12 Ways to Spot a High Achiever

July 23, 2013

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As part of my day job, I run a company that trains recruiters and hiring managers on how to attract, assess and hire top performers using Performance-based Hiring. To overcome the impact of first impressions - the primary cause of most hiring errors - we suggest using the first 20-30 minutes of the interview to look for the Achiever Pattern during the resume review. This indicates the candidate is in the top 25% of his or her peer group. None of this has to do with academic credentials, how smart someone is, their communication skills, personality or first impression. It all has to do with how others have recognized the candidates on -the-job performance. Being pretty cynical and somewhat analytical, the following is how I go about spotting a high achiever. I don't expect to find all 12, but six or more is a good sign the interview should be continued. Note: job-seekers can use this information to make sure the Achiever Pattern is easy to spot on both your resume and LinkedIn profile if you have it. If youre not quite there yet, use thes e tips to find a job that offers you the chance to get into this elite 25%. See point 6 below for the importance of this.) 1. They've been assigned difficult challenges ahead of their peers. The best people, including engineers, accountants, and sales reps, plus everyone else, are typically assigned tasks, clients and projects that are normally given to more senior people. If it happens regularly, especially during the first year of each new job, youve found tangible evidence of the Achiever Pattern. 2. They volunteer or ask to be assigned to projects over their heads. A person needs a lot of confidence to take on a task where they have little or no experience. If theyre successful at it multiple times, the person deserves double bonus points. 3. Theyre put on important multifunctional teams. Managers assign their strongest staff members to critical team projects. Look for a consistent pattern, including teams growing in size, importance and impact over time. This is great evidence of strong team skills, as well as the Achiever Pattern.

4. They get a chance to demonstrate their abilities to more senior executives. Managers put their subordinates in front of a company exec to both demonstrate the managers good judgment, and to help the subordinate get more exposure. 5. They get promoted more rapidly. Look for promotions due to exceptional performance. More proof: a consistent track record of increasing responsibility at different companies and/or with different managers. 6. The reason they change jobs is long-term career focused. For each job change, ask the person how they got their new job, why they changed jobs, and if these objectives were met. Changing and accepting jobs is one of the most important decisions a person can make. Make sure you hire people who have made them wisely. 7. Theyve established and achieved major goals. Rather than asking about a person's goals, ask first about the biggest goal theyve already achieved. Then ask how theyre going about achieving their next one. 8. Theyve been rehired by a former manager. Top managers tend to rehire their best subordinates from previous companies. 9. They rehire their former subordinates. Ask more seasoned managers if theyve ever hired someone theyve worked with in the past. Top people follow other top people. 10. Theyre the go to person inside their department. Find out where the person has been recognized for outstanding work and where theyve coached others. Map this to what you need done. 11. Theyve received formal recognition outside of their department. The best people have reputations beyond their department and function. It could be a company award, a white paper, a fellowship, speaking at a conference, or assigned for special training. 12. They were mentored and/or mentored others. Just ask, and look for a continuous pattern. Then find out why, and the results. When I was a full-time executive recruiter, my goal was to find talented people who had a track record of top performance. Finding the Achiever Pattern allowed me to use facts to counter a hiring manager who conducted a superficial or biased interview. More important, it provided hiring managers a concrete way to trade-off a contrived list of skills and experiences with a track record of exceptional performance. As a minimum, just looking for these factors as soon as you meet a person will lessen the impact of first impressions. Many times candidates overlook these important factors, so its up to the interviewer to seek them out. Once you hire a few top people this way, youll realize its worth the extra effort.

When Working at a Troubled Company Makes Perfect Sense

July 21, 2013

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Time is Your Most Valuable Asset. Use it Wisely.

Is working at a troubled company advisable? Troubled meaning heading into bankruptcy, having a deserved bad reputation, struggling to survive, or going through a turnaround. The answer: it all depends. If you want something safe and secure, its probably best to avoid it. On the other hand, if you have a high tolerance for risk, can deal with ambiguity, and want to jumpstart or accelerate your career growth, it might be the perfect choice. Ive been thinking about this issue for many years. It started about 40 years ago when I first became a manager. I was with Rockwell Automotive in Troy, Michigan (Manager of Capital Budgeting), and my boss, Chuck Jacob, the Controller, and I were interviewing MBA students for financial analyst positions. We were going head-to-head with IBM, Ford, and P&G the hot companies of the day. We were making truck axles and brakes, and while we didnt make the hot or cool company list, Chuck had a great recruiting technique. Since the interview schedule was overbooked, and I had never interviewed anyone before, Chuck suggested we conduct the first interview together. After about 10 minutes Chuck said something to the candidate like: Time is your most valuable asset. What you do during the next 2-3 years will affect what happens to you over the next 5-10 years. He then drew a chart similar to the one shown, saying that if you go to a big, secure, and safe organization like Ford, IBM or P&G, it will take you 2-3 years before you get a promotion. While the first year or so will consist of rapid learning, the next few will be doing the same things over again. If you spend too much time on the plateaus, after 6-8 years youll really only have 3-4 years of equivalent experience.

Since Rockwell Automotive was going through a major restructuring, Chuck said youd have an opportunity to spend more of your time on the steeper part of the learning curve. Taking on bigger jobs, being successful, and getting promoted more rapidly is how you get twice the experience in half the time. This is how you maximize your use of time. He let this idea sink in. Chuck then pointed to me and said, Lou has only been with Rockwell a year and has already been promoted. He then described his own experience, saying that he has been with Rockwell three years, started at the Corporate office as Director of Financial Planning, became the senior director over all business functions a year later, and was just named the number two financial executive for a $2 billion business unit for a Fortune 50 company. Chuck was only 29 at the time. The technique worked, and we hired a number of great people who had offers from bigger "names." None regretted their decision. Ive been using this maximize your use of time concept ever since, especially when a candidate has a difficult career choice to make. Heres the collective advice in a nutshell. It mi ght prove helpful if youre considering working at a troubled organization: 1. Compare the downside to the upside. Unless youre currently on a great career path in an industry that has a bright future, theres less long-term risk than might be first imagined. That's what the graph is all about. There is more short-term risk if the economy is slow and theres a good chance the company youre considering wont be around too long. 2. Youll be able to jumpstart or reaccelerate your career. If you believe youre not as far along in your career as youd like, a troubled company might be a good place to turn both your career and the company around. 3. There is a hidden risk in staying put. Playing it safe could put your future in jeopardy, since you're not growing or stretching yourself. 4. You don't need to be fully successful to get some kudos. Even if you dont fully succeed, most people would still give you credit for making the attempt. 5. It makes greater sense when you have a chance to make a significant impact. If youre just tagging along and hoping things turn out okay, its not worth taking the risk, unless youre desperate.

6. Your confidence will increase. Successfully handling a difficult situation gives you the inner confidence and leadership ability to handle something even more difficult in the future. 7. Youll have a stronger resume. Having the guts to take on a big task where success wasnt assured is a career building accomplishment. 8. Your negotiating power will increase. Companies are always looking for people with a proven track record of significant accomplishments. 9. It might be easier to get a job in a different industry. If youre underemployed or want to change industries, a troubled situation might be the perfect situation for you. Not only are these jobs easier to land since theres less competition, youll be able to recover some lost years due to the accelerated learning opportunity. 10. Dont avoid troubled situations, seek them out. The best people have a track record of taking on tough problems and succeeding. Look for them inside your own organization and ask to be assigned to handle them. This is how you maximize your use of time.

Unleashing Your Inner Thought Leader

July 26, 2013

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I talk with working people, students and job-seekers all day long, so I hear a mind-boggling number of stories. None of them are boring. Sometimes people start to tell boring stories, by mistake. They think that since they're talking about professional topics, they should use corporate zombiespeak language to describe the action. They'll

say "Well, I was instrumental on a cross-functional team that developed a pan-divisional protocol for compliance." Most of us can listen to that for about thirty seconds before we want to kill ourselves. The fix is easy. You just have to nudge the storyteller out of Clone Trooper dialect and get him or her to give you the human version. Suddenly the story comes to life. Now the account is gripping - even mythic. So what, it was a business story? It's an adventure story now. The odds were steep. Things looked dark. Somebody on the team -- maybe the team leader - was crazy and out of his depth. When the human side comes out, the story becomes visceral, even to an audience hearing it for the first time. After twenty-five years listening to people talk about their work, I see the thought leader and sage in everyone I meet. Every sweet-faced new graduate has incredible stories and wisdom to share. Grizzled veterans like me have stories. We all carry around funny, sad, entangled, colorful histories and an astounding amount of learning that we can share. We don't tell one another at work very often, "Gee, you are really an expert in this topic, and I'm learning so much from you," but it's true. We are surrounded on all sides by experts, and we are all experts ourselves. I was a corporate and startup HR leader forever. I started writing and consulting when the company I worked for (and adored) was sold. I loved being a corporate HR leader, but I desperately needed to process what I had experienced and learned working in organizations. I did that by writing and speaking about employment and the workplace. Like many pundit-type people, I started speaking through the keyhole called "How To." I gave a lot of talks to job-seekers, career services folks and and HR leaders. I wrote about how to get a job, how to brand yourself, how to start an HR department from scratch and how to navigate at the top of an organization, the place where vision and strategy meet. The next part was unexpected. The methodology didn't stay neatly on the page. The how-to keyhole led directly into a more colorful, compelling and world-expanding view of work and career education than I had known I was gestating in all those columns, E-Books and webinars. That worldview is

called Human Workplace.

It's a simple idea, just the notion that when we bring ourselves to work all the way and make work as lively, fun and human as any other endeavor, everyone benefits. We believe that work should be as human a place as any other spot where humans congregate, from the corner barbershop to the farmer's market. We talk about and teach that culture is king, that more trust, less fear, and a human voice in everything make a workplace human; and that chipping away at the Godzilla structure of rules is as critical as customer service or product development. It's that edifice of rules and red tape, after all, that keeps people disconnected from their power source, disaffected, and out of their bodies and right brains at work. Once that reality hit me -- that it's the Godzilla structure of linear thinking, data worship, rules, hierarchy, fear and workplace ritual we should be dismantling, if we want people to bring their best to work - then my philosophical-editorial path was clear. My job description became simple then; it was to write, speak and teach Human Workplace ideas and methodology all the time, not overlooking the whimsy, color and operatic flourish the reintegration of humanity and the workplace deserve. While I was an internal HR person, I assumed that any expertise I could claim came from my knowledge of HR topics. That turned out to be totally wrong. It was the sedimentary build-up of understanding how people are at work, how they gel together or don't, the role of energy and the power of a human voice and perspective in business processes that informed my worldview the most. There's an excellent chance it is the same for you. You might think your subject matter expertise in Quality Control is the source of and bedrock for your credibility. I doubt that's true, QC expert though you may be. What you've learned and can teach others goes far beyond the how-to realm, your function, or anything as mundane as Best Practices. Everyone has a story. Everyone has wisdom to share. Our workmates have incredible stories and learning that cannot be conveyed adequately through the channels that our particle-focused, waveblind workplaces offer. We need to connect at work on a different level, with our colleagues, our customers, our vendors and our partners, and what better way to get there than to help people find their voices? We all benefit when we come to work as ourselves, whole and complex, quirky and awesome. There is no better way to build trust, community, innovation and all the good things we want at work than to help people find their authentic voices and use them. You could start a lunchtime writer's workshop at your job, for instance. Wouldn't that be fun? Would it help all of you who participate to unleash your inner thought leader, if you did that? And since you've read this far, what is stopping you from finding your voice and opening a channel for your inner thought leader, right now? It's easy to get started. You don't have to launch a blog or speak to the Chamber of Commerce. You only need to get enough altitude on your job and your life to think about what's important to you, and what you'd like to share. There are people in your own organization or neighborhood and people all over the world who crave the community of shared ideas, whether that is manifested in face-to-face events, online community or in some other way.

You have a point of view that no one else has, informed by events and dramas no one else will ever experience. You are a thought leader right now. You could share some of what you know with a larger audience, and if you're already a content superstar, you could share what you know about reaching that pinnacle. You don't need anyone's permission to tell your story and sing your song. (Unless your company has a social media policy. Check that out. I hate those policies but I like you very much, and don't want to see anything horrible happen when your blog or your podcast series hits the big time.)

You could start with a journal. Start writing your thoughts on paper, or sharing them with a friend who will pay attention. Record a podcast on your phone. Talk about what you care about. If you don't like to write, grow your thought leadership flame by curating other people's content on Scoop.it. I hereby challenge you to unleash your inner thought leader, the person inside you who has a lifetime's worth of good ideas, observations and collected wisdom to share. We want to hear what your inner thought leader wants to tell us! The more you share your stories (your big life story and the million little stories inside it) the more your flame will grow. The more you teach what you know, the stronger your thought leadership voice will become.