ART OF GAUGING STAFF SENTIMENTS CAN BE TOUGH

TALENT TRACK  -  ELICITING IT RIGHT ART OF GAUGING STAFF SENTIMENTS CAN BE TOUGH
HR MANAGERS often fail to see the pitfalls of conducting 360-degree employee satisfaction (E-SAT) surveys. Sometimes, they do see the shortcomings of their methodology, but fail to see a way out. Many HR managers tend to conduct the survey through an online portal or an external agency. However, many of them fail to realize that if the program is poorly designed, it is not going to help the organization in any way. Here are the top 5 mistakes that HR managers of most companies make:

    E-SAT surveys are done by the HR department. E-SAT surveys should be done by a separate task force. I know this sounds contra-intuitive, but it is the truth. HR departments tend to treat E-SAT more as an activity which has to be completed mandatory. The HR should work towards getting the co-operation of business managers and leaders to conduct the survey as a team, regardless of whether you do it internally or through an external agency.

Do not have well-defined objectives for the survey: You cannot conduct the survey without any objectives. Work as a team to finalize the key objectives for the survey. For all you know, your exit interview results can help as one of the sources to understand major pain areas. For example, if employee-manager relationship is a key issue, your survey results will help you quantify the problem and give you the direction to plan appropriate HR initiatives. You may not want to add an evident problem as an objective, like, for example, salary satisfaction.

Selection of questions is misguided: This is like going to a chemist and asking him for medicine to cure your cold. What does the chemist know about your medical record to recommend the right medication? Nothing. He just wants to make money and so suggests the most expensive medication. You need a doctor who understands the cause and treats. You cannot do an internet search for questions and create a survey questionnaire. Involve business managers in the questionnaire design. Business managers are the ones who work very closely with people and their involvement in the area of questionnaire design and target output are vital for the success of the program. Do not have too many redundant questions; limit it to 20 to 25, with 5 choice answers.

Not adequate employee participation: I’ve often observed low participation for such surveys. Even accounting for those on leave and those who may have missed the communication on the survey, you should have more than 60% of the organization responding to the survey. Any less and you are undertaking a useless exercise. Different companies find different ways to increase employee participation — find one that works best for you.

Implementation task force too high-profile: A task force comprising only of senior managers to implement the action items as a result of the survey will not help. The end result may not be as desired. Instead, a few people who have responded to the survey need to be made part of the team in addition to the HR & business managers. This helps in smooth implementation and a wider reach. Otherwise, the same problems will crop up in the next survey. A team, well-defined objectives, appropriate questionnaire, good participation and a right task force will make this program a success. Do not forget to tell people in a periodic manner on what you are doing with the survey results.

Rajkumar D, senior manager , (HR), Microland

rajdraj@yahoo.co.in    http://www.linkedin.com/in/rajdraj

8 ways to recession proof your job! (Fortune)

As promised I will be posting great articles as I come across them in my readings. I have recently read the following article from Fortune (2/1/08) about how to stay on top of your game in the work place.  Now that we (USA) are headed into a recession, I found the info in this article to be great information and worth a read.Please enjoy! ____

(Fortune) — First, let’s not panic. True, payrolls shrunk by 17,000 in January. But at the same time, the Labor Department adjusted December’s numbers upward, reporting that 82,000 new jobs were created that month – a far larger figure than the government’s initial estimate of 18,000. Unemployment, now at 4.9%, is just 0.9% higher than the 4% level that economists consider “full employment” (meaning that everyone who wants a job has one).

Still, with the ripple effect of the mortgage mess still spreading, consumer spending in a sulk, and companies like Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Sprint Nextel (S, Fortune 500) announcing big layoffs, you’d be smart to start thinking about recession-proofing your job – or, failing that – devising a plan for landing on your feet somewhere else. Here’s how:

Think of ways to generate revenues or cut costs. That brilliant idea you had that would open whole new markets for the company, but require substantial spending to get started? Scrap it for now. Concentrate instead on finding places to pinch pennies, or identifying cheap new sources of revenue. Or both.

Be visible. “This isn’t the moment to take an extended vacation. Your position could be eliminated while you’re gone,” says Dale Winston, CEO of New York City-based executive recruiters Battalia Winston (www.battaliawinston.com). “It’s also not the time to come rolling in at ten o’clock.” If you possibly can, figure out a way to stand out and distinguish yourself. She adds: “If you’re in sales, get your numbers up. Nobody will be laying off star salespeople.”

Talk up your contributions. “Make sure you’re adding value at work by going above and beyond your basic job responsibilities,” says Christine Price, principal at staffing firm Ready to Hire (www.readytohire.com) “Then make sure your boss knows it, without being obnoxious.”

Keep a broad perspective. “Don’t get a reputation as someone who only does what he or she is told to do,” advises Richard Bayer, chief operating officer of career counseling network The Five O’Clock Club (www.fiveoclockclub.com). “Pick your head up, look around, and get in on the action. Volunteer for crucial responsibilities, including tasks for which your boss is responsible.”

Just doing your job well isn’t enough. “The question is,” says Bayer, “when your organization is making a list of who has crucial skills, will you be on it?” If you suspect not, now’s the time to hustle.

Get your skills up to date. “Companies get rid of people whose skills are obsolete and replace them with people who are already trained,” Bayer says. “Take classes, join trade organizations, and prove you’re plugged in.” Christine Price adds: “Consider going back to school, to show your employer you’re serious about your career and your performance.”

No whining allowed. Attitude does count – a lot. “Management wants people who can boost morale during tough times,” observes Dale Winston. Not only that, says Christine Price, but happy workers are less likely to get laid off than people who seem to dislike what they do. After all, the reasoning goes, if you grumble about your job all the time, then maybe giving you the sack would really be doing you a favor. Gulp.

Never stop networking. Of course, the day you get a pink slip is not the day you want to start calling old colleagues, asking former bosses out to lunch, and getting in touch to say hello to all the interesting people you’ve known over the years. No, the time to start doing that is now. Whether or not you move seamlessly (and relatively painlessly) into a new job after a layoff often depends on how consistently you’ve contacted – and maybe even helped – lots of people when you didn’t need them.

Update your resume, return headhunters’ phone calls, and start picturing where else you might like to work – just in case. If you’re mentally prepared for a move, you’ll make a wiser one than if you wait until you’re desperate (read canned).

One more thought: If we really are in, or headed for, a recession – and economists can’t even agree on whether or not we are – it may not be so bad. Every downturn is different. So who knows? If you’re not a mortgage banker or a home builder, maybe your current position is perfectly “safe.” But think about it for a while and you may find yourself wondering: Is “safe” good enough? Maybe it’s time to change jobs anyway — and heed the immortal words of Keith Richards, “I’m gonna leave while it’s still fun/ I’m gonna walk before they make me run.”

Top 40 Financial Firms 2008

Each year, many groups perform market research in order to place the top 50 or financial firms across the States.  Recently Vault released their study based on industry experts feedback and polling.

As you take a look through the list most firms are repeats, but you may notice some new names that rounded out the top 40 for 2008.  Do with it what you’d like, but I wanted to post this info for others in the LIRN community.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to comment on this or any other article contributed to the LIRN Blog.  If you would like to contribute an article feel free to contact me at ryan.leary@kenexa.com.

2008 Top 40 financial Firms across the United States

	Featured Employers
RANK		FIRM	SCORE	PREV. RANK*	HEADQUARTERS
1		PricewaterhouseCoopers	7.616	2	New York, NY
2		Ernst & Young	7.415	1	New York, NY
3		Deloitte & Touche USA	7.035	3	New York, NY
4		KPMG	6.447	4	New York, NY
5		Grant Thornton	6.009	5	Chicago, IL
6		BDO Seidman	5.72	6	Chicago, IL
7		McGladrey & Pullen	5.708	14	Bloomington, MN
8		Moss Adams	5.534	7	Seattle, WA
9		J.H. Cohn	5.375	8	Roseland, NJ
10		Eisner	5.341	15	New York, NY
11		Plante & Moran	5.045	10	Southfield, MI
12		Crowe Chizek and Co.	4.93	9	South Bend, IN
13		BKD	4.853	NR	Springfield, MO
14		Beers & Cutler	4.806	13	Vienna, VA
15		Clifton Gunderson	4.733	35	Peoria, IL
16		Dixon Hughes	4.677	17	High Point, NC
17		Rothstein, Kass & Co.	4.607	12	Roseland, NJ
18		Cherry, Bekaert & Holland	4.45	17	Richmond, VA
19		Virchow, Krause & Co.	4.435	25	Madison, WI
20		Anchin, Block & Anchin	4.242	26	New York, NY
21		LarsonAllen	4.18	16	Minneapolis, MN
22		Weiser	4.18	21	New York, NY
23		CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann	4.069	NR	Clevland, OH
24		Amper Politziner & Mattia	4.018	24	Edison, NJ
25		Elliott Davis	3.948	31	Greenville, SC
26		Reznick Group	3.931	20	Bethesda, MD
27		Wipfli	3.765	29	Madison, WI
28		bmc (Beard Miller Company	3.667	28	Wyomissing, PA
29		Kaufman, Rossin & Co.	3.648	NR	Miami, FL
30		WithumSmith+Brown	3.615	23	Princeton, NJ
31		Smart & Associates	3.6	NR	Devon, PA
32		Mahoney Cohen & Company	3.575	32	New York, NY
33		Parente Randolph	3.558	18	Philadelphia, PA
34		Frank, Rimerman & Co.	3.531	40	Palo Alto, CA
35		Berdon	3.477	33	New York, NY
36		UHY Advisors	3.465	NR	Chicago, IL
37		Horne CPA Group	3.429	NR	Jackson, MS
38		Goodman & Co.	3.425	39	Norfolk, VA
39		Vitale Caturano & Company	3.35	19	Boston, MA
40		Aronson & Company	3.35	NR	Rockville, MD

*Previous rankings refer to the rankings published in the 2007 Edition of the Vault Guide to the Top Accounting Firms, published in June 2006.

Compdata Survey Results – Most Popular Sourcing Methods

So, it’s been a short while since I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and contribute here the LIRN Blog. However, Jim Stroud had the very impressive survey posted on his site from Compdata. I felt compelled to post it here as well.  The information is very telling and relevant to us as recruiters. 

Please be sure to visit Jim’s page HERE. His work is outstanding and I thank him for posting this.

 *****

Here are the results from a recent survey conducted by Compdata. The survey compiled the most popular methods used to recruit new employees in 2007. You may find the results interesting. (Looks like I and my fellow researchers/sourcers came in at #3! At least, I hope I am reading that right.)

• Internet Advertising:
  84.7%
• Newspaper Ad right.vertising:
  73.3%
• Internet Search:
  60.3%
• Employee Referral Program:
  59.6%
• Job Fairs:
  54.9%
• Sign On Bonuses:
  32.2%
• New/Increased School Recruiting:
  29.8%
• Increased Starting Rates:
  24.5%
• Trade/Professional Association Advertising:
  20.8%
• Extra Vacation Time:
  14.9%
• Bonus for Staying a Certain Length of Time:
  13.6%
• Free Uniforms/Tools:
  12.9%
• More Raises During First Year:
  12.9%
• Other:
  11.4%
• Organization Phone Line:
  6.9%
• International Recruiting:
  6%
• Not Actively Recruiting Personnel:
  3.7%

*Information used in this DataBrief was taken from the 2007 edition of Compensation Data, which is published annually by Compdata Surveys.

ABOUT COMPDATA SURVEYS

Compdata Surveys, www.compdatasurveys.com, is the nation’s leading compensation and benefits survey data provider. Data is collected annually from thousands of organizations across the country. Compdata Surveys has been providing accurate, reliable data at affordable prices to organizations since 1988. For further information about the compensation and benefits surveys, contact Lane Odle at (800) 300-9570 or lodle@compdatasurveys.com.

You get what you pay for and You pay for what you Get!

Thanks to a Colleague of mine for this recent post. It’s a great article on the thoughts and theories behind hiring quality talent and distinguishing their market value.  Please visit Jody Meyerson’s LinkedIn profile for more information at: Jody’s LinkedIn Profile 

Written by Jody Meyerson

You get what you pay for. Conversely, you must be prepared to pay for what you get. This is abundantly clear to consumers when purchasing a product, such as a new car. Why, then, is this such a difficult concept to grasp when the product is a person, such as in the case of hiring a new employee?

To illustrate this point, let’s first look at education. How many times have recruiters heard, “this position only requires a Bachelor’s degree” in order to justify a lower salary for an MBA candidate? While that statement may be true, it is also true that the MBA candidate has a higher value in the marketplace and cannot be hired at a lower salary simply because the position doesn’t require an advanced degree. To put this in terms of a new car, imagine that you are in the market for a midsize sedan, but take a luxury SUV for a test drive and decide to purchase it. Is it reasonable to expect that you will receive the SUV at the price of the sedan, simply since you don’t “need” an SUV?

Now, let’s talk about experience. Take the case of an entry-level position, and imagine that you interview a candidate with five years’ experience and decide to extend an offer. It is a reasonable expectation that this experienced candidate will demand a significantly higher salary than you would have had to pay an entry-level candidate. To draw another “new car” parallel, suppose that you are looking for a new car with only the most basic of options. If you test drive and decide to purchase a “loaded” model, shouldn’t you expect to pay the price?

Finally, it’s important to consider market value and the basics of supply and demand. If the car you want to purchase is a popular new model that is in high demand, it is usually unreasonable to expect a significant discount. Similarly, if employees with certain educational and professional backgrounds are also in demand, why expect to be able to attract them by paying them less than your competitors are offering?

Today’s increasingly savvy candidates understand their market value. The best of them have interviewed with multiple potential employers and frequently have multiple offers on the table. And while most consumers expect to pay market value for a commodity such as a new car, many companies still expect to attract the best employees at bargain prices. The cost of not coming to terms with this is the loss of revenue associated with unfilled positions. To draw one last parallel, how many of us would rather pay fair market value for that new car than start hitchhiking to work?

Why you’ll finally use LinkedIn

LinkedIn has fast become a daily ritual for many recruiters and social networkers alike. Most recently a new study finds that LinkedIn has now crossed over 17 million active members and shows no signs of slowing.I recently came across the posting below and found it worth posting as I am a huge fan of LinkedIn, and I have become a daily user.Enjoy and feel free to comment!

Why you’ll finally use LinkedIn

The buttoned-down social network has a new CEO, a growing membership, and an increasingly-useful set of features.

By David Kirkpatrick, senior editor
  NEW YORK (Fortune) — For years, I’ve been befuddled by LinkedIn. I knew it was supposed to be the social network for work, but to me it was like war. “What is it good for?” I asked myself repeatedly, even as I occasionally poked around and accepted requests to link with people. I belonged to it, but I really didn’t know why.

The other day I had a chance to sit down with LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye, who’s been on the job since February. He told me about a few changes that LinkedIn subsequently announced (VentureBeat has a good description of them.). And his PR person upgraded me to what would otherwise be a paid account. (It can be $20 to $200 per month.)

I have had a revelation. LinkedIn isn’t bad. For all my well-known (and even ridiculed) enthusiasm for Facebook, LinkedIn shows there will be plenty of room for other ways to connect with people on the Web.

LinkedIn aims for a much more functional role in your life. While Facebook remains better designed and conceived, in my opinion, it is not likely any time soon to help you find a job, hire a contractor or consultant, or figure out who you should hire for a position.

That’s because of two things. First, despite all the criticism of its privacy policies, Facebook is fundamentally based on the notion of privacy. You cannot find out much about someone unless they have willingly elected to be your “friend,” or if they are in a partially-open network you also belong to – for your town or workplace or school. The other reason is that Facebook is intended to be a communications medium. Think of it as, in part, a way to broadcast information about yourself.

LinkedIn, by contrast, is a sort of high-end consensual database of colleagues. In some ways it aims to turn the entire planet’s workforce into one big set of colleagues, who only come to know one another when one can solve a problem for the other. You can look for that job or find that consultant or employee, because LinkedIn’s member data is essentially open for all to see, and because the site offers search tools to help you slice and dice it. (They are much more sophisticated and useful if you’re a paying member.)

In recent months LinkedIn has reached a new critical mass. I know this in part because Nye told me the service now has 17 million members, up from only 8 million when he arrived. But I also know it personally because, for example, until very recently it contained hardly any of my classmates from college. While my class only included about 300, now about 40 of them are on LinkedIn. (You generally tell the system what class you were in when you join.) And colleagues at Fortune and friends outside the tech industry (LinkedIn’s initial user base) are joining quickly.

“We are focused on LinkedIn as a productivity tool,” says Nye. “We don’t want to be compared to other sites that are just about page views and frequency of use. We want to give you the information you need to do your job better.” As for Facebook, he says “It makes sense to keep your personal and your professional lives separate.

“That last one I frankly doubt, in an era when the line between the two is so gray. Facebook will become more functional as it adds features that enable us to slice and dice our relationships to more accurately reflect the fact that one “friend” is a PR person who calls to pitch me a lot and the other is my brother. But LinkedIn will remain useful, albeit not so often nor so enjoyably.

Nye said that if you were seeking a “product manager with an MBA trained in Six Sigma who lives in Cincinnati” you’d probably find six. I did that exact search, and actually found one.

Nye himself wanted to hire a former Procter & Gamble marketer who had been in Silicon Valley for a while. Using LinkedIn, he claims he found eight names immediately and within half an hour was on the phone with one he had quickly vetted by e-mailing mutual friends (LinkedIn tracks those very well).

LinkedIn also enables you to ask questions either of specific members or the whole hoi polloi. You could, for example, ask an HR manager at a company similar to yours if your salary is fair.

A new interface design, still in beta, is an overdue and attractive visual upgrade. With the latest features, LinkedIn aims to become more of a portal drawing users back daily. One, launched in partnership with Business Week, allows you to read a news item and examine names and companies mentioned through the lens of your own connectedness. (Nye recited the depressing figure that only 30 percent of LinkedIn’s members have read any business magazine in the last 30 days.)

Maybe that’s why people recently found credible a rumor that News Corp. was angling to buy the service, which Nye has said would not sell for less than $1 billion. But a very senior News Corp. executive I spoke with says there is “no way” the company would ever be interested in paying nearly that much.

But LinkedIn has established a key position in the business ecosystem. If it keeps developing its functionality, and especially if it reduces its fees, which are ridiculously high for anyone who is not either hiring or looking for work, I see a bright future. It will further speed the pace of commerce by helping us all better find the people we need to get work done.   

TPS – Six Sigma

Six Sigma has many variations and can be implemented any way you feel fit to benefit your organization. Here is a submission from a reader regarding their spin on Six Sigma: Entitled TPS – Six Sigma.

Please feel free to comment or forward your own submission to be posted.

By Hubert Rampersad & Anwar El-Homsi (Information Age Publishing Inc., North Carolina, November 2007)

http://www.TPS-LeanSixSigma.com

A new blueprint for addressing the primary concerns of manufacturing and service in a more sustainable and humanized way is urgently needed, whereby personal and organizational performance, and learning mutually reinforce each other and create a stable basis for a high performance company. Traditional business management concepts are insufficiently committed to learning, and rarely take the specific personal ambitions of employees into account. In consequence, there are many superficial improvements, marked by temporary and cosmetic changes, which are coupled with failing projects that lack engaged personnel. This new book emphasizes the introduction of this new blueprint, called TPS-Lean Six Sigma. This model entails the integration of Total Performance Scorecard and Lean Six Sigma. TPS-Lean Six Sigma and the related new tools provide an excellent and innovative framework for creating a high performance culture and a sustainable breakthrough in both the manufacturing and service industries.

TPS-Lean Six Sigma is like a ‘turbo-charged’ Lean Six Sigma program. All of the proven, sound methodologies of traditional Lean Six Sigma are charged with highly motivated team members. The result is a powerful people driven Lean Six Sigma program called TPS-Lean Six Sigma that leads to a High Performance Culture and allows employees to realize their full potential and contribute creatively while the organization benefits from increased profitability, market share, and customer satisfaction. TPS-Lean Six Sigma is the perfect marriage of Lean Six Sigma and the Total Performance Scorecard. With TPS-Lean Six Sigma, your business, your customer, and your employee’s personal goals are all realized in concert with each other. By integrating human capital into the Lean Six Sigma equation, organizations have the opportunity for exponential, quantum levels of improvement and success. Your customers will be happy, shareholders will be happy, management will be happy, employees will be happy, processes will be optimized, waste will be eliminated, and profits will soar. It is quite possible that now, with TPS-Lean Six Sigma, we actually have reached nirvana. By way of this book, Hubert Rampersad & Anwar El-Homsi are launching a revolutionary, holistic concept called TPS-Lean Six Sigma which actively has human capital embedded in Lean Six Sigma in a manner that not only stimulates commitment, integrity, work-life balance, passion, enjoyment at work and employee engagement but also stimulates individual and team learning in order to develop a motivated workforce and sustainable performance improvement and quality enhancement for the organization.

MISSING LINKS IN LEAN SIX SIGMA

We have been deploying Lean Six Sigma for over the past five years. What we found is that while Lean Six Sigma does a great job addressing the primary concerns of manufacturing and service, there was something missing, something to keep the momentum going. That something is Human Capital. That’s right, Lean Six Sigma primarily addresses quality issues, manufacturing issues, transactional issues, customer issues, speed and variability issues. However, unless your organization is run by robots, you still need people to make it all work. There was nothing in Lean Six Sigma that systematically addresses the very real needs of the people who are the heart and soul of any business. Total Performance Scorecard Lean Six Sigma (TPS-Lean Six Sigma) is the only program of its kind that incorporates the element of Human Capital as a structured part of a Lean Six Sigma program. Let’s face it – you can design the best Lean Six Sigma program in the world, but if the people running it and working within it are not happy themselves, how effective do you think the program will be? Let’s consider the corollary – what if you had employees that are highly motivated running your Lean Six Sigma initiative? Wouldn’t that be the best approach? Would you have to force feed the program to your employees, or will they grab on and move the program along even further then originally envisioned? That is what the authors have included in detail in this book and in their related workshops; How to design, develop, and implement the most powerful Lean Six Sigma program in the world, TPS-Lean Six Sigma. They have combined all the powerful tools and methodologies of Lean and Six Sigma with personal power optimization of the Total Performance Scorecard. The result is a breakthrough program that increases speed, reduces waste, motivates the workforce, satisfies customers, and drives up profit. Based on this revolutionary concept quality has evolved from inspection to TPS-Lean Six Sigma.

A Tale of Two Searches

Here is a great article that was forwarded to me written by Lou Adler. I hope you enjoy and take from it, as much as I did. I encourage you to take a peek at his website.  It is extremly informative and very resourceful for HR Professionals.

A Tale of Two Searches

How to double your placement rate in half the timeBy Lou Adler   “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”This past quarter, I conducted two senior-level management searches. Each one stands out as a shining example of what to do and what not to do. Understanding the differences can double your monthly placement rate in about half the time. Before reading the details, you should benchmark your own recruiting skills using this 10-Factor Recruiter diagnostic assessment to get a sense of what it takes to be a great recruiter.

Here’s a quick summary of what happened. One of the searches was for a director-level technical position for an industrial products company. This is the one I didn’t conduct too well. I had to present seven candidates, and the client would only see four of them. My normally accurate assessments were suspect, and I didn’t have a great deal of confidence in representing either the job to the candidates or the candidates to the client. Making matters worse, it was a long and difficult close with compensation being the primary discussion point. We got very few referrals on the search, and it took about 90 days from beginning to end. The other search was a slam dunk. It was for a director-level project manager position for an alternative energy company. In this case, three candidates were presented, all were seen, all were considered strong, and the company hired one within 45 days.

Our assessments were dead-on across all job factors. Making matters better, we had two strong backups in addition to the three candidates, and both were referrals. While the compensation issues were not insignificant, the short- and long-term career opportunity overwhelmed the other two jobs the final candidate was considering. There are some valuable lessons to be learned here. There are a number of factors worth considering that resulted in a 200% increase in productivity (half the number of candidates in half the time). Here are the ones that made the difference:

• Understanding Real Job Needs. Although I prepared a performance profile for the technical job, it was a battle with the hiring manager (vice president level) all the way. He was insistent on a certain level of skills, experience, and industry background, and it was difficult to get him to change his point of view. The vice president of operations leading the project manager search was a different breed entirely. He quickly accepted the idea of emphasizing critical results and performance objectives as superior selection criteria rather than qualifications. Part of this was that he wanted to hire the best person doing comparable work, and he knew he would be able to find some all-stars outside of the emerging alternative energy industry.
• Becoming a Partner with the Hiring Manager on the Search. I was pushed onto the vice president for the technical job by the vice president of human resources. While a very competent person, he was old-school and he found using Performance-based Hiring to be inconsistent with his old-line management style. Although we got along, it was more obligatory than sincere. The vice president of operations for the alternative energy company sought me out through referrals and wanted to use new techniques to find top performers. We hit it off right away. This alone helped communications and understanding. After preparing the performance profile, he knew I understood the job, and trust and openness instantly jumped up a notch.
• Understanding the Market. I did my homework for the alternative energy company. Within a few days, I knew the players, the competition, how the industry was financed, and the short- and long-term market opportunities. On the other hand, the comparable market evaluation I prepared for the technical industrial products job was superficial at best, reflecting a minimal understanding of the industry jargon. Knowing the industry from a macro standpoint really helps when sourcing and assessing candidates, presenting the opportunity, and getting referrals. When you don’t know what you’re talking about, recruiters come across as a desperate car sales representative rather than an objective career consultant.
• Conducting a Performance-Based Assessment. As you know, I advocate the idea of digging deep into a candidate’s accomplishments (performance-based interviewing) and comparing these to the performance objectives described in the performance profile. The purpose of this is multi-fold. First, to assess competency and motivation. Second, to identify gaps in the candidate’s background that can be presented as stretch opportunities if an offer is ultimately made. If you don’t know the job, you have nothing to benchmark the candidate against. This compromises the assessment and precludes the idea of recruiting on anything other than hot air and promises. Not only do you have little confidence when presenting your candidates to your client, you’re also pretty inept when negotiating an offer. All you have then is compensation as a bargaining chip. So, even though I conducted the same interview for all of the candidates for both searches, I had far less insight and even less credibility with those candidates for the job I didn’t understand as well.
• Sourcing Active Candidates. As long as they can be easily found and are well-written, ads can attract the attention of top people who look on a casual and infrequent basis. With a little research, we found some great niche sites to post a compelling project manager ad. The title was something like “A Billion is a Lot of Green Project Manager Dollars.” It worked. We found a few strong candidates plus garnered a few quality referrals. While the technical director ad was interesting, we had less information and less desire to get creative. The results were satisfactory, but not stellar.
• Sourcing Passive Candidates. Don’t pick up the phone and call a single passive candidate if you don’t understand real job needs as well as have a great understanding of the market. For one thing, without a great voice-mail message packed with insight and some salient facts, few people will return your call. Even those hungry enough to call you back will quickly recognize your lack of knowledge and confidence. While I didn’t actually do the cold calling, our sourcers spent about one-third the time getting the first group of 20 prospects for the project manager search. Within a few days, we had candidates we could present. FYI: We found all but one of the initial prospects on ZoomInfo and LinkedIn.
• Networking and Generating Referrals. If you been to one of our training sessions, you know we spend a great deal of time teaching recruiters how to get great referrals from everyone. While there is much technique involved, if you don’t know the job and market, you come across as both insincere and superficial. It’s difficult to get strong referrals if you can’t build relationships, and it’s more difficult to build relationships if the person called doesn’t trust you. We expect to get 2-3 referrals on every cold call to a passive candidate. For the project manager, we came close to hitting these numbers; for the technical director spot, we were less than half the goal.
• Negotiating the Offer. If you want to place a top person who has multiple opportunities, you’ll need to position your job as offering at least a 30% increase over everything else the candidate is considering. Your objective is to make this 30% a combination of growth, job stretch, benefits, quality of life, and compensation. You’ll be able to prepare much of this comparison by conducting the performance-based interview mentioned earlier, looking for gaps in the candidate’s background. By asking lots of insightful questions, you’ll be able to demonstrate how your job compares to the competition. However, to successfully pull this off you need to know the job, the market, the competition, and the leadership traits of the hiring manager, and have equal in-depth insight into the candidates’ abilities and desires. We did a great job in closing the project director position. The candidate had multiple opportunities, but ours was far superior when compared both tactically and strategically with the others. The technical director comparison was harder to put together and less effective.

On a side-by-side comparison, it required at least twice the effort required to find candidates and negotiate the offer for the director of technology spot as it did for the project director position. While the sourcing, interviewing, and recruiting techniques we used were identical, we lost most of the time due to a lack of understanding of real job needs and the weaker relationship I had with the hiring manager. At a minimum, this required us to source, recruit, interview, and present more candidates. And, even though I believe I’m a very good interviewer, I felt less sure about my assessment of the technology candidates. Collectively, much of what we did for the director of technology job was a waste of time, and eventually it became just a numbers game. Taking the assignment properly and developing a strong recruiter/hiring manager partnership upfront are the real keys to improving your productivity. No matter what else you do to become a better recruiter, don’t ever lose sight of this fact.  

A Poor Resume will Loose that Dream Job!

As a recruiter, a good percentage of my job is to review resumes in efforts to find the best candidates. Though this would seem simple in theory, I cannot begin to tell you how true this is not! It is no wonder why the majority of job seekers in the market place today have an extended job search. A resume is the single most important tool you can have in your arsenal; after all it is your introduction to the hiring manager.

With a shelf life typically lasting no longer than 10-15 seconds, it is truly important that you, the candidate put forth your best foot in representing yourself. According to a poll of more than 2,000 hiring authorities 90% of all resumes submitted will simply not be a qualified fit for the position. In essence this leaves you with 10% wiggle room to either become a star or just another candidate.

So let’s look at the situation this way:

100 Resumes submitted
90 Resumes will most likely be rejected
10 Resumes continue to the next stage

If we take the law of averages (in sales); out of these 10 only 3 may actually be contacted for interviews and out of these 3 maybe 1 will be the right candidate for the position.

I have spoken over the last few years with many hiring managers regarding this very topic. I find that for myself, having a true understanding of what makes my client tick will really allow me to zero in on what I need to do to be successful. Regardless of how much one can sell a candidate or how great a candidate is, if the resume is not up to par, he/she risks loosing that dream job.

The majority or resumes rejected after a hiring manager has had the opportunity to sit and review resumes fall within these main areas:
- Falsifying information / improper work history
- No documentation of achievements and goals attained
- Typos, grammar, and spelin mistakes (yes, I purposely spelled that wrong!)
- No professional summary or cover letter

So what do you do? If you ask 100 people, you will most likely get 100 different answers. With this said, my recommendation would be as follows.

A resume is best presented in 4 distinct sections including: Objective/Professional Summary, Relevant Experience, Chronological work history and Education. The goal of your resume is to professionally present yourself in an image that screams success.

Here is a brief explanation of each section to be included in your new power packed resume.

- Objective/Professional Summary:

A professional summary is the time to tell your story. Be concise yet detailed, and be sure to use action words to accurately describe your ethics. You want to be sure you clearly state what you are looking for and why you are an ideal candidate.

- Relevant Experience:

In creating this portion of your resume it is vital that you pay close attention to format. Though in reality this is a list, you must create an attractive table to represent your relevant skills and expertise. Do not falsify this section as most employers will use this section during your interview process.

- Chronological work history:

Creating a clear and concise review of your past and current work history will expose a couple of areas to a hiring authority. He/She will quickly learn of your ability to write and communicate on a professional level. This section will reveal your experience, skills, employment gaps, stability, growth, career goals, motivation and your ability to effectively communicate to others in report style.

- Education/Certifications:

There is always a debate on where to place your education on your resume. The choice is yours. However, if you are a senior level candidate or have enough experience to outweigh your education, I recommend placing this section at the bottom of your resume. On the contrary if you are a recent graduate or only have 2 years of experience, it may benefit you to place this section at the beginning of your resume. Be sure to highlight your GPA and the specific program/school that you attended.

Another great feature to add in this section is continuing education and certifications to highlight your motivations and career dedication.

Your resume can be a gold mine if written properly. Though it may be a daunting task, be sure to review, re-review and than have someone else review your resume to ensure that your final copy is truly your final copy.

Good Luck, and please feel free to contact me should you have any concerns.

What’s in a Job Description?

*Note*

I have to give credit where credit is due. I am not 100% sure where this excerpt is from, however it has been instrumental as a foundation builder for me. Please enjoy and Thanks to whom ever wrote this; its been successful for me.

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What’s in a Job Description?A thorough, detailed job description should contain the following components:
· Administrative Information
· Reporting Structure
· Metrics
· Job Functions and Contributions
· Required Competencies
· Interaction / Impact Matrix
· Other
· Sign Off and Routing

Part 1

Administrative InformationThis section includes basic information about the position: job title, a short description of the job and its purpose, company name, geographic location, branch or department, supervisor’s name, supervisor’s job title, salary target, special benefits, relocation reimbursement status, special requirements such as drug testing or security clearance, and a revision date for this particular draft of the job description.

The most important part of this section is a concise statement of the purpose of the job, which should be a single-sentence statement indicating what the employee is expected to achieve and how he is expected to achieve it.

Part 2

Reporting StructureThis section includes an organization chart that shows exactly where the position fits in the organizational hierarchy. Any “dotted line” relationships should be clearly delineated. The position of the job in the organizational hierarchy gives valuable information about its significance and the ability of the employee to make progress and influence decisions.

Part 3

MetricsThis section includes metrics that are relevant to the job. These will vary considerably between jobs but might include: annual budgets; annual revenue targets; number of staff supervised and direct reports; number of customer accounts; number of contracts responsible for; and number of brands managed.

Part 4

Job Functions and ContributionsThis section briefly describes the functions of the job. Statements should be phrased in terms of the purpose and the result to be accomplished, rather than the manner in which the function is performed. For example, “Responsible for monthly consolidation of affiliate forecasts and communicating identified inventory shortages to demand planners” is far better than “Diligently perform forecasting duties”.

Itemize the key job functions for a position and record them in a matrix. In a separate column, record the percentage of time the function is performed (should total 100%). Do not list non-essential job functions if they are done less than 5% of the time. In another column, note when the function is performed (e.g. daily, monthly, quarterly). In a final column, put a check mark if the function is essential (i.e. fundamental duties that the individual holding the job must be able to perform.

Part 5

Required CompetenciesThis is where you define the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attributes that the candidate needs to have. We recommend you create a matrix that includes the following information: the competency; the experience, education or certification that is required; the function which the competency supports (going back to the functions matrix you prepared in Job Functions and Contributions above); and, finally, checkboxes as to whether the competency is a Minimum Requirement (i.e. they can’t have the job if they don’t have it) or if it is a Preferred Requirement (nice to have but not essential).

Part 6

Interaction/Impact MatrixCreate an exhaustive list of relevant interaction entities (e.g. Marketing, External Customers, Administrative Assistant, Use of Wireless Technology, etc.) in one column. Then, where appropriate, apply check marks for the following interaction types, each of which has its own column in the matrix: Performs Services For; Negotiates With / Influences; Provides Recommendations To; Supervises; Provides Directions To; and Develops Strategies For. This provides a good understanding of the position and how it will interact and influence other entities within your organization.

Part 7

OtherThis section captures other elements of the job. Include a short narrative section that gives incremental insights into the context in which the employee will do the job. Important aspects of the environment (e.g. “The plant in which this employee came to our company through our recent acquisition of ABC Company”). This catch-all section might also be used to address the decision-making powers of the position. What types of decisions can be made autonomously by the employee and which will require consultation with senior management? This section completes the job description such that it is fully described in all important respects.