KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

The Retention Issue: How To Assess Candidates, Perfect Selection and Retain Top Talent

According To Noah Webster, retention is the act or power of keeping or retaining, but Corporately, retention is the power to keep employees actively engaged and committed to being an integral part of the organization. So what is retention like in this day in age? Are employers on the same page as their employees when it comes to effective performance and talent management?

According to the SHRM Workplace Forecast of 2011, our workplace trends are directly related to talent acquisition, selection & retention. All of these being consecutive to one another and going hand in hand with creating a successful business.

A recent survey on employee performance and retention conducted by Express Employment Professionals, one of the nation's largest privately held staffing companies, found that employers are more disconnected than ever from their workforce. Express' survey revealed that 77 percent of leaders say retention was not a problem or only a slight problem in 2011, while 91 percent of employees said they are willing to switch jobs. These extreme figures should be waking up the employers of our nation, and creating a call to action that something’s not right.

With Employee turn over in the US at 16.4 percent what is there to do? How do you shift your talent management, selection and retention in a way that that increases your profit, your employee satisfaction and turnover?

First of all strong leadership is imperative right now in order to enhance your management operating style, implementing accountability systems, while building and developing high-performance teams.

Talent acquisition can only be beat one way: putting the right people in the right roles. How do we do that? By perfecting selection. Selection can be managed with internally, with a 3^rd party recruiter or using both. Whichever your company decides to go with you must ensure that their skills, personality, and values align with the job and the company. Developing Interview strategies that include pre-established critical screening questions, an in-depth career history review and custom built behavioral interview models prevent the unhealthy corporate impact as well as the high cost of a mis-hire.

Over all the corporate response must be to link employee performance and its impact on the organization’s business goals. Doing this will keep employees goals align with the company’s, creating increasing accomplishment and happier on track employees.

So try something different, create a new hiring process, change the way you interview and beef up your leadership training and finally retain the talent you need. 

To learn more about retention, talent management and see how to create a conscious hiring process, visit us at keenhire.com. We equip companies with systems, processes and people to hire & retain with clarity and insight.

By: Emily Eastman

Cutting Edge Talent Analyst Position Now Open! San Jose

You are a full life cycle recruiter who loves what you do! You experience yourself as a person who operates with a high level of integrity, and you want to work in an environment that rewards your high quality standards and precise candidate recommendations. You are an analytical and service-minded professional with a solid and stable work history, 5 years of expertise in recruiting, and 3 years of selection-based hiring and recruitment process efficiency. You have well defined organizational and planning skills and a strong desire to make a difference for people in their careers, lives, and workplaces. 

As a KeenHire Talent Analyst you are a key staff person responsible for quality assurance and for delivering in Top Grading and Recruitment initiatives on time and within budget. 

You pride yourself on your solution-oriented behavior; your critical thinking skills and your excellent follow up and follow through as well as your highly effective talent evaluation and matching skills. You enjoy a highly productive, fast paced work environment where you have to juggle multiple priorities daily to meet your customer and candidates’ needs. You thrive in a role where you are the ultimate quality assurance person responsible for making an organizational impact, achieving quality standards and strengthening customer relationships. 

We are KeenHire Talent Management; we provide the next generation of recruitment and retention solutions to growing organizations where hiring the RIGHT mission critical, key contributor and leadership talent for the right roles is imperative to their success. We are growing and need the right person to work as an integral part of our team and act as a key contributor in this very important Recruitment, Project Management and QA role.

The ideal opportunity for you is one that you are challenged at every day, where you get to continually learn new concepts, skills and processes and one that allows you to work with a team of committed individuals who are out to make a difference and shift what is possible in the workplace.

You enjoy working in an upbeat, inspiring office with a committed team. You are excited about the monthly opportunity to travel and grow your career. The ideal role for you for you allows you to play to your strengths, be a ‘go to’ team member add value and make a difference for your customers and peers. 

Job Requirements 

• 5+ years full cycle recruiting
• 3 yrs selection-based hiring and recruitment process efficiency 
• Excellent phone voice
• Persuasive communicator
• highly attuned analytical skills
• MS Office

Get excited about a career with KeenHire! Click HERE to apply now!

Choosing To Win During A War For Talent

By: John Kurzatkowski.

I currently work with Margaret at KeenHire as a Sr. Recruitment Consultant, and wanted to share with you a bit more about how to win in the midst of a war for talent. 

As the business-news media competes for our attention by flashing information on the impending talent shortage, some of us listen with a keen ear while others turn to more urgent, pressing issues. After 22+ years in the human resources business, I don’t need the media to tell me there is going to be a problem; I already feel it in my bones, similar to how my grandfather used to know it was going to rain by his knees aching. When your business is the business of finding talent you are the first to feel ANY inkling of change in the marketplace. Although I may feel like I run a best-in-class business, and I may have evidence that I know how to skin the cat better than the competitor, KeenHire is all the more faced with the challenge of locating new talent for myself and my clients in a diminishing talent pool marketplace. 

Lets Talk Retention

According to Noah Webster, "Retention is the act or power of keeping or retaining. Corporately, retention is the power to keep employees actively engaged and committed to being an integral part of the organization."

Webster separates employee retention from standard retention. However, I have read about, seen and experienced a direct correlation of employee retention with stock price and EBITA. When a company does a great job of hiring the right people and then they do a great job of retaining them, they maximize their ability to secure and retain market-share. The businesses that have cracked the code on recruitment and talent management hold on to customers longer, are in a position to proactively solve their customers’ problems, and have the ability to be on the leading edge in offering new and innovative solutions to their customers because of a steady stream of new knowledge and solid relationships. The correlation between employee retention and profitability makes perfect sense.

Impacting your company’s ability to retain your key contributors, mission-critical players and next-level leaders begins with you understanding where people are at from a  of view.

It is important to note that today’s workplace psychological state is at an all-time low—peopleare too discouraged to go the extra mile; they are waiting for the other shoe to drop. The workforce of 2010 is mistrustful and skeptical. The top issues affecting workplace psychology and employee engagement are “warm chair attrition,” when the body shows up but the mind and heart have been left at home, and “corporate cocooning,” when the mature, highly experienced worker is hoarding information, afraid to share with or train others for fear of being replaced. Yet another is young working parents choosing their families first. Many in this group opt for working at home or only going to the office part-time. A great many people in this demographic are looking for “life/work navigation,” as they have seen firsthand how putting the job first and family second is crippling, un-fulfilling and littered with false rewards. One thing for sure is that in most situations and for most of your workforce: Corporate Loyalty Is Dead.

Competitive, astute employees are adopting a free-agent mentality and building their own relationships outside the company with vendors, customers and ex-employees so they are always ahead of the networking curve. Additionally these mission critical players, key contributors, and highly sought after next-level leaders are constantly improving their skill set so when the ax falls, they have opportunities lined up and waiting.

Recently HR Executive magazine conducted an engagement survey with hundreds of high-performing high potentials from all over the nation, and what they published was somewhat surprising, to say the least. Their study reported that 45% of all internal “candidates” within anorganization’s promotion pipeline are currently looking to leave the organization.

In another survey, conducted by Harris Poll and CareerBuilder, the results were just as compelling:

• 41% of employees are not satisfied with their jobs
• 46% say their workload has increased
• 33% feel they’re at a dead end at their current job
• 78% believe they are coping with “burnout”
• 56% are not glad they chose to work for their current employer
• 63% believe their top management does not display integrity and morality.

Any company that values the power of their human capital, believes that their people are their competitive advantage, is aware of the cost of replacing a great employee, and does not have a progressive talent strategy in place should be nervous. If you are not, take a look at this chart. It makes a great visual. Think about if your company lost their best salesperson to the competition. These days even your ironclad non-compete would most likely only slow them down. They might not call on your customers, but they can take their brain and everything they learned while in your operation and use it against you.

The problem is a big one and a strategic, systemic one at that. Not having enough knowledge-workers leads to longer development times, lower sales coming into the organization, fragmented customer service, a reduction in innovation and, eventually, lost customers. Hiring the wrong people because you are in a “rush” leads to more unwanted turnover, and that turnover comes at a high cost. Not knowing what makes your people tick leads to an incubation of the “free agent mentality.” The bottom line: the demographic and psycho-graphic challenges facing our companies cannot be avoided or ignored. Furthermore, the cost of doing nothing far outweighs the cost of being proactive and creating high-impact solutions that affect your bottom-line profitability and stakeholder equity.

Your company must decide if people are your competitive advantage, and if they are, you must strategically cause a corporate transformation, adopt a talent mindset and lead the way. Once you adopt and engage the rest of the leadership and management team in the talent mindset,you need to develop a people, or better said, talent strategy that lives and breathes throughout the organization.

Applying the Win/Win principle to the “War” for Talent

As the business-news media competes for our attention by flashing information on the impending talent shortage, some of us listen with a keen ear while others turn to more urgent, pressing issues. After 22+ years in the human resources business, I don’t need the media to tell me there is going to be a problem; I already feel it in my bones, similar to how my grandfather used to know it was going to rain by his knees aching. When your business is the business of finding talent you are the first to feel ANY inkling of change in the marketplace. Although I may feel like I run a best-in-class business, and I may have evidence that I know how to skin the cat better than the competitor, KeenHire is all the more faced with the challenge of locating new talent for myself and my clients in a diminishing talent pool marketplace.

The looming & ‘impending’ talent shortage seems to be creeping up right from under us. KeenHire has more specified search requests than we have had in 5 years. As companies proactively deal with succession planning and building bench strength, we are seeing salaries going up, qualifications becoming more stringent, and expected outcomes for the candidates showing up as more measurable as well as difference making. All this with less people to chose from makes for a very competitive market place for employers and candidates alike.

So how does a company who has ambitious goals compete for talent in the midst of a WAR for it?

You could outsource. You could offshore. You could take on employing the at-home passive work force, like Jet Blue and Southwest. You could take on hiring the flexible work force, students, retirees and parents. You could home grow your talent, become a farm club of sorts, which many of my clients are doing very successfully. You could pay large retainers and then wait while the search firm does the searching. You could develop your company as an employer of choice where 'win/win' is the norm; where people feel they are not just serving your corporation's needs, but their needs are getting fulfilled as well.

Recruiting As A Career

You are considering employment in one of the fastest growing industries in business today. The Recruitment and HR Consulting industry is challenging and rewarding and solves real business issues such as workforce scalability, organizational effectiveness, operational efficiency, corporate profitability and market expansion. 

You are considering employment in an extremely competitive industry, one where only the strong, ethical and top tier Recruitment and HR consultants thrive.

Successful consultants have a driving force of internal motivation.  They come in early and stay late.  The first five years in the Recruitment and HR consulting industry requires intense learning. Effective HR and Recruitment consultants bring mastery in learning, focus and intensity.  Focus and intensity is determining what actions you need to take and what there is to do and then actively doing it.  Winning HR and Recruitment consultants produce the results they promise in the time frame they promise. 

Most importantly, triumphant HR and Recruitment consultants have a strong sense of urgency and serve customers in the time frame allotted.  Robust Recruitment and HR consultants have an innate ability to read people, to listen intently and facilitate a quality match between the right candidate, the right role and the right company.

Exceptional recruitment and HR consultants are known as honest, forthright business people who have a strong code of ethics. Self-assured Recruitment and HR consultants realize that mistakes happen and they learn the lesson the 1^st time, fail forward and quickly turn the problem into a solution.

Every successful expert in any field from professional athlete and musician to computer inventor and sales person invests a minimum of 10,000 hours perfecting their area of discipline and recruiting is no different. A flourishing Recruitment and HR consultant is constantly evaluating their performance, they celebrate and diagnose their success and autopsy their failures as well as use their lessons learned as grist for the mill. Any recruitment consultant that is effective, successful and fulfilled after their two first years in the business typically chooses Recruitment and HR Consulting as their life’s work.

Welcome you to the best industry on the planet!  Expect to make an impact every day. Expect to earn a salary commensurate with the results you produce. Expect to change lives, businesses and expect to be thoroughly engaged and fulfilled every day!

 

Margaret Graziano

Founder, KeenHire Talent Management

KeenHire Recruiter Certification Training - November 11, 2010

Performance Based Hiring Model Certification Training Agenda 11.11.10-11.13.10

THURSDAY AFTERNOON – Margaret Graziano

1:00-1:40         Montage, KeenHire Story, Charter  

1:40-2:10         Business Case

2:10-3:15         KeenHire Business Model Presentation

3:15-4:30         Conscious Hiring Presentation

4:30-5:00         Download 26step Conscious Hiring Process

5:00-6:00         Keen Case Studies (Duncan, Discovery, Clark, Les Mills)

6:00                  Social

7:00                  Dinner – Thea, San Jose  

FRIDAY MORNING – Margaret Graziano

8:00-9:30          Benchmarking/Role Analysis Overview

9:45-10:45        KPI Role Play

10:45-11:15      Task Analysis

11:15-11:45      Cluster Tasks

11:45-12:30      Selection Criteria (working lunch)

FRIDAY AFTERNOON -  Dr. Stephanie Marberry

1:00-2:15         Assessments & Behavioral Interviews - Why are they keys to hiring success?

2:30-4:00         Assessment Presentation

4:00-6:00         Introduction to Behavioral Interviewing Presentation and Software

6:00                  Social

7:00                  Dinner – Maggianos, San Jose  

SATURDAY MORNING – Dr. Stephanie Marberry

8:00-9:30         Behavioral Movies

9:30-10:00       Matrix Ranking

10:00-10:30     Pick Questions & Overview of Keentip and scoring (recruiter)

10:30-11:00     Mock Interview Role Play I

11:00-11:30     Mock Interview Role Play II

11:30-12:00     Rapid Recall

MANUALS & RESOURCE MATERIAL

• 26 Step Process
• Behavioral Interview

SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS

• 26 step overview (in manual)
• Sample Assessments (KeenClues, TriMetrix, Achiever)
• Behavioral Scan
• Training documents for sending and pulling assessments

 

 

Poaching- Recruitment Market 2010 -The War For Talent Is On

By Sharon L. Florentine

 

Poaching. Logic would have predicted the high unemployment rate would have put an end, at least temporarily, to the practice of recruiters and hiring companies competing for each other’s employees. Logic would be wrong, said a number of recruiters and hiring experts who spoke to TheLadders.

High unemployment has simply created more competition for employed candidates. “Our clients want the candidates who are currently working for their competitors,” said one Texas-based executive search professional who wished to remain anonymous. “They feel that these folks are obviously valuable since they haven’t been laid off, and they’d rather hire them than a candidate who may have been unemployed for some time and who they see as undesirable.”

As a result, executive search firms are under increasing pressure to poach employees and are forced to hone their skills at dislodging candidates from employment, which became harder to do during the recession that bred a desire among employees for job security above all other entitlements.

It’s usually about more than just a higher salary, said the recruiter from Texas. These ‘poachees’ are offered greater upward mobility, the opportunity to work on new products and up-and-coming projects, a better work-life balance, educational opportunities, etc.

When it comes to poaching, most executive recruiters practice a two-step tactic to dislodge the employee, the recruiter said. The executive search firm plants the seeds of doubt about leaving safe employment for a better opportunity and the hiring company (usually a human resources manager or hiring manager) picks a ripe candidate when they’re ready. It’s a bit of salesmanship, he said.

“We have to plant the seed of doubt, and then the hiring manager has to close the deal. In partnership with our hiring manager, we put on our salesperson hat, and we go to work finding out what we have to offer to incite those folks to move out of their current job.”

Once the candidate is sufficiently intrigued, and the seeds of doubt are planted, the recruiter said, the hiring manager or human resources manager at the client is responsible for closing the deal and making good on what the recruiter has promised.

“If we’ve accomplished what we set out to do, then by the second interview, these candidates are starting to think, ‘Maybe I’ve been too focused on this company (or job or career path).

Improve Your Bottom Line. Hire Smarter.

The fundamental goal of the KeenHire 5 Pillar Conscious Hiring™ and candidate selection process is to hire the right candidate for the right job in a company that values a candidates’ unique contribution.  An effective hiring process takes into consideration the strategic reason for the positions existence as well as the candidate’s individual work style, behaviors, motivation, and core competencies. The end result is a solid hire that performs in the role and produces the key performance metrics. 

While employee training and development are mandatory facets of a solid Talent Management Strategy, the results of such programs are almost always insufficient when created outside of an effective and efficient hiring process.  Any company committed to long term organizational success must build a hiring process that closes the performance management gap. We have all heard Jim Collin’s mantra, “Hire the right people, give them the right tools, get out of their way and let them perform”.  Creating, implementing & systematically utilizing a Conscious Hiring process for your business that hones in on the key elements to your organization’s long-term success is a critical element of your human resources strategy.

Our 5 Pillar Conscious Hiring and Selection Process™ defines and quantifies your company’s corporate culture and work environment, the role’s key performance indicators, the ideal candidate’s work style, attitudes, behaviors, competencies, motivations and values.  KeenHire’s Conscious Hiring process begins with strategic organizational workforce planning and company discovery and results in improved return on hiring investment, corporate profitability, workforce productivity and overall organizational effectiveness.

Keen’s recruitment, selection and hiring program takes the recruiting process and breaks it down into five specific pillars, each focusing on different element of the recruitment function; beginning with organizational workforce planning, then key contributor benchmarking and role analysis, then candidate sourcing, then selecting, and finally on-boarding. Creating a Conscious Hiring and Recruitment process is essential to the health and organizational effectiveness of any organization committed to serving and retaining customers.

Vice President Human Resources

YOU WILL LEAD THE TALENT MANAGEMENT CHARGE FOR EFFECTIVELY SCALING

THIS PEOPLE CENTRIC ORGANIZATION.

WORK AT HOME - 60%

TRAVEL WITH EXECUTIVE TEAM - 40%

Make your impact with one of the most successful, high profile Business Process Outsourcing firms in the U.S. and Canada!

VIPdesk has a strong track record of excellence with many high profile customers, is poised as a future 50 and has been an Inc 500 recipient for 3 years running. VIPdesk needs your expertise to scale.

 

Your strategies for High Volume Recruitment, Distance Learning and Employee Development, and keen Performance Management are keys to your success.

You are a high impact player in the Talent Management field. You have scaled a strategic human resources function from 1000 to 5,000+ employees.  You have expertise in implementing highly effective and scalable Retention, Training & Development, On Boarding, Performance Management and Recruitment programs for a customer-facing workforce.

The VIPdesk team are specialists in finding the right people with the right skills that improve our customers’ brand experience. Our team members provide a premium customer experience, build brand loyalty and drive results. We have over 800  customer care professionals (Concierges and Brand Ambassadors) in our 100% home-based workforce and are projecting 200% growth over the next 5 years.

You are a strategic minded, innovative and results oriented leader with a dynamic track record of success and a passion to be an integral member of a mission driven team.  You have an exceptional competency for developing Distance-learning programs through LMS and executing game changing people processes, systems and initiatives. Your ability to inspire and coach business leaders and managers through organizational change and growing cycles is exceptional.

VIPdesk is the award-winning pioneer of home-based virtual customer care solutions for global brand leaders committed to enhancing their brand experience. Serving over 40 client programs and 10 million customers, VIPdesk specializes in delivering Concierge Programs, Customer Care Services, and loyalty programs for national brand leaders in the travel, auto, financial services, and retail industries. You are excited about driving a positive culture in support of VIPdesk’s core values.

You are the ideal candidate if you posses a solid track record of success in high profile staffing for the retail or hospitality industries, have a strong business and human resources knowledge base, are actively engaged in staying ahead of the curve, have 7+ years in a HR leadership role.

You must have been instrumental in scaling a people centric organization and posses strong expertise in implementing full scope, best practice Talent Management solutions. 

To Apply : http://keenhire.sayhired.com/ci/apply.shp?which=837-1140-1413