A complex brief was addressed by Carmichael Fisher with creativity and speed, when Leica Microsystems Group wanted to appoint a global financial controller for its $1.1bn division of the Danaher Corporation. A WORD FROM OUR CLIENT European Headquarters: 23 Austin Friars, London EC2N 2QP phone: +44 (0) 203 178 2630 fax: +44 (0) 203 178 6016 email: europe@carmichaelfisher.com Carmichael Fisher specialises in providing best practice executive search and selection services to private and public sector organisations around the world. With offices in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, the firm has a built a solid reputation for supporting US based organisations with recruitment in Europe and beyond. The recruitment task One of Fortune Magazine’s most admired companies and the leading precision equipment firm, the Danaher Corporation is a $13bn USD publicly-traded company that designs, manufactures and markets industrial and consumer products. Andy Savage is global VP for HR at Leica and HR VP for Danaher in Europe. He admits that his brief for the new global financial controller was complex: “This is obviously a key role in the business, working from our Frankfurt office. We were looking for someone with experience of US GAAP reporting, who was fluent in English, but could speak German and who understood local German filing requirements.” The recruitment task was further complicated by the fact that many suitable candidates in the German market worked for very traditional operations which contrasted dramatically with Leica’s fast-paced approach. The cultural fit was an important added dimension to the brief; the appointee needed to be happy to take responsibility for themselves, but equally happy to work effectively within the Leica and Danaher fast-moving organisation. A great start Andy Savage explains how Carmichael Fisher met the brief: “Two things combined to get us off to a great start, firstly that our key contact at Carmichael Fisher was German and so she understood the market very well and secondly that Carmichael Fisher knows us so well that they had a very clear understanding of the kind of candidate that would fit within our culture.” Lateral thinking from Carmichael Fisher quickly addressed the brief for Leica. With many international firms and Germanspeakers operating in Switzerland, Carmichael Fisher recognised that this could be a good source of potential candidates. In fact the successful candidate was indeed a German woman working in Switzerland for an international company who was keen to move back to her native Germany. The ideal result Andy Savage was delighted with the end result: “Six months in and the appointment has worked out really well. Not only was the candidate ideal, we were also impressed with the speed with which Carmichael Fisher operated. We set a target of 120 days for appointments and this one was achieved in 97 days, which is an excellent result. This was the first time Danaher had used Carmichael Fisher for recruitment outside the UK and the impressive results have ensured that it will not be the last.
Thinking laterally and moving fast
July 14, 2010Beyond the Bassinet
June 17, 2010Paid parental leave will soon be law in Australia but the delay in passing the bill is causing our potty-mouthed PM to sound distinctly fractious. “We have a very simple message for the Senate, ‘Get out of the road, guys; Just get on with it’, said Mr Rudd. But the question is not about getting out of the road but is it the right road in the first place?
Currently, many large employers already offer a paid maternity entitlement from 6 weeks to six months (British American Tobacco Australia). The new legislation will provide 18 weeks paid maternity leave at the federal minimum wage for those on a salary below $150,000 pa. This will be in addition to any employer scheme already in place. But employers will surely scale back their current schemes to take into account the government funding otherwise their employees will, in effect, receive a pay increase of $544 per week (pre-tax) to stay at home. As female executives are discriminated against, the employer will have to increase their maternity provisions to maintain equality. After all these are the women whom executive recruiters will be retained to replace should they fail to return to the workforce and therefore the asset the company is most loathe to lose.
On the issue of paternity leave the policy seems totally confused. Whilst paternity leave is not included in the current legislation, the Families Minister, Jenny Macklin, said the scheme would be transferable between two parents – in other words it can be shared between a mother and a father. This may cause a boom in contract recruitment which is healthy for the executive recruitment company but it is ruinous for the SME.
It seems to me that both parties are following the wrong road. Leave current employer arrangements alone, look beyond the birth and concentrate on the return to work. Over and above the monetary value of any maternity leave payment is the cost, suitability and availability of quality childcare. To work to your optimum you must be assured that your precious baby is being cared for adequately. Therefore, surely it is more valuable to focus on suitable childcare and return-to-work policies rather than the confusing and inequitable paid parental leave provisions. Tax breaks, subsidies for child care, facilities close to schools or places of employment and flexible working hours would be far more palatable.
Why does no-one ask the mothers?
Helen Fisher is the Communications Manager at www.carmichaelfisher.com
Was Moses Australian?
June 7, 2010What is happening? The traditional retirement party is being supplanted by the farewell party. The mature executive exodus is underway – not from choice but necessity.
The Australian executive recruitment market is small – too small. We have but two cities with four million inhabitants in each. Compare that to the UK with 60 million souls, add continental Europe into the equation and the arithmetic becomes simple. We are too small a nation to comply with the government’s desire to keep the Baby Boomers working longer.
The Baby Boomers liberalised society, divorce lost its stigma and women became highly qualified with significant careers causing the onset of motherhood to become delayed. Children of first marriages came when the wife was approaching 30; children of second or third marriages were still arriving when she was 40. The impact of the blended family for this aspirational generation means more school fees for longer and consequently a high remuneration, to maintain a comfortable lifestyle plus associated trappings, is a necessity at an age when traditionally one might have thought of retirement or at least of winding back the working day.
Ask any executive recruiter how the marketplace reacts to employing these highly experienced mature individuals and the answer is that it is generally easier to place a younger person. The end result is stressful, to say the least, for many of the families involved.
An increasing number of our friends now work overseas, having been unable to find anything senior enough in Australia. They fly in infrequently to try to maintain contact with their families and make good use of Skype and the webcam between visits. Their partners are forced to carve out an independent existence, often too successfully, with the inevitable consequences.
Others have set up their own consultancies but establishing a clientele has had a similar effect in that they must be prepared to accept contracts which are remote from their home base and reduce them to being weekend visitors in their own home.
What is the solution? The answer is both simple and impossible to achieve. Simply, to achieve the government’s aim requires a radical change in society’s attitude from both the executive recruiter, who is prepared to form a short list including an older age group, and the client who is open minded enough to consider such inclusions. Impossible, because society moves slowly to implement change. The next generation may benefit but the Baby Boomers better bunker down and start preparing tasty meals with leftovers!
Women, Wealth and the Workforce
May 29, 2010A report in The Australian in April, 2009 showed that the GFC had helped to make history in Australia with the number of working women in full and part-time jobs surpassing the number of men in full-time work by 5000 jobs. In the last recession of 1990-91 male employment sank while female employment trod water. The end result was that women lifted their share of total jobs from 41.1% to 42.5%. The recovery that followed did nothing to restore the balance because women snapped up part-time positions.
Another emerging trend seen from Australia to Europe is that older women are a fast growing (and in Canada the fastest growing) demographic in the job market. The women, cited in a recent New York Times article, who had returned to work were amongst the affluent minority who had sufficient resources to be able to stop working initially because of their partners’ incomes. According to some economists these women… are now collateral damage of the recession – not forced out of work but back into it. The study showed the women face a difficulty beyond rusty skills, namely a 10% pay penalty for every two years they are out of work. Of course not all women are forced back into the workforce because of financial necessity, many return to work because their children are grown up and the walls are closing in.
The return by women to the workforce is having an impact on wealth and their spending habits have significant sales and marketing value. Cunningham & Roberts (2006) quote some interesting statistics:
- Women make 80% consumer goods purchasing decisions in the US
- Women start 70% new business start-ups in Canada
- In the UK women are expected to own 60% of all personal wealth by 2025
Some cynics may attribute this last statistic to good divorce lawyers or asset protection models.
It may be noted that Australia does not feature in the above statistics. According to BRW, Australian business is amongst the worst performers in recognising female talent ranking behind the USA, UK, South Africa and New Zealand on every key indicator for women’s participation. In the ASX200 the proportion of women executives fell to 10.7% in 2008 from 12% in 2006. Executive recruitment is potentially a more even playing field but a quick headcount of the Sydney office shows 33% women and the business heads are all men. Mind you they do say behind every successful man there stands a woman so perhaps all is not lost.
Sources: New York Times report reprinted in www.20-first.com ; The Australian, April 11, 2009; BRW, May 20 – 26 2010; Inside Her Pretty Little Head, Cunningham and Roberts, 2006.
Executive Recruitment and Social Media
May 20, 2010There can be no doubt that the GFC and resultant job fallout had a dramatic and lasting effect on not only the executive search and recruitment industry but also on the way professionals approached and managed their job search.
The use of social media, a phrase unknown to many tongues five years ago, is now an integral part of one’s assault on the job market and from a researcher’s point of view it has become an essential weapon in the armoury of search tools.
ProShortlist (www.proshortlist.com) recently released some interesting statistical data on the Australian recruitment agency market. These were not confined to executive recruitment companies but embraced the whole market. A snapshot of their results reveals that
- 2969 recruitment agencies operate in Australia
- 15284 staff work at these agencies
- During the GFC 207 agencies went out of business along with 4241 consultants
- 122 agencies have no website
- 49% recruitment consultants have no LinkedIn profile
- Only 85 consultants publish their Twitter link in their LinkedIn profile
- You are quite likely to be called David
The statistics for social media usage are, in my opinion, misleading because LinkedIn and Twitter are not complementary tools. But is this a misnomer? What can Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn offer?
Facebook is a familiar social networking site with, for many, the emphasis on social. The younger generation have grown up with Facebook and taking it to the next step to professional networking is a simple process. For someone who has not been in the job market for a long time this is not the case and the advanced applications that Facebook has may not be familiar. The Inside Job application allows users to be in a network of professionals. You can search for other professionals based on their place of employment, previous employment or where they have interviewed at. This gives you the ability to gain inside information on the company and therefore, perhaps, an interview advantage. The Professional Profile application is similar to a standard Facebook profile but it allows users to create a professional profile where they become part of a network. Users can post resumes and import recommendations from LinkedIn accounts.
LinkedIn is marketed as a professional social network and therefore is the most valuable site from an executive recruitment, search or executive job finding perspective. A well thought out entry will leverage your career for business contacts, capture references and profiles. Both increasing visibility and connectability are essential to rank well in LinkedIn. The more connections you make the more visibility you will have. As Guy Kawasaki wrote ‘People with more than 20 connections are 34 times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five’.
Twitter usage is growing exponentially but for the seasoned sceptic it is hard to be converted and a visit to the twitter job search page does nothing to allay the disquiet. The preponderance of weight -loss advertising alongside the job vacancies is not enticing.
In a nutshell, using only 140 characters (or 120 if you allow for retweets) employers and job sites post job openings or entreaties for a particular type of candidate and job seekers use Twitter to help facilitate their job search. Tips from the experts suggest that if you are going to promote yourself on Twitter make sure you have a professional looking avatar and include a link to an online CV in your bio using a tool such as visualCV. Twitter is incredibly time-consuming for the rewards it produces, which is perhaps helpful if you are underemployed but potentially disastrous if you are a time-poor recruiter or researcher.
CareerXroads www.careerxroads.com surveys large firms about where they find new hires. Since 2005 27% come from referrals, 12% job boards and the rest recruiters, company websites etc. The difference is that a lot more of these recommendations start with connections made through online networks.
Helen Fisher is the Communications Manager at Carmichael Fisher. hfisher@carmichaelfisher.com; www.carmichaelfisher.com
Improving Executive Effectiveness
May 11, 2010Effective time management is the key to accomplishing more each day and working more efficiently. Time management is an important skill that can be learned and improved by everyone. In this article are three strategies that can help you work more productively and bring a strong sense of direction to the tasks you set out to complete. If you take the time to practice these strategies, you also will find that you are not as overwhelmed by the number of projects you need to complete.
Plan Well. Planning your day is the first step to managing your work and helping prioritize those things that are most important to complete. Planning your day also helps you accomplish more and gives you more control over the responsibilities you have. At the end of each day, write a “To-do” list which itemizes those tasks and projects that you want to complete the next day. By making the list at the end of the day, you can review the day’s events and plan for the next day. Then, the next day, when you are ready to address your work, you already have your list ready to go. Keep a schedule of all of your daily activities to make certain that you do not miss deadlines or create schedules with meeting conflicts.
Limit Interruptions. Interruptions are probably the single, biggest time waster of your day. As you plan your day, include scheduled time for work projects that you are responsible for completing. Schedule two times in the day when you make and return telephone calls and emails-maybe before noon and during the last hour of your workday. Also, if you are a blacberry addict or a social networking butterfly limit the times you check the accounts. Turn the alerts off so that every new posting does not cause a distraction. If you have questions for a colleague, keep a list and then review the questions all at once rather than getting up from your desk every time a question arises. Set a time to review your work questions so that neither of you is being interrupted continuously. Interruptions in your day remove your concentration for the project at hand causing a need to refocus which wastes valuable time.
Stop Procrastinating. When you are planning your day’s activities, tackle the most difficult and least enjoyable tasks first. Get them out of the way, and the rest of the day will seem more enjoyable. Tackle one thing at a time and continue moving forward so you can enjoy the ability to cross finished tasks off your list. Always divide your large projects into manageable portions that are doable in a reasonable amount of time so that you are not overwhelmed by the size of the task. Think about the results not the process when you find yourself putting off a task that you don’t want to complete.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ann_Gatty
Boards still lack a feminine face
April 28, 2010
The following comment by Maureen Frank, CEO Emberin, was first published in BRW magazine.
The cry for more women on our ASX corporations boards has been around for quite a few years and the statistics have got worse. The reality is that the ASX Top 200 are held up to be indicative of business management in this country in general (not government, not community, not NFP – but business). Certainly some of the ASX list are Australia’s biggest employers and what is typically seen, is that the make-up of a corporation’s board can often be reflected in the senior management team and at the highest levels of the organisation as well.
So in a nutshell, it isn’t just the boards with virtually no women at the top, it is the organisation in general. What needs to happen is a more far reaching strategy than just quotas. There needs to be an understanding of the issues (the barriers women face, the unconscious bias of men), programs to help women move up the ladder and programs for men to be educated on how to counter this process.
But the men have got to believe there is a business reason for all of this. These measures will help to create culture shift in a far more rapid timeframe then waiting for a generation to pass. Look at Telstra – they have a gender diversity strategy, gender goals and KPI’s and educational and motivational mentoring programs for men and women on this issue. They understand the benefits, not just to their employees, but also to their customers, stakeholders and shareholders. It is no coincidence they have seen results in this area.
There is an economic reason to get more gender balance at the top and this is because organisations and the overall economy will benefit (asindicated by the latest Goldman Sachs report which said the GDP could increase 11-20%). The simple business case is that future Australian leaders need to “get” gender diversity and leadership and understand that there is an entire strategy required.
Change Hurts by Leo D’Angelo Fisher
April 13, 2010Executives find it easy to impose new technologies, systems and processes on their workplaces because the executive suite is generally spared the disruption and trauma normally associated with organisational change. Many executives believe that change is essential, inevitable, continuous – and for others to endure.
To the extent that executives are obliged to make some adjustments as a result of new technologies and systems they have mandated, the pain will be minimised by having assistants and obliging junior executives to act as their personal change trainers.
When it comes to organisational change, the more elaborate and painful the better. The change-management dictum is that there’s no point introducing change if it’s not going to be “revolutionary”, which is another word for convoluted. Sticking to effective work practices and adapting them to new circumstances is not the change-management way. Change is shorthand for reinventing the wheel.
Think back to the slavish fashions of total quality management, business processs re-engineering, just-in-time and enterprise resource planning – and the abiding image is of mayhem and waste. Even when the change was based on sound principles, the process inevitably gave way to overkill. Specialist consultants and their vain clients have wreaked havoc on the workplaces.
Managers like to be seen as champions of change (even if they’re better at introducing it than seeing it through). Boards like change as it suggests action by their senior management. Analysts like it because it’s about slashing costs. Too rarely is the question asked: is this change really necessary?
Change feeds on itself and it has a voracious appetitie. The benefits are rarely clear at the coalface and by the time the new system is found to be wanting, another change program will replace it. And the cycle begins again – that’s what they mean by continuous change.
Common deficiencies in change programs include too little explanation too little consultatation, too little training and too little time. The most damaging changes are those imposed on employees: more change war than change management. As companies emerge from the global financial crisis many will use change programs to position themselves. Their approach will reveal much about the mood of employers and the dynamics of Australian workplaces in the new decade.
Leo D’Angelo Fisher is a regular contributor to BRW where this article was originally printed on 11th March 2010, See www.brw.com.au
Employment and Remuneration after the GFC
April 6, 2010Below is an extract of an article, by Michael Markiewicz, CEO Carmichael Fisher, which originally appeared in the March edition of Investor Weekly.
Two years after the global financial crisis we have definitely returned to a market characterised by a shortage of skills and intense competition for the same people.
The foresighted and brave let less people go during the downturn, recognising the cost and time involved in rehiring. As the market improves those organisations should benefit from a degree of loyalty from the staff they have retained. However nothing is certain and in the recent bonus season there have been some generous packages once again being offered. Change of ownership overseas, government interventions, lack of commitment by an overseas parent to the local business (or as importantly, the perception of this by staff locally) and morale are all key contributors to reasons to stay or go.
However, improving bonus packages aside, the consolidation in wealth management continues with several high-profile takeovers. The platform market in Australia is now dominated by a handful of providers. Several boutique fund managers and hedge funds were forced to close or join forces as liquidity dried up. Institutional investors are increasingly looking at new and more cost-effective ways of allocating their funds.
In 2008, recruitment was comparatively flat in financial services, although not as dire as the media implied. The market started to improve from Easter 2009 and July to December were very active. August marked the first increase in job advertisements for 16 months. Companies looking to position themselves to be ahead of the competition started to approach candidates so they were ready to make offers after the bonus season and as the market picked up. From June/July last year, recruitment activity was brisk, but decision-making slow. Many companies started to look for key hires, but went through the process so cautiously that some candidates withdrew from the process. This is certainly not the case now. Companies are proactively reviewing and renewing their business plans/models and implementing growth strategies around these.
With regard to remuneration, when looking at some of the bigger and also mid-level moves in recent months there is little evidence of any major change from previous periods (perhaps a larger part of the package being tied to longer-term sustainable performance and profitability).
One factor which may reduce executive bargaining power is the consideration of people overseas – and not just returning expat Australians. The strength of the Australian economy, the continued negativity in the United Kingdom and other countries, the strength of the Australian dollar and the ever shrinking world make for a larger pool of potential candidates globally. All this activity comes against a backdrop of a rapidly increasing sector demanding ever more sophisticated skills.
Why You Should Treat Email Like A Pet Dog
March 17, 2010Written by Faye Hollands, Director of Outshine Consulting. www.outshineconsulting.com.au
1. Turn Your Email Alert Off
Don’t spend all day being interrupted every time a new email comes in! Turn your auto-alert off so that you can concentrate on the task at hand and increase your level of effectiveness, which in turn will save you precious time.
2. Pick Up The Phone
Sometimes it’s far more efficient to pick up the phone rather than spend time to-ing and fro-ing on email. Consider the situation and choose an appropriate form for communication, rather than always gravitating to email.
3. Unsubscribe
If you’ve subscribed to newsletters that you end up deleting week after week stop wasting time hitting the delete button and instead click on ‘unsubscribe’.
4. Be Clear
Use specific subject titles when you write an email so that the recipient knows what your message is about and responds accordingly. If you leave your subject line blank or are too vague your message might not be dealt with in an effective manner and you may end up having to follow up with another message or phone call.
5. Update Your Address Book
Make sure you add the email addresses of the people you want to receive emails from to your white list or address book so that you don’t have to waste time checking your junk folder or miss out on messages that you wanted to receive.
6. Spring-Clean Daily
Your inbox is not a database or filing system – make sure you check, read and clear out your emails daily where possible and only handle each message once. Doing a ‘quick check’ of your emails and then coming back to them later for action wastes time – open it, read it, action it and delete it. No exceptions.
7. Pick Your Time
Don’t spend precious time wading through your inbox when your energy levels are at their highest – deal with your emails later on and focus on your ‘high end tasks’ when you’re raring to go! For most people email is an administrative part of their job rather than a task that contributes directly to their objectives so it’s important to allocate your energy accordingly.
8. Set Up Templates
If there are emails that you regularly write set up a template and save it to your drafts folder so that you can cut and paste the text rather than spending time writing the same email out over and over again.
9. Choose Your Words Wisely
Email is a fantastic tool but it can also be very dangerous when the wrong words are used and our message is misconstrued. Remember – your words create your world, so think carefully before you hit the send button, and if in doubt, refer to point #2 – pick up the phone!
10. Check And Double Check Your Addressee’s
Before you hit send ALWAYS check your ‘To’ list – there are far too many horror stories out there of people who have accidentally received emails ABOUT themselves, and sensitive information falling into the wrong hands. Email can be your best friend, but it can also be your enemy when you suddenly have to sort out a very messy ‘stray’ email scenario. Check, check and double check!
fayehollands@outshineconsulting.com
© 2010 Outshine Consulting Pty Ltd. All rights reserveWritten by
