Findings from the TechServe Alliance Annual Conference & Tradeshow Women’s Luncheon

Picture if you will, a packed room of 60+ women all who work for or own IT services and staffing firms. Can you see it in your mind? Now, visualize that these women are all actively participating in lively and interactive discussions examining critical and provocative business issues relative to the IT services and staffing industry.

Got a clear picture? Well, now you know what the scene was like in Phoenix, AZ, last month at the Sixth Annual Women’s Luncheon during the 2011 TechServe Alliance Conference & Tradeshow.

ClearEdge Marketing was a proud sponsor of the luncheon with our own president, Leslie Vickrey—a well-known veteran marketer in the IT staffing and solutions industry—serving as the discussion facilitator.

For those who were unable to attend the conference luncheon (and it was a great one!), visit the ClearEdge Facebook page to view photos with highlights from the packed Women’s Luncheon, below. Enjoy the recap!

Remember the Importance of Role Models

Leslie kicked off the luncheon with a poignant story about role models. She specifically mentioned her own mother (a guest at the luncheon!) and how she learned so much from watching her career over the years. From job moves to launching ClearEdge—her mother’s advice has been instrumental.

She then asked the attendees to think about how important role models have been in their career (and personal) development. Role models are critical in establishing who each person becomes. Whether you have role models or act as a mentor to someone else, it’s the fact that this mentorship and experience structure exists that is so important.

To wrap up her opening remarks, Leslie challenged the group to think about what they can each do to help teach one another. How can you be a better mentor?

Roundtable Discussion Topics

The roundtable discussions varied and included the following topics:

• How far into social media should you be?
• Is your sales turnover high enough? Why managing out underperformers is a must.
• The best performance metrics for an IT staffing business.
• How to groom talent within your own business.

Roundtable Discussion Key Findings

Discover the key findings around these topics.

Mentors

• Establish a mentoring program to foster talent development.
• To help enhance the predominance of the mentor program and help individuals gain recognition, add mentors to individual titles.

Social Media

In a poll of the room, when asked who was active on social media, only half the room raised their hands. Clearly it’s time to get social! Other findings around social media included:

• LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, not surprisingly, were the top three social media sites used by attendees.
• Who owns social media? Answers varied, but for the majority, it was either marketing or recruiting.
• How should a company manage social media? The best approach was to establish a team approach or taskforce.
• Measurement was identified as key to participating in social media.
• How do you measure social media? In other words, how do you determine what worked and what didn’t? Google Analytics is the overwhelming tool used to measure results and ROI.
• What are some creative ways to use social media to drive website traffic? Attendees use social media to drive traffic to their website. If traffic increases, then social media is working.
• Others have taken to adding reading lists on their company LinkedIn Group page as conversation starters and traffic drivers.

To learn how to use social media to amplify up your recruiting efforts, download our recent webinar: Supercharge Your Recruiting Efforts Through Social Media, held in conjunction with TechServe Alliance.

Employee Motivation & Retention

What are some creative ideas you have implemented to help boost employee morale?

• Establish an MVP of the Week for consultants. This will help consultants feel more connected. Boomerang was recommended as an easy tool to launch such a program.
• Host contests and time-off incentives as a way to recognize stellar work.
• Launch “fun days” such as crazy tie day or sports team apparel day (in line with big games or season launches) as a way to boost morale.

Recruiting & Sales

How can the relationship between recruiting and sales be enhanced?

• Consider equal pay for sales and recruiting to lessen the divide and foster team building.
• Establish a mentoring program where in senior recruiters train new recruiters. The key is to incent both the senior and junior recruiter (split commission during training).
• Focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics. Hold sales accountable to metrics in CRM by turning metrics into reality. Make sure metrics are real—that they reflect real data and true effort.
• When recruiting, pay close attention for candidates that are “base salary” obsessed. This is a red flag that they are not self-motivated and not right for sales. Top sales performers want less base and more earning potential.

Miscellaneous Office Management

• Cross train skill sets to build the strongest team possible.
• There is a perception that “average” performers are neglected because the focus is on “toxic” performers—the squeaky wheel syndrome. For the betterment of the team, it’s imperative to take action sooner than later so you can focus on grooming the average performer into a stellar performer.
• Everyone agreed that timely time sheet entering and submission is a key challenge. It was suggested to take a positive approach and reward those who are regularly on time instead of continuing to focus on those who fail to enter on time.

At the end of the roundtable discussions, all of the findings were collected and presented as a whole to the group during a debriefing session of lessons learned.

Roundtable Discussion Moderators

Thank you to the wonderful group of women who served as table moderators and helped to foster such engaging small-group discussions.

• Threase Baker, Vice President of Operations & Owner, ABBTECH
• Jamie Delsing, Managing Partner, Consultis
• Leah McKelvey, Director, Corporate Marketing, CareerBuilder
• Stephanie Schroeder, Vice President, NetEffects
• Susan Thaden, President/CEO, Client Resources, Inc.
• Amy Vasquez, Executive Vice President, Strategic Staffing Solutions (S3)
• Karen Wilson, President, MAKE Corporation
• Mindy Zaziski, President & COO, FYI Business Solutions

All and all, it was a great afternoon of networking, camaraderie, strategies, best practices and laughs. We can’t wait for next year’s luncheon!

Have anything to add to the discussion? How have mentors influenced your career and life? How active are you on social media? How do you motivate and retain employees? How do you foster a stronger relationship between sales and recruiting? And, lastly, do you have any general business recommendations to share?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Business & Marketing Strategy, Communication Best Practices, Sales Best Practices, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.