 |
|
| |
|
Old Hiring Foxes vs. The Hedgehogs
Upcoming Events
AFSMI Orange County CA Chapter
July 8, 2004, 6:30-8 pm PT
"Five Strategies for Creating Profitable Services Growth"
To register, contact Angela Andreoff by email at aandreoff@dex.com
or visit
http://www.evite.com/pages/invite
AFSMI Atlanta Chapter
September 9, 2004, 8-9:30 am ET
"Service Survival Strategies for Offshore Outsourcing"
For more information contact Debbie Phillips: dphillips@northhighland.com
AFSMI Authors Corner and Product Signing
October 4, 2004, Dallas TX
For more information, contact AFSMI at (800) 333-9786, x12
or visit: http://www.afsmi.org/events
Old Hiring Foxes vs. The Hedgehogs
Like it or not, you are about to compete for the best
people again. The recovery is the culprit. Labor statistics
indicate over 280,000 new jobs were created in the U.S. in
May. Your competition for talent just intensified by expanding
globally-over 14 million jobs are projected to be shipped
offshore over the next decade, according to a UC Berkeley
Haas School of Business study. Is your company's hiring process
a competitive weapon-or a ball and chain? If you're not sure
whether your hiring system is costing you money and market
value, here are some places to look:
1. You abdicate
hiring responsibility to an HR person or executive recruiter.
That's their job, right? Wrong. The job of HR is a support
and advisory role. The role of a recruiter is to help you
build a stronger pipeline of available candidates and advise
you on key hires. For key positions in any small to medium
sized services company, you must take a proactive role and
learn the nuances of recruiting and interviewing.
One software company I know relies on HR to design their
job descriptions. For years now, they have attracted people
with the right education and the right skills for open positions.
The bad news is that the job description does not help a
hiring executive assess a person's behaviors or cultural
fit for that division. Two Directors in that company who
were hired under the old model were demoted after much customer
uproar about missed deadlines on product launches.2.
You think lunch appointments and golf outings are great
settings to conduct interviews. How much do you spend time
inviting high-flying producers to lunch meetings, yet cannot
seem to get any decision from the interviewee? The common
responses I hear from clients are "I'll think about
it (which is a polite, wimpy way of saying no), or "this
is not the right time."
3. You become attached to specific candidate(s).
Do you ever hear yourself saying things like, "she
would really do well in our culture…we go to the same
church…I have a good feeling about her…"
You lose commitment to hiring the best person, and get attached
to a personality.
4. You confuse selling with interviewing. I recently
heard the VP of a mortgage company tell me, "we want
to build our candidate pipeline, get them in here for a
meeting, and pitch them on our company." If you have
to waste up to 2 hours of your day "pitching"
somebody to come work for you, what kind of loyalty and
credibility are you fostering? What do you think the chances
are that they will see through that inauthentic gamesmanship?
Pretty high.5. When someone asks, "what makes
your company an exciting place to work?" you draw a
blank or start pitching. This may indicate that your company
does not know its uniqueness-or, as Jim Collins calls it,
your "hedgehog." In his timeless book Good
To Great, he describes how enduring companies are extremely
clear about three things: what they are deeply passionate
about, what fuels their economic engine, and what they can
be best in the world at. Without a hedgehog, companies lack
clear positioning of what they do and for whom. If your
company is facing this situation, how can you expect your
future employees and clients to be the least bit intrigued
by what you offer?
Collins applauds GE's "process
hedgehog." Their model is: building the greatest management
development system (what they are truly passionate about),
profit per unit of top executive talent (which fuels their
division-wide economic engine), and developing the best general
management talent (they are best in the world at it). Do you
notice they make no mention of plastics, jet engines, or financial
services in their model? Collins says "this basic hedgehog
has driven their economic flywheel since 1910."Is it
really possible that, in today's global economy, our only
remaining competitive differentiators are our people, our
innovations, and our hedgehog? What will you, as a leader,
do to secure solid ground in at least one these areas?In my
interviews with over 50 CEOs across the mortgage and technology
sectors, scattered, fox-like hiring behaviors truly separate
the average companies from the superstars. In my next NirellNews,
we'll look at some fundamental hiring tune-ups every services
company needs to consider if they want to declare a beachhead.
As the Greek parable says: "The fox knows many things,
but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
Top Performer Client Breakthroughs
"Prior to our participation in the "Five Secrets
of Top Performing Services Firms" Webinar we made some
assumptions about the key factors that make the certain services
companies successful. Lisa Nirell delivered the results of
her extensive research that challenged our assumptions. Within
weeks, Nirell's Top Performer Profile service helped us identify
the strategies that will help us penetrate the broadcast and
business marketplace and prioritize our most critical goals.
-- Dan Wiersma, Sr. VP of Professional Services, Sony
Corporation"We recently announced a new company direction
and strategy. We were using our own assumptions to set our
team goals and strategy. After we completed Nirell's Top Performer
Profile program with our leadership team, we realized we had
two major roadblocks to reaching our goals. This put us at
risk of losing market opportunity and creating a lot of wasted
effort."
Nirell's Profile Program not only saved us months of failed
energy and effort with our leadership team--it also helped
me personally get my priorities back in order in less than
two weeks." -- John Sundberg, CEO, Kinetic
Data and President, AFSMI Twin Cities
Are you ready for a breakthrough in your company? Contact
us for details on what you can accomplish in less than
three weeks.
Nirell Early Bird Product Offer"Five Strategies for
Creating Profitable Services Growth"
Multimedia Training System
Creating services profitability is a fragile challenge...It
requires a finely tuned alignment between purpose, passion
and performance...Sadly, our research shows very few companies
take this "universal truth" seriously…until
they lose a major client or their top producer…We have
gathered the very best of the research to help you grow millions
in profits and present it here in multiple and highly usable
formats-audio CD, DVD, and White Paper. You will hear and
experience the results of probing interviews of highly successful
CEO's, authors and consultants from the services industry.
I heard every ounce of wisdom from these high performers and
identified the Five Profitable Growth Strategies that
are virtually guaranteed to replicate their phenomenal success...
When you order "Five Strategies for Profitable Services
Growth" by midnight ET on July 31, you'll receive
the complete program at the introductory price of $199--a
$130 savings. Order
here.Contact
us to order your copy today.
--Lisa Nirell
http://www.energizegrowth.com/
|
|
|
|
|
