Rodney Apple: All right, so we’ll continue with part four in our Supply Chain Careers Catalyst Series episode, and we’re gonna talk about defining the business need before defining the candidate. And I think this especially comes into play when you’ve got a newly created position obviously, and then also when either someone leaves or has departed or retired from the organization.

You may not automatically wanna replace, clone the person that had left. I think some of… Some companies get caught up into that trap where, let’s go find another lookalike before they think about this could be an opportunity to maybe take a step back and reflect on the incumbent that was in the role before while looking at across the business and determining, is this a good opportunity for us to maybe make some changes.

So don’t fall into that trap and it’s, it’s– I think it’s completely worthwhile to go back through and, [00:01:00] reevaluate what all did this person accomplish? What are the ongoing gaps or problems or opportunities that we’re trying to to capture? We’re working with a a company now in a Fortune 500 and they’ve, it’s basically over enterprise planning, and it’s a very high SKU intensive, lots of complexity type of a business. And this, this function can make or break profitability. If they’re carrying too much inter-inventory, if there’s too much spoilage it can create some wrinkles in the financials.

So big role. Person’s retiring and they did take the time. I was actually pretty impressed. They took a few months to, to reflect on the role as they brought in a new, a leader over this individual as well from internal. And so they looked across the organization.

There’s been a lot of changes with offshoring some of the tactical work. Big focus on advancing technologies in particular with AI, agentic AI and machine learning. And while they’ve got a large field operations presence, they definitely landed on making [00:02:00] some changes with the profile.

And I think every company needs to go through with that exercise bef- especially when it comes to your, these, these big executive roles And so think about what does the business actually need from the role going forward as you re-accept the scope, the priorities, capabilities. How does this role fit into the broader organization before you take a look back into the market?

Chris, it sounds like you’ve got a follow-up on that. What are your thoughts?

Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I’m watching different companies do this from obviously a different vantage point than you, Rodney. But so I have some data points, and it sounds like the company that you’re working with was pretty methodical about it, and I think that is fantastic.

I am seeing some others who, are kind of student body right the way they’re doing it, and their… the spirit [00:03:00] is typically and the motivation is typically the digital AI. Our legacy people were not positioned with that kind of capability, and so we’ve got to go get those capabilities.

And they over-adjust, right? And in this particular environment it is not an environment that’s leveraged technology and analytics well historically. There are real opportunities, but it’s a heavy relationship-based business. So in many cases, the people they brought in skew super high on the new capabilities, but they didn’t calibrate some of the softer capabilities that are required to be successful.

In a relationship-based business, you’ve got to be able to influence, and you’ve got to be able to collaborate, and you’ve got to be able to play up and play down if your partners are there. And I… and so I won’t comment on what I h- I’m always hopeful, that this company does well, et cetera. But I think that’s part of the balancing act, and as we get into this discussion, hopefully we’ll give people [00:04:00] some, some ways to think about how to n-not over-correct, you know, when you have this opportunity.

Rodney Apple: Yeah, absolutely, Chris. I think a good exercise, Is to, when you’re thinking about this, are you, like you said, are you trying to add some capabilities that don’t exist today? But one of the for us and I appreciate your perspective on this, is, what are the core objectives and deliverables?

It’s probably, I would say, it’s definitely one of the top two or three questions that we ask when we kick off any new search. And I can tell right away when we’re speaking with the hiring executive or even HR, if they can’t answer this right off the top of their head, then they need to go back and take that additional time to reflect and evaluate the needs of the business, and then determine what the needs of the role need to be.

But, what are those first year, what are, what’s the success factors? What do you want this individual to accomplish in year one? And if you can force rank those, it just tells me you’ve already done your homework and you know what success looks like. Ideally, we start moving, especially for [00:05:00] executive roles, we start looking at even year two and year three, what are some of these longer term objectives that you want this person to solve for?

What are your thoughts on that exercise?

Chris Gaffney: Yep. I think it’s probably come up in some of our podcasts before. I’m a big Covey fan, and Covey focused on the wildly important. And, there’s a research kind of background of that says somebody can really get their teeth around three big rocks and beyond that they can’t, right?

And so n- even at the VP level, the chief supply chain officer, don’t ask somebody to do the impossible. But separate the big rocks from the small rocks I think is huge. And I think to your point, no matter when these people show up, they’re coming in the middle of the movie. And so if you’ve already got a roadmap, that the larger business is being guided by, make sure you understand, where they fit in that.

I think, I, again, I think there’s a tendency at these senior roles to say these people are fully formed, and they can just jump right on.” But I think if you do that extra care and feeding [00:06:00] director level and above, even for high functioning people, you give them a much greater chance of succeeding there.

So that’s my, my, my reaction on that.

Rodney Apple: Yeah, absolutely. I know when we go through that exercise, we’re walking away in alignment with what the person needs to solve for what’s the burning number one, number two, number three. And then, and we talked about this on part one, when you look at not all heads of supply chain are equal.

It’s actually pretty rare that they have the same background. And so you think about, is am I looking for someone in to come in and just manage the status quo and tweak it? Do we need to optimize, the network or how we do planning? Are we trying to scale this business? Are we rolling in ac- acquisitions?

Looking for synergies. Is this a big turnaround? Is this gonna be a major multi-year supply chain transformation? And once you get those objectives down it starts to become easier to filter down into the role profile and thinking about the functional and the technical skills as well as those [00:07:00] all-important leadership skills.

Prioritizing and the role and looking at the business is the sweet spot, and I think that’s where rubber hits the road. And, if you go through that exercise and do it right, you can make sure you get not only the right candidate, but get someone that can solve the problems for today but can grow and take care of the problems that are around the corner, is how we look at it.

Chris Gaffney: Yeah. I’d like Mike to weigh in on this from his perspective because I think one of the side benefits of that is there are many people at the table when you’re– if you’re doing this right, you’re building this up, right? It might be a direct report, the, if it’s the chief of the, the head of the business unit or whatever.

But if it’s a big job, you may have people above that weighing in. You may have very senior HR people weighing in who are not just worried about this job but where this person fits from a longer term. So I think this exercise allows some of that kind of wrestling around, are we all aligned on what we’re looking for someone to come in on this?

So anyway, I– and Mike, I’d be curious if you have a take on that.

Mike Ogle: Yeah. I’d s- I’d just say the thing that was going through my mind was, you also have to think about at a time like this whether you may already have half or a quarter or a full candidate that’s waiting in the wings that you’re just trying to refill the old position.

So when you identify all these core pieces, maybe somebody wants to take on one or two of those. Or you might take some of this and try to reform what that candidate may end up being

Chris Gaffney: Well, you bring up a great point, Mike and Rodney, I’ll go off script here. I’ve seen a number of situations very recently where a company went outside to fill these kind of roles, and there were people inside who said, “Oh, I thought I was gonna get a crack at this,” right?

And no conversation. Those people, whether you intended or not, they’re leaving, right? If they’re senior enough [00:09:00] or they realize they’re not part of the plan. I have seen other people in exactly the same situation where after the new hires were announced, and in some case it may be a blend of new plus promotions other people who thought they were candidates get a call.

And it may be from the head of HR and I’ve seen cases where it was actually a smaller company. It was head of the business unit or the CEO that says, “Hey, I wanna check in with you. Obviously you’ve seen, what’s going on. We want you to know you’re still valuable. We think it’s really important.

I’m not just calling to tell you that. I’d like to talk about what’s important for you, and we’re gonna make sure that over time we make that work.” So you can’t be solely focused on, “I’ve gotta find the new it person,” because you may be in the effort to hire the right next person, you may create three more vacancies if you don’t handle it correctly internal with all those folks Mike mentioned who say, “I thought I could do that,” or a portion of that,

Mike Ogle: yeah, you- Yeah … you, and you also just never know whether somebody has been doing [00:10:00] something because they didn’t have a better person for it, but they don’t enjoy it. It’s not part of their core. They may wanna take on something else. There may be things that you can just push around in the existing team to make everybody happier before you put that new person and plug them into place

Rodney Apple: Yeah, that’s a great add. I’m glad you added that on Chris and Mike. It just… right now we have this newly created VP of supply chain role that’s gonna lead a pretty significant end-to-end supply chain transformation. And of course the functional leaders i- internally all, all applied for the role, right?

But they just haven’t been given this opportunity, and it’s no fault of their own, but they have… They’re really good in their functional domains, but they haven’t just led the end-to-end supply chain. They haven’t led a significant transformation. They can only speak to projects where they’ve, made some incremental improvements.

But they, a good exercise, and where I’m going with this is whether the internals are qualified or [00:11:00] not giving them the opportunity to go through the process. This client wanted us to take the internals through our evaluation and assessment process, so we treated them just like we did with our external candidates, and then we provided a summary, and we, “Hey, here’s where they’re really strong, and here’s where they have gaps.”

And then they were able to take that information and go back in and let the internals know, “Hey, we appreciate you going through the process. Here are some of the, the gaps that we’ve identified.” And then from there, you, like to your point, Chris, you get a sense for, where they’re short, what kind of development plans could you put into place.

But also it’s a transformation. We’re gonna need them to support it, and you start talking about, “Here’s some areas where we think you could support this transformation and, a- and close some of these gaps while broadening your overall ex- skills and experience.” So it’s kind of a win-win if you do it from that dy- that, that dynamic, and then maybe you tee them up, from down the road that you’ve got a, a better succession plan that everybody has bought into

All right let’s move on. Again we’re continuing [00:12:00] to, to layer in these degrees of complexity and then often we get in some, into some ambiguity as it relates to this complex field of supply chain management. Another challenge that we typically run into, Mike, is is employers that they describe this long laundry list of skills and experience.

We call them purple squirrels or unicorns or in this case, like the perfect candidate. Take take our audience through, through this piece and how we should go about thinking about this dynamic and what are some ways we can solve for it because there’s no such thing as the perfect candidate that’s gonna check 100% of the boxes.

Mike Ogle: Yeah it’s human nature and it’s the type of thing whether you’re trying to create a new product or a, a new service finding a candidate, any of these kinds of situations, especially when you have a team of people that get together to discuss what they’d like to have. And if you’re trying to [00:13:00] satisfy everybody, you’re typically building a long list that may be difficult to fill.

So this perfect candidate problem is really where we end up having companies, teams stack all kinds of requirements together until they’ve created a candidate that might not even exist. So with things to think about with the ever-growing wish list growing narrower and narrower as far as the number of people out there that you could actually find for that kind of position, did you specify they have to have been from an exact industry that you’re looking for or a particular function?

Company sizes, technologies that they’ve dealt with, transformational experiences that they may have gone through. Do they have to be global? Do they have to be from a specific country or background or languages and such? Which may certainly be part of what you build in your priorities.[00:14:00]

But what kind of leadership experience did they have? Compensation constraints, cultural fit. There’s all kinds of things that you can throw into the bag, and what you really have to do is let everybody have a chance to put those ideas in without dealing with them immediately. It’s a method that I personally like to use, and I was actually using this in my classes recently, where you go through the brainstorming, you get a lot of things out there on the table, and then you gotta go through the prioritization.

Whether you assign points or do a method where you’re essentially saying, “Hey, everybody gets 10 chips. What do you have to be able to make this, this function work?” And once you do that, you can put that together and get to the point where you say, “These are the top four or five priorities,” and make sure that’s really clear both to the team and to the individual that might apply.

Because if you’ve got this long laundry list, [00:15:00] the individual applying may say I’ve got these four that I really like out of the 12 that you listed.” There were probably too many listed and the priorities weren’t clear. So it may sound great and reasonable to a team of people to be able to have this big laundry list, but it’s not– it’s gonna result in a small pool that you can draw from.

Have we really defined the best person to accomplish the objectives, or did we just try to make everybody happy by having two or three things on the wish list that were their priorities?

Rodney Apple: Yeah, that’s that’s the right way to do it, Mike. Go ahead and boil the ocean because it doesn’t hurt to, to dream up this perfect ideal candidate.

And of course, I’ve got all these examples popping in my mind where I’ve had to bring the client back down to earth or reality and let them know that this isn’t common. What you describe might be two different jobs you’re cramming into one. And if you handle those conversations the right way, I think you just share examples, you share [00:16:00] perspectives.

And ultimately we’re trying to– we’re having a trade-off discussion. If I can’t get A, B, and C, but I can get D and E, is that gonna be sufficient? And you have to go through this back and forth exercise to help prioritize and understand, if we can’t get the perfect candidate, which is pretty rare what’s gonna be good enough?

And we go through that conversation day in, day out and oftentimes it is bringing people back down to reality. And sometimes people just don’t know what they don’t know as well. And, we had a CEO reach out, and this is the first time he’s created this new, head of supply chain role.

It’s a smaller company, but they’re growing. They’re– made a couple of acquisitions, and he sent me this long document and I read through it. I’m like, “Wow, there’s… what are you not looking for?” Through a couple of different conversations, and sharing some benchmark candidates that, that helped him to realize what’s out there on the marketplace and what’s important, what’s not important.

Can– What can we develop? What capabilities are the true must-haves? And I think you have– you, you must walk [00:17:00] away from this exercise fully aligned on the absolutely have to have this and here’s why. And then you go down to your next list. You take that other laundry list and you drop it into, here are the preferences.

If they have SAP- That would be wonderful. If they don’t have it, as long as they have fluency, experience implementing certain ERP systems or certain modules, that’s where you get that trade-off discussion. What are the skills that we can develop within a reasonable timeframe? What gaps can be closed across our existing team?

I think that’s important, especially with these supply chain leadership roles. You’ve got to evaluate not just that top role, but further down in the organization to see where your strengths are that can supplement that overall leader. That, that really is what it’s all about.

That way, the whole team is qualified to do the work, and you’re not just relying on one individual. In some cases this, this transformational supply chain leadership role we’re working on now, I look at you got a lot of distribution centers, a lot of these through acquisition.[00:18:00]

They don’t seem to be… Looking at the map, they don’t seem to be, strategically aligned. You’re gonna need to do a, some network modeling and, do you have the ability to do that in- internally or are we gonna… Does it make sense to do it internally? Those can be pretty expensive projects when you factor in the software that you need and the expertise of sometimes, you know, outsourcing those projects to consulting.

So where can we gain some skills and experience through consulting partners or even fractional or interim talent needs to fill in some gaps? Those are the things I would recommend ins- instead of looking for that perfect candidate. Chris, do you have anything to offer?

Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I think that, I’m probably an unabashed I s- I fall on one side when you get to the what’s to the hows, what’s versus the hows. And I, I’m probably a broken record on this, but I think when you bias towards the what’s I think you run the risk at these senior levels.

You said transformational. Most of the transformational stuff is ultimately won and lost with the hows, and if somebody’s [00:19:00] intellectually capable, they’ve demonstrated agility. But I think that’s important ’cause I, I think when you have that long list, p- the, the checklist is a lot more, in many cases, on the what’s, and I caution balance on that.

So I think that’s one thing. I think the other thing is, as you built this impossible list up, y- that’s the list that you used to confirm that your own employees weren’t capable of doing it. So to your point, the next time you do this, you better have done some development planning and succession planning such that you feel more confident that more of your people have closed those gaps.

But to your point, when you go to the market and you can’t find everybody, and you end up settling, you need to be careful you didn’t walk back into taking somebody on when in fact you had internal people who had those same gaps, but you weren’t willing to accept them, and you went out and then ended up…

‘Cause that, that’s a real risk of equity and how those, you know, peers who or g- whether they’re gonna be directs or peers are gonna view that [00:20:00] person when they come in. So I think there’s just a lot of, things around the search that if you’re doing it right, you’ve really gotta be thoughtful.

Rodney Apple: Absolutely. Yeah, and this plays into, Where you source candidates too Chris? We have clients all the time. They absolutely have, must have experience in our industry and sometimes that can derail the search and get it off the tracks. If they’re– especially if it’s a short list of companies that are in their space.

As I, I think I mentioned on the last, we did part one of this. We have a, a food service distributor, and there’s only so many of them, and, and you start looking across the that laundry list of skills and experiences they were looking for and then the list becomes even shorter.

And okay I understand you need food service distribution, and the perishables are very challenging to plan for. But what if we were to take that body of complexity and move it over to some adjacent industries that may not have perishables planning, but [00:21:00] perhaps they’ve done something with some relatable complexity, right?

And getting them to, to to think outside of the box is paramount if you want to expand the candidate pool and fill the role in a reasonable timeframe. But sometimes by the time you look for that purple squirrel or unicorn that checks all the boxes, you could have brought someone in maybe from an adjacent industry that doesn’t, and could have ramped up in that period of time, right?

So you have to think about those, those trade-offs, not just with skills and experiences and qualifications, but, thinking about the overall sourcing strategy.

Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I, ironically, having been in the perishables business as an example and been in businesses with longer shelf life I think, two things.

Number one, you need to understand the problem you’re really trying to solve. What’s changing in your business that is gonna be key to you delivering on customer service and keeping the cost structure where it needs to [00:22:00] be as the business changes? That m- may not be what got you here, right? The perishables business from fifty years ago is not the business of today.

And so I think that’s something to be cautious of. And I’ve been in food service distribution as well. It’s a pretty narrow industry. What I’ve seen in particular, it’s a B2B business, and there’s been a lot of evolution in B2C over the last ten to twelve year, ten to fifteen years, that may be really relevant for that business.

So I think that goes back to the rigor that you’ve gotta do in breaking down what is, what does somebody really have to be successful in our business? And I think you said it. What can we teach, right? We can, we can teach, field to market. I hope you can.

Or we can teach some other elements of that. And I think that’s important, right? ‘Cause what you don’t wanna do is overburden what this role has to possess in its ability to lead, right? ‘Cause this role is mostly gonna be getting things done through others, setting strategy [00:23:00] and that type of thing.

So I, I’m very much in looking for adjacencies. I’ve seen examples where people were bringing brand-new businesses in, and so there was no analog, right? And, they basically said, “I need the best of the best for people who have a portion of the skills that are really important to me.”

And in our case, I want somebody in this example you gave who understands the foundations of logistics and distribution, right? Who understands planning. In many cases that, you know, that, that business is heavily a people business as well. So when I get those basics, then I can very clearly say, “What are other industries that grow that skill set and anchor on that to, to broaden my cal- my candidate pool?”

Mike Ogle: Quite often I think, Rodney, you’d say that the vast majority of position announcements that are out there usually have two categories. It’s the must-haves [00:24:00] and the but rarely often, rarely would you end up saying, “Hey, by the way, we can teach you these things.” But it certainly has to be part of what you’re going to, you try to imply in the mix somehow in, when you’re reaching out or having that first interview with a candidate.

Rodney Apple: Yeah. That’s a good, that’s a good point, and especially, we’re working on a lot of newly created roles these days, and so there’s a lot of learning that occurs in the search process. And I think that’s why, we’re not here just to fill the seat. We’re not… it’s, yeah that’s kinda what we do, right?

It’s… But it’s advising, and I think you have to be open-minded a- as a, especially small, mid-size companies. You’re oftentimes building the plane as it’s flying and, I could give some really good examples of how we started out with this profile along the way. “Hey, this is a newly created role.

This is what we think we need.” And so our recommendation is always when we have these newly created roles, maybe working with founders, they [00:25:00] don’t know what they don’t know is, hey, engage with candidates often and early because the more conversations you have on the front end, you’re gonna walk away from candidate to candidate, and you’re gonna be like, “Wow I realize I may not need this A, B, C, D, E, F, G skills.

If I can find someone like this that’s agile, like Chris mentioned who’s done some comparable things, maybe not in my industry. They’ve done it in another industry, or they’ve done it in a best in class academy type company and they built this out there, and maybe they could do that at my company.”

So going through that scenario planning and keeping an open mind and speaking with candidates early and often can help you really dial in that profile and it may shift a little bit, and that’s okay as long as it doesn’t completely change and then you change your mind again. How to make sure all the stakeholders involved are aligned.

And then, and that’s another thing. That’s a, that’s… We’ll go off on a little side topic is if you’ve got one person that comes in and they’re guiding this process but they failed to incorporate ideas and buy-in from other key stakeholders that this [00:26:00] role supports or serves or impacts s- all it takes is another person, especially a more senior person, to come in and say no.

We’re g- we’re gonna change this.” So I always ask and make sure, “Hey, is there anybody else involved with the decision-making process that needs to be part of this conversation?” And you better weave them in sooner than later ’cause you don’t wanna get to the 11th hour, “All right. We’ve got our finalists.

Let me make sure they go up and interview with my boss,” and we’re not calibrated. So calibration is key as well.

Chris Gaffney: I think that’s very relevant as we get to the next topic, Rodney, ’cause if we think we got the right person and then we get anchored on them we gotta find a way to bring them on that, we gotta land them,

Rodney Apple: . Yeah and so we’re gonna move into compensation and this adds just another layer of complexity and there’s a whole lot of ambiguity as it relates to compensation, and there’s a whole lot of out- outfits out there that’s, consulting companies and compensation data companies that seem to get supply chain [00:27:00] wrong.

And we can go back and reflect on some of the examples that we carried in that we covered in the first part of the series where we talk about, for an example, a, a plant manager. It could be a warehouse manager and they may be managing two very different sites, right? And so if someone out there is in compensation is going out and conducting analysis they better be dialed in when you think about the scope and the complexity.

You can’t just base it on job titles. You can’t even go out to peer companies. It’s a tough thing to get right. So Mike, I know you’ve got some comments and thoughts on this. I’ll kick it over to you to to lead this off.

Mike Ogle: Yeah, sure. It’s difficult to be able to put together all the pieces, especially if you’ve made some major changes And and you’re trying to figure out what would be the value of some of those things, and what were the previous things really worth?

Maybe you’ve had that person in there for seven years and you did the the thing that we told people not to do, was just dust off the [00:28:00] old job description and try to hire for the same one again. And maybe you go through the process and say what has inflation been like during those 10 years?

Let’s just go ahead and do a, a new number that matches that.” Or God forbid, as you were saying, go out and look at titles and say, “What’s the average of the titles?” ‘Cause just like one of the worst questions I think I’d ever received when I was working for MHI was somebody forwarded a question to me that said, “What does the average warehouse cost?”

Okay, what does the average car cost? What, and you could look at all kinds of different things, and averages can be very deceiving. There may be some ranges that are in there, but how do you decide on it? So trying to come up with these kinds of benchmarks, you h- you have to do a lot of looking and and a lot of combining and playing off some, some different values.

So it may be the identical title, but you really gotta think about all the different pieces that mean what kind of complexity are they looking at? What kind [00:29:00] of experience are they bringing? And what kind of transformation maybe does your company need to be able to go through? And if they’ve got some of these intangible skills, somehow that’s gotta get added in.

And and you look at their expectations, if they’re willing to express what those are and yours, and be flexible, ’cause we talked about that flexibility and agility and trying to not be– put a line in the sand as far as we will not go above this, period, then you might be boxing yourself in.

So you gotta think about all those different aspects. What kind of caliber of talent are you really looking at? And what kind of things do they bring to the party, and what would you value them at if they’re gonna try to be at that extra increment? So you have a base salary. It’s one component, of course.

You’ve got bonuses. You’ve got possibly equity in the business. A variety of benefits, things that are important to them as [00:30:00] far as their professional development could be part of that. The kinds of things that they wanna be involved in and go to and have funding where they’ve got almost this extra little pocket pile of money that they can they can do things to go develop themselves professionally Retirement, relocation, sign-on incentives, all kinds of things go into that total compensation package that you’ll have to consider.

Compensation data is out there, but it can lag a market that constantly changes, and I think we’ve had a little bit of change lately. A little? Yeah.

Rodney Apple: Yeah, and that could come from a lot of different places, too. You think geographically, obviously there’s, we know that, that’s where these compensation studies tend to get things right as they cut across okay, here’s your jobs that are in the state of California versus the middle of Mississippi, right?

They’re gonna change based on cost of living. So they have the data right there, but that can change on a whim. And then you’ve also got [00:31:00] industries and so cer- certain industries go up and down. Oil and gas is a great one right now. It’s it’s on a high end, right?

With, especially with the geopolitical stuff going on in Iran and Hormuz, Strait of Hormuz. So you’ve got higher gas prices and especially diesel and so certain industries pay more than others. You’ve got to factor all that in. The energy market is notoriously pays above market and same thing with pharmaceutical.

So you gotta, you just gotta factor all that in when it comes to evaluating compensation. And the way that we typically advise our clients is if they’re way off the mark, Mark we’re gonna educate them right then and there. And if they don’t have any flexibility on the profile or compensation, and they’re looking for that purple squirrel, they’re demanding it and we don’t sense any flexibility with comp or the profile, then we tend to walk away if because we’re not, we don’t– nobody wants to spend time working on an impossible to fill search with people that are very stubborn and very opinionated that have a closed mind and then aren’t gonna change it no matter what you put in front of [00:32:00] them in terms of data and reality.

A- as an employer, you really need to maintain some flexibility as it relates to compensation. And if you’re at a place where it’s a hard budget, you just can’t flex, then you need to be flexible on those skills and experience requirements if you wanna get the pr- if you wanna get the right candidate and be competitive.

And it’s not about just getting somebody at the, “Oh, I got, oh, I got this person that’s in my budget.” You have to be thinking longer term too. Are they gonna be a flight risk? “Hey, I found somebody that’s highly underpaid. I know. Sorry, Mr., Recruiter, you had to go talk to 100 people to find two or three that were grossly underpaid.”

Once they realize that maybe some other recruiting companies reach out, wow you’re not earning what others are making, then they may put themselves out there and they become a, a retention problem. So you wanna get that right on, on both ends of those spectrums.

Mike Ogle: I love that flight risk- comment. It’s a great thing for trying to remember what really goes into the whole package and realizing that the, the [00:33:00] cost of somebody leaving and going through the process again can be intense both for just monetary, but also the team and morale

Rodney Apple: Yeah, we call it peer equity.

Yeah, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta be real careful there and not bring in somebody that’s grossly overpaid or underpaid in relationship to the, the people that are working in the same job functions or families. That can create problems as well, and you don’t wanna mess… And that’s some more employee relations and, that can get ugly real quick.

I’ve seen it before. Chris, you’re about to make a comment?

Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I think you have to step back and think through our talk track, right? If you’ve developed this unicorn job description in theory, and prioritized it, y- you’re still going after a pretty narrow market, and your ideal candidate is not on the job market, right?

You’re trying to unseat them from a situation where, in many respects, they’re doing just fine, and I’ve watched this very recently with a couple of folks. [00:34:00] What you need to understand is those people are looking at you while you’re looking at them, and they’re gauging your interest. And when they understand that they have become the prime candidate when it gets down to it they’re evaluating everything, right?

If it’s a physical move, it’s gotta be worth the trip for their family, right? All of those kind of things. So all of a sudden you may say, “We got the person, exactly the one we wanted. We worked real hard. We think they can do it. We narrowed the field, and now they’re asking for things that we hadn’t bargained for.”

It may be beyond the salary stuff even that we’re talking about. It may be, I’ve seen people do this, “I want the opportunity after six months to be able to move anybody who’s on my leadership team if I don’t think they’re part of the future,” right? A- and you have to be… You have to decide what are we as a company, prepared to do.

That’s, for those people, again, I’m talking at the senior level. We’re talking at the VP and above level here. It’s a rare move. It’s like a free agent in a sports, market. [00:35:00] It’s your time, and if you’re gonna make that big move, getting everything you can is part of your job.

And I have good friends who are in procurement, and they were like, “Hey, in all due respect, you’re bringing me on. You’re, you want me to demonstrate that I’m effective at negotiating relationships and that type of thing, so I’m gonna be really tough. I’m gonna ask you for everything until you say no,” right?

And they’re walking the line with their mentors and advisors on the backside what’s too far ’cause they’re like, “Hey, this person’s too greedy.” But that’s a dynamic. Rodney you’ve dealt with all aspects of that. Yep. So I think you just need to know what you’re getting into when you’re aspiring to bring in, big new talent.

Rodney Apple: Yeah. It’s critical. And, and- And don’t be stingy. It applies to the employers, it’s not just the candidates that might ask for another 5 or $10,000 at the end, or a sign-on bonus. You have to evaluate, look at things from a time horizon. What’s the cost of leaving the role open, especially to the rest of the team that might be [00:36:00] burning themselves out trying to take the workload on of this open role?

How’s that impacting the team? Look at it from all different perspectives, not just the total cost of this individual. You might be looking… You mentioned procurement. Okay oftentimes procurement comes in and they generate some cost savings. It could be expected to be in the hundreds of thousands or millions in some cases.

And you’re over here, complaining that they want another $5,000 and the role’s been open for six months and you’re willing to walk away and keep it open another several months to go back to the drawing board. What’s that, what’s gonna be the impact to the business if you leave the role open?

I guarantee it’s not gonna be that 5 or $10,000.

So when the market tells you the candidate you want costs more than you budgeted, what, what should you… where should you give, is it the compensation? Is it the profile, or should we take a look at both sides of that equation?

Chris Gaffney: B- bottom line is y- you gotta get the right candidate, and I can tell you in more junior roles when I was at [00:37:00] the VP or director role hiring people the level below me, y- we took the pain, to get the right candidate, but it meant we had to have the roles covered, right?

If you don’t have the role covered and you’re leaving a lot of money on the table, it’s a different story. But I think you have to manage expectations. There are benchmarks in terms of how long does it take to find the right candidate but you have to be careful, right? It’s one thing to say it’s three months.

It’s another it’s a year, and I’ve seen people in those extremes. And at that point, you’re really stressing the team. You’re kidding yourself if you think everything can be covered, even if you’ve got an interim or if you spread the job across it. So there are a, a lot of costs there. So I think that’s if you can’t find the right person, right?

That, that’s one thing. But if you’ve got the right person and you’re debating over what some people may say is a little money and a lot of money, to your point, Rodney, in any of these director or VP levels you’re now [00:38:00] talking in many cases the h- hopefully the impact is many millions of dollars.

And if it’s transformation, there’s a lot of cost to delaying transformation. So I just think you’ve gotta be… I- if you don’t have the right people, then you’ve gotta do the work to find the right person ’cause the cost of putting the wrong person in is a terrible cost as well. But once you’re in the ballpark don’t go back to the market after you’ve worked so hard and you feel like, wow, I can’t solve for another X.

You may think it’s a lot of money. It might be 100,000 bucks, but another three to six months on a very difficult to fill search is always gonna be more expensive than that.

Rodney Apple: Ab- absolutely. Yeah. A- and even with our fee too I try to explain to our clients that, hey, this is maybe we should swap out the word fee with, you’re investing. You’re investing into your organization, and you get that right person, you get that high caliber individual, they’re gonna pay not only for this fee for the recruitment services.

They should be able to pay for their fully [00:39:00] burdened cost, in some cases two, three X, within a given year, especially if they go back in and and deliver on those, those top three, four, or five deliverables that we’ve defined as the success factor. To look at things from a broad lens and calculate what happens if the job stays open three months or six months, how does that impact the organization?

How does that impact, the existing team? Is it gonna… if someone’s not focused on driving these, these objectives, you lose six months out of your year what does that potentially cost? And it doesn’t mean every candidate should get everything that they ask for. It just means you’ve got to align the compensation with the roles and the broader impacts on the organization, the cost of leaving it vacant.

All of that should come into play. And as you’re looking, where you’re gonna get your best compensation data from is in real time. So whether you have an internal talent acquisition partner on the team that’s leading the recruitment for the organization, if they’re doing their job, they’re capturing compensation [00:40:00] information across a wide array of candidate conversations.

And, look at that data. That’s data that’s gonna tell you if you’re in the ballpark or if you’re far off. And we– when we take on searches where we feel like compensation’s a little bit low, but we sense there’s some flexibility, our job is to continue to guide that, that overall process, share real-time data.

Oftentimes that’s enough for someone at a, like a CFO level to look at it and say yeah we need to increase this or we’re not gonna get the right caliber of candidate to hit our objectives.”

So I think the key takeaway here is, you can’t put pen to paper, go out and define this perfect candidate, insist every requirement, qualification must be met, and then you look at the compensation factor. You- you’re not gonna get that let’s just say champagne at Budweiser prices.

You’re gonna get what you pay for. You’ve gotta balance it, think about the, what the critical needs are of the business. The things you’re looking to solve for, what are the problems or what are the opportunities we’re trying to [00:41:00] seize upon and take the time to truly establish what’s critical for the business, what are some of the preferred skills we can have.

And as you take that out to market once you execute the search, think about the trade-offs. If we can’t get this in our industry segment, what… Go ahead and have the conversations with your recruiter, whether it’s your internal talent acquisition, whether it’s a third-party search partner.

You should have these calibration discussions on the front end, and make sure everyone’s aligned. It will absolutely help speed up and expedite the overall process when all parties are aligned on all factors, including compensation. We know where we can flex, whether it’s on the industry side or the sourcing strategy or the profile or compensation.

Flexibility and open-mindedness is what yields the ideal outcomes.