Networking Works!

The most common way workers and managers landed their current jobs was through networking, according to a survey by Hudson, part of the Hudson Highland Group Inc. Twenty-eight percent of workers cited networking, while 33% of managers did.

"E-mail and the Internet make replying to an online job posting easier than ever, but in this situation, easy does not necessarily mean effective," said Steve Wolfe, senior VP of Hudson North America. "Consequently, developing and maintaining a strong network of professional as well as personal contacts can mean the difference between landing an interview and getting lost in the crowd."

In addition, 40% of managers said internal promotions were the best way to fill an opening, followed by employee referrals (24%) and personal recommendations (20%), according to the survey.

The survey also found that 41% of workers expect to stay with their current employer for more than six years and 28% plan to switch companies in the short term. And 54% of workers are categorized as active or passive job seekers. The survey questioned 2,024 U.S. workers.

SI Report - March 16, 2007, Posted On: 3/16/2007

Recruiting Gurus' Observations:Recruiting Trends of Tomorrow

When I am in receipt of what is characterized as "Junk E-mail" that adds to my knowledge or how to go about doing my job more effectively, I recognize its value. Sent Wednesday 6/27/2007 from ZoomInfo, I received a Mail Message that is informational and timely. I could post an editorial of one of my many opinions regarding best practices in the Staffing Industry; however, for today's article, I am pleased to pass on this gem from ZoomInfo:

Start using tomorrow's recruiting techniques today!

What trends determine which recruiters succeed in the current labor market - and which ones fail? Listen to observations from:

Lou Adler of The Adler Group
Jim Durbin of Durbin Media Group
HireVue's Ryan Money
David Manaster of ERE.net
Recruiting Guru Jason Davis
Sean Rehder of Rehder Talent Logistics

If you're looking for ways to make the difference between merely finding candidates and finding the right candidates, this brief online presentation will get your creative juices flowing! Listen to Lou Adler's comments on combining new tools with traditional networking, Ryan Money's insights into sourcing passive candidates, and Jason Davis' thoughts on the new cooperation between competitors.

ZoomInfo caught all these experts on video at ERExpo 2007, and compiled them into an online, on-demand presentation. Watch it now – and get started with the future of recruiting today!

Click here to watch now »

Who is ZoomInfo? ZoomInfo is a search engine that continually scans millions of Web sites, electronic news sources, SEC filings, and other online resources and provides results in concise, easy-to-use summaries. ZoomInfo PowerSearch helps recruiters source passive candidates by providing information on more than 36 million business professionals. ZoomInfo JobCast is a campaign tool that uses proven email best practices to help you efficiently reach these candidates. Try out ZoomInfo on some of your own searches!

Click here for a demo and free trial »

Copyright © 2007 Zoom Information Inc.

The 21st-Century Talent Shortage

With baby boomers retiring and other companies luring away key talent, is your company ready to fill the talent void, or unprepared to deal with the shortage of talent to manage business operations and growth?

Succession planning is a boardroom topic discussed from time to time; however, almost all companies fail to set-up a program organizationally that can deal with forecasted labor shortages in the not too distant future.

Studies show only about 50 percent of companies has in place a succession plan framework. Those that do, generally have only a process that is aimed at the executive level. Over 90% of companies are insufficiently prepared to ensure critical management and customer-facing positions are filled to levels that safeguard revenue, service and their brand over the next decade.

Secession planning is like changing a tire on a moving car. Human Resource groups are caught up in principally a reactive function that includes a variety of activities – current staffing needs, recruiting and training employees, documenting performance, dealing with performance issues, ensuring company practices conform to various regulations, managing employee benefits and compensation, overseeing employee records and personnel policies. In tandem, front line management is over-involved day-to-day in meeting sales and earnings objectives while ensuring customer service levels and competitive innovation are greater than before. The byproduct of this present-day busyness is no solid strategic plan for long term talent acquisition in what will be the tightest labor market in US history.

How then, do you go about it? A starting point is to better document, analyze and discuss current talent management activities and benchmark this information against an assessment of future needs for talented people. 78 million baby boomers will begin retiring in the next few years, and will continue to do so through 2031 when they reach full eligibility, so any plan should be at least a 10-year plan.

A simple understanding your organization's future talent needs can be made—in raw numbers—by taking into consideration historic turnover statistics, a projection of the number of people currently in the organization likely retiring out, and the amount of new positions created through planned expansion.

Then, organize the performance review process to obtain accurate data regarding existing talent—this process must include measurements of individuals’ performance, as well as indicators of potential and readiness objectively. Using only a few performance indicators based on outcomes to specific performance objectives will make it possible to rank employees and present a clear view of the band of talent in each job family. Where an organization marks the ranking in terms of high, moderate, and under performing employees adds that the count of future talent requirements. Talent assessments need to be methodical, data-driven, consolidated and be graded to be a strategic tool.

The summation of these measures sets the groundwork for a realistic approach to acquiring and developing talent for the future. Bring Human Resources and front line Management together to ask important questions: What needs to be improved? Who are motivated to improve? What knowledge and skills do employees need to succeed in their work? How can what they have learned be applied and retained? Can ongoing performance be measured accurately? If talent cannot be developed internally, how can we acquire the talent from outside the company? How do we go about dealing with these gaps?

Adapting an organization to prosper in a talent war is difficult, and one should not act as though it can be done easily. However, this difficulty and the implications of change for the organization, should be cause for failure to act.

“Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.”
–Warren G. Bennis

The Candidate-Centric Business Model Concept

Changes in economic conditions influence business operating models as we adapt to the drivers of supply and demand. The number of candidates available correlated with the number of open jobs influences, without question, the selling approach for the Staffing Industry. When the job market is depressed, unemployment is high and candidates are plentiful; sales are intensely focused on winning new customers to come across few and far between hiring needs. Conversely, when, jobs are abundant and candidates are scarce, the sales process follows the acquisition of a candidate, and the focus narrows to identifying the hiring manager with an open job that matches the background and experience of the candidate. This is concept is based upon demand forecasting and inventory management—best practices in product-based industries for decades.

The idea that a branch can “be all” to all customers is a myth. You cannot represent every candidate effectively and work every job order successfully. What you can do is develop a core-competency of identified job categories/titles for your branch and build a database of hiring managers who have interest in the job categories that you represent. The ideal core-competency skill sets for your branch should be representative of occupations that are desirable for Temp/Contract and Direct Hire. The reason for that is most candidates are best attracted and come to you for Direct Hire opportunities. Should they be “available” presently, they can be assigned to Temp/Contract engagements until which time a “regular” job is identified. Job categories/titles that fit these criteria are generally aligned with health margins, high pay rates and superior markups. These are the people likely to be sought after by hiring managers and department-level company representatives to fill critical open positions. These may differ market-to-market and should be reflective of your market; including hot industries and jobs as well as job categories with candidate shortages. These are the candidates that you should recruit day-in and day-out instead of wasting precious time trying to fill random job orders that sales efforts are generating.

Candidate-centric selling is simple as doing what you do now and adding one degree of strategy to generate job orders that you can fill with candidates you already have. Most Staffing Industry branches have a selling strategy that is made up of a target list or a zone approach—this remains the platform upon which you build your Candidate-centric business. You enhance this process by adding to your “contact names” associated with the companies that you are pursuing. The key is to add hiring manager, department manager, office manager, executive office contact names that are likely to have a direct need for the job category/title within your established core-competency. At the same time develop a way to track for the company (or hiring-manager level) record, AND the candidate profile the following important values that will superpower your searching and marketing activities: industry, job title, software and any other key need/experience that will match a candidate and a company perfectly. You then can do candidate-based reverse searches to identify companies to which to market them and search your database of available candidates to market specific companies.

You can develop additional sources to market your candidates by reviewing job board postings for core-competency positions—who needs your candidates? You can automate this by acting as a job-seeker (it is free to do so) and set up Saved Searches/Search Agents (employer searches, keyword searches) to automatically notify you of new core-competency positions as they are posted. Additionally review thoroughly the application/profile submitted by your candidates. Their job history, job search activity, and references are abundant with hiring manager names that have, and will again; hire the kind of person sitting across the interview table from you. Save copies of these leads to have ready when you are making sales telephone calls to qualify new leads and market candidates.

You bring these practices together by making candidates marketing calls the center of sales activity. Make it a practice to have a daily meeting to ensure all selling members of the branch are well-versed regarding core-competency candidates available—their background, experience and reason for being in the job market—these are the candidates that are highlighted for marketing efforts. Come together as a team to strategize how to place every qualified candidate with a company and make marketing calls until you do so. In other words, all sales calls are candidate marketing calls. When you make enough of these calls, you will receive job orders…job orders that you can fill with available candidates.

Torn Between Two Masters: An Editorial on Priorities

Tonight, I ran a Google™ search for Branch Manager. It returned…

Results 1 - 10 of about 40,600,000 for branch manager (0.05 seconds)

It takes only seconds find out how serious the need for critical leadership talent is.

Typically the Branch Manager in the Staffing Industry runs a small business, even within the largest staffing firm, and manages a small team. These small teams are at the heart of an industry with the collective responsibility to increase revenues, improve efficiency, expand operating margins, and push profits up while ensuring customer satisfaction and being a team leader.

Most individual branches depend for their very existence on the sales function. At the same time, the Branch Manager is most commonly the lead, or the one and only, salesperson for the branch. This give rise to the implication is that selling is a distinct activity, remote from managing, and of lower status. Many of the industry’s excelling salespeople are promoted to management because they do their jobs well. The people rewarded with advancement to management, tend to establish a new identity in the management position, diminish their sales effort and start overseeing other people instead

Small business managers are the driving force behind top and bottom-line growth—it is the achievements of Branch Managers and their teams, whose hard work and commitment to excellence have made them a key part of the industry’s vitality

Growing a small business is hard work. The sales function is often overlooked by small business managers. Spending the necessary time with sales activity, networking, prospecting, and improving selling skills is essential to growth and financial rewards. A successful sales effort requires regular planning, purposeful execution, and as assessment of progress to achievement of targeted results.

In the role of Branch Manager, he or she expresses him or herself as a leader by:

• Deciding where the team is headed
• Communicating that vision to them
• Gaining access to information and materials which the team needs to develop skills and talents
• Recognizing problems and seizing opportunities

There is no better way for Branch Mangers to practice management than to identify the talents of their people, and then help them add skills and knowledge. Managers with selling expertise can develop and sustain a high-performance sales culture by guiding their people to use their natural talents and strengths to contribute to business development. Every team member can be a part of the sales team and has unique talents to play a key role in carrying out sales action plans.

The essence of this strategy is do away with the thinking that management responsibilities take away from business development responsibilities and replace that thinking with the concept that managing the team to collectively provide consistent, near-perfect performance to a defined sales plan is indeed insightful leadership.

What is a Passive Candidate?

"Passive candidate" is not in the dictionary...yet. A passive candidate is an individual, presently employed and not actively pursuing a new position. What then makes a passive job-seeker is that rare and increasingly important phenomenon of a recruiter reaching out effectively and piquing the interest of a working professional.

Now "woo" is in the dictionary...to seek and bring about.

http://www.wordsmyth.net/live/home.php?script=search&matchent=woo&matchtype=exact

I believe that the future performance of organizations and progress in careers are dependent upon the quality of our conversations with one another.

The challenge to finding and sustaining meaningful relationships between superstars and employers in need of critical talent is twofold. Typically working professionals are too busy performing well to think about making a career change and are quick to say “no” when on the receiving end of even a targeted, well-researched and compelling recruiting call. At the same time, most companies’ hiring managers are heavily leveraged in core job responsibilities and have little time to go beyond traditional “reactive” recruitment methods.

To reach a working professional not in the job market requires a search that is a departure from the job boards. Not only does in require in-depth knowledge of competitors and similar industries that employ like top performers and an action plan for who to target, but it demands a high-level of interest and consideration to uncover what indeed may capture the heart and mind of an individual high-performer.

For the best employers to seek out working professionals, they must recognize that the tools and techniques required to hire passive candidates are considerably different than those required to hire active job-seekers. And equally important for people already successful in their industry, enhancing career progression requires openness to genuinely interested recruiters in order to build networks that advance professional growth

This is the purpose of my work life. We explore those shared characteristics among our client and candidate business partners to keep in touch with information and offers relevant to their needs. We maintain regular contact over time to develop relationships, share connections and introduce job seekers and employers. We believe that it is people who drive business success—it is our job to bring people together.

When It's Time to Make a Job Change

Long term success has a lot to do with being in the right industry at the right time. In 1990 the Staffing Industry was a $20 billion industry. Today, it is nearly a $90 billion dollar industry. During this period of sustained growth, the number of staffing companies and total employment has dramatically expanded. When it comes to talent, a growth industry is forced to go outside their industry to meet their employment needs. This is true in the Staffing Industry. Companies simply cannot find enough people with industry knowledge or experience to meet their own growth objectives. As a result, individuals who joined this industry in the past five-years now have a lot of employer possibilities to compete for his or her talents.

So how do you know when it's time to explore new opportunities?

#1 You can't see a clear picture of your career path at your current company.
Where do you see yourself in 3-years? Is the path to where you want to go visible, or is your company's plans for you, the market and your boss unclear? Is your current employer invested in your future?

#2 You are under-challenged in your current position.
The next step may be easier than you imagine. That degree of comfort in your current responsibilities may be a sign of career-stagnation. A history of success in your position may translate to a promotion or expanded responsibility with the right employer.

#3 You've tried to make changes to or influence your current job situation but you haven't been successful in making your company appreciate your needs or viewpoint.
It is reasonable then to seek a position in a different company more aligned with your priorities, talents or values.

#4 You crave motivation, challenge, or an opportunity to learn and use new skills in a work environment.
Even if you enjoy the job, it may be time to expand your scope and join a company with an operating philosophy or corporate culture that will sharpen your senses and reinvigorate your work life.

#5 You don't feel valued as an individual or you don't feel that you are paid what you're worth.
For most people, being paid what they're worth — at or above the going market rate for their job function — is an essential aspect of feeling valued. Compensation is one factor that can persuade you to make a change, another is capturing the interest of competing employers in you, your aspirations and your individual needs.


If you have found any one of the five points relevant to you, take the initiative to initiate a job search. By extending yourself for consideration and considering your career options, you have a greater chance of finding and sustaining a career in the Staffing Industry of which you can be proud, and for which you will be financially satisfied.

A hot new start-up serving Staffing Industry job seekers!

Are you in the Staffing Industry?

There are in excess of 30,000 staffing, personnel services and employment companies in the U.S.

The U.S. staffing industry will grow faster and add more new jobs over the next decade than just about any other industry, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor estimates. In its News Release Tuesday, December 4, 2007, BLS says that the employment services industry—which is primarily staffing—will grow 18.9% from 2006 to 2016, adding nearly 692 thousand new jobs.1

1. BLS Releases 2004–14 Employment Projections," News Release, Dec. 7, 2005.

On the agency's list of the top 10 detailed industries expected to have the largest wage and salary employment growth, employment services ranks second in terms of number of jobs (see table 2).

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ecopro_12042007.pdf

I am starting a company to build networks that advance professional and organizational growth by concentrating attention and effort within the Staffing Industry.

At Direct Search Alliance, we are industry and Internet savvy professionals interested in connecting with other professionals. We leverage the rapid growth of premier business information search engines and businesses-oriented social networking websites to bypass the typical employment sites and find people who aren't looking for a job, but are interested in hearing about new opportunities.

The Direct Search Alliance strategy is simple…it is centered on making new and sustaining valued relationships with working professionals day after day. These relationships lead to connections with our client business partners.

We start this journey mid-July 2007. Join the alliance!