What Matters

It is always a good idea to get out of the office every now and again if for no other reason than to make sure that you don’t lose touch with the real world. I had the chance last week to do that in Chicago while attending the national human capital summit put on by one of our alliance partners, The Human Capital Institute.

It was a two-day affair, and I had the chance to not only listen and learn, but also ExecuNet had been asked to chair a panel the title of which was: The Executive Crisis: Grooming the Next Generation of Leaders.

As I reflected on my trip back to Connecticut, I was thinking that HCI might have just as easily used a conference tag line of the old standby: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” While it is almost an embarrassment to admit that it has been nearly two decades since my work days were spent in corporate America, the issues under discussion by such luminaries as Wharton’s Peter Cappelli, or author Richard Florida (Flight of the Creative Class) or other well-known gurus such as Rich Karlgaard, author of Life 2.0 and publisher/columnist for Forbes, or leadership development icon Noel Tichy, gave me a Rod Serling sort of feeling.

The descriptors have changed. Now we call it “human capital” versus “human resources” or “personnel” or “employee relations”, but underneath it all, we were still trying to get our arms around the triad of employer needs, employee needs and life’s impact on both. Twenty years ago this was all more localized. We were just starting to wake up to the notion that there was a global economy. Now it is the case of dealing with all of it via cell phones, Blackberries, and wireless web access.

So what did I net out of the 2 days I spent trying to listen, learn, and where I could contribute to the discourse?

It’s always about leaders and our never-ending struggle to find them or develop them. In addition, it was also clear that the degree to which trust plays the key role in any relationship has a huge impact. Organizations who not only understand this but whose actions demonstrate their understanding daily are the ones who definitely have more than just a leg up in the race to Life 3.0 -- which is just over the horizon.

The Find & Replace Feature

As I have mentioned here before, I try to stay tuned into the articles, discussions, and blogs that are all a part of the Electronic Recruiting Exchange. Because the postings are often thought-provoking, I'm a frequent visitor and the most recent piece by Lou Adler, CEO of The Adler Group called, Why We Lost The War For Talent got my attention.

In the article, he shares some figures from a survey he conducted along with some stats from a Gallup survey. The clear message from both surveys was that while companies recognize that finding good people was a major challenge (59% in the Gallup poll said that it was their "most pressing problem") very few of the companies that Lou polled (of which there were over 350 both big and small) said they felt good about how they were coping with the newest skirmishes in the war for talent.

This certainly squares with our own data. This was one of the many issues we recently addressed in our annual Executive Job Market Intelligence Report for 2006.

What somehow seems pretty weird at this "late date" is that while organizations say they are really concerned about dealing with a human capital marketplace that, absent any unforeseen events, (a sad commentary on the times in which we live) will continue to only get tighter, the number that are really trying to make it a top priority seems incredibly low, especially given the competitive risks at stake. How concerned? Over 80% of the recruiters we surveyed, which included both 3rd party and corporate, were clear in saying that they felt the war for talent was heating up and 79% agreed that there was a shortage of talent at the executive level.

Our survey of executive leadership came back with data that showed some 72% of the senior level executive respondents were planning to get out of Dodge within the next 6 months, and when it comes to filling the holes they will leave behind, we were seeing numbers like 75% of employed executives had turned down offers and so had 40% of the unemployed ones. There is a message in numbers like that and it isn't good for organizations that somehow haven't gotten around to reading the tea leaves surrounding retention of talent. This is one battle they can ill afford to lose.

Should be interesting to hear what others attending the Human Captital Institute's conference in Chicago next week have to say. We've been asked to head up a panel on this issue, which is titled: The Executive Crisis: Grooming the Next Generation of Leaders, and are looking forward to expressing at least one point of view and articulating some specific calls to action. The question before the house, of course, is not will be people listen, but rather will they act.

Lessons from the Ethics Panel

One of the other sites I like and follow as best I can given the stresses of living in the 24/7 business world is the Electronic Recruiting Exchange where I find some pretty interesting discussions and blogs.

While the site is primarily designed for corporate and third party recruiters my interest in following the discussions is because to some degree we are part of the staffing space (one of the reasons we became a charter member of Pete Weddle's International Association of Employment Websites) and our membership is made up of both senior level executives (who have feelings and perceptions about the recruiting world) as well as recruiters - both corporate and third party (who have feelings and perceptions about candidates and clients).

That the ERE should be having discussions on the subject of ethics is no surprise. The recruiting industry has been talking about and around this subject for a long time, just as companies have been talking about it for a long time.

The most recent exchanges on this topic arose from a panel on ethics that was featured at ERE's recent conference in San Diego. One of the more recent posts on the subject was titled Lessons from the Ethics Panel if you wanted to check it out to see how the discussion was going. Clearly people have feelings on the subject, but it also makes one wonder why it should be a topic of discussion after all these years.

As I have followed the discussion and digested the points of view expressed, it reminded me of a couple of things:

1. Whether it is an individual, a group, a company, a profession, an industry, a country - we all (rightly or wrongly) have our reputations. Proof once again of the old saw: "Perceptions are real to those who hold them," and

2. "Actions speak louder than words."

Careful What You Wish For

Robyn Greenspan, the Senior Editor of our Career Smart Advisor newsletter as well as the senior editor and writer of our Executive Job Market Intelligence Report that just went out to our members this week, has, among her many talents, a seemingly unique ability to find the quirky little tid bits here and there and then always has something thought provoking to say about it.

She sent me the following blurb that she found in the NY Times:

FINAL TAKE Some 21 percent of workers said they pitied their bosses, and 54 percent said they "could never be paid enough to take their boss's job," according to Money magazine, which also reports that the average chief executive's salary increased 14.5 percent in 2004, compared with a 3.7 percent raise for the average worker.

This lead the Times to comment:

"That leads to one of two possible conclusions. Either the boss deserves the money, or those who feel sorry for him may want to rethink their position."

Robyn's comment after she read it was: “Every company needs bench strength, so it’s probably a good idea that the 54 percent stay out of the way of the high-achieving 46 percent.” Love her sense of humor!

It also made me think a bit about the shots that bosses take. When I was growing up, the American dream was to rise up the corporate ladder and become a "boss." Sounded great until I got there. Once I got there, I found out in a hurry that it wasn't anything close to being "as advertised."

I also think that my experience in working with different bosses over time was probably not too different from my peers. I had a couple of really good ones, and some who were so bad that I kept saying to myself that they would get a separate chapter when I write my book.

Good or bad, however, I would like to think that I learned from each and as I continued on with what I now must look back on as a "career" it is my hope that I was able to save and apply the "good learnings" and drown the "bad learnings" in apple martinis.

The Cost of March Madness

I think many of us saw the stats recently attributed to Challenger, Gray & Christmas on the cost of the lost productivity due to NCAA men's basketball tournament. Was a pretty impressive number, and makes one wonder how much more we "lose" when it comes to super bowl pools, fantasy football, baseball, NASCAR, and we hear there is even fantasy golf! It's a wonder anything gets done at all.

Anyway, in case you missed it, here is how Challenger et al got to their numbers:

- 58,548,000 = the number of Americans who are estimated to be fans of college basketball (41 percent of a workforce of 142.8 million).

- 13.5 minutes = the average amount of time U.S. workers are expected to spend on NCAA-related websites over the 16 business day tournament season.

- $4.05 = the average amount earned every 13.5 minutes by American workers

- $237,119,400 = the cost to employers nationwide in lost, unproductive wages for each 13.5 minutes of time wasted on the Internet.

- $3,793,910,400 or more = the total amount March Madness could cost employers over 16 business days of tournament.

Just for the fun of it, ExecuNet decided to take John C's formula, add a bit of data of our own, specifically compensation data of our membership based on our survey figures, along with occupational data from our friends at the Dept. of Labor. We came up with a number that says executives are responsible for $315,000,000 all by themselves.

If you have nothing else to do at half time, here's how we totaled it up:

- 943,000 = the number of executives who are estimated to be fans of college basketball (41 percent of the 2.3 million executive jobs in U.S., according to DoL).

- $20.88 = the average amount executives earn every 13.5 minutes (ExecuNet found that top executives, on average, earn $92.79 per hour).

- $19,689,847 = the cost to employers nationwide in lost, unproductive wages for each 13.5 minutes of time an executive wastes on the Internet.

- $315,037,440 or more = the total amount executive fans of March Madness could cost employers over 16 business days of tournament.

Not being a "numbers" guy, I didn't want to ask our team to go back and recalculate everything based on the fact that I stopped watching once two of my final four got knocked out by Sunday!

The Wonders of Modern Telecommunications?

One of the e-newsletters I follow is The Herman Alert. It is published by Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia, and frequently has some interesting insights.

One of the more recent posts was titled Ubiquitous Cell Phones Blocking Relationships. Without going into great detail, the essence of the article was that the use of cell phones (and by implication other electronic communications) has gotten to the point where is was replacing personal relationships and in general going a long way to making the world far more impersonal not to mention impolite.

While people talking on cell phones in restaurants, on trains, and in other places where it really is pretty hard not to be annoyed by both the ringing and the conversations is certainly not anything I would endorse, I thought that this particular piece went a bit overboard in terms of sounding the death knell of modern society.

For example, one of the major complaints of the article was that we have people who work within a few yards of each other who communicate via email rather than getting from their desk and going to talk to someone in person.

On the surface I guess that may seem a bit odd, but frankly, it didn't strike me as that crazy. Maybe that's because we do so much of it here, but in doing so, and as I look around (and yes, even walk around) our office on a daily basis, I don't sense that the use of the technology is causing us to lose the personal relationships that we all value and feel are important.

Just because the technology is there doesn't mean that organizations can't do things to ensure that people stay connected on a personal level as well as an electronic one. In fact, I even believe that the electronic tools can help ensure that organizations "stay connected" and that the "connection" is even more personal, not less.

As an example, in our company, we have an email newsletter that goes to everyone in the company every working day. We use it to not just communicate "what's happening" that day on a business level, but often the "Buzz" as we call it, reports on personal achievements as well as contributions to the business. We have fun with it, and it is the technology that makes it possible.

In short, my feeling is that technology is an enabler of communication, both personal and professional, and not a replacement for personal relationships be they personal or professional.

The last time I looked, we manage the systems, the systems don't manage us. Bad manners are one thing, but organizations don't fail because of bad manners or technology that is "abused". They fail because they are not managed well. If things are too impersonal to the point where people don't care, it's because management doesn't care enough not because some jerk wants to show off his latest Bluetooth gadget.

The Happenstance Theory of Career Planning

David Lawrence has a blog which he calls Ripples which I have followed for some time. He, in turn, follows a blog written by a fellow named Adrian Savage whose blog is titled: The Coyote Within. Had I stumbled across the title I would have taken a look just because I thought it was intriguing. He explains the title and his blog's purpose as follows:

"Coyotes are quick, smart and adaptable; everything a small business should be. And despite decades of persecution, they're still doing what they do best: being themselves.

A blog for sharing insights and thoughts into how to survive and prosper in a harsh world."

He has some interesting things to say about careers and how we do or don't manage them.

As I was reading through Adrian's most recent post and the suggestions he has for his readers (which made a lot of sense it seemed to me) it reminded me that I, like so many of my friends and colleagues, sit here some 40+ years into a "career" and realize that that while for the past 18 years I can say that I have never been more excited about what I am doing for a living, I also realize just how lucky I am to be able to say so, because the fact of the matter is that most of my career I had just let the "world happen to me." I was not proactive at all. Things happened, and I reacted as best I could. A sad commentary, but as life has gone on, I realize that I am far from alone in having managed my career in what I would now call "The Happenstance Theory of Career Planning."

As we all know, times change, and one generation observes and "learns" from another. In my generation, senior level executive jobs was the goal for a lot of us, even if we weren't quite sure why and didn't have any great strategy figured out on how we were going to get there.

In today's world, it feels to me like one of the key lessons learned by those who aspire to senior or executive level jobs is that if you are smart, you will not wait for the "world to happen to you." Indeed, given the type of turnover at the executive level that has surfaced since the early 90's, and if the make up of the membership here at ExecuNet is anything close to being representative today's executives are not sitting around waiting to react to events. The last time I looked at our membership mix, nearly 70% of the membership was made up of executives who were currently employed but who were keeping their both their eyes as well as their options open.

We also publish a comprehensive survey of the executive marketplace every year called the Executive Job Market Intelligence Report, and just one of the telling stats that surfaced this year was the fact that over half of the respondents described themselves as unhappy campers in their current jobs, but even more telling, over 70% said they planned to do something about it in the next six months.

While that doesn't give the nation's employers high marks in terms of figuring out how to retain the talent they have, it does indicate that executive level talent isn't just sitting around waiting for the world to happen to them anymore, and given the swing that we have seen in the market from buyers to sellers, there are going to be a lot of companies hurting for hires in the coming months.

The Wisdom of the Flying Pig

I have always wondered why I was such a sucker for those cool little books on managing that come out every once in a while. I am thinking of things like The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson that was so popular some years back, as well as their more recent one, Who Moved My Cheese, or even Tom Peter's mega hit In Search of Excellence.

Prior to that, I used to look forward to getting these little gems published by Price Pritchett that were chuck full of quotes, affirmations, and pithy inspirational statements about "the right way to manage" in the 20th century. (Shows you how long ago that was!) They had great titles like Carpe Manana.

I still have them, and every now and again a break them out and sit there and nod my head wondering why it still rings so true and remains so hard.

I was reminded of all of this again when there arrived in the mail a cool looking, slick covered 103 page 5 x 8 book that was so slippery I had trouble turning the pages. In it was a note from its author, Jack Hayhow that read:

"Dave, Your post on 2/16, Building Retention the Old Fashioned Way, made me think you might enjoy the enclosed book."

The book was titled:The Wisdom of the Flying Pig, Guidance and Inspiration for Managers and Leaders.

How right he was.

Maybe I liked it so much because it seemed to be written for someone like me where patience is measured in nano seconds and any chapter that is more than 2 pages is a struggle. Maybe it is because it was full of lines like:

Reciprocity is a fundamental law of life and an indispensable lever for management effectiveness.

Managers don't get paid for what they do, they get paid for what their people do.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

Using learnings from Drucker, Dr. Seuss and Cyndi Lauper, and a lot of folks in between, this little book, I thought, did in fact live up to what its author says was its intent on the back cover which simply stated is Word for word, we intend for this little book to the be most productive business reading you've ever done.

I don't know if is was the most productive business reading I've ever done, but nothing else comes to mind at the moment, and even if it wasn't, it's right up there.

I have spent lots more than $17.95 for business books, but I don't think any I have read in recent years provides a better ROI.

You can check it out at www.pigwisdom.com

Writing Checks is the Easy Part

I guess because of the business we're in that maybe we are a bit more sensitive than the average bear about noticing how different enterprises go about their business. When you have your own company, and therefore control over both your time and web real estate, it is interesting to see how different companies use both.

Peter Clayton, the Senior Producer and Director behind Landed Radio aka landed.fm is one of those folks who uses his time and real estate to do more than just promote his enterprise, and to that end, every now and again he shares one of these things he hears about (or is involved in on a personal level).

The most recent of these was a neat idea called Get In Their Shoes. The title by itself was enough of a teaser to get me to want to find out more. The short answer is that it is a concept started by the founders of the International Mentoring Network Organization, and Their Shoes Campaign is a call to action by successful business leaders, athletes, entertainers, and politicians to rally youth and aspiring leaders to lift themselves out of their limiting circumstances by proactively interviewing successful professionals within their own communities.

Aside from the fact that the whole concept struck me as pretty cool, I was also impressed that it involved people's personal time, not just having some sucessful folks write a check.

The fact that the individuals involved, and it's an impressive list, are giving of themselves is what will really have an impact on those they spend time with. My thanks to Peter for passing this along.

An Average Guy or Gal in Poughkeepsie

If Pete Weddle keeps writing about this stuff, I may have to just set up a separate space for commenting on his articles, as he has done it yet again in his Feb. 14 issue of his newsletter where the feature article was cleverly titled "An Average Guy or Gal in Poughkeepsie."

The piece caught my eye for a couple of reasons. First, Pete is a talented author, and secondly his insights and observations on the world of talent acquisition and retention are well worth the listen. I also noted that he had made reference to Tom Friedman's well-deserved best seller The World is Flat, and as soon as I saw that I knew it was something a wanted to read as well.

When I read about and hear about some of the things that continue to take place in companies in our country, I often go to sleep wondering if they are on the same planet as the rest of us. A lot of the time, it feels like a case of collective denial. Indeed, one would think that by now, we would understand that we are indeed competing in a true global market place and therefore be acting with the level of urgency that this reality suggests and which Friedman has so powerfully presented, not just in "Flat" but in his book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" as well, not to mention the running commentary in his columns from time to time.

What I liked about Pete's take on all this was the pragmatism he suggests for the world in which we live, and how dealing with that reality should play out in someone who is looking to manage his/her own career. His message is very clear. If we, as a nation, want to maintain our leadership, and most especially economically, then we need to "out perform" the competition. How right he is.

It seems to me that one of the greatest strengths we have is our competitive spirit, and when it is your standard of living that you stand to lose, one would think that it shouldn't take too much more than understanding that to get your juices flowing, but when one sees what is going on at companies like GM, who seem to be the current poster child for just starting to "wake up" it gets a little scary.

Pete closed out his piece by saying "...the only way to endure in this new World of work is to win, and the only way to win is to be better than the other guy or gal wherever they may live." Winners, if they really want to be world beaters, usually need "coaches." In business we tend to call them supervisors, department heads, functional heads, division heads, SBU heads, SVPs, EVPs, COOs and CEOs and a lot in between. The common term and label is "leader."

At ExecuNet, we have done a survey of the recruiting community for the past 14 years, and one of the questions we have always asked is what are the key characteristics your clients ask you to find. The top answer, every single year has been "leadership.

All you have to be is be a casual observer of the world market place and read books like Friedman's or read pieces such as Pete has done to know that we'd better get on the stick.

Building Retention The Old Fashioned Way

There was a commercial that ran on TV many years ago for one of the brokerage houses where the tag line went something like "We make money the old fashioned way, one investor at a time."

I was reminded of this line when reading The Herman Group's newsletter called The Herman Trend Alert. It is written by Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia whose consulting firm does a good deal of "futurist" visions about the world of work.

The one that arrived this past week was, like so much of what crosses our collective desks these days, focused on retention. It was titled "Focus on the Individual." It is a good read, and in it, they talk about some of the ways in which they feel that focus on the individual will play out in the years ahead. For example, job descriptions will be replaced by "individualized expectation statements." Performance management will get translated more into "linking individual expectations to individual results." Interesting stuff to think about.

As I was reading all this, it also got me to thinking about the managers I have had myself, as well as those I have observed over the years. It took me about a nano second to say to myself, I have known managers who did indeed manage by the individual not by the numbers. I have also known managers who, it seemed to me, not only didn't know how to spell individual, and if they could recognize an individual, the only one that they could relate to was themselves.

I know that retention is the buzz word of the week. I sometimes wonder when or if retention will turn out to be the most used keyword on Google at some point. I guess that's when you know it has really become a "trend."

In any case, my point is that as I think about retention as an issue, it made be think about the tag line "...one investor at a time." The successful managers I have known, the ones I looked up to, the ones I wanted to emulate, were those who treated me like an individual. They listened to me, they helped point out to me those areas where I could improve. They made sure I knew when I had done something right and showed understanding when I did something wrong. I knew they cared about me as a person and a professional even though I didn't always agree with the decisions made.

There is another old saying that goes: "People don't leave companies, they leave managers." An over simplification perhaps, but it my experience, more right than wrong. Sometimes managers are a reflection of the culture, or if not a reflection per se, their behavior is a reflection of how the organization rewards behavior.

If organizations are really serious about retention, then they will start rewarding the behaviors that promote it.

The Next Big Thing in Online Recruiting

Anyone who has been operating in the world of recruiting in general, but certainly in the world of online recruiting per se knows Pete Weddle's name. He has been both a participant as well as an observer of recruiting trends since before the Internet really took off.

He publishes a number of newsletters, books, and articles. I subscribe to both newsletters, and always look forward to what he has to say.

In his Feb. 2 issue of one of the newsletters, he had a piece entitled "The Next Big Thing in Online Recruiting."

Essentially Pete's point of view is that the hoopla over the role of search engines when it comes to recruiting is over-hyped, and there are a number of points that he offers up to argue that the "A" players that everyone says they want to hire are much more likely to use a niche site to look for leads than they are by using a search engine. There are arguments that can be made both ways, and if you follow Joel Cheesman's blog you will already know that he isn't quite so sure.

The answer, of course, is that time will tell us all. Pete's point, if you read his piece is that the "A" level players, especially those who the world labels as a "passive candidate" (whatever that may mean in this day and age) will not be "into" search engines so much as they will be “into” sites that provide them with the content, information and community that engages them on a continuing basis. Given the fact that for the senior executive membership we serve at Execunet this has been a fundamental belief that we have followed for the past 18 years obviously we think Pete is more right than wrong.

Joel, in his comments on Pete's thesis, disagreed to a point. I too have a disagreement, all be it a somewhat minor one. It is simply this. If you read Pete's piece, or many others for that matter, they tend to brush off "active" job seekers from the "A" players or so-called "passive" candidates.

If this were 20 years ago, I would tend to agree that the "A" players were not those who were "active" job seekers. For decades in this country, the person who was "unemployed" (and this was especially true at the executive level) was viewed as an "also ran." It was just one of the many biases that existed then and which along with any number of others still exist, although to a somewhat lesser degree.

With all the down-sizing, M&A goings on, restructurings, right-sizing, or whatever other tags one wishes to put on them, there are literally tens of thousands of executives who are "active" job seekers who, absent the history of the past 20 years or so, would easily be called "A" players or "passive" candidates.

I am not saying that there isn't a difference in the "quality" of candidates for a job. Of course there is. What I am saying, however, is that there is still a tendency to lump "active" job seekers under the heading of "low quality" candidates, and that's just not fair.

If that were the case, among other things, and at least from where we sit, the 3rd party recruiters and companies who have and continue to use ExecuNet as a recruiting resource would have voted with their feet a long time ago.

You're Overqualified

Todd Raphael is the Editor in Chief of the Electronic Recruiting Exchange. He also finds the time (where I don't know) to also have his own blog on the site called appropriately enough: Todd Raphael's World of Talent. He recently posted some thoughts which he titled You're Overqualified. It brought me some smiles as in it he shared some feedback snippets from a career conference he attended in LA, some of which as an aside had to do with housing prices in Southern California. If you are thinking of moving there any time soon, you'll want to check this out for sure, but that isn't why it caught my eye.

His last entry in the post was to share a some cute comebacks to a couple of issues that come up for most candidates all the time. Salary expectations and being "overqualified."

He apparently was talking with Carleen MacKay a Director at Spherion, and here's what he reported she said:

Spherion director Carleen MacKay was asked by one candidate what to tell employers who early on in the process ask him what his salary expectations are. "Say to the employer, 'How much you got?'" she joked.

Another candidate asked what to do when employers tell him he's overqualified. MacKay suggested he say, "I may be overqualified, but I'm an underperformer."

When I saw the joke with regard to being overqualified, it reminded me of the hundreds of folks I have talked to over the years and the reaction they had when they first woke up to the reality of age discrimination.

My own "awakening" came when I was 48 and was in the process of trying to figure out what my next gig was going to be. It took me more than 6 months before it started to dawn on me that my age was an issue. I was speechless (which for anyone who knows me takes a lot). I had just finished running in the NYC marathon for Pete's sake! What in the hell was going on here?

So now it is some 18 years later, and I while I am no longer speechless, I'm still pretty ticked off, and the passing years have not reduced the number of members that we talk to all the time who suddenly face this issue. They are pretty ticked off too.

So what's to do I am often asked. My answer usually goes something like "Well, I am only one person, but here's what I think."

You ultimately have to make choices about how you want to spend your time and energy. At this stage of my life, as we are all too painfully aware, the world doesn't lack for biases of almost any flavor you want to name.

My own feeling is that while we all have them, if you throw out each end of the spectrum (bleeding heart liberals on the left and big time bigots on the right) most of us are somewhere in between which means that while we may have the bias for whatever reason, we are willing to listen and can be influenced. That's where I would spend my time and energy.

Our stats here at ExecuNet clearly show two things:

1. Age discrimination is alive and well, and

2. While it usually takes longer, (the 35 year old ends up getting about twice as many interviews as the 50 year olds) it is not insurmountable. Once one starts to manage the anger and realize that the skill and experience you have acquired over time is simply not available by googling, taking pill or injection, you have a USP that is really worth a great deal. What you bring to the party is matuity, experience, and judgement that has been gained out there in the market place where they shoot with live ammunition.

Said differently, you aren’t going to get past someone’s age bias if you approach your search with an attitude that telegraphs, “I know I’m older, probably overqualified and would really rather be retiring than reinventing myself.” What does convince (at nearly any age), is projecting energy, commitment and genuine interest in the opportunity at hand. An up-to-date shirt, good grooming and eye glasses from this century don’t hurt either.

Creating Qualified Talent - Where Does the Responsibility Derive?

There is a pretty hot and heavy discussion that I have been following on ERE (Electronic Recruiting Exchange) that is focused on the issue surrounding the creation of talent and where the responsibility lies for our collective success or failure. The discussion was initiated by Yvonne LaRose, who has a consulting firm in California called Executive Recruiting Entrances.

I have to admit it is a hot button for me. I am not even sure exactly why. I am not even sure if my feelings are driven by fear, anger, or both; I just know they are there. If you have read Tom Friedman's The World Is Flat then you might be able to relate to from whence some of the "fear" part comes.

The anger piece, and I think I have to stay with anger because I am beyond the frustration stage, I think comes from the fact that as a nation we seem to be doing so little about it. The "it" meaning our failing education system.

Most of us have seen the stats in terms of how poorly our education system ranks vs. Europe and Asia. Any company of any size that has done any serious hiring over the past decade has experienced the mind-numbing task of interviewing "kids" who can barely read or write and who have graduated from colleges and universities whose names most would recognize.

I have two quick points-of-view:

1. In terms of where the responsibility derives for the creation of talent, I think it rests with "us." The Feds are not going to fix this. If and when the majority of “us” in the country feel that fixing the educational system is important enough, those we elect will start doing the enabling, but we are going to have to want it badly enough to invest both the time and money to make it happen.

2. Since the Feds can't and won't fix it, I think the leadership needs to influence and persuade the country that it is in our collective best interest to make the investment. This must come from those who have one of the biggest stakes in the outcome -- namely Corporate America.

If you think there is a War for Talent now based on all the hoopla around demographics, etc., try thinking about what it will be like trying to find all the domestic knowledge workers when those who are the products of our crumbling educational system simply can't compete because they simply don't have the "know how." If you think outsourcing is an issue now, hurry up and wait, it could get far, far worse.

There is an old saying that information is power. I think that's true. Information comes from the knowledge that is acquired over time. Certainly one can learn a great deal through practical experience, but for the information age, education is the key.

You can say what you want to about Bill Gates, but I think he "gets it." Look at where he is spending his personal money. There are probably, I hope, many others of our corporate leadership who are doing the same. I happen to be aware of at least one other only because I was once privileged to have worked for the company he headed and knew him, and that's Dave Kearns, former CEO at Xerox. Ever since he left Xerox he has been on the "education case," and not as a recent convert, as the article in BusinessWeek in 1999 demonstrated. It was entitled: The Mission: David Kearns's Crusade to Fix America's Schools and it still rings as true today as it did then, maybe even more so.

I still very much believe that there is no challenge that this country can't meet when and if it sets its collective mind to the task, but it takes commitment before that can be done, and we are a long way from showing that commitment.

If you were interested in following the discussion on ERE, here's the link:

Creating Qualified Talent - Where Does the Responsibility Derive?

Energy & Careers - Work To Be Done

Ric Taylor is a recruiter friend of mine and the Managing Partner and CEO of a firm called Taylor-Rodgers & Associates in Stamford, CT.

Ric has both passion and compassion on a lot of levels, and maybe these are some of the traits that make him so effective as a recruiter.

Among the things that Ric understands is the fact that life is about giving as well as getting. He lives up to this ideal in a number of ways, including going out of his way to provide information or help to the senior-level executives who make up his involvement with what he calls, “SENG -- Senior Executive Networking Group.”

The information that he shares is mostly focused on market trends of one kind or another that help people to look at things on a more macro level, and more often than not these are things that while they are not secret are not necessarily articles or white papers that we would run across in mainstream media.

The other day, I got the note you see below from Ric, which if read becomes pretty self-explanatory.

Here's what he had to say:

"Our Country never ceases to amaze me with its lack of common sense. Here we are facing great energy supply challenges in a dangerous world and so many are lashing out at all the alternatives that can help free us from dependency. Pressure on Congress has once again doomed chances for drilling in ANWR in Alaska. Monday night's NBC political drama The West Wing was an hour-long attack on nuclear power, one of the best and safest alternatives we have. Not to be left behind, the New York Times had a front-page story yesterday morning railing against the natural gas industry, one of the industries doing a fantastic job of meeting our energy needs. The Times wants their taxes to go up! There's a great idea - let's penalize the industry by sending profits that can be used to find more natural gas to bureaucrats in Washington who can't fuel anything!

The two tragic coal-mining accidents in West Virginia this year have unleashed an attack on that industry as well in spite of the fact that safety records are greatly improved over the last 30 years. In short, the only energy alternatives that seem to be getting any press are solar and wind - but they aren't "perfect" either. The Kennedy family opposes a "wind-farm" in Nantucket (Teddy could fuel it by himself!) because it won't look nice. Meanwhile, how are we supposed to fuel economic growth and keep our families warm? Our people have perfected saying "no," and as a country our "idea tank" seems to be running on empty! Like JFK in the early 1960s when he called for ‘putting a man on the moon and bringing him back safely by the end of the decade,’ our President needs to call for energy independence from unstable foreign sources by 2012!

This can be accomplished; this is not ‘pie in the sky.’ Might I suggest that you read a recent white paper by Mr. R. James Woolsey who was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1993-95, one of the four Presidential appointments that he has held in two Republican and two Democratic administrations; these have been interspersed in a career that has been generally in the private practice of law and now in consulting. This presentation was given to our clients last week. It is the same presentation that he gave to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on 11/15/05.

The white paper, prepared by both Woolsey and Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz deals with the dangers of petroleum dependence and some immediate solutions that can be implemented. The paper is a must read for anyone interested in global balance, national security, economics, business and personal planning. This is a white paper that I hope to get into as many hands as possible; I would encourage you to forward it to others."

So what does this all have to do with executive careers? I think it simply is something that underscores even more why when we have surveyed the recruiting community for the past 14 years and asked what characteristic is the most sought after by their clients the resounding answer is leadership. And while one of the key roles of any leader is to motivate, leaders need motivation too. If you're a leader, you should take the time to read what Woolsey had to say. There is work that needs doing.

The link to download this 10-page paper is: here

Theory vs. Results

Workforce Management Magazine covers a slew of topics that would be of interest to managers at almost any level.

The other day I was drawn to an article titled: Could Your Best New Hire Be a "Recareering" Boomer? It was interesting to me on two levels. First, there was a fair amount of comment in the article that essentially said that keyword searching was still not much help to recruiters. Indeed, there was a quote from Kathy Barton, SVP of Marketing & Product Development for PeopleClick in which she said that technology was not very effective in screening career-changing candidates. She said the best stats indicated that "...the use of keyword searches by the major job boards result in matches less than 10% of the time." The article goes on to talk a bit about the efforts that Peopleclick is making to try and help recruiters match skills and competencies. The problem with all of this, of course, is that once you have the "list" people can, and do, just add them to their own "buzz word" lists and you are pretty much back where you started in terms of trying to assess the characteristics and attributes and "fit" of an individual to the organization's need.

While I was not surprised to read this, it reminded me of the narrowness with which both candidates and recruiters often approach each other.

There are many thousands of "boomers who have been in the rat race for 20 plus years who are very interested in moving into something different and more challenging on many levels. Yet when they try to position themselves in the marketplace, they feel compelled to present themselves to the recruiting world as a series of "buzz words" (i.e. keywords) that put them right back in the mold they are trying to break. Why?

Answer: Because the recruiter's client, who is really worried about the "not invented here" syndrome doesn't dare to ask the recruiter to find someone that doesn't look like a cookie-cutter candidate from within the same industry based on a "list" of what in the technology age become keywords. Sad.

The candidates seem to forget that what has really made them successful in their industry probably doesn't have all that much to do with their industry knowledge as it does with their skills as an executive. Sure, the industry knowledge is a plus, but it is hardly the “be all and end all”. Knowledge can be acquired. Skills have to be developed, but once developed are readily transferable.

What we should be talking about is how the candidate's effectiveness as a manager and the things that includes: their skills as a leader(whatever that may mean), an effective communicator, a motivator, and problem solver.

That a candidate must possess the requisite "skills" for the job is a given, but when it comes to someone who wants to get out of the "box" as many boomers are going to want to do, it isn't a question of skills, it is a question of those with the need taking advantage of the knowledge base that these executives have and not being overly concerned with putting people back in the same sandbox they are trying to escape.

What's in a Logo

Joel Cheesman has a blog on recruitment and search engine optimization. With my level of technical expertise, it took me long conversations with our Tech team before I understood that search engine optimization wasn't just a fancy way of telling me to get my car winterized.

In any case, I read this blog with interest as do beaucoup other folks. He has a fun style to go along with insights that clearly mark him as a keen observer of the recruiting world in general and the online space in particular.

One of his recent posts was titled Kodak's New Logo and a Lesson in Employment Branding. Essentially Joel's point was that companies have more important stuff to be worried about than their logos -- like delivering a quality product and real customer service. He couldn't be more right.

It could be that it is still a "new year" so one still thinks a lot about what has gone before or maybe it was just the way he was driving home the point about logos versus substance that reminded me of why we have stuck to our knitting for the past 18 years. We have been approached many, many times by folks who wanted to partner with us and expand the market we serve. While some of these conversations sounded interesting on the surface, the more we thought about them, the more we came to the conclusion that if we really wanted to serve the senior level executive job marketplace, then we had better just keep our focus right where it has been since Day One.

I looked at our logo and I recalled the discussions that had taken place when we were designing it and agonizing over the different renderings, etc. What we decided was that when it was all over, it really mattered very little. Indeed, there aren't any of us here who even now remember what the other designs were. But there isn't anyone here who doesn't remember who our customer is and why, even with all the ads, blogs, mentions in articles, etc., that as we start 2006, we can still say to people that the single biggest source of new members in ExecuNet comes by referrals from current and/or former members, and when we are asked how we measure our effectiveness, our first response is: by reputation.

Joel's right, there are far more important things than cool looking logos.

Previews of Coming Attractions

This is the time of year when all the talking heads, online and off, TV and print, are making their excuses for 2005 and/or their predictions for 2006. Always fun to see, hear, and read.

The Fed notes that were published recently indicated that they were about finished in terms of pushing up the interest rates and the market closed up 129 for the day. We also see things in magazines like BusinessWeek that tell us things like factories are using nearly 80% of their production capacity; the highest rate in 5 years, and that's without counting what is going on in high tech production output. They also seduce us with info like: The Business Roundtable's CEO Economic Outlook Index rebounded to its 2nd highest level since the survey began in 2002. All very cool and comforting.

Our own data that we have been collecting on the senior executive marketplace uses different data and different words, but comes to the same conclusion. We think 2006, from an economic growth perspective, should be a good one and that means expansion on the jobs front as well.

One of the ways that we see all this is based on the mix of our membership. In bad times, the number of employed but sniffing around members drops as they want to keep their heads down. (Not a great strategy, but human nature nonetheless.) When the market starts to turn, the percentage of these folks who come back to the network rises, and this has been the case here for the past 18 months or so, and doesn't seem to be slowing down, not even over the holidays.

Another way we track this sort of thing, aside from talking with members all the time, is to talk with recruiters continuously as well. For years we have done a survey of recruiters that translates to what we call the Recruiter's Confidence Index and it too continues to rise.

To state the obvious, someone who's employed has to be far more circumspect in terms of how they go about trying to find out if the "grass is greener." True, there a gazillion job boards, but how comfortable someone feels firing off something on a job board is a different issue. Besides, even if they felt reasonably comfortable, responding to a posted opening, it is still about the most competitive situation in which one could place himself.

So what's the alternative? Make a new year's resolution to expand your network. Over the years, when we hear from our members who make a change, 70% of the time they tell us it happened as a result of networking. No time you say? Nonsense. When you have a weapon that is that potent, you can and should make the time.

You are probably the member already of a professional or industry association. Get active! Be more than a name in the member directory. How about personal interests? Chances are the time you spend with family is also tied to organizations, be they political, social, charitable, recreational or faith-based. Get involved!

Woody Allen had it right: "80% of success is showing up."

The Next Great Weapon In The War For Talent

If you are on either side of the recruiting desk, you have probably long ago heard about the Electronic Recruiting Exchange's web site. They really have done an excellent job and trying to provide a platform for those who operate in or are just interested in the recruiting "space" to express points of view. I try to check it out frequently.

Apparently, as do many publishers, at the end of the year they will reprise some articles they feel had a lot to say. One of these was written by Mike Homula, currently the Director of Recruiting for Quicken Loans and ran under the title of The Next Great Weapon In The War For Talentand ran last July.

As I said, if you are really a practitioner you'll probably want to read the whole thing, but since I am not in the recruiting game to the degree that Mike et al are, I took something else from the point he was making in this piece which was, in short, that the next great weapon is you, not technology filled clicks, links, and resume data bases.

Anyway, at the tail end of his article, Mike lists a number of attributes which he feels really make the difference in the kind of relationships that are needed for a recruiter to be able to land exceptional talent in the increasingly competitive market in which we all find ourselves. Among these were things like:

Build credibility;
Consult, Don't Recruit;
Use Energy & Passion as a Weapon

Maybe it is just the nostalgia that comes naturally as the year comes to close and we all start thinking about where we've been and where we're going that struck me when I was reading this, not sure. All I do know is that it made me realize that some 18 years ago I was just one among millions of other executives who had been caught up in the recession that was rapidly pushing us into the 90's. I was also angry and confused at what felt very much like an adversarial relationship between candidates and recruiters.

While I didn't use the same words that Mike used in his article, when we decided to try and make ExecuNet a reality, I now realize that much of what still are were then the driving factors for us were also based on the building of our credibility on both sides of the recruiting desk, approaching every encounter with someone not as a "sales" opportunity, but rather to help where we could help and not worry about the outcome; and finally, to take the anger and channel that energy into a passionate message that we could take something that many felt was a win-lose relationship, and make it win-win. It all seemed to fit.

It will obviously be left to others to judge as to how far along that road we have come in the past 18 years, but when I reflect on the fact that personal recommendation continues to be the single biggest source of referral to us, it does make me feel that we are still on the right track, and that credibility, an attitude that is built on helping, and passion for what we believe have certainly helped to keep us going in the right direction.

Here's to a peaceful and prosperous 2006!

Career Doctors

Over the years, now 18 of them, I have lost count of the number of calls and conversations we have had with the media, be it radio, TV, or print. In almost every case, the common thread is that these are short conversations where you really don't get much of a chance to have a discussion. Most are "sound bites" or situations where the writer is focused on a specific topic, so the "discussion," if you want to call it that, is pretty narrow to say the least. On top of that, by the time it gets edited, etc., often the only thing you recognize versus what you actually tried to say is the name of your company.

Recently, however, I had the chance to have a real discussion on an Atlanta based radio show called The Career Doctors. It airs every Saturday from 12-2 on WGKA 920 AM and via the net at www.920wgka.com. The shows hosts are Craig Allen and Deborah Sawyer. On this particular day, Deborah was on vacation, so her place was taken by Mikal Jackson, the Corporate VP of People and Culture at MillerZell, a retail strategy/design/implementation firm based in Atlanta.

What made this so much fun wasn't the fact that host Craig Allen (his stage name because his real last name is one of those where it would take up the first five minutes of the program to pronounce properly) has been such a long time member of ExecuNet - that just added to the good feeling. No, the real satisfaction came from two things:

1. There was passion and genuine interest in the issues Craig and Mikal wanted to discuss, and

2. I actually had time to answer in depth and explain the context of the responses.

Really nice for a change.

The other thought that came to mind when we finished our discussion was that there was such a program in the first place, and when I started to think about it, this is not the only one. A friend of mine in the NY, NJ, CT tri-state area has a similar program, as did Ed Kelleher and his partner Mitch Wienick down in the Philadelphia area. Hadn't thought about it until now, but Ed's company, Kelleher Associates, has been hosting and facilitating our networking meetings in the metro Philly area for a long time as well, and I have fond memories of participating in their show for the same reasons.

Point being? If there is media that is now focusing on career management, it would indicate that there is both interest and need, and it would not surprise me to see this continue to expand. Indeed, it isn't only the traditional media outlets that are focusing on career issues, all you have to do is check out any of the multitude of websites (e.g. Landed.fm or Weddles to name a couple) and, of course, not to mention blogs, including this one, to see that people, including many senior level executives, care very much about and continue to be curious about seeking answers about career management in this era of You, Inc.

Intimidations & Stress: All in a Day's Interview

Saw an article in a recent issue of the Financial Times in a column called MBA diary. Essentially it was about the stress interviews to which many MBA students are subjected in order to see how they react under pressure.

I had not read about stress interviews for a long time. I guess I was hoping that they really had gone out with high button shoes, hula hoops, and pet rocks. Apparently not, and I think it's too bad.

For sure, we all face pressures in our jobs, and for sure they are of differing degrees, so if the deal here is that they are looking for candidates to man a trading desk, then maybe there is some rationale to it, but even then I am not sure that I am ready to sign up for it as a good indication of what I am getting if I hire the person.

People have been trying to break the code on the making of hiring decisions since as they say in the military, "Christ was a Corporal." No one has done it yet despite the claims one sees on the websites of all sorts of interviewing software. The person who really figures this one out will be the next Velcro-like billionaire.

The interview process itself creates stress, to add artificial stress to it, in my view, simply further distorts the real characteristics and traits that an organization may be attempting to identify in the first place.

Said another way: in my experience, the hires that have not worked out failed not because they were deficient in the technical skills or experience but failed because they were not a good cultural fit. Sometimes that was based on a 1:1 relationship with the boss, sometimes it was broader than that, and the employee's personality just didn't sit well across the organization. Anyone reading this will know exactly what I mean.

The point I am trying to make is simply this: Making a hiring decision that turns out to be a winner is tough enough at best, and since what they call “chemistry” is far more important than anything else to most folks, the more things you can do to discover who the real person is the better off you are. Adding stress that is artificial, I believe, does not give you insights into the real person. It shows you nothing more than how you might behave under the same set of circumstances which are not only not real, but which are not likely to surface in any case.

Holiday Shopping

I don't know about you, but when you get to a certain point in your life, and the people on your gift list are at about the same place, it get harder and harder to figure out something to give to them that you think would really give some pleasure that might bring more of a smile than a sweater, tie, or a bottle of perfume.

Fortunately for me Ellen Stuhlmann who edits the Executive Insider, our free bi-weekly electronic newsletter, came to my rescue with a book recommendation (she recommends one in every issue) entitled Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall of Fame Career in Advertising. The author is Phil Dusenberry, the former chairman of BBDO North America.

When Ellen recommends something, I pay attention. Not only because she has great taste, but also because she always picks books that are not only first class reads, but she also makes sure that the "learnings" in the books are things that help our members become more effective as leaders. In this case, Ellen said "Do you want to learn how to tackle communication problems from a unique angle and hit home runs, not just singles? Treat yourself to this insightful and entertaining book this holiday season!" Apparently lots of people feel about her recommendations as I do since scores of our members were forwarding her suggestion to their friends all over the place.

Thanks Ellen

Career Insurance

Pete Weddle has been keeping tabs on recruiting trends since well before any of us knew that the Internet was something other than a new bar-restaurant in our home town. Among other things that Pete's company publishes, he has a couple of free electronic newsletters, and, as usual, the one that crossed my desk this week, had some interesting commentary - in this case he was writing about the importance for job seekers and their use of search agents.

Pete had a number of key points to make about why if people were not using an search agent that they ought to be. I certainly agree with him, if for no other reason, than it helps people to be both proactive in terms of managing their careers, and it also helps to leverage one's productivity.

Pete prefaced his remarks by wondering how many of the employees at Merck might have been using online job search agents since they now knew, along with the rest of us that somewhere along the line there are 7,000 of them are not going to be there too much longer.

When I was reading all this it reminded me again of one of the prime driving forces that gave birth to ExecuNet which was an awakening by many of us that the world of work had changed, and there was great truth in the phrase: "nobody cares about you more than you." Time and time again, I talk to members who tell me that when they originally joined us they did so because they just been impacted by a downsizing, a merger, or restructuring. Over time, however, they say that they remain a member for one of the same reasons that Pete mentions in his piece on search agents - specifically, they view it as "career insurance." Career insurance is one way we talk about it, another is that if you are not doing things to proactively care for your career, you are just waiting for the world to happen to you - and you can bet that it will.

Over the years, it would certainly seem that people have internalized the concept of career insurance, at least by what we see here. When I look at our current membership as we close out 2005, roughly 70% are currently employed and they have their "ALERTS" set,

And given the state of the world of work in which we live, it also makes me wonder if the reason we had our system built so that members could actually set up to three separate alerts for themselves rather than just one was because if we have learned nothing else, we have learned that there is indeed truth to the old phrase "you can't have too much insurance."

Tolerance of Jargon

Most of us are so time constrained and "brand-washed" (if there is such a phrase) to the WSJ, that it borders on being an epiphany to discover that there are actually other newspapers that deal with the world of business.

I have to confess that I while I am still a "loyal" brand-washed Journal reader, during the past year I was introduced to the Financial Times by Lauryn Franzoni, our Vice President and Executive Editor. I haven't gotten around to asking her when she became addicted to FT, but my guess is it was when she was running a publishing company in London a few years back. No matter, she turned me on to the FT, and while I still don't seem to have the time to read the Journal every day, much less the Financial Times, Lauryn very kindly sends long an article or two that she thinks would be of interest.

For example, last July it was Lauryn that turned me on to Martin Lukes Chief Personal Ethics Champion aka Martin.Lukes@a-bglobal.com. Maybe it's just because I am such a fan of British humor or have been gone from the big-time corporate world long enough that some of what goes on just makes be laugh until the tears come. Not sure, all I know is that I have been a faithful reader of Martin Lukes' business happenings every since.

Well, now it seems there is another one! Lauryn stops by and showed me a column in FT's Business Life section written by Lucy Kellaway that was titled: Why there has been an uptick in my tolerance of jargon. Unfortunately, the FT has gone the route of the NY Times and you now have to pay to read the work of their regular columnists, so I can just give you a link so you can check out this particular piece. Suffice it to say I thought it was pretty funny (otherwise why am I taking the time to blog about it).

In the column she directs the reader to a couple of books on business jargon. One is by, as she calls him "...a frightfully nice man with a PhD from Oxford" and is titled: Ducks in a Row, an A-Z of Offlish. To give you an idea of the author's approach, Lucy tells her readers that in his introduction to the book, the author tells us "As offlish is highly contagious, it is vital that these people are mocked, ridiculed and undermined in order to prevent its spread." I love it!

On the other side of the pond, comes the U.S. entry written by Ron Sturgeon, someone that Lucy describes as a "...former scrap-car dealer." This one is titled: Green Weenies and Due Diligence. She says the book as some 1200 terms and phrases many of which I assume covers the well-worn territory that with which most of us are all too familiar. She did, however, offer up a couple of newer ones (at least to me) such as "chair plug" and "square-headed girlfriend." The first being someone who simply sits in a meeting contributing nothing (aka an empty suit?) and the "girlfriend" turns out to be your PC.

What does it all mean? Nothing of course, but as we struggle through the crashing and thrashing of getting to our numbers by year-end along with creating our numbers for the year coming, it's kind of fun to take a side trip to columns like Ms. Kellaway's.

Working to Live or Living to Work?

Last Tuesday's WSJ had an interesting column by Loretta Chao titled, For Gen Xers, It's Work to Live. One of the key points it made had to do with the gap between the "wants" for the Gen Xers and the Baby Boomers (and beyond) for whom they work.

It isn't that the observations the reporter made by providing all sorts of stats from almost any survey you want to mention that made it very clear that the Xers most valued "perk" was work schedule flexibility. That came as no surprise. What caught my attention was that many of their bosses still think that "by the book" structure is still what makes the world go round.

Any company or manager on the planet who has not yet gotten the word that as our economy has continued to gain traction the GenXers (and yes, a good percentage of the Boomers as well) are starting to vote with their feet in a big way must not have their EKG machines turned on.

Here at galactic headquarters we see these things manifesting themselves in any number of ways as the senior-level executives who make up our community report to us on what is often an hourly basis things like: people "landing" at a significantly higher rate; new members who report their status as "currently employed and thinking about making a change" to name a couple. They are, of course, responding to what they see in terms of the increased demand (e.g. our postings from recruiters are up close to 40% YTD).

So my question is this: If all those who say they are making a change because they want to find a work environment and/or a culture that is more in tune with their "wants", to what degree do they "get it?" Do they "get it" enough to really work to transform the cultures of the organizations to which they are going so that they meet the real needs of those already there and as part of which and as members of the executive team, they will be trying to recruit and retain?

If one examines the behavior of organizations in the past as they have attempted to adapt to the changing values of differing generations, it explains all too clearly why when it is a seller’s market that retention is always a big time issue. And the "war for talent" stats notwithstanding, it ain't just about numbers of warm bodies available.

There is in all this, it seems to me, both lesson and "learning." The companies who have not made addressing retention issues a strategic priority must be made up of people who believe the old saying: "History is something that happens to other people."

It would be my hope that in today's environment where we have the chance to apply both lessons and "learnings" that companies will be more inclined to view it as Alphonse De Lamartine put it: "History teaches everything including the future."

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

In the Enron and SOXly era, it only seems appropriate that the ethics gurus would be getting some "testing" questions on a wide variety of topics.

Here's one that I saw the other day on David Perry's Gurrilla Marketing for Job Hunters blog. The question posed to readers was this:

As a candidate what would you do if the company you were interviewing with wanted to offer you a job but told you that they did not want the headhunter who made the introduction to get paid?

Headhunters cost a lot of money, companies are trying to save money any way they can, you want and need a job. What's the "right" call?

Since the question is already posed on the Gurrilla blog, if you prefer to share your thought both here and there, you can do so by going to the Guerrilla Marketing blog and put in your two cents worth on the entry: Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

No Monkey Business When It Comes To You, Inc.

I got a chance the other day to read a piece on CEO turnover that came via Challenger, Gray & Christmas and via CNN/Money. Isn't the Internet great?

In any event, the article said in part "So far this year, 1,110 CEOs have left their jobs, surpassing even the dotcom exodus of 2000. October saw 96 departures, 113 percent higher than during October 2004, including 15 health-care CEOs and a dozen chief executives from the technology sector." This was not a huge surprise since we all have seen the stats that talk about the average tenure of a CEO these days is something less than three (3) years.

What got me thinking was that when it comes to managing one's career in this new world of "Me, Inc.," you had better not only be proactive in your thinking, but you had better be “up” on the tools and techniques that will help put you in the position to compete and not just be part of the pack. While it is obviously encouraging to all of us that the economy still seems to be moving forward in spite of high energy prices, hurricanes, and the understatement of "foreign entanglements," it doesn't change the fact that moving on to the next challenge is anything but easy. Indeed, with this being the case, and in this environment, it still amazes me on a daily basis that so many senior-level executives continue to approach the job market and managing their careers in ways that don't seem to recognize that the world as moved so far beyond "Dear Sir, I saw your ad in the Wall Street Journal" that it doesn't even show in your rear view mirror.

This is just one of the reasons that I was so taken with David Perry's new book called Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters. After I had read a draft, I not only thought the book was going to help an awful lot of people, but I specifically wanted to see if we could get him to put a special live webinar together to help our members become familiar with some of what the book had to offer and also would give them a chance to talk with him. Fortunately, we were able to "score" on both fronts.

When executives are out of work, one of the first things one often hears them say is that they plan to "work with a recruiter.” Even after all these years it still amazes me that somehow they have the notion that a recruiter is the "answer" when almost nothing could be further from reality. In the environment that will continue for at least as far as most of us can see, anyone looking for a senior-level executive job had better hone in on and become an advocate of “do-it-yourself career management.” The tools that Perry has put together in the book make it the best DIY kit that I have come across in a long time.

Don't Miss the Next Strategic Turn

Don't Miss the Next Strategic Turn is the title of an article recently posted on the Electronic Recruiting Exchange and written by Yves Lermusiaux who is the President of iLogos.com -- now known as Taleo Research -- a company that provides consulting services to corporations on staffing. Yves makes some interesting points as he takes the reader though a thought process that among other things reminds us of the following:

"In 2000, only 27% of the Fortune 500 directed all candidates wishing to respond to job positions posted to the corporate careers website to a purely online response mechanism. But in 2005, 77% of the Fortune 500 do not give jobseekers the option of responding offline to job positions posted to the corporate careers website."

If I were a candidate in this day of "personal branding" this sort of news -- even though I probably would have guessed it to be true -- would still not be welcome. Not only unwelcome, but it would also make me ponder even harder, how to get out of the universal "molds" and "boxes" and get a potential hiring manager to start to see all the problem solving solutions I could bring?

Technology is great. It's exciting, and it certainly helps on the productivity side in more ways than most of us can count, but I still think that when it comes to getting someone's attention, we have yet to find a replacement for what we like to call "being remembered and being referred."

It still amazes me even after so many years of being on one side or the other of the recruiting world that even those of us who are seeking senior-level executive jobs see the boards that seduce us with "come see us, we have more jobs than there are stars in the sky" or some other equally enticing come-on that makes me want to say "great, I will simply click, send, and wait for my Blackberry to wake me in the middle of the night with an offer."

I'm certainly not saying that people don't actually get jobs by answering ads. Of course they do or there would be no ads, but when it comes to setting yourself apart, and getting to a hiring manager without rolling the electronic dice, by far and away the most productive "branding" tool known to man is the care and feeding of your personal and professional network.

The Mayonnaise Jar & Two Cups of Coffee…

Like so many of these things that people share with eachother, I don't know who the author is, but as we all pause for Thanksgiving, it just felt like not a bad thought to share. I do know that our Director of IT, Darryl thought enough of it to send it along to me, and since I got it I have shared it with the other members of our staff in a daily internal newsletter we call ExecuNet Buzz.

The Mayonnaise Jar & Two Cups of Coffee

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar ... and the 2 cups of coffee ..

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaises jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous, "Yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, " I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life."

"The golf balls are the important things - your God, your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full." "The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car." "The sand is everything else -- the small stuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you."

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal."

"Take care of the golf balls first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

Why Drucker Still Matters

I think that most people in senior level executive jobs who are my age, and those who are within 35 or so years plus or minus certainly know who Peter Drucker was. For those who haven't heard of him, you may have noticed he was on the cover of BusinessWeek this week. If you read the cover story article, hopefully you gained some appreciation for his insights.

There was a sidebar in this article that featured just a few of Drucker's observations. They are all, as they say; "deep" but one in particular caught my eye. It was on leadership, and said the following:

"Don't ever think or say "I." Think and say "we." Effective leaders know they have authority only because they have the trust of the organization. They understand that the needs and opportunities of an organization come before their own needs."

How many trillions of dollars and been spent trying to figure out what leadership is and how to create or at least develop it I would not begin to know. All I do know is that in almost every survey I have ever seen, including
our own, when you ask employers what characteristic is the most critical the answer is always "leadership."

For me, and to borrow a phrase a bit it is like pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. I think that is true for most of us, and while Dr. Drucker's statement might not cover it all, starting with "we" rather than "I" is a heck of start.

People Who Make An Impression

I think that most of us can reflect on various aspects of our lives and in looking at each segment come up with the names of those who have a significant impact or left an indelible impression.

Probably one of the easiest reflections comes from your education. There was a particular grammar school teacher you remember either because they took you under their wing or scared you to death, but either way you can still see and hear them as if it were yesterday.

You move onto high school or college, and there are usually two to four that stand out in your mind. “Role models” I think they call them, and for me at least, the impact they had on me remains today. Indeed, so powerful were certain teachers I had in high school, that despite any number of wonderful professors I had in college, it is my high school that I support when in comes to annual giving time. I know that had my high school not done for me what they did, the closest I would have come to college would be watching NCAA games on the tube.

It is, I think, the same way in business. There is usually one boss that stands out (for good or ill) or a colleague or two that are really special, and when it comes to professional development programs that we have attended, there are one or two speakers we have heard over the years that stick with you the same way as teachers, classmates, or colleagues.

Peter Drucker, who passed away last Friday, was one such person for me. I did not know him personally, but I vividly recall that early in my career I was given the chance to hear him speak at NYU. It has been too many years now for me to recall much of the specifics of his talk that day, but I sure remember the point he was making. Indeed, I never fotgot the image that he projected up on the screen out of my mind, and this was long before PowerPoint, so what I am talking about was a single black and white transparency that sat on top of an overhead projector that is now likely in the Smithsonian.

What he had put up on the screen was a list of the Fortune 50 at the time, and he began his remarks by saying that in 20 years only one or two would still be on the list. Young and impressionable person that I was, I thought he was crazy. It took me a long time before I realized how right he was, and it has stuck with me ever since. It isn't only that nothing is forever, but when it comes to business, his writings on marketing still ring remarkably true.

My guess is that many of us saw the piece in the WSJ on Drucker along with the side bar that quoted a number of his "lessons." While I had not seen or heard them in a while, when I read them again it reminded me of how much even my brief exposure to him had left such a profound impression. I found myself reading these "lessons" and realized that both had become basic beliefs in terms of how we have tried to run our business. These were:

"Management is about human beings." Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant."

"True marketing starts out...with the customer, his demographics, his realities, his needs, his values. It does not ask, ‘What do we want to sell?’ It asks, ‘What does the customer want to buy?’"

Thanks Prof. Drucker. Rest in Peace.

Unhappy Campers

I was checking out a blog the other day called Recruiting.com and the post of the day entitled, "Easy Pickin's." It was essentially telling recruiters that if they were looking to recruit middle managers, the low hanging fruit was made up of thousands of middle managers who, according to a recent survey done by Accenture, were very unhappy campers.

One of the cute lines in the blog entry said it this way: "...you can't swing a cat in any large corporation without hitting an unhappy middle manager." It certainly went a long way to painting a very vivid word picture of the stats included in the survey such as: 58% of the respondents said they would consider changing jobs while 30% indicated they were actually actively looking for a new gig. This was up from 21% in the same survey last year.

While I was reading over the comments, it reminded me that it wasn't only middle managers who were "not feeling the love" as they are wont to say on Sports Center. I don't know how long Accenture has been running their survey, but at ExecuNet we have been running one for the past 13 years – 14 in January. What struck me was that a lot of this must, as they also say "flows downhill" because our membership is made up of senior-level executives who are also plenty interested in their careers, but the last time we asked, some 61% of our respondents said they were not happy in their current jobs, and a whopping 77% said they planned to do something about it in next six months.

Based on the number of "landings" that our members are reporting on a monthly basis, it would appear they are making good on the threat, and while the grass may or may not be greener, they care very much about finding that out for themselves.

Fun, Profits, and Causes

There is so much hype these days around the renewed war for talent that it becomes more and more difficult to find someone who you really feel has something to say that "sticks with you."

Those who recently attended IACPR's (International Association of Corporate & Professional Recruiters) national conference in NYC, however, had the chance to hear a keynote address given by Greg Lucier, the CEO of Invitrogen, a 5,000 employee company and leading player in the world of life sciences. Lucier is also an alum of GE, which might help explain why IACPR asked him to talk about talent acquisition and retention or as he titled his talk, "Which Talent Issues Keep CEOs Up At Night."

While I was not able to attend the conference myself, several of our staff did, and as a member of IACPR, I got a chance to read Greg's speech in the association's September newsletter. I wish I could have heard it live.

He made so many points that rang true, e.g. "...The first is that nobody really wants to work for a company, they want to work for a cause -- something bigger than they are that will make them feel good about where they work and spend so much of their time. The second is that the truism -- working for a cause not a company -- is radically changing the workforce of today from one that was in search of excess, to one that is in search of meaning, that wants to give back. Events like 911, global terrorism, the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina have left an indelible mark on all of us. Today's workforce wants to be committed to something more than just profits." "...And my theory is that great companies stand for a principle, and great people will want to flock to them." We hear comments from our members that speak to this issue on a daily basis when they talk to us about what's next in their lives.

Another point that Lucier made that hit me was when he not only was speaking about a company culture, but also about a company "...having merchandise that also stands for something." Not to sound too parochial about, but it made me think about what ExecuNet was all about. People so often want to put us in the "commercial job board" space when in fact, that really isn't what we are about. Sure, we have very senior-level executive jobs, have been for 18 years, but that is only one element of what we are all about. If job postings were all we were about, we'd be out there scraping and publishing along with the rest of them, but we learned long ago that ads, even hundreds and hundreds of them in one big pot, is not how most executives make changes in their professional work lives. They make them via real relationships that are built on trust over time. So, what we set out to do was to build a community that allowed executives to come together with each other (and if they wanted to) with the search community in what we call "in confidence and with confidence."

Lastly, Lucier also threw out a wonderful phrase that I thought captured the essence of what would draw people to any organization as well as help keep them there once they were on board. The phrase was "...reputation (what you do when people are watching and integrity (what you do when they aren't)." The point being, of course, that the former, if it's good can only come from living by the latter.

How many of us as leaders have been asked the following question by someone considering either buying our product or service or considering joining our organization: "How do you measure your success?"

I have to admit that it made me smile inside because our answer has always been "by reputation."

TV Doesn't Begin To Do It Justice

This past Friday, Peter Clayton, Landed.fm's senior producer/director came by our office to tape an interview with our President & COO Mark Anderson and myself. He wanted our take on the current trends in the executive jobs marketplace. Both Mark and I had met Peter as the result of prior interviews with Landed.fm, which if you haven't checked it out, I would strongly urge you to do so. They are doing some really cutting edge stuff in the career management arena, not only in terms of the content they are providing, but from a technology perspective in how it is made available to listeners.

The purpose in bringing all this up here is not to drum up folks to run and listen to the interview (I actually have no idea when it is due to air) but to share some thoughts about a subject Peter, Mark, and I were talking about both before and after the taping.

What we were talking about was Katrina, New Orleans, Gulfport, and the whole aftermath of this catastrophic event. We got on the subject because Peter had just returned from the area as the result of a film assignment he was on for Coca Cola.

I guess what struck me so deeply was the difference in hearing someone talk about their impressions and feelings about something which they had viewed with their own eyes on site versus the feeling one gets from looking at the same scene between dinner and dessert while listening and watching Brian Williams.
It isn't that you don't have feelings of deep sorrow and compassion for what you see on TV, it just seems that the "noise level" on TV when it comes to the "sorrow and compassion" scale seems so constant, consistent and at such high volume all the time, that it makes one lose perspective. It's like you look and listen, and say to yourself, "Wow, that's just horrible” or “I have no idea what I would do if that happened to me and my family, but man I’m so glad it didn't" and then asking your wife what she did with the sports section.

Listening to Peter describe what he saw, looking into his eyes one could see the scars and wounds. His tone of voice was filled with the emotion that can only come from seeing something that was just overwhelming in terms of one's ability to digest the sights, sounds, and smells of disaster "live and in color."

I used to think that I had empathy. Now I wasn't so sure.

Things To Aspire To

It is hardly a military secret that for the most part, professional development rests with the person. This is one of the reasons that we decided long ago to form an alliance with the Harvard Business Review in order to provide it as a resource to our members. Anyone who has been around business for any length of time is well aware of the quality of what they publish.

Thanks to this resource, and to my partner Mark Anderson, I recently had the chance to read a piece by Jim Collins (the same Jim Collins who wrote the current best-seller, From Good to Great) titled, Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve. When Mark first passed it along suggesting it might be a good article to blog about, I thought, maybe that was just a nice way of saying that there was a message in it for me, and that I needed to "shape up," but I didn't need an article to tell me that. Indeed, at my age, I figure I am so far beyond repair that all the articles in the world wouldn't help much. Once I read the piece, however, I agreed with Mark that it had much to say to anyone, no matter where they might be in their career.

The debate on the subject of whether leaders are born or made may run second only to the debates that rage around Big Bang theories, stem cell research, abortion rights, the pros and cons of the Yankees trying to buy championships, and trying to determine if "Fair and Balanced" is an accurate tag line for Fox news. In other words, it is a debate that is not likely to be decided anytime soon.

That being said, it doesn't mean that people are not still very interested in the subject, and continually try to break the code. In this article, Collins says he can't break that code, but he does say that of the 1,435 companies that appeared on the Fortune 500 since 1965, only 11 made it onto the list of companies that had level 5 leaders at the time that the companies faced a pivotal time in their history. It is fascinating stuff.

In the face of such stats, it makes it pretty clear that the odds of any of us making it to a level 5 are pretty remote, but with the information that he shares in this article in terms of the characteristics of a level 5, anyone who aspires to a leadership role or who is in a leadership role and is committed to trying to improve his/her performance as a leader would do well to invest the time to read what Prof. Collins has to say.