The Myth About Contingent Employee Engagement

A new survey says contingent workers are engaged with
hiring companies. Despite a small sample, it may have merit.

Last week we talked about worker loyalty and engagement when it comes to employers. Hours later, I received my daily email from a staffing feed with a report that says contingent worker attitudes toward hiring companies are quite favorable. It seems reasonable given the fact that contingent workers need to prove themselves because their livelihood as an independent relies upon performance and results. What benefit would they get from not going 'above and beyond' and being truly engaged in the efforts of the company for which they are working?

While not the same as loyalty; the numbers were quite surprising given the fact that a much larger global workforce study (1,000 times as large) suggested that two-thirds of employees are unhappy and disengaged with their current employer.

So I asked myself, 'Was I mistaken? Should I possibly scale back my way of thinking regarding this matter?' The fact that contingent workers are happy with the organization for which they work, own employer problems as their own, and over 41-percent of them would like to finish out their career with their current company certainly makes a strong case for using my contingent IT staffing offering and goes a long way to break the myth that they are just there for a big payday.

Then I looked at the numbers: 346 employees surveyed, all of whom were from Australia, responded to the favorable survey. With that, I had to ask myself if the favorable data was remotely credible. Given the sample size and country (I have yet to meet an Aussie who wasn't positive and persevering) my first thought was that last week's idea was on point: employee engagement is a problem and social media and the Internet have something to do with it.

However, I do think the positive survey does have some credence and reinforces another of last week's points. There are loyal workers around the world and forward thinking organizations that put employee happiness and engagement at the forefront of their efforts to improve results.

Both studies also support another point from last week:  What is the norm for one type of worker may not be the norm for another. Personally, I don’t see the difference that conventional 'wisdom' holds true about the differences in FTE and Contractors (barring 1099 situations).  I’ve worked with contractors who are no different than their internal FTE counterparts. They have a job to do, and engagement and happiness often depends on their current situation. Whether either type of worker decides to be loyal depends on something more.

I think it all comes down to two factors. The first of which is what the hiring company breeds as far as culture. What the level of trust is like, the management structure, and the role teamwork plays within the organization all factor in to the equation. If employees feel like a part of the team, contingent or otherwise; if they feel like their opinion and expertise is valued; if they have the ability to make decisions on the way the business or a project is structured; they will perform and feel engaged.

The second factor comes down to who the company is hiring, contingent or otherwise. It’s not a question of whether or not they are a contractor, but the type of people for which they are looking. A problem arises when employers are looking to hire the best of the best only in terms of a skill sets at the potential expense of enthusiasm, engagement and loyalty.

A candidate's personality and engagement can be hard to gauge during the interview process; that is…unless you ask. It's important to find out a candidates real motivation for wanting to work for you.

There's a big difference between a worker who was attracted by what you do as well as how you do it and one what is looking at how much you pay and what they'll be doing for you. A good interviewer can usually get an inclination of intent by asking questions about former employers and what the candidate liked or didn't like about working for them.

I am not a professional economic prognosticator, but being in the staffing industry and, due to the hints the recession seems to be slowly subsiding, I can firmly say the days of A+ employees for less are over. Companies will no longer get the best of the best in both terms of culture fit and skill sets for a song. However, that's not to say they aren't available. It all depends on what companies offer in terms of value and engagement potential to candidates.

Companies that have had the luxury of retaining top talent, contingent or otherwise, should do whatever they can to hang on to it: offer a stable environment and keep workers engaged and happy. If you don't, someone else will.

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including management, information technology breakthroughs, healthcare IT recruitment and innovations, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, and technical news and trends.

Real relationships, not online connections, build true professional networks

Some of the top recruiters start 10-20
quality relationships per week.

I am in the IT and Healthcare IT recruiting and staffing business. I am also a self-admitted technology maven and admirer. So when I ran across a blog regarding LinkedIn's affect on the recruiting industry, I felt compelled to expand on the subject further. While Navid Sabetian says that LinkedIn's bubble will burst and briefly, in closing, that one needs to cultivate relationships with top line candidates and build them over the years; with all respect to Mr. Sabetian, I think both points are obvious.

Here is the bigger picture:

Yes, Facebook will have a billion users soon enough, which equates to a ridiculous amount of influence.  LinkedIn is probably the largest network of potential candidates and recruiters on the planet right now.  There are the 'old' job board standards (Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, etc…), Google+, and 'who knows what else' emerging that I haven’t yet fully experienced.

 

There is no silver bullet: Meaning, there is no next or current 'big thing' that is the source to go to find the best candidates for all the open jobs out there.  This new market for talent is not about finding a single, or even two or three sources to find people.  It is about creating a network of real people, across all the relevant channels available to you.  It’s not about how many connections you have on LinkedIn or Facebook, but about how many people in your specialty areas with whom you are able to create some form of human interaction.

In fact, some of the best sourcing around is still done the old fashioned way; through direct, in-person communication. The internet has a host of tools for finding qualified candidates on paper (or on your monitor if you've gone paperless); however, it doesn't replace the legwork of striking up a conversation and getting to know them.

Sabetian claims to have a professional network with 16,000 direct connections with another 12,000 waiting in the wings, with whom he cannot interact due to a glitch on LinkedIn. It raises the question of how one would interact with the first 16,000. In one work year, assuming no vacation or holidays, you would have to interact with 61 people per day. Is it doable? Yes. Is it realistic each contact will be a good connection and suitable for an ongoing relationship? No. Some of the best recruiters make 50 to 100 contacts and start building 10-20 solid relationships a week with candidates.    

To me, as a few of the blog comments also eluded to, it seems that LinkedIn will likely become less effective as recruiters start to use connections as a database. The relevance you can have to one another on a human level in a sea of 28,000 connections seems to be very low for both sides; rendering the service less valuable to both parties. It brought to mind Malcom Gladwell's idea in The Tipping Point that we, as humans, cannot maintain more than 150 real social relationships with others at one time.

In fact, I think it is why I am of the opinion that LinkedInitself is having trouble remaining relevant to users today.

Is the idea of having a professional network with thousands of connections compelling? Certainly it is. But only if you maintain contact with your network, remain relevant its members, and interact with them on a regular basis. Otherwise it's just an overinflated database; not a true network.

Even with all the technologies and social 'networks' available, the basics of recruiting haven’t changed; or maybe they did for a while and now they have come full circle. The only difference is that now, we have more sophisticated tools to make the job of finding real people to develop real relationships with easier. 

I haven’t been in the industry long enough to know how things were done pre-Internet circa 1995, but I do know there couldn’t have been any option other than building a real contact network.  It must be much easier now to find the people to build that same network today; but people are still people and they want good jobs, with good companies where they feel valued; and they want the same when being wooed for a position.

All of the perks that many companies are starting to offer (benefits, higher than average pay, flex-time, daycare, healthcare, free lunches, etc.) to make happy workers cannot replace investment in relationships with those employees. We'll explore this idea further next week.

Good recruitment firms and recruiters become an extension of their clients' business and are often the first point of contact a candidate has with an employer; making relationship building with both even more critical.

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including management, information technology breakthroughs, healthcare IT recruitment and innovations, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, and technical news and trends. 

Rolex and Recruiting: More in common than you think.

Clients & job seekers deserve 'Rolex' recruitment services.

As recruiters, we have a responsibility to our potential and existing candidates to treat them professionally. Unfortunately, because some firms out there are lacking in integrity and have turned the art and skill of recruiting into a commoditized, low-quality, high-volume factory farm for human capital, there is sometimes a negative perception of the industry and recruiters in general, from both candidates and hiring companies. 

Staffing Talk contributor David Gee gives some real life examples of the recruitment image problem in greater detail. In essence, his examples show there are enough bad apples out there to make even the best, shiniest, sweetest Gala seem sour in the eyes of candidates and clients who have been let down by these types of firms.

To take it a step further, equate the problem to the fake Rolex market. I believe the fake Rolex has actually cheapened the exclusive status of a real one.  As I oversee the IT staffing sales activities of seven offices, I'm on a lot of planes and attend a lot of business functions. It’s no longer the rare person you see with a Rolex; instead it’s almost the norm to see that black Submariner.

Now I’m not saying they are all knockoffs, but what was once a symbol of class and refinement has become too common through indistinguishable fakes. The same might be said of the recruitment industry. My firm and many other accredited, legitimate resource providers like it, perform 'real' recruitment work. We call, consult, engage, listen and help candidates and customers solve their problems. Unfortunately, the fakes have tarnished our reputation. Submitting resumes without any contact then asking for exclusivity after the fact; posting bogus jobs in order to aggregate resumes in a database: that's how the hacks operate.

The end result is that clients mostly ignore the 'real' firms, assuming that we are also a cheap imitation.  The value of a solid recruiting firm is assumed to be equal to the value of a fake. 

Who knows if the job boards that marketed themselves to the 'upscale' or executive market have gone further to reduce the perceived value of good recruitment? After all, their inconsistent results have widely undermined their claims of exclusivity.

Either way, job seekers have developed similar behaviors to hiring companies in some cases, and have fallen to some bad habits that make it hard for even the better recruitment firms to truly help them find that perfect match. Monster's Larry Buhl wrote an interesting article on the subject detailing instances where candidates have done themselves a disservice through their actions and attitudes toward some 'real' recruiters based on their experiences dealing with bad ones.

When a candidate we recently hired gave us unsolicited feedback and thanked us for the 'special experience' he had with us, we were not surprised. He said he had done work with three other firms and had contact with many others. We didn't do anything out of the norm for this IT project manager and the recruiter he complimented treats all of his candidates the same way. But in this candidate's eyes, we did far more than countless other firms and gave him a level of service he had not come across. The point is, given his previous experiences with those who share our market space; we should probably count ourselves lucky he even considered engaging with us at all.

It’s time the Staffing Industry really asked itself - How can we change this perception?

Other than chest beating about how some of us in the recruitment industry really are interested in helping candidates and clients get what they want from the experience; other than delivering real, value-adding service; other than holding ourselves accountable for results; what can we do as legitimate recruitment firms do to squash the backlash from the resume factories? 

Make no mistake – Working with a recruiting agency should be a Rolex experience. Here, I see the true caring that goes into the process when great recruiters bring people and companies together. More than anything, I see the potential to help truly reduce the unemployment rate by helping our clients realize that the great talent does exist with some employer sponsored training and by showing job seekers that good honest companies are still out there too.

A Rolex is still a Rolex. Why? Because of the care and attention that goes into creating it. From a quick glance, the fake may look the same. But if you look closely, you’ll find it’s not hard to tell the real thing apart.

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including information technology breakthroughs, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, healthcare IT recruitment, and technical industry trends.

Back it up. Back it up. The Cloud isn't as safe as 'they' say it is.

Are you prepared for the loss of your cloud data?

I recently ran across a blog by Matt Winer regarding his experience with cloud computing that I felt was really important to share. His story is a warning to all who use cloud servers to store their data and brings about some key questions. 

What happens when a cloud server goes down; what happens when your whole online world (pictures, blogs, etc.)  is lost ? What happens when the cloud expels all it energy and, the cloud is exhausted? 

It is human nature to expect everything will be 'OK' when you post to the cloud, but it is not human nature to back up your work further. Winer gave users the ability to download and back up their data. Very few of them took advantage of this functionality. Relying solely on presumption that the cloud will always be there is a bad idea. 

Luckily in Winer's case, he was able to get everybody their data after a massive system failure. For the rest of us; without someone to monitor the chaos; what will become of us and our data when the next cloud goes down?

Now, I am an IT guy so this shouldn't come as a surprise: I figure if you backup on the cloud and on your hard drive you should be pretty safe. 

Am I wrong?

I don't think you have to proactively act on this information immediately (but it might not be a bad idea to get the process started). I don't think for a second that no one has thought of such issues or that there aren't already good systems in place. However, in the end, many of us are relying on a 'constant' that is proving to be less than constant. With no one to monitor it or make sure it is up and running 24 hours a day, is the cloud truly safe?

Of course every company that stores your data and life's work on a server has backup right? You know it's always good practice to backup your data, but you don't.

Don't be fooled. Once, a matter of semantics changed my life for two weeks: I said I wanted to cancel an upgrade order on my current server contract. I had found a faster server from another provider with better software for less money. A human at my host decided to 'cancel' (delete) all of my accounts and all of my backup servers. The end result was two weeks of frantic repopulating of a new site from bits and pieces I had saved in various folders on my hard drive and some cached pages that Google had not re-indexed yet. I learned my lesson.   

Back it up my friends. 

What you assume is going on behind the scenes is not always the case. 

If you rely on the cloud, you are relying on someone else to protect your treasured 'stuff.'  This is why we buy gap insurance on cars, why we buy umbrella insurance, and it’s why you should backup your 'stuff' in the cloud. Back it up or be prepared for the consequences.

Back up your data yourself because you never know what could happen on the other end of the cloud. I say this as an IT staffing professional: Back it up and be safe; because you never know who or what is going to fail next.

On your PC or on an external hard drive; it doesn't matter where you back up your cloud data. You put a great deal of thought, time, and energy into creating your data. Isn't it something worth preserving?