Happy Holidays!

To all our client companies and top-notch candidates, we say thank you again for the chance to work with you and look forward to a great 2009.

Here's to wishing you a very merry Christmas and a special New Year!

From all of us at Venator Ventures!

Building a Building

Kimball Kjar
Venator Ventures
Managing Principal Recruiter

Today was an eventful day for Venator Ventures: we broke ground on our new office building.

Not that this event made much mention in the Wall Street Journal or even our local newpaper for that matter, but this ground breaking is important for us and has major implications on the type of service we will be able to provide.

Although the building, by relative standards, is not huge, the facility is an important milestone in our growth and development as a company.

Many of you may not notice the difference directly in our effectiveness, but with the forthcoming construction of our new office building Venator Ventures will be able to expand, train and better attract top recruiting talent.

With the challenging times coming in 2009 the ground breaking was a symbolic event for our staff to remember our purpose: offer candidates and companies reliable recruiting services by building strong relationships of trust.

With new board rooms, sales areas, management offices, training areas and top tier technology infrastructure our new building will allow our recruiting staff to be the best they can possibly be for your various respective search needs.

We look forward to watching this building rise and being able to help you all in 2009.

Relationships and a Down Economy

Kimball Kjar
Venator Ventures
Managing Principal Recruiter

I will be brief with this entry, since the last two have be a bit laborious to read. But I think it needs saying, and please don't excuse how important I believe in this subject by my brevity, that relationships determine how a person or company will make it through this recession.

It's not just a strong marketing plan or strong sales results, but it's relationships with the colleagues that you work with and those people that that are your clients that will lead to success in times such as these.

Firstly, I said the "R" word a paragraph above, so there it is. Now you can either cringe and shrink like some or stand up to the situation at hand and face the oncoming months of bad news and struggle with optimism and resolve. But no matter your reaction the key to not only survive, but thrive, in a down economy I believe is how you treat other people and companies that you work with.

My colleague and I, Justen Nadauld, will be traveling next week to visit in person with a number of our clients. We like to do this often, but we recognized that these face to face sessions are even more critical in tough economic times.

And it's our hope that such "non-sales calls" will show that we value their business and that they will value the services we provide. So as a result when the wallets get thin but they need to hire a person they will look to us first, because they know we are going to provide value and more importantly be there for them no matter what.

And who knows, if the relationship is strong it might be us calling on them when things are tight because we know that they can be there for us conversely.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who himself saw one of this country's worst economic periods, said:

"Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world, at peace.”

Roosevelt knew that when trouble knocks on your door, it's nice to know that there is someone else besides yourself supporting you.

I won't get analytical in regards to this assumption, but in any form of human relationship, and business falls within this genus, people are more likely to overcome challenges together than by themselves.

So in other words, if things are getting dicey for you and your company right now and you see the dark clouds of the economy starting to form over your head, you need to connect with others who can help you so as to not leave yourself out in the storm that is gathering above you.

Roosevelt also left us with another famous quote at his innauguration that implies strong human connections in times of trouble: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Don't fear the world around you and don't fear standing strong as the economic storms rage around you because you have others there standing with you and around you. That's what friends do in life and in business and if your business is to succeed in spite of your respective set of circumstances, then I suggest you surround yourself with people that support you and your efforts.

I know this is a pretty generalized thought and somewhat altruistis without more academic support, but let me again say that I felt it was worth mentioning especially since we're coming to visit with a number of the people we do business with. We want them to know that we're here for them and we hope that they will feel likewise.

Looking forward to seeing many of you in the coming days.

Perceptions & Job Satisfaction

Kimball Kjar
Managing Principal Recruiter
Venator Ventures

Job satisfaction. What is it? What makes a person like this job or that job? It’s not an easy answer for anyone and there have been numerous studies performed that try to definitively show what things a company should or shouldn’t do to ensure that they have “happy” employees. Because, as these reports assume, when the employee is happy, then the company will fair well.

In my career as a recruiter I’ve seen all sides of the employee job satisfaction array—from blissfully happy to vindictively upset. And throughout each instance there is one under lying reason as to an employee’s satisfaction: salary.

Now, you might say as a recruiter, my opinion is skewed since in most instances my commission is tied to salary. But hear me out and you’ll see what you and your company can do to improve job satisfaction via increased salary and that by so doing decrease the company’s hiring and other related “soft” costs.

A recent study showed that an employee’s salary is tied to job satisfaction in 1 out of 2 cases. But this survey also shows that salary is the real culprit less than 25% of the time. How can this be?—Perceptions.

We’ve heard the phrase “perception is reality” and in the world of recruiting and hiring it’s an even more elevated truth—it’s gospel. One example of misaligned perceptions is given in the above mentioned study. “Over-titling” gives people a false sense of reality and responsibilities and as such, leads to the feeling that the employee isn’t paid enough for his or her role within a company. An employee’s perception is greater than what is in fact reality.

As employers it’s unlikely that we ever fully comprehend the thoughts and intentions of our employees in spite of our best trained senses and abilities. And as such, every individual is left to his or her own internal dialogue to determine their state of being.

But when it comes to job satisfaction it’s not just “over-titling” that leads me to believe that this misalignment of perceptions is the root of the problem. It starts long before a candidate is ever hired, during the interview process.

If a company hires on a candidate after a fully vetting process of interviews from peers to the executive team, properly performed background and reference checks, then that company should feel like they’re done all that they need to do, right? WRONG!

They’ve neglected on major step: the offer package.

This stage of the process is often overlooked on account of numerous reasons which include budget constraints, personal interest, company HR standards, etc. Most companies will say that they are “set in stone” on what they can offer a person in terms of salary. By doing so, the company feels like they are offering “market standards” for the candidate and in some instances that the candidate should feel lucky to be even getting a new job.

This line of thinking is usually left to the companies that are having a hard time finding the best talent and also keeping them over the long run. Why? Perceptions.

It all comes back to perceptions. No matter how well a company brands itself or even sells itself to a candidate, the perception implied in the offer-making process to the candidate by the company is: “What is the perceived value of this commodity (aka the candidate)?” And if the candidate feels like they’ve given up more than their fair share, it stays with them for the duration of their employment at the company.

Another saying comes to mind—“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” And it’s no more true than during the offer-making process of hiring a candidate. If they feel their first impression of their soon-to-be employer is one where they feel unappreciated and under-valued, then that will stay with that employee for a long time.

The crux of this topic is that when times get tough, and they’re tough for more than our fair share of companies right now, any excuse that an employee has to walk out on their employer is accentuated when he or she feels that they are not valued according to what they feel they should be.

Most candidates and companies I work with have been very good about realizing that you don’t always get everything that you ask for during the offer stage. But the successful companies that I perceive to have great employee job satisfaction rates usually are the ones that go out of their way to make the candidates feel valued, appreciated and in some cases loved.

Fortune Magazine recently listed Bay Area stalwart Google as the best place to work. Among other reasons of open communication between manager and employees, team building activities, and such Google’s equity plan is offered to 99% of all the 12,000+ employees. And with the stock having cracked $700 a share it’s easy to see why there’s a term “Google-aires” running rampant in the Bay Area. It’s also widely known that Google’s compensation ranges average as some of the highest in Silicon Valley, but the company didn’t disclose this data to Fortune.

It’s also of note that in the same study by Fortune Cisco and Network Appliance showed the 12th & 13th respectively highest average salaries in the country for employees and that both held the highest average salaries for tech companies behind leading financial, petroleum and legal companies. It’s also worth noting that Cisco and NetApp both rank as 6th and 14th respectively on the overall list of “100 Best of Companies” to work for nationally.

Those company’s that don’t financially compensate the employees well usually are tied by CFO regulations on what they can “actually” spend and don’t have an environment to do what it takes to care for their employees overall. Trust me, I’ve seen it over and over. Companies who are pinching pennies, usually have high turn over rates. But you can still be fiscally responsible while also leaving yourself open to finding and hiring the best talent.

The costs of not looking to financially “well compensate” employees is given in the above cited study. It cited that “HR professionals estimate that the hard costs to replace an employee ranges between 33% and 50% of their base salary, in addition to soft costs such as the loss of productivity and institutional knowledge, as well as new hire recruiting and training expenses.” Isn’t an extra $5-10k given to the candidate during the offer stage worth it in this light?

So what are some solutions to this perceptions gap? I would contribute the following:

1. Pay an extra share of money for the candidate to feel like he or she is valued—give them what they want (within reason).
2. Don’t balk at counter-offers. If a candidate has been looking else where, don’t kick them out, but ask yourself why this person felt the need to look around. This could help hiring and retention processes in the long run and possibly reveal fatal flaws in your company’s human resource strategies. Plus, the cost of finding someone else to fill a vacated role can be prohibitive in the long run as opposed to offering a competitive counter-offer.
3. Work to bump pay at least 10% each year while offering performance based bonuses and equity grants.
4. Work with an experienced recruiter who understands this perception dilemma. Often, a recruiter can manage the candidate to ensure that he or she is “blissfully happy” about the offer and job opportunity.
5. Educate current employees, tactfully via HR, at performance reviews about market standards on pay and compensation.
6. Work diligently to develop retention strategies that offer candidates feelings of ownership, community and an ability to communicate their thoughts and feelings with their managers, peers and subordinates.

If you do this you’ll fight the perception dilemma head on and see positive employee job satisfaction while also decreasing operational costs over all.

The bottom line is that you want to have new employees walking through your doors on his or her first day saying, “I’m excited to be here and I can’t wait to help this company in what ever way I can!”

Trust me, I’m a recruiter…;-)

Upgrade Your Talent During Economic Slumps

Kimball Kjar
Managing Principal Recruiter
Venator Ventures

It's been said that there's nothing good that comes from a down economy. We've seen in recent months trillions of dollars that have been lost to the downward spiral of an economy suffering from a credit crisis, a real estate recession and a war that is putting the government further in debt on a daily basis.

But as troubling times loom for many companies and their employees, there is a silver lining: upgrade your existing talent.

In the recruiting world we like to call an economic slump, an opportunity to upgrade your team. During such slumps talent is usually in over-abundance and "A players" are always keeping their eyes open in case their company, which might seem stable today, gives them the pink slip.

Smart and savvy managers will know the current strengths and weaknesses within their teams and they will know that they can usually, if not always, improve the employees on their teams.

Bottom line, economic slumps are always a "buyers market" for the best employees for those companies with the gumption to do so.

Let me give you an example. I'm an avid sports fan, sometimes much to my wife's chagrin. And last year basketball fans were able to witness one of the biggest "upgrade coups" in the history of the NBA.

Danny Ainge, GM for the Boston Celtics, saw two lowly franchises suffering from poor management and personnel selection and realized he could cash in on their lack of success. Using a bevy of negotiating tactics that included draft picks, current players and cash Ainge was able to upgrade his current team by adding former MVP Kevin Garnett and the sharp-shooting Ray Allen.

Both of the players' repsective teams--Seattle & Minnesota--were ailing from troubled owners and front-office management that together weren't offering championship opportunities to both Garnett and Allen.

For the faltering yet legendary franchise of Boston this was a dream come true. Three of the game's biggest players would join the Celtics and attempt to re-estalbish the franchise’s winning ways.

Well, if you follow the NBA or sports in general, we all know the story that followed. The Celtics went on to have one of the best records in the NBA last year and eventually beat the LA Lakers in the NBA Finals.

For Ainge and the Boston franchise, the trades for Garnett and Allen were a success. By letting go of existing talent and possible future talent through draft picks Ainge and the Celtics give us an example of what companies can look to achieve when things are tough: improve your company by upgrading the players on your team.

Seems simple to say, but it’s actually hard to do in practice. Here are some ideas of how a company can "upgrade their players" during tough economic times as pointed out by noted human resource consultant Dr. John Sullivan for ERE.net:

1. Begin by calculating the long-term economic consequences of keeping a below-average performer, compared to the increased performance level of an above-average performer (the difference is known as the performance differential). If you carefully calculate the dollar value of the performance differential between a top performer and the “targeted” below-average performer, you will often find that it’s two or three times greater, resulting in over $100,000 annual difference in output.
2. Next, multiply the costs of keeping a weak employee over the number of years that the bottom performer is likely to remain at your firm to get the total dollar value of swapping an employee.
3. Develop a formal plan and get the necessary buy-in from HR, performance management, and your recruiters. Be sure and run it by a few operating managers to identify any potential issues or concerns they might have.
4. Get the CFO’s buy in for the talent-swapping strategy.
5. If possible, get a business unit head to conduct a pilot and to “champion” the program among their colleagues.
6. Develop a process for identifying the key business units and the jobs within them where replacing below-average talent with top talent can make a significant impact upon the business. Talent swapping is not appropriate for every position.
7. Within those jobs, work with performance management and individual managers to identify the weak performers to target. Work with “legal” to see if there are any further actions that need to be taken before the employee is deemed eligible for a SWAP. Include a diversity component to ensure that diversity levels are maintained.
8. Define the minimum skill set (skills, capabilities, and experience) that the potential new hire must have to become “eligible” for a SWAP.
9. Develop a continuous sourcing strategy for the targeted positions. Also be aware that using traditional employee referrals to identify candidates might cause problems if employees realize that by making referrals, they are helping to replace an employee who might be a friend.
10. Begin building a “who’s-who” list of the names of the top talent in your industry who might be amenable to taking one of your targeted jobs.
11. Conduct “relationship recruiting” with these key individuals from the list. This might mean calling them occasionally, periodically sending them an e-mail newsletter, or inviting them to your company’s events.
12. When you become aware that one of your targeted candidates is now available, recruit them and offer them a position. If they accept your offer, you then notify the performance management function to begin the release process of the current poor performer. When appropriate, and especially in certain international locations, consider offering the released worker a financial severance package for signing a legal release.
13. Bring the new candidate on board.
14. Continue the process until you have substituted top hires for each of your targeted positions. Remember that you can also swap talent "internally” by moving top performers from low-impact to high-impact jobs.
15. Another option to consider is rather than waiting to release workers who are clearly bottom performers, instead shift them to a contract or contingency basis. This “temporary” status allows you to more easily release them if there is a need for a layoff, a performance termination, or a talent SWAP. If their performance improves, you can obviously shift them back to a more permanent status.
16. Run the metrics and then calculate the overall performance improvement and the dollar impact as a result of the improved performance of your new hires, compared to the released employee.

This is a long list, but one worth reviewing and thinking about. The thing you want to ask yourself first is 'are we in a position to make an aggressive play and improve our team.' If, by using the above criteria, it makes sense to upgrade your talent, then go ahead and pull the trigger.

Should you have any questions please feel free to consult any one us here at Venator Ventures.

Best of luck to you all and have a Happy Thanksgiving from Venator Ventures.

Resumes and Interviews

Check out the latest tips from John Smith, a contributor for CNN.com, regarding resume presentation and interviews.

On your résumé

• It's never one-size-fits-all. "Don't try to sell what you are selling; sell what the employer is buying. Make sure your résumé fits the position and the organization where you are seeking employment," George says. "Hiring managers look at skill set, education, experience and where you got that experience. They want to make sure you are going to be able to do the job and fit into the corporate culture."

• Make it easy on the eyes. "Envision a hiring manager looking at a resume like a driver going by a billboard. Try to make it absorbable at high speeds," says Gwen Martin, managing partner of NumberWorks, a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based staffing firm. "Use bullet points and leave white space so it's easy on the eyes to read. Give the bird's eye view -- you can give the story behind the résumé in the interview."

Wendy Enelow, author, trainer and career consultant, strongly suggests using a typestyle other than Times New Roman. Stay conservative and use fonts like Georgia, Tahoma, Bookman or Verdana.

• Include success stories. Write down several career achievements of which you are most proud, suggests Joanne Meehl, author of "The Résumé Queen's Job Search Thesaurus and Career Guide."

"Choose one or two of these career success stories to go on the résumé, in very brief form, near the top of page one," she says. "These examples of what the candidate has done and can do, grab the employer's attention."

• Analyze keywords. Analyze several job postings in the field for which you are looking for a job, says Cheryl Palmer, certified executive career coach and résumé writer. "Develop a list of keywords from those postings that you incorporate into the résumé under a subheading entitled 'core competencies.'

Employers search their database of résumés by keyword, so having these terms on your résumé increases your chances of your résumé being selected for further review."

During the interview

• Identify why you are a good fit. "Often people peruse a job for no other reason than it is available," says Danielle Weinstock, author of "Can This Elephant Curtsy on Cue? Life Lessons Learned On A Film Set For Women In Business." "Until you can determine why you and the company are a good match, you can't sell yourself."

• Keep your responses job-related. Many job seekers start off the interview on the wrong note when they respond to the statement, "Tell me about yourself," Palmer says. "Job seekers give a personal response instead of a professional response.

Your response will say, 'Hire me,' if you tailor your responses to the position you are applying for. Review that job announcement the night before the interview and write out some bullet points for yourself to speak to the employer's needs."


Entire story can be found at http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/11/17/cb.what.says.hire.me/index.html


Additional Interview Tips


• Know before you go. Be familiar with the background of those you're meeting with. This will help to remove some of the nerves that accompany interviews while removing the mystique of the interviewer. Also this shows you've gone above and beyond in your preparation. Disclaimer: be careful not to appear "stockerish" as this will creep-out the interviewer, undermining your overall effectiveness.

• Always request a business card. At the end of the conversation with each interviewer, make sure to ask for their card. If they don't have one, make sure to get a contact email address. You should email each interviewer within 24 hours of your interview to thank them for the interview and to express your interest in the opportunity. This is also an appropriate time to mention points you failed to emphasize during the interview and to address any red flags. Most important is to be thorough while remaining CONCISE!

• Remember the SAR method. Hiring managers want concrete examples to illustrate your strengths. "Situation", "Action", "Result".

Ventor Ventures joins the blogosphere

In conjunction with the launch of our revamped website, we've decided to enter the world of blogging to keep both candidates and companies informed on the latest developments in the Silicon Valley. Companies can look forward to reading up on the trends of the talent pool we're working with by way of occasional candidate profiles, while candidates can look to the blog to learn about emerging technologies we're focusing on and some of our hottest, most urgent searches.

Maybe more enticing will be our occasional story or anecdote to illustrate some of the "do's" and "do not's" while engaging in you own career search. Also, feel free to share your own stories in the comment section under each post. We look forward to maintaining an added level of communication in this dynamic and competitive market.

-Justen Nadauld
President, Venator Ventures