KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Shaking Hands and Never Letting Go

Today the challenge for all of us in the staffing recruitment profession is establishing and maintaining customer relationships that last.  I have heard many times, “I am only as good as my last placement” or “How do I convince the customer that I am unique in an over saturated marketplace, where everyone makes the same promises and very, very few actually deliver?”  

KeenHire Talent Management is built to deliver a higher quality of service  to our end user as well as to maximize the time and effectiveness of our recruiting partners. 

Our recruitment, hiring and retention programs elevate how we are viewed by business leaders and position our consultants as the full life cycle solution to their talent management challenges.  

As the founder of KeenHire, I have spent five years investigated leading industry technology, new age sourcing solutions, lean recruitment processes & tools and dug deep into enough assessment and on-boarding instruments to make anyone’s eyes glaze over.

The coolest part of my research was that I sat in the seat of a recruiter for over two decades, I have a keen sense of what works, what doesn’t, what’s fluff and what’s real.  The result of these efforts is that my team and I created a world-class hiring process that maximizes our ability to put the right person in the right job for the right period of time. The technology and efficiencies enable us to do it all for the right price. 

KeenHire is committed to transforming the way staffing and recruitment is delivered. We have vetted and designed a conscious-hiring process that maximizes Keen Certified recruitment and retention professionals’ effectiveness.

Imagine you show up at your customers’ door, no one but people in your circle are offering the level of service you did. Imagine your customers invited you in to planning meetings and strategy sessions.  Imagine your recruitment and hiring process is the fabric of your customers’ talent acquisition and retention strategy.
 
As an independent recruiter or contract staffing professional, jumping from one gig to the next has got to be exhausting. Sure the money is great but when the jig is up, it’s up. Not to mention that you become part of most company’s dysfunctional hiring process and you pretty much have to go with it or say something and make waves. For most people making waves is not a lucrative option.
 
Imagine yourself as the Sheppard of a world class recruitment and hiring process, fully armed with the tools you needed to do the best job in the minimum amount of time and are paid an engagement fee, a project fee and a performance bonus for work well done. Furthermore, visualize you as an integral part of the new hire on-boarding and employee engagement process and achieving another bonus for effective retention.
 
Imagine participating in on-going training and development and elevating your ability to deliver better candidates in a shorter time frame and offer leading edge talent management solutions to your customers.  Imagine being surrounded by and serving like-minded customers, working with philosophically aligned professionals and being known as someone who truly makes a difference in their work.
 
There you are, shaking hands with your client and never letting go. Be a KeenHire Certified Talent Management Provider and experience all the above and more.
 
 
 
Service Provider Track                         Sales/Business Development Track
 
Talent Strategy 3.0                             Talent Strategy 3.0
Talent Delivery Model                          Strategic Selling
Behavioral Interviewing                       Talent Delivery Model
Assessment Interpretation                   Success Factor
 
 
56 hours of intense training, coaching and certification over 7 weeks. 10 hours of follow up mentoring and coaching that solidifies your mastery of the systems, tools, training and technology.   66 hours of career altering training and development.
 

Regular cost is $4592 when you register for all three courses you save $919.00. Your price is $3673.00 per person or $55.65 per hour of training.

Is Recruitment Process In-Sourcing A Solution For You?

Does the life of your company depend on the people inside?

Are quality service, employee productivity and corporate effectiveness important to your organization’s success?
 
Are you forced to do more with less?
 
Have you experienced frustration and concern that your current recruitment and hiring process is not delivering people who deliver the results you need when you need it?
 
Is your company committed to maximizing your return on your people investment?  
 
If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, Recruitment Process In-Sourcing with KeenHire Talent Management is the solution for you.

Our Premise

We partner with companies serious about thriving in today’s competitive market place by enabling them to maximizing their return on their people investment. We do this by developing and managing a recruitment, hiring and on boarding process that mitigates the risk of a mis-hire and brings forth the best-suited talent for the role and the company. Our work doesn’t stop at the offer; we work with your management team to ensure a smooth transition, effective integration and peak utilization of the new hire’s skills and talents.

Keen’s conscious-hiring process is comprised of 4 key elements
 
1.  Understanding your corporate strategy and creating a workforce assessment and gap analysis – we tie your corporate strategy to your people strategy.
2.   Conducting a deep dive performance based role analysis for each position - we validate the job needs from an outcome, behavioral, value and  competency point of view.
3. Executing a lean recruitment and candidate vetting process – we save your management team time, money and resources and only submit the right match
4. Standardizing On-boarding and creating a customized new hire integration plan for each manager and their new hire – we maximize your team’s ability to leverage this new talent in the shortest possible time period

Today there are many alternative cost saving packaged and component recruitment solutions from RPO to off shore resume aggregation and on line candidate sourcing.  

Imagine working with a company who brings forth the best component offerings and built a process that operates on efficiency, economies of scale and identifying the right fit (cultural, philosophical, competency, character, values), all while maximizing your ability to synthesize your new hires.  

KeenHire Talent Management offers this specific solution and we have many happy customers to show it.  

Candidate’s say, for the 1st time they feel listened to and cared for in the hiring process, whether they get the job or not they are better suited to go out and target the right role for them after participating in the KeenHire process. An effective recruitment and conscious-hiring process amplifies your Employee Value proposition.  

Employer’s are delighted when they show up in an interview and the person sitting across from them is exactly who they said they wanted at the beginning of the project.  A great process saves your people time and effort.   Hiring Managers are thrilled that they are given the tools, material and guidance to get the best out of their new hire early in the employment life cycle.  

KeenHire RPI – top shelf technology, efficient recruitment process, earnest employment branding, solid candidate assessment and effective new hire on-boarding. And there’s more, our highly skilled Recruitment professionals’ trained and certified in Employee Recruitment, Selection and Retention are available to work at your location or ours, it’s your choice. 

We help you put the right person, in the right job, for the right period of time, for the right cost.  

Recruitment Process Management

Every company is charged with the assignment of doing more with less. The movement to create efficiencies in every component of running a business has lead to a huge movement of outsourcing everything from office administration, technology, recruitment and manufacturing to accounting, supply chain, staffing and in some cases customer service.  Many of the largest companies in America have been among the first to explore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for some it is the best thing that they have ever tried, for others the results have been disastrous.

In the area of business that I specialize in I have been researching the RPO movement. Recruitment Process Outsourcing, is about removing the recruitment and staffing function from inside the company and having an outside vendor manage, execute and deliver people on an as needed basis. The choice to RPO has for the most part been about price, economies of scale and efficiency.  The most popular roles that I have read about RPO filling is call center, front line banking, customer service, retail, and medical.

Some user reports say this is the most efficient way for a National or Global organization to staff, others say their quality of hires has declined, unwanted turnover has increased and candidates are left with an ill feeling about the companies employment brand. 

What I have learned for sure is that RPO is not for every company; a company has to have certain staffing objectives that make an RPO offering appealing.

Just because RPO might not be the right answer for your company does not mean that there is not work to do to create an efficient, effective and highly successful recruitment function within your organization.  After all, your company is only as good as the people inside and an ineffective, inefficient recruitment process is a barrier between you and your next level of talent.

Over 10 years ago, when I owned Alliance HR Network, one of my mentors asked me for our operational quality ratio of interviews to hires. I did not have the number. He then asked me how many candidates we had to talk to, to generate a live interview, I did not have that number either. I began to see that my lack of managing those important numbers was in the way of me running an efficient recruiting operation and that was costing me money.

Efficiency

The journey was a painful one, back then we were interviewing 10 people to place 1 and we had to talk to 100 to interview 10. That meant that 90% of our time did not result in generating revenue. I began to understand more and more about lean manufacturing, operational excellence and performance ratios.  I chose to enroll in a certification program in organizational development and in that 12 month program I learned a great deal about why companies lay so many people off in recessionary times. 

I decided to go to work on my own company looking for ways to bring operational excellence, improve productivity, lower costs and continue to deliver a high quality of service.  What I learned and implemented was the impetus for the making of KeenHire. 

My team and I went to work on our business processes, we analyzed performance ratios in each of our core functions and worked on eliminating tasks that were irrelevant to effectiveness. We incorporated time saving technology that allowed team members to focus on high impact functions. We created a system for candidate intake that dropped our ratio from 10:1 to 3:1.  

Effectiveness

Considering quality was what my company was known for I knew I had to find a way to stand behind that claim beyond in words. This is what lead me to implementing behavioral interviewing and 'fit' assessments into our hiring and selection process. This not only aided us in the validation of the candidates we submitted, it save us thousands of man hours. It became much easier to select the best and eliminate the rest and was instrumental in my ability to quickly ramp up new hires. Our recruiters were making placements within 2 weeks on a desk, because I was hiring the right people and giving them a great process to follow. 

Our customers were delighted with the amount of data we had on each candidate we were representing. The real benefit was when our customers requested we manage the complete staffing of entire department, leadership and launch teams. The implementation of this conscious-hiring process not only saved us money and time, it was directly responsible for an uptick in work, sales and profitability.

Whether your company chooses to run recruitment from the inside or the outside it is up to you to manage performance in 3 key areas.  In no particular order, ensuring high quality hires, managing efficient recruitment processes and delivering a high quality of service to all of the stakeholders is critical to maximizing your return on your people investment and imperative to being an Employer of Choice.

How Can You Improve Performance Metrics and Employee Productivity?

A study of the Corporate Executive Board found that since the recession began, managers have become less effective at defining employees roles and accountability. Before the recession, only 60% of employees said their managers did an okay job of effectively communicating expectations, since the recession that number has dropped to 45%, which considering is quite low.  Before, Front Line and HR Managers told employees how they fit in to the overall strategy and market share objectives, now they tell employees to get to work and be grateful they have a job.  Ouch…….that is pretty short sighted thinking.

The highly interesting part of this is that when employees understand how what they do fits into the overall strategy of the business and the achievement of their corporate objectives productivity can increase by 10% at a minimum. Ten percent of ten employees equates to an additional headcount.

When I lead my Maximize Your People ROI workshop and keynotes I speak a great deal about Jim Collins’ call to action, “Put the right people on the Bus”.  Five years ago I learned two provocative processes for assessing, evaluating & validating job specifications, at Keen we call these Benchmarking and Role Analysis.  Both of these tie Organizational Development and Recruitment processes together and drastically improve hiring metrics and recruiting success rates.

If you want to attract more of the best, you first have to truly understand why some of your employees are high performers. Is it coincidence, dumb luck or a lot of hard work when a key manager assembles a team of high performers?  Or is it a calculated and well-executed strategy?

Experts say that building a high performance work-group does not happen by anything other than a well defined, executed recruitment plan and selection hiring process. High performing teams are not created by accident.  There is always a plan of attack that attracts people with solid competencies, required behaviors, complimentary traits, and shared values.  Companies like HP create programs for this by assessing their top performers and understanding what drives their performance; aspects like competencies, motivators, behaviors, values, work style, and emotional intelligence.  They then build a hiring model that vets candidates with similar winning formulas.

This is what KeenHire refers to as benchmarking.  The Keen team has assessed over 1000 high performers conducted over 200 corporate benchmarks since our launch.  In one company alone, we saved the employer over $1,000,000.00 in poor hiring costs  Download Keenhireclarknatcasestudy because they stopped hiring people who they thought would fit and they started hiring people they knew would fit.  This new age Talent Management stuff really works!

Conducting a Role Analysis on positions that you are filling whether through an internal promotion or a new hire impacts not only your ability to put the right person on the bus, it effects your companies ability to improve workforce production and engagement. When your employees know that you chose them because they had the natural ability to do the job in a way that amplifies the companies mission and vision and they know what is expected as well as how these accomplishments impact the big picture; they are awake and aware to exactly what you are counting on them to achieve on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis they are much more likely to achieve it. 

The Bottom Line is if you want a more productive, engaged workforce hire the right people for jobs they are well equipped to do, make sure they know what you expect from them and then encourage them to use their natural talents and abilities to get the job done.

If you have professional HR Management, Contract Recruitment staff or In Sourced Recruitment consultants on your team make sure they are trained in these critical hiring selection programs and strategies; if you do not and you need to go outside to Recruiting services require these service providers to offer solutions that enable you to hit your hiring and retention metrics. 

From The Trenches-Strategic Positioning For Recruitment and Staffing Firms

KeenHire's Keen Recruiting Institute began it's 1st 2010 training session on Friday, January 22. It is an exciting course for me to lead as I have 3 member companies who have already taken Keen's Talent Strategy 3.0 / NAPS CERS course in attendance and 3 brand new Keen customers, 2 whom are Key contributors of dear friends of mine who own extremely successful staffing operations in California.

The students were challenged with coming up with their Unique Selling Proposition, reading Attracting Perfect customers and tying their 2010 personal goals with their business and sales goals.                                                                                                                                                  

Some highlights of the 1st weeks course are:

1. The Customer getting what they want, when they want it - Is critical. Actually, it's all that REALLY matters.

2. The look and feel of the competition in Staffing & Recruitment is very different today than it was 24 months ago. Your current and future customers do not need more of the same, they need full scope solutions that effect retention, engagement and profitability.

3. If we are not being more efficient and more effective in our Recruiting process and exceeding our customers needs, someone else will!

4. It is not about us-- Find out what is important to them.

5. What are their challenges and frustrations as it relates to their people - what keeps them up at night?

6. Sell to Decision Makers or don't bother selling at all. Companies do not need to pay your rates to have you submit a resume to a VMS or a MSP. Your success will be temporary, at best with that approach.

7. Know what makes you better and different and if you sound just like everyone else, get to work on figuring out WHY a company should work with you instead of everyone else.

8. It is about them, what they need - not about what you want to sell them. For some of your that statement alone will be worth taking the time to read this.

9. They have big problems to solve, like global competition and we need to be more than an ista fix.

10. Follow a process for defining your ideal customer, targeting & prospecting to them, qualifying their pain, budget and possible gain, engaging in their purpose, creating a win/win solution, a process for closing as well as a process for quality service delivery.

11. Do the work or none of what you learn matters

Next Week we will be delving into

Defining Your Market Niche and Prospecting 101