The Bagg Group Blog

In our business, an interview is a science and an art.  With a long track record of successful placements, we have learned a thing or two about how to conduct this very unique assessment tool. That’s why many hiring authorities across the GTA consult our staffing solution experts on how to interview effectively. 

Everyone knows that interviews are nerve-wracking for candidates, but the fact is that they can also be challenging for those doing the interviews.

Those with a responsibility to fill full-time positions, contract opportunities and temporary positions have a lot at stake. At The Bagg Group, we only send excellent candidates to be interviewed, so for our clients the challenge is to choose from our well vetted short list.

Those who aren’t supported by expert recruiters have it much harder.  A wrong hire typically reflects poorly on the person who did the recruiting. 

Whatever the situation, here are a few proven tips from interview experts at The Bagg Group:

Start with an ice-breaker.  Open the meeting with a little friendly chit-chat, a stroll to the kitchen to get a coffee, or quick tour of the facilities.  In making the candidate feel more comfortable, you are setting the stage for a candid chat.

Take jot notes:  It is common practice to sit face-to-face and just talk, without any props. But it’s advisable to jot down questions, as the candidate speaks, on areas you want to probe.  If you don’t, there’s a good chance these may slip from your mind altogether. Also, notes help you remember key details, and pluses and minuses to discuss with your recruiter or colleagues after the interview.

Let your feelings be your guide:  An interview is an assessment, not only of qualifications but also of corporate fit.  Picture this person talking to a client, or in a weekly department meeting. Cut the candidate some slack for being nervous, but a person fails to sit up in the chair and make eye contact, you are right to be concerned. 

Stick to your agenda:  It is so easy for an interview to slide into an informal, friendly chat between two people getting to know each other and their work situation.  But it’s a good idea to avoid getting too casual.  

Remember, anything you say is fair game to be repeated to outsiders, or if this person is hired, to colleagues. The interview isn’t a case of what is said in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.  Also, you will want to be positive about your organization, or you risk turning off a top candidate.

Consult your recruiter for input with questions: All questions should be “why, how and what” questions. At The Bagg Group, we partner with our clients to help them devise insightful questions that will elicit useful information.

The key is always to ask questions that determine how they would handle specific work situations and how their approach and values align with those of the organization.  Asking the candidates to walk you through actual relevant examples helps you determine their problem-solving process. 

Give your recruiter feedback: Check out our May 12 blog (In Giving Feedback- You’re Doing Yourself and the Candidate A Favour) for tips on debriefing following an interview. You’ll see why feedback can make all the difference to the search process.

As many of you know, The Bagg Group has been conducting a survey of 200 private and public sector organizations in the GTA.

Latest findings show  better times ahead.  There are more employers in the GTA  that plan to add staff, rather than reduce their numbers, in 2010.  

In particular, 22% of organizations with less than 100 employees said they anticipate adding staff, while 20% of those who have between 100 and 500 employees and 15 % of organizations over 500 staff reported plans to hire.

For the 15% that said there may be a reduction, the majority were employers of 100  to 500 people. 

And when it comes to hiring staff, we learned that even in this age of do-it-yourself everything, the majority of organizations recognize the value of leaving recruitment  to the staffing solution experts.

While 28% of respondents said they may attempt the task on their own by using job boards, the others gave three reasons  for turning to a staffing agency:  They said the don’t have the time, their staff are too busy, and they don’t have the necessary expertise to do the best possible recruitment.

Unanimously, they noted that a staffing search is more time-consuming than ever before as more people are looking.  The Globe and Mail reported this summer that 54% of Americans are hoping to leave their current position for better jobs.  And in the GTA, we are seeing similar wave of restlessness among the employed.  

As I noted in a blog this spring  (In a recession, employers abide by two golden rules), quantity just means more resources are necessary to sort through the mountain of resumes to find appropriate fits. 

Typically, only three out of 100 responses are potentially suitable for your job opportunity. At The Bagg Group, we meet face-to-face with every prospective candidate. And on average, we recommend less than 30% of all those we interview to our clients.

Hiring authorities in companies across the GTA seeking to fill full-time positions or contract positions know that it will take an enormous amount of their time just to get an initial list together.  And nowadays, in most organizations, people are stretched thin as it is.

With that in mind, companies are more keen than ever to retain A-level talent. And the way to make that happen in this economy is to allow your best employees to focus on their areas of expertise. 

At the Bagg Group, our staffing solution experts hear every day from A-level people who want to find another job because they are de-motivated by having to spend much of their day handling  junior-level tasks that do not require their skill set.  

Our survey showed  the two most popular solutions of top employers in the GTA is to determine priorities for each task, and to hire temporary and contract workers to help balance the workload for those who are doing the job of two.

In these busy times when there just aren’t enough hours in a day, when you help your staff succeed, you help yourself.

The recruitment practices of The Bagg Group, top employers in the GTA and ivy league universities in North America are all motivated by the same belief:  You can’t ever afford to sit back on your laurels. 

No matter how great your reputation is as an organization, to get the best people on your team, you have to go out and find them.  

As President of The Bagg Group, I can vouch for the effectiveness of this approach.  And to new hiring authorities who are disbelieving, I offer the case of Harvard University.

For the class of 2010, Harvard received a near-record of 23,000 applications.  If you posted a position on a job board in the last year, you probably had about the same number of resumes flooding your inbox, proportionally speaking.

Yet despite the fact that Harvard is one of the most desired universities with top-ranking students around the world, it’s renowned for its hard-working recruitment department.  It has a 35-person admission team that claims to travel to more places, in more countries, than any other ivy-league university. 

What’s more, Harvard also has an army of 8,000 alumni who actively seek out the high-school students who show the greatest leadership potential in their hometowns.

The result is that each of Harvard’s 2,100 first year students– 9% of the total number of applicants– are stellar candidates for success.

A top-notch staffing and recruiting agency needs to work in a similar way. I believe staffing solution experts must be extremely knowledgeable about the hard and soft skills that are most valuable for businesses in today’s climate.  They have to have tremendous understanding of what it is they are looking for. And the best recruiters are well connected, with networks everywhere.

Harvard, like our clients – who are leading employers in the GTA and Ontario - recognize that it is people that ultimately make the difference between success and stagnation.  And that’s why recruitment is a proactive science. 

In my next blog, I’ll be giving you the results of a survey that we conducted with private and public organizations across the GTA.  I know you’ll find it interesting.

Geoff Bagg

For many of us, September feels like the start of a new year, more so than January.  And at The Bagg Group, it’s a time of year when we receive a lot of calls from restless employees. 

Many who have been feeling frustrated at work put problems on hold until after their vacations.  They return with a hope that things will be better. When they don’t experience change, they decide it’s time to look for new employment.

As President of The Bagg Group, I and our staffing solution experts make a point of alerting hiring authorities that a return to everyday routine, after a summer sojourn, is tough on all employees. 

I recently came across an article about the post-holiday blues in Spain in which psychologists estimated 35% of Spanish workers will have the syndrome this year. I estimate that percentage holds for Toronto as well.  

The experts on the subject noted the symptoms include lack of concentration, irritability, anxiety and sadness.  That adds up to the dreaded ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude which hurts productivity. 

What’s more, as all recruiters at staffing agencies know from speaking with candidates, returning from holidays to hundreds of emails and a mile-long to-do list increases employee stress at a time when they are already feeling despondent.

Fortunately, there are solutions.  Many of our clients, top employers in the GTA, make a point of holding ‘back-to-school’ meetings. 

At these get-togethers, which are either held one-on-one or with the department, emphasis is on upcoming innovations and projects that give employees something stimulating to think about, and to look forward to.

After all, everyone needs something to get excited about, and next year’s two-week stay at the cottage is not good enough-for employees or their managers.

Another effective strategy used by GTA employers is to help employees with workload balance.  Sitting down and reviewing deadlines and priorities is a first step. 

Where there is no relief in sight, many Toronto employers at this time of year hire temporary workers and contract workers to help staff get a handle on their work and feel more in control. 

Finally, schedule some September fun.  Anything from a holiday picture contest, to a eat-like-it’s-summer hot-dog and hamburger lunch reminds employees that while the workplace may not be a day at the beach, it still a place where you can socialize and have rewarding experiences.

– Geoff Bagg

In previous blogs, our staffing solution experts have talked about how management needs to keep lines of communications with employees open in tough times. 

At The Bagg Group, we can’t emphasize enough how important this is. Our recruitment experts hear daily from A-level talent who are frustrated because their employers are not sharing information and keeping them in the loop. 

An interesting study from the US Centre for Work-Life Policy echoes our experiences.  This three-month long research project entitled, “Sustaining High Performance in Difficult Times” quantifies the value of talking.   

The study showed that loyalty to employers among a group of high-potential employees dropped from 95% in 2007 to 53% in 2008. Trust in their company plummeted from 79% in 2007 to 37% 2008.  And engagement, as evidenced by initiative and willingness to go the extra mile, decreased from 91% 2007 to 71% 2008.  The authors of the study have gone on record to say that over the course of 2009, things have only gotten worse.  

More details on the study can be found in the Business Week special report on The Real Effects of Workplace Anxiety. 

The study offers the same easy-to-implement tips The Bagg Group gives its clients. Hiring authorities with top employers in the GTA use these techniques to promote best workplace and staffing practices:

Managers who don’t have information to impart should share that fact with staff and reassure employees that they will pass on news whenever they receive it. Employees appreciate the good intention and the honesty.

It’s especially important for managers to have an open-door policy in uncertain times. And to circulate in the office. The research shows visibility and accessibility make a difference to morale.

At The Bagg Group, we have always believed in giving back to the community. And we know employees feel pride when their companies put important causes front and centre. It’s no surprise that the study found that integrating volunteer projects into office life is a great way to strengthen bonding and perspective.

Finally, managers should work with employees on ensuring they have a balanced workload.  Prioritizing tasks, training employees to take on new challenging responsibilities, hiring temporary workers to relieve staff of time-consuming tasks or employing contract workers to kick-start projects are found to strengthen loyalty and engagement.

A recent survey showed that in these times of economic turmoil, 49% of Canadian chief financial officers have increased the frequency and quality of communications to boost morale in the workplace.  That’s a smart move on their part. 

As staffing solution experts who speak to hundreds of A level talent weekly, we have the inside track on what it takes to retain great employees.  And two-way communications is key.

Nowadays at The Bagg Group, we get calls from people everyday who tell us they are disgruntled because their employers don’t keep them in the loop about what’s going at their company. And many look for other job opportunities because they are frustrated that their employers never solicit their ideas or feedback on how to survive the downturn.

People want to be involved in discussions. To that end, we often consult with top employers in the GTA on how to hold brainstormings that allow people to feel heard and share their expertise. These round-the-table idea sessions go a long way to boosting morale.

Our top clients have all used these following tips with great success:

• Involve employees from all departments in a brainstorming.  This energizes staff, increases cross-department cooperation, and generates surprising creative solutions.
• Allow every idea, no matter how seemingly far-fetched. This sparks the imagination and gets people to break away from routine thinking.
• Never say ‘No’, instead ask ‘How?’   A brainstorming session won’t be effective if people are holding back because they fear their ideas will be judged or brushed off. 

Hiring authorities have reported to The Bagg Group that often people come up with brilliant project ideas to stimulate sales and employees. But they don’t know how  to find the time to carry them out.  That’s when these top employers introduce contract workers to either free up staff time or help get the project underway.

Encourage participants to share problem-solving tactics they have used successfully in situations outside the workplace.  For example, if departments or members of the same tea aren’t seeing eye-to-eye, ask staff who engage in group sports or play in bands how they increase collaboration in the field or on stage. In this way, participants start to discuss solutins from a different perspective.

Let people talk about the bothersome tasks and activities that de-energize them with a view to finding a way to tackle these in a way that works for everyone.  One of our client’s recently reported that a brainstorming session revealed that, post-cutbacks, staff were demoralized by having to do jobs they weren’t hired to do, such as rotate on reception. Together, the team resolved it would be more productive for everyone to engage a temporary worker to work the reception desk.

Not every brainstorming necessarily results in strokes of genius, but the very act of exchanging thoughts in a non-judgmental forum gives everyone a shot of energy. And even small solutions can have big impact.  At one client’s office, the hiring authority reported that everyone willingly agreed to allow people to bring in their dog, on a rotating basis. The dogs proved the perfect ice-breaker to increase collaboration between rival departments.

As discussed in the previous blog, productivity melts in the summer heat.  So it’s a good time to start implementing time-savers so that your staff don’t lose any more minutes from their day than necessary.

Minutes matter, according to a study on work interruptions by Dr. Gloria Mark, associate professor at the University of California.  In her study, Dr. Mark shadowed 36 managers, financial analysts, software developers, engineers, and project leaders for three entire days.  The researchers timed, to the second, how much uninterrupted time people had while on the phone, working on a document, typing an email or interacting with a colleague.

According to the findings, the average amount of time that people spent on any single activity before being interrupted or switching to something else was only 3.05 minutes.

Juggling so much at once may sound like multi-tasking.  But Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking, argues that the brain is incapable of focusing on multiple tasks at the same time.  He says studies show that rather than working simultaneously on several activities, we actually switch rapidly back and forth between tasks.  And every time we do, our focus and productivity slips.

With decades of working with GTA employers on staffing solutions to our credit, The Bagg Group has compiled this quick tip list for buoying productivity, minute by minute.

Think about disabling the Reply All button.  Neilsen reported great success with this technique as a way to cut down on overloading staff with unnecessary email.    

Start off every written communication with your most important info.  Known as the inverted pyramid, this style of writing helps people get clear on what they need to know, very quickly. Whether writing emails or enrollment packages, lead with the most pertinent points.  Once you get your key info out of the way, you may find you don’t need to add much more.  That saves writing and reading time.

Break tasks into small steps.  It’s helpful to the time-stressed when you specify the individual steps you that are required.  It’s equally useful to help an employee prioritize to fit these tasks into an already busy day.

Think twice about meetings.  If a meeting is strictly to impart standard information, consider sending a to-the-point email instead, and inviting questions by email in return.

Assign tasks per skill. Maximize output by ensuring employees aren’t wasting their energy on tasks that don’t require their skill level.  Reassign or consider temporary or contract workers to keep focus where you need it.

This summer, make the most of every moment.

With the warm weather comes daydreams of vacations and dips in employee productivity. Recently, a survey of a British staffing agency showed 68% of employees admit to spending a significant part of their workday thinking about their impending holidays and 25% of respondents acknowledged a drop in their productivity.

That’s not unusual. When fine weather finally hits, even the most disciplined of us find it difficult to block thoughts of canoes and cottages. 

At The Bagg Group, we advocate vacations.  They are all the more important in a recession when employees need a break from a heavy workload and office stresses.

Across Canada, most companies offer an average of 17 annual vacation days.  That’s down two days from 2007, but still three more than Americans, according to a  2008 Expedia survey of employed workers in North America and Europe

In Europe, the practice has always been to provide significant time off. In 2008, employees in Great Britain typically got 26 days off,  a two-day increase over 2007, and Germany, Spain and France saw increases of one day, with workers receiving 27 days, 31 days and 37 days respectively.

Recruitment agencies in  the GTA concur that there are three reasons to encourage employees to take their vacations:

Vacation help reduce burnout:  Rest and relaxation is the best way to re-charge the batteries.

Vacations promote creative thinking:  Often, in stepping away from a situation, you can see it more clearly and so come up with better solutions.  

Vacations improve work/life balance:  A holiday is a time for employees to reconnect with families and personal interests and increased quality of life can lead to increased quality of work on the job.

Still, daydreaming and vacationing employees can add up to a seasonal headache for managers and hiring authorities who must ensure smooth operations, regardless of the temperature outside.  As staffing solution experts, here are some tips that we have shared  successfully with top employers in the GTA.

Create work schedules for the summer frame of mind:  Allow flexible work hours that let workers start and finish the day earlier.  In this way, workers complete eight-hour days at the office and still have time to enjoy the sunshine

Post a visual chart showing who is absent when:  This is useful for colleagues, and helps managers ensure key employees are not on holiday at the same time.

Have employees compile a list of clients, suppliers, and anyone else who may need to be contacted in case of an emergency:  This list is useful year-round, and the summer holiday is a great incentive for the employee to put it together.

Cross train employees to take over duties of others:  Have employees prepare a list of their major duties and step-by-step instructions on how to fulfill these. But put on hold those tasks that can wait a week.  It’s not helpful to to overburden  colleagues left behind.

Consider hiring temporary staff or contract workers:  This ensures continued smooth operation, and allows the other employees to focus on their work.  Also, it helps the vacationing employee who can suffer a bad case of post-holiday blues if returning to work that has piled up.

Look for opportunities to celebrate summer:  After our long winter, we do need to make the most of summer.  Consider holding one-on-one meetings at a patio or allowing Bermuda short and sandal days.

Often hiring authorities ask our advice about counter-offers.  At The Bagg Group, we’re not in favour of them and our position is founded on research and experience.

According to the US National Business Employment weekly, 80% of those who accept counter-offers leave or are terminated within six to 12 months. 

 That statistic holds true for the GTA where recruiters have observed that four out of five people who accept inducements to stay nonetheless leave within a year.  Half of those who take the buy-back start a new job search within 90 days.  

The trend now among top employers in the GTA is to avoid counter-offers. These companies say that they treat employees fairly and recognize that there may be those who wish to pursue a job opportunity that better suits their needs.   There are no hurt feelings, recriminations, and certainly no negotiations.

For an employee, to quit or not to quit is almost always a gut-wrenching decision.  We counsel candidates to imagine that they are unemployed and then consider which of the two options -as they are — hold the greatest potential for them, and allows for more engaging, interesting days.   We urge them to go for the job that is right for them.

We understand all the reasons why hiring authorities may be tempted to dangle carrots to retain valued full-time employees.   Managers may be concerned that the employee’s leaving could reflect poorly on them, the timing could be bad, or it may appear easier to keep an employee than replace one.

But the pay-off for the company just isn’t there.   Inevitably, the issues that prompted an employee to look elsewhere will resurface in time.  And when an employee leaves after receiving concessions to stay, there’s a sting of rejection that is not good for managers or their team. 

As well, as soon as an employee states his or her intention to leave, trust is compromised.  At the Bagg Group, we have seen the negative ripple effect when what appears as a show of disloyalty is rewarded with inducements.

If the timing of an employee’s departure is unfortunate, ask yourself whether the timing will ever be right?  

And here’s the number one solution practiced by top employers in the GTA who need a particular project completed:  Contract workers. 

At The Bagg Group, we often parachute in highly-skilled, knowledgeable contract workers to temporarily fill a vacated position, and get the  job done under pressure and on deadline.   

There is always a staffing solution that is preferable to the counteroffer.   The bottom line: counter-offers never help an employee’s career and they never help an employer.  

 The counter-offer is simply a bad offer.  They are a form of arm-twisting on both sides.  And that’s no basis for a long-term productive employer-employee relationship.

At The Bagg Group, we meet many highly skilled new Canadians who have enthusiasm to burn and yet who tell us they have a hard time getting any employers to talk to them. A study that came out of UBC last fall confirmed that those with foreign names were less likely to be interviewed for job opportunities. In fact, the research conducted by economics professor Philip Oreopoulos said that people with English names were 40% more likely to get an interview than those with the same education and experience who have Indian, Chinese or Pakistani names.  

The study also showed that Canadian experience matters to hiring authorities. Resumes that showed foreign names and education but had one previous job in Canada listed got almost double the number of calls than those resumes that showed no Canadian experience at all.

To quantify the realities of foreign skilled workers, a team at UBC sent out more than 6,000 mock resumes to 2,000 online postings by employers in the GTA.

Time is right to make a difference.

Interestingly, the time has never been better to give skilled immigrants a chance to get some domestic experience that can make all the difference to their lives.

It’s well-known that economic adversity sparks creativity. And now the recession is also proving to be an opportunity to increase diversity in the workplace.

In these days of downsized staff, many top employers in the GTA are turning to temporary workers and contract workers to help balance the workload of overburdened employees. And these temporary workers and contract workers include highly skilled new Canadians seeking experience in Canadian offices.

They are a proven resource. For example, IT professional contract workers, who often have diverse backgrounds, have been important contributors to companies for years.

And recently, human resource professionals across the GTA have reported these two finding to The Bagg Group:

• Post cutbacks, full-time employees are often stretched thin, doing the job of two and losing a chunk of their day to tasks that don’t require their skill level. Offloading activities to temporary workers significantly improves productivity and morale in the workplace.
• Contract workers are the solution to completing projects that full-time staff no longer have time to tackle. As one successful client told us, moving projects off the backburner in a recession can give a company a competitive edge when they need it the most.

At The Bagg Group, we live the values of a fair society. We focus only on ensuring all the candidates on our roster have strong up-to-date skills and the right attitude. These are the requisite attributes to get the job done, and to do it well. That’s all that matters to us and we know that’s what matters to our clients.

And wherever workplaces can demonstrate that the skills of high-performers can be transferred not just from department to department, but from country to country, so much the better for all who celebrate Canada’s values of diversity.

If you are not working with temporary workers or contract workers, consider talking to staffing solution experts on how they could make a real difference to your company’s productivity, to the morale of your employees, and perhaps to some new Canadians.