CLASSIFIED
(Executive Briefing: © 2016 by Corey
Weiner. All Rights Reserved.)
Here is what to do when operational
overhead consumes profit margins for
B2B services, light industrial: smarter
hiring + simple training + stop buying
'technology tools'
PART ONE – Getting Good Employees
ABOUT
Corey Weiner has worked on sales demand
generation programs for advertisers
including Merck and Company, Glaxo
SmithKline, Wyeth-Aerst, Novartis, New
York Life Advanced Markets, AXA
Equitable, John Hancock USA and AIG
American General.
And four-plus years doing consumer
behavior research for the renowned Nielsen
Company qualifies Corey to refine revenue /
demand generation programming for
advertisers interested in short-term new
business activity over general brand / top-of-
mind awareness.
Corey Weiner
Sales / Demand Generation Troubleshooter
(888) 913 – 1419 Tel / Facsimile
Contact Online | Profile
S
marter hiring / human capital
sourcing can out-maneuver the
status quo; especially at bigger
organizations involved in ongoing hiring.
This is cost efficient and benefits hiring
organizations—and their income statements.
Hiring and human capital management are
messy activities.
True or false – Despite the technology and
skills testing, 50-50 chance a new hire works
out beyond a few months?
Computer software tools manage risk, sure.
But no empirical evidence exists to correlate
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technology tools with superior hiring and
human capital management.
Managers over $80,000 on the pay scale
knows this – line manager, department head,
human resource vice president / director,
medium-sized business owners, et cetera.
That technology tools deliver easy
operations, profits is flawed
Efficient on paper, messy in practice.
Human error is a substantial contributor to
this disposition.
Resumes and test scores do not necessarily
measure or predict critical characteristics
about a new hire.
(Disclaimer: The author has written articles
on human capital management and was a
quality assurance supervisor at what is today
Frontier Communications Corporation,
NASDAQ: FTR, a $4.3B voice, data, TV
technology company.)
The talent acquisition community loves to
tout technology.
Organizations can (and many do) buy
various recruiting consultants, robust
software / ERP (enterprise resource
planning) systems and 20 LinkedIn
accounts.
(Widgets for talent acquisition, essentially.)
Reality is, a five-year-old can post jobs
online and sift through resumes for a week
to then present to hiring managers.
Recruitment process outsourcing works,
right? Companies sell it after all
The author worked on a full-cycle
permanent placement desk for Adecco (big
global staffing company) in Los Angeles
placing mostly accounting specialists for
$60,000 and up.
(Sort of like what IBM and Accenture do for
information technology professionals.)
Nine of 10 recruitment services are what
economists call “price takers.”
They metaphorically pier fish for job orders
and talk about human capital / hiring best
practices in brochures while their internal
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retention is dismal.
Call Adecco, Aerotek or Randstad – the
bigger recruitment providers – ask how high
their internal turnover is.
Then ask why.
Nine of 10 are contingency. They hire
anyone with sales experience who can throw
on a suit and dial for dollars.
Over 70 percent attrition rates are the norm.
“A lot of using the web to target active job
seekers is fruitless,” says Kevin Ballard,
recruitment consultant to middle-market and
Fortune 500 corporations.
“[Recruiters] cannot be jack-of-all-trades
and know what a hiring manager needs for
each department that recruiter supports. So,
by default, how are they qualified to judge
candidates for a given job requisition?”
The author once had this conversation with a
regional director of internal recruitment for
Robert Half, (NYSE: RHI).
A disproportionate few stand out and stay in
recruiting over time, becoming an asset to
clients.
He ran a revolving door of turnover . . . and
made no qualms about it.
So no one savvy is going to solicit strategic
advice from most recruitment process
outsourcing organizations.
Shrewd project management + swift action
trump buying things
Harvard Business Review published an
article in 2011 about the 50 most influential
people in talent recruitment.
The top-producing recruiters did not blab on
about using technology tools / internet want-
ads in their commentary.
How come?
Because they have an extraordinary network
of contacts paired with competitive
landscape knowledge their clients value.
Technology tools anyone can lease are not
really part of the equation.
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In-house recruiters are paid to source
someone Hiring Organization XYZ cannot
get near or do not see.
In-house recruiters exist to problem solve,
not play with computers and sift for resume
keywords like children playing Go-Fish.
Recruiting organizations exist to act as the
intermediary for exactly this purpose:
sparing Company X from calling Company
Y to hire their employees.
Richard Nelson Bolles’ book has over 10
editions since the 1980s.
Chapter Two has the inverted pyramid.
Companies want to hire “referrals,” not
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strangers off the internet – is the gist.
A recruiter pulling job orders then posting
on social networking web sites to solicit
candidates has zero value.
Think about that for a second . . .
1) Recruiters relying on job candidates
actively seeking employment on the web is
pulling from a skewed labor pool, are they
not?
2) Recruiters lacking a realistic
understanding of what skill set the person
who asked her / him to hire someone
requires – and thus pulling a generic one off
the internet – are of little use, are they not?
Easy example illustrates liability
Skim over the below job requisition from a
well-known recruiting provider.
Any red flags?
Position: Marketing Communications
Senior Manager
Location: Dallas Area
Status: Full Time
Rate: Full Time Salary
Job Description:
Our client is looking for a Marketing
Communications Senior Manager. This is a
full time job opportunity that includes full
benefits!
This position will be responsible for
developing and managing the various
marketing communications campaigns that
create brand awareness for the company.
Responsibilities include working with a
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team to develop strategic plans, working on
Social/PR/Media Relation initiatives,
overseeing creative and writing all content
for email, newsletters, collateral, RFP's and
more!
You'll help to identify new opportunities,
uncover client pain points and assist the
sales team with marketing to specific target
audiences.
Must haves:
- BA degree in Marketing, Communications,
Advertising or related
- 5 years experience in corporate marketing
Top notch writing and editing skills
- Managing social media platforms using
Hootsuite or similar
- Proficient with MS Office (especially
PowerPoint)
- Working knowledge of Photoshop,
InDesign is a plus
- Experience writing for corporate and
marketing audiences
What do readers see?
An organization's new head of marketing
must know how to play on computers, click
social media icons – and essentially do arts
and crafts (on more computers) with
software.
And such abilities qualifies this marketing
communications manager to do what a real
corporate marketing communications
department is supposed to: bring in new
business activity / sales leads?
This is a flawed system for procuring human
capital.
Leaner, smarter way of getting employees
Organizations tend to hire keynote speakers
and make bold statements about being a
people company, but less-frequently
facilitate the manifestation of such.
It usually takes key stakeholders and upper
management heads to roll or some critical
threat such as flat revenue or an acquisition
announcement.
Office Depot Corporation (NASDAQ:
ODP), the $11 billion office supply retailer,
is an example of this.
Following its acquisition of Viking
Lithograph, ODP's new chief executive,
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Bruce Nelson, made it clear human capital
recruiting and productivity were a prime
initiative in their challenged retail industry.
Should it take a new chief executive walking
into a mess to increase productivity (or
2,300 layoffs at a national headquarters) for
an organization to improve its human capital
programming?
So while a typical medium-sized
organization's human resource department
concerns itself with applicant tracking
systems and ERP modules, what is really
profitable to that organization is something
else: a mechanism for getting good
workers.
Positively affecting next month's income
statement
Performance-based HR Consultant, Joanie
Wynter, of Bryant-Hall Entertainment &
Media reflects: “My in-house HR team finds
the very best candidates with great integrity.
Then we match them to our open positions.”
“Almost every one of the corporations I
have dealt with previously – entertainment,
media and legal services with 200 to 500
employees or so,” continues Ms. Wynter,
“hires like they did twenty years ago.
A department manager creates a job
description, sends it to the human resources
department – who changes it to be compliant
– and then scrabbles the internet to match
those who come remotely close to the job
description.
If finding the candidate takes longer than
three weeks, the department manager and
HR usually get into a crisis mode.”
Concludes Ms. Wynter from Los Angeles:
“The average employee who is selected and
hired this way will last on the average two to
two-and-a-half years, if they pass the
introductory period.
You know, one of the greatest management
teachers was Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who
said, 'In a crisis, you must learn to get out of
a crisis and change it, not continue to create
it!'”
More profitable hiring / acquisition?
“I would propose explicitly adding
responsibility for hiring to a department
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manager's job responsibilities,” comments
Mr. Ballard on speaker-phone as he juggles
incoming calls from his busy Philadelphia
office.
“Recruiters, in general,” concludes Mr.
Ballard, in a matter-of-fact tone one
develops by working on both talent
acquisition and on-boarding projects for
organizations including Citigroup and
aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, “lack
the technical background to determine a
candidate's qualifications to handle a job.”
“Without recruiters and management
understanding that procuring people first
and then continuous training,” says Ms.
Wynter, “organizations usually experience a
revolving door of employees coming and
going.”
The author once worked as an assistant to a
former program manager for Land, Sea and
Space Business Development at Northrop
Grumman (NYSE: NOC).
An obstacle recruiting outside business
development people and support staff in one
of her units lingered.
She made them watch case studies from
U.S. Marine Corps Officer Candidates
School . . . purposely on weekends during
“downtime.”
It drove the message home: without her
team hiring better people and developing
them as part of a unit and an organizational
commitment, game over.
Smarter, more advantageous hiring / human
capital management practices can out-
maneuver the status quo. (Especially at
bigger organizations involved in ongoing
hiring activities.)
This is cost efficient and benefits hiring
organizations—and their profit margins.
“Officer training is physically and
intellectually demanding – the business of
building leaders out of Marines. Honor,
courage, commitment.
These are phrases which seem corny, but
they are the bedrock of the organization. It's
all about personal and team responsibility –
and carrying the torch to the next generation
of Marines.” – Colonel Wendy Fontela,
USMCR (Ret)
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WHAT NEXT?
Readers will want to assess whether
“domestic downtime” insofar as sourcing
employees (and expenses associated with
such) are diminishing profit margins.
Creating standardized employee recruiting
procedures internally is likely prudent if so.
And for a practical reason: such is more
precise, cheaper and can be completed in a
week's time versus a third-party service.
Monies saved on unnecessary technology
tools and consulting fees is thus available to
compensate managers for handling the task
of hiring viable employees in addition to
their daily workloads.
ENDNOTES
1. Bolles, R., “What Color is Your
Parachute?” (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press,
2014).

The organization benefits by controlling

the HR / employee acquisition themselves
and minimizes unnecessary downtime.

Organizations hire Third and Two

Intellectual Capital to interview personnel as
needed and compile a physical (written)
standard procedure for sourcing employees.

From there, a standard procedure is

modified into a simple (pencil and paper)
flowchart format.

The task of conducting the recruitment /

interviewing remains within management's / © 2016 Corey Weiner. All Rights Reserved.
the organization's control.