Capp’s five-step approach to strengths-based recruitment
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Nicky Garcea
Supporting Young Women into the World of Work
Posted by: Nicky Garcea & Alex Linley
This International Women’s Day, we believe that there’s no better time than now to explore the role that we can all play in encouraging and supporting young women to find their way in the world of work.
Here are our five top tips for how you can do so:
1. Help young women to identify their strengths – after many years at school, young women can be forgiven for thinking of their achievements only in terms of academic grades. Helping them early on to see that their strengths are more varied than this is key. Knowing their strengths will help them develop their authenticity and build their confidence as they start to explore the world of work.
2. Talk about work – at Capp, we see a marked difference in the graduates and school leavers that we meet. There are some whose parents or family members have spoken to them about work and the jobs that they do, and others who haven’t had so much of this exposure. Developing a level of commercial awareness at an early age can be a real differentiator when it comes to a first interview.
3. Make connections – the chances for business-focused work experience are becoming more rare, as are the opportunities for weekend work. Never before has it been more key that we offer young people – and particularly young women – the chance to get into business and build their network. What a difference it would make if we could each make five work connections for a female school leaver so she can start building her career network and contacts now.
4. Mock interviews and assessment centres – it is often the case that women can feel alienated and perform less well during the selection process. Creating familiarity with different types of assessments can be valuable. Find examples of psychometrics on line, share interview questions you have been asked, and encourage the reading of financial papers and the business press.
5. Prepare the ‘work mindset’ – with a growing global emphasis on employability skills, it is clear that many school leavers and graduates lack the vital business skills they need for their work experience or in their first job. Describing the attributes of the people you work with who are highly engaged and productive can help job seekers hear what the best employees are like. Share how these people manage their profiles at work, what they do, and what they don’t. In particular, prepping young women to be prepared to work hard and learn from everything they do, and the mistakes that they make, will create a solid foundation for them to build on.
We urge you today - and for the weeks, months and years that follow – to consider how you might help a young woman that you know to realise her full career potential. We hope our five top tips for doing so provide a useful starting point.
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Building Bridges for Female Social Mobility
Posted by: Nicky Garcea
I am the first person in my family to attend university. I also attended a then ‘newer’ university, the University of the West of England, Bristol. According to government terminology, I am a ‘first generation’ university student. I know amongst my colleagues at Capp and our clients that I am not alone.
If I were to apply for a graduate programme now, in 2013, my ‘first generation’ status along with my ‘non red brick’ university makes me a quirky applicant. Quite probably, for some graduate programmes I would be overlooked on this basis alone.
For some years, I might have hid the fact I went to an old polytechnic, but these days I am starting to fully appreciate the role that it has played in offering me an education for life and a stepping stone into employment. I would also hope that I, together with many of my colleagues and peers, will also be able to show younger generations that you don’t have to have had a privileged background in order to get on.
As we approach International Women’s Day on the 8th March, we will no doubt be presented with many lists of inspirational women. Whilst I applaud almost anything that raises the profile of women, the compliation of these lists fascinates me. I am particularly interested in the subliminal messages that they send out to younger women and emerging female talent.
This year Radio 4 published for the first time, the Woman’s Hour Power List. Much was made of this list, which was generated from audience nominations and vetted by an expert panel.
Now, I am not suggesting that, aged 16 and attending Beacon Community College, that Radio 4 was my station of choice. Even so, had I stumbled across this list, it would have said to me, albeit implicitly and subliminally, ‘If you are not from a rich family, or if you haven’t attended the most elite universities in the US or England, you won’t become a woman of power’.
Please check out the educational and family backgrounds of these unquestionably accomplished women. While in no way is it my intention to detract from what they have achieved, I want to flag simply the implicit, subliminal message that their selection conveys: ‘If you’re not one of us, you won’t be able to make it.’
I’m absolutely sure this is the last thing that Woman’s Hour wanted to convey, but such is the implicit, often unnoticed impact of subliminal messaging like this.
At Capp, we recently asked over 200 women to share examples of their female and male role models. As you might have predicted, responses such as Hillary Clinton and Nelson Mandela were often included.
However, what is possibly most interesting is the number of women who list their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, managers, work colleagues and friends as their most impactful and inspirational role models. Several women noted how their role model had been their first manager, or a leader who took a chance on them, helping them into their first corporate role.
It is clear that the women are most influenced not just by the accolades of the accomplished few, but even more by the actions and behaviour of those with whom they have direct contact. This should be our focus as we approach International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day this year.
How can we collectively create cultures, homes, businesses and societies of people who seek to be role models for our youth?
With both International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day later this week, we’ll be turning our attention on The Capp Blog to how we can make this happen.
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Why Competency-based Recruitment Misses Talented Graduates
Posted by: Nicky Garcea
“This latest research confirms that taking part in work placements or internships whilst at university is now just as important as getting a 2:1 or a first-class degree,” says Martin Birchall, managing director of High Fliers Research, quoting their latest research.
High Fliers latest research report, The Graduate Market in 2013, reflects responses from recruiters from UK’s top 100 degree-level employers. Half of the recruiters surveyed warned that graduates who had no previous work experience at all are unlikely to be successful in their selection processes.
This is hardly a surprise when competency-based recruitment depends so critically on candidates being able to provide “an example of where you have done this before.”
If ever there was a case of needing experience to get the job, and needing the job to get the experience, it’s competency-based interviews. Competency-based interviews rest heavily on past experience.
As a result, it is easy to see how graduates who do not have a wealth of past work experience or job-specific examples, will often be sifted out of a large recruiter’s application process as early as the application stage.
These experiences, confirmed by the High Fliers research, clearly point to a need for both graduates and recruiters to take a fresh look at graduate recruitment.
After all, if every graduate candidate is simply regurgitating the same competency response that they picked up as a model answer from Wikijobs, that isn’t going to help any recruiter sift the talent from the rest. Equally as important, it isn’t going to help graduates get into a job they will love.
Thankfully, there is another way.
For many years now, we have been helping graduate recruiters (and other recruiters) use strengths-based recruitment to assess the candidate more holistically, by taking account of their energy and motivation, as well as their past performance.
Yes, there is still a role for what people have done before, but this isn’t the only criterion, or even the main criterion, by which they are judged.
Our experience of helping major organisations to recruit thousands of graduates for their strengths, rather than being constrained by looking only in the rearview mirror of what they have done in the past, is changing the face of graduate recruitment.
Companies like Barclays, Ernst & Young, Nestlé and Aviva are leading the way, with many others now starting to follow.
Strengths-based recruitment delivers the right talent for the right roles. In doing so, it depends not just on what people have done, or even what they can do, but more on what they love to do.
By getting graduates into the work they love, graduate recruiters will be building their future talent pipelines at the same time as making a significant social contribution, opening their doors to a wider talent pool than just the fortunate few who have “done it before”.
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A New Way for New Year’s Resolutions in 2013
Posted by: Nicky Garcea & Alex Linley
One in four New Year’s resolutions are broken in the first week, that is 7 days – at most – since they were made. A New Year’s resolution is a new ‘intent’. It’s been shown that people who commit explicitly to a goal - particularly if it’s written down – are more likely to achieve those goals.
But for whatever reason, that doesn’t appear to hold as well when it comes to New Year’s resolutions.
One of the issues that crops up with New Year’s resolutions is that, by their very nature, they tend to focus on things that we are not yet doing. Or things that we are doing and want to stop doing. This is likely to mean that we are either trying to change a habit, or we’re trying to build on a weakness, neither of which is easy.
And further, as strengths psychologists, we know that when people try to build on weaknesses, they rarely succeed. True progress and performance only comes through strengths.
Similarly, the issue with changing a habit is that habits exist for very good reasons. They have come about because they are shortcuts, the natural ways in which we have come to do things. They are effortless, they feel natural, they don’t require us to think, to plan, to change.
As a result, staying with our existing habits is pretty much the opposite of what we’re trying to do when we introduce a New Year’s resolution.
This New Year, there is an opportunity to make your resolutions differently. With over 55,000 now having completed Realise2, our online strengths identification and development tool, we know that no two people have an identical profile.
Our individual strengths, and their myriad possible combinations and dynamics when combined with each other, provide rich ground for us to explore in making our New Year’s resolutions for 2013.
As you do so, ask yourself these three simple questions to create strong resolutions that will make the most of your unique strengths:
1. Which of my realised strengths most readily relate to my New Year’s resolutions? (E.g., Curiosity will help with taking a professional course, Persistence will be more use in helping you to quit smoking, and Adventure will be powerful in inspiring you to strike out with a new career direction).
2. Which of my unrealised strengths can I use more to help me achieve my New Year’s resolutions? (The opportunity you have here is to create new habits by using strengths you haven’t used so much before).
3. What are the strengths dynamics that might help or hinder me in what I want to achieve? (What are the links between strengths that will turbo-charge these strengths in combination? Are there dynamics that might get in the way of you delivering your best performance? This is where a deeper dive into the unique potential of your Realise2 profile comes into its own).
Work on using your strengths more to achieve your goals (in this case, your 2013 New Year’s resolutions). You’ll find that you are happier, more confident, more resilient, less stressed and more likely to be effective in getting what you want.
As remarkable as it is, these are all benefits that follow from using your strengths more, as documented across a series of studies from ourselves and others.
So, to make 2013 your year, the best advice is to work on achieving your New Year’s resolutions through harnessing the performance power of your strengths.
And, for the technophiles amongst you, a bonus: Consider if you can use one of the best apps for the most common things we try to do around this time every year…
Happy New Year!
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Using Strengths and Positive Psychology This Festive Season
Posted by: Nicky Garcea
Christmas and New Year, for some, is a time for celebration and jubilation. For others, it will be a period of reflection, sadness or stress. As I approach my first Christmas with my son, I am reminded of how positive psychology and strengths have played a part in his first year, and how both will feature in our Christmas.
Mental snap shots: This year like no other, I have been taking mental photographs and collecting my positive resources. I find I can pull out these positive mental images during points of the day which cause my tension or apprehension. Many of you will be familiar with the work of Barbara Fredrickson and her approach to building positive emotional resources. I know this Christmas, which I will spend with my 10 month old son and 89 year old Nan, will provide me with some great chances to build up my mental image bank. What mental photographs will you take?
Creating rituals: As I talk to my friends who are also approaching their child’s first Christmas, they share with me their childhood memories and the new rituals they are forming as a family. Even for those of you who will work over the Christmas period, I suspect you will squeeze in at least one of your favourite Christmas rituals. What will it be?
Savouring moments: Christmas, even in years when we may have experienced loss, provides us with moments to savour. This holiday period seems always to be filled with sensory explosions, smells, tastes, sounds and things to touch! Taking time to stop and savour these moments, helps to remind us that pleasure can come from the simplest of gifts. How will you stay mindful and savour more moments this Christmas?
Pulling on our strengths: I am an anticipator. I am already conjuring up some of the potential highs and lows of the week ahead. I am currently of the view that the Realise2 strength of Reconfiguration is possibly the most helpful strength over Christmas. This strength means that you can take pleasure in plans changing and can re-arrange resources at a moment’s notice. Which of your strengths do you think you will pull on most this Christmas?
Happy New Year: It is scientifically impossible to be happy all of the time. It is also proven that you can have too much of a good thing. However, focusing on our strengths and being realistically optimistic is good for us. It is sometimes easier when we’re under pressure to forget the impact of focusing on what is going well in our lives, losing sight of the benefit this has on our minds and health. As we venture into the New Year, how might you increase your focus on your strengths, the aspects of your life that you most treasure, and the relationships that you want to nurture?
Doing each of these will make for a Happier New Year. Here’s to doing them in 2013, and beyond.
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Why Men Want a Manager Who is Competitive
Posted by: Nicky Garcea & Emma Trenier
At a time when organisations are often reluctant to provide gender-differentiated development, it is interesting to see some notable differences between men and women in their responses to the Capp Ideal Manager Survey.
Our Ideal Manager Survey showed that men consistently seek one strength from their managers more than women do. This one strength is Competitive.
So why might men want to work for a manager strong in Competitive? Multiple gender studies show that men like to compete, they are confident in their ability to compete, they are less risk averse and less sensitive to critical feedback than their female colleagues.
Researchers seeking to support a ‘nature’ argument for why men are competitive offer suggestions relating to evolutionary studies. One such researcher is Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield.
In his book Manliness, Mansfield states that men are innately better equipped to be aggressive and compete. In contrast, women are seen as having an innate ability to empathise and communicate.
Supporters of the ‘nurture’ debate show that women are most frequently taught to cooperate whereas men (often through their involvement in sport) are encouraged to compete from a young age. Evidently both arguments are controversial and inconclusive.
The interesting question for us, however, is what our male direct reports hope to gain from this strength.
When asked this question, men state that they hope their manager’s strength in Competitive will result in the following:
1. Working for a winning team – managers with Competitive are described as managers who like to win and develop winning teams. This idea of working for a winning team is described by men as providing a greater sense of accomplishment and job security.
2. Clear direction and contribution – managers with Competitive are thought to provide a clear sense of how the contributions of their direct reports relate to the overall business success.
3. Contagious success – working for a manager with Competitive is believed to offer more opportunities for profile raising and recognition. Being associated with a successful manager is considered to enhance an individual’s positive reputation.
4. Greater investment – managers with a strength in Competitive will categorically agree that ‘losing hurts’. The determination, therefore, to win and succeed can mean that managers invest heavily in the success of their teams and their direct reports.
5. More opportunities – in a business context success often breeds opportunity. This might come in the form of new and interesting projects or the chance to be involved in creating a successful product or launch.
All strengths can be overplayed and the manager with Competitive who takes this to the extreme might be described as ‘focused on nothing but winning, creating unhelpful internal rivalry between individuals and teams and distracted by their own success.’
Guiding and applying the strength of Competitive in service of winning the ‘right things’ is perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn here.
At a time when manager research often concludes that managers need to be emotionally intelligent and demonstrate ‘soft skills’, this research provides a useful reminder that there are always other lenses which can be applied to how managers can lead. There is certainly not just one way to manage.
Download Capp’s Performance Manager White Paper to find out more about what people want from their managers.
You can also read more about what women want from their managers in Nicky Garcea and Emma Trenier’s recent blog, published on Changeboard.
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Help Female Staff Excel at Work – Changeboard
Posted by: Nicky Garcea
I thought readers of The Capp Blog would be interested to read this post on the management strategies that our research shows are most effective for women, as published recently in Changeboard:
“Men and women like to be managed in different ways, but in a climate of equality in the workplace, how is this possible? As the director of Capp (a global organisational psychology firm), I worked with Emma Trenier (consulting psychologist) to look at what women want from their managers, and what can be done to address their needs.
Recent research conducted by Capp has highlighted a number of key management behaviours, which make a real difference to women. These largely focus on attitude, relationships, and are not just about getting the job done…”
Read the complete blog on Changeboard.
Follow the link for more information on Capp’s Female Leaders Programme.
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Celebrating Female Leaders Month
Posted by: Nicky Garcea and Alex Linley (as part of Capp’s Female Leaders Month, June 2012)
As we come to end of Female Leaders Month we hope you have enjoyed our blogs. We know from your feedback that the role of harnessing your power bases, realising your strengths and overcoming subliminal sexism has struck chords with many of you.
Our commitment to developing the Generation F of future female talent does not end here.
We are delighted as this month draws to a close to be able to share with you the launch of our Female Leaders Programme. This programme has been designed to harness the unique and impactful combination of strengths and power base development, helping female leaders to maximise the opportunities that are open to them by building on the capabilities they have.
In July, we will also be launching our Women in Leadership survey, designed to explore more about many of the issues that have been raised by our blogs and your comments throughout Female Leaders Month. We hope you will join us in completing this survey and help us further shape the women in leadership debate.
To receive regular female leadership updates, you are also invited to follow Nicky on Twitter, @NickyGarcea
As we sign off for the month, we have 7 Top Tips for Female Leaders, that summarise the advice we have shared across Female Leaders Month:
1. Take confidence from your strengths: know what you’re good at and what energises you – and use it!
2. Maximise your unrealised strengths: align them to your future career goals and aspirations
3. Harness your power: influence decisions and outcomes to help you get what you want
4. Be courageous: with your choice of mentor and sponsor, don’t shy away from seeking someone with status
5. Think before you speak: eradicate unnecessary apologetic language from your daily interactions and particularly in meetings
6. Tilt more than balance: say yes to the things that draw on your strengths and reduce the time you spend on non-critical weaknesses
7. Hold out your hand: through your behaviours and actions, you can play your part to open the door for the female talent of tomorrow.
We hope that the themed blogs of Female Leaders Month have inspired you to do more to celebrate and develop female talent. Watch out for future blogs on these issues on The Capp Blog, and please share your comments and experiences by using the Comment function below.
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It’s Time to Stand Up for the ‘F’ Word
Posted by: Nicky Garcea, as part of Capp’s Female Leaders Month (June 2012)
My grandmother, Joy, is 89. She is a fierce advocate of women voting; she also believes you should never tell your husband who you voted for. She remembers the suffragettes, she remembers women starving and dying for the vote, she is not afraid to call herself a feminist.
Today, things have come a long way from the early years of what my grandmother remembers. Personally, it wasn’t until I took my first consulting role that I started to notice that there were fewer women in the organisations I visited. One Sunday evening in the business class lounge at Charles de Gaulle it dawned on me, ‘I am the only woman, other than air stewardess, boarding this flight’.
I can’t accept any more that things are the same for women in business as they are for men. I am committed to shamelessly supporting and nurturing female talent. The following blog, published in Training Journal, asks whether it is time for more of us to stand up for the ‘F’ word.
When Annie Lennox addressed business leaders on the centenary of international women day on 8 March 2011, she asked all the feminists to stand. The room’s response was stillness, few women stood and supported ‘feminism’. Despite the support for feminism growing internationally at a political level, it is something which UK female business leaders seek to disassociate themselves from.
Frequently, women are apprehensive when offered female specific development, reluctant at the thought of attending a programme that might label them as ‘different’ or that would single them out. So there is a growing tension in organisations between wanting to develop women and support their progression, while at the same time not doing it in a way that is overtly ‘feminine’ or ‘feminist’.
The danger of not developing emerging female talent is that nothing will change and the workforce will not evolve. In Karren Brady’s autobiography Strong Woman, Brady references how on International Women’s Day each year, she attends an event hosted at Downing Street and typically she sees the same faces year on year.
This happens in business, and is something we see time and time again. In Capp’s Female Leaders Programme, we have a ‘Learn from the Leader’ speaker slot, and in most organisations where this is run, there are only one or two senior females who can fill this slot!
So what can we do? How can we change this?
Firstly, I think we have to know the facts. Male employees are still leading the way in personal development and career progression, while little support is given to younger women to advance the career ladder. Despite more women graduating with MBA’s, far fewer actually make it into work. And, with many companies and public sector organisations currently re-organising, it is the female talent pipeline being hit the hardest.
In difficult economic times, budgets to support female talent development are either non-existent or are being significantly squeezed, but this shouldn’t be a business’ excuse for doing nothing. A combination of well-informed leaders and managers and strengths-based self-support for emerging female leaders can be a successful development fusion.
In our view, three groups of people can champion female talent development:
Leaders:
Specifically set out to sponsor the development of several of the emerging female leaders in your organisation. Be aware of the women around you that would benefit from your mentorship or sponsorship. Let them know why you will sponsor them and what they can expect from you.
Recent research by Harvard University found that women consistently seek out mentors and sponsors of less power and status than their male colleagues, instantly limiting their access to the most senior individuals in an organisation. So the more senior you are, the lower you might consider reaching down into your talent pipeline; it will have the longest sustainable impact.
Managers:
Be aware that women will typically behave differently than their male colleagues when it comes to approaching their development. Research conducted by the Institute of Leadership and Management on senior leaders, found that half of women surveyed experienced feelings of self-doubt about their performance and career, but only 31 per cent of men reported the same. The research also revealed that women tend not to put themselves forward for promotion: 20 per cent of men said they would apply for a role despite only partially meeting its job description, compared to only 14 per cent of women. Couple this with studies from Aston University which highlight that women are more apologetic in meetings and that managers have a critical role to play in developing women’s confidence and offering regular feedback on influencing styles and profile.
Women:
Know your strengths and power.
Early in our careers we often can get bogged down ‘gap filling’, focusing on weaknesses. Although critical areas for development shouldn’t be ignored, this shouldn’t be to the detriment of excelling the development of strengths.
Be aware that investing in developing your strengths will impact your confidence, self-esteem and capacity to achieve your goals. Similarly, studies have also shown that when women understand their different power bases, they are better able to use them than their male colleagues.
This ultimately will mean that although business is more competitive, strengths and power base development offer you a winning combination for success.
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Can Only Superwomen Make it to the Top?
Posted by: Nicky Garcea, as part of Capp’s Female Leaders Month (June 2012)
“You just gave your power away.”
I can remember being mortified the first time someone said this to me. Upset because they were right, and embarrassed because I was oblivious to what I had done. Researching and studying power bases has made me far more attuned to the behavioural ticks that can trip me up and undermine my leadership.
Like many women, I was a serial apologiser: “I’m sorry”, “I might be wrong, but …”, “Forgive me if I’m not right …”, “I don’t mean to…” The apologies just tripped of my tongue without me even realising what I was doing.
It was actually the combined efforts and forthright feedback from my Dad, and fellow Capp Director, Alex, who supported me in kicking my ‘sorry habit’. I now know there is more to power than just reclaiming what we give away, so much more.
I hope you read my Financial Mail blog and find there are many power bases that you can use to make yourself stronger, and recognise also that sometimes you really can be Superwoman on your way to the top. The blog is published on the Financial Mail Women’s Forum - I hope you enjoy it!
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