{"id":13250,"date":"2015-06-17T14:58:01","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T21:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=13250"},"modified":"2016-09-15T10:05:39","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T17:05:39","slug":"hired-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/2015\/06\/hired-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Hired Up: Fixing the Document Imaging Industry&#8217;s Recruiting Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_13255\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"ac\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13255\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13255\" src=\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Scott-MacGregor-300x284.jpg\" alt=\"Scott MacGregor\" width=\"300\" height=\"284\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-13255\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scott MacGregor<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Scott MacGregor is fired up. The former VP of Sales and Marketing at Flo-Tech, one of the top document imaging dealers in the United States, recently embarked on a new journey, launching his own unique national recruitment agency, SomethingNew LLC, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trysomethingnewnow.com\/\">www.TrySomethingNewNow.com<\/a>, earlier this year. It\u2019s exciting and challenging and is allowing MacGregor to leverage all the experience he\u2019s gained over the years from interacting with recruiters and hiring and building top sales and marketing teams. What\u2019s he\u2019s come up with is a twist on an old formula.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not a traditional recruiting agency,\u201d he says. \u201cWe do things in a unique way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For instance, SomethingNew LLC uses subject matter experts for the different fields where they place candidates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can\u2019t be experts in everything so those subject matter experts help us vet candidates at a very granular level that only they can understand,\u201d states MacGregor.<\/p>\n<p>MacGregor has some strong opinions about recruiting and the reason for this unique approach is because he feels that the old recruiting model is broken and is frustrating for people. The big issues with the current recruiting model, particularly as it applies to the document imaging industry, and what he\u2019s out to change include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Clients not knowing their exact sales rep ROI<\/li>\n<li>Clients not knowing their exact lost opportunity number<\/li>\n<li>Not building a strong bench<\/li>\n<li>Not having a set in stone talent acquisition strategy<\/li>\n<li>Negotiating for the lowest possible price with a recruiter<\/li>\n<li>Using too many recruiters<\/li>\n<li>Not building a true partnership with a great firm<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThese mistakes are universal and not specific to the BTA channel,\u201d opines MacGregor even though he finds them a bit more prevalent within the channel than outside of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA dealership\u2019s sales and marketing engine fuels growth, but it also has the potential to hasten its demise, especially as Managed Print has turned into Managed Services and people are trying to transition their businesses,&#8221; explains MacGregor.<\/p>\n<p>In his experience working with CEOs or VPs of Sales or Marketing he\u2019s found that many don\u2019t have a handle on these key recruiting issues and by not addressing them it\u2019s difficult to be successful.<\/p>\n<p>Do people realize they\u2019re making these mistakes?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are some intuitive things people know they should be doing but don\u2019t,\u201d responds MacGregor. \u201cBuilding a bench is one. Everybody knows you always have to be recruiting. If you have a sales team and it\u2019s more than one person, you\u2019ve got C\u2019s you need to replace and B\u2019s you need to turn into A\u2019s. You should be constantly evaluating that team like a sports team would. CEO\u2019s and sales leaders know this, but don\u2019t have a mechanism in place to build that bench. They don\u2019t have the time to and I don\u2019t think they know how to go about doing it effectively. Most firms will only start looking if there\u2019s an imminent opening in which case it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He feels that building a bench is difficult to do internally, which is why some organizations use recruiting firms. The real challenge is finding a great one.<\/p>\n<p>MacGregor\u2019s firm is selective in how they build that bench and he cautions that it should be done in a way that doesn\u2019t involve talking to candidates about a job that\u2019s open today, but by creating a talent pool to pull from when the appropriate position needs to be filled.<\/p>\n<p>He also cautions against using too many recruiters and about negotiating for the lowest possible price.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome people think if I use one recruiter my chance of finding that person is X percent, but if I spread it out to multiple recruiters, my percentage goes up,\u201d contends MacGregor. \u201cThat\u2019s not true at all. What happens is if you don\u2019t give a recruiter some exclusivity, and you shouldn\u2019t unless they can demonstrate they\u2019re different and you\u2019ve built a relationship with a great firm, you\u2019ve diluted [the search].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why is that?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause all recruiters are working on multiple searches for multiple companies,\u201d responds MacGregor. \u201cThey have a choice of who they\u2019re going to spend their time on. Recruiting is extremely time consuming. We are busy long after 5 p.m. and on weekends because that is when many candidates have time to talk and be interviewed by us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The same holds true for negotiating the lowest possible price.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou may feel good when you do that, but at the end of day is the recruiter going to focus on filling a position where they can make $5,000 or $1,000?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of dollars and cents, understanding the sales rep\u2019s ROI is something that many dealers working with a recruiter fail to have a solid grasp of. MacGregor has seen that over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2019How can I pay X thousands of dollars for that person?\u2019\u201d is a common response. \u201cBut if they looked at the sales rep\u2019s ROI that\u2019s a small price to pay if you find the right person,&#8221; he says. &#8220;If you do that your fee payment is nothing in comparison to what that person will bring in. It\u2019s a one-time payment and if that person is successful for a number of years it\u2019s an extremely nominal number.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Something else that MacGregor finds important is understanding one\u2019s lost opportunity number.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery simply, what is the cost\/loss on a monthly basis for having an unproductive territory, either because it is an open territory or a territory that is being underserved by a C player?\u201d he says. \u201cTypically you are losing the cost of a recruiter\u2019s fee every month. That\u2019s why it is so critical to have a consistent way to fill positions with A players and to do it quickly. Knowing your lost opportunity number is the first step.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest lessons MacGregor has learned from working with recruiters and watching other dealers hire is that you have to follow a certain process, or more importantly, you need a process.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI talk to people all the time and they have a loosey-goosey interview or talent acquisition process. If you don\u2019t have consistency it\u2019s like a recipe where sometimes you put in a little of this, sometimes you put in a little of that and you get a different result every time and then wonder why this person worked out and this one didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Having a talent acquisition strategy involves not only identifying the criteria you\u2019re looking for in a specific candidate, but the steps for vetting that candidate. That\u2019s a problem not only in document imaging dealerships, but with recruiting agencies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVetting a candidate the right way is very time consuming. There are interviews, thorough resume checks, LinkedIn profile checks, Google searches, reviews of social media like Twitter, reference checks and on and on. Sometimes people do these things, sometimes they don\u2019t,\u201d states MacGregor. \u201cIt has to be consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MacGregor doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s too much to demand that a recruiter do their due diligence. In his previous position as VP of Sales &amp; Marketing, he\u2019s seen it over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d consistently get people where their r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and Linkedin profile don\u2019t match. That\u2019s something a recruiter doing minimal due diligence should be catching, not me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another issue with some recruiters is that they don\u2019t think long term and are more apt to just put candidates in front of people without understanding the company\u2019s needs or what the company does.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason I started this company is because of 24 years of frustration where I would get e-mails or phone calls on a weekly basis from recruiters who had \u2018perfect\u2019 candidates for me. Yet I\u2019d never spoken to them and when I asked them what they knew about my company and the positions we needed to fill they didn\u2019t know anything. When you think about that, it\u2019s like saying I have a perfect house for you, but I have no idea where you want to live, if you have kids, or whether the school system is important to you. The audacity to call someone up and say you have a perfect candidate when you\u2019ve never spoken was always crazy to me. That\u2019s having no process and not being willing to take the time to figure out other than a wild guess what that company is looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s beneficial too to for the recruiter to understand what the candidate is looking for. \u201cYou have to know exactly what the candidate is looking for and what the company is looking for in order to figure out if it\u2019s a match,\u201d says MacGregor. \u201cIf you know what the company is looking for, but are guessing on the candidate based on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 or a LinkedIn profile, you\u2019re going to be wrong almost all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly, he doesn\u2019t believe a document imaging dealership needs to only hire people with experience in the industry. Other intangibles are often much more important.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe look at all this criteria and one might be \u2018I\u2019d like somebody with industry experience,\u2019 but that may not be a must have, but a nice to have,\u201d explains MacGregor. \u201cTheir motivation and drive, business acumen could be must haves, and those are weighted more heavily the way we do it. MPS, MNS, copier sales, it\u2019s not rocket science. If you have a decent on-boarding process these are things that can be taught to someone who has the intangibles\u2014a strong work ethic, good business acumen, and the list goes on and on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coming from someone who possesses many of those intangibles plus over 20 years of experience in the document imaging industry, MacGregor seems to have a good handle on what his former colleagues in the industry may be looking for and he&#8217;s ready to help.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott MacGregor is fired up. The former VP of Sales and Marketing at Flo-Tech, one of the top document imaging dealers in the United States, recently embarked on a new journey, launching his own unique national recruitment agency, SomethingNew LLC, www.TrySomethingNewNow.com, earlier this year. It\u2019s exciting and challenging and is allowing MacGregor to leverage all the experience he\u2019s gained over the years from interacting with recruiters and hiring and building top sales and marketing teams. What\u2019s he\u2019s come up with is a twist on an old formula. \u201cWe\u2019re not a traditional recruiting agency,\u201d he says. \u201cWe do things in a unique way.\u201d For instance, SomethingNew LLC uses subject matter experts for the different fields where they place candidates. \u201cWe can\u2019t be experts in everything so those subject matter experts help us vet candidates at a very granular level that only they can understand,\u201d states MacGregor. MacGregor has some strong opinions about recruiting and the reason for this unique approach is because he feels that the old recruiting model is broken and is frustrating for people. The big issues with the current recruiting model, particularly as it applies to the document imaging industry, and what he\u2019s out to change include: Clients not knowing their exact sales rep ROI Clients not knowing their exact lost opportunity number Not building a strong bench Not having a set in stone talent acquisition strategy Negotiating for the lowest possible price with a recruiter Using too many recruiters Not building a true partnership with a great firm \u201cThese mistakes are universal and not specific to the BTA channel,\u201d opines MacGregor even though he finds them a bit more prevalent within the channel than outside of it. \u201cA dealership\u2019s sales and marketing engine fuels growth, but it also has the potential to hasten its demise, especially as Managed Print has turned into Managed Services and people are trying to transition their businesses,&#8221; explains MacGregor. In his experience working with CEOs or VPs of Sales or Marketing he\u2019s found that many don\u2019t have a handle on these key recruiting issues and by not addressing them it\u2019s difficult to be successful. Do people realize they\u2019re making these mistakes? \u201cThere are some intuitive things people know they should be doing but don\u2019t,\u201d responds MacGregor. \u201cBuilding a bench is one. Everybody knows you always have to be recruiting. If you have a sales team and it\u2019s more than one person, you\u2019ve got C\u2019s you need to replace and B\u2019s you need to turn into A\u2019s. You should be constantly evaluating that team like a sports team would. CEO\u2019s and sales leaders know this, but don\u2019t have a mechanism in place to build that bench. They don\u2019t have the time to and I don\u2019t think they know how to go about doing it effectively. Most firms will only start looking if there\u2019s an imminent opening in which case it\u2019s too late.\u201d He feels that building a bench is difficult to do internally, which is why some organizations use recruiting firms. The real challenge is finding a great one. MacGregor\u2019s firm is selective in how they build that bench and he cautions that it should be done in a way that doesn\u2019t involve talking to candidates about a job that\u2019s open today, but by creating a talent pool to pull from when the appropriate position needs to be filled. He also cautions against using too many recruiters and about negotiating for the lowest possible price. \u201cSome people think if I use one recruiter my chance of finding that person is X percent, but if I spread it out to multiple recruiters, my percentage goes up,\u201d contends MacGregor. \u201cThat\u2019s not true at all. What happens is if you don\u2019t give a recruiter some exclusivity, and you shouldn\u2019t unless they can demonstrate they\u2019re different and you\u2019ve built a relationship with a great firm, you\u2019ve diluted [the search].\u201d Why is that? \u201cBecause all recruiters are working on multiple searches for multiple companies,\u201d responds MacGregor. \u201cThey have a choice of who they\u2019re going to spend their time on. Recruiting is extremely time consuming. We are busy long after 5 p.m. and on weekends because that is when many candidates have time to talk and be interviewed by us.\u201d The same holds true for negotiating the lowest possible price. \u201cYou may feel good when you do that, but at the end of day is the recruiter going to focus on filling a position where they can make $5,000 or $1,000?\u201d Speaking of dollars and cents, understanding the sales rep\u2019s ROI is something that many dealers working with a recruiter fail to have a solid grasp of. MacGregor has seen that over and over again. \u201c\u2019How can I pay X thousands of dollars for that person?\u2019\u201d is a common response. \u201cBut if they looked at the sales rep\u2019s ROI that\u2019s a small price to pay if you find the right person,&#8221; he says. &#8220;If you do that your fee payment is nothing in comparison to what that person will bring in. It\u2019s a one-time payment and if that person is successful for a number of years it\u2019s an extremely nominal number.\u201d Something else that MacGregor finds important is understanding one\u2019s lost opportunity number. \u201cVery simply, what is the cost\/loss on a monthly basis for having an unproductive territory, either because it is an open territory or a territory that is being underserved by a C player?\u201d he says. \u201cTypically you are losing the cost of a recruiter\u2019s fee every month. That\u2019s why it is so critical to have a consistent way to fill positions with A players and to do it quickly. Knowing your lost opportunity number is the first step.\u201d One of the biggest lessons MacGregor has learned from working with recruiters and watching other dealers hire is that you have to follow a certain process, or more importantly, you need a process. \u201cI talk to people all the time and they have a loosey-goosey interview or talent acquisition process. If you don\u2019t have consistency it\u2019s like a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1638],"tags":[2275,1634,2274],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13250"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13281,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250\/revisions\/13281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}