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 …

Alright, now that this new blog is getting a little traffic (thanks to Entrecard) I’ve been looking at the numbers. I’ve used mostly StatCounter and SiteMeter over the last 3 years of blogging. On my other blogs, the data isn’t as important to me, just that I see who is clicking through and how long they stay. However, today it is a very different story because I’d like to confirm the response to an add placed on an Entrecard site I’ve chosen. Therefore, for this new blog, I’ll enumerate for you all the tracking widgets and services I’m using - you’ll see how eclectic this is right now!

Here’s a quick list, with a little extra background on each:

• Added StatCounter first, because, well, I’ve always used them
• Added SiteMeter because TTLB requires a SiteMeter tracker (see next item)
• Added an “old standby” for me, which is The Truth Laid Bear (TTLB)
• Added the WordPress stat plugin so that I could track from within my own site (clever, eh?)
• Added another new site/ranker I found on another site, IZEARanks
• Added an Alexa tracker - for the fun of it ’cause I’ve never ever showed any sort of kick-up on Alexa.
• Added Technorati ’cause it goes well with other StumbleUpon users - they like to have ya “Fave” them (even though I’ve not been faved back - hey, FAVE me!)

I’ve gotta say, all these crazy counters are just not giving me what I need or want! I know, you’re saying, “But Steve, you picked all the free ones, Dude! So, spend some coin!” That’s all well and good if the company was generating revenue and also I had a JOB!

You’d think that there would be someone out there with a site that truly saw every flippin’ hit … wouldn’t you?

Still Looking …

A friend of mine proposed that I take my product/service/process out into the OpenSource market to build a customer base. You know, develop a project on SourceForge and get more of the community involved thereby acquiring a virally generated install base. While I love SourceForge, why would I put the first phase of my product out there for free? Just to save me the hard work and time it is going to take to market and sell my product?

To that, I say, Bah!

It’s hard work that rewards, not taking the easy way out. Let me clarify, I am not advocating, in any way, that to provide a product/service/process to a larger community is wrong. In other words, I’m not dissing the SourceForge community! But everyone chooses their path, and Staff IT Right© is taking the hard, bumpy road, of those that have gone before us.

I’ve been at startups that chose (or were forced to choose) to begin to distribute via the open source arena late in their development phase. The strategy was proposed as a shot in the arm to an already stalling customer growth model - or, well, the hockey stick was busted and out comes the duct tape! While that was de rigueur back in the day (pre-DotCom-implosion), I’m unaware if it is still being proposed in back alleys board rooms. I believe this is more a last gasp than a first breath.

I am, at root, a capitalist folks. Sorry if that is unsavory, making you uncomfortable, but the tools we are developing are for profit. I believe that no matter what effort you have expended, you should be compensated at the value the market can afford. And, in capitalism, there is truly no easy path to success. There are always hard times that make us all pray for just a little less challenge, just a bit more momentum rowing through the muck-N-mire, to have a warmer day from which to bask … you get the picture.

Staff IT Right© is not going open source, just so you know.

After posting my last development update, and as I was clearing my workspace to begin coding, one of my all-time favorite songs began to play, “Cinderella Man” by Rush (A Farewell to Kings, 1977). There is one specific verse that always caught my attention:

Cinderella man
Hang on to your plans
Try as they might
They cannot steal your dreams

LYRICS: “Cinderella Man”, Rush, A Farewell to Kings, 1977

Back in those days, the exit from the sixties and entry into seventies was changing rock music. In a very short time stadium rock was really taking hold - in fact, we had the “Day on the Green” series here in the Bay Area. War protest rock grew up and transitioned into bringing the plight of the every-day man to the fore.

Did you read the verse above? If you have the heart of an entrepreneur, does that verse ring true, to your core? Every dang day that you get up, it’s a new day, and this new day brings another opportunity to fulfill your dreams in a big way. Whether you’re the “big cheese” or a one-person company, your dreams are important and those dreams will propel you to success - no matter the era from which you hail.

Just 100 years ago, it was a rarity that an every-day man would be the head of a company, large or small. In fact, those that were in charge of driving the economy were often benefactors of an inheritance. Today, anyone, woman or man, any race, any ethnic background, from any country around the world, can realize their dreams and succeed. No matter the size of the company and no matter how long it takes, realize your dreams!

In the powerful voice of Geddy Lee, “Hang on to your plans … They cannot steal your dreams.”

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!!!

You’ve reviewed a few resumes and made some notes, picked a few good candidates, and cleared the decks for ample time to talk with a quiet place to concentrate and be an effective communicator. Now it’s time to get this person on the phone.

OMG! What the heck is going to happen?! What to expect? How to be sure this effort is going to be effective and not waste time - for you and the candidate? And as the first person to make contact with these candidates, are you reasonably confident that you can recognize, record, and rank the “best of the best” during the phone screening process?

The most important thing to remember is that each phone screen is your opportunity to confirm that a candidate possesses the key attributes you discovered during the resume review process. Hopefully you have been able to develop a list of the most important attributes this new person will need to perform their tasks. For the sake of discussion, without getting career-specific, let me propose the most likely top ten key attributes related to team work that are required for any team to be successful:

• Promoting
• Collaborating
• Innovating
• Producing
• Leading
• Organizing
• Mentoring
• Inspecting
• Correcting
• Maintaining

These are in addition to, and sometimes more important than, any career-specific attributes required to get the job done.

It is unrealistic to expect any candidate possesses all ten wrapped up with a pretty bow. However, for a team to be successful, each one of these attributes must be present - regardless of the tasks needing to be accomplished. And more importantly, none of these attributes are specific to any one career field, such as software engineering or genetic research. These key attributes are important in sales, marketing, support, shipping, or field work.

When people are working together toward a common goal, these attributes are important. Sometimes, depending on the project or task at hand, only a few are being utilized at any one time. Your job prior to the phone screening process is to assess whether or not all ten are present in your current team. If not, ensure that the gap can be filled immediately by the candidate under review. And you need to stay on point and focused during the phone screen to successfully fill the gap - or worse, gaps!

But, how many times during a phone screen do you find yourself … wandering off … discussing more pleasant subjects not at all germane to your primary objective: fill that attribute gap? Countless tools provide an opportunity to guide the phone screener using questions tailored for a specific career or technology choice. However, very few are targeting these ten key attributes we have listed above. Well, except in the case where you are spending tons of cash and lots of time making the tool you bought work the way you want! Shouldn’t this just work outta the box?!

The tool you use may provide feedback on our list of attributes, and maybe even more than these ten, yet how laborious was it to get through the whole questionnaire? Do you sense any immediate benefit once you’ve completed the phone screen? Do you have to build the questionnaire content yourself to ensure you stay on track and on message? Wouldn’t it be nice if the tool you used to review someone’s resume proceeded directly to the phone screening process? Wouldn’t it be nice if the tool kept it simple, objective, high level (with just enough specificity), and provided clear transitions between candidate workflow check points - all the while supporting accountability?

I keep tellin’ ya, stay with me here, Staff IT Right© really does know your pain …

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

Think about the above statement, carefully. Objectivity during the hiring process is more often than not a great way to ensure the new candidate has “the right stuff”. Granted, skills, abilities, and knowledge are in that perfect bundle: the resume. The first step on the path to an objective review of your candidates in the queue is reviewing that resume. Everyone involved in this process plays a part, and very often a big wrench clouts efficiency on the head, without even trying.

The Candidate
Being in a hurry and trying to land a job are two conflicting forces pulling at every candidate. The faster and more efficient searcher gains the advantage by having their resume in the queue first. And, if their resume and cover letter are golden, it seems like this job is in the bag. Then, at the bottom of the posting, of the job of your dreams, you’re asked to submit your resume through the dreaded “resume muncher machine” — or some such monster. Your speed and efficiency just went from Luke Skywalker’s Light Speed (or Dark Helmet’s Ludicrous Speed) to the pace of a dancing slug.

What do you do to stay ahead? Well, a surprising number of candidates cut some corners or just jam whatever they can into the resume muncher. The Society for Human Resource Management conducted a study where the findings indicated that more than 50 percent of all candidates misrepresented their qualifications on their resume¹. How many of these misrepresentations were due to painful processes on the front end that face the candidate? And, more importantly, how many of these egregious errors could have been caught up front with a less obtrusive tool? It is important to note that the process needs to cover everyone from the candidate through the recruiter and HR Team all the way to the hiring manager?

The Hiring Manager
How many job reqs does it take to ruin a hiring manager’s day? When the job is highly technical or integral to the success of the company (or both) the pressure is on to get the right person for the job, fast. Often times the hiring manager can spare only a few moments to review, catalog, comment, and then coordinate the mountains of resumes, phone screens, interviews, and feedback conversations. To hire just one candidate, during the peak of your day, one hour seems to stretch into half the day - or worse.

The hiring manager in this position can only survive if the recruiter and the HR Team are operating at 120% efficiency. Anything less results in misfires in resume reviews or phone screens which then leads to a less than objective assessment. As soon as the candidate gets into the office, and does not seem like a “psycho”, everyone is happy and relieved to meet someone that fits the culture and wants to be a part of something big. A few months later, as the honeymoon period wanes, the hiring manager sits up and says, “Sheesh, this person doesn’t know anything about this subject?” How often have you awoke, in a cold sweat at your desk, asking yourself this very question? How different would it be if you had been able to focus your efforts and still spend just a little less time reviewing that resume?

The Recruiter
Being in a hurry is the mantra for everyone involved in the hiring process. Recruiters have so many time sensitive tasks it’s a miracle they find time to get a drink of water. With the myriad of job search tools, time spent cleaning up a candidates resume, gathering information to provide better keyword searching, conversations with the hiring manager to understand what role is truly being sought, and providing feedback within to prove that, “Yes, I called 10 candidates and landed 2 new accounts this week.” Just to get a few real leads and land one hire a month there just isn’t enough time in the day.

Recruiters rely heavily on the information that a candidate supplies to them and the information they can extract, like a molar, from a hiring manager. With everyone trying to get to the goal as quickly as possible, with the least amount of heartache, it’s a wonder that there isn’t more than 50% of the hiring ending in a mismatch. Plus, even with very expensive onboarding tools, there are still misqueues and invalid information because those tools require far too much effort to record and report. How amazing would it be to just have all the right information, collected in short order, and clear enough to provide an objective screening of your entire candidate pool? Where on earth is this illusive tool, this process or approach, this grail we all hope to hold one day?

We’re getting there, not to worry …

Footnote
1. “Personnel Assessment Tools Can Increase Hiring Success”, Lisa Rice, Principal, Talent Assessments
Guest Columnist Special Feature: 13 Principles for Conducting Worthwhile Assessment Programs
03-10-2006 — CarolinaNewswire.com

For as long as I have been a hiring manager, I have been faced with the problem of getting the right candidate for the open req - or reqs if I was lucky. Back in the day - you know before online job sites, resume scarfing/scrapers, and formal in-house onboarding tools suites - we had a notebook (the paper kind!), a pen, a spreadsheet, limited e-mail capability, and the phone and a FAX machine. If you wanted to get a candidate into the queue, you contacted your HR Team for the approved list of “head hunters” and you started collecting resumes. Alas, the fun begins …

On the other side, the recruiters that I worked with back in the day were troubled every single time they began a new relationship with a hiring manager. There is really no nice way to put this, but, more often than not the HR Team and their hiring managers weren’t very clear or helpful in making the relationship work. Recruiters were saddled with tons of paper needing to be sifted through, having to make keyword-based searches using tools ranging from the well developed to the really clunky, and these sites and tools not being very recruiter savvy. Let’s face it, our recruiting teams continue to face these huge challenges today, and they can really use support! Alas, newer tools hit the market …

Today, there are so many tools, so many sites, and these solutions are huge and expensive requiring considerable tweaking to get it right. Often I hear from both hiring managers and recruiters that we really haven’t matured. True, these web-based services (SaaS) or heavily entrenched corporate tools (say, Oracle/PeopleSoft) have made great strides in organizing the candidate pool, providing accountability to keep candidates moving through the system, and even giving everyone an easier way to get the candidate into the company (onboarding), it’s still a very inefficient system and relationship.

Is there really room out there for another tool? Is there truly a very simple process, based upon some “old school” approaches, that can make the relationship flourish? And, hopefully, can you provide me with this tool, at a very competitive price, and help me get what I need, regardless if I am the hiring manager, the HR Team, the recruiter, the senior executive, or even the candidate?!

We here at Staff IT Right© know we have what you need. Keep reading, we’re listening, and we know …