The Interview Every Graduate Should Read

Hopefully posting a link here will work :^) "The Interview Every Graduate Should Read" P.58 - please see my latest article in #oraclescene magazine ow.ly/BP6TS

10 songs to get recruiters fired up in the morning

While music is a very subjective thing, it can be exceptionally motivational. Sometimes a song is all you need to get you out of that bad funk and into a good one.

Music is incredibly powerful and can conjure up an image, good or bad, and sometimes it can remind you if a really great time. The songs of your life are personal, but here’s a list of songs that will elevate your mood and put you in that winning frame of mind to have a great day. Songs that I hope will, either by the sound or the lyrics, will get your mind or your body moving to a good rhythm to make your day a little bit better.

I’ve tried to include something for everyone in this list of great songs, but for a very specific reason: because you need to pick one. You need to pick one of these songs as the one you are going to use to kick-start your positive mind-set. Pick one song, and make it your song.

Listen to it while thinking about times when you felt really powerful, unstoppable, like you could take on the world, like you alone have control over how you feel and no external factor can change how you feel.

You can even think of a time when you felt really attractive, and like you had the world in the palm of your hand, or when you felt like you did something really good or benevolent for someone else. Whatever makes you feel strong, powerful and great.

Relive that feeling while listening to your song. Really relive it. Feel it, how you felt, what you thought, what you could see or smell, what was around you. Or if you can’t think of a specific time – make one up, where you are all that you want to be, how would that feel, how would that look.

Then reinforce that feeling by listening to your song again every time you feel great, successful or powerful. When you feel like you've achieved something, done something good, feel great or whatever puts you in a positive frame of mind.

After a very short time this song becomes your motivator, and every time you hear it – every time – you will feel that same way. This is an exceptionally powerful technique that requires minimal effort but gives maximum impact in only a few minutes with little or no cost (99p at most or free if you use YouTube or Vevo, or already own the song).

If you don't feel like doing this and doing yourself a favour then just do me a favour: whether you feel like it or not, listen to one of these songs before you start your day and see if it doesn't make a difference. Go on. I dare you.

10) Back In Black, AC/DC – July 1980

9) Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin (come on, who doesn't love a battle cry?) – November 1970

8) Fighter, Christina Aguilera – March 2003

7) Move On Up, Curtis Mayfield, 1970 – or can be substituted with Touch The Sky, Kanye West, 2006

6) Ali in the Jungle, The Hours – November 2006

5) Lose Yourself, Eminem – August 2002

4) Killing In The Name Of, Rage Against The Machine – November 1992

3) Song 2, Blur – April 1997

2) Gotta Fly Now (Theme from Rocky), Bill Conti – February 1977

1) Can You Feel It, The Jackson Five – September 1980

Alison Mulligan is a senior account manager at ERP recruiter Maximus

10 Film Every Recruiter Should Watch

10 films every recruiter should watch

I love films. Films allow you to walk in someone else’s shoes, if only for a mile, and understand a small portion of their story. Some are more inspiring than others, but none is less important than the other. Here are films that inspire me, teach me and make me laugh.

1) The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) Stars Will Smith

The (true) story of what someone can achieve if they are motivated enough, no matter how difficult their circumstance. If you ever experience fear in your role, watch this film and think how lucky you are that you are not homeless and working for free in the hope that you might get a job. It also reminds me how lucky I am to be given a chance to control my own earning potential. Believe it or not, this is a rare opportunity; don't waste it.

2) Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) Stars Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon

Sales can be a very tough mistress if it's not going well. And that when it's not going well it will be because you're making excuses. You will instantly recognise all the characters as individuals you have worked with in your sales career. And you cannot help but feel at least a little inspired by Alec Baldwin in the opening scenes, delivering some classic lines (which are often shouted playfully across) such as always remember your ABCs.

3) Wall Street (1987) Stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen

Great for inspiring you to go the extra mile but also a reminder that making money is not everything. There is always a human element, and acting without integrity will leave you feeling hollow.

4) Boiler Room (2000) Stars Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel

Another motivational great, especially a speech to interns who are fighting to get the opportunity to earn ridiculous amounts of money as stockbrokers. Some more sales classics in here, but also the message that earning your money through immoral methods will leave you feeling at odds with yourself.

5) Thank You For Smoking (2005) Stars Aaron Eckhart

Sometimes it's all about how you present the information. And he who can come up with the best reasoning is often the victor. However, if you are trying to make something unreasonable appear to be the opposite, it will catch up with you, as your own conflicted sense of morality will work its way to the surface in the end. But some truly great lines of debate in this film.

6) Jerry Maguire (1996) Stars Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger

Sometimes, when you actually try to do the right thing, it seems like you are being punished for it and it feels like the much harder way. Also, classically funny reminders for me of those clients (or candidates) when I was starting out, who made me jump through hoops for no apparent reason. We've all had them.

7) Lord of War (2005) Stars Nicolas Cage, Ethan Hawke, Jared Leto

While not a film actually about sales, you have to admire Ukrainian-American gunrunner Yuri Orlov’s (Cage) capitalist nature. An example of someone who really hustles and turns a deal, even with the most difficult and outlandish clients. Truly an insight into what it (sometimes) takes to put a deal together. Although his industry is morally bankrupt, and Yuri struggles with his own sense of morality, he gets the job done.

8) Cadillac Man (1990) Stars Robin Williams

Williams plays the archetypal salesman, who serves as a stark reminder of what it can be like to be on the receiving end of a pushy sales pitch. Watching someone negotiate under extreme pressure is rarely a comfortable thing, but watch it and see if you recognise any of your own behaviour.

9) Tommy Boy (1995) Stars Chris Farley, David Spade

Tommy has to sell a ton of brake pads to stop his family from selling his recently deceased father’s business to a corporation. Testament to the fact that you don’t need to be the sharpest tool in the box but you must refuse to be hampered by rejection, and you must be prepared to handle objections. It is also an abject lesson in how (not) to close.

10) The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009) Stars Jeremy Piven

Just because it’s really funny, but also because it illustrates clearly how you have to be agile and flexible in your strategy to reach the end goals.

I hope I have encouraged you to watch something you haven’t seen. And at the very least, I hope I have encouraged you to watch something funny, just for the entertainment. Enjoy!

Alison Mulligan is a senior account manager at ERP recruiter Maximus
- See more at: http://www.recruiter.co.uk/personal-dev/2013/10/10-films-every-recruiter-should-watch/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_term=#sthash.lxvYuTRF.dpuf

10 Books every recruiter should read

When adding to a reading list, one of two scenarios generally applies. These are:

1) you want to know more about a specific subject or technique and seek out a title to read about it

2) you see a book and think 'Hmm, that looks interesting. I'll put it on my reading list’.

This list is mostly reflects the second scenario above.

But to satisfy the requirements of the first scenario, the list is ordered by relevance to recruitment and recruitment skills. Hopefully both camps will be happy! So, on with my recommended list of 10 books for my recruiter colleagues.

Recruitment-specific knowledge:

1. Search and Placement by Larry Nobles and Steve Finkel

2. Breakthrough by Steve Finkel

The first book offers the building blocks of running your recruitment desk and is equally useful to new and experienced recruiters alike. We’ve all met a recruiter who, through no fault of his own, has survived a few years in this industry without having a good understanding of all areas of competency required in this business. This book is designed to show exactly what you need to know and do to be successful.

Breakthrough is full of techniques, strategies and processes to take you from an average biller, or stagnating recruiter, to the next level and beyond. Worth every penny.

Sales technique:

3. SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham

4. Selling The Wheel by Jeff Cox

SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-payoff – which probably gives you the nutshell of the technique.

Understanding these four points from your customer’s perspective enables you to provide a fitting solution. Don’t sell the solution until you know what the problem is.

That said, no sales technique is a blanket, proven winner in any given situation. Adjust your approach and technique depending on what your proposition is and what your prospective client needs or wants.

This is where Selling The Wheel comes in. Cox has a highly entertaining way of putting his stories, and the content is based on solid research and findings gleaned from sales people working in a variety of sectors and industries. It all goes to prove that you won't sell someone a brand new Ferrari by telling them it's a ‘good price’ – you need to use the right approach.

Non-sales specific techniques:

5. Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

6. The Extra Mile: How To Engage Your People To Win by David McLeod and Prof Chris Brady

Influence has some brilliant material to help you understand how you can influence the mindset of others in a mutually beneficial way, covering a wide array of psychological constructs (social proof etc) in a highly relatable context, making the information easier to absorb.

The research-based The Extra Mile is a clear tutorial in how much more ground you gain when everyone in the boat is rowing, as well as how to get everyone rowing willingly because they are all heading towards a common goal in which they are invested. This insight has helped me many times in finding innovative ways to engage that team member who clearly has the talent but we can’t seem to find out what pushes their motivation buttons.

Mindset:

7. Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson

8. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

9. As A Man Thinketh by James Allen

10. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

These last books encourage more introspection. If you don’t understand why you think the way you do and how your thoughts govern pretty much everything you do, then you have little chance of being able to understand, motivate or inspire others.

Think And Grow Rich (originally published as The Law Of Success) and The Secret both circle around the law of attraction. Whereas As A Man Thinketh deals with a slightly more abstract concept in that you don’t attract what you want but what you are – like attracts like, and personal accountability.

Who Moved My Cheese is more about how you deal with, and adapt to change. To thoroughly understand this enables you to assist and guide others through dealing with change too, a very valuable skill in recruitment.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but I hope I have perhaps inspired or encouraged someone to read one of the above titles. I have found them all to useful and/or inspirational in my life and career, but as I add to my reading list, and continue to discover new titles, it is highly likely that this list will change over time. The only thing that will not change is that I will never lose my desire to read or to learn.

Alison Mulligan is a senior account manager at ERP recruiter Maximus.
- Originally posted at: http://www.recruiter.co.uk/personal-dev/2013/09/10-books-every-recruiter-should-read/#sthash.3tCdD3rx.dpuf

Delivering and Managing EPM Projects

This article was originally posted on the UKOUG website, but I thought I would also post it here to get the ball rolling...

Delivering and Managing EPM Projects - Which is the best approach?

When it comes to delivering EPM projects, there is a lot of debate about the best way to approach and manage the project, iterative, collaborative, agile, etc… but it seems there is no right or wrong way to go about it, so we have the on-going debate of which way is best?
In the first instance, we come back to the age-old problem that the client rarely knows exactly what he wants in the beginning, mostly because he doesn't have the in-depth product knowledge to know what is available, or indeed what is achievable, but also because the business doesn’t take enough time to decide what they need - in which case they will embark on a project to deliver what they think they need - so how does one go about defining the solution and managing the delivery.


Looking at the above example, if the client doesn't know what is available or doesn’t entirely know what they need, then a waterfall approach will be the least viable option, as the likely result is a client telling you that what you have delivered doesn't work, or (as I'm sure everyone has heard before) "I know this is what I asked for, but..." This equates to an awful lot of wasted time and money on all sides, which is not a desirable outcome for anyone and effectively leads to two frustrated parties.

So how do you decide between the remaining options, and how do you help the client to gain a clearer vision of what the end product will look like.

David Watson, Commercial Director at UKOUG Hyperion Partner of the Year, Concentric Solutions, agrees that “There is a lack of governance and structure in the way EPM Projects are delivered and, as a business which is focussed on EPM, we felt there was a need to look at a way of formulating a standard, or best practice way to specify and deliver these types of projects.

“By drawing on a variety of existing approaches, including Oracle Unified Method, Prince 2, iterative prototyping and our tried and tested experience, we developed our own ‘accelerated method’ framework for the preparation and delivery of EPM Projects. We have formalised this in a dedicated package that our Project Managers use to ensure that customer projects are run with the highest levels of relevant process control, risk mitigation and cost-effectiveness. Without appropriate investment in a governance layer, the complexity of modern EPM projects causes important workstreams to be marginalised, often resulting in a failure to deliver against the original business case.”

Could this approach effectively become a ‘one size fits all’ solution, or will there still be exceptions to the rule, and is any one approach any better than the other or does it depend on the size and complexity of the project versus the knowledge and experience of the consultant(s) delivering the project.  And what of the clients which feel that the best approach is to engage a consultancy to scope and specify the project, then deliver it using their own personnel coupled with some supplementary contract resources.

Noel Gorvett, Managing Director at Amosca, another multi-UKOUG Hyperion Partner winner, comments that EPM projects need a few elements in place to be successful. “We encourage clients to ensure they have a clear plan and engage a trusted sponsor. The business must also be prepared to take tough decisions” – which means being clear about what, in reality, is actually necessary to the business.

“We also suggest they don't boil the ocean, but instead create a series of deliverables that will enable them to monitor progress whilst allowing them to take stock and review how the solution fits with the business objectives. And stay agile.”

This last point is possibly most important, and almost always difficult to achieve as the client will often wish to stick with previous decisions made earlier in the process, and it takes a skilled consultant to get the understanding and buy-in required to get to the required level of flexibility.

Another area that is a difficult ‘sell’ to the client is to invest internal time. Often businesses are reluctant to, or don’t fully see the value of, involving key stakeholders at multiple stages of the project. A great example, and one that Noel is a proponent of, is to train key people before the project is fully underway. These are the people who will ultimately be expecting the system to perform for them on a day to day basis and in delivering training at the outset, they will become familiar with the terminology, will gain a more in-depth understanding the concepts involved, and will become the people that can give the most positive and valuable input into the overall solution.

The next challenges come during the above stages, when it can be easy to get wrapped up in the minutiae of the bits and pieces of the project that need changing or tweaking, or to get side-tracked a wealth of exciting features that you weren’t aware of at the outset of the project. It is so important for the business not to lose sight of the end goal, always keep in mind what you were headed for, and what issues you needed to solve by considering an EPM solution in the first place, don’t be tempted to bolt something completely new onto the solution unless there is a need for it, and always remain realistic about you will actually use rather than dreaming about extras that would be nice to have. If you see something and you decide you do want to add it on, have an open discussion with your consultant about whether this can be done at a later date just as easily as now.

Noel offers that clear communication and transparency are key, adding “We always ensure that these factors are highlighted, and, with constant knowledge transfer, ensure that the client and users are engaged in the decision making, the project, and ultimately are self sufficient as soon as possible.

“I would also suggest that clients should never be afraid to question the vendor, consultancy or themselves. The UK market is very skilled, and a more open approach to capabilities would see more successful projects, and this includes a greater return on the investment, as the solution will be more future proof, and adaptable to the constant changing needs of an organisation.”

So, in conclusion, there is (and I suspect, always will be) different perspectives and, whilst everyone has their own strategy and method, there is some major commonalities amongst those who are highly experienced in the EPM sphere. Firstly that you need to have a clear structure and objectives to your projects, and secondly you will need to use a mixture of prototyping, iterative and agile approaches to achieve the results you set out to deliver, and lastly you need to keep sight of the destination all the way along the journey. Of course, there is always room for suggestion and improvement and it seems that some of the thought leaders in EPM consultancy are looking at ways of keeping the industry in a constant state of evolution, and improving standards and best practice. But at the end of the day, the projects can vary so much in scale and complexity, I’m not sure that one all-encompassing methodology will ever emerge – but one thing everyone agrees on is that the aim should always be to deliver the absolute best solution in the most timely and cost effective manner. And if using your specific strategy helps you to do this better than anyone else, then it this has to be the best way for you to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Mini-biography;

"Alison Mulligan is the BI & Hyperion Lead at Maximus, the ERP Resourcing Partner of choice for many of ERP's leading companies and technical professionals across the world. Founded in 2002, Maximus is an Oracle Gold Partner which handles a complete range of Oracle, SAP and BI positions, both in the UK and around the globe in such key markets as the Middle East and continental Europe."