Being invited to an interview is exciting, and you may be keen to make an instant good impression on the employer and interviewer. One way not to do so, however, is to send a LinkedIn connection request to the interviewer.
Great leaders are one thing above all else, selfless. They are successful because they always put the team first. Everything they do is geared towards maximising the potential of their people, thus achieving the best collective result.
How do you bring scores of individual performers into one harmonious team? That’s the demanding task of Ian Maclay, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Managing Director.
What drew you to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO)?
I came to the Royal Philharmonic by accident. I studied music intending to play professionally, but when I met my peers – who were far better players than I was, and still weren’t earning a living – I decided to work in music, but not as a musician.
I joined as a bookkeeper, working my way up (with extraordinary luck) and learning as I went. I owe the Orchestra everything in terms of my career. I believe every junior can learn an awful lot from their superiors (and their mistakes), and that if you stay around long enough, you might get a chance to put it into practice.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
I enjoy the company of the musicians immensely, and everyone at the RPO is afforded the chance to enjoy the end product of our work. That’s not something every organisation allows.
How do you recruit the players?
All the players have been playing at a high level since their mid-teens, and been through orchestras, scholarships and elite academies – perhaps even being loaned an instrument worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Those who can manage all of that time and cost might then choose to apply for a job at an orchestra such as ours.
We have 84 players, but there can be 300 applicants for each post. Each recruitment is a two-year process of audition tapes, trial periods and performances. Once we have a position down to perhaps six brilliant applicants, it can come down to how well they settle on a long tour of the US, for example, or how the principal conductor feels their style complements the rest of the orchestra.
Is managing performers difficult?
The orchestra is a workers’ cooperative, with new players buying themselves in as those leaving sell their shares. The players employ people such as me to work for them, and they are really driven by a mutual interest in perfection. Getting the top performance is down to the conductor, and my team and I act as talent scouts to sign rising conductors to the orchestra for several years, before they become too popular and expensive.
Interestingly, as the conductor reports to the company, the players in effect employ their manager and management team. It’s a relationship that has to rely on mutual respect, but some conductors can be difficult to work with, even if they are talented. It’s my job to hire the ones that draw the very best performances from our orchestra.
If you enjoyed the above blog then you might also appreciate these other articles, which too originally appeared in the Hays Journal:
- Training at the top
- Why talented Chinese graduates are aiming high in Dubai
- Establishing an effective middle management tier
- Managing external resources
- Four pillars of people
- Family values
View the Hays Journal online, via the Hays Journal iPad app or request a printed copy from [email protected]
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It may sound crazy to ask the above question; after all, isn’t the answer obvious? Isn’t high performance just about consistently delivering results? Yes, in part, but I’d call that a performing team, not a high performing team.
Ultimately, a high performing team meets and exceeds its goals, and it does this by ensuring the team’s performance is more than the sum of its parts.
Why are high performing teams so rare?
Only one out of five teams are high performing (Wageman et al, 2008). Leading a top team to high performance is an art and a craft that can take years to practically learn and then master. Yet, most senior executives find themselves leading teams without the requisite skillset to do so; by that I mean, without the necessary training, development or comprehensive tutelage from role models throughout their own career.
Senior team leadership is both the most challenging and the most rewarding aspect of a leader’s role. It’s a craft that demands constant refinement and improvement.
Top teams do it differently
High performing top teams pull together to achieve more than the sum of their parts. They relentlessly strive for success, and challenge themselves to achieve ever greater performance and effectiveness.
As with top athletes, many high performing teams consult with coaches to increase their performance. Coaches assist the team to review and fine-tune their performance and assist in making sure that their energy and focus are being channelled correctly.
Two essential behaviours of a high performing team
- Clarity of objectives. You’d be amazed at how many top teams I coach that haven’t set clear goals. Without goal you can’t be clear on what success looks like. If we don’t know where we want to go, we’re unlikely to arrive!
The difference with a high performing team is that they have team goals which move the business towards greater success. If the only goals your team sets are individual performance targets, then you’re making the common mistake of aiming for the sum of the parts. If you have team goals, you are setting your sights on optimum performance.
High Performance Team Activity 1
Work as a team to identify the game-changing, transformational goals that the team needs to collectively achieve in the next 6-12 months that will deliver outstanding performance.
- Collective focus on objectives. When you focus on goals as a team, you’re leveraging the collective wisdom and talent of everyone; engaging the whole team towards achieving success for both themselves and the organisation.
In my experience, it is common to find a senior team where some members only focus on their own outcomes and performance. Without shared focus on team goals, it is common for some team members to appear to be ‘high-flyers’ at the expense of those who are ‘low flyers’ – known so only because they are forced into doing work that the ‘high-flyers’ have surrendered themselves responsibility of.
High Performance Team Activity 2
After you set your collective team goals, focus your team’s energy on achieving these goals. To be a high performing team, the whole team needs to be focused on completing the collectively agreed top priorities to a high standard.
If team members are doing other things that aren’t in alignment with the new team goals, how can these lower priority tasks be redistributed, delayed or delegated so that the top team can focus on achieving the new goals? Agree together what success looks like and work together to make it happen.
Read more about high performing teams in my chapter of “Leadership Coaching”, “Coaching Global Top Teams”.
Could you live on £10 a day? Two years ago I lived on the equivalent of the base state pension for a week and it was a real wake-up call as to how important it is to save for retirement.
Like many things in life, it is hard to think about the end game when you are only at the beginning. However, just like when considering the future resale value of a car or a house, you need to be thinking a few years ahead.
Feeling money confident
Feeling secure and confident about not just your current financial state, but your future situation also has a huge impact on how you go about your job. Having enough money is one of the biggest causes of stress and anxiety, which in turn severely hinders how effectively you are able to do your job. The thought of having no income when I retire, and possibly no further ability to bring money in through a regular job, is scary.
Thinking ahead
That’s why I felt it was important to raise employee awareness of how important pensions are. Working with experts at Age UK, my team stripped out the costs that we couldn’t avoid – housing and travel to work – and arrived at a budget of £70 for 7 days. We had strict rules and my colleagues and I did our best to abide by them. Living in London on £70 per week is not easy. Even the necessities needed a lot of forward planning and saving (the cheapest haircut I could find was £22, nearly a third of my weekly budget).
Before we started our week, I asked employees to do two things, write down their aspirations for retirement (what age they wanted to stop working and how they intended to spend their time) and also to keep a record of how much they spent during a “normal” week. Most people were horrified at how much money they got through normally and how much was often wasted.
Unless we start to think forward and plan for the future, retiring at 55 and travelling the world, eating out in restaurants or even just treating the grandchildren, is not going to happen. Unsurprisingly, employee pension contributions increased during the following weeks.
What have you budgeted?
When working out what you need during retirement try to work backwards. A simple 3 step approach to doing this would be:
- Work out how much everything is going to cost. For example, I want to eat out twice a week when I retire. Eating out in a restaurant will cost me £35, so £70 if I do it twice per week. 52 weeks x £70 is £3,640 per year. I want to go on holiday once a year. A week’s holiday might be £700. I need to eat generally – my weekly food bill is £50 so £2,600 per year. Add in utility bills, clothes, haircuts, emergency funds and then total everything up. (Remember that this is a net figure after tax so you will need to gross up your final net sum to reach the pension figure you need).
- Look at your current pension provision – your employer will help you understand what it may give you – and see how closely it meets your total.
- Now think about other savings you might have, or need to make, in order to help boost this income and meet your retirement aspirations.
Lessons learnt
I know that many people currently live on less than £70 per week; people have current financial commitments and it can be hard to save. However, for me it was a salutary lesson – I spend too much and waste money on things I don’t need. Most people need to make more provisions for the future, and even saving just a little bit more can make you feel more confident and happy.
It’s important for your financial confidence to map out your long-term monetary plans. Knowing that whatever happens tomorrow you have some savings to fall back on helps you to feel secure in your current situation, which in turn allows you to focus all your energy on doing what you’re employed to do.
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With the advent of new technologies, the process of finding a new job is changing rapidly, and is very different now to what it was even 5-10 years ago.
Social media, online job boards, mobile apps and so on have all made the job search process far more interactive and transparent. Employers are now able to find out a lot more about you, and have little difficulty with distinguishing between what is true and what is embellished.
However, these developments also present greater opportunities for jobseekers to sell themselves to employers. No longer are you restricted to two sides of regular-sized paper to try and convince recruiters and employers that your vast experience and complex personality are well suited to the position. Now you can evidence this through a variety of media channels; providing a full and robust declaration of your expertise and ambitions.
Being social media savvy is now the minimum requirement for candidates within many industries; however there are still a few extra, lesser known ways you can embrace modern technology to help you stand out from the crowd. Here are some of them that I’ve identified:
1. Have a social media spring clean
As I said, being social media savvy is now the least that employers expect of you. 68% of employers will search for you on Facebook, so make sure that if your profile is easily discoverable that you haven’t done yourself a disservice in what information you include on there. Survey results show that 86% of employers believe candidates should make their profiles more employer friendly, so aligning your social profiles with your professional persona is an important part of selling yourself.
2. The devil lies in the detail
76% of CVs are ignored if the email address provided is unprofessional, whilst people form an impression of one another from their photo in one tenth of a second. Most of these issues come down to common sense; just make sure that you’re presenting yourself well wherever you can be found and that you’re offering current and accurate information.
3. Go mobile with your CV
With online job boards, job email alerts and recruitment company apps you can now job search wherever you are. Create a mobile-friendly downloadable PDF which will enable you to apply for positions on the go. In doing so you’ll be maximising your available job search time, as well as making sure you’re ready to apply for the most appealing positions as and when they are posted. Storing your CV in an easily accessible location online also means that employers can review it 24/7.
Recruiters spend an average time of 5-7 seconds reviewing your CV, so make sure yours is devoid of all formatting issues. The information included needs to be readily-available and as clear as possible.
4. Make your application interactive
Video is something which is only recently beginning to be fully utilised in the job search process. Skype interviews are increasingly common, however video CVs and cover letters have not quite taken of as of yet. Whether participating in a video interview, CV or cover letter, make sure that you’re fully prepared.
A visual version of you provides far greater insight to prospective employers than a sheet of paper. Make the most of this by ensuring that the backdrop is clear, your dress smart and yourself well-rehearsed. YouTube is the third most visited site in the world – and its popularity shows no sign of waning – so video CVs are something that I expect to catch on a lot more in the next few years. They’re a great opportunity to demonstrate your skills and creativity.
5. Network online
Effective networking is perhaps the most crucial step in your technology-savvy job search process. Make yourself easily discoverable across all social media sites by following this advice.
Interact with brands you love, contact people you admire, blog about things you’re passionate about and develop your network. LinkedIn is unrivalled for professional networking; it’s used by more than 90% of recruiters and employers to source new candidates, more than any other social media site. Hays recently hit the 1 million follower mark on LinkedIn, so here’s our guide on how to optimise your profile.
6. Look in the right places
The last thing to understand about making full use of technology in your job search is knowing where to look. The latest and greatest positions can be found from a variety of sources, such as newsletters, individual job ads on LinkedIn, online job boards and individual recruitment sites. You can also use your research skills to do some homework on your interviewer, should you be successful with your initial application.
At Hays we encourage you to contact your regional office. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and locate the recruitment professionals relevant to your field.
The job search process is ever evolving; as new mediums and platforms emerge it’s important to stay on top of the latest development. Through using a variety of methods in your job search, such as those outlined above, you give yourself a better chance of being contacted by prospective employers. The above information will help you to secure a position using the most modern methods, make sure you take full of advantage of them. Good luck in your job search.
About to start your job search? Reading our job searching tips will help ensure it’s a success
- A simple guide to writing the perfect resume/CV
- How to optimise your LinkedIn profile
- Common cover letter mistakes
- How to market yourself in your job search
- Focus your interview on fit
- Stop making these common job search mistakes
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Tea Colaianni has been a major part of Merlin’s phenomenal growth story, and her own career is going from strength to strength.
With a background in law and an HR career that has included stints as Vice President for Human Resources at the optical networking company GTS/Ebone and European Vice President of Human Resources for Hilton Hotels Corporation, Tea Colaianni is a heavyweight HR executive.
She joined the rapidly growing entertainments business Merlin as Group Human Resources Director in 2010, and has a pivotal role to play in CEO Nick Varney’s challenging 15-year target of turning the £20 million business into a genuine challenger to Disney.
Merlin Entertainments is the second-largest entertainments company in the world. The £1.2 billion group runs more than 100 attractions in 23 countries across four continents and, depending on contingent hiring, Colaianni’s remit can cover 26,000 employees, who are responsible for more than 60 million customer visits each year to attractions including the London Eye, Madame Tussauds, LEGOLAND and SEA LIFE. It was recently ranked 15th in The Sunday Times’ list of the Best 25 Big Companies to Work For.
All change
Merlin is a company with dynamism and change at its heart, Colaianni says. “I love that this organisation is like a family, but I also love our growth story, our success, our unique identity, and the fact that it’s fun.”
The rapid global expansion of the business means that Colaianni can forget some of the talent retention headaches facing less successful businesses. “We offer great opportunities for people to grow within the business. We have a range of brands, operate in many countries, across different groups, and are constantly opening new attractions or acquiring new businesses. There’s never a dull moment,” she says.
Merlin’s successful IPO in 2013 and continued growth led to Colaianni’s appointment as a non-executive director to retailer Poundland, which was itself preparing a flotation.
“I think that the Merlin IPO raised my profile, and I got the call about Poundland two or three months after it completed,” she says.
“I joined the Poundland board in February 2014 as chair of their remuneration committee, and the business listed in March.”
She says that the appointment is indicative of HR’s growing responsibility and many boards’ understanding that HR has something to offer when it comes to top-level insight, even if only in a non-executive capacity. Nevertheless, it is one step closer to the top table, and Colaianni’s career demonstrates that HR talent can bring tangible value to a host of businesses.
Thrill of the race
Just like Merlin itself, Colaianni shows no sign of slowing down. “There is lots of room for growth around the world, such as in Japan and South Korea, and we’ve got a new brand to grow in Shrek’s Adventure. LEGOLAND is expanding and the group is growing through acquisitions and by expanding our existing estate through hotels and diversified accommodation,” she says.
Is Merlin’s success in HR simply a case of the basics done well? “We do employee engagement surveys, and they show that when the basics such as pay, culture and career opportunities are done well, people are engaged,” she says. “But 95 per cent of our people enjoy coming to work, so clearly we’re doing more than just the basics right.”
Unsurprisingly, the complexity of Merlin’s HR strategy is tied to the pace of growth, particularly as the business expands across multiple countries and brands simultaneously. “From a brand perspective, we’re similar to businesses such as Unilever or P&G now, and some people still don’t get that,” says Colaianni. “But fewer people say, ‘Merlin who?’
If you enjoyed the above blog then you might also appreciate these other articles, which too originally appeared in the Hays Journal:
- Training at the top
- Why talented Chinese graduates are aiming high in Dubai
- Establishing an effective middle management tier
- Managing external resources
- Four pillars of people
- Family values
View the Hays Journal online, via the Hays Journal iPad app or request a printed copy from [email protected]
