All Posts by Dave Lucas

How to Write an Accurate Job Description

By Dave Lucas | Job Description

Hiring is like match making. I do not know you personally yet, but let’s assume your ideal mate has brown hair and brown eyes. You ask me to find you someone, but I assume you actually like blond hair and blue eyes.

So, I send you all these blonds. Of course, you take one look at them and go eeehhhwwwooo.

Although some people have told me they actually don’t care as long as the person is hot 😉

Anyways, the key point I’m getting at here, is if you don’t know what kind of person you want. How can you ever find them?

The same goes for hiring talent. You need to clearly define what you want as a first step.

But there is more to it.

I’m sure you know someone who always goes for the wrong person. For instance, some women are always attracted to “Bad Boys”, as they find them so much more exciting. These are often the same women who a miserable in their relationships. The ones that you council with, “Why don’t you just leave him?” and the answer is, “But I love him. I’ll change him.” We all know where that one usually ends up.

In this case the women got what she wanted. A “Bad Boy”. But not what she needed, “A Loving Man”.

By the same logic, it is important to not only define what you want in your hire, but also what you need.

So how do you go about writing your job description.

Here are a few facets we consider when writing a job description:

Define Purpose

Every job has a purpose. It has a reason for existing. Every job is there to accomplish a specific organisational objective. If that objective is accomplished, the job is a success. If it is not accomplished, the job is a failure.

That’s why the first question you should be asking when writing a job description is:

“What is the purpose of this job role? What is the key goal this job role must accomplish?”

Define Daily Activities

Once you understand the purpose of your job role, you are ready to define its daily activities.

What is key here, is to link the daily activities to the role’s purpose. That ensures alignment to the key goal you are trying to accomplish through the role.

To do this, you can ask yourself:

“What must the person do every day to accomplish the key goal of my role?”

Define Skillsets to Perform Activities

Next, you need to define the skill-set that is required to perform the daily activities of your job role. You see every job activity requires a particular skill, qualification or background experience, in order to effectively execute it.

You can use the following question to determine the skillsets for your job:

For each daily activity,
“What skills, qualifications, or background experience does a person require to perform this activity with excellence?”

Define Salary Range

Next, we define salary range. We often find in our interactions with clients that this is one area where they really struggle. They find it hard to determine what salary they should be paying.

Because of this challenge, we often see them taking short-cuts. They say the role is negotiable. Which is code speak for, “Tell us what you want, and we will see if you are worth it.”

The problem in this approach, is that ultimately people work for money. In our experience, a person looking for a new job is often motivated by a desire to increase their salary. Therefore, for candidates, salary is very important. In fact, research has been done which confirms that candidates are more likely to apply for a job ad with a salary, than without one.

Further, if you do not define a salary range for your job, you will find that you get everyone from the most junior person applying for your job to the most senior person. In other words, you get too many applications, which wastes your time, slows your hire, and often leads to offers being rejected for financial reasons.

In other words, you do way more work than you really need to. And we all know that you really could use a lot more work every day, because your really have nothing better to do with your time.

NOT. We are all so crazy busy we wish there was someone we could just give all this talent search work to so that we can at least have a chance to come up for a breath.

So how do you determine the correct salary range for your job?

Unfortunately, this is one question that is not easy to answer. Even salary surveys can’t help you, as they indicate what people are earning now, not what they want to earn. And we know that people never leave a job for the same money.

This is really the question you should be asking your talent search consultancy. In the case of Xenitho, we have extensive industry experience, so we know the rates that you should be paying, and can advise accordingly.

Define “Why YOU

The next step in creating your job description is to define YOU. What do I mean by this?

Well, think about it this way. No candidate wants to work for a dud company. They want to know that they are going to be spending the next 2 to 10 years of their life at a wholesome productive organisation. They also want to know that they can grow in the organisation they are moving to. So, you must sell them on your organisation.

You must position yourself, as a desirable place to work. A great place to come to work every day. A place to build a career and to better provide for your family.

If you sell your organisation, people will want to work for it. If you don’t, you are just another job. And will attract people who just want a job, rather than a career where they can make a contribution.

Selling your organisation is an art, which we are happy to help you with. After reading our job descriptions we have heard our clients making comments like, “That description is so good, even I want to apply for the job.”

So how do we do this?

This question will get you started,
“What are the top 3 reasons that someone should work for my company?”

Get Professional Assistance

You now know the basics of writing an effective job description. However, there are many more aspects we consider when creating a job description for our clients. As we know it really is a skill, an art and a science.

We also know that many of our HR clients really struggle to understand what business wants, and many of our business clients really struggle to define what they need.

Fortunately for you, you can get us to write your job description for you.

It is part of our Platinum Talent Search Consultancy package.

You see dealing with a hiring service provider should never be transactional. That is really for low quality jobs that really don’t matter.

If the job counts, you want to get it right. You want to hire the right person. That means you want a consultancy who partners with you every step of the way on your hiring journey. Who gives you the right advice so that you can get it right. Who guides you in clearly defining what you need and then puts in the extensive work required to find you that person.

If it was the love of your life we were finding for you, that would be exactly what you would want us to do. Why would it be any different when we are finding you a person who will directly affect the organisation you work for, which ultimately affects your livelihood.

That’s why more-and-more we are finding that companies want to move away from CV providers to talent search consultancies like Xenitho. The realise they need the professional service and they always like the fact that they get a 6 month guarantee too. Further, they like having the control of a contingency placement fee arrangement. And all this at a small price premium.

They really consider it, “Worth it”, a small price difference for a massive organisational impact. And so should you, because hiring a new person is one of the most important decisions you and your organisation can make.

So, give us a try today. You will be pleasantly surprised to experience what high-calibre a talent search consultancy actually feels like. It is often something new for many of our clients.

Contact us today to hire your next High-Impact performer.

Should You Give a 3 Week Exclusivity?

By Dave Lucas | What Makes Us Different?

Xenitho offers both exclusive and non-exclusive packages. Our customers often wonder which option they should choose.

This is a fundamentally important question. But not for the reason you think.

Most people when asked this question will respond with questions like, “Will they be able to find me someone? What if they can’t find me someone? What if it takes them too long? What if I can find someone myself and don’t need them? Aren’t these guys just trying to knock out the competition?”

In other cases, they may already have contracted someone to work on the role and actually can’t give exclusivity. Or, alternatively, they are trying to DIY the role.

All of these considerations are misaligned to the key point. Which is, does it make sense to partner with a talent search consultancy, or not?

Well firstly you need to consider how critical the role is to your business. For one company a receptionist is not critical, for another it is one of their most critical roles as they need someone to represent the company brand.

What about an Exec job? Is it critical. Well in that case, we would all agree, “yes”.

Hiring the wrong exec, can ruin your business. We have seen this. One exec mis-hire led to the liquidation of a R500 Million company in just 2 years. Ouch!

What about other roles like engineers, financial managers, operations managers etc…? The guiding principle is this. What will happen to your business if the person cocks it up badly? Will it matter? If your answer is yes, then you have a critical hire. If it is no, then your hire is not critical and you may as well get any old agency to work on the role or DIY if you have the time.

So, let’s assume that your role is critical. Would you want to leave it to just anybody, like getting just anybody to do brain surgery on you? Or, would you want to give yourself the best chance of success?

We think the answer there is obvious too. You would want to give yourself the best chance of success. You want to partner with a reputable and capable talent search consultancy like Xenitho, to maximise your chances of success.

You see the reason we offer an exclusivity option is not for our benefit. It is actually for yours. Exclusivity gives us the ability to provide your with a deeply focused, high-quality service. We intimately involve you in our process so that you are assured of the best possible outcome, for your critical hiring decision. Further, by only making the exclusivity for 3 weeks, you are assured of a speedy but high-quality service. 3 weeks gives us enough time to do the job well, without rushing or distraction, but also puts pressure on us to deliver in reasonable timeframes. Which is better for you.

Finally, exclusivity is actually better for you as you get a 6 month guarantee and a number of other meaningful benefits. We reward our customers who partner with us.

It’s time to reconsider exclusivity. Is it better to have a bunch of agencies competing to send you as many CVs as possible, as quickly as possible? The current norm. Or, does it make more sense partnering with the industry’s leading talent search consultancy to jointly find a top 2% performer– who uplifts your business for years to come?

We will leave the decision up to you. It really depends on how much you care about the success of your organisation.

The CV Treadmill

By Dave Lucas | What Makes Us Different?

Our COO for Xenitho used to work for a major Bank.

She worked in their HR department. They had one of the most sophisticated HR setups in the country.

No surprise, they are a bank.

They also had all the facilities for doing in-house recruitment too.

Guess what. They still used agencies.

But that isn’t what surprised me.

What surprised me was the level of poor service that they expected and tolerated from agencies.

So, a typical role would work like this.

They would send the job spec to the agencies.

Who would send them 20 CVs back.

In some cases, lightning fast. I’m talking something like 1 hour to send 20 CVs!

Wow! That sounds impressive. Amazing service, isn’t it?

Or is it really?

You know Xenitho offers a 3 week exclusivity on our talent search services. This means that the company gives us 3 weeks to do the role on effectively a sole mandate. We tell them it is 3 weeks, because it puts pressure on us to deliver fast, but still gives us enough time to do the job properly.

So, I was talking to one of our Exclusive Clients. We had just completed our site visit and cultural assessment. I actually told him that I was really impressed with his company and would actually refer business his way, as so many of our clients have the problem he solves.

So, we were sitting in their boardroom. I said to him, ok I would kick off the role as soon as possible and it would take about 2 weeks to send him his person.

And here came the kicker. He said to me, “Don’t rush. I would rather you take slightly longer and find me the right person.”

In other words, he did not really care about us pushing for speed. He wanted quality.

And you know if we think about it. That is not the first time we hear that from customers. In fact, most of our customers care about quality over speed.

So, if we think about our COO’s bank hiring experience again.

It amazes us that the organisation was content to trust agencies that push speed over all else. And let me tell you a dirty little secret from the industry.

There is a very good reason why agencies push for speed over quality. And it has nothing to do with good service. It is called CV spamming. What that means is they send as many CVs as possible, in order to prevent other agencies from competing. As companies operate on a first referral basis.

So, they know that if they send the CV first, even if someone else submits the CV later having done the work, the company will still pay them.

Which is kinda unethical, if you think about it.

But that wasn’t the most frustrating part of our COOs experience.

The most frustrating part was that every agency was doing it.

They were sending here CVs that were not relevant. She had to go through them. Tell them they were wrong, and then they would send her another 20 CVs to go through. It was clear they had no clue on what was required to fulfil business needs. It was also clear that there is no way they had tested the candidates for suitability to the role. How could they in such a short time period?

Now if it was just 20 CVs at a time, it would have been manageable. But as is common wisdom, in the industry, you must use multiple agencies and make them compete against each other. That gives you the best chances of success. But, is this common wisdom or is it in fact an old wife’s tale.

So, what would happen? She would get multiple rounds of 20 CVs from multiple agencies. The poor women would eventually end up having to review 200+ CVs for a role just to find some sort of shortlist to send to business! At that rate, she may have well done the job herself!

It drove her crazy, and I’m sure it has driven you crazy too.

Such a waste of time and resources.

She often lamented the fact that they did not have a company like Xenitho, which was not an agency, but a Talent Search Consultancy. Who took the time to do the job right, find the best people, and then send 2 or 3 Candidates who had been properly vetted and tested vs the role requirements. Using sophisticated techniques such as Role Driven Competency Testing, Career Analysis and Brain Profiling.

She often lamented that they were missing good candidates because they did not have good looking CVs. And that often they would hire candidates that looked good on paper, interviewed well, and were then duds when they hired them. HR just did not have the skills to separate the pretenders from the real deals.

She often lamented that they did not have a Talent Search Consultancy that would partner with them on a role. Take the time to sit with the line managers and understand the requirements first time. That would even visit their premises to understand their culture to ensure cultural fit.

And if you think about it, perhaps you have some of the same lamentations too. We know many of our customers do.

So, next time you need to hire critical talent. You can consider whether it really makes sense to follow the old wife’s tale of making multiple agencies compete for a role. Which means they will just rush the whole thing. Hoping to get their candidate in first, but never taking the time to do it right.

Or, is it better to partner with someone who treats you as a true partner, and who you treat as a true partner. And work together to find the person that will lift your company to new heights.

Based on our feedback from our client partners, we already know what they prefer.

And, we suspect that you do too.

What we Do that In-House Recruiters Struggle to Do

By Dave Lucas | What Makes Us Different?

The other day I was talking to a HR person and friend. We had built up a really good relationship from working together on a critical scarce skills role. He was working for one of SA’s Top Manufacturers. Because our relationship is so good, we were openly sharing recruitment practices.

He mentioned to me that they normally look at the CVs of the first 10 candidates that apply for a role. And then send them to business.

I must admit I was quite surprised.

I told him that we look at every application. Even if we get 500 applicants. We then filter them using our proprietary process and shortlist to the top 2% of people. So about 2 CVs in every 100.

He was so intrigued that he gave us more work to do.

Well that was a surprise too.

I found this whole question intriguing.

You see, I also had the opportunity to interview the former sales manager from one of the top career portals in the country. I said to him, that we are a bit concerned about how we should compete with companies doing their own in-house recruitment.

I said to him we just can’t compete with “free”, no matter how good we are at finding those movers and shakers.

He told me I really don’t have to worry. There will always be a need for external recruiters. Which means there will always be a need for Talent Search Consultants too.

In fact, their biggest challenge is getting people to renew their career portal subscriptions.

I asked him why.

His answer was simple. Companies want to save the money that they pay recruiters, but they don’t have the time or the energy to do the job themselves.

In other words, they take shortcuts.

Company’s think that all they have to do is place a couple of job ads on their career portal and the perfect candidate will come knocking on their door.

In a sense this is true. The perfect candidate will come knocking, and so will 500 other people who are not perfect. Which means you have to wade through 501 CVs to find the perfect person.

In fact, one of our other customers who has a massive internal recruitment department, complains about the fact that they get…. Wait for it… 2000 applications for a role.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the best candidates often have the worst CVs. And the worst candidates often have the best CVs. You can’t really rely on a CV, can you? So how do you really filter these 500, or 2000 people?

Companies clearly have no problem finding people. But they do have a big problem finding the best people, as they really do not have the time or the systems to filter that many applications.

All this was very fascinating to me.

And I must frankly admit, a relief.

I realised that there definitely is a need in the market for a service which delivers high-impact performers to companies.

Companies need high-impact performers, but they don’t have the capacity to find them themselves.

And as long as wise people work for companies, who realise that great people, make great companies, there will always be a need for Xenitho’s services.

Are you looking to hire a high impact performer. Get in touch with us today.

3 Traits of Top 2% Performers

By Dave Lucas | What Makes Us Different?

As you may already know. Xenitho is a division of Dawning Truth. It is a rebranding of the old Dawning Truth Recruitment.

What you may not know is that Dawning Truth started out as a Personal Development company. Our primary goal was to help people awaken the greatness in themselves.

I remember in the early days trying to discover the secrets of uncommon success so that we could teach them to our customers.

What a fascinating time. We spent every Saturday afternoon researching the greats such as Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Lee, Nelson Mandela and Richard Branson.

We were trying to uncover the secret difference between those that changed the world and those that were changed by the world.

And eventually we did.

These secrets were compiled in the book, “Become Great and Powerful”. Which you can read on Amazon Kindle Here.

Now you may be asking yourself, “What has this got to do with finding me an army of Top 2% performers?”

The answer is, “Everything”.

Because we studied so many successful people, we started to build up a database of success traits. The key behaviours, attributes, attitudes and brain profiles of top performers.

This is the same information we use today to benchmark all our candidates to evaluate if they will be top performers.

So, you may be thinking to yourself. “That’s good to know. I wish I had that information when making a hiring decision.”

Unfortunately, we can’t share all our secrets with you. As they are proprietary, and one of the key elements that makes us unique as a Talent Search Consultancy.

However, we know you are desperately looking for new ways to asses if you are about to hire a dud.

So, in this post I’ll share 3 traits of top performers. Just to be nice… Suppose I’m in a generous mood today.

So here they are:

” Driver Brain Profile
” Sustained Work Effort
” “Can Do” Attitude

So let’s look at them further.

Driver Brain Profile

At the time of writing this article, we will have interviewed something like 5000 top performers. Whew! That is a lot of work.

And time and time again, we always see the same pattern.

Driver Brain Profile.

This trait is actually very accurately identified by our in-house Brain Profile assessment which we use on all candidates we submit. It is also used to great affect by our in-house training clients.

What we have all noticed is that people with Driver Brian Profiles are the people who move and shake the world.

They are the people who make it happen.

So, if you don’t have Xenitho’s in-house assessment, can you still determine if someone is a driver?

You can get rough idea. Unfortunately, it will still be a bit incomplete. Essentially look for someone who takes control of a situation. They are more than likely a driver. Also, look for someone who is achievement orientated. This is normally a trait of Drivers.

However if you really want to know for sure, there is no substitute for Xenitho’s in-house assessment.

Sustained Work Effort

This is another trait that emerges like clockwork.

There can be no success without effort, dedication and drive to completion.

I think we all instinctively know this.

But how do you measure it on a CV?

The answer is. You can’t.

CVs and interviews don’t show you how hard someone works. They just show you how good they are at selling themselves. Which may be a problem. Because we often find that the best people are shy to really put their achievements in their CVs or to brag in interviews. They tend to be humble sort of people, who don’t like to show off. As a result, they often have very bland, boring and frankly unimpressive CVs.

We cannot tell you how many times we have told a top-performer to upgrade their CV as they are underselling themselves.

So is there any way to determine if someone is hard-working and will put in sustained effort? The answer is yes.

Unfortunately, you need a complex combination of behavioural assessments and our brain profile assessment. All of which are proprietary to Xenitho.

If you don’t have these tools, you will have to take a chance or guess. And we all know how well that works.

The problem, is you normally only discover how well someone works after you hire them. And by then it is too late.

I must admit it took us about 3 years to figure out how to assess this at Xenitho. So, yes, it’s not easy to do.

“Can Do” Attitude

This is one that you can assess in an interview.

Successful people are doers. Not just talkers.

They get things done. Take action. And produce results.

To do this they need a ‘Can Do” attitude.

To assess this trait during an interview is simple.

Get the person to start talking about working overtime and see where they go.

Do they complain about too much overtime, or do they say that it is needed to achieve objectives?

The person who is happy to do overtime, is also happy to put in extra effort–with a smile.

They are the people with a “Can Do” Attitude.
So, there you have it, 3 traits of Top Performers.

In Conclusion…

At Xenitho we check a myriad of attributes before we send candidates.

We proud ourselves in finding the best and referring the best to our clients. The top 2% high impact performers.

Our processes are proven and benchmarked against humanities greatest achievers.

That is why you can trust us with your next critical hire.

Contact us today to hire a Top 2% performer.

Are All Accountants the Same?

By Dave Lucas | What Makes Us Different?

A while back we were chatting to a recruitment manager. We were explaining to her the difference between a recruitment agency and a Talent Search Consultancy.

She was just not getting it.

I think the reason was that she had been dealing with so many agencies throughout her life, that she was just unable to make the paradigm shift to a new way of sourcing talent.

She told us that all agencies are just the same. Putting us in the agency box, which as you know we aren’t an agency.

I again tried to explain to her that we are a talent search consultancy, not an agency. She responded, “I need a vacancy filled. You fill vacancies; therefore you are just like everybody else. Even if the way you go about doing this is different.”

Some of you reading this article may even agree with her logic. It is quite common in the industry.

I suppose in some contexts she is actually right.

When you have a job, which is of low impact to the organisation, it probably does not matter that much who you put in it. A large multinational is famous for saying that their systems are so good, that people don’t matter. They are currently struggling with a massive crash in their revenues. I suppose people do matter after all.

So perhaps she was right for some vacancies, but definitely not all vacancies.

There are certain roles in a business where the person you hire really does matter. For instance, an executive role. Tom Boardman former Nedbank CEO added something like R2.1 Billion to the turnover of Nedbank in one year. In that case Nedbank made a brilliant hire. They put the right person in the job. Same would go for the more famous example of Steve Jobs turning around Apple and making it the world’s largest technology company. Also think about what has happened to Apple since his tragic departure.

If you think about these examples, I’m sure you would agree that good people do matter. Especially in critical roles where you have to get the right person.

A critical role is a role where if the person messes it up, there will be harm to the company. That may mean downtime, loss of revenue, losing key staff etc… Further, if the person does the job well the business will typically be uplifted. That may mean increased revenue, uninterrupted operations, break-through innovations etc…

I think we all instinctively know this. However, we are so busy with the hum-drum of business life that we often forget to think about it when hiring.

So now back to the title of this post. Are all Accountants the same?

You are probably thinking that I’m referring to hiring accountants. In a sense I am, but not in the sense you are thinking.

You see, we had a really perplexing problem when we started out.

We could not find a good accountant.

We tried and we tried and we tried. They either could not do the job, stole our money and did nothing, were unable to register us with the right authorities and generally left us frustrated with a lack of financial support and guidance.

Then we found a really top company. They were a bit more expensive for sure. But they made sure everything was sorted. They produced reports, filed compliance on our behalf and managed our books with excellence.

They were a world-class service provider.

As you can see from our experience, not all accountants are the same.

And by the same logic, neither are all recruiters.

Especially when it comes to hiring for critical skills.

Some recruiters will merely spam you with as many CVs as possible. Doing hardly any filtering for the role.

Others will send you two or three CVs that look good, and where they have even interviewed the person face-to-face. But when you climb into the details of their processes, you discover that their interview processes are at best primitive, and having limited actual relation to the role. Yes, they did send you a few good-looking CVs, but have they really done a broad industry search and found the Top 2%? Unlikely.

Then you get Xenitho. We have spent years perfecting our craft. Learning the difference between a Top 2% hire and a good-looking CV who impresses in interviews and then disappoints when hired. We have made our mistakes. Everything utilising lean continuous improvement does, but we have also learnt from them. Saving you the mistake of a mis-hire.

We perform many more activities when we evaluate candidates, but rather than repeat them all here, you are free to read through this site to discover them for yourself.

The key point is.

Not all accountants are the same. Not all CEOs are the same. Not all Engineers are the same.

And neither are the people that find you critical talent.

Some will send you just anybody. And others like Xenitho, will send you that somebody who lifts your business to new heights.

What do you think?

Are all accountants the same?