Would you hire a quitter as your CEO?
I hope there is more to this story than what has been publicized. The current Bank of America CFO is quitting due to regulatory burdens. Bank of America doesn’t have any additional regulatory burdens compared to its major competitors. He also seemed to complain that the CFO doesn’t get the glory like the CEO and said after he ends his term with BoA, he would consider a CEO position but not a CFO position. And while de Molina won’t be seeking another CFO position, there is nothing like publicly proclaiming that you can’t handle the same stresses as your peers.
Now ultimately some apologists will blame the government for this regulatory mess they’ve setup in the wake of Enron and WorldCom scandals. Hell, I’ll even buy some of that. The problem of course is that everyone has to deal with the government the same, especially when you’re talking about SOX at a publicly traded company.
The ultimate question to me is why would anyone hire him to be a CEO? I am sure he is a nice guy and his CFO position was probably a big ole’ pain in the ass but when the going got tough, this guy quit. The thing is, I am sure he will be hired by someone and who knows, he might be good. I just don’t see it though.
Feeling locked into your current role?
Most companies take a stance where they want to promote from within. If you are with such a company and you feel trapped in your current role (maybe you’ve been overlooked for several promotions, etc…), here are a few things that can help you out.
1. Go beyond your job. As I pointed out earlier, your job title doesn’t matter. Offer your assistance on special projects or tasks. If you have a talent that you don’t use in your job, offer it to your company. As a real world example, even though I am in HR, I also have done work in product delivery and supply-chain management. When my company needed that expertise, I could offer it to them.
2. Bring out the big guns. If going beyond your job description isn’t enough, it is time to take your skills and play to your strengths whenever possible. Nobody in the office likes a show off (except your boss). Don’t be afraid to go the extra mile.
3. Get additional education. Even if the company doesn’t pay for it. Even if you only do it one class at a time. Educating yourself is one of the sure fire ways to raise your personal capital in the job department. It shows you are willing to sacrifice a bit of time to give those skills back to your company (for a higher wage of course).
4. Talk to your boss. And listen. It is amazing what showing a bit of interest in moving up can do and the positive consequences that can take place when you listen to and act on your boss’s advice. I almost put this one first but what fun would that be?
5. If you take all of these steps and you still don’t get a bone thrown at you, start looking elsewhere. Or get used to your current role. An employer somewhere will appreciate a person that is willing to go beyond their job description, get additional education and talk to management when they have an issue.
And if you need help with that last one, CareerHub put out a great ebook on how to search for a new job.
Drink if You Want a Raise
Maybe this is why I meet so many recruiters at bars.
It is probably also why I am paid well.
Just kidding.
Sort of.
Longevity
I’m David Manaster, CEO of ERE Media, the leading trade publisher for recruiting professionals. Your HR Guy is generously hosting this (very late) guest post on his blog as part of the Big Bad Recruiting Blog Swap.
I’ve been reading Beth’s post on “job hoppers”, the comments on it, and Your HR Guy’s thoughts on the subject with a great deal of interest. As the CEO of a small business (about 10 employees), I thought that I might have a slightly different perspective on the topic.
Small companies often feel very different than their larger counterparts with thousands of employees. Generally speaking, it’s more of a family feel. Yeah, we really only work together, and most of us at ERE are not even physically at the same location, but we spend most of our days talking, emailing and IMing with each other, so culture is not just some warm & fuzzy idea or a matter of drinking the Kool-Aid, it’s vitally important.
We’re all in this together, and we know it.
I’m not speaking hypothetically here. When someone here screws up, everyone feels it. When someone knocks the ball out of the park, we all benefit.
Your HR Guy Wants You to Perform
I had an employee at an old job of mine who thought I was out to get him. I’ve had many “come to Jesus” talks over the course of my career but the one I gave him was simply brutal…brutally honest. Performance wise, he was the worst employee consistently. He might never be at the very bottom of the list but he was constantly in the bottom 10%. Finally, during one of my meetings with him, he asks me a question:
Why do you pick on me?
I paused. I took a breath and realized my initial response wouldn’t work. I was going to answer “What makes you think that?” but it came off as defensive. Plus, I already knew the answer. I was picking on him. What he didn’t understand is my motive. That was the question he was wanting to be answered. So I answered him:
I want you to perform. I don’t want to see you fail nor do I want to hire a new person and go through training and the added expense. The thing I want you to understand that despite me not wanting to do these things, I will go through with them and that all hinges on how you perform. So if you feel that I am picking on you, that is why.
Maybe not the most fantastic answer but the understanding it brought between the employee and myself cemented for me that posturing doesn’t work when dealing with your employees. The defensive answer I was going to give (that I am sure would tempt anyone in the heat of the moment) was the wrong one for the situation. It is a good lesson to learn by practicing conversations with pauses.
Building portable equity
I reviewed Radical Careering here several weeks ago and while I thought the book was average, one point that stuck with me and has continued to do so is the building of portable equity. Portable equity is defined as skills, experience and education that you can take with you from job to job. These days, nobody would be attracted to a retirement plan that you lose if you get laid off. Employees want portability because they don’t see themselves as employees for life (and most employers, if they are honest, don’t either). The same is true with job skills that translate to the field you have chosen to work in. Building portable equity in your career takes work. As a recent graduate, you may be stuck with not-so-sexy job assignments and duties. Here are five ways you can beat the rap on those duties and become a superstar:
1.) You must do the job. The key to beating it straight out of the gate is to enthusiastically hit a home run with those not-so-sexy duties and every time you do, inform your boss that you are ready for your next challenge. No need to be annoying about it but no need to take it sitting down. It should be apparent from your actions that you can easily and competently take care of these minor job duties and you can start fitting in some projects with sex appeal.
2.) Be patient but don’t be a pushover. If you are on your second day, now is probably not the time to ask for more responsibilities and a raise. If a year has passed and you are doing the same thing you did your first month, you probably need to take control of your career. Don’t be a clock-puncher (a.k.a. the type of person that sits around years after his last promotion wondering why his promotion hasn’t come), go to work excited to do your job and present it as evidence to your boss that it is time to move up.
3.) Be prepared to take risks and experience failure. That doesn’t mean you falsify financial results until you get what you want. It is that you are prepared to risk falling flat on your face for both the possibility you might hit a home run or that you will learn something valuable once you dust yourself off. The best possible opportunities are the one’s that your boss thinks can’t be done. Taking on a project like this with enthusiasm is as near to “no risk” in business as you get. Figure out a way to make it work and knock your boss over.
4.) Build your resume now. Think about what you would want on your resume if you were forced to leave your job the next day. If you haven’t done it yet, do it. Stop putting it off and make it happen. The key to building portable equity is making sure you can use your experience and education to move (either within your company or to a different one). Try finding more projects that make your superstar status apparent.
5.) Be prepared to use that portable equity. While job hopping is not something I would ever promote, sometimes it is the only option in a dead end job. Before you go though, make sure you aren’t job hopping from a bad situation with no room for portable equity growth to another one with a nicer boss. You won’t be happy there either and then you’ll look like a job hopper. While you seek that next opportunity, spend time in your current job building whatever limited equity you can.
Maybe some other HR folks think I am throwing them under the bus here. I wish I had a room full of superstars but I won’t. The problem is that thinking in the above way is extraordinary. It is easy to find people who want to come in, punch a clock and get paid to do the basic requirements of the job. Finding people who are truly hungry for challenges is the difficult part.
Researching to reduce turnover
Dr. Williams over at ERE says that the best way to reduce turnover is to look at past employee records and determine a pattern of traits that can help you avoid high turnover rates. There are several pitfalls that he addressed along with the obvious benefits of such a program that I am interested in talking about.
The benefits he goes over are of real value to any company. Reducing turnover has a true ROI if accomplished effectively as Dr. Williams states. It is an easy sell to the executive group.
What isn’t going to be an easy sell are a few questions they will have for your HR department like:
Who is going to do the analysis? Those sorts of skills aren’t as easily available in some organizations as others
Do we have a similar enough workforce to accomplish this? If you don’t, you’re done.
What kind of reduction are we talking about? It is untested and many companies don’t want to be testing grounds.
On top of those questions, I have to wonder what HR department has time to try something like this. Granted this could be a phenomenal success. On the other hand, there might be nothing significant that differentiates successful employees from the unsuccessful ones (or at least enough to enact positive changes). If you have more HR resources than you know what to do with and you have time to implement this sort of massive research and analysis project, you either don’t have a big problem (because you have adequate HR analysis) or you are missing the boat completely.
HR can make a proven, positive impact on the positions that are very similar: developing a world class training system, constant monitoring of new employees job performance and satisfaction and retooling the interview process in response. Better sourcing, reviewing of compensation, and even a change in management technique can make a more effective change in a company’s turnover rate than this sort of system (even if successfully implemented). If you have higher than acceptable turnover, you should be going through these basic, time tested and proven techniques before trying something like this. If you’ve had little success with the basics though, you should probably be looking at what you’re doing wrong before you spend resources on this because if you can’t nail the basics, I am doubtful you can implement this system successfully.
It isn’t that I think that Dr. Williams suggestion couldn’t be successful, it’s that I think the companies that could implement it effectively probably have little use and probably wouldn’t meet any ROI goal.
How do you spend your Sunday nights?
I have a ritual that might sound familiar to some and foreign to others. About 9:00pm, I start preparing for Monday morning. I started this ritual after finding that Mondays were, by far, one of the worst, most busy days. I often stayed at the office past seven on Mondays (pushing my hours to 12-14 on that day). I would come in at six or seven in the morning and have no prep work, no idea as far as applicant flow is concerned and what I needed to schedule. So, I started checking my e-mail and going over reports on Sunday night and setting my to-do list for the day including setting my first tasks for the day. I could do some of this on Friday but a lot of my work depends on weekend activity. When I get in on Monday, I don’t open e-mails. I check my voicemails and unless there is anything urgent, I usually schedule those calls for late morning. Then, I start working on my first task of the day.
Now I come home at my usual time. I get everything done that I need to and often more, simply by making my priorities before I get wrapped up in the craziness of Monday.
What sorts of things do you do to start your day off right? I would be interested in seeing those in either separate posts or in my comments section.
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About
Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...
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