Now you might be thinking, Sure, it makes sense for technology-based companies to recruit on the Web, but what about my business? Well, you can find more than just the tech types in cyberspace. Currently there are job-related Web sites catering to restaurant workers (www.starchefs.com), truck drivers (www.truckers.com), and funeral directors (www.funeralnet.com), to name a few.
Web-Spinning: Working the Virtual Room.
Beyond databases and Web sites, there are other corners of the Web that many companies are only beginning to discover. For example, there's Usenet, a Web-based network of topic-specific newsgroups or bulletin boards. Kathi Jones, at Aventail, starts at Deja News, where she can search for newsgroups that are of interest to her typical recruit and read through the postings to find the smartest posters. She also quietly lurks through Web-based forums or chats, where attendees share ideas and advice on technical questions.
Don't be discouraged if you can't find a Web forum to suit your needs. Toni Marie Finn of Creative Financial Staffing decided to create her own career-specific Web chat at www.wbs.net, a Web-based "community." She advertised the occasional forum on CFS's company Web site, as well as on other message boards and chat sites. Finn claims she got hundreds of attendants, from which she generated 24 quality leads and 12 interviews, which ultimately resulted in two hires. It cut her advertising costs by two-thirds, she says. "And," adds Finn, "I could interview over the Net, in real time."
Long-Term Prospecting: Cultivating Your People Pipeline.
Finn became very active in the local Chamber of Commerce partly to help create new training programs and internships to groom high school students for potential accounting careers. Finn also teaches a local Junior Achievement class on "Life after High School: How to Prepare for Work," which has actually already netted three temps for her to place.
Joe Martinez takes the outreach process a step further. The CEO of Productive Data Systems, an IT staffing and services company in Englewood, Colo., Martinez wonders why everyone seems to be screaming at Congress to increase the number of visas for high-tech workers from abroad. "There are a ton of people right here we can train to take these new, information-age jobs," he says. "Give the local people a chance, instead of importing these guys from India or Israel." Martinez has formed a nonprofit called Technology Transfer Solutions, which works with various Colorado organizations to help high school-equivalency students get entry-level IT jobs. Martinez concedes that the effort does not directly benefit his businesses--at least not yet. "We don't hire entry-level people, so it's not feeding right into our workforce," he says.
Andrew Levi took the spin-off strategy in a different direction: The president and CEO of Aztec Systems Inc., a systems-integration company in Dallas, started a separate recruiting company. Levi had grown increasingly frustrated with most of the more than 10 headhunters he had engaged. "They were charging these huge fees and delivering substandard people," he says. One particular recruiter had succeeded in bringing in a stream of decent candidates, so Levi approached her about starting up on her own under Aztec's aegis. Now that she's up and running, "our recruiting problem has totally disintegrated," says Levi. His current recruiting clients include companies that he otherwise competes against. Does that bother him? "Other people will place those people anyway," he says. "We might as well get the fees. And even if we don't place them with us, we build a relationship for down the road."
How to Hire: Part Three
Your new 'marketing' mind-set
Ultimately, getting your company geared up to become the recruiting machine it needs to be involves more than sharpening old hiring tools and acquiring new ones. More important is the mind-set you apply to the task. Think of the energy and discipline you bring to courting prospective customers, and you'll get some idea of the intensity you need to bring to the recruiting table.
In the first six months of 1998, Dan Maude took his employee base from 40 to 70, with a goal of having 100 staffers by year-end 1998. Recognizing that the process was more a marketing job than a classic "personnel" function, Maude put his vice-president of marketing at the helm of the recruiting effort. "Sales is not the problem," Maude notes. "Getting customers is the easy part."
Often the biggest selling point a growing company has, and the most difficult to copy, is its culture. Which is why Bill Ziercher, CEO of Sterling Direct Inc., a direct-marketing and communications company in Earth City, Mo., goes out of his way to make sure his company is a fun place to work. The company has ongoing "contests" such as "Pat the Pig," in which a porcine Beanie Baby sits on the sloppiest desk of week, with this week's winner awarding the pig to the next week's recipient. And then there's the "Smiley Face Game," in which, if a fellow employee goes out of his way to be nice to you, you can enter his name into a weekly drawing for a T-shirt, a free limo ride, even tickets to a Cardinals game. The company also holds regular events, such as a recent beach party, during which the lunchroom was equipped with a karaoke machine and Super Soaker water guns. Those who refused to sing got soaked. "But that wasn't a worry," says Ziercher. "Once you get acclimated to the culture here, you just jump on in." Fun events get employees talking. "Happy associates tell their friends," says Ziercher. "That helps you communicate to the outside world that this is a fun place to be."
