I have had a series of employees that do the same thing that annoys me. When I ask to see them to give them instructions, they come to my office without anything to write on. It frustrates me to no end since what ends up happening is that they forget half of what I ask them to do (I am fast-talker) and they have to sheepishly come in to my office saying “what was the last thing you asked me to do again?”

I mentioned this particular frustration to my esteemed columnist, Mom2KG, and her husband last weekend and, lo and behold, it happens to them too! I hate to generalize but the three of us agreed this tended to happen more to younger workers. My pet theory is that as that as you get older you tend to forget things so you always write things down. When you are younger, you have a better memory (its actually not better, its just not cluttered with a million different things) so you take for granted that you will remember everything. I have actually bought employees notebooks and they never bring them to meetings! Argh….

Now, its one thing to write it down. Its another to ask if you don’t understand it. This is something else we talked about too. ASK QUESTIONS WHEN YOU ARE GETTING INSTRUCTIONS IF YOU DON’T KNOW. Its better to be ignorant at the instruction taking stage then after you finished the assignment and its inaccurate because the instructions were interpretted incorrectly.

Ideally, if you want to give your boss confidence, please do the following:

1. Come prepared to the meeting. Bring something to write on. I actually have color coded notebooks. The black notebook are client notes, the brown notebook are management meetings etc. Loose pieces of paper make you appear disorganized (at least to me).
2. Ask your boss to slow down if you are taking down instructions. We know the file well so we tend to skip steps (my biggest mistake. I always find myself saying- “I better back up…” since I am so far ahead of myself. Sorry employees!)
3. Ask for a due date. I addressed this tip in a prior post. Ask your boss what type of priority to put on the assignment.
4. Repeat the instructions back at the end of the meeting. In other words, say: “If I understand you correctly, you want me to do the following…” There will be no misunderstanding on what you have to do if you repeat it back in your own words and the boss agrees with you (or, more cynically, you can cover your butt because your boss vetted your assignment).

Anyone care to share pet peeves of employees?

I have recently switched jobs/businesses and, with that, I have shifted from supervising middle-aged and experienced employees to younger employees (under 30).  Coupled with that, some of my former employees were owner-managers, which attaches with it pride of ownership, and my new employees are plain-old 9-5ers. I freely admit I am having a hard time adjusting.

Fundamentally, if you don’t have enough time under your belt, you don’t know instinctively what to do in the work-place. So I am having a lot of heart-to-heart discussions with my employees about expectation levels and how to make the boss (me) happy. This is what I am saying:

1. Learn to prioritize. Bosses, especially me, are notoriously bad at giving an employee an assignment and then not telling the employee when it is due. Then another supervisor gives the employee an assignment. Which one does the employee do first? The key is to ask what the priority is on the work given. If both supervisors say its “urgent” ask them to speak to each other to fight over the employee’s time.
2. Be pro-active. School is, in many respects, a passive environment. The student sits back and waits for the assignment, is told what to read and when to write the exams. Most office environments I know are not like that. You have be pro-active. Tell people you want work. What type of work you are looking for. What your interests are. If you don’t, you will disappear at work and become expendable.  No one baby-sits you in busy offices.
3. Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. This is related to #2. Tell your supervisor when you are done an assignment, that you are having trouble with it (see below) and you need feed-back on your work. If you do the work and then wait for the supervisor to find you to see how you have done, the supervisor thinks you are too passive.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When an employee gets an assignment they are having trouble with, they can do one of two things: (i) be seized up with fear and do nothing; or (ii) ask for help. The supervisor isn’t going to do the assignment for you but ask for a precedent to copy or a direction you should be going. Asking for help implicitly communicates you want to learn and you are interested as well.
5. Don’t pick and chose the “fun” jobs. Of course, you want to the fun jobs. Everyone does. But here’s the key to work. You get paid for the grief and not the work. Ever wonder what your boss does? They sit in the office mediating office politics, dealing with the Denise the Menace of the work-place and calling clients to collect the unpaid bills. Fun eh? Your boss got to be the boss by dealing with the grief. Show a positive attitude by volunteering to do a wide variety of things- the good, bad and ugly- and you will be respected by co-workers and thanked by supervisors.

Anyone care to share any advice for first time workers?

For those job seekers, Squawkfox has a great series running on resume writing this week (I post the first part).

As the unemployment rate is beginning to creep up into high single ditigals, is a head hunter is right for you if you are looking for a job?

The first thing you have to know if you are using a head-hunter is that they are not a career counsellor. They try to match you up with a job that is substantially similar to the one you had or have. Unless you are paying a head-hunter by the hour or you are an outstanding candidiate, other than the initial interview (which can last from 20 minutes to an hour), there is not a lot of hand holding going on. They may give you a few pointers on resumes but they will not substantially re-write it for you. Thus, remember, at the end of the day, think of a head-hunter as just another networking channel in a job search.

The lesson being, a good job hunter knows where they want to work and has an expert look over their resume before they approach a head hunter. They have no illusions on what a head-hunter will do for them. They provide access to opportunities. They are not a shoulder to cry on or a place to vent.

Having said that, if you are any good, a head-hunter will know they can place you somewhere and earn their commission. Thus, do try your head-hunter as another potential employer. The second lesson being, a head-hunter will put you front of mind if you are prepared, polished and employable. If you don’t try hard to impress them, you are just another number (and head hunting is purely a numbers game).

The third thing to consider is ask for word of mouth referral on good head-hunters in your industry. I used three firms once when I was still practicing law and looking for a job. One was great and two were lousy. The one that was great was in a smaller agency but she actually cared. The other two were in big agencies so I was just another number (and they were extremely rude to me). The one that was great was a word of mouth referral (someone actually pointed me to her and said, she’s the best in the biz). The other two I retained having saw their ad. Thus, like anything else, its all about the word of mouth referral.

Now, to answer the initial question, I would use a head-hunter if nothing else to widen your net in your job search with a few final things to consider:

1. Head-hunters are great for finding quick, low paying jobs. Head-hunters are great for finding girl/boy friends- the temporary help every office needs. We have used them several times and they always find you a warm body. Most of them are straight out of university. So, if you just graduated and need a job fast, by all means use them (the quality of candidates is a different question…)
2. The more skilled you are, the less reliance I place on head-hunters. Skilled employers or skilled industries tend to be quite incestous. Its easier to find another position through word of mouth than relying on an outsider to find one for you. For example, it is typically easier to find a new job by asking the lawyer on the other side of the file for any leads rather than asking an outsider for help.
3. Head-hunters are good sources of intelligence. You should use the initial interview to mine for information. What is the going salary rate? Is the industry dead? Do I need more education and/or training?

It never hurts to pursue as many opportunities as possible to obtain a new job. Just don’t rely on a head-hunter to be the end all and be all.

Anyone care to share their experiences with head-hunters?

Recommendation letters are one of those standard issue things you need to obtain when job-hunting. Everyone seems to have one. The question is- does yours get you anywhere if you are looking for a new job? I am not in HR so I honestly could not tell you if a recommendation letter will put you over the top but if you have to get one to play the job hunting game, you may as well get the best one possible right?

To get back to first principles though, remember to ask your employer to write a positive recommendation letter. Sounds stupid (since the term does imply positivity) but you never know right?

Let’s face it, many employers who agree to write a recommendation letter would also be happy if you diplomatically suggested ghost-writing it for them for their approval; it saves them work and no one knows what you do better than you. So why not ghost-write your own effective recommendation letter?

Below is an example of a recommendation letter I once wrote for an employee I really liked (names, places and job functions and some contextually information changed for privacy reasons). I am not remotely sure if this is a good or bad letter (thoughts?) but, since they were such a good employee, I thought I would go the extra mile with a few extra features:

• The one thing I have noticed about recommendation letters is it is full of generalities. A good “team player” means nothing without context. Thus, I tried to give concrete examples.

• The other thing I did try to do is explain why the employee is no longer with me for reasons that had nothing to do with them.  You have to be careful though. In some jurisdictions, you are prohibited from writing anything negative in a recommendation letter which may include reasons for departure if it is read as a negative (which begs the question of how many terrible employers wrote malicious recommendation letters to have these types of laws passed? What a strange world we live in).
• When I first hired this employee, I knew this was not the field of work they wanted to work in so I asked them what they wanted to do and gave them work in their area of interest if they performed well. Thus, the letter is specifically tailored to getting them their next position in their desired field.

Here it is. Let me know your thoughts:

I am writing in support of Jane Anybody.

Jane served as our offices administrative assistant from January 1, 2006 to July 31, 2007 on a 35 work week basis before the business was sold and Jane decided not to work for new management but chose to take this opportunity to pursue a career in human resources.

During this time, Jane engaged in a wide variety of tasks for the office including book-keeping, accounts payable/accounts receivables, filing, general administration and dealing with the public. Having said that, Jane’s initial job functions were primarily general administration and dealing with the public. As Jane showed increasing competency she was delegated greater responsibility and an increase in compensation to reflect her value to the business.

As she is interested in human resources, Jane was delegated payroll functions and asked to assist in hiring summer help. She carried out both well as our book-keeper did not find any errors in her work and the summer student was a valuable addition to our work-place.

Jane is a dedicated team-player; she would often volunteer to stay late in order to complete her assignments and was well-liked in an office of 14 shared by co-workers and other businesses. She is a quick learner and takes instruction well; she was noted by my book-keeper to understand the book-keeping software quickly and increasingly mastered more options in said software. Finally, she was able to prioritize the various files and issues which arise in any office on a daily basis; she frequently reported on her progress on assignments to ensure that what needed to be done was completed first.

Accordingly, I would highly recommend Jane to join your organization as she would become a valuable member of your team. If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me.

…as I always preface my “job” related posts, I am not in human resources so I am not sure if this is the best recommendation out there (any tips would be great) but I believe it beats the plain vanilla “nice employee, worked hard, I recommend them” letters.

Next post, I address head-hunters from both the employer and employee side.

Due to some reader requests, I am going to start blogging a little more on jobs and employment given that I am a boss. I have created a new category called “jobs”. Any suggestions on this topic are greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I am a boss. I have supervised employees ranging from skilled professionals (lawyers, accountants, civil engineers), to middle level managers to the general receptionist. I am not sure if I have a managerial style other than most of my employees say I am pretty upfront with them. I readily admit because I am not in my 50’s or 60’s that I do not have a huge wealth of experience to draw upon so I do muddle my way through some situations but I also know what I like and don’t like about employees.

With the economy in for a rough ride for at least the next 12 months, its time to start thinking about things that will make you a valuable employee. The hard truth is most bosses won’t have a say in who stays and who goes. In some cases, there are much larger factors at work. But being a valuable employee may mean the boss may actually pull a favor or two for you to land another position. In other words, there may be a larger game at play here.

So what are some things that you, as an employee, can do to make yourself more valuable?

1. Be proactive. Here’s what drives me insane. I give task A to an employee. They do it and then they sit on it, not telling me its done. Bosses have dozens of things going on at once- most don’t have time to track don’t an assignment unless it is extremely time-sensitive. Be proactive. Tell your boss you are finished and want more work. If you boss gives you multiple assignments, ask which one has the highest priority. If you can’t find your boss after you finished some work, email them so at least they know its done. If they sit on it for days so what? That’s their issue, not yours. Being proactive gets you very far in the work-place and life since most people have a mind-set that their boss will fill their plate with work; most of the time, the boss is too busy to even delegate.
2. Care about the business. Its a soft skill but actually caring whether things are filed on time, the customer is happy with their experience and your co-workers are happy means a lot to your boss. Let’s be honest, most employees are there for a pay-cheque and will do the minimal amount possible to get it. If you actually show you care about the business (apart from the fact you need it to survive to get paid), it goes a long way.
3. Be a problem solver. Every work-place has an employee who I call “arms in the air” guy or girl. When some issue comes up, they throw their arms in the air maintaining the issue either cannot be solved or clueless as to how to solve it (hence, throwing their arms in the arm helplessly). Don’t be that person. Bosses hate that person. They are the first to go. As the saying goes, either be part of the problem or part of the solution. If there is an issue, volunteer to solve it. If you don’t know how, ask around. Its not that people don’t know how to solve the issue, its that there isn’t the political will to do so or “its not my department” (well, if its not your department, maybe we should eliminate your department first because what good are you to the business then if you won’t help us beyond your job description? Think about that next time you want to use that line since all you are doing is implicitly indicating you are redundant). There’s an old saying in business- its better to pitch to the board a solution that may not ending up working then no solution at all.
4. Show the boss you are learning from your mistakes. My favorite employee of all time once came into my office and said “how do we make sure this does not happen again next time?” By that simple question, the employee showed me: (a) she cared about her job; (b) she wanted to be a problem solver; and (c) she wanted to learn from the experience. She was recently promoted.
5. DO IT, don’t talk about it. I never like the employee who comes in to my office and talks for 5 minutes about what he is going to do, what he’s got on his desk and how he’s going to organize himself today and then tomorrow start the task after the staff meeting in the morning…. tell me when you are going to do it, do it in time and show me.

Many employees complain about their bosses micro-managing them or being control freaks. Sometimes, their boss is insane and it is true. But do you also want to know why some bosses micro-manage? They don’t trust you enough because you are not displaying some of the traits above.

My favorite employee referred to above? I never micro-managed her. You know why? She would come into my office daily (see #1), tell me what she had done (see #5), tell me the issues of the day and wanted to know if her proposed solution was ok (see #3 and #4) and chat to see how things were going on my end (see #2).

I hope this give you some food for thought.

Next week I am going to address how to ghost-write effective recommendation letters from your former employer if you are looking for work.