RIGHT RECRUITING

All right, Mr. or Ms. Manager, what are you going to do about hiring now? The unemployment rate is below 2% for professional, skilled workers. Recent reports from the Fed have suggested that there are not enough skilled workers left to hire. Growth is being slowed by the lack of people to hire. How do you staff your department in today’s market?

We’ve talked in the past about how to optimize your hiring process. A better process gives a better impression and maximizes your chances of a good candidate saying yes. Of course, you can also compete for candidates by paying more. Flat-out buying people is a good strategy if you have the budget and are only concerned about the short-term. In an earlier Newsletter we discussed how to expand the labor pool by looking at candidates who are more senior than the traditional, 3-5 year level professional.

It is clear however, that designing a recruitment strategy around a mythical pool of unemployed workers or around your ability to entice people already employed may not be sufficient to fill everyone’s openings. Forward thinking employers are recognizing that the real strategic key is to expand the pool of skilled employees. It’s time to touch the third rail and talk about immigration and immigrants. As someone who managed one of the area’s largest IT recruiting firms in the boom years of the dot.com era, I have seen what to do and what to avoid in putting together a team of non-citizens, non-green holders. In IT, it is easier than in other areas like engineering, accounting or operations because the IT language itself (Java, C++, etc) is a common language. In other disciplines, it gets more complex.

Let’s state our goal first, and then give some tips. Our goal is to find ways to evaluate professional talent, foreign educated with foreign experience, and then integrate it effectively into our US-based workforce. This is not the same as replacing your accounting department or engineering department with foreign born, non-green card holders who will work cheaper. If you want to do that, don’t go any farther. I can’t give you advice and it won’t work anyway. We want to know how to select good people to whom English may be a second (or third) language and who may have no or very little experience here in the US. We want to know the best ways to integrate them into your existing professional workforce.

Of course, the first issue is language. It starts with the resume. Is it well written? Typos? All technical with no verbiage? All of these are clues. It goes without saying that typos are bad. But hey, I got a resume from a US candidate last week who spelled his own name wrong - honestly! Poor grammar can be a bad sign. A resume that is focused strictly on technical issues may hide an ability to communicate generally, which will be important in most jobs here. Most of this is common sense.

But what are we to think when we see a perfectly written resume and call a candidate only to find that we can’t understand a word they say? One of two things. The first, someone was paid to write the resume. Yep, that happens. Maybe a relative wrote it, a friend or a resume service. Remember, if you can buy fake immigration papers you can certainly buy a resume. The second thing is more benign. Maybe they just write and read better than they speak. Accents and hearing can be funny things. As someone who has semi-fluency in more than one language and a smattering of understanding of a few others, sometimes written communications comes before verbal. Reading Chinese is easier than speaking Chinese, for example. You need to take a step back and evaluate someone like that in light of other issues, most of which we can explore below. Someone who is very fluent in reading/writing but with weak verbal skills need not be dismissed, unless day-one on the job involves significant client contact.

Okay, they speak well about their area and skills and about themselves. All looks good, However, keep in mind that a significant portion of their interface will be with people outside of their area and company. Here is where fluency really needs to be explored. How can you tell if someone is speaking English or just saying phrases that they have picked up in the business world? Humor is the answer. Can you make the person at ease? Can you make them laugh? If not, you need to slightly discount their language skills. We often confuse the lack of an accent with fluency. They are not the same thing. When someone without an accent is talking about a subject they know intimately, they will do well. Expand the subject matter beyond their area of expertise and all of a sudden you may be speaking with a totally different person. Once again, the lack of true fluency is not a reason to eliminate someone. It is a factor to consider along with all others.

Let’s now explore the interview/evaluation process and look at two areas. The first will be technical, by which I mean evaluating skills in their specific area. The second, cultural. That means ability and willingness to adapt to the employment equation as it is understood here in the US in 2007.

The technical aspect can be daunting. Many of the people you will consider have been educated overseas with work experience overseas. References can be meaningless. You could think you are speaking with the CEO of Shanghai Electric and are really speaking to the candidates brother-in-law. You have to do your due diligence in the interview and ask tough questions that are specific to your area. If you usually spend an hour on the techie component of the interview, you may need 2 hours. Have two people do it to compare answers. You will need to design your process to insure that you are comfortable with technical competence. Let’s face it, when you interview someone from your alma-mater who worked at the same company you did 3 years ago, you make assumptions. You cannot do that with someone whose resume says they come from a school you never heard of and worked at a company 10,000 miles away. As a manager, you know how to evaluate credentials. Just spend a little more time in this area.

Now, cultural evaluation. This can get tricky. You should look for an understanding and appreciation of career issues and a long-term view of employment. In other words, make sure the person knows they are an employee and not a contractor. This is really, really important. You don’t want to invest in training over six months to get someone productive and have them leave because someone else is going to pay them $500/yr more. Your salary structure is not designed like that. Most people, at least early in their career, are overpaid right after they are hired or reviewed and underpaid if they have progressed by the end of the year. Over a year it should balance out. You can’t do a daily, real-time review. That is understood instinctively here, which is why the annual review is standard and it’s not weekly or monthly. Guess what, not everyone from overseas knows that, or cares about that.

People come here for many reasons. For one, I am thankful to be a citizen of a country that people would literally risk their lives to enter. But motivations can vary and need to be explored. Someone here for money exclusively will not care about their career. They will leave you for $500/yr and not understand why you are upset. Maybe their family is home with no intention of coming here. Maybe they want to return home in a short period of time. Maybe they have never been exposed to a career track. Perhaps their home country is so unstable that a career track is the last thing they have thought of. Or, maybe when they first got here, their employment was all of contractual nature and they never inhaled the subtle differences in expectations between employees and contractors. It is important to insure that the candidate has made a long-term commitment to employment here and also understands that you are making a commitment to them - the same commitment you make to other employees. If you are fair to them, they have an unwritten agreement to be fair to you. This is not making them an indentured slave. This is important. You have to look at them across the desk and see someone who could be your neighbor and whose kids play Little League with yours. If you can’t do that, either they are sending bad signals or you need to work harder to look at them fairly.

How can you tell? First, look at the resume. Someone here for 3 years who has had 6 contract gigs, all in different cities, is going to have a hard time convincing me it’s not all about today’s money. Is their family with them? Kids in school? Wife work here? Good signs all. If you spend time with them and doubt their commitment, don’t go forward. Someone who is here just for today’s money is not a bad person but can be a bad employee. They should choose to contribute to a company as a contractor and then return home at will. This is not a value judgment about them. It is a business decision about where to invest your time and training.

Motivation also effects how they approach day to day business life. Someone interested in putting down roots and building something in your company and community will be more interested in general participation. They will want to know how to act, what to say and what to do to get promoted. They are here for the long-haul and not just to write a few thousand lines of code or manage an outsourcing project. In their first few weeks of work, are they asking which townships have good schools for their kids? Are they curious about why everyone at lunch on Mondays in the fall is talking about the "Iggles"? Over time, are they beginning to dress like everyone at work? Or, do they keep to themselves all the time? Do you know nothing about their home life? What is their wife’s name? It doesn’t matter whether you are from Brookhaven or Bangladesh; shyness is not a career enhancer in the US. We don’t bow to each other in the corridor. We look each other in the eye and say hello. To make themselves a productive employee, they must understand that social skills are a business lubricant here. Harold Katz was a shy stutterer who sold brushes door to door to beat stuttering. He then built NutriSystems, bought the Sixers, traded Moses and is now ensconced on an estate somewhere in Florida, I think. Shyness can be overcome. A lack of commitment to make a long-term positive effect can’t be overcome.

Some of the burden is on you. What can you do to make their integration as easy as possible? Of course, the first is to make sure the person is welcomed by your team as an equal. This may be more difficult than you think. If, for the last 3 years, every contractor in your group has been Indian, you will have to work to prevent the Indian employee you just hired from being seen through a contractor prism and treated as such. It is the nature of people to stereotype. It makes life easier. It is your job to work against that trend. One thing the last 30 years has taught us is how to do just that, thankfully.

Try not to create a language ghetto. I saw this all the time in IT. One programmer from China was hired and six months later another was interviewed. A manager would get a bright idea and say that China Number 1 could translate for China Number 2. Within 3 years there were 6 Chinese native speaking programmers in a 10 person group. Bad idea.

That manager created a language ghetto. His initial employees felt left out and suspicious. They withheld info from the new employees and started to make fun of them. The new employees got defensive and talked only among themselves. Basically, two cliques were created. It became the Sharks and the Jets of software. And, frankly, it wasn’t fair to China Number 1. His English skills actually got worse. He either spoke Chinese to his fellow countrymen or technical English to the others in the group. He never got to polish his English vernacular, which is what he wanted to do to begin with. Don’t create a quota. Just use common sense. One of the smartest managers I know used to make sure his staff was not dominated by people from any one school. He wanted new thinking and ideas. It’s the same concept. The people you want to hire come to the US for a reason. Don’t create the same working environment they can have at home.

Lastly, sponsorship. Without a Green Card, it’s a factor. I need to be candid here. I am not a lawyer and can’t give advice. I know sponsoring is easier and cheaper than it was. There are many levels of sponsorship and some only require the employer to fill out papers. On the candidate side, for some there is only a requirement that every year they go to a US port of entry and get their Visa stamped. They don’t leave the country. They can just drive to Niagara Falls. If you see a good candidate who meets all of the technical, language and cultural qualifications, don’t eliminate them without exploring the sponsorship issues.

Good luck. Have a good year. And, as ever, don’t forget Right Recruiting for all you employment needs. Thanks for your time. Jeff