Brick House Partners

May 2009

In This Issue. . .
   Are You Fresh Enough?
   Assessments Done Right – Part 2
   Innovation on Hold?
   Favorite Leos

Ralph Cutcher

FITTING QUOTE
"He was as fresh as is the month of May." —Geoffrey Chaucer

Are You Fresh Enough?
I am working on a presentation to be given this summer to a group of senior marketing executives in Chicago. I was asked to develop this presentation with the view of helping marketing people view job search in new and innovative ways. I came up with a good title right away, "Fresh Search". The rest was to come next month until I challenged myself with the May discussion here. This is a technique called "eating the frog" outlined in a similarly titled book http://www.eatthatfrogmovie.com/. The premise is that you should tackle what you are most likely to procrastinate on. My frog is partially gone...here's the cliff notes on "Fresh Search".

Fresh is a word I use often in describing the approach needed in an effective job search. But, I wonder if a better use for the word "fresh" would be for it to be connected to more of a personal brand management concept. Right now, there are so many people looking for work, being fresh and standing out in a job search is kind of a no-brainer strategy. I tend to want to push beyond the immediate "I need a job" problem solving exercise. I like the idea of pushing the issue into a more cathartic exercise we should all be undergoing while the backdrop of job loss - real or threatened - sits on our door step. This wake-up approach can help people look at their personal brand at a point in time (now is a pretty good time) and ask the question: "Am I fresh enough?" Here are some thoughts on freshening up - overall, and specifically if you are a marketing and advertising person:

What's Your Positioning? - You know, like we were all taught... To (target audience) Jane Doe is the (frame of reference) that (point of difference). Struggle with this for a couple sessions and figure out what makes you special as a person and what is special about your background and experience. Then mold them together. You will have a clear picture of what separates you and how to stay focused in all your personal brand communications including a resume/CV, cover note, job board bio, social networking bio, stationery and ID, phone messages, etc. You will be directing everything you do in personal brand management toward a fresh vision.

Don't Follow the Lemmings - So much of job search is set-up to create sameness in personal background presentation. Think about it...out placement and job search books help people create a personal brand which are developed against the same template and guess what - they look and sound the same. Nothing against either of these resources, but there has to some personal brand strategy and personal panache brought to bear as well. Lawyers are great advisors and counselors, but I would never follow their counsel carte blanche without overlaying their advice with my own business strategy. I believe the same holds true in personal brand creation. A good exercise is to gather 10 resumes/CV's for people with similar experience, tenure etc. and review them well. Then do a SWOT for yourself and figure out how to rise above and stand out.

Get a Digital Tune-Up - SEO doesn't stand for "Say Everything Often"...although I think it could. Right now, nearly every agency I talk with that has cut staff (most) has also hired more digital talent in close proximity. The same phenomenon is happening to most companies marketing budgets. The overall budget is cut and the digital budget increases. Hmm...I think there is a big transition happening. Part of this transition is that there is nowhere to hide in marketing and advertising if you do not have contemporary digital skills commensurate with your role. And there are very few roles that do not include digital acumen. The key is to punch through the ambiguity and Just Do It. If your role doesn't have much digital involvement, ask for it, create the activity, camp out with digital people, hire a digital trainer, read and pick a couple digital conferences to attend. I recently talked with a Creative Director who went to his ECD at a large agency 2 years ago and told him that the agency was falling behind on digital creative and they needed to solve it. The ECD agreed and gave him a new job, Digital Creative Director. He has figured it out since then.

Stay In Touch - Sounds like an old-fashioned term doesn't it? Networking sounds better. Not in my book. I like 'staying in touch" better. It's got a longer-term, more altruistic, less selfish ring to it. Staying in touch is a values based approach; networking is an "I want something" approach. Think about how different you feel when someone who does a good job of staying in touch with you calls versus a long lost colleague who networks to you. They could want the same thing, maybe an introduction, maybe a referral, but in either case you are likely to dig deeper for the former. Now, think about how much fresher you are if you can stay in touch with people consistently without something in mind. I am always amazed when I hear people say "I am so bad at staying in touch". When I hear that I always think to myself "why"? Sometimes I politely ask that question. Don't get stuck on the "I don't have time" to do it.

Stay In Touch with More People - Think in terms of hundreds. Get to know people without an understanding of where it is leading. A lot of times it can lead to new relationships and friendships discovered serendipitously. Then keep the relationship fresh. Staying in touch with an expanding group of people is an investment.

Try New Things - Marketing and advertising people are curious and like to try new things. Right? OK, then let's try new things for your personal brand. How about experimenting with 4-5 social media opportunities and picking 2-3 that you like and can stay active with. Or, how about creating a personal micro-site that is not just an electronic resume/CV. The site has a menu with issues and topics that allows you to share your experience and views on relevant items like leadership, new product launches, digital solutions, mentoring/training, brand re-positioning, break through strategies and campaigns, etc. What if you do a video that shows your outstanding presentation skills and embed it on your LinkedIn bio. Become a blogger. Create a new on-line group. Write an article.

Push Your Values to the Front of the Line - I talk to dozens of people every week and the ones I remember are the ones who, even in brief conversation, communicate what they stand for - not what they have done. Prioritizing your values as important when delivering your personal brand will stand out in two ways. First, not a lot of people do it and tend to rest with what they have done which is pretty quickly forgotten - and it sounds a bit robotic when you are reading/hearing a lot of them (like a hiring manager would). Secondly, pushing your values to the front of the line sounds more authentic and unique because no one will have a duplicate set of values. This doesn't mean you have to wear things on your sleeves and create TMI moments. Just decide what you stand for and look for ways to implicitly and explicitly communicate and demonstrate.

Millennial Connection - The millennial generation is about to become our largest work and consumer buying group. Understanding this generation, figuring out how to connect with and motivate them as team members, and figuring out how to connect with them as consumers, is an important growth direction for all of us.

Here are a couple links that might be interesting:
http://www.millennialgeneration.org/
http://generationsatwork.com/articles/millenials.htm
http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/mgt08044.html

Assessments Done Right
Last month I asked Wayne Nemeroff, PH.D., CEO of our partner, PsyMax Solutions www.psymaxsolutions.com, to share his thoughts regarding assessments. Here's Wayne's 2nd discussion:

Many years ago I took one of my first courses in I/O Psychology in tests and measurement. In those times, organizations were "testing" and not "assessing" people the way they are today. They were using many personality tests originally developed for clinical use with people who suffered from mental health problems. They also used cognitive tests that measure a person's IQ; namely their verbal and numerical reasoning abilities. They were not using tests that were developed using norms from people working in a variety of organizations. Nor were they building assessments based on how people perform their roles in a variety of jobs. And, they certainly weren't using assessments to measure a person's work style behaviors and how those behaviors "fit" with job requirements and an organization's cultural environment.

Then, a funny thing happened on the way to controlling expenses. People in different organizations began waking up to the fact that poor hires can be very costly and the use of assessments began to significantly increase. Every time you hire the wrong person, you may as well go in to the company's coffers, take out a chunk of money and throw it out the window. The higher the job level, the more money you are throwing away every time you make a hiring mistake, not to mention the toll it takes on employee's morale and performance. Out of this more contemporary work habit type assessments were born.

Assessments are not a panacea for all hiring ills. But they should be seen as an insurance policy that more times than not can help prevent you from making a mistake that may cost you dearly. Assessments can point things about individuals that will, at the minimum, make you think twice about whether a person is right for your organization. They make you double check your references, probe further into particular characteristics about a person, or perhaps lead you to call a person back for another interview and ask them more questions about some issues that were revealed in the assessment. Like a CT SCAN, assessments can pierce below the surface and discover things you may not notice. In the final analysis, however, it is the organizations' hiring team that should make the decision to hire or not hire someone. Work Style Assessments will not measure experience and education. However, they will provide extremely valuable additional guideposts (bench marks) to consider when selecting, promoting, and developing people in your organization.

Here is my bottom line. Assessments should not be viewed as an extra expense or some superfluous thing to do every once in a while when you may not be sure about a particular candidate. Rather, assessments should be viewed as a vital component of your HR strategic initiatives, firmly contributing to your organization's bottom line by helping you make better decisions about one of your most important assets - your Human Capital.