Game Changing!

“09 is Game Changing?”

In my 21 years in the IT recruitment industry I think we may be just be coming out of the most ‘game changing’ period I have seen. Sure 1990 was tough post the ’87 crash and Y2K created huge opportunity, then a following lull, but this may be different!

1. The flexible workforce is now a reality!
2. Price transparency and value is for real!
3. Social networks is the great technology enabler!
4. “people are our most important asset”… this Mantra will now be tested like never before!

Flexible workforce: Yep. Short-term, fixed term, part-time, job share, hourly rate, fixed rate, daily rate, work from home, virtual workforce, webcasting, crowd-sourcing or cloud. Whatever it takes and whatever is affordable is driving very creative workforce solutions. This is now a reality and is a change that must be embraced by employers, recruiters, candidates, HR professionals and consultants. Whilst the rhetoric has been around a while we are now genuinely seeing these solutions being deployed with greater acceptance.

Price & Value: Perhaps it the stark financial reality everyone has needed to face that has finally cut through cultures of excess and lack of accountability. This has demanded an honesty amongst executives and suppliers that has driven price down where value didn’t equate. From this moment I reckon that value will be much more closely aligned to price especially in the services and consultancy supply community. People will still pay well for value but won’t accept excess.

Web 3.0: Social Networks are growing at such a rate that embracing it is the only option. Relationships, trust and knowledge will always underpin ultimate success but online branding and community development will drive our sourcing strategies, brand recognition, reputation and ultimately our effectiveness. Think price and value as above! Relevance to our audience and tools to reach them is extraordinarily challenging yet exciting for our industry. We’re all ears at this stage as we navigate forward trying out new tools and techniques!

“Yeah Right”: As green shoots appear company cultures will be tested like never before and lip service to employee engagement practices will come at a hefty price. Opportunities offshore will begin to open up again and a candidate short market will re-appear sooner than some think. Corporate behaviour over the last 12-18 months may just determine their success over the next 24 months. Some of the brutal treatment dished out by some large multi-nationals could come home to roost as people once again have choice.

Overall we see much more positivity than we did even 3 months ago. Unemployment forecasts and being reduced and most companies are cautiously optimistic about the year ahead. Have a happy and safe Xmas break.

Mark Chote
Managing Director
920 career agents

Green Shoots V2

A couple of months ago I commented on signs of growth. Since then I have spent some time in Australia also and was encouraged by reports and attitudes over there. Unemployment forecasts are being reviewed downwards both in Australia and NZ and generally reports are positive.

At a glance locally we are seeing more new jobs listed however the growth has been more evident in contracting and fixed term appointments. This is entirely logical but nevertheless encouraging as across the board people are talking up a better period ahead perhaps as early as Q2 2010?

Lets get with this mindset :_)

Management Contracting Versus Management Consulting?

I had an interesting discussion with an industry colleague from Australia the other day. They have launched a new service for their clients pitched at competing with traditional consulting firms. The key value propostion seemed to be:
1. Management Consulting expertise at a lower price point
2. Mangement Consulting advice that is not aligned to any software provider i.e. SAP or Oracle

This technology agnostic approach they stated was being well received by clients whom were tired of being oversold by strategy advice that was aligned to large enterprise wide software implementations and the corresponding consulting teams beyond what was required.

Is this lack of transparent independance a problem for management consulting firms in NZ?

I don’t know but if this service gains strength in Australia they may have found a nice growth niche in the market providing high quality management consulting experts to their clients with genuine independance at a good price.

This may not be entirely new but rather it may be well timed?

Australia is of course a very large pool compared to ours so plenty of room for all service options!

DIY Recruiting

Had yet another interesting discussion with a client reluctantly advising us that they were going to do their own recruitment last week.
Whilst this DIY ethos is prevalent at the moment it’s almost always reluctantly implemented by the person who is tasked with the assignment.
For this reason I know that the policy is flawed.
Whilst anyone can buy the short term cost saving argument, companies must understand that finding the right person is neither a task that can be undertaken reluctantly nor is it simply a case of advertise and they will come.
Great recruiting requires effective and continual use of multiple sourcing channels.

• Job Boards
• Referrals
• Head hunting
• Social Media
• Talent pool management
• Deep web searching

Equally the best candidates are mostly fully engaged therefore the knowledge of their whereabouts and requirements is a large part of what recruiters are paid for. This requires a significant investment in time and expertise.
It surprises me that many clients ignore this reverting to “cost down” as their primary objective over quality. Both objectives can co-exist when properly planned.
For some organisations “people are our most important asset” has become a Tui billboard…
Thoughts?

Green Shoots

It appears that all the lead economic indicators have bottomed out and that forecasts are a little better than earlier predicted. Certainly we have seen a small improvement in the new job vacancy market. It’s also true that labour markets always lag economic markets so it may be a while yet before we can say things are trending upwards.

So what advice can we share with you?

1. BE PREPARED! All listed vacancies are receiving very large response volumes whether they are via an agency or directly from the employer. This does not always correspond to a high volume of quality applicants. Make sure you tailor your application with very clear details matching your skills to those identified in the advert. Resist sending your standard CV off to every advert where you met some criteria. Follow up as employers inundated with responses will try and make the first cut on what they see on paper so make your presence felt!
2. BE FLEXIBLE! Think outside the square and think about how your skills and experience will add value to both the job and employer. Think also in terms of full and future value of any role and company you look at rather than just salary expectation. Contracting, fixed term contracting and contracting as a trial are methods of hire being utilised in this current market.
3. BE PROACTIVE! Think about all the sources you have to identify new work opportunities. Social networking sites like Linkedin, Events, Job Boards, Referrals from friends and Web Searching as examples. In terms of an Agency we suggest you chose someone who you think gets you and will work for you!

Stay Positive and Stay In-touch with the market and you’ll be well positioned as hopefully these green shoots develop into a much more buoyant job market over the next 6 – 12 months.

Competing on price?

Tight market and a scarcity of new business opportunity has driven some industry players to compete on price as their lead strategy. I’ve always thought that competing on price alone was a dangerous game but maybe I’m wrong. I accept some movement is at times required but recently I’ve been made aware of competitors doing business at 30% of our normal industry terms.

My issues have always been:

1. Can I retain my best people if I can’t pay them well because my fees are so light?

2. Am I respecting the professional competence of my people?

3. Can I go back to my clients and double or triple my fees once the market improves?

4. Will someone always be prepared to go cheaper and if so what is the bottom?

5. Can I actually do the right thing by my client if it’s not sustainable in terms of profitability?

6. If my only value is price then where does it stop and how sustainable is my business?

Perhaps I’m ignoring an extrodinarily challenging market but I would much rather push up the value chain with increased service whilst accepting less volume than playing in a pricing war.

It will be interesting to observe where these price players go from here?

Get Ready!

Now is a great time to focus on becoming “World Class” at recruitment & retention. Competitive Advantage will stem from highly motivated and capable employees as we make our way out of recession. (Not that I claim to know when that will be…)

Retain…

Having a high level of engagement within the workforce will be critical as once the employment markets free up companies will lose more people than they desire. This is because many have simply put their head down to stay employed but they will jump ship once opportunities begin to present themselves. Therefore engage with them now if you want to retain them in better times.

Recruit…

The same applies to spending energy now on recruitment processes, tools and training. Even if your not hiring get prepared because things could change quite quickly. So in my view now is a great time to:

• Keep building your talentpool
• Stay in contact with future talent
• Invest in your employment brand
• Investigate all candidate sourcing channels

Who knows whats around the corner?

Which way ahead?

It’s tough out there so what way should we look? I suggest we look backwards and fast.

1. Looking to far ahead could suggest we believe economic commentators and base our business decisions on what they may be saying. I don’t think they actually know! They may fool us into forgetting about our bottom line and the performance of our people.

2. Keeping our head down will certainly lead to doom as at the very least we need to be out and about having discussions. Raising our external focus will help us to make our own judgement calls.

3. So I suggest look backwards and fast!

What I mean is that to get through this next period we must revert to the basics. Re-commit to being very good at what we do. This means investment in training, coaching the right people but not being afraid of removing either negative influences or people simply in the wrong job.

As my industry is recruitment I get no satisfaction from the stories of redundancies and close downs. I do however understand it and believe we should have seen it coming. The last 6 years or so have seen people succeed in recruitment without well rounded consulting skills and these times are difficult for those not well versed in the basics. Our people need to able able to build relationships, gain trust, manage expectations, unearth opportunities, deliver, manage their time and keep a balance in their lives. NOT an easy thing! However it is this range of skills that were required 20 years ago when our industry went through another challenge period. We will get through but we must be GREAT at what we do other our relevance to clients and candidates will be marginalised.

Tom Peters & Tough Times

I spent a day listening to Tom Peters last week. Articulate, pragmatic and passionate! However the most interesting thing for me is that the so called “Uber Guru” of management consultants delivers a very simple message. To say he is people centric is a gross understatement. Listen, Talk, Act with kindness, Put your team ahead of your customers, Take care of the little things, become OBSESSED with hiring the right people, say thankyou and keep trying things.

That’s the strategy for these tough times. For me I love that! Forget high level strategic retoric and focus on the pragmatic little things that are so important to our people. These are the things that will have our people engaged and doing the best they can.

I’ve devoured his book Re-Imagine and many of themes within his book were picked up in his presentation. I didn’t get the WOW factor from the day but I did get a stark reminder of how important the basics he refers to are. I’m getting my team to read his blogs, look at his presentation notes and act on these key messages because I believe he is right!

www.tompeters.com

The Art of Laying People Off

Caught this on blog.guykawasaki.com …

Posted in: Management

I hope that you never have to lay off or fire people, but the reality is that you will as you advance in your career. If you are scoffing (“Guy, you are clueless: We’ll never downsize, because we’re growing so fast, and I’ll never make a bad hire”), then you’re my intended reader.

1. Take responsibility. Ultimately, it is the CEO’s decision to make the cuts, so don’t blame it on the board of directors, market conditions, competition, or whatever else. In effect, she should simply say, “I made the decision. This is what we’re going to do.” If you don’t have the courage to do this, don’t be a CEO. Now, more than ever, the company will need a leader, and leaders accept responsibility.
2. Cut deep and cut once. Management usually believes that things will get better soon, so it cuts the smallest number of people in anticipation of a miracle. Most of the time, the miracle doesn’t materialize, and the company ends up making multiple cuts. Given the choice, you should cut too deeply and risk the high-quality problem of having to rehire. Multiple cuts are terrible for the morale of the employees who have not been laid off.
3. Move fast. One hour after your management team discusses the need to lay off employees, the entire company will know that something is happening. Once people “know” a layoff is coming, productivity drops like a rock. You’re either laying people off or you’re not—you should avoid the state of “considering” a layoff.
4. Clean house. A layoff is an opportunity to terminate marginal employees without having to differentiate between poor performers and positions that you’re eliminating. It’s good for the marginal employee because he’s not tainted with getting fired. Finally, it’s good for the employees who remain because they will see that you know who’s performing and who isn’t.
5. Whack Teddy. Most executives have hired a friend, a friend of a friend, or a relative as a favor. When a layoff happens, employees will be looking to see what happens to Teddy. “Did he survive the cut or did he go? Is it cronyism or competence that counts at the company?” Make sure that Ted is dead.
6. Share the pain. When people around you are losing their jobs, you can share the pain, too. Cut your pay. In fact, the higher the employee, the bigger the percentage of pay reduction. Take a smaller office. Turn in the company car. Reassign your personal assistant to a revenue-generating position. Fly coach. Stay in motels. Sell the boxseat tickets to the ball game. Give your 30-inch flat-panel display to a programmer who could use it to debug faster. Do something, however symbolic.
7. Show consistency. I cannot understand how companies can claim that they have to cut costs and then provide severance packages of six months to a year of salary. You would think that if they wanted to conserve cash, they’d give tiny severance packages. Typically, there are three lines of reasoning for generous severance packages:
   1. Cutting head count, even with severance packages, is cheaper than keeping the employee around indefinitely, and we don’t want any lawsuits.
   2. We have lots of cash, so our balance sheet is strong, but we need to cut heads to make our profit-and-loss statement look better.
   3. Wall Street (or your investors) is expecting dramatic actions, so we need to do this to show the analysts that we’ve got what it takes to be a leader.

   None of these reasons makes sense. If you need to do a layoff to cut costs (and conserve cash), then provide minimal severance packages, cut costs as much as you can, conserve as much cash as you can, and deal with your guilt in other ways. If nothing else, it’s a consistent story.

8. Don’t ask for pity. Sometimes managers go to great lengths to show the person they’re laying off (or firing) how hard it is on them. Th is reminds me of the old definition of chutzpah: A boy murders his parents and then asks the court for leniency because he’s an orphan. The person who suffers is the one being terminated, not the manager.
9. Provide support. Usually, the people getting laid off aren’t at fault. More likely, it was the fault of top management—the same top management with golden parachutes. Hence, you have a moral obligation to provide services like job counseling, résumé-writing assistance, and job-search help. There are firms that specialize in helping employees during “transitions,” so use them.
10. Don’t let people self-select. We had a joke at Apple during the dark days of the late eighties that went like this: We would announce that employees who want to quit should come to a big meeting. Those who want to stay at the company should not attend. Then we would let the people go who didn’t attend the meeting and keep the ones who wanted to quit—because the latter were smart enough to know that we were in bad shape or that they had better opportunities elsewhere.

    The point is that if you let people choose to get laid off or retire, you might lose your best people. Deciding whom to lay off is a proactive decision: Select the go-forward team to ensure that you never have to lay people off again. Do not leave this to chance.

11. Show people the door. With few exceptions, all you should do is let people finish the day, maybe the week. (My theory is that Friday is the best day to do a layoff because it lets people have a weekend to decompress.) Showing people the door seems inhumane, but it’s better for both the people leaving and the people remaining.
12. Move forward. Let people say good-bye and then get going. This is when leadership counts. In bad times, you separate the men from the boys and the women from the girls. After the layoff, this is what the remaining employees will be wondering about:
    1. Guilt: “Why did I survive the cut and my colleagues didn’t?”
    2. Future of my job: “Will I survive the next round if there are more cuts?”
    3. Future of the company: “Will the company survive at all?”

    So you set—or reemphasize—goals, explain what everyone needs to do to get there, and get going, because the best way to move beyond a layoff is to get back to work.

Immediately after a layoff, you might want to retreat to your office, turn off the phones, stop answering e-mails, and avoid everyone. These are the worst actions to take. This is the time for you to motivate by walking around. Employees need to see you, talk to you, and get your help and advice. They don’t want to think their leader is cowering in some foxhole. The brave face that you put on may be a charade, but it’s an important charade.

---

Reprinted by permission from Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. In other words, I asked myself if it was okay. If you liked this chapter, there are ninety-three more where this came from.