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A New Year — Perfect Storm to Recruit Top Talent!!!!!

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Well, here we are.  It’s 2011.  The beginning of a new year.  A time to reflect on the past and look into the future.  For many, it’s time for their yearly “mid-life crisis”.  As another year goes by, we most often reflect on:

  • Health – Not getting any younger!
  • Financial situation – Did my 401k go up? Did I pay down debt? Am I getting closer to retirement?
  • Career – Is this where I thought I would be at this time in my life?

This is often a time for dreaming and wishing and planning for a better life!  In this state of mind, many will be open to more adventure/risk in the hopes of achieving a better quality of life!

It sounds to me like a perfect storm for recruiting top ‘passive’ talent! 

As you get back into the groove after the holiday season, it is a perfect time too:

  • Contact top talent from your competition! Somebody might be ready to make a change.
  • Re-contact top performers that have not shown interest in the past.
  • Cast a wide net on those folks that were not open to relocation in the past.  The family might be ready for an adventure and . . . the housing market is a tad better!

As we have written about in past blog posts the key to your ability to recruit top talent includes:

  • Timing (I’m proposing the time is right)
  • Compelling message (In less than 30 seconds, can you convey a compelling value proposition that answers the two questions – “So What?” and “What’s in it for me?”
  • Tonality in both your written and verbal communication – Are you positive?  Do you convey excitement about the opportunity you have to offer? (Sales 101 – 50% of the close is a result of your excitement and passion for the product/service that you sell!)

Sooo – What are you waiting for? There’s no better way to get back into the swing of things than by carving out some time to source top talent for your organization (and maybe a little time for exercise too :) )!

Hope you are having a Perfect Week!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Eating Frogs Will Help You Enjoy the Holidays

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Like most of you, I find that the holiday season can bring intense pressure to meet deadlines and get things done before we take a few days off (hopefully :) ).

And when you are working at maximum capacity, you have little room for error and/or time to waste on non-productive, non-value added tasks!

In efforts to improve our time management/planning skills, we have studied experts in time management, personal achievement and behavior modification which has resulted in the creation of The Perfect Week/Perfect Day planning methodology . 

I thought I would share a couple of simple, yet powerful, concepts from this methodology to ensure that you finish the year productively!

  1. To maintain focus and sanity in extremely busy times, you must INVEST more time in planning your weekly/daily activities.   Spending ½ hour creating a time-based daily schedule will allow you to be 25-30% more productive during the day.
  2. Make sure you identify and ‘Eat your Frogs’ early in the day.  Embedded into our methodology is Brian Tracy’s (www.briantracy.com) Eat the Frog philosophy.  If you have never watched the Eat the Frog Movie - DO SO NOW!  In one minute, you will grasp the invaluable concept.  ‘Eating Frogs’ early on will build positive momentum and provide energy for the rest of the day!

Some other helpful hints are outlined in our free resources portal under time management/planning.

I hope that your next week is hyper productive so you can enjoy the holidays!

Posted in David, David Szary, Eat the Frog, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Helping Job Seekers helps children in need! PLEASE READ!

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

As many of you know, with the help of recruiters across the country, I finished a book that I believe will help job seekers across the nation - “Best (and Worst) Advice for Job Seekers”.

The book is a quick read with ‘un-sanitized’ information that can immediately help you (or someone you know) with your job search, next interview, resume, etc.

Just as important, 100% of the proceeds on book sales will be donated to an amazing organization close to our hearts – St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

What a Win-Win!

For less than $10.00, you can help a job seeker and the children of St. Judes!

My goal is to raise over $2500 by the end of the year! 

So . . .

If you know of a job seeker in need, what a great gift!

If you counsel Job Seekers, what a great resource to have in your office.

If you just believe in the amazing work that St. Judes does – - please donate!

Please spread the word on the book.

Please share this message via Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. to all your friends, co-workers, associates, etc.

I thank you for your assistance! 

I hope you have a wonderful and safe Holiday Season

David M. Szary

 

NOTE: PURCHASING THE EBOOK (versus paperback) GENERATES THE MOST MONEY FOR ST. JUDES!

PS – If you have ideas of how I can market this book, I would appreciate your input .

PSS – Thanks again to all of the individuals that contributed to this endeavor.

Posted in David, David Szary, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Relationship Recruiter | No Comments »

‘Beware of overall TTF |All req’s are not equal |Do you measure sourcing time per submittal?’

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

I am a lucky guy!  Why? Because I get the opportunity to work/consult with recruitment teams throughout the country.  This provides me a unique opportunity to not only meet some very good, talented people but also gather perspectives from multiple recruitment teams working in multiple industries.  

Here are some of these thoughts/perspectives (and recommendations) from my last few months of travel:

  • Beware of the overall TTF metric! – The analysis of data from our clients, as well as those involved in our benchmark study, clearly shows that overall average TTF is not indicative of performance. Specifically:
    • TTF for positions filled with internal/active candidates is significantly less than TTF when filled by “sourced” candidates. In a recent analysis, we found overall TTF for an organization was 33 days.  90% of these positions were filled in an average of 23 days while 10% were filled an average of 92 days!  ‘Average TTF’ clearly was not indicative of performance.     
    • We recommend you track TTF for critical/difficult/important to fill job categories. This will help assess performance and improve hiring manager satisfaction.
  • Most organizations treat all new requisitions equally! – When a new requisition comes in, it is worked through the same staffing process regardless of how critical it is to fill and/or how difficult it is to fill. 
    • When a recruiter takes on a position where there is no internal candidates and . . . NEVER has been filled through a posting and/or advertisement, why do we start the search using these tools that do nothing but create waste/time?
    • Make sure your staffing process has a step to identify when a position is ‘business as usual’ (high probability it will get filled by an internal/active candidate) or ‘difficult/critical to fill’ (need to escalate a sourcing strategy ASAP) and work it accordingly.   
  • It takes exponentially longer to source top talent! – Search firms have known this for years!  Just look at how they are staffed.  To fill difficult/critical to fill positions, most recruiters get paid very well to manage a half dozen req’s or less. They are often supported by a research team to do deep Internet mining to fill their positions.  But corporate recruiters are loaded up with 20, 30, 50+ req’s and . . . we are unsatisfied  when they can’t fill them all?!
    • To understand how much time you need to spend sourcing candidates, we recommend tracking a key metric:  Sourcing time per candidate submitted.  This will provide you with a key metric to define how many hours sourcing it takes to fill your critical/difficult to fill positions.   

If you would like to investigate these thoughts/recommendations further, don’t hesitate to email me! 

I hope your having a productive week.

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Managing Your Hiring Manager, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Time to Fill, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Pragmatic, NO COST Solutions to Reduce Time to Fill

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Over the last month, I have facilitated four LEAN Value Stream Mapping exercises.  As mentioned in a recent blog, I am always amazed at how little time is spent in “Process Mode” and how much time is spent “Waiting”.  With the four organizations I recently worked with, the average Process Time was less than 10% of the total Lead time (AKA – Time to fill). 

Of course the key reason you perform a value stream mapping exercise is not just to map out your current state process but rather to identify solutions to reducing waste and wait time.  In evaluating all four staffing processes, the most wait time “variation” centered around . . . . now don’t be shocked . . . ok I am going to say it . . . HIRING MANAGERS!

Yep, most wait time is centered around:

  • Defining the requisition once it was approved (getting enough information required to begin the search)
  • Managers selecting candidates to interview
  • Managers being available to interview
  • Managers making a decision on hire

Some simple, but highly effective strategies to reduce wait time that resulted from our value stream mapping exercises:

  • In advance of a requisition being approved (if it is pending approval), set up a meeting with the hiring manager to qualify the requisition (AKA – Intake Session). If for some reason the requisition doesn’t get approved, you can cancel the meeting.
  • If one recruiter fills a position with an internal candidate, let the recruiter assigned to back fill the position know ASAP. This gives them a heads up on a future position and they’ll be able to qualify the requisition with the hiring manager long before it hits the “system”.
  • “Batch” candidates for consideration and review with the hiring manager prior to submitting.  Instead of routing candidates as you receive them, wait until you have 2 or 3 candidates.  Then set up a quick con call to review them with the hiring manager. NEVER send resumes or paperwork WITHOUT  a discussion with the hiring manager first.  Call and say “I have 2 candidates I want to review with you that I really like.  When can we discuss for 5 minutes?” Search Firm recruiters have been doing this for years!
  • Of course the ultimate way to remove wait time in the “route-review-interview” process is to eliminate the “route-review-interview” process.  During the intake, identify times when the manager is available to interview (give yourself sufficient lead time) and then just schedule the top 2-3 candidates within those time slots.  Why does the hiring manager need to review candidates before the interview? That is our job :)
  • Schedule a 15-minute “debrief” meeting with hiring managers immediately after the interview.  Send an outlook request to meet to debrief at the same time you send the interview request.

While these seem like simple things to do . . . they can have a huge impact on overall TTF!  We often get so obsessed with trying to reduce sourcing time, pipelining candidates, workforce planning, etc to reduce TTF when . . . while I encourage you investigate all of those things . . . the quickest, lowest cost strategy is just working on your current WAIT time bottle necks!

NOTE: Most of the above are based on the assumption that YOU control the interview/hiring process. I.E. – you assist managers with facilitating the interview/selection/offer process.  If your process is to route candidates to managers and let them control the process . . . I would consider changing it ASAP. While it does take more time, in the long run you will save time/waste by being more efficient. For more information on this – Check out our Blog site and search under “process efficiency”.

If you are interested in more information on Value Stream Mapping, please connect with me

Have a productive day :)

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Time to Fill, Uncategorized, Value Stream Mapping | No Comments »

Compelling Time to Fill (TTF) data — It can be misleading

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

In a recent blogcast, (Time to Fill – Are You Managing A Key Metric You Are Measured On?), we discuss how time to fill can be misleading and . . . not a good indicator of hiring manager satisfaction and overall “responsiveness” to the truly critical hiring needs of the organization.

While most organizations might be able to track TTF by job category, they only report the overall average to key stakeholders. Unfortunately, this statistic becomes a “blended” rate of all positions regardless of priority, cost of vacancy, criticality to organization, difficulty to fill, etc.

And if an organization is not structured to truly support priority, critical to fill, or difficult to fill positions, there often is a big gap with respect to TTF between what we call Business As Usual Req’s – (AKA – BAU’s – repetitive positions that most often are filled by active, internal or referral candidates) and  priority/critical/difficult to fill ones. 

Some very intriguing data from one of our healthcare clients illustrates this point.

While there overall TTF for Q2 was 33 days (very, very good especially compared to our benchmark median of 41 days.

  • 300 positions were filled in an average of 23 days
  • While 49 positions took on average 89 days to fill!

This provokes the questions:

  • Do you have the right organizational structure to support BAU and priority/critical/difficult to fill positions?
  • Do you have the right process to support these distinctly different types of positions?
  • Do you have the right resources to effectively screen through the active pool of candidates while proactively sourcing top talent not found in those circles?

If you haven’t done so recently, I would slice your TTF data by BAU and priority/critical/difficult to fill categories and analyze how well you are performing. 

If your data is similar to the organization outlined above, then seek to develop strategies, processes, etc. to improve timeliness on the positions most critical to your organization!

I hope you’re having a good week. 

Posted in 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, Recruiting Buzz, Sourcing, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Time to Fill, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Value Stream Mapping — Eye Opening Exercise!

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Over the last two weeks, I have facilitated Value Stream Mapping exercises (a Lean Principle) with two recruitment organizations.  If you have not participated in one of these before (a Lean Principle), the goal is to analyze a process (in this case, the recruitment/hiring process) and identify:

  • Process Time (AKA – Value Added Time)
  • Delay Time (AKA – Non value added Time)

Examples of processing time would be performing an intake session and/or phone interview, i.e., the time you spend actually processing the “candidate”.  Wait time examples include waiting for candidates to call you back from an interview, waiting for a background check to clear or the most popular – - waiting for a manager to make a decision on interviewing a candidate, making an offer, etc.!

When you go through this tedious process (it is really tedious but . . . well worth the effort), it is amazing how little time we spend processing candidates and how much time we spend WAITING.

For this one particular healthcare organization, their average time to fill is pretty darn good for their hiring volume (38 days). As we analyzed their process using the value stream mapping methodology we found:

  • Total Process time – Low end: 8.5 hours – High end: 3.83 days (most of the difference was associated with sourcing for difficult to fill positions).
  • Total Delay time – Low end: 12.33 days – High end: 195 days!  (this was mostly attributed to difficulty in finding quality candidates, hiring managers not making a decision, relocation issues, etc.)
  • Average Lead time (Process + Delay time) = 38 days (start to acceptance)

Once we identified current state process and delay times for each step, the team started to come up with solutions to eliminate waste. It was amazing to hear some of the easy to implement, no cost solutions they identified! 

Whenever I facilitate this exercise, I am amazed at:

  • How much wait time “waste” is in our staffing process?
  • How we can, through a simple exercise, identify no/low cost waste to reduce wait time and ultimately . . . Time to Fill.
  • How much we often focus on the processes for “improvement” rather than eliminating waste for improvement.

If you would like more information about how we can assist your team in performing a value stream mapping exercise on your staffing process and share some best practices, let us know.

If you haven’t done this, and/or haven’t done one in a while, it is a worthwhile exercise as we prepare for 2011.

Hope you are having a good day!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized, Value Stream Mapping | No Comments »

Data Integrity — It is all about Education, Accountability and Visibility

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

As most of you know, we have just concluded a Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study highlighting key metrics relevant to a Lean, Just-in-Time recruitment strategy.  As expected, since many of the key data points relied on humans to enter and validate the data, most of the participants struggled to reconcile and validate that their data was accurate.   Those challenged by data integrity (or lack thereof), spent countless hours auditing the data to ensure it was accurate.

Of course the only way to ‘nip this issue in the bud’ is to ensure that the data is accurate at the transactional level, hence the often used IT cliché – - Garbage in, Garbage out! 

While I know this is not a profound revelation, why do most organizations still struggle to capture accurate recruitment metrics?

From my experience, the root of the issue is three-fold:

  1. Educational – Key staff members must understand the importance of capturing accurate data and what POSITIVE things result from ensuring the data is accurate.  It is only when you answer the question – What is in it for me? – that you typically start to see improvements in data integrity.  Some of the POSITIVE results of capturing clean data:
    • Enables the organization to develop performance improvement initiatives to save their organization time, money, and allow the teams to get more done in LESS TIME.
    • Allows the team to be able to quantify the ROI of their services to the organization.  Makes us look good! :)
    • Quantifies the amount of work they actually perform!   
  1. Accountability – While I like to point out the POSITIVE reasons of capturing clean data, at the end of the day the recruiters need to be held accountable and measured on their ability to perform this task.  I recommend that recruiters do a quarterly ‘self-analysis’ by reviewing their own data/metrics.  Holding them accountable to this activity is a great way to clean up your data at the source!  Some of the best in class organizations we work with instill an “audit” at the requisition close stage – before a req is closed, the recruiter goes back to ensure that all data is entered accurately in the system. 
  2. Visibility – I am a big believer in making your metrics “public”.  All your customers should see your overall team metrics (have trend charts posted in a visible area in your office).  All recruiter metrics should be public to the recruitment team.  Typically the only folks that do not like to make their metrics public are . . . the ones that are not producing or don’t have clean data!

If you are struggling to capture clean data, I would make sure your team understands why it’s important and put a system in place to ensure accuracy. From experience working with our clients, you will see immediate improvements in data during the first 90 days!

I hope you have a good “back to school” week!

Posted in David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition | No Comments »

Who Is Blitzing?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

In a recent blogcast , we talked about injecting some fun into sourcing for top talent.  Well, our team took it to heart and . . . over the last 4 weeks committed to having some fun while getting in dedicated sourcing time.  

As outlined in the blog, folks could ‘opt’ into 3 daily sourcing sessions (7:30 to 8:30, 11-12 and 4-5).  These times were selected based on thier experience of catching people live during those times.

During the first week, to check out who was going to attend a session, someone would send out an email – Who’s Blitzing!? (as in call blitz).  The folks who were doing to participate would quickly shoot back an email confirming participation. 

Over the course of the month, it was amazing to see these sessions ‘take off’ three times a day.  Most importantly, it was great to see how this ‘fun’ challenge drove some very positive behaviors including:

  1. Folks scheduling in sourcing time BEFORE other activities like interviews, meetings, etc. which is a key principle of our Perfect Week, Perfect Day Time Management methodology.
  2. Folks being prepared for each call session with enough names for the blitz.  This usually meant 2-3 hours of sourcing ‘research’ time to set up these call sessions. Again, another positive outcome of the challenge.
  3. Motivation – Everyone that has participated clearly agreed it increased the quality of sourcing time!  The 7:30 to 8:30 and 4-5 time slots were very productive and before this event . . . those call times were a hit or miss for the team.  Some would get hit and some would be missed.  Moving forward – - it will now become part of their routine.   
  4. Folks are seeing the benefits from this hard work!

Most importantly, everyone has seen increased candidate flow to some very difficult to fill positions during the month that often brings luke warm ‘effort’ as folks seek to enjoy the end of the summer!

I encourage you all to consider injecting some fun into your sourcing routine as we head into the last “official” week of the summer!

Have a great holiday weekend.

Posted in Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Interesting data from ‘Elite’ Recruiter Competency/Skills Assessment Study – some advice to share!

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

We are proud to announce that we have had over 1500 recruiters participate in our ‘Elite’ Recruiter Competency/Skills Self-Assessment Study!   If you haven’t participated, we encourage you to do so! It is free! :)

It is interesting to see that outside of normal areas that recruiters always seem to rate themselves “low” (areas for improvement :) ):

  • Use social networking tools to source qualified, passive candidates (rating of 2.94 of 5)
  • Engage and recruit passively-looking top talent candidates (3.20 of 5) 

The next two lowest scores were related to managing the search process:

  • Sets Service Level Agreements with hiring managers: 3.22 of 5.00
  • Manage and control the staffing lifecycle efficiently: 3.39 of 5.00

We have written articles/posts on this subject that have received positive reviews I thought I would share: 

The Most Important Service Level Agreement

When are you available versus what do you think about this candidate?

Do you have credibility with your hiring managers?

We have also helped many organizations implement an “easy to use” one page Service Level Agreement document to be used when qualifying a new position (especially when it is a new hiring manager). If you would like a copy – please email us!

The scores above point to a skills gap with respect to a consultative approach to managing the search process. If you think this is an area where you need/want to “sharpen your ax”, I hope some of the information provided will be of value!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

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

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