Zack Schuler was reading a book about leadership when a stat struck him — 25 percent of a CEO’s time should be spent recruiting.
Schuler can’t argue. Hiring is crucial as his company, Cal Net Technology Group, continues growing. In 2007, he added nine people to the then 40-person IT consulting company, spurring 20 percent growth in one month.
“Unequivocally, the No. 1 challenge is finding the right people,” says Schuler, founder, president and CEO. “If you have the wrong people, it’s devastating to the organization. You cannot achieve sustainable growth without paying a lot of attention to your recruitment process.”
Cal Net, which has offices in Northridge and Anaheim, almost doubled its revenue between 2005 and 2009.
Create a process. We’ll screen 200 resumes [for a network engineer position]. We’ll boil that down to 10 people that we talk to on the phone. We’ll boil that down to three or four people that we bring in for an in-person interview. Then we’ll boil that down to one or two people to send through our lab, where the engineer spends eight hours building a small network environment.
We’ve implemented similar practices within (other) parts of the company. For example, when it came to hiring our controller, we hired our CPA firm to administer an accounting exam, which took three or four hours to complete.
If they don’t score well on the exam, you can take them out of the race. It actually shows somebody’s interest in the position if they’re willing to go through hours of interviewing and test-taking in order to come on board with us.
Several candidates have said, ‘Are you going to pay me to go through the exam?’ at which point, we chuckle and say, ‘No, we’re not, and as a matter of fact, you’re not even going to be taking the exam now for asking that question.’ When you tell somebody, ‘You’ve got to take an exam,’ you can gauge their attitude. [If] they’re like, ‘Great, I’d love to show you how well I can perform,’ that’s the kind of person we want to hire.
Inspect resumes. If somebody says something [on their resume] like, ‘Possesses experience with server operating systems,’ that’s not good. I want to see: ‘Expert in Windows Server 2008 R2.’ I want them to list out their skill sets in detail. (Frequently,) the candidate could be qualified for the position, but their resume is just too thin to attract my attention.
Another thing I love to see is where somebody will have received promotions and they’ll have dates listed like, ‘From March of ’07 to February of ’08, I was at this company in this position. Then from February of ’08 to December of ’09, I was at the same company but in this position.’ First, I like the fact that the person was promoted. The second thing that I like about it is that they remembered when they were promoted, and if they remember that, it means that job growth is important to them.
If somebody shows up and they have a list of references ready instead of, ‘References available upon request,’ that’s a positive. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’m good. Call these people and ask them.’ I also love to see references of former bosses as opposed to a peer. It’s like whatever the departure was, it wasn’t bad.
Start conversations. They can be the best technical people in the world, but if they don’t know how to interface with our client, it’s just not good. The skills come through in our exam. But if they don’t have the attitude, they won’t even make it to the exam. The first thing that we’re going to hire on is attitude.
It all boils down to, when they show up for the interview, if they’re a good conversationalist. One of the questions that we ask is, ‘Tell me about your last vacation.’ We want to ask a question that they don’t have a prepared answer for. It gives us an opportunity to see what their dialogue skills are like. They don’t have a canned answer for it because nobody asks that question. We’re able to figure out how well this person’s going to do [with clients] just through their process of communicating with us through the interview.
We’ve implemented similar practices within (other) parts of the company. For example, when it came to hiring our controller, we hired our CPA firm to administer an accounting exam, which took three or four hours to complete.
If they don’t score well on the exam, you can take them out of the race. It actually shows somebody’s interest in the position if they’re willing to go through hours of interviewing and test-taking in order to come on board with us.
Several candidates have said, ‘Are you going to pay me to go through the exam?’ at which point, we chuckle and say, ‘No, we’re not, and as a matter of fact, you’re not even going to be taking the exam now for asking that question.’ When you tell somebody, ‘You’ve got to take an exam,’ you can gauge their attitude. [If] they’re like, ‘Great, I’d love to show you how well I can perform,’ that’s the kind of person we want to hire.
Inspect resumes. If somebody says something [on their resume] like, ‘Possesses experience with server operating systems,’ that’s not good. I want to see: ‘Expert in Windows Server 2008 R2.’ I want them to list out their skill sets in detail. (Frequently,) the candidate could be qualified for the position, but their resume is just too thin to attract my attention.
Another thing I love to see is where somebody will have received promotions and they’ll have dates listed like, ‘From March of ’07 to February of ’08, I was at this company in this position. Then from February of ’08 to December of ’09, I was at the same company but in this position.’ First, I like the fact that the person was promoted. The second thing that I like about it is that they remembered when they were promoted, and if they remember that, it means that job growth is important to them.
If somebody shows up and they have a list of references ready instead of, ‘References available upon request,’ that’s a positive. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’m good. Call these people and ask them.’ I also love to see references of former bosses as opposed to a peer. It’s like whatever the departure was, it wasn’t bad.
Start conversations. They can be the best technical people in the world, but if they don’t know how to interface with our client, it’s just not good. The skills come through in our exam. But if they don’t have the attitude, they won’t even make it to the exam. The first thing that we’re going to hire on is attitude.
It all boils down to, when they show up for the interview, if they’re a good conversationalist. One of the questions that we ask is, ‘Tell me about your last vacation.’ We want to ask a question that they don’t have a prepared answer for. It gives us an opportunity to see what their dialogue skills are like. They don’t have a canned answer for it because nobody asks that question. We’re able to figure out how well this person’s going to do [with clients] just through their process of communicating with us through the interview.
How to reach: Cal Net Technology Group, (866) 999-2638 or www.calnettech.com
