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InPursuit Executive Search Receives 2015 Best of St. Paul Award

St. Paul Award Program Honors the Achievement

ST. PAUL August 12, 2015 -- InPursuit Executive Search has been selected for the 2015 Best of St. Paul Award in the Employment Agency category by the St. Paul Award Program.

Each year, the St. Paul Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the St. Paul area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2015 St. Paul Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the St. Paul Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About St. Paul Award Program

The St. Paul Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the St. Paul area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The St. Paul Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community's contributions to the U.S. economy.

SOURCE: St. Paul Award Program

CONTACT:
St. Paul Award Program
Email: PublicRelations@awardcontact.org
URL: http://www.awardcontact.org

As an entrepreneur and business owner, one major learning and piece of wisdom I have acquired is to seek clients that work hard every day to follow a core set of values. These values become the inner compass to drive all behavior within an organization. Whether we are discussing developing a team, making an addition to a team or removing someone from a team, values drive how we should and will interact. The day to day work is defining our best possible response around words like respectful, honesty, trustworthy, integrity and excellence. At InPursuit, we push ourselves and seek clients that have similar goals of operation day to day and week to week. If you are an organization that has instilled this type of mindset we want to work with you.

David Zimmel, President of InPursuit

InPursuit Search was recently approached by a very successful PODCAST company wanting to develop a PODCAST in Talent Acquisition. The PODCAST format would focus on Jobseekers (active and passive), Hiring Managers and Human Resources professionals. I would be interested in your thoughts. Please comment about your ideas on a professional PODCAST and the topics of interest.

I recently attended the 2014 Greater MSP Annual Meeting where I was completely impressed by the work that has been done to increase the awareness of Greater MSP business community to the Global marketplace. The definition of our international connections, our world-renowned innovation and our rich talent pool puts us on the global stage to compete with any marketplace.

Many business leaders and innovators have spent numerous hours researching our marketplace and have determined that we lead and will continue to lead in several markets. The niche that has been strategically carved out for us by these leaders include:

1. Health and Life Sciences.

2. Food and Water Solutions.

3. Technology and Advanced Manufacturing.

4. Financial Services and Insurance.

As the presentation continued to lay out a very detailed plan the story unfolded right before my eyes. WE ARE VERY GOOD AT WHAT WE DO HERE AND WE ARE AND CAN BE A GLOBAL BUSINESS LEADER!!!

Let me share with you the convincing agreement by the several points below:

1. 14 Forbes 2000 companies.

2. 7 Forbes largest privately-held companies.

3. 18 Fortune 500 companies call Greater MSP home.

4. 8 - Inc. 500 fastest growing companies.

5. The Greater MSP region is #1 in professional talent retention among the 25 largest US metro areas.

6. The Greater MSP region ranks 7th among the largest 25 US metros for concentration of professional talent, and 3rd for concentration of professionals with children.

7. Greater MSP has the 10th highest number of local college graduates among the largest 25 US metros, with over 67,000 graduates in 2013-2013.

I encourage all of you to check out the accomplishments of this organization and GET INVOLVED in promoting our great area!!! https://www.greatermsp.org/

Dave Zimmel, President

Interviews and client meetings are happening on the patio.

We are at 1599 Selby Avenue, Suite 208, St. Paul, MN  55104.  When visiting, please select our company name on company listing and we will buzz you into our lobby.  Thank you for visiting InPursuit Search.

Define position tangible and intangible requirements.

Making sure you have team agreement on your target candidate will save you valuable work time. Gather the interview team together to simulate “what if” scenarios of different backgrounds. You may include past companies, previous titles, levels of responsibilities, years of experience, education, etc. We have found that this practice gets people to think about their potential candidates before the resumes start coming and the interviews are scheduled. Document your tangible and intangible requirements that can be used later to communicate the job to potential candidates.

2. Reduce the interviewing team to only decision makers.

Often times it is acceptable to have everyone interview each candidate. This clearly delays the search process and increases the loss of candidates. Identify key decision makers and allow them to make the selection. As a Manager it is their decision on who to hire and not hire.

3. Identify a week to interview and block off the whole interview team’s schedule in advance.

As a team, determine what week will work for the whole team to interview candidates. Performing interviews that week will be the interviewers top work priority. Get approval from everyone that there is limited scheduling conflicts.

4. Schedule candidate evaluation meetings within team within 24 hours after the interview.

Everything is fresh in the minds of the interviewers to make decisions on each candidate. It is important to have quantifiable measurements for the positions tangible and intangible qualifications. Use a grid to determine candidate scoring. Discuss qualifications and make final candidate selections.

5. Pre-qualify the candidate's salary expectation and have that compensation pre-approved by management.

This is called getting “your ducks in a row”. The search process doesn’t have to be linear. Do things in parallel to move the process along. Get this critical information early and ask the candidate their salary expectations several time during the process to verify the information. When you are ready to make an offer, you will limit the opportunity for fall out.

6. Capture all background check information during final candidate interviews.

This is another activity that delays your process for a few days. Gather this information in advance. Know where you are in the search and process background checks once a final candidates has been selected.

Results

• Limit candidate fall out of the search.

• Avoid the probability of counter offers.

• Decrease waste of company and candidate time.

• Decrease the chance of a search restart.

Implementing these ideas will significantly reduce your time to fill. Please contact Dave Zimmel for more ways in improving your search process. Sign up for additional ideas about your search process at: www.inpursuitsearch.com.

David Zimmel, President of InPursuit Search

dzimmel@inpursuitsearch.com

My company, Metal Mafia, has an excellent candidate screening process, a super training program, and a very successful team of employees to show for it.

But hiring has always been a difficult task for me because each time I get ready to hire, it takes me forever to find the right type of candidates to even get the screening process started.

Despite the fact that I carefully consider where to advertise for candidates--I try to maximize the search dollars and get a good mix of potential applicants--it always takes me a long time to find people suited well to the company, and therefore, even worth interviewing.

I've tried everything from placing ads on large job boards like Monster.com, to smaller specialized job boards that cater to sales hires or fashion jobs, to local university boards where I can post for free (or close to it). Each time, I experience the same slow crawl toward finally finding the right person. It has taken me up to five months to find the right kind of hire in the past. So in November when I decided I needed to think about hiring for the new year, I was not optimistic.

For me, recruiters have traditionally been out of the question because I figured they would be a waste of time and never be as good at sending me the right people for the job as I would be in reviewing resumes myself. They're also too expensive for my small budget. But as I got ready to place my job ads again, one of my senior staff members came to me and offered me the name of a fashion recruiter she knew and thought could help. I was skeptical, but I called her anyway, figuring listening would cost me nothing.

The recruiter convinced me she would do a thorough job, but I still hesitated because of the price. I do not have large sums of money to devote to the hiring process, and by my calculations, when all was said and done, using the recruiter was going to cost me three times as much as my usual techniques. On the other hand, the recruiter would only charge me if she found someone I decided to hire, which meant I was risking nothing, and could always come back to my original methods. I bit the bullet and signed up, reminding myself "nothing ventured, nothing gained."

The recruiter sent me the resumes of 10 entry-level candidates. I screened six by phone, met three in person, and found the right hire--all in a month. The cost suddenly became much less, because I saved so much time in the process, and because I got a pool of applicants who were decidedly better to choose from than in the past. Even more interesting, perhaps, was an insight the right candidate shared with me during the interview process. When I asked why she had chosen to work with a recruiter rather than post on job boards, she said "because recruiters make sure your resume gets seen, while submitting via the Internet is like sending your resume into oblivion."

Source: http://bit.ly/Ysuc3E