Don't fear hiring the 'wrong' person; fear not making good people great

By Neil Patrick

Fear is the new greed. And catching a dose of it is more life threatening to more people than any terrorist or viral epidemic.

Tomorrow’s UK referendum about staying in or leaving the EU has been dominating the media now for what seems like forever. Watching media interviews with the public on this topic reminded me of an old truth - many people fear change and the unknown more than anything else. Most people will stick with a terrible spouse, a toxic employer and a collapsing career rather than face up to the unknown. Their default is to stick with what they know, even to the point of it harming them.

Banks know this human failing well and even have a name for it and make a great deal of money from it. They call it customer inertia. It's what stops customers switching to another bank even when they are really unhappy about their current one.

And this fear is becoming the norm for organisational behaviours too. Risk management has become a profession which has expanded its death grip from sensible steps to mitigate calamity to an all-pervasive mind set which hampers any organisation seeking to do the sorts of things they aspire to yet often fail to successfully implement. Risk avoidance has become a surrogate for good practice.

Things like becoming agile. Being flexible and responsive. Being customer centric. The reason these management buzzwords cause me to retch every time I hear them, isn’t because they are unworthy aspirations, it’s because so few people who espouse them actually practice them, or have even figured out a way to make them a reality instead of a pipedream.

And nowhere is this commitment to mediocrity more prevalent than in the decisions around hiring people. The whole sorry process has (not unlike the EU) taken on a life of its own. It has grown from a sensible desire to avoid hiring totally unsuitable people for jobs, into an over-rigid and over-specified set of requirements which mean hardly anyone can meet such demanding criteria.

This is why so many vacancies remain unfilled. It's why employers claim they cannot find the people they seek. HR and hiring managers are so terrified that they might make a bad decision that they make no decision. So the post remains unfilled often for months, because no-one suitable can be found (allegedly). In the meantime, the organisation limps on, other employees carry extra burdens, and the whole environment becomes more toxic, more pressured and less productive.

Yet these thousands of person shaped holes are not because no-one can be found. It’s because the specifications and requirements are so extensive that almost no-one could meet them. In my career I have interviewed and hired hundreds of people and watched their careers develop. The thing I learned from this was that an average person can outperform a superstar every time if they are provided with a good environment. Put a superstar in a poor environment and the reverse happens.

And the responsibility for creating a good environment is down to employers not employees. Some employers know this and work hard at it. Too many abdicate responsibility and pass the buck for their failures to their employees.

Employers want good people. But good people are made not bought. And if your organisation is capable of turning good people onto superstars, you’ll not only have a more loyal and productive workforce, you’ll enjoy the benefits of people staying with you longer and critically, acquire the capability of attracting more good people more easily.

It’s time for organisations to stop talking about talent acquisition and start practicing talent manufacturing.

How to assess the risk and rewards of joining a start-up

By Neil Patrick

In my career, I have been a member of three start-up teams. Two were highly successful. One was not. How can you tell which is which before you join?

Last week I had an interesting meeting. I had a coffee with a new Linkedin friend. It was one of those getting to know you type of conversations.

It turned out that he’d been a casualty of a failed business start-up. He’d invested a lot of his time, energy, skills and money into a business which the management team had convinced themselves would make them all millionaires.

But due to a variety of reasons outside his control, the business foundered. He ended up with no job. Nothing. Not even a redundancy cheque.

His story got me thinking about how we decide to join a start-up. I’ve done it three times in my own career. And I learned something different each time.

Often we don’t take the necessary steps to actively control our careers. We just react to the opportunities as they come along and they flow over us in a somewhat unplanned fashion. And if we are not totally happy in our present role, the prospects of a start-up can be highly attractive. You’ll get out of an organisation you don’t like very much and have the opportunity to shape a new one that’s much more to your liking.

But when we leave a ‘safe’ job for a shiny new start-up, many people do it because it offers the prospect of a big pay-off in the future.

That’s a problem; we get dazzled by the prospect of that big payoff, rather than being focused on what has to be achieved hit the jackpot.

And realistically what are the prospects of surviving a start-up, let alone making the big time? That’s the really important thing you must understand before you jump ship. 

But to get back to my new connection’s story. I could see several aspects of it which have relevance to almost everyone:

If a start-up offer materializes when we are job hunting, it’s tempting to just grab it.

The events which led up to the eventual meltdown in this story were not the result a great business plan gone wrong, but rather a series of events which created the illusion of an opportunity. He had lost his job recently so was on the hunt for his next paycheck.

Then the opportunity with the start-up came along. My friend had seized it with enthusiasm, but did he do the necessary due diligence? I don’t know, but if he did, it was clearly insufficiently rigorous. I think it just happened to come along when he needed a job and it was the most accessible offer around.

We can get blinded by the temptations of massive payoffs so easily

The excitement of the prospect of a huge pay-off is an extra tempting proposition for most of us. But the job offer isn't the same thing at all. You should view it as the offer of a job which may evaporate faster than any you've had before. And leave you with nothing.

So you must be clear you are comfortable with this reality. Ask yourself questions, like ‘Will this improve my job satisfaction and my skills?’ Will it get me closer to where I really want to be five years from now? I say five years because that’s the typical horizon at which you should anticipate an exit from a start-up.

Start-up plans are always full of faulty assumptions

One thing I have learned is that unless the business plan is based on completely known assumptions from an identical business elsewhere, they will be wrong. Sometimes a little bit wrong, sometimes a million miles from anything even remotely accurate.

And the more innovative i.e. untried the business model is, the less reliable the business plan assumptions will be. So whilst I love start-ups, if you are joining one, my advice would be to make sure that you know how reliable the planning assumptions are.

It’s your future that is in jeopardy if someone else got these even a little bit wrong. One thing is for sure, no business plan survives its first real world contact without alteration.

Without the right people, a start-off is seriously disadvantaged from the off

You must pay close attention to the start-up team. If they have done it before, you can take some confidence that they know what they are doing. If not, you need to really decide whether they can be relied upon to achieve what’s required.

Often start-ups struggle to attract the best talent. They are forced to settle for who they can get. This is simply because since they have no track record, they are obliged to pick from the minority who are willing to take the risk. And unless the leadership team has a stellar record of success, these are rarely the best possible candidates.

If we are not true to ourselves, we can never do our best work

I know, I know. It’s that ‘p’ word again. Passion.

It’s become a cliché. We get asked it at interviews. What’s your passion? And we feel obliged to say something ridiculous, like, ‘My real passion is building SQL databases’. Really? 

Our true passion is what we feel compelled to do. It’s what we’d do even if no-one paid us to do it…ever.

In hindsight, only one of the three start-ups I took on really matched my passion at the time. The other two I took on because they appeared to be the best option available at the time. In hindsight therefore, two were a bad choice for me.

In the case of my friend, I am pretty certain that he wasn’t truly following his passion either.

Joining a start-up isn’t a guaranteed ticket to fabulous riches

There’s a difference to being a founder (and therefore owning a large slice of the equity) and an early joiner, in which case you will possibly be offered stock if you stick around long enough AND if the business flourishes. This isn’t to be sniffed at, but it probably won't get you into the millionaires club either.

Plus you should expect that the next five years of your life will be consumed by the business. Its needs will take precedence over you own. This is fine if it’s a commitment you are willing to make and you believe totally in the company mission and business plan and playing your part fully in ensuring it becomes a reality.

If not, you really shouldn't be there.

So how should you decide whether you should join a start-up?

This depends on you. What do you find most important? If you are looking to strike it really rich, you probably have a better shot at doing so by being a moderately successful co-founder (eg 30% of a £10m exit is £3m). As an early joiner, even with a bigger exit value, your payout will be much less (eg 0.5% of a £25m exit is £125k).

On the other hand, if you are merely looking to accelerate your career, then there’s much to be gained by finding a superstar team and joining it at the earliest possible opportunity. Whatever happens to the business in the coming years, you’ll learn lessons of huge value to your future career.

At the end of the day, the key is to know what is most important to you, have a clear appraisal of the business plan and team and be completely clear about why you are joining.

Now can I try that again please?

How to find career opportunities

By Neil Patrick

My Dad was a caveman.

Not literally of course, but he thought like one. I’m not saying that he was stupid. Just that he had extreme risk aversion. And this characteristic dominated his outlook on everything.

It meant that he avoided almost anything that involved taking any personal risk. And over time, this escalated from simple risk aversion to chronic indecisiveness and procrastination.

His career only survived because for his generation, the world changed slowly AND he was in a very secure type of work (he was a college teacher). So he kept his job for decades and even prospered a little without having to take many real risks at all.

Why our brains trick us about risk

Over the weekend, I read a post on Tim Ferris’ blog, by Ben Casnocha an award-winning author and serial company-builder and Reid Hoffman, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn. Their piece was about how our brains react to the perception of risk and the effect this has on our career decisions.

Almost everything has changed since my father retired in the 1980’s. From big things like communications and the geo-political power map, to everyday things like how we buy things and how we network.

But for a moment, let’s roll the clock back to 15,000 years ago

You are out hunting for your lunch. There’s a rustling in the undergrowth around you. If it’s a hungry bear, you’re quite possibly going to die. If you retreat to avoid the risk, you’re almost certainly not going to starve.

You’ll probably find food easily elsewhere without the need to risk being eaten yourself.

This redundant logic is hard-wired into our brains: It’s more dangerous to miss the sign of a threat than to miss the sign of an opportunity.

The world has transformed massively since then, but our brains have not

The human brain has been shaped by millions of years of evolution to achieve a simple goal: stay alive long enough to reproduce and raise offspring. Consequently, we react more strongly to threats and unpleasantness than to opportunities and pleasures.

We all have a red alert buzzer in our brain for bad things, but no green alert for good things. Sticks get our attention and carrots do not, because dodging the sticks was what used to be critical to staying alive.

Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist explains this “negativity bias” thus:

“To keep our ancestors alive, we evolved a brain that routinely tricks us into making three mistakes: overestimating threats, underestimating opportunities, and underestimating resources.”

So being highly alert to risks is a good strategy for surviving dangerous environments, but not for thriving in today’s workplace. When risks aren’t life-threatening, you have to resist your brain’s predisposition to run from what are usually survivable dangers.

In fact, if you are not actively seeking and creating new opportunities you are actually exposing yourself to greater risks in the long term.

What are good risks for you to take?

Risk is highly personal. So what might be risky to someone else might not be risky for you. It’s also situational - what may be risky in one situation may not be if the circumstances are slightly different. But for almost everyone, a risk is worth taking when the possible upside outweighs the possible downside i.e. when the potential reward justifies the risk.

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively.” - Machiavelli

So the key to success is being able to accurately assess risk and reward, not seeking to avoid risk altogether.

Here are some career choices which are often unduly rejected as being too risky and the associated opportunities:

Jobs that may not pay well but offer great learning potential

People are inclined to focus on easily quantifiable elements - like how much they’re getting paid. Or the hours of work involved each week. But other “soft” assets -knowledge, connections, and experience are of increasing value in this digitally connected age.

The world is changing at faster rate than ever before and skills which were relevant and valuable ten or even five years ago can quickly become much less so, sometimes almost overnight. To compensate for this, we all have to recognise that we need to continually invest in the growth of our personal networks, skills and knowledge.

You may be young, or you may be making a change of direction. Either way, the opportunity to learn new skills can be more valuable in the long run than the opportunity to earn the most you can right now. Work with great learning but less remuneration involved may be too quickly dismissed as risky.

So do not under-value opportunities such as:

- Internships and Apprenticeships
- Sideways transfers or assignments
- High-level assistantships

Part-time work vs. full-time jobs

Some people dismiss part-time and contract work as being a poor substitute for full-time jobs. But in reality, doing contract work is a powerful way to grow the skills and relationships that can help you find and move into your next opportunity.

And there’s a rising use of contractors as firms seek to keep their investment in expensive full time staff to a minimum.

Typical areas where such work is plentiful include:

- Design work
- Writing
- Programming

Not understanding the ‘conversion funnel’

Success requires persistence. Just because someone doesn’t like what you have to offer, doesn’t mean no-one will. You just have to keep refining your proposition, building your network and knocking on more doors. Sales people and actors have learned through experience to appreciate this instinctively. Sometimes for them, 1 hit out of 100 attempts equates to a runaway success.

For those of us used to a more stable and secure working environment, a single rejection or negative comment can cause us to drop a good idea far too readily.

So be careful about:

- Assuming that a few rejections means your idea or offering is no good
- Building a plan which requires too high a ‘hit rate’ to be successful

- Interpreting a negative reaction as reason to abandon what you are planning instead of refining it

Choosing to work with someone with less experience but high commitment

Fast learners can easily compensate for their inexperience with enthusiasm and commitment. The flip side of inexperience is often hustle, energy, and a willingness to learn. For example:

- Taking a chance on a smart and enthusiastic person just out of college
- Partnering with someone mid-flight in a career who’s moving into a new industry and feeling re-energized by the challenges
- Recognising that a person with a different background can bring fresh and novel perspectives

Opportunities where dangers have been in the news

The more we hear about the downsides to something, the more likely we are to overestimate the probability that it will occur (this is why people tend to become more afraid of flying after news of a plane crash is splashed across the headlines).

If the media, or people in your industry, talk a lot about the riskiness of a certain job or career path, our brains absorb this information and use it to bias our judgements, sometimes unduly negatively.

Examples of this include:

- Starting a company
- Working in a high tech industry
- Joining a start-up business

Overseas opportunities

International career opportunities are sometimes rejected out of hand as too difficult or uncertain. Spending time in other countries feels risky in part because when you’re not a native, at first you may find it hard to feel comfortable with a different culture around you.

But the world is getting smaller every day. Your skills and experience may be abundant in your native land. And other countries are often crying out for the skills that you have yet to find a buyer for at home.

Don’t let unfamiliarity trick you into overestimating the risk. In the words of Tim Ferris, “Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” Turn this fact to your advantage, by rising above the unreasonable fears of your competition.

Examples:

- Foreign assignments within your company
- Attending a conference or seminar in another country
- Volunteering overseas


In all these opportunities, the worst case scenario tends to be survivable. When the worst case of a given risk means possibly getting fired, losing some time or money, experiencing a little discomfort, it’s a risk you should not reject out of hand.

By contrast, if the worst-case scenario may lead to serious damage to your reputation, loss of all your personal assets, or something otherwise career-ending, don’t countenance that risk.

Ask yourself whether you can tolerate the worst case scenario? If the answer is yes, you know what to do next.

Why you will fail to have a great career

By Neil Patrick

Naturally, I talk almost exclusively about jobs and careers on this blog.

But what is the difference between a job and a career? A lot actually…

Most people think of a career as nothing more than a succession of jobs. But a job and a career are not the same thing. A job, any job, is basically a simple transaction between you and an employer. They give you money and you give them your time and work in exchange.

You take a job because, because… why? Usually it’s just because you are offered it. And you need the money. Not much more generally, if you are really honest about it. I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation that went something like, ‘Yep they offered me the job…and I turned it down. It wasn’t really fitting right with my life goals’.

Most of us have been taught from a very early age, that if you work hard, you’ll succeed and be happy. And if you work really hard, you’ll be really successful. It’s not true. At least it’s not true if all you have is a job rather than a career. And despite the fact that this reality is staring us in the face every day, we still keep on believing it.

Just about every time I ask one of my hard working professional friends how things are going at work, I get a similar answer. But whatever their answer, they will almost always begin with, ‘Yeah things are really busy...’.

'Really busy'. Hmmm. Since when did being really busy equate with the fulfilment of anyone’s calling?

A career on the other hand isn’t a job. It may involve a job or jobs, but it is something you choose because it is what you need to reach your greatest level of self-expression and self-realisation. A real career engages you every single day of your life. It is your very reason for living. It is …your passion.

Yes I know, as soon as I mention the ‘P’ word, some or even many readers will have a Pavlovian response and think… 'Oh here we go, here's another guy, telling me all I need to do is find my passion and my career will flourish’.

'He’s going to tell me all about brilliant people with amazing talents who got lucky'.

Well I’m not going to say that, because it’s not true. And it’s not the point.

What I am going to say is that you have a choice. You can choose the default path and have a life of mediocrity and hard work in a series of jobs. And these days, those jobs will get harder and harder to find and in this economy you’ll have longer and longer periods without one.

Or you can be brave, believe in yourself and the essential truth that no-one ever had a brilliant career by simply having a job. And have the faith that if you accept this truth, find your purpose and pursue your goals because they are your passion, you WILL have a brilliant career.

So the choice is up to you. Every one of us has at least one unique and amazing talent. But most people compete in areas where they have no talent at all.

And it’s clear that I’m not the only one who believes this. Just watch this really entertaining performance at TEDx by Larry Smith from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, who knows a thing or two about careers.

How Negativity Bias Can Wreck a Career Change

By Annie Favreau

"The brain is like Velcro to negative experiences and Teflon to positive ones." That's how the neuropsychologist Rick Hanson describes negativity bias—a psychological phenomenon where humans tend to pay more attention to bad feedback and forget about good outcomes.

As a result, people usually overestimate the possibility that disaster will strike. This is a great survival strategy (that rock might be a bear, so I won't poke it). But it's an impractical tactic for the modern world of work (my boss might say no, so I won't even ask for that raise).

What does negativity bias have to do with my career change? One of the worst side effects of negativity bias is an unwillingness to take risks. Of course, not all risks are good for your career. But taking (smart) chances can have major payoff—especially in the increasingly volatile and competitive job market. "Tough as it is for cautious people like me to accept, if you don't occasionally take calculated gambles, you won't get ahead as quickly as those who do," writes career coach Alexandra Levit in a piece for The Wall Street Journal.

How can I take good career risks? The smartest career risks are ones with possible upsides that greatly outweigh the possible downsides. In other words, when the reward justifies the gamble.

But to clearly calculate the true riskiness of a situation, you've got to work around your negativity bias. To take the leaps you need for a great career change, try these tactics:

• Remember that your negativity bias can make you exaggerate risks. Whatever you're planning, there's a good chance that it's actually less perilous than it seems at first glance. 

• Think about the worst-case failure scenario: Could you survive it? In a post for Tim Ferriss's blog, Ben Casnocha and Reid Hoffman, authors of the book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career, write: "When the worst case of a given risk means getting fired, losing a little bit of time or money, experiencing some discomfort … it is a risk you should be willing to take. By contrast, if the worst-case scenario is the serious tarnishing of your reputation or something otherwise career-ending, don't accept that risk." 

• Take a big picture view. While your instinctive reaction to a risk may be "NO!" take a 3,000-foot view to get a true sense of the long-term rewards. In a year or five from now, will this risk potentially put you at an advantage? Perspective can take the edge off your initial response and allow you to make a more clear-headed calculation. 

Remember, even if you fail, making thoughtful gambles teaches you a vital skill: how to evaluate and handle risk. By taking leaps of faith, both small (like volunteering for a project that's outside your comfort zone) and big (like changing careers), you introduce regular unpredictability into your career. And that can increase your immunity to surprise, shock, and change.

Bottom line: to survive and thrive in your career, you've got to get used to taking risks.

Annie Favreau is the managing editor for Inside Jobs—a site that helps career changers and choosers discover strong career options + find the right education to make it happen. Follow her on Twitter @InsideJobs.

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2013/02/12/how-negativity-bias-can-wreck-a-career-change

50 benefits of hiring an older worker. What would you add to this list?

As you may have seen from my post ‘10 Reasons Why You are Your Own Biggest Asset’, here:

http://40pluscareerguru.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/top-10-reasons-why-you-are-your-own.html

I believe that older workers are massively undervalued by prospective employers.

I fully believe that hiring an older employee is a good business decision. So let’s try and create an all encompassing list of all the real benefits for employers when hiring older workers. Perhaps we can also distinguish between the myths and realities of hiring older workers?  After it is complete I  will publish it for all to see. So start listing your favourite selling points to hiring managers in the comments below. Thanks.

Here’s my  Top 10 again  for starters:

1. You have a strong work ethic

2. You’ve learned things by being there even if you’ve not actually done them

3. You know how to communicate clearly

4. You know that the customer is king

5. You don’t have to be told what to do, or in what order

6. You have an innate appreciation of risk

7. You can listen as well as you speak

8. You don’t panic in a crisis

9. Your ego is not out of control

10. You know that you are worth a lot more than just what it says on your CV

As you will also know if you’ve read some of my other posts, I believe that not only are employers missing out on all this value, but these very same strengths equip the over 40s exceptionally well to set up and run their own businesses. I fully expect that the additional points you add will strengthen this argument further still. Let’s see…