Month: November 2015

As a qualified Chartered Accountant I appreciate how daunting it can be looking for your first role out of practice. There are so many different options it can be difficult to decide how you wish to commence your career in industry.

I have included below a brief step by step guide that I recommend to newly qualified accountants.

1.    Update your CV. I recommend doing this approximately two months before your contract ends (or your envisaged end date). We find it takes an average of 6-8 weeks to fill a position (sourcing suitable candidates, first round interview stage, second round interview stage and offer and acceptance).

Try to keep your CV to 2-3 pages at a maximum. Keep the layout simple, structured and consistent. Proof-read and spell check your CV – there is no excuse for typos! Use the same font throughout and avoid fancy fonts, coloured fonts or highlighting and photographs.

I would recommend including client profiles and size of turnover (especially if it is a listed company and as such, publicly available information).

2.    Set up a LinkedIn account. Once you have prepared your CV it is very easy to create a LinkedIn profile. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is consistent with your CV! Include a photograph (keep it professional) and use LinkedIn to connect with past and present colleagues to grow your network.

LinkedIn Company pages enable you to “follow” companies in which you are interested. When you follow a company on LinkedIn you get updates on new hires, promotions at the company and job opportunities.

Likewise, there are a number of relevant groups you can join (e.g. The Panel has a group Accounting & Finance Professionals in Ireland which is updated on a daily basis providing all of our live roles in addition to relevant market information).

3.    Meet recruitment consultants to discuss your CV, live roles and the market in general. If you are unsure what kind of roles interest you (Internal audit/financial accounting/commercial accounting) your recruitment consultant will be able to advise. Ask your friends or colleagues what agencies they used and who they would recommend.

4.    Attend interviews! Make sure you prepare well for your interviews.  The competition amongst newly qualified accountants for jobs is fierce so you need to stand out from your peers.

It may sound obvious but know your CV. Be familiar with relevant market information in respect of current/previous employers.
The recruitment consultant can help with general interview preparation and will know the preferred type of interview chosen by the particular client in question.

5.    Best of luck in your new role! Choose a role that will add value to your CV and will allow you to follow your chosen career path.

In this, the first of our “In the Spotlight” interviews with Managers, Partners, CEOs and Founders from various industries we will on this occasion look at HR in the Clouds.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Adam Coleman, CEO, HRLocker.com

Company History:

The company was formed in 2004 as a HR Consulting concern HR Interventions Ltd and changed to develop product in 2010.

Elevator Pitch:

We are an Irish based cloud HR company with our product built in the Microsoft Azure Cloud accredited with ISO 27001 for system and business practice.

Our service allows small companies act BIG & Big companies act smart. www.hrlocker.com is used by progressive professional companies with 5 – 1,000+ employees to manage absences/holidays, employee data, HR document management, CPD/ training management and also manages your recruitment/selection & hiring processes.

Our service is simple and easy to use and all reporting and service is done in real time.

Our service is currently live in over 45 jurisdictions and is very affordable for small and big companies alike.

Who would benefit from your services/product?

Progressive professional companies who want to automate the transactional side of HR and empower their employees and managers. In short the employees and the company benefits!

Biggest achievement in the last 12 months

Taking our system from a core HR product and developing out our CPD/training management and recruitment features. We can now compete with the big boys!

Plans for the next 12 months

Expand our company further into the UK through our Partner Channels and even though we have US based clients we need to resource up and start our US market entry by putting bodies on the ground in 2016 in our chosen state of entry to the US market.

Biggest challenge to your business

Marketing our brand in a noisy market! Developing long term partnership arrangements in multi jurisdictions.

Best advice you can give other business owners

• Plan your strategy well, don’t be afraid to deviate from your strategy as the world is always changing but manage these deviations.
• Don’t beat yourself up over being 3 months behind target or where you expect to be!
• Choose partners or investors wisely. Don’t allow or wait for government support agencies dictate your direction or rate of growth, they will come on when you get some success.

If I was Minister for Finance, the first thing I’d do is

I would develop a policy whereby the government take a stake in Irish companies who are trading overseas that are showing success and support them to remain Irish companies. All the government support agencies and investors want to hear is “Five years growth valuation of €x million and trade sale for cash” this is short term strategy that will never help Ireland to be an industrial force in any way.

Reasons to be cheerful

Sunshine, surf and family!

t: +353 (0)1 442 4132 | e: [email protected] | www.hrlocker.com |

Background

In the last few years companies have become aware of the value and importance of information technology, business intelligence, data management, data analytics & data integration as well as the value of data as an Enterprise Asset. The management of this data has become more visible and crucial.

To this end many companies have realised that they must better define strategic priorities for management and delivery of data throughout the enterprise. They must identify new business opportunities through the analysis of data, and significantly improve revenue generation through more effective use of enterprise data.

In an ideal world, one person should be focused on the quality, management, governance and the availability of data. It is about treating data as a strategic asset. But most organisations do not give data the same kind of attention as other corporate assets.

As companies now understand the importance of data and the enterprise-wide governance and utilisation of data as an “asset” – thus was born the position of the Chief Data Officer – CDO. Fundamentally, the CDO is tasked with being the voice of data and generally representing data as a strategic business asset at the executive table.

The CDO is typically a member of the executive management team managing their companies’ enterprise-wide data administration and data mining functions.

The Role – Managing DATA as a Strategic Business ASSET

The marketplace is now getting a better understanding and now has a clear vision of;

• Data managed as an asset
• Data-driven decision-making

The Chief Data Officer now holds the position of being primarily responsible for implementing that vision.

In essence, managing data as an asset means improving links between the databases; making information/data easier to find on-line, making it easier for analysts and decision makers to quickly access and transform data into the new formats and knowledge. It means lowering the cost of consuming and using data because we keep having more data to manage.

CDOs typical responsibilities include:

• Data stewardship, or being the chief owner of all enterprise data.
• Data aggregation, or being responsible for “building bridges between business units and creating an enterprise focus for the data”.
• Communicate data schemasand eliminate any semantic differences among enterprise data.

The CDO should develop capabilities to measure and predict risk and influence enterprise risk appetite at the executive table. The CDO should also be watching the top-line revenue numbers as well as the bottom line.

Once you treat data as a strategic asset then you enable the CDO to generate more revenue or lower costs through the use of data.

Statistics

According to Gartner research, 4.4 million IT jobs will be created to support big data within the next two years.

Some stats about CDOs:

• There are over 100 chief data officersserving in large enterprises today. That’s more than double the number from 2012.
• Banking, Government and Insuranceare the top 3 industries for Chief Data Officers – in that order. However we are now seeing other industries rising.
• 65% of Chief Data Officers are in the United States. 20% are in the UK. There are now CDOs in over a dozen countries.

 

Corporate culture is something that’s featured a lot in the news recently and it comes up again and again when companies do anything involving employees such as engagement surveys (particularly in the responses to the open questions). Culture often confuses people and its something that’s really difficult to pin down – its hard to capture. Most organisations are fascinated with one thing – how do we change the culture?

If your culture is poor, and you have a sense for when it is, then denial on the part of the senior team or CEO tends to make things worse not better. The old joke of ‘beatings will continue until morale improves’ often has some very real examples in industry – Senior execs think people should be happier and more optimistic because they tell them to be – unfortunately this does not work!

I’ve often heard peers talk about CEOs telling HR about the terrible culture and how HR needs to ‘do something about this’ – this is a nonsense – Culture starts and finishes at the top. If you’re working in an organisation where you’re responsible for change and the CEO doesn’t think its their job – then you need to figure out a way of having a ‘robust conversation’ with your CEO. Change starts at the top, the phrase ‘do as I say not as I do’ – is something we should continually hold up to our senior managers. If they are saying all the right things and then doing the opposite – then its our job to tell them so. We’ve all heard the story of the executive who preaches ‘cost cutting’ and then proceeds to arrive into the office in a brand new company car – who is telling him this is an issue for the organisations credibility?? Someone has to.

The Challenge:

Part of the challenge of change is that there are three big pieces in it:

1. You need to realise there’s a problem (i.e. you need to change)
2. You need to acknowledge, investigate and understand the problem – what needs to change
3. You need to be genuinely committed to doing something about it.

If you work in an organisation where things need to change (this applies to any change initiative – not just culture) – where do you start?

Firstly, get a handle on the internal dynamics – particularly the power and decision making networks – who are the key influencers and what do they think of the proposed change. How do decisions get made – is it highly organised and consensus based or does your organisation work on its ‘gut’ and make significant decisions at the coffee machine?

Secondly – make sure the CEO’s on board – don’t even attempt to start without this nailed down and not just passive support – the CEO needs to be four square behind any change initiative or else it will really struggle.

Thirdly – figure out what your middle management group thinks – you might have to do this almost in secret and you might be very surprised – in many organisations, middle managers can have very different views to their senior counterparts. If middle managers don’t understand and support a change initiative then it’s almost certainly doomed to failure. Conversely, the people who are often least aware of issues with the culture are the senior executive – they can sometimes be downright defensive – even when its obvious there’s an issue.

Lastly – Plan carefully – Preparation is key for managing any change so generate a strong project plan. You’ll also need to generate a strong supporting communications and engagement strategy and be prepared to be flexible – managing change is almost always messy and difficult – you’ll almost certainly have to change direction a couple of times.

Managing large scale and transformational change in an organisation is one of the most difficult things an organisation can do and it almost always involves changing the culture or a large part of it but don’t despair! It’s hard work but it’s possible and the rewards are spectacular!

Note: The original version of this article featured in The Sunday Business Post earlier this year.

 

Edwin O’Hora is the owner and principal of OHORA Consulting who specialise in Organisational Development. Edwin is also the Programme Director for the IMI’s new post graduate diploma in Organisational Development & Transformation.

t: +353 (0)86 821 9959 | e: [email protected] | LinkedIn profile |