Global Recruiting

We’ve all heard a talent shortage exists. However, do the shortages vary around the world? A 2011 Survey by Manpower answers that question. In January 2011, 39,641 employer interviews were conducted either by telephone or collected online in three areas of the world – the Americas, in Asia Pacific, and in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). My post today will provide an overview of the findings. I encourage you to review the survey results in more detail. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s installment was submitted by Jeff McGraw of The Callos Companies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jeff serves as the secretary/treasurer of NPA’s Board of Directors, and has been a member of the network since 1994. The Callos Companies provides a broad range of human resource services including recruiting & search, outplacement, temporary staffing, executive coaching, employee leasing, and travel medical professionals.

The six Jivaro Indian tribes are spread out across the Oriente of Ecuador. These native South Americans are notorious for three things: headhunting, beer drinking, and resisting the encroachment of the outside world.

Obviously, beer was an important part of the Jivaro life. So this one fact prodded me to learn more about this tribe and even further ponder “what is the correlation between drinking beer and headhunting.”

There are more similarities than one would think.

The Jivaros are the only tribe known to have successfully revolted against the Spanish Empire and to have been able to thwart all subsequent attempts by the Spaniards to conquer them. They have withstood armies of gold-seeking Incas and defied the bravery of the early conquistadors. The Jivaro Indians are known to be an intensely warlike group, tremendously protective of their freedom and unwilling to subordinate themselves to other authorities.

As independent recruiter headhunters, we too, in some way, have revolted from the mainstream and have been able to prevent attempts from competitive threats to conquer us and put us out of business. We have withstood threats from armies of job boards, managed service providers and in-house recruiters. And as recruiter – headhunters we protect our freedom to work independently and to limit our subordination to authority.

Protecting our independent recruiting business from outside threats while maintaining our business and at the same time meeting our client’s staffing needs in a timely fashion with the highest quality candidates can be an awesome task. However my firm and I have found a weapon of choice to stave off these threats. Being a part of a split placement network has given us the edge to remain independent and to compete at a higher level.

A recruiting split-placement network is typically a group of independent recruiters who share candidates and job orders in order to meet their client’s needs. These recruiter networks also enables its members to better serve their clients with an expanded geographic reach, greater access to industry specialization and access to more candidates (and job orders). Some networks provide a worldwide association of recruiters which can provide a global reach for smaller firms.

Looking back at the Jivaro tribe it was estimated that an adult Jivaro male consumed three to four gallons of beer in one day. I certainly would not advocate drinking four gallons of beer but I do highly recommend joining a global split placement recruiter network.

Almost a year ago, I blogged about a possible new global recruiting trend emerging regarding a preference for local candidates over ex-pats. Today, I read another report that seems to confirm the trend in Asia: Western ex-pats are no longer the “most desired” candidates for management positions.

Companies want to hire managers who have a deep understanding of the local cultural norms. In most cases, that means Asian natives who have been US- or European-educated. According to the article I referenced above, both Spencer Stuart and Korn/Ferry acknowledge that these highly desirable candidates are difficult to attract and retain. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me share a few headlines from some articles that are predicting the future of recruiting…

• Job Boards Will Replace Recruiters
• LinkedIn and Facebook Will Replace Job Boards
• Why Facebook will Destroy LinkedIn
• LinkedIn and Facebook to Face Challenge from Google+

OK, I’m confused. If we were to believe every headline, it seems like the recruiting business is doomed to be replaced. It also seems that anyone that becomes the next best thing will be replaced by another next best thing! Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I read a blog post by Simon Sinek (author of the book, Start With Why) called Two, Not Three: Boost Sales by Offering Less. The post describes why a chain of shoe stores that appeared to have no competitive advantage consistently outperformed its competitors. The owner of the shoe store chain had learned that customers bought shoes if they had no more than two options. When a customer had to select between three or more options, the customer most likely would not make a purchase. Read the rest of this entry »

Recruiting is back! OK, we have all attended conferences and meetings over the past few years and the attendees put on brave faces. The comments were about how it took more time and effort to do a similar level of placements. There were even those quoting a percentage reduction in volume down from peak years of recruiting results. “I’m off 30 percent,” or “We did 60 percent of our prior best year in 2010.” Well, things have changed! Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s installment was submitted by Julie Parsons of Premium Consulting in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Julie is a member of the NPA board of directors and an occasional guest-blogger. Premium Consulting is a boutique independent recruiting firm that provides professional and practical recruitment consulting advice specializing in retained recruitment, partial services, psychometric assessment and appraisals, outplacement and career counseling.

At some point, most recruiters or recruitment firms realize that in order to stay competitive and present a broad range of solutions to their clients, they need to go global. Some common excuses to avoid the work of creating a global firm include: “it’s too hard,” “that’s what franchises are for,” “franchises are so common, set up in every major city with multinational contracts.” Although each of these excuses have some merit, none of them should stop you in your global expansion tracks.

Try to set yourself above your competitors by keeping up on international market conditions and legislation. Your knowledge in these areas will be valuable in targeting where you want to expand and in what industries. One way to jump the international hurdle is to connect with like-minded firms throughout the world. A great place to start is through LinkedIn. Recruiters are pretty transparent on social media so they might be easier to find than you think.

Also, think about joining a network. There are obvious questions to ask as it relates to policies, operations and integrity before jumping into something like this, but if you’ve done your homework, your investment will almost certainly result in a positive ROI as well as global connections. NPA’s President, Dave Nerz, says “half of something is always better than all of nothing.” Yes, this statement may be a little cheesy, but he’s right. Could it be that the way to growing your reach is not through giant steps alone, but through half-steps with others recruiters like yourself?

What are some of the challenges you face with making your global footprint?

I had a wonderful opportunity to visit the UK last week for the Recruitment Agency Expo in London. I am going to generalize and we know generalization is dangerous, but what I found is that recruiting and the challenges seem to be similar in the UK to those that I see in the US. Here are some of the similarities I recognized during my brief introduction: Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you to everyone who participated in NPA’s 2012 business prediction poll on LinkedIn. As a global recruiters network, we are always interested in what recruiting businesses experience around the world.

67% of the 45 respondents were male and 33% were female. Positions held by the majority of respondents included owner, manager, CXO, and VP. The poll did not include in which areas the recruiting business growth would occur. However, several comments point towards the areas of engineering and information technology. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s guest blogger is Meri Laird Jones of Davidson, Laird & Associates, located in the metro Detroit area of Michigan. Meri is a current member of NPA’s board of directors. Davidson, Laird & Associates places technical, operations, sales and manufacturing professionals, primarily in the renewable energy, automotive, paint, plastics, chemical and processing industries.

We see a major trend in executive search assignments that are becoming increasingly specialized and specific in the skill sets required. For example, our clients are asking us to find them executives/senior managers not only with very specific technical experience and educational requirements, but who also have bilingual skills to address their global markets in Asia especially. (It’s not enough to find a Ph.D. in chemical engineering with years of research in specific energy markets who is willing and able to relocate, but this person must also be fluent in both English and Mandarin!) Read the rest of this entry »