Join us for this career change special, as we talk about everything from job acquisition burnout syndrome, setting up your own business, and Craig David - with career coach, Board advisor and founder of Executive Career Jump, Andrew MacAskill.
Andrew Macaskill - Career coach, Board advisor and founder of Executive Career Jump - is on a mission to end our job search misery.
1min - the best and worst of Covid-19 and innovation in adversity.
3mins - communities, social media and serving others.
4mins30s - best pieces of career advice and treating the job search like a project.
7mins - ending job search misery: "getting the human back into Human Resources".
9mins - AI and the transactional systems causing problems.
10mins - the 'Etch-A-Sketch' effect.
11mins - Career history, wanting to be a sports journalist and getting to know the language of business.
15mins - Assessment of the job market now and the K-shaped economy.
17mins30s - Advice to people changing careers or setting up their own business.
21mins30s - Are the CVs days numbered?
22mins30s - funniest interview stories and CV mistakes.
25mins30s - What get's you out of bed in the morning?
28mins30s - What's attributes and approaches are helping people to be successful and getting them over the line?
30mins30s - Why do people find it so hard to package themselves up? "Quite often the best candidates have the least amount of practice in interviews..."
32mins15s - Gender differences on Imposter Syndrome, and becoming an MD at 29... - 'qualify yourself in, rather than qualify yourself out'.
35mins30s - Competency based interview questions and E-STAR-Q.
39mins - Comfort in lockdown, running and podcasts.
41mins40s - Strange fingers and swapping girlfriends with Craig David.
43mins - Coaching experiences that gave me the most satisfaction.
Today we're joined by Andrew MacAskill, career coach, Board advisor and founder of Executive Career Jump. Andrew is on a mission to end our job search misery. His online advice hacks and live Q&As have lit up LinkedIn, so we're delighted to have him with us today. Andrew, welcome to Comms from the Shed.
Thanks for having me Sam, it's great to be here.
Andrew, it's great to have you on, especially in this continued uncertainty that we all face into because of the pandemic. You said recently that Covid-19 had brought out the best and the worst in people. Can you share examples of both?
Yeah, I'd love to. So I think let's start with a positive. I think that's definitely the best way to go. So some of the camaraderie, the community and the collaboration that we've seen has been fantastic. I've seen lots of examples. For example, with job seeker groups popping up to support each other through transition, I've seen examples of people buddying up on job searches to help them attract a new role. I've seen examples of people who are in serious trouble reaching out for help on LinkedIn and the LinkedIn community getting behind them and amplifying that message. And we've helped people get employed who are in dire straits. So I think at a community level it's been fantastic. And I also think there's been some really good innovations in business. So as always, out of adversity does come opportunity and innovation. And I think everything from how people have been migrating to new digital models to bringing new products to market. I think some of the innovation has been tremendously positive as well, so on the negative side, in terms of the worst behavior, I think I hadn't appreciated some of the predatory stuff that's been going on. So I think whenever you get this kind of uncertainty, there's always gonna be people that prey on that. So everything from people not paying small company bills to maintain their own cash flow and they've already got millions in the bank, right, that kind of silliness going on. We've seen some really low-ball salary offers coming out to candidates who would never have received that salary offer 12 months ago. But people are opportunistically putting things on the table that just are not on and not fair. So I think overwhelmingly, the majority of people have really shown through for their values. But there's always, sadly, that predatory element out there as well.
You mentioned the word communities, which caught my ear there. Do you think that people have been even better or have just instinctually gravitated towards communities of interest, communities of self help? What's been your feeling in the last 12 months? Has that been a thing that is exponentially increased?
I think what social media brings is more opportunity for communities already, and we're seeing a business level. A lot of very successful brands are actually built on communities, right, so whether it's Brew Dog or Cule or Heights, who recently did a big crowd-funding raise or whatever it might be. Communities are attractive to people right now, and the more digital we get, the more people kind of seek out that human connection. So I think a societal and business level with more community driven. But I also think what's been happening is people have been struggling. We've had this universal challenge that we're all facing through different eyes. But we're all facing it together, and one way that people deal with challenge, which is positive, is to serve others. And it's one of the best ways to deal with your own mental health. And to deal with your own transition or whatever you're going through is to find a way to self serve others, whether that's through mentoring or propping other people up, because in doing so, you actually do something for yourself as well. So I think it's a mixture of a more macro trend going on, but also at an individual level. People looking to serve others. What do you think? What have you seen?
I'm nodding along here because I think that point you made about mental health and serving others is a really strong one. I mean I personally have always taken a great amount of joy helping people with their CVs, doing a little bit of life coaching with them, geeing them up, you know, dusting them down, trying to help them to present their best versions of themselves. And I felt more like doing that than ever before. I wondered what the best piece of career advice you were ever given was, or, if not given to you directly, that you'd overheard or had someone relate to you.
So two bits here - one if you're in a role, and one if you're not. So if you're in a role, the best advice I ever heard from somebody was to implement a no surprises policy, and I really took that with me. You're a Comms Director from what I could see from your background, so you'll appreciate the importance of good Comms. But I think you know, one of the things that's totally underrated is people's ability to manage upwards and downwards. But there's a lot that's spoken about in terms of leadership. But managing upwards effectively is a really key skill. And if there's one thing that in my experience I learned the hard way, it's that senior people don't appreciate surprises, or being blindsided, being thrown off. And so that bit of advice that somebody get me quite early into my career about implementing a no surprises policy, I thought was tremendous, really simple and tremendous. So just make sure that the bad news travels as quickly as the good news. The best tip I've ever heard, that I now pass on on a daily basis in terms of people in career transition - if they're looking to attract a new role - is to use your business skills on your job search. So there's this craziness that happened Sam, that people hit the job market, successful commercial leaders hit the job market and they go completely passive. It's like they forgot who they are because their identity has been taken away. They go way too passive. Whereas if you can approach your job search and your career in a more strategic way, and run it like a project, you'll tend to come out a lot better. And then the final really tactical bit for anybody who is in a job, something really simple that you can start doing right now...and we're at the end of quarter one on the day of recording - is that every time you have a quarterly review, update your CV. I can't tell you the amount of people I'm trying to help create a CV right now, and we're trying to think back like 5/6/7 years, trying to work out what the hell is going on in their jobs. Now if you just keep that going as an organic document that's evolving all the time, that you're updating with stats are updated with achievements, you'll find that when you do need to transition and you need to be ready, you can go at any time. Basically, so there's a few things you asked for. Apologies, I gave you three, but they're my thoughts.
No, absolutely. That's fantastic advice, and I hope that our listeners are taking note. We said up front that you've been doing some fantastic work in the executive space, and people that know you and have read a little bit about your background will know that you're on a mission to end job search misery. Why is the process such a trial for everyone involved? Is it getting any better?
It's getting worse Sam. So I'm failing at the moment in terms of that particular mission, but it's going to keep me busy. So it's getting worse. And the reason it's getting worse is because somewhere along the line companies forgot that people applying for jobs were humans and not cattle. And what we need to do is to try and get the human back into human resources, right? So we've over engineered recruitment processes using technology, and we've got stuck into this really bad habit of matching a CV to a job description rather than a person to a culture and an opportunity. So as I say, that's where we've gone wrong. The net effect of that is actually very serious because for people on the job market it is brutal. So for example, you've got a less than a 1% chance of securing an interview for a job application. In the current environment that's insane, because you can sit there for weeks, sending out 50 applications and not even get an interview. And what we tend to find happen is that when people get made redundant or they hit the job market, they go through that initial grieving process and the change element that comes with it. And then they just start getting battered with rejections or ghosted and when they do attend interviews they don't always get the feedback they deserve, or any insights that they can go away with, and it just continuously smashes their confidence. And the less confident they get, the worse they deliver in the interviews, and they end up in this spiral. We call it the Jabs, which is job acquisition burnout syndrome, and this is a really big problem. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So we've got a long way to go Sam before we end job search misery. It's a big problem, and it's getting worse.
Is there an algorithm issue in this? I mean, you mentioned the way that people may be poorly matched and that we're kind of programming out the human element of it. Is it too much of a computer A.I. driven approach do you think?
Yep, definitely. It's transactional technology systems that are causing the problem. The ATS systems are also causing the problem, but also just undertrained, incapable fear-ridden leaders that aren't hiring in the right way as well. I don't think we can outsource the responsibility for good candidate experience to machines. That's just laziness. So I think it's a human problem as well as a tech problem.
What would your message be to those people at the other end of the process? So the hiring managers - if you could give them one bit of advice, what would you say to hiring managers in this current climate?
What I would say is that it's easy to forget what it feels like on the hiring side. If you haven't been a candidate on the market for a while, I call it the 'Etch A Sketch effect' because it's like people get a job and they just wipe clean that experience out of their head. And then they just fall straight into type and forget what it's like. So when hiring managers are going into interviews it's really important that they understand that whilst for them, that's one of six or seven meetings they have that day, it's a business interaction to solve a problem for the person on the other side of that zoom call, or on the other side of that interview table. It's literally the biggest thing in their life right now. They've been prepping for this moment, they've been researching for this moment. They may have done 20 applications before they got this one opportunity to come and meet you. So don't go in there half-arsed. Don't go in there without having prepped without having known the person's name, turn up on time. Make sure you're engaged and make sure that you go in with the goal of recognising the human that's in front of you, and ensuring that even if they don't get the job, that they leave as an advocate for your business.
You seem so well suited, if you don't mind me saying, for the role that you're in - I just wanted to go back to the start of your career because you began your career at organizations like Match Tech, Michael Page and Hudson. What did you learn back then, Andrew, that maybe you've you've brought with you from your early days. And how has your career evolved over the years?
You can break my career down into three chapters, which is what I try to help other people do as well. Actually, most careers tend to have a few chapters. For me it's three chapters. So the first chapter of my career was actually in finance, so after I left education I joined a training contract in accountancy practice to become an accountant, because that's what my mum wanted me to do. And so I went off to become an accountant and make my mom proud. Pretty quickly I realised I wasn't a very good one, but I was half decent at the client engagement piece. So after 3.5 years I left with a couple of qualifications, one half finished, one finished, and some really good business experience. A good understanding of profit and loss balance sheets and a future wife. So it wasn't a complete waste of time by any stretch of the imagination! What became clear was that I was far happier on the client engagement side than I was in the finance world. So I then joined Match Tech, which was a tremendous organisation going through growth at the time and I went up to London to do my Dick Whittington bit and make my millions. I think we spent more than we earned in the end, had an absolute ball, but that's what we were doing up there and loads of learnings from Michael Page, Hudson and the others. The best thing about working in recruitment is that you get to learn a lot of stuff about business, so you get to go and have a look under the bonnet of so many different businesses, you get to speak the language of business. You get to learn about matching and influencing and brokering, and you simply can't survive without some good emotional intelligence as well, because when people are your product, in inverted commas, and they should never be viewed as that - as per my comments earlier. But when they are your product, it's such a nuanced skill set to be able to broker one person coming together with another person. It's very different to selling software services, for example, because software services don't go home, have an extension existential crisis, talk to Mrs software services and decide they're not gonna take that job that you just placed them in, right? So it's a number of variables. You learn heaps about leadership, and I got into people leadership quite quickly as well, which is obviously a big learning for all of us, as it always is. I went further and further up the chain, to the point that I started working in Executive search and the biggest job I had was as MD of a business called Executive Online. We had about 85 people in five countries at its largest, and we were helping place Board level placements. It was there that I started to see the need to help leaders in transition. So on the side, initially I set up Executive Career Jump before finally, 18 months ago, after some consulting and bits and pieces, plucking up the courage to actually go all in and see what we could do with it. When we launched it was like record low unemployment, and we thought, well, if this ticks along we would be okay and then obviously three months later the whole world went nuts. Here we are selling job search, coaching and career coaching services in amongst an increased demand for that service. So through way more luck than judgment, the demand went crazy and we added 60,000 LinkedIn followers in a 12 month period. I guess that takes us up to the present day in terms of where we are.
This is definitely the right fit for you, clearly, if anyone's ever listened to your online sessions, the passion with which you do your job is fantastic. But can you remember what you wanted to be at school?
I wanted to be a sports journalist. I just thought the whole idea of getting paid to watch sport for a living and write reviews on it sounded great. Once it became clear, having tried everything, that I was not going to make it as a sports professional, I thought the next best idea would be to become a sports journalist.
Maybe we've had some kind of psychic or telepathic understanding because the next episode of Comms From the Shed is actually a sports journalist who's published a book during lockdown. What's your assessment of the job market currently? Because I tuned into a podcast you did, I think at the start of lockdown, when you were assessing the market. This is definitely going back about 12 months and I suspect it's quite different now to how it was then. But what's your assessment of the job market right now?
So we have got a K-shaped economy. I mean they apply a new letter to the economy every week at the moment, U shaped, W, V or whatever, but it's definitely K at the moment. We're really seeing this. So you've got the upward industries at the top, who are in the top half of the K, that are flying right? And so in there we've got lots of hiring going on in things like biotech SAAS, e-commerce, FMCG, consumer in general has held up very, very well as well. Obviously, pharma, government and public sectors staying very steady in the hiring world as well. So the K economies are flying. But sadly, the flip to that is we've got these other industries that are in rapid decline, whether that's leisure, retail, entertainment, live sport, hospitality, these kind of important industries, that through no fault of their own are in large decline. So the biggest trend we're seeing right now is for people in those downward K-economies trying to reinvent their backgrounds, to leverage their transferrable skills and to pivot industries basically to continue their career on in a different direction. And I think overall as the pension age gets longer and state pensions disappear, with all the tech that's coming out, who knows what the average life expectancy will be by the time you and I get very elderly. But as the life expectancy increases as well, I think we're gonna see people changing careers far more often. You know, I don't think it's out of the question for people to have two or three or four different careers now, rather than just one particular linear path. So I think that's gonna be an interesting trend, and we've seen more and more people deciding to go it alone, set up their own thing, work as a freelance or on demand or consultative or coach type way with a portfolio of clients. I think a lot of people have gone, you know what if I can't find the work that I want? Then I'm gonna go and create it, and they've gone and done that. And we've helped probably 20 people in the last 12 months go that route in terms of our ECJ work, and that's so exciting to see.
You've actually anticipated a future question I was going to ask. So I'm going to bring that one forward on the list, because you mentioned career change there. We're going to have a part two career-change podcast where I'm going to speak to people who have made radical career changes into very, very different industries. What advice can you give to anyone listening who's changing careers? Or they're thinking of setting up on their own, or maybe starting their own business?
Right now there are two different routes. If we take route number one - which is setting up your own business - I think the first thing to say is that there are as many downsides as there are upsides. I think we're in a situation whereby entrepreneurship and being a founder has become cool and trendy and everybody wants to do it. People have this viewpoint that, 'oh I'll just do work on my own terms, and I'm gonna do what I like, and I never have to report into anybody anymore' and all of this stuff, right? But the challenge, the reality hits quite quickly on that, because the fact is, you're always gonna have to report into your customers and your clients. If you get investors, you're definitely always gonna have to report into them as well. And so you know, you need to have a balanced view and not romanticise entrepreneurship or becoming a founder, because the reality is very different. So first of all, get grounded around that. Secondly, you kind of go to the IKIGAI or whatever it's called. I don't know the exact right pronunciation, but it's that lovely Japanese thing, that diagram that crosses over what you can get paid for, what you're passionate about, what the world needs and what you're good at. And you find that sweet spot in the middle, which augments all of those areas to deliver you something that says right, these are my strengths, and this is what I'm going to build my business model around. And then it's about finding some kind of point of difference. So there's no point going to market if you're gonna be a 'me too person' and say, "we do the same as these guys". You've got to have a point of difference. You've gotta have a value proposition and then leverage social media. LinkedIn is still, and I harp on about this all the time, but it is still a once in a career opportunity. The organic reach on this thing...put it this way, we've scaled this business out and it's all been inbound, and anybody else can do that. And we know loads of other business owners that have done it too. So that's the set up for business advice. Now, if you're gonna pivot into a different industry, so say you're currently in travel and you've been made redundant or you're thinking like I just don't see the future here. I want to go and work in technology a couple of different things. First of all, you need to look at people in technology who have already made that switch, right? So if I can see Sam used to work in travel and now works in technology - go after those people and approach them. Ask them for advice, send them your CV and all that sort of stuff. Two reasons. One, they might be able to give you some good advice. But two, a lot of them will intimately understand the value you bring from your industry because they've been there. So they might, if you're a pilot trying to work in software, they might view you in a far more positive way, having been a pilot themselves, than somebody who hasn't lived there and doesn't fully understand what that means. So approach people have already made the shift. Take all the industry jargon out of your CV and your LinkedIn as well, because every industry has a language. So you need to talk far more agnostically about the universal pain that you solve, so you're positioned in the right way. I think that's an important part of making it. And yeah, the other thing to do is to look for what I would call bridging roles. So bridging roles are where you take a role between where you are now and where you ultimately want to be, but it bridges that gap. Put simply if you wanted to move from travel ultimately into software, where you find a technology company that sells back into travel, as your bridging role. So you're getting technology experience, but you're still appealing to that middle bridging role, because of your travel experience. Two to three years down the line this is going to kick you on and get you to where you need to be. Hopefully that's some some good insight for the listeners.
Very good insights - thank you for that. I've taken part in an online debate recently, possibly on LinkedIn, as I'm sure you have, about a debate that's raging on about that tried and trusted calling card, the CV. The debate rages on, so let's just talk about this for a second. Are the CVs days numbered? I mean, who's reading them?
I wish they were. I really wish that the CVs days were numbered, but they're not and they're not going anywhere I'm afraid. For 10 years there's been innovation, there have been platforms. There have been so many people trying to crack the code on eliminating this annoying document that we have to deal with, but it's kind of like a universal language. I've worked all over the world, and I know you have, interacting with people and the standard CV form is understood in every culture. It's part of our business language so I just don't see it being eliminated. Now, can I see it becoming more interactive for example? Having hyperlinks, or maybe in the future, some video components or some more technology or digital type CV elements to it. Potentially. The CVs that I'm sending and helping people format now are, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the CV I wrote 25 years ago. Both CVs and interviews.
When I was thinking about what to ask you, I thought I must ask Andrew what the funniest things are, or stories that he's heard - which are either classic CV mistakes or stories from the interview room. Stories that, when you heard them, you just couldn't help but laugh.
The interview that stands out by a mile was...there was an Aussie guy who was trying to get sales manager job - this was when I worked in a recruitment agency - when we put him forward for a sales manager job. But whilst he was looking for that job he was doing some cash work for a bunch of removal men. He used to go around London and help people move their stuff when they were moving house. It was called 'Aussies on wheels' or something like that. It was tremendous and we used to see their vans all around South London. So he was working, doing some this stuff, and has just done a day's shift, moving pianos or whatever, and turns up at this client's premises. He picked up his suit from the dry cleaners on the way over there, dives in the back of the van to put his suit on to get ready for the interview and locks himself in the back of his van, and was there for 5.5 hours, unable to attend the interview. We're trying to get hold of him, but his mobile was in the cockpit at the front of the van, in the front door, so he can't get to that. And he's in the middle of nowhere in this car park, banging on the inside of the van, until a security guard finally got suspicious of the van that had been sat outside for a while and went and recovered him. So, yeah, that was a real favorite. I loved that one. He didn't get the job either. I'd love to say on the good news front that he got the job, but somebody else actually made it out of their van into the interview and secured the role. So all a good learning experience I guess.
Have you ever seen any typos on a CV that were inadvertently hilarious, or words that were wrongly interpreted?
I'll tell you one which still happens now, and it makes me fall off my seat Sam, is the email address. It's not a typo, but the actual email addresses that people still use? So you know, BigBoyDave@hotmail.com, this kind of nonsense. And you're like, you're an MD - why are you sending your CV with bigboydave@hotmail.com? It's an email address you set up when you were 18 and that went out during your gap year, so it's probably not going to be the right one, but we used to have some good fun with that. We had a wall of fame for email addresses at one point in terms of the best ones that we'd seen. So I think that's good. I can't think of any particular typos, but if you're listening and you've got a dodgy email address, please create a separate email address for your job search. I appreciate you've got everything else tied up there, but it's a good idea to have a separate email address for your job search anyway, because it means it keeps all your correspondence with regards to that in a separate place and that Big Boy Dave or whatever stays back in the past.
I think that's very sage advice for all our listeners. I might have referred to this earlier, having watched some of your sessions where you invite people on to ask questions and you give advice, it's very high energy. I think anybody who has ever tuned, most people I get the sense, feel quite energised by it. What gets you out of bed in the morning? Where do you get your your drive from? What motivates you?
It's really hard to answer these questions without cringing a bit yourself, isn't it? I feel like you possibly gave me a hospital pass there, but I'm going to go there anyway. What is it? So in all honestly this is the first time in my career that I feel like I'm combining my skills with a purpose and an impact that I'm really passionate about, and that is the honest truth about it. It's the first time I've felt that and I think that's what people are feeling. It's authentic, because I'm not, you know, doing star jumps and bouncing around before I get on these calls. I'm in the zone during the day in all the calls that I'm doing. That's not to say I don't crash every evening into a glass of whiskey and fall asleep on the sofa. I absolutely do. But certainly in these moments, it's very real. I'm very, very purpose driven in my view, on those calls, for example. Those live broadcasts, when I first started them 14 months ago, there were 15-20 people tuned into the first one. Fast forward six months and we were getting over 200 regularly, with thousands of views afterwards, with people saying it was making a massive difference. There's no selling, we're not trying to upsell anything we do, and it's reaching a wide audience, many of whom are not our target client base, but it's just that nice feeling of serving other people. I definitely have success-guilt for how well we've done out of all of this, and so I'm trying to pay it forward. I'm just really passionate about trying to give people that boost and trying to give them one or two moments of clarity or confidence, that gives them that edge and helps them unblock where they're at so that they can go and get hired, because it's just been really tough for people. So, yeah, I get spoiled with 'helpers high' as they call it, whereby you get notes on LinkedIn, you get people tagging you in posts. I get absolutely spoiled, and it's not right actually, because it's the whole community behind those calls. Whilst I'm sat front and centre, in terms of the community element, coming back to that word again from earlier, what's going on? People are helping each other, people are having Zoom coffees, people following up with each other. That's what's made that so, so strong. And as long as people keep getting value from it, then we'll keep charging in and doing it. So, yeah, that's my honest answer to your hospital pass. Hope it wasn't too David Brent!
Thank you for receiving that pass and running with it. Wonderful stuff. You were talking there about the advice that people do find genuinely valuable. What's your feeling about the success stories that you've been hearing in recent months? In terms of the people that you are helping, and who are writing back to you to say, great news your advice was fantastic. What's really getting people in the door these days? What kind of things, either attributes or types of approaches, are getting people over the line?
So there are two impactful bits of advice - on the live streams, and also that we help people with in our executive career jump club in our personal coaching...we're also going to be covering it off in our book. We've got a book coming out soon called the Job Search Playbook, which will be published in the next couple of weeks on LinkedIn and personal branding. Most people are completely undercooked and don't understand how to leverage their skills in order to attract opportunities. So we do a lot of work in that space. And 45% of our clients who have secured roles in the last 12 months, which is 292 people, have secured rolls via that channel. So that's a big one. We do a lot of work and advice in that area. The other area, without question is in interviews Sam, so people just have such blockers with regards to interviews in terms of interview mindset. How to sell themselves and how to answer questions. How to deal with this whole video interview paradigm, which is a whole new challenge in itself. So interviews are the other big thing - giving people clarity around scripts they can use, how they can package their experience into playbooks. That lands really well. Great questions to ask your interviewer, how to deal with being put under pressure in an interview and how to throw it back to the interviewer. How to engage and build trust with the interviewer who's ultimately making that decision, based on an emotional basis and making sure that they're connecting emotionally and logically with their audience.
I really like what you said that about it being an emotional decision. I wholeheartedly agree with that because we often assume that it's a logical transaction. It's not at all of course, but listening to you talk about the whole nature of us packaging ourselves up and selling ourselves, why do we find it so hard to package ourselves up and sell ourselves? Is that a British thing? And is that kind of changing over time? Are we getting a bit better at that?
I do think there is a British element to it, yes, although we've helped people in 13 countries, so I think it is a global problem as well. First of all the same humility that makes you a good leader - and makes you a good colleague - is exactly the same humility that gets in the way of selling yourself effectively. So by nature a lot of people who are good at their jobs are terrible at interviewing, because of that humility component. Also in general people are a lot more comfortable and better at helping others than they are themselves. And that's a very general trend across the majority of the population. And quite often the best candidates have had the least amount of practice at interview, for obvious reasons, so they just haven't been exposed to these things. They've tended to get hired in the past on their reputation or roles finding them, or being referred in. All of a sudden, they find themselves on this other side having to sell themselves in a way they've never had to before. So yeah, a combination of all those factors, but the biggest one out the lot is that humility thing. It's getting people comfortable and not in contradiction with their own values, talking about themselves, and selling themselves. And none of us are fully comfortable. You know, I obviously, when you asked me to talk about some of my positive attributes earlier, I described it as a hospital pass, and that's part of the same thing. So here's me coaching other people, and yet I wasn't entirely comfortable diving in talking about what's so great about how I turned up every day? I had to kind of caveat it. So it's finding that zone whereby people can sell themselves authentically and comfortably, in a way that lands well with the interviewer, and get comfortable with being uncomfortable in doing that.
That relates nicely to another thought I had listening to your response there, which is about imposter syndrome. I remember the notion of imposter syndrome coming up - I think it was the last call I dialed into that you were hosting - there was some brief mention of the difference between, or maybe a slight gender difference on imposter syndrome. Do you feel that men and women have a different take on imposter syndrome? Or does it affect different genders differently?
Well where we see the difference is in females, who are less likely to apply for a role unless they feel like they cover at least 90% of what's required in that role. Whereas men need to cover somewhere between 60-65% to generally feel happy applying. And there's been numerous studies that have gone into this. So we're always trying to advocate to our female customers and to the wider job search community, to females in particular, to qualify themselves in rather than qualify themselves out. And that would be my core message to anybody that's feeling that. And you know, the other thing around Imposter syndrome is that it's a positive in many ways because it shows humility. I can tell you from previous experience when I became an MD at 29, which was not not a great decision by the company frankly, that there is nothing more motivating in a role than charging in every day knowing that you might get found out. That imposter syndrome actually drove me to the benefit of myself and the business at the time, so there's definitely some positives. There's definitely some positives that come through with it, and you've got to reframe your mindset anyway. So you know, we see this London bus effect whereby, once people get one job offer, they tend to get two or three or four, even if they've been on the market for ages. And it's because, when they're going into the second or third or fourth interview, they've already got this offer in their hand, so their confidence changes and they sell themselves differently. It's the law of attraction, right? So the challenge of imposter syndrome is - where you need to get to is where it's almost to go into these meetings, these interviews, these applications, removing the emotion that's attached to the outcome. Acting as if you've already got an offer will tend to ironically attract more offers, and just reframing the fact, like if you're being interviewed for a role, the person on the other side of the table is the one with the problem. They've got a gap in their organization, which is going to be causing a lot of issues. So they're the one with the problem, not you. You've got freedom and choice, and it's their job to headhunt you out of that freedom and choice, as much as it is for you to sell yourself in. This reverse interviewing and two way process is important as well. So hopefully there are some things for your audience to think about in there.
My last question on the actual process of job search and interviews. One thing that sticks in my mind from one of your recent online discussions, was about competency based interview questions. You talked about the difference between what you called STAR vs E-STAR-Q, because we have a very traditional way of looking at competency. I mean, what would you say? Because it's still still such a thing, isn't it, talk me through your CV...here come the competency based questions. How should people be tweaking how they think about competency based questions?
I hate competency based questions! My caveat is, I hate competency based questions, because I think that asking someone about what they did in the past - in this current environment - is next to useless because the world's changed, and what happened in the past can no longer be considered of any use to predicting success in the future. I also think anytime you enter into a discussion with another human being with a grid which has marks out of five on it, that feels like a good way to procure a lawnmower, but not a very good way to start a trusting relationship with another human being. So that's my view on competency based interviews, but rant over, they are a reality. They are still out there, a bit like our old friend the CV that we spoke about earlier. So with that in mind, how do we stand out? Well, you mentioned the star structure which is a well trodden path. Which situation task or target, depending on which T you apply and action result, right? That's your normal structure. If you're using that structure, that's perfectly fine. Just make sure that you spend plenty of time in the action area. What I find is that people tend to spend way too much time on the situation, telling you the ins and outs of stuff that's not hugely relevant. Bit of context is fine, but nail the action bit. It's the action bit that gives the interviewer confidence that you can go and do this stuff, right? So that's your standard start, now what we've tried to do to elevate this further - and to help the community and our clients to stand out a bit further - is that we've wrapped EQ around it, which I like because it's obviously a play on emotional intelligence as well. So starting with an E and ending with a Q, the E is for ethos. So before you get into your example, it's a really cool thing to just explain your ethos on a particular topic. So if they ask you about stakeholder management, it's a classic one regardless of what you're doing. Tell us about how you manage stakeholders? Well my ethos on stakeholder management is always to approach it with two ears and one mouth, and a situation whereby I've had to do that is... So just that extra line where you add the ethos on the front tends to be very, very memorable for the interviewer, but also shows them that you've got a way of doing these things that can be replicated. So that's the E, then we go through the STAR. Nail the Action bit. Like I said, go deep on the action and then finish on the Q, which is a question. So rather than making every answer 5, 10, 15 minutes, make it a lot shorter. But finish on a clarifying questions. So say the result was, we save 30% year on year, which I was really proud of. Does that give you what you need, Sam? Or would you like any more detail on that example? So I offer you as the interviewer the opportunity to delve deeper into any of those areas, rather than what I somewhat crudely called showing up and throwing up - where you turn up and you just literally give a life story type scenario every single time and vomit all the details over them. Nobody wants to be sat in an interview like that, so ESTAR, nail the action answer and finish on a Q. 3-4 minutes and allow the interviewer to access any additional information they need rather than you sharing all of the ins and outs upfront.
I'm just going to finish up with a couple of questions that are just about you and what you've been up to. And in lockdown we ask this of all our our guests, what's been your thing of great comfort? It could be TV, movies, books, music, food, the gym, yoga. I mean, what's been getting you through lockdown? What have you turned to for comfort?
Yeah, so running, actually. So I've been a 95-100 kg ex-football rugby basketball guy who hasn't really been able to run much further than 100m at any point in my adult life. And so yeah, I've taken to running. We did our first half marathon last year with a friend, Craig Melvin, to raise money for another friend's son, and we kept the habit up, and I find that I've broken through now. When I first started doing it, I was thinking, why do people like this - I can't get my head around it? Everyone keeps telling me I'm gonna get this runner's high, and it's gonna be euphoric, like this is just bloody painful like this, there's no high coming yet. I'm starting to get it now, nine months in, 10 months in, you start to get it and you really miss it when you're not doing it, because of the headroom that it gives you. So that that's a big thing for me. The other bit, which I absolutely love, is podcasts. So consuming podcasts is you know, how I would take on external influences and access thought leadership. And so I'm a big, big podcast consumer, which is why I was trying to say yes to as many great opportunities like this as possible as well. So a mixture of running and podcasts, I reckon. What about you, anything unusual or crazy at your end?
Well there were phases of lockdown, weren't there? You know, we talked with people and laughed about lockdown. Lockdown one was when the sun was shining and we were running up and down the garden and doing workouts in our homes. And then of course, by the time we got to phase three we were guzzling down chocolates, wrapped up in a blanket in front of another TV box set or whatever. I've got a terrible thing with coffee in the sense that I love it so much, you know? I wrote a little blog about this on LinkedIn actually, but I try and say to my wife - because she gives me an awful lot of abuse about this - the fact that I just go mad drinking all this coffee and spending money in local coffee shops. But I keep saying that I go out for the little bit of humanity, you know, it's the random conversation, it's the chat with the barista. You bump into an old friend or somebody that lives locally, or it's a friend of a friend, and I get a lot of wellbeing from that, you know? I just love that start to the day when I just pop in and see someone. So I really like that. I must say, one other question, and we ask this of everybody who ventures into the shed - which is: can you tell us an unexpected, weird or wonderful fact about yourself? That very few people are likely to know, certainly not people who have dialed into your career and job search conversations online.
Yeah, so I have incredibly bent little fingers. The listeners won't be able to see this, but I'm showing you. Over the years I've made up so many different stories as to how it came about, bear wrestling, saving cats from getting run over, all the usual. The truth is that I was born with these ridiculously strange bent little fingers. So that's one of them. Another thing is, when I was younger, I swapped girlfriends in my teenage years with Craig David. So I grew up in Southampton, which is where the singer Craig David was from. At one point we were at a disco? I'm not sure that's a particularly cool way to describe it now, but we were at a disco at the age of 13 or 14. He decided he liked my girlfriend. I decided I quite liked his. And so we swapped.
And I presume you you took them for a date on Monday's?
Ah, there it is. I was waiting for it. We were definitely too young for dating. We're probably about 13 or so at the time, so I knew there was gonna be some gag coming from there. But I'll fill you in on that later.
You were born to do it I think. We should stop this now as this could easily get out of hand. I promise this is my last question, but I want to finish on a high. And it's been a great interview, so thank you so much for this. In terms of all the people you've helped, and you talked about that kind of 'helpers high', either somebody that you've helped or you've coached, who's gone on to have a fantastic experience themselves. What would you say are your memories of the most satisfying experiences that you've had in that regard?
Wow. Okay, that's a really good question. So there have been people that have been in a really bad place who have been able to pull themselves out of that, and go and kick onto a level that they didn't think they were capable of. That kind of stuff just brings tremendous satisfaction. I have a really special place for people that have launched their own businesses, that we've been involved with. So, there's a lady called Michelle who's launched something called Clarity Finance, which is an on demand FD business. So she helps SMEs on an on-demand way as an FD, which was such a huge leap for her. And we were part of that journey and helping her get it going, and she won her first clients, and all of us were like, that is just so satisfying. I've been involved with Amelia Sordell and the launch of her cloud business, which has gone absolutely crazy. I mean, what she's done is incredibly admirable. And you know people who were running their own businesses, who then had to translate that into new roles or people that have relocated, or people that have just gone through huge life transitions and managed to find the strength within themselves to to get hired, stick at it and keep showing up and and get it done. So there's been loads, and it's such a privilege to be involved with that, and to get paid to get that kind of feedback is insane, right? That's why we keep showing up with the big cheesy grin on our faces and running the high energy live sessions. It's as simple as that.
Well it's been fantastic to talk to you today, Andrew. Thank you so much. I know you're a busy man, so thank you for spending this precious time with Comms from the Shed. I wish you well with everything. And I would encourage all of our listeners to keep checking in with the fantastic advice you keep sharing online, on LinkedIn and various other channels as well.
Thank you for having me. And it's been a pleasure to come into the shed with you, and good luck with the podcast.
Thanks Andrew.
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