Hooking the Big One

How do you get them interested? How do you get your dream candidate to come to work for your company-to leave your competitor and job security, sometimes for the unknown? A rich benefits package is often a sure-fire enticement for luring the industry's superstars. But if you're not one of the big guys who can dangle 14-karat carrots, or if you don't have the patent on the hottest current technology of the hour, then you may have to get creative.

Successful recruitment should begin with an unbiased assessment of what the company has to offer. Employers must define their company's short- and long-term goals. A skills assessment of the current staff in the department with the vacancy will help reveal the most desirable qualities that a new employee should have. Companies also should be realistic about what they're willing and able to pay, promise and provide.

Retaining an ongoing relationship with an executive search firm that specializes in the telecommunications industry can prove invaluable. The search firm will get to know the organization, and repeatedly recruiting candidates for a company can help form a strong foundation for a trusting relationship and a sense of teamwork.

A company that has empirical knowledge of both itself and its industry will provide an executive search firm with an impartial perspective on what's missing in the management team and how to successfully fill that hole. Because of its unbiased position, a third-party search firm can help determine if what a company needs is a facsimile of the person that left, or someone with different skills and strengths to better realize the company's current and future objectives. Companies should consider the search firm's advice and avoid becoming defensive.

Find a partner Telecom companies should select a search firm that specializes in telecommunications or in technology in general. It will know who is available and what other opportunities candidates are considering. It will also be able to advise the company on relevant industry employment trends that need to be addressed to make a successful hire. Investing time and effort at the front end will result in a more successful search and a better fit.

Companies need to tout senior-level openings in particular as an opportunity to make a difference. This is especially true in luring candidates who are secure in their current jobs. It will likely be harder to interest them in a career move than those who are actively looking. However, a call from an executive recruiter who can draw on the prospect's good reputation is likely to at least pique the candidate's interest.

For example, a director of manufacturing position in the U.K. was properly positioned to persuade a successful independent consultant in the U.S. to interview for the position. Upon learning more about the job's long-term career benefits, he recognized the value in the added industry exposure he would receive. In the event that he ever returned to consulting, this would likely pay future dividends.

The benefits and perks package was sensitive to the needs of the candidate's family and included assistance in helping his wife find a new job and his teenage daughter find a new school. Add to this the usual perks of a car, housing allowance and trips back to the U.S. for the entire family twice a year, and the deal was clinched.

Conversely, here's what not to do: A global telecom service provider relocated a new hire and his family to a foreign country. It then proceeded to send him around the world, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves in a country where they knew no one and struggled with the language.

The company made no effort to help the man's family assimilate into its new surroundings. Consequently, within a year, the executive felt he had no choice but to resign and move his family back home. The loss of a highly desirable executive and the costs of recruitment and relocation could have been avoided if the company had been more sensitive to everyone's needs.

Sweetening the pot Many candidates resist making a geographical move. This is another area where creativity can come into play. Before an out-of-town candidate accepts an offer, an overnight or weekend family trip to the new community is in order. If the candidate feels that the relocation is not a good fit with the lifestyle to which he or she has become accustomed, the candidate is not likely to move or to stick around for very long.

The executive recruiter will double as a welcome committee. He or she can help line up meetings with real estate agents, local school officials and anyone else who can answer a candidate's questions about changing locations without changing lifestyle. For example, there might be needs for special medical care, access to a trainer for a budding young athlete, provisions for dependent elderly parents or specific religious obligations.

What ultimately sells a company's products, services and vision to a candidate will vary. In addition to an attractive compensation and benefits package, candidates want ready access to new and always better techno-toys as well as a work environment that has a high regard for ongoing research and development. Whatever an employee's own short- or long-term plans, technology-based companies have to offer continuing education and career development opportunities. Keeping employees current can keep a company current and competitive.

Companies with the newest, most alluring technologies have an edge over more established ones in the telecom industry. They are the ones being talked up by Wall Street, industry analysts and the media. However, a company whose technology is considered "old," or that is going through any kind of change or reorganization, has the advantage of an "elder statesman" image. This company should accentuate the positive and emphasize its solid infrastructure. It should reinforce its prestigious reputation, its loyalty to employees and its survival instinct.

This will appeal to mid-career candidates with embedded family and financial commitments who often are looking for a sense of stability and for companies with other like-minded individuals. These people are less likely to have the agility or the stomach for the revolving door atmosphere of some of the hottest industry segments.

Being imaginative and flexible with compensation, benefits and work lifestyle improves a company's odds when competing for the most desirable technology executive candidates in a shallow talent pool. Popular perks are a car with a cellular phone and job-related equipment such as a laptop computer. Another perk is to pay the points on a real estate transaction for relocating candidates. Temporary housing and a home visit allowance are necessary when uprooting an entire family is not an option.

Give stock options or stock grants, if possible. Vest people after only a year. Private companies can offer a sign-on bonus above and beyond a capped salary grade. Offer a piece of the company to the most senior executives if it is privately held.

But a company's sales pitch to prospective employees needs to include more than a focus on its bells and whistles or past laurels. What is its corporate culture? How open is it to the exchange of new ideas? What makes it an exciting and stimulating place to work? Does it offer new career opportunities, skills development and real growth opportunity lacking in the candidate's present workplace? Finally, what plans are in place for its long-term direction?

The explosion of the technology industry and the use of computer and telecommunications technology in any work environment has resulted in a dearth of good technical talent. As a result, recruiting technology executives is that much more challenging and time consuming. It requires an understanding of what this breed wants and expects and how to reach the hidden talent locked away in a backroom operation. And that takes creativity.

Andy Steinem is a Principal with the executive recruitment firm Dahl-Morrow International, Reston, Va.

As venture capital firm Symphony Management Associates acquires or invests in new companies, it often searches for interim executives to handle an immediate situation. The Annapolis, Md.-based firm once hired a high-level interim chief executive officer for a cellular telephone billing and MIS company.

The approach was to use overkill to bring things up to speed. Although the company did not originally expect the high-powered individual it hired to be needed for long, an initial nine-month interim assignment evolved into a permanent position, and he stayed two years.

Why be involved with a job that is temporary at best and, some might say, a dead end? Besides being a welcomed opportunity for people who may be between jobs, interim employment is well-suited for people who are focused on one part of a company's life cycle. They thrive on frequent new challenges. An interim position, even though short-term, can actually beef up a person's resume through the unique opportunity it offers.

Gaining a year's experience working in Europe was attractive to several American candidates for a new startup in the communications services industry. British Aerospace Communications Ltd. turned to Dahl-Morrow to conduct a search specifically for Americans with experience in contracts to launch a new satellite communications service company. The interims were paid a consulting fee but received no traditional employee benefits. The only relocation expenses they received were one-time round-trip air fare and a temporary housing allowance.

The company found that it was easier to hire interim executives from the U.S. than from Europe because Americans tend to be much more mobile in their careers than Europeans.

Geoff Tamulonis was one of the people recruited for British Aerospace. For him, working interim is not a fluke, it's a lifestyle. He views himself as being in the business of starting and building things. He has worked all over the world in many short-term positions, with no indication of a suffering career.

Currently he is marketing director for 3Com's Remote Access Division in Cirencester, England, which produces telephony voice and data products for small businesses. Before that, he worked for a year in Moorestown, N.J., as a new business development manager for Securicor 3 Net, where he helped establish its business in the U.S. And before that, he held various consulting positions in both the U.S. and Europe. After his interim position with British Aerospace ended, Tamulonis went to work for Inmarsat, a consortium of worldwide PTTs created to deliver mobile and marine satellite communications services to remote areas. Tamulonis holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering, as well as an MBA.

In most instances, people who work in interim employment can step into a job immediately, getting things done and creating revenue quickly. It helps to be able to create a vision and then put the vision in place to work. Twelve- to 14-hour days are typical for interim workers.

Tamulonis has found that the real reward in working interim comes from the challenge of solving new problems and going away satisfied. He adds that the separation part can sometimes be the hardest.

Other than his nomadic tendencies, Tamulonis has a fairly conventional personal life. His current position puts him on a plane to Portugal most weekends where his wife and two youngest children will continue living until the end of the school year and a new house is completed. He's not clear, though, what nationality his multilingual kids consider themselves to be.

To accommodate her husband's global job hopping, Tamulonis' wife, a Portuguese national, has developed a language training and culture development consulting business that has proved to be fairly transportable. Because the rest of his family doesn't share his enthusiasm for this lifestyle, however, Tamulonis says he is looking at his current position as a long-term chance to create and build something new. Again.-AS