ForeRunner News
Art of Finding Employees in this Boom Market
ForeRunner decided this year that to help with the problem of finding employees in our current market that we would take control of it ourselves by hiring our own in-house Recruiting Manager. Joe Vickrey comes to ForeRunner with over 10 years of recruiting experience. Joe joins us to support the growth and vision of ForeRunner with a particular focus in maintaining the culture and environment of our company, while strengthening our ability to deliver superior engineering design and construction to our clients. There are 2 divergent focuses of the recruiting office. They are similar in nature but very different in purpose. They can be classified in simple terms as strategic and tactical.
The strategic ways of a company are longer term in focus and more visionary in nature. As an example, the executive branch of a company may see a new marketplace or industry sector, where profits are sure to be earned, but current company personnel may not have the needed education or skills to service that market. To grow in that direction a company must have the ability to strategically acquire the talent needed to service that new marketplace, without disrupting the current business in process, integrate those services, and subsequent people into the existing business. The recruiting office has the responsibility to assist the company in identifying the skill gaps, and the people who can fill those gaps effectively.
Tactical hiring addresses short term overload, specific niche project expertise, and longer term ongoing needs of the project teams and company. Through the recruiting office we can "contract" that help either through our own database of consulting professionals, or via businesses that provide short term professionals or contract staff. In this case Joe will act as a broker for the department or Project Manager to ensure the requirements or necessary skills sets are met to accomplish the tasks at hand. In other cases the need may be created by continuous expansion of a certain discipline or project type. These positions require us to develop and maintain a database of resources and contacts that can allow us to find potential candidates. Joe has maintained years of contacts in the engineering market in Colorado and on behalf of ForeRunner will develop and maintain contact with potential candidates and networking resources to ensure that when we have a need we have the ability to select the right person. The final component of Joe's responsibility will be to know what the key positions and skill sets are that constitute the bread and butter of ForeRunner's marketplace, and bring those people that are uncovered in the daily activities to the attention of the department managers and make sure that we never miss an opportunity to add to our ability to deliver services or projects for our clients.
Recruiting is all of the things described above, but in addition Joe will be directing other initiatives for ForeRunner that will indirectly allow us to attract and then acquire new and talented people. Some of the things Joe will be active in include Branding, Outreach, College Recruiting, Market Place Expansion and several internal process improvement projects. These process improvement projects will include development of a recruiting applicant tracking system, position identification and approval processes, interviewing and hiring best practices, on-boarding and career tracking and development for internal employees. The purpose is to ensure that as we grow we maintain the character and culture that is ForeRunner. We want to accomplish the long term strategic vision of Bill and Creg, and balance that with the short term requirements of the projects, staff and clients.
By Joe Vickrey