The New Crop of Graduates have arrived

So September has drawn to a close which means that the new intake of graduates have had a month to bed into their new lives as young professionals. There have been 30 arrive in my department recently and the other day I stood up in front of them all to give a talk about Professional Development.

It was an important discussion for a number of reasons, firstly I explained the company’s process for heading up the ladder. There were the usual questions around how long does it take for promotion and what training is there. I stressed the point that it was difficult to put a time frame on the astronomic rise of a talented graduate…but more importantly I stressed that going out of your way to gain promotions and attempting to fast track yourself up the ladder isn’t necessarily the best way to go about things and can often lead to a glass ceiling at junior management.

If graduates direct their effort into delivering the highest quality work whilst demonstrating the behaviours of a leader then the professional success will naturally follow at a pace that will allow excellent prospects at senior management levels.

Don’t forget that the way you go about your work is as important as delivery…but it shouldn’t take precedent…you need a good balance, that way you will stand out in comparison to other high performing graduates vying for similar roles in the business. It isn’t a crime if you purely focus on delivery, however you may find it harder when it comes to behavioural and strategic interview questions for managerial positions.

It occurred to me as I was explaining the development process that the management structure of the business hadn’t been explained to them. I asked the group an outright question whether they understood it…the common response was ‘yeah yeah’ with a few nods. Fair play to one of the guys who actually spoke out and said ‘No, could you explain’. I like honesty and I also like it when people seek understanding so I happily explained…much to the relief of the rest of the room.

The session went well from then on and I encouraged open questions about both the department and their development.

When I called for one final question, it came from the same guy who had asked about the management structure. He asked ‘What one piece of advice would you give us to help our progression?’ What a great question, one I had to take a second to give it the justice it deserved…I went with the following…see if you agree (bearing in mind I had a few seconds to answer it)?

“I would say the single most important thing for your own progression is very good self awareness, it allows you to take a step back to view the impact of every action or inaction you take…not just the impact on those around you but also the impact on yourself. It allows you to catch yourself before you come across as an arrogant so and so…It allows you to ultimately not be the guy or girl everyone hates. A heightened self awareness in my view nurtures the right environment for a high performer to succeed.”

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Understanding The Work-Life Balance

If you don’t enjoy your working life then you need to take a serious look at your choice of job, in the first few years of working, I spent around 60% of my waking hours at work. Being a qualified engineer, I love a bit of maths, but for those who don’t love maths (or math for our American cousins) bear with me because what follows might just show you something.

My first working contract was for 42.5 hours a week, but the expectation was to put in far more than that, and eager to impress in my first year, let’s say I did 55 hours per week on average (my old manager may well laugh whilst reading this but rest assured it was about that as a minimum). Add to that my commute time which was an hour each way in the beat up Silver Fox, so now we are at 65 hours a week purely devoted to working.

There are 168 hours in a week; if we minus 8 hours sleep per night (8 x 7 = 56) then we are down to 112 hours of actually being awake each week. 65 as a percentage of 112 is close to 60%, but that isn’t the whole story as the graph below will try to explain.

As you can see, most people sleep for around 56 hours per week, leaving 112 to play with, if you remove the working time then you’re left with 47 hours per week, which might sound a lot of free time, but let’s have a look at the last column where I’ve put in the “Existing vs Living” title. If you were to add up the amount of time in a week where you cook, clean, eat, shower, shop, iron, sit on the loo (although some see this as a past-time) then I bet that would come close to 20 hours a week. So in reality we are down to 27 hours per week to go and enjoy ourselves, most of that will be at a weekend so if we say that 16 hours of that is weekend life then we are down to 11 hours in the week or if you go a step further then you have 2.2 hours every week day to go enjoy yourself and live. Of course this was based on my working life as a graduate and luckily I loved every minute of my first role, but I bet you can apply this sort of thinking to your own circumstances and come up with a fairly similar picture…then it allows you to question what should you do with your time…watch TV, play video games, right a blog, go to the gym, go for a drink…the world is yours!

This was just an attempt to demonstrate that if you don’t enjoy the work that you do then you had better look forward to and make bloody good use of the 11 hours a week, or if that seems too bleak a future, find a job that you enjoy, that 11 suddenly inflates to 76 hours of enjoyment.

I always tell people that when it comes to choosing jobs you can never make the wrong decision, if you end up hating a new job then at least you tried, you are safe in the knowledge that you don’t like that kind of role, don’t be so proud to either go back to an old role or keep searching for that great job…I promise you it’s out there somewhere.

‘N-T-G’

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Day One as a Graduate – the first few hours!

September came around and it was my first day at the Formula 1 team…I proudly hid the Silver Fox (my beat up old VW Polo) in the far corner of the company car park, packed with a vast number of high end sports cars, ready for my first day as an Operations Graduate on a 2 year scheme, ready to set the F1 world alight! It was fair to say the day hadn’t started particularly well, as I rushed through the car park towards the entrance. I was still living over 50 miles away from where the team were based and although I’d left in what I thought was plenty of time, there had been a crash on the motorway which had used the entire buffer time I’d allowed myself for the journey. So there I was, day 1 and I turn up 10 minutes late, not my finest moment but luckily the induction session hadn’t started yet and as I walked (jogged) in there were some familiar faces waiting in reception. It turns out that a total of 5 graduates, including me, were taken on that year from the assessment centre, 4 guys and 1 girl. As I glanced at the faces of the successful few, I had a mixture of feelings; in my opinion, some of graduates deserved to be there based on their performances at the assessment centre…and others…well let’s just say amazement and disbelief are 2 words that aren’t quite descriptive enough for the feelings I had.

The girl of the group, who out of the others was probably the strongest performer at the assessment phase, leaned across and whispered two things, firstly “I was beginning to get a bit worried they hadn’t offered you a job, I thought you presented really well.” That made me laugh, but not as much as her second comment “How on earth did HE get a job?” which made me laugh so hard I had to walk away for a bit.

The induction session was a pretty standard exercise, nothing much to report except we found out our placement schedule over the next 2 years. As the session finished, the responsible manager for each graduate’s first placement came to collect us, in my case it was the Head of Quality, who turned up last therefore leaving me feeling as if I was the last one picked for the school team.

There was no desk for me to sit at in the Quality department so I was led to an area along the corridor and right round the corner where an empty desk was available in the IT department, this was due to a guy being off on long term sick, “You can sit here” said the Head of Quality. “I only found out you were coming to Quality last week so I’ve being trying to find a desk and I need to think of something for you to do”.

It was at this point that reality struck home; it maybe took me quicker than most and some never quite grasp the situation, but graduates are the lowest rung on any corporate ladder. They have no divine right to respect or authority in a company; this is something they have to earn through proving themselves and slowly gaining credibility, not through professional networking, but through bloody hard work. This may be a bitter pill to take to those who see themselves as the wonder kid on the fast track to corporate royalty, but in my opinion, the quicker this is realised then the transition from student to graduate to executive is a far smoother, considerably easier and perhaps most important of all, a far more enjoyable journey for all involved.

Wow, I’ve just read that back and that last bit seems quite harsh, but actually, it’s probably the best piece of advice I can give anyone going through this process…succeeding at a graduate assessment centre does one thing…get’s you through the door, you should see it as nothing more than that otherwise you might find you’re creating a long list of people who you systematically piss off.

Oh, and the other key points to draw out of this is that during the time between accepting the role and day one…firstly, drive the journey at rush hour a couple of times, I got away with it, but there’s nothing worse than rocking up late on your first day. Secondly, take a bit of initiative, give the company a call a couple of weeks before starting and find out what your first role will be and also if they’d be willing to send out any information that would normally be given out during the induction, I did this when I moved company and amongst other things they sent me a long list of the 3 and 4 letter acronyms they used. If they are well prepared you might also be put through to your first manager…I’ve found out recently that talking to a new manager prior to starting is a really useful thing to do. Try it…what do you have to lose?

I’ll write a bit more about what happened later on my first day, but hopefully this enough to be going on with.

“NTG”

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How to be successful at a graduate assessment centre…Part 2

So here is part 2 of my assessment centre experience…

The next morning started with yet more aptitude testing and for the first time since being in the presence of the candidates there was silence, at last! Don’t get me wrong, idle small talk is a skill I possess to varying degrees, but on the most part I don’t choose to exercise it, and I was beginning to get a little bit bored of being talked at by arrogant students.

Although I can’t remember the exact details of the one sided conversations that I had the pleasure of being involved in, I’m fairly certain they went along this sort of line:-

Hotshot: “Did I tell you about the time I was so brilliant”
Me: “I don’t think so…no”
Hotshot: “Well this one time when I was doing something incredibly difficult, I found out I was actually being incredibly brilliant!”
Me: “Congratulations…you must be very proud.”
Hotshot: “Yeah I know, actually me saying that now has reminded me of a time where I literally saved the world…literally!”
Me: “So the fact we are here now having this conversation, we can attribute entirely down to you…literally!”
Hotshot: “Yeah exactly, sometimes I astound myself with my own amazingness”

You get the picture. It was at this point I had made a critical decision about one of the other candidates, he was a complete and utter idiot, we are talking a prize specimen here, I’ve not met many people in my working life quite like this guy, in my mind it was safe to say there was absolutely no way this guy was getting a job from this assessment. It turns out I can be wrong sometimes!

After the thirty minutes of blissful silence for the tests, it was straight into a team exercise. This time I didn’t have the distinct advantage of knowing the solution, however what I had learnt from the first session was how to speak to people in a way that would engage the team and hopefully tease the solution out without being overbearing or obnoxious. I guess it would be rude of me not to tell you how I did this, but the honest answer is I don’t really know, firstly, it was a few years ago now and the details are a little hazy and secondly I think I’ve always been the type of person who listens to everyone’s point of view before rushing to a decision. All I can offer to you is that if you find yourself in a pressure situation like this, take a step back and say to yourself “Do I sound like the guy/girl everyone hates?” If the answer to that magical question isn’t a resounding “No” then I have 4 simple words for you:-

“Don’t be that guy!” Or “Don’t be that girl!”

You might not think that it’s quite as easy as that, but you will be amazed at the amount of people working in large corporations who are blissfully unaware about the concept of self-awareness. No one ever seems to take a step back and reflect upon their actions, words or behaviour and the kind of shadow that casts on their colleagues. Even the most self-aware can get caught up in the world of high pressure workplaces, behaviours (good or bad) tend to be contagious and can quickly become habits, especially to those who outside of the workplace are completely different versions of the same person.

The team exercise was coming to a close and it was clear there were two solutions to the given task depending on your point of view, and whichever one the team chose you could guarantee the assessors would side with the opposing view. After coming up with our team decision we notified the assessment team, a mixture of F1 managers and recruitment advisors, and were immediately thrown a curve ball. The lead assessor asked for a volunteer from the team to stand up and present the reasoning behind our decision and effectively go head to head with her about the team’s decision. Up to this point I had no reason to think I would get the job, but as I quickly scanned around the table suddenly 15 pairs of eyes became fixated on a combination of carpet, shoes or a very interesting graph on the documents scattered across the table. I remember thinking to myself “Wow, maybe these hotshots don’t want the job” so I stuck up my hand (no…not like the eager kid in class before you say it!) with a bit of a smile and said “Yeah go on then, I’ll give it a go if no one else is keen.” I then promptly stood up before anyone else had the opportunity to pluck up some courage. As I walked to the flipchart where we had made notes about our decision, I could feel 15 pairs of eyes pierce into the back of my ill-fitting suit jacket.

If I’m completely honest the next twenty minutes were a complete blur, I really enjoyed defending a team decision, and I used some creative license on a subject that basically had no relevance to engineering or Formula 1. I remember making the whole room laugh on a few occasions, admittedly mostly by accident, but that sudden engagement you get from an audience who are at ease after a bit of humour has stuck with me ever since. I’m not saying that you have to be the office clown…don’t be that guy either, but I’ve found that in the right environment and delivered at the appropriate time, humour can really help drive home some important points in a presentation or speech. It takes practice, especially the delivery, so if this doesn’t come naturally then try it out in a ‘safe’ environment first before you feel comfortable weaving it in to a presentation. Close work colleagues, friends and housemates tend to be a good audience and are more often than not your best critics. I have a good example of this so remind me later to tell you about one of the harshest drinking games I’ve witnessed, but that isn’t for now…because right now I have an assessment centre to succeed at!

After the team exercise, after the come down from the adrenalin buzz of presenting, it was time for lunch in what we were categorically told to call a ‘restaurant’ and not a canteen, for fear of the highly skilled team of chefs charging out of the kitchen brandishing their knives. The lunch was quite simply fantastic, the food was delicious and the restaurant walls were adorned with trophies. The tables were full of focussed and determined team members, all in team uniform, clearly living their dream of working in F1. I allowed myself to imagine sitting amongst them, wearing the uniform and chatting about the latest race or the hottest bit of driver gossip. This also proved to be a good tool for drowning out the reappearance of the “Aren’t I brilliant” conversations that had gone missing when it really mattered.

As the rest of the company drifted out of the restaurant, we were left sitting there wondering what was in store next. The lead assessor came striding purposefully over with a clipboard and proceeded to read out a list of names which stopped after the eighth and asked them to come with her as she marched back towards the main building. My name hadn’t been called out, and I, along with 7 other gloomy looking faces, remained in our seats wondering when we’d be released back into the real world. I was annoyed at myself, I’d allowed myself to dream about working there, but now it was time for the trusty Silver Fox to take me back up the motorway. As I sat there bringing myself back into reality, I thought that my luck was due to run out anyway and regardless of the outcome I would take some valuable lessons from the experience. As this began to sink in, the lead assessor returned to our table and proceeded to say “Unfortunately the 8 of you remaining won’t have the opportunity of going home just yet, because you’ve made it through to the second part of the session….a factory tour and a technical interview. The first group of candidates have now left the site and will be on their way home” I have to admit, I didn’t see that one coming!

I won’t bore you with the details of how the technical interview went, there are thousands of books and websites available for interview techniques and I wouldn’t pretend to be an expert in this field. What I will say though is that it is very obvious when someone comes to an interview and is desperately trying to be a character they aren’t, just be honest about who you are and what you want, if anything be a slightly more professional version of yourself. The other point I would make is that an interview isn’t a one way road, you should equally be assessing whether you would be happy working for the person or people across the table. I walked out of the interview with the usual feeling that I’m sure everyone gets afterwards (providing it wasn’t disastrous), the thought that it went fairly well but you wish you had said this or mentioned that, but also the feeling of resignation that it’s now out of your hands.

I received a phone call at 9pm that same night whilst at home….come on….at home? After the 2 days I’d just had I was in the pub. The call was from the lead assessor who told me that they were very impressed with me and if I wanted it, there was a job for me. I quickly found out it was possible to jump around like a lunatic pulling a stupid grin, while still maintaining a semi-professional voice over the phone as I replied in the affirmative, while also spilling beer all over the floor.

Unfortunately, most graduate schemes at global companies and corporations will demand some sort of assessment centre, not all have the overnight element, but you can guarantee all will attempt to induce a level of stress throughout the process to observe reactions and interactions. The grueling process works on many levels to filter out those who will be unable to cope. The successful candidates feel a real sense of achievement and accomplishment; it re-affirms their conviction that they are indeed the hotshot, the best of the best and at the moment of accepting the role, that’s exactly how I felt! The job was mine, mission accomplished, the team I would be joining were no doubt counting down the days to my imminent arrival. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that I didn’t really know a great deal on what the job was…a great deal would be an understatement…I knew nothing about what I would be doing or what was expected of me.

And that’s how I blindly stumbled into the crazy world of Formula 1.

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How to be successful at a graduate assessment centre…Part 1

This is the first part of the story of the graduate assessment process I went through to get into a Formula 1 Racing team.

The guys turned up at the fancy conference centre in their ill-fitting suits that had been owned since the limo ride at the high school graduation ball, accompanied by a freshly purchased ‘non-iron’ shirt and tie combo from the local high street fashion retailer. The girls turned up in a mixture of business skirts with a blouse or the brave few had gone for a power suit.

The event was an evening meal and overnight stay preceding a graduate assessment centre for a Formula 1 team, a small number of candidates had been picked to attend this final round of interviews after a number of grueling assessment exercises which had whittled down the 1500 applicants. The atmosphere was a mixture of excitement and nervousness with a large dose of unadulterated arrogance. These 15 individuals had succeeded at beating off the masses, in their minds they were already strutting down the pit lane soaking up the glamour and fame that F1 is renowned for. These individuals were the cream of the crop, the hotshots, they wouldn’t look out of place as candidates of ‘The Apprentice’, you all know the sort, the ones that had focused on this exact job since applying to go to university years ago.

How do I know all of this? Because the 16^th individual was me, granted, I was wearing a particularly ill-fitting suit with a shirt and tie combo straight out of a retailer synonymous with offering students a 10% discount. Only the highest grade of non-iron polyester blend would have sufficed for me. But the difference with me was that I had no idea how I had managed to get this far, not only because of the somewhat temperamental nature of my 1991 VW Polo (aka The Silver Fox) which amazingly completed the 200 mile trip without incident, but also because I wasn’t top of any of my classes. I had spent more time playing sport and working (drinking) in the campus bar than I had done studying in the library. In fact I was even a member of an infamous (at least university-wide) drinking club which was founded during my first year but, for legal reasons, I took absolutely no part in founding…none whatsoever! Initiation into the club involved downing a bottle of wine (always go for a room temperature Sauvignon Blanc if you’re wondering), a brisk run around the quad followed by 10 pints in the campus bar.

I’ll briefly tell you about my application process to give you a flavour of why I thought I didn’t quite belong in this arena. Picture the scene, it was one of the rare occasions I visited the library, a global email had been sent to my university address from the campus work placement officer, advertising a graduate scheme at a prestigious Formula 1 team. At the time I was half way through my final year of an engineering degree, with no idea what I wanted to do after I finished. I filled in the attached application form there and then and promptly attached the form to the reply, pressed send and then promptly forgot all about it, mainly because I was late for rugby training.

During university, for extra income I would do the odd day here and there for an education company where I would go and deliver workshops at schools all over the country. We used to use sports gadgets and exercise machines to teach lessons in Engineering, Maths, Science as well as teaching team building skills, we usually got very little information on what each school wanted so it was always a test of your initiative when you turned up and had to somehow link a rowing machine to Geography or something equally as ridiculous.

About six weeks after hitting send, I got a phone call whilst working at a school from a recruitment team employed by the F1 team, it took me a while to realise what had happened, they must have misread my application and had mistakenly invited me to the first stage of the assessment process, a half day session with a series of aptitude tests and a team building exercise. When I turned up to the session I had resigned myself to the fact that I was there to make up numbers and as a result I was going to try and enjoy myself. Imagine my disbelief as someone started to explain the rules of the team building exercise, it couldn’t have been the exact same exercise that I myself had been teaching the previous day to a group of 15 year old students in Yorkshire, surely that would have been unfair to the other hotshot applicants, yet here was the facilitator of the session regurgitating my exact instructions from the day before. I had to quickly remove the wry smile that had appeared on my face.

It was at this point that I tried something new; I already knew the solution to the age old issue of building the tallest tower out of nothing but sheets of paper and a glue stick, so instead I tried to think of ways to influence the rest of the hotshots without coming across as a pompous know-it-all. The beauty of setting an engineering task to a bunch of engineers is that they are so focused on the result that the process in reaching it is often overlooked. This was no exception, the stronger characters bullied and jockeyed their way into prime position with loud voices, using sentences starting with “When I’ve done this before…” and “The best way to do this is…”

There were times during the exercise that I cringed, but remembering I was there to enjoy myself, I pretended that I was with the group of school children from the day before and tailored my language as if I was ‘teaching’ the rest of the candidates. I used sentences that started with “That’s a good idea, but have you thought about…” and “If we use that solution do we think it might cause this issue…” It started to click in my mind that the assessors weren’t looking for the most highly qualified candidate, of course they were searching for a base level of competence, which in F1 was pretty high, but they were also looking for personalities that they could see would fit well into an existing high performing team.

Was that brief enough? Probably not but hey, what are ya gonna do? Still awake? Good…I’ll continue because building paper towers got me through to the fancy conference centre for the final round of the assessment centre.

The evening consisted of a 3 course meal with the senior management of the F1 team, I’d love to say that the conversation was free flowing and full of intelligent insight, but we all know I’d be lying. It was of course a whole lot of posturing for attention, a room full of that annoying eager kid in your class at junior school with their arm up trying to answer the teacher’s question “Me, me, me, oh please, ME, ME!” I have to admit it was a strange environment, one I’m glad I haven’t had to experience since, on the one hand everyone is desperately trying to be pleasant to everyone else but on the other hand, knowing full well you are competing with every single one of them.

As the meal drew to a close, it became clear that a few of the candidates were taking full advantage of the complimentary bar, purely to calm the nerves of course, and who would blame them, I mean we were all students at the time so who is going to pass up this sort of opportunity, maybe it was a test of social skills. We were told that nothing that evening was part of the assessment but let me tell you now, if you are ever in that situation, you are continuously being assessed, in this case informally.

So what is the socially acceptable level of alcoholism in a situation like this I hear you ask? Well on this occasion I used a little trick my dad once told me, “Son, if you don’t want to get too slaughtered, stick to bottles of Bud…no one can see how fast you’re drinking so you can nurse a few all night.” I have to admit, the old man had a point, so it was with great restraint that I watched much of the group sink a fair number of pints whilst listening to claims of grandeur getting increasingly outlandish. I have used the bottled lager technique on a number of work/social events to good effect but I’ll talk about some of those at a later date.

That’s probably enough writing from me for one sitting…my fingers are beginning to ache. I will talk about what happened the following day soon…I promise.

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