Archive for July, 2009

Archives for Coaching

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We look for star quality in politicians and actors, but rarely do we find it among corporate leaders. And, no, we’re not just talking about good looks. The quality known as charisma is an intangible, but valuable career asset, too.

Does it translate well from one culture to another? “The notion of charisma is extremely culture-specific,” says Olivia Fox Cabane, executive director of Spitfire Communications, who coaches leaders on this topic. “Be cautious with taking what has worked at home and trying to work it abroad. A big part of American charisma is making yourself look human and vulnerable – that can be suicide in Germany.”

Cabane, a 28-year-old entrepreneur, lawyer and author, who has two passports (U.S. & France), holds three degrees from two countries and is fluent in four languages, is one of the few among us who has shopped on different continents for where to live. Cabane, who has lived and worked in seven countries on three continents, says she evaluated countries on the basis of where her personal charisma would work best. She loves France, but felt that “lacking gray hair” she would never be taken seriously there.

She has gone to some extremes to win people over. “When I first started lecturing at the United Nations I was 24-years-old,” says Cabane. “I knew that I couldn’t go in there with my 24-year-old face and be listened to with any degree of respect – so I wore stage makeup.”

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Archives for Relocations

Is there a more compelling place to advance your career than China? Paradoxically, if you’re from China, the answer is yes, but for nearly everyone else China is one of the best places to cut your teeth.

India, Brazil and Eastern Europe are among the destinations that would also impress a global-minded recruiter or hiring manager. But China has unique advantages for “westerners” to consider such as the world’s fastest growing economy, and an acute shortage of experienced managers, especially those who can work with English-speaking customers.

“The war for talent in China is bigger than the dot-com days of 1999,” in the U.S., says Shanghai-based Frank Mulligan, an expatriate Irishman, blogger, and recruiter with Accetis International. The war, as Mulligan puts it, is driving up salaries and staff attrition. “The salary increases are nine to ten percent a year. But the real increases are much higher. The average turnover is in eighteen months. But if you change jobs the average increase [in pay]is thirty percent. ”

Those numbers tend to make job seekers listen closely. But of course that’s just the beginning of the story.

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Archives for Employment

Corporate interviews have become endurance tests, a common way of simulating how candidates will respond if hired. Job candidates sitting on the hot seat can expect to hear the same questions posed four to seven times in a single afternoon. While job seekers are judged on every little detail, feeling pressure not to make mistakes, paradoxically, interviewers often believe they have latitude to come across as aloof, disorganized or rude.

But in a tightened labor market, candidates may experience a role reversal. Savvy employers may drop the fortress mentality – lowering a drawbridge across the moat of fire. For example, some firms may devote more of the interview process to “sell” candidates on the company. And some firms hit by the labor crunch are lowering skill-level or experience requirements for new hires, especially when it’s possible to shape raw talent in a matter of weeks or months.

Not surprisingly, job seekers have a litany of complaints about the interview process. According to a study of 3,725 job seekers, conducted in five global regions by Development Dimensions International (DDI), in conjunction with Monster, the biggest complaints interviewees make are these:

Interview Habits That Most Annoy Job Seekers

Source: Development Dimensions International, Inc.

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Archives for Workplace

This hasn’t been a good year for jerks in the workplace. Apart from the usual controversies about egomaniacal politicians, baseball managers and CEOs, a popular new book recommends zero tolerance for assholes and a research report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Management School underscores the toxic organizational impact of emotions in the workplace.

Experts who study emotional intelligence, also called EQ for emotional quotient, gather data proving that highly empathetic rather than insensitive people excel in business or personal relationships. The emerging ’science’ of EQ is gaining traction among recruiters and HR executives, many of whom screen potential hires for these ’soft skills’.

What hasn’t been well understood until now is how intense emotions, especially in the workplace, impact productivity and spread from person to person.

“We engage in emotional contagion,” contends Sigal Barsade, a Wharton professor who studies the influence of emotions on the workplace. “Emotions travel from person to person like a virus.”

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Archives for Branding You

Ray Sweger is a 25-year-old operations manager with a mid-market financial firm who landed the job he wanted 2,000 miles from home, not by flying out for an interview but by answering employment questions over a webcam.

Although video résumés are controversial and have not been accepted by corporate America, video interviews conducted over the Web or on videoconferencing systems have caught on quickly. Video interviews are considered a fast, cost-effective and excellent way to filter job candidates.

At first blush, it might seem like a double-standard. Why do hiring managers feel video is okay for interviews but not for résumés? In a word: control. It turns out that employers are comfortable using video for interviews when it’s clear that they can both control the process and save time and money by not having to fly (or even bring) in three candidates for every one they hire. Currently employed job candidates like it because they don’t have to miss work or travel just to complete a job interview.

“I love it primarily for the efficiency but one of the bonuses is there are people we wouldn’t have considered otherwise,” says Sweger’s new boss, Devin Thorpe, CEO, Thorpe Capital, a middle market investment banking firm in Salt Lake City. “We did an interview [for an internship] last night with a woman in Paris.” She had found a Web-based internship notice that Thorpe Capital placed with the nearby University of Utah’s career center, contacted the company, and within hours had completed the process online.

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