Ascent Solution's Blog

Five steps to a pay rise

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:41:07 +0000

So you want a pay rise?

Asking for a pay rise is never an easy thing to do, but if you think you are being undervalued at your company, then there’s not an awful lot you can do but to go for it. So what is the best way to get a pay rise?

1) Do your research

If you are going to suggest you should be paid more money, make sure that you can show other comparable roles either at your company or at rival businesses are paying more. Look at job adverts, or online salary surveys, to determine what seems to be the average salary for your role – and be sure to include that information in your submission.

2) Get your timing right

If your company has an annual cycle, then make sure you ask at the right time of year. Pay increases may be linked to performance and appraisals, for example, or they might be reviewed as part of the financial planning done at the start of the financial year. Alternatively, your company may budget from January to December – whatever it is, find out what factors are considered in setting salaries and make sure you ask at the right time.

3) Use the right language

Storming in and demanding a payrise or else you will leave is not really going to get you what you want. Indeed, it can backfire horribly if your bluff is called, and even if it does miraculously work for a short-term gain, all you will have done is highlight potential disloyalty to your employers. Instead, be sure to discuss your request in a conciliatory, factual manner and try to avoid becoming emotionally involved in what you are saying – it will not help your cause if you lose your temper or patience.

4) Don’t continually settle for second best

If your request is not listened to, then don’t worry too much – but you may want to give serious consideration to moving on. Working in the media is very different to a career in the public sector for example, and staying in the same role at the same company for too long can do you no favours. You need to be moving onwards and upwards to keep your profile high – if you stagnate, you’ll seem to lack ambition.

5) Expand your skillset

Pay rises are one way of moving onwards, but you need to also keep your skillset modern. If you are currently employed in print, for example, you really need to develop your skillset so that you are at home in a digital context; if you don’t then you will find yourself becoming a dinosaur pretty quickly. Just because you have plenty of years left in you doesn’t mean that your skills will retain their value in the future. Often, you might be able to secure a pay rise by offering to take on new responsibility in another part of the company – which achieves your twin goals of earning more money AND keeping you relevant. Even if you expand your skillset by undertaking privately-funded training, you will be able to present that to your employer further down the line and it can form part of your case for a pay rise!

The Apprentice proves you can't just recruit from a CV

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:28:33 +0000

The world of recruitment, much like the world of sales, is a complicated and murky affair. Both disciplines rely extremely heavily on personalities, feelings, emotions and reactions and any attempt to distill this into black and white is usually futile.

This week’s episode of ‘The Apprentice’ is a great example. All indications were that Tom would breeze the task because he knew quite a lot about urban art. However, when it came to pitching their services to the artists themselves (seriously, a middle-aged man going by the name of Pure Evil? REALLY?) he was outperformed by the rival team.

The reason of this is that Tom was so eager to impress his knowledge of the art scene upon the artists that he forgot the fundamental principle of needing to listen. By asking questions and listening to your clients you will naturally come across in a better light as it shows that you are genuinely interested in hearing their perspective. Whereas Tom rabbited on and on in his sales pitch without really stopping to ask any questions of the artist. Now, this is probably because he knew the answer to those questions, but the simple act of asking them would have suggested that he was interested in their views and thoughts – instead his verbal onslaught left him looking a little bit uppity, full of self-importance and not actually that interested in his clients.

So if you were appointing someone to that role based on a paper CV alone, you’d have gone for Tom every single time, because of his understanding of art. Stephen would not have stood a chance of ‘getting the job’ – but who performed better? Stephen.

The same can be said of Lord Sugar’s firing decision. Really, as the leader of the project and the man who had suggested he had the knowledge to win the task, it should have been Tom to go – based purely on performance. However, it was Laura who got the boot, and again it was clear that Lord Sugar was making his decision based on his feelings, rather than a cold assessment of the facts. That’s perfectly understandable, and entirely how recruitment needs to work.

The problem is that businesses can’t always meet every single applicant and usually have to shortlist based on CVs or assessment forms alone – so how do you know if you are interviewing a bunch of Toms (look great on paper but perhaps haven’t got the right personality for the role) while binning the applications from all the Stephens (because there’s no directly relevant experience to boast about).

That’s why we insist on meeting all of our candidates – you simply CANNOT tell how good a person is, or what they would be suited to doing, without looking them in the eye and having a conversation with them. It’s why we are able to confidently match people with jobs and companies where we know they’ll fit in.

We can meet every single candidate, while businesses simply don’t have that time – so if you don’t use a recruitment agency and shortlist from bits of paper or online profiles instead, it might be worth asking yourself just how much talent never gets to cross the threshold of your business. It’s certainly something to bear in mind…

Don't moan about problems - work on solutions

Thu, 03 May 2012 14:02:47 +0000

Another week, and another episode of The Apprentice that had me with my head in my hands on more than one occasion. I bet Lord Sugar must wish he could sack five or six of the feckless idiots at once – Jade was very lucky to survive, but she only did so because Azar displayed all of the charisma of an undertaker at a rave.

Admittedly, Jade was guilty of a huge, huge mistake – she didn’t give clear leadership and had no strategy whatsoever. Having failed to shift 40-odd bottles of fake tan (and seriously, if you can’t sell fake tan in an Essex shopping mall, then you can’t sell anything) she sent her team back to pick up more of the same. There was no focus to what they were doing, and that is a criminal mistake to make – enthusiasm and willing are only valuable if they are harnessed to contribute to a common goal – otherwise you end up with lots of people running round and shouting excitedly without ever actually getting anywhere.

However, Azar was a depressing, energy-sapping oxygen thief. He reminded me of those spooky things out of Harry Potter that suck the life from their enemies. He seemed to have read chapter one of Marketing for Dummies and decided that the word that mattered most for him was ‘strategy’. He then proceeded to spend the entire show moaning and whinging at the lack of a strategy, trotting the phrase out every thirty seconds at least.

Now, in essence, he was quite right – there was no strategic thinking, and there should have been. That’s Jade’s fault and no mistake. However, you will get nowhere in life by sitting in the corner moaning and pointing out other people’s failings. If you have any ambitions to be a leader whatsoever, you have to get off your arse and look at solutions, not problems (to borrow a line from Jade).

Azar seemed incapable of doing that. He whined and droned, and moaned and whinged, and he did absolutely sod all about the problem facing them. He was so busy pointing out the lack of a strategy that he didn’t even stop to think about putting one forward himself – no gumption whatsoever! People like Azar just aren’t suited to the type of business that The Apprentice is looking for. An investment of £250,000 is not big business (however grand some of the candidates’ aspirations may appear to be). It is small fry, and what a small start-up needs is committed entrepreneurs with get-up-and-go. There’ll be no-one on hand to do things for them; it will be up to people to make things happen.

Can you honestly see Azar managing that? The kind of career Azar would be suited to is that of a faceless small cog in a big machine. A role where he doesn’t need to think for himself, where he is given clear, unambiguous instruction, and where all the structures and processes are put into place to enable him to concentrate on his paperwork.

People like Azar don’t really have a future in marketing or sales. He’s probably an excellent administrator, but what I look for in candidates as that ability to step up to the plate when things go wrong, a willingness to work towards fixing problems rather than complaining about them and hoping someone else does. It’s those people who combine talent and drive that can go on to become AAA talent – it’s the likes of Azar who will hoover the offices once they’ve gone home.

How do I get into sales & marketing?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:34:07 +0000

Working as a recruitment consultant, I’m often approached by people who are looking to change careers. They often tend to come from a financial background, but that’s not always the case, and they want to move into media. The problem is, they’ve moved a way up the career ladder in what they do (and have the salary and resulting lifestyle that accompany it) and are not so keen to start at the bottom.

This, unfortunately, is a big problem in today’s competitive marketplace.

What employers are looking for are proven hard skills – not transferrable soft skills that require a gamble. Yes, you may have experience of running a team, and yes, you may have managed budgets before, but if you’ve spent your career working as a financial adviser, you’ll lose out to media sales people when it comes to account managing Mediacom.

If that sounds harsh – well, it is I’m afraid. Part of this problem is the fact that sales (and, to a lesser extent, marketing) is seen by some as a career that relies on nothing more than the gift of the gab and a bit of creativity – something that pretty much anyone can do if given the chance.

That’s so wide of the mark as to be painful, but it is a commonly-held misconception. To become a good sales person, or marketer, you need qualifications and experience – the same as any well-paid job.

So, if you want a career change and are looking at moving into sales and marketing, what are your options? There are two approaches to take.

Option one is to accept a hefty pay cut and look for entry level jobs. Even then, you may find yourself missing out to recent graduates with relevant degrees, but you stand a reasonable chance of getting your foot on the ladder. Once you’ve done that, you will have to work your way up. Again, that might not be as quick as you think it will be either – you could be looking at significantly lowered wages for a period of years – and, of course, there’s absolutely no guarantee that you will be any good in your new career – or that you’ll actually enjoy it.

Option two is to invest in retraining, gaining appropriate qualifications to demonstrate your capability and enabling you to at least have a chance of entering at a higher level. Again though, be warned that you will be up against people who have qualifications AND experience, so there are no guarantees that you will be successful. It does give you a fighting chance at least, and demonstrate commitment to your new career.

If you’re looking at training courses and qualifcations to get you ready for that big step, I’d recommend Reed Learning who run a plethora of training courses for all manner of industries. If you are after something a little weightier, then the CIM run certificates and diplomas in sales and marketing that can really help you to stand out from the crowd – and give experienced marketing and sales professionals an edge too.

The link to this week’s episode of The Apprentice? Well, the hard skills required (namely experience of the food industry and how to run a catering business) was what pretty much everyone was lacking and that is what made it so difficult for them to succeed. Those hard skills, that actual transferrable experience of having done this in the past, is invaluable to employers and that is what makes changing career a challenging, but not impossible, proposition.