You just closed the books on the fourth quarter. You’re getting ready for a new fiscal year. But, as can expected, you’ve lost some franchise players due to turnover. You’re next priority is filling their spots. But instead of giving a ringy ding to your favorite executive search firm or putting an ad on your site, what if you had to wait until 12:01 AM ET on Friday, February 29 like NFL teams trying to reshape their rosters via free agency?
The whole free agency thing is pretty funny when you think about it. For a few months each spring, marquee players are courted by teams looking for those few missing pieces to their championship puzzle. Free agent players go on a road show to visit with possible suitors and their agents jockey for position so they can sign a lucrative deal with a new team or land top dollar if they resign with their current franchise. And by summer, it’s pretty much over.
Some recruiters might argue that corporate staffing already is like free agency. And you’re probably right. After all, you’re trying to retain your “franchise players” while picking up a few key free agents from some other “teams.” And, if you happen to lose one of your franchise players, I think it’s safe to say that you wouldn’t want them going to a division rival, or in this case, a key competitor.
Instead of a tour of the stadium complex and state-of-the-art weight room, you might give them a tour of the office complex and state-of-the-art vending machines.
If you can’t find that new assistant brand manager via free agency, you can look to the on-campus recruiting draft to land a skilled MBA player right out of the program.
The biggest down side with free agency is the same downside with eBay—teams usually end up overpaying for talent just like someone might overpay for a pair of like new slippers still in their original box. But even without free agency, it’s still just as easy to get caught in a bidding war with a competitor for a desirable candidate.
How many catches did you have last season? How many times can you bench press 225 pounds?Who needs Randy Moss when I can sign someone who led product management teams with P&L responsibility?
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (www.courtingyourcareer.com).
On Friday, an internal memo from Kevin Johnson, Microsoft’s president of platforms and services, found its way on the internet. Of particular interest, and what made me think about Fight Club, was the suggestion that no Microsoft employees “reach out to Yahoo employees for the purpose of integration planning unless instructed to do so…” If that’s not the first rule of fight club, I don’t know what is. Let’s take a look at how that and the other rules apply to the Microsoft-Yahoo merger.
You don't talk about fight club. Or in this case, integration planning with Yahoo employees unless instructed to do so. You want to talk about your mutual distaste of Google? Fine. The new season of Dancing with the Stars? Fine. Integration planning? Not fine.
You don't talk about fight club. See rule #1.
When someone says stop, or goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over. Other possible reasons for ending the fight include a hostile takeover bid, civil lawsuits from angry Yahoo stockholders, or approval of said merger by Yahoo’s board of directors.
Only two guys to a fight. In a heavyweight bout of this magnitude, two guys (or companies) is more than enough.
One fight at a time. That’s okay for now, but many in the anti-Microsoft camp think this is a precursor to achieving the software giant’s ultimate goal of global domination.
They fight without shirts or shoes. Until Brad Pitt becomes CEO of Microsoft or Yahoo, I think it’s safe to say most people would prefer that shirts remain on for this one. But I think it’s safe to say that the gloves have come off and they are in the midst of some bare-knuckle brawling.
The fights go on as long as they have to. It’s already been more than two weeks since Yahoo shunned Microsoft’s $44.6B takeover bid. Jockeying by both sides continues to heat up but whether Microsoft will land the knockout punch remains to be seen.
If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight. As urged in the memo “Until a deal is cut, Microsoft employees should treat Yahoo workers as rivals, not budding workmates.” Microsoft and Yahoo realize they have to fight if they’re going to compete with the reigning champ, Google.
If all else fails Microsoft employees should take the advice of Betsy Schiffman and “maintain eye contact, look big, wave your arms, and make loud noises until the Yahoo backs away.”
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (www.courtingyourcareer.com).
I was convinced the answer was YES! Airlines, many of which have stopped giving away tiny bags of pretzels in an effort to contain costs, would love the opportunity to tap a new revenue stream. Passengers, who already are willing to pay to access the net in the airport, would surely be willing to fork over $10 to jump online from a comfortable cruising altitude of 28,000 feet. To me, it wasn't a matter of if, but when. That was until I spoke with a vice president of corporate strategy at a major telecommunications company.
I was operating under the assumption most (if not all) business travelers want to be connected and would be willing to pay a premium for it. But, as he pointed out, many business travelers cherish their quiet time in the sky because it’s one of the last places they can go without being tethered to the office.
With JetBlue already online and American Airlines installing and testing broadband technology on all of its Boeing 767-200 aircraft this year, it looks like there’s no where left to hide for business travelers.
All you business travelers out there—I’d love to hear if you’re excited about the thought of in-flight web access.
Let the productivity gains begin!
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (www.courtingyourcareer.com).
2002. Rocky economic times; companies were still in the midst of drastic headcount reductions. They slashed, and in some cases pretty much eliminated, their campus recruiting budgets. Call it a knee jerk reaction, overcompensation in response to over hiring, or just plain panic—what resulted was a bleak hiring climate for students. But they weren’t the only ones to lose out. Some companies washed away years of momentum with students that they worked so hard to establish thus severing their talent pipeline.
So, here we go again. The outlook for the job market and the economy in 2008 is spotty at best. But, unlike the dot com crash and the period that followed, this time it seems like companies got it right. They didn’t run for the hills at the first sign of trouble. And, as anyone who has ever worked in recruiting will tell you, that’s easier said than done.
Your business takes a hit. The pressure is on. Everyone goes into full cost reduction mode. People will undoubtedly be let go. And, when you let people go, the hardest thing to do is 1) attract candidates and 2) manage the internal public relations of hiring in a new batch of employees on the heels of massive layoffs. A few years ago, organizations over hired, and over hired, and over hired some more to meet demand. They didn’t think about what would happen when the growth screeched to a grinding halt.
Although the economic hiccup might not be of the same magnitude, this time companies have been smart about maintaining their talent pipeline on college campuses. With the MBA recruiting season starting to wind down, I think it’s safe to say that most organizations continued to maintain their presence at core recruiting schools. This time, instead of completely eliminating their university recruiting program, they looked to maintain a campus presence while decreasing their hiring numbers. And that makes a lot of sense.
Cutting out campus recruiting altogether can be costly. You lose out on a crop of intern and full-time hires.And, because you’re no longer visible on campus, you have to redouble your efforts to reestablish your brand once the economy turns. Students want to know you’re committed to recruiting on their campus. They want to believe that they’re not going to be let go next week or next year.
If you’re focused on building and maintaining an on-campus presence on college campuses, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water at the first sign of economic trouble. Think long term. Instead of eliminating campus recruiting, look for creative ways to recruit on a shoe string. Career fairs are usually a great way to get a lot of bang for your buck as is brining on an intern. Use those and other low cost/high visibility strategies to maintain your brand and talent pipeline. I know the undergrads and grads would definitely agree.
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (www.courtingyourcareer.com).
Polaroid instant film went the way of the drive-in movie theater and the typewriter earlier this month when they announced they will close factories in Massachusetts, the Netherlands, and Mexico that make instant film. As part of a broader overall strategy to diversify their product offerings so they can remain competitive in the world of digital imaging, they plan on completely phasing out that part of the business sometime next year. So that means there’s still time to stock up for all you nostalgic instant film buffs out there.
I’m sad to see you go. But luckily I’ll always have old photos like the one of me with the Pillsbury Doughboy to remember you by.
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (www.courtingyourcareer.com).
I named my first dog Zip because she was fast. As a puppy, she would fly around the yard in a blur. Later, as she got older, the name was almost comical as she was anything but fast. Like many new business owners, when I named her Zip I wasn’t thinking about the future. Could the name you choose for your new venture be unwittingly impacting your ability to grow and succeed?
I had a conversation with a local restaurateur a few weeks ago. I asked him how the ice cream part of the business was going as it didn’t seem to fit with the theme of the restaurant. “It hardly moves” he replied. As a first time customer, I was surprised he had ice cream because the name of the restaurant had “grille” in it. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a safe bet that most people wouldn’t associate ice cream cones and banana splits with a grille—thus the sales slump. Three days later, I was going to stop in and grab a burger but the place was closed up for good. I’m sure there were many factors that led to him shutting his doors, but choosing a name that narrowly defined his business locked him in to a certain style of restaurant and definitely impacted his customer base.
On the flip side, it’s possible to come up with a name that leaves your options open for the future. The Whigs, a rock trio from Athens, Georgia, did just that. During a recent interview on NPR, they talked about how they got started in the business—buying (and later reselling for a slight profit) most of their instruments and recording equipment from eBay for their first album. My favorite part of the interview, and where the naming fits in, is when they talked about booking their first show. They were contacting local bars when they got a bite. “What’s the name of your band?” they were asked. They were speechless. With all of the planning, they overlooked arguably the most important part of forming a band…their name. Embarrassingly, they had to say they’d have to call them back. They went back and forth over possible names. They wanted something that wouldn’t pigeonhole them into a particular style of music such as a name like Heavy Metal Trucker Mud flaps. So they ended up with The Whigs. As a budding business, it’s sometimes difficult to predict what the scope of your business will be five or 10 years down the road, so it’s even more important to factor that in whether you’re naming a rock band or a new business venture.
On a personal note, I’ve never been a big fan of naming a business after oneself. I think there’s a certain level of creativity in budding entrepreneurs and, as such, I’d much rather see someone come up with something cooler than his or her last name. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t certain instances when that doesn’t make sense…take, for example, writers and public speakers. In certain jobs and industries, your name means everything and should be branded as such. But for other businesses, there’s nothing wrong with showing a little creativity. I still don’t know the story behind Google came up with their name (note to self: check Wikipedia), but to me that’s a much cooler name for a business had someone just used his or her last name. That’s right up there with businesses adding the “A+” to the front of their name so they are first in the phone book.
When you’re naming your business, don’t be shortsighted. Spend as much time thinking about what your business will be and how you’d like it to be branded as you do coming up with that ever important business plan. Write down words that come to mind that describe what you’d like your business to be. Experiment with different combinations. Don’t be afraid to get creative. Bounce ideas off of your friends. In the end, have fun with it. If nothing else, you might wind up with a cool story about how your company got its name.
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (www.courtingyourcareer.com).
How much time do you spend coming up with questions that you want to ask the interviewer? Is it something you put a lot of effort into or do you typically ask basic questions like “What’s a typically day like?” or “Do you have a formal mentoring program?” Time after time, recruiters tell me the questions people ask (or sometimes don’t ask) during the interview can be the difference between them and other candidates.
When coming up with your questions, there are two things to keep in mind—audience and quality. Audience is important because you’re typically going to want to gear your questions to the position of the person you’re interviewing with. For example, when speaking with someone in human resources, a lot of your questions will likely be around training and the hiring process. In that case, it’s okay to ask about the mentoring program. If you’re speaking with someone in a senior-level position, most of your questions will be about big picture, strategic initiatives. Meaning, you wouldn’t want to ask a vice president of the company about the number of vacation days you’d get.
Equally as important as your audience is the quality of your questions. Interviewers want to know that you’ve done your homework. Take what you learned from your research on the company and industry, and incorporate that information into your questions. For example, if you are interviewing with a company in the energy sector, you might ask how they’re positioning themselves in the marketplace to end users given the high price of gasoline. Or, if you are speaking with someone in the pharmaceutical industry, you might ask how they continue to grow and innovate given existing and future Medicare and Medicaid regulations.
Of course, you can also use the Q&A portion of the interview as a chance to incorporate things you might have forgotten to mention earlier. It can happen to the best of us: even when we’re over-prepared and on our game, there are always a few things we fail to highlight. Look for opportunities to wrap them into your conversation.
Don’t let the questions you ask hurt your chances of getting an offer. Spend time coming up with ones that show the interviewer that you’ve done your homework and that you understand the business and industry they’re in. And, the same holds true when you’re evaluating interviewees. Although only a small portion of the overall interview process, the quality of the questions they ask can speak volumes.
And don’t waste time asking about a typical day because there’s no such thing.
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (courtingyourcareer.wordpress.com).
We hear it all the time from colleagues: “At the end of the day, it’s about fit.” “If you were stuck in an airport, would you want to be stuck with that person…blah blah blah.“ Full disclosure—I’m not a big fan of “the airport test” (was it obvious?) mainly because the phrase is so overused by recruiters. But, all kidding aside, as interviewers, it is our job to assess the dynamic fit for each candidate. And, I think we’d all agree that there’s no single “best way” to evaluate it. With that being said, here are a few key indicators I’ve used in the past to consider the fit of a candidate.
Personality. This is something you can usually determine within the first few minutes (sometimes seconds) of the interview. I think we’d all agree that if there’s one indicator of who would pass that always popular airport test, it would have to be personality. Do you find yourself easily building rapport with the candidate right off the bat? Or are you painfully watching the seconds on the clock tick by as you anxiously wait for the interview to end?
Work style. Some companies are looking for in-your-face go getters with a “take no prisoners” mentality. Others are looking for something much different. To what degree is your organization looking for collaborative team players versus those who prefer to work independently to deliver results? During the interview, ask for examples of projects they’ve worked on and their roles. Did they seek input from others or work unilaterally? And how does that fit with your culture?
What motivates them. Recognition? Achievement? Social prestige? Look for rewards that motivated them in previous roles and determine whether or not those same rewards exist at your company. If recognition is their thing, but recognition at your firm only goes to senior management, there’s a good chance he or she isn’t going to work out.
The team dynamic. How would this person fit with your team? Do they have the right skill set, personality, and work style for the group? Try to imagine this person as a member of a team presentation, or participating in a team meeting. If your scenario yields an ugly picture, that might be a good time to cut the interview short.
Things get a little bit trickier when you’re hiring someone for a specific office; offices in different cities often have their own unique “personality.” You have to walk a thin line between finding someone who is a great fit with the overall organization and also with a specific office and a specific group of people.
What are some of the criteria you’ve used to assess fit? Post a comment.
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (courtingyourcareer.wordpress.com).
I was meeting with a colleague recently to help him prepare for an upcoming interview. As I pulled together questions, I wanted to make sure I asked him about how he would approach his first 30 days on the job. When being considered for leadership positions, being able to effectively answer that question will not only help you get through the interview process, but it can also determine whether you hit the ground running or just end up hitting the ground. Although the answer will vary slightly by industry and company, there are generally a few key ingredients to a successful plan.
During the first month, assess performance of the business and your team. Seems simple enough, but without that baseline information, you could end up just chasing your tail. Determine what’s working and what isn’t. Assess whether the performance measures in place are adequate or if they need to be refined. Once you know this information, building metrics will be a whole lot easier.
Meet with key players. Well, first you have to identify who the key players are but that’s generally not hard to do if you just look around. They’re usually dressed the nicest (the fancier the cuff links, the better) and they usually have a window office. Assess their expectations. Get a feel for where they’re headed and where they think the organization is headed. Armed with that insight, look for opportunities to work together.
Make sure employee roles are clearly defined and that you are all on the same page with expectations. If you need to realign staff responsibilities to put them in a better position to be successful, talk it through with them and get their input and buy in before making any final decisions. While you’re at it, make sure everyone has established, and is pursuing, a personal development plan.
Finally, schedule a strategic planning session with your staff. This will give you a chance to work together as a team to chart the direction of the business for the near term. Plus, the session will give you a chance to get everyone involved and that will almost always help to open dialogue and secure buy-in from the team. And, I don’t know about you, but in my opinion nothing says strategic planning like a little SWOT analysis amongst friends.
Once you pass the first 30 days, your focus is implementation. During the strategic planning process, you will have identified some number of improvement projects. Work with your team to execute those projects. Establish year end goals with staff input. Keep track of all ongoing projects and establish periodic check points to discuss how they’re going. During that discussion, it’s also a good idea to talk about how individual projects are feeding into the overall strategy as it’s often easy to lose the big picture perspective when you’re running 100 miles an hour with your head down on a project or goal.
Are you a new kid on the block? What are some strategies/best practices you’ve employed during your first few months on the job?
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (courtingyourcareer.wordpress.com).
Thanks to those of you who shared your thoughts on some of the drawbacks of creative resumes and cover letters. Many of you commented that, because of the sheer volume of applications and the fact that readers prefer that they fit into a neat little box, instead of getting noticed by a line manager or someone who would appreciate your creativity, there’s a pretty good chance creative applications will get bounced by HR. Good observations.
But let’s move on. Performance reviews sometimes sneak up on us without much advanced warning, showing up as an unexpected Outlook meeting request in our inbox. If you’re anything like me, then you probably start to rack your brain to think about the things you’ve done over the last quarter or half of the year (depending on the boss), so you can make sure you have your ducks in a row before that big meeting.
Something a public relations professor once told me has proved incredibly valuable and is something I use to this day to take the pain out of performance reviews. His sage advice? Keep track of what you accomplish on the job as it happens. Back then, before he had one of those “new fangled computers,” he kept a tablet in his right top desk drawer for the sole purpose of keeping track of projects, accomplishments, and anything else he might have to refer to later. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather do that than to try to pull everything together on short notice.
I created a simple Word document that I maintain throughout the year. It contains my performance objectives outlined during my previous review, my accomplishments, my personal development goals and strength and development areas, and a snapshot of what’s working and what’s not.
I’ve been lucky enough to work for some great bosses and they have done a great job of capturing my accomplishments, but there’s always a chance something could get missed. And that something could have an impact on my review. To keep that from happening, I usually make note of anything that I think could add value and then go back and delete anything I feel isn’t relevant. As you keep track of accomplishments, note what you did, what that involved, and what the outcome was—the more specific the better.
If you’re lucky, your boss will work with you around your personal development goals and strength and development areas. Put some thought into opportunities to expand your existing skill set and how that might benefit not only you, but your team and your department. Think about your strengths. Are there things you’d like to get involved in that would play to those strengths? Just remember to keep your “wish list” manageable and realistic: this isn’t the time to add 42 new projects to your plate just to impress the boss.
Finally, come ready to talk about what’s working and what isn’t. I say this with one huge caveat—only discuss what isn’t working if you trust your boss is open to that feedback. “What’s working” is the easy part. Your answer will likely be a combination of what’s working for you, the team, and what your boss is doing that he or she should continue to do. The “what’s not” is often the one that will make you a little nervous. Don’t be afraid to give some constructive feedback but, when you do, try to focus on things that don’t involve individual team members. For example, if you’ve noticed a little friction between staff, it might make sense to mention it without going into specific details—more of a general observation. And, if you’re offering your boss supervisory advice, refer to specific actions, not personality traits. Also, leading with a compliment never hurts: “I really appreciate the way you open our staff meetings with updates from last week; but, it might help if the updates tied a little more directly into what you’d like us to do in the future.”
Whether you use a legal pad, Word doc, or a cocktail napkin, keeping track of your accomplishments, development areas, and what’s working and what isn’t can make prepping for your next review a lot easier. And it can likewise make your life easier as a manager if you use a similar approach with the accomplishments of your staff.
What are some things you’ve done to take the pain out of your performance review?
Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (courtingyourcareer.wordpress.com).
