To attract the best salespeople, Chris Taylor, cofounder of $18.5-million International Postal Consultants Inc. (IPC), which sells international-mailing services, uses a system whereby salespeople earn "royalties" on their accounts: in addition to a commission, salespeople receive a percentage of the profit an account brings in for the life of the account. "We wanted to make it open-ended," says Taylor, "so there wasn't any reason for them to leave and try it on their own." Doesn't Taylor consider the system overly generous? "We hope all our reps make huge six-figure incomes," he says. "A lot of people have said we're giving the shop away, but we've never lost a rep in six years." Plus, word gets around on the street that IPC has this lucrative commission plan, "and that makes recruiting a lot easier."
Brett Brewster of Mitec Controls has gone so far as to change the entire structure of his company to make it more attractive to potential recruits. "We had to find a new way to compete," he says. "We kept losing people to the high-tech industry." Brewster divided his company into five limited-liability corporations, surrounding each of five account managers with one to three testing teams each. Whereas those testing jobs used to start at $14 an hour, now the teams are paid based on the profitability of the account. For example, on a $2,000 contract, about $1,200 would go directly to the people on the team, after they paid for company costs, overhead, and their own materials. "So they work to be productive instead of just being on the clock," says Brewster. "Their overall income goes up greatly." So when Brewster is recruiting, he can point to people on his staff making upwards of $40,000, and to the fact that they have some direct control over how much they make.
As important as it is to get the word out about your company through as many channels as possible, it's also important to ask for and collect feedback. Beverly Kelly, human-resources manager at Robert Charles Lesser & Co., a real-estate consulting firm in Los Angeles, asks candidates about other companies they're interviewing with, and what makes a particular company attractive. She also queries current employees about what they liked and disliked about the hiring process. And she sends an E-mail inquiry to people who have declined an employment offer, asking why. Kelly says she's made numerous changes based on all that feedback, particularly on the company's Web site, which now features more "eye-grabbing" graphics, plus explications of the company's interview process, training schedule, and samples of client work. 
Kelly has by no means finished tinkering; she thinks of her recruiting efforts as a self-correcting process. As does Lou Hoffman, who is optimistic about the changes he's making in his ever-evolving recruiting process. "We've seen some improvement, but we still need to get better," he says. "We started making changes two years ago, and it's really only kicked in in the past six months." Next, Hoffman plans to focus more on marketing to get the message out about his company. He's already created a corporate annual report for direct-mail recruiting efforts. He also hands them out at first interviews. "We thought it was the right vehicle to tell our story," he says. The report highlights the company's perks, which include an outside-training allowance, a paid-sabbatical program, profit sharing, and flextime. It also includes sample client-project case studies and even company revenues and gross revenue per employee. Thanks to his contacts in the business, the report costs him only $35,000 a year to produce, and Hoffman says that when he asks recent hires, as well as people who have declined recent offers, "What gave you a favorable impression about us?" the annual report nearly always comes up. "It gives people a sense of what we're about," he says. "None of our competitors has anything like that."
Additional reporting for this story was provided by Ilan Mochari.
But wait--there's more
For more information on recruiting and the tight labor market, see these articles from earlier issues of Inc. :
HANDS ON: " Beyond Campus Recruiting," April 1998.
OWNER'S MANUAL: " The People Chase," May 1998.
FURTHER READING: " Zero-Defect Hiring," March 1998.
FEATURE STORY: " Motherhood, Apple Pie, and Stock Options," February 1998.
FEATURE STORY: " How're You Gonna Keep 'Em Down On the Firm?," January 1998.
FEATURE STORY: " The Right Fit," Inc. 500, 1997.
WHAT'S HOT: " On-Line Recruiting," August 1998.
BUSINESS 101: " Think All Noncompetes Stink?" October 1997.
