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Multiskilled Employees Sought as Versatility Becomes a Workplace Virtue

As companies slashed their workforces during the recession, employee specialists became an endangered species. Firms needed generalists who could adapt quickly, think on their feet and competently perform duties often beyond their job description.


Those jack-of-all-trade workers remain crucial to companies for their ability to handle multiple assignments. And versatility has emerged as a key quality that recruiters say they consider when filling vacancies these days.


A study released this year by consulting firm Accenture PLC asked U.S. employers why they added employees during the downturn. While 46 percent of the executives reported that they launched new products or entered a new market, 45 percent also said they needed workers with more or different skills for future business.


“Who are the people who can work under pressure, work harder and earn less, who can take on new tasks, who can be OK out of their comfort zones?” says David Lewis, founder and president of OperationsInc., an HR outsourcing and consulting firm in Stamford, Connecticut. “Companies need people like this now.”


Cynthia Good, founder and CEO of Pink, a publication targeting young female executives, retained the people who could handle multiple assignments when the magazine cut staff and went online-only in late 2009.


“I used to have one copy editor, one rewrite editor, two event managers, a designer and several writers and salespeople,” Good says, adding that publishing online only (although she says Pink still provides some custom publishing) was based on reaching readers who are more tech-savvy and like to receive the publication’s content on mobile devices.


“Now I have a half-dozen people working for me. My designer is also my media and video person, my line/copy editor also writes, my events person is now doing sales and is good at it. One person can wear a lot of hats in this economy where you must do more with less.”


Herndon, Virginia-based DLT Solutions Inc., a reseller of software to federal, state and local governments for companies such as Autodesk Inc. and Oracle Corp., also needs employees to wear several hats.


Since the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, DLT Solutions’ salespeople have had to take over what would normally be considered order-fulfillment tasks because of changes in requirements for federal documentation, says Chris Laggini, DLT Solutions’ vice president of human resources.


The new requirements—especially the mandate for transparency in government—meant additional customer information had to be collected for order fulfillment to do its job. However, because the information had to be obtained from the customer, with whom order fulfillment has no contact, the sales staff was asked to collect it.


“The salespeople don’t like that, but the customer is happy, and it’s more efficient for the company,” Laggini says. With that approach, “new pieces of business mean you don’t have to hire new people or create new divisions.”


With the new value placed on adaptable employees, hiring managers appear to be seeking workers who are willing to take on different tasks, even if employees grumble about the extra work.


“We define [adaptability] on two levels,” says Nels Wroe, partner and product director for Princeton, New Jersey-based SHL USA, a division of U.K.-based SHL Global, which provides talent assessment and HR solutions such as succession planning and recruitment for companies such as American Express Co. and Barclays PLC in 30 languages across 50 countries.


“Adaptability is thinking on your feet. It’s a tactical, short-term characteristic,” Wroe says. “Embracing change is not tactical. It’s at the root of someone’s work behavior. It’s more about being thrown curveballs and instead of just reacting, you look at the potential, see it and deal with it. It’s adapting to how the world is changing.”


Wroe says conventional recruiting tools such as résumés, background checks and interviews won’t reveal if job candidates possess such traits.


“For the last 15 or 20 years, most people have been pretty successful” at managing their careers, he says. “But these tools show recent success, an upward trajectory. It’s a little difficult to see if someone embraces change, because only recently have we” experienced economic difficulty.


Wroe is among those advocating the use of personality and talent assessment tests for recruiting and hiring.


“When most companies do interviews, they are as unscientific and unanalytic as possible,” OperationsInc.’s Lewis says. “The days of going from a gut feeling in hiring are over. The interview has become a chess game, and the candidates have become masters. Companies need a more strategic and scientific process. There is a lot of value in personality testing. I started off being a skeptic. Now I’m a convert.”


Lewis adds that tests can validate what occurred in the interview.


“Tests don’t tell you yes or no to hire,” Lewis says. “They tell you the characteristics of the individual and the environment where they’ll do well.”


Adaptive Marketing LLC, a Norwalk, Connecticut-based firm that creates online consumer membership programs and partners with businesses to reach their target audiences, looks for specific adaptability traits during interviews. For executive-level positions, that involves a three-person panel.


“Candidates who deal well with pressure talk about the excitement of change in their work,” says Marcella Barry, Adaptivemarketing’s vice president of HR. “Someone leaving when there was a lot of turbulence indicates they may not adapt well to change.


“In this age of turbulence, it’s good to know you have a person who can operate under pressure. Regardless of the level of the person, it’s helpful to the organization.”


Workforce Management Online, September 2010 — Register Now!

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Staffing Firms Still Getting Work Despite Push for Federal Insourcing

Staffing firms contracting with the government say there’s plenty of business heading into 2011 despite the Obama administration’s edict last year to cut outsourcing and boost federal hiring.


“The federal market is growing for Kelly Government Solutions,” says James Hoen, vice president and division manager of the organization. “Our revenue has grown in the last two years,” though he declined to say by how much.


With 1,600 people and more than $100 million in revenue at Troy, Michigan-based Kelly Government Solutions, Hoen sees plenty of opportunities, even if contracting is cut in the future.


“The federal government will outsource when they have niche requirements,” he says. “It’s much easier for Kelly Government Solutions to hire for project work than it is for the government.”


Citing the rise in federal contract spending to more than $500 billion in 2008, President Barack Obama issued his memorandum to the heads of all federal executive departments and agencies in March 2009. Obama sought an overall reduction in contracting, with “inherently governmental” functions to be moved back to the civil service.


Yet Crystal Blackwell, president and CEO of Decatur, Georgia-based Staffing One Inc., says she’s racing to keep up with all the contract work her 200-person firm is receiving.


“This administration doesn’t want to increase the number of contract employees,” she says. “But we’ve seen a dramatic increase in contracting opportunities across all disciplines. Last year, it got busy around July 4. This year, it started around Memorial Day.”


Blackwell added that the government is spending the money earlier this year for two reasons: They have more of it, since more funding was appropriated this year for certain projects that call for outside staffing, and they must spend it all before the end of the fiscal year or they’ll lose it.


The acceleration of government contracting is expected to slow while government hiring grows with the start of fiscal 2011. “For the community of contractors, there will be a possible downturn of about $36 billion—the annual revenue of Lockheed,” says Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at consulting firm FedSources and the author of the report, “Federal Budget Analysis—2011.”


“While this will create havoc for contractors, will it be precipitous?” Bjorklund asks in the report. “It won’t be overnight. The hiring practices of the government tend to be as slow as molasses in winter.”


Niche staffing needs should prop up contractors through a lean winter and spring. Kelly Government Solutions provides more than 1,400 researchers to the National Institutes of Health.


“The government looks for specific skill sets they may not need for a long time,” Hoen says. “These researchers may be needed for two years to three years, so NIH doesn’t want to hire full-time federal employees [for those positions].”


Even with the predicted $36 billion cutback in 2011, contractors could find themselves called on to help federal agencies.


“The government must figure out how to recruit, hire more smartly, train and retain new government hires and do the actuarial work to figure out how to pay them,” Bjorklund says. “There are emerging opportunities for all these workforce development activities.”


Workforce Management Online, August 2010 — Register Now!

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Government Hiring May Be Moving to the Fast Lane

Budget deficits notwithstanding, expect as many as 300,000 to 400,000 new federal hires in the next few years. That’s according to Allan Schweyer, a principal for the Center for Human Capital Innovation, which is one of the members of the Portal for Talent Management in Government.


Fiscal year 2011’s budget reflects the intent to hire more federal employees as soon as possible.


“The money spent on salary and wages for government employees is increasing and the money for contractors is decreasing,” says Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer of FedSources, a consulting firm in Washington that specializes in the contracting activities of the federal government. Bjorklund performed an extensive analysis of next year’s budget and reported his findings in the FedSources document “Federal Budget Analysis 2011.”


The hiring shift represents a change from the “contractors can do everything better” philosophy of the Bush administration, which Bjorklund says didn’t work well. The policy shift was formally announced in a March 2009 memorandum from President Barack Obama stating that “contractors may be performing inherently governmental functions. Agencies and departments must operate under clear rules prescribing when outsourcing is and is not appropriate.”


Aside from the problem of defining “inherently governmental functions,” the difficulty with returning jobs to civil servants is a lack of manpower.


“There are about 2 million civil servants and about 6 million contractors,” says Schweyer of the Washington-based Center for Human Capital Innovation. “That’s a big ratio, and Obama wants to swing it back.”


To achieve its goal, the government must hire more federal employees—and more quickly than usual. “The current hiring process is overly complex and takes too long,” wrote Peter R. Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a May 11 blog post. “On average, it takes 140 days to make a new hire, and in some cases, it can take nearly 200 days. Often, by the time a federal agency is ready to make an offer, the best candidates have taken a position elsewhere.”


To speed hiring, the federal government is planning dramatic changes in recruiting practices. For one, defense and intelligence agencies now have the power to hire from their contractor workforce.


Such hiring hasn’t been “uncommon in science-related agencies,” Bjorklund says. “It has been unusual in intelligence and the Department of Defense because the agencies never had the hiring authority to cherry-pick the best candidates.”


The current hiring process starts with the posting of a densely written job description on USAjobs.gov that may be 20 pages long. Job seekers apply by writing “knowledge, skills and abilities” essays of 10 to 20 pages. Hiring managers must come up with their own criteria for grading the essays, which is done by a panel of at least three people. The hiring manager provides guidance to the panel, but doesn’t sit on in it.


Once the panelists have evaluated all the essays—not a quick task—they meet to compare results. “If there are significant anomalies, the panel must resolve them,” says Owen Jones, a senior director with FedSources. “Then they develop a numerical ‘certificate’ of ranking—a numerical listing of the names—which is given to the hiring manager. There is a ‘rule of three,’ which means the hiring managers must pick from the top three unless some of them have dropped out.”


The three top candidates must be interviewed. But if a veteran applies and ranks in the top three, that person must be selected unless the hiring manager applies for a waiver—another lengthy process.


The new recruiting and hiring process will eliminate essays at the point of job application. Instead, assessments will be made of candidates’ knowledge, skills and abilities. “This will help to eliminate a lot of candidates,” says Anne Kelly, a principal with the Center for Human Capital Innovation. The assumption is that it will also be a lot faster than the essay method.


Candidate assessments will be scored by a method not yet worked out. Jones says the rule of three also will be abandoned. Instead, hiring managers will be able to choose from a larger group of top-ranked individuals. Whether the group is five, 15 or more will depend on the position and possibly on the agency and the hiring manager. Jones says finalists may be asked to write essays to assist hiring managers with their selections. Veteran preference will still apply, and waivers will still take a lot of work.


Workforce Management Online, August 2010 — Register Now!

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Performance Pay a Challenge in Academia

Pay-for-performance programs in academia appear to be gaining ground as cash-strapped state legislatures demand accountability for every dollar.


Yet the success or failure of such programs depends on the thought and care put into them. “[Institutions] need to define what they mean by performance, and they need to align performance expectations with the institution’s vision or mission,” says David Insler, senior vice president and regional leader for Sibson Consulting. Sibson, a division of Segal Co., has worked with more than 100 four-year institutions to help establish performance and pay programs.


Program success also depends on who’s doing the thinking.


Insler adds that most pay-for-performance programs in higher education apply mainly to administration, not faculty.


“The level of participation is critical in addressing the challenges,” he says. “If the chancellor or president of the university and the chief financial officer get together in a room and decide how things are going to work, it doesn’t work. You must involve department heads and midlevel managers for it to work.”


In some cases, a top-down process, complete with review forms, has already been put in place before Sibson or another consulting firm is called in, and, just as Insler observed, it doesn’t work. “More times than not, it’s about fixing the forms,” Insler says.


While the model is gaining acceptance among four-year institutions, applying pay for performance has proved to be a bit dicey in K-12 classrooms. When teachers’ paychecks were tied to students’ performance on standardized tests, some educators cheated to improve children’s test scores and their own salaries.


“In higher education, the challenges are very different from K-12,” Insler says.


Some pay-for-performance programs have targeted faculty at the college level, according to John Curtis, director of research and policy for the American Association of University Professors, an advocacy group for higher education.


“Normally, these programs are imposed top-down from the state legislature to the top university management without involvement of the faculty,” Curtis says. “The impetus … is to show that something’s being done and people are being held accountable.”


When faculty aren’t involved in defining performance criteria, Curtis says metrics often focus on such things as annual graduation rates, which are expected to continuously climb and which don’t necessarily measure educational achievement.


“This is problematic,” Curtis says. “Not all students come to college to get a degree. There is also the idea that anything should increase continuously. At some level, things should be good enough.”


Curtis acknowledges that educational performance can be meaningfully measured. “The best kinds of measures in education are formative,” he says. Instead of tests, students and teachers discuss what’s happening in the classroom. “Use the information to help improve the teaching process, but do it interactively. Don’t focus solely on some kind of measurable outcome,” he says.


Insler agrees that performance measures must be relevant. “You must be careful that what you’re measuring is an actual indicator of the desired outcome,” he says.


Intelligently defining performance is tough, whether in business or academia. “Boiling the idea of academic accomplishment down to one page loses track of what you’re really trying to accomplish,” Curtis says.


Workforce Management, June 2010, p. 4 — Subscribe Now!

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Special Report on Employee Relocation Strategic Moves

A lthough employee relocations historically have been viewed as obligatory for workers to accept, employers seldom saw the transfers in a strategic light.


That appears to be changing, as moves are finally being analyzed as elements of long-term talent development processes instead of haphazard responses to skills or personnel crises.


The recession forced a drastic shift in relocation philosophies in the last two years, as companies struggled to find the right people for a position, move them where they’re needed and keep them there in an economically feasible way. Yet one of the latest trends in relocation—if not the leading one—is employees’ refusal to move, leaving employers scrambling to fill positions as hiring struggles to return to pre-recession levels.


(To enlarge the view, click on the image below. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required.)


“Many people are turning down assignments because of their negative equity situations,” says Jeffrey W. Palmer, president and owner of Palmer Moving and Storage in Warren, Michigan. “One in five homes has negative equity, and the number of people who have lost money on their homes has strongly affected relocations. We have seen double-digit drops in relocations in the last two years.”


This widespread predicament has generated huge interest in pre-decision services—detailed analyses of all the costs of a relocation for both the employee and the employer. For the employee, they include broker appraisals of the value of an employee’s home and the steps a company will take to help the employee sell it.


They also include evaluation of help and funds the employee will receive for the move, such as packing, moving and storage services, assistance in finding a residence, help with finding a job or paying for additional education for a spouse, and funds for everything from incentives to make the move to assistance for education costs and trips home. Employers learn not only what the total cost of the move will be, but also whether the employee can afford to make the move based on his or her home equity situation.


“Pre-decision services used to be offered only for international relocation,” says Ellie Sullivan, director of consulting for Weichert Relocation Resources. “Now they are being offered to key talent for domestic relocation.”


Pre-decision boom
The popularity of pre-decision services is growing rapidly, says Nick Stevovich, vice president of client engagement at relocation provider Sirva. “In 2009, we had only three companies use our pre-decision services; we have 47 clients using it now and expect 15 to 20 more in the next three months. This is the fastest adoption I’ve ever seen.”


Norwell, Massachusetts-based Weichert’s 2010 “Mobility and the Current Real Estate Market” survey of 200 North American companies also showed fast take-up: Sixty-five percent of respondents currently offer pre-decision and loss-on-sale assistance, and 11 percent plan to do so by the end of the year.


With home sales taking months, “companies can’t mobilize the talent they need,” says Scott Sullivan, vice president of Brookfield Global Relocation Services. So companies are using relocation service providers to determine the “impact of the transfer on both the employee and the employer. They want to see if the employee can even take the assignment or if the company can or wants to pay all the relocation costs,” he says.


Loss-on-sale assistance, in which the company compensates the employee for some portion of the difference between the house’s purchase price and current market value, sometimes is an aspect of pre-decision services. “The loss-of-sale benefit is being used a lot more frequently than two years ago, so companies are examining it a lot more closely,” Palmer says. “Some companies are eliminating it completely, and some are capping it.”


Many employees fear that turning down a relocation could hurt their career, but that may not be the case, says Scott Sullivan, whose company has its U.S. headquarters in Woodridge, Illinois. “Companies do understand the housing situation. We recommend that companies talk with the transferee about costs and the pros and cons of taking or not taking a relocation.”


Tenet Healthcare, which owns hospitals in 10 states, relocates 500 to 600 people a year, but only 20 percent of those are long-term or permanent moves. That group consists of executives at the director level and above, such as hospital administrators, CEOs, CFOs and chief nursing officers. “The other 80 percent of moves are doctors, nurses and technicians,” says Shelley Giles, director of relocation, travel and meeting services.


Because doctors are heavily regulated for moves, Dallas-based Tenet offers them a lump sum of $20,000 to $30,000 and helps administer it. Nurses and technicians also receive lump sums of $5,000 to $10,000 along with the moving of household goods and some final travel funds.


It might seem that Tenet would offer more relocation benefits to nurses in light of the profession’s personnel shortage, but the shortfall also means high turnover. “Tenet won’t spend a lot of money to relocate someone who may leave,” Giles says.


Pre-decision services are offered to final executive candidates at Tenet. Top executives can also take advantage of an in-house buyer value option benefit. “The executive finds a buyer, and Tenet takes over the sale,” Giles says. “After six months, if there’s no buyer, Tenet buys the house.”


Other executives receive direct reimbursement for closing costs.


“Our team has always worked closely with executive recruiting to discuss relocation with final candidates,” Giles says. “We’ve stepped this up and are doing it across the board. We will talk to candidates about what they need for the move to be financially feasible and what the relocation policy will offer.”


In cases where an employee has negative home equity, Tenet will obtain broker market analyses. “Tenet doesn’t provide loss-in-sale in general,” Giles says. “If we see the need for change we will, but we haven’t needed to.” Even though Tenet’s use of pre-decision is limited, the services help prevent financially difficult moves that are bad for everyone.


“They let the employee know if [the move will] work. If not, the company can open the position up to a second person or to more recruiting,” Ellie Sullivan says. “The upfront costs are pretty small compared to a move, but the time to go back for a second or third choice is not insignificant.”


Localizing expats
 It is increasingly common for companies to convert expatriates, with all their traditional benefits, to local employees. Although salaries don’t get cut, most expat benefits do. Brookfield Global Relocation Services’ “2010 Global Relocation Trends” survey of 120 companies around the world found that 58 percent of respondents were using localization policies, compared with 52 percent last year. Forty-four percent of respondents, an all-time high, reported they were localizing employees after five or more years.


“The No. 1 developing policy for corporation relocation is localization,” Scott Sullivan says. “It’s a direct reflection of the last two and maybe the next two years of the decline in the economy and the pressure on companies to cut costs and reduce workforces.”


The increasing development of localization policies is significant. Localization used to be done on a case-by-case basis, says Eileen Mullaney, a principal in international assignment services practices with PricewaterhouseCoopers. “The emphasis started in early 2009. The driver was cost, but it was thoughtful about policy and if the person should stay in the country,” she says. “Companies would lay people off if they really needed to cut costs.”


Localization has traditionally been a gradual process in which benefits taper off over three to five years. Today, immediate localization is increasingly popular. “We are definitely seeing a trend to increase both types of localization,” says Kathryn Cassidy, vice president and general manager of global assignment services at Westmont, Illinois-based Sirva. “It’s done for cost management, but it’s also done because individuals and their families volunteer to go or want to stay in that country.”


Houston-based Mustang Engineering, which makes the above-water portions of offshore oil rigs, has few permanent relocations. The majority are long term, lasting more than a year, while the balance is made up of rotational and short-term assignments. Only permanent relocations are localized.


“We try to localize them as soon as possible,” says John Pfeiffer, manager of global human resources. “If it’s part of their career plan to stay in a place, the company will localize them as soon as possible. Those jobs were always known to be local, but if the job grows into a permanent one, localization takes a little longer.”


Localization isn’t always fast or easy. Pensions and taxation are especially tricky. “Localization policy is dictated by the company’s headquarters country,” Mullaney says. “But the employment regulations depend on where the employer is. If it’s a French unit of a United States country, the employer’s country would be France. Who is the employer and where is the employment contract? Those are the regulations that determine localization on the employee side.”


Company policies vary in terms of gradual or immediate localization. “Localization used to be phased in,” Mullaney says. “Now companies are doing it immediately with a transition payment [usually a one-time lump sum]. When you wean someone off expat benefits, the company doesn’t see the cost savings for some time. Plus, when you take time, expats keep the expat mind-set. The transition is more painful and less successful. Expats also continue to negotiate all the way through.”


Is immediate localization the best approach? “When you localize people immediately, there is an inherent risk in terms of whether that person will settle in,” says Julian Yates, vice president of global client services at Sirva. “Often, they have a vacation mentality about the location, and then they find the location isn’t that good. You must protect that person to see if they can adjust—that is, do a traditional assignment and then localize. If you do it right away, they may not be able to adjust.”


Workforce Management, July 2010, p. 23-26 — Subscribe Now!

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Finding New Executives for Troubled Financial Companies No Easy Task

Bank failures, bailouts and the resulting departures of top executives have left many financial companies struggling to replace failed leaders with rescuers who can set things right.


Although some replacements reach out for these top-level jobs, most have to be found and convinced that the tremendous risks are worth it. Responding to the growing need, executive search firms have developed systematic processes for finding the right candidate to fill executive slots at troubled financial companies.


“Our job isn’t to find the available people and hook them up with the job,” says John Salveson, a principal of executive search firm Salveson Stetson Group. “It’s to find the best person for the job.”


That means executive search firms must first learn everything about the company.


“We must understand the situation in its full depth,” Salveson says. “We must make a judgment about a company before agreeing to do a search.”


So Salveson Stetson, like most executive search firms, does its research firsthand. “If you talk to people and get different stories, that’s problematic,” Salveson says. “If you get the same story, that’s good.”


Knowing how a company got into trouble is important, but it’s not the whole story.


“You must make sure to paint the entire picture,” says Valerie Germain, a managing partner with executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. “Many would assume you’d spend all your time on what happened, but that’s less relevant that what the company needs now. That’s the difference in understanding the leadership needed.”


It’s a lengthy process. In one recent search, even though Heidrick & Struggles knew both the organization and individuals within it very well, “we went out and spoke to 19 different people to see if the picture held together,” says Keith Meyer, vice chairman of the firm. “Our job is to come in and understand not just the hard, tangible facts, but all of these softer elements of how do they manage and how do they lead. We are constantly working on this. It’s part of knowing people.”


Before Heidrick & Struggles spoke to those 19 people, Germain says, “We spent huge amounts of time with members of the board, employees and former employees to see what the company needed to go forward. If someone is going to step in as a new leader, he or she needs to know if the team is ready to fight or if it’s leaving.”


Each unscripted, dynamic conversation lasted one to three hours.


“We’re looking to understand all of the obvious pieces as well as the ones that aren’t so obvious,” Germaine says. “We use a very rigorous assessment process to get the whole picture.”


Once the client’s history and plans for success are clear, it’s time to look for the right candidate. As Salveson said, merely looking for people who are available isn’t enough.


“For a troubled company, I’d look for a turnaround person,” says Janice Ellig, co-CEO of executive search firm Chadick Ellig. “People who take on these roles understand the risk, and the risk appeals to them. They are really turned on by the challenge.”


For a financial company client, Ellig would look for candidates in the same industry.


“The rules and regulations are so complicated and deep that you have to have that depth and breadth of knowledge,” she says.


Salveson takes a similar approach.


“We target candidates in companies or in industries that have been in similar situations. That’s where you start,” he says. “Candidates must be able to demonstrate that they’ve faced these kinds of challenges before and have succeeded.”


To find candidates with the right experience, search firms build databases, stay in constant touch with working and even retired executives, and spend plenty of time networking.


“We’re in the business of knowing, building and maintaining relationships with senior people, knowing client situations and knowing how to find matches with culture and leadership opportunities,” Germaine says.


Weeding out candidates is an essential part of the search.


“If a candidate is not interested in the challenge, then he or she will constantly ask about areas of risk,” Salveson says. “These kinds of questions are red flags for me.”


Other red flags are questions about work/life balance, travel and working from home.


If the situation isn’t right, even a suitable candidate might say no.


“A candidate may not take a position if the company is under heavy legal review by regulatory agencies,” Ellig says. “If the candidate thinks the board of directors isn’t fully supportive, he or she may turn it down.”


And, adds Salveson, “If the candidate doesn’t think the company will provide what is needed to succeed, he or she won’t take it.”


A crucial part of the process is ensuring that candidates really thirst for risk and can handle it. “Some people want challenges,” Salveson says. “I’ve done interviews with candidates where I’ve spent the first half trying to scare them to death.”


Germain says a key to success is knowing a person’s leading bias.


“Some people are attracted to situations that are a mess,” Germain says. “It starts with an intrinsic knowledge of what a leader wants. Some really enjoy high-risk situations. They view that as an opportunity, whether it’s saving a company, resurrecting a brand or doing it for the greater good, such as saving jobs.”


People also take such jobs for financial reasons. Salveson cites an instance where a CEO in one industry took a challenging turnaround job in another industry.


“They were facing a lot of challenges he’d dealt with 10 years ago, plus the stock was really low, and he was going to get a lot of it,” Salveson says. “He felt that once the problems were fixed, the stock price would increase greatly. So, one motivation is to create wealth.”


Challenge, financial reward and an opportunity to succeed hugely and publicly still aren’t quite enough.


“Deals close when candidates feel they understand the situation, can provide a solution and be successful—then they make a connection,” Salveson says.

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New Workforce Orbit—Relaunch at NASA

In 2010, NASA’s space shuttle program is expected to end after 29 years of flight. Its last flight also marks a crossroads for the thousands of NASA and contractor engineers and scientists whose lives and work have been tied for years to the launch schedules and missions of the shuttle fleet.


These highly trained and skilled individuals might not be willing to wait the minimum five years before the United States can put humans into orbit again with NASA’s new Constellation space program, which will succeed the space shuttle. They might not choose to start over again, building the Constellation spacecraft elements from concept to launch.


Instead, they might retire along with the space shuttle fleet. If that happens, a lot of valuable experience and knowledge would walk out the door—experience that the Constellation program needs for space- craft development, manufacture and eventual operations.


Even in government, it’s rare to see an entire program come to an end. As in business when a company is acquired, the implementation of the Constellation is forcing NASA to face a massive shift in strategy and philosophy while grappling with management challenges and workforce realignment.


The agency must figure out which people and skills it needs and which people can be let go through attrition or layoffs, despite significant uncertainty about what the Constellation fleet of space vehicles will look like and what its capabilities will be. NASA and its contractors have to make these workforce changes with the almost certain knowledge that just a few years after experienced people are laid off, their skills will be needed again when the Constellation moves from the development phase to actual spaceflights.


Dealing with these challenges would be difficult enough if plans at NASA were certain. But in May, the Obama administration launched an independent review of all human spaceflight activities to ensure the country is on the right path. The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee is headed by Norman Augustine, well known for his leadership in science and technology. Its report is due this month.


Depending on the conclusions of the committee, the shuttle may fly beyond 2010. But unless NASA’s budget is increased substantially over the next few years, there aren’t enough funds to simultaneously pay for personnel to fly the space shuttle, operate the International Space Station and develop and build the new Constellation program.


NASA’s budget pays for both its civil service and contractor workforces. In 2009, according to the agency’s latest figures, the space shuttle budget is just less than $3 billion. The Constellation budget is just more than $3 billion, for a total of roughly $6 billion. By 2013, the Constellation budget will total about $5.4 billion, and shuttle program dollars will be zeroed out. That’s a net reduction in the overall budget of $600 million between 2009 and 2013, which means that some shuttle program workers will inevitably lose jobs.


Both NASA and its contractors are facing up to the expected changes with every tool at their disposal. A 2005 congressional ban on reductions in force at NASA means the agency can’t lay off large numbers of people. Shuttle contractor companies, however, must reduce their shuttle workforce, whether it’s through attrition, moving people to Constellation or layoffs.


Political pressures affect all the parties, of course, but how NASA and its contractors deal with their diverse challenges will dictate how soon and how efficiently the new Constellation space vehicles will fly. If the space community lacks the right skills, the right expertise and the right management, it will take longer to define and build the Constellation program’s space vehicles—and once they are built and flying, the missions may not be as successful as we’ve come to expect. The nation’s pre-eminence in space for the next few decades will be determined by how well these shuttle and Constellation program workforce uncertainties are resolved.


Maintaining engagement
With no NASA reductions in force permitted, only attrition by retirement or resignation can significantly reduce the agency’s civil service numbers as the shuttle program comes to an end.


“NASA has one of the lowest attrition rates in government,” says Toni Dawsey, the agency’s associate administrator for human capital management. Agency statistics show that although 12 percent of the agency’s 18,000 employees are currently eligible for retirement, only about 3 percent retire each year.


“We think people who don’t go the year before the shuttle stops flying—or who were going to retire anyway—will go after the program ends. So we do anticipate an increase in retirements afterwards,” says Sue Liebert, NASA’s lead for human capital for the shuttle program at Johnson Space Center. “But we don’t expect a big spike.”


Assuming that’s true, it leaves NASA facing one big workforce issue.


“How do you keep people engaged through the transition for the rest of the shuttle program and then into Constellation?” asks Michael Kincaid, deputy director for HR at the Johnson Space Center. “Civil servants have jobs, so the question is, ‘What will I be doing?’ We’re trying to communicate that there will be meaningful work, and we’re working with managers to do that.”


It’s something the agency has been considering for four years.


“I give NASA a lot of credit for trying to be very strategic and thoughtful in their planning,” says Cristina Chaplain, director of acquisition and sourcing management for the Government Accountability Office and the author of several GAO reports on the workforce challenges NASA faces as the shuttle program ends. “They’ve been mapping skills for the next program and figuring out how to translate those into people requirements and how they map back to the current workforce.”


NASA surveyed its civil service shuttle workforce of approximately 1,500 people in the last year to reveal employee concerns. Those include “losing the team they’re working with—especially the contractor members,” says Paul Cruz, the HR development representative for the shuttle program office at Johnson Space Center. “Some people want to know today what they’ll be doing in a year. Some people are worried that all the good jobs will be gone. They’re worried about the skills they’ll need. They fear the unknown.”


In response, NASA has worked to make leadership more visible through regular “all-hands” face-to-face meetings. The agency has improved communications with employees and made sure they know training for new skills will be available. Web sites specific to the agency’s centers, such as the Johnson and Kennedy space centers, are being built to provide news on the transition and to help employees find positions that need their skills—or to help them find new opportunities.


“Matrix management,” in which NASA work groups are assigned to support both the shuttle and Constellation programs, is in place at the Johnson and Kennedy centers.


“This makes the most efficient use of the workforce and also gives employees training in new programs,” says Tracy Anania, director of HR for Kennedy Space Center. Under matrix management, personnel who usually work on the shuttle program can work on Constellation too, learning new skills on the job or seeing how existing skills fit. Indeed, retraining science and engineering personnel may be easy. “It looks very straightforward to train an engineer to go from operations to acquisition and development,” says Joel Kearns, space operations mission directorate transition manager at NASA headquarters. “The change doesn’t look too disruptive.”


The only specialized skills that NASA seems to be missing for the shuttle-to-Constellation transition are systems engineering and project management. “We have time to flex and fix those challenges,” Kincaid says.


In addition to these tangible change-management issues are the intangible ones: dealing with grief for the end of a program that has been a way of life for many civil servants. “We’re offering grief counseling, including training for managers to deal with it, and making sure people know about our employee assistance program for it,” Cruz says.


Events also are being arranged to “show what the shuttle program has meant,” Liebert says. “We may have some resiliency training, such as what we did after Columbia,” the space shuttle that disintegrated on its return to Earth in 2003. Peer counselors will help employees talk about their stress, how to handle the end of the program and how to go through the steps of grieving. They’ll also discuss ways people can take care of themselves and colleagues. “The message [of the Columbia counseling] was that we can help each other,” Liebert says. “Most people found it helpful.”


Contractors gear up for change
NASA workforce projections suggest that as many as 7,000 of the total 13,000 shuttle contractor employees could lose their jobs as the program winds down, with the bulk of those losses following the last flight in 2010.


The challenge for contractor companies is to retain personnel with the critical skills needed to complete the remaining shuttle missions, even though those personnel are well aware that most of their jobs will end not long after that last flight. NASA contractor companies will shift as many shuttle employees as possible to the Constellation program, while simultaneously helping the laid-off workers find new jobs, even though their skills might be needed again in four or five years.


“We are putting plans into place to keep the skills we need,” says Norm Gookins, vice president of HR and administration for United Space Alliance, NASA’s prime contractor for space shuttle operations, which includes tasks such as vehicle processing, flight control and astronaut training. “For the most part, this workforce has worked on the one program their entire career,” Gookins says.


To keep people with essential shuttle spaceflight operations skills on the job through the last mission, United Space Alliance instituted completion bonuses. To make layoffs easier on all employees, including those who must leave before the end of the shuttle program and those needed until the end, the company also instituted enhanced severance payments.


The program pays employees one week of salary for each year of service. Employees must have a minimum of four years of service to qualify for the enhanced payments, and the program pays for a maximum of 26 years on the job. Personnel needed through the last shuttle flight can receive both completion bonuses and enhanced severance.


For those transitioning to the new program, Gookins says, “We’ll need the same skills for Constellation as for shuttle, such as technical administration and organization, but fewer of them.” For all employees, whether they stay or go, United Space Alliance is providing a range of counseling and training services, including career planning, long-term planning, skills training and help with dealing with the emotional consequences of the transition. Line managers are also receiving training so they can coach their employees and tell them what help is available.


United Space Alliance is also seeking to diversify its scope of work beyond space shuttle and space station operations to include operations support for the Department of Defense and for international space programs.


Gookins says the goal is to transition some employees to new work. “But there will still be some layoffs,” he says. United Space Alliance will help laid-off employees find other jobs, and enhanced severance pay will help cushion job loss.


At NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in eastern New Orleans, Lockheed Martin Human Space Flight builds the external fuel tanks that hold the fuel that a space shuttle’s main engines burn during the first few minutes of flight. The company is also doing development work at Michoud on Constellation’s Orion spacecraft, which will carry humans into space.


Cheryl A. Alexander, director of HR for Lockheed Martin Human Space Flight, says that the primary challenges leading up to the space shuttle retirement include maintaining employee morale during reduction in force, coupled with the need to retain employees to support the external tank “flyout,” or completion of the last shuttle mission.


Some Lockheed Martin employees who worked on the external tanks have already transferred to the Orion project at Michoud, Alexander says. But the five or more years between the shuttle’s last flight and the start of Constellation flights is long enough that the company’s skilled employees might leave not only their jobs, but the New Orleans area as well.


Like United Space Alliance, Lockheed Martin is offering retention incentives to keep employees on the job through the manufacture of the last external tank and its flight on the final shuttle mission. The company is also participating in many community and state career transition and training activities to help keep these highly paid, high-tech people in the New Orleans area—or at least in state.


For employees who’ll likely be laid off, Lockheed Martin offers after-hours training in manufacturing and production skills such as welding and composite drilling, as well as coaching in career development and instruction in Microsoft’s Project software, a commonly used project management program in aerospace. The company is also working with other Lockheed Martin divisions to try to place affected Michoud employees in other positions.


Both United Space Alliance and Lockheed Martin offer employees counseling. They’re dealing with a lot: emotional fallout from the end of the shuttle program, the hiatus of spaceflight while Constellation is being developed and the loss of jobs, friends and a way of life.


The two companies also emphasize that they’re maintaining an open dialogue with employees. “It’s a dynamic environment,” Gookins says. “We don’t always know the answers, but we try to get them out as soon as we do know. Once the Human Space Flight Plans Committee finishes its work and the government chooses the next goals for the country’s space program, NASA and its contractors will have the answers they need to determine the fate of the national space workforce.


For thousands of workers, the answers can’t come soon enough.

Workforce Management, August 17, 2009, p. 16-20 — Subscribe Now!

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Ready for Post-Shuttle Retirements

Although NASA doesn’t expect a big spike in retirements when the space shuttle program ends, the Government Accountability Office doesn’t necessarily agree.


“Our expectation, based on anecdotal evidence, is that there will be a lot of retirement as the last shuttle flight comes down,” says Jose Ramos, a senior analyst at the Government Accountability Office.


What will happen if retirements do spike after the shuttle program ends?


At the moment, NASA’s budget appears stable, so there would be funds for recruiting. But competition is stiff.


“We don’t compete well at the top and the bottom, but we do well at the midrange,” says Toni Dawsey, NASA’s associate administrator for human capital management. “We don’t focus on really competing for top-level people,” she says, “We can hire at the midlevel and grow our own.”


NASA can hire from other federal agencies and traditionally also hires from its contractors. For new recruits, the 10 NASA centers have established relationships with national and regional schools where they’ve had good hiring results. “We look at attrition rates and age groups from the different schools,” Dawsey says. “You go where you have the best success.”


The NASA Flexibility Act of 2004 lets the agency use certain incentives and term appointments for recruitment and retention. One incentive is offering additional leave to prospective employees from other federal agencies to come to NASA. Term appointments can be offered to people for up to six years when no permanent positions are open. This lets the agency hire people with special skills for short-term needs, but it also lets them keep highly skilled individuals until a job opens up.


Term appointments for up to two years are also available for senior executive service positions, making it possible “to hire temporarily while the position is subject to open competition,” Dawsey says. “So we can temporarily fill the highest-level positions instead of leaving them open.”


Whether there’s a tiny blip or a big spike in retirements and resignations at the end of the shuttle program, it doesn’t seem to matter. “Our mission is a big incentive,” Dawsey says. “We often get thousands of applications for an open engineering job.”

Workforce Management, August 17, 2009, p. 19 — Subscribe Now!

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Sad for Grads

Survey after survey tells the same story: Companies just aren’t hiring as many college graduates this year as in 2008. Rich Milgram, CEO of Beyond.com, an 11-year-old company that has built a network of 15,000 targeted and niche job boards through ownership and strategic relationships, even goes a step further.


“This is probably the toughest time I’ve ever seen, and it’s the toughest time these grads have ever seen,” he said.


Every year, the National Association of Colleges and Employers conducts several surveys to shed light on its employer members’ recruiting strategies. This year’s Job Outlook 2009 Spring Update survey, conducted in February and released in March, showed that employers expect to hire 22 percent fewer graduates than last year.


“That’s the only reduction since 2003,” says Andrea Koncz, NACE’s employment information manager. “And that was just a 3½ percent decrease.”


NACE’s quarterly salary survey, which focuses on offers by major employers, complements the job outlook survey. This spring’s survey released in April shows that the average salary offer in 2009 is $48,515, down by 2.2 percent from spring 2008’s average of $49,624. According to the survey, computer science salary offers are down by 5 percent, engineering salary offers are up by 2.3 percent, and both business and liberal arts majors’ offers are flat.


“Business graduates are the hardest-hit majors,” Koncz says. “Computer science majors usually get higher salaries, because they are usually pretty well in demand, but we are still seeing decreases.”


In January, career management and job search specialist Vault surveyed 150 corporate recruiters across a spectrum of industries and found that 77 percent had reduced hiring goals just since September. Fifty-two percent of respondents said salary offers would remain flat for baccalaureate graduates, and 51 percent said the same would be true for offers to newly minted MBAs.


“Recruiters are going to fewer campuses and doing more electronically because their budget for travel has been cut,” says Vault CEO Erik Sorenson. “Forty-three percent of respondents are slightly or dramatically reducing pay, although most said pay would be the same as in 2008 but with fewer hires.”


At the University of Houston, “Demand is down almost across the board,” says David Small, associate vice president for student services. “Salaries are flat, with marginal increases in some areas. We’ve seen companies cut back on recruitment resources. They’re making fewer campus visits and coming to career fairs instead.”


Small says companies are also making greater use of online job postings and résumé searches.


“Companies seem to be looking for more immediate needs, not the long term,” he says. “When they do hire, they are looking at their intern pool before new graduates.”


The story is the same at Ohio State University.


“My sense is that companies are being more conscientious about recruiting dollars, so they are conducting more phone interviews and coming to campus less often,” says Stephanie Ford, director of the university’s Arts and Sciences Career Center. “They’re operating on less information.”


Recruiters plan campus visits, but find out just before their trip that there’s no money to hire.


“So we are having employers schedule for employee information sessions and career fairs, but pulling out when they find there is no money,” Ford says.


She notes that the number of recruiters coming to campus is down from last year, but that companies are doing what they can, such as helping students with mock interviews or by speaking to student groups.


At Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business, interviews are down by 20 percent and job postings are down by 25 percent from 2008.


“It could be worse, but it isn’t,” says Jeff Rice, the executive director in the Office of Career Management at Fisher College. “That’s because in 2001 and 2002, companies took a year off from recruiting. When a company does that, it loses about three years in terms of its brand. Also, companies gain momentum in hiring from one year to next as the graduates talk to one another. So [this year], companies have reduced hiring, but they are keeping the pipeline going.”


One key to finding a job in the 2009 economy seems to be a graduate’s ability to produce immediate results.


“Employers are cutting back, only recruiting for people who can drive revenue or maintenance of current projects,” Milgram says.


So sales is a hot area, as are health care, technology and engineering. According to Milgram, good salespeople can improve a company’s overall balance sheet, so they are in demand. Although new technology projects and research are on hold for now, companies “still need to maintain systems and current projects.” Milgram says health care is stable in any economy, and engineers have specific skill sets that people with other majors can’t match.


Sorenson agrees that graduates who can immediately contribute to an organization have the best opportunities, like teaching.


“It’s not enough just to have a college degree in education,” he says.


Certified public accountants willing to work in industry are more likely to find jobs than those seeking positions in banking. According to Sorenson, jobs with high skill sets are hot now, including health care, IT, engineering, teaching and accounting—similar to Milgram’s list.


Rice has identified yet a third set of opportunities for new graduates.


“Follow the stimulus money for the jobs,” he says. “It’s encouraging how focused this generation is on the economy. They’re following where the stimulus money is going because that’s where the jobs will be—in government, energy, health care, education and technology.”


Rice sees stimulus opportunities for majors in accounting, engineering, technology, finance, operations management, and marketing and sales.


For liberal arts graduates, who always face tough job markets, the University of Houston’s Small has some rare good news. “The State Department said that 50 percent of its new hires will be liberal arts majors,” he says. And although finance is not hot this year, Small says financial planners who can work with small companies have opportunities.


“Even companies that are growing are being more cautious so they don’t end up on a downward spiral,” Milgram says. “Companies doing well are waiting it out. They’re not firing, but they’re not hiring, either. Companies doing poorly are firing. College students face increased quantity and quality of competition. That’s not good news for graduates.”

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How Clients and Staffing Companies Can Benefit From Unconventional Candidates

Staffing companies follow a number of models in providing personnel to clients.


Typically, they are focused on conventional full-time positions, even when the work is project-based rather than recruit-to-hire. That’s because most clients want it that way.


They’re often not comfortable with the notion of flexible employment among their own core staffers. So why would they accept it from their staffing providers?


Mom Corps, Your Encore and Flexperience Consulting are niche staffing providers. Each is a case study of how clients can benefit if they’ll accept flexibility in their contingent employees. Staffing companies that offer their talent hours and schedules beyond the typical corporate workday discover an untapped pool of extraordinary talent longing to put their skills to work, as long as they can do it on their own terms. Clients can benefit from this talent, if they’re open to trying it out.


The Boomer Group doesn’t look for flexible assignments. Instead, it offers clients maturity and the benefits of, to put it bluntly, age. As the name suggests, the company’s candidates are mostly boomers, and the Boomer Group’s selling point is its talent’s strong work ethic, professional expertise and life experience.


College Helpers isn’t a staffing company, but its business model is unusual enough that we included it here, especially since many staffing companies use this job board. College Helpers is focused entirely on matching employers who want college students for part-time, temporary and seasonal jobs with those students at more than 1,000 institutions across the country.


This company, just like the other four, is an example of how to take profitable advantage of a business niche that no one else sees and make it a win for everyone involved.


Working moms want time for families
Clients of Atlanta-headquartered Mom Corps don’t care that 94 percent of the company’s 25,000-candidate database is made up of moms who left conventional corporate work to spend more time with their children.


“Clients are only interested in the right talent,” says Allison O’Kelly, CEO and founder of the company. “That’s what we pitch—expertise, qualifications, skills and experience.”


Mom Corps’ staffing specialties include finance and accounting, human resources, sales, marketing, information technology, and some legal work and strategic consulting. The company’s more than 200 clients range from sole proprietorships to large companies such as GE, Wachovia and KPMG.


Clients like other parts of O’Kelly’s sales pitch too. They’re happy to learn that Mom Corps candidates won’t need training, other than on clients’ specific IT systems, and they’re intrigued to learn that “flexibility is currency,” as O’Kelly says.


“If employers offer more flexibility, candidates will view this as one form of payment. So clients might be able to pay less money for higher talent, or they can access candidates who would not otherwise consider the position.”


Mom Corps didn’t lack for clients even before incorporating in July 2005. The company has since opened offices in Boston; Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago; the New York metropolitan area; and Washington.


“Clients find us through word-of-mouth or by looking for internal business development people,” O’Kelly says. In addition, media coverage about the company’s business model drives clients to Mom Corps.


O’Kelly’s own desire for work flexibility was the genesis for Mom Corps. After leaving Toys ‘R’ Us in 2004, she used her financial and accounting expertise to land consulting projects with small businesses.


“I saw that companies had a need for talent, and I had offers for more work than I could do,” she says. She started matching up her stay-at-home-mom friends who also had accounting backgrounds with companies that needed help. That informal process became Mom Corps.


For staffing companies that want to emulate Mom Corps’ successful focus on flexible work arrangements, O’Kelly says, “The key is finding the right fit for the client. This should be one additional option to meet the client’s needs.”


Science and engineering experts mean more business
In a global economy where innovation is crucial to business, and engineering and technical personnel are in short supply, Your Encore’s success is hardly surprising. The company helps meet the technical personnel needs of a select group of clients through a database of 4,000 vetted, background-checked and highly qualified engineers and scientists. Of those 4,000 individuals, 90 to 95 percent are retired, while the rest are seeking alternative careers.


“We not only connect companies with retired engineers and scientists,” says founder and CEO Brad Lawson, “but we help them do it confidentially so IT and people are protected.”


Your Encore also manages all compliance issues such as co-employment and pension and payment conflicts with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.


Founded in 2003, the company struggled to prove itself for a couple of years, but then took off like a rocket in 2005. Lawson describes Your Encore as “an innovation acceleration services company.”


Although Your Encore experts are paid well, clients can use them much more cost-effectively than “for a fully burdened employee, because they can turn them on and off,” Lawson says.


And for clients skeptical of using retirees, Lawson says, “Retirees really involve themselves in the task at hand. They focus on it totally. They deliver more fully than full-time employees.”


These experts aren’t trying to bag their next consulting job, either. “They leave that to Your Encore,” Lawson says.

The company has a unique, or at least an unusual, marketing approach: none whatsoever. Your Encore does a small amount of external business development, but doesn’t need to.


“We are growing so fast we have to be careful about adding new clients,” Lawson says. “We want to make sure we can support them.”


Its 30 Fortune 500 clients come from the company’s origins.


“The idea came from Procter & Gamble and their ‘Connect and Develop’ strategy of looking externally for solutions to problems,” Lawson says. “As they saw their experts retire, they figured other companies were having the same problems.”


Lawson, John Bernard, P&G, Eli Lilly and Boeing partnered to found Your Encore. To date, the company’s experts have participated in more than 1,000 projects.


Just college students, please
Employers with part-time, temporary or seasonal positions can use general job boards or perhaps staffing companies, but if they specifically want to seek out college students, they’ve historically had little choice but to contact one institution at a time.


In 2000/2001, Fred Grant changed that when he launched CollegeHelpers.com. It’s a specialty job board where employers can simultaneously look for college students at up to 1,100 (and growing) institutions, and students can simultaneously look for jobs in multiple locations.


In 2007, Grant estimates 1,500 to 2,000 employers used the site.


“For a flat fee, an employer can list a job at as many colleges as they want,” he says. “It provides employers with economy of scale, and also means students have access to more jobs.”


Grant can offer economy of scale to employers because of his arrangement with participating colleges and universities. Colleges are typically inundated with job listings and often can’t manage the process. Whether institutions ask Grant to manage the entire job-listing process, provide CollegeHelpers.com as a resource to students or just want the listings, they pay no fees.


Instead, the institutions earn money. They provide a link to CollegeHelpers.com from their own Web sites, and when an employer goes to CollegeHelpers.com via the link, 10 percent of the employer’s posting fee goes to the college. Grant pays these affiliate earnings annually.


“Revenue ranges from $100 to $3,000,” he says.


Grant has a two-tier pricing system for position listings: one for for-profits and one for nonprofits and families.


“There are large corporations that use CollegeHelpers.com,” he says, “but there is no way to tell who they are. So I keep the prices low.”


Although employers provide the revenue, Grant markets mainly to students via online destinations such as Facebook, college sites and Google keywords and phrases such as “jobs for college students.”


“Employers respond to the speed with which jobs are filled,” he says.


For his next project, Grant plans to launch HighSchoolHelpers.com. Employers will pay to post jobs, and school districts will participate as affiliates. “It will grow even faster than CollegeHelpers.com,” Grant says.


Focused on flexibility
When Sally Thornton was pregnant with her first baby, her brother died. “My mother told me then that I needed to spend as much time with my child as possible,” Thornton says. That was the moment when San Francisco/Silicon Valley-based Flexperience Consulting was conceived.


Despite her “Aha!” moment, Thornton couldn’t act immediately. The HR specialist, who had worked first in HR consulting for Ernst & Young and then at Covad Communications, had to save up. After her second baby, “Covad went through a transition, and I took the severance package to get the money,” she says.


Founded in October 2006, Flexperience Consulting’s business model is based on providing her 30 clients, including about 20 Fortune 500 companies, with “highly skilled, top-level employees who’ve never signed up with agencies before,” Thornton says.


Her database of 3,000 candidates “have Harvard and Stanford MBAs, and they are focused on flexibility. It’s a win-win situation because companies have access to talent they’ve never seen.”


Thornton defines flexibility as anything that’s less than 40 hours a week with some telecommuting.


“That’s the sweet spot,” she says. Most projects take 10 to 30 hours a week including some telecommuting. “[The talent] doesn’t want to be there during traditional hours. They want to be results-focused, not face-time-focused.”


Despite this, Thornton says her talent will sometimes accept jobs requiring 40 hours per week in an office. “They are used to working 80 hours per week with lots of politics, so this is ‘flexible’ for them,” she says. “They don’t want to work those crazy Silicon Valley hours.”


The company’s marketing is based on networking. “In the Bay Area, everyone knows everybody,” she says. “[We have] people who went to Stanford, Berkeley, worked for high-technology companies and were in moms’ clubs. It’s a small community.”


Flexperience stages well-attended events at the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford and the 1,000-member moms’ clubs. “So people hear about us several times before hiring us,” Thornton says.


For other staffing companies that would like to offer candidates that desired flexibility, Thornton says, “Change the paradigm of face time to results. Logistics should always be second to the work product. Also, really screen for talent that will thrive in a flexible work environment, [such as] a professional’s ability to self-motivate and manage his/her energy without needing a traditional work environment.”


Experience counts
In 2002, times were tough in the staffing industry, and no one knew that better than Stephanie Klein. At the time, she was working for a large staffing company in Denver, which had been hard-hit by declines in its telecom, finance and call-center businesses.


“I had a large financial services company client that was growing,” Klein says. “I’d come to work and get all these voice mails from young candidates who had no work ethic—and weren’t coming in to work.”


Then Klein encountered a mature candidate with a nontraditional background who was strong in accounting. “I placed this woman with the company,” she says. The woman showed up at work every day, had great ideas and sent Klein a thank-you note.


“That was the secret,” Klein says. “As those young people left, unknown to my employer, I backfilled [their positions] with mature people.”


While that was happening, Klein researched boomers. She developed a business plan, used her savings and got a bank loan, and the Boomer Group was born, opening for business in January 2004.


Most of the positions the Boomer Group fills are midlevel or senior level, because clients are paying for experience—both life and business experience.


“I get two kinds of calls,” Klein says. ” ‘Bring me something specific with this kind of background in this area,’ or ‘Bring me someone with good experience and a good work ethic who can be diplomatic and handle our customers.’ ”


She provides candidates with backgrounds in administration, finance and accounting, HR and marketing.


Klein finds clients through networking and cold and warm calling. The company has also gotten a lot of positive press, and that has brought clients in as well.


“Denver has the highest number of boomers per capita,” Klein says. “There are a lot of initiatives on encore careers. I’ve gotten involved in those, and I make a lot of connections that way.”


At just 40 years old, Klein isn’t a boomer.


“I’m a younger person who values experienced people,” she says. “When I first started, I had the intention of saying that mature people are better workers than younger ones. Now, we don’t say that all young people have a poor work ethic; we say that for certain key positions, experience counts. This is our difference.”