A/E Recruitment & Retention Cookbook will show you how your firm can gain a competitive advantage in the A/E talent war. You’ll learn where to find the best people, how to screen and interview them, how to craft an offer letter that gets accepted, and how to keep the best people you’ve fought hard to win. You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes look at what some firms are doing to motivate and reward their best performers in a series of A/E firm case studies that feature firms of all types and sizes at work in the industry today.
Summary of What's Inside:
Learn the new rules of recruiting in today's A/E marketplace
Attract and retain the best people in the industry
Effectively screen and interview candidates and sell your firm
Learn how to craft offer letters that can't be refused
Hear about common recruitment challenges firms face and what pitfalls to avoid
Read case studies and see examples of how firms just like yours are positioning themselves to win today's talent war
Learn the new rules of recruiting in today's A/E marketplace
Attract and retain the best people in the industry
Effectively screen and interview candidates and sell your firm
Learn how to craft offer letters that can't be refused
Hear about common recruitment challenges firms face and what pitfalls to avoid
Read case studies and see examples of how firms just like yours are positioning themselves to win today's talent war
Once upon a time, finding and hiring great people who would stay with the firm long-term wasn’t all that difficult. Talented people would walk in and ask for a job, and it was a relatively simple matter to keep them for the duration of their careers. Times have changed.
A/E firm leaders cite recruitment and retention as the number one challenge they are facing, and there doesn’t appear to be any relief in sight. A dearth of engineering and science graduates and the lure of big money in the IT sector are just two reasons the A/E labor market is so tight. But it’s not a hopeless situation; smart firms are still attracting and retaining the best and brightest. You can, too.
There’s a new talent war out there today, and smart firms know how to win it. They’ve figured out what compels people to take positions with their firms and they’ve set aside the necessary resources to not only attract the best, but keep them long-term as well.
A/E Recruitment & Retention Cookbook will show you how these firms have gained a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining the right people. You’ll learn where to find the best people, how to screen and interview them, how to craft an offer letter that gets accepted, and how to keep the best people you’ve fought hard to win. You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes look at what some firms are doing to motivate and reward their best performers in a series of A/E firm case studies that feature firms of all types and sizes at work in the industry today. Find out what works in other firms just like yours and model your recruitment and retention program off ones that have proven successful.
Finding and keeping the best people who will make a real contribution to your firm isn’t just a fairy tale. A/E Recruitment & Retention Cookbook will show you how to make the fantasy of the ideal staff a reality!
Foreword
Chapter 1: The New Talent War
Recruiting trends
Best Firm to Work For culture
Elements of a Best Firm
Hiring process
Chapter 2: Creating a Recruiting Machine
Continuous recruiting
“Supply-side” human resources management
Recruiting is marketing
Build a database
Appoint a central hiring contact
Finding the right holistic fit
Organizational upgrade
Chapter 3: What’s Your Immediate Hiring Need?
Alternatives to hiring
Authorization to hire
Position descriptions
Chapter 4: Where are the Candidates?
In-house resources
Employee referrals
Professional & client organizations
College recruiting
Advertising
Internet searching
Reading resumes
Responding to applicants and general inquiries
International hiring
Direct recruiting
Connecting with candidates
Chapter 5: The Art of Interviewing
Who to interview?
Prescreening
Internet prescreening
Telephone prescreening
Interview location
Interview preparation
Effective interviewing
Interview questions
The compensation discussion
Unofficial offers
Selling the firm
Closing the interview
Chapter 6: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
Comparing the candidates
Check references
Education and other credentials
Psychological tests
Making the offer
Compensation surveys
Signing bonuses
Title, perks, and other benefits
Relocation
The offer letter
Extending the offer
Waiting for an answer
Chapter 7: New Employee Orientation
Making new hires pay off
Orientation
Realistic expectations
Early feedback
Training
Terminating a new employee
Chapter 8: Now That They’re Here, How do we Keep Them?
Why people leave
Why people stay
Developing an ongoing retention strategy
Connecting workspace and culture
A word about burnout
Recruit-proofing the firm
Chapter 9: A/E Recruitment & Retention Case Studies
Appledore Engineering, Inc.
Atwell-Hicks
Clough Harbour & Associates LLP
Crafton Tull Sparks
Environmental Services, Inc.
The Forrester Group
Hinman Consulting Engineers
JCJ Architecture
The John R. McAdams Company, Inc.
Sasaki Associates, Inc.
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