Talent Search Partners, Inc.

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Employer Insight

The Secret To A More Productive Workforce

Career Insight, Employee Retention, Employer Insight, Inspiration, Recruitment /

It’s amazing when you think about the correlation between encouragement and labour… I don’t quite understand how this behavioural phenomenon works, but the results are always the same… A person who feels appreciated, will always do more – this is true 100% of the time. My Mother would often say to me as a child that a little encouragement sweetens labour. Wise words from a woman who understood that the real intrinsic motivator lies in appreciating the effort of others… This often came in the form of cooking lunch for a general contractor who was doing work around the house for us in addition to their regular monetary payment. She always went above and beyond, and some how that encouraged the people around her to do the same… Business Leader – try recognizing the contributions of that employee with a lunch or a gift card for Amazon. If a gift card is not your thing, then a verbal acknowledgement has an equally positive impact on behaviour – “I saw the work you did for this project, and you did an excellent job – thank you!” (followed up with an Amazon gift card 😉)… We’ve done a great job of normalizing excellence – let’s get back to openly recognizing the contributions of our employees and loved ones… Leadership does not need to be treated like a mathematical equation…..this will challenge a lot of engineers!

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We Want You In The Office 5 Days A Week, Or Else!

Career Insight, Career Preparation, Employee Retention, Employer Insight, Recruitment /

Talent retention remains a trending topic as we approach a new year. With over 14 years in recruitment, I’ve facilitated career moves at all levels. The common denominator in all of those encounters is a motivator. Motivators in this context are underlying reasons behind a prospects willingness to listen to what I have to offer and ultimately engage in the hiring process. The motivators expressed normally stem from a form of dissatisfaction with their current employer – dissatisfaction can take many forms and varies from person to person. As a Recruiter, understanding a candidate’s motivator is vital to a successful Candidate / Recruiter / Company courtship (yes, in many respects, it is a courtship or voyage to a long-term relationship). Any company can post a job advertisement, screen candidates, and onboard new talent. This process is pretty straightforward. Check out an earlier article I wrote titled, Thanks For Another Great Hire, Troy! So, How Do I Retain This Talent? In it, I tackle the inability of business leaders to cultivate a culture that grooms talent and promotes career path options for their top performers. Most say they have such a career path program in place, but it is seldom monitored and fine-tuned to keep up with market trends and the ever-changing needs of their people. While the motivator is important to my business, it is also a pain point for me as a professional who understands that people are an organizations greatest assets. I’ve seen my fair share of top performers and quality human beings leave companies for reasons that could have been remediated or altogether avoided if leaders cared enough about their people. If a better job was being done in this area, admittedly, I would need to find another day job. Thankfully for me, there will always be a disgruntled employee who wants nothing more than to change companies. Talent retention is just as important to me as talent extraction. My success as a Recruiter is measured against 2 metrics – fill rate and employment past a year. I had a conversation this afternoon with an exceptional candidate who I placed a few years ago who he told me that his employment with the company ended recently because of an internal struggle over them wanting him to be in the office 5 days a week, a condition that was not a requirement when he was originally hired. At the heart of this story and what is most disheartening is an organization’s callous parting with a good technical and character employee for something that could have remained a point of ongoing communication & negotiation. When it comes to working from home requests, I believe in a balance when it makes sense for the parties involved, especially when the performance of that employee warrants it. The point to leaders is for them to remain communicative with their people encouraging open dialogue about their career goals, and making sure that they are aligned with the resources, tools, and training to get to where they need and deserve to be. It is also important not to make all of your policies one-size fits all as it relates to retention. If you decide not to put your employees first, then I can assure you that your competitors will. Related Article – The Great Departure – A Recruiter’s Guide To Retaining Your Best Talent

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It’s Against Our Policy To Agree To Exclusivity

Employer Insight, Recruitment /

Show me another profession where its professionals are competing against each other for a fee… What’s worse is that recruiters are accepting of this behaviour. Imagine me hiring 3 different window contractors for my home and having all 3 companies in my home at the same time during installation… Efficiency and logic would dictate that I would enlist the service of ONE company to install the windows throughout my house…(shout out to Pioneer Windows & Doors – highly recommended!) I find it difficult to understand how any competent executive within a company would think that it is good for business to have 3-4 different recruiters working on any given role at the same time. Somehow we believe that the more eyes we have on a search, the greater the odds of filling that position… Hiring Authorities: “We don’t do retainers!” or “It’s against our policy to agree to exclusivity.” What you’re actually communicating is you have commitment issues, and you’d prefer to prolong your searches & increase redundancy, all resulting in a bad hire in the end with that person quitting or being let go for reasons that were missed during the hiring process. Think about it. You spent more time babysitting all of those recruiters then properly evaluating those candidates. This isn’t about money… I’m more concerned about those recruiters who submit themselves to this type of treatment, not realizing the value they bring to companies and people’s lives… Call me radical, but I prefer to work exclusively with a company and pour everything that I am into that relationship. Like any other healthy relationship however, this must be reciprocated.

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The Recruitment Industry Is BROKEN!

Employer Insight, Recruitment /

Car Mechanic: It will cost you $1,000 for a new Suspension and Steering System… Customer: Done, when can you start? Lawyer: It will cost you $300/hour to retain my services for this case… Customer: Done, when can you start? Plumber: It will be cost you $200/hour for my assessment of your leak… Customer: Done, when can you start? Recruiter: My fee is $35% for executive level searches… Customer: That is too high for us. We typically pay our recruitment partners 20%. Take it or leave it. Recruiter: Done, when can we start? Recruitment is vital to every organization’s success, yet we play this game far too often of under-valuing our service and taking what a hiring manager tosses at us out of desperation. What ends up happening is the recruiter takes on the search assignment at a lowered fee that they know is below market & their own personal standards. They quickly grow frustrated with a search that they shouldn’t have taken to begin with and this frustration bleeds into the interaction with candidates. Let’s uphold the integrity of the profession and get back to being a legitimate value-add service!

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We Can Do Better

Employer Insight, Inspiration /

Dear Business Leader, Your business strategy is just fine. You don’t need to hire a consultant and your vision statement doesn’t need rewording. You’ve lost sight of why you went into business… The pursuit of money has hindered your better judgement. You were once approachable, but success has made you prideful and you promote fear over trust. Obedience over partnership. You’ve put profits over the wellbeing of your people and you’ve assembled followers who are working in spite of you, not with you… Congratulations for building a company on a shaky foundation… …the good news is that there is a lineup of recruiters waiting to backfill your open roles.

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Dispelling The Myths

Employer Insight, Recruitment /

Hiring Manager – “We will probably post our job and see what comes through before we engage any recruitment partners. Does that work for you?” That’s great! You should be posting your jobs. There are many advantages to posting your vacancies externally. The issue that I have with this approach however is thinking that you will find exactly what you need through just posting your position. Understand that your brand has a reputation, whether good or bad, and there are people in the marketplace who have an opinion about your company and will base their decision of whether or not to apply, based on what they’ve heard. Many candidates who will see your job ad and could be interested in the position, will not apply because of what they know about your company through information circulating within their network. This information typically stems from grievances that have been aired out by disgruntled former employees. This sort of bad PR will subsequently prevent qualified candidates from applying for your position. It takes a good recruitment partner who will reach out to these prospects who are normally passive, but willing to consider a career move if the right one presents itself. A good recruiter is having these tough conversations and dispelling many myths that exist about your brand. Some of the most gratifying experiences in recruitment come when a prospect was on the fence for reasons that had nothing to do with the actual role, convincing them to form their own opinion of the company, closing the deal, and having that candidate who started at the company say 6 months in that it was the best decision they’ve made to join your client. It’s even more gratifying to see them exceling! The sad thing about this is that most organizations are oblivious to their own brand perception (or they know it, but don’t want to accept it). A Brand Ambassador – Recruitment?! A good recruiter is a brand ambassador. They are taking your company, your values, your mission, your products, your services to market and acting as the face of the brand during those interactions with candidates. It behooves organizational leaders and HR to groom that relationship with their recruitment partner to make sure they are accurately and enthusiastically conveying your message to prospective candidates. The alternative to this is bad for business.

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Thanks For Another Great Hire, Troy! So, How Do I Retain This Talent?

Employer Insight, Inspiration /

One of the weaknesses of business leaders is their inability to cultivate a culture that grooms talent, and to make sure that their top performers are put on a career path that leads to new challenges, personal development, and ultimately, financial gain. Let’s not trivialize the importance of the financial motivation. Dangling carrots is not only insulting, but it’s the easiest way to kick your best producers out of your company. If you as a leader for your group, division, branch, or office, have not crafted a clear and realistic career path for your top performers that will allow them to see continuous growth in their profession and fresh challenges, then I’m afraid that it’s only a matter of time until your roster thins out. This career path program should be monitored closely and fine-tuned periodically. You should be talking to your people about their career goals, and aligning them with the resources, tools, and training to get them to where they need to be. If you don’t, then your competitor will. And don’t be so egotistical to pretend that it doesn’t matter to see your best walk out your door – the cost to hire is far greater than the cost to take care of your people in the first place.

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HIRING MANAGER! Ask That Recruiter These 5 Questions Before Proceeding

Employer Insight, Recruitment /

A few months back I wrote a blog article about the questions candidates should ask recruiters every time they are approached about a new career opportunity. As I was driving back from my local farmers market this morning, it dawned on me that hiring managers have an equal responsibility to properly screen their recruitment partners and to go beyond the surface questions like, “what is your fee and what is your candidate guarantee period?” These are important, but I’d encourage you to dig deeper to unearth the quality and motivation of that recruiter. The reason why ghosting exists is because the proper steps towards due diligence are not being considered. Both sides are unfortunately engaging in transactional, “show me what you got now” type of behaviour, and they’ve forgotten that the best relationships are based on communication and trust. That first intake call between a recruiter and the hiring manager/human resources should set the tone for the future relationship and establish credibility from both sides. These are some of the questions that I believe every HR representative or hiring authority within an organization should ask during that next call: 1. Do you have client & candidate references who can vouch for what you’ve just described to me? 2. Tell me about your value-add beyond just supplying resumes? 3. We have a valued partner at the moment that we’ve had reasonable success with, and they haven’t given us a reason to look elsewhere. Why should we work with you? 4. What has been your longest search to date? (If the answer is more than 6 months, the next question should be, what compelled you to stick with one search for that length of time?) 5. Your fee works for us, but it’s incredibly low. Why is that the case? The key is to be informed and to ask the right questions. I’ve heard countless remarks about the poor quality of recruiters and how bad we are to deal with, but what are you as an organization doing to make sure that you partner with the right recruiter. You are willing to vet every other 3rd party organization that you work with, why not do the same with your recruitment partner? Hiring Managers – reach out to me if you’d like to set up a 30-minute consultation around this topic.

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The Great Departure – A Recruiter’s Guide To Retaining Your Best Talent

Career Insight, Employer Insight /

As a talent partner to some great organizations, I’ve seen my fair share of turnover (admittedly, this is not terrible for my line of work). It pains me whenever I see a good employee leave a company for reasons that could have been remediated or altogether avoided. The sad part is that there are normally warning signs that those in positions of leadership fail to see or completely ignore. If you’ve recently had to deal with an increased number of people running away from your leadership, then chances are there could be an underlying issue related to your approach to handling those relationships. Here are some of the common mistakes I’ve personally noticed amongst leaders: They adopt a standalone leadership style – It’s common for some leaders to manage their teams from their own little remote island. If this is you, then you’ll have a difficult time building good camaraderie and chemistry within your team.  This has been exacerbated by covid and the rise in remote & hybrid working arrangements, some of which is necessary due to legitimate personal circumstances, but some accommodated merely out of convenience or preference. I caution you not to operate as a separate entity from your team, only making appearances when it is in your best interest to do so. They neglect to say, “Good morning!” – This sounds insignificant, but acknowledging your team when you walk into the office in the mornings or during a morning video touchpoint is vital to building a healthy & friendly team culture. It is human nature to emotionally disconnect from an environment or from a relationship when you are not acknowledged or made to feel important. Try your best not to fall into the trap of making your best people feel like you are doing them a favour by allowing them to be on your team. They treat their people like cattle – Average employees who are only working for a pay cheque may not mind being herded around like cattle, but for top-performers who care about their work and the impact it has on a company and the world around them, they prefer a more personalized & kind approach to the leader/employee relationship. This mindset is more common amongst larger organizations with multiple departments/layers, but within your immediate team, endeavour to be a welcoming and engaging leader who treats everyone with respect & dignity. They don’t listen – This is where most people in positions of leadership lose the respect of their team and subsequently see higher levels of turnover. We say we are listening to our best employees, but our actions suggest otherwise. Common examples of this disconnect could be not addressing grievances that have been raised by an employee or failing to recognize an employee’s strengths and leveraging those strengths across the organization accordingly. Also, refrain from creating a culture where fingers are pointed and blame is assigned when things go wrong, or an employee leaves the company. People normally quit as a result of feeling unrecognized for their contributions, feeling detached from their boss or team, having unattainable carrots dangled over their heads, or being forced into roles that they don’t enjoy doing. There is no work-life balance – This should go without saying and in this post-covid climate, but it is imperative that leaders offer their employees a balance that includes time in the office and time away from the office when it’s necessary to do so. They delegate & micromanage at the same time – Are you one of those leaders who assigns a task to a member of your team, only to obsessively over-manage the way they complete the task? If this is you, then stop this immediately. Nothing is more demoralizing for a team then to not have the trust from their leader or room to make mistakes and learn from them. Delegate and cut the strings immediately, only lending oversight when it’s asked for or clearly needed. Final thoughts: At some point, you’ll need to face the hard truth that the problem could be you, but the good news is that we are all learning how to be better leaders. If this latest article has highlighted some points that are relevant to you, then please, for the sake of those under you, take the necessary steps to improve your approach to dealing with people and problems. Feel free to leave a comment or reach out to me directly if you have any questions. Remember, leadership is a privilege, not a right. Lead with your heart and don’t be too prideful to apologize. All the best to you, my fellow leaders.

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