For anyone that has been hiring you have probably noticed that the caliber of employee out there looking for work these days is a bit higher than in the past. During the last recession they said you could tell how the market was doing by whether or not you got stock advice as the cashier handed you your Dunkin Donuts each morning.

Below is an unedited, names and emails have been removed to protect the innocent, request for employment we received that I absolutely had to share with you all.

On the positive side the gentleman has lots of confidence and is not shy about calling attention to his perceived strengths, which is a key in getting noticed in the ocean of resumes businesses are receiving.

On the down side – well I will let you read it and figure out the downside. Needless to say he is not our typical job candidate so if you are interested in an introduction for your organization let me know……..

Josh

saw your ad on craigslist.  I never provide personal information to anyone
for any reason.

However, I have been a programmer for 30 years, consultant for 20.

I can handle all of the IT, Legal and finance requirements for any size
company.  I can take a company public, do complete business plans
including risk assessment, payback, breakeven analysis, proformas, etc;
I develop in postgresql, php, css, xml, javascript/jquery on Linux/BSD Only.
I don’t use CMSs or Flash, they are for amateurs.  Flash has it’s place,
but in my opinion that is pretty much only for video and music sites
that don’t expect a lot of hits.  Flash is extremely slow, buggy as hell,
but has a few cool features if you really need them; I used to develop
in Flash but found it was far more trouble than it was worth.

I will not touch a Microshit box.  All microshit software and os platforms
are pure crap and I won’t touch them, except to convert someone over
to a Linux network.  I also work in Sun/Solaris.  The best way to do this
is to let me know what the specifics are of a project and I can tell you
exactly how I’ll do it, if I can do it.  My skill set is massive, far beyond
your average consultant.

Frankly, most people are pussies and have no idea what they are doing.
They regurgitate the crap that is the technology of the day;  Ruby and
Python being an example, or those crappy CMSs like Joomla, Mambo, etc.
They very well might know something about IT, but they know nothing
about the law, or how to calculate marginal revenue/cost/profit analysis;
or inventory acceleration models; or how to do an M&A, or business
valuation for tax purposes.  I am capable of all of that.

So if you want someone to handle some business in the XX area,
and have the need for a near eidetic polymath, let me know.

This is a good article from the folks at emyth on hiring mistakes to avoid. There is an abundance of talent out there looking for jobs currently and if you have the good fortune of needing to hire to support growth you want to consider your hiring process more closely than ever.

 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Keep the following list of common hiring mistakes in mind as you build your hiring process. Remember, it’s never too late to build systems into your business. Even if you’re not hiring right now, by creating a hiring system, you’ll be prepared when the time comes.

1. Assuming a new hire is the answer – If you’re considering hiring a new employee the first thing to ask yourself is: “Can we achieve our desired results without hiring anyone?” In other words, force yourself to consider all of the options you have at your disposal (besides adding people) to produce the result you want. Only move forward with your recruiting and hiring systems when you’ve determined that a new employee is absolutely necessary.
2. Confusing recruiting and hiring – In an E-Myth’d business, hiring and recruiting are separate things. Recruiting involves defining the position and the ideal candidate and then communicating that recruiting message so that you attract the right candidate. The hiring process is about choosing the right candidate. By keeping these two processes clearly defined, you’ll maximize the impact of both and end up with the best qualified candidate for the job.
3. Hiring on the spot – There’s an old saying that hiring decisions are made in the first seven seconds of an interview. Seven seconds? This means that most hiring decisions are made from an emotional perspective. The candidate just “feels right,” and while trusting your instinct is good; it must be tempered with objectivity. We sometimes tell clients, “When you feel the urge to hire, don’t.” Your hiring decisions are some of the most consequential decisions you can make in your business — it’s essential to have a hiring system in place that allows you to consider all the pertinent data.
4. “Selling” the company – If you’ve done your recruiting process right, there’s no need for you to sell the company to your candidate because they already know exactly what you are about. By the time the candidate has gotten to the interview stage with you, you should be in hiring mode, focused on choosing the right candidate instead of them choosing you. If you feel like you need to convince a candidate that your company is “so great that you really should come work for us” then you’ve got a problem and it’s time to re-evaluate your recruiting process.
5. Hiring based purely on skill — Don’t hire based only on the candidate’s skill set. You should be looking for skill and attitude. Look for the right attitude because you can always train the right candidate in the skills of the job, but you can’t change anybody.

The title of this blog should not be “Have you implemented NPS” it should be “when did you implement NPS and what value have you seen from it”.

Today I was reading the blogs on the Net Promoter website and came across this post that I thought was worth sharing as it illustrates the powerful value to be gained by implementing NPS.

I have long made the argument that we all should be using NPS in our managed services business and publishing best practices as a way to know our core business is healthy, we are driving growth, and customers are remaining loyal.

The example below is a powerful story of how Charles Schwab used NPS to turn their business around from a negative NPS to a positive NPS and how that was a good predictor of their future growth.

We measure NPS for our clients after every interaction, onsite or remote, as well as through a survey each month to our main contacts and all end users. I am happy to report that as a company we have just reached our goal of a 67% NPS across all divisions. I also am happy to let you know, and may even be bragging a bit here, that our score for our remote team – services that are not onsite – has averaged 89%.

I hope this article help drive home the importance of this metric in your business and you in turn make it a priority to implement.

Josh

I spoke at the Forrester Financial Services Conference in New York City this past summer. It was a particular pleasure for me because I also got a chance to hear Walt Bettinger, Charles Schwab’s new CEO, describe how his firm utilized Net Promoter in its remarkable turnaround.
I had already heard pieces of the story from a variety of sources. Schwab began describing its client loyalty strategy and reporting its Net Promoter results to stock market analysts several years ago, and the press had picked up on what the company was doing. But this was the first time I had heard the entire story told in a public setting. Walt reviewed the dark days of 2004-2005, when he was president of Schwab’s retail business. Schwab was losing share. Its economics were collapsing. Pundits were predicting that the firm would not survive as an independent. Chairman and founder Chuck Schwab felt compelled to replace his CEO and personally lead the turnaround effort. The company’s Net Promoter Score at this time was negative 35%!

In its 2006 annual report, Schwab described how loyalty formed a cornerstone of its philosophy: “We want individual investors to feel so good about their investing outcomes—and their entire experience with Schwab—that they recommend us to their friends and family.” Walking the talk, Schwab’s leaders developed a reliable monthly NPS for each branch and began holding branch mangers accountable for their ranking. Bettinger himself personally interviewed scores of detractors and defectors to understand the root causes of their unhappiness. He insisted that bad profits (in the form of infuriating account fees) be eliminated over the next 24 months. Schwab became a founding member of our NPS Loyalty Forum and augmented these quarterly best-practice sessions with a series of internal conferences on NPS called Schwab-fests. The company integrated NPS into employee training. It created an employee engagement/loyalty process with NPS. The list goes on and on.

The results are impressive. By the summer of 2007, Schwab’s NPS had improved by more than 50 points to +23%. Its stock price surged, and it became a growth company once again (revenue had dropped at a compound annual rate of 5% between 2000 and 2004). If anyone has heard of another turnaround of such impressive dimensions, I hope they will leave a response after this blog entry.

In our six years as a managed service provider we have never specifically set out to provide services to any one vertical in particular. We have built strong services serving all verticals and ultimately claimed specific vertical knowledge by looking back at our client base and realizing we had a large group of clients in professional services, or non profit.

This has served us well in the pas but I am a strong believer that focusing on specific verticals in the second half of 2009 into 2010 will allow all managed service providers to maintain growth. I am not suggesting abandoning general managed services but rather adding vertical specialization to your list of tricks, I mean services.

As you make the decision to provide services focused on a specific vertical it is important to do some homework and figure out where the money is. For example President Obama is busy passing legislature that will refund doctors money in order to move their medical records to an electronic medical records system. The law requires all doctors to conform to this standard by a specific date.

That alone should get you thinking about how you can take advantage of opportunities like this. Education is another place that will see money flowing in from the new administration. Have you started thinking about these and other verticals you might be able to use to advance your business?

As I think about launching our verticals I realize there are specific items we will need to cover such as:

• Knowing the industry language – if you cannot talk the talk you will not get through the door
• Knowing the 3rd party apps – once you can talk the talk you best be able to walk the walk by knowing the 3rd party application players in the specific vertical and how to support and work with them.
• Sales materials – once you know the language and the players you need to get yourself out there as an expert. Find the trade shows, vendors, and organizations that already have access to your audience and get in the door with them.
• Regulatory requirements – make sure you can answer the questions about compliance in the industry. Either develop the expertise or partner with someone who has it and can work alongside you while servicing the client.

If you get these four things right and you are in a vertical industry that is spending money you will surely increase your expected growth for 2009 significantly over remaining a general managed services play.

What verticals strategies are working for you that you would be willing to share?

Josh

As we all watch our revenues and expenses during this tight economic time it is inevitable that you will have to forecast worst case scenarios in your business and create plans to adjust if worst case becomes reality.

Please don’t misinterpret this blog post, I am still very optimistic that managed service providers can continue to grow their business at a healthy rate in 2009 I just believe in contingency planning as well.

In reading about creative alternatives to layoffs if things go south I have heard of a lot of employers offering their employees the option of layoffs or voluntarily taking an unpaid day off each month to cut down COGS.

Not surprisingly companies with good team cultures are finding that their employees vote to take the unpaid leave rather than having a few people and their families take the hit in times of trouble.

Other companies are cutting back on work weeks and doing things such as job sharing to control costs as they feel the economy out.

I think the most important thing is to involve your people in the decision making process. It may take some quick and dirty education about the P&L and how the company runs but ultimately the group will come up with some creative answers you may not think about.

Thankfully we are not in a situation where we have to employ these types of contingency plans so I cannot report on how they work. What I can tell you is that worst case projections for any IT company this year will have to factor in these types of situations or they are not truly worst case.

I am curious what creative ideas you have employed or have heard about other using to control costs during these times.

Hopefully as businesses continue to cut costs around the world it will mean a continued steady source of managed services growth for us all in 2009 as they outsource IT services.

Josh