I received one such email today with the headline “Recruitment - 9% Fee.”

I won’t quote the company in question, but rest assured I was not impressed for 3 reasons:

1. Because I have little respect for firms that cold call or email and ask for business without doing any research

Research into what I and my business do and what my potential needs might be. It’s even worse being spammed with a blanket email.  If they were chasing a lead which they had picked up from their market intelligence and attached a sample CV / resume (with names blanked out) that potentially met my needs, then I’d respect the fact that they had done their homework and were market aware. But doing a simple Google search on my name or company would tell them immediately that I was not a likely client for their services.

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Regardless of which industry you operate within, your external environment has changed radically in the last 12 months.

The dark clouds initially sparked off by the credit crunch have now turned into an economic storm and in some parts of the world, a full blown hurricane. Economic slow-down, rising inflation, diminishing consumer and business confidence are having an impact on most of the industrialised world. 

Many businesses are cost-cutting and reducing headcount, but only the forward-thinking ones are still maintaining a strong focus on retaining talent.

In a downturn, retaining the best people is crucial for helping you ride the economic storm, while also ensuring that you have the team to power ahead and take advantage of the opportunities when the economy and market turn around.

But retaining the right people during a down-turn isn’t always easy – here are 7 tips:

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1. Construct a powerful vision - Talented people are drawn to businesses that know where they are going and have a plan for success. Craft an exciting vision for the future and communicate it to potential hires all the way through your recruitment process.

2. Make finding and keeping talent a priority - Make recruitment and retention a priority now and you will save time and money well into the future. Not exactly rocket science? Yet firms still complain about the challenges of recruiting people when they dont make it a priority. In the same way that you should never stop sales activities in a business, you should never stop recruitment activities either.

You may not have open vacancies or you may have a hiring freeze due to cost constraints which means you may not actually hire people. But you drastically reduce the time and cost of recruitment when you do have a requirement by ensuring that recruitment is always be a priority.   

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Whilst this is not always easy due to the pressures of business or an overly bureaucratic recruitment process, you should be challenging these at every turn. In the same way that it is unacceptable for your customers to receive a slow,  unprofessional service - so to is it not acceptable for potential employees to face poor service from you - after all they may well be a customer, or know someone who is.

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We live today in a world with too businesses with too many products competing for the attention of time starved, information overloaded buyers who have more knowledge at their disposal than any other group of buyers in history.

Which is why competing for 1) their attention and 2) their business is a huge challenge in any market. But it’s not just buyers of products - but anyone that is marketed to - including the very people you seek to recruit and retain.

In such a world, it is stories (and not necessarily the product) that sell. Real stories and authentic communication which connect with buyers as people at an emotional level.

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Seth Godin, the Marketing author and commentator has an interesting post on his blog about the selection process he went through to hire summer interns.

He was able to use Face Book as a way of simulating the same approach many firms go through during the screeing and assesment centre process with interns. It was completely free and, from what i can see, involved little work on his part other than just observing the behaviours of the individuals in the online groups before making some quick assesments.

He could quickly see which individuals took on leadership roles, which one were the followers and which ones he describes as the ‘game show’ contestants.

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I’m not much of a follower of American politics and so haven’t really been keeping a close tab on this years election campaign. Also, if I’m honest, I find the lengthy US election process a little confusing and so haven’t followed the election press much at all.

But regardless of this, one of the aspects of the current election which I have been following is the Barock Obama campaign. Not because I’m a supporter or anything – but because it seems to be a very ‘different’ election campaign to the ones i have witnessed in the past – either in the US or in the UK.

Regardless of where you sit politically, his campaign team have created a unique brand around Obama which has no doubt contributed to their success to date.

On this point, I have just read an excellent post on the ERE blog by Cheryl Hardy from Talent Hook titled “5 Things Barrack Obama’s Campaign Proves About Your Recruitment Brand”

She details the 5 lesson’s from Obarma’s campaign which translate directly into your own recruitment and employee brand.

Namely:

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I was recently asked “What would you say is the one real key to finding and keeping people?” After thinking for a moment,

My response was: “Inspirational Leadership.”

Why?

Well a business of any size and shape can develop attractive compensation plans, have impressive talent management strategies and hire the best recruiters and head hunters in town - but without the right leaders in place these initiatives will always be diluted.

Inspirational leaders in any field - business, sport, politics - draw in great people to work with them through their own magnetism. Strategies and policies can attract people - but it’s the quality of the leaders that ensures people are committed the business.

So what are the qualities that make these leaders stand out? And how can this help you recruit and retain the right people?

Here are 7 tips given by people much wiser than myself on the subject of leadership:

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Performance management is the process through which your business sets, measures and reviews the objectives and performance of your people.

As such, it should form a key part of any employee retention strategy.  

Undertaken consistently, effective performance management will help you retain the right people, improve their performance and the overall performance of your business.

Conversely – the failure to performance manage your team can result in losing your best people, keeping the wrong type of people and the consequent stagnation of your business.

But what does this all mean within the context of your business?

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They may go away being unhappy with your decision – but they should always leave feeling they were listened to, dealt with professionally and fairly. That’s the way we can profit from every complaint”

This is a quote from my first manager at the start of my career with the UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S).

When I joined M&S as a graduate management trainee in 1993, my first few weeks involved being indoctrinated with the M&S philosophy on customer service.

One point that was constantly drummed into us was to “profit from every complaint“ and “profit from every lost customer.”

This is very relevant to the way you handle resignations.

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