Courtesy of Recruiting & Staffing Solutions magazine, March/April 2009 issue

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Leveraging Your Network for Survival, Profitability & Growth
by Manny Rao, Chairman of the Board of Directors, NPA

Use your network to:

• Find work
• Expand the market you serve
• Seek advice and coaching
• Cut costs
• Benchmark results

These times are no time to go it alone. Businesses are failing at record pace and the current economic conditions are not likely to quickly recover. So, all business leaders, including recruiting and staffing executives are smart to examine new and creative ways to leverage existing assets to deliver improved results. Looking for ideas, help, feedback, and coaching from your established peer network is a logical first step. Recruiters that have built a strong network of industry partners will benefit from the knowledge and expertise these networks can provide with the challenges ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

by Jason Elias

It is a truism that relationships are the key to success in economic downturns. Naturally your relationship with your NPA partners will be more important than ever; just ask Jim Sullivan who survived the 9/11 aftermath by working closely with NPA partners. Here are a few reasons why a strong recruiter network likeNPA is more important now than ever:

• Getting jobs on is getting tighter; your NPA partners are an instant source of active qualified openings.
• Developing new business is harder; your NPA partners can offer warm leads into existing clients to provide recruitment in your industry or geography.
• Pitching for business is trickier; NPA provides you with a comparative advantage over your competitors. Tell your clients you are willing to give away half your fee to help them find the right candidate.
• Business issues get complex; why not brainstorm with other owners or consultants whose experience and fresh perspective can solve your problem.
• Great candidates are coming out of the woodwork, but you may not have a role for them now. Share with your partners and convert opportunities into placementshappy candidates and clients lead to repeat business.
• You are never too old to learn; keep up your skills and brush up on the all too easily forgotten basics, with NPA’s training and webinars.
• Maintain the relationships in your recruiter network in a great collegiate atmosphere at meetings and conferences.

Laura Schmieder, Premier Placement Inc., NPA 1315

Long ago I read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. It’s a philosophy/travel book that mixes discourses on Eastern and Western culture with the blessings/burdens modern technology bestows on us. It’s a quirky book but I often go back and think about the lessons I learned reading it. Repeated throughout is the conviction that you must live a life of quality but also give quality to life around you.

There are many precepts about life throughout the book. Things about not allowing technology to take over your life but using it to your advantage – to produce good work. To instill patience, care and attentiveness in my work are to achieve peace of mind. Peace of mind produces right values that produce right thoughts (stay with me on this). Right thoughts produce right actions that produce quality work. Read the rest of this entry »

Gary Eastwood, Beck/Eastwood Recruitment Solutions, NPA 6770

One technique Beck/Eastwood has frequently employed as a best practice over the past 10 years has been to utilize contrary logic in order to pinpoint what exactly a client is looking to employ as a skill set for high level positions.

Huh? I know, it sounds bewildering. For us, it works like this:

When we take on a new assignment (we often work across the board in every discipline for our best clients) we ask for and receive the company published job description. This is one of the least helpful documents in talent acquisition in my humble opinion. Read the rest of this entry »

Kimberley Chesney, CPC, Prime Management Group,NPA 7525

How many times have you been asked to provide more resumes so your client can make a hiring decision? As annoying as it may be, we have to look at this from the client’s point of view. How you react to this request should be dependent on how well you know your client. Read the rest of this entry »

Gary Eastwood, Beck/Eastwood Recruitment Solutions, Valencia, CA

The beauty of the NPA experience is that there’s no wrong way to work successfully with a trading partner, if the importer and exporter are on the same page. Following is a case study in developing a new trading partner met at an annual conference and developing a partnership that yields multiple split placements.

In my experience, the backbone of a great NPA partnership is finding a process between importer and exporter that is efficient, particularly if you’re working with several different types of positions with different clients. In my case, I met Jeff Kortes from Human Asset Management in Milwaukee at last year’s Nashville conference.

Read the rest of this entry »

James Brackin
Brackin & Sayers Associates
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Following are some thoughts from someone whose been voted off the island many times, but continues to bob to the surface:

CompaniesClients, etc.
The basic principles apply in good times and bad
a. Get closer to your client companies (those who’ve paid you a fee in the last 12-24 months)
b. Service the bejabbers out of them
c. Make a concerted effort to get to know them betteryour friends in hiring companies will see you through
d. Remain very selective in referring candidates
e. Focus on companies that tend not to be cyclical
f. Market outstanding candidates (no company has too many winners). In fact, in a down market many savvy companies seize the opportunity to upgrade their employee talent.

Your firm
a. Money can still be made if you scrutinize your overhead
b. Alter your recruiters’ compensation package (higher commissionslower fixed salaries/fixed costs) The good ones will survive.
c. Get out of the officego visit some clients (see c above)
d. Expand your practicemaximize NPA for additional jobs and marketable candidates.
e. Identify trading partners within your niche to better service your client base
f. Respond to NPA job orders.
g. Market outstanding candidates to your NPA trading partners who recruit in the candidates’ area of expertise
h. Remain upbeat and optimisticremember the economy is the product of an attitude.

Jim Gifford
J. Gifford, Inc.
Tulsa, Oklahoma

In my role as chair of the International Development Committee for NPA, occasionally I hear comments from US members that lead one to think that doing international placements is hard work requiring a different skill set than is used in the US, or that the international placement activity has relatively little bearing on what the majority of our US members are doing. Both statements are incorrect. Read the rest of this entry »

Nancy Neumann
Hong Kong Executive Search
Hong Kong

1. Promote and market your organization’s capability in handling international assignments through your NPA partnership network.

2. When you secure the job order, you have to determine how you wish to work this job order:

2.1. On an importer/exporter relationship (when the client is based in home country and looking for staff outside of home base).

2.2. On a referral arrangement (when the client is based outside of home country and your NPA partner has the charge to pitch the assignment, manage the client on-site, as well as source candidates). Here usually it will be up to the affiliates to negotiate an equitable fee split, usually 20/80 or 30/70 are the norm.

2.3. Work exclusively with one firm or a scattered gun approach. On retained searches, it is highly recommended to engage a qualified partner who is committed to the project.

3. Post the job order to SplitZone and email the job order individually to those consultants whom you identified as having the expertise to assist you in the project.

4. In the case of an exclusive working arrangement with one NPA firm, agree on the fee split and document such arrangement if it is not the normal 50/50 split.

5. For retained searches, agree with your NPA partner on timelines and milestones of the search including submission of progress reports. Communicate to your NPA partner your style of candidate presentation. If you want the candidate profiles/reports to be submitted according to a firm-specific presentation format, send your NPA partner a sample.

6. After you gathered your long list of candidates, arrange telephone interviews (mindful of the time difference between locations). On rare occasions, the importer may want to conduct video conferencing interviews.

7. Present the short list to your client and arrange telephone/video conference interviews between your client and the candidates.

8. Conduct reference checks on the finalists.

9. Offer accepted by candidate. Deal closed. Celebrate!

10. Importer submits placement report to NPA.

11. On receipt of client’s settlement, remit the exporter’s fee share and NPA brokerage via wire transfer as international checks can take a month to clear.

Jim Gifford
J. Gifford, Inc.
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Incorporate it into your business plan

Develop “NPA international” as part of your company and personal business plan and have a strategy and formula to implement it.

Proactive vs. reactive strategy

Instead of waiting for the phone to ring and reacting to those job orders, progress to proactively identifying and marketing to clients
who can provide you with international staffing opportunities.
Marketing to the right person

Do your homeworkfind out who makes hiring decisions on international staffing, and make your presentations to that person. Find
out who at both the staff and operations levels has hiring authority and responsibility.

Involve your international affiliate. Have a 3-way teleconference among you, your local hiring representative, and your in-country NPAaffiliate. Or, have the hiring representative meet face-to-face with your in-country affiliate if the company person responsible for that
staffing is located in, or traveling to, the affiliate’s home country.
Have a formal presentation

Develop a formal presentation that presents your business as part of an international network rather than a casual “seat of your
pants” plan.

Feature benefits & services (e.g. local in-country recruiting experts able to not only provide candidates on the local level, but also cultural information relevant to hiring/placing candidates, local compensation rates and ranges for positions, unusual benefits [i.e. 13-month salaries, superannuation], visa or immigration issues and processing).

Highlight areas of specialty expertise these international affiliates have relevant to the types of positions your client is looking to staff.

Focus on “case study” success stories of international placements using NPA.

Presenting features & benefits

Efficiency of the Internet for candidate identification, communication between client and affiliates, both locally and internationally,ease of candidate delivery.

Video interviewing

Cost savings on travel of management to interview/recruit

Retention of local control and involvementclients able to continue working with their local recruiting firm who is known and proven to them, yet still get needed staffing assistance half a world away.

In-country affiliatesusually, there is more than one affiliate in a given country or city, meaning the client gets the benefit of several firms identifying local, pre-screened talent, which is then able to be further screened and cultivated and controlled at the local level.

Tested techniques to increase international job orders:

Branding program: NPA, The Worldwide Recruiting Network

Mailers and emailers

Web site and company brochures

“Bulls-eye” marketing

Association memberships

Trade shows and exhibitions

Formal presentation on international capabilities on every client marketing call

Use of the local SHRM chapter to set up an international roundtable on a recurring basis for local chapter members involved with International HR issues. Remember this audience is comprised of “operating company” clientsNOT other recruiting firms.

Attendance at NPA’s international meetings.