers you’ve had to deal with in the past.

It’s worth reflecting how organisations are changing in an information rich age. While it’s tempting to think better access to data will improve their collective intelligence, it may be that algorithms only further entrench poor management practices.

Burning the boxes

Employing technology staff may be a matter of burning, not ticking, the boxes.

“I cater to their crazy and the results are tremendous. Hire the crazy, because you need them. Those are the ones that don’t think outside the box, they burn the box and stomp on the ashes,” says Chris Pogue, Chief Information Security Officer at Nuix who I interviewed at the Black Hat conference at Las Vegas last week.

Chris was talking about hiring information security people and, as the attendees at the Black Hat and DefCon conferences show, show that philosophy is important in hiring good technology people who tend to be people who don’t recognise the boxes, let alone tick them.

That point though could be made for many occupations, many businesses that claim they value ‘creative thinking” should be thinking about burning the boxes.

In a much more competitive environment having management ‘thinking within the box’ may be one of the greatest disadvantages facing an organisation, not just in recruitment but also in identifying threats and opportunities.

Burning the boxes may well be one of the best things business leaders could do for their organisation in finding and cultivating the talent to compete in tomorrow’s economy.

Digital natives and iPads

Is tech necessary for attracting younger workers or volunteers?

I’m writing up a review of  the Emergency Services Integrated Communications Vehicle that was showcased at the Melbourne Cisco Live event a few weeks back.

An comment by one of the National Safety Agency people during the tour was notable; “we need to have modern technology if we want to attract young people.”

The spokesperson was talking about offering iPad and Android apps for the emergency services workers, particularly in the context of firefighting volunteers having an average age approaching 50.

Needing the latest technology to attract younger volunteers or workers is an interesting view which I’m not wholly convinced about.

Do we really need the latest technology do attract younger workers and volunteers or are is this another example of trying to apply tech to a more fundamental problem?

Do business awards help companies?

Winning business awards are great for helping a company focus on its operations, but they aren’t necessarily great for growing an organisation.

The latest clip on The Decoding the New Economy YouTube channel is an interview of Cameron Wall of Melbourne’s C3 Business Solutions about business intelligence, data analytics and whether winning awards helps a company.

Cameron’s business has been a successful enterprise having grown to over a hundred employees since being founded seven years ago.

As a high growth business, the company was listed in the 2010 BRW Fast Starters list, interestingly though Cameron didn’t see a great deal of benefit from winning the accolade.

“I look at it as being a credential, just because you get the credentials it doesn’t necessarily mean you can charge a premium in the marketplace,” Cameron says. “It all helps in terms of recognition, but we haven’t been thrown anything as a result of the award.”

On the other hand the company has won the BRW Best Australian workplace three years in a row and Cameron has found this improved the business’ recruitment.

“Being in a service company you often hear ‘people are our greatest asset’, basically they are our only asset.” Cameron says, “Having a great place to work is really important for us.”

Cameron found that after winning the great place to work that the flow of resumes increased. “Some of the benefits of that were a lot of people applied to join C3 and it makes the recruitment process a lot easier.”

How business awards do help companies is in reviewing their operations and practices as Cameron explained, “using the great place to work process is a great way to understand if we’re trending upward, downward and where we’re going.”

“It was a difficult award to win, as you get probed by every angle.”

With the growth in data science, business analytics and Big Data companies like C3 are going to need good employees in the global race for talent. Having a reputation as fine place to work is a good way of winning the global race for talent.

Trophy image by RoyM through sxc.hu

Google and the workplace

Google’s evolution in hiring practices and HR policies describes the risks of relying on gut feelings and the importance of workplace accountability.

Over the years Google has attracted attention for its employment practices, particularly for its quirky interview questions which challenged many a genius.

It turns out those brainteasers have proved to be less than effective, as has the interminable interview process that saw job candidates endure dozens of meetings before being offered a role at the company.

A recent New York Times interview with Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, discusses some of the company’s employment experiences along with some of the ways the organisation manages staff.

What’s notable is Bock’s findings on Google’s gruelling interview process with its brain teaser questions;

We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship.

The New York Times interview is particularly interesting as it reveals much of Google’s legendary employment criteria – particularly that of hiring only graduates with high university marks – turned out to be effectively useless.

Most telling though is what Bock found about managers and leadership;

We’ve actually made it harder to be a bad manager. If you go back to somebody and say, “Look, you’re an eighth-percentile people manager at Google. This is what people say.” They might say, “Well, you know, I’m actually better than that.” And then I’ll say, “That’s how you feel. But these are the facts that people are reporting about how they experience you.”

You don’t actually have to do that much more. Because for most people, just knowing that information causes them to change their conduct.

Who would have thought that accountability would make people behave better and more effectively?

Despite Google’s learning on hiring and management, things still go wrong. Business Insider’s Nicholas Carson has a wonderful story on the difficulties at restaurant review site Zagats which was taken over by the search engine giant and absorbed into their maps and geolocation divison.

The problems at Zagats though owe more to a cultural mismatch, as Carson writes;

It’s about the collision between the wealthy dream world of the technology industry and the scratch-and-claw meager existence of freelance writers.

One of the notable things about the current dot com boom is the contempt technologists and entrepreneurs have for content creators.
In the Silicon Valley view of the world founders and coders deserve to be generously paid but artists, musicians and writers should be thankful for the exposure they get and the odd dime thrown their way.
Google’s struggles with Zagats also exposes another problem with the tech industry’s hiring practices – that of ‘permatemps’ who never get on the payroll and have few benefits and no security. For years this was a problem at Microsoft and it remains a common practice today.
The story of Google’s evolution in hiring practices and HR policies is something all managers should read as it describes the risks of relying on gut feelings and the importance of workplace accountability.

Walmart pays for cutting staff

Cutting staff numbers is costing Walmart dearly as customers desert the retailer for better stocked competitors.

Along with the carpark test, a lack of customer service is one of the best indicators that a company has lost its way.

Unattended reception desks, closed cash registers and deserted delivery docks are reliable indicators management has focused on short term staff savings which will ultimately cost the business dearly.

Walmart is the latest example of this with Bloomberg Businessweek reporting that US shoppers are deserting the chain because shelves are empty and stores don’t have enough staff.

The claim stock is piling up out the back of stores is particularly concerning, the just in time inventory management of modern retail chains means there’s little room for error as outlets don’t have a lot of space whil the cash flow of the business and its suppliers is based on getting goods quickly into the hands of eager consumers.

Some of Walmart’s pain will be spread among suppliers as the store’s contracts will push undoubtedly some of the costs of rejected deliveries back onto logistics companies, effectively creating problems through the entire supply chain.

No doubt there’s plenty of angry suppliers and truck drivers who are grumbling about lost time and payments on Walmart contracts. That won’t be good news for the company’s buyers when contracts come up for negotiation.

Even though Walmart’s management can throw some of their problems over the fence, the fundamental issue of losing customers can’t be missed.

Walmart’s isn’t the only retailer who’s fallen for the short term fix of cutting store staff to give a quick profit boost as department stores and big box outlets around the world struggle with the damaging effects of not being able to serve customers.

That Walmart, one of the industry’s global leaders, would make such a mis-step shows the pressures on managements as economies deleverage and credit wary consumers decide that don’t need more junk in their homes.

Cutting costs isn’t going to address those bigger trends, it’s going to take original thinking and management commitment to adding real value to customers.

Service is just the start of a long process of refocusing the retail empires.

Image of Albany Walmart courtesy of UpstateNYer through Wikimedia

Recruiting big data

Software company Evolv is an example of how businesses can use big data

One of the predictions for 2020 is that decade’s business successes will be those who use big data well.

A good example of a big data tool is recruitment software Evolv that helps businesses predict not only the best person to hire but also who is likely to leave the organisation.

For employee retention, Evolv looks at a range of variables which can include anything from gas prices and social media usage to local unemployment rates then pulls these together to predict which staff are most likely to leave.

“It’s hard to understand why it’s radically predictive, but it’s radically predictive,” Venture Beat quotes Jim Meyerle, Evolv’s cofounder.

There are some downsides in such software though – as some of the comments to the VentureBeat story point out – a blind faith in an alogrithm can destroy company morale and much more.

Recruiters as an industry haven’t a good track record in using data well, while they’ve had candidate databases for two decades and stories abound of poor use of keyword searches carried out by lazy or incompetent headhunters. The same is now happening with agencies trawling LinkedIn for candidates.

Using these tools and data correctly going to separate successful recruitment agencies and HR departments from the also-rans.

It’s the same in most businesses – the tools are available and knowing them how to use them properly will be a key skill for this decade.

Job classifieds image courtesy of Markinpool through SXC.HU

People like us – could poor hiring practices bring down Silicon Valley?

Are poor hiring practices putting Silicon Valley at risk?

A strange little story appeared in Business Insider a few weeks back, 9 Things Your Resume Needs if you want to be Hired by Apple or Google is a curious view into the mindset of Silicon Valley.

Purporting to be an extract from a book written by a former recruiter who claims to have worked for Apple, Google and Microsoft, the story exposes a weakness in Silicon Valley and the technological elite which may cause the very disruptions they have unleashed to work against them.

The nine items are fascinating for the elitist, US-centric view of the world they portray and each is worth investigating on their own.

If you graduated from an elite college, your chances of getting an interview vastly improve

Yes, where you went to school does matter to the tech giants. Of course there are exceptions, but McDowell says an Ivy League or other top university will get you noticed.

There’s not much more to add to this, except to note that the vast majority of students whose families can afford such an education are from the upper middle class.

The Googles and Apples like to see relevant internship experience.

If you waited tables when you were 19, that isn’t attractive.

If you are lucky enough to get into a an Ivy League school on a scholarship or manage to scrape together the money you may still not make the cut.

To the author, only those with sufficient wealth to participate in unpaid internships are going to get jobs at the top Silicon Valley companies.

Your major matters

Sorry liberal arts people or chemical engineers, you’ll need another way in to Google or Apple.

This is an interesting one, Silicon Valley boosters often talk about the creative process and how coders are artists however according to the recruiter that’s just lip service.

She encourages students to pick majors that are directly relevant to Google or Apple. Finance, accounting, marketing or computer science majors have the best shot of being noticed by a tech recruiter.  At the very least, minor in one of those fields.

A focus on finance, accounting and marketing is the same as any old corporation – you could be going for a job with AT&T, Goldman Sachs or the government with qualifications like that. So much for unique.

Dissing chemical engineering is particularly interesting as Chem Eng graduates have passed one of the toughest university degrees. Whats more, the demands of mobile computing devices means battery technology is one of the most pressing issues facing Silicon Valley at the moment. Chemical Engineers are the folk who will solve this problem.

Big tech companies like to see people giving back to their communities.

Volunteering can be a great way to buff up your resume. That said, McDowell warns: “don’t serve soup in a soup kitchen.”

Instead she suggests hunting for a sales or marketing position, or offering to help a charity with its website and design.

This is a really obnoxious statement – basically saying we want to you volunteer, but we don’t want you to help people.

Just how many sales and marketing people are needed by soup kitchens, volunteer fire brigades or community pantries is open to debate.

A bigger issue with this mentality is that it favours bureaucrats and paper shufflers rather than doers. Which again is something anathema to the public statements of Silicon Valley’s leaders.

They also like good spellers and speakers.

Writing and communications skills aren’t just necessary for media jobs. They’re important in any career you’ll have.

Well, duh.

If you are buddies with college professors, that’s a plus.

Professors aren’t just impressed by how you do in their classes.  McDowell suggests helping them with research projects, asking for help and attending office hours, or becoming a teaching assistant.

That doesn’t hurt, but it’s pretty basic vanilla advice and again it’s tough luck if you have to do a shift at the local fast food restaurant so you can feed yourself.

Show you understand multiple positions at Google or Apple

If you want to work at one of the top tech companies, it helps to have at least a basic understanding of multiple positions in the organization.  McDowell calls this being a Generalist.

On one hand this advice makes sense but on another many technical roles are not generalist positions.

Generally having a knowledge of the company’s structure and roles is going to look good to any interviewer, assuming you can get past the gatekeeper at the recruitment company.

Entrepreneurs have a better shot of being hired.

This is a funny one, if you’re a real entrepreneur then the thought of working in cubicle at Apple or Microsoft while answering to a middle manager straight out of a Dilbert cartoon ranks with getting hot pine needles thrust under  your toenails.
One of the conceits of modern corporate life is that they value entrepreneurs and the free-wheeling spirits – the truth is they don’t and the first true hint of entrepreneurialism among the ranks will be smothered quickly with a deluge of paperwork.
Funnily enough, being a successful tech entrepreneur is a path to getting a good job at a tech company although it’s more likely to happen as an acqui-hire than through a recruiter.

Good news: Your GPA doesn’t matter very much

Most people think tech companies, Google in particular, harp over candidates’ GPAs. McDowell says there is little truth to that rumor.

This is only good news if you’ve ticked most of the other boxes, which means you’ll be considered if you’re middling graduate from Stanford or Harvard but forget it if you went elsewhere, regardless of how good your marks are.

The danger of recruiters

What the Business Insider story really illustrates are the risks of relying on third party recruiters as gatekeepers to filter out new employees.

Regardless of how good the recruitment consultant is they are going to apply their own cultural filters and biases onto the selection process and as a result knock out most good candidates.

More importantly, a company risks developing a monoculture if the recruitment process is too effective at filtering out people who don’t fit a narrow stereotype.

A new breed of officemen?

Reading the Business Insider story leaves one with the feeling that many of these companies are beginning to look like IBM in the 1960s – monocultures more concerned about the colour of an employee’s tie and choice of shirts rather than the talents they bring to the organisation or the value they can add to customers.

This is probably the greatest risk of all to the tech industry, that they end up with an insular group of people with fixed mindsets.

Should that happen, then the wave of disruption Silicon Valley has unleashed on the world will end up being the industry’s undoing as smart kids working out of garages in Michigan or slums in Delhi will out innovate the staid, comfortable incumbents.

It’s also interesting to consider how many other industries are now suffering after several decades of similar recruiting practices where leading businesses are now dominated by insular, unworldly monocultures.

Image courtesy of Alexfurr on SXC.HU

Ranking managers

Microsoft’s problems are deeper than just a misused HR tool

Vanity Fair’s analysis of Microsoft’s lost decade focuses on an unlikely culprit – the management tool of stack ranking.

Stack ranking, or “forced distribution”, is the practice of listing staff members in order of effectiveness or placing them on a bell curve where those in the middle are satisfactory and those at the right hand of the graph are exceptional.

Those on the left of the curve or the bottom of the list are deemed to be underperformers and risk losing their bonuses or even their jobs should the company be shedding staff.

Like all business tools, stack ranking can be useful. One manager of a North American multinational who encountered this when working with an Indian outsourcer described how it was used.

“A senior manager told me how he applied it in his group. Of 300 people, everybody was given a ranking and were told that ranking and given a chance to put their case if they thought it was unfair.
Then the bottom 5% were culled. Tough but fair.”
So at the Indian outsourcer it was applied to large groups and the bottom tier were given the opportunity to put their case. There was some transparency and at least some fairness in the process.
Used poorly though, it can backfire, “using it for groups of ten is stupid and lazy” said that manager who later saw it introduced at his own corporation with catastrophic results.

The real problem at companies misusing tools like stank ranking is too much management.

Like the old saw of “too many cooks spoil the broth”, too many managers create mischief. To justify and protect their positions they build little empires and make work for themselves.

Give empire building middle managers a tool like “stack ranking ” and you have a problem where office politics and patronage become more important than technical skill or performance which is exactly what the Vanity Fair article describes at Microsoft.

Ranking employees in a mindless way is symptom of a bigger problem in an organisation. In Microsoft’s case, the problem is too many managers.

The solution to that problem is simple.

Inflating titles, inflated apirations

How job title inflation can affect an organisation

This story first appeared in Smart Company on 19 April 2012.

“She listed her job on LinkedIn as my ghostwriter,” reflected the journalist about his publishing business’ Gen-Y staff member.

The journalist’s lament reflects an unexpected corporate risk in social media; that of employees giving themselves grandiose and sometimes damaging job profiles.

Over the last 20 years, title inflation has been rife in the business world as corporations and government agencies doled out grandiose titles to soothe the egos of fragile management egos.

So it isn’t surprising that many of us succumb to the temptation to give ourselves a grand title online.

In the journo’s case a young graduate working as an editor in his publishing business listed herself as his ghostwriter, risking a huge dent to his credibility among other the lizards at the pub or the Quill Awards.

That business journalist is not alone, in the connected economy what would have been a quaint title on a business card or nameplate is now being advertised to the world.

Making matters worse, we now have tools like LinkedIn and other social media sites to check out a business’ background and who are the key contacts in an organisation.

So what your staff call themselves is now important. It can confuse customers, cause internal staff problems (“how come he’s an Executive Group General Manager?”), damage business reputations and quite often put an unexpected workload on a relatively junior employee.

In your social media policy – which is now essential in any business that employs staff – you need to clarify what titles your people can bestow upon themselves.

As well as making this clear to new staff, a regular web search on your business that includes all of the popular social media sites should be a regular task.

Just as economic inflation can hurt your business, so too can uncontrolled title inflation. Watch it isn’t affecting your operations.