Yes, the Job Market is “Rebalancing.” No, Employers Shouldn’t Rest on Their Laurels.

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Yes, the Job Market is “Rebalancing.” No, Employers Shouldn’t Rest on Their Laurels. BY JEFF GENOVICH President Right now, the U.S. job market is, in the words of some experts, “losing steam.” After two years of overheating, things seem to be calming down, or rebalancing, as it were. But if you’re looking to hire high-quality, specialized talent, you can’t rest on your laurels, sit back, and wait for them to come to you. You have to be out there fighting for each and every placement. Read on to find out why. 

From Great Resignation to Great “Rebalancing”

Just two years ago, the headline news was that we were in the middle of a talent shortage. Whether you called it the Great Resignation or Great Reshuffle, the reality was the same: mass resignations and great demands from job seekers meant many companies had trouble landing and retaining quality talent. Today, the job numbers seem to indicate the opposite trend. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 2023 saw a decline in job openings, and August saw a slight uptick in unemployment, although nowhere near comparable levels in 2021. These are all telltale signs of a shifting job market—no longer candidate-centric, but employer-centric. If you only read the surface-level statistics, you’d no doubt come to that conclusion. However, the numbers only tell half the story. Ignore the other half, and you risk making poor hiring & firing decisions that can put your firm at serious risk. Given that we’re experiencing the makings of an economic recession, the risk is greater than ever.

Ask yourself: who is getting laid off?

At Brightwing, we work with some of the leading engineering, IT, automotive, and financial services companies in the Detroit area (not to mention nationwide). Just in the past few months, we’ve heard of thousands of layoffs in the metro Detroit area. However, in conversations with our partners, we’re finding that companies are having more trouble filling critical roles, not less.  To answer this question, you can’t just look at how many people were laid off. You have to ask the deeper question: who is getting laid off?  With every executive and HR department we work with, the answer is resounding across the board. Companies aren’t laying off their top performers. In fact, they’re holding onto that critical talent with an iron fist. Instead, it’s the poor performers that are being let go.  There’s a certain logic to this move. As companies are squeezed for resources, it makes sense to keep the people who, for lack of a better term, deliver the most bang for your buck. Not to mention that quality people are difficult to attract in the best of times, not to mention when times are more difficult.  So although the talent market is flooded with warm bodies, the number of qualified Java developers, embedded systems engineers, data scientists—these haven’t increased all of a sudden. Rather than looking in a scarce market, hiring managers are now forced to hunt down needles in haystacks—a haystack that’s become much bigger. 

Changing dynamics in specialized talent acquisition

  What’s more, the way to attract top tier talent has evolved, even over the last two years. I’ll give you a case study related to the arms race of electric vehicles in automotive. Three or four years ago, many leading companies started “e-mobility” groups. Despite unclear objectives and focus, these groups collected talented people to work on the problem of electrification. Now, the critical talent has become even rarer: the coveted EV experts that also are experts in a Tier 1 supplier’s proprietary technology. Because the intersection of these two skill sets is exceedingly rare, these suppliers are increasingly reliant upon them just to function as a business, much less innovate and grow. Often, the fate of a supplier rests in just one person’s hands. If one of these engineers decides to leave, often the employer will bend over backwards to retain them. With one company we’re working with, this has led to senior leadership getting involved. It’s not uncommon for companies to offer retention bonuses to this talent. I’ve personally seen an incredible amount of counteroffers for this talent. This is not the kind of behavior you expect to see in a cooling market. It is the kind of behavior you expect to see in an ongoing shortage of qualified, experienced talent—a shortage that will continue no matter how many low performers get laid off. 

The pressure on hiring managers

  When it comes to finding top tier talent, high performing companies are actually investing more in talent acquisition, not less. In the automotive industry, for instance, leadership is giving hiring managers an increased budget to make critical hires. Hiring is an expensive decision in the best of times. But right now, companies have little tolerance for low performers on their teams. The stakes are high, and the risk of a poor hire is greater than ever. As a result, hiring managers need to work with recruiters that they trust, and who are trusted by top talent in turn. They need to partner with people who’ve taken the time to make inroads with the candidates. This is the only way to mitigate the risk of a bad hire and make the best of increased recruitment spend. 

The way forward

  The biggest mistake hiring managers can make in this time is to rest on their laurels as the market cools and rebalances. Rather, success in hiring requires approaching your talent acquisition strategy with the same sense of urgency and fire that you had in 2021, when quality talent seemed a dime a dozen. Because, in a sense, it still is. You need to find candidates that have the right combination of high technical competence plus the intangible skills that make someone successful in your organization. This isn’t rocket science—it just requires hard work, persistence, and the patience to build inroads and generate quality connections.  Hiring managers who execute the fundamentals well will find themselves doing just fine, even if we end up in a recession or economic downturn. Those who make excuses and are unable to adapt will not. Which camp will you be in?

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Yes, the Job Market is “Rebalancing.” No, Employers Shouldn’t Rest on Their Laurels.

,
Yes, the Job Market is “Rebalancing.” No, Employers Shouldn’t Rest on Their Laurels. BY JEFF GENOVICH President Right now, the U.S. job market is, in the words of some experts, “losing steam.” After two years of overheating, things seem to be calming down, or rebalancing, as it were. But if you’re looking to hire high-quality, specialized talent, you can’t rest on your laurels, sit back, and wait for them to come to you. You have to be out there fighting for each and every placement. Read on to find out why. 

From Great Resignation to Great “Rebalancing”

Just two years ago, the headline news was that we were in the middle of a talent shortage. Whether you called it the Great Resignation or Great Reshuffle, the reality was the same: mass resignations and great demands from job seekers meant many companies had trouble landing and retaining quality talent. Today, the job numbers seem to indicate the opposite trend. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 2023 saw a decline in job openings, and August saw a slight uptick in unemployment, although nowhere near comparable levels in 2021. These are all telltale signs of a shifting job market—no longer candidate-centric, but employer-centric. If you only read the surface-level statistics, you’d no doubt come to that conclusion. However, the numbers only tell half the story. Ignore the other half, and you risk making poor hiring & firing decisions that can put your firm at serious risk. Given that we’re experiencing the makings of an economic recession, the risk is greater than ever.

Ask yourself: who is getting laid off?

At Brightwing, we work with some of the leading engineering, IT, automotive, and financial services companies in the Detroit area (not to mention nationwide). Just in the past few months, we’ve heard of thousands of layoffs in the metro Detroit area. However, in conversations with our partners, we’re finding that companies are having more trouble filling critical roles, not less.  To answer this question, you can’t just look at how many people were laid off. You have to ask the deeper question: who is getting laid off?  With every executive and HR department we work with, the answer is resounding across the board. Companies aren’t laying off their top performers. In fact, they’re holding onto that critical talent with an iron fist. Instead, it’s the poor performers that are being let go.  There’s a certain logic to this move. As companies are squeezed for resources, it makes sense to keep the people who, for lack of a better term, deliver the most bang for your buck. Not to mention that quality people are difficult to attract in the best of times, not to mention when times are more difficult.  So although the talent market is flooded with warm bodies, the number of qualified Java developers, embedded systems engineers, data scientists—these haven’t increased all of a sudden. Rather than looking in a scarce market, hiring managers are now forced to hunt down needles in haystacks—a haystack that’s become much bigger. 

Changing dynamics in specialized talent acquisition

  What’s more, the way to attract top tier talent has evolved, even over the last two years. I’ll give you a case study related to the arms race of electric vehicles in automotive. Three or four years ago, many leading companies started “e-mobility” groups. Despite unclear objectives and focus, these groups collected talented people to work on the problem of electrification. Now, the critical talent has become even rarer: the coveted EV experts that also are experts in a Tier 1 supplier’s proprietary technology. Because the intersection of these two skill sets is exceedingly rare, these suppliers are increasingly reliant upon them just to function as a business, much less innovate and grow. Often, the fate of a supplier rests in just one person’s hands. If one of these engineers decides to leave, often the employer will bend over backwards to retain them. With one company we’re working with, this has led to senior leadership getting involved. It’s not uncommon for companies to offer retention bonuses to this talent. I’ve personally seen an incredible amount of counteroffers for this talent. This is not the kind of behavior you expect to see in a cooling market. It is the kind of behavior you expect to see in an ongoing shortage of qualified, experienced talent—a shortage that will continue no matter how many low performers get laid off. 

The pressure on hiring managers

  When it comes to finding top tier talent, high performing companies are actually investing more in talent acquisition, not less. In the automotive industry, for instance, leadership is giving hiring managers an increased budget to make critical hires. Hiring is an expensive decision in the best of times. But right now, companies have little tolerance for low performers on their teams. The stakes are high, and the risk of a poor hire is greater than ever. As a result, hiring managers need to work with recruiters that they trust, and who are trusted by top talent in turn. They need to partner with people who’ve taken the time to make inroads with the candidates. This is the only way to mitigate the risk of a bad hire and make the best of increased recruitment spend. 

The way forward

  The biggest mistake hiring managers can make in this time is to rest on their laurels as the market cools and rebalances. Rather, success in hiring requires approaching your talent acquisition strategy with the same sense of urgency and fire that you had in 2021, when quality talent seemed a dime a dozen. Because, in a sense, it still is. You need to find candidates that have the right combination of high technical competence plus the intangible skills that make someone successful in your organization. This isn’t rocket science—it just requires hard work, persistence, and the patience to build inroads and generate quality connections.  Hiring managers who execute the fundamentals well will find themselves doing just fine, even if we end up in a recession or economic downturn. Those who make excuses and are unable to adapt will not. Which camp will you be in?

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How to Attract Top Talent in Today’s Market

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How to Attract Top Talent in Today's Market Brightwing’s President Jeff Genovich lays out the best hiring practices for how to attract top talent in today’s market.  Jeff tells us, in times like these when you’re looking to add critical people, the electrical engineering and embedded systems talent, the data scientists and the software developers of the world, the forces are actually aligned AGAINST US right now:

Don’t believe what you hear out there.

If you’re scratching your head wondering how to attract top talent, you’re not alone. It’s actually harder for leaders to hire for critical roles now than it was two years ago. Because critical talent isn’t coming to you and applying on your website, and they’re not going on Indeed and making themselves available. The fact is, with all these layoffs, these organizations have freed up a lot of budget in order to retain the talent that they depend on.

You need a strong magnet to pull these needles out of the haystack.

Counteroffers are coming in fast, and that is a clear sign that we have a talent shortage on our hands. Over the course of the last six months, we’ve seen a huge rise in counteroffers, and we’re actually seeing employers paying 15% over market value in this market that we’re currently in today. Regardless of what we’re hearing in the market right now, there is a scarcity of talent, not a surplus of talent. And whether you’re working with your internal talent acquisition team or an external agency, they need to work with a greater sense of urgency than they ever have – a greater sense of urgency than they did even two years ago. With so much more available talent in this market, some recruiters may feel that hiring should actually be easier. They may feel that they would be doing themselves a disservice if they weren’t to go through all the extra resumes that may be flooding their inbox or doing nine extra interviews because the talent is available.  

If you’re slowing down the hiring process for critical roles, it’s the wrong strategy.

It’s natural to white knuckle the status quo and worry about change. But if you do that, like everyone else, you’re going to lose out on the opportunity to hire the talent to drive your organization forward, and your talent acquisition process will fail.  

Caution should be built into your hiring process. It should look like due diligence. Not like indecision.

Get your hiring process tight, then speed it up. You need a strong recruitment plan in place if you want to land and retain the best talent. Looking to hire? Looking for a job? Contact us today! Share This Post [social-share] More Like This

How to Attract Top Talent in Today’s Market

,
How to Attract Top Talent in Today's Market Brightwing’s President Jeff Genovich lays out the best hiring practices for how to attract top talent in today’s market.  Jeff tells us, in times like these when you’re looking to add critical people, the electrical engineering and embedded systems talent, the data scientists and the software developers of the world, the forces are actually aligned AGAINST US right now:

Don’t believe what you hear out there.

If you’re scratching your head wondering how to attract top talent, you’re not alone. It’s actually harder for leaders to hire for critical roles now than it was two years ago. Because critical talent isn’t coming to you and applying on your website, and they’re not going on Indeed and making themselves available. The fact is, with all these layoffs, these organizations have freed up a lot of budget in order to retain the talent that they depend on.

You need a strong magnet to pull these needles out of the haystack.

Counteroffers are coming in fast, and that is a clear sign that we have a talent shortage on our hands. Over the course of the last six months, we’ve seen a huge rise in counteroffers, and we’re actually seeing employers paying 15% over market value in this market that we’re currently in today. Regardless of what we’re hearing in the market right now, there is a scarcity of talent, not a surplus of talent. And whether you’re working with your internal talent acquisition team or an external agency, they need to work with a greater sense of urgency than they ever have – a greater sense of urgency than they did even two years ago. With so much more available talent in this market, some recruiters may feel that hiring should actually be easier. They may feel that they would be doing themselves a disservice if they weren’t to go through all the extra resumes that may be flooding their inbox or doing nine extra interviews because the talent is available.  

If you’re slowing down the hiring process for critical roles, it’s the wrong strategy.

It’s natural to white knuckle the status quo and worry about change. But if you do that, like everyone else, you’re going to lose out on the opportunity to hire the talent to drive your organization forward, and your talent acquisition process will fail.  

Caution should be built into your hiring process. It should look like due diligence. Not like indecision.

Get your hiring process tight, then speed it up. You need a strong recruitment plan in place if you want to land and retain the best talent. Looking to hire? Looking for a job? Contact us today! Share This Post [social-share] More Like This

Why Your Company Should Partner with a Recruiting Firm

Why Your Company Should Partner with a Recruiting Firm When it comes to landing top talent, the stakes are high. According to Harvard Business Review, over 80% of employee turnover can be attributed to poor hiring choices. Similar research from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that the cost of a bad hire is 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings. Add to that the fact that job resignation numbers keep climbing and retention becomes a greater challenge, quality hiring decisions have become more important than ever. That’s why you shouldn’t go it alone. Read on for our top reasons why you should partner with a recruiting firm during the hiring process.  

What does a recruiting firm do for you?

  Before we get into why you should work with a recruiting firm, let’s talk about what a recruiting firm actually does for you:
  • Gain access to top talent, both passive and active
  • Gather insights into candidate career paths
  • Prepare candidates (and you) for interview
  • Act as an objective source of feedback and go-between for both parties
  • Assist with the offer and negotiation stages
Many of these important tasks have become more difficult in today’s job market. For example, the active candidate pool is shrinking, creating a need to seek out passive candidates. This requires more resources than most companies are willing to invest. When you find yourself falling short in any of the above areas, that’s a good sign that you need to partner with a recruiting firm.  

6 top reasons to partner with a recruiting firm

Now that you’re clear on what a recruiting firm does exactly, here are some reasons you should partner with one.  

1. Speed

Each day a position remains unfilled, you’re missing out on potential revenue. Without access to talent networks and communities, your HR department is going to take some time to find, screen, interview, and place talent—more time than you can afford. A recruiting firm, on the other hand, already has those communities built out, and may even have some good-fit candidates on deck. What’s more, partnering with an agency that specializes in your niche means that they’ll know exactly what you’re looking for. By partnering with a reputable recruiting firm, you can fill positions faster with quality talent.  

2. Attracting passive candidates

Given today’s tumultuous job market, there simply aren’t enough active candidates to fill all available positions. That means that you can’t just post to a job board and wait for people to come to you—you’re going to have to go out and find them. According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive candidates, but 87% of these candidates are open to new opportunities. So even if an A-list player is happy in their job, they’re never going to turn down a call with a recruiter. Partnering with a recruiting firm can open doors to quality talent that you never would be able to access yourself.  

3. Industry expertise

If you work in a niche industry, you’re almost certainly going to have a specific list of requirements for your roles. This requires an intensive and detailed search process. A recruiting firm with industry expertise can take a lot of this off your plate, screening and qualifying candidates before you even hear about them. If they have experience working with similar companies and placing people in similar roles, you can have the confidence that they know what you’re looking for, and can find those people quickly. What’s more, recruiting firms with experience in your industry will also have connections with other companies and candidates. Their insight can be invaluable when you’re bidding for competitive talent.  

4. Lower acquisition costs

You may be hesitant to work with a recruiting firm because of the fee they charge. However, we can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to spend less with a recruiting firm than if you tried to do everything yourself. Consider all of those activities we listed above. Now ask yourself: how much would it cost to hire people to fill all of those tasks? Then consider the cost of the tools and technologies that recruiters use to make their jobs more efficient. Simply put, there’s no way the cost of devoting internal resources to recruiting and hiring would be less than bringing in an external partner.  

5. Scalability & growth

Hiring is never static. There are peaks and troughs throughout the year. So even if you were going to build an in-house recruiting team, it’s very difficult to maintain the right size throughout the year. Partnering with a recruiting firm, however, ensures your access to recruiters and their talent communities year-round. As you look to scale and grow, this dependability can be a major asset.  

6. Candidate quality & retention rates

As we mentioned earlier, recruiting firms dedicate significant time to screening and qualifying candidates. This, combined with their industry expertise, means that when you finally get an interview with a candidate, there’s a high likelihood that they’re a good fit. Not only that, but the recruiter will likely have insight into what prompted said candidate to leave their organization—giving you a blueprint to help keep them at your company. While working with a recruiting firm won’t guarantee long-term employment, it puts you in the best position to achieve that goal.  

Final thoughts

  You shouldn’t have to become a staffing and recruiting expert just to fill critical roles. So play to your strengths, and let a recruiting firm play to theirs. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Fortunately, there are experts who can help guide you through the process and make sure that you find the best talent for your company. If you’re ready to get started, reach out to one of our Brightwing hiring experts today.

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How To Fill Jobs In Your Automotive Supplier Business

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There’s fierce competition for employees in the automotive supplier business, but this industry is booming with great jobs of all ranges.

Read more

What Types of Interviews Are There and How Can You Prepare for Them?

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Learning the different types of interviews and how to prepare for them can help you land your desired position.

Read more

How to Make Meetings More Effective: 8 Productivity Tips

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How to Make Meetings More Effective: 8 Productivity Tips Unproductive meetings waste more than $37 billion per year, and 67 percent of all meetings are considered failures. Yet most people suck it up when their calendars get overloaded—or complain about it to their coworkers—never bothering to ask the question: how do I make our meetings more effective? Granted, if you’re new to an organization, you probably aren’t in a position to dramatically change your team’s meeting habits. That said, there are some actions you can take to help you make the most of meetings—and guide others to do the same. Read on for eight tips to make meetings more effective and productive, so you can get the greatest possible value out of your time.  

1. Understand the purpose of the meeting

  A meeting for the sake of having a meeting is a waste of everyone’s time. If you’re going to pull people away from their valuable work, then you have to make sure the meeting provides equal or greater value—both to the organization and the individual people involved. This means that understanding, defining, and communicating the purpose of the meeting is critical. If you don’t know what the goal of the meeting is, you’ll show up unprepared and won’t be able to contribute effectively. The same goes for your coworkers. Generally, meetings fall into one of three categories:
  • Information sharing. In these meetings, information flows in one direction—usually from leadership to the employees. Generally there will be a Q&A, but the purpose is to clarify and reinforce the information shared.
  • Creative discussion. This is a back-and-forth discussion where you toss out ideas, ideally in a judgment-free way.
  • Consensus decision. Stakeholders come together to reach a decision on a particular topic. Ideally, once the meeting is over and the decision made, no more discussion is needed and you move to execute the plan.
Defining the purpose of the meeting will provide clarity, help you avoid rabbit holes, and help you make the meeting more effective.  

2. Have an agenda

  In addition to having a set purpose for the meeting, it’s also important to have a firm grasp on the subjects and topics to be covered. If not, it’s easy for the meeting to get off track—especially during a brainstorming session. Although your agenda should always be in writing, it doesn’t have to be fancy. It just needs to answer the following questions:
  • What type of meeting is this? What is the expected outcome?
  • What are the topic(s) of conversation (define these as narrowly as possible)?
  • Who needs to be present at this meeting?
  • Who is responsible for leading the meeting? Who manages the post-meeting action items?
Creating an agenda provides clarity, allows everyone to show up prepared, and helps to ensure you are as time-efficient as possible.  

3. Be time conscious

  Everyone’s time is valuable. If you’re attending a meeting, show up on time (or a few minutes early). If you’re running a meeting, show up on time and, most importantly, end the meeting early. This is easier said than done. There are a number of reasons why a meeting might run late:
  • Too much small talk or catch-up
  • Lack of focus on the topic of discussion
  • Allowing some people to dominate the conversation
  • Expecting to accomplish too much in a short amount of time
It’s always a good idea to plan more time than you think you need, and focus the meeting on a narrow enough topic that you can accomplish your objective in the allotted time.  

4. Know your role

  Everyone has a job in a meeting. If you don’t have a role, then you probably shouldn’t be there (more on that later). Are you leading the meeting, or just a participant? If you’re a participant, how active do people expect you to be? What are the risks of dominating the conversation? One of the biggest problems with corporate meetings is that expectations are often unspoken. If possible, reach out to the meeting leader with a quick email to clarify any details. It may take a few minutes of your and their time, but that small effort could mean the difference between a productive and unproductive session.  

5. Prepare in advance

  If you’re going to productively contribute to a meeting, you need to be prepared. But that important truth cuts both ways: if you want everyone to productively contribute, you have to give them the information they need to be prepared. So if you’re a participant, do your research ahead of time. If you’re unsure about anything, ask in advance. And if you’re running the meeting, make sure you provide participants with the background information they need to be successful:
  • Data, stats, and charts
  • Sales plans
  • Production plans
  • Roadmaps & backlogs
 

6. Identify who needs to be present

  Not everyone needs to be in every meeting. While some people feel like they should be present because they’re involved in a project, the truth is that if they’re not going to actively contribute, the meeting is a waste of their time. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a “two pizza” rule of thumb: if you need more than two pizzas to feed everybody, then there are too many people. If you think that you need more people in the meeting, then it’s possible that the scope of the meeting is too big. In that case, focus on a narrower topic and objective.  

7. Listen actively

  The point of a meeting is to gather input from your colleagues. If you don’t listen to what they have to say, then there’s no point—regardless of whether you’re a leader or participant. It’s true that the post-COVID world has blurred the lines between what’s acceptable in meetings. Generally speaking, spending time on your phone or holding sideline conversations is a bad move. Not only is it rude, but you’re missing out on important information—and you won’t be able to contribute to the discussion. And if these meetings are so boring that you don’t feel like you’re getting anything out of them, then consider this next point…  

8. Make sure you need the meeting

  “This meeting could’ve been an email.” We’ve all heard (and probably said) that line a time or two. So before you schedule a meeting and expect people to give up their precious time, decide whether or not a meeting is absolutely necessary. Some issues can be solved via email, Slack, or a couple of one-on-one phone calls. As important as meetings are, if you spend your whole day in them, you’ll never get your work done. So consider the idea of “meetings as a last resort” — you’ll end up with higher quality outcomes in the end.

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Best Ways to Hire for Your Lending Business

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Best Ways to Hire for Your Lending Business

Hiring for a lending business

Financial industry jobs are anticipated to grow by 10% by the year 2026. This means it will soon become more important than ever for financial services recruiters to know how to find, hire, and retain talent.  Lending service hiring is a very specific process. It has challenges that make it more difficult to find the right people to fill open roles than other industries may have. Your company’s financial services recruitment strategies need to be on point if you want to land the most qualified candidates.

What Are the Challenges of Financial Services Recruitment?

Every industry is unique when it comes to best practices in recruiting new candidates. However, many would argue that the financial industry is the most difficult. A large reason for this is simply a lack of suitable talent. In fact, 76% of accountancy and finance employers said a shortage of suitable applicants is the biggest obstacle they face when it comes to hiring. When you add the fact that financial industry jobs often require niche skill sets, navigating a small pool of candidates is even more challenging. Finally, financial employers are often competing with many other sectors for new talent. Many young employees today are pursuing jobs in fields like tech over finance. So, you’re not only competing against your direct competitors but companies in other industries as well.

How Can You Improve Your Lending Service Hiring Strategy?

Despite these challenges facing the industry, there are ways you can position your company ahead of the competition to land some impressive new hires.

Improve Your Employer Branding

If you want to get the attention of quality candidates, you will need to invest in your employer’s brand. You should begin by researching how potential candidates perceive your brand and the things they really want to know about you. Then, you can analyze how those expectations differ from what you’re actually showing them. How can you influence potential candidates’ perceptions about you to appeal to even more people? For example, you’ll likely be competing with new, fintech companies that have a youthful, engaging brand. If that is something many candidates are looking for, they will skip applying to your traditional, conservative brand. In order to be competitive, you’ll need to make sure your company comes across in a way that resonates with the people you consider to be your ideal candidates. 

Use Recruitment Marketing Strategies

Lending service hiring really is a form of marketing and it doesn’t end with your company branding. You’ll also want to consider how you can employ strategies that will help you build an extensive pool of qualified candidates. This pool can be used for both current and future job openings.  You’ll want to use digital tools such as programmatic advertising to help get your open positions in front of the right candidates. Another effective strategy is to create ideal candidate profiles for any job openings. This will help you identify the attributes that are most essential to success on the job. It will also help you employ programmatic advertising that targets the candidates with the skills you’re looking for.

Expand Your Sourcing Strategy

Are you looking in the right places to find new hires? Your open positions should be posted in relevant places like social media platforms and online job boards. Online job boards are one of the best places to advertise your openings since 71% of finance professionals said they look for work through these platforms. You can utilize general job boards such as LinkedIn or Indeed and specialist lending service hiring boards. College job fairs and other recruiting events are another great way to expand your sourcing strategy. These are especially effective in meeting entry-level candidates. If the results of these strategies aren’t satisfactory, utilizing a recruiting agency like Brightwing is an excellent option. We can help you create a more effective sourcing strategy and even take some of the work off of your hands.

Make Growth and Inclusion Part of Your Employee Value Proposition

Today, employees are looking for more than a place to earn a salary. They want to work for a company that encourages their personal growth and prioritizes inclusion. Candidates should hear your employee value proposition (EVP) and immediately know there’s nowhere else they’d rather work. Can you offer training opportunities that your competitors can’t or won’t? Are there clear paths for advancement within the company? Do you hire people of all backgrounds? These are all things that should be an integral part of your EVP. 

Connect Through Email and Social Media

Email and social media are highly effective ways to reach the younger generations of applicants. Consider utilizing email as a way to stay in touch with candidates who didn’t make the cut. You can maintain a relationship and nurture them to keep them in the loop for future job openings using email. Professional social media sites like LinkedIn are also useful for connecting with candidates. If you’re not convinced it’s a place to spend your time and money, consider that 49% of professionals follow relevant organizations on social media to keep up with their recruitment processes. You already know they are looking there, so why not reach them where they’re already active?

Start An Employee Referral Program

There is no one better to vouch for your company than someone who already works there. Inevitably, your employees will know people who work in similar industries or at other companies. Getting employee referrals is an extremely easy and efficient way to reach new talent.  You can start a referral program by rewarding employees for recommending employees they think would make great candidates. Employee referral programs lower the time to hire and also help save on recruiting costs so you are not sourcing. In addition, you already know these candidates have a good relationship with your current employees, which is a win-win.

Lending Service Hiring is Hard

There’s no denying that recruiting in the financial industry is hard. Talent is in short supply and the competition is fierce. That’s why lending service hiring and recruiting has to be an active process, not a passive activity. You need to show potential employees why working for you will be the best choice for them. That means marketing to job seekers in a similar way to how you market to your customers.

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What is Technical Recruiting and Is It a Good Career Choice?

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What is Technical Recruiting and Is It a Good Career Choice?

Technical Recruiting as a Good Career Choice

If you identify as a person with excellent communication skills, a strong curiosity streak, and have knowledge of technical career fields, then becoming a technical recruiter could be a good career choice. 

What is a technical recruiter? 

A technical recruiter is a recruiter who specifically looks for talent to fill technical roles, which are jobs that require certain skills and expertise (usually in IT and engineering). Often, technical recruiters have at least two years of experience in the industry field they will be recruiting for, and formal education gives a prospective technical recruiter a competitive edge.  Technical recruiters match people with opportunities to create a pool of qualified candidates for sustaining a pipeline of talent.

What does a recruiter do? 

To decide if technical recruiting is a good career choice for you, it’s important to understand the duties and responsibilities of a technical recruiter. 

Build recruiting strategy 

Recruiters are responsible for building a pool of qualified candidates for a talent pipeline, a task that is critical to securing a  recruiting firm’s success and longevity as they target the skillset. The importance of the task means that recruiters will have to strategize how to best find new talent and build relationships with them. The process involves reaching out through social media, job boards, text messages, emails, and phone calls.   

Identify sources of high-quality talent

A technical recruiter needs to identify the spaces where they can find qualified candidates for a technical role. This process often includes finding the right circles on recruitment-friendly websites such as LinkedIn and searching for candidates through social media. It’s also important that recruiters maintain a strong digital presence to present themselves as reliable and approachable. 

Reach out to prospective hires

This task is likely the first thing that comes to mind when you think of becoming a recruiter, and it’s a task that requires some tough skin. Technical recruiters will have to reach out to candidates who they identified through their searches who would be potentially good fits for the roles they are looking to fill. Recruiters will also have to be able to market different job opportunities to a prospective candidate. Often, it means reaching out to people who are not interested and being unfettered by blunt responses, rejection, and silences.  

Screen and interview prospective talent

Technical recruiters have to ensure that the candidate is qualified, which is why having industry knowledge is important for the job. The process often includes interviews, technical assessments, and other screening techniques-–often with multiple steps to guarantee talent and experience. To fully assess if a candidate is suitable for a role, a recruiter will need to have strong interpersonal skills and critical thinking. At Brightwing, we use our tried and tested BRIGHTView Process to guarantee we find qualified individuals for our targeted positions. Beyond gauging a candidate’s technical capabilities, Brightwing technical recruiters dive deeper to learn about a candidate’s soft skills, career aspirations, and potential cultural fit. Brightwing recruiters spend time with the candidate themselves, as well as with previous managers and co-workers to get a 360-degree view.

Recommend prospective hires

Once a technical recruiter has found a candidate they think will be a good match, the candidate will likely be submitted to the client for the role. It is also a recruiter’s responsibility to present the recommended candidate in the best light. 

Coordinate and consult on client interviews

When a client decides to interview submitted candidates, the technical recruiter coordinates the interview scheduling and coaches candidates on how to perform their best during the interview. They’ll follow-up after each round of interviews with feedback from the client and tips on how to best approach the next phase of the process.

Offer and negotiate job offers 

Once the client decides they’d like your candidate to join their team, recruiters will have to contact the candidate with an offer and close them. The conversation can include questions and conditions from the candidate, during which a recruiter will have to answer and negotiate effectively to convince them to accept the offer. 

Represent businesses at job fairs

Recruiters will often be present at job fairs where they will promote and represent their business while also searching for potential employees and candidates. 

Is recruiting a good job? 

High Demand and Potential for Growth

There is currently a recruiter shortage. Today, companies are not only facing a staffing shortage, but also difficulty finding recruiters who can fill those shortages. As such, recruiting jobs are in very high demand with ample opportunities and chances that pay well. According to Indeed, the average technical recruiting job in the US pays around $60,737 a year, while Built-In says the average is closer to $85,000.  The recruiting industry is also expected to grow in the coming years, which means that there will be growth reflected in both your salary and in recruiting firms. Entering this industry means you won’t be short on good opportunities. 

Work with Purpose

It’s hard to feel motivated by a job if you feel like you’re not making any sort of difference. But as a technical recruiter, your efforts will be tangible. You will be matching people with their best-fit opportunities, which means that with each placement you make, you have brought in new talent to a business. You can feel that you are doing valuable work both for the people you recruit and for the clients you serve.  Your efforts will also clearly be reflected in your pay, as successful placements will give you commission fees and high-quality recruiting will lead to significant bonuses. 

Transferable Skills and Industry Freedom

A recruiting job is basically a sales job, which means there are countless soft skills you will learn from being a recruiter that you can transfer to other jobs. From excellent listening skills to critical thinking to negotiating, having a recruiter’s skillset prevents you from feeling trapped in one industry, and multiple doors will be open to you in the future. 

Become a recruiter

Here at Brightwing, we hire and invest in our people to help them reach their potential. Learn more about our careers today and send in your resume to see if becoming a recruiter with Brightwing is the best opportunity for you! 

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Does LinkedIn Really Work to Find Jobs?

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is LinkedIn the best place to find and apply to jobs on? More often than not, the answer is no. Find out more about your options.

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Does LinkedIn Really Work to Find Jobs?

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Does LinkedIn Really Work to Find Jobs?

LinkedIn for job searching

If you’re like millions of job seekers around the world, you probably have a LinkedIn profile. And you also probably keep it updated with details about yourself and your previous jobs to hopefully capture the attention of a hiring manager. Many people use LinkedIn as a way to stay connected with colleagues, peers, and thought leaders. Thanks to their job board, many also use LinkedIn to find a job. Since you’re already active on the platform, why wouldn’t you use it for an additional purpose, too? But it’s worth asking, is LinkedIn the best place to find and apply to jobs on? More often than not, the answer is no.

Is LinkedIn a Good Place to Find a Job?

If you want to spend weeks and even months looking for a job, then LinkedIn is a good place to find a job. These are some of the reasons you may not want to use LinkedIn to find a job.

The Resume Problem

It’s common knowledge that you should customize your resume to fit whatever position you are applying to. Many companies utilize applicant tracking systems (ATS) that scan your resume for certain keywords that match their job description. And if your resume does not include them, your resume will most likely be immediately discarded. Unfortunately, LinkedIn only lets you upload one resume that you can use for applications. It just isn’t possible for you to tailor a single version of your resume to every position. 

Not All Employers Post on LinkedIn

In theory, using LinkedIn to find a job seems like a no-brainer. And maybe it would be – if every company posted openings on it. While there are certainly a lot of companies that are active on LinkedIn, that doesn’t mean they’ll post open jobs on it. In addition, many companies are not active on LinkedIn at all. Needless to say, they won’t be posting their job openings on the website. If you are using LinkedIn as the only way to find a job, you will be missing out on a large number of opportunities. 

Fake Job Listings

You may not expect there to be scams on a professional network like LinkedIn. But as more people use the platform to look for jobs, the number of scammers is also rising. Still, not all job postings are spammers or identity thieves. Sometimes, companies put up job listings simply so they have backup resumes on file. Others may use it to simply test the waters and see if there’s a qualified candidate out there for a job that is not currently vacant. No matter what the context is, these fake job listings are a waste of time. They can even be potentially dangerous. If you don’t feel confident that you’d be able to spot a fake listing, you might not want to use LinkedIn to find a job.

It’s Hard to Get Noticed

Some people believe that simply having an up-to-date profile is enough to find a job using LinkedIn. However, that could not be further from the truth. Currently, there are over 800 million members on LinkedIn in more than 200 countries and territories. With that many people in one place, it’s difficult to get noticed. Getting noticed by a potential employer would take a significant amount of work on your part. You are probably already pressed for time in your schedule to job hunt. Adding consistent content creation and profile updates to your to-do list is unnecessarily stressful. Recruiters may often find you via LinkedIn and that relationship is certainly worth investing in.

Why Choose a Recruiting Agency as a LinkedIn Alternative

When it comes to LinkedIn alternatives to finding a job, a recruitment company is your best bet. Working with a recruiting agency provides you with the upper hand you may need to secure a new job. With local connections and industry knowledge, a recruiting company like Brightwing is a much more effective way to find your new job. Not convinced? These are just 5 reasons we’re a better LinkedIn alternative to finding a job.

Get Your Foot In The Door

Are you struggling to even get a first interview when you apply to jobs? You might be running into a problem with the applicant tracking systems (ATS) many companies use to weed out unfit candidates. Unfortunately, most jobs do not have a real person looking at every resume that comes through. Instead, the ATS decides which select few resumes should be reviewed by a person.  So where does a professional recruiter come in? They have strong relationships with companies and hiring managers. These connections give the recruiter a chance to vouch for you and help you stand out in a very competitive job market. They add a personal touch that you won’t get by submitting an application online only.

Saves You Time

Searching for open jobs, customizing your resume, and applying is not an efficient method for finding a job. A recruitment agency works with you to quickly find jobs that are the right fit for your experience and aspirations. Recruiters can evaluate the fit and connect you with the hiring team much faster than doing it on your own. 

Extend Your Reach

A recruitment agency is always looking to fill new, open positions. That means with each new job vacancy, you could be pushed to the top of the list. While you may be able to keep up with these openings on your own, getting a recruiter’s help will exponentially increase your chances of finding a new job. They have the expertise to cast a larger net than you may have even considered.  In fact, some jobs are only accessible through recruiters. Companies often make agreements with recruiting agencies to try to fill open positions before it gets publicly posted. By working with a recruiter, you’ll be the first to know about openings and may even be able to place you before the job opens up to the general public.

Gain Feedback

An underrated benefit of using a recruiting agency to find a job is that they can provide feedback on your job search efforts. For example, they can review your resume and typical interview responses and offer valuable feedback. Maybe you leave out certain skill sets in an interview that could increase your chance of landing the job. A recruiter can make sure you know when and where to include that information. This information might be the one thing that finally lands you that next interview – or the job itself!

Choosing a Recruiting Agency

Here at Brightwing, we believe that you deserve to close out each day at work with a sense of accomplishment. Check out our website for opportunities to find a role, team, and organization you can be proud of.

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How Are You Hedging Against Labor Shortages?

How Are You Hedging Against Labor Shortages? According to data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), nearly 90 percent of their respondents said they were struggling to fill open positions, and 73 percent noted a decrease in applications. This data is indicative of the pain most companies are feeling—they need workers, but struggle to find people to work for them. While sectors like food service, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing are hardest hit, this is something that businesses across sectors are feeling right now. Many companies are struggling to increase wages and step up the benefits they offer, but not everyone has the resources to handle this right now. As a result, you may be at a loss as to the best ways to hedge against these current labor shortages. In this post, we’ll walk through some steps you can take to keep your company growing, even if hiring is a challenge.  

What is Causing Current Labor Shortages?

  As with any economic event, labor shortages have many causes. Here are some of the factors that seem most prominent in the Great Resignation:
  • The shock of the pandemic has forced many workers to reevaluate their work-life balance priorities
  • Many aging workers chose to retire early during the pandemic, exacerbating a growing skilled labor gap
  • Employees who work in crowded environments are hesitant to return to work and risk contracting COVID-19
  • High unemployment benefits enable workers to still meet basic needs without returning to work—in many cases they are spending the time seeking job opportunities in other fields
While some of these factors are tied directly to the pandemic and will likely subside when it ends, others will likely continue even after life goes back to normal. As a result, it’s important to take these changes seriously and adapt to the current environment.  

What You Can’t Do

  Before we dive into the best ways to respond to these shortages, let’s talk about some options that shouldn’t be on the table. Many companies have just decided to throw in the towel, and limit the services they offer. While it may seem like “battening down the hatches until the storm passes” is a good option, that assumes that this “storm” is a short-term phenomenon. While COVID-19 concerns may abate soon, other economic factors may not. What if these dynamics continue for multiple years? Companies who will succeed over the long term adapt to challenges, not shirk away from them. Another bad idea is to expect to achieve sizable growth without growing your team. While adopting automation and technology can help make this possible (more on that later), expecting one team member to do the jobs of two or three right now will just lead to burnout, and people will leave. As a result, if you want your business to grow, bringing on more talent is a key part of the equation.  

How to Hedge Against Labor Shortages

  Here are a few of the actions that leading companies are taking to hedge against current labor shortages. Let’s look at a few of these tactics.  

1. Raise salaries and offer better benefits.

We’ve all seen the fast food restaurants offering $12-15 an hour (some even more) for new employees. That’s because the most obvious thing to do when you’re having trouble finding talent is to offer more compensation:
  • Higher salaries
  • Signing bonuses
  • Education subsidies
  • Free subscriptions (e.g. Spotify Premium)
However, this approach only works when you have the resources to offer these added perks. While it’s important to consider how you could “sweeten the pot” from a compensation standpoint, let’s take a look at other ways to set yourself apart from competitors.  

2. Promote company culture.

As people’s lives re-shift after the third (or fourth, depending on how you count) COVID wave, people are going to be even pickier about the companies they work with. Simply put: culture matters now more than ever. Employees want a culture that values their contribution, provides the necessary freedom for work-life balance, and provides opportunities to grow in their career development. Valuing employees as human beings goes a long way to both attracting and retaining top talent. Be sure to put culture front and center in your hiring materials, social media posts, and online content. Let potential candidates know that you’re a company that people want to work for, not have to work for.  

3. Build a talent funnel.

In today’s candidate-driven market, most companies are rolling out the red carpet during the hiring process, hoping that it will entice top talent to work with them. If you want to build a reliable talent funnel, then you need to start doing some of these things:
  • Be quick in your response times (automation can be a real help in this area!)
  • Engage in remote hiring, both to expand your talent pool and improve accessibility
  • Keep candidate information in a centralized database so you don’t re-ask the same questions
  • Work with a reputable recruitment firm who can handle much of these details for you
Your best employee could turn in their two weeks’ notice tomorrow, leaving you in a lurch. Having a reliable talent funnel, driven by an exceptional candidate experience, can help you replace them easier.  

4. Upskill your current employees.

Promoting from within is almost always more cost-effective than going out to hire a replacement. So if you have some excellent employees who are interested in taking their career to the next level, you can offer training opportunities for them to do so. Of course, this has a two-fold effect: it creates an in-house talent ladder to hedge against potential resignations, and it also keeps these employees engaged so they don’t feel the need to go work somewhere else.  

5. Invest in automation.

We mentioned this earlier but it bears repeating. There are a variety of devices, software, and systems that can increase productivity and output without increasing the cost of labor. An obvious example is the self-service kiosks or mobile apps for fast food restaurants, but there are other types of automation that can help engineering, IT, healthcare, automotive, and other companies:
  • Chatbots that automate the front lines of customer support
  • Email marketing automations to personalize and automate customer communications
  • Productivity workflows and project management software
  • Employee analytics tools to gauge the productivity of each team member, and identify opportunities for improvement
While technology is no replacement for the human team member, it can relieve stress and help everyone do their jobs better—and potentially provide a stopgap if a star employee moves on.

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How a Recruiting Company Can Help You Fill a Job Faster

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How a Recruiting Company Can Help You Fill a Job Faster As an employer, sifting through the numerous applicants received for every open position can be exceedingly challenging. Not just because it takes time and effort above and beyond a hiring manager’s normal set of responsibilities (though, of course it does). The challenges of hiring in today’s market are greater than in recent memory. How, when, and why we work has been disrupted over the last couple of years. Shifting priorities make hiring the best people harder than before. That’s where a specialized recruiting agency comes in extremely helpful. Recruitment companies yield more consistent and speedy employee and employment searches, results, and substantial, long-term employment of the best employees for a given role. Not least because they don’t wait for applications to come in – they work proactively to find top talent that may not even be looking to make a change. In this article, we’ll discuss what a recruiting agency is, the leading-edge benefits of using one, and how to make the most of a recruiting company.  

Why Outsource Your Talent Recruiting?

  In an ever-changing and evolving job labor market characterized by increasing recruitment and acquisition challenges, high turnovers, unfilled job openings, and changing candidate expectations, many have turned to recruiting firms to find their next career role or to find their next valuable employee. The average cost per hire in 2022 using traditional means is $4,425, and filling the average position takes 36-45 days. Moreover, the cost of a bad hire can be a third of one’s salary. A recruiting company acts as an expert mediator between employers and job hunters. They work for a company to understand their people’s needs and then find the most ideal matches. They have a broad view of the market in that skillset, and they have well-developed pipelines of candidates – some who are actively job seeking, and others who are not.  As a result, the best recruiters are prepared to garner top results for employers and job hunters, and save valuable time, money and energy for both. In contrast to an employment agency that focuses on hiring unskilled applicants (or laborers), recruitment agencies are highly beneficial to both employers and skilled applicants. A skilled applicant possesses the experience and certifications, as well as the motivation and the soft skills to fill a role on a particular team well. The recruitment agency works with their clients to qualify job requisitions, then engages in recruitment processes that vary from firm to firm. In the case of Brightwing, we’ve developed the Brightview process to thoroughly vet our candidates, as an example. These tasks include meaningfully reaching out to candidates through various networks, identifying the most ideal for a job through their database and various networks of existing relationships, vetting these potential employment candidates, and presenting the resulting top candidates to the employer.  

Benefits of a Recruiting Company

  Traditional hiring and job-seeking methods are less reliable and efficient than using a recruiting company. They are more expensive and time-consuming in numerous ways, and less able to yield the best results for both hiring manager and candidate. Some of the top benefits of using a recruitment company such as Brightwing to achieve your hiring goals include expert recruitment knowledge and assistance, easier and faster hiring, higher-quality candidates, extended reach and access, specialist knowledge of the job market and current trends, full support for employers and job hunters, less wasted time and resources, and a more competitive edge for both employers and job hunters.  

Expert Knowledge and Assistance

The entire job and focus of a recruitment company is finding the best candidates with expert knowledge, resources, connections, and extensive experience above the average employer. Not only do they post compelling job ads, but they maximize interest in the position by leaning on their longstanding relationships with leaders and up-and-comers in the field.  

Easier and Faster Hiring

An employment recruiter dramatically shortens the time it takes to fill a role with expert knowledge, assistance, and increased focus toward the end goal. What’s more – hiring managers will spend quality time looking at three qualified candidates, rather than sifting through hundreds of applications that are not necessarily qualified at all. The hiring manager or job hunter gets the gift of gaining back their time.  

Higher Quality Candidates

When working with specialized, agency recruiters, employers receive only the highest quality, skilled candidates in their industry. Hiring managers work through a handful of expertly referenced, pre-screened, and interviewed candidates, rather than a vast pool of unvetted incoming applications.  

Extended Reach and Access

Alongside expert knowledge and assistance, employment recruiters also have extended reach and access to wider pools of candidates in diverse industries, including ideal candidates that are less easily accessed and/or who may not be aware of the ideal job opportunity.  

Specialist Market and Trends Knowledge

Recruitment agencies provide clarity on current job market trends, with deeper knowledge and investment in up-to-date research and reports. They provide valuable information and informed advice on how to best achieve goals and improve your employer brand or your job hunting profile.  

Full Support

The best employment recruiting teams communicate actively with both employers and job hunters, find ideal candidates for various roles and job vacancies individual candidates are ideal for. They engage, make impactful connections, and provide full support, feedback, and suggestions to both.  

Less Wasted Time and Resources

There is less waste of time and resources expended toward candidate searches, engagement, and recruitment by using an experienced recruitment agency. Expedient recruitment that provides higher-quality candidates saves time, money, and the results pay for themselves.  

A More Competitive Edge

By providing expert knowledge and assistance, easier and faster hiring, higher-quality candidates and resulting employees, extended reach and access, specialist marketing and trends knowledge, full support, and less wasted time and resources, employment recruiters give employers and job hunters a more competitive edge in their diverse industries of the job market.  

Experiences Without a Recruitment Company

  Without an employment recruiter, employers and job hunters spend much more time and resources searching for candidates or jobs on their own through numerous conflicting, and potentially misleading sources of information. The results are ill-fitting employment matches and connections that lead to inefficiency, high turnover and ultimately make reaching organizational goals more difficult and more expensive. Not to mention, any drawn-out in-house recruiting places an additional burden on team members. This additional work can lead to excessive burnout and increased expenses.   

How to Make the Most of a Recruitment Company

  To yield the best results, have a clear idea of your needs and desires for both the employment recruiters and the open role before you engage with a recruitment agency. The best recruiting agencies will press you for clarity on both of these. Provide a clear job description, a list of requirements, and important skills and attributes for the position. Be clear to yourself and toward the recruitment company on your ideal candidate so they know what to look for. And consider carefully which skills or attributes are required versus nice to have. As an ideal candidate, be clear on your own needs, desires, top skills, and attributes to match with the most ideal job for you. Work with your recruiter to develop questions so that you interview hiring companies as much as their interview you.  

Getting Started With a Recruitment Company

  Employment recruiters at Brightwing are ready to provide you with expert consultation, and highly efficient results that save valuable time, money, decrease turnover, and increase your teams’ work quality, focus, capabilities, performance, and competitiveness. Whether you are looking to find a job or your next top employee, a recruitment company can help you fill a job faster. For the best employee and employment matches, reach out to us to start a conversation.

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6 Steps to Keep Afloat after a Sudden Employee Resignation

6 Steps to Keep Afloat after a Sudden Employee Resignation It’s the one thing that every employer dreads. Unfortunately, in our current reality, this thing has become almost commonplace. We’re talking about an employee resignation. A sudden departure can be scary, especially if you’re losing a top performer. Plus, there’s always the concern that the resignation will become, for lack of a better word, contagious. So if your top employee leaves, here are six steps to keep your organization afloat, set your team at ease, and continue moving toward success.

1. Take a moment to breathe.

An employee resignation can be overwhelming at the best of times. When you’re not expecting it, or if the person leaving is a star performer, it can seem like the world is coming to an end. So instead of making decisions while in fight-or-flight mode, take a deep breath. Ideally, your employee will follow best practices and turn in their notice on a Friday. This will give both you and them the weekend to process the news. Then, on Monday, everyone can come to the table with a clear head.

2. Fulfill all your legal obligations.

There are some basic, legal obligations that you have to do when an employee leaves. These can include:
  • Paying all accrued wages
  • Paying severance, unemployment compensation and other legal requirements
  • Paying out any accrued benefits that must be paid upon termination (or issuing a notice of non-entitlement to these benefits)
  • If applicable, accounting for and establishing a schedule for commission or bonus payments
  • Providing the employee with the required legal notices (COBRA benefit continuation, workers’ compensation notices, etc.)
  • Reviewing nondisclosure and noncompete agreements to maintain compliance (on both sides)
Not only does fulfilling these obligations protect you from liability, it also shows that you’re going to maintain a professional approach to the exit.

3. Fill the most critical gaps first.

When someone works for your company, they ideally fulfill 40 hours worth of work (or more) per week. This is a major contribution, and it’s going to be hard to fill those gaps in the short term. That’s why you shouldn’t try and fill them all at once. Instead, put together a list of the employee’s weekly tasks, and figure out what must get done, and what you can drop until you hire a replacement. Be very picky about which tasks you deem essential, because your current employees are going to have to take on those tasks on top of their regular duties.

4. See if there’s a deeper issue within the organization.

In many cases, a resignation happens because of an issue with the employee—they want to pivot their career, work in a different kind of environment, etc. It doesn’t mean there’s a problem with your organization, it just means that the fit is no longer there. When this happens, it’s highly unlikely that the resignation will become contagious. But there are some cases in which a resignation happens because of a problem with your organization. In those cases, the resignation will almost certainly be the first of many. So when you face a sudden employee resignation, it’s important to get to the root of their reasons why. Often employees are hesitant to burn bridges and so may not be forthcoming, but that’s why it’s important to ask probing questions during the exit interview, and even read between the lines a little bit. Some of these questions may include:
  • What are your reasons for leaving the company? What service did you feel we were unable to offer you?
  • What did you like about the company? What did you not like?
  • What are the top 3 things you think we should do differently here?
  • Did you have a good relationship with your supervisor and team?
  • Did we meet your expectations in terms of employee experience?

5. Be transparent with your team.

It’s important to maintain trust with the rest of your team in the best of times. But when someone resigns, it automatically sets everyone on edge. So it’s important to be especially vigilant about being open and transparent, and reassure them that you still have their best interests at heart. Start by letting everyone know that the person has turned in their notice. Better they hear it from you than from the grapevine. If appropriate, share some of the reasoning. If the employee is moving onto “bigger and better things,” share and celebrate it. Transparency and honesty will help reassure the team that you support them as individuals, not just for their work product.

6. If possible, part on good terms.

Barring some Festivus-style airing of grievances where the employee clearly wants to burn their bridges on the way out, it’s important to maintain a positive relationship with an outgoing employee. You never know: they could become your next customer, refer new business your way, or they may come back to work for you in the future.

Final thoughts on handling an employee resignation

If your top employee quits, there’s a lot you’re going to have to do to handle it. However, the best thing you can do is plan ahead. Here are some workforce planning tips to help stave off the worst effects of a sudden employee resignation:
  • Don’t allow anyone to become indispensable. When an “indispensable” employee leaves, there’s no one left to fill the gap. Make sure that no one person siloes themselves off and hoards their knowledge and expertise.
  • Document institutional knowledge. Top performing employees naturally accrue a good deal of institutional knowledge. You need to ensure that knowledge is properly documented so you don’t have to spend too much time bringing their replacement up to speed.
  • Focus on meeting your team’s needs. By building a strong culture, you don’t just build a better and more enjoyable place to work, improve your chances of succeeding as a business and reduce employee churn; you make it easier on everyone when that churn happens.
Resignations are just a part of the reality of the world right now. Instead of burying your head in the sand and hoping that you never experience one, take steps to prepare and handle them with grace.

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Employee Retention Strategies

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Employee Retention Strategies

Effective Employee Retention Strategies in the Wake of the Great Resignation

2021 was a year of change and struggle for many people, resulting in a wave of resignations which have cost companies millions of dollars in hiring, restructuring, and more. It seems like everywhere, businesses are short-handed and searching for adequate workers. Sometimes called the “Great Resignation,” sometimes the “Great Reshuffle,” millions of employees have switched jobs and even careers in search of a better work environment. Effective employee retention strategies are the key to keeping your employees satisfied and content in their job. 

Employee Retention Strategies 

While there are many strategies for retaining your employees, some are better than others. It is easy to think as an employer that your employees have everything they need, but it is time to consider what might help your employees enjoy their jobs to the fullest. 

Perks and Benefits

While this may seem like an obvious employee retention strategy, it could be the deciding factor between your workplace and a similar job that wants to hire your employees. 

Benefits

If you can make it happen, offer your employees benefits! Access to healthcare and a 401k are the bare minimum in today’s market – can you add other less expected benefits like employee discounts or tuition or childcare reimbursement? Not only do programs like these benefit your workers, but it benefits you as the employer as well. Employee benefits are tax-free, and often it won’t cost you much more to provide them. It also ensures you have a healthier, happier workforce with fewer sick days and more long-term employees. 

Paid Time Off

Another perk or benefit you can easily offer is generous paid time off (PTO). Burnout is a huge contributor to the great resignation. Paid time off can help reduce burnout and provide opportunities for vacations, family time, and needed leave for important other events like doctors appointments or funerals. Everyone needs time off, but a lot of companies make their employees take time off without pay, which can make things difficult for those employees. There are other cultures where everyone has time-off, but people don’t feel comfortable using it. We’ve all heard of the intense work environments where needing time off is looked at as a weakness, and never taking a vacation is rewarded with promotions. Offering generous PTO – and then actually encouraging employees to take it – is a great way to support your employees’ wellbeing and help them to stay with your company. 

Other Perks 

When a company offers perks, it is important not to slight the more important benefits and go straight to fun solutions. However, these fun perks can be effective employee retention strategies, especially in companies where you offer good benefits but need another reason for your employees to stay. Some of these perks are things like gifts over the holidays, contests with prizes, and even remote work options. These can be as exciting and fun as you want them to be! Creating a stand-out work environment can help your employees to see what is so great about your company. Sometimes perks can also look like nice office space, a stipend for office decor or supplies, paid lunches once a month, or even a free gym membership. Get creative! Help your employees see what makes your workspace special. 

Talk to Your Employees

While creating a happy work environment and exciting job package is always beneficial, it can’t replace a great conversation. The best employee retention strategies include several steps: 

Have a One on One With Each Employee

Many companies begin by issuing a company wide survey that gathers quite a bit of data. Then, move on to create a one on one with each employee. If this isn’t possible for you to meet with each employee, ask your managers to step in and meet with some of them. Record your impressions and ask questions such as “What could we do to make your job better?” or “What is your biggest frustration right now in the workplace?”. Make an effort to listen and make your employee feel validated. If you’re already friends, this can be an amazing discussion. Don’t make them feel like you are interrogating them or that if they say the wrong thing, they could lose their job. If that happens, the employee might even feel like they should leave due to these meetings. Be aware of your own shortcomings, and be willing to take some criticism. 

Compile Your Findings 

Notice what your employees say to you. Is there a common thread? What seems to be the biggest frustration of your employees? Maybe take a survey as a part of your meetings. Find what would help your employees to feel happiest in their individual jobs. 

Address the Issues You Find 

Once you have the evidence you need, make changes. Address the issues through effective employee retention strategies. Upgrade the office if needed! Give raises to the employees who deserve it! You will find that your employees will tell you what needs to be corrected if you only listen to their needs.

Growth and Opportunities

One of the most effective employee retention strategies that especially works well for Millennials and other younger employees is the opportunity for growth. Some people are happy staying in the same job for the rest of their lives. Employees often hope for growth, especially when they enter a job at the entry-level or are near the beginning of their careers. Most entry-level employees never grow in salary even after they are much more valuable to the company, prompting them to leave once they have more experience. A great way to combat these employees leaving is by offering scheduled raises or having yearly performance ratings and following up with the employees who go above and beyond. Reward your good employees, without them having to ask for it! 

Upgrade Your Office Equipment 

If your company has been using the same computers for the last 10 years, it’s time to upgrade. If an employee is struggling to complete their work tasks because of a computer, that makes them feel frustrated and like they have no control over their duties. Upgrading your office decor, space, and appliances can also impress clients and visitors to the office, making your employees proud to work there. Upgrading your office hardware can make your office more productive and also help the employees to feel valued and rewarded. Not only does this benefit them, it also benefits you as the employer.  Employees who feel listened to and have what they need will stay where they are. Creating a safe, sustainable job environment is the most effective employee retention strategy. While it is not easy being an employer, it is hard to continue hiring and rehiring employees who are unhappy and leaving. Do what works for you and your business, and you can gain a loyal employee group that will keep your company running. 

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Hiring for Your Financial Services Teams

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Hiring for Your Financial Services Teams

What to Know When Hiring for Your Financial Services Teams

Financial services recruitment can be difficult, especially in a world full of fraud, scams, and untrustworthy individuals. When you are looking to add data scientists, risk analysts, financial analysts, or accountants to your team, there are several steps to help you choose a good candidate. 2022 is a great year to look for new hires, as many people are looking for change in their jobs or may be seeking new employment. Hiring the right person with the talents you are seeking is a great way to set your business up for success. 

Hiring A Financial Services Team Member

Depending on the type of financial role you are trying to fill, take into account what qualifications you are seeking. A financial manager is responsible for the health of your business! Taking into consideration the kind of person you will need is key. Hiring a financial advisor can be difficult, so it is important to lay out what you would want your financial manager to do before you start the hiring process. It is much easier to find a candidate you want when you are prepared with a job description and your desires.  

What Does a Financial Services Job Entail?

As mentioned before, a financial manager would be responsible for the overall health of your company. Some other unique responsibilities might include: 
  • Fraud monitoring: A fraud specialist may be in charge of tracking and monitoring illegal transactions on clients’ accounts without proper authorization from the account owner. Fraud specialists may also report any suspicious account movements and unusual transactions that may be risky to the bank and/or their clients. 
  • Train and develop staff to create a great customer experience.
  • Delegating tasks to various employees.
  • Developing strategies to increase sales and retention
And that’s just the beginning! Financial services recruitment always comes down to finding someone you can truly trust. Completing those responsibilities in a timely and organized manner is important, but trusting that person with keeping your books and avoiding any issues with your finances is even more important. It is essential to identify a candidate who can work well with you, manage their responsibilities, and be trustworthy. 

How to Find a Good Candidate

Once you have identified what exactly you are looking for, you need to put out an accurate job description. Whether you hire a recruiter or post a job listing, be clear on what you want. Are you seeking an applicant with several years of experience? Would you like for them to have a degree? Make it clear in your listing what you are willing to accept from a candidate. Then, be open to candidates who fit the basics. Remember that years of experience don’t always make an individual trustworthy. The hiring process is one of the most difficult parts of running a business, but once you hire the right candidate, your business will thrive. The main steps to hiring someone in financial services are simple: 
  1. Building the job description – how to make your job opening more attractive than the others flooding the job boards? There are a finite number of candidates and it is important to create a job description that is appealing and unique. This is a critical step and needs to be executed well. 
  2. Reaching out proactively to candidates – in this candidate-driven market, you can’t wait for the best talent to come to you. In this market, employees are less driven to search for jobs when people may be recruiting them already. Good candidates are hired quickly. Get ahead of it by proactively reaching out.
  3. Screening candidates thoroughly, yet quickly– how do you make sure you’re hiring the RIGHT person without losing them to other offers? Candidates will often accept a role that they find gratifying and well-paying. If your process is slow or cumbersome, then you will have likely lost out on any number of great people. 
This may seem easy, but it can be hard if your applicants are not what you are seeking. This can happen for a number of reasons. You may not have a good job listing or an accurate description of the requirements of the job. Maybe your area is lacking in people who are qualified. Perhaps you need your job filled quickly, as the current employee might be leaving soon or already has left. This can make this process even more complicated.  You will want to ask for referrals from your best workers or use a better job seeking site to post on. Finding a trustworthy candidate is absolutely essential, and unfortunately, people sometimes lie on their resumes. 

Why Use a Recruiting Agency

Let’s face it, hiring a great candidate is an exhausting and time-consuming process. Hiring is just one of many aspects of a manager’s role, and it is a different type of effort than what a manager is accustomed to doing on a daily basis. Managers often have strong skills in many areas aside from hiring though. When it comes to financial recruitment, a recruiting agency takes a lot of the stress and worry out of hiring. Most people running a business find it difficult to take the time to hire and vet resumes while still accomplishing all they need to get done. A recruiting agency should go above and beyond for you to help you find the perfect applicant. 

Good Recruiters Matter

Experienced recruiters who truly care about finding a great hire are key when it comes to financial services recruitment. Finding a great fit has a lot to do with knowing the available applicants well. A good recruiter knows their candidate inside and out. They know their job history, their strengths and weaknesses, and their trustworthiness. They’ve already done the reference and background checks, and they know what kind of job their candidate wants. Then, they bring them to your business, fully vetted. All the groundwork done. 

Relationship-based Recruiting

Good recruiters get to know the candidates, and they get to know you and your business. They ask all the right questions to know exactly what you might be looking for. Let’s say you are seeking an experienced credit analyst with at least 5 years of experience, but the applicant having an MBA isn’t as important to you. Your recruiter can work through their pipeline of talent – some of whom are actively looking for new jobs, and many of whom are not – and get you interviewing with better candidates, faster than if you wait for applications to come in. Simply posting a job and resting on your laurels while waiting on resumes just does not work any longer. You will certainly miss out on a number of great people by not being proactive. Proactive outreach is more critical now than ever. 

Financial Services Recruitment

Recruiting a financial services team can be difficult, but it is possible to find a new hire who can complete your team and help you in your company mission. A great way to make it easier on yourself and your team is to hire a recruiting company to find you the perfect match! Reach out today to Brightwing and we can help you find the perfect candidate. 

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Find Great Employees for Your Engineering Team

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Find Great Employees for Your Engineering Team

How to Find Great Employees for Your Engineering Team

Creating an effective engineering team is all about choosing the right members. Just like any job, who you work with makes a huge difference. Engineering is a field where the engineering talent of your team can affect every aspect of your growth, output, and production. Finding the right candidates to join your engineering team takes time and effort, but it is definitely worth it to find the right person. This is why most engineering companies use experienced recruiters like Brightwing to bring the talent to them.  

Attracting Engineering Talent in 2022

Building a team of talent in 2022 can be difficult in some ways and easy in others. In 2021, millions of Americans quit their jobs in search of new opportunities. At this point, there is a large gap in opportunities vs. candidates, which means that the job market for hiring is competitive; however, there are a lot of good candidates to be found. Creating a solid team in 2022 is very possible as a lot of people have left their jobs even after years of working for their prior companies. Finding experienced workers and newly graduated students alike is relatively easy, but attracting them to your engineering firm may be a little easier said than done. 

Job Offers

Creating a unique job offer to appeal to engineering talent is essential in today’s hiring scene. What does a unique job offer look like? There are a few ways to make your offer the best one on the table: 

Competitive Salary

Obviously offering a competitive wage is important, but including things like bonuses and room for pay raises and growth will help you stand out among the crowd. Millennials especially tend to take a job that will promise them a career path and scheduled raises rather than a high-paying job where they can’t grow. Offer salary vs. hourly, whatever may work best for you. A competitively priced job offer isn’t just important in this market, it is absolutely essential. 

Benefits

Offering benefits will help your employees know that you care about their health and welfare. Most large firms are offering benefits like health insurance, dental and vision, and 401ks. Make an effort to offer a benefits package that will be interesting and worth it to your new hires. If you offer a plan that doesn’t cover the basics or has an extremely high deductible, that detracts from your offer. Employee benefits are also tax-free to employers, which can help your business in return. 

Perks

Fun, exciting perks don’t always have to be fancy or over-the-top. You can offer monthly competitions with modest prizes. Have casual Fridays! Have special gifts for birthdays! Find a way to bring something you enjoy into the workplace, like offering a gym membership to each employee or renting out a theater twice a year for a premiere. Sometimes something simple and enjoyable can make your job stand out over another and often turn the tide for an employee trying to decide between two firms. 

Show them Your Spark

Help people know that you offer a problem to be solved or a challenge to face in your field. Show your engineering team that you work on something worthwhile and interesting! Engineering is sometimes seen as boring or stagnant. When you have a project that piques the interest of your candidates, you have a great reason for them to choose you over a firm that just isn’t as interesting. If you specialize in something, tell your applicants. Show them what they would miss out on if they didn’t take your offer! 

Building a Team of Talent 

Creating an engineering team doesn’t mean just finding one good individual and building a team around them, it has to do with recruiting members that will work together as a whole. What makes a good team player in an engineering team? 

Team Players are Leaders

On some engineering teams, younger or less experienced engineers may feel left out or like they can’t make comments, offer criticism, or otherwise contribute beyond expectations. When teams have rigid hierarchies, non-team leads or juniors may self-censor. You certainly don’t want that – you want a team where everyone can rise to the occasion as both formal and informal leaders. Creating a team of leaders helps people to take charge and work together. 

How to Find the Perfect Match

Many engineering firms have a difficult time finding the engineering talent they are looking for to fill their teams. Engineers are busy and work on many different kinds of projects, and each firm may experience something different when hiring. Using a recruitment agency for engineering hires is a great way to go about building a team of talent. A renowned recruitment agency with a long-standing engineering focus like Brightwing attracts engineering talent along with other workers in design and manufacturing. Recruiting takes significant time and effort, especially when the recruiting process is optimized to get to know each applicant’s goals, strengths, and weaknesses. 

Easier for Employers

Creating a team has a lot to do with knowing each member, and it’s hard to go about building a team of talent if you don’t know the talents involved. Self-assessment is notoriously inaccurate, and worse, not everyone is completely honest on their resume. If someone says they are organized and collaborative but they really aren’t, it can have a ripple effect that interferes with your projects, timelines, and budgets. Using an engineering-focused recruiting agency to build engineering teams will save time, money and energy for employers because recruiters are experts at bringing engineers’ true soft and technical skills to light. 

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Resignations Are Contagious: How to Hedge Against Recent Talent Shortages

Resignations Are Contagious: How to Hedge Against Recent Talent Shortages In 2019, Texas A&M professor Anthony Klotz dubbed the phrase “The Great Resignation” to describe a voluntary, mass exodus from the workforce. According to recent data, it looks like that’s exactly what we’re living through right now: 
  • 11.5 million workers quit their jobs between April and June 2021 (U.S. Department of Labor)
  • For every 100 job openings, there are 83 available workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
  • Anywhere between 40-50% of workers are considering leaving their jobs right now (Microsoft & Gallup)
So is this the Great Resignation we’ve been waiting to see? Why is it happening now? What’s the relationship to COVID-19? And, most importantly, how should employers respond?  Let’s dive into the numbers and find out. 

 

What are employers saying? 

  If you ask most employers, they’ll certainly say the job market has certainly transformed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  According to survey data from job board Indeed, 73% of employers are struggling to hire and retain workers. Conversely, only 5% are experiencing the opposite effect.  Across the board, here is how employers feel about the job market currently: 
  • 86% believe employers need to take immediate action to reduce churn
  • 86% say they should increase concerns about resignations
  • 85% agree the pandemic has changed beliefs around what a “good job” is
  • 76% say resignations are contagious among the workforce
  • 51% believe how they handled the pandemic resulted in subsequent resignations
Among these statistics, one theme stands out: workers are leaving their jobs at higher numbers than we’ve seen in recent years. And employers feel an urgent need to respond. 

 

Why are workers leaving?

  According to that same survey from Indeed, the following are the top reasons why employees are resigning: 
  • Higher pay (59%)
  • Schedule flexibility (58%)
  • Work-life balance (56%)
  • Remote work options (54%)
  • Focus on personal and family responsibilities (50%)
As a result, many employers are stepping up their benefits. Perks like increased flexibility, higher pay or signing bonuses, and remote work options are now commonplace.  What we’re actually seeing is the development of a new and interesting phenomenon: employees aren’t just making decisions with their heads, but also with their hearts.  According to survey data from LinkedIn, 74% of respondents indicated that these changes are a direct result of COVID-19. The unfortunate reality of the pandemic has had a two-fold effect:
  1. After working from home for a year, employees realize that more flexibility and balance is possible in their lives
  2. Employees value balance, especially time with friends and family, in light of a particularly difficult time filled with serious illness and loss
As a result, employees are more demanding now than before. This has changed the market dynamics and put the ball in employers’ court: if you want to attract great talent, you have to step up your game.  There’s one more thing we need to point out: this isn’t just a Millennial or Gen-Z thing.  In fact, new research from analytics firm Visier indicates that the cohort of employees aged 30-45 years saw large increases in resignations from August 2019 to August 2020. Plus, as of December 2020, resignations among managers were 12% higher than the previous year.  This signals that more established career professionals are more likely to consider switching jobs. 

 

Isn’t this just typical summer churn? 

  Given the fact that we just got out of the summer, can’t we chalk this up to the fact that this is just typical summer churn?  If that’s the case, we would expect to see these numbers start to go down right about now.  But actually, the opposite is happening.  Recent data from Pave seems to suggest otherwise. Even taking into account the fact that companies experience higher churn during the summer, 2021 is still seeing a massive uptick in resignations. 

 

How should employers respond? 

  A ping-pong table isn’t a retention strategy. When many employers think about how to retain customers, they often go for the “hip and cool” benefits, like fancy snacks or gym memberships or weekly happy hours.  The problem here? These things aren’t actually effective at retaining customers.  In fact, in a recent article from Fast Company, Elizabeth Segran argues that The Era of Wacky Office Perks is Dead:  For years, companies have spent money on fun workplace perks in order to attract young talent…But a new study finds that these snazzy office benefits aren’t what young workers really want. Instead, workers younger than 35 place more value on respect. The research suggests that companies should invest more in training managers to communicate respectfully and nurture employee well-being, rather than kitting out offices with trendy new accessories. Remember what we said earlier: it’s established professionals that are leading the charge on the Great Resignation. These people (for the most part) don’t care about all the fancy perks that they’re probably not going to use anyway.  Instead, they care about how they’re treated at work. Are they treated with dignity and respect? Do you respect their family responsibilities? Do they have flexibility in their schedules? Do you recognize them for their accomplishments?  A study of more than 400,000 people published in Harvard Business Review found that when employees believe promotions are managed effectively, employee turnover rates are half that of other companies in the same industry. And according to bonusly.com, 63% of those in a recent survey who said they are regularly recognized also said they are very unlikely to look for a new job. So if you want to get serious about retention, here are some specific, actionable steps you can take: 
  1. Spend some time listening to your employees and gather input
  2. Strive for maximum flexibility in your work arrangements, without sacrificing quality, productivity, and service
  3. Prioritize workplace safety, instituting and enforcing COVID protocols to mitigate people’s concerns
  4. Show empathy to your customer-facing teams, who are likely dealing with ugly complaints about delays, errors, or other issues
  5. Focus on retaining each individual on your team by prioritizing their growth and well-being; each person you lose is a blow to your organization’s effectiveness and morale
  6. Recognize that resignations are contagious, and work to allay any concerns your fellow team members may have 
  7. Keep a pipeline of potential hires; in this market, it’s never a bad idea to have a few people in your back pocket just in case you lose a team member 
Granted, you probably won’t be able to keep everyone. There are some people who are going to leave your company, despite your best efforts.  But if you focus on building a great culture, respecting your team, and engaging in meaningful work, even those people who leave will be a great referral channel for new talent.  Are you struggling to build a pipeline of potential hires? If so, Brightwing can help you identify & qualify top talent. Fill out the form below.

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5 Top Tips for Landing Great Talent in Today’s Competitive Market

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5 Top Tips for Landing Great Talent in Today’s Competitive Market Right now, the talent market is flooded with opportunities for job seekers. In fact, as the market stands right now, there are way more opportunities than candidates. This is pretty much the case across all sectors.  You may be acutely aware of this struggle right now. You may be struggling to find great, experienced talent for all your open positions. If this is the case, you need to change your approach to recruiting, interviewing, and job offers.  Luckily, we’ve had some successes in this area recently, and can offer some first-hand advice. So here are five things you can do today to stand out in this competitive job market.  

1. Define your ideal candidate. 

  If you want to effectively compete for a certain type of candidate, you have to first define who that candidate is and why they’re a good fit for your organization. Otherwise, you’ll spend time and resources chasing the wrong people, wasting both your time and theirs.  To do this effectively, you need to go beyond the standard demographics that everyone looks at: years of experience, qualifications, seniority level, etc. While important, these give you a one-dimensional understanding of the candidate.  Here are some questions you can ask to try and go deeper: 
  • Is this a role that will be actively managed, or do they need to be self-reliant?
  • Can this role function as a remote or hybrid, or does it require someone willing to be in the office full-time?
  • Can you accommodate on-the-job training, or do you need someone fully qualified and ready to hit the ground running from Day 1? 
Ultimately, you want to understand not just who the person is, but how they work and what their priorities are. This will provide clarity, whether you’re searching for and screening candidates yourself, or working with a recruiting firm like Brightwing.   

2. Position your organization to attract your ideal candidate.  

  Once you’ve defined your ideal candidate, the next step is to position your company so that you’re the kind of place where that person would want to work. In a market that’s flooded with opportunity, job seekers have the luxury of being choosy. If you want to stand out among the other banks and financial institutions out there, you have to have a “hook” that draws them to your company — and away from your competitors.  There are a number of factors that come into play here:
  • Brand recognition
  • Reputation
  • Manager/supervisor
  • Special projects
  • Company/office culture
The specific factors you’ll want to emphasize will depend entirely on who your ideal candidate is, and the things they value most. If you’ve effectively defined your candidate (per the previous section),  you’ll have a clearer idea of what to prioritize as you market the role.  

3. Offer upskill & career pathing opportunities. 

  When career professionals accept a given role, they aren’t taking it because of what it’ll offer them right now. They’re thinking more strategically, about how that role will drive their career forward.  As a result of the talent shortage, many savvy professionals are seeing this as the perfect opportunity to find an opportunity that better suits their long-term goals.  This could mean upskilling in certain areas to stay ahead of shifting trends in the market, especially among engineers and IT professionals. It could also mean that they’re ready to start taking on more leadership roles and becoming managers.  In either case, if you want to stand out and attract great talent, you need to provide them with opportunities to move their careers forward. If not, they’ll simply go with another organization who will.   

4. Create flexible work environments. 

  For many, COVID-19 was the perfect opportunity to reset and spend more time at home with family. This inevitably resulted in a shift in priorities, causing the desire for remote work to go through the roof. If you can offer remote work opportunities, you’ll have a leg up when it comes to attracting quality candidates.  However, having a 100% remote work environment may not be feasible for you. But you can still create more flexible work environments by allowing hybrid office experiences, flexible PTO, and other benefits that can help promote a greater work-life balance.   

5. Designate an internal salesperson. 

  This final tip is one that a lot of employers skip over; which is unfortunate, since it’s probably the one that’s most important. After you’ve defined your ideal candidate, positioned your organization, and highlighted the available opportunities, you need to actually sell the candidate on the experience of working with you. That means that you need someone to function as your internal salesperson. Now this person could be the hiring manager. But if your hiring manager isn’t a natural salesperson, you may need someone to come along and help them during the interview process. If a candidate doesn’t get excited about working with you, odds are they’re not going to take the job.   

Conclusion: Be clear about what you have to offer. 

  Different candidates have different motivations. Some want opportunities to push themselves and upskill, others want a dynamic company culture, and others want flexibility.  Attracting quality candidates requires that you become crystal clear on what you’re looking for, and what you have to offer them, and whether that fits with their own career goals. So it’s important that you be very clear on what you have to offer them and whether that’s going to be a good fit. If you have a competitive offer for the candidate, and you’re able to effectively communicate that offer, you’ll certainly stand out from the competition. Only then will you be able to attract the best candidates in your territory. 

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Current Engineering Trends: What Can Employers Learn?

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Current Engineering Trends: What Can Employers Learn? BY STEVE ERMAK PRACTICE LEAD – ENGINEERING & DESIGN Are you having trouble finding qualified engineers to fill crucial roles in your company?  If so, you’re not alone. Talented, qualified engineers are in increasingly high demand right now. This is due to a number of factors, many of which you’re likely already seeing in your firm.  One of these is the post-COVID recovery, which is leading to a booming economy across all sectors. As the economy stabilizes and the future becomes more certain, budgets are opening back up. This is likely why you’re able to start filling those crucial roles now.  There’s also a generational shift that you’re seeing as well. Many Baby Boomers are retiring, and you need qualified Millennials and even Zoomers to replace them. The problem is that although there are more students graduating with engineering degrees, fewer of those graduates have the necessary skills to succeed at top engineering firms.  With an elevated demand and depressed candidate base, the result is a talent shortage. So how do you as the employer navigate this market? A great place to start is by understanding the top 2021 engineering trends, and how you can and should respond. Here are four that you should keep top of mind.  

It’s a job seeker’s market. 

  Just a few years ago, we were experiencing a talent surplus and highly competitive market. In that environment, you as the employer had all the power. Now, that script has flipped. Candidates now have all the power.  This means that you’ll be competing against all the top engineering firms for qualified engineers. If you want to attract them to your firm, you need to come at them with an enticing offer.  This includes going above and beyond when it comes to: 
  • Salary + benefits (some candidates can ask for $20K more than what they were making just a few years ago)
  • Responsibilities and upward mobility
  • Specific projects, particularly innovative and leading-edge work
  • Additional education and training
By “sweetening the pot,” as it were, you can not only attract active job seekers, but you can also potentially engage those who are happy at their current firm, but would be willing to go somewhere better.  For those people, offering opportunities to make a substantial contribution to innovative work can be even more meaningful than simply raising the starting salary.   

Job seekers are looking to upskill.

  Given the growing demand and lucrativeness of many specialized skills, there are a number of engineering candidates who are looking to upskill in their next role.  This means that engineering firms need to ask themselves the following questions:
  • Will this role help candidates gain new specialized skills?
  • Will this role give candidates experience on projects that are innovative and cutting edge?
  • Will this role serve not only as a great job, but a great step forward for their overall career? 
For example, in automotive engineering, there is a lot of talk around autonomous & electric vehicles. The autonomous vehicle sector is slated to grow 39.4% by 2026. Additionally, most of the major OEMs have set net-zero emissions goals before 2030, meaning that they are investing heavily in electric vehicle development.  In my conversations with the market, I’m seeing increased demand for these skills as well:
  • Electrical engineering
  • Embedded systems
  • Software systems
  • Hardware design
  • Program management
  • Technicians
  • Engineering managers
Since gaining these skills will make candidates much more marketable, providing opportunities to learn them will make your firm a much more appealing and enticing option. So during the job posting, interview process, and more, be sure to highlight these exciting opportunities.  You may just attract a great engineer who’s looking to level up in their career.   

Candidates want to prove themselves as leaders. 

  Many senior engineering leaders are aging out of the workforce. You may be seeing that happen within your organization. If so, you know first hand that this is leading not only to a skill gap, but a leadership gap.  Replacing qualified engineers is one thing. But replacing leaders is a whole different ball game. While you may be able to attract experienced leaders from other organizations, they’re more difficult to convince to make a change. So you may have more success bringing on younger candidates who aspire to leadership.  But how do you tell which candidates have that desire? It’s true you could ask them, but someone who says “I want to be a leader” may not be cut out for it.  However, there are a number of soft skills you can look out for during the interview process: 
  • Active listening and response to your questions
  • Empathy
  • Initiative (i.e. they don’t wait for you to ask questions, they’re asking questions too)
  • Curiosity (again, they’re ask lots of questions)
  • Positive response to constructive criticism (e.g. they ask you if you have concerns about their resume/experience)
If you have a candidate who seems to excel in these areas, that could be a sign that they aren’t just a great engineer, but have what it takes to be a leader as well.   

Conclusion: Sell the experience of working at your firm. 

  All of these market trends boil down to one thing: you can’t just expect engineers to come flocking to you. Instead, you have to sell the experience of working at your firm. This involves collaborating with the marketing department to work on building your brand. If you’ve had bad experiences with employees in the past, some reputation management work is also in order.  And if you don’t consider yourself the best person to “sell” someone on your company, then you need to find someone else in the organization who is. Overall, engineering candidates are going to need a great reason to choose you over the competitors. If you put some work into the process, offer a great package, and present them with the chance to work at a top-tier, cutting-edge firm, you’ll have some stellar candidates lining up to take the job.

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How to Compete for the Best Engineering Talent

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How to Compete for the Best Engineering Talent BY STEVE ERMAK PRACTICE LEAD – ENGINEERING & DESIGN Right now, the engineering market is white hot. Although there are plenty of students with engineering degrees, fewer and fewer candidates have the requisite skills to succeed as engineers in top organizations. This is resulting in a growing talent gap: too many jobs and not enough qualified candidates to fill them. So if you want to attract and land great engineering talent, you have to get serious about competing for that talent. Paying above-market rates is a good place to start; the old adage “you get what you pay for” rings true here. If you want top-tier talent, you’ve got to pay the top tier bucks. But there are a number of reasons that factor into an engineer’s decision to take a new job, and pay isn’t the only factor. Here are some other ways your organization can compete for top engineering talent.

Move fast.

In a highly competitive market, engineering candidates are fielding job offers left and right. That’s why speed is an important factor in getting a candidate to accept your offer. I know that a lot of companies want to be absolutely sure before they make an offer. After all, hiring someone is a big investment. It makes sense that you’d want to take your time. But consider this: let’s say you have engaged an ideal candidate but haven’t made an offer yet. At the same time, they’re entertaining an offer from a competitor. Which company do you think they’re going to go with? Who would you go with, if you were in their shoes? Clearly, it would be the competitor who’s already made an offer. My advice is to always assume that there’s another offer on the table. That way, you’ll move as fast as possible and won’t miss the opportunity to work with your ideal candidate.  

Showcase your state-of-the-art projects.

There’s a lot of demand for engineers with niche skill sets. For example, in the automotive sector, experience with autonomous vehicles or electrification is a massive plus. As a result, engineering candidates are looking for jobs where they can pick up these skills. If you have state-of-the-art projects that you’re working on, be sure to showcase that in the interview process. Technical recruiters should highlight projects that provide opportunities for engineers to learn, grow, and upskill. It gives them a compelling reason for them to accept your offer, rather than a competitor’s.

Manage your market reputation.

People want to work for reputable companies. So if you have a tarnished reputation, you’re going to have a hard time attracting and landing top engineering talent. Anyone can Google your company, read reviews on sites like Glassdoor, see what people are saying about you on social media, and will certainly call anyone in their professional network who’s had experience working with you. Bottom line: you can’t get away with anything anymore. Hopefully, your reputation is so great that you won’t have to worry about this. But that’s not always under your control. Sometimes, you’ll be a part of an organization that has had a shady past and you’re trying to turn it around. If that’s the case, then reputation management has to be part of your recruitment strategy. Here are some intentional steps you can take:
  • Own your mistakes. Don’t try and pretend like past mistakes never happened. Your candidates are smarter than that. Instead, own up to them and show that you’re ready to make a change.
  • Proactively respond to complaints. Don’t wait for the candidate to bring up the bad reviews. Show that you’re proactive by letting the candidate know that you’re taking steps to turn things around.
  • Show that you’re serious about moving forward. Don’t just talk the talk: walk the walk. Provide tangible examples of new policies or benefits that will reverse the negatives of the past.
Great talent will flock to great companies. If you’ve had trouble with your reputation in the past, then it’s critical to start fixing it immediately.

Provide upward mobility.

Top engineering talent isn’t just looking for a J.O.B. They want to work in an organization that they can contribute value to, but will also contribute value to them in their career. This includes salary, benefits, and office culture, but also upward mobility Granted, this is something they have to work for. But if you’re talking to great talent, they know they’re going to have to work for it. Odds are, they’ll work extremely hard for it. They just want to know that, at the end of the line, there’s going to be a reward for all of that hard work. No one wants to take a dead-end job. By showing that you’re a place where engineers can grow in their careers, you’re going to set yourself apart from the competition.

How to “sell” the experience to top engineering talent

Having all of these benefits is great. But unless you can communicate them to the candidate, they’re not going to help you land that great talent. In a typical job interview, the onus falls on the candidate to sell themselves. But on the flip side, you need someone who can sell your organization and present all of these reasons why an engineer would want to work with you. If you aren’t a natural salesperson, then you need to find someone within the company who can provide this support. Remember: the key to finding and landing top engineering talent is to proactively sell your company to the talent market. If great engineers see that you’re an exciting place to work, you won’t have a hard time landing them.

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Brightwing Named G.R.E.A.T. RECRUITERS CERTIFIED 2021

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Brightwing Named G.R.E.A.T. RECRUITERS CERTIFIED 2021 Brightwing, the Talent Expert company, is pleased to announce that they have been named G.R.E.A.T. RECRUITERS CERTIFIED 2021 by G.R.E.A.T. Recruiters, a leading recruiting experience and rating management platform. Brightwing has earned this distinction by proving that their teams guide both jobseekers and employers through a consistently high-touch, high-quality experience throughout the recruitment life cycle. “It’s an honor to be recognized by an industry leader like G.R.E.A.T. Recruiters for providing a recruiting experience that exceeds the highest industry standards,” says Aaron Chernow, CEO of Brightwing. By continuously soliciting feedback and then sharing that feedback publicly, Brightwing has demonstrated its commitment to transparency and excellence. In order to earn the distinction of becoming G.R.E.A.T. RECRUITERS CERTIFIED, recruiting firms were required to meet a set of criteria which included: 1) regularly soliciting feedback from jobseekers and placed talent; 2) achieving an average Great Recruiters rating of 4.6 or higher; and 3) at least 33% of the recruiting team achieving G.R.E.A.T. Recruiter certification. Brightwing met this criteria as part of their larger commitment to cultivating a growth culture. Brightwing is committed to delivering the highest quality experience to every candidate and client — a promise that translates into constant efforts to improve and to grow on the part of each individual Brightwinger, of each team, and of the organization as a whole. “The feedback provided by G.R.E.A.T. Recruiters has proved invaluable in our ability to go above and beyond for those we serve,” explains George Optiz, President of Brightwing. The organization is proud to achieve excellent results for its clients and candidates and looking forward to continuing to refine and improve over the coming years.

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What NOT to Care About at Work

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What NOT to Care About at Work

The pandemic and recent economic hardships have affected more than just the “where” and “when” of our work days.

 

It’s changed our work values.

We’ve all spent a lot of time thinking and talking about remote work – especially whether it’s desirable once its urgent necessity fades. It’s an important subject, but it’s only a small piece of a larger discussion. Hardship can shine a strong light on the things that really matter and leave everything else in the shadows. It can be a clarifying experience that helps us reset and refocus. What’s important to us in our work lives? And how do our current models and structures support those work values? If you found yourself struggling to find meaning in your work – why? And what should you do about it? If you found that working for a big name in your industry didn’t save your position when their bottom-line was under threat – how do you conceptualize job security now? And what are you looking for from your next employer? We need to ask ourselves and each other these questions in order to get a broader perspective and make better decisions about the opportunities that lie ahead of us. To get the conversation going, we surveyed professionals in financial services, engineering, operations, and IT who hold FTE (full-time employee) and contract positions. The results were interesting. Here are three insights into which work values matter, and which ones don’t:  

#1 — Working on “Significant” Projects > Opportunities for Promotion

When asked how they’d rank the following aspects of work, in aggregate, respondents chose the following order:  
1. WORKING ON INTERESTING, SIGNIFICANT PROJECTS THAT PUSH YOUR CAREER FORWARD 2. FLEXIBILITY: SCHEDULE AND LOCATION 3. A ROBUST BENEFITS PACKAGE: MEDICAL, 401K, PROFIT SHARING 4. OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROMOTION 5. GETTING PAID OVERTIME 6. WORKING FOR A NOTABLE COMPANY IN MY INDUSTRY – A BIG NAME
  What does this order of priorities telegraph? For one, 52% of respondents said that doing “interesting,” career-propelling work outweighs all the other options. That is a striking statistic, especially as compared to the second-runner up: “flexibility” was ranked 1st by 20% of respondents. What does it mean to value “significant” work so highly? It very well could signal a shift to an employment model growing in popularity across all industries: project work. Rather than let their careers take shape around the organization they happen to join, perhaps more professionals are going to take a more active or assertive role and carve out a career consisting of a series of meaningful challenges. Thanks to its defined scope and – you guessed it – flexibility, project work may prove the most satisfying option for more people in the very near future.  
IN FACT, WHEN ASKED IF OPEN TO CONTRACT POSITIONS, 68.8% OF RESPONDENTS ANSWERED “YES.”
  One respondent elaborated: “It helps you keep work / life priorities in check and avoid the false sense of security that comes with FTE. Further, I think it helps keep skills up and you’re able to have a lot more experiences with different companies, technologies.”  

#2 — 1/3 of Survey Respondents Believe Job Security is a Myth

When asked about their take on job security looking ahead to 2021, this is how survey respondents answered:  
44% – JOB SECURITY IS REAL, AND IT’S HIGH ON MY LIST OF PRIORITIES  33% – JOB SECURITY IS A MYTH. TALENT IS WHAT MOVES YOUR CAREER FORWARD.  21% – JOB SECURITY IS PRETTY RARE. IT’S A “NICE TO HAVE” NOT A “NEED TO HAVE.” 2% – OTHER
  Taking a deeper dive, it seems that for just over half of respondents, job security takes a back seat to other priorities. Perhaps 2020 exposed the fact that even the most secure-seeming jobs are not impervious to economic downturns.  

#3 — 80% of Respondents Report a Neutral or Positive Outlook on 2021

The majority of our survey respondents were decidedly NOT pessimistic about what 2021 holds for them at work.
2.7% 17.3% 42.7% 30.7% 6.7%
  2020 could have sent our outlook plummeting. But it looks like many of us have resisted the temptation to expect the worst. Hope springs from many sources. Perhaps our resilience – as well as our ability to takes things remote and virtual – has opened up new ways of looking at the economy and all the possibilities it holds. HERE’S TO A YEAR AHEAD THAT’S BETTER THAN THE ONE NEARLY BEHIND US!

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