Today I’m meeting a potentially new client located on the northern beaches of Sydney. A small business in Australia (25 employees) but globally they employ over 2,000 employees with an annual turnover of nearly half a billion euros. I really want this one so spend even more time than usual researching their business and finding out as much as I can about their key stakeholders.

The meeting goes well – the MD, CFO and the payroll person all meet me together and pepper me with questions. I return the favour and complete a quick HR audit as we go along. This is a very handy tool to have and clients like it a lot. It’s very professional and helps shape the initial interview. To start with they’re looking for help on some specific HR projects with a view to a longer-term arrangement involving a regualr HR presence on-site.

I hope to get a favourable response in a few days’ time. Meanwhile, I need to get back into town for a lunch meeting with an old colleague of mine (he’s an accountant) who needs to discuss an HR problem he has with one of his clients. It turns out that my friend is being sexually harassed by a female manager who works for one of his best clients. Not surprisingly he doesn’t know what to do about it. Female on male sexual harassment is rare but when it happens it’s just as pernicious and even more difficult to deal with especially when it’s one of your client’s employees doing the harassing. I advise him that he needs to raise the issue with the MD of the Company as soon as he can. It’s clearly a very delicate situation which needs immediate attention although I suspect it won’t have a good outcome. These sorts of issues rarely do.

My afternoon is spent back in the office returning calls and preparing for the Ops Manager interviews with my blue-collar client out west. Suddenly, my day seems a bit quiet although it’s already 5pm. Thankfully, I have a networking do on tonight – not that I’m a great fan of these types of events but I’m in the mood for a bit of socialising. I remind myself that it is, in fact, a networking event and not a netdrinking or neteating occasion but it’s sometimes difficult to remember that!

I eventually get home around 10.30pm. Another reasonably early night. Big drive tomorrow out west…

 

 

Another early start as I have to drive out to a client in western Sydney where I spend a few days a month on-site. It can be a long drive depending on traffic so I leave around 7am.

Fast trip this morning so I’m in my office by 8.30am. Today I have an exit interview, a retrenchment and have to interview 3 candidates for an operations manager role. The full gambit of HR in a single day! This is a family run business where there is no love lost between the 2 brothers who run the show – one is very hands-on, the other prefers a more discrete presence but is nevertheless very quick to contribute his opinion. Despite the volatility of their relationship they run a pretty good ship with over 25 years together bearing testament to their business acumen.

I’m the only HR person they’ve ever really had. Before me one of the wives “did the HR”. I think that means they focused on personnel administration rather than anything strategic. So, I’m quite a novelty around the place for what is primarily a blue-collar work-site. Despite this, there is usually a procession of people who want to see me whenever I’m around – mainly managers and supervisors but also the occasional employee who might have a personal issue to discuss.

The retrenchment goes pretty smoothly – we’ve been consulting with the affected employee for a few weeks before today so there are no real surprises. They bring their wife in as their support person – a really good move so the spouse gets involved early in the whole process. We offer an ex-gratia payment of 8 weeks in exchange for a Deed of Release. I take awhile to explain exactly what this means – the last thing I want is for the employee to feel pressured into signing something they don’t understand. They say they’ll take it away and think about it – they have a week to decide if they want the extra money.

The exit interview is uneventful. The main reason for this employee’s resignation is no surprise – they just couldn’t get on with their manager, something we see time and time again yet somehow are unable to fix. How many more exit interviews will it take for businesses to realise that this is the number one reason why people leave yet management development is arguably the least funded and most ignored HR activity of them all.

I interview my 3 candidates for the ops manager role and select 2 to go to final interview. This will be with the 2 brothers and they’ve asked me to make up the 3rd panel member. Now to break it to the one who missed out…

Up at 6am for my Monday morning call with New Zealand. My client, based in Auckland, is a software developer who wants to start up an office in Sydney. I’m helping them recruit a country manager and a sales person to get things rolling. I’m struggling to find some good candidates and the NZ CEO is coming over next week to start interviewing. I tell them they’re going to have to offer more money. Client not happy to budge and tells me to keep looking. Bit of a gloomy start to what looks like being a long week.

Breakfast meeting in the city with a potential new client. I’ve had a lot of these over the past 5 years when I decided to start my own outsourced HR consulting business after 20 years in corporate. Naively, I thought I’d be spending nearly all of my time solving HR issues for a variety of really interesting clients. Reality is I spend about 50% of my time on marketing, 20% on admin and the rest actually doing what I love. A one-man show does have its good and bad points. Anyway, this meeting goes particularly well and I dash back to the office to email out a proposal.

Hang around the office (also my home, close to the CBD) for a few hours answering emails, taking calls and writing my next article for the website. My SEO guy says I need new content every week so I post an HR advice piece about adverse action. Send off the proposal from this morning’s meeting. They’re looking for phone/email support plus an on-site presence every month. I’m expecting a favourable reply but you just never know. Sometimes, you don’t hear back and are left totally in the dark as to why.

This afternoon I’m presenting a paper at an HR conference in the city. They want me to discuss the future of the performance appraisal and present a few alternatives to what we do now. A pet love of mine so I’m really looking forward to being out there in the limelight. They’ve asked me to stay on for drinks and dinner. I’ve said yes even though it’s a bit early in the week for my liking. Still, a great networking opportunity which I’d be crazy to pass up.

Presentation goes really well and I meet some interesting people. Home to bed around 11.30pm. Another early start tomorrow – I urgently need some good candidates for my NZ client and I have to spend most of the day on-site at another client’s in west Sydney.

 

 

 

1. Write a 30 second spiel about yourself. Pretend you’re in a lift with Donald Trump, going to the 70^th floor. You have this time to sell yourself to him. Practice this out loud in front of a mirror. Write it in terms of what you‘ve done for a customer.

2. Write 2 or 3 sentences about each job you have shown on your resume. Include things that are measurable e.g. deadlines you met, numbers of words you had to write, people you had to coordinate to complete a particular project etc.

3. Write a generic sentence or 2 about why you’ve applied for a particular job.

4. Have a short story prepared about each of the following 5 incidents that have happened to you at work using the following STAR model:

Situation which arose requiring you to do something

Tasks that needed doing

Action you took

Result

* Where you had to deal with a difficult co-worker

* A situation where you had to deal with a difficult customer

* Where you had to prioritise a number of different projects

* Where you devised a new process to improve the way certain things were done at your work

* A mistake you made and how you fixed it

5. I hate this question but it’s often asked: “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” You need to have something prepared. The best way to answer this question is to be extremely honest. Demonstrate to the panel that you have good self-awareness.

6. Prepare a short (no more than 2-3 minutes) closing statement. You will use this when you sense the interview is about to close and they ask: “Do you have any questions for the panel”? You ignore that question and go into your prepared spiel on why they should choose you. This leaves them with the lasting impression of your voice in their head rather than one of the panel members droning on trying to answer one of your “cleverly” crafted questions.

7. Remember that they want to have you on board. Your sole concern at the interview should be to make them feel good about choosing you. Take control of the interview without being arrogant. Make it clear that you’re considering working with them just as much as they are deciding about you.

8. Above all, be honest in your answers – it will make you look and sound so much more appealing than if you try to hide behind a wall of lies.

It was early 2002. I’d just been retrenched for the 2nd time in my life and was obviously keen to secure my next project. An HR Director role with a security company based in Sydney’s western suburbs took my eye. I was particularly drawn to the role because they were hiring direct – no recruitment company to deal with. So, after a lot of research, a carefully crafted cover letter and tailored resume I got the interview.

The initial meeting was to be conducted on-site and would be with the current HR Director who was leaving the Company to take up an overseas posting in the USA. I arrived early and waited for about 10 minutes in the reception area, conscious of the fact that, being a security business, I had probably been under surveillance from the moment I had driven into the car-park. The whole place was spookily quiet.

About 10 minutes after the scheduled interview time the HR Director, John, welcomed me into his office. “You must know Jill Smart”, he chirped as his opening remark. My heart sank – how was this possible? I had reported to Jill very briefly a few years previously when I was working for a global telco. Needless to say we hadn’t got on and I was lucky to find a different role elsewhere in the same organisation which had me reporting into the UK instead. Apparently, this guy and Jill had done their MBA together and he recognised the Company name on my CV. Not a great start.

The interview soon got underway. I summarised my HR career to date, provided solid reasons why I had moved from one job to another and was able to demonstrate pretty well how I was a good fit for the role we were discussing. I thought things were going great until the conversation turned to performance appraisals. I’ve never been a fan of the typical corporate performance appraisal process – invariably a tedious combination of box ticking and painful feedback, serving very little purpose for either the employee or their manager. I’m yet to see an employee emerge from a performance appraisal meeting with a smile on their face. My view is that managers should have on-going and regular discussions with their staff rather than wait until HR tells them to have a formal meeting. Often and open are my two favourite words when describing the ideal performance discussion. Focus on people’s strengths and what they’ve done well.

Anyway, John had written his own performance appraisal document and couldn’t wait to show it to me. It was a 10-pager – a beast of a thing which John insisted we read together page by torturous page. It was entirely dreadful throughout – full of meaningless questions, the silliest of all being one which asked you what your hobbies were. How could someone’s hobbies ever be relevant to a valid performance appraisal process?

That was it for me. I told John exactly what I thought of performance appraisals. I also left him in no doubt that I didn’t think much of his “masterpiece”. He was gobsmacked as much as I was shocked at my own candour. I don’t think either of us had ever been in a similar situation. The interview was over. “Pity”, John said as we parted, “you were really hitting the mark there for awhile.”

I wonder if he ever told Jill about the interview – she would have been delighted (as I was) that I had missed out on my “dream job”.