Why aren’t you getting the best contractors and what can you do about it (Part 2)
Why aren’t you getting the best contractors and what can you do about it?
In Part 1, we look into the question of why companies suck at finding great contractors. We covered reviewing the genuine opportunity. We touched on why demand for great contractors outstrips the supply. We saw why TEST-FIRST recruitment is an abject #EPICFAIL.
Finally, we learn the basics of how to write an appealing advertisement.
In this second part, we expand on the question.
Part 2
Some do not believe that great contractors are in short supply. Well it stands to reason, if a contractor is already working on a job, because under 3, 6, 9 or even 12 months contract then they are unavailable for immediate requirement. Unavailability is one answer. Some Contractors that are supremely good are almost operating like consultants. In other words, they have many choices, and a few frugal contractors, may have a war chest, so they wait until a juicy project [read “challenge”] appears once they have finished an engagement.
Recruiters can shoot themselves in the foot, because they fail to hand the client’s true requests. They may not have the experience and the knowledge of the technical and/or business challenge. If the recruiter keeps sending you CV with generalist Java developers, when you actually require a Java developer with IBM MQ Series then there is probably a miscommunication between yourselves. However, it might be true that there are no MQ Series Java engineers available right now. Of course, chucking money at the problem rarely solves the long-term pain.
Clients can also definitely shoot themselves in the foot. An obvious way that can happen, is that the business suddenly unprepared for demand. There was miscalculation on the effort to deliver the product on the time. The product was undersold to the customer. Now the company has to commit more bodies to product. (This is a very bad idea see Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks.) Therefore, it may easy and tempting to rush-release a tired out-dated job specification to any recruiters. I believe in American Football, they call this idea something like the “Hail Mary pass!” Don’t do this! It leads to resentment and eventual offence. Rather the business strategy should have been clearer months earlier rather today.
Contractors can also shoot blow their foot off. A contractor can become too uppity and stupid just like another person who rediscovers a silver mirror and vanity. It is up to contractors, and indeed, consultants to stay real.
Take your sodding time and definitely make time when hiring a top talented contractor. It is your money to waste, if you get it wrong. However, don’t take an ice age and know exactly what you want to achieve.
Let’s move on economics.
The sea is rough about there and there are no excuses
The economy is the true driver of supply and demand. As a technical leader you are at the effect of it, and you will find job market place and the economy blows hot and cold for certain periods. As a rule of thumb, in the UK, recruitment falls off in July and August and also around Christmas and New Year. Demand typically starts on the first week in January, after the tax period in April and then there is autumn run from September. This is well understood, because IT directors will sign-off for multi-phase projects just before and after these periods.
However, in the year 2016, there was a sudden difference of opinion and attitude to general life not just in digital, or information technology. We are all at the effect of #BREXIT and we still are not sure how this will affect the long-term economy. One thing that is definitely understood is that we have different political opinions, and what we want to get out of leaving the European Unions. In other terms, politics and general attitude WILL affect all of us.
Some people have a practical model of the situation in their heads about economy, society and politics. They explain the situation of bad economy like rough seas using a metaphor; equally a calm sea is like a boom economy.
Use your illusion
Let me throw in two things in this contemporary allegory of the economy. First, let’s imagine that we also have foggy conditions. A dense fogs means you cannot also see the oceans and also that is much harder to navigate without something like radar, or satellite communications and GPS equivalent and therefore two super tankers could smash into each other. The second, thing, I would add is to throw every single person on earth 7 billion people in to a lifeboat or other sea-worthy vessel and tether them so how together. The tethering represents the communication and channels of information. Now if one massive super tanker sinks to the bottom, then there is more than a fair all of those other small vessels would be taken down in a rope, chain and anchor.
As a technical leader, it is your responsibility to ensure that your ship never goes down in rough seas or calms seas. It is YOUR JOB, even if a super tanker (read major investment bank) goes down. Whilst there may be rough seas, seriously dense fog out there in the economy and in general politics, as a technical leader, you first responsibility is to LEAD THE PEOPLE, no matter what. Work place ought to be a place of calm. In your job advertisement, you can get that thought to prospective candidate and also on the interview side reinforce that view. Because you won’t or you can’t, why should a top consultant devote their time and energy to work with you, even you can’t show decent enough leadership from the first handshake?
The sea is rough out there, but don’t delude yourself, because everybody knows that there are no excuses for ignorant, petty and pathetic behaviour.
Consider a flexible approach
With flux and constant change, people expect improvements in their quality of life. It is not just about work sitting constantly in front of computer screen. Experienced people often are older, if not wiser; they can see life differently to when they were just starting out. The best may want a flexible work-life balance?
Are recruiters really the bane?
Recruiters have a bad reputation in the industry. Especially, since the explosive growth of Linked-In and dramatic reduction of cost of sending mails to everyone, some candidates have turned against recruiters.
However, there are great recruiters out there that are fighting the tide. Like every other profession, recruitment has its superstars, journey persons and rubbish bottom of the league players.
Recruiters have a big role to play and let’s face it someone has to manage the process of connecting opportunities to both client and contractor. We would be lost, if there was no one to shepherd the communication and motives. There are some great shepherds around, the trouble is finding them.
Do you really need a contractor or a consultant to be on site (BoS) every single day? Some corporations do, indeed, insist on this requirement, because they have a culture of in-grained authoritative leadership. Hey! I’m sure that you heard of the old phrase, “If you can’t change the organisation, then change the organisation.”, and usually that applies to permanent people. But guess what? How do you think the best consultants evaluate companies when they want to find the next engagement? Same applies to decent contractors!
There are real-world changes in the demography of the IT industry. Women in IT need more flexibility to work from home, because they are often looking after of children. No offence to all men, who deliberately take time off, between contracts and consultative engagements in order to give their partners, spouses and wives a much needed break from looking after the kids and playing house. Do you really believe that being in office 40+ hours a week and chained to work desk in sometimes crappy conditions is befitting of the best technical people out there and inside your team? No. I didn’t think so.
Displeasure of long distance commuting and the time; a very British problem
Likewise jumping into car at 7:30 in the morning, driving over 50 miles to an office and then leaving at night 6:30pm is absolutely thrilling and great for digital productivity. It’s just not great for family life, surprisingly. How about jumping on a long distance train and then dealing with 35 minute London Underground and commuting 2 hours to a distance is fantastically great for moral? I am being severely sarcastic deliberately, but I want to get the point across that commuting is a very British problem. We live in the year 2016, with Skype, GitHub, and RSA security keys, abundant remote working possibilities, 4G Internet, fibre broadband, SaaS solutions and VPN.
I believe this will be one of the positive fall outs of #BREXIT, there will be reflective consideration given to daily toil, and IT software people will consider working from home.
There are a few people who love to commute to work, absolutely. In order to get away from the kids, the dogs, the spouse and they have a psychological need to be somewhere. Some people cannot cope with any form of cabin fever. We shouldn’t forget those people as well. Perhaps, we should look at building shared workspace offices like they have in the USA. Above all, after the 2016 socio-economical-political surprise, we want more choice in Britain.
Astrid Byro
Astrid Byro is an English qualified Project Manager. She is a talented woman by the way. I saw her presentation about working remotely from Mount Everest. The conference was the ACCU UK 2013 in Bristol, West England. I met her at the same conference, because I was delivering a talk: Taking Scala into the Enterprise.
Astrid Byro worked remotely from a height of 5000m with her colleagues from GE Healthcare back in the UK. She cleverly used Atlassian pay-per-use software to manage a team of eight people. She took advantage of the time zone difference to be flexible. Astrid climbed the mountains and rambled during the mornings and return to base camp. By the afternoon, she used a smartphone with just GSM and data and a rugged laptop to connect to the project tracking software sitting in a Software-as-a-Software cloud service. Astrid could manage the project, send and receiving emails, and occasionally make telephone calls. The funny thing of this story was some of Astrid’s team also worked remotely. She showed how remote project management could work and it was a great enjoyable presentation to boot. I was glad I was there to witness it!
As you take the full advice of this article, then you reduce the influence HR in the picture and write your own bespoke advertisement. For large organisations, this is very hard to do. However, you should be prepared to go on the offensive, especially if you want find great people? Now is the time to rethink how we hire people and that includes contractor and consultants. You also need to work a lot harder to find ethical shepherds, the recruitment agency, who will consider your choices and provide brilliant advice. Just remember to guide them to your genuine requirements and push your extra value-adds. If you consider this, you should find better quality contractors and also staff. Good luck.
| Reference: | Why aren’t you getting the best contractors and what can you do about it (Part 2) from our JCG partner Peter Pilgrim at the Peter Pilgrim’s blog blog. |
