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Legal Stuff: How to Select A Recruiter first appeared in the December 1991 Issue of Printed Circuit Fabrication Magazine and is reprinted with permission. The Hiring Process: Managers be Prepared first apeared in the September 1997 issue of CiruiTree Magazine magazine and is reprinted with permission. The Imperfect Storm first appeared as a PC Fab Web article in July 2001 and is reprinted with permission. Printed Circuit FABRICATION Magazine December 1991 Using a Recruiter By Nelson Silverstein Choosing a personnel recruiter carefully can pay off in the long run. Should I use a recruiter? That is the question. And the answer is often a resounding yes. Personnel recruiters specializing in your industry can save you time and money and get you the best possible person for the job in the shortest time period. These people do nothing but recruit. Therefore, they may be better at it than you are. Good PCB industry recruiters will have voluminous files on qualified candidates and will know at any given time which candidates are available. WHAT KIND OF RECRUITER? Recruiters who specialize in your industry are usually your best bet. They know your needs without having to be educated. They will recognize qualified candidates and will be able to move quickly and efficiently. They will have extensive industry contacts who can point them to the right source when necessary. It is more than likely that they will be able to present several candidates with suitable skills and qualifications so you can select the one you like best. Should you always use an industry specialist? Probably not. Industry specialists are not as necessary when general rather than specific skills are required. Suppose you need an accountant for your board shop. Your candidates need not come from PCB facilities. Your needs will probably best be met by access to a broad category of accountants with a variety of underlying industry experience. A general recruiting firm could do the job in this case. On the other hand, if you need a director of engineering, you will do best with a recruiter who has direct PCB experience. OTHER OPTIONS Now let us consider some concrete cases. Assume your worst staffing nightmare has occurred. You have lost a key person in the middle of a major project. How do you replace this person with the right person and in rapid order? The traditional choices are running an advertisement, asking your employees whom they know, making your vendors aware of your needs, and examining your own personnel files for past candidates. Or you can call a recruiter who specializes in your industry. Running an advertisement in a trade publication is a viable choice. You will certainly reach your target audience. However, the lead time necessary for placing the ad can be a problem; it’s often four to six weeks for monthly publications. Adding a month or more to the amount of time usually required to collect responses and schedule interviews may not be the best way to fill an immediate need. Placing an ad in the employment section of a newspaper in your local market also poses problems. It is often prohibitively expensive in major cities. You will be hitting a large and diverse readership, most of whom will have no interest in your ad or familiarity with your industry. You will also be spending recruiting dollars on a vehicle whose life span rarely exceeds one day. Often, the applicants who respond to newspaper ads don’t have the required experience. They send in replies in hopes that other positions, not advertised, will be available for them. Or, they honestly believe they can do the job without the experience. Culling through resumes of no immediate relevance can be time consuming and expensive for the hiring professional who must evaluate them and for the secretary who must respond with "thank you for your interest" letters. Another possibility for filling the open position is asking for referrals from employees, vendors, and others. There is no harm in asking. One or more of them may know someone who is looking for a job. But, these individuals usually have limited exposure to job-seeking professionals. Plus, you cannot expect them to look actively and to sell potential candidates on the merits of the open position and your company. Reviewing old personnel files also tends to be of limited value. These candidates will most likely have found alternative employment. CHOOSING A RECRUITER Using a recruiter may be your best option. In choosing a recruiter, you should be as careful and selective as you would be in making any other significant business decisions. Your recruiter will be representing you in dealing with professionals throughout the PCB industry. Before choosing a recruiter, ask for references and talk with other companies the recruiter has served and candidates he has placed. Review all fees and payment terms prior to engaging services. Be explicit as to what you expect from the recruiter. Differing levels of service demand different fee levels. For example, if you expect the recruiter to meet personally with each candidate prior to furnishing the candidates to you, any associated expenses are your obligation. If you would like to receive in-depth written evaluations and references on candidates, you should expect the recruiter’s fee to reflect this additional service. It is always in your interest to help your recruiter help you. Provide him with as detailed a job description as you can. Tell him exactly what is involved, including salary range, relocation policy, benefits package, skills required, future growth potential, and why the position is available. It is also wise to review the "corporate personality," so that the recruiter can provide candidates who will fit in with the organization.In addition, tell the recruiter about the management to whom the candidate will report and the persons with whom he will be interfacing. This information can be critical. It makes your recruiter more efficient and effective in presenting your company. POST-PLACEMENT ACTIVITIES As your relationship with a recruiter develops, you will want to set ground rules for post-placement activities. For example, you will not want a recruiter to solicit an individual he has placed with you for a position with another company. Most recruiters would regard this action as highly inappropriate. They usually avoid soliciting any individuals from companies with whom they have placed candidates. But what if one of your employees contacts the recruiter without having been solicited? This is an industry recruiter’s dilemma. He does not want to offend his client, nor does he. want to turn away a viable candidate. He needs your input on this point. Issues like these can be discussed with your recruiter at any time. There are numerous ways to recruit personnel, and each has its time and its place. A good recruiter can justify his fee by the time saved and by using his background in the industry to select the proper candidate to satisfy both his client’s and the candidate’s needs. Nelson Silverstein is the President of NDS Associates Ltd., a personnel recruitment firm servicing the printed circuit board industry with offices in Peekskill, New York.
THE IMPERFECT STORM Why 'No new hires' spells opportunity for smaller companies. By: Nelson Silverstein PC Fab Web Exclusive article July 2001 In December, our industry suddenly came screeching to a halt unlike anything we have ever seen. By the second week of January, I was receiving calls from many high-volume producers. All wanted to know what was I hearing about the marketplace. And the theme was always the same: "It is like someone just turned off the spigot," or "We are going to miss our projections by 30 to 40 percent." There was no joy in knowing that they were not alone in their plight. Luckily, few of the dedicated quickturn and prototype shops have felt the impact as strongly as the high-volume ones. Perhaps this is a bright spot. What happened? While I am not an economist, it appears that our industry was hit with the perfect storm. Every segment of the market - automotive, computers, consumer electronics, telecom - nose-dived simultaneously. It began with the materials shortages last year, which caused many customers to double-book to ensure adequate supplies. Then a series of exterior factors quickly wreaked havoc on our economy: rising energy costs; the disputed election; dismal weather conditions during the holiday shopping period; the rapid decline in valuations of the dot-coms, and the resulting impact on the entire tech sector. Add the Microsoft antitrust litigation into the pot, stir in Japan's ongoing economic travails, and the myriad other factors that affect our industry, and it is no surprise the book-to-bill ratio has plummeted. How is our industry dealing with this? How will it influence us? What is the employment outlook? To look at the last slowdown our industry experienced, during the early '90s, does not provide a valid model. At that time, how many of the major U.S. PCB suppliers were publicly held? Not as many as there are now. When they anticipate missing earnings expectations, public companies announce layoffs as a way of demonstrating to Wall Street that they are taking measures to alleviate the problems. Are the privately held companies reacting differently? From my viewpoint, the answer is yes. Rather than announcing layoffs, many privately held companies during the past two months reduced the workweek to four days rather than lay off valued skilled employees. Many of these privately held companies are taking advantage of this current wave of layoffs as an opportunity to upgrade their staff. The public companies are constrained by their corporate dictum - "No new hires" and are unable to take advantage of this opportunity. Few privately held employers could compete for top talent when faced with having to compete with offers of stock options and the allure of instant wealth as their value soared. Now these employees are on the market and many are seizing the opportunity. What does the future hold? I don't have a crystal ball. Nevertheless, with JIT delivery, bloated inventories will run down soon. Consumers are still buying; just not at the same rate. We are a nimble industry with great productivity. Moreover, those prototypes mentioned earlier will turn into new products and will revive our industry. From my side of the desk, the employment market remains bright for skilled personnel. Our first quarter compares very favorably with prior years. The only change we see is who is doing the hiring and who is doing the downsizing. Nelson Silverstein is president of NDS Associates Ltd. (Palm Beach, FL), a personnel recruiting firm. He can be contacted at: Ph 1-561-202-0968 | Cell 1-561-252-0654 | Fax 1-561-282-3302; nelson@ndsassoc.com. CircuiTree Magazine Avoid wasting time and money by hiring correctly the first time. The Hiring Process: Managers Be Prepared By Nelson Silverstein Few managers have received any formal training in how to interview. This can produce major miscommunication. This article will help managers avoid what I call the "two ships passing in the night syndrome." The focus of an interview should begin with a job description, but often does not. Without an accurate definition of the job function, responsibilities, prerequisite experience, standards of performance measurement, etc., it is impossible for a manger to conduct a meaningful interview and to extract pertinent information. I am sure that many readers with whom I have been in contact with over the past sixteen years will chuckle at what follows. One of my favorite requests when taking a job order from a client is: "give me five questions I can ask a candidate. Assuming I get affirmative answers to all five, I will then know the candidate is qualified for the position." Few managers are able to come up with those five questions without thoughtful analysis. I ask, how can you conduct an interview if you cannot identify those five questions? The only answer is: you cannot until you define what you are looking for. The first step in writing a job description is to define the duties or function. The interviewer should have a specific and clear idea of what the interviewee will do on a daily basis and should spell that out. In preparation for the interview, the interviewer should write out, or mentally script questions to determine the candidate’s experience as related to the daily duties. The second step in a job description is to describe the responsibilities defining the scope of, the extent and limits of authority inherent in the position. Define the limits both from a manpower and machine standpoint if inherent in the position. The third step is to define the role of the position in terms of the whole. Some jobs require heavy integration; some do not. Some individuals cannot relate to a team, some can. Hence, it is wise to know what you are looking for. The fourth step is to develop a list of skills a candidate must possess in order to perform the defined task. This might include level of education, knowledge of specific equipment, software, or computer familiarity, and others. This domain is particularly the province of the job description; it is easy to forget to inquire about a particular skill without the aide of the job description. This can be more than inconvenient if the skill is indispensable to the job. Many readers would be amazed if they had the opportunity to listen in to post-interview conversations I have had with clients and applicants. Client "He’s a really good candidate, but he has no experience at all with a specific requirement." I will rebut the statement based on my interview notes and then contact the candidate for confirmation and additional specifics. Me to Candidate "During our interview you stated you had experience with a specific. Mr. Hiring Manager just told me you never mentioned it.," The Candidate "He never asked me about it—we spent most of the time talking about his lamination and drilling problems. It never came up." Two ships just passed in the night. A major flaw in the interviewing process is the unwarranted dependence placed by the hiring manager on the candidate’s resume. More often than not, the candidate feels bound to recite back what is contained in the resume and depends on the interviewer to extract points of interest not readily apparent. This is not the best approach. A better approach requires the interviewer to devise questions that will elicit the in-depth information most important to the hiring manager, irrespective of what the candidate has put on the resume. The final, but perhaps most important, element of the job description is the development of a specific and explicit standards of performance section. This requires careful and realistic evaluation of tasks and the establishment of performance standards required of employees. This is indispensable to the selection of the optimum candidate and eminently fair, since most professionals are comfortable dealing with specific objectives. What I have described in the foregoing paragraphs is the preparation of an indispensable tool for the job interview, namely the job description. Now we come to the interview itself. Several questions are presented. How will I conduct the interview? Do I take charge and direct the conversation? Do I provide latitude and permit the candidate to talk about what he or she wants, or do I take a compromise position and gently guide the discussion? My recommendations are the following. First, I make sure that I will not be interrupted except for an emergency. Frequent interruptions are disruptive and insulting to the candidate. Second, I tell the candidate whom I am, where I fit into the whole and provide a brief description of the position. Third, I proceed to measure the candidate’s qualifications against the job description though a series of direct questions. And finally, having done all that, I visibly—and with a flourish— put the resume aside and ask the candidate to talk about himself. I ask for his interests, his background, his goals, his achievements, what he liked about previous jobs and what he has disliked, and most importantly, what are his expectations regarding the job for which he is interviewing. The interview is over. The hiring process is nearly complete. The hiring decision is as important as any business decision a manager is apt to make. If you are hiring a direct report, you will depend heavily on that person. Your career may rise or fall as a function of this person’s actions and perhaps, you will be spending more time with him or her than your family. It is imperative that your evaluation of the candidate’s capabilities and compatibility be accurate. The costs per hire today are such that every moment spent in the interviewing process must be maximized. The cost of a mistake made by the hiring manager can result in fiscal and emotional damage to all involved. I have been an executive recruiter since 1972. I have seen the personnel I have place grow from entry-level to the presidency—I have also seen candidates discharged or resign within six months. The interview process is far from perfect. However, by predetermining your needs you will facilitate your ability to make the proper decision. Just as I was about to e-mail this article to CircuiTree, I received a call from the personnel manager of one of our industry’s leaders. I asked her opinion of the article and was pleased at her response. ‘You hit the nail on the head," she said. "You have no idea how much time we waste and applicants we miss with ‘two ships passing in the night’ interviews due to the lack of preparation for the interview." Nelson Silverstein is the president of NDS Associates Ltd., a personnel recruitment firm servicing the printed circuit board industry with offices located in Peekskill, New York. [ Publications | UpdateProfile | Comments | Sites ]
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