How do they do it?

Is your organization challenged by employee turnover? Perhaps struggling to get find qualified, interested, motivated applicants? Just looking for ideas on how to shore up your employee retention platform? In the 2008 Forbe's Top 100 Companies to Work For report, you'll find plenty of clues on what other companies are doing right. A space on this annual report is coveted by the select companies that make the list, recruiters looking to identify 'the best' talent sources on the market, and candidates wanting to make career moves to find greener pasture.

Savvy executive leaders know the well-documented links between employee engagement, operational performance and shareholder value/profitability.

But, take a look at the list... and maybe you'll see something that I contiually do. Absent from the list (as they have been for MANY years) are the 'big boys' of Wall Street - no IBM, no GE, no 3M.

Instead, we see.... retailers, lots of them. Surprising still, no Saks, Target or other 'world-class' operations. When I look at the list of retailers I see companies like Wegmans who has long provided one of the best GROCERY shopping experiences you could have - like my fond childhood memory of being a part of the Cookie Monster Club. (As an adult, one my required stops when I go home to visit my family includes a stop of Wegmans simply to bask in the presence.) What do they do to inspire loyalty of customers and employees alike?

Let's face it, retail is NOT glamorous. In my high school and college years, I performed my stint of retailing. Had I been part of team for a company like a Wegman's or Starbucks, I probably would have had a much better perception of the retail opportunity as a career. Instead, I got out of retailing as quickly as I could for my own greener pasture.

What do these retailers do that other companies can replicate? They don't pay huge salaries (Wegmans ranks #82 in pay), they don't offer massage treatments, they don't offer fancy cars or free cell phones. Simply put, they have followed the fundamental rule so easy to forget in business and at home - KISS! Or rather, I mean Keep It Simple, Stupid!

• Offer flexible schedules's. My hometown favorite, Wegmans, is a bastion of opportunity for students, mom's, and people seeking second jobs - in addition to providing high-longevity career paths for employees looking for career options.


• Offer health and welfare benefits. I know, benefits are expensive. But, companies that get the COST of absenteeism, and poor employee health understand the return on this investment. And, Maslov's theory requires our basic needs to be fulfilled before allowing us to reach higher levels of 'actualization' - if you don't have good employee health, you won't have good employee performance. Some industry leaders (like the List's 12th place mention, Nugget, another supermarket) offer 100% paid benefits.
  


• Respect, respect, respect, respect. Rember the addage, people quit managers not companies? Look at the home builder David Weekly (#17). They don't offer many perks of employment compared to most on the list. But, according to the writers at Forbes "when the homebuilding industry slowed, the privately held firm canceled its annual reward trip and tripled severance pay for laid-off employees." Huh.
  


• Career Pathing. How do you start out as a high-school student bagging groceries, and end up managing a department or a retail store? Wegmans has this figured out; with great success.
  


• Support Continued Education and Personal Growth. Let's talk Paid Sabbaticals (#31 Alston & Bird). Or, how about robust tuition reimbursement programs (#42 Mitre)?
  

So, does any of this sound unreasonable? Many organizations balk at flexible scheduling, citing fears that scheduling needs won't be met, mass chaos will ensue, and that western civilization will fall. Ok, it is more work to schedule a dynamic staffing plan (and there is very little more challenging than staffing a 24/7 retail operation). But how productive is a staff that is distracted by being at work when outside obligations are calling them? Not very.

The take away from all of this is simple, each of these companies has found a message that was important to their business (retailers looking to reduce churn, consultancy looking to retain thought leaders) and created programs (great medical benefits, incredible work-life balance options) to stand shore up business need AND human need.

These companies identified issues that mattered to the bottom-line, connected it the issues of their employees all to find a win-win solution. Look into your own organization, find one employee issue and I'll bet you can find a solution that yields bottom-line success.

Playing in the Sandbox... Part II

(NOTE: This is a continuance of my first blog "Playing in the Sandbox Part I")

And, what is the easiest way to understand what makes the Third-Party Recruiting (TPR) world tic?

1) Easy, they are selling a product. Some are selling a relationship, and some are peddling candidates. They have to hustle - they are working against the clock, in a dynamic, faster than light world.

2) They have to be resilient and persistent. At a minimum, a TPR has to be resilient to listen to 100's of "no's" from candidates and clients alike. So, they keep on calling.

3) For as good as any recruiter might be, there is always an element of timing. Timing to land a candidate who is finally looking for their next opportunity; the timing to connect with an elusive HR department. Hence, the value of persistence and resilience.

4) Turnover in the staffing world is very high. When I started my career in the staffing world, with one of the premier companies in the world, by six months, I was a veteran. By year two; I was a leader. It is tough, competitive, unforgiving world of long, long, long (did I say long?) hours. Compensation is feast or famine - you only get the paid on a search after you make a placement - and then you can keep it if the candidate stays in role for at least six months to a year.

What are my hints to work effectively with a TPR?

1) Help them to be successful – give them insight into the role and hiring team so they can get the best candidates to you early. And, give them feedback during the process, too.

2) Set expectations – for instance, let them know the best way to get in touch with you, and when. Outline your interview schedule; turn around on submissions and feedback, and the expected time to generate an offer. This not only helps the TPR coach the candidate and keep them engaged, but also will help the TPR gauge their communications with you.

3) Be respectful of submissions: honor time stamps of submissions if you are working with multiple vendors or validating against your database. Don’t allow a one TPR to backdoor another.

4) Honor your contract: unless you have very special, extenuating circumstances, don’t try to renegotiate terms after a candidate has been placed. Negotiate up front, before you sign. It is a legal document.

5) Don’t backdoor your TPR: Don’t accept a resume from a TPR and they try source the candidate on your own – even if a hiring manager asks you to do so!

In short, the life of a TPR is hard work, long hours, and one of the most grueling sales positions you could imagine. They aren’t trying to pester, but rather close the deal.

Finally, it isn't just the TPR/Corporate HR relationship in pain. It has become a Recruiter/Candidate dynamic, too. For instance, when I run into old-time friends and go through the catch-up of our lives; it is not untypical to get a reaction to the fact that I'm a recruiter. Typically with a drone, a roll of the eyes followed by a biting comment like, "oh I've worked with recruiters, before, and let me tell you about.... (enter some horrible recruiter story here)..."

My first reaction is listen. Then, when they are done, I empathize and let them know how sorry I am to hear about that situation. Yes, I agree, there are some doozies out there... but, "let me tell you about this GREAT recruiter I know..."

Playing in the Sandbox... Part I

Can Third-Party Recruiters and Corporate HR play together in the sandbox?

So often, I see rants and diminishing comments on recruiting community boards. Corporate HR are accused of being bumbling, bureaucratic idiots; Third-Party Recruiters (TPRs) are likened to stereotypical, sleazy used car dealers.

Throughout my career, I've had the opportunity to sits on both sides of the fence. I've been fortunate to meet my share of world-class practitioners on both sides. It seems that lots of TPR's HR players view each other as enemies. Here’s my take on some perspective on both sides of the fence.

The "HR Game" isn't so difficult to understand, if you can realize that the HR Perspective isn't about being ANTI-agency, it is about:

1) Vendor management - as an in-house corporate recruiter, I could have spent all day on the phone with agencies looking to do work with my F500 employer. To what value? Every call was about being a specialist in X, with the best candidate ever. What was always interesting was that when I started offering to review the candidate blindly, submissions rarely followed. Were the candidates real? Was the firm concerned about me 'stealing' a candidate? I'll never know, since I rarely heard a follow-up.

2) Vendor compliance - corporate purchasing and legal often sets criteria for the bonding, and financial stability of a firm with whom to do business, as well as reporting/invoicing compliance

Yes, purchasing does often create a requirement of total vendors, criteria (financial stability, bonding, etc) of vendors allowed. Typically, however, it is part of an overall corporate philosophy to deal with highly-engaged vendors versus a revolving door of contracts to execute and review.

3) Cost containment - yes, some Corps have a strategy to eliminate (very few actually accomplish this, however) third-party fees. More likely, is an initiative to REDUCE third-party fees - using third party firms in high-need, niche, hard-to-fill positions (let's face it - not every position needs external recruitment support if you have an in-house team).

And, a company is typically in business to make money (this shouldn’t be shocking). If you follow a Lean principle of business, that includes eliminating waste. It would be wasteful to spend money unnecessarily. Therefore, dollars are spent where needed. I wonder how many TPR agency/firm owners spend money without cause?

4) Implied-agency avoidance: I have worked for a number of corporations that out of good will, would pay placement fees if a manager accepted a resume submission from a Third party EVEN if unsolicited. The downside (as a corp recruiter) was that often the resume was accepted without having a search in place - then, when a search was executed we found that same candidate in our top database searches (internal and public)! We paid the search fee, but used it as a 'coaching opportunity' to show that hiring manager the value (ie., avoiding a 25 - 30% placement fee hitting their bottom line). Every time thereafter, all submissions the hiring manager received from a third-party was routed directly through Corp Recruiting/HR for consideration to be accepted.

5) Team-work and respect: I know of more than a few Third-Party firms that specialize in HR avoidance. Come on, we all know some of the major vendors actually train their franchisees and recruiters to do so, down to verbatim technique.

6) Reporting and process: much of the role of the recruiter is not only coaching their client towards business objectives, but also maintaining compliance with federal reporting requirements.

Think about this... if you start the process specifically AVOIDING a part of the interview team, do you really think that part of the team is going to embrace you in the future? I heard the quotes from Third-Parties via my hiring managers as a corporate recruiter of being ". Guess what? As a competitive person who had a background in TPR, I was steamed and made it my personal agenda to prove those firms wrong. Guess what, I did! I sourced that same candidates they did - first! After two backdoor submissions from the TPR to hiring manager, without fail, the Hiring Manager was then redirecting the TPR to deal with....me. The TPR had to have a compelling candidate for me to even bother with them at that point - the relatioship was TRANSACTIONAL and a low-value COMMODITY.

Now, flip the coin. As a Corporate Recruiter, when I found an agency that worked with me, wasn't slandering my reputation to the hiring manager, and making gross generalizations like owning an "exlusive database" - I identified searches to work with them on day one of recieving the req. They earned a premiere position in the search life-cycle, they knew about the position before I posted it externally. The didn't have to prospect for business with my team
once.

Fast forward to my current role, as an external consultant to companies looking to develop their Internal Recruiting function. Who do you think I recommend to the high-growth, high need clients? The team players who approach the search as a broader relationship, or the transactional suppliers?

The bottom line is: there ARE operational efficiencies that a company can gain by limiting the number of agencies they contract; which works BOTH ways. I mean, after all, do you really want to work on a search that is out to 20+ firms?? Do you want to have access to the best work, or do you want to take the dart-board approach to business; sending a candidate out to see if it sticks.

When companies create a key provider list of recruiters, they can create partners in the search process who become intimate with the organization and highly vested, external advocates for their customer. Corporations gain improved efficiency in managing fewer resources that typically produce highly qualified, screened, prepared candidates and stay in the search till the end.

I know lots of third-party recruiters who have built a lifelong, highly profitable and successful business by being the (or one of a few) search consultant for an organization. They rarely prospect for business because they have built lasting, reciprocating relationships with a few key clients.

Top sales performers (and most world-class sales organizations) who generate sustainable, recurring revenue call this account penetration; and would also be able to tell you it is the most cost efficient sales technique they can implement. And, the world-class Third Party Recruiters know this to be true, too.