1. The Senior Market – any business associated with seniors is growing.  According to the Census Bureau, 13.5% of the U.S. population is already 65 or older.  That will grow to 16.2% by 2020.
2. Green Power – regardless of politics, saving the planet (using less energy/creating less waste) is here to stay.
3. Discount Retail/Consignment Shops – the Dollar Store and Family Dollar are setting records; so are resale/consignment shops.
4. Local Business – demand is growing for locally grown and made products.  People want to invest in their community – and this is an easy way to do it.
5. Education – huge numbers of people are going back to school.  One term for it – “up-skilling”!
6. Parental Outsourcing – these are things we as parents will gladly pay for rather than do ourselves either because of time, safety or expertise.  Areas of growth include driving schools, test preparation, sports coaching and college selection.  (You have to love the term!)
7. Health and Wellness – simply put, we want to live longer.  Looking good, feeling great, being healthy and fighting aging show no signs of a slowdown.
8. Home Renovation/Design – we may not be able to afford a move to a new/larger home, but we are growing tired of not improving what we have.  And there is a sub-category of growth – senior-house retrofitting (helping seniors stay in their current homes by making the house livable on one floor).
9. Social Media for Small Businesses – all small business owners know that they need social media; few have the time to figure it out.  A consultant with the expertise and an a la carte menu will be in high demand.
10. Pets – we may skimp on ourselves, but not our pets.  Spending over the past few years has topped $40 billion (more that the GDP of 60+ countries).

One final fun trend piece to watch (literally) . . . . . J. Walter Thompson is one of the world’s best known marketing/communications brands.  They put out a piece on the top 10 trends we need to watch this year.  Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MyizJ6KMWI&feature=player_embedded.

Welcome to 2012+!

The HR person responds:  Well that won’t take long!

Sad, but all too true – and these past weeks have given me reason to (at least partially) agree.  I am an HR person by background and still consider myself to be in that broadly-defined field.  HR as a function should strive to be a business partner; that said, they should also make sure certain tenets are followed.  I have found myself responding as an HR person to a few items – and then I started worrying about the search field.

We should know better!

Two different HR leaders . . . . . two different stories . . . . .

1)   An HR leader was asked directly by a respected search consultant (in the Twin Cities) for the year they graduated high school.  (The HR leader was shocked but politely answered the question.  We can argue the merits of that later.)  I give up . . . . . under what circumstance is that pertinent information?  How would one use it?  I can think of only one reason for asking the question.  You can determine the candidate’s age within one year.  Is the search person discriminating?  Were they asked to discriminate?  (NOTE – the search person is an extension of the employer – and I know [or at least hope] that no employer would ‘directly’ ask.)

There’s more . . . . . .

2)   It was suggested by a search consultant (in the Twin Cities) that an HR person (a different person than referenced above) change the date that their employment ended.  It’s January 2012.  The HR person’s employment ended in December of 2011.  The search person said to use 2012 as the date on the resume.  The search person’s concern was that using 2011 could imply that employment ended as early as January of 2011 – a full year ago.  Using 2012 keeps the timeframe more recent in the reader’s mind.  (I know there are other ways this situation can be handled.)

What is our obligation to our client (the employer)?  What is our obligation to our profession?

As I have reported in the past, SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) has a Code of Ethics.  This is its core principal:

• HR professionals are expected to exhibit individual leadership as a role model for maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct.

Not too specific – but we are paid to make decisions, not simply follow a recipe.  SHRM continues with Guidelines (among other things).  The first of these guidelines left me a bit uncertain:

• Be ethical; act ethically in every professional interaction.

Search professionals – we can and should be held to a high standard.  Employers – ask questions of your search firm and assure we are meeting your standards!  The Ethics in the Search Field discussion should NOT be a short one – or the punchline to a joke.

1. Companies are starting to invest in their business again.
2. Organizations are beginning to take actions to ‘fix’ managers that are not performing well.
3. Succession Planning and Retirement Planning are becoming more common topics.

The article suggests actions to consider.

Actually – the article suggests 15 potential actions to consider.  I am a list person so this article was especially appealing.  That said, you can find the full list by following the above link to the article.  There are a few items that I found especially noteworthy – and worthy of repeating here.

• Reward great people management – people will do what they are incented to do.  Performance management should be ongoing conversations, not the once-per-year dreaded conversation that managers and employees put off.  Make developing, leading and promoting great employees part of the management scorecard.  Reward managers who put their best people up for developmental assignments rather than hoarding them.  Again, people will do what you incent them to do.
• Identify and fix bad managers - while recent studies show that engagement is highly impacted by the confidence employees have in their company’s senior management, a bad manager (who employees deal with daily) will take a toll.  Organizations know who these people are.  Take action.
• You need to prepare for a leadership gap – this relates to some of the themes referenced at the start of this post.  The economy is slowly improving; the predictions of pending turnover are growing.  And we finally have demographics to think about – people are using the ‘R’ word (retirement) openly in conversations.  Companies cannot wait any longer.  The need for robust succession planning is staring companies in the face.
• Update your retention approach – we focus way too much on recruiting and way too little on retention.  Retention programs have been shelved due to the recent economic trends.  It is time to take them from the shelf and make them part of our daily mantra.  What if we re-recruited our current employees?  Interestingly, that would make recruiting that much easier.

My favorite of the 15 is the least expensive!

• Improve non-monetary motivation – according to most studies and as reported in the ERE.net article, a significant portion of employee motivation comes from (1) recognition, (2) praise and (3) feedback.  These items are low or no-cost.  Managers do need to be trained to do these things properly and sincerely.  (And providing training to employees is motivational as well – you are investing in them.)

It’s a new year – the time for action is now!

Labor Market and Career Planning Trends (from America’s 50 Fastest Growing Jobs – 1994)

I started reading through the information – part of a larger presentation on trends for the 1990′s.  I then pulled up a list from earlier this year (August 2011), JIST Publishing‘s list of labor market trends and their impact on your career (JIST stands for Job Information Seeking and Training).  The overlap – staggering!

• Education Pays: most good jobs require more/continuing education.  Degrees from years ago are all but obsolete.  It is the continuing education that becomes critical.
• Knowledge of computers and other technologies is increasingly important: all of our areas of expertise can be discussed in terms of technology.  It is no longer necessary to say you are good with the Microsoft Office Suite of products.  Being up-to-date in technology of all sorts is simply critical – and often assumed.
• Career Planning is more important than ever: Laurence Shatkin states, “Most people spend more time watching TV in a week than they spend on career planning during an entire year.”  We will all change jobs and careers many times – we should be prepared.

There were other trends as well.

The pundits from 1994 were ahead of their time – or they were stating long-standing rules/predictions.  Most of their other trends and comments focused on what would be AND still are growth areas:

• The service economy is becoming increasingly important.
• Jobs will increase in health care (due to the need for eldercare/home health care).
• Small businesses will become increasingly important.
• Retail trade positions will increase quickly (remember – the Mall of America opened in 1992).

May 2012 be a year to focus on some of the trends/your own development.

Wishing you and yours only the best for 2012 and beyond!

Resumes that are really just job descriptions

We receive countless unsolicited resumes – in addition to the ones we solicit, of course.  While unscientific as an actual count, well over 80% are written in terms of responsibilities, NOT results or accomplishments.  The trend we always see – our clients (employers) want people who can hit the ground running.  Writing about (in resumes) what you are/were responsible for tells people little.  Writing about, and as a result, being able to articulate what you have done in the past gets the job.

I speak only sales (or – substitute any single function)

How does HR impact Operations?  How do Sales and Marketing coexist – when in most large companies, they are very separate functions?  How does Market Research work effectively with Engineering?  AND how do all of these functional areas impact the bottom line?  The trend we see, from large or small employers, is they want people who are functional experts AND who also speak the language of business. Stating your expertise in terms of how you impact the business gets the job.

When did you get your degree?

I received my Bachelor’s degree in the ’70′s (1979 – you can insert any age comment you would like here).  Getting that degree was a prerequisite for getting employment.  While that is still the case, continuing education, especially for a person with a degree from multiple decades ago, is much more important.  Our clients always (yes – always) want to know what the person has done to keep up in the ‘technology’ of their functional area.  Laws, techniques and actual technology impacts all functional areas.  Being able to discuss recent advances in your field because you studied about it (in a seminar or course) gets the job.

The ere.net article: what did recruiters that ExecuNet surveyed say was critical for this job market?

1. Become connected to industry decision-makers and influencers who will refer you.
2. When contacting an executive search firm, offer to be a referral resource for them in exchange for their assistance.
3. When contacting a search firm, offer to be a source of information related to your industry.
4. Maximize your online resume profiles with keywords and industry-specific buzzwords so it will come up in online searches.
5. Respond to online job postings.  (NOTE – this was rated number 5 by recruiters because it is the least efficient.)

Need a new position?  Imagine combining the ‘two’ items above!

• Job Search for the Mature Seeker

Does job search differ if you are 40+ or 50+?

The answer is not really.  I googled multiple iterations of the topic and scoured the AARP website (I am too vain to be a member . . . . . yet).  There are multiple articles on the topic.  Many are written under the assumption that retirement is part of the short-term plan.  Throwing those out, I read multiple articles with titles such as 5 Ways to Prove Your Worth, Top 10 Tips For Job Hunters Over 50 (that was from Forbes), and Finding a Job Is a Job: Job Search Strategy for 50+ Workers.  The conclusion?

Effective job searching involves executing job search strategies – regardless of age.

That said, here are the top 10 tips from the Forbes article:

1. Cast a wide net.  (While focus is important, think about your skills as transferable to new settings.)
2. Focus on smaller employers and not-for-profits.  (In good or bad economic times, these employers need the skills a mature worker brings.)
3. Network.
4. Ask for help.  (Attend job support groups; talk with other past job seekers, etc.)
5. Be up-to-date with the latest technology.
6. Keep your resume alive.   (Add classes, significant volunteer experience, etc.)
7. Pitch your age as a plus.  (Talk about your accomplishments, not simply past areas of responsibility.)
8. Fine-tune your interview skills.
9. Don’t be a know-it-all with a chip on your shoulder.  (Focus on your best moments and never bad-mouth past employers; I had a recent CFO candidate do this – it did not help to make him a viable candidate.)
10. Overqualified?  Deal with it!  (Focus on the opportunity if you truly want it.)

A quote from the Frank Capra movie, Lost Horizon:

Thankfully, my second reaction was what I went with.

Why do people take our calls when we reach out to them?

In today’s organizations, recruiting (talent acquisition) is often thought to be an externally focused activity.  Retention is thought to be an internal activity.

What if we thought about these two activities differently?

Imagine if we looked at recruiting as a set of ongoing internal activities to keep current employees engaged, productive and developing.  Retention activities would then, in many ways, become redundant.  Most of these ‘retention’ activities could be focused on the organization’s image.  External recruiting could then capitalize on these activities.  Candidates would proactively seek the organization out.

Advice has been out there since at least 1997 (McKinsey’s original work on War For Talent)

The first work I encountered in this area AFTER helping to start what has become Abeln, Magy, Underberg & Associates was McKinsey’s work.  They came out with a list of seven talent imperatives for winning the war.  Some of these included (and still include):

• Instill a talent mindset in the organization – starting with senior management
• Create an “extreme” employee value proposition – the answer to the question, why do I want to work here?
• Make room for talent to grow

Googling this topic in preparation for the upcoming conference, I found similar, but more recent, advice from Jim Sullivan, CEO of Sullivision.com.  He published a list of 13 Smart Recruiting and Retention Strategies.  While I won’t list the 13 here, the themes are the same as from 1997 – he simply words them in more current terms:

• Recruiting is branding.  So is retention.
• Measure, celebrate and reward the managers who attract and retain the best people.
• Make hiring the MOST IMPORTANT decision.

Our next post will give additional information from the conference.  That said, the best advice from all the literature reviewed for the upcoming conference was very simple – and the #1 item from Jim Sullivan’s above referenced list:

• Select the right person in the first place.

• Paving Your Path to Success

I used three books as inspiration for preparing my remarks and need to mention them AND thank the authors:

• The M-Factor by David Stillman
• 1001 Things Every Teen should Know Before They Leave Home (Or Else They’ll Come Back) by Harry Harrison Jr.
• Everything I Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum

What I learned is that advice for college students that are close to entering the workforce is not horribly different than advice for people with substantial work experience.  Here are some of the topics and quotes (mostly from the 1001 Things book):

You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression

• Do NOT dress like a model or rock star – unless you are interviewing to be one
• Show up on time:  for interviews, for class, for work, for relationships
• A business lunch is no different than any other business meeting – except you have the opportunity to ruin your clothes (order accordingly)

Networking

• The best time to start networking is before the need (today would be good)
• The people you are meeting now are future clients, customers or employers – don’t lose track of them

Common Sense (sadly and often not that common)

• Refrain from sending any e-mail (or post to Facebook) written in the heat of the moment.  This can sometimes be called EVIDENCE!
• 91% of employers use Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to screen candidates (http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-job-screening_b15090)
• Never use the words NOT MY JOB if you are making long-term career plans

Final Thoughts

• Buy a loud obnoxious alarm clock with a snooze button!
  • Most of the truly successful people wake up before everyone else
• Never be afraid of doing the right thing
• Your reputation will shadow you for the rest of your lives
• Don’t be afraid of changing jobs; be afraid of losing your passion

This past week I have started to receive calls from parents that I know.  They are trying to help their soon-to-graduate (OR recently-graduated) children get a job.  Adding to this recent theme, I will be the keynote speaker at this year’s TCHRA 2011 Student Conference entitled Paving Your Path To Success.  (Parents – pass this link along to your children!)

Let’s start with basic advice . . . . . think in terms of a grade for your effort AND result.

I am sure that you want to go for an ‘A’ as you embark on a search.  (Parents – don’t you want your child to get an ‘A’ in this area?  Think financial independence!)

• Act motivated – I understand that a parent is likely to make the initial call to introduce the concept/see if it is okay for their child to make a call.  No problem, BUT – then the next step is up to the job seeker.  Students – get on the phone (or at least send an e-mail) right away.  Waiting days (or in some cases – weeks) makes me wonder how motivated you are.  Projecting this forward, will you be a motivated employee?
• Practice – networking calls, writing cover e-mails and resumes, and interviewing are all new behaviors.  No one expects you to be perfect the first time, but “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”  (Thank you for the quote – it is from my 8th grade English Teacher – told to me on the first day of class; that story is for another time.)  Practice with friends, relatives, the career services office, etc.  Important calls should be scripted.
• Resumes – volumes have been written on this topic.  In a nutshell, it is a sales document.  It is your advertisement (think of a product on a shelf – the packaging has to tell the story/get you to want to try the product).
• Career Services – college campuses have varying forms of assistance available.  You as the student will likely have to seek this out (unless they are a business major at a major university).  The services are free for the taking – you just have to take the initiative.
• Networking - at the end of the day, the most successful job search technique comes down to networking.  Think strategically – who is willing to both take your call (friendly) and provide referrals and ideas (helpful)?  Call these people first – after you have practiced your script, of course.

What do employers look for?

According to the Association of Colleges and Universities (www.aacu.org), employers are looking for the following:

I am not a compensation expert, but . . . . .

Daily, my colleagues and I ask candidates to tell us their salary level (base, bonus, etc.).  They tell us; we keep the data – it is great information for our clients on true market pricing for their open positions.  That said, legislation on executive compensation is not where I spend my time.  Because of this class, our head of research finds the latest/greatest out there on the topic.

Say on Pay

In January of this year, the SEC voted to adopt final rules giving shareholders of publicly traded companies the right to weigh in on executive compensation through nonbinding advisory votes.

• Nonbinding?  Let me express my confusion here . . . . . if I buy stock, I approve; if I do not buy stock OR sell the stock that I own, I disapprove.

Regardless, was there an impact to this new SEC rule?  Maybe the answer is additional proactive communication and actual thinking about executive compensation plans.  56% of publicly held companies reached out to their shareholders directly in order to achieve a positive vote; 53% communicated through proxy advisers.    91% are planning or considering at least one change in their pay-setting process or preparations for the 2012 proxy season.  Again, the positive impact may be actual thinking about the optics (how shareholders ”see’ the plans when they read about them) and impact of their plan.

Dodd-Frank

Again, maybe it is just me, but this law states the obvious.  If the financial statements that I was paid under are found to be inaccurate, the bonus I received has to be adjusted to reflect the corrected version.  It is called a “claw back” – reflecting the requirement that the company take back the overpayment.   This law is called the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.  My name for it – pay accurately both short and long-term.

I know there is more out there . . . . .

I appreciate the executive compensation experts that work hard to assure that the top people in any company are paid for the impact of their work.  The laws, however,  seem to be the reactive outgrowth of the stories of executives who are terminated and then receive millions for the lack-of-results achieved.  My solution to these situations?  Don’t invest in these companies!

If I am ever in charge of the SEC or Congress

My rules would come from one of the best books I have ever read, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.  Among my favorite rules from this book, which should be required reading in any business course, are:

• Play fair.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

These are the rules we should adopt and hold people to!