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recruiting Archives - Page 4 of 4 - SourceMatch

Oct 31
0
leaders

Why Should you Recruit Leaders?

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For a company to be successful it needs to have a team that is constantly improving. This is the ultimate goal of every company: to serve the market and create valuable results. But, in order to do so, the company must have a strong team of leaders. They are the ones who inspire other people to take action by showing them the way and taking the first steps towards a clear goal.

Be selective.
This means to be discerning when choosing certain individuals to be part of your team. When you think of adding someone to your team, get know that particular person as much as you can before doing so. The best piece of advice would be to start first with the people you already know. They are the people from your office you interact with on a daily basis. You know their skills and how they work. At the same time pay close attention to their skills and how well they use them.

Good leadership drives the vision
Best-selling author and keynote speaker, Jon Gordon, believes that people follow the leader first and the leader’s vision second. If the leader is not an individual who is followed by the people around him, then his vision won’t be taken into consideration by anyone. Another important aspect is to let your entire team know the vision of the company. If they truly believe in the company’s vision the will passionately work for it. Consequently, the growth of the company will be visible. As a company you need to identify a compelling goal and, in this way, your team will be focused to work well on the assigned tasks. However, having a number of goals will not determine the engagement of your team. Their motivation to work for the company is fueled by their belief in the company’s vision.

Ask, don’t tell
Having a team of leaders means asking them questions and not telling them what to do. If you ask questions they will share their own opinions. In this way, they will be encouraged to think proactively as their responses matter to them. Seeing that you care about their answers they will be more and more involved. Every time you meet with them make sure you ask them about their insights, fresh ideas and other suggestions they might have. Your team won’t be able to develop if you are the only one who does the talking.

Nothing under the rug
An important lesson every organization must learn is to confront the ugly. There will always be situations where employees make mistakes. The leader should understand that he can’t avoid difficult conversations. What he has to do is confront the issues as soon as possible to get things back on track as quickly as possible. It is very important how you talk with each individual and, remember, a good attitude is key. A true leader must pay attention to the attitude towards the people he is interacting with. American captain of manufacturing and magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford used to say: Don’t find fault, find a remedy. When something wrong happens, the leader finds a way to make things work. Telling someone about a problem without giving a solution is redundant.

Be real with appreciation
Last but not least, appreciation means a lot to the employees. Knowing that someone truly appreciates the work you are doing will give you a boost to do even a better job. A leader should know that his responsibility is to motivate the individuals he is interacting with, develop themselves and aim higher. That is why, he must not use cheap compliments that do not mean a thing, but genuine appreciation.

Recruiting is key
At SourceMatch we are recruiting leaders for other companies, not just simple employees. We encourage you to do the same. In a great article in Forbes Magazine, Ken Sundhein expressed his opinion that, although recruiting leaders may be stressful, hard and time-consuming, it pays off in the long run. In his opinion, leaders are the ones who will enable a specific organization to reach its goals.

One thing you must understand is that true leaders get things done. We are not only referring to those people who work in top management roles but in every position. You need people who think and act like a true leader. Imagine what your company would look like if your teams would be formed by leaders.

People in management roles must know that a firm lives and dies by its ability to recruit leaders. If you are a business, one of your goals is to increase the level of productivity and motivate your employees to make quantifiable progress. You can’t do this unless you have a strong team of leaders who are able to act for the benefit of the company and with the good of the employees in mind. However, if you hire incompetent leaders, your clients won’t be satisfied and you won’t get any competitive advantage.

Thrive, don’t just survive
Businesses can only thrive in each business when leaders don’t just replicate other people’s ideas but also create. Each business needs to be innovative so that is why you need to have creative leaders.

These are some important ideas you might want to take into consideration if you want both your company and your team of leaders to succeed.

Contact us to learn more.

 

Oct 30
1

Recruitment Infographic 2018

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Are your recruiting efforts ineffective and inefficient? Have you gone through bad hires, money and time-consuming talent acquisition processes? Adapt your current hiring strategy based on the latest trends.

If you want to hire the right people, make sure their experience with your brand is a positive one.
Statistics show that job seekers consider the reputation of a company when applying to job offers. This means that offering good wages/packages won’t be enough to bring them to the table and especially if you want to attract the best people on the market.

Attract people that are talented and qualified by taking care of the employer branding.

 

 

 

May 08
2

How CATS Improves the SourceMatch Recruiting Experience

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Technology plays a crucial role in advancing efficiency and financial results. According to the 2017 North American Staffing & Recruiting Trends Report, technology adoption is unsurprisingly high: 64% of North American staffing firms use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to track candidate activity and 60% use a customer relationship management (CRM) system for business development. Recruiters want to work smart, not harder. At SourceMatch, it’s this philosophy why we use CATS as our applicant tracking system for all of our recruiting processes.

CATS helps us save time, organize better and structure our recruitment operations in little time. When one of our clients needs 5 new hires in the management department within a short time frame, we trust the automation CATS provides to hire the right people in an efficient manner.

The recruitment workflow in CATS is streamlined and helps us shorten the time it takes from receiving an order to presenting the hiring manager with the best candidates – a huge benefit in the recruiting industry. It’s easy to track and manage candidates through the recruiting process so that team members can see the most up-to-date statuses and quickly move forward with the next interview, the offer, or whatever the next step in the process is.

Thanks to its user-friendly interface, custom dashboards, and numerous integration options, CATS quickly becomes something that just makes sense to us (including our new hires). When we do have a question, we can rely on CATS’ support team for the assistance we need, when we need it.

Many recruiters work on a regular basis with Excel or Google Sheets. Though these do work for simplistic tasks (detailing project status, defining task types, etc.), they lack the intuition of software built for recruiters. CATS is customizable through workflow optimization, job orders dashboard and many more productivity and analytics features. CATS also post your jobs on several job boards (free and some paid) which helps with attracting talent. It is a software built by recruiters, for recruiters, and it shows.

Recruiting has its challenges, but the fact that each experience is different in and of itself helps us improve and become better at what we do. Our experience taught us that regardless of the type of work we are doing, we must always use the right tools in order to succeed. For SourceMatch, CATS is not only the right tool, but it’s also the applicant tracking system we recommend to anyone for their hiring needs.

Apr 27
1

What are some red-Flags that let you know that Something’s Wrong with your Recruiting Process?

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Red flags are the absence of an early warning system. Of course, the obvious problems are consequences/effects of deeper causes and require reactive solving.

A strong recruiting process, like any business process, can only work well if it’s built with all its stakeholders’ interest in mind: Recruiter (recruitment company), the hiring manager (internal clients or external client company) and candidate – in this chronological order.

When any of the stakeholders are not given enough attention during recruitment you may see scenarios such as:

  • The recruiter is under a lot of pressure from the client to deliver, cuts corners in the candidate selection process. The client will receive a candidate whose qualifications are at best short of their need. The candidate will have her or his hopes high, expecting the “opportunity of their career”. The recruiter will live with the impression that he’s done a great job for the time he’s been given to find a candidate.
  • The client makes a recruitment order for a new role with the recruiter and picks a standard job description off the internet. The recruiter might look for a purple squirrel candidate that might not exist, or best-case scenario fits the internet’ job description instead of the real needs of the client. The candidate feels she’s a perfect fit and is surprised during the interview when the client brings up all sorts of questions that are beyond the “internet job description!”
  • Candidate interviews with the recruiter and provides basic answers to the vague questions that the recruiter asks. The recruiter is unbelievably happy that the candidate is a “perfect match”. The client interviews the candidate and is dumbfounded when they ask the candidate to elaborate on their experience.

These are just some examples, but in our experience, at SourceMatch there are a few guidelines for recruiters, which will help everyone in the process win. Here’s the early warning system for recruiters:

  1. Get to know your client, their trade, their culture, values, the hiring manager, the team where the new hire will work in, tangible and intangible factors, must haves and nice to have. Set the expectation early on with the client that you expect them to “help you” understand who they are and who they are trying to hire. The Job Description is at best 50% of all useful information. Once you have all info, ask the client to confirm in writing that there’s nothing left unsaid about their expectations for the new hire (in essence, that you understand well what they need).
  2. Always strive to exceed client’s expectations when it comes to due diligence for the candidate’s qualifications, experience, skills, behavior, performance, etc. Ask meaningful and detailed questions of your candidates. Ask for real-life examples. Let the candidate know that it’s the only way they can present themselves in a unique way.
  3. Be transparent and honest about the job when you speak with the candidate. If it’s a parallel move for them, don’t make it sound like it’s something else. Be open and let them know of the advantages and challenges of the role at the same time. If they are at a different point in their career than what you expected, don’t oversell the position. Same can be said with candidates that miss the mark on the client’s expectations.
  4. If a client has unrealistic / hard-to-meet expectations regarding the speed of recruiting or available candidates in the talent pool, you must speak up! You need to act as a consultant to the client. Because you are the expert of your trade, you will have unique perspectives that have been tested and validated throughout tens or hundreds of recruiting engagements.
  5. When you present a candidate to the client (ideally over the phone or in person), make sure to show clearly why they were selected, and to what degree they meet/exceed the expectations that were agreed in the first place. Don’t just present a resume, but also let the client about your thought process. This is a tremendous opportunity to act as a consultant to your client.
  6. Time and information will break you regardless if you are disciplined or not. That’s why you need to have a system – an applicant tracking system – to follow through your process and to keep you on track, remind you about upcoming calls, meetings, deadlines, tasks, etc.
  7. Always follow up with candidate and clients with regular updates, even if they are negative – i.e. a different candidate has been selected following the in-person interview with the client. When you don’t communicate in the recruitment process, stakeholders will assume the worse.

You may start with these 7-steps early warning system and develop your own version, but thinking proactively about everything that can go wrong will prepare you for most of what can go wrong.

 

Apr 18
4

Is it more Important for a Company to hire Based on Skill set fit or Based on Cultural fit?

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Of course, no one feels comfortable having to choose between the two. And yet, we don’t live in a perfect world and candidates bring different things to the interview table.

To even start thinking this topic through, it’s important we understand what a skill set is and what makes up the cultural fit.

Are skill sets important?

A skill set is a particular category of skills or abilities necessary to perform a job. Skill sets are easy to showcase based on previous jobs, numbers, achievements or in other words quantifiable facts. A good recruiter would have no problem to assess these looking at a resume, through interviews or tests.
So why even have any debates when a candidate can fit the job from a skills point of view?
After all, they will require less hand-holding, less training, and a shorter ramp-up period in the new job. They are people that hold a certain level of expertise that can just be plugged into an organization and bring immediate results.

What about culture fit?

It’s very tempting for recruiters who spend merely seconds to pick and choose what candidates will make it forward in the selections process. Candidates have complex personalities and unique combinations of upbringing and experiences.
When searching for new hires, hiring managers and recruiters want to ensure that the person who’ll join the organization will have preferences, personal and work styles that aren’t far from the hiring organization’s culture. Organizational psychology guru Adrian Furnham offers a definition for the cultural fit in his seminal academic textbook, “The Psychology of Behaviour at Work”: “A fit is where there is congruence between the norms and values of the organization and those of the person.”
Asking candidate’s questions such as the following will help you uncover their, likes, dislikes and expectations:

 -> Why do you want to work here?
 -> How would you describe your ideal workplace?
 -> What makes the work environment frustrating to you?
 -> Do you prefer working in a team or alone/as a sole contributor?
 -> Who was your best boss and what made them so great?

It’s critical however you take these questions and customize them to help you compare with your organization’s culture. Some companies are more loose when it comes to time and make results the sole main requirement, some are very eclectic and laid back wanting to foster creativity and outside-the-box thinking, and some that are very formal such as banks and other financial institutions.
If he/she is a fit, then they will feel good working for the company’s goals. The importance of cultural fit will reflect on the employee’s productivity. They will also be interested in the results they bring.

So what now?

You do need people to bring the right skills to the table to fulfill their jobs, and you also want a great alignment between the person’s and the organization’s values. However, as mentioned we don’t live in a perfect work: What if you had to choose between the skill set and culture alignment?
Culture always comes first.

Culture is the glue that holds an organization together, and the cost of poor culture fit can cost that organization between 50% to 60% of the person’s annual salary. So before you start vetting candidates, it’s critical that you define and articulate the organization’s culture (values, goals, practices, etc.). Only then will the recruiting process highlight the best candidates that fit the culture.
Everything considered culture fit should never be at the expense of different personalities, backgrounds, and a diverse workforce.

However, you do need to prioritize. First, make sure the values, ethics, morals, principles, etc. are there. Otherwise, you may find yourself hiring someone who has outstanding skills with a poor cultural fit. They will challenge your organization’s existence at every step of the way, either silently, or vocally. Sometimes it’s useful to have a new and constructive perspective on things. But if you have a culture that has proven time and time again to be beneficial for the organization’s development, for its employees and not the least its customers, then you should stick to it. Someone new who will not integrate with the team and organization will only cause unnecessary friction.

Lastly, in order to decrease the probability that you need to be in such a tough situation to choose between skill set and culture, hire continuously. Always be on the lookout for people who are shining in their current roles, who are delivering value to their customers and enjoy being part of something greater than themselves and their jobs.

 

Mar 02
0

What do Interviewers Expect when Asking: “Do you have any Questions for us?”

By | Blog, Interview, Job, Questions | No Comments

We’ll start with one statement: The interviewers expects you to be genuine.

We know there are probably hundreds of online and printed articles about the smartest questions you can come up with. It all comes down to you and the opportunity in front of you.

Let’s start with you.

There are a lot of things that are important to you, and only a handful that is crucial. Those are typical aspects that reflect what you expect of your life, career, the people or things that make you happy and fulfilled, and not least your health (this is a short list, you certainly have your own). You are there because in one way or another the job opportunity you’re interviewing for contributes to what’s critical to you. Once you’ve figured that out, think about what kind of questions you could ask that will clarify whether pursuing the job opportunity will contribute to what’s critical to you.

For instance, you may think: “In the long run, I want to be an outstanding business consultant, however, I don’t have any experience right now, so it’s crucial I get a job that helps me grow towards that ideal role.” so your question for the interviewer might be: “How does the company plan for professional development/growth?”

Or you may think: “it’s crucial that I work for organizations that value a healthy culture that encourages creativity, instead of a top-down” so your question to the interviewer might be: “Could I meet some of the people I’d be working with?” If they are open to the idea, it will be a good way to tell what kind of culture you’d be dealing with.

Then continue with them

In the same way, think about what’s important to the company, why have they even posted this job? Is it because they’re growing? Is it because someone left? Is it because someone got promoted? Is it because it’s part of their strategy? Some questions you may ask:

“How does this role help the company?”

“What made the person before me successful in this role?”

“Why has the person in this role decided to leave?”

Or you can direct your question toward the interviewer himself:

“What do you like most about working here?”

“If you were to change anything for the better at this company, what would it be?”

“Why did you decide to work for this company in the first place?”

You also want to get a clearer understanding of how they thought the interview went:

“How do you think I and my qualifications match the company’s and hiring manager’s expectations?”

Do your homework

Employers do spend the time to put Job Descriptions together. But that’s not all that they have on their webpage that can give you an idea of who they are and what they do. Their “about” page will help you know how they think, what they value (value/principles), where they’re going (vision), and how they’re going to get there (mission/objectives). Then review their “products/services” section of their website. Is there any aspect in particular that intrigues you? Is there anything that you think might be related to your job?

Ask a few specific questions that will help you have a complete picture:

“How do you measure the effectiveness of that product or services?”

“I noticed one of your values emphasizes the importance of people. How do I pursue this value?”

“How often can someone get involved in corporate social responsibility initiatives?”

Notice most of the questions are open-ended. This approach ensures you get the most out of your of conversation with the interviewers.

How they respond is an important indicator of that organization’s values. Did they provide honest and meaningful answers? Were they specific or generic/quoting from a “textbook”? Etc.

So be genuine, be yourself!

 

Feb 27
0

What do Recruiters look for in a Resumé at First Glance?

By | Blog, Career, Job, Recruiting | No Comments

To get the best talent for the client, a recruiter will spend the time to evaluate resumes in accordance with the target profile. They will look at the resume components that relate to the candidate’s potential to be successful in the client’s organization. They will try to understand both tangible and intangible facets of a candidate’s background in relation to the client’s requirements for that position. Here are 10 specific areas that recruiters look at:

  1. What kind of organizations, teams, and cultures has the candidate worked in (i.e. corporate vs entrepreneurial, teamwork vs individual/expert consulting focuses work, focused on innovation/continuous improvement, etc.)?
  2. Is there any recent time gap in the resume? Could that kind of gap affect the relevancy of the candidate’s skills for the role they are applying for?
  3. If a candidate has focused on contract work, it may appear like job hopping – clarify whether a job was a contract or not by mentioning it in the resume. It could be that for the current job the client is looking for loyalty to previous employers (i.e. 3+ years average) or for someone who can come in and solve a problem and move on.
  4. Amount and relevancy of quantifiable achievements/facts – i.e. for each job, list top 3 achievements, and top 3 activities you’ve been involved in.
  5. The resume should not be too long (more 3 pages), or too short (less than a page), and with just enough info to strike a good balance between keeping it brief and having enough facts.
  6. If you are a recent graduate, fill in the page with the main school, extracurricular or internship projects that you were involved in – what you did and what were the outcomes.
  7. Resumes must be customized for each role in the sense of emphasizing the skills and expertise relevant to the role that the candidate is applying for.
  8. With today’s tools available online, there’s no reason why a resume would not be verified for grammar and spelling accuracy.
  9. Finally, the resume should be structured in such a way that it’s easy to read, without using difficult or unusual fonts (mainly sans serif fonts are easier to read – such as Arial, Segoe UI or Verdana)
  10. Make sure to insert page numbers if your resume is longer than a page. It makes it easy to follow through multiple pages.

Finally, make sure that the resume shows the real you. After all, a resume is a document that shows not only what you did, but what your potential is for your next employer. Use it wisely!

 

Jan 09
2
recruiters

What’s the Biggest Problem Modern Recruiters face?

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One can say that the greatest challenge for recruiters is staying human in an era of lightning-fast technology.

If until a few years back we could still hope to build relationships with candidates and client organizations, and act as that educated advisor (at best) for both candidates and clients, today things are changing fast. Speed has taken the steering wheel of recruiting over careful consideration of all factors that can make a professional success in the job and organization they are considering and vice versa.

Dehumanizing the whole process leads to superficial hiring and disaster (whether organizations like to admit it or not) just months after the hiring decision has been made. The later can take many forms but here are just a few: the disappointment when new hires understand that everyone involved in the process made a rushed decision, the lack of engagement and creativity pursuant to that reality check, and finally, a decision to start looking for another employer from that point on or in other cases just staying complacent (pick your own worst-case scenario!).

On the one hand, as recruiting specialists, we need to educate our clients about the risks of moving too fast (i.e. just bodies in placeholders), and on the other, consult candidates so that they are equipped to make a sound decision (i.e. right career move).

So, let’s go through some challenges of the recruiting process.

Every Recruiting Journey Starts with the First Step: Effective Sourcing

First of all, let’s look at the recruitment screening process. According to talentnow.com, 52% of talent acquisition leaders say the hardest part of recruitment is screening candidates from a large applicant pool. 

Of course, there are best practices for sourcing. These include working with a high-performance sourcing team that finds and qualifies new candidates. But recruiters need to build a pipeline for assessing the talent pool. They have to have a strategy in place and if that strategy is not properly implemented it is easy to waste time. Imagine if the job requirements are not properly analyzed or the candidate persona isn’t correctly defined. The search may go in a different direction than what is needed. Moreover, if the recruiters don’t know the tricks of the trade, the ATS (applicant tracking system) will be a lost gold mine.

For instance, not many sourcing analysts know they should start every search with the previously interested candidates who applied in the past thus using their existing database before going out in the digital world to start their search.

Following this line of thought, attracting the identified and desired candidates is not just another hurdle recruiters nowadays face. According to various recruitment statistics, attracting top-quality candidates is the biggest challenge of recruiters, period. It is one thing that 82% of Fortune 500 executives don’t believe that their companies recruit highly talented people. When becoming aware that 54% of employers currently have positions for which they can’t find qualified candidates, it’s clear that recruitment is no kids’ play. Still, in the world of high-quality recruitment services, the failure to attract talented candidates is not an option. The solution lies in making the candidate’s journey about them, and then in the recruitment processes that are constantly revised and renewed and therefore adapting and evolving.

Keep the Candidates’ Interest in Mind

Another challenge is keeping the balance between how aggressively you present the opportunity to potential candidate’s and what they want for their career. The key term is “potential”. When we talk to candidates we don’t want to assume they’re (by default) interested. Rather, start your discussion with a candidate by asking if it’s the right time to make a career change. We need to care about his/her plans since that determines if it makes any sense to even talk about a job opening. Fellow recruiters would you like it if somebody reached out to you and started telling you about an opportunity without any considering for YOUR plans? We are working with living and breathing human beings and if we don’t care we don’t have any place in this line of business.

The Interview is also the Candidate’s Interview for Your Company

What comes after candidates engage with recruiters? An interview. Another challenge recruiters face is the hurdle of developing an interview structure that’s interesting enough for candidates who applied for that role. The recruitment process must be a professional and positive experience for your prospective candidate. If you are a recruitment firm, the recruitment process must be highly attractive to your client as well. The point is that regardless of the industry you are navigating through, the job market you are sailing or the candidates pool you are choosing from, your recruitment process must be top-notch and offer a convincing experience for your clients and for your prospective hires. When the recruiters have sourced candidates and then interviewed the interested ones, the recruitment project managers make sure of two important things. First, they build an interview that highlights technical and behavioral skills that are needed to meet the job requirements. Second, they conduct the interview professionally. The first one is to please the client and the second one is to motivate the candidate. Either way, quality is key. Interviews are the perfect opportunity to show candidates what they can expect from your organization down the line.

Build a relationship

The interview leads to the next difficulty, which is maintaining the candidates interested while the hiring manager interviews and chooses the one that best fits the opening. Although you want to recruit a candidate as soon as possible, you don’t want to compromise, and only want to hire the best talent possible, and that usually takes time. This means that when someone is selected for an interview with the hiring manager, he or she must wait for weeks until other candidates are interviewed as well. During this time, the recruitment project manager makes sure to stay in touch with all of the viable candidates to build rapport with them, keep them interested and engaged.

Problem: “Ghosting” is a phenomenon in which job candidates schedule an interview but fail to show up, or they get hired but don’t report to work – without so much as a phone call. It may be hard to rationalize such bad behavior, but human resource professionals say it could be candidates’ way of paying employers back for their indifference during the recession. Jobs were so scarce that companies often received hundreds of applications for a single job, but many failed to acknowledge the time candidates took to apply.

Candidates who are not a fit for the role will still want to hear back from you about where they stand. Don’t ignore them. They need to be handled with care because although they were not selected, they are candidates who could be a great hire for future openings. Recruiters need not be biased by their lack of time and get back to the candidates making sure they are appreciated not only for their qualifications and experiences but also for the time they invested in the recruitment process.

In conclusion, when recruiters face challenges it not only affects them but the entire recruiting process, and thus their clients and candidates. But when challenges are identified they can be transformed into learning and development opportunities. At SourceMatch, recruiters are in a constant process of improving themselves as they strive for the best outcomes. Feel free to check it out here.

 

Nov 09
0
outsourcing can be a good thing

Outsourcing and its Alter ego (hint: Frugal Innovation)

By | Blog, Future of work, Recruiting | No Comments

Perhaps one of the leading misconceptions about outsourcing is that a company that outsources needs to cut the jobs of current employees. For sure, there are instances where we see that happening. But that is a result of a flawed mindset deriving from an early stage of outsourcing history where increasing the margins (for the sake of profit) was the only purpose. It works, but it’s short-sighted.

Outsourcing done right has a lot to do with frugal innovation. Navi Radjou coined the term and defined it as a mindset exhibited by individuals and organizations that strive to do more and better, with less. Most managers will translate this: “Ah, I need to cut costs while keeping the same revenues level.” Contrary to this understanding, frugal innovation rather translates to “How can I maintain my current level of expenditure while increasing the efficiency of output and revenues?” In other words, how can I increase value to my customers, while at the same time not spending more towards that purpose?

Outsourcing is undergoing a shift in mindset

This switches the angle from which managers look at outsourcing: it becomes a strategic decision (i.e. from cost-cutting to cost saving). The outsourcing partner comes in to complement an existing organization, and act as an extension of its teams in order to tackle larger projects or peaks in demand. Besides bringing in raw capacity, the outsourcing partner will contribute (if selected well) with a strong focus on end results, since their business with that organization depends on it.

stark-lightbulb

But let’s take a step back and think through the model of frugal innovation. Without any doubt, it’s quite easy to find a solution by spending a lot of capital (especially if it’s available and this seems like a good cause, right?!). However easy that may be, it actually drives down innovation and creativity (since most likely an existing solution will be chosen, one that can be bought off the shelf). While taking the decision to outsource is a step forward, it’s hardly the only one you need to take. The other critical step in reaching higher levels of value is the innovation process through which old practices and processes are entirely re-thought or upgraded. That puts the outsourcing partner (and whether they like it or not, the organization as well) in a tight spot that doesn’t allow for any status quo such as using piles of cash as a safety net. As Renault-Nissan Group CEO Carlos Ghosn once said “In the West, when we face huge problems and we lack resources, we tend to give up (too) easily. Frugal Innovation is about never giving up!”

The lesson from emerging markets

Although frugal innovation has been associated more than often with emerging markets (and for good reasons), more and more organizations in developed economies are considering this mindset because of the rising consciousness that resources are limited (i.e. see the Skills Gap for human resources or fossil fuels). The last economic crisis that swept many western markets off their feet has contributed towards that same consciousness.

stark-grinder

Outsourcing based on that mindset is probably one of the soundest decisions that an organization can make (where applicable, see the organization’s core or niche specialty capabilities that represent its trade secret), especially because of its sometimes harsh but healthy side effect: it enables that same organization to innovate faster, better, and cheaper (without giving up on any of the three). All of which are quintessential to success in the New Economy where capital takes the back seat, while talent drives.

Here’s a challenge that takes you out of the comfort zone, out of a profit-only or damage control mindset. What will you do?