LEAN, Just-in-Time Recruiting!



Archive for January, 2010

Spend less time searching for resumes and more time searching for people with intelligence!

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

OK - You have a critical, difficult-to-fill position and you have performed all the ’normal sourcing tactics’ to fill it.

  • Posted on your website and a large job board or two
  • Networked with key employees
  • Surfed the Internet for candidates
  • Checked out LinkedIn

And unfortunately, you still don’t have any interested, qualified candidates.

Does this sound familiar? What do you do next?

For many, the next step is the ‘wait, hope & pray’ tactic.  You wait, hope and pray that some qualified candidates fall in your lap :) . 

For others, that have the time and expertise, you dive into deep Internet mining tactics (Boolean/semantic search) scouring remote databases/information for the elusive, ‘passive’ candidate. 

From my experience, very few recruiters immerse themselves in identifying people that will KNOW the people you are looking to find and talk too!  

This fundamental shift in thinking is so simple but very powerful. If implemented, this technique will transform the way you source candidates forever!   

Instead of asking the questions:  

  • Where can I find qualified professionals?
  • Where should I look for them?
  • What search techniques should I use to find quality talent?

Ask:

  • Who would know the person I am looking for?
  • Who can I talk to within a particular company (that has the talent I am looking for) that would know the person I am looking for?

For many creative sourcers, as part of the search strategy, they try to identify key words to source such as:

  • Competitor companies
  • Similar job titles
  • Key tools/technology the qualified candidate uses to perform their job

Now drive laterally through these questions with: 

  •  Who works with/for the person you are looking for? What is their job title?

And your search becomes more three dimensional.

Now drive straight down the middle with the question:

  • Who has recently left that company that knows the person I am looking for in that company?

And you can strike oil!

Let me explain.

The first question – - Who works with/for the person you are looking for? – - will exponentially increase the # of people you can talk to to locate the person you are looking for (you know – - the whole 7-degrees of separation thing).

The second question – - Who has recently left that company that knows the person I am looking for in that company? – - will connect you with folks that have left an organization and probably do not have a vested interest in withholding sensitive, confidential intelligence. Heck – if they were let go, they are even more willing to assist in providing information that might help you and . . . unfortunately . . . ‘hurt’ their former employer. 

Another important point here is the person’s level.  While first instinct may be to go “to the top” and call the SVP or VP (like in a traditional sales approach), you may have non-compete issues that cause the contact to be reticent to provide the information you need.  Don’t avoid this level, but be mindful of it. You may have greater success with peers and/or individuals that worked for the person you are seeking to identify.    

Some examples to illustrate this concept:

  • Searching for accountants — talk to actively looking controllers
  • Searching for .com developers — talk to actively looking SQL – DBA’s
  • Searching for OR nurses — talk to actively looking anesthesiologist.
  • Searching for Market Research professionals — talk to the Account Manager at the research firm.

Note – I referenced ‘actively looking’ in each of these examples. Probably the best person you can ‘network’ with is an active candidate that has recently left an organization. 

Not only will they know the person you are looking for, but they often will provide un-sanitized information about the people you want to connect with. Add in other thought provoking questions to your conversation like – - Who were the top performers? – - Who worked best under pressure? – - and you might gain valuable insight to pinpoint your search.  

A simple, straight forward approach to contacting them: 

John:

 I wanted to reach out. I saw you online and saw you worked for _________.  I  was hoping I could network with you and see if you could help me - and potentially one of your peers - out.  

I have a great opportunity for the right person…. I am seeking ___________________________. I thought you might know the ________ folks at __________ that might be interested in this opportunity? 

Were there some folks that you thought were really good that I should connect with?

Anyone that was not very happy I should connect with?

Any advice you would give me to help me with this search? It is a great opportunity for someone! 

________________________________________________________________

Then when closing, I would always recommend asking them how you can assist them in their job search: 

I really appreciate all your help. As mentioned, I found your information online.  

 How can I help you? – - what are you looking for?  

What have you done so far to find a new opportunity?: 

Have you tried www.indeed.com and/or http://www.simplyhired.com/   

I will keep my eyes/ears open…, etc . 

 

The key to your success in engaging individuals is your sincere interest in helping connect individuals to excellent opportunities!  

Too often I think we spend too much time searching for resumes versus people with intelligence that can help us with our search.  We wrote a similar post on this subject that you might want to check out – The Indirect Networking Call.

Happy Hunting :)

Posted in Bradley Savoy, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Relationship Recruiter, Sourcing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Ensuring Staffing Process Excellence

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

By Bradley Savoy

This week I had the pleasure of presenting to our local SHRM chapter on Staffing Process Excellence. Here are some of the highlights:

I know what you’re thinking, “We’re hiring fewer people this year”, or “Our hiring’s flat, so why bother with a Staffing Process Excellence exercise?”

Whether you’re hiring 5 people or 10,000 (yes – there are still companies that are hiring that many people), it’s the beginning of someone’s tenure with your company, and it acts as an extension of your brand.

A Staffing Process that’s excellent will enable you to utilize Voice Of the Customer (VOC) data to define and deliver an error-free fulfillment process that will deliver world-class customer satisfaction, improved retention, and even quality of hire.

The simple steps in Staffing Process Excellence are:

  1. Gain Executive Buy-In.  With every process improvement initiative you need the executives’ buy-in.  Typically the best way to do this is to align the project to a business initiative.  Are you trying to trim costs, improve customer satisfaction, or reduce attrition.  All of these can be addressed with an improved staffing process.
  2. Gather the Voice Of the Customer data.   Begin by using surveys, focus groups, or other channels to tap into the perspective of those that work through your process each day.  Hiring managers, candidates, recruiters, and others that are involved, should be consulted on how the process should look.  Find out what opportunities exist to streamline the process from their perspectives.
  3. Gather Process CTQ’s (Critical to Quality).   These are aspects that are critical to meeting and exceeding customer expectations.  These will also typically come as part of your exercise to gather the VOC information from your stakeholders.
  4. Align the process.  By now you have the needs of the customer (VOC) and you’ve gathered those aspects of the process that are critical to them (CTQ).  Now you have to align the two, making sure the wants of the customer and the critical needs can be met.  Exec or Org.  Initiatives??
  5. Define the staffing process.    At some companies this is a detailed chart of the staffing life cycle; for others it’s a simple list of bullet points.  While best-in-class is a clearly articulated and defined process, even bullet points on a Word document are a start.  The end goal is that with the input from customers you can now define the world-class process – and the best part is no one can say “Hey you didn’t ask me!” because each of the customer segments gave their input.
  6. Educate, Implement, and Continuously Measure the new process.  You’ve put all of this effort into your new process; now make sure it “sticks!”  Don’t just email the new process out to everyone; instead, leverage executive buy in to have a big kickoff.  Executive announcements, internal staff meetings, and even e-mails can have more power jointly coming from line execs and HR/recruiting.

You’re also going to need to educate each of the stakeholders on the new process, and then of course continually measure the results.  Consistent surveys, focus groups, etc with the “customers” of the process will ensure long-term adherence.

If you have questions on staffing process excellence, or you’d like to discuss an audit of your staffing process, contact me

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Seven Deadly Sins of Waste: #2 – Waiting

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

By Bradley Savoy

So I’ve just screened an exceptional applicant, and the next step in my process is to forward information to the hiring manager for approval to schedule an interview.  I send the information along….and now I’m in the middle of the next sin of waste – waiting…..

If you think about your current staffing process, and you had analytics on it, you’d find that in many cases an inordinate amount of time is spent waiting.  There are multiple reasons for this: delays based on decisions needed, peoples’ schedules (vacations, meetings, etc.), and various other factors that come into play.

Back when candidates held the power and the war for talent was in full swing; waiting on a decision for the next phase of the hiring process was a death knell.  Back in my management consulting days I remember losing candidates to competitors if we couldn’t make a hiring decision in 24 hours because by the time we got to them they already had offers from our competitors in hand.  Those days may be long gone in most cases, but they still exist for critical talent.  For many healthcare organizations RN’s and PT’s are still critical positions to fill, and recruiting departments don’t want to wait days for approval from a hiring manager to move forward with the hiring process.

In our Proof of Concept we look at our clients’ staffing process flow, as well as the efficiency and time spent during the various stages of the process.  We often find that a simple lean solution in reducing waste is to reduce the amount of time spent waiting on decisions from the various stakeholders of the process.  A hiring manager may expect candidates faster than you can deliver them, and you may expect to receive feedback on candidates faster than the hiring manager can respond. 

One way we address this is through establishing better relationships with hiring managers, as well as managing expectations on both sides.  See our previous posts on being a Strategic Business Partner and establishing a Service Level Agreement.  These will give you some simple tips and techniques to address this area of waste in your staffing process.  And of course you can register to attend our webinar next week where we’ll discuss this, as well as other facets of the 7 Sins of Waste in Recruiting.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Seven Deadly Sins of Waste: #1 – Overproduction

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Before the holidays, we had an enormous interest in our recent whitepapers on Just In Time and The Seven Deadly Sins of Waste” in Recruiting.  Based on the interest, we’ve decided to not only publish our thoughts on these topics in upcoming blogs, but also to host a webinar to discuss these topics.

If you’d like to attend the webinar on Wednesday, January 20th at 2:00pm EST, please register here.   

One of the seven deadly sins of Waste is Overproduction.  In recruiting and staffing – we’ve not only tolerated overproduction over the years, but we’ve actually rewarded recruiters for it!

For as long as I have been recruiting, I have found most recruitment organization manage by (and reward) the “How Many” philosophy:

  • How many calls did you make?
  • How many applicants responded to the posting?
  • How many people showed up at the open house/job fair?
  • How many people did you interview?
  • How many candidates did you route to the hiring manager for consideration?
  • How many resumes are in our database? How many resumes to you have access too?

Most have lived by the “more is better” philosophy.  

Having read The Goal by Eli Goldratt, early in my recruiting career, I never understood this mentality. 

I always understood my goal to be:

  • To generate the most amount of quality hires/month for my organization (Mr. Goldratt calls ‘Throughput’).

and that:

  • I had a fixed amount of time, money and resources (He calls ‘Constraints’).

I could not understand why:

  • I was measured by how many calls, interviews, or candidates routed??

Isn’t that counter-productive to the goal? 

In reality – shouldn’t I have been rewarded for the following: 

“Talking to the least amount of people that allowed me to hand pick a select few that I interview that nets me the perfect candidate I route to the hiring manager that gets selected and hired and becomes a top producer within the organization for  the next decade!”

When you start to look at the staffing supply chain with this lens you start to ask yourself some different questions:

  • Why do we track how many calls, interviews, etc. a recruiter makes? Shouldn’t we track how efficient we are with the candidate activity we put into the staffing supply chain “funnel”?
  • Why would we post every position on a large job board when it causes a tremendous amount of overproduction/waste of unqualified candidates?  Especially the positions most often get filled by internal candidates or other sources and rarely, or NEVER get filled by internet postings?
  • Why does a manager need to see 3-4 candidate before making a decision if we have identified the top candidate through sourcing/selection? 

Don’t have time to get everything done during the course of the day? A root cause to your problem just might be the time associated with managing the waste caused by overproduction. 

The fact of the matter is that overproduction causes waste.  It also takes time, money and resources (that we have a limited amount of) to remove waste from the process.

And to think that most of us not only tolerate overproduction, but in some cases reward our recruiters, vendors, job boards, etc. for it!

A great way to safe time and cut costs is to analyze each step of your staffing process for overproduction and look for ways to eliminate it BEFORE it gets into the process.

For more information on the Seven Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting, join us for our free webinar on January 20th at 1pm EST.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Uncategorized | No Comments »