Kinsa Group Blog

Ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information coming at you each day?

With the barrage of data pouring in from newspapers, TV, the internet, social media, RSS feeds, e-mails, voicemails and good-old-fashioned face-to-face meetings, finding the critical information you need amidst all the “white noise” can be exhausting.

Take the BLS Monthly Employment Situation, for example.  It contains monthly employment estimates for over 1,000 industries from its Current Employment Statistics program.  However, the changes in these overall employment levels tend to be delayed in the monthly labor reports – making it a lagging indicator of economic trends.

Sound like a lot of white noise?

Not entirely.  Temporary help employment numbers, which are part of the monthly BLS report, are generally considered to be a coincident indicator for overall employment.  This means that changes in temporary help employment tend to forecast subsequent changes in overall employment and coincide with changes in economic activity.  Why?  Many companies, including food and beverage industry firms, use temporary staffing as a means to quickly adjust their operations to meet fluctuating demands for their products and services.

Here’s how to stay on top of employment trends with temporary help data in the BLS report:

1. Go to the BLS Current Employment Statistics home page.
2. Then select either the HTML or PDF version of the “Employment Situation Summary.”
3. Data for temporary help services can be found in Table B-1 (page 30 of the report’s PDF version).

The BLS CES can also help you key in on highly specific industry employment numbers.  Custom data views are available for various food and beverage industry segments (food packaging, food and beverage distribution, food and beverage manufacturing, food and beverage processing, etc.) based on NAICS codes:

1. Follow this link to Create Customized Tables.
2. Select the data you wish to view, the industry super sector, and the industry.  For quick access to food and beverage industry NAICS codes, visit NAICScodes.com.
3. Select either “Seasonally Adjusted” or “Not Seasonally Adjusted” or both (Seasonally adjusted data will remove any changes in employment related to normal seasonal hiring or layoffs, thereby recording current trends or irregularities.).
4. Select “Get Data” to retrieve the selected information.

Kinsa Group is poised to help you manage your specialized food and beverage recruitment needs as the economy slowly improves.  Serving companies throughout the United States for over 25 years, we can deliver the highly qualified professional and senior-to-executive level management candidates through our unique food & beverage recruiting process.

Help your recruiting service service help you.

Continuous improvement should be a goal of any business relationship – your relationship with your recruiting company is no exception.  Help your recruiting service deliver better results by providing them with frequent, measurable feedback.  By letting them know what they’re doing right, as well as how they can improve, you can make your recruiting even more efficient and cost-effective.

Ask internal staff who interact with your recruiting firm during the hiring process to periodically fill out a simple report card.  It can evaluate quality of fills, ease of working with the recruiting specialist, timeliness of service, etc.  Then, share the feedback with your recruiting firm.  They will use the information to identify opportunities for improvement, to further customize the service they deliver, and to make your job as easy as possible.

Here are a few sample questions to consider:

The Recruiting Firm

1. How well does the recruiting firm understand the food & beverage processing industry?
2. How valuable is the recruiting specialist during the initial phases of the search (e.g., position specification, determining a salary range, developing a recruiting strategy, etc.)?
3. How well does the recruiting firm meet your expectations?
4. How would you rate the recruiting firm’s service, as compared to other firms you’ve used?
5. How would you rate your recruiting specialist (service, industry knowledge, professionalism, etc.)?

The Candidates

1. How well do the candidates referred fit the requirements of the available position?
2. How well qualified are the candidates to work in the food and beverage industry?
3. How would you rate the candidates’ attitudes (i.e., willingness to accept the position offered, professionalism, etc.)?
4. How would you rate the interview-to-hire ratio (number of candidates referred to find the right individual)?

How well are we doing?

Kinsa Group specialists are experts in recruiting for the food & beverage industry.  Our goal is to provide you with the “ideal match” – talent who optimally fits your company’s philosophy and culture.  We want to know what we’re doing right and where we can improve.  Please contact us with your feedback, so we can deliver even better results for your organization.

These days, competition for positions in the food and beverage industry is fierce.  With a greater number of candidates vying for fewer openings, you may find yourself having to say “No” more often.  Needless to say, writing rejection letters can be an unpleasant and stressful part of the hiring process.

But even when you can’t offer a job applicant the position, you can still end the interview process on a positive note.  Here are some quick tips for writing candidate rejection letters in a constructive way, to build good will with candidates and position your company as an employer of choice:

• Send out the rejection letter promptly.  If you’re certain you will not be hiring the individual, let him know that he was not selected as soon as possible.  Even when the news is bad, your timely follow-up will convey a high level of professionalism.
• Always use formal company letterhead for a rejection letter and never handwrite it.
• Address your candidate by name.  Further customize the letter with the position for which he applied, as well as a supportive comment about the applicant’s qualifications, experience or enthusiasm.  Although a rejection letter is basically a form letter, your candidate shouldn’t feel as though it is.
• Be direct, but gracious.  Make it clear that there were other candidates more qualified for the job, but do so in a respectful way.
• When appropriate, encourage further action.  If the candidate is a good culture fit, and may be qualified for other openings with your company, say so.  Encourage him to stay in touch and apply again.
• Always end on a positive note.  Thank the candidate for applying and interviewing.  Wish him good luck in his career development.  Remember, this may be the final impression this individual has of your company – make sure it’s a favorable one.
• Close the letter formally with “Sincerely,” or “Best wishes,” and sign your name.

Don’t want to write rejection letters? 

Call Kinsa national food and beverage industry recruiters with your professional placement needs.  We’ll handle every step of the process – from recruiting to assessment and initial interviews - and only present you with the most qualified candidates.  If you decide not to hire an individual we refer, just let us know and we’ll take care of the rest.

An effective mentoring program provides a wide range of business benefits:

• Facilitated onboarding.  Mentoring speeds up the process of bringing on new hires as well as redeploying existing employees into new lines of work.
• Increased employee satisfaction and retention.  Research has shown that employees who participate in mentoring programs have higher job satisfaction and reduced turnover.
• Improved employee productivity.  When employees are mentored, they can get answers to common problems quickly – without wasting time on rediscovering or re-inventing solutions.
• Effective career growth / succession planning.  Mentoring programs help employees reach their full career potential, grooming them to fill key roles as part of an organization’s succession plan.
• Knowledge management and retention.  Mentoring promotes effective knowledge sharing, to reduce the risk of losing critical skills and knowledge when employees leave.

Obviously, mentors can play an important role in ensuring your company’s continued success.  But while identifying a budding protégé may be straightforward, identifying a potential mentor can be more complex.  Whether that person is you, one of your managers, or an outside expert, a mentor should possess the following professional and personal attributes:

1. Senior-level business experience.  To provide guidance, the expert should have several years experience working in senior corporate positions.  At a minimum, the expert should be a professional peer to the protégé.
2. Interpersonal and political “know-how.”  The expert ought to be proficient in handling all sorts of complex interpersonal dynamics within the context of office politics.  To be an effective trainer, the expert must be able to help the protégé navigate the tricky political waters of his organization.
3. Integrity and confidentiality.  Professional development involves discussing high-level, strategic, off-the-record information, as well as sensitive personal issues.  Honesty and discretion are essential when broaching these confidential topics.
4. Organizational and personal insight.  The expert must have an in-depth understanding of the company’s objectives, needs and hierarchy.  Equally, he must also appreciate the protégé’s strengths, weaknesses and goals.  To achieve professional development goals, the trainer must align both the company’s and the protégé’s interests.
5. Flexibility and ingenuity.  When egos, ambitions and agendas collide, sparks fly.  What works for an organization one day may be thrown out the window the next.  An expert trainer must be able to shift gears, develop solutions on the fly, throw out tactics that prove ineffective and come up with new ones – fast.  He must be comfortable dealing with uncertainty to navigate a corporate environment rife with change.

Need a promising protégé?  Looking for your next mentor? Contact us today.  As a national food and beverage industry recruiter, Kinsa can provide the talented individuals – from R&D directors to food service sales managers to process engineers - your organization needs.

It’s hard to believe that some of these actions would occur, but we’ve seen it happen in 2010!

Keep the door wide open for offers, remember…

DO NOT:

•  Hug the interviewer
• Wear jeans to the interview
• Feel badly if you are overdressed compared to the interviewer
• Answer (or play with) your mobile phone while in the interview
• Discuss your opinion on politics or religion with the interviewer (no matter how ancient)
• Yawn in front of the interviewer
• Ask the interviewer if you can work from home (if the job was not presented to you as a home office job)
• Chew gum during the interview
• Tell jokes during the interview
• Smoke during or before the interview
• Say anything negative about former colleagues, supervisors, or employers
• Bring up or discuss personal issues or family problems.
• Ask about salary, vacation, or other benefits until after the offer
• Act as though you would take any job or are desperate for employment.
• Forget to contact Kinsa Group and/or the new employer if you decide not to show up for your first day on the job

The time and costs associated with recruiting, screening, interviewing, evaluating and hiring employees are significant.  So why do it on your own?  A recruitment services firm can provide quick and cost-effective access to the talented professionals you need:

• Position Specification and Search Strategy Development.  Before starting a search, a professional recruitment firm will help you precisely define what type of individual you are looking for (skills, experience, traits, etc.), and identify the most expedient and cost-effective ways to find that candidate.  A quicker, more targeted search improves hiring success while reducing the cost of vacancy in the position.
• Recruiting.  A recruitment firm executes a comprehensive search strategy on your behalf, including advertising, database searches, cold-calls to target companies, social networking and generating referrals.  A recruitment firm with industry specialization, such as Kinsa Group, can leverage its experience, industry contacts and recruiting economies of scale to produce results faster.
• Assessing and Evaluating.  By working with a search firm, you save your HR department the time and expense associated with screening résumés, arranging and conducting initial interviews, and checking candidate references.  This frees your internal staff to focus on other key priorities.
• Guarantees.  To help ensure hiring success, many recruiting firms offer placement guarantees.
• Outsourcing.  Some recruiting firms, such as Kinsa Group, can act as your company’s internal recruitment function for a portion or all of your jobs – handling the entire recruiting / hiring process from job profiling through the on-boarding of the new hire, including staff, technology, method and reporting.   Known as Recruitment Process Outsourcing, this service improves your company’s time to hire, increases the quality of the candidate pool, provides verifiable metrics, reduces cost and improves governmental compliance.  RPO changes fixed investment costs into variable costs that can vary with fluctuation in recruitment activity.

Kinsa Group – A Better Way to Hire Food and Beverage Industry Professionals

Hiring on your own can be an expensive, time-consuming and frustrating process – so don’t do it alone.  Contact Kinsa today.  Using our unique recruiting process, our dynamic staff of skilled recruiting professionals will make your next hire a success.

Because of their drive to achieve personal career goals, high performers are unafraid to take risks – this includes leaving your company for a competitor’s.  So how do you keep your best and brightest working for you? 

Use these insights to motivate your high performers and maximize their job satisfaction:

• They need opportunities to learn and grow.  Ironically, the more high performers are able to grow professionally within your organization (and therefore become more marketable), the more likely they are to stay with you.  Your company must meet their need to remain highly marketable.
• They need recognition.  Although fueled by their own need to achieve personal career goals, you must give them recognition due.  When appropriate, let them shine.  Stroke their egos, but only when merited.
• They need continual career development.  Recruit senior employees to mentor high performers, helping them to set goals, develop their careers and take on tasks beyond those designated in their job descriptions.  Mentors should use their status and influence to help these protégés gain entry to groups and experiences that would be career enhancing.
• They need their individual goals to align with their company’s.  As an employer of these talented individuals, you must match their skills and interests with their responsibilities.
• They value additional non-compensation benefits.  Wellness programs that promote the general health of employees (e.g., exercise and nutrition programs, health screenings, etc.) are an important factor in a high performer’s decision to remain in his current position.  Additionally, work / life balance programs (e.g., casual dress days, educational seminars, flex hours, job sharing, etc.) increase their overall job satisfaction.

A final note.  One of the biggest reasons employees don’t return to former employers is because they’re embarrassed to think about how to approach coming back.  So if a high performer leaves your company for another, let him know that the door is open for his return, in case he realizes that the proverbial grass isn’t greener on the other side. 

The Kinsa Group specializes in recruiting and assessing high performing professionals for the food and beverage processing industry.  Visit our website to learn more.

The results are in for FoodProcessing.com’s Fourth Annual Salary & Job Satisfaction Survey of over 1,600 professionals in the food and beverage industry. 

Here are some of the survey’s key findings:

• The average pay in the food & beverage industry declined by 6.3% over the past 12 months to $93,537 – the lowest average since the survey started in 2007.
• With the exception of Plant Operations, every job category tracked showed a drop in salary.
• Marketing and Sales people faced a 19% pay cut, dropping from a six-figure salary in 2009 to $84,726.
• 60% of respondents said they get a raise every year, down from 65% in 2009.
• Average hours worked per week went up 23 minutes from last year to 47.5 hours.

The survey results also contain plenty of respondent comments – both positive and negative – which describe professionals’ overall level of job satisfaction.

To find out more about salary trends in the food and beverage processing industry, or to locate the ideal candidate for an opening in your organization, contact Kinsa Group today.

The word “diva” no longer refers exclusively to a distinguished female opera star.

In recent years, the term has commonly been used to describe any difficult employee, male or female, who:

• is used to getting what he wants;
• thinks he needs no guidance or management;
• lives for drama in the workplace;
• is hyper-critical, sensitive and intolerant;
• is great at what he does.

If you have a diva on staff, you need to learn how to keep him in line without driving him out the door.  You need to find a way for your employees to co-exist peacefully and productively.  Here are some techniques for reigning in this high performing – albeit challenging – type of employee:

1. Nip annoying behaviors in the bud.  Discuss problematic behaviors immediately – before they develop into patterns.  This allows you to address issues without releasing a wave of emotional build-up.
2. Act based on facts – not gossip or rumor.  Too often, co-workers compound problems by spreading gossip.  So when drama unfolds, don’t assume what others tell you is true.  If you haven’t witnessed a diva’s inappropriate behavior yourself, look into it further.  Listen to both sides of the story, to be sure you get all the facts.
3. Keep open lines of communication.  Divas need to vent more than other employees.  Keep drama to a minimum by maintaining an “open door” policy.  If a diva has a chance to voice frustrations to you, he will be less likely to stir up conflict with other employees.
4. Keep your emotions in check.  Never stand around arguing with a diva.  Make your point once, clarify if necessary, and move on.  A difficult employee may get a rise out of seeing you lose your cool, so stay calm and positive.  If you need to, walk away from the situation and come back once you’ve regained your composure.
5. Make your diva part of the solution.  Give your problematic employee the opportunity to help develop a solution to the problem.  He is more likely to implement behavior change if he’s at least partly responsible for developing it.
6. Get outside help.  If sparks fly when you and your diva communicate, ask a neutral third party to step in.  With no ulterior motive or emotional ties to the situation, an objective individual may improve how you communicate and work together.

Of course, the best way to handle difficult employees is to avoid hiring them in the first place.  As experienced national food and beverage industry recruiters, Kinsa Group provides a range of recruiting and assessment services that identify potentially difficult candidates – and keep them out of your talent pool.  Contact us to find out more about our recruiting and assessment services.

According to a worldwide survey of senior managers, years of staff cutbacks have undermined trust in the workplace.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s new report, titled “Companies at the Crossroads,” recommends that to restore that trust, companies must put their employees first  - or risk experiencing deep talent erosion and sustained underperformance as the global economy recovers.

Here are some key statistics from the December 2009 report:

• 29% of business executives surveyed said employee engagement is low – and that they expect to lose key people as talent demand grows.
• 41% of respondents cite a shortage of talent in their organization.
• 44% of executives surveyed said they find it increasingly difficult to recruit talented employees.
• 50% of respondents plan to ramp up recruitment in 2010, with only 18% freezing headcounts.

The survey found that while executives understand the need to focus on their talent, greater action is needed to develop sound talent management strategies for the future.  Low trust among mid-level employees, coupled with low graduate recruitment and an ongoing demand for senior executive talent, is creating a perfect storm for businesses:  the most talented employees may be headed out the door, with fresh talent not yet recruited.

Bottom line, these trends can have a serious impact on your business as the economy recovers.  The Kinsa Group is prepared to help.  We proactively recruit to ensure you always have immediate access to the top food and beverage industry professionals you need – especially when that talent becomes hard to find.  Visit our website to find out what we can do for you.