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Your Next Step in Hiring: Profile Builder for Scaling Teams Hiring the best people is important for any business. Hiring the right people at the right time is paramount. Crafting an effective job description is just one step of many to identify, attract and engage the right people for your growing team.   Get it wrong and it directly impacts the success, efficiency and culture of your organisation. Get it right and… we all know the rest of that story.  Before you start writing the next job description for a new team member, there are six important questions to consider. One question that plays over in every leader’s head at one time or another is: “Who do I need to hire next?” It’s a pivotal decision that can significantly impact an organisation’s growth and success. Hiring the right person for a specific role can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be a guessing game.    By asking a series of in-depth questions, we guide you through a thought-provoking process to understand what tasks should be delegated, automated, created, or considered for consolidation within your organisation.   Let’s take a closer look at some of the questions you should be asking yourself as the business leader to guide you toward making informed hiring decisions:   What Do You Spend Time Doing That Only You Can Do?   The first question delves into the core of your responsibilities. It helps you identify tasks and functions that require your unique expertise and decision-making abilities. By recognising these key activities, you’ll ensure they remain under your direct supervision while freeing up your time for more strategic thinking.   What Do You Spend Time Doing That Could Be Automated?   Automation is the key to efficiency. Human’s Profile Builder will prompt you to identify repetitive and time-consuming tasks that can be automated. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of human error, ensuring consistency and quality in your operations.   What Can Be Delegated Tomorrow?   Delegation is a crucial skill for effective leadership. The tool will help you pinpoint tasks that can be passed on to others within your organisation. It considers whether you have team members with the necessary skills and resources to handle these responsibilities, paving the way for your team’s growth and development.   Do You Have the Skills and Resources Within the Business to Delegate?   This question serves as a reality check. It encourages you to assess your team’s capabilities and whether they have the skills and resources required to take on the delegated tasks. By understanding your team’s potential, you can confidently entrust them with more responsibilities.   Are There Tasks That Could Be Consolidated for Greater Efficiency?   This question focuses on the possibility of streamlining processes within your organisation. Would that 8 step process achieve the same outcome if it were only 5 steps? This question encourages you to examine if there are tasks or responsibilities that could be merged, leading to a more efficient use of resources and a clearer path for potential role creation.   What Are the Long-Term Goals of This New Role?   Looking beyond the immediate needs of your business, this question asks you to envision the future. It prompts you to consider the strategic goals of the new role you’re planning to create, ensuring it aligns with your organisation’s growth and development.   The End Result: A Clear Profile for Your Next Hire   After a thoughtful journey through these and other questions, Profile Builder provides you with a clear and well-defined profile of the role your business needs to hire next. It takes into account your unique expertise, automation possibilities, delegation opportunities, potential for consolidation, and long-term strategic objectives.   Ready to Take the Next Step?   If you want to speak with our Talent Acquisition team, book a consultation call and they will work closely with you to identify the right candidate, craft a compelling job description, and assist you throughout the hiring process.   As a business leader, your time is precious. You are the driving force behind your organisation’s success, and it’s crucial to allocate your energy and expertise where it matters most. Human helps streamline your decision-making and helps you identify the critical roles your business needs.   Take the guesswork out of your next hire. Book a consultation today and take the next step in shaping your organisation’s future.  

Nicole Healey, Talent Acquisition Consultant at Human – People & Search shares her insights into improving the quality and effectiveness of your CV. A CV (or Resume for my US connections), either way it’s often your only opportunity to make that first impression. It’s commonly known that some hiring managers or selection panels will take as little as 6-8 seconds to scan a CV before deciding on your eligibility for the role in question. As a Talent Acquisition consultant I’ve seen my fair share of CV’s and when speaking with potential candidates I often hear “I have a CV but it’s not up to date” or “can I send you a copy of my CV? but just to warn you, it’s not the best”, there can be varying reasons for this but I find the most common to be: Lack of confidence We spend our time making a significant impact in our organisation – looking outwards BUT how often do we take a step back and reflect on the impact we have actually made? Where do we begin? It’s the fear of rejection, the ‘putting yourself out there’, if your CV isn’t where it could be, the outcome could have probably been different…. So here are a few suggestions I often share with the candidates I work with: Focus on your achievements don’t just list your responsibilities. Take a step back and reflect on the significant measurable achievements you have made to your current or previous employer and quantify it in numbers, fractions, pounds and percentages! What problems were you hired to solve? What did you do? How did you do it? What were the results = £10,000/57% etc = achievement number 1 for your new and improved CV! Showcase the benefits you bring Those achievements you’ve made, they translate to the benefits you brought to your employer and in turn, we can safely assume they are the benefits you can offer to your future employer too. Keep it concise and clean stick to two pages if you can, make it scannable! Bullet points are a great way to highlight key points and break up long paragraphs. Use a clear and easy on the eye font. Graphics, images or ‘fancy’ designs are personal preferences but ask yourself if they could be distracting from the information you actually want to get across. And please, please, please don’t add a photo! If I can help anybody feel more confident about their CV and in applying for their next opportunity, please feel free to drop me a message and good luck! Nicole

Last week we hosted the first Human HR Hackathon of 2023 and had a great conversation. We were joined by a guest speaker Dr Jared Skey and a panel of HR and People Leaders including: Donald MacRae, HR Director EMEA at Starbucks Fiona Williams, HR Director at Buro Happold George Stone, Director of HR at Shields Sharon Frost, Global HR Director at Oxford Pharmagenesis Steve Farmer, MD at SPIE Build & Connect

As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow in their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with George Stone, Director of HR at telecoms solutions provider, Shields. George, despite only being in his teens then, found his passion for HR while working in hospitality. Can you tell us how you got into HR? I always had an ambition to be a teacher when I was younger. In hindsight, it was probably because of three things: I wanted the opportunity to stand up and talk and to have an impact; you manage people to get the best out of them in the classroom; and lastly, just having the genuine passion to help people develop and improve themselves. So while in secondary school when I was about 16 years old, I got a part-time job at Topgolf, a sports entertainment venue. That opportunity catapulted me into employment. It was a transitional stage for me, and I realised that education wasn’t really where I wanted to be at that time in my life. And although I wanted to be a teacher, it was never really the style of learning that worked for me. I transitioned to working full-time at Topgolf. In my first year I became a leader of a team of around 17 people, and I started initiatives that made a difference to people. I realised that people management is similar to teaching; I was a coach and a teacher just to different people. I had a very operational career for the next six years at Topgolf. I was dealing with everything from finance to sales, marketing and day-to-day operations. Ultimately, I believe that you have to get the people right for the business to go well. Topgolf had massive success whilst I was there and grew quite quickly. When I joined we had around 35 people that worked in the venue, and when I left six years later, we had 250. And those numbers were replicated across the three venues at the same time. Suddenly, the volume of things I was doing people-wise increased. This was probably a massive advantage for me. Someone could work in HR for five years and maybe do a hundred interviews. And there I was doing a hundred interviews per week, not to mention the challenging chats, and all those development conversations. After working for Topgolf, I wanted something different. I found this opportunity with the pub and hotel company Youngs & Co Brewery in London. I was brought in to help because some of their larger acquisitions had larger workforces. However, the role wasn’t for me. It was a bit too operational than what I wanted. After about a year, I started to figure out that I’m better at dealing with people strategically. I managed to land an opportunity with Shields. They’e been around for 40 years, have a hundred and twenty staff, and operate internationally. They had just opened entities in France and Spain at the time. But they were small teams of three or four people and did not have an HR team. Senior leaders at Shields have an average of 10 to 20 years tenure, and I was coming in probably 20 years junior to everybody else. I had to transition the business and start the people process almost from scratch. It included managing employment contracts to our recruitment strategy, learning and development, curriculums for e-learning, engagement policies, data and analytics and diversity. Fortunately, I was able to apply the high-volume knowledge that I had learned and am enjoying the journey. What challenges are you currently facing? I think that a big topic for employers at the minute is how they are identifying talent – where they are looking and what they are looking for. It goes back to our point about work experience. Working the same year 10 times is not the same as having 10 years experience. Reading between the lines is a lost art when it comes to identifying key talent and that has to change.  At the present, we are in a market where candidates can interview with five companies they are interested in and they get to pick the best ones that suit them. Now their decision is impacted by what the company stands for and how it treats its people. You don’t want to miss great talent just because their CV isn’t great or because they don’t come from the right industry. You need to find people who are passionate about what they are doing and show great growth and transferable skills, which reflects more that they’re going to succeed. When you think about all of the greatest achievers, the great CEOs and business leaders that have done amazing things over the last 50 years, would you have snapped them up when you were 20 years old and they didn’t have anything yet? What were they like back then? Or what did their principles look like? Instead of looking for someone to fit into a certain role, look for passionate people to join the organisation. You, as the business, should let them do the jobs you tasked them with. And if that keeps failing for you, it’s clearly an identification issue. You’re picking the wrong people. What advice would you give to those planning to pursue an HR career? I was very lucky when I was younger, at about 17 or 18 years old, I had a great mentor. Hopefully, everybody can find their mentor at least once in their career because these people are not always easy to come by.  Also, making mistakes is not a problem. The problem is when you continue to make the same mistake over and over and do nothing to adjust or change. But if it’s the initial mistake, I