Toilet Paper effort.

Here is the fifth part of the insight into the world of talent search and recruitment processes. Don't forget to comment and check out the full version of the ebook here.

“One time, Ben went to a big bash at the Waldorf. Milten’s there. They immediately started talking business. He said to Milton, ‘how much are you paying for toilet paper?’ And Milton said so much. Ben was buying his quite a bit cheaper, and he knew that you want to be not just cheaper but right. Milton said ‘yeah, but that’s the best I can get.’ And Ben said ‘Excuse me,’ and he got up, left the black-tie benefit, drove out to his warehouse in Long Island, and started tearing open cartons of toilet paper and counting the sheets, because he was suspicious. He knew that Milton could not be paying too much by that wide a margin, and therefore that he must be getting screwed himself somehow on toilet paper.

                “And sure enough, the vendors were saying there were five hundred sheets per roll in one of these things. And there weren’t. He was getting screwed on toilet paper.”

                Buffett knew that he wanted to be in business with the kind of guy who would leave a black-tie party to count sheets of toilet paper.

Warren Buffett, The Snowball

 and the Business of life

  If Hamish Purdey were running a retail store he’d be leaving black-tie parties to analyse toilet paper. I meet Purdey in Ffastfill’s ground floor offices, a stone’s throw from their financial services clients and the square mile’s most incongruous landmark: A croquet lawn. The chrome domed, Australian CEO doesn’t spend much time playing croquet but has grown Ffastfill to a company with a seventeen million pound turnover and upwards of two hundred staff across four time zones.

  Purdey is quick to establish the culture of Ffastfill. “Commission carrying salespeople are a no-no,” he says and executives are expected to keep their phones on at all times. He’s quick to point out that scaling a tech business is not nine-to-five and building a world class team of technical staff, across four development centres has taken a great deal of work. This rhetoric, although interesting, doesn’t distinguish him a great deal from other ambitious technology CEOs. His attention to detail does.

  Purdey realised that retaining the team he had built was a priority in continuing rapid expansion. Salary was a key cause for concern, not least because of the well- documented ballooning salaries in offices next door to Ffastfill. The traditional approach would have been to download two or three generic salary surveys. Instead, Purdey and his senior team analysed the accounts of the ten companies competing or operating in derivatives to work out how much each firm paid in salaries annually. They analysed each company’s headcount, the type of employees and estimated what each employee was being paid. Having analysed the averages, it transpired that it wasn’t possible for their competitors to consistently overpay for Ffastfill’s talent. This kind of in-depth, laborious data analysis makes Purdey’s decision making far more effective.

As Purdey demonstrates with Ffastfill, rapid growth is often the result of “toilet paper effort:” Detail orientated, laborious effort that goes above and beyond a job description.  It may not be fun combing through ten balance sheets but it’s this type of effort that will help Ffastfill beat their competitors and even the competitors that don’t exist yet.

First Who, then Woo

Hello and Welcome to the fourth chapter of the ebook. We would like to take this opportunity to thank those who responded and shared their thoughts with us about the latest publications in our blog. Don't forget you can now find the full version of the ebook here.

“Hiring is easy and fast and is basically a retail operation. Recruiting is artful and slow and is essentially a direct marketing effort…. Recruiting raises the bar because it demands you have a job worth quitting for.”

Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog

“80% of participants believed that advertising vacancies were either not important or completely unimportant in sourcing A players.”

Phil Mochan is everything a serial entrepreneur should be: feisty, fun and, to the casual observer, slightly mad. The Scottish contrarian started his first business at age eleven, breeding mice. Thankfully, a career spent crisscrossing media and telecoms has been far more lucrative. After three successful exits he co-founded Digital Governance and is quite clear that adverts have not been the driver in sourcing quality engineers or commercial staff. “Nepotism is usually better,” he said with a half smile when we met at a bar overlooking London Bridge. As with much of Mochan’s off the cuff commentary its difficult to tell where the humour stops and the truth begins.

Mochan’s view of job advertising as unimportant is shared by 80% of our participants. With such a prevailing mood of dissatisfaction it’s odd that so many seemingly hard-nosed technology companies persist with adverts. The reason is based more on human nature than business objectives.

As we have discussed, technology companies often have unplanned immediate vacancies. Online job boards offer thousands of candidates-now! However, just because the method is easy and immediate does not make it effective. Yet, many recruiters and HR departments persist not because they are impressed with the candidates but because presenting some candidates to senior management is better than presenting none. In an economy that's stagnating, HR and recruiters are fighting for their existence, which engenders timidity rather than risk taking. The belief is that if you interview safe, available candidates you can’t be fired. Yet, innovation has no place for timidity. Technology companies that shy away from mavericks, jagged resumes, overachievers and inexperienced underdogs will lose.

To attract extraordinary talent you must make extraordinary efforts. When Wayne Rooney changes clubs does he post his CV on Monster? Star computer scientists or salespeople don’t either.

Job advertising makes some companies believe they can advertise, assess and still make happy hour. Unfortunately, giving your recruitment team access to multiple job boards is like giving car keys, cocaine and hookers to teenage boys: initially fun, eventually disastrous.

Instead of advertising the mantra must be: First who, then woo. Find your five-to-one candidates and persuade, court or seduce over time that your company should be their soul mate.  Advertising your vacancies is as seductive as a 3am visit to a kebab van and soul mates don’t like kebabs.

365 recruiting

We hope you have enjoyed reading the chapters of the ebook by Rob Symes thus far. Today we present you with the third chapter of his inspiring work. Feel free to leave your comments below and let us know your views on processes of recruiting for technology and high growth companies. You can now also access the full version of the ebook here.

365 recruiting

 “After the game… early edition newspapers with SUPER BOWL CHAMPS in bold letters were being displayed on the field… It was a celebration, but the team builders in the group were still thinking what was next.

‘For whatever reason what stood out more than the parties and parades was the reality of how far behind we were’, Pioli says.”

Michael Holley. War room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the art of building the perfect team

American Football is a laboratory for studying recruitment. Soccer is not.

Both are worth billions of dollars, highly competitive and highly scrutinised but crucially American football has a salary cap. When a rich soccer team, like Chelsea, wants success they open their chequebook and just buy players. If those players don’t work, they buy more players. When money is no object, mistakes don’t matter which is why Chelsea can pay thirty million and a hundred and twenty thousand pounds a week for Andrei Shevchenko to fail.

American football teams can’t overpay for players because if they overpay in one position they will have to underpay in another. In the stark world of the salary cap, NFL(1) teams live and die on their player selections. As Bill Polian, Vice Chairman of the Indianapolis Colts, says when discussing his choice of Peyton Manning over Ryan Leaf for the Colts quarterback position “If I had got that wrong…I’d be across the street, parking cars(2).” Five years after that selection, Manning was the named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. Leaf no longer plays professional American Football.

Foreign billionaires do not fund most technology companies. Therefore, like the NFL, tech companies live and die on selection. 

There are two crucial differences when assessing how NFL teams and technology companies recruit:

Ø   NFL teams source and assess candidates continuously throughout the year. Technology companies source and assess candidates intermittently usually when they have a direct recruitment need.

Ø  Although NFL teams have extensive scouting teams (the equivalent of internal recruiters) the General Manager (the equivalent of the CEO) is constantly involved and often drives the process. In technology companies the CEO and executive team are often removed from the process after deciding on a job description until they take part in a final assessment.

In Michael Lewis’s book, The Blind Side, College Head Coach Nick Saban flew hundreds of miles to visit star high school American Football player Michael Oher at his home. While trying to persuade Oher to play for Louisina State University, he charmed Oher’s mother by commenting on the material of her curtains.

If technology companies change their mind-set from stop-start to constant and their executive team from hands off to hands on, the competitive rewards are bigger than an NFL team’s payroll.

Let’s take a hypothetical situation: A tech  firm with 100 employees, double-digit growth and the expectation that they’ll need to recruit at least twenty members of staff during the next year.  Now I would prefer every one of these employees to be involved in recruitment but some might call this unrealistic. Let’s just use the senior team of five: the CEO, CTO, COO, VP of Sales and VP of HR. Let’s conservatively say they work 250 days during that year and instead of spending whole days on recruitment they just spend twenty minutes purely on sourcing prospective candidates. Ten minutes on building a relationship with a source, ten minutes on speaking to a referral. They do this every day, without fail.

Over the course of the year they will collectively have spoken to 5,000 prospective candidates and because it was purely through referral their quality is to some extent prequalified. Instead of advertising and scrambling for recruits they have a pool of 5,000.

Most companies will complain that senior executives don’t have time for this. NFL executives are busy too. But there is a quantum leap in effort, professionalism, thoroughness, attention to detail and assessment between technology companies and the NFL.

Most technology companies will continue to recruit B players because recruiting A Players is so damn hard. However, the smart tech companies will see this as opportunity

---

[1] The NFL is the National Football League, the professional form of American football.

[2] From George Anders book, The Rare Find

The Strength of Weak Links.

Below you can find the second chapter of the book by Rob Symes "First Who, then Woo", Enjoy!

The Strength of Weak Links

“All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others”

George Orwell. Animal Farm

Definition of a Source “ A place, person or thing from which something comes or can be obtained. A person who provides information.”

  Weak links in a career context was thoroughly researched by sociologist Mark Granovetter when he asked a random sample of professionals who had just switched jobs how they found their new opportunity. Of those, who had found their job through a contact, Granovetter then asked how frequently they saw that contact. He asked participants whether they saw the person often (twice a week) occasionally (more than once a year but less than twice a week) or rarely (once a year or less). Only 16% of individuals had found their job through a person they saw often. The rest found their job through a contact they saw occasionally (55%) or rarely (27%). In Granovetter’s words, the contacts that referred jobs successfully were “weak ties.”

  Granovetter’s explanation for this was simple. The stronger your relationship with someone the more likely you are to know what they know: their friends, their restaurants and their job opportunities. This interconnectedness is limiting because you all have the same information. In contrast, weak links are outside the inner circle. They can uniquely serve as bridges to other worlds and pass on information and opportunities you would not hear about otherwise.

  Weak links are also a highly effective method of locating candidates. However, exploiting weak links cannot be done on a whim. It requires a fundamental shift of mind-set.

  Building sources that can bridge you to weak links is different from building traditional friendships. The criteria you use to build friendships is not only unrelated to building a network of sources but will actually harm your chances of being referred to weak links. When you build friendships you tend to focus on similarity, shared interests and what experiences you can have in the immediate future. In contrast, when you are building sources you attempt to look for different personalities, diverse interests and focus on the long term.

  The long-term focus is crucial. People are inherently self-interested but also reciprocal. It is illogical to expect someone you met yesterday to introduce you to his or her Rolodex. There is no benefit to them and even if they like you, they do not trust you. The key to building the relationship with your source quickly is to do something genuine for them first. If it can be a shared experience so much the better. Physical and mentally strenuous experiences are much better at building a trusting relationship than impersonal emails. Here is a recent example.   

I met Scottish entrepreneur and MD of Anvil mobile, Ian Phillip, at a post conference dinner. On the face of it we had little in common. We are twenty-five years apart, Ian is far more technologically savvy than I and we weren’t interested in buying each other’s services anytime soon. However, I quickly realised that Ian could be an ideal source because of his background running large sales teams for telecoms companies. It also helps he’s great fun to be around.  

In the three months that followed we exchanged emails, he appeared on our weekly podcast, I discussed his daughter’s post graduation plans with her over coffee and we arranged to play golf.  

Now during this time, I happened to be asked by a client to find a VP of sales. Remember, in my business, clients are difficult to win and devilish to keep so I was keen to find the best candidate possible to help them succeed and gain repeat business. Clients also expect speed. Reactions like job advertising and cold calling prospects is not only time consuming but usually ineffective for this kind of specialised position. Planning trumps reactions.

On that night I was calling the twenty people I’d designated as sales sources, I called Ian who gave me three names. One candidate only accepted the approach because of my referral from Ian. He is approached at least once a day by recruiters. He ended up being the client’s new VP. No one worthwhile is easy to find.

Just because you are connected on LinkedIn does not mean you have a worthwhile relationship. Just because you have a business card does not mean you’ll get a referral. In a world where weak links still trump technology it’s not about who you know, but how well you know them.

The Latest edition of Ambitions is out!

Here is the latest edition of Ambitions. We hope you'll enjoy reading it. Click here to view the original format. If you have any questions regarding the subjects of coaching and mentoring or simply would like to share your thoughts with us, please send us en email. SJ Associates    Ambitions 4 You are receiving this email as I believe we have had previous business contact.

Dear Sir/Madame, There is no time like Autumn to put the frustrations of the economy behind us and lay the foundations to grasp all our opportunities to accelerate our companies' and personal development.  When the going gets tough, execution focus is the key to differentiation and to rising above our peers.  Execution is the theme of this newsletter and we cover 3 dimensions of it below - recruitment, team development and coaching tools.  Thank you all for the feedback on our newsletters so far and I look forward to continuing our dialogue. Best wishes, Simon simon@sjassociates.org Execution 1 - Recruitment   "First Who, Then Woo" - No compromise recruitment We are delighted to announce a new collaboration with executive search company Campbell Black. The aim is to combine Campbell Black's insights into technology and high growth companies' recruitment processes with SJ Associates's business coaching expertise.  An early fruit of this collaboration is the launch of a research study based where we interviewed 25 of the most successful CEOs and HR leaders on how hiring has helped them scale technology related businesses. What business leaders told us went a long way to de-bunk many of the myths of recruitment and this is a theme we will return to in future research. Read the first chapter of the resulting eBook here. Execution 2 - Team Development Motivation driving team performance We are firm believers in individuals' capability to continuously stretch and improve themselves. Through their own resourcefulness they will discover new solutions to complicated problems and push ahead in ways their managers or peers could never have predicted.  Management by choice rather by requirement drives superior performance versus peers at competitors through creating a fun working environment.   I have seen enjoyment being the driver motivation that, in turn, drives positive team dynamics, successful recruitment, talent development, staff retention, and ultimately customer satisfaction and bottom line results.  This is why the Motivational Maps analysis tool impressed me so much when an associate introduced me to it - ties together so many aspects of leadership that would have been invaluable during my time as a CEO .  To see if this makes the same impression on you please request your complimentary discovery analysis (map, action list and consultation).  It is remarkable how much actionable insight can be generated so quickly and easily - shared data opens up so many doors to deliver step-change performance improvement. Get more information on one-on-one and team motivation drivers here. Team Development Case Study - Motivational Maps at John Lewis See how motivational maps have helped UK's third largest private business improve performance. Execution 3 - Coaching Tools Blog - How coaching influences business performance. Business Coaching can help businesses on both organisational and individual level. It can provide aid not available elsewhere, as coach is a fully independent source of feedback and support and is not impacted by client’s decisions or past failure. Get more here. Blog - The difference between Coaching and Mentoring. To many people, the difference between mentoring and coaching is rather unclear. Below we compare both activities graphically, to better explain what they have in common and how they ought to be viewed. Find out more here. Execution 3 - Coaching Tools Business Insight - Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Fundamental to NLP is goal setting. Goals need to be stated in the positive, based upon sensory evidence, be measurable and owned, wanted by the coachee, and be something that really lies with the beliefs and values of the coachee. Learn more about goal-setting here. Business Insight - Well-formed outcomes Goal-setting is fundamental to all forms of coaching and to its positive impact with clients.  While full-blown NLP techniques may not everybody's cup of tea, the discipline of its approach to setting clear and actionable personal objectives is something relevant to all styles of coaching. Check your outcomes here.

News from Portfolio Companies: Read about Camdata's electronics engineering work HERE See Pneumacare's "ERS Product of Outstanding Interest" for 2012 at the European Respiratory Society Congress Cornwall Energy - Get Your copy of Energy spectrum Top-rated SJ Associates Tweets: Mentoring and coaching for professionals: a study of the research evidence Difficult workplace situations where executive coaching would be an appropriate solution to improve performance Getting 'unstuck': Does your life need a coach? Coaching         Mentoring         Consulting Follow on Twitter                      visit our website forward to a friend  unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

Recruitment research – how to hire the best people

We are delighted to announce a new collaboration with executive search company Campbell Black. The aim is to combine Campbell Black's insights into technology and high growth companies' recruitment processes with SJ Associates's business coaching expertise. An early fruit of this collaboration is the launch of a research study based where we interviewed 25 of the most successful CEOs and HR leaders on how hiring has helped them scale technology related businesses. What business leaders told us went a long way to de-bunk many of the myths of recruitment and this is a theme we will return to in future research. Here is the first chapter of the resulting ebook.

First Who, Then Woo

Rob Symes

Recruitment research – how to hire the best people

 Introduction

The reason you’re talking to me, along with all these other people… is because there’s a huge difference between our very best performers and everyone else. If you take a long hard look at productivity, you’re seeing what easily amounts to a 300 percent difference. In fact, it’s probably a five-to-one gap.

Where else was I encountering some version of that five-to-one test?

The answer: Everywhere.

George Anders. The Rare Find

So many corporations, companies or start-ups proclaim the same thing:

“ABC is a leading company in the XYZ industry and we only hire the best people.” “People are the most important part of our business. It’s all about hiring A players.”

Unfortunately most companies don’t hire the best. Most companies compromise: they hire the available, the out of work, the keen, the desperate, the almost resumes and the just-about CVs because it’s just so much easier. On the surface, the reason they exaggerate is obvious: Money and reputation. Mediocrity in recruitment is easy.

  The paradox is that we know that there are people, as George Anders says, who are “five-to-one” candidates, the candidates that are five times better than their average competitor or teammate. This is not an alien concept. People often tell me how far ahead their top performers are. However, they miss that once you understand the five-to-one standard it should change your perspective. Now, bad candidates or average hires aren’t the worst enemy. The most serious mistake is not hiring a candidate capable of the five-to-one standard.

  Many technology companies talk about hiring “better people” than the competition. Unfortunately, in the technology industry, protecting your company from competitors is not enough. You need to protect your company from competition that doesn’t exist yet: the kid in the garage, the engineer with an Internet connection, the rebel or misfit or maverick with a dream. Five-to-oners are the best future proofers that exist.

Referrals, Referrals, Referrals

1)      91% of participants believe the most effective sourcing methods are personal connections or referrals.

2)      83% of participants ask for referrals only when they have a “direct need.”

  Toby Hunt, the Co-founder of Pebble Code, guided me through their trendily dilapidated offices in Vauxhall full of beanbags, Swiss balls and murals and surprised me within ten minutes.  He estimated the eight-month search he just completed for the right developer cost the company eighty thousand pounds in lost revenue. Pebble Code, a 15 person, software and application development company, is not alone. For Innovative technology companies failing to locate talent is not just frustrating but expensive.

  Although online and digital sourcing appears initially attractive, ninety one percent of participants believed that personal connections and referrals were the most effective method of sourcing top candidates. However, Michael Reynolds, the former CTO of Intrasonics, summed the problem up when he said, “by far the best method is my own network and referrals. The only problem is that the best people are never available.”

           

  Like Reynolds, many participants’ networks yielded an insufficient number of applicants or individuals who were otherwise engaged. Unfortunately, this led them to pursue other sourcing methods that were considerably less effective and often compromised the quality of candidate. 

  This problem is not that the participants asked for referrals. The problem is that they asked too late and too infrequently. Asking for referrals only when you have a need is like asking for water after you’ve died from thirst. Too many executives try to solve diverse and difficult recruiting requirements with easy and immediate solutions.

  No one worthwhile is easy to find.