Though I am a recruiter, I come from a background in business and technology.  I am fascinated by system improvements and changing the status-quo.  Doing it the “way its been done” just doesn’t cut it anymore.

With that in mind, I am pleased to announce that Merrill|Recruiting is offering services specially designed for small/medium and startup businesses that need recruiting assistance, but do not need full-time recruiting staff.  Your company gets years of recruiting experience for less cost than hiring a high-school student.

This form of on-demand recruiting will enable companies to get a local, dedicated recruiter who actually gets to know your company’s needs, culture and unique environment.  Your recruiter will provide regular on-site support (at least 4 hours a week) and will leverage our entire company’s resources to help improve your company’s recruiting process from end-to-end, at no additional charge.

We have solutions for marketing jobs, gathering candidates, electronically managing candidate flow, and we will screen candidates and help your company hire the right people… the first time.

This is ideally suited for small/medium companies which anticipate hiring between 1-10 people per month at salary ranges less than $50k/yr.

Custom services are also available such as external recruiting vendor management, applicant tracking system installation and maintenance, building your own search-engine friendly jobs and career site, and assisting companies with recruiting in various real-world scenarios (like job fairs) and virtual situations like facebook. Occasional high-end ($50k+) recruiting tasks can be done as well, at rates far below what large agencies demand.

When you’re ready to hire better people and improve your bottom-line, let’s talk — 801-228-0529 or robert @ merrillrecruiting.com

Most job postings do a reasonable job of bragging about a company, but the best ones focus on what is in it for the candidate.  Here’s a good outline of how your job description could be formed:

• Job Title – Company name – Location
• Description of the opportunities available for the right person.
• List the KSAs required for the job, the knowledge, skills and abilities a person will need to succeed in the role.  This listing should include degrees or education that are needed, and you should designate if certain things are optional, as opposed to required.
• Finally, describe your company’s culture, available benefits, and other items about your culture, the job location or other things pertaining to the lifestyle people would have working with you.

Overall, when writing your job posting, remember to put yourself in the candidate’s shoes.  Job seekers today want to know what’s in it for them, and will go far and wide to find it (or leave when you don’t provide it). Millennials (Gen Y) are the most-aggressive in this category.

There are some good suggestions online you can follow, such as this post at CollegeRecruiter, and this post about writing a job advertisement not a description.  You may want to consider your overall website as well, following tips from this post about how to use your company’s website better for job-postings.

Also, 43% of respondents couldn’t care less, thank you.

72% of companies polled do not use social media to recruit

What innovative ways is your company recruiting? (or… not?)

IMG from CollegeRecruiter.com

I will never forget the day I came around this corner in Boston near the Bell Atlantic building (Now Verizon) on my way to work and found hundreds of 411-information workers picketing. This was late summer 1998. The economy was booming beyond its bounds. The financial giants of Boston (including Bell Atlantic) sat literally feet from this place in their glittering towers of monolithic, economic supremacy, but these workers felt an injustice had been served, and through their union, they walked out on their employer so they would hear and know their frustration.

The uproar and the noise echoed deafeningly off the walls of the other buildings. I could see business people in the large windows above looking down at the craziness below with distant interest. Police with riot gear stood nearby. Since it was nearly 8am, as people tried to go into the building for work, they would receive shouts, jeers and swearing in return from the emotional, angry scene. I was frozen in my tracks. I literally felt breathless as I watched the scene–the anger, the emotion, the intensity.

Checking my watch, I knew I would be late if I stayed there, but I

just.

couldn’t.

leave.

Hundreds of people walked through that square in the few minutes I was there watching. Hurrying to work with their newspapers and lattes, cellphones and blackberrys. Some of them stopped and looked. Most of them hurried on. I felt like I was caught in that moment.

That experience really effected me (obviously, since it’s 11 years later and I am blogging about it). I remember wondering what it meant. What was the point? It began to make me think long and hard about the hours I was putting in for my employer, making someone else’s retirement a sure thing. I began to lose the taste for the technologies I worked with every day. There had to be something MORE than just writing code!

Fast-forward a few years, a layoff, two more kids and a mortgage, and I jumped from technology programming into recruiting, mainly because of the opportunity to use what I know about technology with what I know about people and help people get connected with new and amazing opportunities. Hopefully ones they could be proud of when they went home at night.

But that isn’t enough. There is more to be done because the ground has shifted and moved, and the companies who don’t learn this will soon enough be spit out by the very economic forces that made them great when it was OK to treat your employees like tools.

Markets are Conversations”. – Cluetrain Manifesto

Cluetrain, Rise of the Creative Class, and Groundswell (how to be human) give you primers and clues into the language.

Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook show you a peek into the conversation.

Meetups, Codeaways, ignites and camps give you access to the people.

But without your CORPORATE PARTICIPATION, you will be forced, eventually (by either your talent leaving you, or the market selling you) to watch all of this revolution from the sidelines… unable to join in until it is far, far too late.

“Markets are conversations… Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”
- The Cluetrain Manifesto

I shared a few things with him which I am glad to say were published in this month’s magazine along with some other good, insightful thoughts from both local and national employers.

If you don’t receive Business Connect Magazine (which I strongly recommend), you can read Peter’s article online here: How to Retain Your Employees.

Just for fun, I’ve listed the more verbose responses to some of what Fretty asked me:

What do you see as the most effective means of retaining employees?

The most-common reason people leave their jobs is because they don’t like their boss. This takes on a lot of forms from not feeling challenged, to feeling micromanaged, passed over for opportunities, or not being trained well. It’s regular for new managers to completely change over much of their staff within a year after they take a new post, generally because of these personality factors.

It’s not about the money, it’s not benefits, it’s not getting a shiny car for being employee of the year like Doba did last year*. At the end of the day, the employee’s direct supervisior has more power and ability to help and employee feel liked and encouraged or disgruntled and dissatisfied than any other thing a company can do.

We all know that the cream rise to the top, and in business, the superstar talent will always keep their eyes and ears open through active and passive networking. Even the least-talkative or outgoing employee likes to work where they feel liked and appreciated, and even they will seek new opportunities when they feel their relationship with their direct supervisor is strained. Superstars are savvy enough to not complain about their boss around other people, but they will sing their praises, and your company’s, if they like what they’re doing, and they feel satisfied with their job.

That being said, the best boss in the world will lose employees hand-over-fist if the company is not:

• Paying well (by the way, which means ahead of the curve, not right at the median pay-range),
• Doesn’t provide adequate (read: liberal quantities of) tools to help employees succeed at their jobs
• Misses opportunities to praise and reward employees for the hard work they do (recognition is more important than money, but money talks very loudly).
• Provide all of the required and some over-the-top benefits to make sure their employees (and their families) feel appreciated as more than cogs in the machine.

What mistakes do people commonly make when trying to keep employees?

1. Hire the wrong bosses.
   People are promoted to management for the worst reasons. They look the part, they have the right degree, or they’ve been there the longest. Just like a brilliant doctor without any bedside manner, the most accomplished, credentialed, superstar manager will fail miserably if she can’t incite enthusiasm and success in her employees.
2. Don’t give bosses tools for retention.
   Corporate policies always play their heavy hand when employees want flex time, or to try out a special project, or even take an extra day of vacation to see their kid’s last soccer game of the year. Google’s 20% rule, where employees get one day a week to work on any approved project of their choosing has produced some of their best creations. Why not?  This is much better use of “water cooler” time anyway, isn’t it?
3. Don’t ask people what they want to do next.
   People will jump companies in a heartbeat for new challenges. Companies are usually horrible at actually helping people accelerate through their careers internally. Challenge them, ask them for help with special projects, allow them to be creative and try new things with your blessing.
4. Pay exactly the “market rate”.
   Duh. This one is easy to fix, but hard to approve through management. Yes, employee costs are high. But replacing an employee costs up to 70% of that employee’s annual salary. It’s your choice: You can lose them every 8-16 months (current averages for non-executive transitions), or you can pay them an extra 10% or even 30% over the market, with regular, meaningful raises.
5. Stifle creativity by maintaining the status-quo.
   Doing more of the same, but hoping for something different is the definition of insanity. People will either go insane or go somewhere else if you don’t allow them to have input to your processes and take on difficult projects. Toyota championed this, allowing any factory line worker to stop the whole plant if they saw something that needed to change.
6. Don’t Talk.
   The old joke is, if you hear from your CEO more on CNN than in your own business, there’s something wrong (See GBAT #16).  Maybe your CEO isn’t ever on CNN, but this is the age of transparency, and if your employees don’t know what’s really going on behind the brass-handled doors of the C-suite, they will go elsewhere.
7. Don’t Listen.
   Gatekeepers, assistants, and other executives are great at keeping the bad news and feedback from getting to the top. That’s bad. Engage in conversations. Real, honest, and serious ones. Your staff will respect you for listening, and likely respect you even more when you recognize where you’re wrong, admit it publicly, champion the better ideas, and make sure you always pass credit where it’s due. Likely, when people know that if they talk to you, you will act… they will make sure they only talk to you about really crucial things in the first place! P.S. If your employees blog, comment on them!
8. Don’t Relax.
   Companies that let their hair down once in a while and do something fun–take your employees to the premier of a new movie, send them to lagoon for a day, host a staff retreat that’s actually about retreating–will retain employees longer because people will like working there.  Do something once a quarter… maybe two smaller events and two significant onces. Make them memorable, fun, and for everyone.

* Don’t get me wrong, Doba did an AMAZING thing by doing this, but not everyone can/should.  I’d be open to it, personally though…

You’re a busy professional. You have a lot on your plate, your team is working overtime, and that ugly deadline is fast-approaching.

Finally, the recruiter calls you with an interviewee. They send over the resume, and you skim it, but mostly, the recruiter sounds confident this person is the match, so you have them setup the interview.

Days go by, and your calendar reminds you that your interview is about to start in 5 minutes.

“Oh, yeah…. the interview…” you say absently as your mind races to find the resume you are sure you printed off.

After a few minutes of fumbling, you think to yourself, “hey, its not my interview… they should have a copy of their resume, if they want this job…” and you head down to the lobby to meet them.

Sound Familiar?

If it does, then you’ve got a serious train wreck about to occur. You, being unprepared for an interview, may be the absolute worst thing you can do for your company apart from posting those New Years Party photos on the Internet (you know, the ones that mysteriously appeared on your camera).

Here are three things hiring managers often forget when they are interviewing and, yes, these things really do matter:

1. Read and annotate the resume beforehand:
   Chances are, they spent hours, and possibly some money on getting that “resume.doc” in your email.
   • Are you sure everything they say is real? Is it relevant?
   • What can you learn about them by the way they phrased the objectives and accomplishments of their last three positions.
   • What does their cover letter really say about them?
   • Don’t you think you should make a note to clarify what they mean by “some coursework completed” next to their claim to a Harvard MBA?
2. Prepare Questions:
   If you don’t know what you’re going to ask, the truth is, you won’t ask the right ones. “Going with your gut” should be reserved for the craps table, not your organization’s retirement account’s future.
3. Pay Attention to them:
   The interview is as much of an opportunity for the candidate to investigate YOU and your company. If you rush through, don’t seem interested in them as a human being or that you’re not really listening, they will translate that to mean you will overwork them, not appreciate them and, in the long-run, they won’t be satisfied with working for you very long.

Summary:

By their 30s, most people have had enough “bad bosses” to write long, lengthy books on the matter (not fun, nice-to-read books, but enough content to fill them up!).

Make no mistake about it, before they make any kind of move at all, superstar employees today are sizing you up as what kind of boss you are going to be.

Superstar talent want thriving, engaging, challenging environments and bosses that will help them thrive and flourish and introduce them to the right people that will help them make the next two or three career moves.

The upside, for you, is that you will forever be known as “the one who finds the superstars”. Don’t forget, when that new hire is getting recognition from the top level of the company, YOUR NAME will be in lights right alongside them… but, the slightest whiff from you that you don’t care, you’re “very busy”, or that you don’t appreciate or value what they, as a human being, bring to the table… well, kiss the chance to hire that person goodbye.

Isn’t that worth 10-15 minutes of prep time on your part, and asking two or three relevant “human” questions during your interview?

1. Real and Wage Inflation
2. Intense Competition for Talent
3. Corporate cost-cutting
4. High Energy/Commute Costs

The hardest part to pin-down is that the economic indicators show a market that is schizophrenic. Utah’s high tech job market is part recessionary and part booming. There’s both signs of weakness, but signs of boom-cycle madness.

If there were ever a time to unveil the invisible hand and see what’s really going to happen to this economy over the next six-12 months, now is the time… those who navigate this juncture well stand to gain a lot of opportunity, while these massive icebergs of clashing forces might very well crush entire sections of our economy and workforce if we’re not paying close attention.

Real and Wage Inflation

The Fed won’t admit there’s inflation yet, even though everyone else is worried about it… but one trip to the grocery store tells you a dollar doesn’t go as far these days. This plays into issues 3 and 4, and is the driver for issue 2.

Bottom-line: If the same amount of money you made last year isn’t cutting it, talented people will demand higher wages for the same jobs they were doing a year ago.

If the company they currently work for won’t pay up, no problem, they’ll just move.

Intense Competition for Talent

As a recruiter, I use every tool I can find. The job boards, these days, are as silent and un-exciting as a Hillary Clinton rally in Payson. The war for top-talent has moved from remote, tactical operations using unmanned email probes and remote-controlled resume submittal to (continuing the analogy) hand-to-hand, street fighting. Candidates are being approached at every angle, from every recruiter, in very creative ways…. and they’re getting hired, too!

At the Blogger Dinner last Thursday, Steve Spencer quipped something like: This is just like the late 90s. It doesn’t matter if you can actually do any of the stuff on your resume, but if you have the right acronyms, you’re hired!

(And, yes, Steve’s company is hiring… tell ‘em I sent ya)

Corporate Cost-Cutting

Client after client of mine has issued cost-cutting warnings. Several more companies are putting in-place hiring freezes, readjusting their priorities, laying people off or closing down all together.

This hyper-sensitive focus on costs can be unacceptable to a workforce already in high-demand.

One jobseeker for a Salt Lake-based IT Outsourcing firm told me last Thursday that his current employer has”implemented a new performance-based pay plan where you get a “very low base wage” and, if you hit certain quotas every day, you will get paid more.

The story goes that these employees, if they are industrious little busy bees, can earn even more than they have been making, but the employees don’t quite see it that way.

“Its a joke,” my jobseeker friend told me. “I’ve done the math. It is impossible to make anything close to what I have been making. I am outta here.”

There’s bound to be losses when a company needs to refocus. A recent article by Tiffany Hsu in the Baltimore Sun explains this very well:

“It costs a lot to let someone go,” said Don McNamara, president of Heritage Associates Inc., a management consultant company based in Laguna Niguel, Calif. “So we’ve got to circle the wagons and pull in a little bit.”

Businesses, he said, can cross-train employees in multiple roles to boost productivity and restructure to remove inefficiencies…. but employers can’t cut too many expenses and perks without risking driving workers away.

“You’ve got to be sensitive to your people and make sure morale isn’t one of the things you cut,” McNamara said. “If this comes as a surprise to them, they might be tempted to update their resumes at another company.”

High Energy/Commute Costs

Even thinking about high gas/energy prices makes me exhausted, but the simple fact is we are receiving regular calls and updates from our candidates seeking more commute-friendly work options, telecomuting, shorter commutes, or other benefits to offset the incredible rise in fuel costs this last year has seen. For once, the State has taken a lead here, generating (I predict) pressure on many new fronts to allow employees to have more control over when, where and how much they work.

On the flip-side, a lot of people who otherwise want to keep their current job are interested right now in part-time, flexible, contract-based work options too. That is an unforeseen consequence of these higher prices.

Summary

At the end of the day, companies are asking their employees to do more with less, while these same high-demand employees are not afraid of feeling out their options and making a more lucrative move if needed.

I fear, for companies too cost-conscious, this will become a race to mediocrity unless they very creatively examine their work demands, and be very open and honest with their employees. Find out what they need/want and even while cutting costs, you can make work fun and, heck, maybe even more productive.

These are generally very talented individuals who like their current job/employer, but are looking for additional work to take on.

Likewise, these same people are usually willing to take a decrease in their “day-time wage” for a flexible work opportunity because of the, well, flexibility of it.

Some are cutting their pay-rate down as much as 75% of what they would deserve in a day-time/full-time gig because they are not looking for just income, but additional income.

If you are a software development manager and I was willing to experiment with adding flexible/additional staff (especially if you’re already considering outsourcing where there are time-differences anyway), this might be the time to seriously consider bringing on a swing/night shift (your programmers are already there all night anyway, right?) and acquire some excellent talent at a discount.

Of course, finding the people to do this is what we do all day. Even if you had your own person in mind, contracting them through an agency (so you would not have to hire them permanently, or deal with 1099 messes) can remove a lot of headaches and legal issues down the road.

If you’re curious about how an agency like mine could help you, please feel free to contact me.

If you know of companies that are accepting candidates for non-traditional work hours, and you want to share, please feel free to leave a comment!

The Green Autoblog reports that the US workforce may be switching to a four-work-day week in response to higher gas prices and pressure to be smarter about requiring commutes. They point to this reuters article explaining how the four-day week is becoming a benefit in otherwise cash-strapped areas of the economy:

In America’s struggling automaking heartland, the shorter workweek offers employers a way of rewarding employees when the budget does not allow a salary increase, said Oakland County, Michigan, executive L. Brooks Patterson.

“By allowing employees to work four 10-hour days it will save them 20 percent on their commute costs and ease the financial pinch of filling up their cars,” said Patterson, who last week proposed the compressed week for county workers.

Some ways to introduce four-day work-weeks:

• Offer your employees one day a week to work from home.
• Allow your workers to put in four 10 hour shifts rather than five eight-hour ones.
• Simply close your office one day a week, and ask your employees to accomplish their work in the alloted time. This rewards them for efficiency.

Who would have thought that something as simple as allowing your employees to self-adjust their commute just might be the best benefit you don’t have to pay for.

A few days ago, I wrote about how hard it is for good, employed job seekers to search for new work while retaining anonymity.

But what if a candidate is not really “looking”, but also wouldn’t pass up the right opportunity if it, well, fell in their lap…?

Sometimes the difference between someone “happily employed” and “happily employed… but listening” isn’t very much.  As an employer, how can you be attuned to those subtle shifts in perception of both your company as an employer, and their outlook as a candidate?

As far as I can tell, there is no way for someone to easily, passively and privately tell a company, “yeah, if you had something great for me, I would be interested.”

Is there?