Working ON your business, not IN it.  That was the premise of the Inspired Group event I attended last night and the subject addressed by the speaker, Richard Fisher.   Richard made some excellent points but the thing I found most interesting was how the audience reacted to certain key things he said.

Richard talked about businesses who focus too much on the product or service rather than the processes and people, thus hampering their business growth.  He suggests that the correct perspective is to spend more time working on the people, then the processes and finally the product or service. 

I spent some time recently talking to my good friend Maxine Welford of maxxy.co.uk.  Maxine has a very successful telemarketing business and she's absolutely fantastic at what she does.  We were discussing the difficulties of recruiting the right people and that, quite apart from the financial cost, there are other implications of getting it wrong.  Maxine has written a blog post about it which I'm delighted to share with you. 

"I have learnt a lesson recently and wanted to share this with you.  Maybe it will help others to avoid the mistake I made.

You may have heard the terms “positive action” and “positive discrimination” bandied around recently in relation to recruitment.  Do you know what they mean and which method you CAN use without getting into trouble?  

In April this year, a change brought about by the Equality Act could very well affect the way you recruit new staff.   The change in the law means that “positive action” will be allowed.  “Positive action” means that you can choose to hire a candidate from an unrepresented group, provided they are as qualified for the role as other applicants.

If you’ve been for an interview recently and had post-interview feedback, consider yourself lucky.  It’s not right and it’s certainly not fair but it’s the way it is these days.  Fewer and fewer companies take the time and effort to give feedback to unsuccessful candidates.

Quite often, the feedback is usually to do with your skills and experience not being the best fit for the role.  Or often you’ll be told that there were other candidates more suited to the role than you. 

After the revelations that two senior police offers in North Yorkshire are facing charges of misconduct over claims of nepotism during a recruitment drive, I have a question.  When does a helping hand turn into nepotism and is it just a question of interpretation?

You might think that cases involving nepotism don’t happen that often.  But what about the countless family firms all over the country where the son and heir automatically takes over the running of the company?  Is that fair to all the other employees?  Is it just a case of “it’s their business and they can do what they like!”?  Sadly, it happens all too often that said “son and heir” wouldn’t work off a battery, let alone man up and lead the company!  What would happen if such companies put time and effort into looking for the best person for the job, regardless of who happens to share the owner’s gene pool?

“Of course your bum doesn’t look big in that”.  “I didn’t know the telly sold to me by that bloke in the pub was stolen goods your Honour”.  “The cheque’s in the post”. 

People lie. They do it all the time.  Sometimes there’s a good reason for it and sometimes there isn’t.  The point is that you cannot take everything at face value and if you do, without checking the facts for yourself, you really only have yourself to blame. 

People lie in every aspect of their lives – some more so than others, I agree.  This applies in the world of recruitment just as much as anywhere else.  You may think that this is stating the obvious but it bears repeating.  If you do not check the basic information provided to you by a candidate, it is no one’s fault but yours if it turns out that they were lying. 

I always loved playing “let’s pretend”.  Work with me here.  Let’s pretend that I’m an employer who’s recruiting.  I have a pile of CVs on my desk and I’ve read through them.  I’ve even shortlisted the ones I want to interview based on how well they match the specified criteria for the job.  So far, so good.

Otherwise entitled "How not to be the best person for the job."

Continuing on the subject of interviews, here are my top 10 stupid things for interviewees to do. See if you can guess how many of these situations I’ve dealt with as an interviewer.

Otherwise entitled "How not to find the best person for the job"

We've all had them.  Those awkward interviews where you wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole.  And you're the interviewer!  For those of you who regularly interview, here are the top 10 stupid things you can do in an interview.  I wonder how many of these you would 'fess up to?