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!!!

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 …

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!

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 …

Staff It Right© is simply one of the simplest tools with which any organization can manage their resources. We’ve begun to build something that provides targeted and objective analysis related to talent acquisition. While these views are predominantly of your candidate pool, one can expand their view to include the current pool of talent.

We at Staff IT Right© are well aware of the fact that you can snatch up the market leading talent acquisition tool suite. We also know that you are going to pay through the nose - all the while having to learn new, complex, and somewhat foreign processes. In fact, you’re going to have to change existing resume collection, inspection, and import processes! Oh, and, even though you bought an onboarding component, you’re never going to use it because you are overloaded learning all the other “stuff” the whiz-bang tool you bought has to offer.

Oh yeah - the team that created your whiz-bang tool is just a bunch of engineers looking to strike it rich — somehow. They just forgot that you are NOT an engineer, per se. This really shouldn’t be so dang convoluted and obtuse!

So, sit back, and watch our posts here at Staff IT Right’s Blog©. We are going to begin to discuss the advantages of our approach and take the time to listen to YOUR troubles, cares, wants, and desires.

Even though we’re engineers, we get it - really.