Recruiting Great People!

As a business we’re now going through a period of rapid growth which means we need to find people with the right skills and experience and fit for our company. I appreciate it’s a stressful activity for interviewees but it’s also a tough time for the interviewer. I hope that a few of the readers of this blog are potential MINX candidates and recruiters!

I break out the recruitment process into three stages:

• Finding
• Interviewing
• The First Week

Finding

Throughout the day we field several calls from recruiters and direct queries from candidates so here is a bit of guidance. The majority have no real interest in our business or the way we work. If they did we sure wouldn’t have to wade through CV’s with appalling grammar, typos or candidates fielded that are just inappropriate. We’re polite but don’t give much airtime to these approaches.

We're also not interested in candidates that have or are being sent round to many dissimilar businesses for interviews, we don’t treat cattle this way so why do we do it to highly talented and valuable people? We’re looking for people who understand our business and feel that they would fit in and make a big contribution.

We treat our recruiters as close trusted partners not suppliers and share our business growth plans to help them understand our needs. I like to feel that I can sit down for a chat without being constantly pressured to place people. Equally we have people who express an interest in us but are not yet ready to make a change. We keep in close contact and do not apply any pressure, they may turn out to be a great recruit at some point in the future or simply remain as a good friend.

Interviewing

People who turn up on time, look smart and are fully briefed impress us. It’s the exact same way we want to see them handle our clients. We also fully understand that there may be valid reasons for no-shows as in many cases our candidates are currently working for other businesses and their immediate priorities are higher than ours. There is nothing more irritating than a no-show. All we expect is a call or e mail as early as possible to let us know and then we can re-work plans.

In one recent case Tom, who looks after our Consulting business, had a candidate call to say he had been pulled into a major piece of work at his current employer and was both tired and scruffy. He apologised and asked if we wanted to re-schedule. Tom told him to come in as planned. Despite some very strong coffee there were probably a couple of matchsticks holding his eyes open! It was only fair to then let him get some sleep, throw a suit on and come back in. The second interview was really to give him a chance to ask us a few questions and confirm the fit in. One hour after the interview Tom got on the phone to hire him!

CV’s are a pretty poor benchmark for candidate suitability. In 2006 ResumeDoctor.com reported that nearly 43% out of 1,000 of CV’s surveyed included incorrect statements. This was backed up by nearly 400 HR execs in a recent study by the Society of Human Resource Management. We also have to appreciate that CV’s represent past achievements and do not help explain how the candidate works with people or their future potential. Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs lacked college degrees or senior management experience and Steve Ballmer dropped out of his MBA programme!

The US army uses an interesting approach to leadership selection based on ‘Be, Know, Do’. The technical Know skills are obviously key to Do the job but equally important is an underlying set of traits to Be the role holder of the post you’re interviewing for. This is where we have to look a bit deeper to see if the candidate will fit in with the team and has a passion for the role. I’m not suggesting that this is a bullet proof approach to selection. We have made, and probably will continue to make, the occasional blunder but it has resulted in some really talented people joining MINX.

The First Week

The first day in a new job and probably the first week is a stressful experience, lots of new people, different processes, standards and doubts. It's an important time to re-assure and impress our new colleague. I’m not going to pretend that we’re great at this because we’re not and have been working hard to get much better.

The first week should be fully scheduled with day 1 covering all the basics – kit, system access and basic training on systems. Alongside this we need to introduce all the key people including senior management. I also make a point of wherever possible taking anyone new out to lunch along with their direct manager. It’s important to re-enforce that we’re a close knit community and easy to approach. I also believe that it is important to get them working on some client focused work as early as possible to give them the buzz associated with making a positive contribution to the business in that first week.

Next Blog.....

I will probably continue on with this theme for one more entry with a bit more on our approach to people management post the first week.

The Final Three Feet!

The term Customer historically derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods there, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future.

In a 2005 survey of several thousand customers in the US and UK 49% of respondents claimed that poor service had led them to change service provider in at least one industry during the previous year. A more recent UK survey in 2006 identified that 65% had taken their business elsewhere after a bad service experience. 25% of those movers expressed intent to never return to the previous service provider!

The stats are pretty shocking when you take into account that it probably works out at 7-10x more expensive to acquire new customers than retain existing. I guess it is also worth bearing in mind that a customer is far more likely to invest in a big purchase with an existing trusted supplier than a new one.

The importance of great customer relationships is recognised industry wide but we tend to emphasise the wrong approaches and look for a silver bullet in technology instead of people. The CRM technology market place grew from $23 billion in 2000 to $76 billion by 2005 and forecasts 11% pa annual growth thru to 2014!

Ironically much of the investment has been focused on reducing the costs of servicing customers, not building new or deeper relationships. Before managing a customer relationship you need to first build that relationship and that is not where data-mining or behavioural tracking technologies offer much help.

Jan Carlzon who led the turnaround of the Scandinavian airline SAS commented that customer’s feelings about a company originate in the many small interactions including reservations, checking-in, boarding and the way they are served a drink or meal.

It’s useful to look to the retailing industry where the client interaction is at it’s most important to start to understand how the successful businesses create a great customer relationship. A particularly good example here is Starbucks. Things have been rough in this sector recently but it is worth bearing in mind that since 1992 Starbucks stock has risen a staggering 5,000%. One of its key differentiators in a heavily saturated and competitive marketplace is its ability to create a highly personalized and satisfying customer experience.

Starbucks recognizes that its customers expect any business to respond to routine requests but that when a business “colours outside the lines”, customers respond with loyalty and increased sales. One customer recalls calling into a local Starbucks an hour before opening time by mistake and resigned to a long wait in the car park. The door then opened and he was offered a coffee, as he put it, “Starbucks gets it”.

In an industry where we focus on high technology products it’s important to look a bit deeper. Unified Communication solutions are there to catalyse those human interactions, why else do we invest so much money into creating AV solutions that so closely simulate a face to face discussion and phone systems with a high quality service. The “final 3 feet” as one consultant referred to it is the most important area for us to focus on!