Tag Archives: Recruit

How Do You Recruit Outside Board Members? Five Recommendations

Situation: A company wants to add outside members to its Board. They seek individuals with industry knowledge, experience and contacts, among other things – members who can provide high level introductions to potential clients or key players within these organizations. The team is struggling to develop a list of candidates. How do you recruit an outside Board member?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Your best bet is to hire a firm with a good track record of Board placements.
    • Given your other priorities, it is unlikely that you can devote the time required to develop a list of candidates on your own. Ask yourself whether this is how you should be spending your time, and what the value of that time spent would be.
    • What level of business do your expect from the contacts that the new Board member will provide for you? Calculate a fee that you would be willing to pay a recruiter as a percentage of future business. A fee of $25,000 or more for a good member is not out of line.
  • Network with significant players in your industry, and also look at who is serving on their Boards.
  • Investigate LinkedIn Groups – Groups that focus on Board members. These can be helpful in learning who might be available and connecting with them through mutual acquaintances. In addition, firms that specialize in Board placement frequent these sites. Also look at LinkSV.com which is more focused on Silicon Valley.
  • Determine what you will offer as both liability protection and compensation for new Board members. At a minimum you want to have a good directors and officers insurance policy, as well as stock and cash compensation that is competitive for your industry and company size.
  • Current Top Executives may be too busy to meet your needs. Consider individuals with deep experience who are nearing retirement or recently retired.

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How Do You Recruit Hard-to-Find Talent? Five Solutions

Situation: A company needs a strong pool of engineers in their market niche to stay ahead of the competition. Their niche is specialized with little transferability from other engineering specialties. They struggle to find local talent and relocation expenses are high. How have you recruited hard-to-find talent?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you want a mix of fresh and experienced talent and need to add 3 to 5 new engineers per year to keep up with growth and turnover, you will be hiring a new engineer every 2-3 months so you need a standardized, repeatable process that is ongoing. If you don’t have either in-house or reliable outsourced HR capabilities, you need to secure this as soon as possible.
  • Consider establishing a satellite office in a geographic area which has an available talent pool.
    • Look for areas with a top university engineering program in your field.
    • Look at your key competitors’ locations and see whether they are in areas with both the educational and industrial-technology base to be a candidate location.
  • As you develop a new geography, forge strong relationships with the university programs that can feed you the younger talent that you need. This is a win-win relationship, because universities are focused on their placement statistics and corporate support.
    • Get to know the professors in your specialty and explore establishing a center of study or excellence within the engineering programs.
    • One company works closely with Santa Clara University and developed a program that offers financial rewards for the best technical papers produced by students in their specialty. This has created a buzz around the company, helped to establish a study program in their specialty, and enables them to attract the best and brightest graduates.
  • As you establish a reputation for attracting the best younger talent, this can help you to attract seasoned talent that wants to work with the brightest young talent in the field.
  • Another option is to find 2-3 key experienced engineers who are willing to relocate for the opportunity to build a new team.

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What Are Best Practices Hiring Out of College? Four Thoughts

Situation: A Silicon Valley company finds it difficult to find good candidates locally, and also to attract qualified distant candidates to the Bay Area. They want to explore hiring talented individuals out of local colleges and developing them within the company. What are best practices hiring right out of college?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Hiring out of college or graduate school is a good way to find long-term hires who can grow into positions. It is less useful if your need is for experienced and tenured individuals who can immediately get up to speed in a position of significant responsibility.
  • As in any hiring situation, you should review your hiring process before you start to hire. Many companies hire locally based on who applies or who’s a friend of a friend, rather than making an effort to recruit the best candidates.
    • What is your infrastructure? Do you have a system for identifying candidates who best fit your culture and needs? Do you have personnel who can mentor a new college hire, or are you willing to devote significant time to this?
    • An alternative is to hire consultants to develop a recruiting process or to mentor the new hire in specific areas of development during their first year or two on the job.
  • One CEO sponsors an annual competition at Santa Clara University for papers in his company’s field. This has won him considerable support at the school, and gives him access to promising students, several of whom he has hired. An advantage of this program is that the company gets to know the individuals and the quality of their work before making a commitment to offer them either an internship or a full-time position.
  • Be cautious using candidate assessment tools with college hires. An individual’s profile may shift significantly once they start working because there is a significant shift in priorities once an individual leaves student life.

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How Do You Build Consistency and Reliability as You Scale Up? Three Keys

Interview with Greg Hartwell, CEO and Managing Director, Homecare California, Inc.

Situation: Fast growing companies find it difficult to manage consistency and reliability of service as they scale to their next level of growth. They need to systematize what works and leverage technology to enjoy the benefits of scale. How do you build consistency and reliability as you scale up?

Advice from Greg Hartwell:

  • Invest time and effort to build an experienced management team. As a small company building a new service delivery model, it is helpful for the founders to know all roles so that you have a sense of what’s needed for each role.
    • Be open to hiring people from other industries. This brings a fresh perspective and broadens the pool of talent. There’s value in industry experience, but attitude and cultural fit are key.
    • The split between tactical and strategic skills is 80 / 20. Basic skills are necessary, but specialized knowledge can be learned.
  • Institutionalize how you recruit, screen, hire, train and retain. How do you do it like Disney – attracting and hiring the best of the best?
    • Know your market and the personality of those who will excel. This greatly simplifies the screening process.
    • Work hard on training. Our customer-focus starts with our employees. We complement natural talent with training that focuses on soft skills, and on consistency and reliability of service.
    • Find great advisors who can help build a training and retention system that works for you.
    • Minimize turnover by compensating people well, and treating them even better. Build a culture of recognition and shared experience that emphasizes the importance of the team and its members.
  • Embrace technology which enhances your ability to scale.
    • Don’t wait for something bad to happen and then rush to fix it. Anticipate and prevent mishaps.
    • Leverage communication technologies to tighten the bond between client and provider agency. Provide added services that are valuable and affordable.
    • Hand-held device technology is developing rapidly. Leverage this to increase consistency and reliability of service, enhance case reporting, reduce human error, reduce the ratio of supervisors to caregivers, and increase productivity. Be at the head of your industry class!

You can contact Greg Hartwell at [email protected], www.homecare-california.com

Key Words: Fast, Growth, Consistency, Reliability, System, Technology, Benefit, Management, Requirement, Talent, Recruit, Hire, Train

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