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Laws of the Hiring Jungle
With unemployment at historic lows, anything goes for companies seeking to attract skilled labor
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Business New Haven
10/4/1999
By: BNH
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Hunting for talent? Hungry for qualified people who can grow your company? Better build up your arsenal of recruitment tools and strategies, because the labor supply is shrinking.
On September 22 the state's Department of Labor reported that the jobless rate in August plunged to its lowest level ever in Connecticut - 2.1 percent. That number gives Connecticut the lowest unemployment rate of all the 50 states.
Good news for workers, but bad news for employers across the region, who are having to dig deeper and cast a wider net to find qualified workers. And only the most daring, creative and persevering are succeeding.
Perhaps you're thinking that when the economy begins to decelerate, the pool of skilled workers will once again be filled. But that's not too likely. Demographics is one of the main drivers of today's labor crunch. Remember: 78 million baby-boomers aren't getting any younger. GenXers are the 45 million people born between 1964 and the late 70s. And guess what? The vast majority of them already have jobs.
The bright side is that these workers rarely stay in any one job for more than a few years. So while the ranks of the unemployed continue to thin, there are worthy workers who can be lured into your company - if you can attract them and have something better to offer.
When scouring the labor market, early targeting of prospective candidates is key. Many employers are setting up a permanent presence at local high schools and community colleges, and networking with organizations that place mature workers, and with state and municipal agencies.
Others are working the information highways, both on the Web and by posting billboards along interstate highways. Most are reporting at least some progress in finding the types of people they need, but not in sufficient numbers.
Thirst for Workers Grows at Surging High-Techs
"Right now I have 250 positions open. In February of this year we had 16 people on board. Today we have 140 ," says James Bento, vice president of finance at New Haven-based DSL.net Inc. "By the end of the year, according to our budget, we're going to need 295 employees, and a total of 400-600 people next year."
DSL.net provides small and mid-sized businesses with high-speed Internet access and service. The company is also a leading acquirer of local and regional ISPs throughout the country.
Explains Bento: " We have eight people doing recruiting now. Some are contract recruiters and some are in-house. We had 18 people start last Monday. We're signing up businesses and buying up ISPs at a very rapid pace."
So what exactly is DSL.net looking for? "We need a lot of networking/LAN people, computer engineers and Web application people," says Bento. Since these are the same folks sought by virtually all the dot.coms of the world, Bento is aggressively recruiting outside of Connecticut as well.
Arun Gupta, CEO of EcomAgents in Shelton, tells the same story. The company launched its first e-commerce product in February, and is set to go public within the next few weeks.
"We now have 40 employees, and need 500 by the end of the year," says Gupta. "Rapid growth requires creative recruiting. Particularly on the Internet." Posting jobs on popular job listing sites such as www.monster.com isn't enough. Gupta and others like him make a regular practice of posting openings in techie newsgroups, linking to sites frequented by computer types, and advertising on sites hosted by chambers of commerce and state labor agencies.
Coincidentally, DSL.net is also going public in a few weeks (sure doesn't seem like the tide has turned against Internet IPOs here in Connecticut). And contrary to the alarmist predictions of industrial behaviorists, technological advancement does not appear to be displacing humans in the workplace. In fact, there's hardly been a time in the history of automation when human labor was more valued.
Programmers fresh out of training command annual salaries upwards of $75,000. Since few early-stage companies can pony up that kind of money, they're assuring candidates of future professional growth opportunities, a future financial pay-off and a desirable work environment.
DSL.net's Bento has met with state economic development officials, the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) and the Yale Enterprise Center to try to forge coalitions with the state, local colleges, local chambers of commerce and Connecticut innovations to help provide training and get his company's name out.
Says Bento: "Here in our Long Wharf headquarters we can accommodating 150 people. We're actually looking for space right now, since we want to stay local. We need more space to set up areas to train sales and service people on an ongoing basis. Right now we believe that the New Haven area is the best place to be to put up our call centers and run our customer-service operation."
Businesses trying to lure top IT performers away from their present jobs are having to pay sign-on bonuses and offer stock options even to first-line programmers. Dollar referral rewards to employees whose leads turn into new hires are also on the rise. Other appeals to job candidates include work/life balance perks: telecommuting arrangements, day care, health club memberships and entertainment discount packages.
DSL.net has been hosting and attending local fairs and establishing employee incentive referral programs to try to bring in new people. Bento believes that there are still talented people available in the local labor pool. He's hoping that the company's eight recruiters will be able to reel them in before they get caught in someone else's net.
Cool Companies Make Smart Scouts
When you've got a business that's different or cool (or at least can be made to appear so), top-shelf workers swarm in. At least that's how Sandy Eliazarov, part-owner of the new Blues Café at 71 Whitney Ave. (opening date: October 7) sees it.
"So far we've been extremely lucky. We're quickly finding waitstaff, bartenders, kitchen staff, even table bussers, all of whom have great experience. There was a huge response to our help-wanted ad because people realize that there's nothing like this in town." Eliazarov says she's hiring about four of every ten applicants.
Highly qualified job candidates frequently select the organizations they want to work for by look and feel of the workplace environment. Energetic group dynamics, camaraderie and open lines of communication are easily detected by the naked eye.
For example, a talent scout for a high-end manufacturer of voice-activated technologies had to explain it this way to her client who couldn't lure a highly desired mechanical engineer from his current position: "He appreciates your offer of a $20,000 raise in salary and is wild about the stock option program, but he doesn't want to leave his job because he loves his company's culture."
Branford-based Seton Identification Products is another local company in growth mode. It may not sport high-tech glamour or offer Blues Café-style cool, but Seton does offer job applicants flexible schedules and a stable, supportive workplace. Nevertheless, Lorraine Kelly, Seton's human resource manager, reports that classified ads in the local papers aren't as effective as they once were for finding qualified people.
"We're struggling with it," Kelly says. "We've recently advertised our new sign-on bonus in the paper. And we have so many openings right now that we're raising our employee-referral program from $250 to $500 per successful hire."
Kelly is taking a multi-media approach to finding the people Seton needs. She's considering radio advertising and already posts jobs on a variety of Web sites.
"Advertising on the Internet has been quite successful for us," she says. "Some of the Web-generated candidates applying for these positions are local and some aren't." Kelly believes that qualified managerial and administrative people can be found on the Internet. The company lists positions frequently on monster.com, its own site and on trade-association sites such as the Direct Marketing Association. Seton also plans to post jobs on the Branford Chamber of Commerce's Web site and with the state's employment offices.
Don't forget that there are companies around that need to lay-off workers. Perfectly capable employees get pink-slipped when their companies dissolve, move or downsize. Kelly has had some luck recruiting semi-skilled or skilled workers by contacting companies such as Starter and Smoothie.
Seton's small HR team is often so busy responding to job applicants that there's little time to travel out of the area to search for new hires. Instead Kelly focuses on local guerrilla tactics like placing flyers in supermarkets and canvassing local colleges for year-round part-time help.
Since human resources are in such high demand and since colleges are one of the places where potential employees can be found in high concentration, some schools are recognizing a good opportunity when they see one. Says Kelly: "One college recently contacted us to tell us that for $4,000 we could place job ads under a glass on a table in their cafeteria. That stays there for a year - and we're considering it."
While growing your own entry-level or semi-skilled people works for some types of companies, most require that new hires to be productive on day one.
Says Angela Bolton, customer service manager at Graebel Co., a $300 million moving and storage company based in North Haven: "Even though we have a great, fairly relaxed work environment here, we've been having a difficult time recruiting receptionists and customer service people. Agencies often send us unprofessional people who dressed inappropriately for a corporate environment."
Bolton has had the most success with summer college students who are hired on when volume at the company is high. "We go right to career counselors and placement offices at UConn, South Central and Gateway," she says. As far as finding receptionists that can last more than a day or two, Bolton's tactic is to simply leave the ad in the Sunday help-wanted section for as long as it takes.
Early Intervention Fights Health-Care Labor Crunch
In addition to the ongoing need for semi-skilled or non-skilled workers, health-care facilities are plagued by a dwindling pool of qualified nurses. In her 25 years at the Hospital of Saint Raphael, Patricia Colby, senior HR consultant, has weathered cycles where nurses were in short supply, but this one appears particularly acute.
"Our biggest problem right now is a nursing shortage. I circled the globe trying to recruit nurses - especially head nurses - during the last shortage," says Colby. This time around an intensified hiring effort is directed closer to home.
"We're actively involved in the state's welfare-to-work initiative, working to prepare people and absorb them into many areas of the hospital," explains Colby. "I'm going to Hillhouse High School again next week to plug Saint Raphael's and to let students know that a hospital is also a business."
Colby wants people who are getting ready to enter the workforce to know that the hospital offers good entry-level employees many opportunities to grow into positions with more responsibility and higher salaries.
Says Colby, "We're advertising in different publications, local and national, for all kinds of people. Part of our strategy is to let prospective employees know that they won't feel like a number here - it's a personal and friendly organization. People are not treated shabbily here."
Recruiter's Secrets Revealed
"The No. 1 way we get people lately is through referrals from temps that work for us or from our clients," says Mindy Gagliardi, branch manager of Adecco Employment Services' Hamden office. Gagliardi is noticing that more and more local companies are doing the same thing: offering increasingly generous finders fees of up to $1,000 to staff members, and sometimes anyone, who can lead them to their next qualified hire.
Gagliardi strongly encourages in-house recruiters to get out there and become a part of the community. Adecco places temporary and permanent workers in administrative, secretarial and light manufacturing positions.
"We find that by attending charity functions, fundraisers and a variety of business networking groups, we can get the word out about the benefits of signing on with our agency, which include medical coverage and paid vacations."
Once the agency does line up candidates for placement, Adecco, however, still has trouble getting clients to accept entry-level people who don't have the skill-sets that they need right now. "There's a lack of patience among many companies," Gagliardi notes. "We would provide training to meet their needs, but many just don't want to invest the time or money."
Gagliardi characterizes recruitment life at Adecco as an "endless effort to get skilled people in here. The agency is succeeding to attract qualified word-processors and other administrative support staff, but bookkeeping, accounting and the financial people are more difficult to find. Still, she says, "Once you've screened applicants and checked references, you end up with maybe one of the ten being sufficiently qualified to send out to clients."
Some of the recent recruitment ideas of the day that Adecco circulates among its 3,500 offices worldwide include:
o Call HR managers you know at (non-competitor) companies to ask them to ask their employees whether they know anyone with the skills you're looking for.
o Hold an open house independently or in conjunction with a local chamber of commerce. Offer $10 off on résumé development, along with workshops on how to do a job search on the Internet. Advertise free training opportunities at all open houses and job fairs.
o Actively recruit during off-hours and on weekends.
o Accommodate walk-ins and put a sign out in front of the office.
o Attend local community events, craft fairs, road races and other sporting events and set up recruiting tables while passing out flyers and promotional items, such as coffee mugs or key chains with the company logo.
o Attend and/or sponsor programs and set up a job kiosk with recruitment and marketing materials at hand to distribute to passers-by.
o Make use of state Department of Labor apprenticeships and training programs.
- L.G.
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