Tom Gimbel was never
good enough. At least
that’s what a past employer would have you believe.
“I’ve worked for a company
(where) I sold over 50 percent
of total sales,” he says. “No matter what I sold, I was always
told, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?
Why aren’t you doing more?’”
Instead of letting such negativity dampen his spirits,
Gimbel turned his enthusiasm and business acumen
toward his own enterprise,
The LaSalle Network.
Founded in 1998, the staffing
and recruiting firm boasts
2007 revenue of $16.5 million
and an 80-person staff of
happy employees.
“I remember what it was like
to not always be treated as a
valuable employee,” LaSalle’s
founder and CEO says. “I never
want that to be the case [for my
employees].”
Smart Business spoke with
Gimbel about how to hire and
retain the best employees and
how to keep them happy.
Q. What are the keys to
attracting the best employees?
First off, you have to retain
the best employees. Good
employees tend to be around
good employees.
Another layer of that is how
you communicate with them
through the interview process.
Step one is always selling us to
the candidate. We want them to
be excited about us before we
go about trying to determine
whether they’re right for us.
There’s a big difference there,
and a lot of companies miss that
boat. They have such an imperial view of how great their company is that they stop selling it to other people.
Then, we demonstrate career
paths that we’ve shown. I had my
marketing guy create bios and
career progressions of the staff
that we had showing that there
was a way for people to advance
and grow within a small- to
medium-sized company.
That really played a role when
people were doing research on
us to say, ‘I heard about such-and-such’s career progression.
That was really an attractive
thing for me.’
Q. How do you retain
your current employees?
Always have empathy
for the employee. Think:
What’s fun for them?
An example we do is,
we celebrate what we call
employees’ rebirthdays.
That’s the anniversary of
their start date with the
company. …
Every year on their
rebirthday, we give them
a gift. We’ve done iPods.
We’ve done computers.
We’ve done a new suit.
You’ve got all of these
friends and families outside of the office that
acknowledge your birthday, but how many people are going to acknowledge
that you’ve worked really hard
for a year?
When you see the look on
somebody’s face when they
come off of an elevator and
they see all of the balloons, it
really is fantastic.
Q. How do you justify the
cost of such recognition?
I meet with CEOs and CFOs
and VPs of HR, and I always
say, ‘Whenever I look to hire
somebody, the first question I
ask myself is, ‘Am I ready to commit an additional $10,000 a
year to training?’ If the answer’s
no, then why am I hiring them?’
The question is, ‘Do you care
about the people?’ If you do,
you’ve got to recognize their
efforts. When you do that, you
create a loyalty that is stronger
than any outside force can ever
break.
Q. How do you gauge chemistry between a job candidate
and the company?
You can’t be afraid to have the potential employee meet a lot of
your existing staff.
It’s a value-added all around.
The staff feels that they’re part
of the process, and the potential
employee feels that they’re
meeting the people and not just
the management team.
The first time, we’ll have them
interview with at least one person. If that one person likes
them, we’ll have them meet
with a second person. The second person can be somebody
within the department, somebody without. It can be anybody
— just to get two perspectives
to brainstorm.
The second day, we bring
them back. We want to have
them interact with their direct
manager who would be running
the department.
One of the biggest things that
can hold up the hiring process is
delaying the momentum
because of scheduling conflicts.
What our research has shown
us is that candidates would
rather have continued momentum and interaction with the
company, even if they’re meeting with people outside of their
direct manager. Keep that
process going.
Q. Why is hiring the right
people so important?
The cost of turnover is much
higher than people anticipate.
Spending eight to 10 hours
upfront and in an elongated
interview, you are going to save
yourself literally hundreds of
man hours in recouping morale
and personal time.
Pay for the right people. Every
time I didn’t hire somebody
because they were too expensive, I’ve always looked back and
said, ‘What could have been?’
HOW TO REACH: The LaSalle Network, (312) 419-1700 or www.thelasallenetwork.com
