Why buy a company when you can cherry pick the employees? Companies often acquire other organizations to attain talent, and do not realize all of the costs involved other than the initial sticker price.
Goldmines of Talent
Some companies are goldmines of talent and are often considered great deals. However, on further analysis or after acquisition, hidden costs are found. There may be under/low performing employees; repetitive processes, functions, and replication of positions; major cultural differences; disparity in strategic leadership; burdening debt; restrictive contracts; and problematic locations. Perhaps these issues can be avoided through due diligence and/or resolved through great leadership, but at what cost?
Taking a Good Hard Look
First, a company needs to ask why they are considering acquiring another company. If a company’s main reason for acquiring another company is to obtain talent, they need to decide if acquisition is really the best route to go. This means taking a good hard look at all costs involved-- not just the actual selling price but also the hidden costs and domino effects to the company, the acquired company, the employees, and the economy.
These acquisitions can cause difficult employee integrations and layoffs due to cultural differences, repetitive functions and processes or duplicate employees. This usually results in lower employee morale, higher turnover, lower production, higher costs, and lower profits.
Like Brain Surgeons…
Skillful recruiters can minimize costs enormously. Like brain surgeons, they can carefully target, extract, screen, and present much needed candidates to their clients. After candidates are hired, they can be more easily integrated on a case-by-case basis than can many new employees in the case of a massive acquisition. Depending on recruiters’ fees and the volume and quality of recruiting needed, employing third party recruiting services can be a much more economical route versus acquiring another company.
Cherry Picking
Cherry picking, in addition to reducing costs, allows companies to acquire talent at all levels and fields from companies globally. After a company considers all internal and external factors, it may decide that cherry picking employees may be a more customizable and beneficial route to take not only because of the costs, but because of the opportunities offered.
Showing posts with label contract. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contract. Show all posts
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Contract Recruiter - Past, Present, Future
Yesterday
I started my first contract recruiting assignment in 1995 for Levi's. Back in the 90's, there were very few of us, and there really was no predecessor to model myself after.
It was really up to me to decide what was included in this role. This usually meant finding and meeting with a potential client, negotiating a contract, and doing whatever it took to honor the contract. Since technology and ATS's were far and few between especially at the corporate level (many agencies had something in place), I would set up a database to track candidates. It also meant sitting down with each hiring manager to understand his or her needs and writing up the requisition and job description. This was followed by sourcing and screening, interviewing, reference and background checking, negotiation, closing, offer, and orientation.
With this scenario, placements came easily and with it the need for other advisory services outside of recruiting. In addition to these basics, I managed or provided projects/troubleshooting/advice for compensation, branding, infrastructure, recruiting tools/systems/metrics, internal recruiting, career pathing, organizational development, vendor and contract negotiation, compliance and employee relations.
Today
Today, with total functions being outsourced, recruiting has been broken down into many functions: client relations, sourcing, candidate development, interviewing, reference and background checking, negotiation/offer and account management. This has been both good and bad.
Volume recruiting can be handled more easily and more consistently if the process is sound and communication is good. In turn, the cost of upgrading technology can be justified by increased productivity and need for compliance; with better systems in place, processes can be integrated and expedited.
On the flip side, poor communication and processes can mean inefficient recruiting, targeting the wrong candidates, resulting in lower productivity, reduced quality, and wasted stakeholder time. Breaking recruiting down to small, specific functional areas often is an oversimplification of "recruiting" and translates into a tremendous drop in rates and diminishing duties for contract recruiters. With redundant, repetitive, clerical/administrative, myopic duties, comes poor branding for the contract recruiter. Considering these factors, what does this mean for the "contract recruiter of tomorrow"?
Tomorrow
Considering living costs and inflation, there are three choices, the contract recruiter can make:
Others will leave completely realizing they can use their experience, skills, knowledge, abilities and beliefs for a new career or life vocation. Some will retire. A few will leave intermittently and return.
Yet others will evolve, staying connected to contract recruiting but in a new way: Full Spectrum HR; HR Business Partner; HR Services/SaaS; Education, Communications and Recruiting; Technology & Recruiting; Deep Research & Sourcing; Compliance & Recruiting; Global Recruiting; and Recruiting & Retention.
I started my first contract recruiting assignment in 1995 for Levi's. Back in the 90's, there were very few of us, and there really was no predecessor to model myself after.
It was really up to me to decide what was included in this role. This usually meant finding and meeting with a potential client, negotiating a contract, and doing whatever it took to honor the contract. Since technology and ATS's were far and few between especially at the corporate level (many agencies had something in place), I would set up a database to track candidates. It also meant sitting down with each hiring manager to understand his or her needs and writing up the requisition and job description. This was followed by sourcing and screening, interviewing, reference and background checking, negotiation, closing, offer, and orientation.
With this scenario, placements came easily and with it the need for other advisory services outside of recruiting. In addition to these basics, I managed or provided projects/troubleshooting/advice for compensation, branding, infrastructure, recruiting tools/systems/metrics, internal recruiting, career pathing, organizational development, vendor and contract negotiation, compliance and employee relations.
Today
Today, with total functions being outsourced, recruiting has been broken down into many functions: client relations, sourcing, candidate development, interviewing, reference and background checking, negotiation/offer and account management. This has been both good and bad.
Volume recruiting can be handled more easily and more consistently if the process is sound and communication is good. In turn, the cost of upgrading technology can be justified by increased productivity and need for compliance; with better systems in place, processes can be integrated and expedited.
On the flip side, poor communication and processes can mean inefficient recruiting, targeting the wrong candidates, resulting in lower productivity, reduced quality, and wasted stakeholder time. Breaking recruiting down to small, specific functional areas often is an oversimplification of "recruiting" and translates into a tremendous drop in rates and diminishing duties for contract recruiters. With redundant, repetitive, clerical/administrative, myopic duties, comes poor branding for the contract recruiter. Considering these factors, what does this mean for the "contract recruiter of tomorrow"?
Tomorrow
Considering living costs and inflation, there are three choices, the contract recruiter can make:
- stay,
- leave,
- or evolve.
Others will leave completely realizing they can use their experience, skills, knowledge, abilities and beliefs for a new career or life vocation. Some will retire. A few will leave intermittently and return.
Yet others will evolve, staying connected to contract recruiting but in a new way: Full Spectrum HR; HR Business Partner; HR Services/SaaS; Education, Communications and Recruiting; Technology & Recruiting; Deep Research & Sourcing; Compliance & Recruiting; Global Recruiting; and Recruiting & Retention.
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