The Job’s On! Blog

According to the latest data from Seek, the most sought-after employees in the ACT are in-house solicitors.  And the most applications per advertisements were received for receptionist jobs in the nation’s capital.

According to the study, the Australian employment market stabilised in August after several months of decline.  That’s good news for job seekers (and jobs boards!)

The ratio of new job ads to job applications rose by 2.0 per cent (seasonally adjusted) across Australia.  The greatest increases in the index occurred in the ACT (+4.3%) and Victoria (+1.7%).  

This suggests that the ACT has rebounded  strongly from earlier negative sentiment and that the local jobs market has not stagnated, as it has elsewhere in the country.  Indeed, CapitalJobs.com.au has seen an increase in job applications every month since its inception earlier this year.

You pay for them, right?  So it’s best that your job advertisements are as good as they possibly can be - to give your organisation the best possible opportunity to attract those elusive candidates.  After all, these ads represent your business - they should be good.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a talent war going on out there - talented staff don’t want to work for organisations that post sloppy, unimaginative, incomplete and poorly written ads because they are a reflection on the employer and the vacancy being advertised.  Take some pride in your ads and you will notice a significant increase in applications…

As the manager of the CapitalJobs.com.au jobs board, I can tell you that some of our advertisers get significantly higher click-through rates and application-to-view ratios than other advertisers - because these organisations know how to write informative and captivating advertisements.

Remember, an advertisement is ’selling’ your business to a prospective employee.  You need to pitch your opportunity in a way that is captivating to the candidate.  Put yourself in the shoes of the applicant and don’t write the ad from an employer’s point of view.

From a content perspective, your advertisement should contain the following:

Your logo - Most job boards allow you to display your business logo at the top of your advertisements (CapitalJobs.com.au does).  People are more inclined to click on an advertisement that is visually pleasing.  An ad with a logo will be visited more often than an ad without.

A captivating title - This is what appears when candidates search for jobs and it is the major element that determines relevance for the job seeker.  The title needs to prompt the candidate to take the next step - to click and view the content of the ad.  Be creative and try and stand out from the pack.  It’s a bit like a newspaper headline.

How about: ‘Future Chief Information Officers Training Ground’; ‘System Administrators - the Most POWERFUL People in Defence’; or ‘Only the BEST Programmers Need Apply’

A compelling short description -  Normally the short description (or at least the first few sentences of the short description) appears on search results pages.  Job hunters scan these search results pages and try to find keywords that capture their interest, before clicking to read the full advertisement.   The short description needs to be compelling and contain ‘What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)’ factors - $, perks, opportunities that go with the vacancy etc.

A detailed long description -  The long description contains further details about the job, including an overview of the organisation, information about the vacancy and the selection criteria for the person sought.  Don’t make it too long - most people are time poor and won’t read the whole thing if it is too long.  Again, try and put the most important elements - the key attractors - up front so that candidates are encouraged to read on.

An indication of salary - It is proven that advertisements that contain salary details receive more applications than those that do not.  If you have a salary range in mind, then put it in your ad.

Screening factors -  It’s important that you include screening factors in your advertisement, to rule out those people who will not be suitable from the outset.  For example, you could close with a couple of parameters that are not negotiable - i.e. Australian citizenship essential’ or ‘5 years’ management experience required’.  If you don’t provide any screening factors, you may be inundated with unsuitable applicants - this will waste time and reduce your focus on the suitable candidates.

Multiple contact details -  You need to make sure that you give the candidate every possible means to get in touch with you.  Candidates are in high demand - make it easy for them to contact you.  Provide an email address, telephone number, contact name and even an alternate contact, should you be unavailable at any time. 

Once you have got the content right, make sure that your advertisements are grammatically correct and do not contain spelling errors - make sure that a third person reviews the advertisement before posting it on the web.  Spelling and grammatical mistakes will reflect poorly on your business and may preclude candidates from applying.

Some of the things that turn me off include advertisements that don’t use correct sentence structure, poor use of capitalisation (either excessive capitalisation or non-adherence to normal usage of capitals), three-line advertisements with scant detail, and the use of Hotmail or other free email services in the contact information.

Once the ad is posted, review it as if you were a job seeker reading it for the first time.  Make sure that it appears correctly in the browser and is visually pleasing.

Make any final tweaks to your ad and then wait for the applications to roll in.

Many employees are hired without ever being reference checked - and a lot of managers ultimately regret not conducting these checks as part of their hiring due diligence. 

A reference check is a short interview with a former or current manager (not a peer!) to determine the person’s suitability for a new vacancy, based on their performance with previous employers. 

Reference checks constitute a key information gathering activity in the recruitment process and they should not be skipped, despite the fact that they may seem painful to do.  All too often, employers are keen to move quickly to fill a vacancy and believe that the candidate’s performance at interview alone justifies an offer of employment.  This is often not the case, because many candidates are consummate performers at interview but turn out to be lousy employees.

Whilst a reference check won’t provide a 100% guarantee of the quality of a candidate, it will assist you in your decision making process by corroborating information gained earlier during interviews, and by highlighting potential points of concern that may have arisen during the recruitment process.

Some people say that reference checks are useless, because the candidate generally nominates the referee and ‘primes’ them before the check is conducted.  A lot of the time, this is true.  However, you can reduce the prospect of ‘tainted’ reference checks by conducting interviews with multiple referees from multiple organisations, and dealing only with referees who have had managerial responsibility for the candidate (preferably in their past 2-3 jobs).  You may also consider advising the candidate that you wish to speak to an unspecified referee from one of the employers listed in their CV or from their current employer.  If you receive resistance to this, then alarm bells will start to ring. 

Of course, the candidate may legitimately not want you to talk to their current manager, as it may not be known that the candidate is planning to leave.  I have seen this used as an excuse by ‘job hoppers’ so the employer needs to be wary in this situation.

Reference checks should only be considered one ‘component’ in the overall information gathering process.  Coupled with the candidate’s CV, cover letter, job application documentation, telephone manner and performance/presentation at interview, the reference check can help build a complete ‘picture’ of the candidate and his/her suitability for your vacancy.  As reference checks are often the final step before the offer stage, they should be used to address any inconsistencies or concerns identified earlier on in the process.

Having conducted 2-3 quality reference checks with previous managers, you should have the confidence to proceed to the next stage of the process - to make an offer to the candidate or to advise them that their application has been unsuccessful.

Here’s a Candidate Reference Check Proforma that you can use for your own reference checks…candidate-reference-check-proforma

Last year I had cause to fire a staff member who worked for me.  It was one of the most stressful experiences I have ever been through.  In the days leading up to the act, I couldn’t sleep, I had sweaty palms and felt extremely unsettled.  Firing staff is not an enjoyable experience and it’s one experience that I hope I don’t have to go through again.

That said, firing staff comes ‘with the territory’ of being a manager.  Sometimes it is necessary to fire a staff member in situations where the individual is costing the organisation time and money.  Whilst I did not enjoy the experience of firing an employee, I feel that I now better equipped should the need arise again. 

There is a right way and a wrong way to fire a staff member.  The right way will ensure a successful parting with the former employee’s dignity left intact; the wrong way will result in your organisation being taken to court for wrongful dismissal.

Here are some tips for ensuring that you don’t end up in court (please note that I am not a lawyer and this is NOT legal advice!):

1. Constant communication.  Be frank and honest with people about their performance.  If a person is not performing, then tell them so - preferably at the time when the poor behaviour was displayed so that corrective action can occur immediately.  Help them to rectify the problem.  Give them every chance to succeed by providing support.  If the person doesn’t ‘work out’, then it should come as no surprise when they are dismissed, because they will have received performance feedback throughout their tenure.  Problems occur when the dismissed person has had no ongoing feedback and is oblivious to the manager’s thoughts about his/her performance.

2. Have a formal performance management process for ALL staff.  Not only should you provide  informal verbal feedback about performance, it is important that you have a more formal, written performance management process - not just for miscreants, but for all staff.  You should sit down with each employee several times a year and discuss their performance truthfully and objectively.  Allow them to rate their own performance and then provide a written report from a managerial perspective.  If the two perspectives are divergent, then discuss these differences and agree to a plan for improvement over the next reporting period.  Written performance management reports constitute documentary evidence of ongoing counselling - this could be used to refute a litigious ex-employee’s claim to unfair dismissal at a later time.

3. Document everything.  Keep a record of every conversation or activity - not just formal reports.  Make notes about incidents that contribute to a ‘case’ against the employee.  When the inevitable question comes - why are you firing me? - you can recount a string of events from your dossier that will justify your actions. 

4. Three warnings not necessary - but desirable.  I’m told that the three warning approach to firing is no longer required, but I think it is still an appropriate lead up to firing an errant staff member (unless of course the employee has committed a crime which justifies instant dismissal, like fraud).  The employee needs to be in no doubt that their performance/behaviour is unacceptable and the only way to do this is to confront them about it.  Your three warnings may take the following form:

- A formal meeting with the employee involving a verbal explanation of their unsatisfactory work practices, with an opportunity to respond verbally.

- A formal meeting with the employee to issue a written warning, indicating clearly what is expected of the employee, where the employee has failed to meet expectations, and the consequences of not rectifying the problem.  During this meeting, you should make reference to the earlier discussion and the fact that there has been no change in behaviour.  You may also require the employee to formally respond to your written warning.  The response will probably reveal the extent of the employee’s commitment to ongoing employment with your organisation.

- A formal meeting with the employee to inform them of your intention to dismiss them.  You should explain why, with reference to the previous two steps, and examples of where they have failed to meet expectations despite the numerous warnings.

Each of the meetings listed above need to be carefully planned and even scripted.  I recommend having a third party sit in on the meetings to rule out any potential ‘my word against your word’ claims later on.  The proceedings should be documented and filed.  The meeting should be conducted in a formal manner - it is not a convivial, two-way conversation.  As the manager, you should speak clearly, succintly and maintain eye contact.  The employee needs to be made aware of the gravity of the issue and leave the meeting in no doubt as to his/her obligations.

5. Be sensitive.  After delivering the harsh news, it is likely that there will be an outpouring of emotion (anger, tears, strident rebuttal, accusations, refusal to leave) and at this time it’s important that you are extremely sensitive.  I have never been fired myself, but I expect that it would be a horrible experience and one that would rock your self-esteem to its foundations.  It’s your job to try and convey the news so that the ex-employee’s dignity is left intact and so that they are able to move on quickly and find alternate employment.  This is not an easy thing to do and that’s why it is so important to plan thoroughly for this step, to ensure the welfare of the ex-employee, the rest of the staff and yourself.

I think the key to this is communication and documentation.  It’s not an enjoyable experience, but when a dismissal is called for, it’s best done properly.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute legal advice.  I recommend that you obtain independent legal advice in relation to your own organisational circumstances.

Some people are awful at job interviews - their profuse sweating, nervous twitching and rambling responses often precludes them from winning the position, despite the fact that they might be perfectly suited to the job.

Other people are fantastic at job interviews - they can present themselves impeccably, speak confidently and formulate pointed responses to questions, yet many of these people ultimately turn out to be lousy employees!

‘Selling yourself’ is a difficult thing to master - it comes more naturally to some people than to others. 

For those of us who do find job interviews stressful, it is important to prepare thoroughly.  As part of your preparation you should consider the following tips:

Research the employer.  Before going into the interview you should know as much as humanly possible to know about the company - you may be asked questions about your understanding of the company’s operations.  If you don’t know, then you will look silly.  Also, your knowledge of the organisation can be used in framing your response to the inevitable question: ‘So, why would you like to work at XYZ Co.?’.  To learn about the organisation, use the company’s website, search for articles on Google or even get in contact with an existing employee to ask them questions about their job.

Be punctual.  You will be dead in the water if you arrive late for the interview.  In fact, it’s probably not worth turning up at all if you’re late.  Make sure you’re there at least 10 minutes before the scheduled start of your interview.  And when I say ‘there’, I mean sitting outside the interview room ready to go.  Don’t fall into the trap of arriving 10 minutes early and then taking 20 minutes to find the actual location of the interview.  It happens regularly in Canberra with the vast sprawling government departments…

Dress appropriately.  It’s a job interview.  You should be wearing a suit and tie (or equivalent) for any office-bound position.  If you don’t have a suit, buy one.

Make a good first impression. When you first meet your interviewer(s), greeet them with a smile, look them in the eye, and shake their hands firmly.  Make sure that your breath is minty and that your perfume/aftershave is not overpowering.  The first impression of you is often the lasting impression, so make it good.

Be confident, use appropriate body language and voice.  You should adopt a confident persona throughout the interview.  Maintain eye contact with the interviewer.  If there a multiple interviewers, address your responses to each of the interviewers by shifting your eye contact.  Sit up straight and cross your hands in your lap.  Use simple hand gestures for emphasis but don’t wave them about like a helicopter.  Try to vary your voice intonation so that you do not sound monotonic.

Don’t waffle.  Remember that the interviewer is probably going to be conducting more than one interview.  Sometimes they may be conducting 10 interviews…in a single day.  If you waffle, then they will switch off and, mentally, they will record a negative mark against your application.  Keep your responses short, succint and to the point. Don’t try to fill pregnant pauses with talking.  Just state your answer and stop.  If you don’t know the answer to a particular question, tell the truth and don’t make up a flowery, long-winded response.

The six (seven?) Ps.  Prior preparation and planning prevents poor performance.  You should anticipate the types of questions that will be posed to you. You should then prepare and orally rehearse your responses to these questions.  Some questions are almost ALWAYs asked in interviews: tell us how your experience is appropriate for our company?; why do you want to work for our company?; what will you bring to our company?; where do you see yourself in two years?; give us an example of your previous work that relates to our operations?, etc. etc.

Provide examples of your work.  Just like job applications, you should give detailed examples of work that you have done previously.  Qualify and quantify (who, what, how, when, why, how much) the work so that the interviewer understands the scope of the work - eg. At Tax, I managed a successful $1.2 million information technology project that employed 7 people over the course of a 3 month period, which sought to implement a new online customer relationship management system for the enforcement division…etc. etc.  Examples represent tangible evidence of your previous work history, rather than fluffy motherhood statements about what you ‘can’ do.

Finish on a high.  At the end of an interview, you are generally given the opportunity to ask a question or to make a concluding remark.  If you have questions, then ask them.  It is expected that you will have questions, after all, this is a major step you’re taking and not asking questions suggests that you are not really aware of the gravity of making a career change.  By the same token, it is not a good idea to produce a list of 40 questions at this stage of the proceedings.  Similarly, if you have the opportunity to make a concluding remark, then you should use it.  Conclude by stating succinctly why you would like to work for the company - don’t overdo it, keep it short and sweet.  Once you’re done, stand, make eye contact, smile, shake hands and be on your way.  Hopefully at this stage you will be told what the next step in the process will be…if you’ve followed these tips, then, rest assured, you are well on the way to progressing to the next stage.

The PS News reported this week that the Canberra-based Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has been named as one of the best organisations to work for in 2008 by the Great Place to Work Institute (presumably the Great Place to Work Institute is a great place to work too - one would hope so).

Each year the Great Place to Work Institute conducts a study of workplace culture across a range of Australian organisations to determine the best companies to work for in the country.  The best companies are selected based on the answers that employees provide to a detailed survey conducted by the institute.

Other companies that made the top ten included Dow Corning, Google, McDonald’s (yep, McDonald’s), Morgan Stanley and - credit where credit is due - our competitors, Seek Limited.

Further information about Great Place to Work Australia can be found here: http://www.greatplacetowork.com.au.

Our congratulations to the AIHW for being recognised amongst the top employers in Australia.  All of the organisations named should be very proud of this recognition.

News.com.au carried an article yesterday about the ‘death’ of the lunch break, with many employees now feeling compelled to remain at their desks during their designated lunch hour. 

The article said that up to 70% of all Australian workers are now eating lunch at their desks.  In the US, 55% of all workers either give up their lunch break entirely or cut back their allotted time due to work commitments.

A lot of employers tacitly support this perceived industriousness - more time spent at the coalface means more productivity, right?  Well, in a lot of cases this isn’t true.  Working for long periods without a break often results in reduced productivity and, ultimately, employee burn-out.  Employers should insist that staff take regular breaks throughout the day and spend a decent lunch break away from the office.   This will make employees feel more energised in the afternoon and hence more productive.  There is also evidence that longer breaks provide health benefits (eg. instead of eating a packet of chips from the vending machine whilst poring over a keyboard), which in turn will benefit the business.

Unfortunately, in many situations, an employee’s desire to remain at their desk over lunch is driven  by a fear of being labelled a ’slacker’.  Employers need to be cognisant of this and create an environment where this fear is unfounded.  By the same token, employees need to be aware that it is unacceptable to have ‘long lunches’ every second day…

Employees are legally entitled to a 30 minute lunch break each day, but in most cases, a one hour break is appropriate.  Employers should encourage workers to be active during this period - encourage them to go for a walk or a run.  My old workplace had an unofficial ‘running group’ that ran around Lake Burley-Griffin at lunchtime every day.  Healthy body = healthy mind. 

As the team manager, I was part of the vanguard of the ‘running group’.  It is important that managers set an example for their subordinates, even to the point of taking proper lunch breaks.  Workers often model their own habits on those further up the chain - with managers working through the day without a break, workers will feel that they need to do the same.

How often do you eat lunch at your desk?  I have been guilty of this, I must say….although I do love my job.

How ‘green’ is your business?  Many business owners – particularly small business owners – have probably never given any real consideration to the environmental ‘friendliness’ of their business. 

Sure, it’s a relatively new phenomenon in business – after all, businesses were traditionally about making money, no matter what the environmental impact.  Things have changed and today environmental considerations are not only important to ‘save the planet’, but also because they play a key role in attracting and retaining the best staff - and customers too.  Pay short shrift to the environment and your business with suffer…

Most people have become more aware and concerned about the environmental perils that are besetting our globe – particularly the socially-attuned and connected younger generations who have grown up in the era of global warming and holes in the ozone layer.  Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth was a watershed in heightening global awareness about the melting of the polar ice cap and how our growing consumption and exploitation of the environment is setting us on a disastrous course.

 Since then, we have seen some significant developments in Australia – greater segregation of waste products for recycling, debate about the imminent abolition of plastic bags, plans to build hybrid vehicles in this country, and a national focus on dwindling Australian water resources (particularly the River Murray) to name but a few.

So what is your business doing to contribute?  Most businesses don’t have the environmental footprint of BHP, but there are a string of relatively small things that businesses can do to contribute to the cause – whilst they may seem minor, the collective effect of every business enacting these strategies will be significant.

Here’s some things that your business can do:

• Print double-sided copies on your photocopier
• Use recycled paper
• Reuse scrap paper for other purposes rather than throwing it away
• Correctly segregate all waste into appropriate bins and recycle
• Turn off computer monitors and CPUs when not in use – particularly overnight
• Turn off photocopiers and other applicances when not in use – particularly overnight
• Turn off lights when not in use – particularly overnight
• Use heating and cooling sensibly – if everybody is wearing a sweater in the office in the middle of summer, then it’s probably an indication that your air conditioning is on too high
• Use blinds and double glazing to lock in heat/cool and reduce air conditioning
• Allow natural light instead of using electric light
• Encourage workers to use public transport
• Choose a premises that has a high energy efficiency rating

It’s recommended that business owners write a ‘green policy’ for their business - incorporating the action points above and more - and trumpet the fact that the policy exists when dealing with customers and when recruiting new staff.  Existing staff should be included in the process of developing the policy, so that they take ‘ownership’ of the strategies therein, and accordingly, will advocate the business to customers and prospective employees. 

Employees today are more environmentally aware than they have ever been and they have greater expectations about the environmental efficiency of their workplace and their employer.  It’s important that every business considers the impact of not enacting an environmental policy – not only on the environment, but on their customers and staff.

We’d like to hear from businesses who have enacted such a policy, or have further suggestions about what businesses can do to contribute.

CapitalJobs.com.au has been featured on the Destination Talent blog written by Phillip Tusing.  You can read the article here…

It was quite amusing to see a gawky picture of Julia Gillard and comments from Alexander Downer’s son about his ‘pompous’ dad appear in the weekend papers - both were retrieved from social networking websites.  This is a reminder to us all that we should be very, very careful what images we upload to websites (not just social networking sites) and what comments we post in open forums on the internet.

Have you ever ‘googled’ yourself?   It’s worth doing, because the search results that are returned by searching on your name are not only available to you, but they’re also available to ANY person that chooses to search for information about you.  And that includes prospective employers, who will be most interested to see if they can dig up some dirt on you and and will be keen to corroborate everything that you said in your job interview.  In fact, US research says that 44 per cent of employers are now using sites like MySpace and Facebook to research job candidates.

When I ‘google’ my name (don’t you love brands that become verbs - think hoover, xerox..), it reveals my LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, the fact that I used to run an Indonesian language website, and that I won the high jump at the 1998 Australian Defence Force athletics championships.  Nothing too bad there…thankfully.  But delving a bit deeper, it is not that hard to find a photo of me in the Birdwood High School football team back in 1990, skinny as a rake with massive ears sticking out…

If I were to upload photos of a drunken escapade to Facebook (or if a mate/enemy does same), then it is quite likely that these will be available to internet surfers too.  It’s important that you are aware of what content is available to others via these sites and to protect personal information, where possible (for example, Facebook allows you to keep elements of your profile private).  If you don’t want the world to know, then just don’t publish the information on the web.  Simple as that.

Unfortunately, once published, the content is like a ‘tattoo’ - very difficult to erase, so it’s best to exercise discretion.  Prevention is better than the cure.

As an employer, the first place I am looking once the candidate walks out the door after an interview is the web.   You should expect that others are doing the same.