I've moved

I'm no longer on Blogger, but you can find all this content plus more on my new blog here (www.recruiterlearnstocode.com).

Are You Considering A Career Change

Gone are the days when a job was for life.

No longer is it the norm to find an employer post-education, and serve them faithfully until retirement. According to an article in Forbes, 91% of Millennials expect to stay in a job for less than three years.  It isn’t just Millennials, either. According to figures cited in the Wall Street Journal, changing jobs every few years has become the norm.

But are we just changing jobs more, or changing our whole career direction, too?

You can find the rest of this post on the Zealify blog.

The Culture of Feedback, and How to Create it

Originally published on the Cloudreach website. For those of you who don't know Cloudreach, we are a Global Cloud Enabler based in London.

If you make it your business to follow content about culture or recruitment, you may have come across this thoughtful article by Russell Abdo about the culture of feedback Medallia have created, originally posted on Glassdoor.

If you didn’t read it: a few key points. Abdo explains how enjoyable it is to work at Medallia, because each employee has a voice and say in the direction the company takes. He makes the valid point that difficult conversations about each other’s performance are an absolute must in order to make the changes happening in your organisation real and valuable. He sums it up well when he says:

“change is inevitable — it’s how we act on it that defines who we are"

This theme really resonated with us here at Cloudreach.

In 2009, Cloudreach was two bright guys with a great idea and a lot of passion, talking in a pub in London. Today, we are over 200 strong, with offices across the globe. It’s safe to say that a lot has happened in a short space of time. In fast-growth companies, change is persistent and swift, and dealing with that change decisively yet gracefully can make or break you as an organisation.

Enabling a culture where feedback is welcomed, expected, and acted upon, is incredibly important.

If you’ve ever worked a typical student job serving coffee or folding napkins, you’ll probably have witnessed first hand an environment that could be far more efficient if management listened to the people doing the day-to-day work on the ground. It makes me a bit sick to think back to the resource waste and customer dissatisfaction that perpetuated in many of my holiday jobs. I firmly believe that the principles of speaking up and, most importantly, listening are vital whether you are a small hospitality business, or a large enterprise.

If you are management level or above, you’re likely extremely busy. Much as you might want to be everywhere at once, experience your company running first hand, once it reaches a certain size you simply can’t do that any longer. Your people on the ground can, and they will be the ones most likely to notice day to day changes for the better or for the worse. If you encourage them to speak up, and to pass on their thoughts, recommendations and feedback to you and to their colleagues, then you make everybody responsible for safeguarding your culture and your performance. And the results? Better output, slicker processes and a culture where employees are happier because they know their opinions matter and are valued.

So how do you create this?

There is an excellent article by Ed Batista (a Leadership coach) published in The Harvard Review called “Building a Feedback-Rich Culture”. If you’re looking for pointers and practical advice, this is a great start. In particular, he notes that taking the time to give positive feedback is just as key as giving constructive criticism. That’s something I’ve really noticed is built into the culture at Cloudreach; in our weekly company meeting every team is represented and called upon to highlight great work from their team members. Is is not abnormal for our founders to personally ping individuals a word of thanks for a job well done, and this is a great thing.

Another thing Batista mentions in his article is the importance of gaging a colleague’s personality and mood before approaching them with negative feedback. Whilst everybody who wants to improve should welcome constructive advice, there are ways and means of delivering this best which will depend on the individual and situation. Ideally, your aim is to create a culture where feedback isnormal, so that everybody trusts that their feedback will be heard, and everybody welcomes feedback being given.      

The problem with being Global and/or Distributed

Giving good feedback, and receiving it gracefully, is easier said than done. It becomes even more difficult when your team is cross-cultural or distributed.

In the first case, you may have lexical differences, and the ‘language barrier’ could lead to misunderstandings or mis-delivery. I used to run invoicing for a company comprising mainly Portuguese employees, and I remember one of them telling me during a particularly tense pay run, “Charlotte, you have to stop asking peopleif they’d mind sending their invoice to you. Tell them to send it! In Portuguese these things are taken very literally - if they do mind, then they will think sending it is optional!”. Stereotypically British and overly delicate back then, I’d thought my feedback on their promptness was tactful, and their lack of response was hugely frustrating and confusing to me. This kind of misunderstanding is far from uncommon - if you’re interested in the idea check out this article about cross-cultural communication.

Besides potential language barriers, with a distributed team you then have the added problem of which channel you use to communicate. I’ve personally used messaging services including Google Hangouts, Slack and Telegram extensively, as the main and most convenient method of daily communication. Whilst I love the ease of having access to your whole team at your fingertips, sometimes only a conversation over the phone, or even in person, will do. It’s incredibly difficult to control how you come across over messaging services. As this recent article in The Telegraph explains, there is an informal text etiquette of which many people may not be aware. Even an ill-judged full stop may make your comment sound demanding or aggressive! If you’re in a rush or not concentrating fully, your feedback might easily come across differently to how you intend.

What’s the solution?

Well, there could be many, but at Cloudreach a fundamental aspect that’s helped us build a culture of feedback has been our internal Cloudy principles, in particular these two:

Respect the Individual and Individuality

A basic recognition that we are not the same, that’s it’s a good thing, and a reminder to be sensitive to people’s individuality in our interactions. This mantra also encompasses the idea that each other’s differing perspectives can be very useful for our own personal development, and to therefore be receptive to feedback.

Be easy to work with

This serves as a reminder to be receptive to other people’s ideas and advice. In a previous post on Building Company Culture we referenced our belief in the “culture of yes” (always be open to assisting others, and the default option should be to approve people’s ideas and feedback, rather than reject them). This mantra encourages people to be very open with colleagues about their opinions, trusting that they will be heard.

Another good example of feedback in action at Cloudreach is our Glassdoor page, where there’s a large number of reviews. We love Glassdoor as a platform because it’s so transparent and a chance for employees as well as people experiencing our company for the first time to be really honest about us. We want to be publicly accountable to employees and candidates for our performance.

Trust is such an important element in creating a culture of feedback, so it’s key to remember it won’t happen overnight. Culture is something you must build carefully, but we truly believe it all starts with openly encouraging feedback wherever possible and, above all, demonstrating you are really listening.

4 Ways to Nurture your Company Culture in 2016

Originally published on the Cloudreach website.

For those of you who don't know Cloudreach, we are a Global Cloud Enabler based in London.

We are also extremely passionate about employee welfare and building the right company culture to enable innovation. You may have seen my recent blog post, Keeping it Cloudy: How to Build Company Culture on this topic.

I'll expand here with some follow-up actions that you, as a business leader, could use to make some practical changes this year.

#1. Involve your employees in parts of your high level strategy and planning.

This doesn’t mean you have to give away confidential information or involve everyone in every decision (that could be hugely inefficient!), but do share successes and failures, and identify places where employee voices could add to the discussions you’re having at the top level. 

Sharing your company’s progress over the past few months and outlining key goals for the next quarter is a great way to make people feel unified and engaged. This is especially effective at keeping communication channels open in companies larger than around 50 people, where employees can easily become distanced from key decision makers. Make sure you're all pulling together, not in different directions!

#2. Review your L&D Capabilities.

Do you offer any formal training, training discounts or resources to staff to help them develop? How is staff performance tracked? Is promoting/tracking L&D a feature in employees' 1-1s with their managers? 

Consider making this a key question you ask all your employees: 
“Aside from helping achieve the goals of the company, what do you personally want to achieve for yourself and your own growth in 2016?”.

Follow up with “How can we help you achieve that?”. 

Employees (particularly the most talented) are becoming increasingly strategic about their career goals and evaluating their progress. Among graduates in particular, there is a sense that they expect a return beyond salary for their investment of time and effort in your company. With that trend in mind, it’s worth you being the one to voice that they’re allowed to be a little selfish when it comes to their growth.

#3. Ask yourself how well feedback works in your company.

Though many companies promote the idea that employees can voice their opinion at any time, too often it is difficult to do so without being worried you will endanger your position or your chances of promotion. Whilst it’s a nice idea to say that your culture is open and everyone should be able to add to the conversation openly, in practice it sometimes just doesn’t work. Sometimes a large difference in seniority, or hesitation about how an issue will be dealt with, can stop people voicing concerns or grievances. The answer shouldn’t be to stifle those voices - you risk resentment growing and the voices becoming privately louder.

Instead it may be worth examining what your system is for lodging complaints or suggesting feedback. One thing that can work well is an anonymous onlinesuggestion box like this one which can be monitored by management or HR. Since we value transparency, we have a number of localised Glassdoor pages where we actively encourage people who interview or work for us to leave anonymous reviews. This is both informative, and makes us publicly accountable for our performance.

Ideally, you're aiming to develop a culture where giving feedback becomes natural:  I'll be following up soon with a blog post on how to create a 'Culture of Feedback' so keep an eye out!

#4. Consider your Company Mission Statement and Purpose. 

If you don’t have them, create them! A company mission statement is externally facing, and will help customers identify with your brand, but it also helps your employees to clearly identify and align with your ultimate business goals. It will give a sense of what you are all looking to achieve together, as a team.

A 'Purpose' (as defined in the book Scaling Up), is for your employees only, and is more about the daily motivations, beliefs and behaviours that make your company 'tick'. Defining this will help to unite your team and enable them to work more cohesively.

Good luck with Keeping it Cloudy in 2016!

Why not follow Cloudreach or CloudreachPeople on Twitter?

Keeping it Cloudy: How to Build Company Culture

Originally published on the Cloudreach website.

Inspiration

Maintaining “cloudy culture” is important to us, and it’s also a hot topic at the moment. One of our Partners, CloudHealth Technologies, wrote a blog post last year about company culture, and concluded that the culture of every organisation must necessarily be unique. One of their key ideas, which I’d like to reflect more on here, is that if culture is nurtured it will be more powerful in defining your success as a business than your brand, product or customers.

Why should you care about this?

Consider the following statistic: “57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talks to a supplier (B2B)". This statistic explains the sudden boom of inbound marketing activities, but also I think has relevance for your company culture. The final stage of a marketing cycle is to ‘delight’ customers so that they act as brand ambassadors, and I believe the same is applicable to your employees, who are really your most crucial brand ambassadors.

When potential customers first notice your company, their opinion will be founded on what they hear about you from others, the things they see about you in the news, on your website, on your blog. Well, your branding is delivered and maintained by your people. You may define it at a high level, but they are the ones who will work with your customers and inspire them to promote you in the wider market. They are the ones who will write thought leadership content for you, the people who will represent you at events and conferences. Your employees will define your profile in the market, your network, the calibre of your service and your ability to innovate quickly in line with evolving customer expectations.

Why does Cloudreach care about this?

One of Cloudreach’s core business goals is providing high quality work to our customers. The way that we treat our employees is the way they will treat those customers. The quality of the people we hire reflects on the quality of service they provide those customers.

It’s a short leap from realising these truths to committing to hire the best people to work for us, and then delivering on the cultural promises we make them so that those people stay and thrive.

What do Cloudreach believe about People?

The key ingredient to building and retaining a talented workforce, we believe, is to promote and foster a culture and work environment that provides our employees with challenging work, fulfilling rewards, promotional opportunities and ready access to our leadership team.

• In order to put the client first, you must actually put your employees first, because they will be the ones to define the client experience.
• Hiring and retaining great people is Cloudreach’s top priority because every great company is a sum of its parts.
• We rank training of high importance because we want to help individuals develop themselves and develop Cloudreach.
• We have the responsibility to provide the career growth opportunities; employees have the responsibility for taking them.
• Innovation is not just encouraged; it’s expected.
• Autonomy of and respect for the individual is key.
• We attract people because of the values we promote, but we retain them because of the values we live.

The last point is especially important to us. On any journey to define culture you have to come from point A, where you talk about how you want people to act and what you want them to believe, to point B where to live that talk becomes second nature.

In my experience this is probably the biggest area where company cultures fail - when it’s well defined but not lived. I’m not trying to say we have completely cracked it here at Cloudreach, but that’s almost the whole point: it can never be ‘cracked’, it is continually a work in progress. Problems begin if you become complacent.

How do we stay alert?

We have a number of principles which we designed to help us stay true to our purpose as a company, and these are hiring criteria as well guidelines for day to day life at Cloudreach. They are broad enough to remain relevant as we grow, but narrow enough to keep us on the right path and allow us to evaluate our behaviour and motivations.

Respect the individual and individuality

You do not have to be the same to be equal. Differences should be valued since they help stimulate creative and diverse thinking which enables innovation and makes us all stronger as a company. This also allows us to...

...Be one step ahead

As with company culture, so this mantra is true of the technology market and the role of a Partner in business. It is our goal to provide solutions before they are needed - perhaps before the problem has even been identified. This is encapsulated by the popular sales spiel, ‘be proactive rather than reactive’, which is perhaps overused as a term but is certainly crucial to client relationships. We relentlessly drive to improve all things Cloudy.

Be easy to work with

Our attitude is positive, bright and helpful. When colleagues react this way to each other, everybody’s job becomes easier. Another way of putting this is we want to nurture a “culture of yes” - which means you should always be open to assisting others, and the default option should be to approve people’s ideas and feedback, rather than reject them.   

Promote personal growth

This allows us both to maintain our highly skilled workforce for our clients’ benefit, and also to make sure that people’s individual aspirations are met. When I was a recruiter a common complaint I heard from passive job seekers was that they had exhausted their learning and growth capacity in their current role. We never want that to be a reason people leave Cloudreach. We are huge advocates of feedback. Upwards, downwards and sideways - the only way you can improve is by getting feedback.

Hopefully you’re a little more convinced now that Company Culture should be on your agenda in 2016.

5 Steps to take at a Career Crossroads

I'd wager very few people know from a young age what they want to do with their lives and sometimes, even if they do, the path towards that goal can be unclear. After two years in Recruitment helping people take a step closer towards their ideal role, I actually found myself at a career crossroads. I didn't want to work in agency recruitment again, but I also suspected from my six month spell in Operations that this wasn't my dream job either.

For all those people who are trying to break into new sectors, new responsibilities, or if you just have no idea what you want, I can honestly say that I sympathise. Feeling under-stimulated at work can be one of the most frustrating feelings. For all you people, I wanted to shoot out some ideas based on what I've experienced recently, that might help steer your minds. I'm only just starting out, I realise, but I think these things could apply to anybody, wherever they are in their career.


1. Try and forget about it 

I'm not joking. Counter intuitive as this may seem, if you've been getting frustrated about your path in life it can help to just strip everything back. I found I was obsessing over it, feeling miserable, lost, confused, and I stopped doing the things I enjoyed. You quickly find yourself in a position where you can't recognise what you enjoy - and I'd consider this recognition the springboard for career inspiration.

I'm not saying if you like to bake cakes you should become a chef, but I think giving yourself space to just be can give you the opportunity to realise what sort of person you are. Do you like creating things, do you like learning, do you analyse, are you driven by being around other people, do you like being active and outdoors? All the things you'd naturally do once you give yourself some space will help you determine what elements make up your ideal role.

I also believe job hunting is tough and you need to be in a frame of mind that's positive and refreshed. Giving yourself some time out or just some time off from thinking about it will help you get to a more positive place. It's okay, and actually can be very helpful, to give yourself permission not to think about it for a while!


2. Make a list

It's much easier to list what you hate than what you like, so start with this. Think about all the work environments you've been in (or, if you're new to the workplace, think about your life so far): what annoys you, what bores you, what sort of situations make you unhappy, what personalities drive you crazy? If you can think about times you've been happiest and most fulfilled, list them too. If, like many people, you've been in a job where your feelings about it changed over time, really analyse what changed to bring that shift in mood about. Once you have your lists of positive and negative, try and find commonalities, similar situations in which you reacted in the the same way.

You can't always know what you're stepping into with a new job, and I believe it's largely a path where you're always filling in more blanks, but if you refuse to really acknowledge your own preferences you'll keep making the same mistakes. I mention this (seemingly quite obvious) point, because I definitely realised that what I wanted in my head was very different to what I actually enjoyed in practice. I think I've always been a bit of a dreamer, and in my head at school I think I had a picture of my future self as some sharp corporate over-achiever, working all hours. Thinking about it now that I've actually worked, I like relaxed environments, and I want to create things. I want to wear jeans, not a suit. I want to choose how I work, and I want to work with people who genuinely care about the things they do, not just chase big fees.

Get real about what actually makes you happy and unhappy based on your experience, not what you think will make you happy.


3. Read, Talk and Listen

Let's face it; often the problem comes down to just not knowing what is out there. You have reached the place where you know what you like and dislike, but you have no way of knowing how this fits into a job role. Does a job like this exist? Are you being far too idealistic? You need to start being more curious - tell people what you like, get their ideas and input. Start listening to the world around you and being more receptive to information about the jobs available and who is hiring. And research; you'll have to do lots of reading. I found some really great material whilst in this phase - one blog I really loved is a guide for people who feel a little lost in life, check it out.

Research different jobs. Use LinkedIn to search for different keywords and see what comes up. What do people with similar backgrounds, skills and interests to you end up doing? However frustrated you get, keep being curious. If you see a company you like the look of, just write to them. Explain what you're looking to do and why you would love to be a part of what they're doing. Many people don't do this, but it can open doors for you, and what do you have to lose?


4. Always say 'yes' to a conversation

I cannot stress this enough - approach your challenge positively and always say yes to conversations if people are willing to give you their time. This is especially the case when you're job seeking or looking to change job area. If you're asking people to take a chance on you, then impressing them with your drive and passion can go a long way towards making this risk seem less severe, especially if you lack some of the skills required for the position.

In addition to that, every conversation sparks something, whether that's an introduction to somebody else, or teaching you or confirming something about yourself or the world. Change is slower if you keep doing everything the same - going out of your way to have new experiences will help spark the change you want. And many people are genuinely lovely and sincerely do want to help you. As I said at the start of this article, most people have been in your shoes at some point in their journey.

5. Reach out to your contacts

Assuming that you already embrace point 4, you'll have quite a nice base of contacts. Talk to the people you already know, let them know what your position is and ask them for inspiration. Conversations are much easier if the relationship is already warm so, if you have a good contact somewhere you'd like to work and you know they like and respect you, it might be worth asking for help. As a recruiter one of the major things I learnt is that the majority of roles are never officially advertised, and many are filled internally before you would ever hear about it.

If you know any good recruiters, talk to them. Anybody really committed to candidate care and long term relationships will take the time to give you some pointers and ideas. If you're looking to take a change in career direction I wouldn't bother sending out your CV to new agencies. People are very blinkered when it comes to CV screening and from my recent experience will not spend time helping somebody who doesn't already tick all the boxes for the role. Seek advice from recruiters you know and trust though, and see what comes of it.


That's it

I could say much more, but I'll leave it at this: if you find yourself in the position I describe and you'd like somebody to mull things over with or to get some informal advice them my inbox is always open :) Reach me at char.poynton@gmail.com

Why Investing in Culture Should be Your Most Important Business Objective

I was having a discussion recently about company culture, something often talked about but rarely truly captured and lived by companies.

Have you ever worked somewhere where the culture seemed riddled with contradictions - website slogans which only ever seemed to be given voice in client meetings or interviews with prospective candidates? Colleagues who all knew what they were 'supposed' to feel about the company, but who really were all disconnected. Or perhaps you're a founder who knew clearly what your intention for your company culture was, but growth phases were met with clashes and high turnover.

Culture determines the people you attract, the quality of the people you attract affects the quality of the work you produce, which affects the clients you attract and the value of your work to them. Even if, like Amazon, who recently came under fire in the New York Times for their aggressive, relentless and somewhat merciless approach to their work and their employees' welfare, your culture is not as warm and fuzzy as many founders aspire to, at least it is defined and anticipated by new employees. People choose to work at Amazon because of the buzz that comes with a somewhat brutal work hard, play hard culture. I'd posit that this is better than having that culture but not being upfront about it, and thus not having the same high quality of employees looking to make their name.

The worst kinds of environment are those that fall in between an Amazon (cut-throat but ambitious and high quality) and those like Google who offer the same excellence with a seemingly warmer culture, an on-site doctor, and months of fully paid parental leave. Because having a clearly defined culture, whatever its nature, is better than having no culture at all, being bland, sounding like everybody else and being all talk.

Do not write down some words, send out a memo, and leave it at that. 

You literally need to live your culture from the top down. You need to reward people who demonstrate it. You need to invest significant amounts of time and money to help educate people about what you're trying to do, what your mission is and what your values are.

Most importantly, you need to embody them, and in public, visible ways. You need to make sure that everything you do, and everything you produce, has a coherent message and embodies what you stand for. When you hire, don't write a generic boring job spec with the same words everybody else does; market your company in such a way that you attract the kind of people you want to hire (like Google, embedding a secret coding challenge in their search engine).

Do not underestimate the importance of culture.

It runs throughout and affects everything you do, and everyone you come into contact with.

In a recent course I viewed on Udemy I saw this statistic: "57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talks to a supplier (B2B)".

This is because a customer's impression of you is coloured by what they see, and what they hear, and if you establish and live a truly clear culture, your employees and your clients will do all the positive talking for you. If you don't, you fight twice as hard for each sale.

How to Find Offices in London

A key part of a great company is often having somewhere centralised where people can come together into a creative and relaxing space and share their ideas but, in London, it's usually not that easy to find. In fact, if you're doing all the leg work yourself, it probably feels like you're ramming your head repeatedly into a wall. 


At YLD (where I'm now helping out with Ops and HR) we’re currently in the process of finding somewhere to lay our hats, and so thought it would be worth sharing some of the sources we’ve found useful (especially if you’re a start-up and/or have limited funds).

An important point to bear in mind, as with house hunting in London, is that if it’s on with an Estate Agent it’s probably already gone. For commercially licensed property there’s not too much advertised on mainstream sites like Rightmove anyway, but worth knowing.

Tips:

• Start looking early - probably a good 6 months before you actually need the space, if possible, as this will give you more choice.

• Decide what you need - is a private office essential, or could co-working space be an option? There are some great accelerators and co-working buildings you could look at, and these probably have a lot of facilities/infrastructure already in place which you can start using immediately.

• Decide how much work you want to do - if you want to use your existing network to find out what might be coming up (ask friends, colleagues, spread the word about what you’re looking for) or if you want to use a specialist to help with the search. They promise to take a lot of the pain out of the process, but they will charge a fee.

• Budget - have a clear idea of your budget and start to get a feel for different areas of London and what they cost. Some are very pricy but may not actually suit you best in terms of your travel needs. Something in Zone 2/3 might be more convenient and much cheaper. Think about Service Charges (charged for maintenance of your building) on top of Business Rates (payable to your local Council), electricity, gas, cleaning, internet and phone lines, as well as installing any desks/features. 

• Consider residential - decide if you want to go for a pre-licensed commercial property or get your own residential space and go through process of getting it licensed. May be easier to find.

Resources:

• General info: Government advice 
• Co-working space: Bathtub2Boardroom, WeWork, MinistryofStartups
• Agents/Consultants: MakingMoves, EstatesGazette, WorkSpace

Happy hunting - feel free to post your tips below :)

Where are all the front-end developers?

I found this brilliant blog post by Jose Aguinaga (here) and it got me thinking about the reasons behind the shortage of software developers in London - especially in front-end. I want to reflect on and summarize some of Jose's ideas and add a few of my own.

Context

I don't have the frustrating experience of many recruiters - when I speak to most companies, they tend to struggle to find developers, which makes it a much easier conversation for me! Often, they are happy to talk about the difficult condition of the market, and how I can help. That's a nice position to be in! But it leaves me with a problem to solve; I need to know where the front-end developers are...

It's Not as Challenging?

Jose quotes a user who points out that, since front-end development is easier than other fields of engineering, the shortage seems odd. It's a premise that I've come across in many conversations actually - particularly when speaking to back-end developers who believe their job is harder or, at least, more 'serious' engineering. I've also had clients comment they'd like 'a back-end developer who has turned to the front-end - but that never happens', as if front-end development is just a step one takes in the journey to becoming a 'proper' programmer. Perhaps this stigma (though diminishing quickly I would say) is still a reason why many developers don't focus on the front-end, abandoning it completely to move into back-end or choosing to use it as part of their full-stack skill set.

It's Misunderstood?

I think the big problem is distinguishing between being a 'front-end developer' and a 'front-end engineer'. Another of Jose's arguments is that front-end engineering is a relatively new area, with the 'engineering' part being added only recently. No longer is the front-end just visual design (not to undermine that, either), but what is technically demanded of the front-end is getting so much steeper. What many people might believe a front-end developer does is vastly underestimating the role, if you're looking at the responsibilities of a front-end engineer. Which skill set does a company need, what is it really looking for?

There is a Low Barrier to Entry?

One of my favourite points from Jose's post is that, because it is so easy for anybody to learn to code now (free online courses), anybody can learn HTML and CSS (a bit like I did...) and then call themselves a front-end developer, indistinguishable from a hard core front-end engineer. The fact that there are many bad or perhaps inauthentic front-end developers means that it is much harder to identify the good ones who have sound engineering principles mastered.

Lack of Exposure

There are, of course, many ways into programming, but it seems from my experience that a large number of the most passionate programmers I've met wrote their first lines of code at a very young age. Granted, this kind of personality was probably more likely to look in the right places to stumble across programming but, for many children, perhaps they just didn't have the exposure. I think this is something that will be changing over the next decade. Children are being taught programming now in the UK from as young as 5 years old. Besides this increase in audience engagement with the young, I also think the image of IT has changed drastically. No longer are programmers the humorous but socially awkward geeks of shows like The IT Crowd - they're millionaires, CEOs, Entrepreneurs, Game Changers. Brands like Facebook, Apple, Google, are sharp and attractive to young job seekers. If we, the general public, are to understand how our technological world works, then we need to step up and take an interest in how it all fits together. We know how to write in English, why not JavaScript? 

Becoming a true front-end engineer, master or mistress of your craft, demands time, practice, dedication and patience. The exciting thing, though, is that the front-end developers of the future are everywhere - they're children and students, they could be me; they could be you. 

Want to Work in a Start-up?

The start-up scene in London at the moment is booming.

Boris Johnson recently said there’s “nowhere to rival London for start-ups looking to thrive and grow", and it certainly seems the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ as well as the numerous incubators and accelerators are doing a good job of nurturing London’s new digital businesses.

There’s a large and buzzing community around start-ups, and often these are the kind of people who don’t need a recruiter’s help, as they already have plenty of contacts. Normally, I’ll only be brought in at about the second round of funding, when a lot of hiring needs to be done in a short time frame, and the founders have worked through most of their existing contacts, or when the founder is not technical.

If you spend a lot of time at events, and you network with the right people, then you probably know a lot about the start-up scene, and you know people who can fix you up with a great job at one.

If you don’t, though, then it can seem like a daunting move to make from the more corporate, hierarchical 9-5, to the world of the start-up.

What do start-ups look for?

Obviously every company is different but, if I were to sum it up in one word, I’d say ‘passion’.

If you were starting a company from scratch, spending (initially), 60+ hours a week with a handful of other people, uncertain if it will pay off, then you need to be confident about those other people. You need to know that they, like you, hunger for your idea to work and be successful. You need to know that they are 100% behind your idea. This doesn’t really change even when the company reaches 50+, sometimes even 100+ employees, especially when this growth can happen within a short number of years in a fast-growth start-up.

When I screen candidates for culture fit in start-up tech roles, passion is one of the key indicators for me. This is everything from what a candidate does in their spare time, to the way they talk about their work, and if their eyes light up.

Does a corporate background count against you?

No, not necessarily, but I would definitely look at what the candidate has been doing outside of work – side projects, meet-ups etc. By the way, by ‘corporate’ I don’t just mean a large company – I mean the traits that unfortunately tend to come along with being a larger company – technically set in its ways, very hierarchical, slow moving. 

I think it’s a much more natural move to transition from an SME, because the start-up world is dynamic, evolving constantly, and usually very flat structurally, but it depends entirely on the individual, and it’s never too late to make the change.

I’d say the key thing here is to make sure you’re coding in your spare time. Swot up and make sure you know all the latest trends in your chosen technology. The tech space moves fast and if your company isn’t sympathetic to that then you need to be.

Is joining a start-up risky and time consuming?     

It can be, but you just have to be smart about it. I think it’s quite easy to tell if a start-up has legs or not. Look at where the money is coming from; if they have a concrete business plan beyond big dreams; if they have done their market research and have a track record in the space; who the other people working there are and what their backgrounds are.

I think when you consider what recently happened to Tesco, it’s clear that any company can fail, big or small. It’s only as big a risk as your research is careless.

If you think you'd like to work for an awesome London start-up message me :) 

This is a Man's World? Sexism and Technology

I’ve been trying to write a post about women and technology for months but I always shied away from it. I was worried about approaching a topic which provokes so much debate and such strong feelings (and often aggression) without knowing enough to be able to protect and defend myself against potential backlash. Maybe that was cowardly.

I will not, I’m sure, say anything revolutionary here, but I feel it’s my duty as somebody who works (albeit not directly) in the technology sector, to weigh in on this issue.

Personally, I’m a feminist, because feminism is the belief that everyone should be treated with equal respect regardless of gender. On that basis, I would question anyone who is not a feminist. This said, I think many people associate feminism with pedantry and men-hating, or feel it’s outdated because equality has already been achieved and they do not personally experience a problem in their own life. Many people do not see the concept of feminism as the advocacy of equality. Ultimately the use of or definition of the word is not paramount, so long as, at root, everybody believes and acts upon the belief that we are all equal. This is, sadly, not the case.

It is true to say that here in Britain, here in London, there might perhaps seem less need for militant feminism than in other areas of the world. Sexism still prevails against both genders but, by and large, the effect it has is to hamper free choice, rather than to prevent it completely. The trouble is that, if you stop taking your antibiotics when you start to feel better, the infection comes back with double the force and, when it comes to gender bias, many areas of our society are still sick.

I approach this topic as somebody who didn’t originally consider herself a feminist. Most of my friends, male and female, were brought up to believe in equality and, as a girl, I never felt limited by my gender or that I could not achieve the same as or more than my male counterparts. The top three students across the board in my year at school were all girls throughout my school career. I went to a good University and got a degree, and I prioritised my career when I graduated without a thought to how later having a family might affect this, and without thinking that any hiring manager might think that it would.

I went straight into a recruitment company setting up a vertical in software development – and my perspective about women in the workplace began to change. When you don’t see problems in your own work or social environment it can be easy to dismiss allegations of gender inequality, but they’re worth spending some serious time thinking about. In technology there is still a serious problem.

This is nothing new, I’m sure, to anybody who works in technology, but some basic stats for those who don’t… Behind the commonly spoken of ‘White Brogrammer’ culture are surveys to quantify the lack of females in Tech. In May, Google published a report showing that 70% of their Global workforce was male, with other leading technology companies including Facebook publishing similar results. Transparency is important, and Google’s decision to launch a multimillion pound program to attract women is a commitment to desiring to address the imbalance, but it might be difficult when the root cause of the problem is still debated. The Guardian commented that, though commonly the low number of women in technology is attributed to the fact that fewer women take Science and Technology subjects at school, in actuality many women begin a career in programming and then leave, suggesting that there is also an issue with the cultural reception of them.

   

As a recruiter it becomes pretty obvious that women are a minority – I’ve spoken to a handful in 18 months (I’ll speak to 10-20 people a day). Female coders are known in the recruitment industry to be highly “placeable”, with tech companies struggling to address their diversity issues crying out for women’s CVs. I’ve had clients tell me off the record they’ll pay me a higher rate if I can find them a girl. I sometimes think that this positive discrimination is actually a desecration of feminism – treating men as less desirable candidates than women because they are male. Ideally you would not need to bias, of course, towards a gender. I wonder if this kind of positive bias is ever right? In any case, it is a problem caused by an attempt to fix an original problem.

But it does not do much good to hire women if their experience in your company is then negative and discouraging. One female developer (we’ll call her Charlotte) who I met with told me that she once tried an experiment on github, where she submitted a question under the name ‘Charlotte’ and then at a later point the same question under the name ‘Charlie’. The feedback she received from the tech community when they assumed she was a boy was supportive, constructive, and assumed a good level of competence, whereas some of the feedback she received when she posted as ’Charlotte’ was patronising or condescending. With minimal delving online you can find a huge number of accounts by women within the global tech community being made to feel deficient, unwelcome, or objectified by their male (and sometimes  even other female) counterparts – a few interesting ones are here, here and here.

I want to conclude this commentary but I’m not sure there’s a conclusion. This isn’t a problem with an easy solution or a clear end point. The stories of female coders often comment on the many respectful and fantastic male colleagues they have had, and in focussing on the problem perhaps I’ve neglected to point that out until now, but it should be said. #

The issue is that until a woman can attend a tech conference and not stick out like a sore thumb, until a woman can start a job as a programmer and not even dream that she might have to face limiting beliefs from her co-workers (male and female), then we should continue to have these conversations openly and not push them to the back of our minds.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

Thought I'd write a quick post about employee attraction and retention in Tech companies - meant to relate to technical hires (since this is what I know about!).

Common Reasons Technical Employees Leave Their Job...

* The company is directionless/failing/weak leadership
* The company does not care about technology and 'doing things right'
* The projects have become repetitive and boring
* The employee is not getting the chance to use a technology they love
* The employee sees no progression potential and feels unrecognised
* Logistical issues - money/location/commute

How Can You Counter These?

* Business Plan

This both relates to you wider business, and the employees' career path within it. 

If you're a start-up, you need to have a clear business plan which is founded on facts and research rather than just enthusiasm and passion. Whilst start-ups are always risky, you will significantly minimise the risk for prospective employees if you can prove your idea has legs and you're taking it in the right direction. You need to have an idea of where funding is coming from and be honest with your staff about this. 

If you're an established company business plan is as, if not more, important. You can't rest on your laurels, and must demonstrate how you intend to keep your offering fresh in the face of competition. Increasingly, start-ups will spring up to fill the gaps in your business model so, the more you grow, the more you need to demonstrate you're constantly improving your business model and remain receptive to industry changes. Companies whose business models do not change to reflect the trends in technology (for example, those who remain driven by Waterfall workflows and can't become agile) will find it very difficult to attract top talent.


* Technology

Where possible, take risks with interesting and new technologies in order to make sure you're always using what is most relevant and efficient. This is obviously easier for smaller companies than for large ones with established platforms but, saying that, I have clients with teams of over 60 developers who are experimenting with a variety of new technologies and in some cases totally rebuilding their platforms to better cater to market demand. Obviously this is also dependent on your budget and agenda, but one of the best ways to attract top talent is to demonstrate you are heavily investing in new technology.

Top developers want to work for companies where coding standards are a priority and where they can continue to improve themselves and innovate.

It isn't always possible or desirable to move away from your current platform, but successful tech companies engender a community around their brand and innovate outside of their day-to-day work. You could encourage employees to work on their own projects every Friday afternoon, or collect suggestions for an experimental project that the whole team will then vote on and build together. Even if you're unable to innovate on your current stack, encourage innovation.


* Listening and Responding

In the best companies, process is not more important than people. 

Process has its place, but attracting good people will yield far more in the long-run. Listen to everybody in your business and encourage them to voice ideas - create a democratic, meritocratic environment, not a dictatorship.

Hire strong Technical Leadership, and listen to them. Encourage pay reviews that are suggested by the employees, not the manager. I see so many times people who leave because they feel undervalued and underpaid, and this is such an avoidable problem.

You should build your business around your talent, not the other way around.

Message me if you want to chat more about anything I've written! 
I'm on charlotte.poynton@lafosse.com (for my work) and char.poynton@gmail.com for anything else :)        

Two Point Guide to CV Writing

**Please, please, for the love of God, do not put everything in boxes**

It was only a matter of time until this post was written.. I know there's a lot of these out there, but I think I might as well add my two pennies' worth! I see a huge number of poorly structured and written CVs so this is still a problem worth addressing.

I know the market is evolving, and for a lot of developers you'll use code samples, github, stackoverflow, network to find a new job. However, for many people - whether because they're further down the career ladder, or new to the London market - CV writing is still a key part of the application process.

Though some things are a matter of preference, but I would say follow these basic principles and your CV will stand out to recruiters who know nothing about technology as well as technical employers.

1. Make sure the tone is Achievement Led

• Include a section near the start with Key Achievements. These should be the top 2-3 things you're most proud of. If you're starting out, pick side projects or work experience challenges.
• Broadly speaking, the STAR approach works at any level (Situation (setting/context), Task (what you were asked to do personally), Approach (what you did, and any challenges you had to overcome), Result (achievement - did you deliver in time, in budget, and what did that mean for your team and company?).
• Make sure you don't lose your personality when you do this - there is no substitution for simple passion. I come across CVs with bios like 'I have been programming since I was 13, and it is my life', and I still love reading them. I know sometimes that kind of thing might sound a little trite, but it actually normally reads as very genuine, because it is. A combination of personality and achievements is a winner.
• I would count good spelling and grammar as part of this tone you're trying to set. Spell check your text, get someone else to read it. I've rejected CVs for not doing so and have seen many employers do so as well.

2. Remember to KISS (keep it simple, stupid)

• I would recommend the following sections and this is my preference of order:
• Name, contact details > Short Profile (a few sentences) summarising your career history and objective for next role > Key Achievements > Technical Skills (technologies you've used and level you're at) > Professional Experience > Training/Education/Qualifications > Hobbies (anything relevant to your career path is highly relevant to put here). Only exception I'd say is with fresh graduates, where I would put 'Education' straight under 'Profile'.   
• For Professional Experience, use the STAR approach (above) and outline specific things you did, not your team, though frame your achievements in the context of the wider project and say how it impacted the business. Outline briefly 3-5 key projects/tasks you undertook in the role.
• If written efficiently, your CV should really not go over 2-3 pages, regardless of level. You only need go into detail for your last three most relevant roles. If you have relevant experience from years back, highlight it in your Key Achievements section.
• Formatting - a professional looking font (calibri, TNR, arial etc), size 10-12, and **please, please for the love of God, do not put everything in boxes**. Recruiters will send your profile with a couple of others, and will make sure they are all formatted to look the same. This is just professionalism, and we will always talk through your individual suitability in detail over the phone. You will save us both a lot of time if you just keep the formatting simple. If you want to show your design skills, include a link to your portfolio, or have two versions of your CV at the ready.

Any questions or additions would love to hear them, as always!

Oh 'Appy Day!

Apologies for the terrible pun. It's probably a good thing I didn't become a serious journalist.

I wanted to write a post about mobile development for several reasons - I got very confused by this initially and I'm probably still pretty confused (if anybody wants to correct the technical info in this post please do!), but I had a wonderful conversation with a CTO yesterday and thought it was worth pondering with my new found revelations!

Essentially there are three main ways to develop mobile applications, Native, HTML(5) or Hybrid, which sort of straddles both.

HTML(5) Applications are quick and easy to create because they are written as normal web app. They will be available over multiple devices, but will probably have performance issues as available only via the web browser.

So you can wrap them, to create a Hybrid Application, using a wrapper like PhoneGap/Cordova (probably best known) to embed it into a native app. Worth thinking about how you want to market your app, because apparently (I was told during my degree never to reference Wikipedia...) the wrapper sometimes doesn't make the performance sufficient for it to be 'native' enough for the Apple store.

Native Applications run faster than web (HTML) apps because they use a specific language for a specific platform (so Java, C, C#). No translating or compiling has to be done to make this happen. The disadvantage is you have to build separately for iOS and android if marketing your product to both platforms, but result will be fast and more responsive.

Useful chart

If you're interested in reading in more detail than this snapshot, then this is a great article! 'Appy Developing Folks!

The Technical and The Personal

This point seems to be coming up in my job a lot at the moment – people with excellent technical profiles being rejected for roles because of ‘culture fit’, or bright people being rejected because they don't quite fit a job spec. 

I thought it might make an interesting post, especially off the back of a point I mentioned in my last post, made by Mazz Mosley when she spoke at PrimeConf last month (about what qualities should be important triggers in the decision to promote someone to a leadership role).

Should the person adapt to the job, or the job to the person? How important are hard skills, tech, experience, and how do they weigh in compared to attitude and personality; culture fit?

These are challenges many companies face every day, both when they hire new staff and when they direct existing staff. It’s also a challenge technical people face when they interview, many finding that their technical skills can easily stagnate unless they stay fluid in the job market. If you work at a company that uses a specific set of technologies but not, say, angularJS (which, for better or worse, everyone wants right now… that’s a whole other post…) then you might find it hard to move on to a company using angular. Increasingly, candidates are looking for new roles where they can learn new tech, whilst companies only want to hire people who have already been using this tech.

In some cases – when work needs to be delivered quickly, or expansion is so rapid that it’s hard to find training time, or there’s simply nobody able to train staff internally, for example in an early stages start-up – then of course I can see how there is a need for somebody who brings significant experience. 

Courtesy of Dorothy Dalton

In other cases, however, the decision to look at the technical profile and not the person can lead to hiring mangers missing out on an excellent developer because they are limited by that person’s last job role. It’s something that recruiters get accused of a lot (only looking at the last job role or tech skill, not the person’s complete history/aptitude to learn), but actually I think technical hiring managers can lack that vision too.

Another argument is that, if you only ever hire people with the same skills, you’ll only ever have the same skills in your team… and that’s not good in a market which is evolving fast and competitively. A senior contact of mine recently made this point actually – he’s interviewing currently, and noted that many companies focus too much on the user interaction, (which doesn't translate well into larger systems development and delivery) whilst many others have the opposite problem of not understanding digital and customer experience at all. Few companies are getting the balance. He could have brought a huge amount of wider systems knowledge into a frontend-focussed creative agency, for example, but they only wanted someone with an existing agency background.

In an ideal world...

Personally I think that talented people are at the crux of any successful business plan and so, in an ideal world, you would hire good people first and allow them to define the direction your business takes. You would use the technology that makes most sense for the job, not just the one you were last using. If your employees are talented then they would be able and willing to learn the best tool for the job. Culture fit is a difficult one to pin down, but in my experience if people fail here it is often to do with their ability and desire to learn, or how open-minded they are about trying something a different way. The best companies I work with - or at least the ones who perform consistently above their competitors, who can attract the top 5% of developers and whose developers do not want to leave - create this kind of culture and business model.