KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Recruitment Differentiation-Being Extraordinary Is A Choice

With the impending employment crisis budding, barrier to entry being virtually null, margin erosion, and a new and provocative competitor around each and every corner (better job board sites, RPO, Off Shore, ATS that screen and assess candidates), now more than ever, staffing industry sales people need to differentiate ourselves against the sea of competition.

We already knew there was a sea of competition. Now that sea is turning into a very vast ocean, and that ocean has inlet water streams that flow to many other industries, as well as many other countries. Not to mention, last time this country faced a people shortage, every shoddy sales person who loved making a quick buck penetrated our market and pummeled our industry’s reputation, so that even in some circles the word “RECRUITER” has some people react as if what they just heard was a sound not that different from nails on a chalk board.

If you thought you had to be good on a daily basis to keep your clients coming back, NOW you have to be great. And you have to be different. Saying you’re different and actually being different begins with your unique selling proposition. What is yours?

Do you provide the BEST qualified and matched candidates in the least amount of time, for the best price? Many RPOs actually say the same thing and are delivering on their promises by adding services such as assessment and behavioral interviewing to their staffing offerings so they can validate hires against the predetermined benchmarks created specifically for their client.  Many of these RPO clients also employ Organizational Development professionals and utilize these credentials in their selling process.

Is your firm the one that really does head hunting? Are all your candidates passive and employed? Are you more connected than the rest on the social networks? 

Did you know many large companies are building their own executive search operations internally? There are even seminars and workshops provided by firms specifically for the purpose of eliminating search fees from their clients’ budget. 

Did you know the job boards; specifically Monster.com is establishing social networks in every industry with the purpose of connecting with candidates for the life of their career rather than just during search time.  When Monster accomplishes this feat, Yahoo HotJob, Career Builder and the Ladders won’t be far behind. As boards know if they are not continuing to innovate they too will evaporate.

Does hiring your candidates come with a risk free guarantee? Did you know when a customer hires someone through SearchPath they get a 12 month guarantee? 

Do you provide on-boarding and new hire integration? Does your firm aid your clients in developing the candidates once they are placed?  Did you know Manpower, Spherion, Apple One and Korn Ferry all have the systems, power and resources to offer these types of promises? Over the past four years all of these companies have added Human capital consulting to their service offerings, either through an acquisition or through grass roots home grown efforts.

Do you remember when it was value add to background check candidates?  Now it is no longer a unique value add, it is standard operating procedure and it’s expected.   It is my belief that the more talent astute CEOs and Business Leaders become, the more they  expect from us.

We can no longer operate as business as usual, we need to get into our customers’ world, see what they see, feel what they feel and offer what they need, and the way they need it. And it all starts with finding out what that is and assessing if and how we can provide it. 

Once that happens and you come up with your core differentiator and unique selling proposition it’s time to evaluate your selling strategy and determine if it is sufficient in the present day world with present day conditions.

If your selling system isn’t effective, I’d recommend registering yourself in a course and committing to getting better. Sell the way differentiated value service providers sell, not the way transaction based vendors sell.  

The time to lay the seeds for tomorrow is today, while everyone else is resting, sleeping, coasting, or freaking – this is your time to stealth forward.

He Who Owns The Talent Pool Owns The Market

10 Lessons Learned at the Florida Staffing Association Owners Conference

1.       The future competition is not just the newest recruitment / staffing firm offering better, smarter and more holistic talent solutions, it is also Monster.com and their NEW career portal as well as other specialty niche sites that aim to own the talent pool through various career pathing and career targeting technology.

As many of you know Keen embarked on creating a new kind of talent management firm 14 months ago and while we are having a great go of it and are making excellent margins, there is certainly something new to learn every time I turn around.

The most recent conference I led a key note for had a woman from Monster.com, Marica Biggar speak on the reality of the future for staffing and recruitment firms. She showed us demographics that were so evident of predicting our future the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. Obviously Monster.com has their hands on statistics that we only wish we had, and the good news is they are ready, willing and able to share it.  She showed us a chart of supply and demand, I think I first learned about supply and demand in 4^th grade, and the picture shown on the overhead was a caveman and a wheel. Looking back it was Economics for Dummies.

What was quite stimulating about this Monster chart was the linkage to Thomas Freidman’s predictions in “The World Is Flat”.  The jobs  and skill sets in America are changing, the talent pool is changing and is more diverse than ever; to attract and retain the best people will take skills and tools most of us have not even begun to think about.  We in Recruitment and Staffing need to shift as well.

2.       When there is a need and limited supply, they will pay; when there is no need and a surplus of people, they don’t need to.  As our speaker continued to blow us away with facts and figures that have everything to do with the amount of money we have in our bank accounts; we learned exactly where we need to focus our efforts, now and in the future.

 

3.       If you want to own the candidate market – you first must operate in a niche specific enough to do so and capitalize on the economies of scale both in your recruitment processes and in your business development processes.

 

4.       I believe that the hardest pill for recruitment and staffing owners, staffers and business development leaders to swallow is that they are going to have to reinvent who they are for their candidate pool and therefore reinvent who they are for their customer base. What worked in the past is not working now and wont in the future. Technology is advancing faster than humans are, and technology does not have get over the fact that times have changed, it just does. People on the other hand are so busy fighting the trends that in many cases they miss the boat.

 

5.       When you own the candidate market you are no longer spending your recruitment efforts on filling jobs, you are working on attracting and capturing candidates for their career life cycle. Imagine how much more profitable we’d all be if we focused on retaining relationships with candidates before during and after the placement, and whenever our niche candidates needed something having to do with their career (advise, coaching, training, internal progression marketing, a new job outside the company, development in their new leadership role) they could get served by your team. Imagine the power if people were tied to you and your firm first and foremost before they began their search.

 

6.       When you own the talent pool – you own the market. If you are the name to know for Talent Management in Clinical Research, if your company is the one sponsoring Career Progression workshops, Leadership Development programs, Campus Recruitment events, then your company becomes the “Go To” for that Brand of Talent.

 

7.       Monster.com says they are No longer in the job posting business, they are rolling our an immensely powerful tool that uses algorithms to manage their relationship with candidates and keeps them coming back to their site, even when they are not in ‘search’ mode.

 

8.       Vocational training is HOT, and needed. If you ‘Re-Train’ people with the right skill and talent and get them ready for the new emerging hottest roles, you become part of the Obama Stimulus Plan and win in more ways than one.

 

9.       When you host a meet-up, gathering, advisory council or web site that acts as a social connectivity point you own not only the candidate talent pool, you own those that want access to the information.

 

10.    The time for reframing who you are as a staffing and recruitment firm is while everyone else is waiting and wondering when the economy will turn around. The time to build your plan and plant the seeds is NOW.

 

After all who you were coming into the recession is no longer relevant. It’s who you are coming out that matters.

 

 

Creating An Internal Hiring Process And Maximize Hiring ROI

WHAT IS AN INTERNAL HIRING PROCESS AND HOW DO WE CREATE ONE?

If you hire someone you don’t really know, for a position you have not thoroughly defined, chances are that neither the person nor the position will deliver. Hiring the right people requires implementation of a comprehensive internal hiring process that selects the best and eliminates the rest. And it all starts with benchmarking. Whether you are benchmarking the role, the top performers in that role, or key traits of the best performers in the company as a whole, the first step is creating the model of what right looks like. Companies that take the time to do so fully understand not only who they need, but also why they need them. These are the companies that excel in the employee-selection process and the capacity to build a “dream team.” 

WHAT RIGHT LOOKS LIKE

Before you evaluate your immediate needs, evaluate the company and team. This is called the Internal Human Capital Inventory and Assessment, and it
involves:

1. Evaluating your core culture:

• Acknowledge and prorate your core values.
• Assess the character quotient of your company.
• Identify the non-negotiable character traits or core values for your company.

2. Evaluating your current team:

• Identify your key players and what innate abilities and traits make them
successful.
• Identify what’s working on the team and what isn’t.
• Identify what elements are missing on the team that would make a positive difference.

3. Implementing a system for evaluating and selecting new hires and internal
promotions:

• Establish and cross-train to hiring protocol. 
• Create companywide candidate-screening ground rules.
• Create a Comprehensive Position Requirement (CPR) for every role.
• Validate, select and utilize the right assessment tools. 
• Create behavioral-based interview models for each role in the company.  
• Establish a decision-making matrix. 

SPECIFIC HOLISTIC HIRING TECHNIQUES THAT SAVE MONEY

With a treetop look at your company and a foundation in place to grow
from, it’s time to look at each role on a tree-trunk level. Focus on the needs of
the business and how each role is attached to the key performance indicators of the company as a whole. When you are clear on the performance objectives for each role in the company and how those affect the big picture of service, sales, retention and profitability, it is much easier to determine who the best person is for each role. Here are some specific holistic hiring techniques:

1. Hire right the first time:

• Thoroughly define each role in your company.
• Define specific success outcomes that are expected in the role.
• Isolate the CAN DO (Intellectual Quotient). 
• Isolate the WILL DO (Emotional Quotient).
• Isolate the FIT IN (Character Quotient). 

2. Follow the hiring protocol:

• Train each hiring manager on the CPR for his/her positions.
• Conduct a preplanned behavioral-based telephone screening.
• Employ a cursory pre-interview assessment.
• Formulate a position-specific interviewing guide for managers to follow.
• Make hiring decisions according to the predetermined hiring matrix.

3. Set up an effective ramp-up process that validates your hiring choice out of
the gate:

• Socialization – on-boarding.
• Manager – new employee meeting.
• Game Plan – expectations, communication, work style.

With established hiring procedures adhered to consistently, your company will
jump over and past dangerous hiring traps, turn the tables on the mishaps of
poor hiring, and reap the benefits that come with having the right people in
the right roles.

Choose Wisely-Now Is The Time For Strategic Hiring

Poor hiring decisions are costly mistakes that can range from 150% to 300% of an employee’s base salary. Financial losses include expenses associated with hiring and training, low employee morale and decreased productivity. Plus, poor hiring choices frequently lead to damaged client relationships, loss of new business and business in general, unemployment and more. The bottom line is that bad hiring decisions can make or break a business. 

The two most common hiring traps are hiring in a hurry and hiring the résumé
rather than the person. Companies that don’t have succession plans or fail to practice cross-training often rush to relieve the pain of the empty chair. Businesses that ignore the hiring process in the interest of expediting it are far more susceptible to missing important clues that could prevent a poor hiring decision. For example, studies on the behaviors of job applicants report that more than 65% of all candidates do not prepare their own résumés. Even more unsettling for prospective employers is that more than 45% misrepresent their credentials with one or more “tall tales.” From reporting academic degrees never achieved and embellishing roles to listing completely fictitious positions, many of today’s job seekers will do whatever they can to appear qualified. 

A third and very common trap is to hire on the basis of job descriptions. 

These typically list a subjective interpretation of required skills and experience.

By highlighting only hard skills, they leave out the most critical elements such as key performance objectives, behaviors, values, emotional intelligence, character traits and soft competencies — the defining criteria that lead to effective performance.

With the war on talent in full force, there is tremendous pressure on hiring
managers to keep their organizations fully staffed and productive.

But how does one meet these demands without falling into hiring traps?

After more than two decades as a recruiter, staffing agency owner, and leader of the KeenHire™ strategic hiring and retention initiative, I’ve developed an arsenal of practical tips and “insider” tools that empower business owners and HR executives alike with the ability to make informed decisions about their most important resource — their people.