Invested, innovative, brilliant: Improving the recruiting experience

My deepest thanks to the ten readers who answered our November poll about office bullying.

According to the article's author, Kyle Taft, showing young potential employees the environmental sustainability of your building design can help you recruit them and retain them.

The piece refers to hiring in an academic setting, and recruiting students, so I am not sure how the results would be duplicated in other industries. Still, based on the work we've been blogging about Gen Y and the Millennials, I think that it's worthwhile to consider sustainable design as part of the employment brand. The article refers to several factors that the author says will attract potential employees.

2. Regional materials should be used. Not only does this help a new building blend in with historical buildings, but the practice supports local jobs and saves carbon emissions that would be spent on transporting building materials.

3. Use and show off the use of renewable energy sources like wind mills and solar power panels.

4. Allow for user-controlled heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. It empowers employees to save energy.

5. Communicate all your strategies for sustainable work environments and energy-saving practices from the earliest recruitment stages.

NOTE FROM SARAH: Normally, I'm not a big fan of these Transform Your Career and Your Life-type of self-help books, mostly because the majority of them take one simple common-sense idea - like "If you make an effort to be positive person, you'll attract other positive people!" - and then just keep repeating it in different words until they've filled up 200 pages. However, thanks to Maureen's evangelism about this book, it's swept Head2Head like wildfire, and I can personally attest that several H2H-ites - including myself - are now demonstrably more productive and less stressed out than we were just a few weeks ago. So we want to tell you about it, too.

Are you a procrastinator? Do you find it hard to get those really important things done every day? I've faced the big P for years, and I was convinced that I was doomed to chronic procrastination. That all changed one day when I was browsing the business section of my local Chapters.

Of course, 99% of the stuff in the business section is about as dull as dishwater, but then I spotted it: a little yellow book with Eat That Frog! in large, friendly letters on the cover. It seemed a strange title to find in the business section, so I picked it up and was intrigued by the subtitle: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. This book was written for me!

So I bought it – and was so impressed that I passed along the message of the book to every person on my team.

The concept of the book is quite simple, and based on a concept (possibly apocryphal because I can't find a reference to it anywhere else) first put forth by Mark Twain: Twain said that the key to happiness was eating a frog for breakfast every day, because that way you could go through life knowing that nothing that happened to you for the rest of the day could possibly be worse than breakfast.

The point of the book is that if you make a list of all the things you don't want to do - i.e. frogs - and then systematically get them done (eat them) before moving on to other tasks, you will find you accomplish more in less time. More importantly, you'll feel less stressed out.

According to the book these 'frogs' are that one or two things in your day that really need to get done. These are the one or two things that are likely the most important part of your job, but the things you tend to put off.

For a salesperson, that might be the 20-25 cold calls you are required to make everyday – typically you wait until Thursday and then rush through trying to get 100 calls in one day. For a recruiter, that might be sourcing for that hard job – but the job that would make the most impact if you closed it.

The idea is that you discipline yourself every single day to Eat Your Frog first thing in the morning. We all make To Do lists, and put many items on them but really how important are those items. It feels really good to cross off 7/10 of those items but did you really complete the most important task by the end of the day? I expect that most of us like to do all those small things first so that you think you are accomplished. But at the end of the day did we do the most important thing?

So that leads us to the first rule of Frog eating – “if you have to eat two frogs – eat the ugliest one first”. It doesn’t pay to have an ugly frog staring at you all day long. And really do you want the ugliest frog possible staring at you all day long? Discipline yourself to eat that frog – it works. First thing in the morning after checking my email and my calendar for the day I pick up a knife and fork and dig right in.

The second rule of Frog eating is very sensible as well – “if you have to eat a live frog it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long”. Remember all those occasions where that one task just hangs overhead, or feels like a huge weight on your shoulders? This is the rule that will help solve that problem. The quicker you start the work, the faster it will be completed – then you no longer have that weight on your shoulders.

This a great system – and when I follow it I tend to get a great deal done. Conversations about frogs and frog eating are commonplace in the office. If you are every walking the halls at Head2Head and you hear someone talk about frogs – now you know why!

It's time for yet another new demographic revolution.

While the oldest members of Generation Y turn 30, recruiters and consultants alike are starting to turn their attention toward the Millennials, the next generation to enter the work force. That means that the span between the oldest and youngest workers is five generations wide.

According to a study of the co-hort released by Accenture this month, Millennials make their employment decisions based on how companies accommodate how they want to use their own mobile devices and other technology.

"In addition, more than half (60 percent) of Millennials are either unaware of their companies’ information technology (IT) policies or are not inclined to follow them," says a press release about the study.

Whether the Millenials interviewed were in the 14 to 17 year-old group, the 18 to 22 year-old group, or the 23 to 27 year-old group, the survey found that the demand for high-tech devices to communicate was higher than for any other generational group.

“To lure them into the workplace, prospective employers must provide state-of-the-art technologies,” said Gary Curtis, managing director of Accenture Technology Consulting. “And if their employers don’t support their preferred technologies, Millennials will acquire and use them anyway. In order to acquire and retain the best talent, organizations must understand the technologies that the new workforce expects and then find a way to support their employees without compromising enterprise security.”

Whether you think we're in for a period of economic change like those we've earlier in history, or if you believe we are about to experience the entirely new reinvention of the global economy, it's important for recruiters to look at all the possible opportunities and experiences of economic change.

In his book, The Green Collar Economy, Van Jones presents one idea of where new jobs are and where they are going to be in the future:

As recruiters, our primary skills are in making connections with others, facilitating the delivery of right resources in the right place, and maintaining relationships through both difficult and easier times. At the same time, our industry doesn't exactly get by on the strength of its reputation for caring and sharing. The term "head hunter" and all the agression it implies has always made some people uncomfortable working with us.

So, given our skills and challenges, what place (if any) do you think recruiters will have in the green collar economy?

So, I've been thinking about job fair giveaways. And, I am not saying that if you see Head2Head at a job fair, you are going to get this mug. I am saying that when you spend time thinking about how to do something different with pens, note pads, tote bags, fridge magnets and coffee mugs, you might as well start designing them. I did this one at Zazzle.com.

With all the news headlines about layoffs I've been reading, you'd think it would be easy to find an application designer, a part-time HR generalist, or an IT auditor. If you know anyone who fits those descriptions in or around Toronto, please let me know.

Have you ever had a client that just didn’t seem to get it, even after having signed an agreement?

It’s amazing sometimes that one can agree to a project without understanding the full scope of work to be completed. Is it up to the salesperson to ensure that the client is well-versed in the process?

Recently, a client of mine seemed to miss the point at the beginning of the project. He was having issues getting the consultant in to work, did not have her workspace ready for her first day and generally seemed to not understand the work flow process that needed to be implemented.

The consultant reported all of this back to me on a daily basis. First, she had confirmed that she was going to be in the office for a half day the week before she started. When she arrived that particular afternoon, no one was ready for her. The client wasn’t even in the office to greet her.

But I thought that this could be forgiven. You see, the client is a young executive. He is far from the greatest communicator but he is quite technically brilliant. He rarely returns phone calls, but then suddenly he calls out of the blue. His knack for absent-mindedly ignoring you is infuriating but does not seem to be intentional.

The consultant arrived promptly for her first day and found the door locked. No one had arrived at the office. She shortly received a call from the client letting her know that no one would be in to the office for another two hours.

Finally, in the office, she received direction from the client that ignored any need for process or preparation and asked her to get to recruiting senior-level roles. The contractor tried to explain to the client that she needed to do some ground work first.

Unfortunately, neither her phone nor her work station was ready, so she was working with pen and paper. The client had been very careful not to involve the contractor with his existing team. She had to introduce herself to people that she would meet in the hallway and try to break the ice while not stepping on the client’s toes. For some reason the client seemed to want to keep her segregated from the rest of the staff.

Luckily (for me), this consultant is used to working with clients that don’t understand the recruitment process (as that’s her specialty) so she didn’t take any of this to heart and soldiered on gaily. She put together a summary of what the client had told her about the open roles and submitted it to him. Not even 24 hours later he asked her in to an ad-hoc meeting with his entire executive team.

Turned out, her summary opened his eyes to the value of process and he was so excited that he showed it to his executive team that bought in immediately. Now he's given her full access to his team and all the tools she needs. The client has almost been too persistent in ensuring that the consultant is accommodated.

So what went wrong initially? Does this client simply communicate better in writing than verbally? Was he worried that his executive team wouldn't buy in to the project? Did he have doubts regarding the contractor’s abilities?

Whatever the reason, it's clear I - as the account manager - could have done a better job in terms of setting the consultant (and the client) up for success.

So, in the interest of learning from every experience, here are the top three questions to ask a client when scoping a project:

We're as obsessed with Generation Y as anyone at Head2Head so I'd like to send a shout out to On-Boarding Gen Y for the post on retaining the youngsters in difficult times.

Based on the fact that Generation Y is probably the most family-oriented group we've seen since the dawn of nuclear families, and that they're starting to turn 30, I think the primary issue for them is always going to be work-life balance.

What do you think is the decisive factor for keeping Gen Y happy in the workplace?

The public perception of recruiters would improve if people talked about how they were rescued from toxic professional situations. In particular, being bullied or ganged up on by one's co-workers.

Unfortunately, those are often chapters of people's lives that they would rather not talk about. A recent article in the Toronto Star cast a some light on this taboo subject that seems more appropriate for the hopscotch court than the office:

"It can start out with something as simple as co-workers going out for coffee and bringing one back for everyone but you. Sometimes it's full-blown "desk rage," where your failings are constantly broadcast in loud insults.

But, usually, it's much more insidious: fellow workers or superiors who chronically criticize and undermine, deliberately keep you out of the loop, go out of their way to give you the worst jobs and shifts, or take away responsibilities that you have handled in the past.

Most bullies are devious enough to keep the encounters quiet and out of the email loop, so there's no paper trail.

"Some people dignify it with the term `office politics.' But it shouldn't be dignified," says Queen's University business professor Julian Barling, who recently co-authored a study declaring such "workplace aggression" more damaging than sexual harassment, largely because there are few laws to prevent it."

We can talk about the costs of this kind of behaviour in terms of lost productivity, health care costs, and the inefficiency it brings. The stress experienced by the person at the receiving end of the bullying in can lead to damaged mental health and even suicide. While there are many professions where "eating the young" is a kind of initiation, no one needs any extra maliciousness in their lives enough to make it part of their corporate culture.

While employers need to work on policies for dealing with this kind of behaviour, there's really only one response for those who experience it: get out.

You might approach the "gang leader's" superiors and negoitate a settlement. You might file a complaint with the union or the human rights tribunal and refuse to work while the complaint is heard. You might just take the easy way out and find another job. The most important thing, though, is to get yourself out of a bad situation. Recruiters help people in your position all the time, really.