How can you create urgency in the hiring process?

Have you had outstanding positions that have gone unfilled for long periods of time? Are qualified candidates going elsewhere?

The first thing you need to do is make hiring a priority. Next to budget planning (i.e. getting money to hire), hiring should be the next most important thing your team does. Without people, you cannot accomplish your goals.

Your team needs to understand they can, if necessary, slip other things to support the hiring process. Until they do and until you actually support that ideal, hiring will always remain secondary. It is much easier for your managers to spend time on fighting fires or working on products than hiring.

The second thing I would do is set goals for your team and hold people accountable. Here are some sample goals:

• Resumes reviewed per position per week
• Hires per month per manager (goal: 1)
• Time elapsed between identifying a good resume and a phone screen (goal: 48 hours)
• Time elapsed between a good phone screen and face to face interviews (goal: 48 hours)
• Time elapsed between good face to face interviews and an offer (goal: 48 hours)

Time allowed for candidates to accept an offer (goal: 72 hours)

Set goals for the above items with your team. I have place some goals I have used before in parenthesis above.

Another big issue that limits hiring is that many companies allow teams to have way too many people interviewing a candidate. I limit the number of interviewers to 4. Pick people you trust to do the interviews. Make it a priority for them to interview candidates. Make sure you get their input back quickly. You can support senior candidates who want to talk with more of the team but make sure to set your team's expectations.

Many companies are pennywise and pound foolish. They will negotiate every little piece of compensation to get someone at the lowest cost. In the end, you may leave a bad taste in a candidate's mouth. Even if they hire on, they may resent the process. It also takes a lot of time in the process. And, in the end, it costs much more if you lose a candidate.

So with all these techniques to increase urgency, how do you make sure you are hiring good people:

• Learn which members of your team are good interviewers
• Do reference checks (blind ones too if you can)
• Train and manage new employees well
• Don't be afraid to manage out mistakes quickly
• You can make a positive difference in how your team hires!

More later ...

What are the key factors in good morale?

In my job as a management consultant, I get asked to lead teams that have been through some amount of trauma including management changes, layoffs, missed schedules, etc. I am always asked about their morale and what we can do to improve it. The following is a list of basics:

• Improved sales
• Having a job
• Interesting work
• Communication
• Accomplishable tasks

There is nothing that helps morale more than a company that is doing well. Everyone wants to be on a winning team! If employees can see path to continued employment, R&D expansion and increased remuneration (stock and/or salary) then that is a great incentive. Note that success can be a two way street because there is a natural ebb and flow of employee movement. If a company is doing real well it is unlikely that movement will occur and it will take closer management of your employees to make sure people are not just hanging on.

Following 9/11, many developers were laid-off one or more times. Developers took lower salaries just to have a job. For many engineers this was the first time in their careers that they were out of work for any substantial amount of time. Stability rose as a priority in job seekers. While the environment has gotten brighter recently, the memory has not been forgotten.

Engineers may go to a company or stay at a company for the quality of work. The art and science inspire and compel many high-skilled developers to join or stay with employers. If all you have is maintenance work for your employees, do not assume they will stay even if you incent them. Incentives (bonuses, increased salaries) work for a while but not in the long run.

Employees can put up with a lot of hardship and change if they feel they are part of a team. The first way to make them feel like they are part of a team is to let them know what and why things are happening in a company. Communicate often and make it two-way communication. Solicit employee ideas. Explain rationale. The more you can share the better. Make sure you have a plan or a plan for a plan when you talk to employees -- ambiguity does not inspire confidence.

Finally, the item that is the lynch pin in morale, success, and satisfaction: accomplishment. If employees have impossible goals and they can never make those goals, they will always feel like failures. All good things in a company stem from accomplishment. If engineers can accomplish their tasks, sales has a chance to sell product, the company has a chance to make profit, employees get to make some money and do new exciting work. It ties it all together and it just feels good to accomplish something!

Go out and accomplish something with your team!

More later ...