• If I leave this job, will my dissatisfaction go away?
• If I find another job, what would need to be different to reignite my enthusiasm?

It’s really important when answering these questions that you:

• Know yourself
• Identify what you love most in your work
• Identify the type of people and work environment that inspires you
• Are realistic in your expectations
• Have a long term career goal, not a next job approach
• Are prepared to go after and commit to what you want

This sort of analysis and planning shapes your career plan in a way that removes emotion and restores objectivity.

Inspire your team: Act as a role model for your employees or teammates, inspire them and help them identify what they are passionate about. Provide a project that will allow them to explore these areas.

Provide feedback: Make sure that adequate feedback is given, this is essential to keep people engaged, focused and motivated. Use your feedback sessions as a way to highlight the positive and plan what’s next.

Offer training: Most employees, whether they are starting out in the industry or have worked in it for a while, will be looking to sharpen their skills. Training is a mutually beneficial exercise. It allows you to harness the best skills from your team and they will be more hirable in the future.

Listen: Many employees can feel that their suggestions can go unheard. Really take the time to appreciate new ideas and implement them when appropriate. Doing so will encourage your employees to think innovatively and in a more productive way.

Recognise a job well done: Take the time to recognise when someone in your team has done an exceptional job. This does not need to cost any money, however can do a lot for the culture of your organisation. Simple suggestions include: sending the person a hand written thank you card or creating a newsletter to highlight the “star” players of the month.

Like attracts like: The people who work for your company, with industry and corporate regard, are your most important source of attraction. It is important to make sure that your high performers engage their personal network and quality recruiters with insight to “identify and hire” from a select talent pool because they are looking for progressive and like-minded achievers.

Don’t assume engagement: Your high performers will thrive on stimulation. They draw value from recognition and a highly dynamic environment. If these factors aren’t in place, your best performers can quickly become disenchanted. In a recent study by Corporate Executive board, one in three high achievers feel disengaged from their company.

Pay attention: Even negative attention or feedback is ranked over no attention at all. In a study by Tom Rath and Jim Harter of “Well Being – The Five Essential Elements’, the most disengaged group of workers were those who simply were not receiving any attention from their superior.

Earn their attention from the beginning: The first 120 days for a new employee is critical for them in terms of ability to adapt to their new organisation and build a relationship with their manager with longevity.

Place an emphasis on performance reviews: Top talent want to know that their work has been recognised, and without adequate feedback or an effective review process, individuals may join the dots and assume a lack of career development also.

Cut the red tape: The number one reason (Forbes, 14.12.2011) your employees can become disenchanted with your company is bureaucracy. Having rules that make no sense and too many layers masking the clear messages of leadership, is the quickest way of repelling them.

Listen and take on board your surrounds: The more attention you pay to what is being said and for that matter, what’s not being said, the less likely you are to form inaccurate assumptions or race to action and make needless mistakes early on. Such mistakes can often dent positive impressions of your professional brand.

Shine the light and share the love: Build a troupe of allies not enemies. Don’t diminish but acknowledge the work of predecessors. Build relationships based on recognition of previous good work and then identify areas for ongoing improvement.

Be sincere and consistent in your undertaking: Anyone can spot the sharp rise in tone, the over-rehearsed communication or the sheer lack of emotion in insincere dealings. Be genuine and consistent in your dealings with others and you will reap the dividend of loyalty and goodwill.

Be helpful and attentive: Take advantage of any opportunity to help out. Getting involved, collaborating and supporting others is the most natural form of orientation to any new workplace. After all, the best way to showcase who and what you are personally and professionally is through your work and from there the magic will happen.

This is despite the fact that in 2011, only 6% of employers conducted cultural fit assessments of appointees.

Cultural fit amongst a wide range of industries, including highly skilled roles like project management is becoming the sought-after factor. Soft skills are becoming just as important, if not more so than a candidate’s technical capability.

So why is cultural fit becoming more valued over the skills of an employee? According to Mark Murphy, US author of Hiring for Attitude, your attitude, not skill-set is a better predictor of your success within the workplace.

In a study of over 20,000 new hires, around 46% were let go due to poor attitude and lack of cultural fit. In contrast only 11% were let go due to lack of skill-set.  On the home front, perhaps the recent forced redundancy program by Toyota is the beginning of more to come in this area.

Although the candidate’s ability of applying their skills can affect the success of an organisation, one’s lack of cultural fit can affect the company on a day-to-day basis. The culture of an organisation is a guide for relationships between colleagues, management, suppliers and a host of associates and partners and displays the professionalism upheld organisation-wide.

Skills can be developed and are ever evolving, whereas an employee’s soft skills will likely be more enduring and difficult to adjust as the organisation grows and evolves.

Investing the time into identifying candidates that are culturally aligned will pay dividends in the long run. Doing so will create an organisation with higher productivity, evidenced by a positive and reaffirmed culture for all to see and experience.

So how can you find the right person? International assessment providers SHL has found that up to one third of candidates misrepresent themselves during the application and interview process. Reference checking and background interviews, with 75% of employers using this method, are imperative in countering false representation.

However, in reality this may not prove to be so simple.

Before and during the interview process, it is important to determine:

1. What you need in the appointee i.e. professional ability and a personal values-set that is aligned to your corporate culture.
2. When interviewing prospective employees, base your behavioural questions around the areas that you would like them to excel in.  Make sure that you can clearly see evidence of achievement.  Model your questions on existing high performers in your company.
3. Make sure you have a structured interview guide, filled with 7-8 insightful questions to ask at interview.  Follow up reference checks should also contain questions that are tailored around the opportunity and areas of potential concern surrounding each preferred candidate. If you don’t have one to hand, ask your HR department to prepare one or seek assistance from a quality recruitment agency.

Final note: Although high performers may differ from each organisation, there are five key characteristics to look for when identifying an exceptional candidate: They achieve results, influence others, display leadership quality, seek continuous learning and can demonstrate functional competence in their field.

We realise that not every work environment is perfect, some managers are plain hard work and no matter what your contribution, sometimes it’s never going to be enough. In this circumstance find a co-worker or close associate who can vouch for your performance. Beneficially these sorts of referees can also attest to professional resilience and positivity  in the workplace where your endeavour shines through in the absence of management rigour or environmental certainty.  This sort of reference, although hard earned, is worth its weight in gold.

The quality of the reference is also important. At Blue Sky Careers in most cases, we find referees to be honest, objective and very fair minded in what they have to say. Professional respect in a reference flows naturally where good relations and powerful performance has flowed. The alternative is the reluctant referee unwilling to answer probing questions which begs the question why volunteer them at all? Offering an alternative that is too distanced from your daily work is also pointless as they can’t authoritatively comment on performance.  Bottom line is that lack lustre references create doubt and derail applications so our guidance is to seek referees with care making sure they are well briefed and not put on the spot because a poor testimonial cannot be undone.

So how do you make sure that your professional references are ready to go?

Think outside the box: When listing references, professional endorsement can be sought from a manager, co-worker or subordinate, or indeed a longstanding supplier or client. As long as your reference group can provide insight into the value of your professional currency, recruiters will happily accept them.

Know what you want to achieve: Don’t seek out the easiest referee, rather choose appropriate career sponsors who have professional standing, industry experience and real insight that will benefit your application. Referee choice is vital as they help cement your prospective employer’s impression of you.

Keep in touch: If you would like to list someone as a referee, pay them the courtesy of letting them know. Brief them on your plans and applications in play and make sure they are singing from the same hymn sheet.  Whether successful or not, express your gratitude and keep them up to date.

Selecting the friendly work colleague to speak highly of you is fine but quality recruitment consultancies will always seek a superior or management reference(s) for greater insight into your capabilities as an employee.

To counter potential negativity, a concerning developing trend is for fake references to be purchased by job seekers according to Human Capital Magazine. Although more prevalent in the US, believe it or not fake references can also be purchased in Australia.

At Blue Sky Careers, our years of experience have taught us to dig further into a candidate’s application when advocating for their employment with our clients. A lack of due diligence can prove costly for our reputation in the long run and that’s not a chance we’re willing to take.

“When applying to Blue Sky Careers, we never accept a written reference at face value. No matter where the referee is located in the world, we take the time to speak to them personally or email them a series of tailored questions so that we can validate the quality of the applicant we are representing” Roisin Duffy.

It’s a small world after all: With the increase of sites like Facebook and Linkedin, a mismatched employment history soon becomes visible to a recruiter vetting new candidates.

Be proactive: Rather than faking performance, constructively use your time to build up meaningful relationships with an advocate group that will jump at the chance to vouch for your exemplary performance.

Arrogance on the other hand is an inadequate self-image parading as confidence. It is manifested in self-importance and in some respects a disregard for others. While it is really important at interview to recognize and be proud of your contribution to shaping and delivering important projects and initiatives, remember there is no ‘I’ in team. Humbly acknowledge the work of others, the support of leadership or the resources made available to you to achieve those outcomes.  Real champions never walk alone.