As the economy improves, should businesses be doing anything 
different with their staffing?
It’s a fact: recession is followed by employee moves. In HR circles, everyone is talking about a mass “exodus”. What that means is employees who may have looked content for the past few years are going to start taking advantage of the end of hiring freezes and move, in unprecedented numbers.
To prepare for this, companies need to do three things. First of all, conduct performance reviews to ensure key performers are on rewarding career paths and fairly compensated compared to the competition.
Second, businesses need to open up communications channels with their employees: share details of improved profitability and positive plans for things such as future growth, expansion and new opportunities. A little reassurance goes a long way toward getting staff back on board when the company has gone through an unsettling economic period.
Lastly, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on the talent market. Work with your recruiter to gain access to market intelligence and potentially profitable hires at all levels of your organization.
Steve Yakesh
Vice President
McKinley Group
Should businesses continue to cut salaries to stay profit-able through the economic recovery?
The financial media is reporting a new trend for leading CEO’s to take a pay cut of several percent in order to trim operating costs. But after almost two years of recessionary conditions and reduced salaries, asking any other employee to do this is either going to be unwise or may be logistically undoable. Many businesses that have been forced to run lean and make staffing or pay cuts may now have little goodwill or flexibility left in either their workforce or their payrolls.
At McKinley Group we advise our clients that whatever the economic conditions, staffing up or down should never be driven purely by the balance sheet. People equal productivity and ultimately profitability – not percentage points. Businesses struggling with staffing for 2011, really need to take a longer term approach and build a 2-5 year staffing and conservative growth model that rewards employee loyalty now but builds an employee base of diverse, flexible skills for the future. A professional recruiter can help think through the process and create an appropriate plan that doesn’t involve pay cuts.
Chris Ohlendorf
Partner
Using temporary employees is on the rise in the economic recovery. What do I need to know as a business owner?
No doubt about it. Personnel can be a large expense on any business’ operating budget. As the economy recovers, consultants are being used to not only bring in a specific specialty skill set to a company but to also provide help while their business is ramping back up.
We’ve seen clients at McKinley Consulting request help with not only the direction of their IT initiatives but also to provide the hands-on experts that do the actual work. During the economic downturn, many companies laid off employees and asked the ones that remained to do more work. With the economy turning to the positive, many employers are opting to bring on consulting help before hiring a full time employee. This gives them expertise and flexibility.
Many companies will try a contract to hire option. This allows the business to see how an individual performs on the job before they would actually commit to them as a full-time employee. As a business, you must make sure that you recruit people that are willing to become a fulltime employee after the initial contract period. Make sure to discuss your goals with your consulting firm. Under the right circumstances, it can be a win win.
Scott Mihelich
Director, Business Development
McKinley Consulting
How important is specialism when hiring employees?
In the old days hiring a new employee seemed a fairly simple or straight forward task. Write a detailed job description with a specialist brief and work with a recruiter to find the candidate whose experience best matches it. Today, hiring managers and business owners are facing a much more complex recruiting landscape that requires a new approach and different strategies to find those people best suited to open positions and a changed work place environment.
Firstly, anyone looking to recruit a new member of the team should realize that, while there are a lot of candidates out there, this is not 2009 anymore. The market is moving again for talented individuals with great resumes and expert skill sets. Managers who sat out the uncertain times in their old positions are now looking to get their careers back on track and we’re seeing unprecedented movement. In other words, if you’re looking for a true specialist, the game is back on and it’s both good and bad news. Candidates are more willing to move than ever but there’s a lot of competition from other companies and open positions out there.
Also, consider the meaning of specialist. The definition of a specialist in a particular work area has changed significantly. Today the smartest hiring strategies include seeking a candidate who has all of the day to day skills you need for the position, but who also brings something additional to the role. A finance manager with a track record in the IT industry can be a real added value benefit to a tech firm. A candidate who has spent their career in similarly sized companies with the same type of culture can be a much easier, quicker and more efficient fit than someone with just the right resume line items.
Lastly, seriously consider the real needs of your business, your available hiring budget and the role you are filling. Do you really need someone with a specialist certification that may demand a higher salary or is a specialist just a nice to have? Could you broaden your requirements and still find a highly qualified candidate who could save a little cash?
There are many instances where specialism is absolutely essential, but today’s market offers a new breed of highly versatile, flexible candidates that are willing and able to offer something more.
Tony Fornetti
Partner
McKinley Finance
While the economy is still difficult, finding the right skill set in a candidate has never been easier. Easy, that is, if you have an unlimited amount of time, patience and access to online professional networking sites, resume sites, social media, and well-networked professionals.
Technology can look like the answer to a hiring manager’s prayers. Sites like Monster.com provide thousands of lookalike resumes, but fail when it comes to giving insight into the nuances that get positions filled quickly and efficiently with exactly the right candidate.
At McKinley Group, we track our placements and typically find that more than 60 percent of open positions are filled through traditional networking: market intelligence and connections with the right people.
Technology does have its place; LinkedIn ranks as the second most successful tool we utilize to help recruit and place candidates. But LinkedIn is not about resumes. It’s a virtual collective of the same kinds of connections that bring results in the real world – an interactive community of people who refer, recommend, approve and pass along.
In a business environment of time-crunched managers faced with endless online “miracle” cures, recruitment success for any business today is about the right people plus the right technology.
Adam Hoffarber
IT Director
