Amar Panchal doesn’t give employees a blank check to come work at Akraya Inc. But the founder and CEO of the staffing solutions firm will pay for talent.
“A lot of times, entrepreneurs follow job regulations that say, ‘This is a certain pay scale that I have,’” Panchal says. “If somebody is beyond that, they will not consider the person. I feel if you have the right person, having some flexibility on compensation is worthwhile.”
This flexibility became a potential issue when the recession hit.
“It was fairly gut-wrenching for the first two or three months,” Panchal says. “The biggest question was, ‘Are we doing the right thing having increased our expenses to the level we have?’”
Panchal decided to ride out the storm, and while he instituted a pay freeze, he did not lay off any of his 250 employees.
Despite the end-of-year struggles, Akraya reached $28.2 million in 2008 revenue.
Smart Business spoke with Panchal about how to find and build a valuable team of employees.
Don’t pass the buck. The first step to building an exceptional team is recognizing that it’s your responsibility to build that team, not just giving instructions to a recruiter and saying, ‘Hire these kinds of people for me.’
I’ve succeeded because I’ve taken on that responsibility myself, even if it’s getting down and rolling up my sleeves and sourcing for those people. Exceptional people are not going to be looking for jobs. You have to find them, you have to entice them, and you have to attract them to join your organization.
When I’m looking to fill a critical role, I will spread the word around within my network. I will try to have a fairly wide pool of candidates from which I will make a selection rather than just seeing who is available.
Before I call anybody, I’ve eliminated a lot of people. Just looking at their profile and using some of the social networking tools, it’s fairly easy to understand the profile of a person to a large extent today.
I would have seen who or how I’m connected to this person. If we share a common connection, I would have spoken to the common connection and asked them informal questions about the person and done some level of blind reference checks even before bringing the person in. So there’s a lot of qualifications I do before making the first contact with the candidate.
Find the motivation. My first call with a candidate is not to find out whether or not he is the right fit. My first call is to sell him or her on how great Akraya is and how great the opportunity is. I’d rather be in a position where the candidate wants to join us, but he may or may not be the best fit for this role than the candidate is an extremely good fit for this role but does not want to join us.
I’m really trying to understand what would the motivation be to leave whatever role they are in and work for a company like Akraya?
I put myself in the potential candidate’s shoes and try to think of this from his or her perspective. Understand how he or she perceives this role and how he or she would compare it to what they are currently doing or the other alternatives they may be considering.
