The Career Dead Cat Bounce (Evaluating Talent)

April 23rd, 2012

If you were an economics major or understand the operational aspects of a margin account, you likely already know what a dead cat bounce is. For those that don’t we grabbed a clip from Wikipedia to explain.

“In economics, a dead cat bounce is a small, brief recovery in the price of a declining stock.[1] Derived from the idea that “even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height”, the phrase, which originated on Wall Street, is also popularly applied to any case where a subject experiences a brief resurgence during or following a severe decline.”

We are not just churn and burn recruiters rapidly firing off paper at the pace of a Gatling gun, we are talent evaluators assisting you with the selection of hiring top 5% talent. One of our own internal metrics happens to be, “if you chart this candidates career, is it their second wind or simply a dead cat bounce?”

You likely have made this mistake before, someone was killing it for years at one of your competitors and they took a down turn or maybe even were unemployed for a period of time. You may be thinking about picking them up cheap and go with your instinct that their industry experience could be useful. What you didn’t know is that although the candidate interviewed very well, they were a broken man \ woman. This could be one major event in their life or an accumulation of several factors such as divorce, bankruptcy, loss of competitive attitude or simply being burnt out.

So you hired this “rock star” on the cheap and you’re counting the days until you can let them go, so where did you go wrong?

You need a bad guy. It’s that simple. When you’re working with an executive search firm we can be the bad guy, but when you’re doing it internally you really need someone that can do it. Not just anyone can do this and we will tell you several rules that must be followed when doing this.

1. The bad guy cannot be the hiring manager. When onboarding intelligent people, if they feel the hiring manager is a pain to work for you can count them out or expect their salary demands to go higher.

2. The bad guy (or girl) must have the necessary business alchemy so they know what questions to press buttons on.

3. This person cannot accept politician answers. For example, if you ask how much they saved with their value engineering efforts in the global supply chain and they reply with “$2MM to $4MM”, you ask, which is it? $2MM or $4MM? And you keep your foot on the pedal until you figure out all the details on HOW they accomplished it.

4. Get out of the office! We are notorious for conducting interviews in coffee shops, at dinner, we even pack up the golf clubs and head to the driving range. Get candidates out of the boardroom setting where they know how they should act and put them in a social scene allowing them to be who they really are.

One last note, follow these interviewing processes all the time! You don’t need to follow these just for when you are vetting someone’s ability to come in and still be a star, you can use these principles to assist with making better hires every time.

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“We went live on a new ERP System and don’t know what to build or ship”

February 27th, 2012

This is the first thing we hear from new and existing clients right between the 3-6 month periods after a go-live on a new ERP system. Largely prevalent with those running SAP, but we still hear these stories from more than a half dozen different MRP \ ERP systems.

So we want to say this: “Call us BEFORE you go live!”

We receive dozens of these calls every year and it often leaves our jaw on the floor. All these companies have the same problem, and if they would plan for this before going live we could get them the talent they need to stop this from happening. Some of our executive search consultants have been part of implementations and are aware of the first month or two of “hell”. But it seems once the data in your old system can no longer be a crutch, you don’t know what to build or ship. Planning for what is going to happen 6 month’s out is critical.

Our most famous call in went like this “Its 2 weeks before Thanksgiving and our inbound EDI and master data is unreliable. We don’t know what to build and our Christmas shipments represent over 30% of our annual sales!” (Retail Client CPG)

Here is the thing, they went live over 6 months prior!

We have helped turnaround a lot of nearly failed ERP implementations but without time we cannot help you. In the case above even if we reached out to our Manufacturing and Supply Chain ERP contacts, the likelihood of them being able to start a new position quickly, locally, let alone having to relocate is almost impossible.

Plan ahead. If you’re going live you can bank on having Demand \ Planning issues, call us months before you go live and let us leverage our 15 years of Manufacturing, Supply Chain and ERP recruiting experience to get you the right workforce to help avoid these costly issues.

 

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Candidate compensation demands demystified

February 25th, 2012

Finding someone’s resume in a database or on LinkedIn only represents a small fraction of what a great recruiting firm is paid to accomplish. While many companies look at recruiters as a one dimensional source of paper, the top recruiting firms in the nation are also great talent evaluators, compensation negotiators and counter offer experts. We are going to talk about the touchy compensation issues in this article.

So we deal with this every week and if you’re hiring often you do as well. Your in-house recruiter or outside recruiting firm sends you a candidate, they note their salary range and if you like them, you bring them in for an interview. After the first interview, you choose to do a second and when your in-house recruiter or outside recruiting firm calls the candidate to book it, all of a sudden they went from needing 95k + 10% bonus to needing 120k + 15% bonus otherwise they don’t want to move forward. (this also happens later in the process when an offer is to be made)

Ok, now you’re upset at your in-house recruiter or outside recruiting firm because you think they didn’t do their homework or they are fudging the numbers. Once you realize this happens way too often for either of those mistakes to be happening regularly, you want to learn the WHY behind these debacles.

We will break it down to tell you WHY and also make suggestions on how to mitigate it from happening so often.

1. The candidate walked into your company and the hiring team said things like, “when can you start” or,  “you’re the best candidate we have met so far”. You basically just told the candidate you’re willing to give them a blank check when its offer time. How to avoid this: You have to walk the fine line of showing them you’re interested as top candidates want to feel wanted but you cannot show your cards either. Giving the candidate any idea they are the only and or best one for this position only begs for them to raise their price.

2. You don’t want to hear this, but the candidate wasn’t sold on your company either because of the vibe, looks of the place, lack of participation from people that should have been in the interview, your product or service or many other things they discover once being on site. They may still be interested but for them to work there or leave their current position for your company, they want more reward for more risk. How to avoid this: As recruiters we have to SELL your company, and sell it hard to top candidates, you must do the same. You also need to make sure what you’re showing \ telling the candidate makes them feel comfortable with your business unless they know it’s a turnaround situation. If you tell the candidate the CFO, CEO, COO or other executives will be in the meeting, make sure they show up and act interested otherwise the candidate feels insulted.

3. The candidate is interviewing elsewhere (always assume this anyway) and they have the rational that they can ask you for more money and if you pull the offer oh well, they have other options. How to Avoid this: This one is simple, act fast! Far too much time goes on, between the time a candidate is found and an offer is made, companies often drag their feet and as the saying goes “more is lost from indecision than the wrong decision”. Interview fast, make a decision quick and make your offer strong! To top that off, don’t make offers on Fridays and when you do make an offer give the candidate 48 hours to make a decision, put their feet to the fire and MAKE them MAKE a decision.

If your company is having issues with the art of the deal when it comes to making a hire, read more about our Retained Executive Search Firm Services.

 

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Why the Vice President personally interviewing ALL new hires is a good thing

February 25th, 2012

Would you ask why or instantly understand why a Vice President within a multi-billion dollar company is interviewing EVERY new hire, even positions down to 40k?

Frankly, we were excited to hear it. Not because of his rank, but because we know he is very talented at making the right hire. When we say right hire it is about not screening people out because of their resume, interviewing quirks or other superficial traits. He has the ability to honestly read people, see their talents and know how to leverage them along with figuring out in a short period of time which person is really going to make it there vs. someone just bs’ing their way only to disappoint 30 days in.

But here is a problem we see every day. Hiring managers are often great department managers or leaders and often very poor at hiring. Not everyone is born with that special trait to read people for who they are, and no matter how much you try you may never be good at it.

We often recommend companies try to find that person in each department or division that can be part of the hiring team in this special role. This prevents the office politics of hiring managers not hiring someone because they’re worried they will take their job and it also increases the chance of weeding out those people that BS their way in the door.

Your hiring team needs someone that is great at hiring. Set a goal in 2012 to make sure every new hire is well vetted by those in your organization that have a record of making great hires as the market continues to become ultra-competitive for top talent.

 

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Who is your Steve Jobs?

January 3rd, 2012

This article is not just about Steve Jobs, Apple Fans or even those in Technology. This is for anyone that owns, manages or sits on the board of a company within any sector.  Through our executive search firm we are often sitting down with the executive team or some of the board of directors  and we prefer to have candid, direct, to the point conversations about their executive leadership.

One question we often ask is: Who is your Steve Jobs?

We are often met with chatter, looks of deep thought and the oh so common, “I don’t have an answer for you”. This is a question the JMJ Phillip Founders have come to ask as they have formulated an opinion that most companies need a visionary, someone with skin in the game above and beyond compensation, stock options or willingness to impress the shareholders.

We are talking about a Steve Jobs in the sense of, who has an emotional attachment to your business? If you cut one of the founders of JMJ Phillip they would bleed JMJ Phillip Blue as Steve Jobs would Apple White. We are talking about the kind of people that cannot shut their brain off at night, they go to bed and wake up with ideas, endless ideas that can and will transform your business. The ideas that solve problems, that are innovative or that can drive sales to unimaginable levels.

We see a lot of companies that have made really bad hires by bringing on an executive that had an operational management mindset which leaves revenues flat or even going in reverse. At this level money is a topic of discussion but not always the key motivator for the person you really want or need. Someone at this level is likely already independently wealthy, they don’t wake up in the morning driven by a salary if you’re seeking the right person.

Our founders have noticed something while attending startup conferences and groups while looking for companies to invest in. The room is filled with people of all ages, from the 20-year-old young gun seeking seed capital to the mid 40’s ex-corporate executive looking for Series A Capital, to those in their 50’s and 60’s looking to invest because they have a passion to be a part of something.

So when looking for your Steve Jobs the one key thing we like to hone in on is passion.  A true passion to want to make something their own, a passion for continuous improvement, to make or build something better, to grow something because they can, and want to, not because they have to. The is the most difficult thing for any company to find that does not have a founder as their visionary who has an emotional attachment to the business.

Howard Schultz had to come back as Starbucks CEO in 2008 because he is the one that had the most passion about the business, it wasn’t about his own pocket book. Schultz has the level of emotional involvement that no one else had, to the point of getting pissed off that the new breakfast sandwiches overpowered the smell of their core product, coffee. These are things most people brought in to manage don’t see, they are not tied to a company in the way a founder is.

But that is the hardest part of the search; you may never find anyone that will take something personally as a founder does such as Steve Jobs or Howard Schultz. But you can find someone that has a passion to make something their own and run with it. As we have seen at the startup conferences these people do exist and thankfully that pool of creative and high passion minds continues to grow. Finding the person with the entrepreneurial spirit, know-how and passion to get the job done is the hard part.

At JMJ Phillip, the founders’ philosophy, as they have grown their business units, is to keep each company small and boutique. When we hire someone to run a business unit we choose someone that has entrepreneurial spirit, is a free thinker, high energy type that also has the experience or education to be successful at our company.

JMJ Phillip isn’t a franchise, it was developed from the ground up with innovative thinking and a passion to do better business. We also are not a firm doing a couple hundred million in revenue where the executives come and go.

The founders are part of everyday business and consult on all executive searches -as who better to do so? They are the ones doing business on their name and understand better than anyone that a true visionary with a founders mentality can take your business to the next level.

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Understanding seasonal recruiting cycles and candidate flow

August 7th, 2011

It is mid-summer and this time of the year our executive search consultants are often battered with emails and phone calls on a daily basis asking why candidate flow is not booming. The scenario starts with a new order coming in on Monday and by Friday when all of our executive recruiting account managers do their status calls, the questions start arriving on why the client hasn’t seen 10+ resumes yet.

 Summer recruiting is one of the most difficult times to get great candidate flow and it’s a national problem. By the end of May people have mentally checked out, all they can think about is traveling, boating, jumping in their RV’s, camping, the kids are out of school, family reunions and so on. Targeting content passive candidates results in not much progress and even the most unhappiest of currently employed active candidates do not want to risk losing their planned vacations to start a new position.

 What does that leave you with? Targeting those that are unemployed, have a need and also have had the free time to get their vacations out of the way. If you’re starting a search between May and August and need someone to start ASAP your best chance is to find a highly qualified unemployed candidate, the second chance is hoping the search team comes across some candidates without many plans.

 This same problem also plagues the resume writing industry which historically peaks at the end of March and demand falls quickly. With resume writing sales dropping off drastically until mid-August when sales will spike dramatically. But don’t get too excited, people are buying resumes at that time to get ready to make a move, they’re not ready to make a career change just yet and we won’t start seeing the unsolicited resume submittals increase until after Labor Day.

 We make placements every month so it’s not to say you cannot make a hire in the summer, we just wanted to share some of our experiences and historical data about the cyclical nature of seasonal hiring. We always suggest to clients to start their searches before the end of winter or after school starts if they can plan it that way. Naturally, when someone leaves your company they’re not operating on your watch so you have no choice, but depending on the time of the year you now know what you’re up  against.

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Why great Executive Recruiters are your own personal ICBM

August 7th, 2011

The giveaway that you are working with a great executive recruiter is by calling them a headhunter and see how they react. Some have tried to change the image and no longer like the term ‘headhunter’, but we tend to embrace it.

Many prefer the term “executive search consultant” these days and we are fine with that as well, it really tells a little more about what we do. It comes down to the mindset of the recruiter and their firm, and at JMJ Phillip we have no delusions about what we do for a living and that is attacking the market, digging into your competitors and delivering you top seeded talent.

 We are constantly striving to educate  businesses on how we can assist them. We have said many times in the past that our value isn’t in finding the paper. You have access to databases, LinkedIn, job boards and even referrals just as we do.  So that brings up the question , why do we even exist?

 The simplest way we can describe it is that we really are your own personal ICBM where we dispatch the target (such as a competitor) with great accuracy. From clients giving us a name to go after to sell and close, to a full on search of North America’s top executives, we pick up the phone, get the plane, show up to the front door, aggressively pursue and oppose our will on the targets so you get the candidates that your company needs to stay on top.

 We have a thousand stories of a company having a resume in their hand and they couldn’t allure the candidate or negotiate a package where both parties were happy. Regardless where you are at in the process, if you feel there is a chance you’re not going to be able to wrap the candidate up please give us a call to discuss how we can change your hiring processes and increase your ability to attain top 5% candidates.

 In the next 5 years as the boomers retire there will be a giant shift in the workforce, turnover rates are going to increase and companies will be battling for a handful of top seeded candidates. Those battles are not going to be won with offering more money and even then, can you afford to “buy” candidates in the long term?

 As the markets become ultra-competitive you need someone on your side, with the tactical ability to identify  a target and have the know-how, sales ability and negotiation skills to walk the deal through the door otherwise you end up with the bottom of the talent pool.

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An Inch Deep and a Mile Wide: An Executive Search Perspective on the Problem of Recruiting today’s Top Leaders.

July 11th, 2011

As Executive Search Consultants our clients rely on us to make recommendations on hiring the best and filtering out the mediocre. A common misconception is that a recruiting firms purpose is to forward 20 resumes hoping the spray and pray method works but that thought comes and goes quickly when you’re hiring an Executive Search Consultant to not only allure an Executive that wouldn’t normally give you the time of the day, but to also force rank the true top seeded leaders limiting the exposure of making a bad decision.

 As part of our vetting process for Executives, their career information and interview details are shared amongst the Executive Search Team along with the input from the founding partners of JMJ Phillip whom are considered some of the top talent and business evaluators in the country. The round table discussions of each candidate often begins with the comment, “An Inch Deep and a Mile Wide”. Below we will tell you more why this has become more of a problem for corporations seeking new leaders in recent years.

 What we want to know is what happened to the CEO \COO \ SVP \VP \ Director that was not only well rounded but could also dive into details with a keen understanding of those topics? It seems with the recent explosion of the “MBA” the educational process may have left us with some book savvy leaders but they often lack the focus or know-how to tackle a multitude of complex problems. Many of the future Executives can scratch the surface of a thousand topics but are a master of none. Sure, maybe your organization is large enough to hire 1,000 experts to dig deeper, but what if you don’t have that luxury?

 As we conduct a search and weed out the mediocre, we constantly strive to see through the BS and find the leaders that know how to ask the right questions so they can get the information they need to make the correct decision. It’s not the easiest thing to do, let me tell you, as every college graduate in the last 15 years seems to think “I can run the company just by looking at the numbers”. And, although that statement can be true, is it that type of thinking that has made Google or Toyota so successful?

 To run the company by the numbers thinking has sunk more than a few companies as we all know and the pool of great leaders is shrinking. To use our manufacturing background as an example, some of the best placements we ever made were of Executives that had an engineering background starting off in R&D and moved their way up to managing a plant and on to becoming the COO\CEO. They could walk out on the floor and see the problems, ask the right questions and understand causality.

 The person we were often replacing is someone that was a business major and was “taught” to run a company without ever really understanding the end to end operations. What they did know was a little sales, a little marketing, a little purchasing, a little plant management and so on. In our opinion that works great when running a Subway Franchise, but not so great when running a $200MM Manufacturing Company.

 Just the little things you learn along the way allow you to be a better leader. How many engineers recall the sales team making promises to customers which resulted in you staying until 6pm every night trying to get a product designed or the plant manager that had to open a window in the production schedule to get the hot job though? All invaluable lessons because these are just some of the things you deal with as a leader.

 Now everyone is different. There are the MBA types out there that will blow your socks off, the truly amazing top 5% types so we are not discounting them. In the end if our clients are not looking to tackle a certain problem where an executive needs to focus solely on let’s say, driving sales, the balance are seeking someone that can still roll their sleeves up and solve problems, drive efficiency and contribute to profitable ideas directly.

 So what’s the “tell” on whether or not you’re about to hire the Inch Deep, Mile Wide type? Our philosophy is if they talk about constantly referring to others as the doer you may want to think twice. We put an immense amount of pressure on prospective candidates to find out what they accomplished, not what they had others accomplish. We don’t accept politician answers where answers are diverted, we will repeat the question until we get the information we need. It’s not the most pleasant way to do business day in and day out but in the end our clients get to make a great hire and there is a great sense of pride in that throughout our entire team.

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Technology Fatigue and Mid-Career IT Professionals

June 23rd, 2011

The executive recruiters were discussing an article that is being written for our aggressive Executive Search Division about “Executive’s Falling off in their 40’s” which led us to another similar topic and phenomenon that our IT Recruiters often witness.  That topic happened to be why companies have such a hard time finding seasoned IT Professionals that are in their Mid-Career and beyond, something our technology recruiters experience daily as well.

It’s in plain sight that companies are hiring younger these days not only because of the need for fresh ideas but it’s also cost effective.  But when it’s time to hire a senior network engineer or application developer the pool of high quality candidates dwindle quickly.

Since it is an active topic at JMJ Phillip I decided to ask one of the JMJ Phillip’s principals about  his view on the topic.

Q. Why do we see the typical IT Professional Career Arc peak in the late 20’s early 30’s when typically it is the 30’s and beyond when you truly become an expert at something?

A. Technology fatigue, it is pretty much that simple. When I first started in IT I bought a 550 page Novell CNA book on Friday, read it twice over the weekend and went and sat (passed) the exam on Monday. Multiply that by the countless other certifications and sooner or later your burnt out.

 Certs are not for everyone, in fact it was a lot of undue stress when I think about it, but let’s take that out of the equation. Even without the certifications you still had to deal with constantly changing technology.  Several times a year you’re sitting down with a Sybex book the size of a smart car and your trying to keep up with all the new software, network devices, application, security and this never stops.

 And it really never stops. You’re constantly in acronym hell for the rest of your life and it’s not like reading a business book on how to be a better manager, it’s more like taking organic chem over and over again. Add in the fact that people trade in their weeknights of reading technical books for spending time with their spouse and kids and all of a sudden you have an amazing IT Professional that is no longer on top of their game.

 As an example, If you’re a Buyer or Cost Accountant your game doesn’t change a whole lot over 5 years. If a Systems Engineer walked away for 5 years and tried to step back into the role they wouldn’t know where to start. The continuing education aspect of Information Technology is grossly overlooked.

Technology isn’t going to slow down and the amount of new information IT Professionals are going to have to retain and apply is only going to grow so Technology Fatigue is going to continue to be an issue.  Take a look around team and find those that have become uninspired and take a proactive approach to encourage them to keep learning and look for ways to keep them content before you have to give us a call to replace them.

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