 I know if you are a company of any size right now especially smaller in nature its natural to panic during an unprecedented crisis like the one we are going through with Covid-19. Therefore the first defense mechanism to set in is "button down the hatches" and stop all hiring. Then the next move an organization contemplates is work force reductions and who is expendable. I'm here to tell all the Business Owners and Leadership before you do anything, take a deep breath, pause and reset your mental thoughts. Reacting out of panic is the worse thing you can do!
Now if you are a small business that is barely surviving "living paycheck to paycheck" that is a different story. However the focus of my message is to smaller Emerging Technology Firms who were doing well before this crisis "blindsided" all of us. My message specifically to these firms who have a great technology product or service is step up your recruiting efforts to find the talent you need going forward, and PLEASE PLEASE consider NOT laying off any personnel. How companies react or DO NOT React is being judged by candidates that may consider working for your organization in the future. I urge you to explore other alternatives to get by for a few months if at all possible. People are your best assets in a crisis, your Employees are your best assets! Your organization invested a lot of time to find and train these people, to panic and let them go will harm your ROI in the long-term. Especially when this crisis passes and business gets back to thriving, you will realize how much you needed them and not having them is impacting business. RECRUITING vs. HIRING Now when I speak about step up your Recruiting Efforts that doesn't mean necessarily hiring. Recruiting and hiring are very different functions, let me explain difference. Hiring is actually adding people to your staff where you are paying them salary and taking on the cost of benefits and training. Not much more needs to be said beyond that. Now recruiting, that is a completely different story! Recruiting can be as little or as intense as you want it to be. The main goal is to engage your audience which is a company's Hiring Profile Avatar on some level. Again this doesn't have to be a full fledged recruiting effort that you would normally conduct when you are actively hiring. It can be as little as reaching out to a handful of candidates on a weekly basis in your niche space that your business normally hires for to say hello and introduce yourself. Let them know what your business does and that you would love to have an open dialogue to get to know them and network. Mention that your company is always on the search for talent with their skill set and even though you are not hiring now, you hope to be in the near future and want to make the connection. You can be even more passive then that if you like. Maybe you send out videos or blogs on some interesting projects your firm has done in groups on Social Media where your candidates hangout. RECRUITING IS A GREAT WAY TO BRAND YOUR ORGANIZATION DURING A CRISIS By not "letting up on the gas pedal" with your recruiting efforts during a crisis says a lot about your company to the outside world from a branding perspective. When you are staying active talking to candidates and letting them know about the passion behind the work you are doing, and you plan to continue doing this work past the crisis this will create positive energy and a sense of good will for people about your brand. It shows that your company is strong and refuses to be defined and handicapped by the crisis. More important, your company creates a positive brand image to the outside world that your organization is forward thinking and a place that has big plans for its future.
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 By Steve Rosen Thought Leadership December 12, 2018
Organizations can have the best ideas or products in the world but without great employees and more particular talented leadership to facilitate the process of managing the flow of operations, those ideas and products will die. In today’s economy, hiring the best people is more critical than ever. Entrepreneurs to Large Organizations can’t afford to lose time, money and results from a bad hiring choice (a recent Forbes article by David K. Williams pegs the cost of a single bad hire at anywhere from $25-50,000). “The cost of finding, interviewing, engaging and training new employees is high”, says Williams. When trying to identify new employees there are 7 factors to consider in your evaluation process that David Williams framed “the 7 C’s”. 1. Competent: This is still the first factor to consider. Does the potential employee have the necessary skills, experiences, and education to successfully complete the tasks you need to be performed? 2. Capable: Will this person complete not only the easy tasks but will he or she also find ways to deliver on the functions that require more effort and creativity? For me, being capable means the employee has the potential for growth and the ability and willingness to take on more responsibility. 3. Compatible: Can this person get along with colleagues, and more importantly, can he or she get along with existing and potential clients and partners? A critical component to also remember is the person’s willingness and ability to be harmonious with you, his or her boss. If the new employee can’t, there will be problems. 4. Commitment: Is the candidate serious about working for the long-term? Or is he or she just passing through, always looking for something better? A history of past jobs and time spent at each provides a clear insight into the matter. 5. Character: Does the person have values that align with yours? Are they honest; do they tell the truth and keep promises? Are they above reproach? Are they selfless and a team player? 6. Culture: Every business has a culture or a way that people behave and interact with each other. Culture is based on certain values, expectations, policies, and procedures that influence the behavior of a leader and employees. Workers who don’t reflect a company’s culture tend to be disruptive and difficult. 7. Compensation: As the employer, be sure the person hired agrees to a market-based compensation package and is satisfied with what is offered. If not, an employee may feel unappreciated and thereby underperform. Steve Rosen is an accomplished HR and talent acquisition professional with more than 18 years of HR and recruitment experience. Mr. Rosen is actively engaged in the local entrepreneurship ecosystem and is a member of the Tampa Bay Wave mentor network.  By Steve Rosen Community October 26, 2018What is the Major Hurdle in Scaling your Organization?
Congratulations, your organization has reached its first major milestone; the company made its first Million Dollars in Revenue! As a growing Entrepreneur, your next desire is probably $2MM, $3MM, etc... However, this is easier said than done. As a newer Leadership Team, Scalability is probably presenting some major “hurdles” for you that maybe you didn’t quite anticipate. The most common challenge for organizations of the Million Dollar Size is lack of bandwidth to generate this additional revenue to grow. Lack of Sales is usually the 1st problem to be identified. “If we could just sell more to our current customer base while adding just a few more new clients, we could probably double our size within one, two, three years.” This is the most common line of thinking that CEO’s and Founders usually gravitate towards. However, if you really take an extended deep dive analysis into the problem, lack of sales is usually not the culprit. In fact, even if you could line up an additional project or two from your current customers or add another client would you still make more money? This answer may surprise you, BUT NO! The reason is if your current workforce is producing at full capacity and additional resources are not added, your organization can’t generate any more revenue beyond what your resources are producing. It’s impossible to grow as you can see. What is the Solution? So now that we have identified a lack of resources as the root cause of achieving scalability for your organization, the next question is how to solve it? These challenges can easily be solved with a Talent Acquisition Strategy. The key is your strategy has to be consistent with a committed effort to keep up with a regular cadence of activities. Even if you may not be hiring in that particular moment, the key is giving the world the perception that you are always looking to hire strong people. So how exactly does this work and what components need to be in place in order to execute this strategy? The first piece that I mentioned is a commitment to be consistent with execution. Let us compare this with how any organization views their sales functions. Companies don’t stop selling just because they land one or two deals, so why should they stop recruiting for talent just because you hired someone? Believe it or not, hiring is far more volatile than landing a sale. With sales, there are contracts involved binding both parties to the agreed terms. Hiring a candidate for a job does not bind them at all to take the job or even stay in the job once they start. Most States abide by “Employment at Will” Laws meaning a company can let an employee go for almost any legal reason and an employee can certainly quit without giving notice. So would it not make sense to always have your “Plan B…Plan C..” etc… in place just in case? The other critical component to have in place is either have a dedicated HR Talent Acquisition Department or the very least have a person in place dedicated to ONLY recruiting functions. The mindset of the organization has to be that this Recruiting Resource is to be viewed as an investment to building Talent Funnels. If an organization is thinking, “we don’t anticipate doing any hiring for minimal 6 months probably a year why should we waste the money paying for a Recruiter?” Then as an organization, you could be making a critical mistake. People quit all the time, new projects come up all the time so the smart organizations that think strategically “two moves ahead” are the ones that have a higher success rate of achieving their scalability goals. Implementing the Talent Acquisition Strategy The first step, engage in an internal assessment of where you are now and what that next level goal is. More important once you figure out where you want to go, then you want to figure out from a resource and fulfillment perspective what you need to get there. Essentially your organization wants to build hiring profiles that will serve as a blueprint for the type of talent the organization needs to achieve that next milestone. Second step and this is critical for implementing the Talent Acquisition Process, “go all in” and make the investment in the Hiring Department. This is where a lot of smaller organizations get caught up. It’s difficult to invest money into hiring functions when you don’t always need to hire. I get it but think of it from an ROI perspective. If opportunities come up that can bring your organization instant revenue stream, having the ability to take advantage of that “real-time” far outweighs the alternative which is showing your customer you CAN’T DELIVER. This leads organizations into desperation where reactive hiring activities take place, which then leads to bad hires and we all know the consequences of bad hires! To be honest it would not take a whole lot of investment to implement this strategy. As a smaller organization, you can even start out with one employee who takes the mold of a Corporate Recruiter. Let this person drive your Hiring Profile Strategy where potentially all they are doing for you is building candidate relationships and pipelining talent. You don’t want to compensate them like a salesperson, however, you may want to have a bonus component in place on how many people they are pipelining that fit the hiring profiles the organization has set up. I would mix into the strategy some corporate branding on Social Media from an HR Talent Acquisition perspective. The messaging should be specific for what the company does, why people would want to work here and some specific information on some of the exciting initiatives the company is involved with. Essentially the company wants to take on a Persona that they are always hiring if strong talent comes across. The final step is what I term “Storing Your Treasures”, what I mean by that is you want a safe place to save your information. If you have implemented Steps 1 & 2 then you will be generating candidate leads and resumes. You will want to have this stored in some type of Database specific to Recruiting called an Applicant Tracking System or “ATS”. So as situations come up where you need to hire, you now have a virtual “Tickler File” of warm leads to find applicants from. This certainly beats what most organizations do when they need to hire quickly, pay hundreds of dollars to post an online add then have to scramble to find the right people from applicants who apply even though they don’t fit the job requirements. If you follow the system, your recruiter should be always speaking with candidates that fit your company profile therefore when you do have to hire, you will be selecting from profiles where an initial match has been identified. If you are serious about looking to scale up your business, a Talent Acquisition Strategy might be your “Best Medicine”! Steve Rosen is an accomplished HR and talent acquisition professional with more than 18 years of HR and recruitment experience. Mr. Rosen is actively engaged in the local entrepreneurship ecosystem and is a member of the Tampa Bay Wave mentor network.  Generation Z Profile
Recent college graduates are the first of Generation Z entering the workplace. The way they socialize is through texting and social media, as they are attached to their phones. Gen Z do not have a reference of what the world was like before the internet and social media. They are valuable to employers because they have the knowledge to adapt to different technologies and usually would not require much training. What makes them even more valuable as an employee is this is the first generation ever to grow up in a truly Global Society. Because of Social Media Gen Z grew up with limitless avenues for learning and interaction with people their own age around the World. This is going to go a long way in developing their skills to be "Major Players" in a truly Global Economy world. What Motivates Generation Z What most people are not aware of about this generation is what motivates them, their personal goals they have and what many of them value in a career. This may come as a shock to many, but Generation Z from a career standpoint are focused on being entrepreneurs through their own self-directed inventions. A lot of them will be going to College with purpose. Because of growing up witnessing student debt and economic uncertainty they are determined in making post high school education an investment. The purpose is to learn skills that can make an immediate impact in generating a salary, as opposed to their prior Generation Predecessors who went to College with a more abstract purpose for general learning and social interaction. Instead of a more General Business Degree, a lot of Gen Z's will major in newer Business Curriculums that has been developed such as running an entrepreneurial business. In fact a lot of Gen Z's are trading Four Year University Education for Apprenticeships. This way they can learn on the job while earning a salary and then combine the skills they are learning with their "Tech Savy" creative skills to advance the "Trade Professions". So what is driving this intense ambition from a group of teenagers and college aged kids never seen before from any prior generation? One very interesting theory presented by professionals out there that could make a lot of sense is that they are a product of their parents. Where many Millennials were offspring of the late "Baby Boom" Generation, Generation Z are a product of "Generation X" Parents. What difference does that make you ask? This is where analyzing this particular theory gets very intriguing! Generation X which is the post "Baby Boom" Generation grew up in a world where the majority went to college and graduated with a four year degree in four years no matter what the major. There was not a lot of strategy for the most part in choice of curriculum. The end goal was to just graduate with a degree and then figure out your profession from that point. The byproduct of that was, an entire generation of over saturated educated graduates entering the workforce all at once without any differentiating skills or meaningful internships "under their belt". This caused a lot of new graduates to stay unemployed for many months going into years. Finally a lot of these Gen X's had to settle for just any job that paid the bills and just settled into doing that for their career. So when they had their Generation X children, they instilled in them the reality that not everybody unfortunately can win at the same time and the "sense of urgency" in "cutting your own career path". Summary This new up and coming Generation with a "deadly combination" of technology and a fierce ambition is where the organizations who want to stay ahead of the competition need to invest their future recruiting. This is going to require a lot of companies to restructure their jobs to quench that "individualistic thirst" that Generation Z is going to want out of their career. This will not be an easy task for most organizations, which is why the "balance of power" in the recruitment of talent for the first time could be shifting. Now it might be the Startups that soon could have the major talent acquisition edge over the more traditional Fortune 500 Conglomerates for acquiring "Grade A Superstar Talent"! Career Compass Group has a strong interest in promoting the growth of the Future Generation Z Workforce! I would love to invite current and future Entrepreneurs to share their ideas and innovations with us and our audience through the platform of a Feature Story. Email me at Srosen.ccg@gmail.com with your idea. Written By: Steve Rosen-Talent Acquisition Consultant  For anyone unfamiliar, the term “Headhunter” has long been a staple term in the Recruitment Industry to describe someone who goes out and runs searches for organizations trying to find talent for Strategic and hard to find Job Openings. Prior to the induction of the “Digital Age”, these individuals were a highly sought after premium that provided an invaluable service to Organization Hiring Managers who needed to hire tough to find talent. These individuals would literally cold call into companies blindly without any resources trying to recruit people out of their current employers. The way these individual “Headhunters” would infiltrate competing organizations to find people was an “exact science” mastered by very few.
Now here in the New World of “Digital Age” the invention of the Internet and Artificial Intelligence, finding people for anyone who is not working in Recruiting is not only possible but actually very easy. Therefore the need for the “Headhunter” I won’t say went away but it definitely shifted things around. With the Internet it was believed that mass "Email Marketing Campaigns" driving candidates to apply for jobs into a Company Owned Database was not only the best way to find talent, but the most cost effective. In addition to Digital Technology, another methodology that organizations believed would be an alternative solution to hiring a "Headhunter" was outsource the entire Recruitment Function to a Country with cheaper labor cost. Hiring Managers I'm here to tell you, its time to get re-connected with your "Headhunters" if you have not already. Something critical has been overlooked, the Recruitment and Hiring Industry has and always will be a People Business. Job changes are a very emotional decisions for candidates, even when it comes to leaving a job that they are not happy with. Even though the Internet and AI applications are great ways to find people, they are not equipped to deal with the Human Element of guiding a candidate through the "emotional roller coaster" to make the decision of leaving their current company to take a new job. That takes patients, understanding and counseling through those emotions that technology will never be able to replicate or replace from a Human Being. Plus the messages candidates receive through AI campaigns come off very generic and "cookie cutter" without regard for selling or "schmoozing" a candidate on a company or job to attract their attention. A really good "Headhunter" has the art of "schmoozing" a candidate and getting them interested in a job change down to a "science". Earlier in the article I mentioned a shift of the role of the "Headhunter". The discoveries I made about missing the human element to recruiting, organizations also have made that discovery. Therefore for more critical searches they have gone back to utilizing "Headhunters". Actually Companies have taken it a step further. They are hiring their own "Internal Headhunters" called "Sourcers". The role of the Internal Sourcer is to do nothing but build pipelines of critical talent for their organization they work for and do Talent Acquisition Marketing. "Headhunters" great news, as long as companies hire Human Beings they will need you around to not only find these people but persuade them into a job change! Written By: Steve Rosen-Sr. Recruitment Consultant  If you are in the Talent Acquisition Business and you think a strong or attractive job description is enough to help "land you" that hard to find Enterprise Sales Person or Software Engineer that most organizations covet, than think again! The reason being, no matter how much effort goes into differentiating a job description in the end Job Family Descriptions have to be standardized. Therefore a job description for the same role will look very similar among most organizations.
So then the question is, if our job description doesn't attract those candidates our organization's way what will? The answer to that is a "one-two punch" of Employer Branding alongside creating an Amazing Candidate Experience that will stick in a Job Seeker's Mind! Organizations spend a lot of time and effort crafting their marketing message and brand to their perspective Client Niche on Social Media and their website. That same effort needs to happen from a Employer Branding standpoint when trying to hire and more important even if you are NOT trying to hire in that moment in time. The reason, candidates have a perception that the same job among most organizations is going to be very similar so in order to select a company to work for they need something special, and in most cases that is NOT always money. In fact when candidates were asked why they chose one organization over another. They say they will choose to go work for a company that offers growth opportunities, passion for the product/service or flexible work/life balance over more money. How Do Organizations Create a Great Candidate Experience So what can a Company do to create this amazing candidate experience? Mainly, it has to be a team effort involving other employees to help sell the company as a great place to work and create an upbeat vibe! Here are a few tips to get you started:
Steve Rosen-Recruiting Consultant  This is the First of a series of "How To Recruiting Strategies" designed specifically for Smaller Organizations with limited HR Resources to successfully hire which is critical for scaling their businesses. What is an Avatar For anyone unfamiliar with the term "Avatar" in the Business World it refers to the profile that fits what an organization deems as their "perfect customer". However the term is universal and can also be used in the HR World for describing a organization's ideal employee. For the strategic roles within an organization such as Sales/Marketing/Technology/Leadership it would be smart for an organization to determine what their Ideal Employee OR Avatar would look like. The reason being these are the roles that put a brand on your organization to their client base and helps drive success! It has been proven over and over again that organizations who hire based strictly on skills without considering whether that person fits the particular company culture will have a higher turnover rate. The reason is even if someone can do the job, when they don't fit or don't like the company culture they won't be happy and if they are NOT happy well I think you can guess the rest of the scenario. How To Create Your Company Avatar -Determine which Job Families or Roles are critical to your organizations success -Conduct an analysis of your current staff in those roles to determine the strongest players -Create an Avatar which is a deeper dive than General Profiling on a personality type that fits that position. You want to determine all of the characteristics of that employee including personality type so that you have this mold of exactly what a perfect Sales Employee or Technology Employee looks like in your organization only. The goal here is not to be general on what any organization looks for in the role. It's what they look like for your company based on successful employees you have. This is important! How To Use Your Avatar To Recruit For Your Organization -Now that you have your Avatar Blueprint of what your ideal employee looks like this will set the tone for your Employer Branding Strategy -Based on knowing your Avatar's Deep Thoughts and what they like, that information can be used to craft specific messages on your website, your Social Media and your Job Descriptions. This will help increase the rate of people your organization is targeting will respond. -Knowing the characteristics of your Avatar will help you determine where they are located, what they read, what Social Media Platforms they are on etc.. -Craft a message that is specific to them letting them know your organization is doing strategic hiring for a critical role to the organization and that you wanted to make a connection for near term or future opportunities. The goal of the message is you want to get to know them before you pitch them about a specific job. DO NOT fall into the mistake that most recruiters make with sending a job description assuming that will attract the candidate. -Companies that build rapport and relationships with their Avatars will find it easier to get their message return rate raised. Hope this article helps and please let me know what you think. Stay tuned for the next article in the series! Written by: Steve Rosen-Recruiting Consultant 
Leadership is rarely taught in school. All business problems are a result of a lack of leadership. The solution is leadership training. The fact is, professional leadership is teachable to every employee and employer. What is Leadership? A Leader establishes a clear vision of goals, provides the proper information, knowledge and methods to manifest that vision. Good Leaders proactively facilitates as well as balances the conflicting interests of all employees and employers. Once you learn and use leadership skills, it transforms your professional life, your personal life and increases your happiness. When you commit to developing leaders within your organization, company goals are achieved. Let's take a look at why lack of leadership is the cause of all your business problems. An effective leader is proactive and takes personal responsibility for the situation they are in and reaches company goals. The fact is, most leaders are reactive and irresponsible and do not make a difference. Your company requires effective leaders starting from the top down to entry level employees and interns. Leadership and Management are different, this is why. Management provides the proper information, knowledge and methods to manifest that vision as does leadership. After that they are different. The characteristics of effective leadership are:
They want to thrive and make a difference. They use compelling communications skills to win over new accounts and manage difficult clients. They worry as much as you do, and stress about the results of a spreadsheet. Leadership has 3 characteristics :
These characteristics are teachable, when practiced and developed the results achieve a high level of accomplishments. Having confidence in leaders solves problems. They value different viewpoints from employees. The results have a shared outcome. Leaders are selfless, they want what is best for themselves and everyone else. They create the ‘win-win’ situations we all strive for. They facilitate these wins from having an ability to generate confidence (this is rare). They have learned to effectively communicate clearly to show everyone around them they earned the confidence to lead. To achieve this, it is in the leader’s emotional Intelligence. This is where leaders manage their negative emotions, recognize negative emotional traits in others. This signals them to speak effectively and persuasively to people experiencing a broad range of emotions. All business problems, are solvable when leaders work towards a solution. It is that simple, it requires an effort to learn leadership skills. It takes work and an honest introspection on what skills and traits you are currently lacking. From there, you build a Leadership Development Platform to improve your skills and start thriving and succeeding! Written By: Steve Rosen-Sr. Recruiting Consultant  If you want retention of good employees at your company, this is a list of what makes employed professionals want out. Note to Bad Managers, the problem is YOU. The fact is good employees leave bad managers. Employees want good leaders that can help them not only be productive, but grow!
Why Employees Leave Your Organization:
Written By: Steve Rosen-Sr. Recruiting Consultant  I am a Senior Recruiter working mainly in the IT Technology Sector. What I hear from Hiring Managers is that it is a challenge finding qualified talent in this area. The IT profession requires extensive technical training. That means there are plenty of positions available to those that have a technology skill set. What I learned is that a majority of teenage girls avoid Math, Science and Technology which could be due to any various reasons. If Teenage Girls were exposed to technology the result would be a source of available talent to have in the workplace with a marketable skill set that Technology Companies not only want but desperately need!
What could be done about this? There is a resource I stumbled upon that is stepping up to do something about it that solves this problem. It was started by Famous Fashion Model Karlie Kloss #Karlie Kloss and its a non profit called Kode with Klossy (www.kodewithklossy.com) #Kode with Klossy. I browsed this website and I am impressed with what they do. It is where Teenage Girls learn to code . With this education these girls are provided along with all the necessary tools, they have an amazing opportunity to become future Technology Leaders. The women that have this skill set have the ability to shape the future! Written by: Steve Rosen-Talent Acquisition Career Consultant Share this post: |