chat
expand_more

Chat with our Pricing Wizard

clear

Industry News and Information

A Paradigm Shift: VISION for Making the Transition from Recruiter to Virtual Organization Consultant

chairman101 Avatarchairman101
May 1, 2007


Every now and then something comes along that revolutionizes an entire industry or brings about a new age. Without having to go all the way back to ancient history, we can refer to some of the most recent events that have taken place during our lifetime and which have shaped the world in a way that none of us babyboomers could have ever imagined.
The advent of the PC in 1974 – which became widely available by IBM in 1981 – was one of them and there is no need to expand on that. It took a number of years for most companies to catch on and realize that this was not simply a toy and that it would soon replace these huge mainframes and expensive workstations they were hooked into. VISION played a key role in some of these companies who became early adopters and led the way.


Moreover, a number of smaller companies who could not afford these huge mainframes and expensive workstations also saw opportunities hitherto unavailable to them and led the way to realize huge efficiencies in productivity and economic returns. Besides the fact that they had nothing to lose, VISION also played a key role in their decision.
Microsoft-Bill Gates’s idea to license the operating system – in this case, purely a concept but, nonetheless, “revolutionary” – did more than anything else to bring the PC to the masses at a price they could afford. Besides the fact that necessity played a key role in Bill Gates’s thinking – breaking away from a behemoth like IBM and the huge cost of manufacturing PCs and etc. being key factors – VISION was needed to make that decision.
Bill could have never anticipated in a million years that this concept would serve as the foundation for what was about to happen in later years starting from 1990 onward, the birth and rapid expansion of the World Wide Web. I might as well acknowledge Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreesen for their VISION of the Web as we know it today.
Which brings us to Today and the Recruitment Industry in particular. These technological advances have completely changed the world and transformed the way we do business on a huge scale. Companies are struggling to attract and recruit the sort of talent that they need in order to adapt to these technological changes and the resulting transformation which is rapidly taking place in this new global and interconnected landscape.
The Virtualization of business is taking place at a dizzying rate and, from a technology standpoint, the possibilities are endless in terms of communication, cooperation, and connectivity. Microsoft and others are gung ho on Virtualization of the workspace and virtual collaboration tools. Social networks are all the rage and companies such as ERE.net, LinkedIn, MySpace, Frappr and etc. are sprouting up on almost a daily basis; and even employers are forming social networks that are directly tied in to their website for talent recruitment and marketing purposes.
These technological changes are spawning a whole new set of challenges for executive management, and especially for human resources executives, worldwide. Primary among these challenges are these ever perplexing questions and dilemnas that they are faced with:
How do you harness in a strategic and orderly fashion this ocean of opportunities presented by the virtualization of the workspace? How do you quantify and analyze the results?
Are there any existing best practices, policies and procedures for managing a Virtual Organization?
What type of recruitment guidelines and assessment tools should be adopted in order to identify the best candidates who will be able to thrive in the new Virtual Organization?
How do we prepare and train our existing workforce so it can cope with the increasingly rapid and dizzying rate of virtualization of the organization?
The answer to all these questions lies in Virtual Organization Management Consulting instead of the old Virtual Team Consulting approach, that is assuming that certain companies made the big leap to hire Virtual Team Consultants in the first place.
Virtual Team Consulting is engagement specific and deals with a microview of a virtual situation, whereas, Virtual Organization Management Consulting takes a macroview of the entire organization from top to bottom and seeks to institute and incorporate best practices, policies and procedures for working in any type of virtual environment and for managing a specific virtual organization.
Virtual Organization Management allows an organization to make the transition from today’s Virtual Chaos to the new Virtual Organization which is rapidly taking shape before our very own eyes. It provides the roadmap that an organization needs to follow during this rapid period of Virtualization of the workspace.
Which brings us to these HR-related questions previously stated:
What type of virtual organization recruitment guidelines and assessment tools should be adopted in order to identify the best candidates who will be able to thrive in the new Virtual Organization? Are there any existing standards available?
Where is Virtual Organization Recruitment training provided and by whom?
How prepared are today’s recruiters – Corporate and Agency Recruiters – in dealing with these new challenges?
The answer is not that obvious. To this date, most recruiters of all stripes and persuasions have been doing a courageous and outstanding job at filling positions for their corporate clients and stakeholders. A great number of them are extremely internet-saavy and very adept at using the latest internet technology and recruitment tools. In fact, some Agency Recruitment firms are themselves, or consider themselves, virtual organizations because they have made primary use of the Internet for all communication and activities. Some recruitment firms and RPOs, such as Library Associates based in Beverly Hills, CA, even offer Virtual Team Consulting services to client firms.
However, this is NOT about who can best use internet tools and technologies to recruit more efficiently. Nor is it about Virtual Team Consulting or recruiting candidates who can best use internet tools and technologies. It’s really about recruiters recruiting candidates who can adapt and thrive in the new Virtual Organization.
In light of the new challenges that the Virtualization of the workspace itself presents, most recruiters are ill-equipped to adequately address the Virtual Organization Recruitment needs of their clients; and their role and responsibilities need to undergo a radical transformation. After all, you cannot give what you don’t have.
A paradigm shift must take place: from the role of Corporate or Agency Recruiter to an elevated and more prestigious role of Virtual Organization Consultant. A role which reflects the demands and greater level of sophistication needed for this new recruiting position. A role that is more consultative in nature and which helps their client to develop and put in place these specific guidelines and assessment tools needed to identify the best candidates who will be able to thrive in the new Virtual Organization.
To that end, NetWEB Elite Solutions, Inc. – a pioneer and inventor of patent-pending best practices, policies and procedures for managing a virtual organization with deep experience in that field since 1997 – through its newly formed division, Virtual Organization Management Institute, is the only organization in the world leading the charge in that effort. A shameless plug for an organization I chair.
And what about the Corporate Workforce itself? Who will train the hundreds of millions of new and existing workers at these companies that are undergoing this rapid Virtualization? Should this training be outsourced to a VOMT (Virtual Organization Management Trainer) or be conducted in-house?
At first glance, the most logical answer is for HR to immediately set up a separate Virtual Organization Management Training department entrusted with such task. However, upon closer reflection, the question is, “Who will train the Trainers?”
Therefore, the first and most essential task for Human Resources is to rapidly begin the gradual process of providing Virtual Organization Recruitment – NOT Virtual Team Recruitment – training to a new cadre of recruiters as well as to some of its existing recruiters, some of whom will eventually form the core of a new Virtual Organization Management Training department established by the virtual organization management consulting firm – the VOMT – in parallel with their training.
Concurrently, this in-house Virtual Organization Management Training Department, in consultation with the head of HR and other members of executive management, would immediately begin to provide Virtual Organization Management training to certain designated senior corporate executives and middle level managers. This should NOT be forced upon these individuals. Instead it should be considered a reward or badge of honor for those individuals who are initially selected to comprise the first team. The success of the first team will lay the groundwork and foundation for the successful implementation of this training throughout the entire organization.
For a number of critical and very important reasons, the details of which are outside the scope of this treatise, this initial training must be conducted ONSITE at the client’s location and should be conducted over a minimum period of 6 months or, ideally, a 1-year period.
This new vanguard of Virtual Organization Consultants and corporate managers trained on that subject is critically needed NOW at companies at all levels and, from all indications based on previous and current experience, there is a groundswell of support in both directions – from top to bottom and from the bottom up – for this change to take place in certain sectors of the corporate world.
To this date, the corporate world – and by extension, Corporate Human Resources – is split into 3 camps: Camp Vision, Camp Aware, and Camp Oblivion.
Camp Vision
Camp Vision contains some of the more visionary companies who have been struggling with these vexing issues, then considered exotic, as far back as 1994; companies who have specifically allocated the resources needed for virtual team consulting and collaboration tools in their fiscal budget. Some of these companies, as they were then named, included BP Amoco, Canadian Tire, Ford and etc. They have long relied on Virtual Team consultants to provide them with guidance and assistance. Others have been “winging it,” so to speak, and making the rules as they go along.
These companies, now at a critical juncture, are ideally suited and very well poised to make the transition to the next phase of the evolutionary process: from Virtual Team Consulting to Virtual Organization Management.
They were wise to make the initial steps as Early Adopters and have tremendously benefited from their decision which have resulted in savings of billions of dollars over the past 13 years. Most likely, they will continue down the path of innovation and progress and will continue to set the trail for others to follow with the adoption of Virtual Organization Management.
Although no definitive data exists on the number of companies that make up Camp Vision, one can safely say, based on anecdotal evidence, that they represent no more than 2% of the global corporate world.
As for the rest of the corporate world, it is split into the other 2 camps: Camp Aware and Camp Oblivion.
Camp Aware
Corporate Human Resources and Agency Recruiters at Camp Aware are aware of the fact that this is somewhat a gray issue that needs to be tackled with as soon as possible, however, they do not see any urgent need to do so at this time and nor have they made any attempt to include it as a separate line item in their fiscal budget. They have other pressing needs and priorities and, unless mandated by the CEO or Board of Directors, this is not something that needs fixing at this time. Rather, they view it as something that needs to be patched. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I dare to say, they look at it from the standpoint: “If it is cracked, patch it.” In which case, some of them are doing an excellent patch job.
Some do offer variations of flex-work schedule which includes telecommuting; a number of them employ statutory employees and independent contractors who telecommute in some capacity; others, such as Wells Fargo Bank, have remote global teams and engage in quite a bit of collaboration.
A number of them includes companies, such as Bank of America, who hire Virtual Recruiters to work directly from their home office for as much as $80-90 per hour after undergoing a 2-week training at their corporate location; after which time they are only required to report back to corporate on a quarterly basis.
But there is another but very important reason for the lack of enthusiasm in Camp Aware: HR is not really sure if this is an IT issue or a corporate management issue that falls within the HR domain but nonetheless they made the decision to take the initiative. Most are not aware that this is NOT an IT issue.
The third and most critical reason is the reluctance to go out on a limb and step out in front of an issue where there is no consensus by executive management that an issue exists. No one wants to be a maverick or see their ideas shot down before it has any wings. Very few of us want to be the first one on the dance floor.
That being said, we believe that Camp Aware companies hold a great deal of promise for the world’s economy, the virtual organization recruitment industry in particular, because once their collective power and wisdom is finally unleashed, the thunder will loudly reverberate around the world. Based on intelligence gathered thus far, this should begin to take place as of the date of this writing, however, their effect will not be felt until the next year or two.
To quote Confucius, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” They have already taken the baby steps; now it’s time to walk and run; and some of them are beginning to make that walk.
And for those Recruiters and Corporate Trainers who heed the call for transition to Virtual Organization Consultants and Virtual Organization Management Trainers, they will be poised to reap the huge rewards and prestige these positions will bring and this will indeed be welcome news for them all.
Camp Oblivion
As for Corporate Human Resources and Agency Recruiters at Camp Oblivion, they are completely oblivious to the relationship between the Virtualization of the workspace-workforce and the need to recruit AND train a different type of workforce. They continue to do business as usual and are only interested in preserving the status quo. The word “virtual” is synonymous with “The Jetsons”; some exotic and futuristic concept not grounded in today’s reality. As far as they are concerned, it’s much ado about nothing; it’s still a brick-and-mortar world and it’s going to remain that way for quite some time into the foreseeable future; and all is well on the western front.
This catastrophic failure of imagination not only rests on the shoulders of Human Resources but also on those of the entire executive management team; and by the time executive management realizes what’s going on, they will be so far behind their competitors that they will be faced with an almost insurmountable challenge to catch up.
They are the Late Adopters of the corporate world, extremely conservative and resistant to change. They are bound to get on board sooner or later, but only after everybody else has gotten on board and it becomes the “in thing” to do.
This group will represent the Third Wave of the transformation of the recruitment industry and, if history is any guide, this should take place within the next 7-10 years. With the influx of new entrants into the Virtual Organization Recruitment field, the rewards and benefits will begin to stabilize and level off and the prestige associated with the title of Virtual Organization Consultant will begin to lose its novelty and luster.
In conclusion, Corporate and Agency recruiters and Corporate Trainers with the VISION to heed the call and make the transition to Virtual Organization Consultant and Virtual Organization Management Trainer will have an opportunity to redefine the global corporate landscape on a scale such as it has never been seen before, revolutionize the entire recruiting industry, and bring about a new golden age. History is in the making, so go for the ride.
ABOUT AUTHOR: Pierre M. Coupet is the Founder, Chairman, CEO and Chief Virtual Organization Management Consultant at NetWEB Elite Solutions, Inc. He is also the Founder of their newly established division, Virtual Organization Management Institute. He is an author and prolific lecturer, speaker and trainer on Virtual Organization Management and is considered worldwide as the World’s Foremost Expert on Virtual Organization Management. He previously founded and managed a national executive search firm for over 13 years. For additional information regarding NetWEB Elite Solutions, Inc. and the Virtual Organization Management Institute, go to http://www.netwebelitesolutions.com. To contact Pierre M. Coupet directly, please send email to chairman@netwebelitesolutions.com or call 818-793-0303.
Copyright 2007. NetWEB Elite Solutions, Inc. and Virtual Organization Management Institute. All rights reserved. Cannot be reproduced without permission. All trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Related Articles

No Related Posts.
View More Articles