What’s missing from most job application packs?

You want to attract the best possible candidates for your vacancy.  You’ve prepared a detailed job description and person specification.  You’ve put together an attractive reward and benefits package.  You’ve included information about the organisation, its strategic vision, culture and achievements (or have this information easily accessible on the company website).  You’ve highlighted the exciting career prospects and development opportunities available to staff.  What could you possibly have forgotten?

There comes a stage in most people’s careers where the whole interview and selection process becomes a two-way thing.  It’s not just about the organisation choosing who they want to employ; job seekers also have their own list of essential and desirable factors that make for the ideal employer.  Job details are clearly important, as is information about the organisation and the context in which the job operates.  What tends to be missing, and is hard for job seekers to find for themselves, is information about the person who will be managing them.   There’s sometimes an indication of the job title, but unless this is a very senior post, it’s often nigh on impossible to find out much about the actual person.

It has been said that people leave managers not organisations; is it so unthinkable therefore that job hunters may want more than the briefest information about the one person who potentially has the power to make their working life a genuinely rewarding experience or a complete nightmare?  Is the opportunity to ask a few questions at the end of an interview really enough to reassure the applicant that they aren’t entrusting the future of their career to a complete psychopath?

It might perhaps be a step too far to expect the recruiting manager to complete an application form of the applicants’ own design (questions might include staff turnover rates, average number of sick days taken by team members and the amount per head invested in their development); similarly managers may be reluctant to provide references from two people they have managed.   At the very least however, the manager’s name should be provided, accompanied by a brief career history and perhaps the link to their LinkedIn profile. 

As a recruiter, you wouldn’t rely on sketchy information and trust to make such an important decision as who to appoint to your vacancy.  Why then do you think a job applicant would be satisfied with knowing next to nothing about the person who possibly has the most significant influence over the success or otherwise of their next career move?

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk



Five Great Articles About Bad Bosses

Talk to most people who have worked for any length of time, and they will have a bad boss story.  It seems that bad bosses are everywhere.  Perhaps it is just that the bad experiences stick in the memory, while good management is taken for granted and only exceptional cases get noticed.

No-one sets out to be a bad manager.  This collection of great articles highlights the consequences of getting things wrong and provides guidance on becoming a better manager.

1.     The Costs of Mistreating Employees by Frank Sonnenberg

Frank Sonnenberg is author of Managing with a Conscience: How to Improve Performance Through Integrity, Trust, and Commitment.  In this post he identifies the potential consequences of treating employees badly

2.     How to utterly destroy an employee’s work life by Tersea Amabile and Steven Kramer

Based on a long-term research project, the authors identify four ways that managers can leave you frustrated, unmotivated by the job

3.     Top 10 Excuses for Being a Lousy Manager by Dan McCarthy

Bad bosses often have a hard time taking ownership for their flaws.  Here are some of the most common excuses managers use to justify their behaviour

4.     Are you a bad boss? 7 Management Moves to Avoid

Inc. identifies seven of the ugliest management tactics in the business world, along with better ways to handle the challenges

5.     What Are Good Things About Having A Lousy Boss? by Bob Sutton

The author of Good Boss, Bad Boss brings the positive side of having a bad boss. 

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Empowerment – fool’s gold or the real thing?

Over the years, the term empowerment has become part of everyday management language.  It has all the hallmarks of a winning concept: by giving individuals greater control over decisions that affect their work, they feel more engaged and fulfilled, and at the same time productivity and quality improve.  What’s not to love?

On closer inspection however, there’s a faint whiff of snake oil about the whole thing, managers giving back what they took away in the first place.  While of course there are individuals who find problem-solving and decision-making difficult at the best of times, many have no problem with these at all.  So, what robbed people of their natural abilities, and instilled in them instead a sense of learned helplessness? 

Empowerment is not just about adding vitality to a flagging workforce, with the implication that it is the workforce that needs to be fixed.  There is something rather patronising about a manager acting as Lord or Lady Bountiful bestowing on their people the power to use their own judgement, provided they stay well within the clearly defined limits of their pay grade. 

As well as thinking about how to empower staff therefore, managers should be focusing on eliminating the ways in which the organisation actively disempowers them.  There is little point introducing empowerment measures unless these are accompanied by a thorough overhaul of the organisational structures, policies and procedures that prevent individuals from using their judgement.   Without a culture where trust is clearly demonstrated, risk is acceptable and blame avoided, empowerment is likely to become yet another idea that sounds good in theory but achieves little in practice.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk