Having a spot of bother at the moment, on a couple of counts! Firstly I appear to be blogging for everyone else but us..:-( And secondly we are starting to look at hiring for ourselves...always a case of cobblers children.
Good news is, I am rectifying the first problem now! The second is interesting, so I pulled the team together on Friday and asked them, what is it about us that makes us tick...the result was quite interesting.
So we believe we are a fun bunch, very open to newcomers...turns out we aren't. Well, we are fun but we are horrendously difficult to gel with, according to those we asked (this included people who had left our business and one who came back), the traits of the group are:
Confidence - our people exhibit a sense of control, around their subject matter and expertise that can be intimidating...got to come in punching :-)
Pace - our people work at a pace that is 100x faster than anything people coming in to our business have seen before, the analogy used was "it's like trying to jump on to a speeding train". The truth appears to be that if you can not hit the ground running at the pace we need, the train doesn't slow down and you never end up getting on :-(
Intolerant - Crikey, this was a rough one...apparently as a group we are highly intolerant of anyone not able to "keep up", we are religious when it comes to the brand (like that one) and fanatical about the quality of the deliverables to the client. Two impacts of this one, we are consistent but uncompromising and consider communication and output that is not 'brand" coherent as criminal offences.
Open - by this I mean we discuss everything, nothing is secret or sacred. The view is that the frenetic pace dictates that we don't have time or the inclination to "flower" anything up or "couch" feedback...it comes full on and as naked as it gets, if we are thinking it, we say it....again when you are struggling to jump on to the speeding train and you get swiped by a piece of "honest feedback", the impact can be twice hard. Makes the humour round the office, oddly dark :-)
Caring - OK, so it all sounded a bit harsh and then, "caring" came up...once you are on the train, you are in the "family" and when in the "family" the business is generous, listens well and is protective
Hard Working - 65+ hours a week is the norm..., go online at 9pm at night and you will find Chemistry guys, IM'ing each other, writing up proposals, candidate profiles...no one switches off, last night I received emails from 4 of the guys...there are only 8 of us! I question whether this is a good thing but these are bright people who have families etc...I am convinced they are doing it, because they love what they do.
Technology - there are 8 of us doing the work of 16...we embrace technology to help us with the workload, if you aren't typing fluently, using social media naturally, pulling together proposals and powerpoint together in minutes, not hours and not able to understand the different "bonus elements" in Mario Kart for the Wii...you are not going to get on the train...
Total Belief - Chemistry people totally believe that we are on a mission, to challenge the status quo, in recruitment, in consulting, in short, in everything we do...they believe that we can "make a dent in the universe"...this makes them, what's the word..."high maintenance" :-)
So there you have it, our job advert...call any one of us on 01344 418300, it may not be a normal job but it might be Chemistry
R
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