Shifting fortunes remake the ‘help wanted’ quest

In Fairfield County, where companies compete to attract the most qualified job candidates in a small, densely populated area, finding the right recruit is a challenge.

Operations Inc., a Norwalk-based human resources consulting firm that offers recruitment advice and hiring guidelines for small to midsize companies, navigates various job markets until the ideal candidate surfaces.

Among other concerns, a candidate increasingly wants to be near a train station.

Twenty-five years ago, his company wasn”™t needed, said David Lewis, who founded Operations Inc. in 2001. Most businesses could simply place a job posting in the classified section of a local newspaper and expect readers to all look in the same place.

“Nowadays we have to imagine a market with 100 newspapers all with classified sections,” Lewis said. “There are so many options and alternatives as to how you go about finding candidates that it”™s becoming daunting for the average recruiter, human resources department or hiring manager to pick the right places to do open casting and call recruiting, which is posting a job somewhere and seeing who shows up for the audition.”

Operations Inc. serves a niche of companies that choose to outsource their HR services, Lewis said. He added that the only way to keep up with the evolving HR market is to become an expert when it comes to hiring potential employees who will not just fit the bill, but who will adapt to the work culture and gel with the people at the company.

“There”™s an ongoing process of keeping up with what the market has to bear,” Lewis said. “Once you”™ve done that, it”™s getting down to understanding what the company is trying to find in terms of a new hire and historically what they”™ve done in the past to employ people. It”™s become a more granular scientific approach.”

Lewis said his employees are trained to ask questions of their clients to find out what defines the ideal job candidate and what qualities current and past employees have attributed to pros and cons of their recruitment.

“Our job is not just to do what anybody could do,” Lewis said. “Anybody could put a job posting up, read through resumes and pick out who could be a good fit. What distinguishes us is it”™s much more thoughtful, scientific and delivered approached designed to improve the challenges of finding the right people to fill open positions.”

Operations Inc., which provides assistance in compliance, liability management and HR administration, including training and development and recruitment, employs 50 people. Once the HR team draws a pool of candidates for their clients, the next hurdle is creating an interview process that helps sift interviewees.

“Typically, personality profiling, skills-based testing and looking at the job candidate”™s interviewing process, which can involve multiple interviewers, are strategic exercises,” Lewis said. “But not a lot of companies understand how to divide and conquer. If we have list of 15 to 20 questions we”™d like answered from a candidate, we won”™t have time for thoughtful responses. Instead of asking four people to interview the person, give each person in the interview process three or four questions to ask as part of their to-do list. That way, you use the time you have across the board of four people more productively.”

Lewis added that personality profiling, which often requires candidates to take a 15-minute survey on the computer, helps recruiters understand a candidate”™s working style, what type of manager they need to thrive and how they may fit in. But the test is more useful when managers optimize the results by using them to guide that employee during his or her term of employment and nurtures him or her on the job.

Consultants at Operations Inc. also recommend math tests or organization skills tests that save time in the interview.

“You”™re playing a game of ”˜trust me”™ in an interview if you ask, ”˜Are you good with numbers?”™ and they say, ”˜Yes,”™” Lewis said. “But if you give someone a test and you say, ”˜Take this,”™ you can validate that information for yourself, and you don”™t have to take time out of the interview to ask those questions when they can take a test from home.

“I”™d much rather find out my new accounting person is not good with numbers before rather than after I hire them,” he said.

Recruitment is often flawed by interviewers asking the wrong questions or they may not misinterpreting responses, Lewis said. “If you go very deep, you realize most managers are poor interviewers, and they need better training and a better understanding of how to conduct interviews and interpret the results.”

In Fairfield County, talented candidates are more attracted to businesses along the New Haven line train station than farther away from transportation hubs, he said.

“If you”™re not a business located up against train station, then you, like your counterparts, will struggle with finding talent in this market because of the combination of the cost of living and the ongoing traffic woes as it relates to Merritt Parkway and I-95,” Lewis said.

Often, the market is “artificially held down” by the fact that some businesses are far from the train station and the commute is long and arduous, Lewis said.