On Thursday, July 26, I will be hosting a webinar sponsored by eRecruit on Metrics for the Staffing Industry. In this webinar, I will discuss how the right metrics portfolio can empower management decision making to ensure both short and long term competitiveness. It is important to understand that the right metric portfolio can help executives and leaders Measure Results Provide … Read More
SIA Executive Forum: The Most Direct Path to Greater Profits
On Wednesday March 14th, I will be presenting at the SIA Executive Forum on aligning your recruiting organization with your client buying patterns to improve profitability. The impact of effective alignment can be quickly realized in the bottom line results and are typically of a substantial scale. Why is the impact of improving operations so significant? Well, because delivery issues … Read More
Relationships Still Rule, But…..
Back in the early 90s when I entered this business, I was exposed to a simple yet accurate description of the staffing industry by Al Dubuc of Oz Enterprises- “People selling people to people”. The crux of that definition was that this business runs on the strengths of one-on-one relationships with clients and consultants. However, as clients have changed how … Read More
Planning for Success
How would you respond if someone asked “what’s your growth plan for next year”? In answering the question, you may find that you really don’t have a satisfactory answer. One of the causes of this lack of planning is the tendency to derive business planning from the budget process instead of the other way around. The budget should give the … Read More
Letterman’s Legacy
Recently, I stumbled across some articles that made some interesting claims including the “The ten dumbest management trends” and “The ten worst business ideas ever”. It makes me want to write an article titled “The top ten management articles that make controversial overgeneralizations to drive web traffic”. I understand why people structure their articles around lists, and if you want … Read More
Are the Scales of Talent Tipping?
From my discussions with many staffing owners and executives, things are getting better. Job orders are up, clients are moving faster and it seems more and more likely that the worst of the great recession may be behind us. This uptick is especially true for IT staffing. This is good news, but it does bring with it issues that managers … Read More
The End of Management
A couple weeks ago I was browsing through the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal and stumbled on an article titled “The End of Management”. Contrary to what it suggests, the point of the article is not to rid companies of management, but to challenge the perception of the role of management as it faces unprecedented change. One … Read More
The Price of Excellence
Recently the last of US combat troops left Iraq and crossed into Kuwait marking a significant milestone in a long hard fought war. Regardless, of your view on the war, the support for our troops justifiably crosses political spectrums and is a unifying force for most Americans. I believe much of that appreciation stems from the willingness of our men … Read More
Pardon the Interruption
Most everyone these days has a DVR. I personally love the technology, mainly due to the fact that I can skip all the commercials pitching products and services I don’t need nor want. Fast forwarding through these advertisements makes me think of all the wasted time and effort spent on just trying to get someone’s attention. On top of that, … Read More
The Power of Habit
I was just reading a book called the Power or Habit by Jack Hodge. The primary narrative of the book is that we, more than anything else, are defined by what we do, and close to 90% of what we do is determined by habits both good and bad. I am not sure how he determined the 90%, but we all know … Read More