KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Conscious Hiring: An Operationally Efficient Sales Hiring Process That Gleans World-Class Results

As business leaders of scaling organizations you know that the success of your organization  depends on the quality of the people inside. KeenHire Talent Management’s Conscious-Hiring webinar enables you to learn how to identify the right people for the right roles directly impacting your ability to achieve corporate sales objectives.

Registration for Conscious Hiring Webinar is FREE

Date: August 2, 2011

Time: 10:30 - 12:00 PST

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW!

During this high-powered webinar you change the way you think about your employees' impact on your business while raising your level of expertise and control in choosing your sales team wisely.

By engaging in this Conscious Hiring process you hone in on the key elements it takes to produce consistent sales results in your sales organization and you learn to identify the core sales behaviors, values and competencies needed to achieve those results reliably over time.

You walk away with:
1. A blueprint for creating a highly effective Conscious-Hiring process
2. Insight into Role Analysis, and why it is the key to effective sales hiring
4. Understand how & why to use psychometric assessment tools
5. Review Behavioral Interviewing techniques; the when, why and how

 

The Expert

Margaret Graziano is a torch bearer in the Staffing and Recruitment industry. Her visionary ability, astute knowledge of full life cycle Talent Management and her tenure in the field, positions her far ahead of the Human Capital innovation curve. In the early 2000's Graziano shifted her mindset from recruiter working to make a placements to consultant committed to building extraordinary workforces. She added a talent management division to her staffing operation, adopted a world-class conscious hiring and placement process and significantly invested in her own personal and professional development. She utilizes her certifications in Organizational Development, Behavioral Interviewing, Psychometric Assessment usage, Role Analysis and Employee Retention to create curriculum and programs that elevate KeenHire's customers' ability to hire and retain the right people.

REGISTER NOW!

Can't make the webinar, visit the KeenHire on line store and purchase tools, workbooks, scripts, manuals, assessments, CD's, DVD's, books and more!

5 Ways to Retain Your Top Talent

While the recession is easing and unemployment figures are falling, there is another set of numbers that doesn't look so good.

KeenJobs: New Position Available

At KeenHire, we strive to provide our clients with the best candidates for the job. Our proven hiring process is geared to provide results for our clients, helping to launch successful relationships between a company and its employees. We know that talent is everywhere and the right person for the right job can be harder to find that expected. KeenJobs extends our clients' available positions to our readers in search for the perfect candidate! Here is a new position we're currently searching to fill:

Recruitment: Why Change is Good

Global employment is changing rapidly. Within the last 20 years, we've witnessed highs and lows that have redefined the way talent is acquired, assessed, and implemented into the various business environments of the modern world. This change has been a result of global events, government regulations, and a changing economic climate that has demanded efficiency. Not only is this change revolutionizing the recruitment and hiring process, but is benefiting both recruiters and growing companies alike.

If the Job Could Talk...

By Bill J. Bonnstetter

 

JOB TALK

If a job could talk, it would explain precisely what was necessary to achieve superior performance. We could ask it to tell us about the:

• Knowledge a person needs,
• Personal attributes required to drive success,
• Rewards for superior performance,
• Hard skills vital for the job,
• Behaviors necessary to perform at peak levels, and
• Intrinsic motivators.

But we all know that jobs can't talk. If they did, we would certainly hear the real story.

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.

103K new jobs in Dec. point to slow, steady growth

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writer Christopher S. Rugaber, Ap Economics Writer 1/7/2011

"WASHINGTON – The nation's economy added 103,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4 percent last month, its lowest level in 19 months.

But the job growth fell short of expectations based on a strengthening economy. And the drop in unemployment was partly because people stopped looking for work.

Private employers added a net total of 113,000 jobs last month and the government shed 10,000 jobs, the Labor Department said Friday.

"It's a bit of a mixed bag," said Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody's Analytics. Many analysts hoped to see larger job gains, and the drop in the unemployment rate is unlikely to be sustained, he said.

"The labor market ended last year with a bit of a thud," he said. "But I think things will get much better this year."

The economy has shown signs of steady improvement in recent weeks, leading many economists to expect more job creation. The Labor Department said Thursday that fewer people applied for unemployment benefits over the month than in any four-week period in more than two years. An increase in consumer spending made this past holiday season the best in four years.

There were positive signs in the December jobs report. Government revisions showed more people were hired in previous months than the government first estimated. The economy added 210,000 jobs in October, above the previous figure of 172,000. November's total was revised to 71,000, up from 39,000.

Over the past three months, the economy has added an average of 128,000 jobs. That's just enough to keep up with the population growth. Nearly double is generally needed to significantly reduce the unemployment rate.

But other factors can affect the unemployment rate, at least temporarily. One key reason for the drop was that the government no longer counts people as unemployed when they stop looking for work.

Fewer people said they were out of work last month. The number of unemployed fell by more than 500,000 to just under 14.5 million, the lowest since April 2009.

Still, the unemployment rate has topped 9 percent for 20 months, the longest such streak on record. And even with last year's job gains, the unemployment rate fell only from 9.7 percent to 9.4 percent.

The stock market showed little reaction to the report. The Dow Jones industrial average rose by about 10 points in morning trading.

Through all of 2010, the nation added 1.1 million jobs, or an average of 94,000 jobs a month.

Economists expect hiring will ramp up this year, with some predicting double last year's total of jobs or more. A tax cut package that goes into effect this month should boost consumer and business spending.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a more optimistic outlook for the economy during testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. Still, Bernanke said it could take four to five years for unemployment to drop to a historically normal rate of around 6 percent.

"Persistently high unemployment, by damping household income and confidence could threaten the strength and sustainability of the recovery," he warned.

The health care and leisure and hospitality sectors showed the strongest job gains last month. Health care added about 36,000 jobs, while restaurants and hotels hired more than 29,000 new workers.

Retailers added 12,000 net new jobs, after shedding jobs the previous month. Manufacturers hired a net total of 10,000 new workers, after losing jobs for four straight months. The bleeding continued in construction, which cut 16,000 jobs.

Companies hired nearly 16,000 temporary workers, the fewest since July.

Including those who are working part time but would prefer full-time work, and those who have given up looking for work, the underemployment rate was 16.7 percent last month. That's down from 17 percent in November.

The average work week didn't increase, remaining at 34.3 for the third straight month. That's a negative sign, since companies are likely to work their existing employees more before hiring new ones.

Average hourly earnings moved up by 3 cents, to $22.78."

Article by: Christopher S. Rugaber as found on Yahoo! News

Shifting The Context For Employee Performance Reviews

You walk into the manager’s office and close the door. It has been nearly a year since you last sat in this room. Today is your yearly performance review, but as you both shuffle papers, you haven’t a clue what is going to be discussed.

You’ve done great work, but does your manager know that? When’s the last time the two of you discussed your objectives, or you received any kind of feedback? Every day you work hard, but what’s it all amounting to?

If this scene is familiar, or if your organization also struggles with performance management, you’re certainly not alone. It’s a common problem for companies, especially during performance reviews. At KeenHire, we traced performance management issues to a few deficiencies, specifically a lack of performance indicators, misplaced priorities and improper managerial training.

Optimize Performance Indicators

Without clear, established performance indicators, it’s difficult for both managers and employees themselves to measure success. Many times, a manager will establish performance metrics, but won’t develop a way to effectively measure and track those indicators.

Along those lines, if metrics are not tied to a company’s objectives or if the position lacks a well-defined purpose, it’s hard to measure an employee’s long-term success or improve corporate performance.

Improve Performance Management – Make It Priority No. 1

If a company doesn’t consistently dedicate time and resources to performance management, it won’t develop a culture of ongoing growth, especially if performance reviews are conducted on just a yearly basis.

Without feedback from managers, employees can’t improve performance, learn and grow. Also, without regular interaction, the employee-manager relationship suffers, which directly impacts the effectiveness of performance reviews. If managers don’t understand the day-to-day activities of their employees, how can they accurately evaluate corporate performance?

Performance Management 101

If managers are not trained in how to provide effective, meaningful feedback, no matter how accurate a position’s performance metrics or how regular evaluations are, a performance review is still destined to fail.

Especially if managers don’t like to give criticism, reviews can become overly lenient, biased and ultimately ineffective, which makes performance improvement difficult.

The KeenHire Solution

At KeenHire, we believe to optimize performance management systems you need a strong, well-designed hiring process. Without a good hiring practice, companies fail the first test of performance management – matching the right people to their ideal position.

However, “most companies have problems with performance management because they either have not identified clear metrics for effective performance on the job, or do not measure those metrics objectively or haven’t tied them to development and rewards,” says Stephanie Marberry, PhD; Organizational Development consultant and Keenview product manager at KeenHire.

That’s why we developed the KeenHire 5 Pillar Conscious Hiring and Selection process. With it, we help your organization build a solid foundation and improve performance management.

• Organizational Workforce Planning
• Key Contributor Benchmarking and Role Analysis
• Candidate Sourcing
• Selection
• On-boarding

We’ll help you every step of the way, from thoroughly defining a position’s unique purpose to outlining its performance management metrics and long-term objectives. During performance reviews, you’ll have all the resources necessary to measure the position’s success and accurately evaluate the employee.

If you’re looking to learn from the finest recruiters and Organizational Effectiveness consultants, join us at our certification program KeenHire Talent Management’s Talent Strategy 3.0. You’ll learn to:

• Build and develop your people strategy
• Create an employee brand proposition
• Search for and select the perfect candidate
• Improve your on-boarding, training, and optimize performance management and employee development programs

After becoming certified, you can use your knowledge to improve corporate performance management systems across your organization and develop and retain your employees.

To learn more about Talent Strategy 3.0 and other seminars, head to our KeenHire seminars page. To see how a KeenHire consultant can improve performance management systems at your company, contact us today.

After becoming certified, you can use your knowledge to improve performance management systems across your organization and develop and retain your employees.

To learn more about Download EmployerofChoice-TS3.0 and other seminars, head to our KeenHire seminars page. To see how a KeenHire consultant can help improve your company’s performance management systems, contact us today. 888-533-6447