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- Are you ready to hire a COO? You very well may be - http://t.co/xJQxv6j7 #hr #management #hiring 1 day ago
- The Talent Paradox: why only a third of your employees actually want to work for you http://t.co/dovv1hq0 #hr #management (on @fastcompany) 1 day ago
- Hiring in 2012, from @openforum. With @HireBetterCEO - http://t.co/cfJh2dbR #hiring #hr #recruiting 1 day ago
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Conor Neill, a close friend of mine and a prominent Entrepreneur in Spain, wrote this short story below for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization’s blog. It’s a great reminder of just how important attitude is in hiring.
Two men, Bill and Frank, begin working at a hotel the same day. They are intelligent, educated and ambitious. The manager of the hotel greets them and hands them both doorman uniforms. They are to begin opening and closing the doors, helping with bags, flagging taxis, etc.
Bill thinks “Doorman? I am worth more than this! I could manage this hotel better than the current guy.” But he doesn’t have an alternative offer and he needs the money, so he does the job anyway. He maintains a pained grimace on his face and deals with customers and other staff in a negative way because he is “better than this.”
Frank, in contrast, thinks “Okay, doorman. It’s not what I had in mind, but hey, I get to spend some time outside, get to meet the customers, and I’ll learn about how this hotel works.” He sets to work with a smile on his face and finds that he quite enjoys the small challenges he faces as a doorman at such a prestigious hotel.
After six weeks, a position at the front desk opens up, and the hotel manager immediately thinks of Frank. Frank is promoted and immediately brings his positive attitude to the front desk of the hotel. Several years later, Frank is the hotel manager. He leaves late one evening and there, opening the door with a hard-wired grimace, is Bill.
Is it luck, or is it fate? Bill will spend forever in a job that he hates and Frank will love every job that he is given. This story is such an inspiration, because it encourages me to always stay positive about my responsibilities and to find the reward in every remedial task. When hiring staff I spend more time exploring attitude and self-motivation than I do exploring capabilities. I also spend time looking to direct my employees toward challenges that are motivating for them.
When it comes to running a business, I’ve learned it’s not just about the results, but the work you put in. That’s where successful people thrive.
Tags: A-Players, career history, hire better, hire for attitude train for skill, hiring, hiring manager, Interview, proactive recruiting, Retention, talent acquisition, unemployment
Recruiting Season is Heating Up
In case you haven’t noticed, the hiring freeze that seemed to overtake the our nation over the last 14 months is thawing, just in time for Spring.
Here are a few of the articles that I’ve noticed in the past few days that suggest it’s time for you to pay attention and get your act together because it’s going to be time for you to start RECRUITING instead of ABSORBING…soon.
- Upstaged by Younger Rivals, Google aims to Get Hip again [LINK]
- Demand for Programmers has returned and Start-Ups are out of luck [LINK]
- Microsoft is spending 10x that of Apple to Recruit and still struggles [LINK]
- There are more than 1,000 Job Postings with the word “Java” in them on Monster [LINK]
- The same keyword results in >8,000 on CareerBuilder [LINK]
The next BLS survey isn’t due until February 4, 2011 but the statistics will continue to hold true, while there is a nationwide unemployment rate of between 9-10%, the unemployment rate for college graduates is around 5% and about 2% for married college graduates.
It’s time to get your game faces on or you’re going to be forced into hiring people in the very bottom of the barrel.
And if you haven’t checked it out GlassDoor yet, you should. Your current and former employees are talking.
You’ve been warned.
Tags: A-Players, proactive recruiting, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, talent acquisition, unemployment, unemployment rate
Not All Referrals Are Created Equal
At HireBetter, we’re always looking at our processes and results to try to identify trends and figure out better ways to help our clients confidently make great hiring decisions.
One of those trends that we’ve noticed has held true over the past 6 years of business has been the SOURCE of where candidates come from and then who our clients ultimately hire. Here are our findings:
If you have 100 Candidates* that you’re considering, our experience would suggest that:
- 82-87 will be Direct Applicants [defined as those who see your posting somewhere and send in their resume via email]
- 12-15 will come from a Headhunter or Recruiting Researcher
- 1-3 will be Referrals [defined as anyone who you learn about through your network or the network of those you trust]
*Author’s Note: the reason I’ve chosen 100 is because it makes the %’s really easy to calculate. If you have greater or fewer than 100, look at the total % of the pipeline instead of the # of people.
For the FINAL 3 People, we’ve found that it’s very likely the make-up of that pool looks like this:
- 1 Direct Applicant
- 1 From a Headhunter
- 1 Referral
And when you make your Ultimate Hiring Decision – you’re at least TWICE as likely to hire the Referral versus the other 2 candidates.
Granted, there are some obvious reasons why Hiring Managers choose the referrals. Things like the stigma that might be attached to an unemployed direct applicant or the costs associated with an external headhunter that might impact your Department’s P&L. But even with those things stated, I set out to find some more answers as to just WHY a referral is so much more likely to get hired than anyone else for open positions.
To help answer this question, I turned to Thom Singer. Thom’s a well-known Author and Speaker on Professional Networking and Personal Brands and he had this to say:
[JDavis] What’s the significance in your mind of earning that referral introduction that gets you an interview?
[TSinger] Hiring Mangaers are human beings – no matter how many pre-screening tests they can use, how much training they’ve had on the psychology of hiring. At the end of the day people are drawn to do business with people they know, like and trust. When someone they know, like and trust strongly encourages them to meet with someone it’s going to get preference because ultimately what a Hiring Manager is trying to do is eliminate people so that they can have a “short list”. Being a referral from someone that the hiring manager likes and trusts, means you’re going to have a much higher likelihood of landing on the short list. If that Hiring Manager knows somebody, likes somebody – that candidate gets to ride on the coattails of those human emotions and can benefit from their referee’s reputation.
One other thought here: I’ve said for years people will do biz with people they know, like and trust (this isn’t an original thought – it’s widely accepted). The problem is that in the last two years, the definition of the word “know” has changed. Because of the mass adoption of social media, we all think we “know” everyone else. This used to be a process [getting to know someone] that took years to develop. It’s served to make the act of “know” less important but makes LIKE and TRUST significantly more important. Just knowing “Of” someone doesn’t necessarily lead to like and trust. Today, referrals need to come from someone that the referee TRULY likes and trusts.
[JDavis] What are the dangers of being a referral if the person who is referring you just KNOWS you, and you’re not SURE that they LIKE and TRUST you?
[TSinger] Asking a stranger or an acquaintance to introdce you to their company is just slightly better than picking up an employee directory and calling through it. The risks are that (a) the referral might not happen [as the candidate you may think you got referred but it didn't happen] or (b) the referee could give a “lip service” referral that indicates that they don’t really support you or won’t stand up for you. The power of a REAL referral is that the person will stand up for you and can really make a strong case for why the hiring manager should hire that person.
If you’re a Hiring Manager and you receive a referral from someone, what should you look for in that referral to know it’s “real”
1. How do you know this person? (look for the fact that they really KNOW the person, not just know “of” them. Get to the bottom of the story by asking, “Do you just follow them on Twitter?” or do they actually use statements like, “I worked with them for three years and they’re a rock star“.
2. What does their work product look like? Do they have direct knowledge? How do they know them related to the job that you’re referring them for?
It gets back again to that danger I referenced in the first section of “just because you follow them on twitter or you’re connected on facebook, that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”
Ultimately, it’s got to be MORE THAN “Ambient Awareness”. As a Hiring Manager your goal is to be working with a stronger foundation of knowledge versus just a marketing brochure disguised as a resume.
While the tools we use to communicate over the past 2 decades have changed, how we’re wired as humans to make decisions is still the same. How people speak about others (yourself included) and your personal brand is just as important as it has ever been.
[JDavis] Why should an interviewer or hiring manager CARE about the size of someone’s network and influence or reputation?
[TSinger] As the world has gotten more digital and electronic, the ABILITY to connect with someone and to get others to stand up and say, “I like them, I trust them” is exponentially more valuable than in previous years. This ability has become “capital” – because people just don’t do it any more (or more importantly, do it well). There’s also so much more noise. When you’ve got people who stand up and say, “I REALLY KNOW John Doe – then you’ve got a winner.” When you see that someone has real human connections that care about them, it’s more valuable because it is genuine and says people care.
But there’s more to it than just being liked! Just because someone has a lot of visibility and people like them doesn’t mean they’re good at a job. But it’s my opinion that if you have two people whose ability is equal but one of those people has great interpersonal skills and a strong network of who will stand up for them, the tie MUST go to that person because it says that they are much more well-rounded.
Bottom Line: It’s not just about the network. You still have to be good. Being good at what you do is your “admission ticket”. Too many Professionals today subscribe to what I like to call the Kevin Costner Business Model: if you build it they will come. What I tell people is, “If you’re the best kept secret in your industry, you lose”. When it comes down to a hiring decision, with all things being equal, a Hiring Manager is going with the person who has the reputation.
Thom Singer is a Professional Speaker, Consultant and the Award-Winning Author of seven books on the power of networking and business relationships. He has trained thousands of people on the art of creating a personal and professional brand. Thom’s Blog, Some Assembly Required, is widely considered one of the top resources on or off-line for Professionals and Job Seekers and his Networking Quotient Test was created to help assess and then provide the action steps needed to make networking a priority. You can also follow him on Twitter.
Tags: A-Players, hire better, hiring manager, Job Search, proactive recruiting, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, social networking, talent acquisition, thom singer, Topgrading, topgrading methodology, unemployment, using social networking tools to get a job
Do Your Employees Know What Equals Success
The following letter was written by a fellow Entrepreneur who needed his top Technical Talent to really understand what he was getting into by asking to take on the role of CTO as the company continued to grow. I’ve taken out any personally identifiable information but I DIDN’T remove any of the CEO’s requests because I wanted each of you that read this blog on a regular basis to be able to see how well thought out this is and how he did such a good job of explaining his vision for the role, what it would take for the current employee to move into that role and what they would be responsible for. But he didn’t stop at that, he gave him options! Proactively realizing that it would be likely that the employee wouldn’t want the role of CTO after seeing what went into it, he described the four other roles that the employee should consider pursuing instead so that the employee didn’t read this and get the wrong message that maybe he wasn’t “wanted” any more.
There’s a lot that everyone, including myself, can learn from how well this CEO communicates.
A CTO’s role and responsibilities
A Chief Technical Officer is an executive-level position in a company who is focused on technological issues within an organization. It typically involves overseeing Research and Development activities, and formulating long-term visions and strategies at the officer level.
CTO’s focus on planning, budgeting, and business management. They see technology as a tool to solve business problems. In my option, the challenge we’re currently facing is that we view technology like a toy – one that we enjoy playing with but not focusing on its real purpose – to finance our team and solve business problems (with a focus on the finance). We solve problems with technology, we respect it, we enjoy working with it, can sell it, but there is a higher order ROI (Return on Investment) and applicability function that a CTO must perform. And that’s where I see us coming up short.
What it takes to be a great CTO
Admittedly, we’re both inexperienced with defining this particular role. To compound the issue, you haven’t been part of a bigger company to observe what a CTO does. You don’t know what you don’t know yet. If you’re restless and in a rut, this may surface in future challenges as well in terms of how you perceive your value. I learned long ago that technology is perishable and you have maybe 6-8 years of being a super geek before you need to reinvent yourself or face becoming obsolete. And with the extreme changes in technology, that window is getting smaller and smaller. To take the next step in your career development, I suggest changing your perspective. Perhaps try thinking the following ways:
- Think bigger. Be responsible for the transformation of capital – be it monetary, intellectual, or political – into technology to further our objectives. You must combine your strong technical background with business development skills in order to create and monitor business value from IT assets.
- Think differently. I get the impression that you’re struggling with knowing what our business is supposed to be. Simply put, it’s a machine that solves problems for money. Period. We need to accept and remember business fuels technology. Technology does not fuel the business.
- Think strategically. Start looking at things differently. Technology is nothing more than a tool that is used to solve business problems. As a corporate officer, your primary concern should be long-term strategy and “big picture” issues while still having deep technical knowledge of the relevant fields we occupy.
How do you get there?
Becoming a great CTO and technology leader is going to require you to at least double the amount of effort you’re currently putting in – and that’s no exaggeration. There’s a lot you’ll need to learn. This requires a great deal of restraint and will force you outside of your comfort zone. I realize this will not happen overnight. But, I believe in you, and if you want to take the next step in your career development, here are the things you’ll need to do.
- Read every day. You must set aside time every day to read blogs, newsletters, books and magazines. This is non-negotiable. Put the time on your calendar, shut off your phone, IM, email, etc and read.
- Better communicate your vision. Be more proactive in what you want the team to accomplish, what our product should do, and what you hope it can achieve. You’re the driving force with building our product suite, and it needs to show! This needs to be done on a daily basis. You must reinforce your views every day.
- Know the competition. You should be able to rattle off a list of our competitors without hesitation. You should be able to tell me exactly what they’re doing, who they’re targeting, what kinds of features and benefits they have, and how we’re different and better than them.
- Know the players in the space we occupy. You should be obsessed with our marketplace. You should be able to list off every major company out there we could possibly do business with. You need to know how their technology works and how we can work with it.
- Know the latest technology trends. You must be up to date on the latest platform decisions whether it’s .NET or PHP. You need to have a view on whether Ruby on Rails is worth the hassle. What I’m getting at is technology is changing very fast. You don’t want to be left with an obsolete skill set in case .NET falls out of favor and/or something better comes along. The only way to prevent this is to know what’s happening now and what’s coming down the road later.
- Forge relationships with the players in the space we occupy. You need to get out there. You need to become comfortable in the role of wearing the company’s public face when it comes to all things technology. This will require you to start proactively talking to people and introducing yourself to them. Start attending trade shows and conferences, contribute to discussions on online forums, find people on LinkedIn and introduce yourself. Consider even taking a public speaking class through your local Toastmasters club.
- Meet other CTO’s. Start rubbing elbows with people like you at other companies.
- Properly manage and mentor the team. This means you must make time every day to meet with your team to discuss issues and roadblocks, discuss technology trends, and get to know them better. In addition to, I suggest meeting every other day to or two times a week to do code review as well.
- Travel to our office at least once a month. I’m not convinced what we are doing can be done remotely. Being successful will take a herculean effort. As such I’d like you to plan on spending most of your time here each time working face-to-face with the guys.
- Find a mentor. I highly suggest a mentor. That’s the only way you can be sure that the CTO role is right for you. You’ve got to talk to someone who actually does it. I certainly haven’t been a CTO but I have worked alongside them. It’s a demanding job and not right for everybody.
- Take ownership and be more accountable. You know what’s required to get the job done, not me. You have to enforce deadlines and dates. This is what successful companies demand. We can’t be any different otherwise we’ll always miss our deadlines and dates.
Do you still want to be CTO?
As you see, it takes a ridiculously large amount of work and discipline to be a CTO. I’ve never faced this issue before and it isn’t easy. But being in it now and seeing how much is required of a CTO, I don’t want to presume that this is something you want to be. I’d like you to reflect on my suggestions above and work with me to define what role you want to play in the company.
Other roles for you to consider
I want to help you find out what you love doing while being careful at the same time not to pushing you into something that you’re not, or not ready for. If you decide the CTO hat is not for you, I want you to consider the following alternatives:
1. The Lead Architect – Every great technology startup needs one of these – this is not unique to our company. If we don’t have somebody inside our organization that is setting the technology direction then I’m convinced we’ll never head for greatness. Either our core is innately technical or it’s not. It’s what makes Google, Google and Facebook, well, Facebook.
I believe that every great technology startup has the technology visionary inside the company. This needs to be you! You not only need to own all the technology but you need to dictate what it is we’re building and why – every day.
Trying to work without this person is like wanting to build a world class sky scraper but not having a great lead architect and civil engineer. They provide the vision for our infrastructure. The problem that many inexperienced startup CEO’s like me make is confusing these people for the people who lead the technology team. Most often they are not. The deepest thinkers on technology architecture are seldom good team leaders. They often aren’t great at planning development work. The best technologists often aren’t amazing people managers. Sometimes they are introverts.
2. VP Engineering – First and foremost, a VP of Engineering is a people manager. They have the respect of their team because they’re technical by training. But they’re that rare breed that also understands the human element. They know how to motivate their people. They know how to get people to hit deadlines. They know when it’s OK to push hard for the team to hit a deadline even if it means yet another all-nighter or weekend. And they know when to tell me (the CEO) to shove it because the team has reached maximum stress / effort. A great VP of Engineering manages me (the CEO) as well as the team below him.
In my view it is important to distinguish the difference between the CTO and the VP Engineering. The VP of Engineering is the person who still has great technical chops but prefers not to be a developer.
The VP Engineering aspires to manage teams. They feel comfortable with C# but are also whizzes in Excel. They are sticklers about managing unit tests, system tests and regression tests. In fact, they’re passionate about automating testing overall. They know how to estimate work units, how to manage the agile development process and how to get the most out of their teams. VP’s of Engineering are essential to making sure the trains run on time. The VP of Engineering is also our company’s primary interface to our future head of product management and often the VP of Engineering is somebody I would bring with me to meet clients and to win big deals.
3. Program Manager – This title almost sounds like a consultant’s job. It is not somebody that we need just yet. However, it is one of the more critical roles as we scale our company. As we head into the phase where we get real customers paying real money for a period of time we’ll have a whole new set of issues. Examples include:
- Every time you release new features you need to update our technical documentation
- Updating our marketing documents including our website
- Somebody needs to be sure that customer service is alerted to the new features and are trained in how to handle these functions with customers
- New features need to be rolled into PR strategies and competitor analyses
- New features need to be documented so the rest of us know the latest and greatest about how to differentiate from the competition.
Many startups have never faced these challenges because they haven’t hit scale. Trust me, as we grow these issues become the key to winning large customers and keeping them happy.
4. Lead Developer – This person is the most senior of all developers on staff. They are typically the go-to person on projects they are assigned. Their entire function in the company is to product top-tier code while acting as a mentor to other developers that are more junior.
The lead developer typically reports to a CTO or VP of Engineering and is a key part of their team.
Closing thoughts
In summary I hope this didn’t scare you away. On the contrary I’m here to help you. You’re an incredibly gifted and talented individual that does so many things right. At the same time, however, you have a lot to learn and achieve. We both do. I hope this letter identifies what steps we need to grow this company and helps you to reach your full potential.
Tags: A-Player, EO, hire better, proactive recruiting, Retention, Scorecard, Topgrading
In Defense of our Culture at Hire Better
Earlier this week I found myself on the phone with one of our service providers at Hire Better. The company: Monster.com. We’ve used their service with average satisfaction for about 5 years. Every year we step back and evaluate it but ultimately, we’ve chosen to invest the $10,000-$15,000 that they want to charge for access to a huge database of largely uninteresting people – many of whom need work Visas to make career moves.
Our account comes up for renewal at the end of May. We haven’t heard from anyone in their company since last September when our account was nearly cancelled FOR FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY.
A little bit of history – Last year an interesting thing happened: their Compliance Department caught wind of a report that the “seats” that we paid for were being used by IP addresses that weren’t in Austin, TX. This set off all kinds of alarms at Monster.com and I received a disturbing voicemail from a woman who more than suggested that we were guilty of fraud because of our usage and that the legal team was looking into canceling our account without a refund – essentially a loss of $10,000 for us.
Why were they accusing us of Fraud? Because our Corporate Address is in Austin, TX. ”If your address is in Austin, why would you have anyone with an IP address in Iowa, Kansas or Arkansas?” they asked. How very 1993 of them. I challenged that same Legal Team and their Compliance Team by asking,
“Have any of our seats EVER been logged into by more than one person simultaneously and in different geographic regions?”
“No, never once.” they responded.
“And is our usage on any of these accounts outside of our terms of use or so heavy that it would make you think that we were trying to be fraudulent or mis-represent ourselves in any way?”
“No, not at all.” was their answer.
It took me a week and about 20 hours of our senior team’s time to explain to their Legal Department that we’re a Virtual Company that’s built around team members who work from their homes because of the Balance that it provides to each and every one of us. We finally settled on an agreement with their team that we could give each and every one of our employees their own usernames and passwords and split up the usage of each “seat” into what was the equivalent of 50% of a traditional license. This satisfied their Legal team and it allowed us to avoid a $10,000 loss. My Account Representative at the time was a gentlemen named Chris Shaw. He stuck up for us, was the internal champion for our cause and put his reputation on the line with that same Compliance Department to vouch for us and insist that there wasn’t any fraudulent intent or activity.
Fast forward to this week: my new Account Representative called me 4 times over the course of a week – only bothering to leave a voicemail once (a hint: while we’re virtual we do have “real” phones that have caller ID). When Cortney, my Assistant, finally reached him to book our phone meeting, we were less than a week from our renewal. Here’s the breakdown of the conversation:
9:15 AM Central Time comes and goes (our agreed upon call time)
9:21 My phone finally rings. It’s my new representative. It’s clear he doesn’t understand how OCD I can be about the timing on phone calls. He starts the call with, “So how’s your business doing these days?” with an artificially chipper tonality. I politely asked if he had turned on the news in the last 9 months and then reminded him that we had 15 minutes booked for the call and we were down to 7.5 minutes left because of his tardiness.
9:32 I’ve had to explain, at length, what the entire situation was that had happened during the previous September. Apparently, the CRM system at Monster.com isn’t equipped to keep track of week-long legal boondoggles with clients that have paid them nearly $75,000 over 5 years. If you’ll remember, I mentioned earlier that Chris Shaw, our representative at the time, was a great advocate for us. Our new representative made it a point to remind me, at least 3 times during these 11 minutes, “Well, based on all of these exceptions that you benefitted from in the past year, you’ll clearly understand why Chris isn’t with our company any more.”
9:34 I’m now 4 minutes late for a commitment I made to call a prospective candidate for one of our biggest clients. As politely as I can muster, I shared with our representative, “Look, I appreciate that you’re not a fan of Chris. I also respect that you have a precious “rate card” that you’re allowed to discount from by 75% (side note, if a sales rep can discount by 75% off of a rate card, what’s the point of even having a rate card?), but unless you can wrap your brain around the fact that I’m VERY familiar with your legal contract and that I’m not willing to buy ONE seat (as he suggested) and pass around the username to everyone (which is in violation of their agreement) or 9 full, individual seats for our employees who spend about 1 hour per week each on your website, we don’t have much more to talk about. And I’m late for my next call. I need to go.”
9:36 It’s starting to get ridiculous. Every effort that I’ve made to be polite so that I can move on to my next commitment has been ignored. It’s as if I’m speaking an entirely different language. My representative has shared with me things like, “You know, 2 years ago we were only permitted to discount by 15%” and “What you received last September was clearly a one time thing and there’s no way I could get that approved again.” His arguments were as pertinent to our conversation as the amount of snow they received in the Napa Valley last year. ”I know we’ve gone a bit over our alloted time this morning Jonathan. Why don’t you let me go back to my managers and that Compliance Team from last September and see if I can work something out for you.”
3:10 Central Time – My representative called me back to share the news with me. ”Jonathan, what I’ve gotten approval for is to sell you 9 individual seats at 75% off of our rate card. This is a great deal. Can I send over the agreement?”
If you’ve hung with me and read all the way down to this part of this blog post I hope you’ll let me clarify something: My intent of this post was NOT to air the dirty laundry of my discussions with Monster.com. However, sharing that level of detail was critically important because this is what I want every company who acts as a service provider for us to understand:
- Our Core Values are NOT something that we just hung on a wall for everyone to ignore. Earning Trust, Having Balance, Adding Value and Respect play a significant part in every decision that we make every day.
- I (and We) will never apologize for or alter our decision to have hired the team that we have in place that just happen to work from their homes all around the country. Because we have Balance in our lives, the quality of the work that we do for our clients is TOP NOTCH. When we work, we work hard. And then we stop and spend time with our families. We don’t waste time commuting, attending pointless meetings or waiting in line for lunch in the same 15 minute period that everyone else has to run to the local fast food joint.
- We may need a concession or two from you, as a service provider, because we ARE different. Here are some of the companies who have acknowledged that and will be Partners of ours for a long time:
- Pioneer Bank in Dripping Springs, TX
- 8×8: the providers of Packet 8 Phones
- Apple
- Otherinbox
- 37Signals
- Jintech
- Clutch Creative
- Spross & Associates
And one final note to Monster.com: it’s 2009. It might be time for you to take a good hard look at services like LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Recruiter’s Earth, Door64, Google, Craig’s List and a host of other websites that passed you by a long time ago. For me, I’ll take the $13,000 I just saved by not renewing with your service and I’ll spend it on training our employees on AIRS. After all, our commitment to our clients is that they’ll HIRE BETTER. Your website simply doesn’t help us do that any more.
Tags: 8x8, A-Players, AIRS, bad hires, career history, clutch creative, hire better, hiring, LinkedIn, Monster, monster.com, OtherInbox, pioneer bank, proactive recruiting, purchasing decisions, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, research, talent acquisition, talent vault, Topgrading, tweets, Twitter, unemployment, unemployment rate, virtual bench, zoominfo
The Economist: How the Recession is changing Recruiting
Last week The Economist had an article in their Print Magazine that was titled, “You’re hired – next year“. I found to it be a lot of window dressing and likely written to attract eyeballs more than provide real value. However, there were a couple of things in the article that were worth noting:
“According to a survey carried out by Watson Wyatt, a consulting firm, three-quarters of American companies have implemented a hiring freeze.”
“The hiring of freelancers and consultants has become more common, allowing companies to avoid spending on employee benefits and delay hiring decisions until the economy picks up.”
“When they do take on new employees, companies are taking longer to make an offer, knowing that they no longer have to move fast to prevent competitors from stealing their prospective hires.”
The first data point, while it likely won’t surprise you, is still very shocking. There are nearly 5 million unemployed Americans right now and 75% of companies aren’t allowing new hires. This combination does make me wonder what Ben Bernanke was smiling about today…
The second data point, again, won’t come as any surprise at all. The reason I pulled out for the purpose of this blog is to emphasize the guidance that I’ve shared with a number of colleagues. If you’ve got needs right now for work that can be done by freelancers, it’s very possible to get $1 worth of work for $.25 these days. It’s not because Freelancers are lowering their rates. Rather, I’ve found that it’s because hiring a graphic artist (as an example) for a 10 hour project is much easier to do these days and, if you hire a Freelancer who doesn’t have anything else to do, there’s a very high likelihood that they’ll put 15 or 20 hours into the project simply to fill up their day and occupy themselves.
Lastly, the third quote that I called out of the Article is another example of just how clueless the media is about the labor market these days. It’s absolutely true that if you’re competing for a perpetually lazy clock-puncher who is guaranteed to bring no value to your organization and poison your culture, you can take as long as you want to hire them without fear of competition. But if you’re looking for top talent, even in this marketplace, you’re going to have to fight. A real life example: one of our clients needed to hire a Service Delivery expert in the NYC area while the S&P was at its absolute low earlier this year. The prospective employee they really wanted had been on the market for 3 days because the company he was with had shut down when it ran out of funding. By the time they “won” the chance to add him to their team he had 3 other offers.
I love analogies and I’ll end with this to drive home my point and also show my love of baseball: there are never scalpers selling tickets for more than face value outside of the stadium in Kansas City in September. Conversely, good luck getting a single seat at Fenway during the same period of time for anything less than twice the price printed on the ticket.
Tags: A-Players, ben bernanke, freelancers, hire better, hiring, proactive recruiting, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, talent acquisition, unemployment, unemployment rate, watson wyatt
Recruiting vs Absorbing: Know the Difference?
I continue to hear from Recruiters, Journalists and even Business owners that now is a great time to pick up talent because of how high the unemployment rate is. I’ve written in the past about how I think that now is a great time to be RECRUITING as well but not because of the growing number of the unemployed. I’m not going to re-hash that here. Instead, this post is going to focus on what Jack Daly considers the difference between Recruiting and Absorbing.
I’d like to start by sharing that I live in Austin, TX (yes, it is as cool as you’ve heard). In this town we’re proud of live music, barbeque and, probably above all, Longhorn Football. Mack Brown is the Head Coach (aka the CEO) of the team.
Right now, spring practices are done and the coaching team is spending all of their time figuring out (1) what’s our depth chart for the fall (2) who are the top High School Sophomores at each position in Texas and the US and (3) how are we going to convince young men from around the country to pay us $300+ to come to our camp so that they can be seen by our coaches when every other school in the country wants them to do the same?
The reason I brought up point #3 is because it’s not unlike the current marketplace for Businesses looking to land top talent. How? Hundreds of young men will descend upon Austin in the coming weeks and happily throw down their $300 camp fee. While the coaching staff has a responsibility to treat every camper fairly by providing them with a safe place to stay, healthy food and some nominal feedback about how to improve, it’s the 8-10 players that they personally invited in for the camp that they are focusing their attention on. Every once in a while a young man who shows up and was unheralded impresses the coaches and gets a shot scholarship but it’s rare.
I hope you’re seeing the direct parallel between the people who are applying for jobs at your company as opposed to the people who you have to fight to get.
With that in mind, let’s go back to Mack Brown’s role in this recruiting process. Because he has the advantage of knowing who the top 10 Prep Quarterbacks or Linebackers are by subscribing to the industry publications that track this data, he can carefully place phone calls to these young men to get them excited about the program.
Focus because here’s the crux of the blog post: After Mack Brown gets off the phone with a young man who he’d like to see as his starting quarterback in 2011, do you think he sends that 16 year old a copy of a job description for what a Quarterback does?
Let’s bring it all back to your business: here are the 5 questions you have to ask YOURSELF when recruiting and then share with your “top recruits”:
1. Why come to work here?
2. What are we (as a company) doing to ensure that our team is successful?
3. How can you (our prized recruit) be sure that the reputation of our company is exceptional?
4. Where is our greatest opportunity for growth in the marketplace?
5. What are the most compelling reasons to join the team here?
If you’ve read the book Who you would know that these are also part of the 5 F’s (Fame, Family, Fortune, Fun and Fit). By asking yourself these questions as the CEO or Hiring Manager you’re attempting to proactively answer a lot of these concerns that a recruit would have.
If you’d like to pick up a great book for the weekend and learn how college football is answering each of these questions, check out Meat Market: Inside the smash mouth world of College Football Recruiting by Bruce Feldman.
Bonus food for thought: if Mack Brown needed a starting quarterback in 2011 and he didn’t start thinking about it until 2 weeks before the season started, would he start placing ads on CraigsList with the hopes someone would apply that he could hire?
Tags: 5 F's, A-Player, A-Players, Austin, bruce feldman, Fame, Family, Fit, Fortune, Fun, geoff smart, hiring manager, jack daly, longhorn football, mack brown, proactive recruiting, recruit don't absorb, recruiting versus absorbing, talent acquisition, unemployment, unemployment rate, who the book
When Recruiting Gets Fun
We’ve had three client meetings on-site in the last few days. All three of these meetings were tremendous and remind us about why we do this. It got me thinking: what makes a great client for American Workforce?
1. They understand that people aren’t widgets that can be manufactured. Some weeks might produce 5 qualified people who could be great in a role. Some months might produce no one!
2. They realize that the cost of a mis-hire is a lot more damaging to their company than trying to hire too quickly or trying to save money on the front end by cutting corners on talent assessment.
3. They only want to hire amazing people. Really, for them it isn’t just lip service. They’ve analyzed their needs, they’ve built an environment that makes it incredible for people to work in, and they’re willing to be patient until the perfect A-Player is identified.
4. They “Aim High in Steering”. Remember Driver’s Ed in High School? You’ll drive your car into a tree if you are staring at the steering wheel. When you can look down the road and understand what your needs are going to be 3, 6, 9, 12 months out you’re much more likely to get exceptional people instead of just the ones that are looking for jobs on that particular day.