Almost all job postings, yours included, describe the absolute minimally acceptable qualifications. Why aim low? You know people will stretch their credentials and experience a bit to apply, so describing the least you will accept will attract many résumés that are totally inappropriate. Sound familiar? Here’s the antidote, with credit and thanks to Vistage speaker Barry Deutsch, my guru for job ads. Some of his advice and training for hiring managers is here. Click here for much more from him.
Based on my memory of his talks and seeing the principles applied by many of my clients, here are some of the keys for writing an ad that attracts the right candidates:
When searching for a person to fill a job opening it seems natural to describe the history of the person you are seeking. That’s a mistake.
You’re not in business to hire people.
You’re in business to create results. Therefore…
Don’t describe the person–describe the results that person must produce to be successful.
Spend more time on what the person will be doing than what the company does.
Good candidates will go to the website to learn about you. Disqualify the ones who do not.
Write it from the seeker’s point of view, in the second person.
You love to help people get in action on their problems
You can’t walk away from your desk until everything is double checked, logged, and filed.
Describe breakout success
Too many job ads and descriptions detail the minimum requirements.
Describe outstanding success in detail, with numbers and vivid examples.
Make it interesting and compelling; describe a place the right candidate would be eager to go every day.
Sell your culture and values. Employees who resonate with your fundamentals will be productive long-term.
The Great Recession has led many of my executive coaching clients to reduce 401(k) contributions, celebrations, work hours (through furloughs), and cut other employee perqs. These leaders often explain the reductions as prudent adjustments to avoid layoffs. Employees, unfortunately, are likely to react by becoming less trusting and cooperative with their employers, as this new research illustrates.
“Even something that is not so strong as a vindictive action—something simply perceived as a negative act,” [Professor Boaz] Keysar says, “escalates quickly.”
The researchers paired up participants for several games of give and take. In one a designated leader decided how much of $100 to give to a partner. In another, leaders decided how much of $100 to take from their partners. … Subjects in the study also consistently reacted better to receiving something than to having it taken from them, even when the gift left them with less money, say $30 instead of $50.
Leaders, however, thought they were being fair … “They did not anticipate,” Keysar says, “that the other person was going to perceive them as doing something negative.” What’s more, he discovered that as the game wore on, each successive round saw partners grabbing more and more as they alternated the taking role. Perceiving the takers as selfish, the participants became less generous.
All the best companies have bottom-up management. That means those staff who actually meet customers, or run operations, tell the boss what works, rather than vice versa. It means delegating responsibility in order to empower staff. Imperious, dictatorial leaders who are out of touch with the shop floor do not achieve sustained success.
–Luke Johnson
Chairman of Channel 4 and Risk Capital Partners
in The Financial Times
Employees’ moods, emotions, and overall dispositions have an impact on job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations and leadership. … employees’ emotions are integral to what happens in an organization, says Professor Barsade, who has been doing research in the area of emotions and work dynamics for 15 years.
Everybody brings their emotions to work. You bring your brain to work. You bring your emotions to work. Feelings drive performance. They drive behavior and other feelings.
For a group of people to work smoothly together, each member must understand what constitutes agreement. This understanding is often left in the background, unexamined, as everyone assumes their standards match those of other people. Fundamental to the success of the executive off sites I conduct is helping the group make these assumptions explicit so that everyone is playing by the same rules. If, in fact, everyone has the same standards, we finish this step quickly. If not, time invested early to clarify the ground rules saves a lot of time (and upset) later.
There are two essential parts: clarity and verity. First, everyone must be clear on what is being agreed. Second, the group needs a way to know if agreement has been reached.
The news item below is a bit technical, so here is the gist:
Every cell in our body is continually sensing and responding to tiny chemical, electrical, and temperature changes created by nearby organisms without physical contact. As a result, cells alter their physical structure in response to the presence of other living things, including reshaping themselves to move toward or away from their neighbors.
A single atom or molecule, without even touching the cell, can move it.
When great big bundles of such cells get close, as in (more…)
Years ago, when I was new to being coached, I experienced a fundamental attribute of transformational coaching. I was completing a fantastic call with my coach, Mary Arzt. I had done a lot of venting and whining. I had seen some new possibilities. I, ultimately, had gotten clear and excited about the steps I would take into my future. A fantastic coaching call. I thanked my coach for the generosity of her listening and the power of her insight.
At which point, everything had been said and there was nothing left to say. The coach let the silence continue and we sort of basked in that rare space of nothing to do and no place to go: just perfect. At some point, my ego started to second-guess the just completed conversation. My ego realized that I had revealed (more…)
My mother, my wife, my sister, and Oprah recommended Ellen Foster to me. Ellen Foster is a very young, very mistreated Southern girl who tells her story in simple, compelling language. She takes us energetically into her world and lets us see adult behavior through her worldly but never cynical eyes. Her saga is funny, clever, and heart-rending. But most of all, it is a true human experience.
I developed this talk for the initial meeting of executive coaching groups to prepare them for the slow, sometimes difficult aspects of their work. I have used it many times to great effect when launching teams into other long-term projects. Some of my coaching clients have even adapted it for their own presentations.
Lessons for managers from how the Army re-made itself between Vietnam and Desert Storm.
I was moderating a conference of business owners in the late 1990s as they lamented the poor work habits and other failings of “Gen-Xers.” Finally, I’d had enough so I said, “Say what you will about body piercing and Starbucks, I don’t think that’s the key issue. It looks to me that our generation’s contributions were the drug culture and Vietnam while the present generation has given us the Internet and Desert Storm.” The question becomes, how did this happen? Into the Storm provides part of the answer.
I am a baby-boomer who came of age in the Vietnam era, so my interest in things military was slight and my general opinion of military organization, I’m ashamed to say, came more from Catch-22 and MASH than reality. Yet, the U.S. Army has done some huge and useful things, so I was willing to take a fresh look with this book.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, “the Army began a revolution in (more…)
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Almost all job postings, yours included, describe the absolute minimally acceptable qualifications. Why aim low? You know people will stretch their credentials and experience a bit to apply, so describing the least you will accept will attract many résumés that are totally inappropriate. Sound familiar? Here’s the antidote, with credit and thanks to Vistage speaker Barry Deutsch, my guru for job ads. Some of his advice and training for hiring managers is here. Click here for much more from him.
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