Where do you see yourself in five years?

Have you ever been asked that one in an interview? It's a classic. I think most of us have come across this little gem more than once. The question then is, how do you answer it?

I think, first of all, it depends on the nature of the job. I remember being asked it when, as a starving student, I applied to a part-time retail sales position while still a student. I replied that in five years time, I hoped to have graduated and moved into a professional role. The interviewer seemed to think this was a terrible answer. I had to wonder if she would have liked it better had I lied and told her I couldn't imagine doing anything other than working for her company, maybe work my way up to full-time sales associate? I'm not good at dishonesty. And my ambitions, even then, went way beyond store manager at a mall retail outlet. Still do, as a matter of fact.

It's not the easiest question to answer. First of all, what is the person asking it looking for? Generally, I think it's safe to say that the questioner wants some idea if you intend to stick around, because turnover is expensive. This question is often looking to see how ambitious you are. I once answered that question by saying I wanted the job of the person asking it, which is a terrible answer, and I don't recommend it, but it worked in that particular case. That was a little different though because it wasn't during a job interview, but during a conversation with my mentor, and I knew him well enough to think he would think it was funny and admire my chutzpah, which he did. Thankfully, I was right, though there was some desperation involved during that momentary pause after I said it. I found myself thinking, 'dear god, please laugh. Please laugh now.' Actually, that smart-ass response might have been what cemented our relationship, but it was a risky move.

Thinking on it more, 'where do you see yourself in five years?' is a very tricky question. I mean, there's where I want to be in five years, and there's where I think I will actually be in five years, and it's two different things. I want to be a human resources manager (or director, that would be ok too!) in five years. Preferably with my current employers, but odds are low of that happening. I want to have my CHRP long done by then. I want to be managing people, implementing recruitment and retention strategies, and I want to be making a difference to my organization. I want to be on my way to the C-suite. I want to have a voice. I want to matter. I want to love what I do, love my job, love my organization.

I don't know how much any of those answers matter. Really, maybe you'd be better off asking me what I can bring to your organization, what value I can be. Because really, who doesn't want to love their job?

At least, I have learned not to tell you I want your job. Even if it's true.

The Lattice Approach

In catching up with some of my HR rading after the long weekend, I came across this article on ere.net about career development. In case you aren't familiar with it, ere.net is an online community aimed at recruiters, and has a number of articles, blogs, and webinars that can be very informative. This particular article talks about the career lattice, as opposed to the career ladder, and I found it very interesting from my own, job-seeking, career-building perspective. Basically, the article says that recruiters should encourage candidates to look beyond the traditional career development ladder, and instead look at their skills, and move up by moving over to adjacent, related positions. So, look at your career and see what themes emerge. For me, one of the biggest themes I see in my career to date is people. I have extensive experience in customer service; I have managed teams of up to fourteen people; HR is all about people. My transition from customer service to HR already touches on this lattice concept; customer service skills translate well to HR.

I don't think there is any question that this approach makes sense. The traditional career ladder is very limiting, and especially in today's fluid work environment, is too rigid. This concept of a lattice works a little better, because it encourages recruiters (and job-seekers, both!) to look at experience in terms of the skills it provides and how those might apply regardless of job title. It simply makes sense, and is something I have always encouraged people to do. Don't be too narrowly focused on industry or job title- skills often transfer.

The Wannabe HR Guru....

If you are at all familiar with me, you will have seen that title before. I am the Wannabe HR Guru on LinkedIn, and on Quora, and I believe I'm listed that way in my Twitter bio as well. I recently got a message on Quora telling me to change it. (I had originally written that someone "suggested" I change it, but that was really too mild a word for the way this message was phrased.) According to the sender, labeling myself as a "wannabe" showed weakness and a lack of confidence, and I should find something else to call myself, or I would never make it far with that attitude.

I have to say, that message came as a bit of a shock. For one, I had no idea who the sender was, never heard of the guy, and had certainly never communicated directly with him in any way. For another, the wording of the message was quite aggressive, and I didn't much care for it. I had also never considered that I might look weak!

I thought about it for a while, and in the end, I decided to keep my "wannabe" right where it is. I wrote back to the gentleman in question, telling him that I felt it was appropriate, rather than being another "ninja" or "rockstar" on the basis that, while I have some education and a web presence in HR, I have little practical experience in the field outside of my present employer and the particular issues I have dealt with there. I feel it would be pretentious and misleading of me to claim "guru" status without the "wannabe" modifier; I know a lot about HR, but I certainly don't know everything. Furthermore, I certainly don't lack confidence; I know I'm good at what I do, and so do the people I work for, or I wouldn't be here in the first place. But there are a lot of situations I haven't yet experienced, and I have the wisdom to realize just how much I don't know. Give me five, ten, fifteen years, and by then I might be able to call myself an HR guru. But by then, I probably won't have to. You'll all know it. Right?

Customer Service

To date in my career, I have worked mostly in the customer-service field, primarily as a frontline worker and manager. I've worked for organizations that are great at trying to build a more personal relationship with their customers, and I've worked for organizations that focus on getting as many people in and out as possible.

In my personal experience, I strongly prefer the former. I like being able to talk to people and form a bit of a rapport with them. I enjoy finding out exactly what my customer's needs are and formulating a solution that will serve them best, and I have very high rates of customer satisfaction as a result. It means a lot to me and it means a lot to my organization to have customers come back just to tell me how happy they are with my service. It doesn't happen every day, but it does happen.

My current employer is very focused on the customer experience. We are a high-end retailer, dealing with custom product, and this is the only approach that really makes sense. If you don't make any attempt to stand out from the crowd, people will likely make their decision on where to buy based on price. Well, competing on price alone is pretty tough. Sooner or later, some other retailer comes along with prices you can't beat. In our case, it's pretty common; it isn't that our product is more expensive than anyone else selling the comparable thing, it's just that we don't sell generic or lower-quality versions of our products, and other places do. We focus on the top-quality end of the market, and once you're doing that anyway, you had better provide good service to back it up! And if you want to build your business, you had better provide great service to back it up.

This article talks about creating a customer-centered organization. I think particularly in a market that has abundant competition, choosing to stand out on the basis of your customer service is a tremendous idea, and, if done right, is a great strategy. If you go into your day thinking of ways to serve your customer better, that will show.

This does not mean that the customer is always right. There are many cases
where the customer is definitely wrong, but the approach you take makes all the difference. How you resolve the issue can have a tremendous impact on the customer; I've made customers for life on the basis of how I handled an issue, and not necessarily because I gave them everything they wanted, but because I showed them I was willing to go to bat for them, and give them everything I could do.

I personally try to approach HR with the same spirit in mind. My job is not to quote policy at people and tell them why they can't; my job is to try and serve them better. Good HR comes from the realization that my job isn't to support the company. My job is to support the employee, because supporting the employee is in the best interests of the company. Happy employees work harder. Happy employees stay longer, and recommend their company to others. Happy employees don't start lawsuits. And so on. Granted, I can't always give employees what they want, just like the customer is not always right. But if I go into my day trying to understand my employees' needs and give them the best solution I can, then I've done my job right.

Bad, bad me...

Well, folks, it's now been a week since I posted, which is strictly a result of life getting busier than I had planned. Funny how that happens. I don't even have anything in particular to blog about today, I just feel somewhat obligated to go ahead and do it.

Life is still stuck in neutral at the moment, and I'm feeling a bit disheartened. I'm just tired of waiting. Right now, I can't even really go job hunting because I still don't know what city to do it in, and I'm still waiting on anything from my head office. I should send a quick follow-up email to remind them that I'm out here, waiting, but I sometimes can't help but feel like a pest. Still, it's been a couple of weeks since anything moved from them, which means it isn't unreasonable to send off a note looking for feedback.

Like so many in the C-suite, these are busy people. I can't sit here waiting for them to remember me, because then I might make it on to the to-do list sometime in the next decade, especially since I am working remotely. It's not like they'll run into me in the hallways at head office, either. So, I have to push a little more. Maybe I'll go do that now and come back when I have something to really blog about.

See ya!

Whassup, Tweeps?

Do you tweet? I do now. I only started a couple of months ago, at the beginning of the year, which makes me a bit of a late adopter as these things do. I'd been aware of twitter for a number of years already; I spend a fair amount of time online, and I have a techie geek of a husband who's usually pretty up on the latest and greatest new thing.

I wasn't on twitter until recently because I've never been much for posting facebook status updates, and I figured, what was the point of twitter then? I thought it would be one of those things where you sign up, tweet a couple of things, and then completely lose interest.

Instead, I'm now addicted. I tweet mostly about HR stuff, and I found there was an awful lot of it on twitter. Access to articles and blogs that I would never have stumbled upon on my own, online chats, HR-themed internet radio broadcasts; it was a whole new world. And I jumped right in.

To date, I've tweeted about 250 times, I think; I try to tweet a few times a day, and retweet anything that I find particularly interesting. I've amassed a few hundred followers, which makes me happy, and have been included by a few people on lists of who to follow, which makes me even happier. One tweep (that's Twitter Peep, for all you folks out there who may not have a clue what I'm talking about) made my week when he listed me as a part of his "people who know what they're talking about" list. I still feel pumped just thinking about that.

Now I feel like I need to check twitter, and find out what's going on! I'd better get back to it.

Basically, I do think twitter is a fabulous resource. There are some great people on there, and some great blogs. It can be a great way to promote your blogging as well, although I can't say as I've really taken advantage of that. I'm not yet comfortable enough with my blogging abilities to go on to twitter and promote myself.

You should try it!

Management... The Good, The Bad, and The Rest

If you haven't checked out Ask A Manager yet, you should. You really, really should. Alison is amazing. Her blogs are always informative, insightful and interesting, and they really make it clear that there are some absolutely awful managers out there. While she also has good advice for jobseekers on there, some of her most hilarious postings come from the questions people send to her. If she considers it a dumb question, you'll likely get a somewhat snarky response, but that's part of the fun, too. I check it often and read avidly.

If there's anything that the wide array of information available online about management can tell you, it's that a lot of people simply don't have a clue. In my experience, a lot of managers who aren't any good at management simply have no clue that they suck, and some might know but refuse to admit it. Perhaps that's simply because I have mostly worked entry-level jobs, where frontline managers seem as a rule to be given little or no training in how to manage people.

Many of these companies seem to feel that teaching management skills is not a good investment. Strategic HR begs to differ! Anyone who has worked under one of these first-level frontline retail managers has likely seen someone way out of his or her depth. Some of them figure things out eventually, and some of them don't, but during the time that this process is happening, there's a loss of productivity for the manager, likely a loss of revenue for the store, and generally an increased turnover rate due to incompetent management. Why would you only train someone by the time that he or she is obviously failing? And I've seen this a lot; a new manager is hired/promoted/transferred, and not given any assistance during that process. Instead, he or she is left all alone until the numbers start coming back ugly or angry phone calls hit the regional manager's voicemail. All of a sudden, the regional is on site! being the training guru when it's probably too late because the entire staff hate the manager and the manager is this close to having a breakdown. Allocating more resources to training from the beginning should help to ensure a smoother transition from one manager to another, and reduce the amount of panic encountered by the new manager who is out of his or her depth and knows it. The store will run smoother, and sales will be higher. Management turnover would probably even go down!

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. The company doesn't want to invest much money on training its managers, because they don't tend to stick around for long, but the less they invest in their managers, the quicker the managers leave the company. Not to mention the rest of the staff who are tired of working in a dysfunctional environment. I've been there, done that, and believe me, it isn't fun. At the same time, even the crappiest McJob can be made a whole lot better by a halfways competent manager. I've seen that too. Not every manager you invest money in is going to be great at it, but they'll all be better than if you don't invest a thing, and how can you tell the difference between a bad manager and a badly trained one unless you give them the training?

Bore, Boring, Bored, Bored...est?

Today I find myself not entirely sure what to do with myself. I've recently drafted a couple of projects for my employer, including a social media policy and my recruitment and selection manual. It's great to have those done, and I had a total sense of accomplishment once I did so, but now I find myself really wondering what to do next. Right now, both of those projects are in the hands of senior management at Head Office. They've been written and revised, and now I wait.

I'm not good at waiting. I know there are other projects in the pipeline that need doing, but I don't as of yet have enough information on them or the go-ahead, so I'm sitting metaphorically twiddling my thumbs. I say metaphorically, because it isn't like I don't have any work to do; I'm still doing my regular 9-5 job. All of these were extra projects that I either initiated myself or eagerly took on outside of my regular job duties. But I don't quite know what to do with myself without them.

For one thing, I'm not used to having as much free time as I do. I worked fulltime throughout most of my university career, and certainly throughout my HR program. I finished my HR program and jumped straight into these extra projects. So for the first time in a number of years, my commitments are only to my regular working week. It's very strange.

The other issue is that I don't get nearly as engaged by my regular job duties. While I always strive to perform to the top of my abilities, and am classed as a high-performer according to the company standards, I'm not that interested in my regular duties. I've outgrown this role, and everyone knows it. When I have other things to do as well, then the day-to-day doesn't seem too bad, but it gets harder once I've got nothing else going on. I've always been a bit prone to getting bored once I've learned the ins and outs, and I've hit the wall. This job really doesn't have anything more to learn or to offer; there's no challenge anymore.

Right now, I'm waiting. Waiting for head office to give me something else to do; waiting to find out if they have the budget to transition me to another role. I've never been good at waiting. There are some things that I can be very patient about, but I'm not good at bored. That is, after all, what prompted me to go ahead and start some of these projects; it's also why this blog exists. And I love twitter; the microblogging format is perfect for me. When I have a quiet minute, I can check in and see what's up in the world of HR, because that's pretty much all I do on twitter, is HR stuff. Because it's fascinating. And there's new stuff pretty much everyday, and I'm finally in a position to be able to apply the things I learn to my job. And that's just awesome.

Common Sense... Isn't.

Does anyone out there have pride in your common sense? I do. I tend to think of myself as pretty practical by nature. I try to cut through to the center of the problem and find the simplest way out. Obviously, it doesn't always work out that way, but I try.

Common sense, though, just isn't that common. There's an ability there to frame the question in a particular way, to be able to see through to the simplest solution, that eludes some people. And those who do it well generally can't tell you how they do it, either; they just do. And it seems almost incomprehensible to those who do have a solution as to why someone else might not get it.

Nobody gets every problem, every time; I certainly don't. I'm not the Rainman of problem solving. But I do enjoy a good thought puzzle every once in a while. Aside from the unhappy-customers part, I always really enjoyed it when a customer came in with some kind of unusual issue with his or her glasses- it meant I had to figure out what the problem was and how to fix it. And yet, at the same time, I worked with people who couldn't figure out how to straighten a crooked frame. (You go opposite to the problem- if the frame is too high on the left-hand side, because the patient has an ear that's higher, raise the temple on the other side to compensate.)

A lot of things that should be common sense aren't simply because people don't really understand the concept. For example, paying off your credit card in full. Many people don't seem to understand the way compound interest works, so don't really understand how much more they end up paying by making only the minimum payments. I don't know that this is so much a lack of common sense as it is a lack of education, but whatever.

This posting mostly stems from a seminar I attended on the weekend.
It was great - very interesting, and the sponsors were kind enough to supply some very nice wine at each table. They also had put together a number of gift baskets as door prizes. One of them was a selection of teas. When the girl drawing the ticket was announcing this particular prize, she mentioned having gone around town to various tea shops in order to put together the gift basket. And then she said, "I tried to get English teas, but no matter where I went, all the teas were grown in India or Sri Lanka."

I laughed. Nobody else did. I thought she was joking. She wasn't joking.

First of all, I thought it was pretty common knowledge that tea doesn't grow in the UK. I also would have thought there would be some awareness of history in terms of the tea and spice trade, and the British Colonies around the world, especially considering we ARE a former British Colony. However, that's ignorance, not necessarily a lack of common sense. What really struck me in all this as a lack of common sense was the fact that she went all over town, to several tea shops looking for tea from England, and it never once occurred to her to ask the shop staff??

Passion in the Workplace

One of the corporate values espoused by my current employer is passion. Passion about quality, about what we do, about service.

I think corporate values are one of those things that a lot of people tend to tune out, as mere corporate buzzspeak. In some organizations, this may be true. In the smart organizations, it goes rather beyond all that, and, whether it is explicitly laid out as one of your values or not, I think passion is hugely important.

Have you ever worked a job you didn't much care for or about? How motivated were you to do well? And how easy was it to get up every morning and head into work? I know for me, once I found a job that I could get excited about, it made everything easier. It has always been important to me to do well at any job, starting with my first one working in the local grocery store deli. I take pride in my ability to perform well, even in a job that really isn't that intellectually stimulating. (Slicing lunchmeat barely requires an IQ, especially with scales that do all the work for you. I remember being so excited when I got a job that allowed me to handle cash- it seemed like such a step up.) At the same time, though, my jobs felt so much easier when I was working for a company I wanted to be working for, and doing a job I wanted to do. That extra little bit of effort that makes the difference between a good performer and a great one has a lot to do with passion.

I started out as a salesperson. First, it was shoes, then lingerie, then glasses. The shoe retailer I worked for sold low-end shoes, and were very much focused on price. Their products didn't typically last too long, and were quite inexpensive. It drove me nuts when someone would come in and try to haggle down the price of a pair of shoes that were already marked down to $5. First off, in case anyone didn't know, the clerk you're dealing with in a chain store very rarely has any ability at all to lower the prices on anything. Second off, if the shoe is marked down to $5 from an original price of $29.99, chances are that's as good as it's ever gonna get for you. This wasn't a job I was particularly fond of, but it paid the bills for a year or so in university. I still did my best, but it was hard to get up and go to work in the mornings, especially when I ended up with a boss I couldn't stand. Ultimately, when I moved on, I ended up in a company that focused on quality instead of price, and where the goal wasn't to sell at all costs, but to ensure that it was a good sale, a product that suited the customer's needs. It was a job where I was encouraged to refuse to sell a poor-fitting pair of eyeglasses, because we knew the customer in the end wouldn't be happy with them, and one where the price was what it was, and we made no apologies for costing more than some of our competitors- we sold high-end product. Suddenly, my sales shot up. Suddenly, I didn't have to feel like a salesperson, pushing extras on customers who just wanted a pair of shoes for a low price. Suddenly, I could find out what the customer actually needed, and reccommend a good product on that basis. Suddenly, I was passionate.

I've never looked back. For me, quality is hugely important, and I want to work for a company that feels the same way. Knowing that their values aligned with mine meant that I went to work happier, and talked to customers more, and sold more. I'm not a salesperson; I still don't think of myself that way, even though I was one of the most successful in the Western half of the company. Instead, I think of myself as an educator in a sales role. My job is to find out what my customer needs, and teach you about your options. Based on that education, my customer and I come to a conclusion, and purchased accordingly. I had very high levels of customer satisfaction, as well as high sales, and a reasonably devoted customer base.

That said, I don't particularly intend to pursue a career in sales. I am also passionate about HR. It grabs me in a way that sales really doesn't, and while that job was a wonderful role for me while it lasted, I also think I have outgrown it. But now I understand a little better why the company's philosophy matters to me as an employee. I have great respect for anyone who turns down business on the basis of a poor values fit. Understanding that not all business is good business is a valuable lesson to learn, and it has made that company quite successful in their market. You need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, and that was the first (though hopefully not the last) company I ever worked for that was truly aligned with its values.

See this article for more on passion.