The Shape of Work

#41: Jane Ferre on 'frustrated professionals', mentorship, coaching, self-learning and more

July 23, 2021 Springworks Season 1 Episode 41
The Shape of Work
#41: Jane Ferre on 'frustrated professionals', mentorship, coaching, self-learning and more
Show Notes

Our guest on this episode of The Shape of Work podcast is Jane Ferre. Jane is an Executive Career Coach for frustrated professionals

She provides private career coaching for professionals who, despite loving the organisation that they work for and the people who they work with, know that they’ve outgrown their role and need a new challenge - but they just don't know where to start. Prior to working as a career coach, Jane worked at British Airways for almost twenty years. 

In the episode, our conversation with Jane revolves around job redundancies and tips to cope with them. She also discusses facts about a good candidate experience and ways to improve it through the recruitment process. She provides a variety of insightful tidbits into mentorship, coaching, training and development, and the concept of “self-learning”.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

What Companies Must Do To Have a Good Candidate Experience

Hiring managers must know quickly if a candidate is good for the role or not. It's important to make decisions quickly and tell the candidate. When you are slow to make decisions, you can lose the person to competitors. If you want to bring back people, make that decision quickly. Keep the processes to a minimum. It's important to provide candidates feedback and a positive experience, regardless of the outcome of the interview.

How Do Companies Identify the Training and Development Needs of Employees During the Pandemic?

Development is a two-way street. It is not just about the organizations giving training to individuals but also about the individuals taking ownership of development. Development is also about developing one's skillset. It is not just about developing something specifically for the organization. The individual has a responsibility as well. They must focus on developing specific skills within a time frame. The organization must focus on getting the right people with the right talent and the right skills for the right roles at the right time. Individuals can develop in many ways – Watch YouTube videos, be part of someone's Facebook, read a book, follow a blogger, or even start their own blog, engage the content of a reputed personality on LinkedIn, and more.

How Virtual Meetings Affect the Working Pattern of Employees?

More meetings are happening in organizations since the pandemic forced the work from home norm. This string of meetings can affect the working hours of employees. Online meetings are eating into work time. But one reason why these meetings are increasing is that virtual meetings do not provide the visual elements to understand employees' frame of mind and their body language. Employees must take a stand to decide if their presence is really needed in a meeting. Do they need to be there? What is the contribution they are making? What's the impact if they are not there?

How Effective is the Survey Method to Judge the Overall Health of an Organization?

Most organizations probably don't need a survey because they already know what they are doing. If they are engaging with the employees regularly, they know what the answers will be to the survey questions. Surveys can create overwhelming data, and companies don't know what to do with it. Organizations must not go on a strategy changing spree just because of the data given out by a particular survey. Just change one or two things that are most important and implement that. Choose to change things that are easy to implement and can give quicker results.

Follow Jane on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Rohan Mankad