With the recent collapse of Blue Chip investments in New Zealand, the obvious biggest loser has been the investors. However, there is often a forgotten party within that mix that get adversely affected when organisations fall over and that is the employees.
Working for an organisation that does not succeed can affect your ‘employee brand’ no matter what position you hold within that company.
The recruitment process from an employer point of view and the methodology behind finding candidates with good clean backgrounds is becoming tighter and tighter. Good employers will reference check, credit check, run a criminal history and even use online searches to ensure that they are mitigating as much of the risk as possible when coming on board.
From an employee perspective I often come across situations where a prospective employee is more concerned in their basic needs in a role (i.e salary, location and job title) rather than finding out anything beyond that.
We spend more of our ‘waking week’ at work, however, when it comes to choosing a new workplace often not much is done to find out about the organisation that you are looking to work for.
However, when we buy a car or a house, often we will get a number of reports and summaries on the suitability of that purchase. We will compare options, prices, performance, location, etc…
In the case of Blue Chip and the related organisations I am not sure whether there would have been alarm bells for potential employees when joining these organisations.
However, in terms of doing your due diligence there are a number of ways to research both the financial position, culture and management style of an organisation such as:
- ask the prospective manager if you can reference check them
- call people within the industry
- seek out people that use their product or service and find out about that experience
- discuss with your recruiter their experience with the organisation
- ask for their financial statements
- conduct an online search to see what blogs or other information exists about the organisation
- if they are listed look at their recent share history
- speak to current employees and find out their experience
- use the final interview to interview them – what is their vision, values and goals?
No matter what your role within an organisation, if that company is involved in any dodgy activity and this is made public then this could affect your ability in gaining your next role.
It is important to know the good, the bad and the ugly when going into the organisation. Often when applying for positions you hear the good, it is up to you to find out about the not so good and ensure that your expectations about that company are set from day one. This way there will be as little surprises as possible and you will keep your career on track.
Hi Brien, I think you’ve made some excellent comments in this post, which is very relevant given the skills shortage and fact that many candidates receive multiple job offers.
I was interested to see your suggestion about asking a prospective manager if you can reference check them – have you come across this very much? How has it been received by your clients? Have you had candidates reject a job offer based on their findings?
Laura
Comment by Laura Fayers-Pooley — April 11, 2008 @ 6:11 am
Laura,
Savvy candidates will always do as much research as possible. For example, I know when hiring staff that potential consultants here in New Zealand have contacted friends in Australia to find out about their experience as both a candidate and/or client of LINK Recruitment.
Clients that are open, with nothing to hide, do not see any issue in being ‘referenced’. I haven’t had a client feel uncomfortable about it, but that would be cause for a concern (as it is when candidates are relucctant to provide referee details).
Most internal reference checking occur relatively informally, more and more clients are getting prospective employees to meet up with the rest of the team before job offer stage. This serves many benefits, including giving the existing team input into the hiring process. From the prospective employee’s point of view, it gives them a first hand understanding of the culture as well as opportunity to find out about the manager’s leadership style, establish a relationship with potential colleagues and to address any other questions that they may not have been comfortable asking previously.
In the current market urgency in hiring good people is important. With this in mind, all these extra steps may seem lengthy in time, but if you can work with a recruitment consultant to do all the ground work around setting up additionally meetings and gaining additional contact details you should be able to move quickly through the process. At the same time enabling both parties to make a more informed decision at the end of the process.
Brien
Comment by Brien — April 14, 2008 @ 5:32 am