BY Annelize van Rensburg director of Signium Africa (previously Talent Africa), a leading South Africa-based executive search and talent management company servicing sub-Saharan Africa.

Who needs a top job as a senior manager or executive? Why bother? It’s only an annual salary of R1,5 million or more. If they want you, they’ll see your potential. Just rock up for the interview. You’ll be fine.This attitude alone is probably enough to wreck any chance of landing a top job, but just to be sure you can always adopt some of the self-destructive behaviours known to kill a candidate’s interview prospects.You can …

1. Turn up late. Blame the traffic or bad-mouth the location, especially if it’s at the hiring company’s head office.

2. Fail to prepare. Don’t even check the corporate website. Ensure the interview panel know you have done no ‘homework’ by confusing the recruiting company with a competitor or by asking questions that display ignorance of the company and its industry.

3. Dress to fail. Jeans, scruffy shoes and an open-neck shirt should do it, or perhaps high heels, a revealing top and a micro-mini.

4. Display self-interest. At the first possible moment ask about pay and perks.

Then ask about how much paid leave you can expect.Even senior people scupper their chances through crass errors like these. They are looking for seven-figure salaries and might be experienced personnel in their 40s or 50s, but still self-destruct.If you really want the job, you avoid obvious pitfalls.The biggest key is proper preparation.Research the recruiting company (inside out). Read its financial statements and annual reports. Make sure you know the names of the CEO, executive team and board members. Prep for the interview by driving the route to the venue ahead of time. This ensures you know the way, the traffic and the time commitment.Know your CV backwards.

Memorize key dates and bring along extra hard copies to ensure all panel members have your CV. Make sure all information is correct and up to date. Tell no lies!Always display passion and a positive attitude to life in general and your career in particular. Infuse the panel with your energy. Dead fish do not get top jobs.Share with the panel concrete, well-considered examples of strategic and operational achievements. Punt team efforts and give credit to peers and teams when reviewing career highlights. Be honest.Ask questions that display an interest in the recruiting company, its industry and the position you are targeting. Strategic issues and corporate culture are favoured topics.

Leave questions about pay and perks until later.Show loyalty to current employers or at the very least display restraint and discretion. Put the focus on new opportunities rather than past disappointments.Dress appropriately. To be safe, dress up, not down.Show respect. Switch off that cell phone. This interview is more important than your dinner plans.Always indicate that you take responsibility and make yourself accountable. It might be tempting to blame others when discussing career challenges, but leaders show resilience. They have ‘broad shoulders and turn problems into opportunities.Do all this and you have a shot at that dream job. 

www.signium.co.za

By Michelle Moss, director at Signium Africa (Previously Talent Africa) www.talent-africa.co.za

The corporate world embraces diversity and inclusion. Countless mission statements say so. Building a diverse organisation is supposedly a strategic imperative. But the question remains: Are businesses making it happen or missing the mark?

One test is talent acquisition. If diversity is so important, you would expect it to be reflected in the selection of senior executives and skilled professionals.In the real world, a mixed picture emerges.Awareness of the advantages of diversity and inclusion is certainly growing.

The ‘2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends’ report says 69% of executives say diversity and inclusion are important, up from 59% in the previous survey.Furthermore, the number of executives who cited inclusion as top priority rose 32%.Diversity strategy has the CEO’s attention.CEOs are the primary sponsors of diversity initiatives, according to 38% of executives canvassed in this international survey.Finding the right skills, irrespective of gender or race, is crucial. It ranks third among the major concerns of business leaders, says the Deloitte report. It is ‘very important’ or ‘important’ to 83% of executives.Increasing pressure to comply with organisational hiring policies and quotas also drives growing focus on diversity and inclusion.There is an implicit prohibition of ‘cloning’ (hiring someone just like you) as it perpetuates the status quo and is bad for the business.

Failure to move forward could even kill the business, yet the practice remains prevalent.‘Cloning’ may not involve the same race, gender and religion, but the same skills, management approach, interests, likes and dislikes as the hiring manager and team.The pretext is often that the selection gives the best ‘culture fit’ and therefore seems perfectly acceptable.However, ‘cloning’ is toxic as it fosters group-think. Consensus and like-mindedness strangle collaboration, creativity, innovation and risk-taking.Industries and technologies change. Customer’s needs change. Therefore, a team’s ability to generate new ideas and embrace change is critical.

Here, experience shows it is easier to teach a multi-skilled team how to resolve conflict among themselves than it is to teach a homogenous group how to generate alternative solutions.We can espouse diversity in theory, but nullify it in practice simply by sticking with time-honoured recruitment practice that might be skewed toward recruitment in our own image.

This explains growing doubts about traditional interviewing.It seems our brains are hot-wired to make rapid assumptions (an asset when ancient man had to instantly assess danger). Research shows we take just 15 seconds in a rush to judgment. Essentially, we look for things that make us comfortable.Quickie judgments like this can flaw traditional interviews.Obtaining a diverse skills set may be vital. But how, if old-style interviews might not be up to the job?A mix of tools is increasingly adopted, including psychometric tests (often questionnaire-based), simulation exercises (to replicate challenging scenarios and scrutinise behaviour) and semi-structured or competency-based interviews.Is there any evidence South African business is racing to adopt these more objective assessment tools in its quest for greater representivity?Yes and no.Some employers are moving in this direction.

Others rely greatly (sometimes solely) on traditional interviews. Often, objective assessment techniques identify a high potential candidate who challenges traditional thinking, identifies novel opportunities and embraces risk, but is passed over by a hiring team who favour slow, cautious and conservative thinking.Again, the culture-fit rationale is trotted out.It seems everyone wants diversity, but ‘cloning’ is comfortable, ‘cloning’ is acceptable … but for how long?

By Gusti Coetzer - director at Signium Africa (previously Talent Africa)

Entrepreneurship is widely celebrated. Since 2010, National Entrepreneur’s Day on November 19 has been presidentially proclaimed in the USA and has now been joined by National Entrepreneurship Month (November), National Entrepreneurship Week and Small Business Saturday.

Celebration is understandable. Global experience indicates entrepreneurs create jobs and often develop products with worldwide appeal that boost export earnings.Entrepreneurial spirit is also high on the list of competencies when job specifications are drawn up by major companies looking for executive talent.

Though entrepreneurs are rightly applauded, there appears to be some confusion about what it takes to be one.Media coverage of entrepreneurship and the qualities required of the next Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos confirms the confusion as many commentators are just as keen to outline misconceptions around entrepreneurship while others fail to distinguish between subsistence-level small business and game-changing innovation.

Those with real entrepreneurial fire go out to revolutionise their industries. Some even want to change the world.Opening yet another nail bar will hardly revolutionise the industry, though earning your own living without reliance on a boss is certainly a commendable goal.

Pretoria-born multiple entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk famously said, “Goingfrom PayPal, I thought, ‘What are some of the other problems that are likely to affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘what’s the best way to make money?’”

He went on to launch SpaceX, the commercial space travel firm, and Tesla Motors, the electric car-maker.For the type of entrepreneurship that creates boundless new opportunities, it therefore appears a vision beyond financial security is required. In fact, financial insecurity and frugality may be the lot of the visionary entrepreneur in the early days.

There is general consensus that risk-taking ability is a must as so many entrepreneurs champion breakthrough concepts that may not look like a solid investment at inception stage. Generating ideas is therefore a plus, but even more important is the drive to implement them, often at pace.

Creative people have ideas. Entrepreneurs not only have them, they implement them, acting quickly to effect change.

Even a writer and poet like Goethe recognised the importance of get-up-and-go. He noted, “What is not started will never get finished.” In other words, dreaming won’t make it so.It takes a committed entrepreneur to get the job done and turn vision into a paying proposition.In addition, a positive mindset and persistence are obligatory, judging by media commentary.

Billionaire British entrepreneur Richard Branson remarked that business opportunities are like buses – there’s always another one coming. Decades earlier, inventor-entrepreneur Thomas Edison consoled himself during a rough patch that he had not failed, he had simply found 10 thousand ways that did not work.

Conservative investors would have given up long before his bright ideas led to the development of the electric light bulb and record-player.Of course, the start-up visionary does not monopolise entrepreneurship. Increasingly, we see major corporates committing themselves to a culture that embraces judicious risk-taking and champions ongoing innovation.

Only a self-motivated initiator (or several) can instil such a culture.It seems the day of the corporate entrepreneur is at hand … and not only on November 19.