EPIcenter - News from Executive Pursuits Inc

Baby Boomers Chances are Looking Good.

2010-05-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

We are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. With the largest creation of jobs in three years, we seem to be headed in the right direction for hiring to begin in earnest. Late in the fourth quarter we started to see larger employers hiring again. As this trend progresses, Baby Boomers may be in a better position to be hired than younger workers.

Older workers are choosing to stay in the work force longer for different reasons. Some need to because the recent economic crisis has diminished their retirement funds and they need to buffer their savings. Others just enjoy working and don’t want to leave the workforce because they are having fun and still have a lot to offer.

With payrolls still weak from millions of cuts, companies need a knowledgeable workforce that can be highly productive. Firms don't want to lose the institutional knowledge that some older workers have and are viewing them as more valuable than ever.

Older and younger workers alike will still face hiring hurdles for the next few years. Competition will be fierce so attitude will be important. A young 60 year old will usually win out over an old 40 year old. Staying positive and enthusiastic is always a healthy choice and in this job market it’s more important than ever.

Employee Retention

2010-04-08T10:21:00.001-07:00

In a recent study, top executives from 1,000 leading companies said their greatest staffing concern was retention, and they said so during the current recession. These CEOs understand that good workers can find better jobs in any economy.

Recent research on employee retention found that people leave managers, not companies. If there is a turnover problem in your company, first look at your managers because managers trump companies. Employees may join a company because of its overall prestige and reputation, but the employee’s relationship with his immediate supervisor determines how long he will stay and how productive he is while there.

Great managers, like great coaches, focus on people first and then on the actual plays. Note that the skill set of managers is not necessarily the same as that of leaders. It is important to look at your managers not simply as leaders in waiting but recognize the unique managerial gifts they bring to the organization.

In their book “First, Break all the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently,” Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman argue that great managers do the following:

1. Select an employee not only for her unique experience, intelligence and determination, but for her talents. Knowledge and skills are competencies that can be taught, while attitudes and beliefs are talents that are difficult to teach. Talents are recurring patterns of behavior productively applied. And they can have great value to any organization.

2. Set expectations by defining the right outcomes, rather than the right steps. Great managers communicate clearly what is expected of each person in order to accomplish the organization’s goals and they provide freedom and support to the individual to get the job done well and on time.

3. Motivate the employee by focusing on his strengths rather than weaknesses. Great managers often act as coaches by providing clear feedback on what the employee is doing well as well as not so well. The best managers help build confidence by recognizing and utilizing each employee’s unique talents. Simply stated, stress what works and minimize what does not.

4. Develop the person to determine the right job fit and not necessarily the next rung on the corporate ladder. This often runs counter to what most of us think is necessary in many organizations. The fact is many people are not suited for nor do they want to be executives in a company. Great managers determine how to recognize and fully utilize an individual’s unique talents and enable them to be successful wherever they are in the organizational chart.

Looking for the talents first and matching those talents to the right role can be the key to excellent performance and satisfied and challenged employees.

Employer Branding for Recruiting and Retention

2010-02-11T12:24:00.000-08:00

Employer branding is becoming a key element of talent acquisition as companies look to regain their competitive advantage and rebuild their workforce in 2010. It is fast becoming one of the most powerful recruitment tools available in today's competitive environment but attracting top talent after a tumultuous year of downsizing can prove difficult for many companies whose employer brand has been tarnished.

How can you overcome this? Start by thinking of the candidates as a consumer and learn to be a top marketer. A marketers focus is always on the consumer and identifying what they want to buy as opposed to what do we have to sell. In the same fashion, companies should consider what top talent might want to buy from them.

For help with understanding what candidates and employees want, look no further than Forbes' Best Places to Work list. Best practice organizations such as Google, Wegmans Foods and SAS are able to differentiate themselves by offering incentives, flexibility and job stability.

Utilizing these as tools for recruiting and retention will increase your chances of attracting and keeping the best.

2010-01-07T07:51:00.000-08:00

The Five Cs

Before you can attract great talent you must be able to recognize it. A great place to start is with the 5 Cs. These are the indicators of talented people everywhere and in any industry and if you look you will recognize them in your top performers.

1. Competence. At the very foundation, to be considered “talented,” a person has to be highly competent in an area that is key to your business. Truly talented people are fanatics for lifelong learning, and a sponge for new ideas.

2. Character. Honesty, transparency, and integrity are the elements that build professional and personal character. You can have the smartest person on the team but if he or she isn’t completely trustworthy, you have a liability, not an asset.

3. Collaboration. In this fast paced, complex, global environment with too much information for any single individual to manage alone, talented individuals must be superb at collaborating with others. Teamwork is mandatory, not optional.

4. Communication. Every talented business professional who succeeds must be an expert communicator. It’s not about what they say but rather it’s the ability to ask superior questions and then listen to the answers. They should be adept at laying out simple, clear, and logical arguments – while connecting emotionally.

5. Commitment. Highly talented business people are committed, driven, and passionate about what they are doing and bring that energy with them to their companies and their teams.
Knowing the right characteristics is actually the easy part. The hard part is attracting people who have these characteristics, and convincing the best of the best to join you.
To attract the right people, you must become a fanatic about finding and recruiting top talent. That means putting effective actions in place, and spending real time on the process.

Working professionals will be hesitant to change companies. Recruiters will add significant value to an organization if they can entice and close candidates for key roles.

Large numbers of active candidates due to layoffs have flooded the marketplace requiring more vetting, due diligence and overall work. At times like these, candidate care is reduced potentially harming the company brand. Take care during these times to respect the potential candidates and their time and interest leaving them with the best possible experience outside of landing the job. This will not only help your brand in the future but avoid any damage in the present.

A positive experience translates into quality hires, strengthens a company's employment brand, and reduces its cost per hire. A negative experience can result in a decline in the acceptance of employment offers, a decrease in the quantity and quality of applicants applying, and a negative image of the company throughout the labor market. Bad news travels fast.

Now that you know what they are, how can you be sure to attract people with these qualities to work with you? Working with a trusted search partner can help you identify and recruit top talent with these must have traits.

Candididate Care and the Employer Brand

2009-12-16T13:38:00.000-08:00

Large numbers of active candidates due to layoffs have flooded the marketplace requiring more vetting, due diligence and overall work. At times like these, candidate care may be reduced potentially harming the company brand.

A positive experience translates into quality hires, strengthens your company's employment brand, and reduces its cost per hire. A negative experience can result in a decline in the acceptance of employment offers, a decrease in the quantity and quality of applicants applying, and a negative image of the company throughout the labor market.

Take care during these times to respect the candidates, and their time and interest, by leaving them with the best possible experience outside of landing the job. This will not only help your brand in the future but will avoid any damage in the present.

Working with a recruiting firm can enhance the employment process by providing candidates with the high touch experience that will ultimately be associated with the employer and strengthening the brand you've worked so hard build.

Retirement Age

2009-11-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that the 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964— the baby boomers — have been driving cultural trends since their infancy, from rock 'n' roll to Rogaine.But the next boomer trend will likely have the biggest impact on Corporate America yet: retirement.

With one-fifth of American workers reaching retirement age by 2020, an estimated 25 million people are poised to leave the workforce. The mass exodus will not only create a shortage of workers to fill jobs — one Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate put the shortfall at 2.3 million by 2014 — but it will precipitate a "boomer brain drain" that will be felt for decades.

The loss will hit some harder than others. In fact, sectors with higher concentrations of older employees, such as retail, utilities, manufacturing, and health care, could suffer a shortage of skills large enough to have a dramatic impact on their global competitiveness. "This can be viewed as a crisis," says Stacey Wagner, managing director of the research and education arm of the National Association of Manufacturers. "But it's a skills crisis versus a simple loss of bodies." She says that many manufacturers have done a poor job of filling the pipeline behind retiring experts with workers who have the education and skills to master increasingly complex manufacturing technologies and processes.

A CFO survey of senior financial executives found that 63 percent of respondents are concerned about the loss of human capital due to impending retirements. Given the potential loss of workers, many companies are starting to make an effort to protect against such a skills drain. They are offering more training to younger workers, developing formal mentoring programs, and enticing older workers to stay on the job past retirement age by embracing partial retirement, telecommuting, and job-sharing arrangements. "Those who aren't on top of this issue are taking a big risk," says Daniel Weinfurter, CEO of Capital H Group, an HR consulting firm based in Chicago. "The bottom line is that there aren't going to be enough highly skilled people to go around."

It's not entirely bad news. Some industries could actually benefit from mass retirements. Charles Fay, a professor at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, says that the government sector, higher education, and highly unionized industries that still operate on seniority could see some benefits from large-scale retirements, because their older workers are more costly. In general, they use more health care and earn more, and in labor-intensive jobs, they are less productive. However, those benefits could be a long time in coming. The impending retirement wave will inaugurate a protracted graying of the workforce that will increase the average age in most industries for some years before it starts to drop again. The youngest boomers start retiring in 2026.

Using the Recession to Gain a Competitive Edge.

2009-09-15T15:23:00.000-07:00

Today’s economic climate has caused more and more companies to move their hiring efforts in-house believing that they can find the people they need in the multitude of resumes they receive from their job postings. While the number of available candidates is plentiful, they may not be the people you want for your organization.

Hiring managers can learn a lot from the savvy investors who have spent the last 6 months investing in undervalued stocks. They know those stocks will rebound when the economy turns around.

The same goes for employees. Now is a great time to hire good quality, undervalued employees who will pay big dividends when the recovery begins giving you the competitive advantage you need to succeed.

First, let’s put to rest the idea that the more candidates in market place the easier it will be for you to hire good people. As a recession deepens and companies lay people off, the people they lay off first are in the bottom 25% and the people they lay off next are in the average range. Companies will fight like mad to keep the good people who are in the top 25%. This doesn’t increase your ability to find great people, it diminishes it. Instead of looking for 1 person in 10 you are searching to find 1 person in 25, 50 or more!

More is not necessarily better when you consider the time and cost of interviewing the wrong people. A cost easily avoided by working with the right search firm. Now, more than ever, search firms can help you identify and recruit “A” players for you management and executive teams. You won’t find them on the job boards because most are still employed.

The hiring decision is the most important one you will make. Experts agree that building a great team plays a key role in an executive’s success. Placing your confidence in a recruiting firm that knows the industry, your company and the players is critical in this economic climate.

Successful Hiring - It's a Process Not and Event

2009-06-11T18:59:00.000-07:00

Successful hiring should be a process not an event. Smart companies know this and view the current economy as an opportunity to hire.

While other companies have put their hiring on hold, many are taking advantage of the top talent on the market today. These proactive companies have developed a successful recruiting strategy; one where they continually find and recruit the people they want to hire instead of hiring from the people who find them. Granted, this takes a little more effort but let’s face it, if you want the best, first you have to know who you’re looking for.

Are you proactive or reactive? Most employers talk a good hiring game but when it comes down to it, they only hire when they have to. Upgrading your talent in a down market like this will put you ahead of your competitors when the economy turns around. That’s an enviable place to be and it truly makes for great company to keep, if you want to be at the top.

The moral of the story? Hire now or pay later.

Do you really need a search firm in this market?

2009-05-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

In March, the national unemployment rate hit 8.5%, the highest since 1983. While the number will vary from state to state, we'd like to share the educational demographic that we believe provides a clearer picture of where we are today.

No high school diploma: 13.3%
High school graduate, no college: 9.0%
Some college or associates degree: 7.2%
Bachelor's degree or higher: 4.3%

Looking at these numbers, we are sure companies are receiving a tremendous response to their posted positions; however, they may not be seeing the quality candidates a company needs to not only survive this downturn but emerge stronger than ever? People will be the key.

Current estimates for replacing an employee range from 50% of salary for lower level positions up to 400% for executive and C level professionals. These operational costs include but are not limited to:

Separation costs
Vacancy costs
Replacement costs
Training costs

These are the hard costs that land directly on the bottom line. Taking into account the soft costs such as lost productivity, morale and revenue, the value and even necessity of working with a specialty search firm becomes apparent. A search firm should be a value added partner, not just a resume source.

A respected search firm working as your value added partner, will provide you with exceptional candidates not accessible by other means. In today's uncertain job market, top professionals may not be looking for a new challenge; yet, they will consider specific opportunities from a trusted recruiter. Someone who has invested the time to discover the type of opportunity they regard as challenging and progressive. This insight is critical, a value added service that pays for itself by saving you time, money and perhaps a very costly hiring mistake.

So, do you need a search firm to fill your open positions? Here's a few questions designed to help you decide.

How valuable is my time?
How critical is this position?
How much time is it taking my staff/HR to review,
assess and screen the increased volume of resumes
and are their core responsibilites suffering as a result?
What is this open position costing me? (Are others having to do this work? How does that relate to their job atisfaction? How much revenue/productivity/morale has been lost? )

Searching for new talent can be a costly and time consuming endeavor. Having a search firm as a collaborative business partner will help you mitigate those costs and allow you to focus your time, energy and talents on what matters most - building your organization to be the best it can be. .

Look at these challenging times as an opportunity to hire the best and you will be far ahead of the pack when the economy turns around.