3Q12

The Excellerator 3Q12   Get Excellerated!

It’s September, where has the summer gone? We hope you got to get out and enjoy the great weather! We have been working hard developing two new services for small to mid-size businesses… Excellerated Staffing and Excellerated Benefits.

In line with EA’s mission to offer services that meet or exceed all standard performance expectations, at rates well below the industry norm, Excellerated Staffing and Excellerated Benefits represent new ways of doing business in their markets. See below for details or visit the new EA site www.GetExcellerated.com to see our new expanded service offering.

Recruiting Do’s and Don’ts

There has been a lot of recruiting activity at Excellerated Analysis thanks to The 100 Hour Check-Up.  To coincide with the launch of Excellerated Staffing here is the EA list of Recruiting Do’s and Don’ts based on recent client assignments.

#1 – If you post it, mean it
The first interaction a new recruit is going to have with your company is most likely your job posting.  People are trained to be wary of the bait and switch and doing this with a candidate’s career is a sure way to set off alarm bells.  Don’t post a role at a salary that you have no intention of hiring at or for a full time job when the candidate will be hired on a contract first.  Sure there are plenty of fish in the sea and you might just find someone who is willing to settle for the lower salary or take the contract.  But what about the candidates who get turned off by your approach, they could tweet or facebook a negative sentiment about your business, poisoning your well.  At the very least, let your recruiter know your intentions so they can guide candidates accordingly.

#2 – You get what you pay for
Yes, staff cost money and yes it takes time for a new hire to ramp up and generate the value add you hired them for, but at the end of the day you get what you pay for.  One client was having issues finding the right person for a leadership role in their business.  Upon discussing their requirements it quickly came to light that they were paying a salary that was well below market for the role.  EA worked with the business owner to realign their expectations and recognize that… you get what you pay for.  We raised the salary range, drafted a job description that better suited the organization’s needs and filled the role.

#3 – When in doubt… TEST!
There are times when no one candidate stands head and shoulders above the crowd and 2 or 3 qualified names stare back at you on the short list.  Which one to choose…  At this point it is worth spending the extra dollars to have the candidates take a personality assessment to determine the best fit for your organization.

We suggest an approach slightly different than the norm.  The hiring manager should be tested along with the candidates.  The reason for this is you want to know how a candidate will perform in your work environment.  The only way to do this is to understand your work environment, which begins with getting to know the hiring manager.  Then, when evaluating the test results, rather than providing a boiler plate report with some graphs depicting the candidate’s score, a one-on-one discussion takes place with the hiring manager first being walked through their test results and then the candidates’ after which a recommendation is made.  EA clients have found that this approach puts them in better position to make a tough hiring decision.

#4 – Sleep on it
When hiring leaders into an organization, the urgency to fill the role cannot overwhelm the importance of finding the right candidate.  Avoid being pressured into a hiring decision.  A good candidate today will be a good candidate tomorrow.  We have seen business leaders second guess themselves after we have already made a verbal offer.  Lean on your recruiter to maintain strong communication with all candidates and be aware if they have any offers on the table.  If they don’t, take your time.

#5 – Employers Keep Out!
One of the benefits of using a recruiter is that they have to do the dirty work.  The recruiter makes the rejection calls, deals with candidate inquiries and generally shields the employer from the noise that accompanies the recruiting process.  One very important aspect of this is negotiations.  Employers keep out!  The last thing you want is for emotion to enter at this stage.  A very motivated and excited candidate does not want to hear a justification from their new manager why they did not receive a higher offer.  All this can do is spoil what otherwise would have been a healthy business relationship.  Leave it to the recruiter to do this, they are experienced at it and can position things in a manner that an employer cannot.

#6 – If it’s not full cycle, it’s not full service.
If a recruiter’s service offering is missing any of these steps, you should be questioning why they do not offer the service and how that impacts their ability to meet your staffing needs.

  • Work with employer to define the role requirements
  • Compile/write/manage the job posting
  • Determine appropriate channels to source candidates
  • Aggregate and review resumes
  • Conduct phone screens and first round interviews
  • Present a short list of fully qualified candidates
  • Manage the interview, offer and acceptance process
  • Mediate between employer and candidate throughout the process

Excellerated Staffing is a full cycle recruiting service based on hourly rate pricing. Compared to the industry norm percentage of salary approach, client savings range from 30%-80% compared to traditional fees.  If you have shied away from using a recruiting agency due to the costs involved, we invite you to take a look at recruiting services from a fresh perspective… an Excellerated perspective. 

Excellerated Benefits provides group benefit plans on a pricing platform that can sustainably save up to 37% off your plan’s current rate, without any impact to benefits, coverage or service.  With health care and administrative costs skyrocketing, contact us today for a free savings evaluation of your plan.

EA In The News…
Here is the latest press coverage on Excellerated Analysis.  Checking 1, 2, 3…Is Your Business Working?

Business Blunders (You could win $500 in cold hard cash!)
As the purpose of The Excellerator is to communicate best practices we want to open the floor up, to you, in particular, we want to hear about Business Blunders…  We’ve all been there, you know that moment when you’ve been in a meeting or heard about a business decision and all you can think is, , “Wow, that is not a good idea, in fact that is just plain dumb”.  Well, EA wants to hear all about it. Send us the blunders you’ve personally seen or that took place in the business world that just irked you, and let us know how you would have done things differently.