Archive for January, 2008
4 Ways to Get Recruiting Back on Track
4 Ways to Get Recruiting Back on Track
By Carol Metzner
President, The Metzner Group
Managing Partner, www.CivilEngineeringCentral.com
In my 20s, I was a young and feisty headhunter. A national E/A firm hired me to reduce outside recruiting fees and to build a recruiting team. Back then, as now, recruiting was tough. Not enough engineers, architects, planners or surveyors. Companies needed to be innovative in their recruiting efforts. Working for a professional services company, I never lost sight that I was corporate overhead. If my managers didn’t have the staff to do the work, they couldn’t bill the client and in turn couldn’t pay my “overhead” salary. What’s a recruiter to do? One day, while sitting around trying to think creatively, it was suggested that I go to the local “watering hole” and meet with the surveyors who visited it after work. “You want me to go to a bar?” When I presented it that way, it was quickly decided that maybe it wasn’t the best idea – although it was creative! So, what can a company do when the shortage of talent won’t even out for at least 10 years?
Here are just a few ideas to get you on the right track:
Revisit your retention plan.
Are you paying attention to your employees’ career development or are you just concerned with getting today’s project out the door?
Create an employee referral plan.
Be careful not to turn your staff into full-time recruiters just to get big bonuses. There needs to be a balance between rewarding staff and bribing them.
Evaluate your old advertising plan.
Success for Internet recruiting has moved from the large generic job boards to specific niche industry-related job boards. Attract the right talent and let the job board drive candidates to you.
Encourage staff involvement in industry-related associations.
Paid time off for paper presentations, use of administrative staff for industry-related correspondence, and company-paid sponsorships for staff to join associations will pay off in the future.
As the old saying goes, “Look to home first for your answers,” then go outside for help!
Carol Metzner is President of The Metzner Group, LLC, a professional search firm specializing in the search and recruitment of engineering professionals nationwide. To contact Carol directly, call 301-293-4206, or visit her on the web: www.themetznergroup.com.
Networking with Generation Next
Networking with Generation Next
By Matt Barcus
Moseying on up to a bar stool and talking shop with a potential client over a few drinks. Sharing the fairway at the local country club with a couple of high profile public sector clients to pick their brains as to who they might recommend as viable candidate for the VP slot that just came available in your firm. These always have been and always will be the best ways of networking at a high level with your Baby Boomer peers. As we all know, your Baby Boomer peers are retiring and people from a new generation are moving up. My question is, how current are your networking skills to the younger generation of engineers? How can you equip your people to get in touch with this generation of students and junior engineering professionals who are internet savvy and using social networking websites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com? After a few years out in the real world they transition into more professional oriented networks liked LinkedIn.com. If this is all a foreign language to you, hit the books (or at least the websites) for Social Networking Websites 101.
Assuming that you have at least a vague understanding of what I am talking about, do you know that on both MySpace.com and Facebook.com you can find different groups like ASCE, and ASCE student sections? Did you know that schools like Syracuse University and Virginia Tech have their own MySpace page specifically for their Schools of Architecture? A company website is great, but you need to expand your exposure to the tech savvy potential hires of today. It is easy to develop a MySpace.com or Facebook.com page that you can promote within the trade associations mentioned above, and many others as well. You can even start your own group (what a great way to generate loyalty and name recognition!). Post jobs, announce big project wins, discuss market conditions, highlight current projects and update it once a month. When your firm attends University career fairs make sure you have a couple laptops at your table where students can see that you are current and that you understand their generation, they will be impressed as you flash them your MySpace.com page.
LinkedIn.com is the professional version of MySpace.com and Facebook.com, and a natural transition for regular users of those sites. People love to see their accomplishments and bios on the internet. Explore different groups or start your own. Search for potential candidates by plugging in your competitors’ names or keyword phrases like “civil engineering” or “environmental planner” and see the results. In future articles, I will discuss what you need to do with that information you gather and how you may approach the people you “meet” through online social networking.
Matt Barcus is President of Precision Executive Search, Inc., a Pottstown, PA-based executive search firm specializing in the civil engineering community. Matt is also Managing Partner of CivilEngineeringCentral.com. He may be reached at 610.705.4942 or mbarcus@precision-recruiters.com.
Welcome to CivilEngineeringCentral.com’s Weblog!
Welcome to our blog. This blog is managed by Matt Barcus and Carol Metzner. Matt and Carol have over thirty years of combined experience as executive search consultants to the civil engineering industry (Precision Executive Search and The Metzner Group, respectively); they are also managing partners of CivilEngineeringCentral.com, a niche job board, forum & blog catering exclusively to the civil engineering industry. The intent of this blog is to discuss, debate, and share any and all ideas as they relate to the civil engineering industry, specifically as it relates to what we know and are so passionate about – jobs, searching for candidates, retaining employees, the hiring process, etc. So, if you’ve got something to say or something to ask, then you have something to post!
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