Tech Capital Partners Blog

At some point during a company’s life cycle there will likely come a time when the need to engage an Executive Search Firm arises.  Too often I have seen companies make the decision to engage a search firm, and then once the decision has been made they move too quickly to engage a firm without appropriately screening those being considered.  With this in mind I will suggest a few things to consider for those new to Executive Search.

Why Use Executive Search?

There are a number of reasons that you may choose to engage an Executive Search Firm.  A few of these may include:

• The need to engage an experienced professional to source, attract or entice those individuals with the appropriate skill set, competencies, and qualifications that you can not get to on your own otherwise.
• The organization is in a period of change or flux that demands the expertise of a search firm with experience placing top executives in specific industries.
• The need for confidentiality which may not be achieved if you were to engage the search on your own.
• And for some, the assistance provided in handling all screening interviews, managing candidate concerns, referencing, offer negotiation and closing the deal.

Selecting a Search Firm

Time taken up front to identify, screen and select the appropriate search firm will be saved through the search process by working with a firm that is appropriately matched to your needs.  The following are some things to consider when selecting a search firm:

• Company alignment - Which firm is best aligned with your organization, that has the appropriate professionals by way of reputation and past experience, with an ability to identify and access those individuals with the right skill set and competencies demanded by the position being recruited for?
• Organizational understanding - Which firm has a solid understanding of your  business and the culture of your organization, and appreciates the challenges you face - strategically, operationally and organizationally?
• Confidence - Which firm instills the confidence that they can get the job done, that they have the appropriate resources and search methodology in place to execute, will prioritize your search relative to others they are working on, and will approach the search in a way that aligns with your organization?

Evaluating Search Firms

I would suggest a few things to consider when evaluating your shortlist:

• The Basics - There are a few important basics you should consider.
  • The size of firm - I am less concerned with the size of the firm, as I am with the ability of the firm to meet and deliver on your needs.
  • Geographic area covered - What is the geographic reach of the firms you are considering?  Not where they say they can go, but where they have gone in past with proven results.
  • Industry knowledge and specialization - Don’t settle.  Find a specialist that has the appropriate domain knowledge and expertise to meet your needs in searches where it’s necessary.
• Benchmark searches - Look at their track record - relevant searches, relevant positions, appropriate industry and appropriate stage of company if it is important.
• Search strategy - What will the firms approach be to the search?  How many candidates will they present? What level of status reports can you expect (verbal, written, to what frequency)? And what is their approach to the market with your search specifically?
• Hands off clients - Who are their past clients they have worked with and can’t touch? It would be important to know if any companies that may employ the type of person you are looking for is on their hands off list.
• Guarantee - It would be prudent to understand what the firms position is with respect to guarantees.  How long will the firm offer a guarantee? Will they replace the candidate? What if you don’t feel they have the capability to replace the candidate, will they credit fees? When will they consider the job description to have been changed substantially enough to warrant a new search (in which case they may ask for a new retainer)?
• References - Ask for minimum of three to five professional references.  Get comfortable with the references yourself.
• The Firm - Do your research on the firm.  What is their reputation in the industry?  Get an understanding of who your account manager will be and what their level and capability is within the organization. Ensure it aligns with the needs of your organization and search.

Finding a Search Firm to work with

There is no shortage of options when it comes to Executive Search Firms.  The key is to find the firm that is appropriate for your company and your current requirements.  Board members, advisors and investors will have suggestions on who to engage and will have had good and bad experiences they can reference with firms so they are a good starting point for referrals.  Lean on your network for referrals, ideally lean on those that operate within the same market or product environment, for suggestions on who they have had success and challenges with in past.  You can also reference the Worldwide Association of Executive Search Consultants, a professional association that represents retained and executive search consulting firms worldwide.

It is best to consider Executive Search as an engagement as opposed to a transaction. It is best to evaluate which firm you can establish a working relationship with that will allow you to achieve the desired outcome that suits both parties.

I love September. For one I love fall. Next to that, there is a certain hustle and bustle in Waterloo this time of year that you can’t ignore. Part of it has to do with all the new folks settling in and finding their way in town. More importantly, it has to do with the energy you feel around UW & WLU Campus. Given students are back to school and we are amidst co-op recruiting I thought the timing was right to talk about some thought’s on how companies can maximize campus recruitment efforts. For some companies it is easy to get brand recognition when posting co-op opportunities on campus. RIM, IBM, Apple and many others are able to attract students to their co-op and new grad opportunities with their name recognition and the excitement of potentially working with some well known and successful companies.

For companies looking to build a reputation as an employer of choice on campus, there are a few things to consider to help build your brand.

1. Co-op and career services help employers promote themselves on campus by assisting with coordinating some campus specific events. Information sessions allow companies to target students by discipline. They offer an intimate environment to talk to students directly about your company and the opportunities it offers. Career services may also assist in organizing and advertising campus associated career fairs in the spring and fall for students looking for opportunities.
2. Consider a campus ambassador. A current or past co-op student that will talk up your company to students on campus and why it offers a great work experience. You can get creative on how you incent your campus ambassadors… a little can go a long way.
3. The best way to advertise opportunities to students is to get in front of them (obviously). Student groups and class reps have a captive audience and are best positioned on campus to disseminate information to students.  Students lean on class reps to keep informed.
4. Traditional print advertising through campus news and bulletin boards. A call to the Federation of Students should help you navigate student advertising opportunities, or point you in the right direction for further info.
5. Hold an open house. Build your co-op or new grad value proposition, and then showcase why you offer a great place to work. Students are looking for more than a job, they are looking for an “experience”. Promote your corporate culture and boast about your co-op and new grad experience to catch student’s attention.
6. If it fits with your corporate culture consider hosting a campus ‘event’ at the local watering hole for students. Targeting specific disciplines or student groups can create a buzz on campus among the students you will one day try to recruit.
7. Research social media marketing opportunities that exist for the student groups you are trying to tap into. Students are blogging and on the web. Niche campus groups can be targeted on Facebook, consider podcasts, mobile app’s and video opportunities… sometimes very little money needs to be invested to get some viral advertising working for you.
8. Sponsorship of student group associations, sporting events, campus events and student run activities will get your name in front of students. Commitment to continued sponsorship can help build momentum on campus.

Staying tapped into student groups on campus makes sense for a few reasons:

• For companies looking to hire co-op students it helps to attract those high caliber students that have their pick of opportunities.
• Attracting returning co-op students who have a co-op term under their belt will allow them to hit the ground running with a good feel for the business and corporate culture.
• Staying tapped to the best and the brightest supports new grad recruitment efforts.

Building a brand on campus as with any other branding effort isn’t a one time event. It is something that needs to be nurtured and will build momentum over time. A mixed approach will show the best results.

I went to an interesting conference not long ago where David Foote, world-renowned demographics expert and author of Boom Bust & Echo gave a very insightful talk on changing demographics and the effect these changes will have on society’s needs.

I found the discussion particularly relevant as he made a very persuasive case for the need and importance to consider how changing demographics will affect our approach to recruitment over the next decade. Foote states that, as we know boomers today are in their 40s and 50s. We also know that according to Statistics Canada birth rates have been declining steadily for years. Both of these factors combined are good reason to consider what you will need to do to incorporate skilled immigrant talent attraction into your recruitment strategy.

If you would like to incorporate hiring skilled immigrant talent into your talent attraction strategy and aren’t sure where to start, there are some resources available to assist you:

• TRIEC – Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, established in 2003 by Toronto City Summit Alliance and Maytree, is working to remove the barriers immigrants face when entering the labour market, while at the same time helping organizations benefit from the talents and skills immigrants bring with them to Canada. TRIEC is a collaboration of employers, labour, occupational regulatory bodies, post-secondary institutions, assessment service providers, community organizations, and all three levels of government.TRIEC offers a number of programs and services to both newly settled Canadian’s as well as Employers in the Toronto area to facilitate the settlement of immigrants in employment within the Toronto Region. Training, mentorship, and an immigrant employment loans program are a few services offered or facilitated. hireimmigrants.ca is an excellent resource. It is a TRIEC program that provides employers with the tools needed to better recruit, retain and promote skilled immigrants.
• WRIEN – recognizing the good efforts made by TRIEC, Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network was established to support the successful integration of immigrant talent into the workplace within Waterloo Region. A collaboration of employers, government, educators and foreign trained professionals it also offers programs and services to both employers and newcomers to Canada to support the hiring of skilled immigrant professionals through similar training, programs and services as offered by TRIEC.
• Skills International is committed to full and relevant employment for all of Canada’s immigrants. It offers a web-enabled, searchable database of candidate profiles and is dedicated exclusively to profiling the skills of immigrant job seekers in Ontario. The first of its kind in Canada, this tool connects pre-screened, internationally trained individuals with employers who need their skills. Employers have the benefit of knowing that candidates that are involved in Skills International will have worked with a qualified employment advisor on employment preparation.
• World Education Services (WES) provides evaluation services for immigrants who wish to convert their educational credentials from any country in the world into their Canadian equivalents. It describes each certificate, diploma or degree you have earned and states its academic equivalency in Canada. From an Employers perspective, WES evaluation reports mitigate risk, and provide accurate and fair candidate screening.
• COSTI Languages Bureau a partner of WES, offers a full-services communications operation providing professional translation, interpretation, and typesetting services in over 100 languages to individuals, businesses, community based agencies, government departments, educational institutions, and regulatory bodies.

Recognizing Employers that do it well
Canada’s Top 100 Employers award sponsored by MacLean’s Magazine, last year launched the Best Employers for New Canadian’s award. This award recognizes Canadian employers with the best initiatives and programs to assist recent immigrants to Canada. The 2008 winners offer interesting programs to assist new Canadians in making the transition to the Canadian workplace.

For a complete list of the programs and services being funded visit the following - Ontario Training Programs

There are a number of resources available, within the Region and Province, to assist Employers with attracting and retaining skilled immigrant talent into your workforce. Regionally you can also consider taking advantage of The Working Centre, Focus for Ethnic Women and the New Canadian Employment Connections Program to name a few. Hopefully this will give you a snapshot of some of the resources available to you and help get you started.

At Tech Capital the investment team looks at three main things when evaluating potential opportunities – team, technology and market opportunity. It seems obvious that team is important because even smart strategy can be replicated. For companies this means that people are the prime source of competitive advantage. Given people provide companies with competitive advantage, I think it makes sense to stop and consider employee engagement for a minute.

Employee Engagement in Growth Technology Companies

Thousands of dollars are being spent by corporations annually to define employee engagement strategies, measure engagement through employee surveys and other methods, and track how successful engagement programs are at achieving desired results.  It’s understandable given the positive impact an engaged workforce has on both productivity and financial results. Watson Wyatt’s Global WorkAttitudes research, confirms that “when engagement is high, so is financial performance”.

I was surprised when I read the results of a Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study that found, “just 21% of the employees surveyed around the world are engaged in their work, meaning they’re willing to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed”. All this said, one of the things I love about working with early stage or growth technology companies is the passion of the individuals that I have the opportunity to work with. Without spending money defining an engagement strategy, employees are committed, passionate, and engaged.

Engagement to me means employees are committed. They understand how their contribution has a positive impact on the organization, and they feel a real sense of making a difference in helping to build a successful organization.

My thoughts on some engagement ingredients:

• Exceptional Leadership – engagement is driven from the top down. Great leaders have the power to both empower and engage their employees. Enough said.
  
• Collaboration – there are many things that can help facilitate an environment of teamwork and collaboration. Considering things like ideal team size, ensuring teams don’t get too large and become counter productive. Facilitating good working relationships between team members and across work groups is important. Finally, trust is key – of course something that can only be nurtured, not demanded.
  
• Empowerment - fostering an environment that encourages team members to share ideas and come up with creative solutions to unique problems. It’s important to ensure that the sense of empowerment is real. If employees are given a false sense of empowerment, they will soon realize their ability to elicit change is not backed by the organization and they will be less likely to push to drive the organization forward.
• Tools / Resources – hire smart people that have passion for what you are trying to accomplish and fit within the culture of the organization, then give them the tools they need to accomplish the task at hand.

Then stand back!

I have been considering what to write about for my first Human Resources blog post. Many topics come to mind – HR best practices, hot topics in the various functional areas of Human Resources, talent attraction and retention in a time that lives up to The War for Talent, the changing face of recruitment with Web 2.0, social networking sites and the many emerging online recruitment tools, to name a few.

I decided to start with some thoughts on Human Resources from an early-stage company perspective. Whether your company is at a point where it can support a full-time HR person or not, here are a few practices and/or processes that cover off some basics very early on.

1. Recruit the best – hire the best, hire better than yourself – we all know this right? When I speak with prospective candidates about our Portfolio companies, I consistently speak to three things: the people, the technology and the work environment (employee and corporate). Smart, passionate, dedicated people want to work with people who are smarter than they are, people they can learn from, and this especially seems to hold true in technical environments.
2. Create a solid foundation for growth - regardless of your company’s funding plan (self-sufficient/generating revenue from the start or angel/venture capital financed), at some point you will be need to rely on the foundation of legal agreements you have put in place. Implementing Employment Contracts, Confidentiality, Non-Disclosure, Non-Solicit and Non-Compete Agreements, and Stock Option Agreements are important, even at an early-stage. Some may believe they can rely on one set of agreements as the company is getting started and then reevaluate these agreements as the company grows but consistency in agreements is important. Having employees sign new agreements down the road can create various challenges, legal and other, that make it much easier to execute one standard form up front.
3. Treat your employees well – employees that join early-stage technology companies work extremely hard and tend to do whatever it takes to build a successful company. Giving ALL employees a stake in the company through stock options, ensuring equity in compensation, creating a comfortable work environment, and covering off all of the perks that make it fun to come to work will foster a positive work atmosphere and help with employee attraction and retention.
4. Communicate – monthly (or more often) all staff communication meetings ensure that everyone in the organization stays on the same page. Updates on company wins, product development, financial results, and new team members ensure that all employees are on the same page, aware of key customer commitments and the consequences for missed deliverables. Each employee has a vested interest in making the company successful and is best positioned to do so with knowledge.