Learning is a Skill

Did you know people learn? Yes, you heard it right here! People, even grown ups, have the ability to learn new things. Isn't that exciting?

Being in Recruiting for a third of my life, I've worked with thousands of candidates on thousands of open jobs with thousands of customers. Some jobs are easy to fill. Some candidates are easy to place. Sometimes the stars align and an easy to fill job is filled with an easy to place candidate. Everyone wins!

What about the other side of things? Specifically, jobs that are hard to fill. Hard to fill jobs are hard to fill for a lot of different reasons. They can range from difficulty of skill set to how attractive the job and/or customer are to people with said skill set and a lot of things in between. The short of it is, any hard to fill job can be tied back to customer expectations and their ability to flex with the market. Much of this has to do with setting expectations early and the customer's willingness to be flexible. A job description, after all, is nothing but a wishlist.

Too often in Recruiting we spend months trying to fill a job, sinking valuable time and resources into trying to please a customer that isn't flexible. The longer this takes, the more obvious it is to you that someone with lesser skill and experience could have filled the job and learned what they needed to be successful. People are awesome like that!

The point is, have some guts. It's in everyone's best interest to fill the job quickly with a great candidate. The earlier in the process we can educate the customer on market conditions, skill-set availability and their attractiveness to potential candidates, the sooner we can work towards finding a candidate who can not only do the job, but will see it as an exciting opportunity to learn and grow. Who wouldn't want that?

Prioritizing is Juggling.....With a Twist

We all have a lot of balls in the air. You've heard it said in business, you've probably even said it yourself. We're essentially comparing ourselves to jugglers. Someone who juggles is skilled. Someone who can juggle a lot of things is very skilled. Not to take away from the skill and coordination of a juggler, but to compare our business priorities to a juggling act really oversimplifies how complex and challenging it is to keep them in the air. To make it apples to apples, I've never seen a juggler (maybe you have) juggling any items of any number that weren't all nearly identical in size and weight. Learning to juggle is a matter of hand-eye coordination and muscle memory. The more you do it the better you'll be.

Business priorities are like juggling a vase, a feather, a chainsaw, a rubber ball and an anvil. No amount of practice, strength or coordination will make you great at juggling this combination of items. Your best bet is to know which are the most important, which you can handle and which shouldn't be priorities.

The best advice I've received on the topic: "Know which priorities are glass and which are rubber. Don't break the glass".

You Will Never Regret Making a Phone Call

Do you remember the phone? In the words of one of my mentors, "It's that dusty thing on the corner of your desk." I don't want this to be the millionth blog you've read that points out how surrounded we are by technology. Instead I want to focus on what that technology has led to, which is an erosion of conversational skill.

Having the ability to reach out to an endless amount of people almost instantly has made it so easy for us to only engage in conversations with the very small minority of people who reply positively that everyone else gets ignored. How many of those in the silent majority could we engage in a conversation if we would have just picked up the phone? What if they don't want to speak?

In 10 years of business I've never picked up the phone to call someone I don't know without butterflies in my stomach. The butterflies are perfectly normal and should indicate that you 1) care about what you're doing and want to do it right and 2) are doing something challenging and difficult. It's supposed to be difficult. You're about to call someone you don't know and have no idea how you'll be received. You probably have one shot at learning just enough about them to earn a deeper conversation or a future conversation. You'll fail, you'll be rejected and hung up on, but so what? You'll also establish rapport with some great business contacts that will hopefully become strong business relationships. In the process, you'll become skilled in listening, seeing opportunities and overcoming objections. The only way to gain these skills is to make yourself pick up the phone.

Can you even think of a phone call you regretted making? I can't.
Can you think of times you wish you would have picked up the phone? YEP.

Talent War? Believe Me It's Real!

We've all heard about the war for talent for years and if you're anything like I was, you wondered how real this "war" really was. People got hired, jobs got filled, what was the big deal?

I can say with absolute certainty that when it comes to technology, the war is very, very real. I've become increasingly convinced that there is more demand for top technical talent in Louisville than there is top technical talent available. The evidence is there. 

From speaking with IT Leadership throughout the area it's very clear that everyone, without exception, is looking for the best talent available. The path diverges from there. Every company wants the best talent, few companies have the processes, urgency, and perks to consistently. What do the successful companies do that allows them to attract the best people? 

In no particular order:

1. They have a candidate friendly hiring/interview process. 

2. They understand that talented people don't stay on the market long. Think days versus weeks. The best candidates are only on the market for a matter of days. If the process takes any longer than a week, it could be too long.

3. They understand their own culture and have great perks and benefits in place. 

4. They partner with their recruiters (internal, external or both) versus asking them for resumes to fit a description. 

5. They're open, honest and happy to answer questions that the candidates have.

I'll elaborate on these 5 points in future posts. I'm sure I've left some out as well, but in my experience, these attributes are the common thread with companies that are able to consistently find, attract, hire and retain people with top talent. 

Lifting The Veil

Linkedin is a great resource to make professional contacts. Most recruiters are taking advantage of this vast network of professionals. On a daily basis we are advertising our jobs, direct-connecting and requesting introductions. For an IT market the size of Louisville's this means we're essentially connecting with and advertising to the same group of people. It's an important group of people that we definitely want to get to know.

There's another, equally important group of people that the best recruiters can find. This group of people hasn't taken the time to make themselves known on linkedin or facebook or any other networking site. They're out there working and not giving much thought to connecting with others. They may not be happy with their job, but they may not be giving it much thought. They may just be too busy to think about it. Are you confident your recruiters are uncovering these people too? I hope you are.

Ohio Valley meets Silicon Valley

I saw a news report yesterday that there are over 130,000 IT jobs in Silicon Valley, with over 52,000 of those being for software developers. There's a real talent war going on out there and companies are getting very creative about what they're willing to offer candidates.

We have a similar situation in Louisville, though on a much smaller scale. Demand for IT talent is increasing faster than the supply, which will obviously increase the level of competition for that talent. With this war for talent on our doorstep, it's time for companies to consider what they can offer top candidates and be creative about it. Someone is going to do it, it might as well be you.

Stay Human

A former coworker and friend of mine recently reminded me that before, during and after our working day we are all still human. We all have something that motivates us to work, which keeps us there and drives us to be good at what we do. We build relationships and friendships throughout the course of our working life that transcend our company connections.

We are not machines.We may have the occasional transaction that becomes just that....a transaction, but whether we're selling or buying we all want strong relationships in and out of the workplace. If you're the buyer, you are naturally going to be more comfortable with someone you know and trust. You like the person and you know they can solve your problem. 

Staying Human is pretty important to what we all do. We all face problems  in our daily work life and I think we would all love to find a way to solve those problems. Because we're human we are more likely to choose to work with someone who has taken the time to understand our problem and wants to solve it than to choose to work with someone who may be able to solve our problem, but hasn't done the human stuff up front.