KCRecruiting

Talent Acquisition: Dilbert Strip

I can only hope this doesn't go off the page.

talent acquisition. heh.

List of Kansas City Recruiters

I've built a list of Kansas City Recruiters, and will start e-mailing them to ask if they want interviews, to get them on the first page of Google.  If you place recruiters in Kansas City, it would be in your best interest to contact me.

I just need help sending out the interviews, and posting them here.

That's quite a deal.

Cost Per Hire

I have been working on a project with a client; crunching numbers, determining cost per hire and balancing costs of current state vs outsourcing vs internal build of a team rightsized to deliver increasing staffing demands.

Keep in mind I have never been one to worry about cost per hire. Rather I worry about cost per non-hire. What does it cost our clients to have an empty seat?  Personally I feel cost per hire is just another way to measure the impact of a staffing function. I can sum up the impact of a staffing function pretty easily.  Are seats getting filled or not?  Are new hires staying longer than 90 days or not? Are new hires performing at acceptable levels within 30 days? Again, humble opinion here, but does anything else really matter?

We are getting people in the door, clients want to make offers, candidates are happy and effective in the role at the 30 and 90 day mark.  I am more worried about the cost the business is putting in to RETAINING these people I have fought other companies for.

FYI, my client is spending about $2000 per hire and has maintained that cost over the past 6 years being woefully understaffed in the staffing group. Not bad...

-Doug Burris

Resumes and Football Rankings

Our friend (Heather Hamilton of Microsoft) has a great post today.

First off she discusses her Alma Mater's (USC) powerhouse football program ("Fight On!") and then launches into her thoughts on resumes.

A resume is nothing more than a marketing piece. A non legal advertisement of a candidates background.  The candidate world has been told their resumes, at best, will get a a 30 second once over from a recruiter so it must have some punch to it.  Heather hits this right on the head me thinks...What say you?

We're Here To Do It Better Than Anybody Has Every Done It Before

-Doug Burris

Intronic Solutions Group

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Find high quality Bilingual jobs at LatPro.com.

Recruiter Metrics? What's The Use

We've discussed blogging metrics before, and the question has been one of soft measures versus hard measures.  Does  traffic, "buzz," press mentions, and anecdotal stories count as good metrics, or should we be focused on employees hired, time-to-hire, and cost-to-hire?

First, let me just say that recruiting metrics are not reliable. They're fun to talk about, they give executives a sense of security, and they allow recruiters to pitch the illusion that our job can be measured.

I'm not disagreeing with the principle of recruiting metrics.  The numbers do mean something.  I simpy refuse to believe that steps taken to improve measures like cost-per-hire are causal, rather than coincidental.  Improving cost-to-hire is not an exact science, and anyone pretending it is deluding themselves. 

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Learn about Hispanic Recruiting at LatPro.com.

Making Love to your candidates, even if you do not place them

In this candidate driven market, we owe it to ourselves to follow up with EVERYONE. Candidates you have placed, candidates you have spoken with that have landed somewhere through another agency, candidates that have yet to find something despite your efforts. It leads to new opportunities, new candidates (work the network at all times!) and just makes you feel good to know someone has found the right role or that you can help them if they have not.  This market is all about timing.  Staying up with people makes that contact when the right roles come open a lot warmer.

We must build a relationship in order to place the right person in the right role at the right time. Maintaining that relationship, no matter the circumstance, is more important in the long run.

Underpaying and Overpaying Your Third Party Recruiter

Here's a little secret.  Fees for Direct Placement typically range from 15%-33% of the first full year salary.  When negotiating fees with a recruiter calling in, most managers focus on the lower end of 15-20% for a placement, figuring that the less they pay, the better for their budget. Sure, a top notch DBA in the right salary range or a Salesperson who makes mostly commission might be worth 30% of their salary, but those rare occasions can be dealt with by offering a higher rate to recruiters for that single placement, right? You don't have to answer.  I've seen those contracts.

Truth is, you're a great fool or a compulsive gambler if you're counting on your recruiters to work harder for you based on your needs instead of what you're paying them.  The problem is an easy one to understand.   Paying a recruiter 15% is overpaying them, while paying a recruiter 30% is underpaying them. Make sense?  Let me see if I can explain. 

Pay Raises For Candidates

One of the frustrating things about working for a public staffing company is the metrics behind your billing rate.

Gross Profit Margin is the name its given in most places, and it's the percentage of the billing rate that the staffing company collects as profit after paying the contractor's salary, taxes, Social Security, Medicare, Insurance, and Expenses, but before commissions are paid out to the recruiter and salesperson.

Gross Profit Margin is a loathsome master, because it prevents you from taking into account the individual worth of a contractor, and instead focuses on percentages, reducing each contractor to a number.

When you're working for a firm that totals in the hundreds of millions of dollars, some measure is required to keep profits in line. But is GPM the right measure?

Does Your Hiring Manager Know How To Interview?

The following is a true story.  The name of the client has been changed, and a sufficient amount of time has passed that the story can be told without repercussion.  I'm going to share with you the hiring strategy  of a hiring manager who was looking for PC Techs for work on an enterprise level account,

The pay rate was $12-$16 an hour, and our billing was only $15.96-$21.28, a 33% mark-up as required by the service level agreement we signed to be a vendor.  The manager didn't like me, ostensibly because I wasn't his favored guy, and we had "horned" our way into the contract with a low price negotiated outside of the RFP as a favor to one of our executives.

33% mark-up, and a low pay rate to boot.  But I was instructed to find the people, and was informed that to be a team player, I needed to work on this account.

Are Branch Managers With A Quota A Good Idea

An interesting analogy for both hockey fans and fans of the selling sales manager model.  The bloggers over at the HireSense walk through the inherent conflicts of interest when sales managers are required to sell as well as manage.

This struck me as an excellent analogy for staffing firms, because many companies look for branch managers who can sell staffing to clients at the same time they run an office.

They use the description of the Minnesota Wild's coach to explain what's wrong with this model.

Now imagine if the owner of the Wild decided he was going to measure Lemaire’s performance by how many goals he scored in the games. Lemaire would have to change his whole strategy to allow himself to score as many goals as possible. Other players would be needed simply to fulfill his personal goal of scoring. There would be a benefit to Lemaire coaching them along, but his top priority would be to his own goal production.

The use of a player coach apparently was widespread in basketball in the 70's, but fell out of favor and now is considered a bit strange (we prefer player owners, like Michael Jordan and Mario Lemieux).  This wikipedia entry says the use of player-coaches was an attempt by owners to save money, and this is clearly the purpose of selling branch managers.  So what are some of the problems with branch managers with a quota?