7 Reasons Your Top Performers Will Leave In 2010

A recent spate of surveys and commentary confirm what has become clear from my conversations with top performers over the last eight to ten weeks: many of them will move jobs as soon as their existing employer is in recovery from the recent economic collapse – some as early as Q1 2010.

Why now? Why change jobs when things are getting better, not worse?

7. Weariness
Exhaustion, plain and simple. It’s been a tough two to three years, and your top performers are tired. And you know the saying – ‘A change is as good as a rest’.

6. Trust
Trust in authority has taken a battering during this last downturn, and you are the public face of trust for your top performers. Even if you’ve done nothing wrong and everything right, even if you’re held in high regard individually, you represent the untrustworthy old guard. They’ll move somewhere new to start rebuilding that trust.

5. Fit
Like an old set of dentures, your veteran top performers don’t ‘fit’ in the organization as well as they did. You’ve changed, the business has changed, the industry has changed and they’ve changed. What was once a seamless relationship now has irritating edges, chips and crevices.

4. Spring, Easter, Bunnies, etc.
Business-wise this last few years have felt like winter to many people, and your top performers are no exception. They’ve been loyal enough to stay the course while things were really tough, but as soon as there’s a change in season, and they can honestly say they’ve seen you through the worst of it, they’ll go to warmer climes to start something new and fresh.

3. Challenge
Top performers want new, positive challenges. They can only thrive on negative challenges for so long. Your competitor’s hiring process emphasizes new challenges, your 2010 ‘maintenance and recovery’ plan does not.

2. Impact
Top performers need to feel they’re making a real difference. Nothing is more frustrating to them than a sense of stagnation. Right now, your organization reeks of stagnation (‘s not your fault – it’s just a fact).

To them, your competitor looks like a bright new opportunity to make a real impact. And of course, your competitor will ensure that the opportunity to do so will be front and center in their hiring process (whether it’s true or not).

1. Control
The #1 reason your top performers will leave next year is simple: to restore a sense of control over their lives. They have dedicated the last few years to loyally doing things they don’t enjoy and wouldn’t do naturally (retrenching, firing people, taking back tasks they’d long since delegated), and as soon as they can look in the mirror and honestly say they’ve got you over the hump, they’ll go elsewhere, to restore the sense that they are once more in control of their own destiny.

None of this is inevitable, but unless you make changes now, it is very likely to happen. Next up – what to do to keep your top performers.

Simple policy tweak improves workers’ health, productivity

Your company policies directly impact employees’ risk of heart disease, how much they sleep and their families’ well-being, eight separate studies have found.

Implementing flexible policies can add years to your employees’ lives, according to a three-year nationwide study released by the Work, Family and Health Network.

The following findings for the study were compiled by eight federally-funded research teams:

Workers are twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease if there is little willingness in the workplace to accommodate employees’ family needs — like caring for a sick child or attending one of their kids’ sporting events.
People who work for companies that are flexible about where and when work is done get an average of 30 minutes more sleep per night.
Employees who experienced tension in the office say they feel out of touch with their child’s activities.

Communicate flexibility
While many companies have added flex-time or telecommuting policies, close to 40% of employees believe they’d be less likely to advance at their company if they asked for flex schedules, found the study.

That means companies that want their employees to take advantage of flex policies need to assure workers these activities won’t put their job security or career goals at risk.

It pays to communicate that message, according to the study. Companies with a more flexible culture benefited from:

less unnecessary work being done
increased employee support for the organization, and
a 45% reduction in employee turnover.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hrmorning/~3/wOieNaHa9Wc/

 

How Do You Choose the Right Career Path for You?

Choosing the right career eludes some of us right up until retirement. Be one of the lucky ones who have truly found their calling. The following tips from Bayt.com should help.

Franklin D Roosevelt once said “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Thankfully, we live in trial-and-error times where growth and change are expected and employers have learned to tolerate if not wholeheartedly appreciate and welcome the diversity in background and skills that come from career changers.
In lieu of life-long job and career stability, many of today’s professionals espouse a career trajectory that is open to responding to new challenges and opportunities as they arise. These may be motivated by entirely extraneous factors such as economic restructuring, downsizing, upsizing, the emergence of lucrative new industry sectors or motivated by changes in personal situation which could include age, changes to marital or family status, geographical preferences, new life demands, desire for better work/life balance etc.

Whatever the motivation, career change is no longer the frowned-upon sole recourse of the unemployed but a common turn of events and one that is expected to become more so as economies restructure at an ever more accelerated pace, information about alternate career paths flows ever more freely, work/life balance becomes an increasingly hot topic, and a booming global economy means opportunities abound.

A recent on-line poll run by the Middle East’s #1 job site Bayt.com covering over 1,420 professionals that enquired how often candidates have changed career paths in their life saw the majority of respondents have changed careers at least once and many had changed careers two times or more. Only 40% of respondents have never changed careers whereas 27% had changed careers once and 32% of respondents had changed careers twice or more.

So how in such times of flux and opportunity and in light of the vast amount of choice out there do you determine the right career for you? Below the Career Experts from Bayt.com offer some pointers as you approach this important topic:

DREAM

(Examine your passions and interests)

1. Read the current literature on career change – the whys, how-tos and whens. Books such as What Colour is Your Parachute are a great way to start the self-exploration process.

2. Ask yourself what you would do in an ideal world if money were no imperative. What would you do if you had a year away from work or if you could emulate someone who in your opinion has a dream job? Would you write poetry, run a global corporation, compete in athletics, design world-class architectural projects, publish literature, start your own little business, work with children, with the elderly, teach, heal, perform?

3. Ask yourself what tasks you ideally like to immerse yourself in. Do you prefer the analytical aspects of your current (or past) job, the administrative aspects, the leadership aspects, the coaching aspects, problem-solving aspects, decision-making in teams, writing, designing, co-ordinating, managing, creating, trouble-shooting etc. Where do you find yourself happiest and most comfortable?

4. Make a list of those aspects of your job or other jobs that you don’t like and wish to avoid.

5. Be honest with yourself, be creative and dare to dream as you think of what you would really like to do. The dreaming stage is not the time to focus – allow yourself to really explore all avenues of interest and be curious about new paths and possibilities.

DETERMINE

(Examine your values, priorities and skills)

6. Determine what your priorities really are. How important is work-life balance to you versus career growth or financial stability? How important is leisure versus work versus learning for you? Are you willing to put one or two on hold while you pursue a t hird or is your ideal life plan a blended one that includes the three? Are you content with financial stability or are you interested in huge financial gain? Are you interested in a job or a career? Is prestige and social status critical to you and how much of these does your career, past and potential, afford you?

7. Determine your real values and ask what career satisfies and is consistent with those. Albert Einstein’s advice on this front was: “Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.”

8. Make an inventory of your skills and strengths.

9. Take self-assessment tests to even more deeply understand what it is that motivates, drives and inspires you.

DIG DEEP/ DISSECT

(Examine alternate career paths)

10. Research alternate career paths – look at growth potential, job profiles, pay, benefits, mobility, work/life balance and all other issues that will determine your longevity in the career.

11. As you hone in on potential career paths obtain the maximum amount of information about these careers. Read industry blogs and websites, talk to people in the field, subscribe to industry journals and newsletters and leave no stone unturned as you familiarize yourself with the potential new territory.

12. Map your personal inventory of skills, interests, values against the requirements of alternative career paths.

13. Realistically analyse and make contingencies for those factors that impede your career mobility. These may be geographical mobility issues, financial limitations, family considerations, or education/ training issues. Look at occupational and non-occupational barriers to career entry and determine realistically how you can/will overcome those.

14. Seek counseling and advice. As you seek to reinvent yourself you may want to talk to a professional counselor formally, or informally to someone in your new area, an old colleague or a peer. Formal counseling is useful when trying to overcome mental blocks to career growth and advancement. Often, the biggest detriment to career development is low self-esteem, anxiety fear, inertia and the inability to deal with change meaningfully and constructively.

DECIDE

(Select the ultimate career path)

15. Let your natural instincts, your introspection and the fruits of your intense research guide the way. Many of us in today’s number-crunching world have learned to quell those very essential natural instincts that propel us towards leadership, happiness and success.

16. Don’t be swayed by external pressures. Often family, friends and society place undue pressure on a person to conform to or follow a certain career path. Pablo Picasso once said “My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general; if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope.” Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”” .

17. Don’t let financial considerations alone guide you unless of course you have determined that financial gain in itself (with all its glories and trappings) is your overriding value, interest and goal in life. Oftentimes, short-term financial losses can be compensated for by the fact that you will eventually prosper most and acquire the most depth and skill in the field that most interests you.

DARE

(Confidently stride into your new career)

18. Believe in yourself. Have faith and be bold and brave as you follow your aspirations. Don’t let negative self-perceptions and external diatribes detract you from your true calling. After the homework, the reading, the research, the introspection, soul-searching, networking and analysis, close your eyes and find the person you always wanted to be.

Robert Kennedy famously o nce said “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” Arm yourself with your dreams, your invaluable newly acquired self-knowledge and your rigorous research into the plethora of opportunities out there and don’t hesitate in pursuing the career of your dreams. Your success will thank you!

 

Top Ten Ways to Turn Off a New Employee

You want your new employee to experience his new job as a major turn on. Why is it that organizations so often act in ways that create the opposite result? These are the top ten ways to guarantee your new employee will start off on the wrong foot – possibly forever.
Make sure a work area has not been created or assigned. (Let him sit in a hall or share a cube.)

Schedule the new employee to start work while her supervisor is on vacation.

Leave the new employee standing in the company reception area for a half hour while reception staff try to figure out what to do with him.

Leave the new employee at her work station, to manage on her own, while coworkers pair up and head out to lunch.

Provide an hour in a noisy lobby for the new employee to read and sign-off on a 100 page Employee Handbook.

Show the new employee his office and don’t introduce him to coworkers or assign him a mentor.

Assign the new employee to a staff person who has a major, career-impacting deadline, in three days.

Assign the new employee to (you fill in the blanks) your most unhappy, negative, company-bashing staff member.

Assign the employee “busy work” that has nothing to do with her core job description, because you are having a busy week.

Start the new employee with a one or two day new employee orientation during which Human Resources personnel make presentation after presentation after presentation after presentation …

 

Job Interview Match Dance…

People forget that the purpose of a job interview is not just to get the job. Sound strange to you? It’s not. You go to a job interview to discover whether your talents, abilities, interests and direction are a good fit for the job, the company, and the company’s mission. I admire candidates who come in for a first interview, meet the team, learn about the company, and call me to say they don’t think it’s a good match. Why string me on?

At the same time, employers have the same obligation. If you have decided a candidate is not a good match for the position, tell the candidate. Don’t string all of the candidates on until you make your final decision. It’s not fair and, in my mind, it’s unethical.

Additionally, once you have decided the person is a poor match, if you eventually select that applicant, you are settling. Bad, bad, bad. Let’s all be more respectful of people in the employee selection process.

This match is particularly important now because, with so many people unemployed, and many unemployed for a long time, candidates will reach out to take any job offered. If it’s the wrong candidate for your open position, you will spend time, money, and psychic energy later when it’s time to let an unsuccessful employee go. So, the job match dance is even more critical now to employers.

Please share your ideas… and do Comment

Thank You,

Zaman.

Job Interview Tips for Interviewers

Companies are in constant search for high-caliber, well grounded prospective candidates.

Chasing competent and trustworthy talent has become an urge in today’s highly competitive job market. As a matter of fact, a recent study from Harvard University has recently reported that 80% of employee turnover is attributed to mistakes made during the hiring process, that is employing the wrong people to the wrong positions.

It is mainly within the interviewer’s ability to avoid such dilemmas by following a few essential guidelines during the interview and placing the right questions in the right places.

Tip 1: Know what the job is about: More often than not, interviewers tend to commit the mistake of not being abreast of the job requirements and thus rely on their rudimentary gut feel to decide whether a candidate is suitable for the position or not. Do not fly by gut instinct alone; instead prepare your questions in advance and learn everything there is to learn about both the specific position (by taking the time to read through the job description thoroughly) and the candidate (by taking the time to review his/her resume) before the interview stage.

Tip 2: Offer the information you have about the position. Do not wait for the candidate to ask. Sell him both your company and the position itself. It has become quite hard to find talented, efficient, committed employees nowadays and your role as an interviewer requires you to lay the facts on the table and explain to the candidate why you should be the employer of his/her choice and why the position is the long awaited position that will grant him/her long term success and career advancement.

Tip 3: Follow a behavioral interviewing technique rather than the traditional interviewing path: Dig deep into the candidate’s accomplishments rather than merely glossing over the candidate’s stated skills and capabilities. This technique accentuates past performance and behavior, and there is no better indicator of future performance than past performance. Let go of customary questions (i.e.: tell me more about you, your strengths and your weaknesses, etc…) and hypothetical questions (what would you do if…) and focus more on getting further into the details of previous actual work experience relating to decision making skills, leadership, resourcefulness, organization, communication, motivation, resilience and willingness to learn (i.e.: Did you face obstacles on the job? How did you handle them? Etc…)

Tip 4: Use open-ended questions when you are interviewing a candidate and give him/her the time he/she needs to give you an answer. Silence can be an effective tool in such situations and can work to everybody’s advantage. Do not hustle the interviewee with the next question on your list but rather give him/her the opportunity and the time to think before he/she responds.

Tip 5: Remember that your role as an effective interviewer urges you to listen more and talk less (interviewers are usually expected and advised to talk for about 20 to 30% of the total interview time and leave the rest for the interviewee). Give your candidate the opportunity to talk about his/her competencies, skills and qualifications.

Tip 6: Watch your body language:

a) Posture: Make sure your shoulders are kept straight and your head up high. A solid posture reveals great self confidence (which assures the interviewee that you’re on top of what you’re doing).

b) Hand shake: A firm hand shake shows interest and extends value to the interviewee. Remember to greet your candidate with a steady courteous hand shake.

c) Tone of Voice: Speak clearly, slowly with an enthusiastic tone of voice. This will put your candidate at ease and reassure him/her that they are in good hands.

d) Eye Contact: Maintain direct eye contact with the interviewee during the interview process. Strong eye contact is usually perceived by interviewees not only as interest, respect and self confidence but also as credibility and trustworthiness from both your part and your company’s.

Last but not least, remember that being professional at all times is a must. You obviously have to ensure your candidate is comfortable enough to want to sit and talk to you and later on become part of your team (especially if he is the right candidate for the job). Be friendly but still maintain your professionalism. Do not indulge in excessive small talk, rather focus on work- related information. Remember the interview process is a two-way street: the candidate will be assessing you and your company just as mush as you will be assessing him/her and his/her capabilities. Always allot some time to answer his/her questions and concerns before wrapping up the interview!

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