KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

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 god 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.

Does Your Recovery Strategy Include a Talent Management Strategy?

If the reports are true and employee disengagement is on the rise, when 25% of your Key Contributors, Mission Critical players and Next level leaders become the departed, who will take their place? 

What systems are you putting in place to have the departing knowledge and skills effectively transferred to the impending replacements?  What retention strategies are you implementing to avoid loosing the 25%?

Experts who have studied the global economic situation, America’s long awaited recovery, workforce statistics and workplace psychology fear that in many organizations employees are ill equipped to carry out new business strategies that will be critical to a companies ability to compete and thrive in a global economy.

Business and Human Capital pundits hypothesize that in a recession-altered workplace, employees are often adrift, without well-defined roles and accountability or managers who have a grasp on how to actually execute the business leaders key strategies and metrics.

Many of the nations largest companies have or are implementing new ways of attracting and recruiting the best talent for key contributor roles, stimulating their ongoing engagement and amplifying their reasons for staying.  If the largest companies are doing this with a vengeance the smaller, mid sized and newer, mission driven, socially responsible companies need to take note and get in action.

Some popular initiatives that I have seen with KeenHire's Recruitment Process In-sourcing and Talent Management Process In-sourcing customers are:

1.    Making Organizational Development & effective Recruitment a priority
2.    Altering the objectives, roles and accountability of HR Management
3.    Hiring the right people who shared common values and purpose
4.    Establishing an on-line employment presence flaunting their EVP
5.    Reducing Executive compensation before reducing employee comp
6.    Sending daily motivational positive messages
7.    Providing employee development, mentoring and coaching for hi-po’s
8.    Creating On-boarding programs that stimulate early engagement & bonding
9.    Making rewards personable and customized
10.  Building relationship strategies into management
11.  Implementing a top grading culture


There is no better feeling in the world than when a high potential employee recognizes the value of a program that Keen implements. I have had the privilege to work on several organizational development, recruitment and talent management projects where the mission critical, key contributor and next level leaders were positively impacted by the initiatives we implemented.  It is a great feeling to find someone a job; it is a very powerful experience to elevate his or her career and impact.

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

Recruiting: Filling The Talent Pipeline

Filling the Recruiting Pipeline  

Sourcing and Selection are two very different worlds. One puts as many applicants in the pool as possible and the other sorts and selects the best fit for the fulfillment of the positions’ key objectives.  Given there is a War for Talent many companies fear that they can not afford to be highly selective in their recruitment efforts. The reality is while there is a war, there is also a recession which means certain industries are dying and with that is the emergence of talent from hidden sectors. 

If you strategize effectively you will easily attract solid ‘core’ talent from industries that are highly compatible to yours. Yes, you may have to train the candidate to your company, products and services. However if you conduct the hiring process with thoroughness and integrity you hire ONLY the best suitable talent - rather hiring the best suitable experience (which we all know backfires when it’s the wrong ‘fit’). Either way you have to train a newcomer to your firm, so it is your choice whether you want to train and fix bad behaviors or invest in up front industry, product and service training.  

To attract, hire and retain the “right” talent Keep in mind there are now a multitude of cost effective options and alternatives.  If you are choosing to pay a fee, or hire a contract recruiter ensure your recruiter is highly skilled in both search and selection, or consider outsourcing pieces of the processes to firms or people who are highly skilled in a specific area, or make certain that your internal resources have all the tools & training  they need to improve their hiring batting average.

Options for Generating Candidates at the top of the funnel:

A. Hire a Contract Recruiter, a full scale Search Firm or a local Employment Agency

Interviewing & Hiring A Recruitment firm or Professional Recruitment Contractor:
Questions you may want to ask.
1) How many placements have you made in our field/niche/industry/position level?
2) What is your passive candidate strategy? Please outline it.
3) What system are you utilizing to evaluate your candidates strengths, behaviors,and competencies as they compare to our immediate and long term needs for the role?
4) What is your due diligence process? Who pays for that?
5) What is the average tenure of your placements?
6) Will you consider a fee arrangement with a percentage weighted on retention
7) How many customers have you retained for 5+ years?

B. Sourcing Candidates through the Boards & Internet

1) If you using the boards to source candidates – hiring a 3rd party sourcing company might be a prudent option; these companies have armies of people who scour the job boards while we in America are sleeping. The average cost of this service is $1500.00 per search to $2500.00 per month.  Different companies charge based on the deliverable. This emerging industry is rapidly taking their stake in the talent acquisition sector.
           
2) Resume Search Aggregation and Filtering – these are software as a service subscriptions that take your job specifications and pull appropriate resumes from a multitude of job boards. This type of software can save your internal Sourcers or Recruiters hundreds of hours.

3) Posting technology - There is job board and social media posting technology that takes your single job posting and delivers it to hundreds of specialty sites in seconds. Pretty cool!

C. Passive Candidate Acquisition: Social Networking 

1) If you chose this route make sure you are hiring/contracting with a person who has no fear of rejection, is willing and able to make an abundant of outbound calls on a regular basis and who has strong talent in navigating around the internet.

2) Linked in and Face Book are by far two of the most effective ways to find passive talent. 

D. New Fashioned Head hunting

How is your recruiter planning on building the list of who to call? Do they have the resources for list building; will they outsource this function; if so how much will that cost?  There are excellent technology solutions that your recruiters need be using to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. 

E. Create an EVP and promote the hell out of it

Find out why people work for your company, find out why they stay. Create an Employee Value proposition and promote it on social media, industry sites, internally, to customers, to local colleges and vocational schools, etc. 

F. Pay Referral Bonuses

G. Build Your Internal Recruitment Team to Maximize Your People ROI

Consider implementing B-F with a carefully selected and trained internal recruitment team. The internal team must be evaluated based on hiring metrics, retention, efficiency and value they provide.

The bottom line is make sure you are investing in the right solution for your unique situation.

What I Love About Working With Recruitment And Staffing Businesses

Someone recently asked me why I enjoy working with staffing and recruiting people.  The answers probably have something to do with why I myself, spent 25 years as an active member of the industry.

Lets start with the industry as a whole; overall the staffing industry, temp, perm (oops direct), contract staffing and executive search all have something in common. We surround ourselves in people contact all day, every day; as an industry we have a better finger on the pulse of why people stay at companies and why people leave companies than any other industry on the planet.   We also know what the job market needs and what it wants, before the newspapers and CNN have even begun to think to ask.  Additionally we are amongst the first that feel the onset of a recession, so in some ways we are pretty astute economic fortune-tellers.  As an industry we put people to work, we give people hope, dignity and purpose.  As an industry we make new friends easily, keep friends and maintain our networks.

When I look at the people who flock to and make it in the staffing industry, I see so many commonalities, many which bring a smile to my face, some don’t and I’ll list those as well.

Most people I have met, are friends with, or have assessed all share a strong sense of urgency about their business, how they make decisions and how they serve their customers.  They also are for the most part bit on the competitive side, they like to win the games they play and the business they go after. They like a lot of action and enjoy the frenzy of the flurry of the deal or multiple deals coming in or closing at once. They know the numbers tell the story so they watch the numbers and encourage healthy activity.  They learn from their mistakes, as one can only spend so much time with the wrong candidates, clients, prospects, orders or co-workers.  They also like being evaluated on performance, the bottom line. They do or they don’t, trying is not something an experienced successful staffing person enjoys saying or hearing, especially out of their own mouth.

I would say most of my colleagues in staffing have a good sense of humor, and learn as time goes by, to find the humor in every no show, mis hire, client debacle, lost fee or candidate betrayal.  What starts out as a disappointment or angry rant typically dissipates into some long lasting joke or key lesson for future hires to laugh over and learn.

On the not so cheery side, most people in the staffing industry have a very healthy dose of Ego, with a capital E. At times that Ego, while shielding them from rejection also gets in their way of getting better, hearing the truth and making needed changes – in business and in personal relationships.  I know this because I have lived it.

And then there is the shoemakers kids, the staffing industry by far a has the worse turn over of any professional services industry. Although the BLS does not track our industry independently, most agency owners report close to a 45% turn over of established staff in tough times and 65-68% fall offs of new people hired who lack the right stuff to stay long enough to make the impact the company needed to justify the hire.  That is darn scary. Some people attribute the turn over to us making the job look too easy, because we are just so great at it, others say we adopt the practice 'place the best and hire the rest', and others say it's because we take care of ourselves and our businesses last.  

All in all, the staffing industry houses some of my favorite people, fondest memories and life long friendships, not to mention every aspect of my entire adult business life.  I am glad to be a part of it and happy that I am working with so many great new comers, established professionals and successful business leaders. In an effort to better serve our readers and customers we are asking that you click on the following link and take this Keen offerings survey. Thank you for your partnership and your support.

https://app.e2ma.net/app2/survey/25372/15365/9edbcfae7b/

Hard Won Staffing Lessons And Where We Go from Here

 

Although staffing employment traditionally is a leading indicator of recovery, professional recruiters today look forward with caution. This recession feels different -- not just a slowdown, but a disruption of the way business has been done.   As you formulate a strategic plan for 2010, ask yourself: "Can I afford a return to business-as-usual?"  Monster spoke to leaders in staffing whose hard-won wisdom points to a better future.

Staffing Solutions that Innovate

Dan Boersma of Laguna Source in Laguna Beach, CA specializes in finding talent for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device makers. He's managed the downturn with a three-part strategy of client service, industry knowledge and old-fashioned hustle.

"In this recession, you're working twice as hard to make three quarters as much money," Dan asserts. "The big positive is you have a little bit of free time, to say, 'Hey, we have some time on our hands, what can we do that's going to help us long-term?'"

Talent shortages in his niche have helped, but as even successful companies try to do more with less, Dan finds he has to narrow his focus to develop deeper relationships with clients. This is the time to listen, to learn more about coming technologies and the skills needed to harness them, and to build trust.

Dan and his team watch for announcements on venture funding and company earnings that signal staffing opportunities. Press releases and news articles are obvious conversation-starters with potential clients. Less obvious is Dan's observation that his best currently-employed candidates are more reluctant to move to a new employer. They need reassurance that a medical technology firm, for example, will have staying power. Whether positive or negative, industry developments point to hidden corners where top talent and new prospects on both sides of the recruitment equation are open to change. Dan says, "If a company's doing layoffs, I want to be the first to talk to their people."

And then there's plain old bearing down in tough times. "In a downturn, recruiters tend to get down on themselves and the business," Dan says. "It's easy to blame things on a bad economy, but we get here early, stay late, work on weekends…staying aggressive like this has just kept us going."

Service, research, and hard work deliver. It's a simple plan, and it works for Laguna Source.

Rethinking Staffing Services

Margaret (Margo) Graziano of KeenHire in San Jose is taking the reinvention route; she believes that the fundamentals of staffing have shifted, and the future belongs to those who broaden their services.

Margo has moved her Talent Management Division from "getting people into chairs" to a form of human capital management consulting. KeenHire's clients, also caught in the disruptions of the Great Recession, face many hiring complications that boil down to doing more with less. They profit from expertise she's developed across the entire talent acquisition timeline, such as:



Risk Mitigation
"Clients are asking us to help them not hire the wrong people, because they can't afford to make mistakes," says Margo. Staffing can't just supply candidates and hope it works out (or blame a bad hire on a client's managers). Risk mitigation means helping a client design teams. What's the right mix of talents for a new initiative or product? How should the team work? Can the company adapt, and how?

It also means retention. "We see a lot more effort and money being spent on keeping the good people," observes Margo.

Hiring Improvements
Job descriptions can be a vise, squeezing the wrong person into a job because she happens to have the right skills. Margo counters this problem by assessing people well beyond skills. "I look carefully at the people who are already doing well in the job and build what we call a 'DNA thumbprint' of what the ideal candidate looks like -- not their resume but their values, beliefs, competencies and behaviors. We actually find and staff organizational development professionals, industrial psychologists, training and development people, HR, talent management people, talent acquisition, full-time and contract recruiters."

Human Resource Management
Human capital consulting from staffing companies can add value to processes like onboarding, top-grading and retention strategies. Once the staffing company has supplied great talent, it can help the client hold onto those people. This is more service, and while it reduces churn (and -- let's admit it here -- churn can make short-term profits for staffing companies) it deepens customer attachment and creates new services to sell.

"It goes beyond the hiring moment," Margo concludes. "We work with companies to help them develop coaching programs and training and development programs for their high potential people."

Where Staffing Goes from Here

As you plan for 2010, consider these likelihoods:

1) Staffing will see a resurgence but not a return to business as usual. The collapse of whole business areas and re-alignment of money (think automotive and health care, for two examples) means that client needs will change.

2) The super-candidate syndrome will continue. Margo Graziano suggests that staffing lead the conversation away from "Super Resume" to "Super Candidate" by finding greater alignment in values and capabilities than single skills.

3) There is no substitute for persistence and hard work, especially with your most creative employees. Open your business to their suggestions. Experiment. Be aggressive. Learn and change.

Great practitioners of staffing recognize a tectonic shift brought by such a brutal recession. Companies big and small will have to do more with less. Even as business picks up, the opportunity to lead change -- for your clients and your business -- is too exciting to miss.

By Doug Hardy: Monster Staff Writer