KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Choose Your Executive Search Firm Wisely

In Today’s competitive climate for talent many companies are counting on

HR Executive Search professionals to be their field talent scouts. It makes perfect sense that progressive talent minded organizations would require a top notch Executive HR Search partner to augment their internal Corporate Talent Acquisition team.

 

Whether you are building your Internal Talent Acquisition team or hunting for the right Executive Search partner it is important that you ask some fundamental talent acquisition questions; such as:

 

1.     What is your Role Analysis process?

2.     What is your talent mining process?

3.     Where do you find your candidates?

4.     What percentages of hires are generated from which sources; job boards, social media, corporate talent mining and existing databases?  

5.     What is your hiring process?

6.     How do you validate the candidates you recommend are the right candidates for our roles?

7.     What is your on boarding program? 

 

At KeenHire, our teams of tenured Executive Search, HR and Recruitment partners are each skilled in segmented niches and stages of Executive Recruitment and Employee Selection.  Every Keen partner has been working in the HR, Executive Search, Talent Mining and Employee Selection field for a minimum of a decade and has a long list of successful projects, programs and customer references. Segmenting the Executive Search process allows for highly skilled people to focus on their areas of proficiency increases our throughput and effectiveness which brings you highly qualified candidates who match your criteria, faster.

 

We approach building your team strategically and deploy expert level Talent Mining and a Conscious Hiring process in every HR Executive Search project we accept. 

At KeenHire Talent Management, our Executive Search model begins with a complete Organizational Culture and Role Analysis.  We diligently follow Stephen Covey’s philosophy of begin with the end in mind.  We work with your organization to understand your Organization’s direction, values, competitive advantages, objectives and challenges.

 

Once we know who you are, where you are going and what your barriers are to getting there, we help you discern what competencies, behaviors, beliefs, values and emotional intelligence levels your leadership team must possess walking in the door.  Our proprietary Role Analysis process has been utilized in over 100 companies and is the foundation of all of our Executive HR Search projects. This process has successfully led our founders in placing over 2500 business leaders.

 

KeenHire’s team of highly skilled Talent Acquisition, HR and Executive Search professionals are certified in our Conscious Hiring process, the benefit to you is that each and every candidate presented to your company is fully vetted and benchmarked against the Role Analysis.  We only present candidate with the right behaviors, competencies, values and emotional ability to do the job, in the right way for the right period of time.

 

In most Executive Search operations the founders have deep domain expertise in the firms area of specialty. At KeenHire, we too have deep domain expertise in our field of Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, Executive Search and Organizational Development.  We have worked in these areas for over a quarter of a century.  What makes us different is our commitment.  Keen’s brand, unique selling proposition and core differentiators are all driven from our founders expertise with Top Grading principles and building Good to Great companies.  We built our business with outside in strategic thinking. We built our business to help you scale your organization and achieve your goals. 

 

 

Should You Hire A Contingency Recruiter, Retained Search or Contract Recruiter?

In today's plight for the right talent most competitive organizations are dealing with the challenge of securing the right mission critical, key contributor and next level leadership people. 

Astute companies are building internal or external talent minded programs that generate top tier candidates, amplify their employment brand and mitigate their risk of mis-hires and unwanted employee turnover.  Leading edge talent minded organizations are solidifying their relationship with Executive Search providers, Interim HR Executives, Contract recruitment organizations while building competitive employee retention programs that maximize employee engagement and personal productivity. 

Given the last 2-3 years have had most companies operating in survival mode, many of them have lost touch with their external and internal Talent Acquisition providers.  KeenHire has seen a huge uptick in inquiries for developing Hiring Process, Executive HR Search, Interim HR Executive contracts and Employee Retention program development and the biggest challenge our customers have shared is that the market is changing daily and they just can not keep up.

Some reports say that the search activity for Executives is 60% higher today than it was one year ago, which is a good thing; however from where our clients sit this makes it extremely difficult to identify and differentiate between the winners and the whiners. 

Below is an overview of what differentiates the Executive Search providers, Contingency and Contract Recruiters; it is a good reference sheet, so fee free to share it with your clients and your team.

Who Do They Represent?
Retained: Represent employer clients only, learn about their client and establish a solid foundation for the future.

Contingency:  Can and do represent individuals seeking placement, they are more like sports agents, representing and pitching the latest and greatest.

Contract recruiter: Work for one company, and represent them but....share candidates from previous gigs, mostly they are loyal to themselves.

How They Work?
Retained: Conducts assignments on an exclusive basis only.

Contingency: Are usually in competition with other similar firms or agencies for the placement.

Contract Recruiter: Work on site at the customers’ office working on as many or as few assignments as are needed.

Establishing Performance Criteria For Your Talent Acquisition Department

Wow! As the market begins to rebound I am amazed at all the nation wide openings for internal Human Resources roles. Most of these roles no longer carry the Human Resources title; the most popular title I noted I see is Talent Acquisition Director.

What amazes and concerns me is, in none of these job advertisements for Talent Acquisition Director; absolutely none of them have the key performance indicators and specific measureable intended outcomes clearly delineated in the ad.  In the cases where there is no Human Resources leadership in place I understand a lack of clarity in role expectations, however in hundreds of cases the companies doing the hiring have well established HR executives and HR leaders and still no clear expectations listed. 

If companies really want to impact their ability to hire and retain ‘A’ players they must clearly outline the specific measurable results for those expected to deliver.  ‘A’ players want to win and area attracted to challenges.

Any company taking the initiative to hire a Talent Acquisition professional for the purpose of owning the recruitment role and impacting their ability to build and grow  their talent pool must also understand that you get what you expect. If you are not clear on what you expect you can not expect people to deliver just because they hold the title and have a resume that says they know how to recruit. 

A solid Talent Acquisition Director has typically spent their career working in organizations that paid for performance, rewarded proactive behavior and expected innovation and creativity on a daily basis. 

 I am going to give an example of some key performance indicators a well-crafted Talent Acquisition Director Role might include. While these are only an example I think you will get the concept of clearly articulating role expectations.

 Time to Fill – Talent Acquisition Director is expected to build and maintain a pipeline of at least 25 qualified potential software engineer candidates at all times therefore impacting their ability to fill open positions within 20 business days.

Quality of Hires - It is expected that 85% of all Talent Acquisition Director’s new hires are achieving intended outcomes at their 90 day, 6 month and 12 month performance review.

Employment Brand Management – Talent Acquisition Director is continually delivering a high quality recruitment and engagement experience for candidates involved in our companies hiring process resulting in increased high quality applicant referrals and high marks on new hire surveys. 

Customer Service – Hiring Mangers are delighted with the level of service and attention their recruitment needs and business unit receives from the Talent Acquisition Director.

They key to building a strategic HR department is to be the change you want to see.  If you want the Talent Acquisition Director role to deliver and truly impact your businesses ability to grow and compete then you need to consciously hire the right person. In order to hire the right person for the Talent Acquisition Director you must be specific about what you expect the role to produce. You must be clear about what you expect the role to deliver and what excellent performance looks like. 

Once you are specific about what you expect it will be that much easier to identify the person who has the competencies and ability to achieve those results. At KeenHire our proprietary conscious hiring process begins with creating the KPIs for each role and is completed by clearly detailing the behaviors, competencies, values, motivators and emotional intelligence it takes on a daily basis to perform effectively in the role.

Keys Points for Hiring Strategic Minded Talent Acquisition Professionals

Today I researched how many national job openings there are posted for strategic minded HR leaders, HR Business Partners, Talent Management and Talent Acquisition professionals. I was flabbergasted at the amount of companies choosing to take their recruiting and talent management to the next level. Amongst all the noise in the HR space, business leaders are listening and realizing that their organization is only as good as the people inside it. 

For certain, the word is out that companies who need to compete for business and market share also need to have an HR professional on the inside who thinks strategically and can fully execute an innovate, effective and efficient talent strategy.  Companies today are requiring their internal Talent Acquisition Director create and implement key recruitment strategies and execute a highly effective employee selection and corporate hiring process. They are expecting the same person to be a maven at sourcing candidates, initiating and continually improving new hire on boarding for employees of all levels as well as understand and influence key workforce planning strategies. 

Beyond the skills of sourcing talent, hiring only the best and brightest talent, coaching and mentoring Management in adopting a Talent Mindset these same highly skilled and greatly in demand HR professionals are also expected to process day to day HR paperwork.

Is it me, or is something off? Who is writing these job descriptions? Are these companies interviewing HR professionals, Talent Acquisition leaders and VPs of HR or grabbing generic job descriptions off of Monster.com?  In 25 years of Recruiting and working hand in hand with several hundred HR business leaders I have yet to see one human who can do it all, flawlessly. In companies where there is one key player holding down the HR fort, there is almost always a large budget for HR Consultants, Executive Search, Contract Recruitment and temporary HR support.

If the HR business parter is strong at sales oriented functions like recruiting, stimulating employee engagement programs, HR Management consulting and employee retention; they typically are weak at the HR Administration side of the house and vice versa. If they are not 'weak' they almost always complain that spending their time on these type of functions interferes in their ability to play to their strengths. What amazes me is that this day in age business leaders are still missing some basic instincts about human beings and what makes them tick on the job.

Would an astute VP of Sales hammer on his number one sales producer for not being on time with her sales reports? (okay maybe that's a bad example) Still, I think you get the point.

Proactive candidate Sourcing (not through the job boards), Interruption style Recruiting, Engaging, Persuading, Consulting, Business Thinking, creating HR Strategy, developing programming are all functions that require dynamic communications, creativity, risk taking and dominance to some degree. Filing HR paperwork, checking references, filling out forms, maintaining files, reporting, benefits administration and documentation are functions that require conscientiousness and attention to detail. Rarely is all of this found in the same person. Your high Dominant and Influencer person will almost always struggle with the highly methodical, routine work. They will do it last, at times forget about it then rush to get it done and if not supported, they might make costly mistakes.

There are two sides to HR - One being the Creative, Strategic and Solutions side and Two being the compliance, process and systematic side.

If you are lucky enough to find someone who excels at both, wonderful. However, if you are like 90% of the HR and Business leaders you will need to hire two types of people.  One could refer to it as hiring both the yin and the yang types of people. If you simply can not afford that, you might need to resort to hiring an average producing hybrid type person. If that is not the answer either, then you might want to consider outsourcing the high level strategic aspects of the role to an HR Consultant or outsourcing the administrativia to a company like TriNet, Algentis or Administaff. 

The whole point is HR is a critical function in every company that depends on the right people executing their business strategy. When hiring Key Contributors for Critical HR functions it's important to have realistic expectations and articulate specific measurable results for the role, it's very challenging to do that when the role is all over the board. It is important to note  that Industrial psychologists when studying peak performers report that most highly effective employees are focusing on 3 maybe 4 key result areas at once and they also report that most employee's productivity breaks down when they are spread too thin and their skill set is continually diverted in multiple disciplines.

I am ecstatic to see the HR Job market heating up and even more excited to see that companies are finally taking steps and actions that honor the statement "people are our greatest asset!"

Are Mo, Larry And Curly Doing Your Hiring?

I'm serious.

Let's get real, have you ever hired someone you knew little about for a job you knew less about? It happens to all of us.

I started my own company, for the 1st time when I was 29 years old. I had a pre teenager, a young son at home and a new baby due any day. 

The company I was with was shutting down, literally, that night. The girls and I took our stuff and needed a place to go, FAST.  I had no operations experience, no management experience, no finance, no marketing and certainly no technology experience. I had no operational infrastructure, organizational design or business plan.  We had a couple desks, a phone and a hard floor. Failure was not an option, as I was the breadwinner.

Our first year we did $1,000,000.00 in sales, we had a temp division and a direct hire team. As I began to think about growing, I started to hire. I hired people who reminded me of me. Imagine that? In one year I hired 35 people. All failed, were fired, quit or stayed far....far too long.

I was a producer and I knew how to make the donuts, fry them up in a pan, serve seconds and then make more donuts. I did this over and over again for over a decade. It was who I was.  When the Pinnacle Society accepted my application I was flabbergasted. My billing status was a pretty big deal. I was good at this job.  So, the technician became a business owner, not out of a carefully designed plan, out of survival. 

The bottom line is in 10 years I spun through over 100 people. Some commission, some not. When I spoke to other business owners in the Staffing and Recruitment Industry, I was told this is what we get; our industry has an extremely high turnover, deal with it.  My paradigm for the staffing industry was developed on my first job.  I was brought up in a company that hired 10 people per month and if 1 was left at the end of the year, that was a victory. The difference between them and me, was that they had a person whose only job was to hire, train and churn people. I was the biller, owner, sales rep, recruiting manager, HR, and the so-called trainer.

Given my strong willed personality and insatiable appetite to get better, I knew I had to change, so I went to my Vistage chair (formerly known as TEC).  Mike Donahoe sat me down and we looked at what the high turnover, poor hiring practices and mediocre on-boarding was costing me. I knew it was costing me (Download The_cost_of_a_mishire) money, I never considered it was costing me time with my kids, happiness and fulfillment. That meeting changed my life. 

My coach had me take the income I earned in one year and divide it by the amount of hours in a work week.  Then he had me research how long each hire was with me, and the amount of my time was spent training, coaching, fixing, correcting, answering questions and un-ruffling feathers. Then he worked with me to figure out the cost to the organization in terms of lost sales, unhappy customers, unfilled orders. 

Then he had me take a calculator to it. The impact was astounding.

It was then, the fall of 2002; I chose to become a Manager. I chose to be a business leader that is effective at hiring and selecting employees, managing performance, on-boarding, compensation, employee engagement and retention.  Choosing was just the beginning; I then had to learn how. It did not happen right away, it took a ton of work. However, when I finally got it, I got it.

Before I knew it Alliance HR Network (my previous company) was training our customer's HR departments, Corporate Recruiters and their front line Chicago area Managers how to hire, on board and manage their new employees. The better I got, the better they got. 

When we surveyed our customers they told us they would like to see us offer more 'people consulting' services, such as performance management, hiring process training, human resource consulting, new hire selection, employee on boarding, employee retention and succession planning consulting for the people we placed and some of their key players. Our first projects were about installing effective hiring processes for growing companies.

In companies where the hiring process used to be a game of golf and a shot of Jack, they upgraded to using psychometric assessment tools in addition to an M interview and a behavioral interview to evaluate candidates. In Chicago area technology start ups, where normally a skill on a resume gets an interview, they upgraded their hiring process to glean the right behaviors, competencies and emotional intelligence required by the role. Skills are a given, they wanted more than skill from their technical consultants, they wanted to achieve corporate effectiveness through each and every hire.  Since those early days I have worked with many companies on different variations of our service offerings from Recruitment Process in Sourcing, RPI to Employee Retention consulting. More often than not we are bringing our recruitment, hiring, employee selection and on-boarding knowledge and processes to companies who have little or no internal Recruitment and Talent Management infrastructure.

I find it interesting, funny and amazing that most companies do not put more of a strategic emphasis on who they hire. The ones who do have sky rocketed in sales, in innovation, in service and in customer retention. The ones who don't, well maybe that is one of the reasons they fade away. Progressive, hiring savvy companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Enterprise Leasing, etc. do a very good job of following a hiring process, but most of the rest, from the perspective of over two thousand corporate recruiters and executive search consultants, don't even come close. They treat hiring like a crap-shoot or a collaborative popularity contest.

My question to a CEO of a growing organization is, "Why would you have a C player interviewing potential candidates?". I have heard jokes cracked that Mo, Larry and Curly led the interview in unison. People who have never been trained in interviewing, who don't fundamentally understand people or the role asking route questions, thinking about how much "other" work they have to do and resenting ever minute of it.  No wonder, my first sales coach, Tom used to say; the biggest problem with sales departments is the manager who does not know how to identify true sales people. "They thought they hired John Wayne only to find out it was Woody Allen."

I can't tell you how many times I interview a company who hired the wrong person and he or she failed in the role I find out they hired from the hip and not the head.  I see that type of behavior, specifically in sales recruiting the candidate shows up and looks super strong only to stop short of the finish line. The company, or the hiring manager bought the shiny penny, the creative communication, and the glamor of having 'the name' on the team.

If it is our job to run a profitable company, one who delivers excellent service; then it's also our job to run an operationally efficient company. Bad hires, people who miss the mark, people who are not aligned with the mission and vision, people who lack the work ethic and passion to get it done all lead to operational inefficiency and high cost.

We can not compete with high overhead and operational waste.

We can not compete with average sales people.

We can't compete with inefficient people, systems or tools. 

We can't compete without the right people, in the right roles, doing the right things, in the right way.

If your company carefully vets it's investments of time, money and resources and your people are your largest spend it's time for a change.

It's time to Choose Wisely.

Hiring 1099 Contract Recruiters IS Dangerous Business!

I hear a lot of buzz from frustrated 1099 independent contractors about how they are sick and tired of being told how to do their job, what tools to use as well as when and how to report results; they believe because they are not earning benefits, are not an 'employee' of the company that no one has the right to "tell them what to do".  I find this interesting because at the same time I am hearing the complaints from the field, I am eliciting similar yet different feedback and concerns on the side of the companies using independent contract recruiters in the bay area.

Many companies have told me they need to use the services of three to five, or more 1099 contract recruiters to find one that produces high quality candidates in the desired time frame.

These companies tell me they install measures and accountability structures because without a system in place they feel like they are throwing their recruitment budget down the drain.

The way my colleague Diana Maier, Labor Attorney sees it both parties have a right to their opinions however companies MUST take note of their 1099 practices and if they are unwilling to give up control they need to seek an alternative solution; for example KeenHire's Recruitment Process In Souring model where every consultant is our employee, and we are accountable for managing the results. The customer still saves on insurance and other "employee" related costs, however they do not have to worry about the impact of an IRS violation.  For detailed information on 1099 versus Employee - read on!

One of the biggest challenges facing employers today is something that most people know nothing about.  Specifically, is the person who provides you a service at work or in the home a contractor or an employee?  That is, do you need to take responsibility for the person, file taxes, get worker’s compensation insurance, withhold earnings, etc, for her, or do you simply pay her what she charges and move on? So often people do the latter when they should be doing the former. The government, of course, knows this and profits heartily from it. As an employment attorney I see so many small or budding businesses ruined over this mistake.

So what can you do about it?  A few things.  First, educate yourself on the differences. If someone has a specialized skill over which you exert very little control (for most people a good example would be a carpenter, a computer guru, an accountant, etc.) they are likely a contractor.  Consider whether this individual works in a specialized field that is not your area of expertise.  If he does, it becomes difficult to exercise control over how he does his job.  Since most state and federal agencies hold that the payer’s ability to control the work done for him is the single biggest factor in determining whether someone is a contractor or an employee, answering the above question allows you to discern a contractor from an employee.

Another factor to consider is whether the person’s expertise is something that operates as a support to your home or office, or entirely independent of your home or office.  For example, the person who comes to paint your law office is performing a duty totally unrelated to your area of expertise, supporting contractor status.  While you might be able to pick up a paintbrush and help (i.e. the work is arguably not as skilled as a computer guru), you most likely could not effectively micromanage the painting project.  Contrast this with the person who comes in to offer secretarial support in your law office.  The secretary’s work is an integral part of your operations and also something over which you can exert a large amount of control.  The average lawyer, for example, often proofs the work of her secretary and might make all kinds of changes to it.  These kinds of actions show an employer-employee relationship.

How you pay someone, whether by the job or by the hour, is another crucial difference between contractors and employees.  Using the above example, you are paying a secretary for his time (supporting employee status), while you are paying a painter for his completed work (supporting contactor status).  In addition, the longer the relationship between payer and payee, the more likely courts or administrative agencies are to find employee status.

Finally, consider whether your service provider has many clients or just a few.  If the person works just for you, she is more likely to be your employee.  If she has many clients and holds herself out as a business, she is likely a contractor.  If, for example, your housekeeper comes to your house 4 days a week, you pay her hourly, and she has very few clients, she is likely an employee.  If she holds herself out as a business, advertises, solicits new clients, and works for many people, she is likely a contractor.

What else can you to avoid being penalized for misclassifying a service provider?

-Draw up a document that supports contractor status if that’s the way you choose to go.

-Keep a vendor file indicating contractor status (include ads place by the contractor, proof of her insurance, and other indicia of the individual holding herself out as a business)

-Consider asking for an advisory opinion from the Labor Commissioner or another administrative agency.  Be aware, however, that the government errs on the side of finding employer-employee status 9/10 times

-Play it safe and treat everyone who provides you a service as an employee.  While you’ll pay more at the outset, you can calculate and pay a fixed and knowable cost rather than subject yourself to untold but always heavy-duty penalties.

Assessments-Know What You Are Buying Going In

 Media from the Wall Street Journal to CNN, and CEOs with whom I’ve spoken, agree that one of the top strategic initiatives of many companies is hiring not only new talent, but also the right talent. It is forecast that by 2012, we will be fully engaged in a high-level leadership and knowledge worker talent shortage.

Given the diminishing available talent pool, and the compelling messages about offshore, lower-skilled labor and processes, I predict that the pendulum will swing and companies will re-recognize the need to invest in hiring and retaining key people. This will allow companies to leverage their opportunities to innovate, compete and achieve their corporate objectives. But where will this talent come from?

 The impetus for this talent “shortage” is that growth-oriented companies are demanding more of their workforce, and are unwavering in their desire to attract and hire “difference makers.” Companies committed to winning the war for talent will not only have to create an environment that fosters growth, development and challenge, but will also need to implement systems and operating practices that maximize their ability to attract and retain the best. 

Given the amount of effort and money that will be budgeted to create extraordinary retention programs, these same companies will need to evaluate and improve their internal hiring practices so that only winners get in the door. In today’s competitive talent market, with candidates demanding top salaries, companies have the right to know what they are getting, and have the right to expect a return on investment with each hire. That’s where assessments can have a huge impact.

Another major consideration affecting the use of assessments, or assessment service companies, is the need to analyze the cost of a bad hire. Besides salary, taxes and benefits, there are an immense number of hidden costs when a company hires someone who does not succeed. 

 COMPARING COST OF TURNOVER TO COST OF ASSESSMENT PROGRAMS

 Company XYZ has 200 employees, of which 40 are sales/execs and 160 are hourly. They are planning to expand by 10%, or 20 people, during the upcoming year.

EXECUTIVE/PROFESSIONAL SALES If turnover for the sales/execs is 15%, then XYZ Co has turned over 6 people (40 x 15%). If the average sales/exec earns $80K, then based on DOL figures, the turnover cost for that group is 6 x $100K ($80K x 125% = $100K).	TOTAL COST OF TURNOVER                 $600,000	TOTAL COST OF ASSESSMENTS
With an average test cost of $300, the cost for assessing all new exec/sales candidates would be $300 x 6 tests.		$1800
HOURLY EMPLOYEES If turnover for the hourlies is 30%, then XYZ Co turnover is 48 jobs. With the average turnover cost at $6500 for an hourly, the turnover cost for this group is 48 x $6500.	$312,000
With an average test cost of $180, the cost for testing all new hourly hires would be 48 x $180.		$8640
PROJECTED EXPANSION Projected 10% or 4 exec/sales positions		$1440
Projected 10% or 16 hourly positions		$3456
	$912,000	LESS THAN $15,400

 

 

 

Recruitment Process In Sourcing versus Outsourcing – What is the difference?

The focus of this article is about Recruitment Process Outsourcing versus Recruitment Process In Sourcing.

Many companies are looking for alternative solutions to getting work done for less money.  When I first read the book the World is Flat, I was freaked out to say the least. If Thomas Friedman is accurate, I thought, the business that provided me a healthy income for almost 23 years would soon become a thing of the past.   I needed to shift my focus and I needed to do it before the change was upon me.  Since 2005, when my book group of recruiters and technology professionals gathered to discuss the potentials impacts that the world being flat on the recruiting and staffing industry much has changed.  Between Off Shoring, Outsourcing and Technology companies have plenty of options and resources to increase their output while being much more operationally efficient and profitable.

As far as Outsourcing, Hundreds of name brand corporations that I know of have set up offices off shore in Costa Rica, Thailand, India and the Philippines.  Other companies are taking advantage of outsourcing and utilizing lower cost resource centers in the U.S. such as El Paso and Detroit; as well as several cities in Utah, Iowa and Nebraska.  Progressive and responsive companies are outsourcing everything from general accounting functions, interpreting & analyzing reports, data management, routine call center & data processing operations, architectural design, elements of software support and development as well as elements of the recruitment process.  Furthermore, there are entire businesses (BPO) set up to completely outsource non core business functions such as recruiting, data processing, software development, network administration and accounting. The theory is, when a company capitalizes on their core functions and stays focused on delivering excellence in their area of specialty they dominate the competition. 

In the recruitment industry one of the big industry game changers is RPO, Recruitment Process Outsourcing.  This type business process outsourcing completely removes the recruitment function from the corporation and gives 100% of the accountability to an outside resource. Companies are offered better, faster and less expensive recruiting on a mass scale.  While old school staffers say this is not working, the black box report on RPO informs us that 90% of all companies using the services of an RPO are very happy to extremely happy.  The deal with RPO is for it to be cost effective and efficient there needs to be a certain amount of openings and the company must be committed to outsourcing and to let the RPO lead the way in best practices.

Technology progress has brought many savings that we experience daily to state organizations, banking, the entertainment industry, and in my world recruitment. It started with ATMs, Tollbooths and Movie theaters and then before I knew what was happening there the progress was in my front yard, impacting my industry and my business. Some people complain about technology stealing jobs and replacing humans, as a business owner, and a 25-year veteran in the recruitment industry I say hurrah!  If technology can replace menial tasks, can make our teams more productive and aid us to deliver service better, faster and cheaper then bring it on.

In my business, my team used to scour the internet looking for resumes, hour upon hours of time, high value time, searching for qualified resumes; now I can chose to utilize a technology or off shore resource to accomplish this and when I am working with the right recruitment professional, they relish in the opportunity to spend their time on higher level impact recruitment functions.

So what about In Sourcing?

Many companies have established recruitment as a strategic function and a core component of their business strategy. They have fundamentally linked the quality and effectiveness of their talent pool to their ability to progress faster than the competition and deliver a higher level of service to their valuable customer base.  In these cases these companies do not believe that outsourcing such a crucial function is a sensible way to achieve their goals.  They prefer to bring best practices and leading experts in the recruitment and talent management field into their company on an as needed basis. They utilize these experts to train, coach and direct their internal human capital efforts when they need and how they need it.  In my experience companies that have hired KeenHire Talent Management as their (RPI) Recruitment Process In Sourcing and Talent Management In Sourcing (TMPI) provider choose us because we bring the expertise in the areas recruitment technology and assessment selection, candidate sourcing and recruitment functions as well as programming and resources for employee retention and next level & emerging leader development.

The type of companies most likely to utilize recruitment in sourcing are companies that are on their way up; they could be in an emerging market, a start up or a company whose corporate headquarters are located in another country.  One thing these companies have in common is they have specific growth plans and are committed to building their organization with the best talent they can secure.

 

Let’s face it whether you are a commercial staffing or recruitment firm, a single recruitment provider or a recruitment department it makes sense to outsource, off shore or bring systems and technology to specific aspects of your recruitment process as anything you can do to maximize your efficiency and profitability is a mandatory business requirement. Similarly a business leader of a company on your way up, the right answer for you might be to bring the best possible resources inside on an as needed basis and only pay for what you need, when you need it.

 

 

 

 

 

Employment Retention begins with Effective Recruitment & Selection

It however does not end there.

 

When I started the KeenHire recruitment process in sourcing adventure it was my mission to transform the Recruiting and Staffing industry, to raise our industry's level of influence, contribution and effectiveness. I was quite surprised by the high volume of recruiters, mostly 3^rd party and contract, that met KeenHire’s mission with a strong resistance and in some cases an outright defiance. 

With hindsight being 2020, I understand the concern that Recruitment professionals would have for being held accountable for the employee retention of people as they have no power or control once the offer is accepted.  Furthermore, I get the frustration one feels when the recruitment function has no influence over new hire on boarding and 1^st year performance management.

Innovative companies are aware and awake to the fact that employee retention certainly begins with appropriate recruitment and new hire selection, what’s new is that they are integrating specific retention based talent management functions with the recruitment process and impacting the whole talent life cycle.  Progressive talent mindset companies are implementing customized on boarding programs, tailored employee development models, succession planning and laser focused performance management systems into the picture. The best companies educate and train their recruiters, including the 3^rd party and contract recruitment resources to work inside their long-term talent strategy.  In these leading companies, the Recruitment and Employee selection process is built and managed with the end in mind.

At KeenHire we experience just as many customers that hire us to implement employee retention strategies as for recruitment process in sourcing. The most common call to action we receive is everyone comes to us to impact their ability to attract and select the right people for their organization.  

What most emerging and start up companies are surprised by is that selecting the right hires is only the beginning. When a company works hard to get the right people on the bus they must understand that great people expect to work for great organizations and great managers.  If you hire an A player and surround them with C and D employment and talent management practices you are asking for unwanted turn over. 

When your management team does not posses effective employee engagement knowledge and does not fundamentally understand how to get the best out of people and leverage their strengths, you experience unwanted turnover. When your management team believes that their employees need to focus on their current role and not where they can go in the future, the employees, specifically the high performers, slowly loose their passion and engagement in the role and the firm, and hence the result is unwanted turnover.

When a company wants to impact their ability to hire the best people, they must also consider the needed improvements they need to make on their management team, in specific functions and processes within the talent management life cycle.

As the employment marketplace heats up, particularly for high impact knowledge workers such as Sales and Engineers, companies choosing to compete through

the quality of their workforce must learn to dance with and appeal to their employees’ motivations from day one.  Leading companies competing for mission critical, key contributor and next level leadership talent need to get in the hearts and heads of their people, understand what make them tick, match them with the right manager, create a vision of the future from day one, have systems and structures in place to cause on going engagement and build effective, customized performance management and employee development programs that maximize their people’s strengths. 

Yes, this is a tall order, which is why companies like KeenHire Talent Management exist. We help our customers maximize their return on their people investments by installing customized world-class hiring and employment selection processes and by implementing leading talent management systems, processes and people. 

 

 

 

 

Cost Savings In Recruitment

Is Your Company Maximizing Your Recruitment Effectiveness?  

The world has shifted; the economy has changed- we all need to do more with less.  The U.S. we are now entering into a Global Talent Marketplace. Companies can hire top talent labor cheaper than ever before.  Competitors in your marketplace are popping up all over the globe.  What happens when your competition offers your customers a better solution for less money?  As we slowly crawl out of the recession we enter a brand new age, new business models, a new age of pricing and a new age of service delivery. We all must maximize our effectiveness while minimizing our costs. Going forward one of the ONLY competitive advantages a company will have is the people working in their organizations. 

The U.S. talent market is shrinking while the global talent pool is expanding.  In the next 4-6 years, companies will face the most challenging and tumultuous times in building and retaining their workforce. Your company has choice in recruitment solutions.  You can build your own, In-source it, outsource it, or wing it. Below are some cost saving methods for maximizing your recruitment and retention effectiveness without paying high fees.

1. Benchmark your key contributor talent, clarify the DNA of winner in your company and then use that DNA to validate new hires.  
2. Identify KPI’s for each role
3. Utilize a contingent recruitment workforce – bring in skilled, accountable recruiting talent, ONLY when you need them
4. Eliminate wasted time, effort and money by implementing screening tools at the top of the funnel. 
   
5. Create steps in the recruitment process that bring forth the best and eliminate the rest.
6. If you use assessments do NOT buy them from the publisher, they are selling you their tools they are not helping you select the best tool for your roles, circumstances and culture.
   
7. Use Behavioral and Values based interviewing in the finalist interviews.
8. Have your recruiters trained in selection, retention and performance management so they understand the whole talent life cycle and make better matches.
9. Evaluate your current workforce: what is working, what is not, what needs to change and then hold Managers accountable to make that happen.
   
10. Implement performance management across the board.
11. Tie everyone’s performance and compensation to the company’s profitability.
    
12. Get help in making the final selection of candidates for key roles.
    
13. Make employee engagement a priority.
    
14. Set up futures meetings with your key contributors.
15. Exploit the grapevine.
    
16. Select 1 job board and maximize that relationship.
17. Measure recruitment success.
18. Measure retention success.
19. Monitor steps in the process for new efficiencies.
20. Outsource pieces of the process.
21. In-source pieces of the process.
22. Train your Managers to recruit, select and on-board key contributors and mission critical talent.