Where Will Your IT Staff Come From NOW?

The labor recession is over. During the course of the recession, almost 500,000 IT positions were lost according to publicly collected data and anecdotal information suggests even more. According top a recent poll, American business will add over 200000 new IT jobs in 2005. Your staff will probably be scanning job boards to see their value and blocking access is useless; they’ll only do it at home.

So now that companies are hiring again, where are they going to find their staff of educated experienced professionals?

In most labor recessions, the group most affected by staff reductions is that of older, more experienced workers. These individuals have often accepted managerial positions that are less in demand as firms do fewer new projects and are often maintaining existing systems. Yet, initial demand during a recovery is for staff level professionals who are involved with execution, rather than managing. Thus the most affected group is the one least sought after when the recovery comes—unless they have used this time to revitalize their core technical skills and reposition themselves as staff, rather than management.

The other impact of a labor recession is that fewer young people are focusing on technology as their potential profession resulting in fewer people entering the labor force.

So your company has funded projects that need skilled staff. Where can you turn to?

1. Underutilized internal staff. Are there people on your staff who are high performers in their current role who could be trained for lower level staff positions on the project? These people may have an understanding of your business and industry that will provide subtle value on the project. Training them will help to retain them, keeping them from being picked off by other firms (Oh did I mention, that your staff is going to be poached again by other firms with labor shortages, offered salaries that you may fund shocking).

2. Consider hiring people who can be employed through TN visas. TN visas are one year automatically renewable visas that were created under NAFTA. Often, these employees will work for less than US workers. It requires an offer letter crafted in a particular manner and a check for $50.

3. Work with search firms again. You don’t have the time to speak with every person who emails a resume to you, especially people who flip resumes to every job posting like burgers at a fast food restaurant. Using search firms or employment agencies to assist with hiring will help with your time management. Interview them like you would a new employee. Once you accept them, provide them with useful screening questions in order to serve you. It is not enough to say, “I want a J2EE developer with two years of experience.” Tell them what the person should have done within those two years. Give them a questionnaire to administer pre-referral.

4. Hire people who have H1B visas. You can pay for these people as consultants where you will be charged more or you can pay for them as employees. Hiring someone with an H1B requires their completing a form on their first day of work that allows you to transfer the visa to your firm. Yes, you will help to sponsor them for their green card and that will cost money. They will pay for it with slightly lower wages and hard work. Getting someone who is early in their visa will allow you access to an employee for several years.

In 2005 and beyond, as the labor market picks up steam, you will need to be creative to attract and retain staff from your competitors. Fair wages and benefits will be one element that will help; training will be another. Yet whether you will even be able to find someone when you need them will be most important of all.

Jeff Altman
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com

© 2005 all rights reserved.

Effectively Interviewing Job Applicants

You have a job to fill. You've looked at scores of resumes and invited several seemingly qualified people in for interviews. You'll pick one person from the eight or eighteen that you're meeting with to solve your staffing need. But after a while, they're all starting to get confusing. You don't remember who is who, Worst of all, all their answers are starting to run into one another. You've hired two or three people in your career so you don't have a lot of experience doing this. How do you organize yourself to get the person that you want to hire? After all, both your ability to complete your objectives successfully (and your ability to be promoted) are at stake.

1. Have the reception area a place where recruiting information is available for a perspective hire. Have brochure available that speaks to the quality of life at the firm, the company's financial health, benefits, the sorts of things that you would want to know if you were visiting a new employer. Make sure it is not a zone where people can be standing and complaining to one another while waiting for the elevator. As a test, walk into your reception area one day and imagine what message it would convey to a stranger. Look at the walk to your office and do the same. Is there something that can be changed to convey a better impression to a stranger?

2. Don't overbook yourself. Unless your sole job is to interview, it is hard to keep track of answers if you're interviewing three or four people a day. And don't let your appointments sit and wait a long time for you. You don't like it when you're kept waiting in a doctor's office or a gove240rnment agency. Don't be rude. In deference to your own schedule, try to make appointments during lunch or after hours.

3. If you have a receptionist or assistant, give them a heads-up about the appointment to insure that their desk is not a gathering place. If available, have them offer a beverage to the waiting person. And if you can validate their parking permit, don't make them ask for it. Have it done immediately.

4. Take notes about answers. Seems obvious, but too often people rely on their memory to make decisions. If you're like most technology managers, you're handling a lot of quick decisions in the course of a day and risk making mistakes that can cause you to miss our on someone you would otherwise hire.

5. Pay attention! As a professional interviewer, I am conscious of how often my mind wanders to something I need to handle outside of the interview -- a work problem, a call I need to make, something my wife or son said. This is not because the person I'm evaluating is inappropriate or incompetent. It's because I'm human and don't come equipped with a switch that allows me to concentrate at all times. Do your best to concentrate on the person in front of you.

6. Prepare questions in advance that will help you assess a person and their qualifications. Don't "wing it". You've developed a specification of a job that you need to fill. What can you ask to help you determine whether this person has the right skills to do the job and personality for your team and organization?

7. Sell! The person who you're interviewing may be the one you decide to hire. They may be someone who will get a call from a friend of their who is evaluating whether to come to work for you or hire you. Tell your story. Why did you join and what keeps you there? Why is this a great company to work for and a good opportunity Take the time to talk about the merits of joining your team and your organization. Sell, don't lie.

8. Finally, think about the number of things that you are uncomfortable with, embarrassed by or wanted to apologize for and correct them. For example, do people see the chaos of the work day, the office clown, the rows of empty cubicles or paper stacked on empty desks from the last layoff? What can be done to rectify the impression that is conveyed by these and other things?

If you follow these points, you'll find that you'll have more successful outcomes and waste less time making decisions.

Jeff Altman
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com

© 2005 all rights reserved.

Pebbles in Your Shoe Don't Only Hurt your Foot But Cause Hip and Back Problems!

CIO Magazine ran an article entitled, "Ten Mistakes CIO's Too Often Make" I was thunderstruck by a mistake she sited---Pretend that your organizational weeds are really untended flowers.

My mind immediately went to a comparison with what it is like to spend a day walking with a pebble in your shoe. If you haven't done this before, imagine a pebble in your shoe, not just for 5 seconds, but what I is like to have a small hard rock under your foot for 12 hours.

It hurts, it moves around in the shoe sometimes disappearing and then re-appearing in a different place. Most people attempt to compensate by walking differently, thus affecting their posture or stride, causing pain to the back and hip in their effort to minimize the discomfort.

Too often, organizations lose their way by tolerating performance or behavioral pebbles that should be dealt with immediately. Because taking an action may cause a manager to "look bad", "develop a reputation" or in some other way appear to be poor leaders, managers develop a pattern of working around or coping with a problem rather than dealing with it.

Unfortunately, in the desire to avoid a confrontation with the mediocre subordinate, the work around solution often creates another problem like the hip and back pain derived from a pebble. Your staff knows incompetence when they see it. They resent doing extra and covering for someone else who doesn’t carry their weight. The bad job market won't last forever and these people will leave rather than continue to be taken advantage of. How smart a manager is someone to bring in a consultant to solve the problem created by a mistake in hiring.

Furthermore, the poor performer wastes your time by causing you invest time that you could be using on strategic work to create tactical solutions caused by their performance.
This market climate is one where you have an opportunity to replace poor performers with hungry eager staff. If remedial training to support the improvement of a subordinate is either unavailable or fails to achieve the intended outcome, there is no time like now to identify a superior talent and solve your problem.

Why walk around with a pebble for twelve hours when you can stop, remove your shoe and get rid of the unpleasantness in less than a minute?

Jeff Altman
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com

© 2005 all rights reserved.