I am often asked why I wrote a book about the staffing industry. I felt like a book on staffing management needed to be written. There was no business case or financial model, just a belief that strong management is critical to the future of our industry. We needed resources that helped managers understand there unique role as well as … Read More
Webinar: Metrics for the Staffing Industry
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
Is Intuition Enough in the Staffing Industry?
Most successful executives I have worked with have an indefinable intuition for the business that drives their decision making. This ability presents itself in a variety of ways, but is best revealed when they are forced to make decisions for which there is no clear right direction. In those cases, the executive uses their best judgment and hopes for the … Read More
In Case You Missed It: Metrics that Matter
A couple months ago I was given the opportunity to present on metrics at the SIA conference in Miami. I have had several requests for the presentation, so it is now available on the website. You can listen to the presentation or view in pdf format here. Some of the topics covered in the Metrics that Matter presentation are: The role … 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
Hiring For Drive
One of the most common questions I get from staffing managers is whether it’s better to hire experienced or green sales people. Leveraging my years of experience, I can confidently answer that I really don’t know. I have come to this conclusion because I have seen both profiles succeed and fail. In the end, it seems experience level is a poor predictor … 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
Budgeting Behavior
Staffing is a rapidly changing, people driven business, so I have always struggled with the role of the budget in managing the day-to-day operations over the course of an entire year. While I know budgets are necessary, they can also exert a negative influence on management decisions and employee behavior that can be traced back to the budget process itself. … 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