Category: Job Search & HR

Job Search: Unemployment & Depression


At the end of February, The Ladders featured Debra Donston-Miller's article Depression is Making Unemployment Longer, which reiterated the well-known fact that unemployment walks hand in hand with depression and anxiety, and that, in turn, diminishes your ability to get employed. 

It's a vicious circle, you know.   A person looses his job – that's on its own is a hard blow to his ego.  Nevertheless, he gets right on all job boards – Monster, CareerBuilder, etc.  – posts his resume and applies to every single opening that matches his qualifications.  As time goes by, he keeps lowering his expectations – now applications go out to jobs with smaller titles and lower salaries.  Still, the response is not too hot.  

Nowadays, the statistical probability of converting applications into a recruiter's or hiring manager's interest is around 2% for high-level financial professionals – CFOs, Controllers, Financial Directors, etc.  The national numbers of people not being able to find employment in one, sometimes two, and more years are scary. 

While you are waiting for the sparks in the dark, your spirits get lower and lower.  You become listless, loose interest in everything – depression really kicks in.  The anxiety of not being able to support yourself when the savings and unemployment compensation run out gets overwhelming.  You swing between over-hype of appraising your possession for possible liquidation and inability to move a muscle.

Still, you force yourself to apply every day, you do your networking, ask people around.  Finally, quantity turns into quality: you've sent out 100 resumes and someone finally called you.   You've had a positive response after the phone interview and now you are going for a face-to-face appointment.  Anxiety floods you – the workspace environment, which you have not experienced for several months, seems so alien to you. 

You are prepared, though – you are a seasoned executive with superior qualifications, a likable person, well-spoken, know how to handle yourself.  The interview seems to go well, but there are so many candidates, and you might have said something wrong just because the depression and anxiety ate some of your confidence away.  Every day you wait for a call back, but nobody ever does; nobody even sends an email to let you know that you did not qualify – people don't do those sort of polite things anymore.

Now, you are loosing hope altogether: it is more and more difficult to make yourself even to look at the job listings.  It seems like staring at the television screen all day without seeing what's on is a better option…

You know what?  I am not going to tell you that it will get better.  I am not a fortune teller.  I don't know it, but neither do you.  Yes, it's fucking tough out there!  As I always say,  we live in a new economic reality.  The truth is that you may need to rethink your entire life.  But you cannot let the depression eating away your time.  FIGHT IT!  Do you know what happens with every single day you waste on giving in to nothingness? It disappears and you will never get it back. 

The Ladders' article quoted cognitive behavioral psychologist Deb Brown, who suggests creating a routine for yourself as one of the helpful tools.  My readers know how big I am on time-management and routines.  Whether you are fighting the unemployment depression or job frustration, scheduling your time and filling your day with meaningful tasks always helps.   And when you are unemployed, you have an opportunity to do things that you never had time for before: study Spanish with that Rosetta Stone pack you've got for your birthday two years ago; transfer all those home videos onto DVDs, get yourself fit.  

You don't really need more than two-three hours a day to look for new openings and apply.  Spend the rest of your free time (FREE TIME – when do we have it otherwise?) catching up on your life.  And don't be a prisoner of your schedule either – let go of it for a day, when you feel frustrated.

And listen, even if things with employment never get better and some drastic decisions will need to be made, at least you will not need to look back at the long stretch of a complete misery right before that.       

The Clueless Boss of a Frustrated Downshifter


Confused-animals-are-funny15-300x260The economy and the resulting miserable state of the job market forced many financial executives to downshift, i.e. take jobs way below their levels of expertise, authority, and adequate compensation.  It's been almost a year since I wrote about the heartbreaking reality of first finding such a position and then accepting it for the sake of having food on the table and keeping the roof over your family's head.  Yet, the painful topic is still relevant.

But let's look a little further.  We have an opportunity to examine an interesting situation brought to my attention by an actual downshifter – a former CFO of a, now defunct, $500-million-dollar firm.  After a year of a futile job-hunting he accepted, at 50% of his former compensation, a Controller's position in a young and small ($30 million) company, ran by two owners – a female CEO and her partner with a COO title.  

How many times did I write about accidental bosses?  And here we go again: this business has started because the two partners got lucky. They were in the right place at the right time with extensive connections and sufficient funding at hand.  Neither of them actually needed it to survive, but the opportunity were too exciting to pass up. 

Guess what?  The CEO never led a company before.  She never even worked in a commercial enterprise.  Her partner has an MBA from an Ivy League school, but he only worked overseas.  Neither have the chops to make good executives, yet both have undeniable talents and a lot of enthusiasm.  She is a sales ace and the toughest negotiator you can find.  He is incredibly detailed-oriented.

Not only that they managed to get the company off the ground eight years ago, they kept it growing with minimal labor resources, including  a single bookkeeper.  Hiring a senior financial person was definitely not among their priorities. Until…  Some people are just born lucky.  An even bigger  opportunity presented itself.  To implement it they needed more capital.  The dogged COO wore down one of the major banks into providing them with a substantial trade finance line.  Among bank's mandates was hiring a proper Controller. 

Enter our former CFO.

Because both execs are not very clear on the leadership functions, the division of responsibilities is blurred.  The COO was in charge of the Controller's hiring.  The CEO never even saw the candidate's resume or salary history.  When COO decided that this is their guy, the CEO was called in for a minute to shake the future Controller's hand.  

Yet, once our downshifter started working there, he realized that the woman's word was the final authority on pretty much all other issues.  Now, because she lacks corporate experience, she is not capable of assessing the Controller's performance.  In her mind, any other accountant would provide the same input as this guy, who managed in the first three months to correct more procedural, systematic, recording, and administrative errors than he did in 25 years before this job. Moreover, he contributes into the company's strategic decisions.  All that for a price of a low-brow peripheral Controller.  The CEO has no clue that what she's got was a gift; that she got very lucky again and obtained an Hermes bag for the price of a Coach.

This is a big problem.  If your boss doesn't understand your value, she cannot appreciate your contribution. The fact that someone with lower qualifications and less experience would not be able to attend to the sophisticated tasks you accomplish remains unnoticed.  As a result, you are helping to better the company without a chance for a fair reward. 

What to do in this situation?  You are not the type to brag every time you do something extraordinary.  The first thought comes to mind is to re-introduce yourself.  The guy who hired you didn't share your resume with his partner, so give her one together with your salary history.  You can say, "I understand you've never had a chance to look at it before and I think it's not fair for either of us."   I know some people will say it's tasteless, but the options here are limited.

Secondly, you must propose a proper evaluation system for all staff members.  Because these people have no idea how to go about it, they will turn to you.  This is your chance!  Provide them with the format that allows employees to list their own accomplishments.  Then, make sure that reviews are actually conducted.

Finally, if you don't get satisfactory acknowledgement anyway, start looking for another job.  Maybe you will be luckier this time around.  It's like I always say, employment at will works both ways: they can separate from you at any time, but so can you.

HR Capitalist Believes That Operational Guidelines Are Optional


ScrewballLast week (Wednesday, January 26th, to be exact), my fellow Typepad blogger HR Capitalist (www.hrcapitalist.com) posted a short musing on the subject of what he calls "Rules Orientation." Not a very clear term, it basically attempts to encompass the process of introducing new hires to the way the business is done in the company, i.e. operational guidelines. And the thesis is that it's not always necessary and the choice depends on the propensity of the candidate: if he wants the structure, give it to him; but if he doesn't like to be restrained by the rules, let him figure out his own way. The latter apparently is especially "good" for the companies that operate without rules in the first place – the mayhem kind of businesses.

(Side note: I cannot suppress my high cultural standards and must make a note about the inappropriateness of the "Fight Club" reference. I just cannot stand the pretentiousness of people who don't even understand what they are watching, but try to appear deep. Let me tell you, it took a lot of discipline, military organization, and RULES to properly run Project Mayhem. Remember? "The first rule of Fight Club is…" and so on – rules 1 to 8. Even The Narrator's psyche was protected from Tyler Durden within as long as the rules were followed. Once they were violated, the spell was broken.)

These kind of ideas and recommendations are somewhat surprising, coming from a career HR guru. How narrow is the employment niche of, what he calls, "low rules" candidates? In my opinion, minuscule – maybe some small haphazard consulting company with no supporting staff and a life expectancy of a couple of years, or a startup based on an IPhone App that will be hot for a few months and then lost in the sea of 300,000+ solutions.

In any other type of business, or even in the same kind but with a little bit of structural complexity, project deadlines, customer base, etc., operational guidelines guarantee faster immersion into daily duties. The only employees that should not be bound by protocol are the creative staff (designers, architects, artists, etc.); and even those need to abide by the rules of conduct, employment agreements, client-time billing, etc.

The biggest question is, who the hell can afford nowadays the unstructured learning curves of people not powered by certain procedural standardization? Especially if they are very good – you don't really want them to waste time on "figuring out" their personal ways of going about the job.

Moreover, I guarantee you that no small or midsize business, with its flat organizational structure and intense concentration of responsibilities, can let a no-rules screwball (or rather cannonball) into its already vulnerable system. Just imagine for a second someone like Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) running around your workplace, releasing leopards, breaking all conventions, and eventually reducing the result of long-time effort to a pile of disconnected fossils.

But I shouldn't be really surprised that this post was written. This is a typical problem with many narrowly-focused specialists, including HR gurus. They lack the ability for systematic thinking, are not capable of viewing business as an integral organism, where everything contributes to the ultimate success, and, thus, rarely make good executive material.

I am all for matching employees abilities to their appropriately assigned tasks and specifically talk about it in the last section of "CFO Techniques", but I cannot imagine trying to fit into any organization those people who cannot follow any rules.

A CFO’s Democratism Gets Tested


Worker Bee In most smaller companies, CFOs and controllers include general HR functions into their scopes of responsibilities – that's a given. The flat organizational structures, though, with their spatial and psychological proximity of top executives to the staff, play peculiar tricks on those in charge of the company's human relations.

Very frequently a CFO takes a role of a buffer between the owner/CEO and the rest of the company's employees. She feels obligated to soften the impact of the direct dealing with frequently harsh and hard attitudes of the boss.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: more frequently than not entrepreneurs don't have an experience of ever being in a position of an employee and, therefore, they have very little understanding of the staff's mentality. On the other hand, a CFO maybe a right-hand person now, but she is still just a salaried employee, most likely grown into her current status by climbing through the ranks. If she is a decent human with a conscience, she is sensitive to the needs of valuable employees and cares about their well-being (if they are useless, let someone else care about them).

It's likely that an excellent CFO would enjoy a comparatively preferential treatment by a CEO: more disciplinary leniency, nicer attitude, better perks, general amiability, etc. When it comes to other employees, their efforts and achievements may be remarkable, but they are not as evident to the boss, and that reduces their value in his eyes. I've had one CEO openly tell me that if I want a certain benefit (let's say flexible spending account) for myself, he would be fine with obtaining it, but he did not care about the rest of the "worker-bees."

So, the CFO takes it upon herself to protect other employees from undue tyranny and act as their speaker when it comes to betterment of the employment conditions, whatever they are: raises, bonuses, vacations, benefits, etc. Sort of like a representative of the XYZ Company's employees union. And when she discusses this situation with her friends and family, she expresses her disdain for the undemocratic ways of her boss, taking pride in her efforts to right the wrongs.

Now imagine such a CFO taking a position with a new company – small, young, still pretty much in development stage. The owners are very liberal and treat everyone like equals. Moreover, the CFO is the last person being hired. Those few other employees have been there from the start. Nobody needs protection. Furthermore, there is one person who has been there the longest, starting as a CEO's assistant. Not that she gets any special perks or something like that, but she definitely feels very secure.

This should make the democratic CFO very happy. After all, wasn't she fighting for equality of other employees all the time before? Yes, it's nice; wonderful, really; exactly what she hoped to find… Except that… Being "the chosen one" was kind of a guilty pleasure too, an enjoyable self-esteem booster. And the gratitude of others for all that blow-cushioning effort was very rewarding as well. As important as the democratic principles were to this CFO, the old tyranny is somewhat missed.

That's how we, humans, are. For various reasons and purposes, mostly subconsciously and without any malice, we create these little lies that alter our self-image and other people's perception of us in one way or another.

It reminds me of my UK friend of many years, Gerald Hamer's, revelation concerning his constant bitching and moaning about endless international traveling he had to endure throughout many years of his impressive career as financial broker and adviser. "In truth," he said, "deep inside I love the goddamn airports; the sub-par plane food; the inevitable delays; god-forsaken Yakutsk, the coldest city on Earth, with its diamond mines one week, and unbearable humidity of Bahrain another. I wouldn't want it any other way."

So, all you, democratic CFOs out there, work as hard as you can and fight for your employees' well-being with all you've got, but be honest with yourself: you enjoy being special, the Most Valuable Player in the field.

Job Search: The Reality and Heartaches of Downshifting


Stock_overqualified158x188 Here is the testimony to the current job market condition: the necessity-driven "downshifting" (taking a position below your lever of qualifications) has become so prevalent that HR consultants start addressing the issue as a separate subject with specific advices on how to do it successfully.  There used to be times when some over-50 empty-nesters wanted to lighten their workload and spend more time at leisure, so CFO's switched to consulting, and stuff like that.  Now, we are talking about highly-experienced middle-aged financial executives unsuccessfully trying to get whatever jobs they can in order to put food on the table and continue to support their post-college children, who have no chance of getting a good job either.  It's heartbreaking!!!

I always had a problem with the concept of "overqualified" candidates.  It goes against all commercial, practical, and common sense – why would anybody say "No" to buying a diamond ring for a price of a cubic zirconia?  Why wouldn't employers want to benefit from high-level expert if he is willing (moreoever, eager) to take a much lower position and pay than the ones he used to have?

The official explanation (especially, if you talk to recruiters at Robert Half, or ExecuSearch, etc.) is always (it's like everything changes around us except for the stupid banalities) that employers don't want to take the risk of hiring someone, who will be immediately looking to leave for a better opportunity.  This outdated explanation begs three responses. 

First of all, nowadays the process of looking for a job is unbearably excruciating.  Anyone who finally finds one is so relieved and enthused, he wouldn't want to continue that struggle for sometime (especially, if his attempts may leak through the Internet and jeopardize the position he already got). 

Secondly,  where are those better opportunities? The whole point is that there are no opportunities.  I remember after the Internet bubble burst, let's say 2001-2002, an opening for a controller position could generate 300-350 good (not garbage) responses.  It was terrifying.  Today, there is a thousand of unemployed financial pros for every CFO, controller, director or VP ad. 

Finally (and most importantly), even if the person leaves soon, what about the cost/benefit analysis of the time he does spend in the company?  Why wouldn't an employer want to sponge a superior knowledge off of him at a lower price?  Is it because the company still uses the outrageously expensive recruiting services?  Well, then the agreement should be negotiated in such a way that no fees are paid until the break-even grace period passes.  And anyway, people should stop wasting their money on recruiters altogether.

But we know that this explanation is bullshit.  In reality, no matter how beneficial it is for the company, CEOs and existing CFO don't really want the brightest and the most knowledgeable person in the position.  They want the non-threatening and obedient, know-your-place employee.  Especially the CFO – what if the newcomer turns out to be better than the present loser (only losers feel threatened by someone strong; winners have nothing to fear).

Anyway, this issue is so prominent that on August 26 Finance Ladder published not one, but two career advice articles on the subject: Getting the Job When You're Overqualified and Packaging Yourself for a Smaller Role, both by Sean Gallagher.  Here is the best quote:

"…Finding a job – even one that pays significantly less, with less responsibility — is still a challenge."

There are some interesting observations and advices as well.  Nothing groundbreaking – most of it you can figure out yourself, but still it may be a useful reading not only for those who are looking now.  Because it is not going to get any better.  If you are employed now, it does not mean you will have a job tomorrow.