Category: Leadership

Making the best out of your current job

3/7/2019

"I do my job well, then why am I not getting any promotions"

"I do my job just as well, or better than my co-worker. Why is it that my manager always turns to him for...".

If any of this sounds familiar, you should know that you are not alone, and we recommend that you read this article.

Its not all about simply performing your job duties. We all know those common sense things you must do to make a good impression at any job. Show up on time, dress professionally, finish your project ontime, limit absences, thinking about consequences of your actions etc. But these are just the basics. They may ensure you keep your job, but there's more you can do to get ahead. Here are some tips:

Find a Mentor or as Ben Stein says in his article on Yahoo Finance, "Get someone up above you on the ladder. Listen to his war stories. Listen to his boasts. In return, get his advice, get his contacts (contacts are everything in life), get his words to a friend, get him to boost you up the ladder." Ask him for advice on what he/she recommends you do to get ahead

Become Visible. Put Yourself Out There - Staying confined to your cubicle, doing just the basics of your job will not get you ahead. If you really want to move up in your career, get your face out there and make contacts. Seek out people in other parts of your company. Do things you do not have to do. Volunteer to serve on an inter-departmental committee. You will make contacts, learn about new opportunities, and show your commitment to your company and department's vision. Offer to help on a project outside your normal duties that fits with your interests. If you understand where you hope to go in your career, you can identify projects that will help you get there.

Be Reliable. Your manager should always feel they have nothing to worry about, if a task has been assigned to you. If your manager is expecting you to complete a task by next Monday, and you are running into problems, don't wait until next Monday to tell your manager. Tell your manager on Thursday/Friday of prior week issues you are having.

Train, Train, Train. In any career, training helps keep one's skills and stay up-to-date, nowhere is it
more critical than in IT, where new developments are the norm. Training opportunities may be offered through your employer. Even if they are not, its worth spending your own money to develop new skills (this money spent may be tax deductible).

Maintain Positive Attitude A little thing like smile on your face can go a long way. No one likes to work
with people with poor attitude. In order to keep your job, you may not have to go beyond the norm. But if you want to advance, it is best that your superiors see you maintaining a positive attitude, a smile on your face, and steering clear of politics. If you stay focused on the bottom line (success of your project) without stepping over other people, combined with enthusiasm and smile, it will not go un-noticed. Come annual review time, the next promotion may be yours.

Be a Solutions Person Most people have the ability to identify problems. Very few go upto their boss to talk about a problem, and already have a solution that addresses that problem. Having more than one solution to the same problem does not hurt.

Take Initiative Don't wait for your manager to assign you a task. If you see something that needs to be done, and you know you can do it (or its going to be assigned to you anyway), go ahead and bring it up to your manager. Tell him/her that you see a task that needs to be done, and that you would like to do it. On the contrary, do not be 'over ambitious' i.e. do not go ahead and do the task prior to obtaining your manager's approval. It is possible that your manager has some thoughts about that task, or may have already assigned it to someone else (without you knowing). If you take upon yourself to do the task, without your manager's knowledge, this may backfire. So taking initiatives requires some balancing.

And the most important - Be Results Oriented. You were hired to produce results. You can have all of above attributes, but if you are not creating results your were hired for, do not expect to advance. Make sure your definition of results is the same as your manager's definition. If you two are not on the same page, you are not producing results.

I am sure that there are many other attributes to a successful career. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

9 Things Great Leaders Say Every Day

10/26/2018

Saw this article by Bill Murphy Jr. at inc.com and thought is was worth sharing. Some of the highlights of that article below

If you are a leader, manager, or an executive, its always nice to get a refresher on what an effective leader should be "saying"

1. "This is the situation" - People want to know what's going on. Odds are, they'll find out anyway, or worse, fill in the gaps with conjecture...

2. "Here is the plan" - Your team needs to know where you're trying to take them, and how...

3. "What do you need?" - ... people need to know that you want them to succeed... you need to leverage every person's abilities to the maximum extent possible...

4. "Tell me more" - Let people know you're more interested in finding good answers than hearing yourself speak...

5. "Remember our values" - You can't be everywhere at all times... but remind people of your values (of course, that you can actually articulate shared values)

6. "I trust you" - If you can't trust the people on your team, then they shouldn't be on your team. You need to ensure that they understand how much you depend on them.

7. "You can count on me" - If your team can't trust you, then..... So tell them you've got their back, and then work like hell to fulfill the promises you make.

8. "We can do better" - Push your team to a higher standard than they might set for themselves

9. "Let's celebrate!" - Make it a practice to celebrate your wins, both large and small. This can be just to call people out for great work and congratulate them for their milestones

12 Tips to Screen and Select Temporary IT Staffing Vendors

7/30/2014

IT Staffing is probably the second or third largest expense in most mid to large size companies (#1 being cost of their internal IT employees). First know the difference… the process for hiring ‘contract/temporary’ staff versus hiring ‘permanent/employee’ staff is very different. Know that a typical vendor will not be an expert at both. Ideally, you want to have 2 separate pools of vendors – one for contract/temporary hiring and one for permanent/employee hiring.

This article focuses on contract/temporary staffing vendors, and may be useful for Procurement and IT departments at all size companies in preparing a RFP for "Temporary Staffing / Staff Augmentation / Contingent Staffing Services". It may also be useful for IT and Corporate Management to learn the Staffing Vendor Selection issues.

From a client perspective – try to understand your vendor's business involving their processes, costs, challenges etc. Once you do, you will be better armed than your competition in order to give your internal departments and vendors relevant data, which will eventually lead to your vendors coming through with the best talent with lower risk.

1. Basic Vendor Screening
   • How long in business (experience counts). Don’t give credit to “individuals” industry experience – you want to know about “company” experience. When hiring temporary staff, company is more important than the individual(s) you deal with. Minimally, the vendor should have been in business 10 years, and gone through a few different economic cycles and recessionary environments.

   • Ask for types of clients they have experience with. Have they worked with clients in an industry similar to yours?

   • Meet some of the vendor staff. See if you have access to vendor’s senior management. Many companies have offshored their initial candidate sourcing. But quality produced by these offshore recruiters is significantly lower than US based recruiters. Are these the people you want to represent your company? What is the turnover among the client facing “account management” and “recruiting” staff.

   • Ask what type of background checks they perform on the candidates. Minimally, they should be verifying US employment eligibility (not hiring illegal aliens) and criminal background checks. See related article “11 tips on hiring and IT Consultant”.

   • Are they adequately insured? Typically, you want to look for Commercial General Liability, Professional Liability (Errors and Omissions), Employers Liability and State mandated Workers Compensation and Disability policies that carry at least $2MM per claim limits.

2. Capacity and Hiring Volume
   • Ask how many consultants do they currently have deployed at clients sites. If you want to be extremely thorough, ask them for some proof (e.g. using 10,000 per month as an average cost per consultant, if their bank statement shows payments of $100K in a month, that means they have approx. 10 consultants).

   • Also ask for a list of new consultants they have placed in the last 12 months. This will help you understand the “volume” of business they do on an active basis. For example, if they have 100 consultants currently, but placed 10 in last 6 months (meaning 90 of them were placed more than 6 months back), that does not demonstrate an “active” recruiting team, just shows long term engagements.

3. Recruiting Process
   • Identify the depth of their process and the quality checkpoints.

   • Ask them types of questions they ask candidates during the recruitment and screening process

   • Ask about their candidate interview process. In IT industry, it is very common for consultants to be located in different states, where an in-person meeting is not feasible. Your vendors should be interviewing these candidates using some video conferencing technology. See related article “11 tips on hiring and IT Consultant”.

   • Ask sources of recruitment (e.g. online job boards, internal databases, referrals etc.). If they are able to substantiate 10%+ hires via referrals, you will have access to candidates not easily available to their competitors.

4. Financial health
   • This is very important as temporary staff gets paid by the staffing services provider, and there are co-employment and other legal issues at stake. There have been cases where you need data from a vendor going several years back. Therefore, you need to deal with a vendor who has good chances of surviving through all kinds of economic cycles.

   • Ask for their Revenues, P&L statement, Balance Sheet etc. A reliable vendor should be profitable, but profit should not be high like 30% of the revenues. Ideal vendors will have profit between 5% to 15% of revenues. Anything less implies “risk” and anything more implies “fat margins”.

   • If you want to be extremely thorough, ask them for some proof. Once again, bank statements can show a lot, but not many vendors will be willing to share this data.

5. Candidate Payment Process
   • Assure and impose process for candidate payments. Regardless of who employs the candidate, the candidate should be getting paid once every two weeks, and no later than once a month. If candidate does not get paid at least once a month, they will leave.

   • In worst case scenario, the vendor should be paying their subcontractors within 5 business days of receiving payment from you, the client organization. (Note: subcontractor is not same as consultant working at your site)

6. Co-Employment Issues
   • What checks are in place, in case a government audit is requested, the client company does not end up being recorded as candidate’s “employer”. There was a case a few years back, when Microsoft fought a battle with government entities on this issue. You want to assure that you are taking appropriate measure to protect your company.

7. Markups and Costs
   • Understand the vendor’s markups and costs (i.e. how much do they markup after all their costs). Know about vendor costs, as each vendor has different structure. Some vendor offer health benefits / paid vacation etc, whereas others do not. Regardless, there will be some costs such as employment taxes, workers compensation and other state mandated statutory costs. Ask them for breakdown of these costs. When doing this analysis, keep in some IT candidates you hire will not be employed by the vendor you deal with, but another subcontractor (which is acceptable and encouraged - see related article “11 tips on hiring and IT Consultant”). Typical markup are in the 25% to 50% ranges, depending on benefits, costs and other variables.

8. Industry affiliations
   • Is the vendor affiliated with an accredited industry staffing association? If yes, you have some confidence that they are aware of trends, laws and best practices. If they are not, you should ask yourself “why”. Why is this vendor not willing to invest in themselves?

   • Ask for technology vendor partnerships e.g. IBM, Oracle, Microsoft etc. While this is not critical, it will help you understand the vendor’s specialties. If they are associated with some technology vendor as a partner, ask if candidates have access to exclusive learning material and training provided by these industry partners

9. Timesheets and Invoicing
   • Ask about their timesheet collection / time reporting and invoicing process. If you, as a client, already use an internal time reporting application, ask the vendor if they will accept this data, which will remove the headache of consultants working at your site of by filling out multiple timesheets.

10. Temp to Perm Conversion
   • Ask the vendor of their policies regarding hiring their consultant as your employee. You should be aware that many times the consultant is not directly employed by the vendor you are dealing with, and the vendor may have “non-solicitation” clauses with their subcontractors. Don’t impose Temp to Perm conversion, as that will limit access to good talent. But it is important for you to know what you are getting.

11. Vendor Pool
   • Ask about their experience when competing with other vendors. Ideally, you as a client, depending on your company size, would want to have between 5 to 25 active vendors. If you have less than 5, you may not be accessing a large enough candidate pool, and if you have more than 25, your vendors are not very motivated to work in an environment with excessive competition. You need to find a balance, and need to work with a vendor that has experience in environment such as your.

12. Post-Sale Follow Up
   • What is the process of vendor follow ups, after they place a consultant?
Good vendors should have a process for consultant and client follow ups, like 30-day, 6 month, and one year? In addition, senior management should meet with you at least once a year, with quarterly in-person meetings with your account manager.

To summarize, identify the pain points of your current job. If having inadequate IT staff is amongst the top 3 reasons of your current challenges, you need to invest time in forming, screening, developing and maintaining relationships with the right staffing partners.

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Making the best out of your current job

9 Things Great Leaders Say Every Day

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