Jesus said: ‘the sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me- John 10:27
“Summit Consulting Ltd focus is on improving the client’s condition. You are the leading experts in digital forensics, advisory and cyber security. I read on your website, under advisory you specialize in strategy, risk management and IFRS implementation. I have seen that you write a lot. I found a lot of resources on the website about risk and that is how I thank God for having made me come across the advert for the job.”
Impressed by the quality of most of our staff, many of our clients ask to recruit our consultants yet this is not sustainable for a young practice like ours. Losing a trained staff is expensive due to the high recruitment and learning costs. As consultants, when you go to the client, you must be one of the smartest person in the room. That status does not come cheap. One must invest in research and reading widely. We call it having intellectual firepower. On-boarding new staff involves training them about the firm’s strategy, values, culture and services. This takes over a year and it is expensive.
And yet it is difficult to retain a staff that has been offered a better pay elsewhere.
You see, a financial institution or competitor can afford to double one’s salary because they will get someone who is work-ready and therefore will hit the road running instantly and start making them money. For us, we have been with this staff for two or three years and all that time we have been training the staff and putting up with their mistakes which most of the time are expensive in terms of reputation for the firm. For example, a staff makes a mistake while making a technical presentation to top management team at a client. To grow you must extend such opportunities to the staff, while we risk losing the trust in the quality of our work by the client. But those are the kinds of sacrifices we must do as a firm to give confidence and empower our people for more senior roles and for their own career success.
By the time the employee is showing signs of being market ready, they want an easy way out. It then becomes challenging. No employer will try to keep someone who forgets so quickly. If you came when you are green, and no one would want to give you a chance. Then someone sees something in you and opens your world by giving you an opportunity and a chance to learn, then suddenly you ask to go, they will let you go!
To manage these challenges, as a firm we decided to recruit and train staff for our clients. If someone wants the staff, they pay us to get a quality ready employee. So, we placed several adverts for job opportunities.
We have been getting so many applications about 2o applications are received over our digital channels daily. As you can imagine, the numbers are too high to absorb. To save our time in interviews, we ask the staff to study our website, identify the consulting area of their expertise and passion and make a practical demo of what they can do and send it to a specified email address. We review the quality of the work and decide whether to interview the staff further or not. Over 80% of prospective employees do not respond!
The 20% of those who respond are usually good.
The candidates who have scored very well demonstrate a lot of interest in our company, do not just talk, they make demonstrations of how to use the tools they have like Microsoft Access, Excel and Word in advanced ways that transform staff productivity. Two weeks ago, a young lady demonstrated to us at the Interview how to automate Microsoft Word to generate automatic reports to ease management reporting. And when we asked about “What do you know about Summit Consulting Ltd?”
She surprised us with “Summit Consulting’s focus is improving the clients condition. You are the leading experts in digital forensics, advisory and cyber security. I read on your website, under advisory you specialize in strategy, risk management and IFRS implementation. I have seen that you write a lot. I found a lot of resources on the website about strategy and that is how I thanked God for having come across the advert for the job.”
You too can get any job you want or business opportunity of your interest if you demonstrate you understand the prospective employer or partner, make a demonstration of what you can DO instead of saying what you can you know. People want staff who are work ready.
I wish you success in your career.
Bernabas M. Mugisa, Mr. Strategy, helps plant the seed of transformation. Visit mustaphabm3.sg-host.com/ to contribute to Mustapha’s new book, MagneticLove Secrets. Your opportunity to contribute to better marriages.
