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The
Radin Report
Published monthly,
our free e-mail newsletter contains sensor industry news and career
commentary. To subscribe, simply
send us your e-mail address.
The Future is Now
Will technology experience
20,000 years of growth in the next century? Futurist
Ray Kurzweil thinks so.
Tribute to a Sensor Industry Giant
When
Emory Farr handed over the keys to Sensortronics in early 2002, a
generational torch was passed—and with it, leadership qualities that are
absent in today’s corporate culture.
Crash
Diets: The Cure for Overweight Companies?
Given the enormous costs of recruiting and training employees, it’s
surprising that so many companies are purging themselves so quickly of their
valuable talent resources.
How
Effective is Your Capture Strategy?
In the war for talent, you may
know how to wine and dine the talent you need. But as a manager, are you
able
to actually
consummate the deal?
Intelligence
Failure Costly to Employers
If
the syntax used in the employment game could be improved, employers would
save millions of hours—and
dollars.
Merger
Mania Hits the Sensor Industry
Sensor companies may lack
celebrity status, but they’re no less active than the highest profile
companies when it comes to shuffling the deck.
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How
Effective is Your Capture Strategy?
By Bill Radin
Ouch!
You lost a perfectly good candidate to another company.
How could it happen? Your company has innovative products, a slew of happy
customers and a fun, casual work environment.
But no capture strategy.
In other words, you know how to wine and dine the talent you need, but for
some reason you fail to—um—consummate the deal.
Of course, you’re not alone. Managers at all levels
complain of their difficulty in attracting the best people, while their
competitors seem to gobble up talent like twinkies. But why the disparity?
To find the answer,
take a realistic look at how your company addresses the needs of today’s
candidates. Do you offer the types of resources, training programs and
mentoring that will attract career-minded individuals? If not, you may be
at a disadvantage in the current market.
Next, see if you suffer from comparison shopping
paralysis by taking this little test. Do more than half the people you
interview:
Accept another job before you can make an offer?
Make salary demands that creep up from one interview to
the next?
Require more than a day or two to “contemplate”
your offer?
Have a change of heart after accepting your offer?
If the answer is yes to one or more of these questions, you may be
losing good candidates due to delays or indecision. To rectify this,
shorten your hiring cycle, either by scheduling multiple interviews on one
day, or by making your selection more quickly. The longer you take to make
hiring decisions, the more time you give candidates to check out other
jobs.
Your
Eyes Say “Yes,” but Your Lips Say “No”
To help reduce the number missed opportunities, take a look at the five
most common mistakes managers make during the hiring cycle—and
how to avoid them:
1. Your offer comes too late. If you’ve got a hot candidate, move
quickly! Nothing turns off a job-seeker more than an interminable
interview cycle.
2. Your offer is too low. Research the market—as
it is today, not what it was last year—and try to stay calm when the candidate states
his salary needs. What seems like extortion may actually be the going
rate.
3. Your
negotiating comes at the eleventh hour. If a salary compromise is necessary, try to reach an
agreement before you make a formal offer. Negotiating after the candidate
turns your offer down might be perceived as poor planning on your part; or
worse, an exercise in bad faith. As soon as you know the offer will be
accepted, go ahead and extend it.
4. Your
story keeps changing.
Whatever else you do, always maintain a consistent job description from
one interview (or interviewer) to the next. If you and another manager
can’t agree on the nature of the job (or you surprise the candidate with
new revelations), you stand a good chance of driving talent from your
door.
5.
Your
body language spooks the candidate. Job-seekers have a sixth sense
regarding your sincerity, urgency and level of interest. Mixed signals or
indecision during the interview will almost certainly be mirrored by the
candidate, who will find a way—consciously
or not—to undermine your offer.
It’s never too late to make adjustments. If too many
people turn you down (or you can’t find anyone to interview), you may
need to rethink your expectations, salary or job description.
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