Greg Campbell comments on the Jobs market in Housing

The recruitment market nationally remains buoyant, with most senior vacancies attracting good numbers of well qualified candidates. The most challenging roles to fill are those in strategic asset management and in corporate finance. Regional differences in executive salaries now appear less evident, though they still remain relevant at more junior levels. Regions such as the south west where there are fewer housing organisations to generate local jobs churn, are seeing pay levels for senior roles often comparable to London and the south east in order to attract candidates from further afield. Salaries are not rising uniformly,we are aware, for instance, of some CEO positions where the new appointee has been recruited on a salary up to 20 per cent less than their predecessor.

•A growing trend to seek finance director candidates with housing sector experience, reflecting the growing complexity and risks inherent in social housing funding streams•Strategic asset management director roles created in some organisations, bringing together responsibility for asset management, maintenance, and development•Growth and new business director roles in other organisations, commonly combining development, new business streams, and inorganic growth.•Commercial sector experience growing in popularity for customer service roles, and for new business roles where a range of business streams are to be explored..This article first appeared in Social Housing magazine,January 2014. Greg Campbell is Director of Campbell Tickell

Principles of Success

MBI: Patrick W. Jordan (Photo credit: Cedim News)

Patrick W Jordan has distilled the essence of 200 self help books into one short and readable little book! And here they are the five steps to achievement, happiness and fulfillment.

1. Take responsibility - only you are responsible form your life - don't blame others
2. Set goals - know what you want and set out to get there
3. Be positive- surround yourself with optimism and be positive
4. Persevere intelligently - don't give up at the first obstacle but do give up the unrealistic
5. Connect with others - empathise, treat others well, forgive and learn form others
   
   Sounds really easy? And all this is achievable - get the book, get a coach and you can find achievement, happiness and fulfillment.

Life and career coaching is available from www.maryhopecareersuccess.com and from www.patrickwjordan.com

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Fast changing job search world

Our world is changing faster than we can realise it is. No sooner have we learned new skills and new ways of doing things than some new idea comes along.
I spent a lot of time last year learning about social media and starting to use it.. twelve months later I find that things have moved on.. and not always in a way that is helpful! Google keep altering their algorithms, Linked In have stopped putting my Twitter feeds through to their site  ... And the challenge is that the recruitment market is changing all the time too. Employers and recruitment agencies are constantly looking for new and more cost effective ways of attracting the candidates they need. And whilst lots of that effort is targeted at attracting passive job hunters, it also means that those who are actively job hunting need to shift how you do it.
Major employers, including those in the public sector no longer spend their recruitment budgets on print but on social media. In 2005 UPS spent 90% of their budget on print and now they spend 97% on social media. Deloittes have a dedicated career website which is populated with blogs from their staff and has three distinct sections targeted at graduates, young professions and professionals. The site is content rich and attract traffic through well managed twitter streams, facebook pages, and Linked In company pages. Employers seek to build long term relationships with people who have common interests with them rather  than waiting until they have a specific job to advertise. They want to hook your interest before they recruit you by building communities of interest, what is known as 'crowdsourcing' (I think!)
The recruiters placing a single advert in a magazine or newspaper are in the minority and nowadays on line advertising is much more common. So if you are looking for a job you need to be on line as well. NB yesterday's Telegraph had a single page of jobs! But where to start?
To make life easy there is a brilliant tool called 'indeed.co.uk' This is a web crawler, you set your search parameters and then let it do the work. By 'crawling the web' it will bring you the jobs that you have specified by salary, location and title.
You need to sign up to major jobs boards and post your CV, CV Library, Monster, Total Jobs, JobsGoPublic. And whatever professional Boards apply to your work. Again set your parameters, search, press email alerts and wait for the vacancies to drop into your in box. Job Boards are the second largest source of hires.  And don't forget Linked In. For professionals it is the 'go to' source of candidates for head hunters. It is also increasingly a place where vacancies are advertsied. get into the Groups and see what is happening and what openings you can spot.  At least 90% of recruiters are already using social media to find, source and connect with talented candidates.

English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What you do need to do is to ensure that you have your target list of employers and that you have a routine of checking their job sites and if you can register for alerts from them. See if you can register your CV. Follow them on Twitter and on Linked In.
Sadly, the public sector seems to be lagging behind the other sectors in embracing all this technology. When I checked half a dozen County Council's in the South East, only one was posting vacancies on Linked In. However there are new products around that are designed to catch your attention even when you are not job hunting. JGP have developed 'smart search' which uses digital marketing to place a vacancy in front of  people who are looking for information and not just for jobs.
I can remember laughing when they told me that people would use their phones to job search,  (well I also laughed at the idea of mobile phones back in the 1980s) but there are now Apps which will help you search and bring alerts to your door. eg  Jobs.ac.uk,   this free international jobs board has launched on the Android and iPhone platforms with more than 3,500 employment opportunities in universities, research institutions and commercial organisations.
It s not all bad news for the job hunter.. as long as you are looking where today's vacancies are to be found and not using the tricks from twenty years ago.

The rise of social recruiting

• 66% of recruiters have used Facebook to find new talent
• 54% of recruiters use Twitter
• 93% use LinkedIn
• 71% of HR and recruiting professionals consider themselves moderate to exceptional social recruiters

Source:2012 Social Recruiting Survey, Jobvite (base: 1,000 HR professionals)

How good are you at deciding whether to make a job application?

When we are looking for a job or looking for a promotion it is usual to look at the  person specifications and considering whether  we meet it. Often coachees will ask me: should I apply for this? Others will come with a vacancy and go: I am going to apply for this, what do you think?

Being realistic about your own prospects of success is quite difficult. People who are out of work may consider that they have nothing to lose in casting their net widely and having a punt. (This rather ignores the depression that can set in with the law of diminishing returns) So if they fancy the role they will have a go. When I’m coaching people my work is to support them and not to poor cold water on their ambition: although there will be times when I do counsel and more focussed or targeted approach.

So I was really interested to read about the Kruger-Dunning effect, in 1999 they hypothesized that the more people know the less confident they are , whereas the less people know the more they overestimate their abilities.

 For a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

Having gone on studying this cognitive bias they have deduced (2008) that poor performers do not learn from feedback suggesting a need to improve. They lack the skill and experience to enable them to know what they don’t know.

The caveat of this is that they were testing humour, grammar and logic rather than the ability to solve complex problems or lead organisations. But it is an interesting principle: we don’t know what we don’t know.

So how can people make sensible decisions about whether to apply for a role?

There is a lot of subjective judgement about your own abilities, but you can reduce your margin of error. What is that Dunning and Kruger say: you can’t know what you don’t know, and the people who over-estimate their abilities don’t listen to feedback. So get on with your research, find out what this job is really about, what skills it really needs and then ask the following questions.

Well clearly the first test is to look at the objective criteria: do I have the right qualifications, right experience?

Secondly look at the person specification and ask yourself ‘if I were recruiting for this role what would my ideal candidate be doing now?’ Does this describe you?

Thirdly, ask ‘if I were recruiting for this role and could not have my ideal candidate, which of these criteria would I be willing to give up?’

Fourthly, given that you now know what the ideal person looks like and what they are doing now, does such a person exist? Are there lots of them? What have I got that would be really useful that this ideal person may not have?

Fifthly, am I 80% of the way there towards meeting this specification? If the answer to that is yes then it may be worth the punt…This is somewhere that the real subjectivity kicks in: but pay attention to the numbers in the job description and the significance of the expereince they are asking for. If it is a fundraising job, running a Race for Life may not be want they want... yes you worked hard but just how much will they be expecting you to raise? that will give you some clues.

 And finally, treat the writing of the application as a test. If it flows easily and you are finding that you have the right examples and it is easy to feel confident then you are probably in the right area. If you are struggling and not sure that your examples are of the same depth and breadth as the tasks in the job... then that struggle is an indication to you.  

Find out what you don’t know about the job and then find out what you don’t know about yourself. Ask for feedback… maybe your coach will give it to you!.

Job Search Employment Outlook According to the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey Q1 2012, 6% of employers expect headcount to increase, 8% forecast a decrease and 84% anticipate no change, the result a net Employment Outlook of -2%.  The significant difference in employment rates across regional labour markets has resulted in recent trends being mixed, however across the spectrum was a major commonality; the bleak report on the future of the economy.   With the news of budget cuts, growing inflation rates and organisation freezing pay, the level of job security continues to fall. The Acquisition and Retention in the War for Talent survey showed that 37% of employees frequently think about quitting their jobs, 66% intend to search for a job in another organisation next year and only 44% feel valued by their employers.  The disheartening employment outlook reports have amounted to declining employee engagement levels across industries as such the number of employees seeking new roles has increased making the job market highly competitive.  Job seekers are now utilising alternative routes to the traditional methods to increase their chances of finding a new role.  Social Media and Career management are amongst the growing trends in the job search market. LinkedIn's Q1 2012 financial results stated that its Hiring Solutions amounted for over half of its revenue; this confirms there are many job opportunities available from tapping into Social Media.  The Acquisition and Retention survey also showed that 41% of employees use their social media network when making career decisions.  One thing is certain, to maximise the chances of securing a new job in the current state of the economy, job seekers to need to stay abreast of growing trends and utilise the alternative routes to the job market.

Synopsis thanks to Connaught Executive Ltd,

Jobs data shows modest increase in permanent appointments - hurray!

John Eccleston 08 February 2012 12:01 in Personnel Today

Jobs data published today points to a modest uplift in the number of permanent appointments, although figures relating to temporary placements and pay offerings suggest that the job market is still experiencing difficulties.
The Report on Jobs, published by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and professional services firm KPMG, is compiled using data provided by recruitment consultancies. The latest edition, released today, found that permanent appointments rose for the first time in four months, albeit at a modest rate.
However, this small piece of good news was offset by data which highlighted temporary and contract billings falling for the second month in a row. According to the report, a number of respondents cited the introduction of the Agency Workers Regulations as a reason for this fall.
In addition, salaries for permanent positions rose only marginally in January and at a much slower pace than the long- term average. Hourly rates of pay for temporary/contract staff increased modestly following a slight decline in December.
Respondents also reported that the growth in overall demand for staff eased to its weakest level for 27 months. Data suggests that engineering and construction workers were the most sought after in the latest survey period, in contrast to declines in demand for hospitality and catering staff.
Kevin Green, chief executive of the REC, said: "This month's report highlights that there are glimmers of hope for the UK jobs market with permanent placements increasing for the first time in four months. This is the first positive indicator for some time that employers are looking to hire staff despite the ongoing weakness of the economy.
"It is particularly encouraging that six out of eight sectors surveyed show growth in demand, including engineering, IT and office professionals. The report also follows better than expected services data from the Purchasing Managers' Index last Friday, which suggests that confidence is growing among consumers as well as businesses.
"A major challenge in the jobs market is the disconnect between what employers are looking for and what jobseekers can offer. Better careers guidance is part of the solution, as is increased use of apprenticeships to get young people into employment with vocational skills development."

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Please read between the lines…

Please read between the lines…

I have been coaching a great chap who has been looking for a new job. He wants to be a Chief Executive and he works in local government. So we have been smartening up his presentation and applications.

Last week he rang me as he had seen a role for a CEx in the midlands, lovely part of the world.  So could I review the application. No problem.

The first line on the person specification was ‘senior management  experience in a large, complex, public sector organisation’ . My client duly started his application with a description of the senior civil service  role with 3500 staff, big budget and lots of departments, computers etc etc. Well that is a large, complex  public sector organisation. But is it what the £17m turnover district council is thinking of?

Probably not, they are more likely to be scared off by the scale of this. I can hear the phrases ‘oooh would he know how to operate in a district council? Will he be hands on enough with so few staff? How would he cope with the little budgets we have here? He probably had a chauffeur there; won’t be like that here!’

You see when people write person specifications they may not mean the same thing as you or I do. When they wrote this they probably (I don’t know who did write it but have sat in the room when such things have been discussed) were thinking; we don’t want someone from a Parish or Town Council, we don’t want someone from a small housing association, we don’t want someone who has not managed a range of services… There are quite a lot of public sector organisations that are smaller than this District Council. I don’t suppose they wanted a self employed accountant or a manager of a corner shop, or the marketing manager of a food manufacturer, or even the production manager of the local cheese factory.

Another client was thinking of applying to an international human rights pressure group. He felt he could meet the criteria ‘have influenced opinion formers and politicians at all levels’. And whilst undoubtedly they had done that in a local charity.. had they done it on the  international stage, had they been and done presentations at the UN? The context of the job was not really described by the person specification.

So when you are reading the person specification just read between the lines. What will the people in that organisation be thinking about? What do they mean by small? Who are the politicians that need influencing?

With my first client we were able to identify a different experience which was in another District Council, similar turnover, rural, tourism dependent and in a National Park that was going to press the buttons of the prospective employer. In the second, she was not successful in getting an interview.

When reading person specifications you have to read between the liens and understand the context of the job, anticipate the mind set of the authors and put yourself in their shoes. I could yet be proved wrong.. maybe they were looking for a former senior civil servant with a multi million pound budget and 3500 staff… but I suspect they will like my client whose experience is very directly relevant.

How can I find a public sector job?

How can I find a public sector job?

In these days of the WORLD WIDE WEB, it is seen as the answer to every question. So isn’t the answer to how do I find a job?  simply ‘on the web’. Post your CV  on a big jobs board like Monster and sit back and wait.

Well it may be and you may well find jobs  vacancies on the web. But there are other routes as well, even in the public sector.

You can use the internet to find a job.

• There are Employers’ Sites – every local authority has a site and their vacancies will be on there, NHS employers, civil service jobs are sites where you can find those employers advertising.
  
• Dedicated jobs boards – who only publish jobs for certain sectors- such as Careers for Leaders, or The Ladders which publishes jobs in certain professions about £50k
  
• Profession specific sites- sites like People Management or Personnel Today, often attached to a professional institute will advertise a range of roles
  
• Web crawler sites – sites like Indeed, Simply Hired  or  Jobs1.co.uk can make life easy as they literally crawl the web to look at other sites and collect together all the vacancies.

There are some myths around  that all public sector or at least all local government jobs must be advertised. And they are just that, myths. The requirement is to get the best person for the job and to have a representative workforce. Together these two influences drove many organisations to advertise widely to recruit just such people. But it is not a legal requirement.

And think of the cost! Advertising in the press or on the web can cost a lot. So in these straightened times many organisations have changed their strategies. They may advertise only on their own website if at all.

So what sorts of jobs don’t get advertised?

The short term contract type, the temp roles, the ones where the actual employer is not the public sector organisation, the ones which are filled by contractors not employees.

So how can you find them?

Talk to the organisations that you want to target. Ask them how they fill such posts, do they have arrangements with agencies? Are they running their own in house agency/talent pool that you can join? Are they sourcing candidates through boards like Monster? Are they using FaceBook or Linked In?.

Talk to people who work within the organisations you want to work for. What they tell you about how people get to work there may be different from what HR believes should be happening. 

In spite of the tradition of open advertisement there are many opportunities that will never appear on the web.

for more career advice and tips on career advancement www.maryhopecareersuccess.com

£19b down the drain becasue of bad management

Bad management could be costing UK businesses more than £19 billion in lost working hours every year, according to a survey published today by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).
The CMI's report suggests that three-quarters of employees waste almost two hours of their working time every week because of their managers' inefficiency.
The CMI claims that, by taking the average hours wasted in a week across the average working time of 48 weeks per year, this equates to a loss of £900 per employee and a total loss of £19.3 billion, calculated at a median value rate.
The report found that the worst management practices include unclear communication, lack of support, micro-management and lack of direction.
Christopher Kinsella, CMI acting chief executive, said: "This survey highlights some disappointing - but not necessarily surprising - numbers. With only one in five UK managers holding a professional management qualification and many organisations not properly investing in management training, it's not surprising that some managers are making mistakes in how they work.
"Yet we are in one of the hardest economic climates we've faced in some time, and business bosses need to understand the financial impacts of not having properly trained and qualified managers. Improving the skills of the management workforce is absolutely key in terms of individual business success, in terms of delivering effective public services and in terms of helping the UK deliver on a world stage."
The research also found that 13% of respondents have witnessed managers exhibiting discriminatory behaviour towards employees based on gender, race, age or sexual orientation and almost one-third have witnessed managers bullying or harassing their employees.
Responding to the findings, Ashley Ward, director at talent management organisation European Leaders, said: "Reality tells us the cost of bad management in terms of time lost is a great deal more than that indicated in today's CMI report. A great deal of time is lost as employees discuss the lack of communication from, and the behaviours of, management.
"An efficient working culture stems directly from the very top of an organisation. If a business leader actively promotes a happy work culture based on openness, transparency, good communications and gender diversity, the organisation will be far closer to the top of its game and employees will view it as a good company to work for. The successful high-growth organisations we see today all train their managers to have increased awareness of subjects like bullying and gender discrimination.
"In our experience, the 'macho' management style of the 80s and 90s no longer has a place in modern high-performing businesses. The aggressive approach we see on programmes like The Apprentice and Dragons' Den is incongruous with modern entrepreneurship."

Thanks to Personnel Today for this one.

Jobs you may not think you want but have lots to offer!

Following on from yesterday's blog about what you  thought you wanted for a career but may find less than palatable is the reverse. CareerCast have graded occupations by how desirable they really are by looking at the stress, hours, pay, promotion, security etc factors. Now the commentators on their web site don't really seem to agree that these jobs are not stressful.. but it's only one factor.. just look at how low the unemployment rate is!

Most Underrated Jobs in 2011


When most of us were in elementary school, our teachers taught us to aim high in our careers and strive for such prestigious jobs as doctor, lawyer, pilot and even President. But as we learned in the years that followed, the excitement those jobs promise typically sounds a lot better than the reality. On the other hand, the jobs held by our parents, neighbours and siblings, which seemed like “normal” jobs, may actually provide many more rewards than we ever imagined.
To that end, the CareerCast.com editors reviewed our in-depth Jobs Rated data to identify the most underrated jobs based on a range of criteria. While terms like flashy, glitzy, glamorous and prestigious aren’t typically associated with our list of underrated jobs, these careers have some great advantages that are often overlooked. They’re professions that don’t woo people with the high salaries or notoriety, but instead have characteristics that make them especially worthy. For instance, our most underrated jobs typically have median-to-higher income levels, lower stress, lower environmental dangers and lower physical demands. And even in this tight economy, all share one great attribute: a lower than average unemployment rate.
"I have the best of both worlds. I get to do the work that I want, but I don't have the high demands that a lawyer does,” says Jennifer Dahms, a paralegal at a Milwaukee law firm.. "I wouldn't say that my job is underrated. I would say it's equally balanced. I get to take vacations, leave work and have a life."
While paralegal takes top honors in our ranking, insurance agent isn’t far behind. "I think it's interesting, but not a surprise we made the list," says Sherri Primes, an Orange County, Calif., insurance agent. "It's the only career or job that I've ever had that I feel I get to do something good for people. I can impart change in people’s lives."
In order – with their US unemployment rate attached, the top ten most underrated jobs:

1.      Paralegal 4.6%

2.      Accountant 5.0%

3.      Loan Officer 7.7%

4.      Market research Analyst 7.7%

5.      Software engineer 4.6%

6.      Computer systems analyst 5.9%

7.      Insurance Broker 5.4%

8.      Dietician 3.2%

9.      Dental Hygienist 1.2%

10.  Civil Engineer 3.9%

While the paparazzi may not be knocking down their doors, the following jobs are worth a look if you’re considering changing careers. They also apply if you’re a recent graduate looking for a career that will reward you for many years to come.That is of course if your talents and motivations are suited to those roles!