I have just returned from 18 days travelling around glorious New Zealand – experiencing as much of the country as I could possibly fit into to the time.  And during that time my kids and I also experienced a wide range of employees in the service industries.

These employees could be categorised into one of four main types, which I suspect most people can recognise.

The “I hate my job” employee.  This employee is typified by a counter attendant at Burger King in Christchurch. All customers were greeted with a glare and a snarl and her luckless colleagues got the short end of her temper when things were not done “her way”.  She ran down her colleagues to customers, and rolled her eyes when thanked and you could taste her bitterness in the food. Luckily the “I hate my job” employee are few and far between. Unluckily these tend to always talk about leaving the job and never actually end up going anywhere.

The “I’m only here for the money and they don’t pay me enough to care” employee. These are the vast bulk of the employees in many jobs. They do their job competently, following all of the steps to the letter including the “smile and ask how is your day” step. But don’t expect them to actually listen to the answer or deal with unexpected situations. They are functional, mean well and try and do the right thing – but the magic is missing.

The “I used to care once but something happened” employee. These  can be hard to distinguish from the “only here for the money” group, but every now and again you discover hidden animation, warmth and genuine joy from this group of employee before it is quickly bundled back in and hidden away.  We discovered this type commenting on a cruise on Milford Sound, doing the boring tourist drone and every now and again hitting a quick highlight of insight and fun before quickly returning to boring drone.  I suspect that with the right management it wouldn’t be too hard to get them to shift to the next level.

The “Gee I love my job and can’t wait to share it with you” employee. These are the true gems who are extremely rare in any workplace. Luckily we met a few of them. Our tour guide from Hobbiton’s eyes sparkled with joy and michief, her voice varied from conspiratorial to exuberant – she so loved her job that she made magic happen – you could almost see the hobbits travelling around their homes. Our Huka Falls jet boat guy oozed cockiness and testosterone – and also oozed the love of his boat and the joy he gained from bringing pleasure to all in his boat. Yes, he was a nutter in how he drove but my kids rate him as right up there as one of their highlights.  Our hotel owners at Brylin Motel, Rotorua and Camelot Motor Lodge, Christchurch were both awesome – both couples treated visitors as honoured guests in their home and were full of amazing information, warmth and genuine caring. For example, the owners at Brylin would pick up, wash, dry, fold and return our washing to our room for us – awesome for a very tiny motel with only about 12 rooms! The Camelot owners would have a long yarn with us about life, what we had seen and ideas for future experiences that matched our personalities. They were a listening ear and much welcome adult company (after 3 weeks travelling just with teenagers).

These few gems are the reason raving fans are created and brilliant memories made. Not one of these people had to follow a script for their work. Not one needed to be taught “customer service”. Not one had to fill in a tick sheet to remember what to do next. What was their secret? A genuine love for what they did. They believed 110% in the value of their work and their role in sharing their passion with others.

Hiring for passion can be challenging, but by asking a few well chosen questions around how they feel about their current job, or to describe what they do in their day to day role, you should be able to see glimpses of sparkling eyes, joy and enthusiasm vs boredom and hatred. Past behaviour is a good predictor of future behaviour, so when in doubt, hire for passion!

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance HR Writer

Many businesses with salespeople struggle to work out who is the best person to hire for the role. Do they take the raging extrovert (who couldn’t complete paperwork to save their lives), or the diligent paper completer who struggles with getting out of the office and talking with people?

A hidden dimension to look for in sales success is empathy – the ability to understand what people are feeling. By being able to “get” people’s feelings, they are better able to help the person find the solutions they need and therefore make better sales. However, measuring empathy has been tricky to accurately assess.

The Neuromarketing blog reports on a study that looks at the correlation between empathy and the melodic voices (yes, whether or not the person speaks in a monotone or has variable tones). The study shows that people whose voices are more melodic, are more empathetic. The suggested reason for this is the person whose voice shows light and shade, are more likely to be able to identify emotion in other people.

Having a strange mind I had visions of the application – candidates voices being run through voice analyzers as part of the selection process. However, the more practical application is through just listening to the voice of your candidate and then following it up with standardised questions and reference checks to verify your assessment. You still have to resolve the paper warfare dilemma – but at least you would have an idea of how well they can identify and work with customers once they get in front of them.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

If you talk with any HR Manager, one of the most challenging parts of their jobs is graduate recruitment. They want to hire uni students for part-time or casual work, or they are looking for new graduates or experienced graduates for jobs.  If you advertise on one of the traditional job boards or through the press you get inundated with spam applications or applications from unqualified people – all of which have to be reviewed and answered. All of which takes time.

Most Australian HR Managers end up contacting each individual uni, hoping they will list the vacancy around the campus or on their jobs board. But people change roles, so it is a constant battle to keep up to date with who is in the career role in the Unis.

Until now.

Yesterday a colleague talked me through a brilliant new service called CareerHub Central. In Brisbane there is a great software development company that has developed the software that is used by almost every Uni as well as TAFE NSW  in Australia to run their careers boards.  They have even started expanding into the UK (love local success stories)!

The latest enhancement of this software is that now employers can log a vacancy with CareerHub Central, choose the uni’s and career areas they want the vacancy to be listed with and hit submit. The vacancy is then listed on the Uni careers boards.No more stuffing around. No more chasing contact details. No missing Unis by mistake.

You get access to over 200,000 current students and graduates – with the uni career sites getting over 1 million hits per year, and over 7500 students per day (which means students and graduates are actively looking for work from the sites).

And what makes it even better is only current students or Alumni of each uni can access the relevant uni career sites (they need their student ID to log on). This means your vacancy only is visible to the specific groups you are interested in attracting, reducing wasted time in sifting applications.

This is a seriously brilliant application that will save most HR Managers weeks of work each year. Price wise it is cheaper than an ad in one newspaper and on par with other job sites – but remember, your ad is super targeted to the groups you want to attract, so you theoretically should get an increased response rate both in quality and quantity of applicants.

The other great thing about the application is individual Government agencies and companies can list their company profile (for a fee). This means when students are researching potential employers, your company is front of mind. Great in the competitive graduate recruitment market.

If you are looking for uni students or graduates in Australia, then give CareerHub Central a go.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – HR writer

To all of you teenage job-seekers, or parents of teenage job-seekers out there please pay close attention to what I am about to say.  I am going to share with you exactly how managers and Human Resources (HR) people go about working out who to hire for those casual jobs at rock bottom wages at Superscoop Icecream or Instant Plastic Food Fast Food.

Let’s start with some basics – you are not our only candidate. Most times for a single casual vacancy we get 25-30 applications.  If you go for something a bit more meaty – such as a Graduate Program or even a traineeship – I have personally been on the other side of 1000 applications.  Yours is only one of them.

As a manager we don’t love interviewing – in fact we will do anything possible to weed people out of our interviews. We are ruthless when it comes to cutting people out of recruitment processes – you don’t get many second chances. If you blow the first impression – you won’t make the cut.

It doesn’t matter how great you are, or what massive potential – unless we see a glimmer of it in your application, you won’t make the cut.

You see to us each entry level role is the same. We are willing to train you and pay you while you learn (yes the wages suck – but we are paying you to learn). In return these are the things we look for:

1. Reliability - Will you turn up on time every time, and not blow off work to hang out with mates.
2. Willing to learn & listen – Are you someone who can be taught? Are you someone who listens to instructions and follows them without argument?
3. Presentable – If our company has a uniform – we are proud of it. Will you wear our full uniform with pride? Will it be clean and ironed? Will you have neat shoes? Will you tuck your shirt in?
4. Polite – You are our face to our customers. Can you string a few sentences together? Can you be polite and friendly to them? Can you smile?
5. Team players – Other people work here. Can you get on with them? Will you help them out or ignore them if they need a hand? Will you back up your team members or are you the star?

That’s pretty much it. That’s what we look for in every single entry level role – no matter if you are cleaning tables, scooping ice-cream, digging plumbing ditches or ringing up sales. If you have these qualities we can teach you the rest.

So how do we choose who gets an interview and who doesn’t?

Well – there are whole libraries dedicated to the art – but in real terms it boils down to this. You get 10 seconds – 30 seconds tops where we look at your resume or CV. That’s it. Unless you grab our attention in those 10 seconds, you get thrown into the “Don’t bother” pile.

If you hook our attention – we will take a bit longer to read over your application. You will then go into the “Definitely Interview” pile or “Maybe” pile. At the end of reading all of the resumes, if the “Definitely Interview” contains more than about 5 resumes, the “Maybe” pile gets moved to the “Don’t bother” pile. Game over.

So what are we looking for in those 10 seconds?

Remember the top 5 qualities I talked about? Your resume has to show EVIDENCE that you have all of these. Evidence – just like the crime shows. You need to supply evidence that you can do all of this stuff.

Top Evidence:School reports & school references

Yes. We want to see copies of your last 2 reports. What do we look for? Well you know that column that says “behaviour” – we treat that as a more important clue than your academic results. If you consistently get poor behaviour scores, we take a stab that you may not be such a great employee.

We look at comments about uniforms “can be well presented at times” translates to “generally scruffy and poorly presented”. If our job has a uniform – well guess who goes into the “Don’t Bother” pile.

We look at your extra curricular activities. Do you take part in team sports, debating, choir or anything where show you can work in a team?

Personal references

If you have never had a job, having your Aunty write you a reference about how you are a good boy or girl does nothing for us. Having the local Pastor or Minister, or the Coach of your sporting team talk about what a great team player you are, or how you have leadership qualities will get our attention. Pick your personal reference.

Your resume

Did you follow all the instructions 100% in completing your resume. Sometimes we ask you to put in reference numbers, to address it to certain people, or to comment on certain skills.  These are not optional extras. Do it!

We also look if you took the time (2 seconds) to run a spell check over your resume before you sent it in. We also check that you spelt our name correctly and the name of our company. If you can’t spell our name with it written in front of you, we wonder about how good you are at following simple instructions.

It is also amazing how many people send in an application to ABC company, when the job is for XYZ company – we know you are going for lots of jobs, but it shows you really don’t care about us and only see us as a meal ticket. It helps if you know a bit about what our company actually does – so do some research and drop in some clues to show us you know what we do. It isn’t hard to check out our website first!

We check out your hobbies and interests. Hanging with mates and playing in garage bands won’t win you any favours job wise. We see that and think – gets drunk on weekends and too hungover to get to work the next day. Think about what your hobbies may say about you (and assume we think the worst).

Finally, we look at how to get in touch with you. getdrunkfriday@hotmail will not win you any favours. Watch your email address and if you have to, set up a separate business one (and check it regularly). We also hate it if you give us mobile numbers that are permanently out of credit. We don’t care! If you can’t return our calls – then you don’t get the job. Simple!

One more hurdle

If you make our “Definitely Interview” pile, don’t get too cocky – we still have another round of evidence to go. Managers these days look for evidence on the internet. We type your name into Google to see what we can find out about you on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and all of the other social media.

We look to see what photos you have been tagged in. We check out the photos and videos you post on your page and we read your comments. These all tell us the sort of kid you are. If you have a fight video on your page  – kiss your job good-bye.  If you rant against ethnic minorities – good-bye. Our customers come from all walks of life – we need you to be able to serve them equally.

If you have comments about wagging school – good-bye. If you talk about how a specific teacher sucks or how much you hate your named school – good-bye. We know you will do the same about us and our company. We take our reputation seriously – dissing us out gives us a bad reputation – so why would we hire you?

The internet leaves clues. Before you do anything on the net – think before you upload!

Interview time

If you have made it through that hurdle – you may be lucky enough to get an interview. What are we looking for? The same 5 things we talked about before. Cover them off at the interview and you are in with a chance.

Take-aways

So, you have a less than squeaky clean trail of evidence. What can you do?

1. Pick up your act at school. Yes it does matter!  Get your uniform sorted, fix your behaviour and attitude and join some teams.
2. Get a cynical outsider to check your resume. Get someone who doesn’t know you to read over your resume and tell you how you appear to them. Fix it!
3. Get references. Get good references from people that matter. If you say you are good – so what. When someone else says you are great we listen.
4. Clean up your social media act. Take down all your videos, photos and stuff that is not helpful. Get your mates to do the same. Upload good stuff (too many photos of you at Church picnics and we may get suspicious though) and make decent comments. You need to bury the bad under a flood of good.
5. If you need to – hire someone to help you clean up your act. There are companies out there who can help polish your tarnished social media, polish your resume, polish your personal presentation. If you are serious – then ask your folks to get you their services instead of the latest i-pod. It is a much better investment.

One more thing. If you want a casual job in February – get hired in November.  We hire Christmas casuals as our pool of casuals for the year. Outside that time you are lucky to get a vacancy.

Good luck!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – HR Writer

If you are on-line – you are public property. That’s the hardest thing to get teens and other people to realise.

Last week I was helping the son of a friend redo his resume. He had been out of High School for a few months and couldn’t work out why he wasn’t getting any interviews.

His resume didn’t help with his interests listed as “partying with my mates, gigging with my band and extreme sports”. Mmmnnn every company wants to hire a drunken layabout who will either come in after no sleep or hungover … or if they do turn up they are carrying an injury from their sporting prowess.

The funny thing is that this is a really nice well-behaved kid who doesn’t do that sort of thing as a rule – but the words he had chosen for his resume could be misinterpreted.

I then asked about photos of him on “MySpace” and “Facebook”. Bingo – photos of him making less then useful choices.

Job mystery solved. He now has a revised resume that shows all the brilliant community work and leadership roles he has adopted. The photos are harder to fix (Google has a long memory) – so his mates are taking down the bad and loading a few more photos of him showing what he is normally like and the good stuff he does.

Seth Godin also talked about this experience with a colleague who was hiring a housekeeper. They Googled the three candidates names and came up with the following:

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, “binge drinking.”

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, “I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings.”

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

The bottom line is everyone from the age that that are allowed to access the internet should also be taught the essentials of online branding.

You need to manage your appearance on the net.  If you realise that you are always “on stage” and nothing you place on the net is off the record then you are better placed to move forward with life in a positive way.

For employers – if you are looking for people for jobs, then certainly check out your preferred candidates on the net. It can be an eye-opening experience.

However, similar to any reference check if you find something negative I suggest discussing your findings with the candidate to hear their side of things and not automatically discount them. That’s simply natural justice in play.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writers