Here be dragons, and here be (hopefully) how to slay them

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Vaughan Granier

As HR Leaders, our portfolio includes many things but significantly, change management, cultural development and/or guardianship, and leadership development. We are often called out of the safety of managing processes and procedures (let’s be honest, that’s not really what drives us anyway) into the murky world of people. Depending on the situation that brought it on, these moments can be entertaining, educational, or, perhaps, daunting and stressful.

We have a role in most organisations as the go-to person for problem solving, whether or not we are personally skilled at that. Some HR practitioners are pure strategist, some pure administrator. The best problem solver is an “impure” practitioner, and by that I don’t mean ethically! The best problem solver is an alloy, a mixture of many things, and able to draw on each of those many different things at different times to be uniquely suited to the diverse challenges of the workplace.

That is all very well when we are solving other people’s problems. But we are also employees and managers, followers and leaders in our own right. We also have STUFF. Stuff that needs resolving.

Sometimes, we are not just facilitating; we are at the very centre of the matter itself. Those times are when our problem-solver skills and reputation are deeply tested, when we are solving the problem that we are also integral to! In MSExcel, this is a crushing defeat known as a circular reference. Unlike Excel though, we are creative beings and are not bound to mathematical limits in dealing with these things. We can feature significantly in the solution to problems and challenges that involve us.

Here are some “what if’s” to illustrate:

  • What if we are required to performance manage within our own team – and the poor performance has affected our own reputation or standing as team leader?
  • What if we are required to diagnose and resolve a weakness in the leadership culture of our organisation, and our opinion is unpopular with one or more of the protagonists?
  • What if we are drawn into conflict because of our role and are required to objectively resolve and guide our leaders through the very conflict that involves us?
  • What if our own capacity, competencies and emotional intelligence comes up short and we actually have contributed in some way to the problem?
  • What if our personal values place us in tension with corporate actions or ideals, or with the specific actions of other individual employees?

These issues, and many others, can require a great deal from us personally and be pivotal in establishing or damaging HR’s reputation within the organisation. In reality it is these situations that require our best and dropping the ball here is really dropping the ball.

As HR managers, we are more likely than most to find ourselves navigating these waters, so developing the aptitude and the competencies for this is pretty much going to separate the sailors from the puddle-pirates. There is an unwritten rule that the two people who must demonstrate great leadership in times of trouble and provide the stability for others to rally around, are the CEO and the HR leader. I have discovered, in talking to many HR leaders, that in times of trouble, the employees look to the CEO for leadership and stability, and in that same time of crisis, the CEO can often be looking to the HR Leader for exactly the same thing!

For most of us, no-one really coaches us to excellence in these areas, and natural gifting is rare. If we have a mentor or a coach, we are in the smart minority, but frequently we are simply on our own, working these things out alone in our own minds and then trying to solve the workplace dilemma that is facing us and our organisation.

I don’t have any slick or great answers, but I want to consider some personal characteristics and disciplines that are profoundly helpful in sailing confidently through these rough seas. Let me say that I am not for one second advocating that we seek out quiet waters to practice our craft, as HR practitioners. Quiet waters do not make for a skillful sailor, and let’s face it, that is not why we were hired anyway.

Over the next few blogs, I will write some thoughts around these concepts.

So, from a somewhat drenched and exhausted sailor looking forward to dry land, to other drenched and exhausted sailors also looking forward to dry land, these are some ideas around “here be dragons” and “here be (hopefully) how to slay them”!

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Some Ideas for a new approach to Personal Planning (a.k.a. New Years’ Resolutions)

Posted on January 3, 2015 by Vaughan Granier

New Year’s Resolutions are a funny thing. Most of us make them, but almost all of us fail to keep them.

And we do so without a definite conscience, really. We pretty much have perfected the art of walking away from our New Year’s Resolutions with hardly a backward glance. It’s as if we are just following some kind of formula – “it’s January 1, so I better make my New Years Resolutions”, or maybe its just a  crowd mentality – “Everyone else is doing it, and I will feel like a loser if I can’t show them I am also aiming at something this year, so I should”.

Or maybe it really a reflection of something deeper that we desire but somewhere in the transition from wishes to reality, it all gets lost. Am I good at keeping New Year’s Resolutions? No, not as good as I’d like to be. So am I qualified to shell out advice about them? No, not really :-).

But can I – can we – do something different this year? In the past I have made radical commitments that were pretty much doomed from the start. I think more than a few of us can agree we have done that on occasion. We aim high and far, without changing the fundamentals, and come up short. It hardly ever works, except in the rarest of cases. And if you are reading this and you managed to do that one year, or every year, you have my respect. Because it is not easy.

So if there is a real desire inside us for “this year” to be different to “last year”, and we really want to get something significant done about it, what can we do? More specifically, what can we do DIFFERENTLY? I have been thinking about this, because I am really really tired of wanting something and not achieving it.

Stephen MR Covey, the son of the late Stephen Covey, wrote a book on trust called “The Speed of Trust”. In it he talks about the 5 different levels of trust, and the book contains a really insightful, useful and revealing self test. It is about measuring our level of self-trust. In keeping with his fathers powerful principle that “private victory precedes public victory”, he says that establishing self-trust is key to becoming a person of high trust. It is the fundamental level of trust that underpins all others. If we are seeking to be someone who is trustworthy, and is seen as trustworthy (who does NOT want that???); we have to first become someone who trusts themselves. If we desire to have a trustworthy reputation but have not established and consistently achieved our own internal trustworthiness, then we are simply hypocrites – seeking to put on an act and performing public behaviours for other’s approval, that we do not replicate in private.

Integrity, he says, is key to trustworthiness. And hypocrisy is a complete lack of integrity.

New Years Resolutions are usually private individual commitments, and integrity and trust are all about keeping commitments. So… lets face facts. If we don’t keep our personal commitments, we lack integrity towards ourselves! If we fail to keep them to others, we gain a reputation of untrustworthiness. and that is humiliating, and embarrassing. Nobody wants to be seen as lacking integrity or lacking trustworthiness. So we put real effort into NOT APPEARING to lack integrity, often going the extra mile to avoid letting someone else down. But privately we seem to have a different standard. We are not embarrassed as much, or humiliated as much, by our failure to keep our promises to ourselves. Maybe its that old adage “We judge others by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions”. That mindset is a very subtle but devastating one. We really need to stop that subtle lie that we allow, to ourselves. If we really want to change, then failure is failure and success is success.

Maybe if we are really serious about making changes, its time to judge ourselves ONLY by our actions, and not by our intentions.

But there is another issue for the average Joe or Jane underachiever – habits. Unhelpful habits. We are in the habit of letting go of our commitments. In the habit of excusing failure. In the habit of procrastinating. In the habit of instant gratification over delayed gratification. In the habit of allowing small, almost indiscernable lapses in discipline that quickly build up into failure. These habits are destructive to any personal plan. How can we change that?

Again, the book “The Speed of Trust” makes the point that these cannot be changed overnight, but they CAN be changed. So we should start small, and drive the habit to be re-formed, but to do so in achievable instalments. The level of these depends on where we are at on our own personal journeys. For an absolute layabout, the steps and the goals would be very different to an athlete seeking to break through a ceiling and achieve new heights. “Achievable” for a couch potato might be not snoozing the alarm clock, and actually getting up at 06h30 like they said they would. “Achievable” for an athlete, might be an extra 30 minutes of exercise every day.

We are all different, and we need to individually own where we are at if we are going to get something done; and work from there to a better place.

I read a great blog this past month on Inc.com that talked not so much about setting goals, but building SYSTEMS. Read it here: http://bit.ly/1D4dVqY. In other words, instead of setting a goal, rather set a process, a system, for achieving that goal, and then focus on keeping the system going. If the system is right, the goal will take care of itself simply by keeping the system going solidly 🙂 Sounds interesting – and achievable! So it’s what I am going to do differently this year.

They say it takes 28 days to break an old habit and build a new behaviour in its place. So, one month. What I am going to do is focus on one thing per month. So I am going to have 12 goals for this year, each achievable in a month of consistent behaviour. They won’t be wildly different each month – in fact some of them will build on the success of the previous month to effectively achieve something in two months, or three months, that if I had tried it in one go I would likely have failed :-/

But here is the rub. It seems that if we are going to succeed, we need to be building something we really believe in. Not just anything. The key to success is to be building something we are passionate about, not just doing for the sake of it. This is very important. Failure is almost guaranteed if we are chasing a “good idea” that is not also a core value for us personally. Something that we will strive for even if it costs us. Especially, if it costs us.

So setting and keeping effective New Year’s resolutions seems to be the same as setting and keeping any goal, really. Let’s take the mystery out of it!

1. Make the goal something that is really special and important to us, so that we have real skin in the game and a real desire to see it through.  read this: http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/3-tips-for-better-new-year-s-resolutions.html?cid=sf01002
2. Figure out the process, the daily behaviour, that will get you to that goal.
3. Don’t aim too big out of the starting blocks – make it achievable. Grow it in coming months.
4. Don’t make excuses – judge ourselves by our behaviours, and our actions; not our intentions.
5. Don’t let minor setbacks prevent recommitment.
6. Focus on the daily behaviour (the system) not the final goal.
7. Stick to it, and when you look up, you will already be there 🙂
8. One last idea – accountability. Let someone know what you re doing, and give them the right to kick your butt if they see you falling off the pace. 🙂

Some simple, practical examples, for clarity:

Here’s an idea for better exercise. If you want to go to a gym 5 days a week (a big ask from couch potato stage) , try this:
First month: 2 days a week, Tuesday and Thursday for 4 weeks.
Second month: 3 days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 4 weeks.
Third month: Success!

If you want to spend more time in personal reflection (a big ask for a habitual TV watcher, for example):

First month: Consistently get up with your alarm clock.
Second month: Consistently go to bed 30 minutes earlier
Third month: Set your alarm clock 30 mins earlier, and Success!

So, I am going to do everything I have talked about here, in principle, to push myself to another level this year. I deserve it. My family deserves it. And my colleagues deserve it.

What about you?

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Soldiers

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

It was Remembrance Day recently around the world.

Remembrance day this year was filled with amazing conversations for me amongst a few friends, one of whom had written a book about his experiences in battle. This book, highly recommended, is “The Battle on the Lomba” by David Mannall, MMM. The day brought to memory my many friends who had passed away in service of their – my – country. People whose voices I knew, forever stilled. People whose friendship had been dear to me, forever gone.

I remember being 17, 18, and 19 years old, and hearing the news of their deaths. It was traumatic back then, but having lived so little of life ourselves, perhaps the poignancy was lost on us. We felt the pain, yes, and we mourned their loss, but the tragedy of a life unlived was to some extent lost on those of us who had not yet lived our own.

I knew some details of how some of them had died. One shot in the air descending as a paratrooper. One while defusing an anti-personnel mine. And some in the heat of close battle, in a hail of bullets. I have experienced moments where my mortality has been brought home to me. I have had a loaded gun pointed at my face by someone who wanted to use it. And I have, on one occasion, felt the fear of being shot at. But I wonder what it must have been like for my friends, to face a wall of bullets aimed in their direction by professional soldiers. I can never know that feeling.

It may seem inane, but I remember clearly a line from a science fiction movie, where a soldier, played by Kurt Russell, was asked what he felt in battle. His response was “Fear. And Discipline.” All men fear. Soldiers fear. I don’t believe anyone stares death in the face and does not fear. And yet, some have conquered that fear with discipline. And soldiers are not alone. Police officers in many countries do it. Firefighters all do it. Sea and mountain rescue people all do it; and many others besides. And I respect those acts of courage.

Nature is not malign, though, as people are. It does not seek our deaths. It exacts a severe price for stupidity, this is true. But in battle, another human seeks our death in order to win a safe return to their family and we seek their death in order to win a safe return to ours. In many ways, this is an unspoken and torturous battle within; that starts only when we take aim for the first time at another human being. We become a taker of life. Not just offering to give our lives, we have to be willing to take life as well.

So the combat veteran is an alloy of extreme opposites, perhaps. An alloy with a very short half-life – one that only exists only while in the furnace of battle. One part willing giver of life, one part willing taker of life. One part utter selflessness (it’s me, for them), one part utter selfishness (it’s me, or them). And the only environment hot enough to sustain the union of those two elements in an uneasy peace, is the heat of battle. Perhaps the unravelled lives of some veterans, post conflict, are evidence that in a life lived away from the heat of battle, these two opposing elements, forever forged together in battle, and forced to be one, are still, and will always be, at war.

We talk of the “ultimate sacrifice”, and that it is. All of us love life. We happily live day to day, embracing the hope of tomorrow, the promise of the future in our children’s eyes, the pleasure of living life without the immediacy of its last moments… We love to live, and yet there are times where certain individuals embark on a course of action which says there is something more important than life itself. For those of us who have never done that, there are no words.

And these are the same ones who have also required of others, the ultimate sacrifice. That is partially, perhaps, why veterans of conflict do not talk about it, except maybe to each other. They are similarly forged; in the same fire, between the same hammer and the same anvil, in a process that we know nothing of. Both givers, and takers, of life. We who live under the shelter of their protection, cannot simply identify with them and slap them on the back, and say thanks. There is so much more to the gift they were prepared to give us on the battlefield. There was also the unspeakable price they were willing to exact from others, to do that.

This is probably, in many many ways, an inarticulable tension; an unspeakably mysterious burden that we civilians cannot ever share. For us, the beneficiaries of such unselfishness, perhaps the appropriate response is the respect of gratitude, of silence instead of cheap words, and the deep appreciation of what we have been given as a result, and the cost of that gift.

To do it justice is impossible, but there is a transaction that happens when someone freely lays down their right to live, to offer someone else the freedom to do so. And, in addition, when they shoulder the burden of taking a life to afford us that same protection, they stand unique.

It forever sets apart those who stand on the wall, from those who dwell in safety behind it.

Respect.

Posted in Spiritual | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Life-Lesson from Roger Federer

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

I have been travelling again, like I regularly do.

This time, though, I feel like it cost me.

Yes, it is important to do my work excellently, and I do that. Yes, it is important to honour face to face time with senior managers so that we connect on more than a superficial way about important – and not-so-important – issues. I enjoy the travel, I really do. It’s fun to be in a different country and fun to shop in a different shop, and to watch different people prove and disprove the stereotypes. It’s fun to drive a hire car. And it is especially fun to watch the self-importance of politicians as they strut and pontificate on TV. (I’ll let you in on a secret – they all do it – but the Aussies, they are fanTAStic at it 🙂

But there is a cost, and this time, two things happened back at home. There was an incident at my wife’s business where she was torn between two priorities, and made the best possible call, but there was fallout from the choice she made and she was very hurt and feeling lonely. Feeling criticised and feeling like a failure. And I wasn’t there for her.

And my twin boys, just three, had their first day at Kindy. They did their usual thing, I am told. Tag-teamed, took over the place, and owned it completely. And then when my wife had to leave half way through, one wanted to stay and continue his domination of his new space, and the other wanted to go home for a cuddle. And I wasn’t there for the beautiful intimacy of that.

2572 kms away (Thanks, Google Earth) and a single missed memory, a single opportunity to hug my wife and tell her how awesome she was, and my heart is breaking.

This is good, on so many levels. My wife does not “need” my affirmation or my support. I married a fiercely independent lady with great courage and the right instincts. But we have grown to the place where we treasure each other’s company in tough times. We are together. And although our road is rocky at times, we always treasure.

And although my sons do not “need” me to witness their first day – I would have been at the office anyway – I would have been there at the end of it to inspect the grazed knees and hear the excited stories first hand.

I was – am – the one who needed something in this. I needed to be close to my beautiful family as they experienced something, and to play my part in the drama and the excitement of it all.

I saw something on the internet this morning, catching up on the tennis ATP World Tour Finals. Roger Federer had just beaten Kei Nishikori, and was headed off afterwards. A bit later his next opponent, Andy Murray would be playing. Federer is known for many things, and two of them are his passion for tennis – he watches it on TV just because he loves it – and his passion for winning and for doing what it takes to win.

So the commentator asks “Will you be watching the Andy Murray match?” His response was beautiful enough to bring tears to my eyes as I sat on my hotel bed thinking about my own family and what I was missing. He said “I don’t know. Probably not. I have four kids, and that is when I put them to bed.”

There he is, the greatest tennis player the sport has ever known. Mid tournament, and not just any tournament – the one that could propel him back to a record setting #1 ranking at age 33. Post victory, still sweating and heaving from the exertion. And what is on his mind? His family and the joy of putting them to bed.

Thank Heaven for role models like that.

He is not unique, but he is rare. It’s great to see, and I am so glad that I saw a great man demonstrate great priorities. For his children, and for Mirka his wife, I am sure he is a hero. And not for what he did on the court that night. For what he did back at the hotel, focusing completely on his family, mid-tournament, being Daddy and putting his kids to bed.

All kids need dads like that. All wives need husbands like that.

Awesome stuff.

Posted in Family | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Marriage open to growth

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

Recently my wife and I were talking about some marriage stuff.  🙂

We have different styles of communicating, and we sometimes miss out on seeing each other’s good intentions as we work through the usual dynamics of a relationship. We can easily, on a bad day, do more reacting and defending to the words used, rather than accepting the opportunity to develop and grow towards each other. So we were just touching base about how we could do that better.

It was an interesting chat because the nature of the chat itself required us to practice the very things we were talking about not always having, if you get what I mean.

One of the key standout points for me was when we talked about what we were doing to become better as partners. It is probably safe to say that no-one comes into a relationship with all the skills that will be needed to make it work into the future. We arrive in a relationship on a wave of emotions and early impressions, and we settle into this rhythm that is great for a while.

But things change. Workplace stresses change. Kids arrive. We gain weight, and maybe start to feel insecure. We mess up stuff, and lose confidence. Financial struggles arrive and take longer than expected to resolve. This is life, and we simply have to live it! But as these challenges come and go, the idea we were talking about is the need to increase our own skills and develop our competencies as partners and as parents.

We noted that in some areas, we had grown quite a bit. And in others, not so much. And in some areas, one of us had grown, and the other, well, not so much.

And this wonderful conversation set me thinking. Physical growth is inevitable. Mental and emotional growth is optional. It is deliberate and acquired by choice. This is different to simple change. Every day things happen that result in change. But that is not the same as growth. Growth implies an increase in capacity, a strengthening, an awakening of understanding and maturity. Change is, well, just change. Something is different; but not necessarily better.

If you embrace the theory of evolution, you might say well, change is good, and random change is therefore also good. It will result in something better, eventually. Darwin at his best, and all that stuff. But change is not always good. And “eventually” is a luxury a marriage and a family just don’t have!

Change can be very, very bad. Just ask a wife or kid where the dad has started drinking. Or Gambling. Or becoming violent. Or one of the parents has started having an affair. Or a promotion is taking a parent away from family too often… Things are changing, for sure, but not necessarily for the better. And change can be complicated – a good financial change might have a very bad outcome for quality time.

If you are a scientific thinker, you may wonder about entropy, which says that a system, if left alone, will tend towards disorder and chaos, not towards organisation and structure. And this is what happens with directionless change. There will always be change. But whether it is good or bad; whether it is coordinated and planned , or an accident of every day’s random events, that is up to us.

My point is that we choose whether our marriage system is closed or open.

A closed marriage system has little or nothing in the way of external input. It relies on the goings on within the marriage itself, for its opportunities to develop new skills and capacities. It relies on the external world to be benign and generous in the influence it has on the marriage and the relationship. And it assumes that what we had, going in, will be enough to successfully make it through and come out the other side…

Occasionally an external input might occur, and that might be great. Or it might not. These marriages, in the reading I have done, and in the irregular real life views I have actually had of them, tend to be the ones most likely to be abusive, and controlling, and the least likely to last. People get frustrated, and start to focus on the problems they are having and not so much on the solutions to those problems. People think in the same ways they always have, and try to fix their problems with the same thinking that created those problems in the first place.

An open marriage system, on the other hand, has external inputs that are allowed and encouraged to regularly influence the relationship. These can be negative, of course they can; but usually the very fact of it being an open system is a positive thing. By openness I mean open to new influences. This is where there can be incredible potential for learning and re-inventing ourselves. And the opportunity is there to seek out positive influences and opportunities for learning. Because the system is open, there are choices!

Right there, next to us, is someone who knows us best of all. They see us at our best and at our worst. Stressed and relaxed. Happy and sad. Courageous and timid. Strong and weak. They see it all. What a privilege to be with someone who can know us that well. I remember once we spent $2000 per person at the office to get some personality profiling done, and one smart-alec manager said “That was a waste of time. My wife could have told you all of this for free” We laughed, but he was right!

The problem is, we also can resent that person’s insights because most of our issues are exposed by most of their issues, and we tend to think “if they just fixed THEIR issues, my issues would disappear too!” Receiving input from our partners can be really hard sometimes. We lash out and say “Stop worrying about the speck in my eye and sort out the log in your own!” We know it’s a silly thing to say. We know our issue is real and we need to work on it, but we hate that they were right. And the best form of defence is… you got it. Attack.

So we lose out on a wonderful opportunity because the feedback loop just feels too close, too personal.

The beauty of a marriage that is an open system is that we are inviting opportunities to grow, into our relationship. It might be people, who are not quite as close as our partner. Not also the cause of our frustrations. A friend, a pastor, a mentor. Whoever. Or it might be a book, a video, a conversation that we can share and learn from, together. It might be a course on parenting, or marriage, or conflict resolution. It might even be a discussion we have about a TV programme that raised interesting issues. The point is, we are opening ourselves up. Opening our relationship up, and making sure that we take advantage of opportunities to grow with our partner into each new season of the relationship.

That dynamic has a real buzz to it.

Posted in Marriage, Personal Growth | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Post (Part Four of Four) for people wanting to enter the job market

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

In the last three posts on this issue I covered off the preparation of a CV and the cover letter, as well as how to penetrate the market. The last post is for those of you who get close enough to the front of the queue, to be offered an interview.

Firstly, this is significant. Hopefully you got here because you wrote a great CV and a great cover letter, and those two documents are accurately reflecting who you are and what your skills are. If so, you are in the lucky position of being ideally suited for the job, along with a small number of other candidates. If you got here by networking, also good. Just remember that the reputation of your referrer depends on you acing the interview. If you treat it as a right, and not a privilege to be here, it will end up biting you AND your referrer in the derriere.

So here you are, about to be grilled by a panel of strangers about how you should be selected to join a team that you don’t know, and do a job that you are not yet familiar with, and how you will add value in some way to an organisation that you only know from the outside. No problem!

Of course it’s a challenge! Hopefully this post will help you to prepare yourself for that interview.

Firstly, you absolutely need to appreciate that you are top of the pile. There is no need to go into an interview feeling like you are second best. Let me stress that arrogance is a big turn-off, so I am not advocating that you walk in like the other candidates are worthless. They are not. Humility always a great characteristic to demonstrate but that does not mean having a poor self-image. It means having a RIGHT self-image. You are good enough to be at the interview. Own it.

The interviewers know what you don’t know. So all the insecurity that paragraph three might have caused, don’t worry about it. But they will be looking for some very important things, so that they can take a gamble on you:

  • A values fit, and being comfortable in your own skin
  • The ability to make your CV come alive through conversation and good storytelling (know your own CV so well you never ever have to look at it or hesitate)
  • A hunger to succeed and grow
  • A track record of achievement, not just effort.
  • Handling the pressure of behaviourally based questions and challenging scenarios.
  • That you have a sense of the picture one, or two levels up from you in an organisation.
  • A clear picture of what hiring you, as opposed to the other candidate, will add to the team. (This is your value proposition. Formulate it. Take the “elevator pitch” idea and customize/expand it )

These are the things you must learn to communicate well

Secondly, your interview preparation is paramount. I can assure you that it is easy to tell when a candidate is flying by the seat of their pants. And there aren’t many times when that is a good thing. Preparation is about knowing the business that you want to join, and knowing yourself. It is also about presenting yourself in the best possible light, and you always get that right with good preparation.

Know the organisation

Because interviews do not come up often, we expect you to take the time to prepare well. Get on the Internet, and learn what you can about the company. But the corporate pages are mostly marketing stuff controlled by the marketing team, so that is shallow at best. Dig deeper.

Research products, look on YouTube for relevant videos. Hunt down controversy and corporate or product reviews and formulate opinions that you can test in an interview. Understand stock prices and recent trends. If the firm is international, what does the exchange rate; and instability in other countries do to the supply chain? You get the idea.

Valuable team players are borderless, they think outside the team boundaries all the time. Be able to show that you can do that. (You may not get the chance, that’s ok, but be ready anyway. It’s called being thorough)

That said, it’s not about cross-boundary interference or being hyper-opinionated. Being borderless is about creativity, and value; but a good team player knows their place as well. That value can easily be undermined by being rushed or destructive in how you voice those things. Be careful that your value proposition is not only sound, and respectful, but also communicated well.

Know yourself

Its time to look back over your career and know what kind of management style you work best with, and what kind of a manager you are. There are trends and events that you know define you – they say what you are good and what you are not good at. What people you work better with and which ones you do not. Whether you like autonomy or supervision.

This is the part about being comfortable in your own skin. There is no right answer, but there are helpful and unhelpful trends in each of us. Knowing what they are, and how we manage them for the good of the team is hugely important.

Know the job

Do you have the role description, or just the advert you used to apply? Get the role description, and source similar ones from the web to compare responsibilities, etc. Figure out the team, and the likely contributions you and they will be making to the overall picture. Are you familiar with some typical performance constraints in a role such as this? Performance enhancers? Can you discuss them intelligently in a positive helpful way. (Test – could the interview panel leave the interview with improved knowledge, after interviewing you?) can you show how you would positively deal with those things?

Do you know what makes for success in a particular role? Can you find out? Do you know that you can be that kind of a person/employee/team player. If not, do you know what you can do to become that kind of a person/employee/team player?

Prepare Scenarios

Interviewers will want to know about situations where you have learned things, discovered shortcomings, overcome obstacles and challenges, and beaten the odds. We expect you to have those stories ready to tell. You can’t possibly prepare for everything but there are some fundamental scenarios that are important to prepare for. (Often those can be adapted to other questions, so having the source idea/scenario well-constructed is vital)

The fundamentals:

  • A time when you handled some serious pressure. How you handled it, and what the outcome was.
  • A time when you learned something new.
  • A time when you clashed with someone else in the office
  • A time when you screwed up and had to fix it.
  • A time when you had to deliver something primarily through/using others
  • A time you had to plan something from scratch and then execute it to completion
  • A time when you were in a team and didn’t get your way, or were leading a team and had to deal with someone else who was a difficult team member.
  • A time when you had to problem solve on the fly.

Someone with good answers to these is very employable.

But faked answers, or answers that are carefully constructed to be positive (false weaknesses are a good example), are very transparent. No-one is perfect, and it is very refreshing as an interviewer to find someone who is comfortable with the truth, even when it is difficult. What counts is the positive learning achieved during and after a difficult time. The absence of any flaws or difficulties in a candidate’s career is cheesy and disingenuous.

Some interview skills and fundamentals

  • Dress for success
  • Good, firm handshakes, and pleasant eye contact. No knuckle breakers, and no wet fish handshakes.
  • Don’t be overly familiar, but feel free to be charismatic and easy going
  • Make a point of remembering names, using names and making eye contact. Even asking for names and roles of potential team members can be huge if you get it right.
  • Take time to answer. Don’t let your mouth lead the interview. Consider, think, and reply with consideration. Clarify if you need to.
  • Be positive at ALL times about your previous employers. Even – especially – if there were challenges.

Interviewee questions

Prepare your own questions to ask. In this regard I can only refer you to a phenomenal article I read recently in Inc. Magazine.

Should you ask about salary and benefits?

This is for you to decide. For me personally, it’s not necessary to ask about salary. When I am the interviewee, I want the impression I leave to be about the value I can add, and what I will be worth to the Company, not what the Company is worth to me.

That said, questions around benefits and quality of life in the workplace are not off-limits for me; I simply don’t like asking about salary or wages. Generally I ask the agent in my preparation stage, or the company at negotiation stage. I don’t believe there is much to be gained from asking in the interview itself – other than exposing that my primary concern is money. And although it’s always important, and everybody of course knows that, it’s not what I want to be remembered for in the interview. But that is just me…

OK, that is enough from me. Good luck out there.

Happy hunting.

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A Post (Part Three of Four) for people wanting to enter the job market

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

The Search

Networking

There are two main ways into employment (obviously) – through the advertised vacancies in the media, or through the unadvertised vacancies – through networking and referrals. Contrary to what some people think, the unadvertised vacancies outweigh the advertised vacancies by a significant number, so if we exclude networking, we exclude a significant avenue of exposure to the market place.

The other aspect of networking is that people who are referred through networks get to leverage off the reputation of the referrer for a foot in the door – you may not be significantly better than any other applicant might have been but because “Bob” or “Mary”, who have their own great reputation, say you are worth interviewing, you make it onto the shortlist.

If you, like I was, are a stranger in a new country, you have nothing to leverage off. And this is the same dilemma faced by new entrants to the workplace. So, how do you create a network from scratch?

There are a few things you must and mustn’t do:

  • Get on social media like Twitter and Linked in, and discover groups relating to the companies and careers you are interested in. Read discussions and comment methodically and carefully, with well researched and thought out perspectives. This gets your name and some first impressions out there.
  • If you are confident enough to post entire articles or start discussions, do that. But try not to post articles that demonstrate a lack of skill or proactivity – you know, the “How do I get work in _____?” articles.
  • Avoid like the plague, any negative or critical postings.
  • Be very careful with your social media presence – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, everything. “Googling” a candidate is now common practice in the hiring process. If you want a good reputation, build it carefully and thoroughly, and realise you cannot separate social and work on social media. Who you are is who you are. It all counts.
  • Meet people. In the context of work, try and make a personal connection with someone senior in your field, especially if they have shown that they care about other people enough to take some time out for a newcomer. Respect it if they don’t or can’t, but try until you succeed. There is always a degree of empathy for someone starting out. And – most importantly – a degree of respect for someone being proactive and sincere.
  • If those people you meet like you, they will be prepared to stay connected. But the responsibility is yours to stay engaged without stifling them. Remember it is a privilege to be connected, not a right. And it is a person’s right to offer you access to their network or not; and their right to offer you their reputation and/or credibility in assisting with your pursuit of a job. Never take those things for granted.
  • Remember that networks rely on a quid pro quo. However kind, generous and available someone is, remember this and never take it for granted. If you just take, you will quickly be sidelined and lose privileges. A network is an investment and a commitment, and not just a magical fountain of opportunity laid on for your benefit.
  • Remember to say thank you – every time – and to give credit where credit is due. Respect the network and it will respect you.

The Search

The direct job-search is the way into the advertised positions.

It is not exclusive of networking, especially networking with Recruitment consultants who also use networking to create a database of desirable candidates. Networking with recruitment consultants is more straightforward, and less quid pro quo, shall we  say, but it still requires a great deal of effort and respect. The key with recruiters is that you need to very proactively maintain your profile with them and stay active on their radar. If they don’t hear from you, they will quite reasonably assume you have found work.

Some thoughts:

  • Advertisers filter their positions by a salary range, whether you see it or not. Remuneration levels are usually closely connected with seniority, experience, and credibility, and are a natural filter for approximately the right level of candidate. Respect that, and do not apply for positions too low or too highly remunerated, unless you can REALLY bring something unique to the party that will justify it.
  • Feel free to contact the recruiter or the company for more information. Ask intelligent questions, and show that you have gone the extra mile in the documents you submit. “As we discussed in my phone call…” or “Thanks for our conversation on __/__ “are great reminder sentences in a cover letter. You will stand out, because not many people do this!
  • Do not apply for everything you see. Bombing the market is a sure sign of desperation, and you will get known for it, especially in a smallish locality. Choose your roles carefully, and apply rigorous standards to this. Show that you have discernment and restraint, by avoiding showing that you do not have it.
  • If you apply for something well outside your demonstrated areas of expertise, realise that you must show proactively that you are not wasting everyone’s time. You are asking them to take a second look, at a deeper level to find the additional synergies, for this position, that you believe are obvious. Do the work in your cover letter, and help them see why you are applying for it.
  • Do your research, prepare your CV and customise your cover letters individually
  • Be prompt with correspondence, confirmations, replies and appointments. You get one change to make a good first impression. One.
  • Accept rejections with grace and strength, and always with a written thank you. Again, you will stand out for this courtesy.

Happy hunting!

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Managing Stress through mindfulness and an accurate sense of Self Worth.

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

So there are about a million articles out there about mindfulness and how fantastic it is.

This isn’t one of them. This is a real, down to earth assessment of whether it works for a busy executive.

It does.

In my experience, in the past, taking time out was a way to recharge the batteries and to clean out the clutter of a busy but disorganized life. But it was not a simple exercise. Usually it meant planning time away, or reserving some annual leave. Finding a “place” away for the hustle and bustle where I could empty out. There could be the logistics of planning a vacation or a weekend stay somewhere, issues around family responsibilities etc. These factors usually meant that “taking time out” was simply too difficult to do, and I therefore did not do it.

The direct and unavoidable consequence of that was that me, myself, I, became less important than the things I was doing and the responsibilities that I had. And that ran contrary to a core value of mine – that the person themselves, is far more important than what they do.

There is a second and very important aspect to this process, which was to consider why stress existed in my life, and why therefore I was needing time out! The bottom line, I discovered, was that stress comes from attaching one’s self-image to inappropriate things. It is a real danger that performance oriented individuals face, most of the time without even realising it – our performance, has nothing – NOTHING – to  do with who we are or what we are worth as individuals. But it’s a nice easy metric, and we default to it very easily.

How I discovered this was in a coaching session where I was encouraged to ask “WHY” at least 5 times, before worrying about something. If you do this, I was told, you will never assume the burden of stress without fully understanding why it is yours to assume.

And, more importantly, doing this exercise allows me to correctly own the responsibility of doing something well, without incorporating it onto my self-image – the danger of this, lying in that whether I successfully manage it or fail miserably at it, my self-worth will be affected. And my self-worth should never lie in what I do or how well I do it, but in who I am. Who I AM. Not what I DO.

The key is to keep perspective by viewing success and failure through the lens of our self-image and self-worth, and not to create our self-image or self-worth out of our successes and failures.

So I began to consider all my responsibilities; all my responses to challenges and confrontations; all my insecurities and worries, only AFTER filtering them through the “5 Why’s”. This has enabled me to separate my self-worth from my performance. (And note, both success AND failure are bad for self-worth. Remember what Bill Gates is quoted as saying?

“Success is a lousy teacher. It fools smart people into thinking they can’t lose”

And Rudyard Kipling summed it up the best when he said, in his poem “If”:

“…If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same…”

They are impostors – imperfect and unreliable indicators of who we actually are and what we are worth.)

It’s important to work on this. I have posted about this before in some ways. I believe that most people have a very inaccurate image of who they are, because we have mostly been taught to measure ourselves by what we do, and how well we do it, and then, in a sickening double whammy, we also have been taught to do THAT by comparing ourselves to others.

And what does one flawed individual get when we measure ourselves in comparison to another flawed individual? I can only say what we don’t get. That kind of exponential multiplication of errors means we don’t get accurate results. Not even close. Remember that recent meme on the internet?

“My problem is I compare my blooper reel with everyone else’s highlight reel”

That is the real danger of comparison.

So, I am suggesting that finding and establishing an accurate and independent sense of self-worth is a really important aspect of managing stress. And the second aspect of it is mindfulness.

Mindfulness is best described as the discipline of achieving the serenity of the moment. It is defined as:

“a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations”

Mindfulness for me is simply focussing in on an autonomic body process like breathing, and sensing that fully, without allowing other distractions to invade our thoughts. Like that time on the edge of sleep, where all the things we didn’t do come rushing back to haunt us, mindfulness is a place where things can come at us. Our defences are deliberately down and the idea, instead of combatting the thoughts and trying to organise and deal with them, is to allow them in but park them to the side while we continue to experience the moment.

Combatting the thoughts and organising and prioritising them is exactly what we do all day anyway! It is called busyness. Attention to detail. Success. Achievement. Management. And also, pressure. Failure. Deadline. Urgent. Error. Analyse. Stress. This is not what mindfulness is. Those thoughts are about the future – I will. I must. I mustn’t. I have to. And about the past – I did. I didn’t. I could have. I should have.

Mindfulness and the moment, are simply and quietly “I am”.

When you combine the two, you get quite an amazing result.

Try it.

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A Post (Part Two of Four) for people wanting to enter the job market

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

The Cover Letter

When you apply for a job, the standard requirement is to submit a CV and a cover letter. The CV, of course, is your career profile, your carefully prepared portfolio that is your personal marketing tool. The thing that will “blow them all away”.

And we send it off with a cover letter that is designed to win over a total stranger and get them to say “Out of 100 applicants, this one is top 5”. Because the top 20% might get a second look, and the top 3-5% will get an interview.

Sometimes the cover letter is an afterthought – and never more so when we apply on line and the website says “Write your cover letter in this text box” – and then we DO! Do you know, that that hastily written cover letter arrives as lines and lines of unprofessional and overpowering unformatted text, and generally doesn’t even get read?

And sometimes we did “thought” about it – like that time when we drafted one that we thought was really awesome so now we attach it to all our applications, remembering (but not always) to change the address or the name of the company we are applying to… Guaranteed, those letters are getting tossed in the bin, especially when addressed incorrectly. And the CV attached to it either joins it in File 13, or goes into the “maybe” pile. Because the cookie-cutter cover letter tells us a lot about the applicant!

So what will work? The answer is simple. Hard work; putting in the effort, on each and every application, will work. It will get your CV read, and once your CV is read, you are in with a shot at an interview. There is only one goal for a cover letter, and that is to get your CV read. And it must do so by making a quick, high impact impression on a busy person who may well be having an overload of nearly identical documents cascading into their inbox.

Here is the attitude of a hiring manager: “I really want someone in this job who wants to be here, and wants to be excellent. So I want to see applications from people who have taken the time to show that they want to be here, and to show that they know how to be excellent”. The point is, everybody wants a job, somewhere. That is not what interests a recruiter. They want to find that person who wants to work at THIS company. In THIS role. In THIS team. Not just “any company, any job, any team” so they can bank a cheque every fortnight. Those people are a dime-a-dozen. Be very different to them.

Here are the basic requirements of a Cover Letter, then I will unpack then in more detail:

  • Address and addressee
  • Header / Reference
  • Introduction
  • Role specific motivation
  • Conclusion

So, five things, of which the first two are dead easy

Address, and addressee

And yet, people still get them wrong. Get the company’s name and address right. Use a physical address, not an email address. Look it up.

And please, go online or call the company and ask who to send the letter to, if you do not know that clearly. If someone called my company asking for the HR Manager, and then asked me for the correct spelling of my name and address so they could send me an application for employment, I would remember that person for all the right reasons!

Header and Reference

A concise header is a clear indicator of a purposeful and economical thinker. A lack of a header is a poor reflection on the applicant. All business documents have headers, to clarify their purpose. Your application is a business document. It needs to look something like this:

Dear Sirs

Application: Human Resources Manager (Ref 123456) advertised on SEEK on 01/09/2014

First Paragraph Blah Blah

It sits below the salutation, as you can see. And it needs to fit on one line with room to spare.

These two requirements are basic essentials. The next three are vital and they are why it can easily take an hour or more to draft a proper cover letter. If you want to get the job, this is a worthy commitment to make.

Introduction

Your introductory paragraph is the make-or-break paragraph. You need to have taken time to really get this right. This paragraph will set you apart, pique their curiosity, and get you noticed. Or it won’t. You decide. (There is a lot of flexibility possible from this point on, but whatever you decide to write, write it WELL.)

Your introduction tells people what’s coming, and it makes them want to read it. Dale Carnegie says that “the sweetest sound in any language is the sound of our own name”. A person using our name says they are interested in us and have taken notice of us. So it is with a recruiter, but they may not be looking for their own name – they are looking for the sign of your interest in more than the job – your interest in the Company, what it does, and what it stands for. Maybe knowledge of a newsworthy recent accomplishment, like sponsoring something relevant.

It’s really great to see an introduction that shows detailed knowledge of one or more of these things and then comments and segues well between that and the interests and suitability, etc of the candidate.

Role Specific Motivations

A single page is likely to hold five economically drafted paragraphs. One was the introduction, and one will be the conclusion. You will have 3 paragraphs, at most 4, to write specifically in response to the advert, why you and your track record makes you right for this position.

The advert was drafted for a reason. Your job is to show that you fit the bill. And you don’t do that by ignoring the advert or glossing over what it said. This is about your attention to detail, and your willingness to get gritty about why it should be you, out of the 100 applications they receive, they interview. Every word, every sentence in the advert is worthy of your specific attention and clear response.

Try to distil out of the advert as many core essentials as you can, and then craft very specific statements about how you either a) fit the bill already or b) can adapt and acquire the exposure necessary. You get three to four paragraphs and by the end of those paragraphs they will either want to read your CV or not.

Please don’t start every sentence with “I” Find other ways to write your sentences. Instead of “I have 10 years’ experience in generalist HR…” say “Having had 10 years’ experience in generalist HR, my ability to ….”

You are using your ONE opportunity, to create a journey for the recruiter, from not knowing you at all in any way, to wanting to spend time with your CV to assess your suitability for their vacancy. And then maybe to spend time with you in an interview.

Conclusion

So, you have used up your allotted paragraphs and you have a few lines left at the end of the page. How do you close it out? It’s not easy – the whole letter is about closing it out! How you finish is really up to you, depending on the role you are applying for and what you most want to communicate. Maybe it’s a sales role, and you want to close it out as you would a sale. Or a people role, and you want to close it out as you would a successful conflict resolution.

I would hold in reserve a carefully chosen or unique aspect of who I am or what I can do, and in conclusion, sum up your passion and your unique fit for the company and/or the role. And it’s quite ok to be a little bit cheeky and say you would love to tell them more at the interview

Last words – always sign your cover letter personally. If it means you have to print it, scan it and send a PDF, so be it. Do not send a typed name with no signature. Again, that is simply a lack of attention to detail.

Happy hunting!

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A Post (Part One of Four) for people wanting to enter the job market

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Vaughan Granier

As an HR Manager responsible for recruitment, and as a person who had to look for work when we relocated to New Zealand, there is a chance my experiences and observations can help others. On a number of social media websites, I have come across similar questions, and similar problems, so I thought I would jot down some ideas for interested people. I will write 3 posts, as I see it now:

  • The CV
  • The Cover Letter
  • The Search

I recently revised my own CV, and it was interesting to see how both market expectations of a CV, and my own ability to express myself, had changed as my experience grew, so don’t be afraid of updating it constantly to keep it accurate to who you are.

Firstly, confidence. It’s easy to feel like you have nothing to add because everyone you talk to says “Get some (local) experience first.” Those kind of comments can also undermine your positive demeanour when applying. It is important to realise that in many subtle ways, your attitude comes through even in your written words. So be positive and full of self-believe when you write. Take the time to gather together all the reasons you DO have something to offer, then write from that good place.

Secondly, your CV itself (Curriculum Vitæ, Resumé, etc). I will list some basic pointers in bullet form

Keep it easy to read – that means, more than anything, formatting. Be consistent, structured and logical. It means that a speed reader can assess your CV positively in an instant. They will not dig through bad formatting to look for redeeming qualities.

    • Make the font readable – I recommend Arial 11. Use white space to create readability.
    • I recommend using tables (one per section so you can subtly format it to suit the contents) and hiding the internal borders. It provides real consistency to your structure. I lightly shade header cells.
    • I prefer not to let tables run across pages but sometimes it’s inevitable.
    • Aim for a professional and neutral look, resist too much personal expression unless the job itself requires it, e.g. graphic design; then, of course, let them have it!
    • I justify BOTH margins (Ctrl J in Office) all the time
    • Take the time to look around on the Web for a good format.
    • How your CV looks, is how they imagine you will make them look. It’s a really good feeling to post off a CV that you know, in itself, is a reflection of your best work.

Make sure it is spell-checked and that your grammar is exceptional. Do not use abbreviations or shortcuts. And if English is your second language, please do not assume that the way you translated it from your mother tongue works well. There is a right way and a wrong way to say something, and the wrong way can be quaint, but also possibly jarring. Remember, you want to connect with the person reading your CV. As the applicant, it is your job to make it easy for them to feel that connection.

In NZ, you want to come in under 5 pages total, under 4 is better. Here is a section list

  • Biographical data – name, address, email, phone number, visa status, social media details, (If you want, but sometimes its essential.)
  • Personal Statement (depending on your style). Don’t mindlessly spit out the standard ones, and do not use buzz words. They are rejected instantly. Take care to craft something personal and real. Mean it, or don’t say it at all.
  • Career summary – a table, of dates (eg 2009-2012) and position titles in reverse order, most recent first. Look at it objectively. Are there gaps in your CV you should be ready to explain? Or stagnant periods where there was no growth? Why? Have the answers ready.
  • Employment History with a subsection per job. Same headings for each. This section is NOT intended to show WHAT you did. This is the error many people make. You want to primarily show the VALUE you added, and in doing so, you show that you are capable of seeing your position from at least one level up. Immediately, you are possible promotion material
    • Position
    • Company name
    • I like to put in here, in Font size 8, one sentence why I moved on. It’s not necessary but it shows confidence and can pre-empt distracting questions later.
    • Reporting Line
    • Achievements
    • Core responsibilities
    • (Strategic) Contribution
  • Early Career – you don’t want to itemize every job. The employer is assessing your recent career probably no more than 10 years is needed. The rest can be in summary form, unless there is something you want to highlight, like relevant experience in one of those positions. Again, a table with dates and job titles; one job per line.
  • Education – highest level first.
  • Professional Qualifications and other studies – most recent first
  • References – list them. It is not great form to tell someone you will provide on request. You are just making work for them.

Once this is ready, as a standard format, you need to think about the position you are applying for. Every one of your jobs is relevant, but not necessarily to the same extent. It is important to re-orient your CV if necessary to highlight different aspects of your value add so that your work history reflects you in the best light for the job you are applying for.

Important: NO lying, faking or whitewashing. If I were to read three version of your CV (for example administration focused, marketing focused, and sales focused), I should know they belong to the same person. What you are trying to do is highlight positive connections between your work history and the specific role you are applying for, not to misdirect or “con” an employer. The truth always comes out, so only put the truth in!

You won’t rewrite your CV for each role, but it can be handy to have some basic variants ready. What you will write specifically from scratch for each role, is your cover letter. That will be the subject of the next post.

Thirdly, Writing style. This is subjective, and it is subtle but please allow me some latitude here to discuss different ideas. What we want to feel, reading a CV, is a connection. That connection happens on a few levels. Please note – if you try do this all very deliberately, it will be too much. Work thoughtfully through how you use words and what they convey.

  • Confidence – I want feel, reading your CV, that if I sat across a table from you I would enjoy the conversation; that you would feel secure in yourself to engage me person to person. I want to know that you believe in yourself, that you are an individual with something to offer. I WON’T get that from prepackaged statements. Or buzz words. Or vague statements.
  • Culture – I want to feel that you will share the values of the team. That is not to say conformity. And I must stress that. A good recruiter is not looking for conformity, but they are looking for a values and vision fit.  Having recruited internationally, I can attest that conformity is quickly exposed as unhelpful, because it is often the death of diversity and creativity. But culture is a non-negotiable. If you are unique, bring that to the table with confidence and pride. But a poor fit for culture will destroy a high performing team.
  • Capacity – I want to see in the words you choose and in how you describe yourself, that you have been around the block a bit and you know how to get things done. Well. I want to see a problem solver, a proactive person who will bring their manager a possible solution and not just a problem. As a manager, the last thing I want is someone who lazily tries to put their monkeys on my back. (How will I see that, you ask? Easy. If you describe your job as just a series of activities, you will not meet the mark. If you describe it as a series of valuable acts that contributed to the organisation and the success of others, we have a winner. Your words must subtly convey your energy levels)

An example, if you don’t mind, and I am going to walk a dangerous path of generalizing about national cultures. This is only by way of example and is not an evaluation of any candidate or country. I will use my own home country as the first example 🙂 In HR we are guardians of culture and workplace synergy. It’s important that an HR practitioner embodies those criteria. If the way we handle conflict, solve problems, communicate or generally do our jobs is too jarring for the workplace, we are not an ideal fit for HR.

  • I often see CV’s from a particular country where the management style is known to be very authoritarian, and directive. NZ is not like that. NZ is a very much less a confrontational place with a higher emphasis on influencing and on consulting. To succeed, the choice of words and the problem solving concepts need to be phrased very differently.
  • Another country’s candidates have a tendency to write very “eagerly”. The problem there is that HR can sometimes be an environment where we speak unpopular truth to power, and a CV must show that that ability exists if needed. Somebody who comes across as too eager, will not convince about that aspect of the role.

So, this was a long one, but hopefully beneficial especially to seekers in the NZ job market.

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