"What Can I Do to Help You Now"?

The Annual Economic Analysis released by the American Staffing Association June 2008 shows that, if indeed the U.S. economy is in a recession, the staffing industry is not experiencing the severe contraction characteristic of previous recessions. Despite the fact that demand is slowing, it is important to take into account that total staffing industry sales are $90 billion dollars. Staffing industry employment hit a new annual record high in 2007, and temporary and contract staffing daily employment also set new record highs in the second and third quarters of last year. Presently, the market is 10% ahead of 2000 – a banner year for Staffing – and nearly $30 billion ahead of the historic low of 2002.

There is market share for this period of “flatness," economic “correction” or “downturn,” but not for the cowardly. Those who take on the market’s sluggishness with energy and good judgment, leading actively and by example will prosper even in trying times.

Building a strong growth-sustaining team calls for the time and attention of the business unit manager to maintain a sense of urgency and establish solid work plans that will leverage each team member’s strength. Guidance, support and direction is essential to maximizing team members’ contributions and lift up the capacity of the team. A high level of engagement in training and development, as well as in guiding territory management and lead development is essential to bringing about results.

Business unit managers with the most success in developing strong teams and arranging talents of team members to the discipline in which they belong, direct and support the work flow collectively and individually, as well as contribute personally.

What then are the core best practices of a successful business unit manager?

1. Manage with twice daily meetings to communicate, set responsibilities and priorities. It is wrong to think that stopping “work” to meet as a team is a waste of time. A team with clear priorities and shared information is much more effective than a team “figuring it out on their own.” These are 30-minute meetings – everyone in attendance – with the following agenda items:

Recognition

Candidates for marketing to hiring mangers—who is highly placeable?

Call plans, target lists of hiring authorities—who are you going to call?

Candidate inventory and interview objectives.

Open job orders, next steps and who is responsible for it.

Specific objectives for the day (morning); assessment of outcomes (evening).

Upcoming ends—what business do we need to replace?

Specific, “stretch” objectives for the number of starts to happen within the week—what can we fill?, with whom?, who can we market who to?

Progress to objectives and refocusing all team members based upon current needs (e.g., do we need candidates, job orders, new leads?)

General communication…who may call, what is pending, hot candidates, prospective business—make sure the team knows what is happening.

Role play or planned lesson to foster skills development.

2. Manage the market, inventory and match. The leader must act as the first source of what is “hot” for follow-up to pick up the pace of all team members. The relationship and interplay between oversight of sales and service is leveraged when you can “see” a branch candidate and “match” the candidate to companies the sales team are engaging.

Weekly, review Business Journal, job boards, candidate applications, and expand knowledge of the marketplace with networking, marketing directories and other business resources to garner new leads for the sales team—who is hiring now?

Daily, review every interviewed candidate’s resume/file, meet as many candidates as possible personally—"Is so-and-so a fit for ABC Company”?

3. Manage business development purposefully. Who else but the manager should know the marketplace? Work with self and sales staff at the beginning and the end of the week to review target lists/lead lists/task lists for content, activity and next activity to do. Other sales driving best practices include:

Work together to make up an organizational chart for a minimum of three companies a week to expand the list of Company contacts, set out objectives to uncover missing information.

Ensure that each sales-responsible person has multiple search engines on multiple job boards to receive daily postings for each position the branch is prepared to fill—this will feed lead-following for immediate direct hire job orders. Ad book binders are fine for organizing ads for follow-up calls, but inputting leads to your front office system is better to build future calls plans—monitor use of front office systems so leads are not lost in a paper shuffle.

Set specific “blocked time” to make ad calls, skill marketing calls and qualifying calls to focus sales activity—sell during prime time, research and qualify during specific days/times set aside to develop future targets. Separating the two makes it easier to manage the effectiveness of sales efforts.

Set objectives for the appropriate number of sales calls/visits to support business and take the time to debrief together post-call/visit and plan next steps.

Make a work plan to set time aside for reference check calls—this supports the service team and offers better access to the Company contact who can be qualified as a temporary staffing or direct hire prospect.

Rotate assignment of making up and distributing a “Hot Candidates” communique—monitor and manage quality and growth of email lists.

4. Manage the business of the business. It is up to the leader to plan for maximizing the recruiting team at the beginning of the week to:

Set objectives for individuals’ focus…recruiting, skill marketing, order management—be specific regarding the objectives for the number of fee-eligible candidate and temp interviews in what positions.

Review T-H orders against temporary staffing opportunities to keep from over investing in job orders that, unlike temp, have less of an immediate chance to actually start—maintain a strict 50% of total orders, and…redirect team to actively skill marketing/selling for opportunities.

By the first of the month, ensure that each Recruiter has a minimum of five “viable” direct hire orders in the right skill set—mobilize sales and recruiting teams to generate marketing calls to address any gaps in the number of job orders.

Weekly, have a specific direct hire job order review and discuss what is pending and the next steps to close—communicate with neighboring offices to increase participation.

Step in to talk with candidates and/or Company contacts to assist in closing.

Set specific blocked times to make direct recruiting calls generated from applications/interviews/referrals—ensure a pipeline of leads from recruiting to sales—set up a method to communicate leads in a structured way.

Set objectives for net starts weekly, markup, and “level” of candidates to increase GM$ per hour. To achieve the net starts objective, a 30-day forecast of upcoming ends needs to be visible to the team to set the actual number of starts per week to stay ahead of the progression, including contingencies for unplanned ends. Make up for shortfalls by focusing on placing higher-level, higher-GM$ candidates.

5. Great managers look inward. They look inside the company, into each individual, into the differences in style, goals, needs and motivation of each person. These differences are small, subtle, but great managers need to pay attention to them. These subtle differences guide them toward the right way to release each person's unique talents into performance. Recruit for talent, manage to strengths, hire expeditiously. Manage learning and development at least weekly, if not daily.

Set aside a minimum of 1-hour per week with each employee and talk about: what is expected, what you can do to set him/her up for success, what he/she does best, recognize performance—be specific, genuine and interested; uncover how to make the work meaningful, gain feedback and talk about progress, learning opportunities and how each individual’s contribution fits in the overall company and his/her career progression.

Assign Company training resources to employees and organize opportunities for employees to share learning with the team

Prepare role plays to overcome common objectives—have all team members involved. Listen, and role play with individuals to improve recruiting, negotiation, customer service and closing skills.

Share financial reports to engage the team in the outcomes—demonstrate how increasing markups, direct hire placements/fees and marketing higher-level candidates improves results and personal financial rewards.

Get out of your office and sit side by side with the team and demonstrate best practices…show, not tell.

6. Do not delegate tasks that are not revenue-generating. Support the team with meaningful contributions so they can do their jobs more effectively—individual activity to generate personal production for the good of the branch is useful, but equally important is preparing and focusing each team member by taking responsibility for administrative and operational support to enable the team to expand the business. This is not “lending a hand,” this is “doing” a task completely so the collective bandwidth of the branch team is actively engaged in work that generates gross margin dollars.

Use administrative support to assist you as needed, but do the heavy lifting yourself administratively to ensure that each employee is focused on developing the business. Release the team to “ring the cash register” collectively by doing weekly tasks like payroll and compliance, invoicing and aging, updating and managing all job postings, job board searches—review, print and distribute resumes for blocked recruiting call times.

Drive sales by sourcing new leads that any branch team member can “run with.” Get the details so the next step is to “pick up the phone.” Get names of multiple Company contacts for each lead identified, get contact information (telephone, email address), input new leads to front office system and set them up on team members’ calendar or task list. Generate urgency to follow-up on specific contacts by personally contributing to the database in a meaningful way. Dedicate time to adding Companies/Company contacts in numbers and update Company records that are out of date. If you pass on a lead with good contact information and business intelligence, it is more likely to be followed and create outcomes.

Take up operational tasks (application process items, reference checking, etc.).

Revise/retype resumes for presenting candidates.

Make up handwritten notes to every candidate who comes in the office; prepare marketing mailings.

Run reports to assess business activity and inventory.

Roll out corporate initiatives and respond to corporate response/reporting requirements.

Ask, “What can I do to help you now”?

Managing Middlescence

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson, Ken Dychtwald

Burned out. Bottlenecked. Bored. That’s the current lot of many midcareer employees—those 35 to 54 years of age. Thirty percent of these middlescents work 50+ hours per week, while only 33% feel energized by their jobs. And many lament that their workplace offers few opportunities to try new things.

If your company’s like most, midcareer managers and employees make up half your workforce. Neglect their discontent, and you risk losing valued performers who seek exciting work elsewhere. This is a dangerous development—considering the brain drain that’ll soon hit when the vanguard of baby boomers retires. Disaffected middlescents who stay because they need the money take an even worse toll: Their lack of energy, innovation, and focus erodes your firm’s productivity.

How to avoid these losses? Tap into your middlescents’ hunger for renewal by helping them launch into new, more productive, more meaningful roles and careers. Fresh assignments enable middlescents to acquire new skills. Job changes help them develop new specialties. And training expands their business knowledge and stokes their desire to learn more.

You’re probably already using such simple and inexpensive career revitalization techniques on your stars. Extend them to all your midcareer employees: They’ll reward you with renewed commitment and productivity, as well as reduced replacement costs—immediately.

The Idea in Practice
Use these strategies to revitalize middlescents’ careers:

Fresh Assignments
Offer new assignments in different locations or parts of your organization to leverage middlescents’ existing skills and contacts while helping them acquire new ones. General Electric taps experienced managers to integrate new acquisitions—giving them a change of scene and bringing to bear their extensive organizational know-how.

Career Changes
Provide attractive internal career changes to help middlescents develop new specialties. Early in his 30+ years with Pitney Bowes, Dave Nassef served as a factory personnel manager and then marketer. When the company centralized HR, he was one of the few HR managers with manufacturing and marketing experience. At 40, he took on HR responsibility for half the company. Nassef’s additional careers within Pitney Bowes include corporate ombudsman and company representative in Washington.

Mentoring
Encourage middlescents to mentor less-seasoned employees. Your midcareer managers will relish giving back to their organization and making new social connections in the workplace. At Intel, a companywide employee database tracks skills attained and needed and matches employees with mentors—even if they’re in a different country. Both mentors and protégés take classes to learn ways to maximize the mutual benefit of their relationship.

Fresh Training
Don’t assume your middlescents don’t need training. Provide brief introductions to new business areas to expand their perspectives and trigger their interest in learning more. Use refresher courses and in-depth education to help them strengthen or develop their skills. The U.K.’s National Health Service is responding to a chronic nursing shortage by training seasoned aides to become nurses.

Sabbaticals
Provide paid sabbaticals: They cost less than replacing disaffected middlescents, and most people return from sabbaticals more committed than ever. At Wells Fargo, employees with five or more years of service and qualifying performance ratings can work in community service settings of their choosing for up to four months while receiving full pay and benefits. One employee traveled to Armenia to help women establish businesses. The company reaped good publicity, and the employee returned to work highly energized and recommitted.

Leadership Development
Just because midcareer workers are older doesn’t mean they don’t aspire to higher roles. Give them access to leadership development programs to rejuvenate them and stock your leadership pipeline. Health insurer Independence Blue Cross has put one-third of its top 600 people—most of them middlescents—through a leadership program. It includes a weeklong session at the Wharton School, individual coaching and career planning, and work on important business projects.

Copyright 2006 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Do the Math - Why Recruiters Are Worth What They Charge

Why are hiring managers so tightfisted when dealing with what is so commonly thought of as the “heartbeat” of their companies ... top-talent?

Companies think very little about paying the often excessive fees charged by their outside accounting and legal firms ... or even to the gaggle of consultants who promise cost-cutting and streamlining miracles in other areas of operations.

Yet, when faced with brain drains, talent deficiencies or the need to replace one employee with a better one, their thoughts too often turn to frugality. This belies and contradicts their stated objectives to "hire the best." Of course recruiting fees can vary from firm to firm but, when they do, you will almost always find that those on the low side are sure to exclude some very key ingredients of the process all of which are vital to providing the indispensable services necessary to satisfy the needs of the employer.

So why are recruiters worth what they charge? Just a few of the often unspoken reasons are:

Expertise
Nobody knows the employment marketplace better than a professional recruiter. . . nobody! In house human resources, no matter how effective (or Internet-savvy), view the marketplace through an imperfect or misrepresentative prism and tunnel vision is a frequent occupational hazard.

Just as physicians are cautioned against treating members of their own families, so too is it folly for an in-house H/R professional to believe that they have an undistorted and unbiased picture of the employment landscape. They are vulnerable to the pressures of internal politics and cultural dimensions which do not hinder the outsider.

Street-smart recruiters already know the neighborhood, including the unlisted addresses so often overlooked by the insiders.

Cast a wider net
A professional fisherman will always have more to show than a weekend angler. Recruiters are in the marketplace day in and day out. They know the unfished coves, reefs and inlets that are unknown to others. The job-hunter bookshelves are filled with lore about the “hidden job market.” The same holds true for professional recruiters who have a detailed roadmap to the hidden talent sources which will never be accessed by newspaper ads, alumni associations, applicant databases, the Internet or any of the other more familiar sources of people.

There are occasional pearls through these sources (and someone inevitably wins the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes too) but you have to shuck an awful lot of smelly oysters to find them. Recruiters only give you oysters proven to contain pearls. Your only job is to determine which pearl is the best. Want to catch what you’re fishing for? Hire a guide!

Cost
There is a misconception among employers that the cost of a hire equals the cost of the ads run or postings on the Internet designed to attract the person hired. Nothing could be further from reality.

Try adding these to the true cost and you’ll see just how cost effective an outside recruiter can be:

Salaries and benefits of the employment/recruiting staffs plus those of the line managers involved in the hiring activity (who are not productive in their normal job pursuits when they’re out recruiting); travel, lodging and entertainment expenses of in-house recruiters; source development costs; overhead expenses including (but not limited to) telephone, office space, postage, PR literature, applicant database maintenance, website costs, reference checking, clerical costs to correspond with the hundreds of unqualified respondents and more.

Unbiased third party input
Contrary to what some believe, recruiters don’t try to put square pegs into round holes. A recruiter’s stock-in-trade is their integrity and their reputation for finding someone better than a company could have found for themselves.

For a mid to senior-level executive, the average recruiter may develop a long list” of a hundred or more possibilities. Each must be called and evaluated against the position specifications as well as the personality “fit” with the company and the people with whom they will ultimately work.

Once this is winnowed down to the “short list” an even more intensive interviewing process begins to narrow the search to a panel of finalists for review by the client...

It is highly unlikely that a professional recruiter will be plowing new ground with your opening.

They deal within spheres of influence far more familiar with your needs than any internal recruiter and, more often than not, view the finalists as people who are competent to solve client problems rather than just fill an open slot in the organizational chart.

Because they want to do business with you again and again, they are looking for (and challenging you to excellence by hiring) the “truly exceptional” rather than the “just satisfactory” so often settled for by in-house hirers.

Confidentiality
Advertising or otherwise publicly proclaiming an opening, aside from its cost and demonstrated ineffectiveness for sensitive senior level openings, often creates anxiety and apprehension among the advertiser’s current employees who wonder why they aren’t being considered or worry about newcomer transition problems. Just as often it alerts competitors to a current weakness or void within the company.

Speed
The recruiting process is always faster through a search professional who is continually tapped into the talent marketplace than one having to start the process from scratch,. For every day that a key opening remains unfilled, a company’s other employees must grudgingly do double duty. And this doesn’t factor in the profit opportunities or competitive advantages lost to a company because a position remains unfilled or is done on a part-time basis by others less qualified.

Post-Hire Downtime - Not only is speed an essential part of the professional recruiter’s process, the ability to locate a person who can immediately “hit the ground running” with a minimum of “ramp-up time” saves time after the hire. All too often, a hire selected through less effective sources offering a smaller talent pool requires several months of expensive training and orientation.

Reality
Professional recruiters often recognize and have a duty to inform clients that they may be mistaken as to the type of person sought, the salary required to attract them or the possibilities that the solution might just lie in areas outside the traditional target industries.., something an internal recruiter is politically disinclined to do. Too many hirers fail to understand that a professional recruiter’s primary function is not necessary to fill a slot but to provide the right candidate to solve a problem.

Negotiation
As a buffer and informed intermediary, the professional recruiter is better able to blend the needs and wants of both parties to arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement without the polarizing roadblocks which too frequently materialize in face-to-face dealings, especially in this “show me the money” economy.

Prioritizing company resources
It is often amazing to see how much of a company’s revenues are squandered on non-productive perks while penny-pinching on what is every company’s lifeblood. . . talent acquisition. Enlightened executives learned long ago that the fee paid to a recruiter is a shrewd strategic investment, not an extraneous expense.

Do the Math
Here is a good example:If your company has A territory vacant for 2 months and this territory produces 1.2 Million dollars per year, your company has lost $200,000 during the time the position has been vacant

Ex. $1,200,000/12 months = $100,000 per month. If the territory is open for 2-months you have lost $200,000!

So, the investment that you would make to a recruiter for quickly finding top qualified individuals is far, far less compared to allowing the territory to remain open. It becomes even more apparent when you factor in the amount of time, energy and money spent on all the in house efforts.

Content thanks to Porter Group, Inc.

How Much Does it Really Cost to Hire - or not to Hire?

In a recent article in 'The Interbiznet Bugler', it is stated that the Saratoga Institute, often seen as the ultimate source of HR thinking, typically describes "cost per hire" as the sum of administrative costs and expenses, and Infomart-USA, a hiring practices auditing company, estimates the national average at about $4,400. They consider the elements of cost per hire to be the following:

• Advertising
• Agency fees
• Employment fairs
• Employment office salary expense
• Employment office facility expense
• Estimate of time spent in training
• Recruiter travel expense
• Internal recruiter expense
• Internal recruiter labor expense
• Referral Bonus
• Recruiting & Training expense
• Uniforms

The means used to calculate the administrative cost per hire is deeply understated. So what is the real cost per hire - or more importantly, per not hiring?

Opportunity Costs

The cost of a hire is the money lost because the hire wasn't made. Well recognized in MBA programs and broadly understood throughout the rest of the organization, the simple concept is "opportunity costs."

At its most basic, the opportunity cost associated with a particular hire is the productive revenue lost because the hire wasn't made. Here's an easy way to get your arms around the real cost per hire in your organization.

1. Take the annual sales of your company (or division) and divide it by the number of employees. This is the annual revenue per employee.
2. Divide that number by 250 to get the daily revenue per employee.
3. Multiply daily revenue per employee by the number of days it takes to hire an employee.
4. If you want, add the dollars spent by the Recruiting Department (it's a minor fraction).

This is the real cost per hire. Generally it's 5 to 10 times the administrative costs.

Using an outside recruiter to fast-track hiring of sales talent is good business as it costs far less than not hiring and is an investment in your organization’s growth. When economic times are challenging, sales-focused employees are the resource best leveraged to protect market share—in a shrinking market, taking share away from your competitors is priority one, superseding cost containment measures. Fielding sales talent is an initial success that lays the groundwork for achieving growth objectives. Tapping into a network of industry sales professionals puts growth-minded managers on the offensive.

Should Sales Run the Company?

This question keeps coming up, so I’m going to answer it. Let’s start with the basics:

The only reason a for-profit business exists is to make profitable sales.

Read that last sentence three times, because there’s an entire MBA’s worth of business wisdom in it. If you believe that statement is true, then the follow must also be true:

In a for-profit business, every job has a single purpose — to help profitable sales take place.

Therefore, the value of EVERY activity inside EVERY for-profit business can be assessed by two criteria:

1. Does it generate qualified leads, resulting in more sales, thereby increasing revenue?
2. Does it reduce the cost of sales or cost of goods, thereby making the average sale more profitable?

Considering all of the above, the four major “non-sales” functions can therefore be defined as follows:

Marketing — Every marketing activity should either attract new customers (generate qualified leads) or make it easier for sales to close business (reduce the cost of sales.) For example, a direct mail campaign is wasted money unless it attracts new customers, thereby potentially increasing revenue. Similarly, a “branding” exercise is stupid and pointless unless it creates credibility that makes it easier for sales to close business, thereby reducing the cost of sales.

Development — Every activity that’s funded should be to design new products and services that existing and future customers want, thereby making it easier to attract new customers, thereby increasing the revenue stream. New ideas that results in products and services that can’t be sold or that nobody wants to buy is wasted effort.

Operations — Every activity should be focused on delivering high quality products and services that attract new customers, while reducing costs. While those costs aren’t traditionally counted as a “cost of sales”, they are really the same thing, because both cost of sales and cost of goods are only meaningful concepts if a sale actually takes place.

Management — Despite all the blah-blah-blah about “leadership,” in the end a CEO’s only important jobs are to 1) sell the company to the public as a spokesperson, and 2) make sure that every other department in the company serves the needs of the Sales group. And don’t try to tell me that the CEO has an important job representing the company to investors. What investors want are more revenue and more profit.

Does this mean that the Sales group should be performing all these functions? The answer is no. Not because they couldn’t do it, but because it’s a waste of selling talent. People who can sell — really sell — have got no business pushing pencils in the back office.

Instead, the Sales group should be telling these other groups what they must do, at least in a general sense, in order to ensure that profitable sales continue to happen. More importantly, all activity in all those groups must be measured and compensated based upon whether those profitable sales eventually take place.

So let’s restate the question:
Q: Should the Sales function drive the entire company?
A: Absolutely.

Excerpted from an article by By Geoffrey James

Don't be Slow, be Strategic in Hiring Talent

Why is it taking longer than ever to find, and land, revenue-generating professionals with the skills and talents to drive results? In a recent hiring survey, more than two-thirds of the respondents said they expect their companies to be bringing on new revenue-generating staff additions within the next 12 months, and 88% said their employers were experiencing a skills shortage.

The demand is there, but where are the candidates? Only 9% of revenue-generating workers polled said that they’re actively looking for a job, and 63% reported feeling secure or very secure in their current position.

Even when candidates are available, a lack of preparation by hiring managers or a disconnect between business drivers and internal processes can compromise company performance.

For any industry which is currently facing talent shortages in revenue-generating positions, the pertinent question remains: does the time-to-hire make a difference to the quality of talent being inducted into an organization?

Recruitment experts agree that the hiring time is critical for finding the right candidate. The reason is obvious. Often because of undue time lags between identification of candidates and making the selection, a good candidate may lose interest in that specific role and take up another opportunity.

SPEED (or the lack thereof) is a strategic factor in the competition for talent. When talent acquisition is an organizational strength, you start by overwhelming candidates with responsiveness.

Here are the spots in the recruiting process where the need to manage speed is critical:

1. Solicit candidates only when you have the time to and interest in screening them. For prospects that fit your general position requirements, set the initial step within 48-hours of submission.

2. Organize process steps to fast-track internal bottlenecks. Once the initial screen is completed and you decide to move the candidate to the next stage—momentum is on your side! Plot steps to the final interview and schedule these all at once, within 24-hours of the initial step.

Example: if the initial step is a telephone screen, and the final step is an interview with the senior manager; but in-between there is an interview with 1) the hiring manager, 2) a peer, and 3) a next-level manager—book set times for all of the 3 “middle steps” in this example, within 2-days of each other. You can always cancel if the candidate proves to be less than anticipated, but you cannot regain lost time between steps tying to schedule “on the fly” as the process unfolds.

3. Manage expectations as you move to the offer stage. Give timely and honest feedback to, or about, candidates following each step. Ideally, you want to do a blitz round of interviews and get to the final stage shortly thereafter. If there is any holdup in the process, you have to sell the candidate on the company and the fact that you still love them as the right fit for the job in question.

4. Anticipate administrative and/or organizational requirements to get to the offer stage. Don’t wait until after the final interview to initiate administrivia like reference checks, pre-employment screenings, approval forms, offer letter/new hire paperwork turnaround, etc. At the same time you schedule the final interview, start the organizational wheels turning to ensure a minimal lag time before you can make a firm offer.

Interested candidates are a perishable resource – start the process too soon or have a delay after a phone interview or a face-to-face meeting, and you have problems. Candidates start having confidence issues in you as an employer of choice, and even if you eventually hire them, the delays can cost you negotiation leverage as you go through the offer stage.

Learn how to juggle the timing needs of the company and the candidate in the hiring process, and you'll get better talent than you deserve.

It's January 2, 2008 - Where is Your Sales Talent?

With reports of workers losing faith in the economy and employers forecasting flat or reduced hiring in the New Year, it is that time of year when we ask the question..."What is the economic forecast for the Staffing industry next year"?

Considering the Staffing industry market is near to $90B, I ask..."Isn't it really about how we approach the marketplace"? When an industry is growing it is easy to increase your business, just jump on the economic escalator and focus on delivery. When the market is retreating it is not so easy, but with a multi-billion market at hand, it should be with the right strategy and tactics.

Many staffing firms leveraged the "escalator effect" to boost profits by leaving revenue-generating field positions open for extended periods or not investing in sales talent in all territories to reduce the cost base against market-driven revenue increases. This works in the economy that is now in our rear view mirror; however, in 2008 the pleasant escalator ride will fast become more like an unpleasant battleground for the firms caught with gaping revenue-generating vacancies.

The battle will be over market "share" and the strategy for 2008 will center on influencing hiring managers, human resources and procurement to change providers - in other words, the growth leaders of 2008 will take away business from their competitors.

The tactics are simple, yet difficult for most companies to execute. To win, the participants must have on the field a well-trained, prepared, and talented sales force before their competitors. To do so, companies must step back from cost management at the expense of deploying a business development workforce. With demand declining, cost containment on the personnel expense line will neither offset the revenue downturns, nor spur increases that have vaporized in the changing economy.

Investment in revenue-generating people is risky in an organization where headcount management, productivity per headcount metrics, compliance and delivery solutions has dominated profit-making strategies. But, as I will explore further in the New Year, there are some leverage points to mitigating the risk of playing to win in 2008:

Reduce "time to hire" for open revenue-generating positions- If you measure the total number of days selling branch management and/or sales representative, executive recruiting, blended-desk positions remained unfilled in 2007, you will likely be quite shocked. Count the markets that you have poor, limited or no sales representation and you will likely become frightened at your prospects for the New Year.

Consider additional sales representation in hot segments/markets- Deployment does not have to be uniform, focusing resources in "hot spots" proves to be cost-effective. You can plan for hiring sales talent in waves to spread out costs against results, but don’t wait too long—the economy changes quickly for the leading-edge Staffing industry—you are already “behind the 8-Ball” so to speak.

Make people the metric- Start holding field managers accountable for filling revenue-generating positions with a sense of urgency by measuring days open, averaging-in open slots with current productivity measures to detect lost opportunities, and recognize the tactical leaders who field a team in play early on in 2008.

Reduce on-boarding time- Revamp your hiring process in terms of steps and priority to cut by half the time it takes to recruit, assess background/fit and make an offer. Use internal, corporate and external resources to grab up talent before your competitors acquire the best of a limited pool of top-performers.

Accelerate training time- Compress training for revenue-generating roles to a boot-camp, immersion-style of delivery to reduce by two-thirds the time it takes to make a new hire ready and competent to face customers persuasively.

Create networks for sales talent- Promote a sales culture with newsletters, chat rooms, blogs, meetings, conference calls, webinars, contests, rankings, and recognitions to bring together the sales team for motivation, further development and peer mentoring.

The greatest challenge to overcome in a retreating economy is not whether a company can grow against prior-year economic-driven benchmarks (which it can). The greater challenge is can industry leaders operationally turnaround their laissez-faire attitude regarding fielding sales talent and make the necessary shifts to strengthen their company’s sales culture, sales-support platform and scope of sales “coverage” across their market footprint before it is too late for cost reductions to protect earnings and shareholder value.

Five Ways to Say "I'm Unprofessional"

When you're looking for a job or internship, particularly in a tough market like this one, there's nothing worse than leaving a prospective employer with some sort of bad impression. Unfortunately, though, there are many ways you can do just that, often without even knowing it.

In most job-filling situations, the employer has the luxury of choosing from several well-qualified applicants, all of whom could probably do the job. It is then that the little things, like the common but often unrecognized mistakes described here, almost always come into play. Make sure you avoid them, so they don't cost you a shot at the job.

1. Using a Cutesy Email Address for Correspondence

Example: cutiepie@domain.com, or -- far worse -- something like sexkitten@domain.com.

You Might Think: It's a clever, memorable email address everyone will get a kick out of.

The Employer Will Probably Think: I can't believe someone would actually list this email address on her resume, let alone use it to correspond with me. Will she do the same thing on the job if I hire her? Yikes!

2. Putting a Silly Message on Your Answering Machine

Example: A is for academics, B is for beer -- and one of those reasons is why we're not here. So leave a message, OK?

You Might Think: Mine is the funniest answering machine message this side of the Mississippi. My friends will love it.

The Employer Will Probably Think: Good lord, this person probably lives in Animal House. And I just can't risk interviewing, let alone hiring, someone like Bluto or Flounder. Sorry, Charlie. Click.

3. Sending Your Resume and Cover Letter Without Proofreading

You Might Think: Everybody makes mistakes, even employers. So if there's a mistake or two on my resume, no big deal. The employer probably won't even notice, much less care.

The Employer Will Probably Think: Everybody makes mistakes, even employers. But making more than one minor mistake on a resume or in a cover letter is unacceptable, and often, even one is too many. How do I know this person will proofread the letters he writes to shareholders? What if he someday leaves a zero or two off one of our financial statements? I better put this resume aside and look for someone who's more accurate and thorough.

4. Winging Your Interviews Instead of Preparing Thoroughly

You Might Think: I'm good at thinking on my feet, and if I get stuck, I'll just BS my way through, like I've done on many an essay exam. Besides, they can't expect me to know everything about the company.

The Employer Will Probably Think: This person clearly knows nothing about the company, nor has she made any effort to learn more about us and what we do. She must not really care whether or not she gets the job. I want someone who cares. Oh well, maybe the next person will be better.

5. Failing to Send Thank-You Notes After Interviews

You Might Think: A thank-you note? You're kidding, right? Do people even do that sort of thing anymore?

The Employer Will Probably Think: This person has no follow-up skills, not to mention common courtesy. He could have at least dropped me a quick email note, like this other person did. I think I'll invite this candidate for the second round of interviews instead. The other guy must not really want the position.

by Peter Vogt - MonsterTRAK Career Coach

Watch for Interview Warning Signs

Hindsight may be better than 20/20, but if you pay attention during an interview, you might be able to head off a bad fit.
By LIZ RYAN

I got a call from my friend Candace, and she was in low spirits. She had just returned to Wisconsin after moving to Florida to take a job. She took the job, she hated it, she lasted six months, she quit, and she moved back. "I should have known, " she said. "I should have picked up on the signs during the interview. There are always signs, aren't there?"

"I'm torn, " I told her. "If I tell you 'Yes, there are always signs' then you'll feel bad. If I say 'No, sometimes things just get weird after you're hired,' then you'll think the universe is capricious and you won't feel like you have any better odds of finding the right situation the next time around."

"Forget about my feelings!" she cried. "What do you really think?"

"I think you should tell me what you saw or heard in the interview process that you now feel you should have taken more seriously," I told her. "Then we can talk about what that sign might have meant, and what you could do differently in your upcoming job search."

The Red Flag

"O.K.," said Candace. "Well, there was only one sign, really. I was applying for a marketing communications job. I've always done a lot of writing and editing, and as you know, I have a Master's degree and I consider myself a really good writer. So there was one point in the last interview where my manager indicated that he was very interested in me and he was considering making me an offer. At that point he said: ‘You're an adequate writer, and I could make you better.'"

"GAAACK!" I said."

"That was a big sign I missed, wasn't it?" Candace asked.

"Well, " I told her, "the thing is that hindsight is 20/20. Hindsight is better than 20/20—it's LASIK. Through rear-facing glasses, it seems obvious that your ex-boss had issues."

"Right, well, he turned out to be a total control-freak and a guy who's impossible to please," she said. "That's why I left. Am I a complete idiot for missing that red flag?"

A Sick Ticket

"It's so easy to overlook those bizarre statements in the frenzy of the interview process," I reassured her. "Look, Candace, I've missed every sign in the book. I hired a guy in a human resources role who said in the interview that every 10 minutes, he asks himself: 'Am I having fun in my work?' I should have asked him a few questions about that. You mean literally, every 10 minutes? Who does that? It turned out that the guy was using his company cell phone to call some offshore gambling line every 10 minutes."

O.K., back to your ex-boss. I'm an HR person and not a psychologist, but I'd call this guy a Sick Ticket. What kind of boss tells the person he's about to hire: 'You are adequate, but I could make you better?' That's totally passive-aggressive. It means that he wants to test you before hiring you, to make sure you're O.K. with being insulted. He wouldn't want to hire a person who would say something in his own defense."

So I should have said something," Candace said.

"Hindsight is LASIK," I repeated. "Now listen. Let's say that you or any other candidate had said: 'Excuse me? You think I'm an adequate writer, but you want to hire me? I'm terribly sorry. I want to work for a company that I think is outstanding and that thinks I'm outstanding, too." Then your boss would have known that that person wasn't going to put up with his leadership style, if you want to call it that."

"And when he said he could make me a better writer that a signal that he didn't just want to be my boss, but he saw himself as superior to me, too. I mean, he's not even a writer,” Candace said.

The Little Weird Thing

"Well, it's just such a hostile thing to say," I added. "Certainly if you hire someone right out of school, it's fine to say: 'We hope that I, as your manager, and lots of other people here will give you all sorts of professional training and mentoring.' That's great. But when you say to a seasoned professional, 'You're adequate and I can make you better,' it's like you're telling her that only with your expert guidance can she rise above her current state of mediocrity. That says a lot. The guy wanted someone under him who didn't have a lot of confidence. Too bad he hired you."

"Yeah, too bad for both of us," said Candace. "Well, now I know for next time."

"But next time the little weird thing in the interview, if there is one, will be different," I told her. "You don't have to react to it in the moment, and you don't even have to dope it out by yourself. After every interview, call a friend—me or someone else. Walk through the whole interview. A second pair of ears, a few hours after the fact, will help you figure out what means what and how to process all the information you've taken in. It can be a lot to digest on your own."

Deconstructing the Interview

"Especially when you've already talked yourself into the job," Candace added. "I'm going to have my red-flag radar on full alert on my next job hunt."

"The good news is that you'll never be sucked into that particular vortex again," I said. "Now that you've worked in the snake pit and survived, you have more confidence. You wouldn't sit still for a prospective manager telling you you're adequate, not in this lifetime anyway."

And this is true for all of you out there. Deconstruct the interview with someone, because if you don't see the signs, your friend might.

BusinessWeek Online, September 2007

How to Fire the Employee Who's Holding You Back

Compliments of Jennifer Alsever

Donald Trump makes it look easy, but the words "you're fired" are always difficult to say. Letting an employee go is painful, and for many managers the process is fraught with sleepless nights and stomach-churning anxiety. But hanging onto the wrong people can ultimately make matters worse for you, your other employees, and your business. Here's how to break the news firmly but gently, so you can put the rest of your team back on track.

Treat Dismissal As an Option of Last Resort
Goal: Make sure the employee has been given ample opportunities to succeed.
Before you lower the axe, ask yourself whether you should really let this person go and whether you've given them sufficient opportunity to redeem themselves. Will more training or guidance help? Is the problem the worker, or the work environment? Along the way, communicate expectations clearly—in person and in writing—and provide sufficient feedback so the worker knows where he stands. Planning and documentation is key to letting someone go gracefully, and it's also the best way to avoid expensive litigation. It's tough to objectively document a worker's surly attitude, but you can address the issue in periodic employee review sessions. Keep copies of those reviews and document performance regularly, indicating how the worker was informed of your expectations, how he fell short, and whether or not he knew that continued failure would result in termination. Performance reviews are important, but no set number is needed. Just be sure to treat every worker equally and even-handedly: Don't scold the underperformer for lateness if you let another worker get away with the same transgression.

Danger! Danger! Danger!
Flattery Will Get You Nowhere.
"A lot of employers fall into the trap of trying to flatter workers [in reviews] with the hopes that problems will go away," says Lew Clark Jr., an attorney at Squire Sanders & Dempsey in Columbus, Ohio. "Workers think the boss is happy, and when they're fired that can create legal problems because they feel that the firing was discriminatory or unlawful." For more detail about the legal issues surrounding employee termination, see "Firing and the Law."

Endure Pain Now to Enjoy Benefits Later
Goal: Get over your guilt. Accept that you're doing the right thing and start preparing for the change.
Once you're sure an employee isn't working out, act on that conclusion. "The longer it takes to fire someone, the more you're in danger of losing respect from the rest of the organization," says Monique A. Dearth, a former HR manager at General Electric who's now president of Incite Strategies, a consulting firm in Atlanta, Georgia. "Firing someone is never something we want to do, but it's inevitable, and if you're a leader it's something you're going to have to get used to."

Nobody likes conflict, but while you dither, your company may lose customers, money, or productivity. Tolerating sub-par performance can also impact the morale of other employees. "Managing an underperformer drains resources," says HR consultant Donna Flagg, who spent 15 years as a human resources professional for Chanel, Barneys New York, Donna Karan, and Goldman Sachs. "Other employees will want to leave if they feel they're not being recognized while someone else is doing less and getting a break." It's better to spend your time filling an open position, she adds, than managing someone who shouldn't be in the job.

Don't forget continuity planning, and anticipate what you'll need to do to replace the employee or handle her work flow once she's gone. Will you need approval from anyone above you before firing the worker? Before asking other employees to fill in? Is there anyone you'll want to promote into the vacated position?

Hot Tip
Put the Ball in Their Court.
In many cases, when the skills, work ethic, or personality of a worker don't mesh with the rest of an organization, you may actually be doing them a favor by letting them go. In fact, they may know this as well. So before you fire someone, consider asking if they're really happy in their job, rating it on a scale of 1 to 10. Sometimes, employees will realize on their own that it's in their best interest to move on.

Set a Time, Date, and Place
Goal: Map out a strategy to make the event as painless as possible.
There's never a good time to tell people they're fired. But if you wait until 4 p.m. on Friday, the terminated employee might question why he wasted his whole week. "Monday gives them an opportunity to regroup and start networking," says Pamela Holland, COO of Brody Professional Development. Likewise, it's best to get it over early in the day, so you won't be distracted by the looming conversation. Cutting ties during lunch hour can be a good idea, because the office will be relatively empty and a fired worker can clean out his desk in private. Plan out the details carefully, considering whether company policy requires that the worker be escorted out of the office and whether he has access to critical company systems. (If so, you may want to back up files before you have the conversation.) Arrange to have the employee's final paycheck ready on the day of your termination meeting.

Give some thought to where you will hold the meeting. Don't go out to lunch or pull a worker into your office, because it can be difficult to end the conversation. Instead, pick a neutral place, such as a conference room, where you can easily walk out when you're done. Afterwards, bring in a human resources representative to handle the final details: collecting keycards, laptops, filling out paperwork, and answering questions about health insurance and accrued vacation. "They can complain if they want, but they'll be sitting there with someone who can't do anything about it," says James Wright, who handled numerous layoffs at tech firms during the dot-com bust.

Danger! Danger! Danger!
National "Daddy Got Canned" Day.
In addition to consulting your own calendar, check to see whether the planned termination will fall on a day that may have significance for others. One company didn't think through its firing plan and let a systems engineering manager go on Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Security escorted both the man and his 8-year-old daughter out the door.

Keep It Quick and Clear
Goal: Be direct and don't let ambiguity creep into the conversation.
Though you'll spend a lot of time planning and preparing, firing someone typically only takes a few minutes. Be clear and—harsh though it sounds—use the words "terminate," "let you go," or "fire."

"When people hear bad news, they go into selective listening mode," says Bob Kustka, who handled terminations at Gillette for 25 years. Kustka recalls one manager who told a worker he needed to "move him out," intending to terminate him. The worker walked away thinking he was being transferred to a different job.

You can show sympathy by starting out with "this isn't going to be easy to hear," but keep it simple and stick to the facts. Ideally you will have already had several conversations about the worker's performance, so the news shouldn't come as a surprise. Be clear—"You're being fired because you stole," or "You're being fired because you're not hitting your sales numbers"—but avoid a laundry list of the worker's personal faults. If necessary, write a script and have a checklist of items you need to cover. For example, be sure to tell them when their departure is effective.

The way you deliver the news can determine how the person reacts—and whether they'll pursue legal action. "When they feel disrespected, employees will believe the law has been violated," says Clark, the lawyer. "How the decision is communicated—doing it respectfully and preserving the employee's dignity—can make a difference." If the worker becomes angry or hostile, end the conversation and insist she promptly leave the premises. Avoid an argument by simply stating "I will not argue with you."

Close the conversation by giving the worker credit for the effort she's put forward. Tell her you're sorry this has happened, but that it's what you must do. Depending on the situation, you may also want to show support by offering to be a reference. Stand up, wish the person well, and shake hands. Then introduce the representative from the human resources department and leave the room.

What Not to Do
Common Mistakes When Firing.
Don't talk about yourself: If you say, "I know how you feel," or "I don't want to do this," you seem more worried about yourself than about them. Do not offer advice.

Don't sugarcoat: Don't offer false praise and tell them all the reasons why you think they're great. It clouds the issue and can be confusing. Pick one genuinely positive thing to say about the person, but do not go overboard.

Don't defend yourself: Even if you're told you're a lousy manager, resist the temptation to tell your side of the story. Stay calm and redirect the conversation back to the worker and your decision.

Let the Rest of Your Team Know
Goal: Lay the groundwork for a smooth transition among the workers who remain.
Tell other workers about the termination right away. Flagg says, "Any window [of time] is dangerous. Someone will hear that it happened, and the news will run like wildfire." Just as in your conversation with the fired employee, don't get into big discussions with fellow workers. Instead, explain that "John left the company on Monday" or "John no longer works here," recognizing his contribution to the company but avoiding details of why he was fired.

If you have a team, bring them together that week to talk about their concerns, discuss how to handle the departed employee's workflow, and map out your plan to fill the vacancy. If the firing was an isolated incident, you may want to assure workers that their jobs are not in danger. But if employee performance varies considerably, save your comments for private conversations tailored to each person.

Nitty Gritty
The Kindest Cut.
One way to bring compassion to the firing process is to let the person determine some aspect of how they will leave. Some managers offer the fired worker the opportunity to resign. This is usually done with high-level executives, but it may also apply in cases where there's a friendly relationship between the employee and employer.

In other situations, smaller gestures are appropriate. You might give the employee a choice about who will walk him out of the building: you or the HR rep. He should also be able to choose whether he wants to gather his personal belongings now or after hours, and whether he's ready to have the benefits conversation or wants to postpone it to another time, when he's feeling less rattled

A Most Heartfelt Thank-you

After the trials and satisfactions of founding a new business…after the initial weeks of startup operations, I am still taken aback, in high spirits, and honored at being awarded with such high trust to place our first candidates in new jobs with a world-class company — for doing nothing more than what I am passionate about.

I've said it before; I'll say it again: I love bringing together job seekers and employers. We believe that it is people who drive business success, and it is our job to bring people together. Where else, but in the Staffing Industry, can you represent, serve and inspire talented individuals in connection with business performance as well as career progression and be showered with praise for doing something you have so much fun doing?

Many, many thanks to…

~ Adecco. the world leader in workforce solutions www.adeccousa.com.
~ Joyce Russell, President and Chief Operating Officer of Adecco USA who gave Direct Search Alliance its entrée to becoming the leader in talent acquisition for the Staffing Industry.
~ Kristy Willis, Senior Vice President, Southwest Division Adecco USA for choosing to be our first customer.
~ Peggy Hardebeck, Vice President of Operations, Southwest Division Adecco USA for her in-depth interviews and professional consideration our initial candidates.
~ MaryLou Hager, Regional Operations Manager, East Central Texas Adecco USA for making the front-line decisions to hire our initial candidates.
~ Lynda Comer, Branch Manager, Houston TX Adecco USA whose peer review allowed us to get to the next steps in the hiring process.
~ Rana Meyers, Southwest Division Administrator Adecco USA for trafficking the process end-to-end
~ Doug Arms, Chief Talent Officer Ajilon Finance, Office, Legal & Financial Solutions / Sr. Vice President - Talent Management Adecco USA for his leadership and support in our service to the Adecco family of companies.
~ Bernadette Kenny, Chief Career Officer Adecco North America for endorsing our service to Adecco.

Thanks and best wishes to…

~ Richard Embrick, our first candidate placed, who starts his career today with Adecco as Branch Manager of the Houston Galleria Staffing office – new to the Staffing Industry, his optimism about his career is inspiring.
~ Randy Burch, our second candidate placed, starting the same day, as the Branch Manager of the Houston Northwest Staffing office – his plan to develop this market for Adecco is exciting.

Thanks and welcome to…

~ Nancy (Huang) Soni, Managing Principal Direct Search Alliance for collaborating with me in this business endeavor – our shared principals, attitudes and beliefs make our company distinctive and our prospects favorable in the years ahead.
~ Kisa Brannen, Research Manager Direct Search Alliance who’s Ivy League background and quick study of the Staffing Industry showed us the way to top talent in the Houston marketplace.

Advice on Re-recruiting Key Team Members

Bosses should always assume that their best employees are getting calls and offers from their competitors. Bosses should think of retention as re-recruiting their work force. This means applying the strategies and tools of external recruiting to current employees. It means proactively reaching out to top talent on a regular and ongoing basis. Top talent must continually be challenged to keep them.

The answers to the following questions can often determine whether or not they will stay on their jobs:

1. If you could make any changes about your job, what would they be?
2. What things about your job do you want to stay as they are?
3. If you could go back to any previous position and stay for an extended period of time, which one would it be and why?
4. If you suddenly became financially independent, what would you miss most about your job?
5. In the morning, does your job make you jump out of bed or hit the snooze button?
6. What makes for a great day?
7. What can we do to make your job more satisfying?
8. What can we do to support your career goals?
9. Do you get enough recognition?
10. What can we do to keep you with us?

Although they can be useful at review time, these questions don't have to be asked in a formal session. Bosses are encouraged to schedule time when they can introduce these topics in an informal manner - over a cup of coffee or lunch, for instance. The key to success is promptly addressing issues that could lead to losing a key member of the team, or making sure that the employee has a full understanding of situations that cannot be easily changed. Using this technique can actually enhance communication between managers and their employees.

Source: MRINetwork
Ten Questions the Boss Should Ask Every Employee
Thursday August 9, 9:00 am ET MRINetwork(TM)

For Many Job Hunters, Money Is Not a Priority

They say money isn't everything, and that's true for many job hunters. While it may seem intuitive that most are concerned with compensation, it isn't always top of the list. Priorities change not only during a job, but also over a career.

When "early career" workers -- those up to age 35 -- and workers in their 40s have acquired skill sets and are deciding where they want to settle for the long run, they often take a look around, says Steve Gravenkemper, a consulting psychologist for workplace consultancy Plante & Moran LLP of Southfield, Mich., and that's the point at which many companies lose people in whom they have invested time and training.

A recent study conducted by consultancy Accenture Ltd. in 21 countries on six continents found challenging and interesting work topped the list of employer characteristics that job candidates sought when considering a new position. Rewards and compensation were a close second, and opportunity for advancement third, followed closely by a company's long-term prospects. But other popular concepts like corporate citizenship and workplace diversity were at the bottom of the list of 15 qualities.

"There are basic needs: compensation, challenge. But once you get employees in the door with these, they'll move on to looking for other things" like working for a responsible company or one that encourages teamwork, says John Campagnino, Accenture's global head of recruiting. "You need to offer recruits a package with as many of these characteristics as possible. Priorities shift over time."

Beyond entry level, the decision becomes complicated by more responsibilities -- not just marriage and children, but also the time workers have invested in honing their skills, where they have chosen to settle, and long-term goals such as retirement benefits.

"There's a paradox," says Plante & Moran's Mr. Gravenkemper. "At midcareer, people may realize how important job security is to them, and yet job security may be an illusion. Workers used to go into a company knowing ... that if they did a good job they would be employed for life. Now that's no guarantee. They want to know 'What's in it for me?' "

He adds, "I was working for one company with a group of high-potential employees...and one employee said, 'I'm so glad to see you -- I never knew I was high-potential before.' It's often the strongest performers who leave because they have the most options."

Maturing needs are why many alumni continue to utilize career services, says Beverly Principal, assistant director for employment services at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., which offers students career counseling for life.

Ms. Principal says she often sees former students who are trying to make the transition from entry level to the next step, or to start their own business. Five or six years after they start a career, "people may have a family and want completely different things. They need help figuring out the transition."

Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., has two staffers dedicated solely to helping alumni. "When the economy is good we see people looking to make more drastic changes," says Donna Goldfeder, director of career services. "When the economy is tight and things are scary" they will be more cautious about such transitions.

Companies can retain workers they have invested in, she adds. "Supervisors should show their appreciation, give compliments. It's really still about the human touch. Are your workers happy?"

By Teresa Rivas
From The Wall Street Journal Online

Do You Really Have a Recruiting Strategy?

Most leaders in the Staffing Industry in search of management talent for their organizations:

• Can't even define the term "strategy" as it relates to their needs
• Don't know the available strategies in recruiting
• Don't have a name for their own recruiting strategy
• Don't know the steps involved in preparing a recruiting strategy
• Have never written down their strategy so that others can follow it
• Have never compared their strategy in recruiting to their competitors' recruiting strategies in order to ensure that theirs is superior
• Measure the effectiveness of their recruiting strategy

What Exactly Is a Strategy?
The basic premise of having a clearly defined strategy is that by focusing your efforts and looking at the big picture, recruiting activities will produce results aligned with needs and have a significantly larger economic impact on the business.

Having a clearly defined strategy sets up an architecture to focus your efforts and planning beyond basic tactical recruiting and towards establishing a competitive advantage in recruiting. A strategy focuses the actions of a recruiting professional, or group, telling everyone what to concentrate on and what is unimportant.

From a practical standpoint, being strategic includes these elements:

• Establishing a competitive advantage. The primary goal of a strategy is to drive actions that gain your office a sustainable competitive advantage in your industry. It demands an ongoing competitive analysis of major "talent competitors" and adjusting of strategy to keep competitors from mirroring or gaining an advantage over current recruiting efforts.
• Demonstrating economic impact. Strategic impact is measured in profit, return on investment (ROI), increased revenue, higher market share and increased margins. They rely on extensive information gathering and forecasting of the business environment.
• Continually evolving. Being strategic means continually evolving and reacting to any change in the environment. It requires you be proactive and aggressive. If requires that you seek out problems and opportunities.
• Data driven. Strategic functions rely heavily on the analysis of data and the measurement of outcomes.
• A way of thinking. Being strategic is as much a way of thinking as it is a way of managing.

What Are the Available Recruiting Strategies?
Depending upon your resources, marketplace, lines of business, and company objectives the right recruiting strategy for your organization is unique. In fact, strategies cannot be “generalized” from company to company. Recruiting strategies are complex and individual to the organization. A solid strategy, does, however, contain up to 12 distinct elements. In order to develop a complete recruiting strategy, select one or more items from each of the twelve elements. These elements include:

• The primary goals of recruiting
• The prioritization of jobs
• The performance level to target
• The experience level to target
• The employment status of the candidate to target
• When to search
• Where to search
• Who does the recruiting
• Primary sourcing tools
• What skills to assess
• How to assess skills
• Primary selling points to offer

Comprehensive recruiting strategies cannot be accurately covered in with a single word or even a simple phrase. Before you can put a name on your strategy, you first need to make a variety of decisions within each of the 12 different strategy elements.

The net result is a strategy that might, for example, sound something like this:

An external, hire-to-learn strategy targeting top performers: Our strategy is a skill-building, "hire to learn" strategy focusing on hiring experienced top performers (who are currently employed by competitors) into pre-identified key jobs. Our strategy employs a pre-need, external "within the industry" search that primarily utilizes sourcing and recruiting specialists. A branding strategy and employee referral program are utilized to attract candidates. Candidates are selected primarily through interviews that screen candidates for pre-identified corporate competencies. The primary "candidates selling" approach is a great culture and proven learning and growth opportunities.

With a strategy in hand, you can not only focus your internal resources to the task of attracting top talent, you can bring into line outside resources to your company’s distinctive strategy to ensure consistent messaging in the candidate marketplace regardless of the spokesperson.

What Should Good Staffing Management Do?

1. Provide leadership. Everything starts with strong leadership. People need direction, focus, controls and a fair system of rewards. Although they don't require a charismatic leader, they do need someone they respect, who can follow and lead by example, who is open to input from staff, and who has a strong ethical compass.

2. Make sound decisions. Good managers use both their gut instinct along with an analysis of the facts to make good decisions. The gut is really their analog computer that tells them, based on their experience, if something either makes sense on the face of it or doesn't. When things are not obvious, they have to run the numbers and ask questions to figure things out.

3. Create teamwork. A company should be a team effort and is only as strong as its individual members. If you have a great sales rep who brings in the orders, but your recruiters are not filling them, or vice versa, you can't succeed. Providing team-based incentives leads to the identification of weak links. Get close to your staff socially, but always remember who the boss is, and don't let friendship cloud your judgment.

4. Streamline your company. Don't have more people than you need. Streamlining the organization not only saves money, but also people who are fully utilized are happier campers. And in today's increasingly fast-paced world you can't wait until critical information works its way up the food chain before you know about it and can act upon it. Streamlining maximizes your span of control so that you can get as close to the action as possible, and reduces the likelihood that information will be filtered before reaching you.

5. Be connected. Our rate of change makes it incumbent on you to utilize electronic communications (e-mail, pagers, etc.) to stay connected, as long as you don't become overloaded. Don't operate in a vacuum of your company information alone. Be connected to the world around you and integrate that information with your internal data in order to make sound decisions. Join industry as well as eclectic associations. Be on the Internet and be well read. Seek advice from others including outside experts. One of our clients used his social connections to entertain the movers and shakers in his community for both seeking advice from successful people as well as opening up doors for his staff. Never stop learning, and if you are doing great, don't think that now you have all the answers.

6. Retain control. Always remember that it is your equity that is at stake in your own business and that even if you have a bank loan, it is your house that may be held as collateral. Having a good staff is critical, but it is only the owner who will do anything to ensure the success of the enterprise. So stay in control, have adequate checks on the decisions that affect the financial viability of the company and make sure that you sign off on all key decisions (see Case I, above).

7. Be analytical. Most staffing company owners and managers are not as comfortable with numbers as they are with people. That is understandable given that we are in a people business. But you don't have to be an accountant to understand the meaning of not making a profit or not having sufficient cash flow to cover payroll. You need to be able to understand which numbers are important and how to fix things if they are flashing red. You can always hire people to do the number crunching, as long as the numbers are being crunched competently and are then translated into something that you use to run your business. As noted above, your gut alone is not usually enough.

8. Think "boundaryless." You don't need to be large to extend your staffing business boundaries. This also helps when your margins are thin or your market share is low. A good way to do that is to create value-added services. Some of our clients have done this via training workshops, performance guarantees, employee retention programs, profit improvement programs, alternative billing methods, career counseling, customized reports and proprietary screening methods. They first created, branded and copyrighted the services. They then promoted and bundled the services, which increased their margins as well as their market share. Project solutions offer a similar way to extend traditional boundaries, but this does involve greater risks as you are now responsible for deliverables, not just staff augmentation. The results can be impressive with an increase in profits of up to 60% higher for those who are able to perform in this arena.

9. Communicate well. You need to clearly communicate whatever your concepts are to others, unless you want to do everything yourself. Good communications start with explaining why you are requesting that things be done in a certain way and then what the benefits are to those parties involved. If you come up with a new compensation program for your staff, for example, you will need to explain how that plan (if it is designed well) will make the employee, as well as the company, more money. You should be prepared to provide examples and answer whatever questions arise.

10. Be creative. GE had its 4Es, QMI, six sigma program, its unique grids and charts. Create your own tools and convert them into your own buzz words and mystique to energize your staff and stand out from the competition. Last March we wrote about some of the creative concepts from Blink, The Tipping Point, etc., such as viral marketing, thin slicing problems and connectors. Build on those concepts and be better than your competition by staying one step ahead in the creativity arms race.

Exerpt. Issue Date: SI Review - March 2007, Posted On: 3/9/2007