Companies establish a reputation through their talent, however the companies themselves become the perceived vehicles of this talent and often people are unaware of the real “movers and shakers” behind the scenes. This creates an environment of disassociation where people see the accomplishments of the company, not the people.

With the traditional model, companies would conduct interviews through the managers of the associated need for talent. For example, a Director of Development would interview a lead programmer, and a lead programmer would interview a mid-level level programmer, and so on and so forth.

However the dynamic of talent acquisition has changed with the unprecedented and excessive use of recruiting firms, which bears a critical question: why do so many businesses put the acquisition of talent in the hands of unassociated and often inexperienced and unqualified third parties?

This trend is generating a middle-man nightmare many are reluctant to talk about and even fewer are willing to challenge. It is also creating weaker companies of disconnected team members.

Recruiters…
Recruiters have been with us for a long time. There is nothing new or unique regarding the services of a recruiter. What has changed are the habits developed by companies regarding their use of recruiters. It used to be a company would work to acquire talent through their own resources and when those resources failed they would call in a “specialist” to help fill the position they were unable to fill.

In the past, recruiters were hardly ever used as a “complete solution for all talent acquisition” because the idea would have been so absurd. For those of you who have been around in the IT industry for two or three decades, think back to the 80’s and 90’s. Did the majority of companies you worked with solely rely on outside parties to acquire all talent for the company? Most certainly not. So why is this happening now?

The perception of “using a recruiting firm to manage the acquisition of talent lowers overhead and liability” is a primary driving force, but how real is this perception, especially given most recruiters have no hands on experience regarding the talent they are looking to acquire? Does this not generate liability instead of prevent it?

Many companies believe the recruiter acts as a buffer to find viable candidates and once a viable candidate is found, the company conducts their own internal interviews to determine if they wish to hire the individual. However, is this really worth the “fee” associated with the individual, which is often 10% or more of that individuals “payment? How is that cost effective?

The average experienced C++ developer makes around $90,000 a year. With this model, $9,000 of that (per year) is absorbed by a recruiter as a fee for placing the individual. A company may say “but that’s OK because it would cost us $12,000 a year to insure them, and it saves us money by having the recruiter absorb that cost and offer health insurance as an employee of the recruiting firm.”

But guess what – that person works for the recruiter, and is paid by the recruiter. Their paychecks come from the recruiting company. How does this generate loyalty for the company the person is “working for” through the recruiter? Simply put, it does not. As a matter of fact it creates a subliminal psychological side effect on the worker purposely detaching them from the very company they are doing the job for. This dynamic is inherently counterproductive to building a strong team that is dedicated, loyal, and most importantly, connected directly with the very company they work at.

In general, recruiters are salesmen and while salesmen are good for selling things, they are traditionally not good at developing things. Ask your developer recruiter how many lines of code they have written or how many products they have shipped. It’s important to remember the Recruiter doesn’t know the job, they know recruiting.

Dealing with Market Saturation
Market saturation of school trained and inexperienced individuals is something taking the IT industry by storm. Pair that with a faltering economy and every individual claiming to be some sort of technology or programming specialist, the result is a monumental amount of applications for general positions which must be reviewed to determine of an applicant is qualified or not. This mound of submission-based paperwork serves as another reason why companies justify using an outside source to act as the entry point for resource acquisition, especially when we are in a job market which is flooded by the unemployed who continually apply for jobs they are unqualified for solely to keep their government check coming in.

Taking all of this into account, are companies making the right decision by putting the acquisition of key talent required for quality and growth in the hands of recruiters?

The Importance of Leadership
This leads to another critically important aspect of running a company and acquiring talent; Leadership. Proper leadership is critical for talent to thrive in a productive work environment since the productivity of talent is directly related to empowerment. Many companies attempt to enact policies of control and restriction which often infringe upon talent and productivity. A good leader recognizes these restrictions and adjusts them to serve as guidelines for productivity rather than limitations on what one can and cannot do because true talent is empowered to do whatever their talent allows them to do within the area of committed focus. Good leaders also inspire and support.

While there is no substitute for experience, leadership focusing on guidance instead of restriction is also critically important. Creating an environment where an individual has the ability to focus and execute their talent results in a thriving company. An environment where an individual must worry about rules, policies and procedures which hinder productivity and talent can kill a company.

Retention of talent is directly related to the leadership. It’s important to remember talented people thrive in environments where they can operate at their fullest potential and a truly successful company allows them to do exactly that. But talent has a habit of working with other talented people. Just having one or two weak managers or the worst case – a weak leader – will result at best in mediocrity with no inspiration and at worst in high turnover or talentless team members who simply go to work to have a job.

Key Decisions
An unfortunate truth is many people possess no talent whatsoever and companies who waste resources, time, money and energy attempting to grow talent from somebody where none exists are rampant. This is why key decision makers must provide respectful leadership showing they have the knowledge necessary to determine if talent exists in a potential new hire.

While many jobs and responsibilities can be carried out by dedicated and capable people, some require a specific talent. To put it bluntly, if a position requires a specialized talent and the person in that position lacks the talent, let them work somewhere else that does not have the level of standards your company requires, or let them work at a different company altogether.

Empower your strong, experienced and capable leaders. Remove those who are not. All managers and executives will find the core rule set of culling bad individuals applies to anyone no matter the position, and it is highly effective.

If your company uses outside parties to find your talent, take a step back and review why your company is doing it, what benefits come from it, and how successful such a decision has been on positively or negatively impacting your company. Ask yourself the key questions many people prefer to avoid. Is the use of outside firms related in any way to laziness, a lack of knowledge, or as a means to cut corners? If your company lacks the knowledge, experience and ability to use today’s tools to find the people you need in order to be successful on your own, is your company really making the right choices?

While I believe some recruiters can offer a great benefit to companies, most offer very little and cause more of an overall detriment than benefit. Weak companies lacking truly talented individuals use recruiters as a total staffing solution. Strong companies hire their own people with their own resources. Even stronger companies utilize recruiters solely for specific purposes in clearly controlled and defined scenarios based on their own hiring structure, principles and practices – and most importantly, led and directed by their own internal talent.

About David Allen
David built the first virtual company in the industry to ship a commercial MMOG. With nearly 50 team members at its height, his company had a near 100% retention rate for anyone who was with the company more than 90 days for a period of more than three years. Not once did he use a recruiter to secure his team members. Instead, he used referrals from existing members and contacts, and recruited the members himself.

For example, EMail is the most used technical solution in the world, something we are all familiar and comfortable with. But few stop to think about how old the technology and process behind EMail is; more than twenty years. EMail is a legacy solution, yet we all embrace and count on it vigorously. We are comfortable and familiar with it. Plus EMail Works, right?

That’s if it’s not caught in a spam filter, has a link or attachment your EMail program doesn’t like (and won’t let you open), or is simply rejected by your EMail host for a whole myriad of reasons. Simply put EMail is not reliable, and even worse we have become accustomed to “missing that one important EMail” on a regular basis. We get a phone call “did you get my proposal?” and respond with “oh no, not sure why. Just send it again.”

While normal solutions are fine for normal people and normal businesses, how will a normal business survive in today’s economy? How about what is on the horizon? We must expand beyond our comfort levels and increase our awareness not only in the area of technology, but also how we manage our work and communicate within our company and with our clients.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, the core of being a modern business leader rests not just with embracing the latest methods of managing work and technology, but also knowing how to use all of it.

Understanding Technology
While the number of technical solutions has increased, often creating the illusion of complexity, the simple fact is using technical solutions becomes easier and easier each and every day. Data management systems which were once massively complex are now as simple as configure, point, click, text, and done. Online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions such as Salesforce have shown us how easy and painless it is to embrace the latest technology, especially as it applies to business.

Today’s technology companies don’t just provide technical solutions, they provide simple solutions. Gone are the days of a hundred page manual just to get started with a new data management system; now it’s as simple as subscribe and use, and any help the customer needs is often built right into the interface itself. The customer learns to properly use the technology by simply using it.

Not sure if you want to use a large-scale CRM solution for your company? No problem. Try one out by filling out a few fields, submitting your information, and clicking a link. It’s that simple. And within just a few minutes you’ll begin your journey of learning a basic grasp of what the technology can do for you and your business. Is it worth the time? You bet. But why don’t more companies seek to try, learn about, and embrace these “simple yet powerful” solutions? Because most don’t know they exist or where to start.

Understanding tools and technology for enhancing a company doesn’t mean knowing the nuts and bolts of every solution. It means learning about what solutions are available and how to find them, what they can do, and most importantly how to properly use them within a business. This high level knowledge is a must have today, and it’s easy to acquire with the right focus and effort.

Don’t let the massive flow of information from EMail, social networks such as Facebook, blogs, and websites distract you. It’s all about focus and consolidation. Google isn’t just a great search engine, it is a critical tool in your efforts to learn as much as possible about the business solutions available to you and your business. Some simple rules of thumb are: if they don’t have a trial, don’t waste your time, and if you can’t sign up and be running with a demo or trial version in just a few minutes, move on. The quality solutions can all be accessed easily, and the older solutions cannot. A solution worth your consideration is powerful, easy to use and understand.

Just wait until Google Wave and other real time communication systems begin to integrate in our daily lives over the next few years, marking the first stage in phasing out EMail. No longer will we be sending and receiving chunks of information (which can get lost or intercepted); instead we will all work in and on a living, breathing system of data featuring real-time adjustments, notifications, and results.

The future of technology is exciting indeed!

Establishing Strong Relationships
Personal relationships are the root of all successful business and with the slow economy, are now more important than ever. Companies that learn how to balance the technical nature of growing their business with the necessary balance of personal relationships will greatly outperform their competition.

Our society has grown impersonal at an alarming rate with our teenagers growing up spending more time texting each other than talking. However business isn’t very far behind; many companies now conduct business globally with people they’ve never even met. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there is no substitution for the human factor. Business leaders must work to establish personal relationships with not only other companies, but clients and customers as well.

Of course companies operating online and providing services to clients all over the world generally never meet their customers, but one thing they do offer is a level of interaction that is impressive; live chats or responses to any and all issues within an hour of a support ticket being created. These respectable and technically savvy solutions operate as a buffer between the great quagmire that is the internet and the very people who help solve problems. You actually “feel” like somebody is there when you need them because they really are.

The key is balancing how much time you spend meeting people in person vs. working in a technically advanced environment. Finding the “perfect synergy” is key to optimal relationships and performance. Too many companies waste time holding unnecessary in-person meetings on a regular basis. Effort needs to be put into stopping these huge inefficient wastes of time. In addition, some companies do not hold enough in-person meetings with their staff, quickly creating a situation where people only use the computer to communicate. This often results in an environment where the very people who make up and represent the company hardly know each other. Granted if a company is designed to operate globally with team members working from home or other isolated environments, the relationship-based needs are different.

One example is if six people are spread around Salt Lake City and working from home telecommuting for a company in Atlanta, they will work together and build a much stronger relationship by meeting regularly for something as simple as lunch.

It’s the responsibility of a business leader to ensure their environment does not create shut-ins among their team. I can’t emphasize the importance of this enough.

Make time to meet people in person. Have lunches as often as you can, collaborate, communicate, and work together. Skilled, experienced, and capable people are worth their weight in gold, but the gold isn’t worth anything if you can’t share it!

Conclusion
Learn everything you can about growing your business not only through embracing technology to strengthen everything you do, but also by putting effort into ensuring your relationships are rock solid through in-person meetings and communication.

With every penny counting now more than ever, a business must focus on what’s important. This is why I started Mercois and this is why I write articles such as this; to help companies become aware, educated, experienced, and ultimately self sufficient in growing and evolving.

This means embracing new methodologies of collaboration, productivity and cutting costs. At large companies such as Google, where subdivisions within the company exist solely to evolve the company’s processes, most small and medium businesses do not have the luxury or resources to pursue such goals. The solution is Virtualization.

Virtualization is a new leading edge business approach, triggered in part by a challenging economy and the need for companies to make every resource count. Virtualization is the process of running a company in a controlled, technologically advanced online virtual space while utilizing specifically designed policies to ensure maximum efficiency and performance of all team members from anywhere in the world, with impressive results.

In a Virtual environment, team members can access and share all forms of media with each other from any online location and work collaboratively through their web browsers. An online web-based dashboard serves as the point of entry where updates, tasks, reminders, and other details are made easy to read and accessible. In the Virtual environment, any team member can begin to work on whatever their assigned tasks require. Throughout the work day, notifications are sent and received based on completed tasks, updated workspaces, and media. New habits drive this machine of productivity, resulting each team member properly monitoring, managing, and producing based on the notifications (via EMail, SMS, or IM) and tasks at hand.

Most companies are unaware of how easy task and collaborative technologies are becoming to use. No more issues falling through the cracks, communications getting lost in EMail, floating word and excel documents never reaching their destinations or getting tangled up in edits by multiple individuals. All of this is now consolidated, tracked, and inexpensive resulting in no more wasted time on useless meetings, company members working inefficiently, and management not having the visibility necessary to ensure their teams are unstoppable forces of productivity.

While the latest technologies for tracking tasks, collaborative work, and asset management are publicly available, the key is to ensure these new systems are properly implemented, embraced, and utilized.  This requires proper training, clearly defined policies, and most importantly: implementing new habits. Since part of the training process includes the knowledge and experience necessary to successfully use the technology, a virtualized company becomes its own self-reliant expert.

As the economy continues to become more challenging, companies focusing on streamlining operations and utilizing the latest technology will outperform their rivals across the board by producing more and spending less.

Virtualization translates to higher profits and lower costs through streamlining the flow of information, and ensuring the team is properly trained and focused. Collaborative work becomes the standard of business, and the use of technology results in redefining the work environment to lower overhead and the constant need for on-site team members. The structure also allows for companies to more easily take advantage of global market trends and resources. This includes having a centralized work system where new team members can be up and running in a matter of hours, not days. While the dollar value translates differently for each and every company, one thing is certain; the savings are great, and the company is positioned to compete in today’s global market.

This is the future of business, and you can begin the process now.

However, there is a bright light in all of today’s turmoil. The value of money has gone up, which means the value of relationships has gone up as well. It is during these times many individuals and companies will establish some of the strongest and most productive relationships they have ever had. People will rely on others now more than ever before, and put great effort into establishing and keeping good business relations.

But what does all of this mean in relation to the cost and savings of Virtualization? Virtualization is about more than just finances, it’s about a business wanting to grow and expand while increasing productivity through the use of technology and method, all while establishing good solid relationships with others.

Virtualization generally decreases costs across the board at any company, but more importantly, Virtualization also directly affects productivity to the level where sales and profit are affected. Since Virtualization affects every aspect of how a company operates, it’s impossible to assign a number ahead of time as to the exact impact it will have on finances, but it’s more than just a financial impact, it’s a complete business impact, and an extremely positive one. Does it save money for your team to now be able to use a single search field to find data in any document that has been converted through the “going paperless” process? Of course; it changes everything. What about your team designing your next major product through the company’s collaborative workspace, posting images, writing up details, receiving comments and feedback, and updating pages, which automatically sends notifications to all involved parties who are participating in the progress? Of course all of this makes a big different in working together in a more focused, efficient, and productive fashion; and these are just a few examples.

Some companies charge well over $100,000 just for the software to address a few aspects of Virtualization, and often these solutions are highly complex and specialized and can take months to integrate. Granted some of these products have focused highly complex and necessary solutions depending on the type of business, simply put the cost of software and solutions on an enterprise level is far from “company friendly” unless the company is swimming in cash.

So with Mercois, is it worth $10,000 for a 25 person business to Virtualize? For that company to learn all the most productive processes, policies, habits, and technology in order to operate as efficiently as possible?

What are the traditional areas in which Virtualization will save a company money?

• Office Space / Rent
• Office Equipment Costs (furniture, computers, etc)
• Office Security / Misc Overhead
• Electricity
• Paperwork
• Commute (cost and stress factor)
• Smoke Breaks (a huge time waster)
• Employee status vs. Work for hire (tax and paperwork savings)

What about areas that help the company save money through efficiency and productivity?

• Task & Work Processing – Your team always knows what they need to do and all work is easily planned, managed and tracked.
• Online Collaboration – No more misplaced documents or mismanaged time.
• Instant Results – Depending on the business type, by using the proper tools, feedback, reviews, and verification can be conducted in a record amount of time.

We’re redefining the way companies are Virtualized, and we’re doing it on a budget that most any business can afford.

The question isn’t “how much will Virtualization cost my company?”, but instead “how much is it costing my company to not Virtualize?”

When companies state “multiple tools are better” and “we like our current system” but cannot make such claims as “we reviewed the latest technology in collaborative work systems last month, and found our system is just as efficient, and our company’s productivity grew 33% last year” it reflects a “comfort” mentality that is not indicative of a leading edge business philosophy.

The biggest mistake a company can make is to forego process and optimization reviews because the stance is “don’t need to fix what works just fine”. This is why we have banks and other large institutions still utilizing technology from the 80’s and 90’s; and their customers end up paying the price when reasonable requests of taking certain actions are made, and the business responds “our system can’t do that. But it works!”

Virtualization isn’t just about client interaction, it’s about understanding, collaboration, and efficiency. Any company that does not conduct regular reviews of enhancing their systems will never be able to operate as efficiently as possible.

Running a company isn’t about what is comfortable; it’s about making the best decisions for the future of the company. Given technology is driving the global economy and having a massive impact on our society, why is it companies are so hesitant to review and when it’s productive, embrace new technology, methods, and systems?

Everyone is influenced in one way or another. Leaders provide guidance, and those who do not lead, follow. We often find company leaders operate in their comfort zone, whether or not it’s a development manager, or a CEO; they do what they know and they do what they’re comfortable with. So how does a company ensure they are always operating as efficiently as possible? Simple. Every company needs to have at least one technology, process, and procedure expert. One or more people everyone else counts on and respects who can go out, review the available technologies, and have the proper level of visibility and implementation responsibility allowing a company to grow in method and process. This is more than an IT expert, this individual is a Technology Integration Specialist. Very large companies may have an entire team of these individuals, and they are worth their weight in gold.

How many times have you gone over to a friend’s house and seen something you thought could be taken care of in a certain way and commented on it, and your friend responds “wow, I didn’t think about that. Thanks!” Simply put, most people who are working very hard at companies don’t make the time to pursue things like Virtualization; this is why they need to either hire somebody or appoint somebody to lead in such processes, and the results can be monumental.

You can now request a FREE consultation through the website; find out if your business can benefit from Virtualization! It’s as simple as filling out the questions on the Request Consultation page and clicking Send. You should hear back from us within 24 hours.

The FAQ page will be growing over time. Be sure to add any questions you have!

An excellent encapsulation of Virtualization and the services Mercois offers, the Presentation is now available for review!

While technology serves as the foundation of Virtualization, the leadership and methods of management play a critical role.

A virtual company cannot operate properly unless the managers are well-trained in and familiar with the Virtual systems. Team members look to their managers for leadership, guidance, strength, knowledge, and direction; and all good managers provide all of this.

When a company is looking to adopt Virtualization and properly implement it within their organization, it’s up to the leadership and management to first fully support and adopt the new policies. But without understanding the reason behind these policies and being able to provide examples, a manager will lose the respect of the team when they are unable to answer basic questions related to the “switch”.

Many companies make the mistake of trying to work out relationships with individuals who should have been removed from a company long ago. Whether it’s due to fear of lawsuit, bad HR advice, or the inability to make a decision. Simply put, a good manager under a normal company structure will be a good manager under a virtual structure.

Virtualization often serves as the catalyst of change at companies, opening the door to empower and strengthen a company by dealing with personnel issues that have been a problem for awhile. Virtualization forces the removal of poor team members, managers, and leaders, and allows for the integration of the right people for those positions.

Just another reason Virtualization is so successful and important for any company who wishes to operate more efficiently.

Most people are accustomed to working within applications when it comes to writing documentation. Microsoft Word and other “Word Processing” systems have become the norm. When writing a book, or putting out a highly graphical publication, other software such as Illustrator may be used, and PDFs are becoming the common format for “distributing” materials. However for this example, I’m going to focus on the most common “work method” for standard businesses – the creation of “documents”.

Open Word, start writing, save the file, EMail it to your boss/team members, shuffle it around in your online folders depending on the theme, revisit the file six months later and forget where you put it. Sound familiar?

What if your word processor was an online space where your updates were stored remotely, all revisions were tracked, and others could both review and modify your work, all through a browser? You never have to worry about floating DOC files, misplacing them, losing them, or sending them to co-workers. You just share a link.

This is just one example of using an online collaborative space. While this sounds great and people are excited at such ideas, they don’t realize how difficult it is to change their habits to working online and outside of the traditional “local document” space.

This is a key part of training. Getting into the habit of managing an online space and online pages (which serves as the core documentation for a business) is something that takes time. Pairing that with other collaboration tools such as a Task Tracking system, and for those companies that need it, a more robust source code asset repository system, companies quickly find out the power of Collaborative work is really in the way people use the technology rather than the technology itself.