Career development issues

There is little question who is responsible for assess­ing training needs and planning strategies to meet these needs. Most organizations hold the supervisor responsible for seeing that subordinates are trained to do their jobs. However, assessing career goals and the education and skill development needed to achieve these goals is another matter. Who is responsible for employees’ career development is very often not clear.

In helping employees assess career goals and education and development needs, the supervisor has to decide how far his or her responsibility in career counseling extends and how far he or she is willing to go to provide help.

Most experts on career development believe the employee should have final responsibility for managing and developing his or her own career. The supervisor can help in many ways but should remain a helper–not a decision maker, but a facilitator of decisions. In this role, supervisors should follow good counseling practices:

• Ask questions

• Listen actively

• Provide information

• Help focus ideas

• Give feedback on strengths and weak­nesses as they are perceived

• Refer the employee to other sources of information (and perhaps a professional career counselor if

needed and if avail­able), and

• Assist the employee in developing action plans

Match employees to target customers

Every business interaction is ultimately between two people – an employee and customer, or the employee who designs the customer interface and that customer. Most high-performance business relationships are heavily influenced by emotional compatibility.

Therefore, the employee selection process should begin with carefully selecting employees who will first best match the targeted customers, then the company. Although we lack understanding of the emotional state of the customer at the beginning of an interaction, it is possible to hire for and then match emotional predispositions of employees, e.g. sales, service to particular customers. This entails matching employee human attributes with customer human attributes. After a firm segments their customers by human need, it can then match the emotional attributes of employees to emotional attributes of customers. One of the ways to accomplish this is through applying classic personality typing during employee screening. The firm can then hire ‘‘personalities’’ who best match how the firm delivers its value to a certain segment of customers.

When employee and customer human attributes are not matched, it is stressful to the employee and increases the chance that the customer will not be satisfied. In many cases, management will end up chastising the employee for apparent performance shortcomings when in fact it is simply a mismatch of emotional attributes between employee and customer. Matching can be accomplished by creating customer needs profiles and employee needs profiles for particular customer ‘‘need’’ segments and employee roles respectively. The critical component of matching employee to customer is the first focus on what emotional end state the customer desires; next is hiring employees whose natural ability is to create such an end state. This goes far beyond the conventional job description of roles and tasks. When customer/employee emotional matching is embedded into core hiring practices, not only does customer and employee fulfillment increase but so does employee efficiency and effectiveness.

Ultimately, employees’ ability to fulfill customers is determined by their inherent human characteristics. Below is a comparative table of people with high self-esteem versus low self-esteem illustrating this principle.

Leader’s Promise to Employees

I’ll ACKNOWLEDGE you – recognize your worth

I’ll be ACCOMMODATING – change things for your needs

I’ll be ACCOUNTABLE – take ownership of my decisions and their outcome

I’ll be COMMUNICATIVE – openly exchange ideas/information with you

I’ll be CONSIDERATE – think of you first

I’ll be COURAGEOUS – bold and tenacious, even when it’s tough

I’ll be EMPATHETIC – sensitive to your feelings

I’ll be ETHICAL – do what is right

I’ll be FAIR – balance your needs with others

I’ll be FLEXIBLE – open to alternatives

I’ll be GENEROUS – give more than expected

I’ll be HONEST – tell the truth

I’ll have HUMILITY – give credit and avoid self-importance

I’ll be INSPIRING – provide enthusiasm toward a goal

I’ll be LOYAL – always there for you

I’ll be PERSONABLE – easy to be with

I’ll be RESPECTFUL – recognize your dignity as a person

I’ll be SUPPORTIVE – provide help and remove barriers

I’ll be TOLERANT – accept you without judgment and forgive mistakes

I’ll be TRUSTING – believe in you

I’ll be TRUSTWORTHY – do what I say and what needs to be done

Source : Costumers are People, The Human touch. John Mckean 2002

ADVICE FOR GLOBAL RECRUITERS

ADVICE FOR GLOBAL RECRUITERS

If you can’t find the talent you want in your own country, there are recruitment firms and Internet Websites that will enable you to look beyond your nation’s borders. Likewise, these same resources can help you people overseas operations with nationals rather than use expatriates to staff them. Whether you use an international headhunter like Korn/Ferry International Inc.

or a Website that specializes in overseas jobs like Overseas Jobs Express (www.overseasjobs.com) which lists entry level to senior executive posts, your description of the job will influence the response you get from talented employees to your job opening. Here is what Peter D. Weddle, publisher of Weddle’s, the newsletter about online recruitment, suggests that you talk about.

Challenging work

Stay away from a list of requirements and responsibilities. Instead, describe the opening from an applicant’s perspective. So talk about the opportunities that the job will offer for the holder to be involved in important and meaningful work. Discuss the corporate mission and the value of that mission and then describe how the job holder will contribute to achievement of the mission.

Personal development

Yes, you will provide opportunities for additional training but that is expected, particularly if the job is in the IT area. The candidate is looking for development beyond that; that is, professional development that comes from an opportunity to be mentored by leaders in the organization and to participate in key decisions that impact the success of the company. Still, do mention if the company will subsidize higher education degrees and support involvement in professional associations.

Advancement

Demonstrate that there are opportunities for upward mobility in your organization by posting examples on your own Website. This should catch the attention of foreign nationals willing to relocate to build their career. Let those hired to represent your firm abroad know, too, about specific examples of personal advancement within your company, ideally by others recruited abroad.

Collegial relationships

Let executive recruiters know about other superstars on your management team so they can mention them to prospective candidates. On your Website, play up these individuals. Says Weddle, ‘‘Include their picture and a description of their work, in their own words.’’ Update the site regularly with new profiles; you want prospective employees to see that your organization isn’t limited to one or two ‘‘names.’’

Support/resources

If you will be relocating a manager and family, you want to be sure that services are available to help them make the transition – physical and cultural. At the very least help them locate a home, even for the short term, and a local school for any children. Provide training in the language and career placement assistance for the spouse if that is an issue of interest. Depending on the position, mention should also be made about workplace resources like special computer systems, access to technical libraries or data, or information on new research that can make relocation seem worthwhile.

Compensation

‘‘Competitive salary’’ or ‘‘salary commensurate with skills and experience,’’ says Weddle, will mean little to someone coming from another country, particularly someone whom you truly need on your staff. Don’t try to pay less because you are recruiting from a developing country. It will take little time for a new hire to understand how he or she stands financially to peers. If the pay and benefits aren’t comparable to that of colleagues, you are likely to lose your new hire to another firm quickly. Better to talk about stock options and base plus incentive early in the recruitment process. Certainly include that information in any international Internet postings. As Weddle’s research has found, salary information must appear in the first five lines of a job posting or most candidates will read no further. What about staffing overseas subsidiaries with nationals? The same rule applies. Big distinctions found between expatriate and local national pay, benefits, and bonuses can encourage the brightest local nationals to learn as much as they can from you, then move on.

Source : Recruiting & Retaining People .Florence Stone. 2002