[consulting] Hiring People

Fri May 18 17:24:12 UTC 2007

Got it. The challenge you describe is one of attracting the right
candidates. 

There is a great book called Relationship Marketing by Regis McKenna
that might be valuable. In the book, he describes a methodology for
learning what people want, looking at the competitive environment, and
developing a differentiable strategy. He also describes a communications
infrastructure between a firm and their target audience (in the case its
strategic talent).

I know that many people think 'marketing' is a bad word - especially in
the FOSS community, but I don't personally consider it bad. For many,
marketing is fooling your target - which is pathetic. Relationship
Marketing is actually learning what your audience wants, and learning
how they make desicions, and learning what other people influence those
decisions. For your strategic recruit, you might want to do the
following:

1) Learn what you can about the type of individuals that you want to
attract. What do they like to do for work? What are their concerns? Do
they like working on big project or small ones? Do they like virtual
teamwork or physical teamwork? How much to they earn? Where do they want
to live? Do they want to be on the cutting edge of technology? What kind
of clients do they like? What are their core values?

2) Think about your competition for them. Where else might they be
working or want to work? From the above needs, what do the competitors
offer? Which of their needs are you in a particular position to be able
to provide that other competitors cannot provide? What things do you
need to provide that you may not be able to provide? What values do you
have that might be important to your candidate? (if you don't have what
they want - then first you need to create an environment so that you can
give them this - otherwise you may end up fooling your target and they
would quickly leave after they figure it out;)

3) Next, think about where your target gets their information. What
professional associations are they involved in? What trade magazines or
blogs might they frequent? What events might they go to? What experts or
leaders in their field might they respect? Basically, you want to
identify the information infrastructure between you and your target.
Identify the individual people in these areas that might be in a
position of importance to your candidate.

4) From all of the above, devise a plan to a) build a better environment
for attracting the talent (if needed), b) develop a differentiable
position - what makes you more attractive then another potention firm
that the target may want to work for, c) develop a communications plan
to reach into the information infrastructure between you and your
target, d) execute.

Hope this helps.

-Henri

On Fri, 2007-05-18 at 12:47 -0400, Michael Haggerty wrote:
> Hey Henry - 
> 
> We do strategic consulting on top of development, which covers the range of
> issues you mention. But this position I am describing is a little different.
> We have clients coming in with plans that sometimes need to be fleshed out a
> little more, and this goes beyond the kind of advice a project manager is
> going to offer.
> 
> A case with a recent client involved deployment of an overall Web strategy.
> They had the functionality in the Web site locked down pretty well, but
> there were no forms of outreach that were part of their plan. We were able
> to get them started on Google ads, mailing lists, tacking on a CRM system,
> and a few other things that made a big difference.
> 
> Offering this kind of advice is a little different than what our project
> managers do. While they are well versed in all these things, they are
> primarily concerned with keeping the production process on track as opposed
> to providing detailed advice on strategy outside the scope of the project.
> While they understand the details of how to make things work, there are
> natural limitations (budget, timeline, availability of resources) in how
> creative they can be with a client. I really just want a dedicated resource
> who can be the goto person for just understanding the goals of the project,
> and providing options on how to achieve them. In some cases this is decision
> support, in some cases this is risk management, and in others it could be
> just sorting through a big list of complicated issues that are not
> necessarily technical. 
> 
> I'm just not having a lot of luck finding someone like this and wonder if
> anyone has had to hire for a similar position or has any advice on finding
> this person.
> 
> Thank you,
> Michael Haggerty
> Managing Partner
> Trellon, LLC
> http://www.trellon.com
> (p) 301-577-6162
> (c) 240-643-6561
> (f) 413-691-9114
> (aim) haggerty321
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Henri Poole [mailto:henripoole at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Henri Poole
> > Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 11:27 AM
> > To: mhaggerty at trellon.com; A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal
> > service/hosting providers
> > Subject: Re: [consulting] Hiring People
> > 
> > Where is the recruiting effort giving you trouble?
> > 
> > We have found that our client need strategic advise in several areas
> > which include (not necessarily in this order of importance:
> > * grassroot organizing
> > * online and offline community building
> > * search engine optimization
> > * technology (scaling, availability, interoperatility, integration)
> > * internationalization
> > 
> > What types of strategic services are you looking to provide?
> > 
> > We also reach out to our clients and look at trends around them to
> > determine what strategic services they may need in the future. Depending
> > on the types of organizations that you are targeting, you may find
> > certain services that are more important to a number of them.
> > 
> > As for the actual recruiting, we tend to provide strategy from within
> > our organization. This may include our engineering team members, as well
> > as project managers - who have a particular knowledge about the areas of
> > interest to our clients.
> > 
> > -Henri
> > 
> > On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 10:17 -0400, Michael Haggerty wrote:
> > > Trellon is growing and I am giving a lot more thought to how our team is
> > > composed. Something I want to do is hire an internet strategist. This
> > would
> > > not necessarily be a programmer, but someone who can really understand
> > the
> > > goals clients are looking to accomplish and advise them on the best ways
> > to
> > > get there. This person would craft strategy documents, review projects
> > under
> > > development to make sure they are really meeting the client's goals, and
> > > keep things organized outside just the production of a Web site.
> > >
> > > The problem is I don't really know how to recruit for this position. I
> > have
> > > spoken to people with a lot of experience in specific areas, but finding
> > > someone who is a generalist and knows enough about a lot of things seems
> > to
> > > be a tall order. It looks like this kind of work especially appeals to
> > > project managers, but it's not really a production role so much as a
> > client
> > > relations role. It's hard to convey the difference.
> > >
> > > Wondering if anyone on this list has any advice...
> > >
> > > Thank you,
> > > Michael Haggerty
> > > Managing Partner
> > > Trellon, LLC
> > > http://www.trellon.com
> > > (p) 301-577-6162
> > > (c) 240-643-6561
> > > (f) 413-691-9114
> > > (aim) haggerty321
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > consulting mailing list
> > > consulting at drupal.org
> > > http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
> 
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