Sometimes the best workplace resources are already on your staff.
By Fran Duskiewicz
A friend of mine is a retired registered nurse who speaks fluent Spanish. This makes him worth his not inconsiderable weight in gold here in southwest Florida.
He recently took on a part-time job at a major medical facility just to keep his medical skills finely honed. He is often frustrated by the data systems he needs to use to do his job properly. Does he know how to improve these systems? Absolutely.
That’s because for over 30 years he owned and operated a medical billing business that handled the responsibility for many hospitals in the Northeast.
He personally created efficient, time-saving, data entry and file accessing practices for his business.
While my friend’s medical background is important to his new employers, his broad experience and achievements as an owner of a very successful business are being ignored. It seems that a hidden treasure within the company, such as my friend, should be brought to someone’s attention higher up in the managerial food chain.
Is it possible that the company might be paying big money to a consulting firm to do exactly what my friend could do? The odds are good.
I, myself, have gotten bored and have begun looking for something interesting to do. A major company right here in Naples advertised for a projects manager. The opportunity looked right up my alley, so I submitted my resume. The recruiter and hiring manager became very excited and scheduled a phone interview with me.
As I answered their questions and discussed the various projects I had overseen at Nice N Easy, the more excited they became. I had the goods, alright. Well, until they asked if I were a certified projects manager. Was I “certified?” I said that I wasn’t because at my former company, Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes, I didn’t need to be certified to manage projects during a period of 30 years.
In Naples, however, the lack of an official certification proved to be a deal breaker.
You should understand this is a world-class company in Florida that would pay for someone to relocate. I live five minutes down the road. If I could have met the person who required a certified project manager face-to-face, odds are he or she would have waived the certification and been thrilled to find a hidden treasure just down the street from the main office.
That didn’t happen because a couple of hide-bound, middle managers, operating with no leeway or business experience of doing the actual work, dismissed my potential.
ASSESSING TALENT
A number of years ago, Topps Markets bought P&C Supermarkets in central New York, and a very experienced produce buyer named Sam was out of a job. Sam looked for work, and decided that being a consultant might be a good way to get his foot in the door somewhere. That somewhere was Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes, because
John MacDougall, company founder, always dreamed of his stores being a first-class supplier of fresh produce to the communities where he operated his stores.
Sam was not born to be a consultant, but it didn’t matter. John told him that he didn’t need a produce consultant; that he needed a produce buyer and he offered Sam a job right then. If Sam had been forced to keep working through middle managers, be they HR people, recruiters or hiring managers, he might have gotten nowhere and given up. Instead, by bypassing that unproductive bottleneck, and gaining access to a true decision maker, who knew exactly what he wanted, Sam was able to create a great produce program at Nice N Easy to everyone’s benefit.
My point is to examine how you are assessing talent. Are you overlooking someone within your own company who might have wandered in for a job, but who has a sterling background that could be beneficial to your company? Have you assigned talent acquisition to unaccomplished middle managers who toss applicants who don’t meet some form of unimportant qualification or whom they deem as being too old, or not team players, into the circular file?
If the answer to those questions is “yes,” then stop it immediately. You’re missing out on hidden treasures. Take the time to find them. It’s worth the effort.