KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Recruitment Process Management

2010-02-07T20:27:25-06:00

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.

How Can You Improve Performance Metrics and Employee Productivity?

2010-02-03T09:01:48-06:00

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.

Does Your Recovery Strategy Include a Talent Management Strategy?

2010-02-01T07:07:00-06:00

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.

Retention: Will Your Key Contributors Be There When You Really Need them?

2010-01-28T03:05:54-06:00

Even though Human Resource Executive’s Magazine is geared towards HR Management professionals, the January 2010 issue is excellent reading for any leader concerned with Talent Management. The cover story is about the necessity of Re-Engaging of Mission Critical, Key contributor and next level leadership talent. The most pressing post recession issues for leaders will be to provide highly engaged worker with the ability to execute new business strategies.

HRE reports that as the nation heads for an economic recovery, HR leaders at some of America’s largest companies will have to focus their attention on securing and keeping the talent capable of executing new post recession business strategies and metrics.

Isn’t that what we have been saying all along?

KeenHire Talent Strategy 3.0 program not only delves into the changing demographics effecting the US workforce and the companies employing it, we also dig deep into the continual stream of issues surrounding and effecting employee engagement, organizational design, recruitment, and talent retention. The course is quite content heavy however because of the group interaction the journey is barrel of fun!

The Washington based Executive Board reports that the number of disengaged workers has doubled during the recession of 2009 and 2010; even more disturbing many high potentials, workers who very possibly hold the key to a companies ability to press through the rebound are waiting with baited breath for a headhunters call. When the call comes, these highly valuable contributors will not only take it, they will leap at the chance to escape the last few years of misery. Actually another report by the same organization indicates that nearly ¼ of all high potentials are already looking for a new job and beyond that one in ten of the broader workforce is actively on the hunt for a new job.

In Peter Drucker's 5 New realities and 8 Business Strategies he speaks about Business Leaders being willing to see the truth even when it hurts. To ensure you are not running in front of the truck and scrambling for Talent Management and Recruitment solutions, the time for planning how your firm will handle these changing workforce realities is now.

2010 Goal Setting and Accountability

2010-01-26T11:10:00-06:00

It is January 26th, Have you Set your 2010 Goals and Action Plans yet?

Here is a quick overview of the process that Keen Coaching utilizes with our Emerging and Executive Leaders.

1. List 2009 Successes - Celebrate, pat yourself on the back, kiss the mirror, get a hug, give a hug

2. List 2009 Resentments, In-completions and Disappointments - then say what you need to say, burn them, laugh at them, but get over it.

3. List your 100 Life Goals

4. Look 5 years old and imagine your life as the masterpiece you want. What are you doing? Where are you living? What is your bank balance? How does it feel? Create Affirmations for each area of life that is important to you, be very descriptive of how life looks, feels and is in the future that you create.

5. Create a 1-2 page 2010 Plan - Business & Personal Goals in the areas of life that are important to you. For me it is Fitness,Family, Fun, Financial, Love Life, Work - not in that order. Chose what your overarching area of concentration for 2010 is going to be. Chose the Values that you will use to monitor your behavior. Set dates to each goal. Make them measurable. Add some ZIP and ZAP to the goals. Loose 10 lbs gets old and boring, like washing the toilets. Looking fabulous and sexy in the speedo is a bit more enticing.

6. Create a monthly habits chart - things you will do that bring out the best in your. Drink lots of water, do Yoga, meditate, Say thank you, etc. Download MonthlyHabitschart

7. Create a monthly score sheet for your goals so you can track your progress.

8. Create a Weekly Activity Tracking Sheet Download WeeklyGoalTracking2010

9.Use a daily 6 Most Inspired Actions worksheet to keep yourself attached to the weekly, monthly and annual goal.

10. Create a HOT, Fun, Inspiring Vision Board -See Above..... :)

11. Engage buddy you can count on to schedule weekly accountability calls with you, have a consequence for blowing the call.

2010 - Your Time To Ascend !

From The Trenches-Strategic Positioning For Recruitment and Staffing Firms

2010-01-24T22:38:36-06:00

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

2010-01-21T21:35:07-06:00

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.

You Are The Sum Of The 5 People You Spend Your Time With

2009-12-30T21:17:24-06:00

Sometimes that statement makes me cringe. If that statement is a true one, we all best be very selective with who we chose to call our friend and who we chose to give our time to.

I make friends easily. On planes, on trains, in cars, in bars, in courses, on horses, at lunch, upon a hunch, through my boys, because of my sporting toys..... it seems no matter where I go I come back with new friends. The real question for me to answer is, "How do I feel when I am on my way home from being with these people I am calling friends?".

Do I feel energized, powerful and giddy or am I drained and exhausted? Are my friends and business partners feeding my spirit or sucking the life out of me? Do they give what they take, or do they just take.

Do we share values, beliefs and commitments? Or do we share partying and fun over cocktails and gossip?

The naked truth at times hurts. Sometimes even people I have known and loved for a decade need to take a back seat because they are stealing my energy, time and in some cases my spirit.

One of my new friends and inspirations is a man named Michael Nila, Michael is the CEO of Guardian Quest. When we met we discussed everything from spiritual matters, leadership, parenting, sex, business and family. I was sharing with Michael my dilemma of as I get busier and have less time, how selective I need to be with what I do with my time. He says purging is part of life. Sometimes you see people because of the family connection, other times because of a deep bond and a need to be with that person, other times it is to fill in the space or out of obligation. The key is evaluate, assess, weigh the pros and cons of having certain people in your life. Sometimes when there are people who I am around out of guilt or fear they limit who else comes into my life and the time I would have to nurture the right relationships is wasted and misused. WOW, it seems pretty much like the coaching I give to hiring managers and business leaders on choosing their talent wisely. When the student is ready the teacher appears.

Michael believes that Magic moments are what ties people together and builds foundational bonds. Sharing things that matter, like life training programs, family events, kids sporting games, life losses, charity events, spiritual awakenings and uplifting adventures. He said that the ability to communicate good, bad, happy, sad, real feelings is critical. As he was speaking I kept checking in with myself for how I was interpreting his words. The thought that kept popping up was shared values. Common bonds, common life experiences, aligned beliefs, similar work ethics and missions in life.

It is a lot like hiring, right? You are the sum of the 5 people you surround yourself with in business. Are you surrounding yourself with challenging people who will up the ante or are you surrounding yourself with people who are happy just to have a place to call home?

My conversation with Michael was very timely, actually perfect as I plan for 2010. I chose ideal friendships, and ideal lover, ideal business partners, ideal employees and ideal customers, people of depth, purpose and passion. People who will call me to be at my best.

Cha Ching - Ring in the New Year!

Best of Success in 2010

Margo

2009-12-30T20:27:33-06:00

Who has made a difference for you in 2009?

Stop Jamming A Square Peg Into A Round Hole

2009-12-16T13:45:57-06:00

As a manager, have you ever had the experience of trying to ‘make’ an employee change, forcing an outcome from an employee to improve their performance or even worse; have you ever attempted to have them work differently by encouraging them to alter their natural work style, values, behaviors, beliefs and personality so they would perform better in their role, or for the betterment of the company?

As leaders of people, we often have to deal with ourselves to overcome the syndrome of

“I can fix and change people". As a peak performer in recruitment, for years I found myself placing the best and hiring the rest. As a small business owner, I was hiring 'C' candidates, because they were more affordable and selling myself on the myth that they would be better if someone just helped them and then I expended enormous amounts of my personal effort trying to overcome their ineffectiveness. My shortsightedness had me saving money on the front end and spending 3 times the savings on the back end. Until I went through a basic training from Vistage (formerly known as TEC), I was not present to the profit erosion that these non strategic hiring practices were causing.

Once having my eyes opened, I embarked on a hiring process development journey. I was committed to fixing my problem and I took courses on organizational assessment, behavioral interviewing, top grading, organizational development, personal transformation and executive coaching. Over the course of a decade I invested $100,000 in mastering 'putting the right people on the bus'. After much resistance and many breakthroughs, I finally learned the lesson handed down to me from my first mentor. "People are whole and complete and have everything they need to be successful, as long as you put the right people in the right role." It is your job to Choose Wisely"

There have been many books, articles, lectures and even case studies written on this subject. Companies like General Electric, PepsiCo, Spielberg Productions, DreamWorks, Google, Microsoft, The Limited and more have all publicly stated that a KEY factor to their enormous success was the people they chose to employ in key contributor, mission critical and leadership roles.

The new game in the business of Recruitment Process In-Sourcing

and Talent Management goes way beyond the norm thinking and acting of the past. Currently, everyone is buzzing about the need to find ‘those’ mission critical key contributors, and next level leaders in an economic crunch yet talent-deprived climate.

Certain companies foolishly believe that because it is a 'down economy' these excellent performers are walking the street, anxiously waiting to join their companies. The reality is regardless of what unemployment is, the real numbers about unemployment are not posted on CNN or Fox News. Unemployment for the highly skilled, white collar, college educated labor is no higher than 4% in many highly populated business sectors.

Companies who do not have a systematic hiring process for selecting A and high B players often hire mediocre candidates in this type of employment marketplace. They hire the low hanging fruit and then Managers and Leaders expend countless hours trying to fix dysfunctional behavior, mismatched values and non existent core competencies. What these same companies often experience is that the bottom 80% of the performers are taking up 80% of the managers time and effort.

Imagine if the right people where hired for the right roles. What would be the impact be on the bottom line? How about morale?

What would happen if the managers focus was on engaging, retaining and developing the top 20% of their workforce?

What would happen to productivity if the right people were taken to the next level?

How would your companies Recruitment Brand and Employee Value Proposition be effected if your leaders spent little to no "people" time trying to force change and the majority of their "people" time defining and executing a profit driven recruitment and retention strategy?

Named “Chicago Woman Business Owner of the Year” by the National Association of Women Business Owners in 2004, Margaret Graziano is committed to empowering people and organizations. Graziano is currently celebrating 16 years as a business owner, and she continues to innovate and offer new and cutting-edge services and products to her clients through offering KeenHire Recruitment and Talent Management Process In-Sourcing services.

2009-12-16T12:38:14-06:00

Guardian Quest Leadership Development - Michael Nila, Ondra Berry - Stellar training, stellar people.

7 Easy Steps To Becoming An Employer Of Choice

2009-12-15T00:51:07-06:00

Step 1 – Establish Your Employee Value Proposition

Tie your employment brand with your business strategy. Understand why people want to work for your organization and develop a program that attracts more ideal candidates through your doors.

Recommended Reading: Attracting Perfect Customers: The Power of Strategic Synchronicity, by Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez.

Step 2 – Establish a 'Cracker Jack' Candidate Sourcing Strategy

Do the work to find out where your ideal candidates are right now. Where do they hang out? What do they read? What do they do for fun?

Include Social Media tools, this means be a proactive social media presence. Have a credible, passionate, authentic person from your company talk to your ideal audience all the time, whether you are hiring or not. Provide value. Keep ideal candidates coming back for more, get them on your web site, create reasons for website and social media stickiness.

Be a talent scout. Enroll your team into scouting for additional contributors and mission critical players. Reward your people for quality recommendations.

Hire the right recruitment talent. Select your partners as wisely as you select your teammates. There are a ton of ‘recruitment’ alternatives in the marketplace. Choose a partner who is committed to your end game and will do a great job surfacing, selecting and assisting you in on-boarding top tier people for your organization.

Step 3- Conduct a Role Analysis – Let the job talk.

Define performance criteria before you start searching. Sit down and work through the KPI’s, Core functions and specific Selection Criteria with the key stakeholders impacted by the success or failure of the hire. Predetermine the “who” in who you need to hire. What values do they honor? What is their work ethic? For that matter, what are their ethics? What are the non-negotiable competencies, behaviors and emotional intelligence levels required in the role?

Recommended reading: The Truth About Managing People and Nothing but the Truth. Stephen Robbins.

Step 4- Establish a hiring process that holds your hiring team accountable for selecting the best and eliminating the rest.

Create a process and choose to stick to it. All to often a great process is defined and then a decision maker meets someone who strikes their fancy yet clearly does not meet the selection metrics required. The decision maker calls the shots, ignores the very process they implemented and pulls the trigger only to discover that a slick talker with a good story has bamboozled them into paying way to much money for way too little in return.

Step 5 – Begin amplifying the employment brand during the hiring process.

Create reasons for the right people to choose your organization. Continuing creating points of engagement. You are asking a great deal of the candidate throughout your hiring process, so think about what you can give in return. Keep in mind; ‘on-boarding’ begins with the first ‘hello’.

Step 6- Make an Astute Selection

Whether you are utilizing assessments, competency and behavioral based interviewing, top grading interviewing modalities or group presentations; use tools and multiple dimensions to aid you in choosing the best person for your team. Get down to the top 3 candidates all whom have what you said you need, all who pass mustard in your process and then choose wisely. Conduct your due diligence; background checks and behavioral references, ensure your hire maximizes your brand and will forward your business.

Step 7 – Effective On Boarding

From the beginning of your relationship, ensure that your new hire fully understands the responsibilities and accountabilities of the role. In some circles, this is called up-front contracting of expectations and performance parameters.

Assign a mentor or a new hire ‘buddy’. Give the same credence to selecting the mentor as you did with hiring the mentee.

Start creating their future with the organization day one.

Know why your new employee chose you. Uncover what they need from you to stay engaged in the role and with the company. Learn what they need in terms of development and how they prefer to be managed, recognized and rewarded.

Establish a 90-day new hire integration plan. Include a session outlining the purpose of the company; it’s mission, vision and values and how the employees emulate that in their day-to-day activities. Request a welcome visit or a call from the CEO, corporate leaders and other mission critical teammates.

Silicon Valley Continues to Lead N. American Metros in Strength of Its High-Tech Industry

2009-12-06T15:37:21-06:00

Silicon Valley Continues to Lead N. American Metros in Strength of Its High-Tech Industry, but Growth in Other Regions Shows Integration Across Continent, Says Milken Institute Study

LOS ANGELES – Silicon Valley, the largest and most influential high-tech center in the world, continues to lead all other metropolitan regions in North America in the breadth and scope of economic activity it creates through technological innovation. But many other metros have built strong and diverse industries that should allow them to prosper when the global economy recovers, according to a new report from the Milken Institute.

“High-tech industries are an important and sustaining anchor for regions to survive the slump and to rebuild their economies around high-wage jobs,” says Ross DeVol, Director of Regional Economics at the Institute and author of the newly released report, North America’s High-Tech Economy: The Geography of Knowledge-Based Industries.

“Every sector has been impacted by the current economic downturn, but high-tech centers will come out on top,” continues DeVol. “In 2003, many said that the era of technology-based economic development was over. However, the industry defied the naysayers and grew rapidly in the following years, proving that regions that promote and sustain the vital inputs to a high-tech sector are best prepared to recover and generate broader stability and growth.”

According to the study, which ranks the top high-tech centers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, most of the top tech metros are well known – like Seattle, Cambridge, Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco. But there are many lesser-known regions that have made tremendous inroads in the past decade to build their technology assets, such as Toronto, Canada; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and even Baja California.

The top-ten rankings for the preeminent high-tech metros in North America:

2007 Ranking	2003 Ranking	Metro Area	Total High Tech Score
1	1	San Jose – Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA	100.0
2	3	Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA	46.4
3	2	Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA	45.2
4	5	Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV	41.8
5	4	Los Angeles – Long Beach – Glendale, CA	40.2
6	6	Dallas – Plano - Irving, TX	21.8
7	7	San Diego – Carlsbad – San Marcos, CA	19.3
8	11	Santa Ana – Anaheim-Irvine, CA	17.7
9	9	New York – White Plains – Wayne, NY-NJ	16.8
10	8	San Francisco – San Mateo-Redwood City, CA	16.1

Like most of the economy, the high-tech sector has taken a beating in the last six months, but recent numbers show that these cuts may be leveling off and the sector could be primed to once again be an engine of sustainable growth when recovery begins to take root.

DeVol says those cities with strong high-tech bases will perform best as the economy recovers because the jobs generated by these fields pay so well. That’s why so many regions have worked tirelessly – with tax breaks and other incentives – to attract high-tech industries, whether computer manufacturing, medical devices development or life sciences research.

The report includes benchmarking for 2003 for metros in the United States and Canada and states in Mexico. (This was the latest available data for Mexico and the best way to ensure an accurate analysis. Mexico does not have data available at the metro level.) The 2007 benchmarking data is the latest available data for U.S. and Canadian metros.

By looking over time – particularly starting with 2003, just after the tech-bubble burst and the industry lost significantly more jobs than in this downturn – the relative stability in the rankings of successful regions demonstrates the staying power of this industry through good times and bad, DeVol says.

Among some of the metros not often thought of as growing high-tech centers are:

Toronto, ON jumped 10 places from 2003, showing impressive gains in building and attracting high-tech businesses in manufacturing and reproducing of optical media, biopharmaceuticals, and medical and diagnostic laboratories.
Kalamazoo, MI illustrates how entrepreneurs can overcome dramatic shifts in the local economy. The region was able to retain its human capital and redirect it after Pfizer’s 2003 relocation of previous Pharmacia operations. The metro ranks 9th in North America for medical equipment manufacturing in 2007.
Baja California has become a key manufacturing center for high-tech giants such as Casio, Honeywell, Sanyo and Sony. The state finished in 2nd place in 2003, just after San Jose, in the ranking for manufacturing of semiconductors and other electronic components. It also leads North America in medical equipment and supplies manufacturing.
Scranton-Wilkesboro, PA ranks 3rd in audio and video equipment manufacturing and showed employment growth of at least double the North American average for the period 2003 to 2007.
Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC ranks 4th in North America for data processing, hosting, and related services in 2007, but will need to ensure that recent consolidation and turmoil in the banking industry does not impact its future rankings.
Vancouver, BC showed the greatest rise among the top-10 metros for software publishing, climbing from 14th place in 2003 to 9th place in 2007.
Durham, NC experienced the fastest job growth in scientific research and development services since 2003 among the top ten metros, and was the third fastest in North America.

The report is an update to the Institute’s 1999 publication, America's High-Tech Economy: Growth, Development and Risks for Metropolitan Areas, a groundbreaking study that was one of the first to show the importance of high-tech industry to regional economic growth. The new study has been expanded to include Canada and Mexico, highlighting the integration that has occurred in this industry in the last decade. The methodology has also been modified to move away from a strictly output-based measurement and instead provide a better assessment of the impact on the communities by assessing employment and wages, in addition to the relative concentrations of employment and wages to other metros in North America.

The report was sponsored, in part, by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.

An executive summary, the full report and interactive data tables for all U.S. and Canadian metros and Mexican states, plus breakdowns for 19 separate high-tech industries, are available at www.milkeninstitute.org.

Contact
Jennifer Manfrè, Associate Director of Communications
(310) 570-4623
E-mail: jmanfre@milkeninstitute.org

About the Institute: The Milken Institute is a nonprofit, independent economic think tank whose mission is to improve the lives and economic conditions of diverse populations around the world by helping business and public policy leaders identify and implement innovative ideas for creating broad-based prosperity. It is based in Santa Monica, CA. (www.milkeninstitute.org)

2009-12-06T15:29:34-06:00

Silicon Valley leading the way out of the recession!

What Is RPI-Recruitment Process In-Sourcing

2009-12-02T18:22:12-06:00

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