Syntagma Group Named to BBJ’s list of Fast 50 Honorees

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The Boston Business Journal has released its exclusive list of 2022 Fast 50 honorees, representing the 50 fastest-growing private companies in Massachusetts. Syntagma Group is honored to have made the list. It’s worth noting, The BBJ Fast50 is calculated based strictly on a company’s growth percentages.

On Thursday, May 19th at the Long Wharf Marriot Hotel, the Boston Business Journal will be honoring all winners at an exclusive celebration. Not only will honoree companies get recognized but their actual ranking will be revealed as part of the celebration.

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slow and steady is not winning the hiring race

Who’s Winning The Hiring Race in 2022?

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Is it time to consider “Rapid Hiring” or will slow and steady remain your HR team’s hiring pace? Well, there’s one company that’s given up on the slow and steady path and that’s Home Depot. With plans to onboard 100,000 new employees this spring, Home Depot is making job offers nearly on the spot.

So how’s Home Depot and other companies big and small accelerating their hiring? They’re using a combination of speed, simplicity and substance. In the case of Home Depot the speed and simplicity can be found in the use of text messages. The substance can be found in the artificial intelligence used for background checks to qualify applicants.

Other industries might want to follow suit. Take, for example, the world of Business Management Consulting. Traditionally, slow and steady has been the general consensus for this industry’s hiring life cycle. However, will this proven approach still win the top candidates in 2022 and beyond? Likely not. Especially with labor shortages hitting the industry just as demand for new hires continues to grow. Could a quicker approach to hiring be on the horizon? All signs point to yes!

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Bigger Doesn’t Mean Better in Management Consulting

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As more and more hiring managers scramble to fill consulting positions, data strongly suggests the hiring cycles of old are now a cause for concern. Why? Well, because top talent is getting more appealing job offers earlier in the recruitment process which means hiring agility is becoming a key differentiator.

Today’s methods for selecting and placing the right person into the right job are too rigid. As a result, the more agile competitor wins the talent. This means bigger isn’t always better, especially in management consulting services. 

Take Syntagma Group for example. We’re a boutique consultant agency with 300+ years of collective experience. This small size and deep experience allows us to better understand client requirements and changes compared to our larger, less agile competitors. 

Now check out these three common hiring hangups when searching for top consulting talent that a firm’s size alone can’t fix.

  • Hang Up 1: Inexperienced talent acquisition team
  • Hang Up 2: Offshore talent
  • Hang Up 3: Uncertain business relationship

If you’re experiencing any of these hiring hang ups then check out Syntagma’s consulting services team. There’s nothing offshore about this team. 

Our senior talent acquisition professionals are standing by ready to showcase top performing engineers who have long term relationships with our team.

We’ve also setup retention programs to reduce your exposure in the unlikely event an engineer goes MIA. That’s right. You’re protected. It’s that simple.

Ultimately it all comes down to trust. You can trust we’ll deliver with the same simplicity and speed we give all our customers.

Why? Because we care just a little bit more than most. We aren’t speculating. It’s just obvious to anyone who considers our process, benefits and long-term relationships.

Syntagma Group’s consulting services just may be the answer to those hiring hang ups.

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hiring is a process moneyball

Top Three Hiring Trends To Define 2022

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Technology fads come and go, but what doesn’t change is the technical complexity of hiring the right talent. Today’s methods for selecting and placing the right person into the right job are too rigid. As a result, the more agile competitor wins the talent.

What may be holding back some hiring managers is a long-held belief about how their company should hire. We believe 2022 is the year such beliefs begin to wane.

Given this boost in hiring agility, below are three hiring trends we predict will shape staffing and consulting services in 2022 and beyond.

  1. #substance – Business owners will re-stabilize their core executive team for a more predictable path to success.
  2. #simplicity – Hiring managers will find more creative ways to source technical consultants to maintain business continuity.
  3. #speed – Department heads will boost their hiring pace to remain both competitive and viable.

2022 will essentially be a reminder that substance, simplicity and speed are the real keys to solving your hiring problems. In these challenging times, remember to stay focused on the end goal and that improvement is a continuous process.

THE RESOLUTION

Syntagma Group is a leader in the fast paced world of consulting and staffing advisory and believes the time is right to:

  • Make a resolution to upgrade your hiring mindset in 2022.
  • Make a resolution to upgrade your hiring vision in 2022.
  • Make a resolution to upgrade your hiring partner in 2022.

THE SOLUTION

While executing on these three pillars of success above, remember to always look for better ways to work the system. For example, a better way to hiring is Syntagma’s Playlist App. Check it out. It’s mobile-based, easy-to-use and built with speed in mind.

THE NEXT STEPS

More Hiring Hang Ups in Queue for 2022

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In our last post we broke down how your workforce will eventually force the CEO’s hand if the company is slow to adapt to change. Why? Today’s workforce now has much more leverage in the employer-employee relationship. So much so that many HR experts sense that in 2022, companies will be reporting more and more hiring hang ups. Much of this is due to ongoing talent shortage and skills gap. However, a new variable is at play now as remote and hybrid workforces are also having a negative impact on business continuity.

Here’s three way to avoid or even just abbreviate any future hiring hang ups.

1: Focus on Recruiting and Retaining a Core Executive Team 

2: Focus on Growing Your Bench of Technical Consultants

3: Focus on Accelerating the Hiring Cycle

As more and more hiring managers scramble to fill even the positions on their core team, data strongly suggests the hiring cycles of old are now a cause for concern. Why? Well, because top talent is getting more appealing job offers earlier in the recruitment process.

One such appeal that a growing number of in-demand executives and technical consultants are opting for is working remotely. It seems clear that the painful commutes and toxic work environments are a thing of the past for many in the workforce.

This hot trend in recruitment and hiring is called “work-life balance” and data indicates many US companies are behind the curve with their competitors. Similar to a “skills gap” for talent, there’s a growing “work-life balance” gap for many corporations.

Given ongoing workforce trends will continue to destabilize your hiring process, one thing remains a firm fact, significant hiring changes are coming in 2022.

Top Three Reasons Todays Workforce Is a Destabilizing Force

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For any company slow to adapt to change, know that your workforce will eventually force your hand. That’s right! The workforce now has much more leverage in the employer-employee relationship. So much so that many HR experts sense that companies slow to adapt to remote and hybrid workforces will absolutely lose out on talent.

Here’s three reasons why employees can be a destabilizing force:

1: Employee self-empowerment can be a destabilizing corporate force.

Accenture recently discovered every corporation has within it influential, purpose-driven employees. How is this a destabilizing force you may ask? Well this group of pathfinders, as the study refers to them, values a well-rounded, whole-brain skillset in their leaders. It turns out many CEO’s have those left brain skills down but lack the right brain skills of creativity, intuition, empathy and imagination. Not only that, but pathfinders will influence others AGAINST the corporation if it’s leaders lack these right brain skills.

2: Employee talent wars can be a destabilizing force.

While it can’t be said as fact, the 2021 war for talent in some sectors has returned for good. Yup, there are clear signs that the struggles employers had faced sourcing hard-to-find skill sets in areas that have notoriously faced a dearth of talent are starting to surface once again. What sectors you ask? Well its no surprise that technology and life sciences are struggling to find in-demand talent. However, as the financial sector develops an appetite for cryptocurrency aficionados other sectors are craving new skills as well. It seems the pre-pandemic employment landscape may reappear soon.

3: Employee work-life balance demands can be a destabilizing force.

As hiring managers prepare for a new business year, data strongly suggests there’s a stronger relationship between productivity and worker well-being. Why? Well, because more creative employment models will be entering the job market.

As their careers flourish, a growing number of in-demand talent will opt to either work less or work smarter. Their previous job hindrances such as an unreasonably long commute or an unfulfilling career path will be so 2020 come next year.

This hot trend in recruitment and hiring is called “work-life balance” and data indicates many US companies are behind the curve with their competitors. Similar to a “skills gap” for talent, there’s a growing “work-life balance” gap for many corporations.

Given these destabilizing forces are only increasing in strength, one thing remains a firm fact, significant corporate change is coming one way or the other!

SYNTAGMA GROUP - January 2021 Moneyball Webinar Article

Moneyball Recruiting – The Next Big Thing in Hiring.

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In a recent blog post  on the downsides of an inexperienced recruiting team, we highlighted the 2011 movie Moneyball. We’re doing it again. Why? Well, it’s not only one of the greatest corporate underdog stories of our time but it’s the blueprint for how to compete for top talent come 2021.

Based on the best selling book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game”, the movie begins with Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane handicapped with the lowest salary constraint in baseball. If that isn’t troubling enough, his veteran team of scouts and coaches push back on his new ways of recruiting talent. So to win against the better financed teams, Billy needed not only a competitive advantage, but also a way to change a team of malcontents.

Doubling Down

So given this is our second reference to this iconic movie, it’s safe to say we’re doubling down on both its entertainment value and its ability to provide business perspective.  With certain references to this movie, we can help you think differently about how to recruit next year.

On January 11th from 11AM to 12PM EST we’ll be stretching a single into a double by hosting a live Moneyball Recruiting webinar. In that one hour, we’ll be breaking down a few key scenes and how they correlate with better ways of to recruit top talent next year.

Recruiting’s 5 P’s

So what can a decade old movie like Moneyball teach you about recruiting top talent? Well, it actually depends on not only your recruiting team’s experience but on their level of curiosity and compete level. When it comes to corporate change, without a deep curiosity to find better ways to hire top talent there will be no change. For example, take this scene where Billy, played by Brad Pitt, confronts the young statistical analyst.  Notice it’s the Billy’s intense curiosity that can drive change. People like this young analysts have innovative ideas all the time but lack either the passion or the path to express it. Without a passionate, well connected change agent, innovative ideas face resistance and ultimately fail. But not this time. Check out Billy’s unwavering drive to find a better way to compete. This is what it takes to win at the recruiting game in 2021. The background music starting at the 3:00 minute suggests Billy found a better way. In our webinar, you’ll discover how this formula can be applied to hiring top talent in your industry.

So it’s now clear Billy Beane was an intense competitor who hated losing top talent to the competition. His goal was to win, not keep the status quo. But along with being competitive, he was also clever. Before reworking his recruiting process, Billy redefined his recruiting problem. Only then did Billy look for better solutions.

After speaking with a number of our clients, we sense this approach works well in today’s business environment as well. So we’ll be looking to redefine your recruiting problem and cover these five topics in more depth during the January 11th webinar.

  • Problem  – quality of hiring manager’s view of the top barrier to winning.
  • Pitcher – quality of hiring manager’s capability as a change agent.
  • Players – quality of hiring manager’s starting lineup and bench depth
  • Process – quality of team’s operational techniques and systems
  • Provisions – quality of team’s tools, supplies, technology, partnerships

Moneyball Recruiting’s 5 C’s

If you are familiar with baseball scout lingo, you’ll know the quality of a baseball player can be broken down into five areas. In the movie, the actors casted as the scouting team were actually real scouts. They mentioned each of these “five tools” that a complete player possesses.

  • Speed: How fast can a player run.
  • Throwing: How a player throws in terms of strength.
  • Fielding: How a player catches, throws and handles the ball.
  • Hitting: How a players bat meets the ball and quality at bats.
  • Power: How a player exhibits home run and extra base potential.

Can these five tools carry over to the business world? Of course not. However, think about it? What skills are needed to not only survive but to thrive on your team? You likely do have a good sense. But believe it or not, we do too.  You see, Syntagma Group’s team of experienced recruiters have personally assessed thousands upon thousands of job candidates for our clients. This collective knowledge, along with our latest industry research, allowed us to build a data set on the top five tools needed to succeed regardless of industry, department or role.

This knowhow and research we’ve come up with these five general cognitive competencies. Individually each yields the highest career and economic rewards. However, collectively they’ll help you identify your potential team MVPs. 

These five competencies are in high demand across all labor markets:  

  • Competitiveness: quality of personal grit and resiliency when solving problems and thinking both critically and creatively
  • Communication: quality of personal expression one-on-one
  • Collaboration: quality of personal expression within team dynamics and team leadership
  • Charisma: – quality of vibe, energy level and presentation
  • Command: – quality of self-confidence, self-discipline, preparation, organization and domain knowledge

Change is Coming Fast

Unlike in the movie, you may not need to implement a new recruiting system or completely break from traditional best practices. But perhaps you need to refine a problem you’ll know you’ll be facing in 2021. Or perhaps you’ll need to readjust your team’s critical and creative thinking in 2021. To do so you must think differently. Why? Well, it may be obvious to some but come next year, change will come faster than ever before. So you may end up with one of two choices as Billy rightfully points out in this clip.

Webinar Registration

As it turns out, Billy Beane’s new player recruiting and management system actually became part of many successful sports teams and businesses. That type of knowledge is a Google search away if you’re interested.

So this live webinar will spend little time on the “how” of this system and most of your time on the 5 P’s and C’s above. In the end, it’s up to you, as the recruiter, to look in the right places and analyze the right KPIs.

If you’ve made it this far in the article then it’s likely that Moneyball resonated with not only the competitor in you but also the leader hoping to change things up next year. If that’s accurate, this webinar is for you.

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syntagma group 2021 the year of #worklifebalance

2021: The Year of #WorkLifeBalance

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As hiring managers prepare for a new business year, data strongly suggests many will see a stronger relationship between productivity and worker well-being in 2021. Why? Well, because more creative employment models will be entering the job market.

In 2021, a growing number of in-demand talent will opt to either work less or work smarter in 2021. Their previous job hindrances such as an unreasonably long commute or an unfulfilling career path will be so 2020 come next year.

This hot trend in recruitment and hiring is called “work-life balance” and data indicates many US companies are getting low grades. Check out the Statista.com graphic below to realize how United States and other countries get a D grade or worse.

2021 Opportunities and Risk

Keep in mind, the point is not to place the USA in the corner with a dunce cap or toss a scarlet letter on it. The point is there’s little work-life balance in the US and the opportunity to rebalance is underway. This is great news for workers! However, what risks will companies face if caught flat footed?

According to a recent BenefitPro.com article, as more and more employers realize well-being is a growing concern among workers, these related trends will likely gain traction in 2021.  

Top 3 Employee Trends

  1. Employer Support. Today’s workers want employers to support more flexible hours, remote work and the career path development program that includes with training classes and regular feedback.  
  2. Employer Stability. Key aspects of a workers life are now top of mind for workers and thus should be for their employer such as reliable employment, mind/body health program, a solid financial foundation. 
  3. Employer Satisfaction. Workers want to feel satisfied with the way their employer operates as a contributing member of society. They want a personal and social purpose and expect to be updated and acknowledged throughout the process. 

Top 3 Employer Trends 

  1. Flex wages. The gig economy, tech and the pandemic created a perfect storm of new employment models as more workers can now dictate their terms and cash flows. Employers outside of the gig workforce are going to be expected to support this funding capability.
  2. Concierge Health Care: Worker behaviors have changed in this uber-ized service economy. Today, new concierge service models provide on-demand medical care. The key to driving down the increasing cost of health care for both employers and employees is efficiency, access, knowledge, and cost control mechanisms.
  3. Career & Child Care. The pandemic has decimated childcare and k-12 educational systems across the globe. Employers going beyond financial support and providing an infrastructure to offer career and child care for employees and their families will find themselves in a premium benefit tier.

Upcoming Live Webinar

In an upcoming post we’ll tease our live 60-minute webinar on January 11th from 11:00am to 12:00pm EST. The webinar is titled “Moneyball Recruiting – The Next Big Thing in Hiring”. This webinar is designed for hiring managers and HR professionals looking for better ways to recruit and hire top talent in 2021.

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What's Your Hiring Hang Up in 2021

The Next Big Thing in Hiring Come 2021

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Guess what recently happened in the world of recruiting and consulting services? Well, first of all, it’s likely no surprise to hear more and more full-time salaries are being replaced with in-demand consultants in 2020.  But did you know that a recent survey of US corporate hiring managers indicates an upward trend in such hiring regardless of business or market conditions.

According to a recent HRExecutive.com article, in 2021, more organizations will “open up the talent marketplace” amid a surge of flexible work arrangements. You may not think so now, but this is a BIG DEAL for HR and hiring managers.

Change is Coming

Along with the remote work arrangements already in place in 2020, the survey’s underlying data strongly suggests any hiring hang ups you experienced in years past will likely be change big time in 2021 and beyond.

Why? Well, you know those in-demand, full-time workers you’ve been wooing for the last decade? This cohort of talent aren’t as loyal as in years past will leave for more favorable job options. One job option that’s top of mind for most full-time workers is mental health. Perhaps they’re career path is not clear or their commute to a 40-60 hour a week job is too much. Whatever the reason, a growing number of in-demand talent is opting to work less or work smarter (ie. remote work, freelance work). Another name for this hot trend is “work-life balance“. When last checked, the U.S. was graded a D at number 11.

A recent article entitled “Why revamping benefits should be a priority for today’s new reality” made it quite clear that increased employee benefits are gaining momentum for many employers.

The timing seems right too as employee loyalty continues to wane. Today company’s are looking for new ways to hire and retain top talent.

So what’s all this mean to your hiring strategy and underlying processes? In short, it means you as an HR and/or hiring manager must think differently.

In an upcoming post, we’ll help you predict and avoid your top hiring hang ups in 2021. We’ll also suggest ways to identify the diamonds in the rough who may be undervalued or underutilized. It all revolves around refining your understanding of where a job candidate’s value comes from now and in the long term.

Stay tuned as we plot a better path to recruiting and hiring in the coming weeks and months.

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How Experienced Is Your Recruiting Team?

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For both baseball and business fanatics alike, the 2011 movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, tells one of the greatest underdog stories of our time. Based on the best selling book by Michael Lewis, the movie begins with the Oakland Athletics struggling to compete in the unfair game of Major League Baseball. The team’s GM, Billy Beane, requests a budget increase to acquire the top talent needed to win but is denied. If that isn’t troubling enough, his veteran team of scouts are resistant to his new ways of recruiting talent.

Losing Stinks

What can a decade old movie like Moneyball teach you about recruiting top talent? Well, it may actually depend on your recruiting team’s experience and compete level. You see, Billy Beane was an intense competitor who hated losing top talent to the competition. His goal was to win, not keep the status quo. So before he reexamined his recruiting process, he redefined his recruiting problem. Only then did Billy look for better solutions. Check out this pivotal scene where Billy finally gets to the root of the problem after listening to his scouting team’s typical babble.

Problem Refined

Change Stinks

Unlike in the movie, you may not need to implement a new recruiting system or completely break from traditional best practices. But perhaps you need to refine the problem you’ll trying to solve in 2021. Or perhaps you need to readjust your team’s competitive and creative vibes in 2021. One thing is for certain, you must think differently. For example, Billy’s new system added more data-driven insight and less reliance on traditional key performance indicators on players. Ask your recruiting team if their current system could benefit from such changes. If so, be aware of the roadblocks to business change. As the clip above reveals, the biggest are discomfort and fear. Over the years, perhaps previous recruiting team’s have similar discomfort when asked to think out of the box.

Recruiting Today

As it turns out, Billy Beane’s new analytical system has actually become the foundation of many successful sports teams and businesses. However, despite the power of analytics, it’s up to you, as the recruiter, to look in the right places and analyze the right KPIs. In the end, Moneyball resonated with not only the competitor in each of us but the pathfinder looking to inspire or manage institutional change.

Just like high-priced players don’t determine a team’s MLB season, high-priced talent doesn’t determine your brand’s success.  The key to both winning games and building brand value is finding the undervalued or underutilized talent that consistently outperforms their peers. In our next blog post, we’ll describe how to find these brand MVP’s in 2021. Most importantly, we’ll help you think differently about talent acquisition heading into the new year.

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9 Reasons To Resolve Your Hiring Hang Ups in 2021

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Meet ESPN personality and broadcast media pro, Rebecca Grant. She’s helping Syntagma demonstrate the pain B2B hiring managers feel when working with inexperienced recruiting managers. Why’s it so painful? Hiring managers like Rebecca know an inexperienced team limits their ability to quickly recruit and hire top talent. In 2021 and beyond, that’s a hiring battle that must be won every time.
Here’s why:

Recruiting Rules

For decades, B2B companies in every industry have known that recruiting top talent was a priority. However, as the pandemic continues to destabilize job markets, recruiting top talent has now become THE priority. 

Think about the highest performing brands in your industry. It’s quite possible they’re more effective during this pandemic at recruiting top talent than ever before. How could this be? Well, according to HR Executive Magazine, 97% of enterprise decision-makers believe the pandemic sped up their company’s digital transformation including recruiting.  

Recruiting Trends

Recently, a World Economic Forum report on the future of jobs identified nine trends forcing many brands to reimagine the future of recruiting. For example, 40% of future jobs will have require new in-demand skills — and these skills will not just be in technology. Here’s a summary of the trends listed in the report. 

  1. TECH ADVANCEMENT: The pace of technology adoption is expected to continue and even accelerate in some areas. The adoption of cloud computing, big data and e-commerce remain high priorities for business leaders, following a trend established in previous years. However, there has also been a significant rise in interest for encryption, non-humanoid robots and artificial intelligence.
  2. PROCESS AUTOMATION: Automation continues to disrupt existing workers as 43% of businesses surveyed will be reducing their workforce due to technology integration, 41% plan will expand their use of contractors for task-specialized work, and 34% plan to expand their workforce due to technology integration. 
  3. JOB DISPLACEMENT: Employers expect that by 2025, increasingly redundant roles will decline from being 15.4% of the workforce to 9% (6.4% decline), and that emerging professions will grow from 7.8% to 13.5% (5.7% growth) of the total employee base of company respondents. 
  4. IN-DEMAND SKILLS: Skills gaps continue to be high as in-demand skills across jobs change in the next five years. The top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025 include groups such as critical thinking and analysis as well as problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility. 
  5. BRAND-IMPROVEMENT: Digital transformation is in full swing as 84% of employers are set to rapidly digitalize working processes, including a significant expansion of remote work—with the potential to move 44% of their workforce to operate remotely. 
  6. SELF-IMPROVEMENT: There has been a 4X increase in the numbers of individuals seeking out opportunities for learning online through their own initiative, a 5X increase in employer provision of online learning opportunities to their workers. 
  7. RE-SKILL WORKERS: The window of opportunity to re-skill and up-skill workers has become shorter in the newly constrained labour market. For those workers set to remain in their roles, the share of core skills that will change in the next five years is 40%, and 50% of all employees will need re-skilling (up 4%).
  8. HUMAN CAPITAL: Despite the current economic downturn, the large majority of employers recognize the value of human capital investment. An average of 66% of employers surveyed expect to get a return on investment in up-skilling and re-skilling within one year. 
  9. BETTER MEASUREMENT: Companies need to use more elaborate metrics for human capital and adopt new measures of human capital accounting. 

Recruiting Resolutions

Perhaps it’s time for you to make an early new year’s recruiting resolution. For example, for your first resolution, we’d suggest focusing on a broad concept. For example,

  • In 2021, I resolve to rethink my recruiting mindset.
  • In 2021, I resolve to rethink my recruiting vision.
  • In 2021, I resolve to rethink my recruiting strategy.

This approach will allow you to explore more creative recruiting options. Once all your recruiting resolutions are listed out, you can then prioritize those resolutions that, if completed successfully, will make all others fall into place. We can help.

In the end, with all the change happening in 2020, one thing will remain constant this new year. Recruiting top talent should be priority one if your company hopes to remain competitive! In our next blog post we’ll dive deeper into how to hire top talent and describe how we identify top talent no matter the industry or job order.

Next Steps

Jim Muntone on Chris Miller as a UX Talent Partner

Episode 11: UX Community Shouts Out to Chris Miller

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As the producer of the Chris Miller Show, I usually stay behind the scenes. However, after producing close to a dozen episodes on the growing importance and variances of UX, I want to give a shout out to Chris Miller.

You see, when Chris isn’t podcasting about UX, he’s on the phone finding high quality UX gigs for job seekers or online landing top UX talent for his clients. Chris is committed to informing and serving his growing network of UX professionals and hiring managers everyday. So, for this brief episode, we’re selfishly showcasing Chris Miller’s UX know-how, connections and skills as a talent partner.

In fact, the inspiration for this podcast’s topic came from a LinkedIn post within Chris’s network. Check out Jim Montone‘s comments below and notice the value Chris offers each of his customers.

To hear my thoughts on what makes Chris a valuable asset to any HR team, hiring manager or job candidate, listen to the podcast below.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant at Topfolio, a Syntagma Group company.

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Nick Strickland on his Ideal UX v2

Episode 10: Nick Strickland on UX at Turbo Speed

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Here’s the job situation; you just finished up a project for the Air Force and now starting a six-month gig for NASCAR. Your UX task is to help produce a high velocity, high impact media blitz campaign that energizes the growing fanbase for the upcoming season. As part of the project, you’ll not only be recording live racing footage onsite, but will be working in studio with a twenty-five-foot green screen named “The Cycolorama”.

Now doesn’t this sound like you’d be working on UX at turbo speed? Well, as a media UX Design & Strategist Consultant, Nick Strickland did work with AIR FORCE and NASCAR marketing teams. However, surrounded by all the “move fast” and “go big” marketing mentality, Nick realized the true fuel driving each campaign’s UX success remained grounded in simple, foundational concepts. For example, check out this quote from our recent podcast with Nick:

“While there are many paths to good UX, its foundational elements include onboarding quickly, orienting immediately, and exploring effortlessly. Just open your phone’s weather app to experience all three.”

Nick Strickland on the key elements of good UX

Now here’s a UX pro experiencing the full-throttled power of both Air Force and NASCAR marketing saying good UX remains grounded in the basics.

Listen to the full podcast as Nick describes not only these memorable UX gigs but the power of deep collaboration, creativity and curiosity throughout his UX career.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant at Topfolio, a Syntagma Group company.

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Glenn Greenberg LMS Podcast

Episode 9: Glenn Greenberg on Simplifying Online Education Deployments

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As the need for online education capabilities increases during the COVID-19 pandemic, learning institutions slow to deploy solutions are now scrambling.  In episode 9, Chris discusses this online infrastructure gap many learning institutions are racing to fill by summer’s end. Chris speaks with Glenn Greenberg on the implementation options available to these overwhelmed and understaffed institutions.

As the digital learning strategist and owner of ggLearningworks LLC, Glenn has vast experience in the eLearning space. Listen to the podcast as Glenn breaks down how those institutions left flat-footed can still successfully navigate the critical path ahead. He breaks down the path to success into three key areas: speed, simplicity and substance. 

  • Speed – To launch a fully functional online education program by summer’s end, the old way of hiring talent and rolling out departmental projects must evolve. Interdepartmental collaboration, project staffing precision and quick action are all imperative. 
  • Simplicity – To design, develop and deploy a fully functional, easy-to-use UX remember that less is more. Consider a hybrid approach of live video classes (synchronous learning) and course assets (asynchronous learning) mapped in a Learning Management System (LMS). Complexity will be a key contributor to failure if you let it. 
  • Substance – Focus on quality when identifying project talent, technology and techniques. There are many high quality LMS tools available at a relatively low cost so choose wisely. As for course material, consider working with what’s already available as opposed to wasting resources creating new content. Finally, a high quality project team is essential.

Here’s the full podcast of Glenn detailing the key elements of an eLearning system along with his suggested discovery and deployment strategies.  

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant at Topfolio, a Syntagma Group company.

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Episode 8: Brian Morrison on the Homerun Power of UX

Episode 8: Brian Morrison on the Homerun Power of UX

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Let’s say you’re an up and coming UX pro and dream of becoming a UX powerhouse at your company. What’s your path to power? Welcome to Episode 08 of The Chris Miller Show, a UX podcast series detailing and demystifying the growing UX profession. 

In this episode, Chris speaks with Brian Morrison, the Creative and Marketing Director at a multinational publishing company. The conversation begins with Chris describing his first meeting with Brain, over a decade ago. Much has changed in UX and in Brian’s career path as he’s now a member of Adobe’s customer advisory board. According to Brian, compared to years past, UX has developed its homerun hitting power due to the growing emphasis on customer-first branding initiatives.

Corporate Branding’s Secret Sauce

You see, gone are the days where corporate branding begins and ends at a stylish logo and punchy tagline. Today, branding is all about understanding the customer. It’s success relies on a secret sauce that’s spread across every customer touchpoint. That secret sauce is UX.

Given this new market reality, Brian believes branding and UX must merge and become more pervasive within all companies. But that’s easier said than done, especially for enterprise companies. So here’s five development areas on the path to becoming a design-led organization.

  1. HIRE: Decentralize staffing so hiring managers find UX talent quicker.
  2. COMMUNICATE: Develop a common UX vocabulary across departments.
  3. SIMPLIFY: Align UX and Branding together to bolster a design-led organization. 
  4. BUILD: Develop a system for creative idea sharing across departments.
  5. SCALE: Build out the idea system to generate tangible results at scale.

Career Creatives Hit for Power

Following the above steps will help build a more cohesive culture and develop a stronger lineup of UX power hitters. Brian calls such power hitters, career creatives, because, unlike hobbyists, their creativity can be generated seemingly at will. Career creatives also seem to value humility, continuous learning and look for inspiration all around. If this sounds like your approach to UX then here’s a power-hitting tip from Brian, continue finding ways to sketch and develop your ideas on days where creativity is low.

Soundbite from Episode 8

Click on this podcast soundbite on this key point or listen to the full podcast below.

UX Homerun Power is Internal

In the end, the skillset you need to grow in your career has nothing to do with photoshop training. It’s about who you are internally and how that internal power helps you in managing people, developing budgets, creating processes, communicating effectively and leading with confidence. No one teaches these in-demand skills in Art School. These skills are a combination of soft skills and professional grit. These skills make up your own secret sauce and help determine where you’ll bat in your team’s creative lineup.

Here’s the full podcast of Brian detailing how any passionate UX professional can develop into the power hitter at their company.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant at Topfolio, a Syntagma Group company.

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Episode 7: Vivek Gupta on the Path to UX Bliss

Episode 7: Vivek Gupta on the Path to UX Bliss

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In episode 7 of The Chris Miller Show, Chris speaks with Vivek Gupta, a senior UX lead, manager, and consultant. The conversation starts with Vivek sharing how UX designers, architects, and strategists should approach their work. He then dives into the essence of good UX almost as if he was describing a better way to live life. For example, here’s Vivek’s preferred UX talent skillset regardless of the job role. 

  • genuine curiosity
  • panoramic perspective
  • subtle persuasiveness 

According to Vivek, applying these skills not only results in deeper customer empathy but also better stakeholder management. What’s his inspiration? His UX beliefs and concepts are rooted in a Japanese philosophy on building consensus called nemawashi. Listen in as Vivek describes this philosophy and perhaps a path to UX bliss.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant at Topfolio, a Syntagma Group company.

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Episode 6: Ryan Rosenberg on the Primary Purpose of UX

Episode 6: Ryan Rosenberg on the Primary Purpose of UX

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On each episode of The Chris Miller Show, Chris speaks with a different UX expert on how they define and apply UX at work. Through these one-on-one casual conversations, Chris hopes to uncover the mystery and clear up the confusion around this advancing topic.

In episode 6, Chris interviews Ryan Rosenberg of Sanofi, a global pharmaceutical company. Through his conversation with Ryan, Chris just may have uncovered the primary purpose of the growing UX role.

As the Digital Design and UX Capability Lead at Sanofi, Ryan believes UX is less about designing and more about discovering. Why? Because in Pharma, like in many industries, the user’s intent and preferred journey is initially unknown. However, through user research and data analysis, a thoughtful UX professional can discover valuable user preferences. According to Ryan, if this analysis is reliable, it must be prioritized over less reliable sources like a brand manager’s personal preference. Ryan’s one caveat is the complexity required to do it right, especially in the design phase.

In Ryan’s own words, “To make something that is simple on a device is extremely complex. It takes a research team to figure out what their users want. It takes a tech team to build it, a design team to make the interactions useful and intuitive for the user”

“But when it does happen, now that’s great design, and there should be no other thought about how that experience should work. To give the users what they want, when they want it, on the device that they’re on is my definition of UX.”

Ryan believes, no matter the company, the UX role must work with a customer-centric mindset. Unlike other product, development or marketing roles, UX has a primary purpose of passionately advocating for the user. Now this doesn’t mean blindly implementing what the user thinks they need. Rather, it means capturing reliable user data and persuading others based on your data-driven UX model.

Listen in as Ryan describes his UX career path, experiences on Adobe Creative Cloud’s customer advisory board, and upcoming industry trends.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant

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Episode 5: Bridget Lyons on the UX Design Continuum

Episode 5: Bridget Lyons on the UX Design Continuum

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The Chris Miller Show showcases top UX design experts and explores the many hiring and job complexities of this advancing field.  Determined to better understand this somewhat vague and all-encompassing term, Chris searches for answers in these podcasts. After listening to his latest episode, we sense he’s getting closer to the true meaning behind UX design.

Chris’s fifth guest is UX Designer Bridget Lyons of Studio b, a results-driven Creative Boutique.  Listen in as Chris and Bridget discuss the key driver to why the term UX design means something different to so many.

For Bridget, UX is a moving target that can’t be easily defined. Why? Because a company’s own maturity level in UX design helps drive the terms various meanings. For example, it’s no surprise that many companies are still in the early stages of UX design. So reskinning an old website will be all that company understands UX design to be. The visual element is the extent of their current UX maturity. On the other end of the continuum is product design. In these instances, a company’s UX maturity extend beyond the visual. The product may be an app or an event booth or merchandise. In such instances, a UX designer must factor in more than simply the visual design.

Listen in as Bridget shares how she determines where a company lies on the UX design continuum and why she considers herself a hybrid UX designer.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant

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Episode 4: Aaron Usiskin on the #1 UX Skill

Episode 4: Aaron Usiskin on the #1 UX Skill

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The Chris Miller Show is in its fourth episode of speaking with top UX experts about the various complexities of this advancing field.  

Chris’s fourth guest is Aaron Usiskin, a consultant at ETS specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning UX.  Listen in as Chris and Aaron uncover the #1 UX skill.

According to Aaron, UX involves not just digital and desktops but every interaction with a brand. For example, look at how your local Starbucks is setup; the setup design was UX-driven. Even your next trade show event will have components of UX weaved into booth setup. Aaron speaks about his experience exploring, designing and deploying event booths based, in part, on traffic flow analysis from one booth to another. 

After Aaron outlines how everything around you is a UX problem to solve, he speaks on the core of good UX talent. For the truly gifted, good UX is less about drawing pictures and more about discovering patterns in what people are trying to do, how they react, or how they interact. Thus, good UX is grounded in the creative and critical thinking required to see unexpected patterns. As UX continues to increase in complexity, the top UX skill to master gets simplified, “see things others cannot”, as Aaron puts it.

Listen in as Aaron shares how to develop this skill daily and how to find it in your next UX hire.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant

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Episode 3: Derek Mei on How UX Design is a Team Sport

Episode 3: Derek Mei on How UX Design is a Team Sport

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Listen in as Syntagma’s Chris Miller speaks with top UX experts, hiring managers and consultants. Each guest will share experiences on how they meet growing UX expectations by identifying and hiring top UX talent.

Chris’s third guest is Derek Mei , UI/UX Developer at 3Play Media. Listen in as Chris and Derek discuss how UX design means something different depending on the size of the company, or the technical sophistication of the audience, or the various roles on a development team. 

According to Derek, good UX design lives at the intersection of technological inspiration, business strategy and team collaboration.  

Because of growing user expectations, good UX has become a team sport. The design and development teams can’t design in a silo as all functional departments have valuable input to share when it comes to user feedback and expectations. 

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant

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Episode 2: Brandon Comstock on How Good UX is Not About Deliverables

Episode 2: Brandon Comstock on How Good UX is Not About Deliverables

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Listen in as Syntagma’s Chris Miller speaks with top UX experts, hiring managers and consultants. Each guest will share experiences on how they meet growing UX expectations by identifying and hiring top UX talent.

Chris’s second guest is Brandon Comstock, Director Of User Experience at Boston Digital. Listen in as Chris and Brandon discuss the downside of the recent commoditization of the term “UX” and how to rise above it.

According to Brandon, good UX doesn’t focus on deliverables like user requirements or wireframes. It also doesn’t focus on design in the “graphic designer” sense.

Good UX is about researching and fully understanding the underlying currents of brand, business, and technology. Only then can you build a lasting bridge between the brand and its target audience.

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant

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Nick Etemadipour On How to Hire Extraordinary UX Designers

Episode 1: Nick Etemadipour On How to Hire Extraordinary UX Designers

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Listen in as Syntagma’s Chris Miller speaks with top UX designers, hiring managers and consultants. Each guest will share experiences on how they meet growing UX expectations by identifying and hiring top UX talent.

Chris’s first guest is Nick Etemadipour, Lead UX/UI Designer at BRD. They first discuss how best to evaluate UX designers and their portfolio. Then Chris and Nick dive into these top three indicators of good UX:

  • Authentic — Is the UX free of overt brand messaging or blatant product promotion?
  • Unique — Does the UX deliver the unexpected?
  • Entertaining — Does the UX appeal more to emotion than logic?

Hosted by: Chris Miller, Creative and Digital Staffing/Recruitment Consultant

Next Steps

  • Learn more about Chris Miller and his vision for our creative/digital services.
  • Learn more about Lead UX/UI Designer at BRD, Nick Etemadipour.
  • Subscribe to receive email alerts.

UX PODCAST SERIES: How to Hire Extraordinary UX Designers

UX PODCAST SERIES: How to Hire Extraordinary UX Designers

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Many tech buzzwords grow in popularity, and then die down. For example, take the phrase “Big Data,” which is still valued but no longer such a hot topic. Alternatively, it’s not surprising the search term “data science” continues to trend up. Care to guess how the search term “UX” is trending? Over the last 10+ years, Google searches on “UX” (see red trend line below) also continue to climb.

Impact of Bad UX

As a growing discipline, UX engagement optimization is a never-ending challenge for many brands. Why’s it matter so much? In a survey of more than 5,000 cross-market consumers, 76% indicated they’d switch brands after one bad experience with a brand they like.

If you’re looking to improve your UX design team and avoid the same fate, this podcast series will help. Listen to Syntagma’s Chris Miller speak with top UX designers, hiring managers and consultants. Each guest will share experiences on how they meet growing UX expectations by identifying and hiring top UX talent.

Indicators of Good UX

Along with discussing how best to evaluate UX designers and their portfolio, the series will discuss these top indicators of good UX:

  • Creative — Is the UX well thought out in its speed, simplicity and substance?
  • Authentic — Is the UX free of overt brand messaging or blatant product promotion?
  • Meaningful — Is the UX fresh and edgy?
  • Transformative — Does the UX capture attention and encourage visitors to ponder?
  • Unique — Does the UX deliver the unexpected?
  • Storylike — Does the UX appeal to a user’s innate sense of good storytelling?
  • Engaging — Does the UX appeal more to emotion than logic?

Chris’s first guest will be Nick Etemadipour, Lead UX/UI Designer at BRD. Subscribe to receive email alerts when the podcast series debuts, and later, as additional guests are announced.

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Don’t Miss These 5 Job Hunting Slam Dunks

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Yes, it’s a strong job market for applicants. But, even if you’re “the one”, you’ll forever be competing with less qualified applicants. It’s a bit like you’re the top-seeded team playing the first round of a tournament.  Your goal is to avoid the upset! Think about it; you’re the most experienced applicant but still miss that slam dunk job due to a resume oversight or an interview gaff.

To avoid these missed opportunities, check out my steps for hitting those job hunting slam dunks.

1. Write your resume as if the person reading will have no clue what you do.

  • Focus on your accomplishments and how they  benefited your employers: Include ROI, size and scope of projects, and the like.
  • Stick to your past three-five years: I love one-page resumes and so do most managers who don’t want to spend too long reviewing resumes. Whatever you can lose (pointless details, cliché words and phrases, etc.) lose.
  • Figure out who you really are and what you really want. Build the resume from there.
  • Don’t treat the resume as if it’s ever really finished: It will be a work in progress from day to day.

2. Target your search carefully

  • Don’t just apply everywhere: Make sure you only apply where you want to, and carefully keep records for where  you applied to. You don’t want to get a call and not have any clue who is calling you from where or why.
  • Remember those who might be advertising for openings might not really be hiring and those who aren’t advertising might be hiring.
  • Be able to tell people in a specific company why YOU should be hired: Don’t just say: “I need a job.”
  • Keep in mind that LinkedIn and Indeed aren’t the only places on the web to mine.

3. Network and actually meet people

  • Get proactive in terms of learning new things, meeting new people, and showing your face simply because a lot of people DON’T do these things anymore.  
  • Attempt to meet the people you want to work for.
  • Going to an event? Learn who will be there there and target them.
  • Don’t get discouraged: There is an association for anything and everything, including your industry.  

4.  Kill the interview

  • Be prepared beforehand: research the company, know what it does, check out its latest press clipping(s), and so on.
  • Don’t take an interview for a company you aren’t interested in – you are wasting your time and wasting the interviewer’s time. Bad blood can develop.
  • Never lie, but don’t always tell the WHOLE truth. Prepare some vanilla answers to potentially awkward questions. For instance: really think about how to concisely explain why you are leaving your current job, and if need be, practice your answers.
  • Pausing before you respond is never a bad idea when in an interview.
  • Pretend you are talking to the CEO every time.
  • Don’t change your story as your interviews progress and you meet with various people: It will look like you are making it up.

5. Beef up your social presence

  • The online world is fragmented. So take some time and review all applicable social media platforms and resources, such as job boards, AI recruitment tools, etc.
  • Today, LinkedIn profiles function oftentimes as the new resume.
  • Anything you post on Twitter, in Facebook, etc. basically, will last forever. You may want to police your presence.
  • Be professional without being stuffy: And if you are going to get political, remember that carries risk.    

Finally, believe in yourself and know that failing during the job hunt builds grit! However, if after applying these steps you’re still losing to the competition, reach out to me and I’ll get you back in the game.

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Top Three Ways Your Recruiting Process Can Avoid Blind Spots.

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Today’s hiring managers must adapt to two constant challenges: Creative talent shortages and competitive counter-offers. The managerial response must include developing insight into the hiring process via artificial intelligence tools and platforms. This demands market-driven high speed decisions, while overcoming digital complexity. Because of this, on any given day, even the savviest hiring manager might feel a bit like Sandra Bullock in Bird Box.

If you’re determined to achieve better recruiting and consulting outcomes, here’s a brief Q&A with Chris Miller, our Creative and Digital Staffing and Recruitment Consultant. Chris shares his experiences and ideas about how to improve your creative talent vision.

What’s the number one red flag that a client’s approach to filling a position lacks the necessary thought and vision?

This is always dependent on the role, but given it is a design position – looking at the resume first and a portfolio second is a bad move. It is always about the work first. Or looking at a resume of someone who has “jumped around” and dismissing it, only to find out the person is a professional freelancer. Suddenly that person becomes a different candidate.

Today’s recruiting firm talent, tools and technology are more robust and agile than what they were a few years ago. So, if a client chooses to hire using only internal resources, what are they sacrificing by way of the vision?

All of the other people who might be available in the market. A job advertisement is just like a commercial. Not everyone is always watching and there so are so many opportunities and companies hiring, that sometimes candidates miss the best opportunity.

What impact do building and maintaining relationships and feedback loops have on a recruiter-client account?

The client-recruiter relationship and candidate-recruiter relationship are unique because of all the things you CAN’T SAY in a job description or about yourself. People are more forthcoming about their challenges and goals when going through a third party.

Contact Chris to learn more about our new operating company focused solely on the creative services space within Boston. Especially if you start experiencing any floundering “Bird Box” moments at the office.

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Look Who Just Launched a Boston-based Creative Services Company.

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After tremendous growth and success within the IT and Financial Services fields, Syntagma has opened a new operating company focused solely on the creative services space within Boston.  We look forward to great things as we continue to grow offerings to our valued customers in the commonwealth.

Our focus is to compliment our fast growing technical recruiting business with freelance, contract to hire, and fulltime placements within:

  • Visual Design
  • User Experience
  • User Interface & UI Engineering
  • Digital Marketing
  • Content Strategy

Next Steps

  • Contact us to learn more about the top freelancers or our expansion into creative services.
  • Subscribe to stay informed on recruiting metrics or other industry topics.
  • Evaluate your current recruiting process with our 60-Second Assessment Tool.


Your Boss Texts, “Send CPH by EOD”. What’s Your Reply?

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Cost-per-hire (CPH) is the primary metric for analyzing your recruiting program’s budget allocation and overall effectiveness. Of all your 2018 recruiting data points, your cost-per-hire (CPH) will likely have the most influence on next year’s recruiting budgets and strategies. To calculate CPH, you simply add up your hiring cost structures for a given time period then divide by the number of hires in that time period. But what exactly are your hiring cost structures? Read more

Three Ways to Fail Your Job Interview

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As many know, Syntagma Group not only has the in-house experience to find the right talent, we also advise job candidates on how best to develop their career path. For example, interview strategies is always a hot topic. Over the years we’ve seen our share of interview mishaps and wish to share our top three ways to fail an initial interview. Read more

WINTER IS COMING: Are You Prepared for a Recruiting Transformation in 2019?

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Pick any high-performing brand in your industry and it’s likely midway through a digital transformation initiative. If your company is also on that improvement path, you’re probably hearing buzzwords like “automate,” “streamline,” or “digitize.” These words essentially describe different ways to support one major goal: improvement — particularly, business process and bottom-line improvement.

Data suggest that such a transformation is a winning strategy. The proof? 94% of decision makers recently said they believed their departments’ digital transformation initiatives would provide significant returns on investment. Though most companies are in the early digital transformation adoption stages, such positive sentiment shows promise. However, can it be realized?  Research reveals 70% of these initiatives will not reach their stated goals which translates into $900 billion worth of spend yielding sub-par results. The gross mismanagement is due, in large part, to ineffective utilization of talent, techniques or technology.

In fact, new research on how company decision makers view their enterprise digital transformation progress, successes, and adoption challenges identified these top three barriers:

  • TALENT: ineffective in-house talent
  • TECHNIQUE: ineffective top-down communication
  • TECHNOLOGY: ineffective infrastructure

This post will focus solely on what is arguably the primary determinant of business and project success: hiring the right talent.

Digital Transformation Setbacks

It’s no surprise that unqualified in-house talent is derailing many digital transformation initiatives. In the meantime, across the board, companies are executing their digital transformation roadmaps while relying on outdated methods, with inadequate talent. Accordingly, it’s not just hiring managers who need to improve their recruiting processes — human resource departments themselves need a revamp.

If your corporate hiring process were a “Game of Thrones” episode, we’d see line of business managers warning their brands that “Winter is Coming.” Yes, as most companies scramble to overcome their digital skills gaps, 2019 is when things will get much worse for those companies relying on traditional recruiting strategies. They will start failing completely, as the non-traditional adopters position themselves for unprecedented successes.

The demand for more and more specialized creative and technical skills is causing a talent pinch for many businesses. Even if these companies realize the problem, they’re typically not trying to solve it. They keep trusting the in-house staff to attract, pre-screen, interview, negotiate with, and hire candidates. This methodology works best when there is a full labor pool to draw from. However, when there’s severe talent scarcity, it’s going to fail.

Recruiting Transformation Now

Successful digital transformations yield significant ROI. So, eliminating key barriers to these transformations must become a top business objective. It’s proven that a company’s recruiting process can be a major barrier to digital breakthroughs. So, to compete with your industry’s top brands, you must make talent acquisition a priority for your brand and department.

The first step to hiring the right talent is to assess your existing recruiting processes. This is exactly where Syntagma provides value. We ask clients the sorts of questions that force them to acknowledge and attack process snarls and kinks. Contact us for a sample of questions that help our clients better gauge their processes.

Our next post will include our 60-second recruiting process assessment tool. Along with a sampling of our typical questions, this video will prepare you for recruiting process improvement by 2019.

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Welcome to Syntagma’s New Website and Resource Center

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We made a few changes to our website including a fresh look, new pages and tighter copy. If you check out our homepage you’ll notice that the improvements are a reflection of our three core values:

  1. SIMPLICITY: By leveraging our small size and simple approach, we consistently source top talent while keeping pace with dynamic industry demands.
  2. SPEED: Gaining and keeping trust has a bottom-line impact on partner results and when your trust in us grows, increases in speed and effectiveness follow.
  3. SUBSTANCE: Our collective experiences enable us to deliver both quality and substance to the partners we serve and the talent we manage.

As a hiring or HR manager prospecting in a relatively thin talent pool, you’re likely striving to continuously improve as well. How can we help?

Along with our new website, we’re investing time and effort into a new resource center complete with blog posts, podcasts, interactive tools and online calculators. The center will feature recruiting and onboarding discussions and topics designed to educate, entertain and enlighten.

To kick things off, this week’s blog post discusses the determining factors in a company’s digital transformation success or failure.  In 2018, while $1.3 trillion will be spent to digitally improve operational efficiencies and increase customer value, data strongly suggests 70% won’t meet their goal. Why? Our next posts discusses the top three reasons.

We hope you find our new content a worthwhile part of your weekly routine. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.

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Syntagma Recruiting Process Improvement

Will Your 2019 Recruiting Process Include Tricks or Treats?

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As we approach Halloween, it’s time to discuss a somewhat scary topic – next year’s recruiting budget. With job openings at a 17-year high and unemployment at a 49-year low, the competition for talent is intense. As a result, 2019 recruiting budgets may increase to make room for testing new technologies and techniques. Although some testing may reveal tricks that yield little impact others will uncover treats that improve recruiting results exponentially.  

So do you allocate a portion of your 2019 recruiting budget to explore promising recruiting alternatives or do you maintain the status quo?  Since your competitors are likely re-allocating budget to improve their recruiting, the riskier of the two choices is to take no action as it may come back to haunt you.

Recruitment Process Laggards

Recently, recruiting expert @BrettonPutter penned a Forbes article entitled “How Lazy is Your Recruiting Process?”  where he explains just how unexceptional your recruiting process likely is today. He says, “very few companies have unique hiring practices. If you are doing the same things everyone else is doing, you’re inevitably hiring average candidates.”

Exceptional hiring practices, according to Putter, include installing a talent officer, tasked with ensuring the company’s culture is fueled by a “robust, disciplined and highly effective recruitment process.”

Recruitment Process Assessment

So, all that being said, what’s your 2019 staffing picture look like? Could you trick yourself into thinking your current process is above average? Or will you strive to treat your internal stakeholders to a continuously improving process? If the latter, it’s crucial to fully understand your current processes first. 

Prior to working with any client, Syntagma will ask a series of questions to better understand their recruitment process.  Typically, our questions are based on one of three process success metrics: time, cost or quality. This is exactly where Syntagma provides value. We ask clients the sorts of questions that force them to acknowledge (and prioritize) process snarls and kinks.

60-Second Recruiting Process Assessment ToolWant a peek into our initial assessment process? Try our interactive recruiting process assessment tool. Please remember, this is an initial assessment only. Its goal is to initiate a discussion with your internal team or your recruiting partners about process improvement.

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