Active and Passive Job Candidates

Posted on December 31, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Is it possible to tap into the hidden but highly valued passive candidate marketplace? We all know that the best people, the people we would really love to have working with us and for us, are not out there actively seeking a new position. The passive marketplace is the domain of the professional search firm.

We differentiate between active and passive job candidates. There is a world of difference.

The candidate pool for a new hire can be broken down into about four categories. There is the:

(1) active type who is aggressively looking for a new position.

Passive candidates are either

(2) “discerning” or

(3) “dormant”.

Discerners are carefully and consciously open to the right opportunity.

Dormants are subconsciously open to the right opportunity but they have to be woken up to it.

The fourth category are the

(4) “Impenetrables”, non-candidates who are not open to any opportunity for a variety of reasons; overcoming the impenetrable’s obstacles is nearly always a futile waste of energy and time.

Active candidates are either unemployed, and hopefully for good reason, or else for a variety of reasons, they are simply looking for an upward or lateral move from their current job. We will often find a few gems; they can be precious beyond their skill level by nature of their character, leadership style and personality.

Tapping in

To tap into the passive marketplace we start by first mapping out the hiring company’s competitors and other companies who are potential sources of quality candidates. This is immediately followed by picking up the phone, discreetly cold-calling and entering into a meaningful dialogue with each of those top level prospects. Thus we can sometimes move from finding the best individual “out there” seeking a new opportunity to the best candidate in the entire marketplace. The difference can be a quantum leap, not always but sometimes.

Different Methods

This is a marked departure from the usual methods personnel departments use. It is the distinction between romance and bureaucracy. People really want to connect with people, not paper. They would rather be courted than be filling out application forms and jumping through bureaucratic and administrative hoops. Later on paperwork has a vital role to play but before the courting, paperwork is a genuine turn off and a nonstarter. As professional recruiters we know exactly how to start the romance and fight the roadblocks that could kill the relationship as everything progresses. One key to success in life seems to be to find and attract the right people to be around us … and then to keep them there.

Many times the well-honed skills and experience of a search professional go well beyond what can be found in a typical personnel department. It stands to reason that someone who spends 50 hours a week for many years will have a better aptitude for search than an executive who only recruits part-time. It is most surprising the difference in the number of critical contacts the outside recruiter has compared to the in-house personnel officer. In those ever-expanding contacts lay the richest soil for unearthing truly amazing people. Mapping out the competitive playing field and gaining access to hidden passive candidates takes time, money, and resources. But more importantly it is a skill not readily found in-house either by the senior executives or the personnel department.

Discovery

So we have to map out the hiring company’s competitors and other companies who are potential sources of quality candidates. We get out on the street and start talking to people about what’s going on in the industry generally, and more importantly, what individuals are thinking about doing. We involve the hiring manager, his colleagues and networks, as well as other executives he collaborates with. They are an immense source of wealth gone untapped. Then we start seeking out nominations for the position. Sometimes the nominators become the nominees themselves for this (or other) positions. The passive job market is combed for opportunity seekers.

As we uncover interested passive candidates we go through a different kind of relationship, almost like a courtship. Intimacy, understanding and opportunity thinking will develop. This will help both sides in the negotiations when it comes to demonstrating how they will do the job together. These type of negotiations are not about who can get the most out of the situation, but rather how everyone can work comfortably together.

Types of Search

The difference we make in an executive search, compared to other forms of recruiting, is we go out into the marketplace and actively solicit – - reach in, touch, turn around, and tempt – - the top talent from our client’s most successful competitors. We are able to produce candidates who would otherwise remain unavailable. By sifting and unsettling the very best people who are working for someone else in the industry, we can often deliver gifted professionals who have the capacity to impact our clients in unexpected ways.

Now there are two main types of search: Comprehensive and Covert. A
Comprehensive Search is thorough and will yield the best possible set of candidates for the job at hand. It also takes a huge load off the hiring company and pits it squarely on the back of the search firm. The benefits are multiple including increasing the quality of the talent pool, extra time as well as peace of mind for the hiring manager, and making the most efficient use of the recruiting budget. A Covert Search is a subset of a Comprehensive Search and can be very fast in yielding results. It’s like a rifle shot with a silencer compared to a shotgun blast.

We use a Comprehensive Search when we want to ensure that we hire the very best candidate available. We use a Covert Search when we want to take a quick targeted approach for an immediate need. The Covert Search is a little more expensive but easy to justify; the Comprehensive Search gives the best value for the investment.

Learn more at Pe-Trick.com

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Simple Works Best

Posted on November 30, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

We believe that in most cases there is no secret sauce that will produce untold success… rather it seems to us that success is found in doing the fundamentals very well. Success is a combination of (1) skill or know-how, (2) a wide base of understanding along with common sense, and (3) diligence motivated by vision. That’s wisdom. Wisdom is simple and straightforward. This stands in direct contrast to those who try to Wow us with stature and mystery. Too often, offering a secret sauce is nothing more than a grand tap dance that later turns out to have very little substance.

We do our very best to communicate in a clear, easy to understand manner – - the simpler the better. We don’t keep people in the dark; neither do we hide behind silence (“I am important and hard to reach”) or email or some other automated avoidance behaviour. We try to give context and reasons why we say what we say. We have a limited amount of time but we do make great effort to be on the phone with everyone who wants to talk to us – - even if we do have to be brief. In that way we focus on what’s important and what is a waste of time so we can all channel our energy to the right places.

Simplicity is sometimes found in complexity. Put things as simply as possible but no simpler we are told. Looking for simple cause and effect in human beings and their organizations just doesn’t work and we often don’t know why. To effect change there are often a number of factors at play and they all have to be dealt with at once. The dynamics of a situation like vector forces are interactive and mutually self-reinforcing (positively or destructively). Sorting out what influences what is often an exercise in futility but knowing what factors are in play is important. To effect human change all of the key factors have to be dealt at once, not sequentially or one at a time. Taking partial or incremental steps is often insufficient and therefore only leads to discouragement.

The simplicity in complexity comes from the actions we take. We need to be very explicit in the action steps that are necessary to solve a problem or challenge. Everybody needs to be extremely clear on the overall plan, what their role is in the plan and why. The vision and the solution steps need to be over communicated until clarity is reached. Clarity starts with “why” and finishes with what “obviously” needs to be done. It needs to be said over and over and over again until everyone understands. Leadership is about straightforward purpose and finding everyone “a place in the choir”.

Simplicity takes a great deal of effort but there is little that is more worthwhile.

Posted in Change, Executive Search, Innovation, Leadership | Leave a comment

Disciplined Collaboration

Posted on October 2, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Disciplined Collaboration stands on two fundamentals: (1) properly assessing when to collaborate and when not to, (2) instilling in our staff both the willingness and the ability to collaborate on the high-value projects we choose as worthy. There are three steps involved: evaluating opportunities for collaboration, identifying the relevant barriers, and tearing down those barriers.

In the first step we evaluate the worthiness of our opportunities. How great will our gain be as we choose one project or another? Collaborating for the sake of collaboration is a rabbit chase defocusing and frustrating everybody. We need to pick areas that will solve our customers’ (external and internal) deepest frustrations. Value needs to be created both qualitatively (improve functionality or usability) and quantitatively (increase cash flow).

Secondly we need to spot barriers to our collaboration. People don’t collaborate well for a number of reasons; there may be a lack of motivation or willingness and a large number of people simply lack the innate ability to collaborate easily. Four of the most common barriers are (1) an unwillingness to reach out to other people, often from a cultural not-invented-here syndrome; (2) staff are unwilling to provide help – they hoard their resources; (3) workers are not able to find what they are looking for, they don’t know how to search; (4) people are not able to work with others they don’t know well either because of social skills or attitudes. Rather than jumping too quickly into an assumption about what is interfering with collaboration, the barriers simply need to be identified and listed.

Then in the third step we tailor our solutions to turn down those barriers. Different barriers require different solutions. Often the solution is found in lifting workers into a state of unity by articulating the dream or vision, setting out common goals and preaching the strong value of cross organizational teamwork. That means moving our staff from their narrow interests towards our common mission. In most cases the high achievers have to be moved towards shared achievement, while the social butterflies have to be moved towards achieving measurable results. If employees cannot or will not learn to both make cross organizational contributions as well as focus on their own individual performance, then they probably need to be replaced. There are some who are naturally both collaborators and individual achievers but most require at least some skill acquisition. They might need to learn how to build nimble interpersonal networks across the company while others need to learn what the thrill of achievement is all about.

Good collaboration emphasizes both performance from decentralized work and performance from collaborative work. Everyone can grow to be more collaborative leaders from the example they set and the attitudes they transmit. Just a little guidance is needed in most cases. We need to cultivate collaboration around us by transforming ourselves, our organization and the people working with us. Collaboration or mutuality leads to everybody’s better performance. Our job is to unite together towards our common mission. We need to think about what Peter Drucker said:

“Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. …. Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals.”

Posted in Change, Innovation, Leadership | 1 Comment

Collaboration Defined

Posted on September 1, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Collaboration can be defined as a cross functional meeting of the minds towards a common purpose and goal, and most importantly, towards a specific end result. By cross functional we mean people of different professions or disciplines, different departments or units or functions, different levels in the hierarchy of the organization, and different backgrounds in terms of neighborhood culture, ethnicity/race and gender; it means putting people together that have very different perspectives, ideas and desires.

One subset of collaboration is Great Collaboration, or as Warren Bennis calls it, Great Groups. Recruiting the right genius for the job is the first step in building great collaboration. Great groups are put together by leaders who are unafraid of hiring people better than themselves. In such recruiting they look for two things in particular: (1) industry excellence and (2) the ability to work with others.

A connoisseur of talent looks both for intellectual gifts and the ability to work collaboratively that it is people who “play well in the sandbox with others”. Such recruits may not be of high stature but they consider themselves to be some kind of “an enviable elite” however overworked and underpaid these greatly gifted people might happen to be. There are definitely the best person for the job at hand. Further they are usually young in their 20s or early 30s. Their enthusiasm, optimism and ignorance (or lack of experience) means they do what everyone thought couldn’t be done. Such unseasoned recruits “do not usually know what’s supposed to be impossible”.

Virtually every great group also has a strong visionary head along with a champion or two who can clear the obstacles of stifling bureaucracy and corporate politics. The “dream” is the engine that drives the group. The visionary details the task and its meaning; the champions keeps the recruits free to do their best most imaginative work. The focus is not on money or other tangible rewards but rather “the project is all” that matters. They fall in love with it. The thrilling process of discovery to bring new insights is everything. For the participants that process is its own ultimate reward. They live for the excitement of pushing back the boundaries, of doing something superbly well that no one has ever done before. Such genius is rare and the chance to exercise it in a dance with others is rarer still. These collaborating knowledge workers cannot be managed but can only be facilitated, guided and inspired. The leader finds greatness in the group and in turn helps members find it in themselves. Together they are able to achieve something that no one could achieve alone. “None of us is as smart as all of us.” These great groups reshape our world in very different and enduring ways.

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The First Step to Collaboration

Posted on August 31, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

What Happens to Collaboration?

If only we could cooperate together better at work, it just might be a better place to have fun and be more productive. But as we all know collaboration doesn’t come easy anywhere, anytime. Do you understand why?

To understand we have to look at corporate culture. Some workplaces encourage cooperation but perhaps many more promote a spirit of competition. A classic example of this was the two cultures at Sony and Apple, when the iPod was being developed. At Apple there was a clear goal in mind with each division devotedly focused on that single goal. Information sharing was high and there was clarity of purpose as each group went about their business. At Apple collaboration pre-existed their products and in fact flourished as they went about their work. By contrast each of Sony’s divisions had its own ideas about what to do on its product Connect It was as if they were contraindicated (to borrow a medical term) to each other; they were so conflicted in how to develop the product they seemed to work against each other. Sony’s mess turned into a market disaster whereas the iPod became one of the success stories of the decade. The iPod’s progression transformed Apple from an average company to an amazing story. The fruit of their collaboration became a world changing product that has become an ordinary part of everyday life for so many around the globe. Sony’s people worked against each other; Apple’s people energized each other and have been producing amazing products ever since then.

The first lesson about collaboration is that it occurs in a corporate culture that is by design operated in a spirit of cooperation – - an environment where people want to work together, take pride in what they do together and celebrate in big and small ways at each progressive inch of their successes. Creating a safe and secure workplace also supports this culture, which is why many companies turn to https://fastfirewatchguards.com for reliable fire safety and protection services.

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Executive Search – A Key to Success

Posted on July 31, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

We can say what we like about all the bells and whistles in our company: we know our core competencies we know why our product sells so well, and how great our services are, but what really makes our company go is the quality of the people that we work with. We can never have enough good people, enough people who have their heart in their work and who have their brain clicking… enough people who are responsible, who will pick up the ball and run with it, who do not need to be told what to do, they already know.

The whole reason to hire a search firm when we have an opening to fill or a position to plan is simple. We want them to unearth the one very best candidate in the marketplace that will make a true difference in our company. Procuring such people requires a very high skill level not ordinarily found inside our company or for that matter outside. Not only do the individuals need to be located but they also need to be reassured how beneficial a move would be by someone who offers emotional support and objective advice; a candidate needs to be advised by someone who cares. The hiring company likewise also needs objective advice about their choices and the meaning of those choices. They also need the carefully chosen words of an intelligent, articulate advocate who can advance the corporate client’s case. There is a balance between seizing the initiative and exercising appropriate risk management as the right person is sought out.

Fortune Magazine has said that there are “competent executives everywhere whose performances are underrated and unrewarded standing a better chance than ever before being noticed and courted by someone else”. There is a reason why the best people change firms and and it rarely has to do with money. Good executive move for opportunity and the satisfaction to be a top performer, to live with purpose and collaborate with a winning team

When a critical role goes unfilled, it can have a huge impact on company growth. You’ll need to have a plan in place to cover the job duties for the position while you are recruiting for it as efficiently as possible.
When the perfect match is not on the shelf, companies are left with no option other than hiring a headhunter who can find the best employee for the vacant position.

Posted in Executive Search, Innovation, Leadership, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Why Is An Innovation Standard Necessary?

Posted on June 30, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

An innovation standard can be thought of as the skeleton that the human body is built on.

An innovation management standard is needed to serve as a foundational skeleton to develop an innovation management system (IMS) especially in terms of:

(A) providing elements
(B) types of requirements
(C) detailed clause and subclause descriptions in a common language to achieve sensible exchanges of necessary information

Standards provide a holistic A-Z comprehensive approach to innovation that will cover support, direct and indirect as well as administrative innovation activities. Standards also provide the basis for a common language for innovation and thus make these standards transferable from one entity to another from both within the company and without, whether different divisions and departments or stakeholders and/or supply chains. Standards also provide a means for training and certification of both individuals and organizations. This means that the standards would be available both privately and publicly on both local and international scales. Standards imply standardization for common use and development or in other words it enables sharing and the ability to build upon each other’s work as well as to give feedback and direction to move forward in a unified way to some future point of need and/or desire. A lack of standards and standardization makes it virtually unreasonable and incompatible to work collaboratively together.

For example, consider the sharing of electricity. An electrical receptacle needs a set voltage as well as a mechanism to join male to female transfer points. Over time the receptacle can become more sophisticated: a grounding plug or prong has been added to the input output and of a common carrying electrical wire. Later, a different grounding mechanism has been developed that provides grounding without a third prong. Having a set standard such as an exact voltage allows for common development. North American and European voltages are quite different from each other and require a converter or translator in order to utilize local power to be used with foreign equipment. These voltages are two set and different standards but consider if there was hundreds of different voltages – - then hundreds of different converters would be required. This can sometimes be seen in devices used to connect to a laptop computer. One brands converter may be quite different than another’s and make it impossible to obtain power without the exact and precise converter from a specific company . The requirements are just incompatible because of a lack of a standard. Working together is arduous and inefficient to say the least to the point of making it too frustrating to have disparate elements even attempt to work together. On the other hand if the computer laptop industry embraced a standardization of converters, compatibility and modularity would come to the forefront – - different equipment could work together effectively and efficiently.

The essential requirements of six of the most important elements: (1) culture, (2) leadership, (3) resources, (4) processes, (5) monitoring and measuring, and (6) improvement and corrective action, can only be achieved when common standards and language are utilized to build an IMS. Standards and standardization are the building blocks of working together in a synergistic cross-functional way. Without standards any notion of building a system is like embracing chaos instead of organization and focus. Standards bring harmony and compatibility. Thus standardization brings about “a highly structured set of norm-setting documents, describing all aspects of an innovation management system, by its six elements”. Standards and specific language (with common concepts) walk hand in hand.

Posted in Innovation | 1 Comment

Why the Big Boys Fall !

Posted on May 29, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

What happens when stakeholder requirements are ignored by big companies already known for its innovation?

Just being good at the moment is not enough to stay on top of an industry. New ideas must continue to be sought out and implemented. To not be implemented or not implemented fully is innovation idea folly!
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Let us look at the cellular phone industry. Motorola was initially an industry leader and dominated the market. Then Nokia took over industry leadership. Blackberry came by and blew away the narrow-minded efforts of Nokia. But then Apple virtually bankrupted Nokia. Now Samsung’s Galaxy is giving Apple a stiff run for its money as it gives end-user stakeholders (SH) many new delightful and frustration reducing features.

How is Samsung achieving impact? By putting out a new size of device that is bigger than a cell phone but smaller than a tablet. The tablet is just too big to carry around most of the time while the phone is too small to be able to work on like a computer (although smart phone users do it albeit in a somewhat frustrating way). Apple’s policy of not going to that type of an intermediate size is hurting them.

How did Apple grab Blackberry’s market? The SH had an initial need for security of intra-corporate communication but Apple is able to provide that kind of security and yet do so much more. Blackberry concentrated on incremental improvements to its product instead of seeing the grand picture of what was possible to do with the communication device such as turning it into a computer now known as a smart phone. The ability to carry around a computer in a very portable and easy fashion without aggravation removed a deep-seated frustration for the general public and far exceeded the simpler desires of a very narrow business market.

Similarly, Nokia took advantage of Motorola’s very narrow focus on its current economic/performance engine while it’s inability to make radical or disruptive change was ignored. Nokia moved out into a new S-curve, a new performance engine: a small and sleek highly comfortable device replacing a big and bulky monstrosity-to-use cell phone even though those same cell phones were becoming incrementally smaller.

When stakeholders’ deep-seated frustrations are ignored somebody will fill the gap with a frustration-reduction solution. When the SH requirement or need is critically important to what they commonly do, then the rate of acceptance of a frustration-reduction device will be exceedingly rapid and produce huge new markets. Detecting both critically important SH activity that is being met with a matching deep frustration is the basis for radical or disruptive innovation. When such detection techniques are repeatedly used then a world-class innovation company will come on the scene and become exceedingly difficult to displace or compete against – – they become a stakeholder’s dream company.

So who seeks to intimately know the critical frustrations of a company’s many stakeholders?

Posted in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy | 1 Comment

How to Start a Hiring Conversation

Posted on April 1, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Having a long list of special questions and top-secret interviewing techniques simply isn’t going to attract and motivate the people we actually want to hire. Rather, generating a consultative peer-to-peer (mutual colleague) discussion is going to pay dividends for us big time. It’s okay to be clear early in the relationship that we are in a hiring mode; in fact it is probably best to be up front that way. But more to the point, it is important to be able to identify one or more challenges that we are willing to discuss in an open and honest way, in a way that is both fearless and “safe”. Whether we are having a very informal preliminary conversation with a potential candidate, or we have set up in a formal interview, we must not come across as being a “power broker” grilling them on their qualifications…. Instead, it is so much better if we just act as a human being sharing a problem or two common to our marketplace. A combination of humility and curiosity is very powerful (and captivating).

What we want to do in our initial conversations is threefold:

(1) paint a vivid picture of what our business is trying to do for our clientele and market;

(2) see to what extent the candidate understands and grasps the problems and challenges we have been describing; and

(3) have them describe how they would plan to meet the opportunities presented by such difficulties.

The goal would be to see to what extent the candidate would become a vital part of our problem-solving team, to illustrate how much they can contribute immediately to what we really need to do. Ideally we would also like them to be aware of and explicit about how they would personally impact our bottom line. Beyond those three areas, everything else is more or less just fluff. Such conversations tend to be rich and rewarding to both parties whether they are ever hired or not.

If in the course of these conversations, we become serious about one or more of these candidates, what do we do next? That will be our the topic of June’s blog.

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How to Hire an Innovator

Posted on March 31, 2014 by AndrewPetrick

Traditional hiring practices may not work all that well when it comes to acquiring the creative people we really need. By traditional we mean the way personnel tends to operate especially in terms of the screening process and generating multiple candidates through advertising. It can be a rather depersonalized process that treats individuals as numbers.

Highly successful people have little desire to go through the grinding machinery of the Human Resource department. Unless they are specifically on a job hunting campaign of their own, or just checking for interest in their value, they are unlikely to be submitting a resume to an advertisement. Further, the resume is unlikely to reveal an innovator’s true talent and/or value. And even if it did, personnel’s sorting process will often screen out the candidates we should be looking at. Further, if and only if, some true innovators actually end up in the candidate list from the resume sort, they may not want to endure the initial interview parade conducted by interviewers really don’t know what they’re looking for.

To land an innovator, we really need to understand respect and dignity. Any advertising utilized should reflect a unique approach for the position in question. But recruiting for innovators should go far beyond just advertising. Practical – creative workers tend to build a “reputation” that seldom stays a secret within the industry. When our company reflects respect and dignity for

(1) the individual as an idea generator and

(2) high-value for what customers really need, then the innovative types tend to want to talk and exchange ideas with us.

Connecting with those types of people based on who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish is where opportunity starts, opportunity to hire these truly talented workers into our company.

Next: How to Start a Hiring Conversation

Posted in Executive Search, Innovation | 1 Comment