Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter's No B. S. Hiring Advice: November 2006

Saturday, November 25, 2006

My, Oh, My!

How the Job Market is Changing!

Wherever possible, I like to share anecdotes to illustrate a point.

This week, a client of mine wanted to extend an offer to a person with a good background. The person is an auditor who has done a lot of work in the hedge fund space. She has changed jobs, on average, over 18 months since entering the field and, at one point a two years ago, worked for a competitor.

I knew she was earning $86000 in her current job and asked her how much she was looking for. She told me that title was very important to her and that one company, a former client, had put a job offer together with a “powerful title” which I learned was an Assistant Director’s title.

And what salary where they offering?

$115000.

I was shocked. An almost $30000 raise PLUS bonus plus a title to join the firm.

After checking references, I told my client what this person had received in the way of an offer and, to put it mildly, they were surprised, too.

And then they matched the salary offer and offered her a VP position.

Folks, I keep saying that we have entered a period where talent will need to be rewarded to attract AND retain strong people.

Do you know who the top 10% of your staff is and what are you doing to keep them?

Are the performance reviews serious? Are they receiving positive and constructive field back? Are they receiving challenging assignments?

Are their raises exceeding what your competition would offer them if they went looking?

Jeff Altman

If you have a question that you would like me to answer, email it to me at:

thebiggamehunter@gmail.com

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s new meta job lead tool, Job Search Universe, or to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, go to http://www.jeffaltman.com. Job Search Universe is also available at www.jobsearchuniverse.com

For Jeff’s free recruiting ezine, NaturalSelection Ezine, to help human resources professionals, managers and business owners make even better hiring decisions, ,subscribe at www.naturalselectionezine.com . For information about personal job search services, go to www.VIPPersonalSearch.com.

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at jeffaltman@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).

Becoming the Employer of Choice (Part 3)

How Are You Shaping Your Company’s Message

Have you asked yourself the question, “What is the message you want the market to know about working with your company?”

“What is the view I want the job market to have about my company?”

In the last issue, I wrote about the value of “the buzz” around a company. Google is the current media darling. Microsoft once was. Whose next? What will be the buzz around that firm?

Yours may not be a glamorous company. It may be a door knob manufacturer, a neighborhood business or an enormous company that creates boring things. Yet there is a way to create an image for your firm.

Go to YouTube.com and look at a video for Great Lakes Brewing. They are selling their business in this video and do a nice job of creating a feeling. There’s another from the Charlestown Fire Company, a fire company that put something together to show what they do. The Romanian production company, Demo Mediana, does a nice job of selling their work.

What are you doing? Have you thought of tailoring an existing commercial, putting the tailored commercial on YouTube or one of the other sites have it work for you.

Could you be creative and pull a few managers together and create a spot for your company?

Consciously shaping your company’s message for employees will go a long way toward making yours an employer of choice.

Jeff Altman
The Big Game Hunter
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com

© 2006 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in technology, accounting, finance, sales, marketing and other disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

If you have a question that you would like me to answer, email it to me at:
thebiggamehunter@gmail.com

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Becoming the Employer of Choice (Part 2)

(Second Article in a series)

Among the reasons for becoming the employer of choice in your market area and in your industry is the ability to attract all the talent you want with relatively little effort. People seem to know your brand and have a favorable disposition to it. It’s almost as though there is a halo around the organization—people think well of the firm and have the idea that working there would be fun and advance their career and interests.

Businessweek recently published an article about the best places for beginners to start their career and pointed to a characteristic when comparing firms. That characteristic is the second factor about an organization--there’s a “buzz” around the firm.

What’s “the buzz” about your company?

What do your employees think about working there?

What’s does the street gossip say about your company?

Do you know?

Have you ever surveyed your employees and asked them these questions:

What are the best things about working for us?

What would you want to improve about working here?

If you’ve ever published the positives have you ever announced changes based upon the areas that needed improvement?

What is your employee turnover rate? Do you conduct exit interviews and make changes based upon the results (I’m not talking about firing a manager because a of a disgruntled employee; perhaps it can be hiring additional staff or consultants because because the overtime required is excessive)?

Are you putting out press releases that deal with business successes or just hoping that your company gets noticed?

Do you have formal announcements to acknowledge great achievements or just expect people to do their job?

One of my clients caters a modest breakfast for the staff once a week in every office around the world. They even pay for benefits for the employee AND their family including dental. Do you think this company has a leg up competing with your firm?

Oh, I forgot to mention that they have a higher than normal match on their 401K, start employees off with three weeks of vacation and through a quarterly party for the staff.

Firms that go out of their way to cater to the needs of their employees incur an obvious expense but also gain a big advantage when competing for superior talent. Getting “the buzz” around your company can be achieved in thousands of ways over the course of time. What’s most important is that there is a positive buzz around your company that makes people stop in their tracks and become favorably pre-disposed to working there.

Jeff Altman

The Big Game Hunter
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com

© 2006 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in technology, accounting, finance, sales, marketing and other disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

To subscribe to Jeff’s free job search ezine, Head Hunt Your Next Job, go to www.headhuntyournextjob.com. For Jeff’s free recruiting ezine, NaturalSelection Ezine, subscribe at www.naturalselectionezine.com To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you or search for openings, go to http://www.jeffaltman.com. For information about personal search services, go to www.VIPPersonalSearch.com.

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at jeffaltman@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).

A View from the Other Side

Someone forwarded an article to me the Kansas City Star entitled, “Hr Gatekeepers Keeping The Skilled Out” (http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/15848818.htm ). It paints the usual picture of the mistreated worker (you know, the one—well-educated, high level, out of work longer than you would imagine, generous, kind to children and small animals) victimized by the system.

This is what they believe (and I quote):

Good candidates aren’t getting through corporate front-line resume screening systems.

Or, if their resumes are reaching the eyes of actual hiring managers, they’re getting no feedback as to why they’re not getting interviews.

“We can’t get past the HR gatekeeper,” one said. “If we’re blown off, we don’t know why.”

. . . the hiring system is broken in many companies.

Blame the flood of Internet applications.

Blame downsized human resource departments that can’t handle the application volume.

Blame front-line screeners who don’t understand what they’re looking for or at.

“It’s a loss of etiquette,” one of the participants complained.

More precisely, it’s a loss of human contact.

You and I both know that these are romantic notions that belie the fact that you would interview a chipmunk if their resume looked like a fit for the job you were trying to fill.

It is hard to screen every resume you receive given all the responsibilities and priorities you have. HR systems are often handled by the least experienced person who may not fully understand the skills sought. That may not be the case in your organization but it is the case in a lot of them.

Is there a way to set up an email address for ad responses that gets an auto response acknowledging that you have received the resume, will review it and will be inviting in several [ep[le who are a tight fit with the requirements? That if you do not hear from the firm, it is because your experience does not appear to be as tight as others’?

For many of you, these people are consumers of the products and/or services your firm sells thus a minute of time invested (which is al this takes, can have terrific pay off.

Jeff Altman

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search job openings, use his free meta job lead tool or to subscribe Jeff’s free job search ezine, Head Hunt Your Next Job, go to, http://www.jeffaltman.com. To subscribe to Jeff’s free recruiting ezine, Natural Selection Ezine, subscribe at www.naturalselectionezine.com For information about personal search services, go to www.VIPPersonalSearch.com.

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at jeffaltman@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).

Sunday, November 12, 2006

The Disconnect Between Management and HR

I used Google to search for the function of a human resources department and found
a pretty typical description:

The Human Resources Department acts as a business partner working with and
for the employees, divisions, and units of the Cancer Center, including staff and
academic employees, supervisors, and management.

This was obviously written as a description for a hospital but, substituting
a word or two, it could just as easily been written for your organization.
Yet would it be true.

Would you truly see human resources as a business partner, or an encumbrance
or a nuisance to hiring?

Unfortunately, too many managers and business owners refuse to partner with
their human resource people, during budget formulation, during the process of
developing a specification or during the recruiting process. Conversely, many
human resource professionals perceived and believe that they are treated as
“less than” their line management brethren, rather an integral part of the
recruiting process.

In fact, when done well, human resources, is very much a social work process
(to use the lingo of one viewpoint) and a killer application (to use Jack & Suzy
Welch [Jack of GE fame}).

I can examine the roots of the “disconnect” between the ideal (the killer
application/the good social work process) and the current one that may reside
in your organization (a disrespected nuisance), but, frankly, believe that each
organization has its own history of how this was created.

It is only necessary to go into the past to communicate with one another where
the problems originally occurred, see how they can be fixed going forward and
get everyone back to the table with one another to (re)create the partnership.

What is critical in a climate of labor shortages that all cylinders be working
and that the car is pointed in the right direction.

My friend, Dennis, is a martial arts instructor who went to his sensei for permission
to learn a second discipline. In his explaining his refusal to grant
permission, the sensei explained,

“When a dog chases a rabbit, he can catch it; when a dog chasses two
rabbits, he catches none.”

When organizations are going off in multiple uncommunicative paths to finding
and retaining talent, the enterprise is stressed unnecessarily. When everyone
works together, there is a great opportunity to unify efforts and get better results.

If you have a question that you would like me to answer, email it to me at: thebiggamehunter@gmail.com

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s new meta job lead tool, Job Search Universe, or to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, go to http://www.jeffaltman.com. Job Search Universe is also available at www.jobsearchuniverse.com

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Labor Shortages Now Worldwide

Manpower, an international staffing firm, completed a worldwide annual survey of 32000 employers of all sizes (at least 1000 in the US). The survey looked at companies in many industries came to some startling conclusions.

First of all, the days when you could extend a job offer and offer someone two choices (take it; leave it) are over for now. More and more firms are noticing something that I have been warning people about for the past year—labor shortages are now a part of the corporate landscape.

45% of employers are finding it difficult to locate engineers, nurses and accountants.

38% of firms are already paying higher salaries.

29% are finding it extremely difficult to find talent (not just the categories above).

25% are already paying higher wages than they were a year ago.

If you expect me to advise you to raise wage scales, well, frankly, wages are only one part of the equation when individuals are evaluating companies.

How well are managers interviewing for jobs they need to hire for? I don’t simply mean do they ask a bunch of questions and decide but do they have a clear idea of what they are looking for and have a clear sense of the questions they want to ask to assess someone?

What is the impression that human resources is creating as they evaluate someone? Is someone being greeted by a disinterested receptionist who places a form on a clip board. Will someone greet a job applicant as though the potential new hire might matter?

Will the job seeker “be sold to” about how wonderful your company is to work for, even if you aren’t interested in hiring them?

Does anyone speak about the potential of a future with your company or are you flinging job offers at people with the belief that if it isn’t this one, another will come along?

As you know, having a successful enterprise involves working with exceptional and motivated people. Treat each person as valuable when they are met with and they will feel a difference from your organization that help you attract and retain talent longer than your competition.

Jeff Altman

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search job openings, use his free meta job lead tool or to subscribe Jeff’s free job search ezine, Head Hunt Your Next Job, go to, http://www.jeffaltman.com. To subscribe to Jeff’s free recruiting ezine, Natural Selection Ezine, subscribe at www.naturalselectionezine.com For information about personal search services, go to www.VIPPersonalSearch.com.

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at jeffaltman@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).