Earlier today I was commenting over at Boycott Software Sweatshops. There are so many posts of value I’m finding this post is not doing the other site justice, at all! My post is going to focus on a very small subject in one of his posts regarding culture and the use of offshore resources.

I do have quite a bit of experience in offshore personnel augmentation. I can say that I have been involved in the use of local (onsite or same locale), onshore (other states), and offshore (other countries) resources for many years. There are so many opinions out there, with the negative attention and intensity growing at a rate that is far too alarming, that offshore alone has received a very bad reputation. While some of the reasons are warranted, these situations are a small percentage and clouds the many successes in the use of offshore personnel. I’ll caveat this entire statement with the fact that it is how one applies the use of offshore personnel. It can be said that bad management is irrespective of locale - it’s just bad management!

The post to which I am referring is How to get Burned Outsourcing. The author brought up a few points, but I found the mention of culture to be something that immediately caught my attention. Culture is a key factor in the success of any offshore contract or relationship. There are two prevalent forms of culture, when one uses the term culture: corporate and heritage (origin of birth). I believe that regardless of culture (heritage), the most important factors to a successful project consist of the following brief list of culture components:

• Entrepreneurship in spirit
• Drive to develop the best products
• Love of company and your team
• Competitiveness, in any form, applied appropriately
• Loyalty to company and its intellectual property
• Product development process awareness

While these are not all, they are probably a large subset of those traditionally known as corporate culture. The greatest success can be achieved if everyone involved is firing on all cylinders in each of the above areas. When looking for candidates to be a part of your winning team, wouldn’t you look for all of those qualities? Can you honestly say you can scope these areas into objective criteria to better screen these candidates before making the decision to hire? And, what about the subject we are talking about now, onshore and offshore personnel augmentation? Can you consider these two part of your candidate acquisition process? Do you?

Interestingly enough, the issue of hiring is integral to the success of any project. Offshore, in this instance, is not immune. Everyone should apply the same criteria when acquiring support from an external firm. In fact, it is sage advice to say that one should be even more selective when bringing on offshore resources.

While the Staff IT Right© tools are not currently addressing offshore personnel assessments, it is not at all impossible to perform such assessments using our tools. By arranging the candidate pool to include the CV/Resumes of those resources used to augment your staff, one can logically see that an assessment is very much a reality! In fact, one can compare and contrast local, onshore, and offshore resources in one pool!

As you can see, Staff IT Right© knows your pain and help has arrived …

Is it your belief that during the review of your overall career information by a recruiter or hiring manager, he or she is being as objective as possible? I’d have to agree with you that in most cases you are right; I’d wager they are objective more than 80% of the time. But, what about that other 20% of the time? You know, those calls or interviews where you were left to wonder, “What happened, anyway?”

Have you ever sensed during a phone screen or interview, either with the sourcer/recruiter or the hiring manager, there was something just not right with their tone, the direction of the questions, or even the consistency of the subject matter covered at different stages in the process? Hopefully you kept notes of the key concerns during the conversation? Because later, as you walk through or replay the conversation, a pattern might emerge to provide you a key insight into your inability to get that dream job.

In the field of quality, scatter grams enable you to perform an activity known as defect density analysis (I will refrain from getting into Poisson, DPMO, and Sigma, OK?!). This invaluable information gives you an opportunity to redirect your efforts early with greater precision and efficacy. If, however, your test reference is influenced, or weighted, by a single attribute or input sample, the density of error(s) can be skewed resulting in a false indication. In fact, for each iteration, if a different attribute is utilized at a higher concentration, your resulting data is completely useless. One needs to be consistent across all phases and with all forms of input to get the best predictive result possible.

Stick with me here while we go through a simple hypothetical scenario. Upon reviewing your notes of the phone screen a pattern emerged uncovering a particularly obvious focus, or weighting, on your education and less on your experience. Then, your notes regarding the interview process with the hiring manager (et al) uncovers a heavier than expected influence on your work experience. Based on the very simple density analysis process outlined in the previous paragraph, the result is a pretty obvious false indication. Remember, that false indication will greatly affect your candidacy and you’ll quickly drop off the radar. Weighting a different attribute over another at different stages of the process, therefore, is not a best practice anyone would ever view as, well, best.

School work, while helpful and supportive in a learning context, does not always prove the creativity in, or mastery of, a specific body of domain knowledge in the field. On the job work experience, while powerful and clearly a result of hard work and focus, doesn’t always translate into the best ability to excel in a particular domain, either. Allowing for differing perspectives or proclivities of the individuals on the reviewing team, the entire team must decide at the outset whether one attribute will have significant influence (EDU:60 - EXP:40) or if there should be parity (EDU:50 - EXP:50). Once the decision has been made to choose one over the other, stick with it to the end of the hiring cycle and ensure all participants remain consistent when interacting with the candidate pool.

If you had a tool that allowed you to lock in the percentage of influence (EDU:55 - EXP:45), do you believe your hiring process would be more effective and result in the best candidate joining your team? Let us know …

Staff IT Right© knows … let us help you … it’s sooo much fun firing on all cylinders!!!

I’ve been a hiring manager since the late eighties. My first attempt at hiring was relatively messy. I realized my notes were bad and I had a hard time deciding between one candidate or another. The second time around, I decided to create a spreadsheet with the most pertinent info in the first tab and background notes with observations on subsequent tabs. Over the last several years I developed quite a, dashboard of sorts, whereby I’ve been able to help my sourcers and recruiters deliver to me the best candidates on the market. The debut version of the Staff IT Right© product implements the first layer of a multi-layered spreadsheet that was my, candidate dashboard.

In our first installment of Hiring Needs Objectivity, we discussed the resume review process. It’s quite simple to just write a few notes on each resume and then sort each one into the “Call” or “Dunno” pile - oh, then there is the “No Way” pile. But, once you have made all those notes, are you able to communicate those results to your recruiter? Are you able to provide clear and objective analysis? How can you best capture those attributes that aren’t obvious on the resume and communicate that back to the recruiter? Other than keywords and the basic vetting done by your recruiter or HR team, what are the most important hidden attributes in your next candidate? And finally, can you compare and contrast your candidate pool fairly and objectively?

I just stumbled upon a great post by a gentleman in reference to finding the best programmer. He has provided a list of very basic attributes that can be grouped into positive and negative indicators. I’ll share Daniel’s bulletized summary that truly speaks to anyone interested in this subject:

Positive indicators:
- Passionate about technology
- Programs as a hobby
- Will talk your ear off on a technical subject if encouraged
- Significant (and often numerous) personal side-projects over the years
- Learns new technologies on his/her own
- Opinionated about which technologies are better for various usages
- Very uncomfortable about the idea of working with a technology he doesn’t believe to be “right”
- Clearly smart, can have great conversations on a variety of topics
- Started programming long before university/work
- Has some hidden “icebergs”, large personal projects under the CV radar
- Knowledge of a large variety of unrelated technologies (may not be on CV)

Negative indicators:
- Programming is a day job
- Don’t really want to “talk shop”, even when encouraged to
- Learns new technologies in company-sponsored courses
- Happy to work with whatever technology you’ve picked, “all technologies are good”
- Doesn’t seem too smart
- Started programming at university
- All programming experience is on the CV
- Focused mainly on one or two technology stacks (e.g. everything to do with developing a java application), with no experience outside of it

I’ll grant that this is far from scientific. However, how much science can truly promise you a great candidate? As long as you are objective and use the same criteria, scientific just sounds, silly …

Being objective is the key to securing great candidates for your company. The above attributes, which Daniel spells out quite eloquently, can be quantified to provide you a very powerful way to compare any candidate pool appropriately. The best part: these soft attributes become objective assessments that see beyond age, title, role, and formal instruction.

Unbelievable segue here — we’ll move on to the phone screen phase next … oooh … stay with us here at Staff IT Right© … we’ve got your “six”!

How many times do you get pinged by some recruiter saying, effectively, “Lemme tell ya, you are sliced bread! And, do we have a company for you!”

Once the wave of excitement has calmed and the rip-tide has receded, what is the next thought that pops into your head? Mine often is (of course I’m gonna share with ya), did this looney toon actually read my resume? How on earth can this recruiter have “jumped the shark” so bad as to think this is the job for me? And, more importantly, is this recruiter’s client prepared to look at my resume and in all honesty think of speaking with me?

I’ll grant that many recruiters see your resume, or mine for that matter, based upon keyword hits. Keywords are what make our resumes pop to the top, and that is very much something we’d all love to experience. The recruiter in question is obviously trying to get into contact with us for future reference, or to use our experience as a “compare and contrast” with the candidate they know will get the job. I don’t mind being used, but isn’t there a better way for recruiters to narrow their target search and get a higher hit return from their clients?

Staff IT Right© knows there is a way … are you willing to stick with us and discover?
TAGS: looney toon, resume, keyword, reference, Staff IT Right, Intelligent Business Resourcing, staffing, sourcing, recruiting

As we here at Staff IT Right© get closer and closer to completing our debut version of our software, we would like to expand our reach into the staffing and recruiting industry. While we have developed a wonderful tool for you, it would be extremely helpful to receive input on our approach from industry experts like you.

I am beginning to build a team comprised of a few very close contacts. Several of our early members have spent the greater part of their careers dealing with various challenges and innumerable tools, processes, and approaches in the staffing, recruiting, and HR field. I truly value the input these industry experts provide me.

However, our membership is very one sided - everyone I know or have known over the past 20 years! I would really appreciate your helping make us - and you - a success! Let’s face it, no one can “go it alone” out there. I would love to get your input, suggestions, critical reviews, and even upgrade suggestions!

Please contact me if you are interested in participating. And, as an extra incentive, a select few Staff IT Right© Advisory Council Members will receive a free version of the software to use!

Please, let me know if you’d like to join us: advisors AT staffitright DOT com Better yet, just leave a comment and I’ll trace that back to you - if that is easier for you.

In the e-mail you are going to send, please provide as much information regarding your history in the field of staffing and recruiting. In fact, if you are also a member, feel free to include your LinkedIn profile link/URL in your correspondence. I’ll be sure to use your profile as your “experience of record”.

Thanks so much for your help, in advance!

I’ve been in a very small discussion regarding how best to charge customers for ones product, service, or process. Granted we’re all discussing this inside a Plaxo Pulse discussion area called Blogging for Business, but the issue is valid and I’d like to take a moment to provide insight into my current predilection.

Scott Andrews, the CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions, posited the following:

“I’m offering a training program and access to a resource center filled with downloads, screen prints, slides/audio recordings, links to helpful widgets, tools, code, and methods to make money with blogs and grow traffic to blogs.”
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“I’m trying to determine the best way to position the price for this program …”

I suggested that Scott think of offering to his customers a price break for his product in return for ad space and a share of revenue. This seems like an affiliate program at first glance. However, an affiliate program is not tied to the purchase of a product or service, just the real estate on the page. I’m suggesting he charge less for his product with the intention of being able to tie the success of his product to a share of the profits his customer attains.

The product, service, or process one sells as a package in essence provides your client a big benefit. Why not provide them the opportunity to share a percentage of the back-end value instead of paying 100% up front? This is important because now you’ve got skin in the game by not charging them too much. Any increase in their traffic, which also provides proof that what they bought from you truly works, in turn pays you both back, handsomely.

Look at it this way: you are making your client successful and you both share in that success. As your product proves itself, taking them from nothing to something, they have invested a modest amount and you’ve shown your commitment to your product and their success.

And, for an internet business, this is like promising to help the farmer clear the weeds, by hand, if your product fails. It’s a solid and sound hand shake.