Finding Good People Is a Never-Ending Challenge

Businesses change. To keep pace with the changes, processes, systems and equipment need to be adapted. As a result, every WMS system user will, at times, find themselves in need of support or in need of application experts. Turning to the vendor is not always an option – costs are high and the talent pool is stretched. Users are then forced into the costly and timely effort of reaching out to the market for help—often a fruitless exercise. Even worse, users often forego the help and continue to watch their operations limp along at less than optimal performance.

Where Is The Talent?
To find the people needed, companies have several options. For shorter term contractors, there are lots of large and small systems integration and consulting firms. Placing ads with on line resources like Monster and DICE is an option. Or companies can look to headhunters to help, along with ads on the company web site, Linked-In, Facebook and Twitter. And through all of this, the warehouse manager or human resources representation will answer the phone, meet with sales reps and answer a ton of emails. If the process it successful, perhaps there will be a significant amount of resumes to peruse. Some of them will look good, many of them will not. Regardless, the next step is to pick up every one of them and judge it. Once the talent pool is narrowed down, the due diligence begins — phone screen the candidates, check references and conduct face-to-face interviews.

Sound familiar? That’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of time. And it’s not just the manager’s time. Staff gets involved. HR certainly gets involved. Upper management gets involved. All of this is time spent recruiting new hires instead of addressing the tasks at hand. Contracting with a systems integration firm, is another option. That process will provide good resumes, of those who work for the firm. The definition of best and brightest will include only the people who work for the firm already have.