We wish to thank Gregory Stobbe SPHR JD, an independent human resources consultant, for the “must read” content below on an important change in the law that takes effect January 1, 2015.

Ban the Box!

Who is behind the Ban the Box movement, you ask? (Hint: it is not those anti-corrugated cardboard activists again). It is in fact, none other than Pat Quinn, the Governor of Illinois. To be fair, he is simply joining the growing ranks of governors and mayors across the country to follow suit in making this initiative the law.

The official name for this law is the Job Opportunities for Qualified Applicants Act, which becomes effective in Illinois on January 1, 2015.  It is commonly referred to as “Ban the Box” (BTB), as most employment application forms contain a question regarding the applicant’s criminal convictions, preceded by a small “check box”.  At a summary level, this law prohibits “covered” private employers, including employment agencies, (one qualifier is that an employer must have 15 or more employees) from inquiring into a job applicant’s criminal history until either:  1.) An applicant has been deemed qualified for the position and an interview has been scheduled with that applicant OR 2.) If no interview is scheduled, until a conditional offer of employment is made to that applicant. However, certain categories of employers are exempted, so this law should be carefully examined for its specific applicability.

One of the changes mandated by this law is that an employer may no longer, on an employment application (or any equivalent inquiry, whether written or verbal), ask about an applicant’s criminal history until one of the two conditions outlined above is met. What the application specifically defines as “criminal history” varies depending upon the employer and the jurisdiction in which they are located.

The legislative intent behind BTB is to ensure that applicants, who may otherwise be qualified for a position, are not initially screened out from consideration because they “checked the box”. They must first be judged based upon the merits of the qualifications they present for the position to which they are applying. The BTB proponents say it is only fair to give people with a criminal history a fair shot at a second chance.

Multi-jurisdictional employers should take special care to ensure that they understand and comply, where applicable, with the differing laws to which they may be subject. If there is any uncertainty, an employer should work closely with their employment law counsel. Laws coming into effect prospectively are not the only concern employers should have in this area. For example, in Illinois, the Illinois Human Rights Act has for some time, prohibited employers from asking applicants to divulge arrest record information, or expunged or sealed criminal convictions, when making employment related decisions.

Notwithstanding the changes required to comply with current and new laws affecting the application process, employers who work with background check vendors, should also determine if there will be a downstream effect on the timing of initiating such a check. It is wise to look at the entire hiring process holistically and to be prepared for these changes.

What’s a prudent employer to do? Well, according to those activists and the new law, as long as you “Ban the Box”, it’s “In the Bag”.

Stay tuned…
The information contained in this article is provided solely for the general interest of the readers and should not be relied upon or construed as legal advice and is not a substitute for obtaining legal advice from an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. The author assumes no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of this article. The author, Gregory Stobbe SPHR JD, is an independent human resources consultant located in Chicago, IL. Should you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to him at gregorystobbesphrjd@gmail.com.
©2014 by Gregory Stobbe SPHR JD. All rights reserved.

Since I’ve spent the majority of my career working for organizations to help them hire the best talent possible, it’s always gratifying to sit on the other side of the desk to share my insights from the past 20 plus years with job seekers.

So, along with my fellow TalentRISE partner, Jim O’Malley, we gladly accepted a recent invitation from well-known outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas to speak to a group of high-level HR executives in transition.

Given the positive reception we received, I decided to share thoughts from that meeting on the five most important insights on networking that every successful job seeker needs to know in today’s job market and environment.  The advice below holds equally true for those at the pinnacle of their career in the C-Suite…as well as for those who have just entered the job market. The “Five Rs”, as I call them, were standard operating procedure twenty years ago and are equally valid today, even in our LinkedIn and hash-tagged world.  That’s because all networking – even given all the social media tools available to job seekers today – is ultimately all about relationship-building.

So, the best advice I can possibly give to job seekers today is encapsulated in five maxims, easily remembered as they all start with an R.

#1 Research

Before you speak, tweet or otherwise contact a single person to request help with networking, gather information about their company, industry, or the targeted hiring manager. This seems like such obvious advice but it never fails to amaze me how many job seekers simply don’t do their homework. There is so much information only a click away, from who is hiring; company financials, to industry analysts’ reports.

#2 Reassurance

Tell the person you are networking with that you do not expect them to have or know about a job opening. This will not only make your contact more comfortable about speaking with you but will also broaden your network overall. After all, the  people you get to know through your job search now can become important contacts (or even clients) as you evolve in your career and vice versa. Building a network should, afterall, never only be about getting a job but more of a career-long endeavor to broaden your perspectives.

#3 Remembrance

Make sure you make yourself memorable (in a positive way!). See people in person when possible, but also be smart with your time and considerate of theirs. Always leave them with a hard copy of your resume as well as a typo-free PDF file that they can forward to others. Anchor your selling features with stories – these can be anecdotes of, for example, business situations in which you dealt with a problematic situation with a novel approach, new technology or other innovative solutions. Finally, stay in touch. Many people I know who serve as guides within their industry to job seekers lament the fact that while they give of their valuable time, they often don’t ever hear back from the people with whom they generously share their time or contacts.

#4 Referrals

If you are asking for referrals, be willing to share your contacts freely as well. Many job seekers I coach seek to get two names from each encounter, which is actually a pretty good yardstick. But also adhere to rule number 2 above and recognize that not all of the people you network with will be able to help you in such a direct fashion.

#5 Reciprocity

The final “R” involves building what scientists call “social IQ” and is about a basic human need to form connections. These connections, however, run on a two-way streets so never neglect to ask your contacts how you can best help them. This doesn’t always need to be – or can’t be – an even one-for-one exchange but you can offer to:

• Provide them with information about their industry, based on your research (see #1 above)
• Offer insights about what you have learned
• Offer ideas and contacts of your own
• Be courteous and appreciative
• Give the person plenty of air time and listen

Jim O’Malley, TalentRISE Partner, recently completed a senior executive-level search for Urban Partnership Bank (UPB), a U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured full service community development financial institution and minority depository institution with $1.4 billion in assets.

Headquartered in Chicago, UPB was established in 2010 with a focus on building vibrant urban neighborhoods and promoting economic and environmental sustainability in distressed and underserved areas of Chicago and Detroit. We spoke with Levoi K. Brown, Chief Banking Officer for Urban Partnership Bank,about his role, the bank’s objectives and how the talent that UPB hires has helped them to achieve such significant growth in just a few short years.

TalentRISE:  Can you tell us a bit about your background and your role at the bank?

Brown: I’ve been here since 2010 after working in structured finance for 11 years at GE Capital. That job took me from Chicago, my hometown, to Stamford, Connecticut, to work in the GE investment banking arm. Along the way, I spent time on the affordable housing and originations side of the equation and also in commercial real estate. In 2009, I started my MBA studies at University of Chicago and, midway through business school, I thought I’d get back intoinvestment banking or capital markets. But few opportunities felt right in terms of traction for me at that time. Then, I received a call from a recruiter who said Bill Farrow, now our President and CEO, wanted to talk to me. After seven interviews, I was sold on the opportunity. That’s not to say I wasn’t initially interested; it’s just that at GE, we were a $90 billion organization in real estate and here our asset base is ~ $1 billion. But we’re growing and proving out our business model every day. Our three business units here – the commercial real estate, our business banking group and the non-profit team – comprise about 30 professionals. We’ve currently have 9 branches, including one in Detroit. All in all, we now number 90 professionals across commercial banking and retail. My role on the talent front, from a people perspective, is to work with our really talented HR team to hire the heads of individual units – basically all the directors – to be sure we secure great talent who will lead the bank going forward.

TalentRISE:  How did you connect with TalentRISE?

Brown: TalentRISE had a relationship with our HR group. I needed a new head of retail banking and our HR team suggested that we engage TalentRISE, an up and coming firm. The introductory meeting, when we first met with Jim O’Malley, went well and we essentially scoped the assignment over lunch. I was impressed. After a few email exchanges,we created a profile and shortly thereafter we met five candidates, the first of whom was a great fit. All of them, actually, were viable and people that we might revisit in the future. But Darryl Hendricks, the first candidate,  was just the perfect fit and graciously agreed to join us out of retirement from a 35 year impressive career at Citibank where his last position was ten years as Illinois president.

TalentRISE:  How was your experience working with TalentRISE?

Brown: Jim and team did a wonderful job of listening. We have an impressive crop of early career bankers here and needed someone with the right stuff to manage that team; someone who has “been there and done that”.  Darryl, Jim knew, could come in on day one and be that leader. Jim really understood what we needed and found us Darryl plus several other people who may be good future candidates for other positions. When I learned that my colleague Jennifer Walton who is the Chief Compliance Officer for UPB, was looking for a senior compliance officer, I suggested that she contact Jim, As a result TalentRISE continues to do important work for UPB.

TalentRISE:  As you are building UPB, how important is having the right talent in place?

Brown:  Here’s our scenario: we lend in communities where most banks don’t. We operate in the urban core and those income earners are at the median or below. These individuals are underserved or unbanked. At UPB, we provide a bridge to basic financial tools, whether getting someone a mortgage or working with a business owner to understand what finance is by, for example, figuring out the right amount of debt that they should carry to optimize their situation. So what we do requires a certain degree of education.  In general, this may be the first time someone has applied for bank debt whether to finance a business, buy a car or own a home. This is unique and different.

That’s why we’re targeting heavy hitters in our hiring. Our great business potential is a draw. In only two to three years of lending experience, we’ve already committed over $200 million in commercial lending.  But attracting great people also helps. Sixty-five percent of our team has undergraduate degrees; 25-30% have graduate level degrees. The schools represented among this highly educated population include University of Chicago, Northwestern, Notre Dame, University of Michigan and others. In addition, diverse workplace histories and diverse skills and backgrounds amount to an incredible team. Having an impressive workplace like ours attracts others with the same kind of intellectual curiosity.

Last March, as reported here new disability and veterans regulations developed by the OFCCP went into effect.

In the roughly 10 months since, we have heard numerous employers, veteran’s advocacy groups and veterans themselves complain about how difficult it still is to actually accomplish what the regulations require, which is for contractors to  establish a hiring benchmark of 7.2% for protected veterans each year.

Survey after survey shows that most employers would gladly hire veterans. In fact, a CareerBuilder survey from a couple of years back shows that 29 percent of employers are actively recruiting veterans to work for their organizations and sixty-five percent said they would be more likely to hire a veteran over another equally qualified candidate.

So, why the frustration in reaching the relatively modest benchmark of 7.2%? The problem is fairly simple: current traditional recruiting and hiring models don’t work very well for veterans.  According to this Prudential study on veteran employment challenges, the solutions are not simple because veterans face the following hurdles to job search success:

On the flip side, employers committed to recruiting and hiring veterans must first change how they recruit this diverse and valuable talent pool by addressing the following:

• Job posting & resume review:  Veteran experiences and sometimes specialized skills generally don’t translate neatly into all the boxes on the online job posting “Must Have” requirements list so corporate recruiters and hiring managers need to re-assess and re-write jobs so that they highlight a need for specific competencies and transferable skills  Example:  Demonstrated leadership and team management skills, able to make accurate and timely decisions in crisis situations, aptitude for numbers and data analytics
• Training:  Hiring managers, HR and Recruiters need to be educated in how to review and assess the resumes, career interests and potential transferable or developmental skills and abilities so that they can better match them to job opportunities in their company. A common mistake of many employers is that only the front line recruiters and/or HR professionals receive this kind of training leaving the hiring managers to continue rejecting a high number of candidates presented for consideration.
• Veteran Career Coaching / Peer Mentoring:  Military job candidates are themselves often unsure of what they want to do in a civilian career, so many need career coaching as a first step in their transition BEFORE they can effectively search for a job that best matches their skills and abilities.  Veteran employee resource groups can play an important role in partnering with corporate HR and recruiters to assist in candidate career coaching, job matching, new hire cultural assimilation / onboarding and/or employee career development coaching.
• Quality over Quantity – Targeted Outreach:  This is where employers will get stung the hardest in the new OFCCP requirement as a high volume of veteran resumes from various sources is BAD. The government looks seriously at the ratios of those applying to your jobs compared to those moving forward in your recruiting process.  If your recruiters screen out a high number of veteran applicants you could be at risk of an OFCCP audit!  The most important thing to do is be strategic and targeted in your outreach to promote your employment opportunities and attract talent that has a greater chance of moving through your process to a hire.  There are hundreds of veteran employment service organizations  (VSO), employment / career coaching programs and for profit job boards available so developing a targeted outreach strategy that yields veteran referrals who are pre-qualified for your job opportunities is key to improving your hiring ratios and meeting the requirements for demonstrated outreach.

TalentRISE has established a Partnership with ConnectVETS.org, a non-profit organization committed to removing barriers to employment for veterans and employers. Together, we have developed turn-key solutions to address each of the employer military recruiting challenges highlighted in this blog post. If you have any comments, would like to share your experiences OR are currently seeking assistance in overcoming similar challenges in your military recruiting efforts, please contact us for a free consultation on how TalentRISE and ConnectVETS.org can help!

TalentRISE recently successfully completed a consulting project to help a client develop a roadmap for a global Talent Acquisition Strategy.

Our Client’s Profile

• A multi-billion manufacturer of an iconic American brand
• Operates globally but lacked a standardized enterprise-wide talent acquisition process and global technology platform that would enable the organization to deal with labor shortages in the U.S. and build sustainable competitive advantage in the external talent marketplace.

The Client’s Issue

Our client needed an independent, end-to-end assessment of their U.S. and global recruitment practices in order to proceed to build a world class recruitment framework. Most importantly, the client needed a talent acquisition strategy that would reconcile geographic differences, work within their unique culture and offer a roadmap to develop a sustainable and global perspective to talent acquisition.

The TalentRISE Approach

Our team, led by Gayle Norton, Principal – Consulting Practice, was engaged to develop recommendations and a three year long roadmap to help the organization come to an informed decision on how to proceed to build a new global Talent Acquisition structure.

All options were on the table as we looked at both qualitative and quantitative data.  Beginning with interviews of key stakeholders around the globe, we synthesized our findings into themes and analyzed internal and external data.  We then presented a proposed plan to the leadership team outlining the relative merits of three viable options with one recommendation that we believed would be best for the client. Recommendations encompassed the talent acquisition organizational structure, employment brand, career site, candidate engagement standards, onboarding, technology, metrics, global standards, the interview and selection process, and the change management plan.

The Results

The final decision to move forward with our top recommendation was made and agreed upon by the leadership team. The client has already instituted the first step of the recommendations and is continuing to push ahead with implementation of the strategy. Since this is a long term strategy, the full effects of the changes will be realized incrementally as this phased approach is implemented and we anticipate a resulting positive impact on the organization.

To learn more about this project or how our team can improve your recruitment process, function and/or technology, please contact us or link here to see our services.

TalentRISE recently spoke with CHRO Roberta McQuade, formerly of Signode Industrial Group and ITW.

Many of our readers may know Roberta as she is one of the most well-connected senior Human Resources executives in the Chicagoland area. Her experience encompasses public, privately-held, private equity and foreign-owned businesses in manufacturing, food/consumer, aerospace, and oil/chemical industries. In the interview that follows, Roberta shares her perspectives on the challenges organizations – regardless of industry – face today in hiring qualified talent.

TalentRISE: What is the single most pressing talent acquisition issue facing companies today?

McQuade: Finding skilled,highly capable, strongly motivated talent is still a challenge across all functional areas. The baby boomers have stayed in their jobs a long time and hung in there during the recession thereby effectively blocking 30 year olds from moving forward. So, a significant skills gap exists within the pool of younger candidates who are potential replacements. This gap presents a struggle in every organization.

There are a couple of ways to deal with the gap.  First, we can ask executives to take gradual retirements. Conceptually, in this solution, executives reduce their work week from five days to, for example, three days a week. They may no longer remain in the same city as their previous job.  A replacement candidate is identified.  If done effectively, the wisdom is maintained while the experience level grows. This only really works when the executive is committed to the process.

A second way to deal with this gap is to convince the executive to bring in a younger and/or less experienced person and essentially treat that individual as a student. It takes some convincing and works when the executive is motivated to leave a strong legacy.   HR often is part of the process to help executives work to move on gracefully.  Retirement is not easy for the vast majority of people.  All of this takes time and trust. I’m not a big fan of formal mentorship programs because you really can’t mechanize trust.

TalentRISE: Like many of our readers, you have led HR in organizations that recruit for a range of very diverse positions, from accounting to manufacturing to engineers. What are the challenges involved in recruiting for such a range of skills?

McQuade: I find that recruiters who truly understand the requirements of a certain type of job are able to screen for those skills well. Recruiters can be an asset to an organization if they screen well and use their filters effectively.  In this way, when the candidates do get to the second round, candidates can be  screened for attitude, demeanor, ability to fit in the organization and so on.

It is difficult to find people who love to win today, as opposed to people who just want “to be”. The distinction is one that I think is very important.  Organizations today are so focused on cost, especially in the light of the Affordable Care Act taxes and other pressures, that every employee in any sort of leadership role must be an impact player. You can’t hire people who don’t have passion – passion for life, passion for what they do for a living, etc.  Employers need people who can win and will work hard to do so.

TalentRISE: When and how did you decide to hire TalentRISE? How has it worked out for you?

McQuade: I met Jim [O’Malley] through networking at one point in time. I liked how quickly he picked up, understood what I needed, and his previous experience as an HR professional with significant time hiring and recruiting people. For me, he focused on the search of senior level HR and operational job fills in places where we have had a difficult time finding candidates. The searches Jim completed were tough to fill because of the skill sets we required and also the locations. In fact, in some of the searches, other recruiters had failed, but Jim and his team produced results. This led me to recommend him to several operating leaders.

Working with TalentRISE has been a very positive experience; it’s really been great. The methodology used in finding quality candidates is very effective, and we’ve seen good results. I would strongly endorse Jim and his model. I am very picky about who I work with, but Jim and his team produced quality candidates in a timely fashion.

TalentRISE: In your experience, what does HR need to do differently now, post-recession?

McQuade: As far as talent acquisition, there is no doubt that quality talent is more difficult to hire. HR must really understand what type person they are trying to recruit and the requirements of that role for the next few years.  We are hiring people to accomplish not just to “fill”.  HR people have a better than average knowledge of culture but, often not a strong enough understanding of business needs. Good HR people grasp both. I’ve always made it a point to ask my teams to present about the businesses that they support.  My focus has been to help them understand what the operating people watch – operating income, markets, key customers, trends, etc. They will hire better solutions with that knowledge.  They will also become the “business partners” that so many in HR aspire to achieve.

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” – Yogi Berra

If navigating the many highways and byways of executive search firms was only as simple as following Yogi’s advice!  There are indeed many different types of executive search firms and, frankly, navigating them during a job search can be bewildering at best and a debacle at worst.

Why does it matter that job seekers stay on the right track? For one thing, depending on your background and level, more and more organizations contract with executive search firms, or “headhunters” to fill senior level or highly specialized positions. It’s therefore important that you make yourself known to them and that you respond to them in a professional manner. Secondly, since these firms can operate under different business models, it is critical that you, as a prospective candidate, understand their customer relationships and parameters and proceed accordingly.

To begin with, there are essentially two main categories of firms: contingent recruitment firms and retained executive search firms. As the names suggest, retained firms are hired by an employer to fill a certain position on a project basis while contingency firms aren’t typically hired directly by a company but, instead, “sell” candidates to an employer hoping that they will “buy” the talent they present. Contingency recruitment firms fill an important role in the labor market so early careerists, in particular, often find them very useful in their job searches. However, when working with contingency recruitment firms, understand that the customer is not the candidate. In fact, truth be told, the job seeker can end up feeling more like a commodity at times. Typically, when working with a contingency firm, you should not expect a lot of coaching or feedback; nor should you expect that the agency will share a lot of information about the employer, the job at hand or the culture.

For most of our readers who are at the executive level, retained search firms offer the best path ahead. The business model is based on a relationship where the employer engages the search firm to find the best person for a particular job. While that makes the employer the primary customer, well-regarded retained firms also value and treat the candidate as a customer and therefore operate with a high-touch approach. This is based on that fact that their success – and future business relationship – with the ultimate client (the employer) depends on their ability to find the best possible candidate and cultural fit. Retained search firms also view the candidate as another potential future client. That’s why many of us are passionate about really getting to know both sets of customers – the corporations we serve and the candidates we work to place. We’re investing in our future mutual success.

Job seekers also need to be aware of yet another fork in the road: retained search firms can be further divided into two separate directions!  The first category is what are known as multinational retained search firms. Their clients typically only include large companies with global operations. Thus the multi-national search firms are usually organized in parallel fashion, with multiple specialized divisions focused on an industry or a function working across borders. Boutique search firms (such as my own) on the other hand, also operate internationally but in niche areas. As the term implies, boutique executive search firms focus their efforts and expertise placing candidates with specialized skills and backgrounds in an industry or a function. Contrary to what you might think, boutique firms are also engaged by large companies looking for a more personal and hands-on approach than they may receive at one of the multinational firms.

I’ve spent the better part of my career helping people navigate through the winding roads of a typical executive level job search. My best advice to you is to understand how search firms operate so that you can work with them accordingly. Doing so will eliminate at least one potential speed bump on your journey to your next job.

In my next article, I’ll share my perspectives on how to be found by search firms.

Insanity, as famously defined by Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

Analogously, employers who are frustrated by their inability to attract, hire, retain and develop veterans must revisit, and re-vamp their hiring strategy. What works for recruiting a civilian workforce definitely does not work for hiring (and then retaining) the roughly 2.8 million men and women who have transitioned from military to civilian life in the last dozen years. Good intentions are also not enough: surveys* show that employers – particularly federal contractors who now must meet an annual OFCCP benchmark of 7% for protected veterans – WANT to hire more veterans. The problem is that they don’t know HOW.

Why is hiring veterans so challenging? According to numerous studies, the biggest challenge for many organizations is translating military skills into civilian career opportunities. As employers look beyond the fundamental critical issue of matching candidates to opportunities as they seek to identify and implement solutions, they must ask themselves the following questions to establish a high touch candidate experience throughout the hiring process:

Does your job posting/resume review process work for veterans?

Veteran experiences and specialized skills generally don’t neatly fit into all the boxes on the online job posting “Must Have” requirements list. A supply sergeant’s skills, for instance, are comparable to that of a purchasing manager but that individual may be overlooked because either keywords won’t surface his/her resume or for other reasons lost in translation. Corporate recruiters and hiring managers need to re-assess and re-write jobs to highlight their needs for specific competencies and transferable skills.  Examples:  “Demonstrated leadership and team management skills”; “able to make accurate and timely decisions in crisis situations”; “aptitude for numbers and data analytics”, etc.

Are your hiring managers trained?

It’s critical that your entire team, including hiring managers, not only understands what roles are best suited for veterans, but are also educated in how to review and assess the resumes, career interests and potential transferable or developmental skills and abilities in order to better match veterans to job opportunities. A common pitfall is to limit training to frontline recruiters and/or HR professionals only to have ill-informed hiring managers reject candidates because they mistakenly perceive that he/she lacks specialized skills or industry experience.

Is your outreach as targeted as possible?

Every recruiter knows that you need to look for candidates on their home turf using the optimum employment branding, messaging and outreach strategy to reach candidates with the desired skills. So, go high-touch and look to the hundreds of veteran employment service organizations (VSO), employment / career coaching programs  available and ready to help.  Doing so will yield pre-screened and career “transition ready” veteran referrals which is key to improving your hiring ratios and, for federal contractors, meeting requirements for demonstrated outreach.  In fact, federal contractors will get stung the hardest in the new OFCCP requirement as a high volume of veteran resumes from various sources, but not making it through your hiring process is BAD. Quality and FIT, over quantity, is most important as the government compares the ratio of job applicants to those moving forward in the recruiting process. If your recruiters or hiring managers screen out a high number of veteran applicants, you could be at risk of an OFCCP audit!  It’s important that outreach is strategic and targeted so employment opportunities are promoted where you have the greatest likelihood of attracting “right fit” talent with a greater chance of moving through your process and be hired.

Are you leveraging the veterans already in your organization?

Career coaching and peer mentoring programs can have a very positive impact on transitioning military job candidates to guide them on a civilian career path. Coaching is a valuable first step BEFORE they can effectively search and apply for a job that best matches their skills and abilities.  In-house veteran employee resource groups can play an especially important role by partnering with corporate HR and recruiters to assist in candidate career coaching, job matching, new hire cultural assimilation / onboarding and/or employee career development coaching.

Are you maximizing the use of technology?

For veterans, mobile-enabled technology allowing them to search for jobs while on the go is a must. Many employers are also seeing great success using videos featuring veterans they have hired to speak about their journey into a civilian career. These individual and personal testimonials offer views into daily job activities, workplace culture and they effectively tell the story about the company, the jobs, and what it’s like for a veteran to work there. They are great tools for “selling” your company and also for providing veteran job candidates with career exploration information.  Lastly, be sure your online application is updated to enable veterans to bypass required information that may not be relevant to them.

Finally, does your on-boarding program fill the needs of this group?

According to study by Prudential**, three out of five veterans report challenges with cultural assimilation into civilian corporate cultures. So, once you’ve hired veterans, make certain that your cultural assimilation process takes this into account and does not assume that veterans will be familiar with office practices, politics or culture. For instance, many corporate cultures value debate as a required part of the decision-making process – which is not how the military chain of command generally works!  By instituting an onboarding process that addresses the specific and unique needs of veterans, you will minimize new hire turnover.

Summary

For employers looking to add veterans to their ranks (pun intended) the problem is fairly simple: current traditional recruiting and hiring models don’t typically work very well for veterans.The solutions are not as simple, but asking the questions above and using the answers as a guide to creating a robust, high touch process that gets great talent hired – and helps to retain them – is a great way to ensure that your veteran recruitment strategy yields results AND is fully OFCCP compliant.

* A CareerBuilder survey from 2012 shows that 29 percent of employers are actively recruiting veterans to work for their organizations and sixty-five percent said they would be more likely to hire a veteran over another equally qualified candidate.

** For a link to the study, go here

Additional Resources for Employers

For more information, check into hiring initiatives at both the State and National level. Many not-for-profit organizations also provide invaluable information. ConnectVETS.org, for instance, is committed to removing barriers to employment for veterans and employers and is partnering with TalentRISE to provide turn-key consulting, training and recruiting solutions to address the employer military recruiting challenges highlighted in this article.

On-demand recruiters are one of the best solutions to handling talent acquisition challenges.

There’s an ever-growing consensus that attracting and retaining experienced talent is one of the most critical challenges companies face today. Multiple surveys point to the fact that the availability of talent is, in many industries, having a major impact on growth. In fact, a PwC survey of CEOs found that 63% of all CEOs are concerned about the threat of availability of skills on their companies’ growth prospects and that only 34% of them feel that HR is “well-prepared for the challenges ahead” (link here for more).  Some industries feel the pain more than others: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for instance, has projected a 19 percent growth in employment for Registered Nurses from 2012–2022. Likewise, according to a recent analysis by Indeed.com, technology jobs (in particular, software engineers, computer information systems managers and network administrators) are also among the most difficult positions to fill.

Despite the dire data, remedies are available and many of your competitors in need of hard-to-find talent have already begun to explore and implement solutions. As history has shown us, just throwing money at the problem in terms of perks, signing bonuses and pay as many did during the last, pre-recession hiring spike, does NOT work. While pay needs to be competitive, it is clearly not a cure-all. Instead, we are seeing a trend among HR professionals in a variety of industries to review and reevaluate their entire end-to-end hiring process. This is because many have come to the conclusion that recruitment can’t be compartmentalized.  Recruitment  is much more than just hiring people and hoping they will stay; it needs to covers a spectrum of integrated activities under an umbrella strategy described as “Talent Acquisition” or “TA”.  TA encompasses not just sourcing/interviewing/assessing and hiring but also employer branding, compensation benchmarking, on-boarding, mentoring/coaching, formal retention policies and so on.

Within the entire range of TA components, one particular strategy that can result in the most immediate return on investment – and is therefore becoming increasingly popular – involves revamping the recruitment function itself to be sure that the team is operating at maximum strength. For many organizations feeling the pinch of a talent shortage, this assessment often reveals that the internal function simply can’t keep up with current needs – much less fully anticipate future needs. Consequently, to augment internal resources, we’re seeing increased use of what’s known as on-demand recruitment, defined as a turn-key, fully-managed recruiting and sourcing resource (whether a team or an individual) delivered via an external partner to supplement the internal team, focus on specialized roles or priority positions, handle recruiting spikes and/or to build a pipeline for future talent needs.

In a very recent, real-life example of how this can work, a growing health system turned to us to deliver an on-demand recruiting engagement to support advanced nursing roles, as well as clinical, strategy and IT recruiting needs following a comprehensive consulting engagement to re-engineer recruiting to support growth. In response, our firm assigned a hand-picked team of very experienced on-demand recruiters to provide targeted candidate sourcing to support the system’s now changing hiring needs. The project lasted 18 months during which over 175 critical talent needs requiring nursing leadership, IT/EPIC, strategy, clinical operations and leadership roles were filled.

The example above, in which a dedicated team focused on sourcing and pre-qualifying candidates to meet a hospital system’s most pressing needs, is just one way in which on-demand recruitment can provide relief. In another situation, a healthcare system in the middle of a business transformation sought to fill twenty critical roles including nursing leaders in six months, but wasn’t successful in using contingency search firms to fill those roles. In fact, the majority of positions had been open for six months prior to our involvement via an on-demand arrangement. TalentRISE assigned a team of 4.5 recruiting consultants and filled 20 critical roles within five months with two additional offers pending going into the sixth month. Additionally, the system achieved a cost savings of over 50% compared to using contingency search vendors.

On-demand arrangements can also yield favorable results when the external consultant’s efforts are focused on building talent pipelines for future or anticipated needs. Given the anticipated wave of retirements within many industries, attracting younger employees today to allow for on-the-job mentoring and knowledge transfer by more experienced staff is critical. However, members of the millennial generation typically have different perspectives on work-life balance with more appetite for rapid career progression, development opportunities and upward mobility than their baby-boomer counterparts did. Clearly, employers seeking to fill their ranks well into the future need to rethink how to adjust their employment brand to appeal to the next generation as well as the channels that they use to source them. That’s why using the skills and knowledge of an on-demand consulting team to now focus on developing a deep talent pool to prepare for the future can be so powerful.

Assuming your organization decides that an on-demand recruitment solution is the right approach for you, how should you proceed?  In our experience, the best first step is to spend time upfront defining your issue and articulating what exactly you want an external provider to accomplish. For example, know what type of support are you looking for, whether sourcing versus full lifecycle recruiting. Also be able to articulate the issues are you facing and what your most urgent needs are. Are these difficult to fill positions, and do your job descriptions accurately reflect the position you are looking to fill or will you need a different skill set?  As far as selecting a provider, the first rule of thumb is obviously to be sure that they have deep industry knowledge. But also question their past experience in handling on-demand projects of this type. Other things to investigate include:

• Who on the consultant’s team “owns” the project? Ideally, you should be dealing with an individual at the top so that his/her project management oversight will ensure that performance expectations are met in the desired time frame.
• How will results be reported? Is there transparency, whether the reporting is done through weekly status calls, recruiter activity metrics tracking and/or other reports?
• Are the recruiters proven and experienced with relevant backgrounds?
• Are the recruiters equipped with a comprehensive “toolbox” of sourcing, assessment and research tools including today’s leading-edge social, mobile and video-optimized tools?
• How is candidate data tracked? Ideally, recruiters are equipped with a CRM they use to track potential candidates sourced.  This data should then be provided to you at the end of the engagement.
• How will billing work? For budgeting purposes, you will find that a time and materials hourly billing approach will be the simplest and the best way to calculate true ROI.

In conclusion, it’s clear that talent shortages for several job categories in many industries will persist for a long time. While there are many strategies and tactics available, one of the most sensible is to consider external assistance in the ways discussed above. An on-demand engagement – whether it is focused on filling currently available positions or sourcing in anticipation of hiring new talent in the months to come or both – has several distinct advantages, the greatest of which, in our experience, is scalability. Using experienced external resources on an as-needed basis is easier on the budget than hiring full-time recruiters, and allows your internal team to focus on their jobs. As many organizations experience challenges attributed to shrinking talent pools, working with an on-demand partner can help you keep your head above water.

Essential Research Tools Every Recruiter Should Utilize

While data from CareerBuilder shows that 52% of employers currently use social networking sites to research job candidates, up significantly from 43% last year, that still leaves roughly one half who unfortunately aren’t doing so. In today’s world, there’s simply no excuse to ignore the vast array of useful technological tools to research candidates for your most critical hires.

However, the range of tools available is enormous, ever-changing and evolving. Additionally, the technology that delivers these tools has changed dramatically, allowing the profession to search for candidates in different ways. For instance, per data cited in a recent webinar, since 45% of active candidates have applied for a job via a mobile device and 60% of passive candidates view career opportunities sent to their mobile device, it’s become much more important to make job postings and career websites mobile-friendly. That’s why determining which tools to use to is often so challenging.

The overall goal of this article is to describe broad categories of recruitment tools available so that readers who are corporate buyers of recruitment consulting services will know the right questions to ask when interviewing external recruitment/search vendors about their experience and qualifications in using these tools. Recognizing that every search is unique, just as every position and its associated challenges are unique, our intent is to provide a general guide when embarking on a relationship with an external executive search consultant. We’ll also cover savvy ways that capable recruiters can shortcut a search or bypass a dead end when working on a particularly difficult search.

Change is constant

Compared to even five years ago, literally hundreds of new tools have been brought to market. According to Towers Watson, the recruitment technology industry is now a $8.1 billion industry (for further reading, link here).  Some tech providers tout sophisticated algorithms to find passive candidates; others aim to streamline the process. Much attention, in particular, is being paid to technologies that meet the “2-3 thumb swipe rule” by engaging candidates who view job postings and emails on their smartphones by minimizing click-throughs.

While every search firm may subscribe to different products, at a minimum they ought to be able to prove their expertise in advertising the position in the most effective and targeted manner possible (see sidebar) and prove their prowess within three different categories of tools.  These tools are by no means mutually exclusive nor do they all necessarily need to be employed in the context of a single search. The specific tools a recruiter selects when starting a search should always be the culmination of a measured and strategic decision based on the likelihood that a combination of particular tools will turn up the best candidates in the shortest possible timeframe.

Before even turning to the selection of tools, however, every reputable search firm will insist on a pre-search kick-off meeting with their client to discuss the ideal candidate for the job, compensation, as well as the corporate culture, potential challenges, etc.  One of the critical outcomes of this meeting is a position profile written to attract potential candidates and to develop a “value proposition”.  As a next step, savvy recruiters will also create something we refer to as a “sizzle sheet” for advertising and research purposes, and when contacting candidates by phone. Only then do we turn to selecting tools from the following general categories described below:

CRM and ATS

Tracking – whether in the form of a candidate relationship management (CRM) system or an applicant tracking system (ATS) – is vital. So, before engaging an outside search consultant, make sure that they are using one. It is also quite common and advantageous to have contract recruiters use your organization’s ATS system so that you are able to retain all the information on each contact for future openings. As for retained searches, we make it a practice to provide our client with a “dashboard report” identifying all of the candidates we have contacted.  Also make sure to ask about a potential vendor’s own proprietary database. At TalentRISE, we maintain and update a database of nearly 400,000 names which we mine as a first step when assigned any search. This database has proven to be invaluable as we continue to build groups of candidates by function and geography, experience and expertise.

Public/Social Business Networks and Forums

Social networks, with LinkedIn Corporate Edition leading the pack, are some of the best tools that recruiters can use to find passive candidates via their digital footprint. Examples of such networks include chat rooms, association forums, and LinkedIn groups. We also use listservs to communicate with groups, especially academic forums, about job openings. A recent example of a search in which a listserv played a useful role was for a job with a specialized medical organization requiring a PhD. By leveraging highly specialized academic listservs, we were able to identify qualified candidates.

Be sure to ask a prospective vendor which networks they will use to find candidates for your specific open position. Depending on the functional role you are filling, ask your potential vendor about their expertise with directories such as  Ziggs, Zoominfo, Jigsaw and Spoke. And does the consultant make it easy for individuals to share opportunities through their own personal social media channels with their colleagues?  Depending on the level of the position, don’t discount the value of Facebook – while a VP of Engineering is not a likely target on Facebook, success can be found with more junior level technology positions.

Thought Leadership and Media

A category of tools less frequently utilized but perhaps even more useful than that offered by social networks mines potential candidates’ contributions and quotes in the media as well as their current employers’ websites and blogs. Self-published blogs, articles, personal websites and twitter feeds are also valuable for research and will often lead the way to the ideal candidate.

Typically, a recruiter will search under certain keywords to find a candidates who has published on a specific topic. For example, when looking for a consultant with expertise in healthcare management on behalf of one of our clients in the professional services field, our researchers may search for articles in healthcare management publications and then do further research on the most frequent and prominent authors, speakers at conferences or individuals who are quoted as experts in their field. Similarly, we will often monitor twitter feeds as well as blogs to research and identify individuals who stand out as thought leaders and may fit the qualifications of our clients’ job description. Various tools, such as Broadlook/Capture streamline the process of filtering such information from what often ends up being hundreds of sources.

Correcting Course

As we all know, things don’t often go as planned. In anticipation of Murphy’s Law, it’s also important to question your consultant about their “Plan B” if and when a particular search tool strategy does not yield the anticipated results. An experienced recruitment consultant will know when to switch gears and adopt a new strategy to avoid going down the same wrong path again and again, wasting time and energy when the traditional sources for candidates aren’t surfacing the right qualifications. There is a need for workarounds particularly when what you are looking for is not really obvious. A recent search we filled, for instance, required very niche skills –  both fluency in Japanese and an engineering background. In cases like this, a knowledgeable researcher will create an algebraic search using a boolean search string. In a recent instance, for example, we were able to uncover several candidates for a senior level executive role requiring a security clearance using a Google search that looked something like this: (intitle:resume | inurl:resume) (director OR engineer) (windows | MCSE | exchange) (ts/sci | poly | polygraph | secret) (VA | Virginia | DC | Maryland | MD) -jobs -send -submit -your -sample).

Summary

In our opinion, one of the most critical roles in any search is the researcher.  The role is not unlike that of a master sleuth looking for that often very small and elusive handful of candidates best qualified and credentialed for a certain role. The researcher also needs to be an expert reader of people and their personalities to find individuals who will best fit the culture of your organization. Finally, the researcher must also possess the sales skills to interest the candidate to pursue the position further. Given all these hats a researcher must wear in order to be successful, it’s only common sense to equip him or her with the best tools possible to do his or her job.

Insights from Conversations with the First National Bank of Sioux Falls

In our experience conducting searches for hundreds of senior level executives, professional coaches can have a tremendous impact on a company’s ability to retain new executives, shorten “startup” times, increase learning and improve productivity, particularly within the critical first few months. Consequently, to demonstrate to our clients and to the new recruit our belief in the importance of onboarding, we’re providing a dedicated onboarding coach for newly hired executives – at our expense – for the first 100 days.  

To offer insights into how this works in practice, we recently spoke with Jeffrey K. Russell who joined our client, First National Bank in Sioux Falls, (FNBSF) as the Chief Deposit Officer last May and his boss, William L. Baker, Chairman and CEO of the bank. Jeff was recruited by TalentRISE partner Jim O’Malley from a large bank with international operations to run a critical group for this fourth generation, family-owned community institution. The contrast in cultures alone was an interesting aspect of the both the search and onboarding processes.  In the interview that follows, Jeff and Bill discuss the search and selection process and how the onboarding coaching, provided by CoralBridge Partners, has worked.

TalentRISE: How did it come about that you selected TalentRISE for this search?

William (Bill) L. Baker, Chairman and CEO: Once we embarked on this national search for a Chief Deposit Officer, we identified several consultants. Jim O’Malley [of TalentRISE] was one of several we interviewed and brought to Sioux Falls for a daylong meeting to describe our culture and communicate our needs. We intentionally structured this meeting in the same way in which we conduct our interview process. Jim, with his credentials and banking background, turned out to be the favorite of my executive team and, by going through the interview process himself, he gained a firm understanding of not only our culture but what the selection process would be like for the top candidates for this job.

TalentRISE: Bill, as CEO, you play a huge role in establishing a very unique culture. Can you elaborate a bit more about your culture and what makes it so unique?

Bill Baker: We have a core set of values that shape our culture more than anything else, known as the “FIRST Values” which stem from our values as a family-owned bank. These have been articulated precisely, with the letters of the word “first” standing for Family, Independence/Innovation, Relationships, Stewardship and Teamwork. I mention this because these values are the guideposts against which we measure ourselves and are key in our decision-making processes. They also support our mission in the community.

TalentRISE: Can you describe how this culture came into play in your recruitment process?

Jeff Russell, recently appointed Chief Deposit Officer:  As a resident of Sioux Falls, I’ve always been aware of the bank and admired the role that it plays in the community. Even during my 12 years at Wells Fargo, with my office across the street from this building, I kept in touch with people at First National and I heard about the opening when this position was posted. The bank is unique as it is family-owned and TalentRISE, while being totally fair to their client, provided me with excellent information, for instance, on how the interview process would be structured. When TalentRISE reached out to me, it was clear that they knew the culture, perceived that I would fit and convinced me to apply. They were helpful throughout the application process. The process itself took a while and included intensive interviews with the group leaders as well as a consultation in Minneapolis. It wasn’t a quick decision but TalentRISE made sure I knew what I signed up for.

TalentRISE: When TalentRISE offered to provide onboarding coaching to the new hire, what was your reaction?

Bill Baker: Very positive. When Jim described the onboarding coaching process, it seemed like a great idea. Ultimately, however, I wanted to be sure we had Jeff’s buy-in because it needed to be a voluntary process. He readily agreed that it would be worthwhile.

TalentRISE: Jeff, once you accepted the position, how did the onboarding process unfold?

Jeff Russell: TalentRISE did a very nice job of presenting the availability of onboarding coaching, particularly as my situation was somewhat unique in moving from a large bank to a family-owned community bank. They understood that there could be some challenges. It has worked out well, and the coach has been very helpful in offering his insights into a number of things such as metrics setting. I would certainly use an onboarding coach for outsiders joining the bank as it can provide a big benefit. We are somewhat of an island here and coaching would be very helpful to someone moving here from Chicago, for instance, to take a job.  

TalentRISE: What impact do you think that the onboarding coaching has had?

Bill Baker: From my perspective, it has proven to be very effective. The consultant provides me with regular updates but I am intentionally not directly involved, and that’s how it should be. My belief is that the coach and Jeff need to work autonomously and independently. I do know that the process has gone well. For example, the coach has set up and used tried and tested exercises with Jeff and the team and that these have been very effective as icebreakers.

TalentRISE: Any other comments you’d like to add about the experience?

Jeff Russell: Now having been part of the bank for a while, I realize the many ways in which TalentRISE has ensured that the structure of the process has worked well for all sides. More structure, in my opinion, is good. Yet they have also been flexible, shifting course along the way based on feedback, for instance, to craft a more specific description of the position. Overall, this been a great experience. Jim [O’Malley], my main contact, has been down-to-earth and very fair; always acting with integrity on behalf of the client. In addition, my coach has both a banking and an HR background which has been a big plus. It’s clear that they have really taken the time to understand the culture here.

A study conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and The Miles Group in 2013 found that while nearly two-thirds of CEOs and half of all other senior executives do not receive coaching or leadership advice from outside consultants or coaches, 100% of those who received coaching said that they enjoyed it.

De-Mystifying the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC)

Ever experience the exhilaration of finding a long forgotten twenty dollar bill hidden in a pocket? Jeff Newcorn is an expert in uncovering what he calls “found money” for companies and claims (pun fully intended) to be quite passionate about it.  His firm, R. Jeffrey & Associates, specializes in helping employers access Work Opportunity Tax Credits (WOTC). WOTC is a federal tax credit program that benefits companies located in low-income communities and/or who hire people with barriers to employment. Those employee groups include veterans, food stamp and welfare recipients, disconnected youth, recent ex-felons, and residents of Federal Empowerment Zones, Renewal Communities and Rural Renewal Counties. In the interview below, Jeff describes the WOTC program and his mission to make these tax incentives more accessible to a broad range of small and medium sized companies.  

TalentRISE:  What does WOTC actually do?

Newcorn: This is a federal program designed to incent businesses to hire individuals from eligible target groups by reducing an employer’s federal income tax liability by as much as $9,600 per employee hired. There’s no limit to the number of people an employer can hire under the program.  So, the program is a win-win-win on multiple fronts: for employers who get a tax break, for people who will now get hired and for states since putting more people to work decreases the benefits that states must otherwise pay out.  

TalentRISE: What’s the typical profile of a company that is eligible for WOTC?  

Newcorn: Companies of any size that hire a significant portion of their workforce at entry level or lower/near minimum wage may be eligible for credits. These are businesses that typically experience high turnover and operate in industries such as food service/restaurants, retail, staffing, janitorial and entry level healthcare jobs. Their workers often have had fairly significant challenges finding work and the program is designed to incent employers who hire from this population. For example, about 80% of employees who generate WOTC for businesses are currently using food stamps. Veterans, while statistically a small portion of the possible pool of employees that can generate eligibility for credits, are in a separate and more generous category. While not-for-profits are exempt from federal taxes, they too can receive some benefits through this program because the federal government will match social security taxes for those that hire veterans. If your business is included in any of these categories, you should definitely talk to your accountant or other advisors about the possibility of being eligible and then taking the steps to track, calculate and claim these credits.

TalentRISE: How many companies do you think are eligible, but (for whatever reason) aren’t collecting the credits?  

Newcorn: Larger companies seem to utilize the program more. Walmart, for example, has committed to hire 100,000 veterans and certainly has a process in place to collect the tax credits that are due to them. Overall, it’s hard to put a number on it but many small companies don’t even know that the WOTC program exists or they don’t understand how it works.  I think it’s really a matter of awareness and also a lack of actionable information about how to make the program real. Frankly, the program has not really been “sold”.  The IRS and most CPA organizations don’t market or promote tax credits.

Another reason some smaller businesses are initially reluctant to use the program is that it used to be more complicated to obtain and process the WOTC paperwork. Today, with the technology available in 2015, that objection that really has no merit. The process is simple. At my firm, we have clients ask their new eligible hires to fill out a six question (web-based) electronic survey. It takes 90 seconds. Then, my team loads the information into the government system along with payroll data that clients stream to us through a secure feed. We calculate the data for all individual workers who are certified through the system and we then provide the credit-earned report to our clients.

Finally, although less frequently, I also hear yet another objection:  some small business owners don’t want the credit because they don’t feel entitled to it. The truth is, that as business taxpayers, they are indeed entitled to it. They’re paying into the system via taxes so they should get back what they are entitled to receive under the law.

TalentRISE: How do you work with clients? Who is generally your internal contact and how do you engage with them?

Newcorn: My role is to educate, administrate and ultimately calculate the credit.  Finance and HR are typically involved in the first steps since we need data regarding hiring processes and payroll.  HR is then somewhat more involved in the administering.  Finance and the tax department are always, but not surprisingly, interested in the results.  

TalentRISE: How did you get into this business?

Newcorn: A friend who was working with companies to claim Job Training credits told me about this back in 1998. I quickly assumed that most small businesses were unaware about business credits and incentives. And, I was right. With my accounting background and previous experience in corporate finance, plus my software skills, I saw an opportunity and have been an evangelist for the program ever since.  

For more about Jeff Newcorn and R. Jeffrey & Associates, Inc., see www.rjeffrey.com  or www.zonecreditsnow.com

Early in my career, I worked in operations for two large transportation companies, Roadway and UPS. At both, I quickly learned that the operations function thrives on metrics. Over time, I have concluded that ALL areas of a business lend themselves to measurement. Yet, for years, we in HR/Recruiting avoided metrics either because we thought we were too good for them, or because we believed that measurement doesn’t apply since the (mistaken) perception was that HR, by definition, exists to advocate for employees. How do you measure the “warm and fuzzy”?

So, when the winds of business shifted a couple of decades ago and it was no longer acceptable to only be warm and fuzzy, some of us in HR/Recruiting quickly latched onto metrics that, at the time, seemed like reasonable things to measure. Within recruiting, many started collecting data such as “cost-per-hire”, “time-to-fill” and “source-per-hire”.

As we advanced our view of what to measure, others started to track the recruiting department’s workload, hiring manager satisfaction, the effectiveness of outreach/brand awareness, applications-per-hire and even the percentage of hires that are proactively sourced (which seems to imply that it only requires an individual recruiter’s ingenuity to find the hired candidate!). Metrics such as “value-of-hire” and “quality-of-hire”, focusing on the value that a particular hire brings to the business, were talked about, but rarely instituted.

Recruiters still struggle to measure what matters. In a TalentRISE survey last year of leading companies we asked respondents to name their top three priorities related to recruitment processes. Not surprisingly, the most popular responses were measuring quality of hire, client/candidate satisfaction, performance metrics, and ROI.  (Source: 2014 TalentRISE Recruiting Innovations and Best Practices Survey)

The good news? Today, there is widespread recognition that the most valuable metric – and the one that really matters – is quality-of-hire (QOH). Others may help you evaluate the efficiency of your recruitment function, but that’s about it. They won’t reveal much more than whether recruiters are working as effectively as you’d like. What you really need to know is whether the work recruiters do is materially raising the bar on the quality of people joining your organization.

The problem, of course, is actually measuring QOH. There is no “one-size-fits-all” algorithm.  It will mean different things for each business and possibly even for each individual contributor within each business unit. Measurement is perhaps best done by vertical. For instance, the measurement of an individual in a finance position requires different tools than someone in a sales position. However, at the vertical level, it’s difficult to determine who you benchmark against. Is it all the finance people within your company; within your industry or ALL the finance people with a particular title/level? QOH is also pretty subjective. Do you base it on a performance evaluation system? When do you measure it? At six months into the job? 12 months?

Questions abound but there are no easy answers since the metrics and measurement process must be tailored to your organization. However, several overarching principles can be helpful in establishing QOH and other related metrics for your business.  David Earle of Staffing.org in his white paper for Jobvite Recruiting Analytics: 5 Ways to Benchmark Success is right on target when he recommends asking the following questions:

• Will everyone who sees them understand what they mean?
• Have they been compiled cooperatively, based on dialogue between recruiting and internal stakeholders?
• Does everyone agree that they are important?
• Do they speak directly to recruiters’, hiring managers’ and executive management’s objectives?
• Can they be easily accessed and compiled consistently and accurately?

When seeking input from within your organization, don’t neglect to look beyond your usual internal clients for expertise. The absolute best source of information is the individual ultimately responsible for the organization’s financial performance and metrics: the CFO.  In my experience, even the most well-intentioned (or perhaps ignorant) recruiters overlook the value of soliciting input from the person whose job it is to constantly measure overall business results and who, by the way, certainly appreciates the magnitude of employee costs.  

Once you’ve established the metrics, ensure that the process of tracking and analysis isn’t overly complicated or unwieldy. Recruiting tools and technology have made this much easier. The same technologies can also support and enable decision-making for strategic workforce planning and can be used to gather critical talent-related business intelligence. In fact, in recent years, this has evolved into a profession right in front of our eyes.

Back in my days at UPS we would repeat this age old quote: “Plan your work and work your plan. Because if you fail to plan, your plan will fail”. In thinking about recruitment metrics, we ought to substitute the word “measure” for “plan” and use that expression as a guide when improving our recruiting processes.  We can also tap into wisdom from Lord Kelvin, an Irish physicist and engineer obsessed with measurement, who wrote: “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it. When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”

Even more succinctly, Kelvin also said, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”. Which leads me to offer one last piece of advice: always follow-through on what you learn from your metrics – whether it’s good, bad or ugly – to improve your processes.

The value of onboarding is indisputable. Pretty much everyone agrees that onboarding new executives, especially those in mission-critical roles, works. In fact, research shows that organizations with best in class onboarding programs* experience:

• Significant increases in retention and hiring manager satisfaction
• Enhanced productivity for new executives as new working relationships are jump started
• A reduction in time spent by HR assimilating the employee
• Decreases in organizational and individual stress
• Greater returns on investments made when recruiting for high profile, critical roles

So why aren’t more businesses using onboarding to complement their existing orientation/acculturation programs?  Honestly, we really don’t know — except that their reluctance may be grounded in misperceptions about what onboarding needs to cover, how it’s delivered and/or its costs.

To overcome those obstacles, we provide a dedicated onboarding coach for newly hired executives for the first 100 days as part of our executive search solution — at our expense. The comprehensive one-on-one coaching program is offered through highly experienced coaches identified and managed by CoralBridge.   

If you are interested in learning more, contact us at info@talentrise.com for information about an upcoming Breakfast Briefing to be held on May 10 in Chicago or you can register here. Steve Andrews, CEO of International Equipment Solutions, a global engineered equipment company, and Charles Bishop, PhD, Principal with CoralBridge will discuss how a customized coaching program was successfully developed and conducted when the company hired a new General Manager recruited by TalentRISE. Space is limited and preference will be given to corporate attendees.  

*(Source: Aberdeen and others)

Why Can’t I Fill My Job(s)?

In my thirty years in recruitment, I have heard this question, and other related time-worn queries discussed below, countless times. Lately, it seems to be asked more frequently – and with a far greater degree of exasperation – leading me to believe that the problem is getting worse!

Author and Buddhist philosopher Tenzin Palmo, when questioned about finding happiness, writes “The answer lies within ourselves”. Similarly, when pondering these age-old recruitment questions,  I believe the fixes can be identified if we look inward. If we just dig a bit deeper, we can get at the core of the solutions for the most commonly asked questions about recruitment, including:

Why can’t I hire “A” talent?

Before you set your course to acquire “A” talent, ask yourself these three simple questions:

1. Does this position require it?
2. Can I afford it?
3. Will “A” talent consider this role/company worthy?

Often times, we fail to recognize the difference between needs and wants and how that difference impacts scarcity. In other words, our needs are few but our wants are limitless…and human wants will always exceed the resources available to fulfill those wants, hence scarcity.  We can all agree that there is a scarcity of talent and this is compounded when we seek those at the top of the “A” list. That’s why we need to set our expectations appropriately from the beginning!

If you’re absolutely convinced that you must hire “A” talent, recognize that you’ll need to answer questions two and three above in a rational and objective manner. Also realize that you will pay a premium to attract “A” talent and they must perceive that a move to your company is worth it. Finally, recognize that “A” talent is typically not looking to move or available when you need them… you have to work within their timeframes. Unlike a piece of fruit at the market that you can buy when you need it, “A”s need to be identified far in advance. Then, their interests and capabilities must be assessed and cultivated over time. So, think long and hard before you embark on hiring “A” talent and start engaging them well in advance of your needs. Or, follow the example set years ago by of the most progressive businesses and professional sports teams and hire top talent when it is available, not when you need it!

Why does it take too long to fill my positions?

As noted above, a big part of the problem is that organizations try to hire “A” talent for “B” and “C” jobs. The other challenge is related to the demand or supply chain for talent (which is “just in time”) within a reactionary recruitment system. Supply chain professionals know that when a customer buys a product, that product must already have been manufactured, stocked and be ready for delivery. But companies and their recruiting functions, in contrast, seldom have talent on a shelf. They have to “produce” the talent when they get a request and this frustrates hiring managers who expect recruiters to deliver talent “just in time”.

So why hasn’t this changed? Ask yourself this question when you eliminate recruiting staff every time demand for new hires slows. Instead of laying off your team, why not deploy them to go out and restock the shelves!?  Better yet, ask yourself what you stand to lose when you decide to NOT use an outside recruiting consultant because of the perceived cost. The reality is that the price of retaining a recruiting consultant is often far less than the revenue lost every single day that a key position remains unfilled!

Why is it so difficult to get the right candidates to accept my offer?

Too often, we allow our internal convoluted and/or extended interview processes to determine our destiny. A good recruiter knows that time is the enemy. Candidates who are “passive” when you initially engage will inevitably respond to every other recruiter calling with an opportunity once that candidate declares him or herself “active”.

This is particularly challenging for industries like consulting where I spend most of my time. We know that a good consultant might have three or more opportunities to consider at any time – even when they are not looking!  That’s why a long drawn out or otherwise “messy” interview experience can kill a great candidate’s interest in joining a firm. Callbacks, recruiters who oversell the opportunity, rescheduled hiring manager interviews ad nauseum OR, worse yet, getting mixed messages from various hiring managers, can lead a candidate to reject the job. The candidate’s thinking is, “if they can’t get the interview process right, how does anyone get any serious work done here?”.

Why do I struggle getting my new hire up to speed?

Again, we already know the answer to this question. While hiring is often a challenge, getting that individual up and running and, of course, making sure that he/she stays, is equally important. Plus, an onboarding program, viewed as a tool of attraction, can actually help you fill a position in the first place.

Traditionally, recruiters have tended to focus on the tactical at the expense of the strategic and view their job as “I get a requisition, I do a bunch of recruiting, I find and interview candidates, I get them hired, I am done!”  That’s now changing because businesses understand the frequency, costs and risks of early departures. They are also beginning to acknowledge that onboarding needs to about acculturation as much, if not more, than about training. Finally, there is growing recognition that recruiting is uniquely qualified to be involved in onboarding given that a relationship with the new hire has already been built.  

But onboarding shouldn’t only be recruiting’s bailiwick.  Getting the new hire up to speed is not a task the hiring manager can or should delegate to HR/Recruiting/IT or, for that matter, an assistant. Ultimately, onboarding is the hiring manager’s responsibility. The better the on-boarding experience is, the faster the new person will become productive and engaged. Conversely, the lack of onboarding or a bad process can translate into a slower start, delayed success (or even total failure) and sow the seeds for discontent and a early departure.

Conclusion

Make it a practice, before asking yourself these questions, to ask “what am I doing that is preventing me from filling my jobs?” As the market for good talent in most industries becomes increasingly competitive, it’s easy enough to blame external conditions for the recruitment challenges you encounter. But looking inward instead at your own hiring practices can uncover numerous ways – many of which won’t cost a dime – to increase your chances of hiring great talent…and keeping them. And, of course, lead you to the answer to “Why Can’t I Fill My Job(s)?”.

Avoid These Three Most Common Recruiting Missteps

Uncertainty is often described as a situation involving imperfect and/or unknown information. Within the fast moving consumer goods sector (FMCG), uncertainty is both pervasive and unavoidable. The marketplace is changing radically and rapidly. In the past, competitive advantage used to encompass concepts such as scale, brand loyalty and retail relationships. But today, FMCG companies are dealing with slowing economic recovery among the middle class, changing consumer preferences (particularly towards health, wellness and sustainability) and the proliferation of digital marketing and sales.

As a result, businesses in the sector that are intent on survival are seeking growth through both new product development and by taking a fresh approach to market.  In the past few years there has been a rush to build innovation centers of excellence to improve and accelerate outcomes from these new initiatives.  As a recent study by Deloitte University Press correctly concluded, “While business leaders focus on charting the path to sustain and grow under these conditions, we must not lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of these changes will be led by people and there are major headwinds there as well.” The study also states that “CHRO and Talent leaders need to figure out new ways to incorporate non-traditional employees into their resource model to import the skills they lack” and developing a much need culture of innovation.

The magnitude of this challenge is reflective of a trend that I, along with many peers in executive search, are experiencing firsthand. Up until a couple of years ago, clients in the sector most often asked me to identify candidates from within FMCG – and often even more narrowly from a direct competitor.  Today, hiring managers and talent acquisition leaders are intent to look outside for new employees to bring the fresh perspectives and skillsets needed to drive innovation.

However, old habits die hard and companies struggle to attract and select new employees outside of their industry – heck, many still struggle with assessing talent within their industry!   While there are multiple reasons that companies are often less than successful in hiring and keeping talent, below we discuss the three most common and dangerous missteps that I have witnessed during my many years of recruiting both inside and as a partner to FMCG clients:

• Assuming “Best in Class” is best for you
• Utilizing a selection process that overly weights industry experience
• Failing to provide critical onboarding and assimilation

Missstep #1 – Assuming “Best in Class” is Best For You

I’m often asked to find what’s commonly referred to as  “best in class” talent for my clients. That’s understandable since every company wants to hire the best talent possible. However, using the label “best in class” can be problematic.   

First, we need to ask ourselves what exactly is meant by “best in class”? What types of attributes are you really referring to?  What data sources are you using to determine best in class?  So, before starting any search for “best in class talent”, take a step further to understand what the term means for you and how you would map it to the market place.  You, and the hiring managers on your team, wanting to attract great talent outside of your industry need to:

• Do your homework.   Seasoned professionals will know their industry competitors inside and out but may not know who the players are in other sectors. While P&G is widely known in a class by itself for supply chain excellence in FMCG, do you know that McDonald’s is number #2 on Gartner’s 2015 list of the Top 25 Supply Chains?  Similarly, marquee-named companies and brands can be very alluring but do you also know that Inditex (who?!) is #5 on that same list?  A good recruiting partner can develop a solid target list of companies, including those potentially flying under the hiring manager’s radar.  
• Practice self-awareness. Look inward and understand who your company really is. What are your strengths and weaknesses as an employer? What will attract the talent you want to join your organization and to stay for the long run? Then, set internal expectations for the caliber of talent you want to add to the bench. If, for example, you run operations at a $50 million regional coffee distributor but want to hire a VP of logistics from Amazon, you may want to think twice about the likelihood of successfully recruiting that person.  And, once you’ve decided who your class is, target your recruitment message appropriately to attract those individuals.
• Get real and set appropriate expectations.  All organizations have aspirational business goals, which they need to balance with the reality of the work that needs to get done day-in and day-out to reach those goals. When you set out to hire someone today, realize that they are walking across your threshold to deal with immediate reality. Overselling the job, based on a vision of the future, can backfire with any new hire but even more so when making the leap from one industry to another. Apply integrity to your recruitment messaging and distinguish between what’s aspirational and what’s real and you will be more likely to retain the new talent you acquire.

Missstep #2 – Overly Weighting Industry Experience (…Despite Your Best Intentions)

While ostensibly looking for candidates who can provide fresh and innovative ideas, many hiring managers will still cling to what is familiar and end up hiring candidates whose resume looks like their own, and that of the rest of the team’s.  Singularly focusing on candidates like your current team will not likely result in breakthrough change and innovation. 

• Focus on competencies and behaviors, not just accomplishments. This advice is not revolutionary but it bears repeating in this context.  For example, if you are in the beer industry, it can be exciting to hear about a candidate who delivered double digit growth for a new brand when the sector as a whole has been declining.  We can be quick to jump to conclusions, apply what we know about the beer industry and incorrectly fill in the gaps in the narrative based on our own experiences without really asking the questions to learn what the candidate really did (or didn’t do) to achieve these results.  When you are talking to people outside of your industry, you can’t cut corners or jump to quick conclusions.  You have to prepare, probe, truly listen and seek to understand.  What were the circumstances under which they achieved the accomplishment?  Have they done it again under different circumstances?  Did they apply what they learned in a new situation and achieve new or different results?  All too often, good candidates from other industries are overlooked or discounted because of breakdowns in the interview process or a lack of interviewer preparation.
• Don’t let internal recruitment procedures hinder your external recruiting strategy.   If your job requisition process or internal application policy includes standard requests about specific industry requirements or overly uses industry jargon and acronyms it is likely the most desirable candidates may be dissuaded from expressing interest.  Instead, describe open positions with less emphasis on requirements and more on experience and accomplishments by painting what we call a “success profile”.  A high performer in another industry needs to easily make the connections between their strengths or interests and your job opening so they will take that important first step in your process.

Missstep #3 – Failing to Provide Effective Onboarding and Assimilation

Companies across the board, regardless of their industry, invest too little in onboarding beyond asking the new hire to complete paperwork and providing a few sessions on company culture. That falls far short of protecting your investment in new hires as witnessed by alarmingly high rates of failure estimated at 50% within the first two years for senior executives.  Proper assimilation – with coaching and on-going support to help new executives navigate the norms of your organization – is even more critical when you are hiring outside of your industry. A nominal investment of time and money will offer a return in multiple ways.

Summary

FMCG companies looking to become truly innovative need people with the spark to light the fuse of innovation. This means thinking differently about who you recruit and, for many companies, it means recruiting from non-traditional pools of talent. However, if you want to attract new types of employees, you need to change how you recruit and retain these newcomers. The process can be challenging – and costly – if not done right. But by building a cohesive external strategy, following the suggestions above and seeking guidance from consultants with the appropriate expertise, your chances of success will be greatly improved.

Dave Swinehart, Director of Human Capital and Operations at HealthScape Advisors is absolutely passionate about getting the right type of talent hired. With a stated mission to be “the trusted advisor for clients navigating the evolving healthcare environment”, he acknowledges that recruitment in such a complex and rapidly-changing industry requires a careful and strategic approach. It also helps to work with external vendors who understand his firm well enough to know which candidates will be the best fit.  Read more in the interview that follows.

Question: What is your industry’s greatest talent challenge these days?

Swinehart: The business challenges facing the healthcare industry today are as complex as they have ever been.  At the crux are three relationships: between the healthcare provider, the payer, and the healthcare patient. That triangle is extremely complicated, filled with sometimes disparate motivators and emotions.  And when you add in ACA (the Affordable Care Act) there is an additional layer of intricacy. Therefore, as a consulting firm, we’re charged with finding solutions to problems that haven’t existed before. In turn, that’s what makes the talent challenge so complex. Today, solutions that we have used in the past are less relevant – or don’t even apply – when we need to address the full complement of nuances within this relationship triangle. Our team must be capable of facing a degree of uncertainty or ambiguity that they, as professionals, may not have ever experienced before.

We have always made sure that the workforce we deploy is exceptionally nimble, motivated, bright, experienced and good at listening to solve problems. Now, today, on top of all of that, we are asking our people to consider problems that have never, heretofore, been a problem. Experience alone is not a safe harbor anymore. Collaboration is paramount whereas before, doing research on one’s own might have generated some effective ideas. What oftentimes in the past led to a fair amount of success still holds true but now there is added element that we seek in new hires: we want people who revel in the gray area, who enjoy chasing after a ghost – metaphorically speaking – and who are able to hear whispers or hints of solutions in places that weren’t necessarily relevant a couple of years ago. It’s challenging to find people who can do that.  Hiring people with these competencies is difficult.

Question: When you look for external partners, what specific criteria do you use?

Swinehart: It’s relatively simple and straightforward. Before I consider any relationship, I test that potential vendor’s market credibility. Someone I trust needs to tell me that the external firm will do well here. That’s not the only basis for a decision, of course. A referral is not a “go”, but it is typically a “no go” if it’s not positive.  By far, the next important thing is the relationship. When we approached TalentRISE to do executive search for us, our final decision was to choose between TalentRISE and another vendor really deeply entrenched in the healthcare space. We selected TalentRISE because of that team’s deep knowledge of us. We know that Jim’s [Jim O’Malley] team will present us – for instance – with three great candidates and tell us, “this is the one you want because we know you.”  That is really important to me.

Question: In addition to retained searches, TalentRISE is also handling an on-demand recruitment project for you. How is that going?

Swinehart:  The three month long on-demand project, which has just been completed, has worked very well. We’ve viewed it as retained search “lite”, with flexible pricing as we’re filling a very specific need, as far as the level of domain expertise and fairly senior level of candidates. In using contingent search providers, they only occasionally come across candidates that fit the bill. With the on-demand solution from TalentRISE, we started with a list of a dozen to twenty companies and they are generating names, pounding the pavement and handling candidate prep. It’s worked out really well for us.

Question:  There is a Latin motto on your website, “Genesis Doctrina Culture”, which roughly translates to “Living a Learning Culture”.  How has it helped you to attract the types of people you describe above?

Swinehart: By way of background, the literal translation of that phrase is “being alive”, “learning” and “culture”. We use this expression because Latin is the foundation of so many languages in the world and, likewise, we feel that learning here at HeathScape is the core component, or foundation, of our values. Our people’s ability to learn is how we add value to our clients. And their desire to learn is often the reason that our employees accept a job here.

For recruitment purposes, the motto has resonated particularly well with recent graduates. When the firm was launched seven years ago, our corporate brand was quickly well-received. On the other hand, while that branding was off and running immediately, our employment branding was a complete unknown. In doing campus recruitment, we fared pretty well because we were in the healthcare space and because of our focus on the development of people. But new recruits had to take our emphasis on “sharpening the saw” on faith. So the motto has helped to underscore our recruitment message and make our employment brand unique.

Question: Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

Swinehart:  Regardless of what type of service TalentRISE has provided, we recognize that the recruiters who work on our behalf are an extension of our employee brand. We are very protective of that brand. If we get that wrong in the talent marketplace, we attract the wrong people or the wrong expertise, both of which are very difficult to undo. I have the utmost confidence in TalentRISE’s team’s ability communicate our brand to candidates in a fashion that represents us professionally and appropriately.

Look, I’ve worked in organizations where I’ve had a large in-house recruiting team and I know you really can’t always control the message. However, with TalentRISE, I have had candidates tell me things about the TalentRISE team like, “Sarah knows a lot about your firm/position or the culture at HealthScape”. I’m confident that TalentRISE represents us in a knowledgeable and balanced way and that’s important. It makes the recruitment process effective.

What’s Good for Your Company Is Good For Your Career

Jane Clarke, the Talent Acquisition leader of a 5,000 employee business, contends with a lot of “noise” in her job. Hiring managers are constantly changing course to revise talent requirements. Her overworked team complains about antiquated recruitment technology. Contract recruiters she hired to deal with the most recent hiring spike quit for full-time positions at a competitor. Her mentor and former boss, recently promoted to lead HR at an admired company, is encouraging Jane to consider RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), but Jane worries that doing so will somehow acknowledge defeat, marginalize her managerial skills and ultimately damage her career.

In our view, Jane’s got it all wrong. Her fears are unwarranted. In fact, she should embrace RPO and promote the value it can bring to the business. Not only can a well-architected outsourcing engagement address her greatest challenges, being proactive and spearheading the process can make her a star at her current employer… and highly marketable to others.

While there are many compelling reasons to outsource all or some of your recruitment process, below we outline the seven top career-building considerations:

You can’t predict the future

Just like “jumbo shrimp,” the concept of “workforce planning” is an oxymoron rather than a reflection of reality.  In today’s fast paced marketplace, most organizations have difficulty anticipating hiring needs further than six months out with any degree of accuracy. In fact, according to Mercer, 62% of organizations rate themselves as ineffective at workforce planning. There are simply too many variables that impact the diversity of talent needs – by business unit, by role, by geography and even by season – to make most workforce planning little more than an educated guess.  Strategically aligning recruiters to business units can help overcome workforce planning gaps but, in reality, continually rightsizing the recruiting team to meet the hiring demands of the business is really difficult even with decent workforce planning processes.

In contrast, an RPO solution scales, allowing your business to deal with ebbs and flows in talent needs, whether across your entire business or only within those units where unpredictably is the most extreme.

You want more, not less, control

Yes, you did just read that correctly! A well-structured RPO arrangement can actually give you, as the talent acquisition leader, more control than using an in-house team. Contrary to popular belief, a properly structured and executed RPO engagement can provide a talent acquisition leader with greater visibility and oversight into the entire hiring process, especially related to what’s most important.  As a client, you should actually receive a higher level of service from the team handling your recruitment.  Additionally, you won’t need to deal with distractions related to the hiring, training and general management of direct hires. As opposed to micro-managing details, you can focus on the big picture.

Many worry that outsourcing will weaken their employment brand because their frontline “Brand Ambassadors” aren’t on the payroll. Those concerns are quickly alleviated through orientations and cultural immersion with the RPO team, equipping them with the insights they need to represent your company and culture.

You want to build new personal skillsets

Negotiating and managing a partnership with an RPO provider will help you build a new, and different, skillset. In order to succeed, the relationship requires deep collaboration and great project management skills, not to mention the ability to champion the concept and business case internally. These competencies will deepen your skillset and provide immeasurable value to you as you further your career.  

 You don’t have the resources to innovate

Dealing with the everyday tasks inherent in running a talent acquisition function doesn’t leave most  leaders with time to spare to develop and institute new ideas. Entrusting the day-to-day recruitment tasks to an RPO partner will free you up to focus on what really counts in the long run, whether that means providing more training to hiring managers on interviewing protocols or investing resources in better social media outreach. The best RPO partners also make it a practice to share insights among clients facing similar recruitment challenges, thereby providing you with ideas to help you innovate.

You’re determined to up the ante on best practices

Related to the point made above, it’s in the RPO vendor’s best interest to use the latest tools and technologies available because the more effective they are, the more economies of scale they – and by extension YOU – will achieve. Because efficiency is a mutually shared objective, RPO vendors will offer your organization access to the latest and greatest suite of tools in the market.

You want to take costs out of your business

Comparing the true labor costs (hiring, training, payroll, benefits, etc.) of employing a full-time recruitment team along with recruitment advertising, search agencies, real estate and IT costs to RPO vendor fees usually seals the deal on which is more economical and scalable. Perhaps that’s why, according to Everest, RPO has grown by such leaps and bounds across multiple industries while improving quality of hire with potential cost savings of 10-30% depending on search agency usage.

Finally, you want to accelerate business outcomes

If, like in most businesses, your ability to scale recruitment to hire the right people at the right time is critical to your growth, then an RPO solution will help you achieve that goal.

In summary…

Simply put, RPO is good for your career because it’s good for your company. As we like to say, “it’s not ‘if,’ it’s when.” For many business leaders, RPO is a core component of their overall talent acquisition strategy. If you are serious about getting that coveted “seat at the table,” why not be proactive and instigate a serious conversation about RPO with your business leaders? The career-building benefits of outsourcing recruitment on behalf of your current employer will translate into measurable accomplishments on your resume for future employers. RPO can help you climb the next rung on your career ladder as a business partner, strategic thinker and decision-maker.  

TalentRISE Partner Jim O’Malley recently contributed an article for the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council’s NewsLink newsletter.  Jim provides key insights related to recruiting talent in the transportation industry’s unique environment.  Click here to read the NASSTRAC NewsLink.

A Conversation with Deborah Snow Walsh

Debbie Walsh joined TalentRISE last spring as a Managing Director, having served Fortune 100 companies in executive search for more than 20 years. This has given her keen insights into what CEOs really want in terms of talent and how to deliver on that. In the conversation below, Debbie shares her opinions on several current hiring trends, including hiring for innovation, diversity recruitment and what she calls the “big five” competencies that all top executives need to possess to be successful.

Read the interview with Debbie below and learn more about her professional experience here.

Question: In your opinion, why is executive search still relevant today? Skeptics will say you can fill positions using in-house resources, referral networks and LinkedIn.

Walsh:  First, to answer that question, let’s look at how important having the right talent really is. Talent is top of mind for CEOs; it’s almost always the first priority on the lists generated by survey after survey of the executive suite. What I call the “big five” are the core competencies that define top talent; these are the behaviors that every CEO is – or should be – looking for in the talent that he/she hires. The “big five” are the clearest indicators of top tier performers: the ability to articulate a clear vision; to drive financial results; to be agile while negotiating change; to demonstrate ethics and integrity and finally, the ability to develop people. The final competency is particularly important as it means understanding that people make you better and you make people better. It’s about lending a hand to those above you as well as those below.

So, to address this question about whether a company can use LinkedIn or employee referral networks to hire people as effectively as a dedicated executive search professional, my take is that finding someone in possession of all of “big five” is exceedingly difficult. Making a mistake is also risky and risk is not good when you are hiring people with cash compensation starting at $300,000 on up.

Finding people with the knowledge, experience, skills, credentials and also the “big five” also takes time. And no one really has time these days. I just had a senior banker at a global bank tell me why she hired me for a search. She told me, “You took this project off my desk, you were easy to work with, you found the right person and you got the job done.” That’s what it’s all about.

Question: Where is the greatest talent “hurt” right now?

Walsh:  In my experience, which is most likely influenced by the fact that I work closely with so many, the CHRO (Chief Human Resource Officer) role is experiencing enormous change. In fact, I participate in a project called CHREATE, officially described as The Global Consortium to Reimagine HR, Employment Alternatives, Talent, and the Enterprise.  The group is composed of top CHROs from large companies around the globe who are dedicated to envisioning what HR will look like in 2025. The overarching themes driving our project are twofold: talent and finance. In other words, we’re focusing on ways HR leaders can ensure that they have the right talent and that talent can produce.

This translates into HR taking on responsibilities that previously have been relegated elsewhere. As an example, think about how HR today needs to deal with the impact of the physical location of employees. Ten or more years ago, you may have had 60,000 employees spread across 5 or 6 corporate campuses. Today, with talent working virtually, employees can be spread all over the globe, working from corporate sites, their homes, hotels, client locations or possibly even all of the above during the course of a single week. That has huge implications for the profession of HR as now HR is tasked with its traditional responsibilities, from compensation and benefits management to new areas with “scope creep” including jobs previously categorized as “real estate” or “premises management”.  Another area is internal communications, previously most often the bailiwick of marketing departments. Today, HR is increasingly tasked with ensuring a unified organization when employees are largely virtual. We’re even starting to see titles such as Chief Employee Experience Officer, which is miles beyond the HR roles of yesterday.

Question: Talking about “the employee experience” raises the issue of retention. Your job is all about placing people; what advice do you have regarding keeping them?

Walsh:  First of all, you need to make sure that new executives are quickly made to feel are part of a team and don’t feel like a cog in the wheel. You are hiring these people to deliver so it only makes sense to let them know that their thoughts and ideas are valued and respected.

At most organizations, there is a realization that a significant onboarding process is absolutely critical. Here at TalentRISE, we work with an outside coaching company to provide that service to our executive search clients through an independent, outside party. It’s working well and really is very effective throughout the most critical times, at 30-60-90 days into the executive’s new job.

I personally also stay in touch with my clients and the candidates I place throughout the first year. That’s when the hiccups will happen.

Question:  Throughout your career, you’ve made diversity a focus of your work. Can you describe your philosophy and your approach?

Walsh:  When I started in this field in 1995, none of the big firms were thinking much about diversity and, if they were, the tendency was to focus on just the visible dimensions of diversity, such as race and gender. In broadest terms, the top echelons of corporate power were composed of straight white guys and that’s where the hiring focus was. Today, that reality has shifted somewhat but it hasn’t been a major as many of us had hoped. My daughter is about to enter the job market where females still make only 78 cents on the dollar compared to men. That’s disappointing.

Having said that, I am delighted to work with many organizations that walk the talk on diversity and practice equal pay for equal jobs. I am passionate about bringing a diverse slate of candidates to the table. We all know that diverse employee and management teams, as well as diverse boards, make good business sense. I am particularly gratified, especially in industries where we are starting to see demand outstrip supply, that companies are beginning to value age. It’s wonderful to bring people back who may have lost jobs during the recession but want to work and apply what I call that “the maturity of judgment”. That judgment takes time to develop. Companies who value it can access great brain power while transitioning skills and experiences to the next generation. But, generally speaking about diversity hiring, it won’t work unless the CEO is devoted to it.

Question: Several industries today are shifting their focus on hiring from the outside, to access innovative talent to transform their markets. Are you seeing that as well? 

Walsh: It’s definitely a trend. To me, creativity and innovation are part of diversity. So looking to other industries can be incredibly valuable if you go about it in a smart way. I often need to convince the hiring manager to look beyond the competition.  As a professional executive recruiter, I then do the research to develop the list of companies and the individuals we want to target inside that company so I can strategize how we go about it.

Question: You’ve had experience working within HR organizations. What’s your top takeaway from your days as an in-house talent acquisition leader?

Walsh: Here’s what I’ve learned from sitting on both sides of the desk: the best hiring process starts when everyone who will touch the candidate in some way meets in the same room at the same time. Otherwise, Mary’s and Bob’s and whoever else’s’ differing ideas of the top five candidate qualifications will not ever be reconciled. This way, the negotiation on what’s important to each decision-maker is completed before the search starts. That saves not just aggravation but also time.