Rutherford International

Resume Design - A Headhunter's Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 29 May 2015 18:03:00 +0000

Resume Design – A Headhunter's Perspective

Forbes Rutherford is President of Rutherford International (www.rutherfordinternational.com), his team has provided specialized HR consulting and executive search services to both national and international property and investment firms for the past twenty five years. He also oversees the management of NEXTalent Inc., (www.nextalentinc.com) a job marketing and recruitment agency that provides clients with a cost effective recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution for acquiring talent.

Through his NEXTpath Inc. division, Mr. Rutherford sponsors behavioral research to determine the key success traits common to high performers within the global real estate and investment communities. Through the establishment of these functional benchmarks, Mr. Rutherford has access to a broad cross section of active senior executives and rising stars. He is in a unique position to observe the changing macro trends and oncoming challenges facing the communities that make up international real estate, infrastructure and alternative energy.

Additional background information may be viewed at the following web links: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com When a client comes to you seeking a new opportunity, what advice do you give them?

Forbes RutherfordIt’s probably best that we clarify who the client is as it varies with each company. In the context of Rutherford International's executive search services or NEXTalent Inc., the client isn't the prospect but rather the corporation. Our fiduciary responsibility is toward the corporation who has retained our services. That's not to suggest we aren't prepared to play the role of 'trusted intermediary' between the two parties. The purpose of the search was most likely to implement a strategy or resolve a problem, it's beneficial to all concerned that we leave the table in the knowledge that 'fairness' was the basis of the negotiation.

With respect to NEXTalent, again it's the corporation however we have a moral obligation to the candidate to provide them with honest counsel that advances their careers. I didn't design NEXTalent to be just another agency, this sector is driven by 'self-interest' which seems to be an acceptable ethical standard by some employers that have little regard for their employer brand. My opinion about this sector can be read at this link on REmatrix.com, it's an old tirade but is still current given their business model remains intact. It's not likely they'll change until the Internet and machine learning via AI pry's it from their cold dead hands.

NEXTpath Inc. is quite different, the firm operates as a coach and career agent to a community of individuals that have been scientifically identified for having the potential to high-perform in their selected function. These high-performers are our client's, we're their sounding board, we help them with the vagaries of change by directing them to relevant resources for the situation at-hand or by assessing career opportunities that they are likely to busy to consider.

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com Okay, so when a potential candidate comes to you seeking a new opportunity, what advice do you give them?

Forbes Rutherford

I do get industry professionals coming to me for advice on how they should approach their job search. What I tell them is contingent on whether they’re using an “outplacement” service or doing it on their own. If they’re using third party assistance (generally provided by the former employer) then it’s likely that they have gone through a battery of tests and assessments that are designed to determine behavior, personality and interests. If not, or they’re on their own in this job seeking adventure then I’ll let them use my assessment services. Self-appraisal and self-awareness is important at this phase of their life; by understanding ones strengths and what truly motivates oneself, one can recognize career opportunity more effectively.

Ask a CEO to identify their greatest human resource challenges, I can assure you that one of them will be the challenge of finding motivated talent. If you don’t understand your strengths, what gets you passionate, or the optimum working environment, then the odds of finding the right position will be based entirely on serendipity. Since seventy-five percent of the workforce isn’t happy with their job, I’d say serendipity hasn’t struck the average worker very often. So before offering advice, I ask three fundamental questions, “Do you know your strengths, your interests and what gets you excited each and every day?”

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com Do most job seekers know what they’re looking for, and how they fit into the industry?

Forbes RutherfordBy and large, the answer is a resounding “No!” Some of course are looking to clone their former position with another firm. They may not have the luxury of time to reassess their career or decompress from a previous position or they’ve taken the position – allegorically speaking – “office leasing is office leasing, it doesn’t much matter who it’s with.” Of course, they’re dead wrong. Job’s are usually chosen this way, not careers. You can tell by the resume if a person hasn’t taken adequate time to think through their career.

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com Would you comment on resume errors that you’ve seen?

Forbes RutherfordWhole books are written on this subject, but fundamentally, it's not taking the time to think about the content. A resume is simply a marketing tool designed to get you through the door, it’s not meant to land you the job. It’s a living document, which defines your growth in knowledge, states your underlying value in the past and present and the likelihood of your success in the future.

It’s the most important personal document the average person will ever draft, and yet many spend little time in its creation. For example, the professionally written resume, which I find abhorrent, suggests either bad time management or inferior writing skills – if you can’t take the time to design and draft a document to effectively market yourself, how thorough will you be in representing your employer?

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com Would you comment on the resume format you prefer?

Forbes Rutherford

I’ll give you the abridged version of what I tell candidates. There are three basic formats for resume design – “functional”, “chronological” and a “hybrid” of the first two. When I receive a functional resume, I’m instantly suspicious and look for what’s being hidden versus emphasized. Candidates with significant gaps in their employment history favor the “functional” format.

I prefer a chronological format or a well thought out hybrid for the simple reason that it’s easier to interpret the flow of the person’s career decisions and the growth of their accomplishments in successive positions. When assessing a candidate by their resume, career choices are as important as duties and accomplishments. One can tell a great deal about a person’s judgment and the quality of their decision making by their career choices.

One other reason for a chronological format is “technology.” Large corporations and companies such as mine use data bases that optically scan resumes and drop all the critical information into searchable fields. Functional formats are poorly suited for this type of technology as the information must be manually inputted through a cut and paste process. It’s tedious, and we get to it when we have time, and we have very little time.

Rule of Thumb: A resume is only meant to get you through the door for an interview.

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com What are your basic rules for resume design?

Forbes Rutherford

The format you use after graduation shouldn’t be the same format after five years of experience.
Don’t itemize the same duties for each position held. When I’m reading resumes, I find bland redundancy to be a constant annoyance.
Resume should be no more than two pages. A cover letter emphasizing key parts of your resume that relate to the position your applying for is acceptable, and even helpful to the reader. When sending your resume digitally, attach the cover letter at the end of the resume rather than as a separate attachment. Some data bases that electronically scan the document aren’t sophisticated enough to handle two separate documents for the same applicant. You could end up in their system twice or have one of the two documents rejected.
Write the resume or your LinkedIn profile in the knowledge that it will eventually reside in a searchable archive. You may hear from the search firm today, or more likely two years from today on another assignment. Keep your LinkedIn profile current irrespective of your job search activity, applicant tracking systems are designed to parse this profile like any other resume. Trolling LinkedIn is standard fare for talent acquisition professionals.
Use contact information that isn’t likely to change especially your email address. Do not use your company address or a cute personal address. The address you use on your resume should be one that you check regularly. Consider a service such as Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail, which allows you to set up an account and forward mail to your personal home account.
Make it as easy as possible for the employer or search consultant to reach you during the day. A personal cell phone number is best – again, not the company cell.
After your contact information, insert your Career Objective or Executive Summary. This section should be indented from the main resume body, highlighted and no more than twenty words. If you can't state what you do in 20 words or less, you probably don't know what you are doing.
A chronological employment history, with proper title and employer name comes next. Accurate employment dates on the left side, not the right. If you’re not sure of the actual employment and departure date, then month and year are sufficient.
Statement of duties and responsibilities with each position, limit yourself to the four or five that take up eighty percent of your working week. Quantify the scope of your duties without divulging proprietary information that’s critical to your former or current employer. If duties and responsibilities’ are similar for each position, avoid redundancy and leave more room for “significant accomplishments.”
Significant Accomplishments are successes that surpass the norm and where possible should be: quantifiable in dollars saved, earned, budget or project size; number of subordinates managed; percentage increase in market share; or square footage built or leased, etc. Why quantify your accomplishments? Look at a page of text with a few numbers dispersed among the letters, your eyes will always view the numbers first – a resume is no different. You want the interviewer to see the numbers.
Managing Proprietary Information - Get permission if you need to use information that is borderline proprietary. Why? I’ll ask you if you had permission to use the numbers. If you don’t have it, it’s an indiscretion I wouldn’t want you repeating with my client.
Emphasize personal performance metrics in comparison to peers in relation to division, department or personal performance.
Assign responsibility for stated accomplishments to your team when it’s accurate to do so, but don’t avoid claiming your right to personal achievements in some misconstrued belief that there is no “I” in team. There is no “L” in Team either, but every team has a leader. A resume is your time to blow your own horn, not to do so is a contrivance.
Education – emphasize degree and successes if you’re writing the resume at the early stage of your career; but as the year’s progress you’re going to be judged on you success and accomplishments. Continuing education is critical – individuals that are intellectually sedentary aren’t overly attractive especially if the company you’re applying to considers itself a “learning organization.”
Community Volunteerism – “if you want something done, ask a busy person.” Some companies avoid individuals that are socially active in their communities; my advice is to avoid these companies as prospective employers. To be motivated daily, your values at work need to parallel your values at home.
Interests – Painting, gardening, writing poetry and long walks in the woods are not the kind of interests an employer wants to see for a position that requires a high degree of social interaction. If you’re applying for a position that calls for behavioral traits that are inconsistent with whom you are as a person, then perhaps you need to reevaluate your employment goals.
Key Words – At the bottom of the resume, create a box labeled “SEO Meta-Tags” and insert “nouns,” which describe your functional duties. This is not advice you will read in most books on resume design but it’s a feature at the end of the resume that will increase the likelihood of your information being found by a CRM/ATS search engines. Most large corporate and headhunter data bases use search engine algorithms’ that locate key words and organize the search result based on relevancy. The greater number of key words found in a document, the more likely your name will he highlighted on the output.

NEXTalent Inc. Drives Down the Cost of Recruiting

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 22:37:00 +0000

NEXTalent Inc. Drives Down the Cost of Recruiting

Dear Visitor,

Twenty eight months ago, NEXTalent Inc., a sister company to Rutherford International Executive Search Group broke onto the national corporate recruiting scene becoming the talent supplier to a number of Canada's top REIT's, REOC's and corporate service firms.

Utilizing the back office and research tools of Rutherford International, NEXTalent Inc. is designed to be consultative “success based” talent acquisition firm that offers clients a variety of competitively priced programs utilizing cutting edge technologies and in-house recruiters.

NEXTalent Inc. is not a traditional recruiting agency, we offer an innovative hybrid approach to talent recruitment with a singular client-driven purpose to drive down the cost of hiring by passing technology and science based process efficiencies through to the client. Clients have a achieved a 60 percent savings over traditional agency fees through our methods.

I welcome your interest, so please don’t hesitate to call me on my private number at 855-256-5778. I work in Eastern Standard Time.

Who We Are:

NEXTalent Inc. is a hybrid between the strategic application of executive assessment utilizing actuarial mathematics and behavioral science working in combination with the tactical or transactional application of proven recruiting processes. We overlay these services with the expressed mission and intent to reduce your talent acquisition costs without compromising your access to candidate quality or time to completion.

"Expressed mission and intent to reduce your talent acquisition costs"

Our methods encompass direct recruitment, supplier management, process and business network analysis, human intel, convergent advertising platforms and employer branding campaigns to effectively identify and evaluate expertise. We recognize that employers require expediency; it is part of the value proposition in hiring a consultancy. With this recognition, we advise clients on how to scale their recruiting needs recommending different price points along the recruitment value chain.

What We Do:

A. Talent Advisory and On-boarding:

Our full recruiting service applies executive search methods including functional specific scientific assessment tools that have an 85% predictive accuracy for identifying high performance. Our assessment of competencies span over 3000 executive, management and staff functions including investment and real estate. Whether experienced or a neophyte, our due diligence enables us to predict a person’s on-the-job performance with enough accuracy to offer an industry leading warranty.

"Our assessment of competencies span over 3000 functions"

Furthermore, we offer rapid on-boarding and learning path designs which have been proven empirically to reduce time to proficiency by 30% to 50% relative to normal training methods.

B. Employer Branding/Job Ad Marketing Campaigns:

This method works on the established theory that a passive candidate must be touched by your "job ad" a minimum of five times without the assistance of a recruiter before they are motivated to apply to a position. Our approach is designed to achieve this goal. We leverage the "Semantic Web", we market through convergent advertising platforms, employ opt-in targeted email lists and develop employer branding campaigns to effectively identify and evaluate expertise.

"Savings greater than 60% relative to standard recruitment agency fees"

Depending upon assignment difficulty, our job ad marketing campaign clients have achieved a 'talent acquisition' savings greater than 60% relative to standard recruitment agency fees, while improving their experience and success rate.

C. Job Board Advertising:

This service is the lowest price point on our recruitment value chain, yet offers exceptional value insofar as clients are able to take advantage of NEXTalent's web traffic including priority placement of their position on REjobnet.com, an international real estate job board that pulls real estate job feeds from 53 countries.

We would welcome the opportunity to explain these services to you in more detail. I can be contacted at forbes@rutherfordinternational.

Sincerely,

Forbes J. Rutherford / Group President & CEO / LinkedIn

Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc., / NEXTalent Inc. / 855-256-5778

Musings About Talent Aquisition and Employment in Canada's Real Estate Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 15:36:00 +0000

Musings About Talent Acquisition and Employment In Canada’s Real Estate Industry
by Forbes Rutherford, Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc.
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl/

A. Selection Ratio and Cost per Hire
1. War for Talent
What concerns me with respect to the future is the scarcity of high performing talent at all levels of the corporation. Identifying talent and then transferring institutional knowledge through effective succession planning has become a strategic imperative.

2. When to Use and Not Use a Headhunter
To determine your talent acquisition approach consider the following:

the strategic and/ or tactical importance of the position;
the urgency to fill the position;
and ultimately the cost to hire.

If the role is strategic and has a direct impact on profit and loss, consider an executive search partner. If the responsibilities of the position are tactical but the need is urgent, consider a standard recruiting agency. If time is on the side of the employer, then an effective job marketing campaign should suffice in order to keep the cost per hire at a minimum.

3. Driving Down the Cost per Hire Through SEO and Employer Branding
The cost per hire is a direct charge on a firm’s bottom line. This cost, however, has dropped dramatically with the advent of job boards, in-house recruiters, social networks, career advertising and search engine optimization. Much like traditional recruiting agencies, we package these tactical recruiting tools among others into our direct methods. Unlike other agencies, however, NEXTalent passes these savings on to the client.

B. Cost to Fire is Rising Exponentially
1. Cost to fire is rising exponentially relative to the cost to hire.
As much as cost per hire is rapidly declining, the cost per fire is rising exponentially. The associated contingent liabilities that attach to the bottom line are considerable and lingering. Enabling our clients to hire right is fundamental to reducing your overall cost to fire.

2. Impacting the Bottom line Through Science Based Hiring
You can improve a person’s education through courses and mentoring, you can improve their experience by exposing them to more responsibility; however you cannot improve or modify their behavior. While minor adjustments can be achieved, the behavioral DNA of an individual is relatively hardwired by the mid-twenties.

Through Rutherford International's talent acquisition advisory approach, we apply science based hiring methods utilizing advanced assessment tools that have an 85% predictive accuracy for identifying high performance.

C. Economic Realism
Having conducted executive search assignments in real estate spanning major global markets since 1986, one becomes intimately familiar with economic cycles. You don’t live through a full real estate cycle without learning that there is a correlation between gravity and finance. By its very definition, markets do cycle. We cannot assume otherwise.

Even a modest shift in capital fundamentals and inputs such as energy will test management's effectiveness to control an asset’s NOI.

D. Institutional Knowledge Transfer
1. An Aging Demographic
We have an aging managerial and executive demographic. I'm not convinced key executives pushing into their late 50s will hang around through the next financial correction. Talent gaps weren't apparent in the 2008 financial crisis as most executives remained. They weren't prepared nor ready for gearing down with their nest eggs severely eroded. However the markets have made them whole, it's not likely they'll be caught again. In fact, many are liquidating and lowering their risk threshold in preparation for gearing down or outright retirement. I expect we'll see a significant exodus of talent and institutional knowledge from corporations at all levels over the next five to ten years. Capturing this institutional knowledge along with hiring a workforce that is resilient to change is fundamental to a corporation's ability to sustain its market position.

2. The New Guard and Managing Generational Expectations
In general Canadian real estate professionals under age 47 (not the case in the United States) have yet to experience a rapid cracking of real estate fundamentals. When they do, there will be few old guard left. There is no reason to assume, however, that the new guard can't navigate through a downturn. They are bright, aggressive, collaborative and better educated. The question management needs to ask itself in preparation for the future is, 'Do I have an organization that measures its worth by its resilience to adapt, or is it caught up in its entitlements?' This is a behavioral question, the answer is easy to determine."

E. Succession Planning and Benchmarking Winners
1. High Performance Attributes as Defined by the Function
Navigating effective organizational succession planning within a transitioning industry through internal promotion and external hiring requires an understanding of the unique combination of high performing behaviors required for each key function within the top and bottom tiers of an organization.

2. Benchmarking High Performance Through Behavioral Science Research
Rutherford International’s NEXTpath division is the leading sponsor of a North American wide behavioral research study to benchmark the high-performing competencies found in critical real property functions. We currently offer access to psychometric benchmarks which span the high performing competencies of 3000 executive, management and staff functions including some real estate (retail leasing/development/project management), construction and investment functions. Grounded in thirty years of behavioral science research with statistical validity founded on actuarial science, the predictive accuracy of our benchmarks for determining a person’s on-the-job performance is 85 percent.

F: Changing the Talent Management Paradigm
1. Wading Into the Deep End of the Talent Pool
The Rutherford Group of Companies consists of a vertical of specialized executive search, talent management and recruiting firms that complement each other at various stages along the recruiting value chain. Each firm offers clients a varied approach to talent acquisition at a different cost per hire.

By adapting your point of entry onto the recruiting value chain, our methods let you ‘test the waters’ before jumping completely into the talent pool. Depending upon urgency, your first point of entry can be the running an ad on our international job board (www.rejobnet.com) for as little as CA$499.00.

2. Phased Talent Acquisition Including Proactive Recruitment
Alternatively, you can engage our talent acquisition firm (www.nextalent.ca) to implement a job marketing and employer brand management strategy to target market your position to relevant candidates; or if timing is critical we offer a full service recruiting campaign with our experienced recruiters.

Not every assignment requires a full service recruiting program. Properly staged, the cost savings of the NEXTalent program offers significant savings. A job advertising and employer brand marketing campaign through NEXTalent Inc. is equal to the cost of an average career ad in the Wall Street Journal.

For Additional Information, please contact:
Forbes Rutherford - forbes@rutherfordinternational.com or 855-256-5778 EST.

Identifying Retail Leasing Talent

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 01:14:00 +0000

Identifying Retail Leasing Talent

By Forbes J. Rutherford, Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc.,

Toronto, Calgary, 855-256-5778

About the Author: Forbes Rutherford http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl leads a consortia of talent acquisition companies that allow clients to attract talent at any price point along the recruiting value chain. Rutherford International (www.rutherfordinternational.com) is an executive search and management consulting firm that supports a network of real property, private equity, venture capital and investment management firms with identification and behavioral assessment of executive talent.

Furthermore, we offer rapid on-boarding and departmental enhancement strategies that can reduce time to proficiency for critical front-office functions (including sales) by 30 to 50% compared to traditional training protocols. See: http://tinyurl.com/rutherford-group to review our integrated approach to talent acquisition.

The following is the first of a serialized article detailing the results of behavioral study conducted by a leading behavioral scientist and sponsored by Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc. (www.rutherfordinternational.com). Through a marriage of actuarial and behavioral science, the study benchmarks the success attributes of Canada’s top retail leasing executives in the following functions: Senior Retail Leasing Manager/Director; Greenfield Leasing Manager/Broker (included repositioning of existing assets) and VP Retail Leasing. Preliminary results to date are considered 86% accurate, and the study will be expanded into additional global markets to yield additional data. The article is serialized over the month of March with brief entries published each Monday.

In my capacity as an executive search professional in real estate, I’ve been a keen observer of shifting trends in organizational design and talent for the past 30 years. Within the last decade, Baby Boomers in management have started to give way to Generation X and Y with the Millennial generation rapidly filling junior and intermediate leasing roles. This generational shift was clearly evident at last year’s ICSC conference given the number of fresh faces attending broker and owner leasing booths.

These fresh faces caused me to wonder how they may have been selected for their retail leasing role and who in the crowd had the capacity to become succession candidates to management. Some had recognizable surnames, all were eager and all were excited by the prospect of beginning their careers in a function that is foundational to creating value and a traditional springboard to promotion within the industry. The seeming promise of this pool of talent in the room seemed incongruent with the lament of old guard industry leaders who confided their frustration that for every 10 junior retail leasing representatives or agents they hired, only one would exceed their expectations.

Darwinian approach to talent selection

This lament is frequently followed up with the additional complaint that after two or three years developing a protégé’s expertise, the risk of s/he being poached by a competitor was high. It was an extraordinary statistic. Imagine hiring ten junior/intermediate leasing representatives to get one that merits promotion to Senior Retail Leasing Manager, only to run the risk of losing him or her to competition. These are odds even Vegas wouldn’t consider. Admittedly this 10:1 ratio is founded on anecdotal evidence and likely an exaggeration, however even if the ratio were 5:1, it remains an extraordinary admission of failure in the ability to identify potential leasing talent.

How should executives mitigate hiring risk when selecting a junior retail leasing representative – without resorting to a Darwinian approach to talent selection?

The answer and resolution to this question is available through a research study conducted by a renowned organizational behavioral scientist and sponsored by Rutherford International. The study benchmarked the behavioral profile of a cross section of some of Canada’s top in-house and broker retail leasing executives. Of the 85 behavioral traits assessed, we found 20 traits that are within varying degree core attributes to the high achievers in three studied retail leasing positions: Greenfield Leasing Executive/Broker; VP Retail Leasing and Manager/Director Retail Leasing.

The observations in this study are provocative

Traditional Approach to Hiring

At present the emphasis by hiring managers is on screening for traditional sales personality characteristics, perceived industry network and apparent track record when assessing prospects with experience. In the case of hiring an inexperienced prospect, the industry tends to screen for traditional sales characteristics solely. As indicated above, however this approach typically yields poor results.

In fact, the study observes:

Observation 1: The use of typical sales profiles would not successfully predict high performance in any of the three retail leasing roles as little or no correlation exists between the behavioral attributes of successful salespeople and that of high performing retail leasing professionals.

The observations in this study are provocative, and underscore the importance of early assessment of the behavioral strengths of leasing representatives and placements that can effectively leverage those strengths. Read the example of a retail executive following a successful science based hiring approach prior to the Vegas ICSC conference here: http://tinyurl.com/vegasandleasing.

ABOUT THE STUDY

Underlying Science behind the Study: Job Component Validity (JCV)

Our approach to establishing a benchmark for retail leasing performance is based on a selection methodology known as Job Component Validity. Grounded in formal actuarial science, this single standard system has the potential to revolutionize hiring. Major thought leading publications such as Science Daily, American Psychologist and the International Journal of Selection and Assessment have pointed to the ability of JCV to accurately identify almost anybody for anything in 1/1000 the time and cost.

Potential to revolutionize hiring

In the world of psychometric assessment, industry is served by a myriad of tools designed to categorize and slot an individual’s personality into an understandable quadrant or color code. It’s a confusing array of choices for the layperson. Even the categorization is perplexing:

Category 1 assessments are often clinical based, highly accurate and designed to provide the user with decisive options without having met the candidate;
Category 2 assessments are accurate within 60-70% of predictive validity but require a behavioral interview to validate findings;
Category 3 assessment tools are often characterized by their cheap and cheerful price and are most often used for staff and middle management hiring. They tend to emphasize personality type, offer no predictive correlation for success on the job in question. In fact the predictive validity of this category is so limited that the governing body of American Psychologists will fine any member found to be using one popular C3 assessment tool as a basis for hiring.

A fundamental weakness with both Category 2 and 3 assessment tools is their lack of granularity insofar as only 26 to 50 overall character attributes are considered (few actually assess more than 35). A person’s behavioral DNA is a highly complex interplay of attributes. Limiting the number of assessed attributes when calculating Job Component Validity significantly diminishes the predictive accuracy of the assessment.

A further weakness of these tools is the authors’ penchant to dumb down the results in a manner that’s meant to be understandable to the layperson, with explanation from a certified consultant. The output is often fancy, but lacks scientific rigor.

Behavioral DNA is highly complex sequence of attributes

Predictive Validity of the Retail Study

The granularity of our benchmark is the result of a Category 1 instrument which measures 85 statistically distinct behavioral attributes. No assessment tool is 100 percent accurate; however, the synthetic validity* of our methodology can be used to estimate predictor validity in these situations within 86 percent accuracy.

Note: “Synthetic validity is a logical process of inferring validity on the basis of the relationships between components of a job and tests of the attributes that are needed to perform the job components.” International Journal of Selection and Assessment

Data Collection

Rutherford International handpicked the national survey sample based upon industry referral, a sound understanding of the three position requirements as well as having a long familiarity with each participant’s perceived high rated proficiency either within the industry or their company.

The sample highly rated performers within each of the three retail leasing roles were asked to complete an online survey. Most individuals competed it within approximately 90 minutes, but there was no time limit and the assessment could be done over several shorter periods rather than one sitting.

Core Behavioral Traits Identified – Retail Leasing

Our assessment instrument measures 85 statistically distinct Behavioral Attributes (few assessments measure more than 30) and 35 Career Themes (few measure more than 10) which interface with more than 2500 Occupational Titles….few tests measure more than 200 career titles.

Of these 85 statistically distinct Behavioral Attributes, we identified approximately 20 attributes that a successful Manager, Retail Leasing, Vice President Retail Leasing and Greenfield Leasing/Broker as a professional group demonstrated to a higher degree than the typical employed population.

A sample of the identified behavioral attributes common to this professional group are: Self-Expression, Analytical Thinking, Assertion, Initiative, Fraternity, Stamina (Physical and Mental), Stress Tolerance, Seeks Adventure/Change, Visibility (Outgoing, Extroversion, and Desire for Social Attention.)

STRATEGIC QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER WHEN HIRING

As I scanned those fresh faces in the ICSC crowd, four questions came to mind that science based hiring and resource management can resolve. Elements of these questions will be addressed over the coming weeks:

Imagine if it were possible to quickly assess the individual members of your retail leasing team’s potential for near to high performance.
Conceive the efficiencies achieved if you could balance your leasing team’s effectiveness, ensuring within 86% of predictive accuracy that the leasing manager best suited for green field is attached to the development project, while the leasing manager best suited for infill leasing focuses on the existing portfolio.
What is the impact on team morale of promoting your star leasing executive – who lacks the capacity to manage others – out of a desire to retain him or her? How might that promotion sabotage the very goals you set out to achieve when that leasing executive’s poor management skills begin to surface?
What savings in acquisition and retention could you achieve and how much compression in project timelines could you recover if your new hires had the behavioral profile equal to or better than the top retail leasing executives in the country?

SUMMARY OF STUDY RESULTS

1. Core Attributes Relative to Traditional Sales Benchmarks

Initially, all the participants’ scores were compared to our behavioral scientist’s Sale Agent/Broker/Distributor profile which has a high degree of accuracy in predicting performance within a wide variety of industries. While all individuals participating in the research were rated as consistently “exceeding” performance expectations in their specific retail leasing role, less than 25% of the participants in the sample scored 60+ on our non-real estate “Sales Agent/Broker/Distributor” benchmark. Even when we compared respondents to his generic Sales Representative benchmark, fewer than 45% scored in the 60+ range of this profile.

Less than 25% of the participants in the sample scored 60+

(Note: 60-69 scores on either of the mentioned sales profiles would predict that individuals scoring in this range have a 50% probability of being rated as ‘high performer,’ a 30% probability of being rated as ‘typically meeting’ performance expectation, and therefore an 80% probability of being rated as ‘meeting or exceeding’ expectation.)

Clearly, the use of standard sales profiles would not successfully predict high performance in any of the three roles under study. The behavioral characteristics demonstrated by successful retail leasing professionals is quite different than those necessary to succeed in traditional sales positions.

2. Greenfield Leasing Representative/Broker

In this category, we identified leasing professionals that have a clear track record in substantively repositioning a retail center though tenant re-mix and/or front-end development leasing using a set of drawings or executing on the owner’s vision for the dirt. We wanted to determine if there was a clear incongruity in behavioral attributes between a professional responsible for Greenfield leasing and a leasing professional responsible for leasing a stable portfolio. A clear distinction does in fact emerge.

Observation 2:

A “Probability of Career Success Score (POS),” or “Predictor of Success Score” ranging from 60-80 suggests that only 25% of Retail Leasing Manager/Directors and 42% of VP Retail Leasing have the wherewithal to be “High Performing” in a Greenfield or asset repositioning leasing environment.

Observation 3:

Not a single Vice President, Retail Leasing nor Manager, Retail Leasing participating in the overall survey group and who were excluded from Rutherford International’s Greenfield participant list scored within the 60 – 80 range of the Greenfield Predictive Profile.

Observation 4:

An actuarial extrapolation of survey results would suggest that 75% of Manager’s, Retail Leasing employed by Owners/Managers do not possess the fundamental success attributes necessary to be effective in Greenfield leasing (includes repositioning of a retail asset).

Observation 5:

Furthermore, given the Manager Retail Leasing’s poor score in the attributes critical to the Greenfield benchmark, we believe that employee development programs designed to improve these behavioral attributes will have little benefit.

What does this mean?

We are confident that this Greenfield Leasing Predictive Profile can be successfully applied to predict who would be successful in the front-end leasing or repositioning activity of a retail development.

How information can be applied.

Assuming relevant education and experience with the lease document and nuance of the business are in hand, we can predict with 86% accuracy as to whether the individual has the wherewithal to be “high performing.”

3. Vice President Retail Leasing

In this category, we identified approximately 20 distinct behavioral attributes that a successful Vice President Retail Leasing demonstrates to a higher degree than a successful Manager, Retail Leasing. The ‘Mean Score’ for these 20 distinct behavioral traits achieved by VP participants in this benchmark was 64% whereas the ‘Mean Score’ for the same traits by Managers, Retail Leasing was 39%. This would suggest that a significant percentage of Senior Managers, Retail Leasing do not have the behavioral wherewithal to become even average VP Retail Leasing executives.

Observation 6: A “Probability of Career Success Score (POS),” or “Predictor of Success Score” ranging from 61-82 and deemed to be “Near to & High Performing” was achieved by 50% of the VP Leasing participants, while the remaining 50% scored between the 50-58 range on the POS for this role.

Observation 7: Only 33% of Managers, Retail Leasing participants that were not part of the Greenfield Leasing profile scored within 50 – 55 on the Vice President, Retail Leasing Predictive Profile. An additional 50% of Managers, Retail Leasing participants scored 14 – 46 range of this same sample which means a total of 88% of Managers, Retail Leasing scored less than 55 on the Vice President, Retail Leasing Predictive Profile for Success.

What does this mean?

The “Mean” age of VP Retail Leasing executives within Canada is somewhere between 45 and 55 years of age. When one considers the limited number of high performing executives within this group in conjunction with the weakness for high performance identified at the Manager level, we believe that the Canadian retail owner/developer will likely face succession challenges for the next ten years.

Owner/developers will face succession challenges for ten years.

Through our benchmark, companies are able to assess the success potential and manage the career trajectory of their rising management stars in a manner that meets the strategic needs of the firm’s growth. A statistical analysis suggests that a significant percentage of Managers, Retail Leasing do not possess the fundamental attributes to be successful in the role of VP Retail Leasing; nor are they likely to increase their score in regard to these specific attributes through employee development programs.

We are confident that this VP Retail Leasing Predictive Profile can be successfully applied to predict who would be successful in this role.

How information can be applied.

4. Senior Manager, Retail Leasing

Of the entire sample of retail leasing professionals we determined that 72% had the critical behavioral attributes to achieve a high level of performance in the role of Senior Manager, Retail Leasing. Within this grouping of 72%, only 39% of incumbent Senior Managers, Retail Leasing perform at the same level as their superiors and Greenfield colleagues.

Observation 8: A “Probability of Career Success Score (POS),” or “Predictor of Success Score” ranging from 60 - 90 and deemed to be “Near to & High Performing” was achieved by 72% of the overall retail leasing sample, while the remaining 28% achieved a POS rating as “Typically Meeting” expectations.

What does this mean?

Statistically, a high percentage of retail leasing professionals possess the necessary qualities deemed necessary to be “high performing” in the role of Senior Manager, Retail Leasing (responsible for stable assets.)

This is not the case however with respect to the repurposing of or development of retail assets, where it’s evident that a significant number of the retail leasing professionals currently employed by Owner/Developers do not have the behavioral foundation to “high perform” in these roles.

Our leasing benchmark optimizes the prediction of performance

How information can be applied.

We are confident that this Senior Manager Retail Leasing Predictive Profile can be successfully applied to predict who would be successful in this role.

Assuming relevant education and experience are in hand, we can predict with 86% accuracy as to whether the individual has the wherewithal to be “high performing.”

Commentary on Study Impact and Use of Information

“Increasing the internal talent ratio”

Your next great leasing executive may be in finance or property management. Rarely does one witness a retail property manager transferred into a key leasing role. Hiring risk is generally the reason for this reticence on the part of management. However armed with the (POS) Probability of Success score for Manager, Retail Leasing, you can reduce hiring risk while increasing the scope of your internal selection ratio when posting the position.

You can reduce hiring risk

Becoming known within the industry as an organization where individuals have the opportunity to break out of functional silos raises your corporate brand identity thereby reinforcing the organization’s image as a great place to work.

“Understanding what you have”

Whether acquiring a property or an operating company, the granularity of our bespoke research helps you enter a new market; strengthen the existing leasing team or department including the assessment of talent prior to an acquisition, merger or co-venture.

“Managing employee expectations”

We’ve noted in our research that it’s possible and quite likely that your Manager, Retail Leasing is a “high performer” with respect to leasing a stable portfolio, but lacks the behavioral attributes for promotion into the VP Retail Leasing position. How do you manage the career expectations of this star performer?

Manage an employee’s expectations

The benchmark allows you to manage an employee’s expectations by applying other means of recognizing their importance. For instance, with foreknowledge companies are able to structure a performance based compensation and recognition structure that rewards the high performing manager while moderating the individual’s perception that leadership of staff equates to career growth.

“Hiring Process Re-engineering”

There are hard and soft costs to wrongful hiring and/or hiring error. Hiring effective and motivated people can become a predictable and consistent process. Employers simply needs to align every aspect of their recruitment, interview, and assessment process around the promotion of their corporate brand and the “science of hiring.”

“Leasing Team Planning – Bench Strength”

Our approach utilizes key behavioral factors and the Drexler-Sibbet Team Performance Model to enable analysis of strength/gaps against required performance; and to identify best fit from an individual and team balance perspective. For example, firms hiring Manager’s, Retail Leasing for a relatively stable retail portfolio should have little difficulty in hiring a competent “first string” to its leasing bench.

Your first string of leasing professionals quickly wilt

However throw in an element of economic chaos or projects that require some form of re-purposing or re-valuation through a tenant remix, and the capabilities of this first string may quickly wilt into a third or fourth string of leasing professionals.

“Employee Development Programs – Focusing on Strengths”

Companies invest heavily into the development of their employees; often these programs are designed for multiple participants and have little effect if meant for behavioral modification. A person’s behavioral attributes are relatively ingrained by the time they finish adolescence although it is possible to make some adjustments by focusing on one’s ‘near strengths.’

Shifting a "Behavioral DNA" takes a great deal of effort.

The benchmark allows you to apply programs that are customized to the individual by targeting specific ‘near strength’ attributes where improvement will have the greatest effect. To have a high performing “POS” score one must have a 65 point score or greater in a majority of the attributes key to the POS benchmark. Statistically, it’s not possible to move an attribute’s behavioral score more than five points, yet moving a key attribute from 60 to 65 through a targeted career development program will have a dramatic effect on the POS score and the individual’s ranking. Shifting "Behavioral DNA" takes a great deal of effort.
Note: Read Article - "You are what you were and will be what your are"

“Mentor/Mentee Programs – Risking Mediocrity Counseling Excellence”

It is not uncommon for a junior leasing manager to be placed under the wing of a firm’s Senior Leasing Manager. However imagine if it was determined that this particular Senior Leasing Manager’s POS score indicated that h/she was unlikely to progress beyond an average status in their current role, while the young protégé had all the attributes to be a high performing VP Retail Leasing executive one day. In this instance, is it appropriate that this Senior Leasing Manager should mentor, and if so, to what extent and for how long should h/she be responsible for the junior representative’s development?

Survey Results to be continued:

April 14^th for Succession Planning through customized success profiling

I’ll be publishing excerpts of the study each Monday for the next two weeks. If you would like to receive forthcoming excerpts directly please contact me at forbes@rutherfordinternational.com.

In the meantime, should any other questions come to mind, I would be pleased to offer you additional insights from the survey and offer insight as to how we could impact the development of your leasing team and ongoing succession strategy.

Sincerely,

Forbes J. Rutherford, President, Rutherford International, Toronto/Calgary

forbes@rutherfordinternational.com or 855-256-5778

Building A Talent Pipeline

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 00:51:00 +0000

BUILDING A TALENT PIPELINE

By Forbes J. Rutherford, Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc., Toronto, Calgary, 855-256-5778

About the Author: Forbes Rutherford http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl leads an integrated group of talent acquisition companies that enable clients to attract talent at any stage along the recruiting value chain. Our process can achieve a 30% reduction on a client’s annual budgeted recruitment spend by simply aligning every aspect of your recruitment, interview and assessment process around the promotion of your corporate brand and applying science based hiring.

As well, our approach to on-boarding and re-engineering of training protocols for front-line functions has reduced time to proficiency by 50%. The retention of effective and motivated people can become a predictable and consistent process through re-engineering of your hiring and training protocol. See: http://tinyurl.com/rutherford-group

The following is an eleven part series which details the past, current and evolving conditions related to building a talent pipeline in your organization. The article is serialized over a five week period with brief entries published each Monday and Thursday.

With the ongoing retirement of the baby boomer cohort from the workforce and the rising influence of the technically savvy millennial, the executive suite is becoming increasingly aware of the impact the war for talent is having on the profit levers of their business. Demographers have been predicting for years the seismic shift the boomers’ departure would have on consumer and workforce patterns. Even when change is predictable, however, not all industries are able to effectively adapt. Some industries that have struggled with change despite the benefit of economic prognostication include water utilities, pulp and paper, automotive, commercial banking and beverage manufacturing.

Real estate industry remains highly fragmented and unpredictable

Real estate is quite different. The industry can work its way to the edge of chaos and yet has the entrepreneurial wherewithal to reshape itself. It is an industry that has matured over the past thirty years, and yet remains highly fragmented and unpredictable in the extreme. Urban social patterns compound demand cycles leading to both disbursed and concentrated communities that create hard to predict development patterns. Both commercial and urban residential real estate have few barriers to entry; with constantly evolving innovation in workplace design, energy efficiency and building science leading to new opportunities. The ability to identify effective and resilient expertise within this chaotic dance of competing firms is directly impacted by these conditions.

Chaotic dance of competing firms

The industry has proven itself to be susceptible to elasticity, having been strategically shaped by forward thinking CEOs with adaptive corporate stratagems that embrace short or continual planning cycles. It’s not unusual for adaptive real estate companies to rely upon an ecosystem of customers, suppliers and co-venture partners that identify with the CEO’s vision for new markets, client relationship standards, technology platforms and improved business practices. The challenges within this adaptation include preparing for succession and voluntary attrition within the industry’s ranks. To adapt successfully, companies must actively build talent pipelines to ensure the growth and viability of the business.

The challenges within this adaptation include preparing for succession

Part 1 – A Brief History

Twelve years ago companies shifted their recruiting from offline to online, following candidates as they moved their job search from newspapers to job boards. The migration produced a 55% decline in market share for newspapers carrying jobs – today newsprint accounts for only 5% of advertised vacancies.

Today newsprint accounts for only 5% of advertised vacancies

The utility and robustness of job board technology continue to evolve. According to Bersin and Associates in the United Kingdom, job boards have acquired a market share of 19% of new hires in the United States and 9% in the United Kingdom. Canada would fall in between these percentages at around 12%. This market penetration has been at the expense not only of print advertising but also recruitment agencies.

In response to this competitive challenge, broad sheets followed their clients by establishing proprietary job boards, linked to their syndicated newspapers through a single integrated job board. For major employers who recruit nationally, this integrated job board approach simplified things as advertisers didn’t have to place jobs in dozens of newspapers all over the country but could simply post a job to one or two national job boards.

Part 2 – Job Board Weaknesses

As a technology platform, job boards are most successful in attracting ‘active’ candidates – those who are looking for a job. However 9 out of 10 visitors to corporate career sites and job boards don’t apply to the posted jobs. Reasons for not submitting their resume are multiple. It’s likely they are gainfully employed and reluctant to have their name in play; while others are simply comparing their functional duties and accountabilities with competitive organizations. As well, thirty five percent of the working population do not actively seek ‘change,’ requiring the impetus of an intermediary.

35% of the working population do not actively seek ‘change’

With this low conversion rate of prospects into candidates, one might think that job boards are likely to die out, certainly progressive companies are reducing their budgets on job boards in favor of more comprehensive job marketing strategies designed to source both “active” and “passive” candidates. Job boards are not dying, their role remains a critical component of an integrated candidate pipeline.

REjobnet.com is representative of how a job board functions as the first stage of integrated candidate pipeline. Catering to commercial real estate, the site receives real estate postings from 53 countries. This volume of international real estate jobs should satisfy the intellectual curiosity of most passive job seekers while featuring opportunities for active job seekers.

Part 3 – Widening the Pipe – Search Engine Optimization

The Internet is a continuous disruptive force on our way of living and conduct of business. In the war for specialized talent, the marketplace does not rely solely on job boards as means to gather job and career information. The job board as a source for prospects is akin to a garden hose filling your outdoor pool, it will get the job done but not at the same rate as a hose attached to your local hydrant.

Google receives 300 million job related search requests per month.

To increase the flow of prospects, one needs to optimize their search engine access, along with improved tools for mining Big Data. Big Data is becoming increasing accessible and cost efficient, it's created mega-shifts in workplace design, influenced adaption to process, caused the reconfiguration of value chains and the segmentation of markets. Search engines such as Google and Bing in conjunction with job aggregating spiders scrape the internet for job information and postings.

For example, Google’s search engine receives 300 million job related search requests per month. With this level of activity, there is an inaudible yet omnipresent noise factor one must consider when posting a position to attract a specific expertise. As a result, crafting job ad text and strategically posting the ad to optimize the potential of search engines has become a central aspect of digital ad placement and interactive marketing.

Part 4 – Filtering Noise in a Distributive Universe

The decline of ad revenue from traditional print and broadcast networks dramatically demonstrates the remarkable ability of emerging technologies to disrupt and recast our sources of information and their influence on the social fabric. The advent of the 800 channel digital universe has fractured the viewing audience by redirecting the public to a diverse array of specialty broadcasters and a bevy of themed shows. This example of disruptive technology has reduced viewership even more so by providing alternative forms of on-line entertainment such as gaming and social networking. In response, media savvy entrepreneurs adapt by applying the principle of platform convergence to create an integrated interactive experience for their audience.

Job seekers may need to see or hear about the same job five times

This same fracturing of the viewing audience has taken place in the job market where job seekers may need to see or hear about the same job as many as five times before they are motivated to apply. In the war for talent, the importance of multiple touch points has led to a convergence of job information platforms. This convergence of technologies has created symbiotic information channels spanning search engines, job aggregators, newsletters, affinity job boards, social networks, recruiting firms, company web sites and targeted email.

Coordinating the management of these distributive channels (or touch points) through a singular workflow promotes the likelihood of converting a prospect into a candidate.

Optimizing these touch points is what we do at www.retalentselect.com. Contact me at forbes@rutherfordinternational.com for more information or visit http://tinyurl.com/rutherford-group

Part 5 – Targeting the Digitally Raised Prospect

Disruptive technologies have allowed us to adapt our workforce strategies. Workforce planning includes a highly distributive environment consisting of flexible work settings and trans-national project teams. In today’s workforce, an email to an associate is as likely to go around the world as across the room. In this distributive world of work where text, video conferencing or email has become the default means of communication, it’s not surprising how difficult it is to convert a passive and perhaps remotely located prospect into an active candidate. Today’s employee has grown up digital.

All things digital has fundamentally changed social and work life behavior

Not only has today’s employee grown up digital, our embrace of all things digital has fundamentally changed social and work life behavior. However, as much as individuals are tied to their corporate networks, people are inherently social and require interaction at both a personal and professional development level.

Societies change but remain consistently true to their internal behavioral compass. Evidence of this consistent social wiring is found in the growth of social networking platforms which have reshaped society. These platforms are simply a technological response by a decidedly adaptive and distributive digital society that yearns to coalesce into smaller cohesive circles of interest and knowledge. Targeting these digitally savvy prospects must be on their terms.

Part 6 – Mapping the Shadow Network – Connecting to High Performance

Social network mapping is an instrumental tool in the identification and acquisition of high performing human capital. Understanding how business networks interact is critical to accessing key talent through direct contact or referral. For instance, behind the hierarchy of a corporation’s formal and public structure, every company has an internal shadow network of dominant employees. It’s not always apparent to senior management who these individuals are. Mapping these shadow nodes within a corporation, however, can uncover the real sources of influence and knowledge.

Every company is supported by an internal network

These human nodes of influence know who the high performers are within an organization and often within the industry. Most importantly, they are generally willing to share their knowledge as a means to fostering their influence.

The researcher’s ability to map this social or corporate network of connectors is a technical function. Charting the internal dynamics of a connector’s influence is a complicated exercise especially when the connector’s network spans an industry. Charting a network is often counter-intuitive and requires a skilled network navigator.

Charting a network is often counter-intuitive

The research department of RutherfordInternational Executive Search Group Inc. draws from the collective abilities of more than 120 researchers based across Canada, Europe, United Kingdom and India. Skilled in mining ‘Big Data’ and expert in both hard and soft contact recruitment, our methods chart the shadow network across multiple corporate platforms and industry sectors.

Properly applied and in concert with other segments of the recruiting pipeline, our clients are able to effectively reduce their acquisition costs while attracting and hiring quality candidates.

Part 7 – Breaking the Dependency on Agencies

To reduce the ‘average cost per hire’ for new employees, employers must find a way to minimize their reliance on transactional recruitment and personnel agencies when sourcing the candidate population.

For the last 30 years, apart from fear of starting a talent war, it has been considered ‘bad form’ to directly recruit from competitors. There was always enough talent to go around. This implied civility created an environment where favored agencies acted as external proxies providing clients with probable denial. However talent scarcity and a shifting corporate ethos has abridged the corporation’s concern to be seen raiding a competitor. “All is fair in love and war.

American corporations have reduced their dependency on proxies

The use of agencies as proxies is most common in the United Kingdom and Canada where agencies still account for 35 percent of staff and middle-management new hires. Whereas American corporations have reduced their dependency on proxies to 8 percent, preferring to engage more consultative and strategically minded third-parties strictly for senior level and hard-to-fill positions.

Long part of the employer landscape, the third party recruiter’s failure to adapt to disruptive technology and provide a consultative value proposition versus being a corporate veil has broken their entrenched business model within the recruiting culture. See Recruitment – An Insiders View

Transactional firms are still too expensive

The vast majority of agencies who’ve remained transactional versus consultative have adapted by reducing their fees to compete with web-based options. The sad reality is, in their pursuit towards mediocrity – these transactional firms are still too expensive relative to aggressive job marketing tools currently available to employers.

Clients are simply looking for more effective methods to uncover passive candidates, including beefed-up internal recruiting departments in companies where hiring volumes justify increased burden. In time, web based technology will supplant those pure contingent agencies that haven’t been able to rise above their “introductory role” within the hiring transaction.

Part 8 – Passive Candidate Conversion – It’s a Matter of Touch

Candidate conversion is a difficult exercise, especially in the context of converting the passive candidate who is likely resistant to change or not giving the idea a moment of consideration. Success is often the result of the recruiter’s understanding of industry nuance, and frequently based on the number of times the recruiter can ‘touch’ a candidate in the overall job marketing campaign.

Only 8 percent indicated that they were actively hunting for a job

The decision to use an external or internal recruiter is ultimately a matter of deciding who is best at managing the talent pipeline including the engagement and conversion of high-quality candidates into a successful hire.

Evidence of this challenge was highlighted in a LinkedIn study of 4,500 respondents to their on-line job service. Of the 4,500 surveyed only 8 percent indicated that they were actively hunting for a job. The remaining 92 percent were categorized in a variety of ways which described their openness to employment opportunities.

They broke down as follows:

28 percent were described as “Super Passives” or unlikely to respond to any type of solicitation
40 percent were described as “Explorers” surfing through the cyber shadows exploring their options;
15 percent were “Tiptoer's,” this group is selectively committed to opportunities that are upwardly mobile;
6 percent are “Searchers,’ where they’re not actively seeking a new position but are open to the idea of changing jobs;
And 3 percent are “Networkers,” where they’re not actively seeking a new position as much as seeking to increase industry relationships.

The survey results would suggest that a full 83 percent of respondents were exceedingly passive and likely to only respond to a recruiting process that involved multiple touch points both through technology and human interaction before becoming active.

Part 9: Changing Roles of Internal and External Recruiters

Most external and a very few internal talent acquisition departments have the wherewithal to directly reach out and touch a list of targeted candidates. Currently the primary responsibility of an in-house talent acquisition department is to manage agency contracts, oversee process, track metrics, foster and promote employer branding and when necessary conduct tactical recruitment.

Reduction of your overall annual talent acquisition costs

Through an alignment of interests, aspects of this internal scope can be outsourced to an external service provider leading to a reduction of your overall annual talent acquisition costs by as much as 40 percent. The Rutherford Group of Companies methodology provides for this degree of granularity and can be layered into your internal recruiting team at a cost factor exceedingly less than your annual spend on employment agencies.

Part 10: Building and Managing a Real Estate Talent Community

Employers have operated their recruiting strategy on a pay-per-job model for years. This approach means that every time a new employee is required, the employer generally begins the recruiting effort from scratch by paying to advertise the job and/or engaging a third party recruiter. Through this process, candidate resumes are compiled, a short-list is established, a winner is eventually identified and all non-selected candidates are usually thanked for applying and then discarded.

As many as 9 out of 10 respondents to a career site don’t apply for the advertised job, so discarding the runner-up along with the top five or so respondents in a job search, given the cost of acquisition seems like a terrible misuse of capital and future access to talent. Currently, most employers don’t have the systems in place to manage these valuable and often high quality candidates beyond the current search. Information in data bases deteriorates by 30 percent per year so dropping the resumes into a searchable data base isn’t a sufficient solution.

Email your job descriptions to our talent supply chain every day

Through an alignment of interests, we offer a centralized talent community that allows us to capture more passive candidates, multiply industry referrals and automatically match and email your job descriptions to our talent supply chain every day. No more hoping that your recruiters are searching your applicant tracking system and doing manual outreach to registered candidates. Our talent community engine will automatically match and email every job to each subscribed candidate, inviting them to apply for future positions and encouraging them to tell friends who may match your jobs.

To be continued on April 7, 2014. To receive notification of the update, email me at forbes@rutherfordinternational.com with “Update” in the Subject or request a connection to my LinkedIn Profile

Forthcoming excerpts:

Part 11 - Employers Need a Partner - Alignment of Client/Supplier Interests - April 7th.

Integrated Talent Acqusition Services

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 23:19:00 +0000

Rutherford Group of Companies

forbes@rutherfordinternational.com

Tel: 855-256-5778

The Rutherford Group is a vertical of specialized talent acquisition/management firms that complement each other by empowering clients to phase their approach to talent acquisition at a different cost per hire along the recruitment value chain.

We optimize interactive recruiting strategies using a competitive yet effective process that co-mingles the “crowd sourcing’ capabilities of Web 3.0 technologies and the intelligence gathering skills of a 120 person international research team available through Rutherford International’s back office. This back-office approach to managing talent acquisition combines the attributes of a job ad agency that targets active job seekers with that of a human capital research team that utilizes its knowledge and superior access to specifically target candidates not actively seeking new opportunities.

This unbundled approach to the “recruitment value chain,” lets clients ‘test the talent waters’ before jumping completely into the pool with a fully engaged search. Properly employed, the cost saving is significant. For example, a job advertising and employer brand marketing campaign through NEXTalent Inc. is equal to the cost of an average career ad in the Wall Street Journal; or approximately 50 percent savings over standard recruiting agency fees.

Our talent acquisition and management consulting firms operate within a three tiered vertical. Rutherford International sits at the top of the stacked firms, with NEXTalent Inc. in the middle, and REjob.net, an international real estate job board at the base.

Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc. - www.rutherfordinternational.com

Executive/Board search, succession planning and team gap analysis, target merger and acquisition opportunities specifically roll-up of brokerage and property service companies, match capital to talent including asset stabilization and restructuring, support market expansion by identifying alliance or co-venture partners, behavioral assessment and research;

NEXtalent Inc. - www.nextalent.ca or www.nextalentinc.com

Corporate Recruiter Service: Paid on a success basis, Corporate recruitment - Permanent, Contract, Special Projects including flex workers. Subject to client volume, we offer dedicated RPO account managers including vendor management solutions. NEXtalent currently acquires talent in the following real estate sectors: Lenders, Direct Investors, Advisory Firms, REIT’s, REOC’s, Property/Facility Managers, GC’s and Retailers/Hospitality

Job Ad Campaign/Employer Branding: We market your employer brand including active job openings utilizing Web 3.0 and SEO technology, newsletters and targeted emails. The firm puts your opportunity and firm directly in front of relevant candidates. Our researchers process the response and experienced recruiters are on-hand to short-list for you on a time and material basis. Depending upon the base salary, our process represents approximately a 50 percent savings over an external recruiter’s average fee.

Flex-Work Clearinghouse: The desire to have "Work Life Balance" was once considered a reason for rejecting a job prospect, now it has become part of the productivity lexicon. We designed our FlexWork Clearinghouse for the retiring Boomer to gear-back, subsidize their pension while helping companies acquire generational knowledge. The idea of "FlexWork" where you are only around three days a week project managing a specific role, re-engineering a process, raising capital or managing a defined number of properties fits your present and future lifestyle. Unlike our Interim Executive and Contracting Service, our FlexWork roles are full-time part-time functions. We have a particular interest in experienced property managers, project managers and building operators. Let us assist you in finding the right "Work/Life Balance" today!

REjobnet.com - www.rejobnet.com

We highlight your job ad on an international real estate job listing site that aggregates job opportunities from 53 countries. Clients can purchase a single ad or a package of five postings at a volume rate. For larger volume clients, we host a micro-site for you that can be actively linked to the homepage of REjobnet.com and your corporate web site.

“You are what you were, and will be what you are”

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 04:36:00 +0000

Part III - Targeting High Performers – Behavioral DNA

The third step to successful hiring is to hire for those high performing behaviors that are specific to the job in question. Hiring for such behaviors, however, does not mean that you must suddenly become a devotee of the fashionable personality test approach to recruiting. Knowing where a candidate resides on the confidence spectrum is only significant to the extent that self-confidence is necessary to the role. Does the candidate, for example, require confidence to fuel the negotiation chops required to secure a complex lease agreement?

Talent management professionals need to re-evaluate the merits of their personality assessment tools

Talent management professionals need to re-evaluate the merits of the personality assessment tools they are using for critical hires. The most popular of these personality tests attempts to measure a broad range of basic traits including emotional intelligence. While they can offer useful insight about both individuals and teams (including gaps in a management team’s composite profile), psychological research has consistently proven that these personality measures do little to predict how well a candidate will actually perform on the job. This lack of predictive validity likely sheds light on why so many executives balk at completing these tests. They have seen for themselves that identifying someone as an “idealist” or “counselor” or “analytical driver” rarely translates into something they can use in a real-world scenario. In the absence of role-based behavioral requirements, a personality profile is data without purpose. And many employment candidates, regularly subjected to such tests and thus well aware of their profile’s attributes, have already concluded that broad personality tests cannot provide a reliable path forward for their career plans. They have discovered for themselves that a correlation between these broad personality test types and successful on-the-job performance is a phantom in the wind.

Personality testing can deliver valuable insights, but they don’t predict performance outcomes – unless the attributes they unveil are closely mapped to specific job requirements. If job performance is what’s at stake, then the goal of these assessments should be to uncover those metrics that best predict the individual’s ability to leverage pre-existing behavioral traits that can be applied to successfully execute on the specific demands of the position.

Personality testing can deliver valuable insights, but they don’t predict performance outcomes

Knowledge can be taught, skills can be acquired, experience can be fostered but the behavioral profile necessary to be successful and happy in a specific role must be in place if the candidate is to be successful. Seventy five percent (75%) of employees in most companies don’t like what they do. Imagine the impact to the culture, productivity and profitability of a firm if senior executive were to reduce that percentage by a mere 10% simply by hiring people with behavioral profiles correctly matched to the job in question. Consider Southwest Airlines or Westjet as examples of what can be achieved when employees enjoy their work.

Our Western cultural upbringing teaches us to believe we can be anything, do anything, and achieve greatness simply by applying ourselves – the force of will. We’re taught that we can improve our life by identifying and improving upon our weaknesses. Everything from Disney films to pop psychology bestsellers to executive coaching tomes insists that if we get to grips with our weaknesses we can overcome all odds. And while addressing one’s weaknesses is a laudable goal, for many, the efforts may be misspent. From the career-planning standpoint, an individual may be better served by addressing only those vocationally specific areas that need strengthening. What’s more, the effort spent on addressing weaknesses might be more productively applied to enhancing strengths or those near-strengths that are applicable to an individual’s career path. A brand guru renowned for creativity and strategic insight may be better served strengthening her pre-existing big-picture prowess than trying to caulk the gaping holes in her analytical skills.

Imagine the reduction in parental and child angst if your son or daughter not only knew what industry sectors they would most enjoy, but also which specific roles their behavioral profile and their ability to achieve high-performance correlate. Offering vocational clarity by sweeping away personal doubt with respect to what one can enjoyably achieve in life, providing one has the proper academics and access to experience is a powerful insight to have at the start of a career.

Addressing one’s weakness is a laudable goal, for many, the effort may be misspent

After 25 years of interviewing, I have concluded that people are generally unable to radically change their behavioral profile. Rote patterns typically govern everything from personal to social and vocational decisions. People default to learned patterns of behavior. They are what they were and will be what they are. And the latest science on the human brain indicates further that our behavioral traits are pretty much fixed by age 24 – the age where humans achieve the ability to exercise good judgment. So if you know someone that’s sitting in his parent’s basement drinking Pepsi and playing point and shoot games at age 24, there is a high probability that he will be doing something similar at 44 – although not necessarily in a basement anymore. Subject to the individual possessing the correct weighting of a spectrum of approximately 24 key performance traits out of a measurable eighty-four, this same 44-year-old may end up a highly effective digital warrior in the basement of the Pentagon. Similarly, if a 24 year old woman who possesses the 22 key traits required of a high performing CEO of a billion dollar corporation, then the predictive accuracy is such (85%) that one would be wise to keep an eye on her progress – she likely won’t disappoint. In the real estate domain, the same math holds true for VP Retail Leasing or a broker – align the traits to the role, and the result is predictable high performance.

“You are what you were, and will be what you are”

A further example as to why one should hire for behavior relevant to the position is to mitigate the impact of stress on corporate productivity. A few of the attributes associated for dealing with ‘life stresses’ are behavioral based; some coping attributes but not limited to, is one’s orientation to ‘being a workaholic, or prone to addiction, the need for intimacy or exercise.’ By knowing the coping attribute one is likely to default to, is critical to understanding their ability to succeed in a particular stressful role. What firm, big or small hasn’t had to budget for stress leave?

“Behavioral psychology has come a long way since the days Guidance Counselors subjected us to tests authored by Alchemists and Wizards.”

Behavioral psychology has come a long way since the day’s guidance counselors subjected us to tests authored by alchemists and wizards. Unfortunately many of those assessment tests are still in circulation, some are more granular in the number of attributes assessed, many shouldn’t be used for hiring, and few can claim accuracy beyond 70% validity. For instance, the validity of a Myers-Briggs, the workhorse of Personality Testing is in the high 50’s but covers less than 30 attributes. It’s a cheap and cheerful placebo for hiring process thoroughness.

Imagine! Applying actuarial science to manage hiring risk. It’s enough to make your eyes glaze over!

Consider a slate of candidates for a critical hire, a scenario you deal with regularly – there is some variation to each candidate’s knowledge, skill and experience but not enough to radically change the selection math. Now imagine the financial impact on your business if you had the wherewithal to predict within 85% percent accuracy not only a candidate’s potential for “career success” but also handicap the prediction to include “career satisfaction.” This capability exists.

Rutherford International has the capacity to predict present and future performance in over 600 specific executive and staff roles including retail leasing and brokerage.

Rutherford International has the capacity to predict present and future performance in over 600 specific executive and staff roles including retail leasing and brokerage. By the end of Q2-2014, with the assistance of our corporate sponsors, we expect our behavioral scientist to complete the research on the balance of occupations within the commercial real estate industry.

With a high degree of certainty, our benchmarks are able to compare candidates to other “highly successful” individuals in career roles relevant to the position our clients are seeking to fill, and establish a succession plan or determine who will benefit the most from career development courses. The corollary of our actuarial approach to measuring high performance is that we can predict the probability of failure with similar accuracy. The ability to predict the potential for success or failure through our behavioral benchmark counters the need to “narrow frame” the experiential or academic requirements of the position. As referenced in the first article regarding the potential for human rights complaints, you now have an empirical based response grounded in actuarial science.

“Hiring instinct? I’ll take your gut feeling and raise you an Actuary.”

You improve the probabilities of better hiring outcomes by making better decisions. It need not be a crap game nor is it rocket science but rather an exercise in combining behavioral science with actuarial science.

I hope this series of articles helps you improve hiring outcomes along with providing you with some insight into the scope of services we offer our clients. Please don’t hesitate to call me should you require additional details. The international number is 1-855-256-5778, alternatively my email is forbes@rutherfordinternational.com.

I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl or follow my Blog at http://rutherfordinternational.blogspot.ca to view the series in its entirety.

A brief outline of my recruiting companies and their related services is listed below. We would welcome an opportunity to assist you with the growth of your firm and the development of your career.

With sincere regard,

Forbes J. Rutherford,

Vertical Offering of Recruitment Services

The Rutherford Group of Companies consists of a vertical of specialized recruiting firms that complement each other at various stages along the recruiting value chain. Each firm offers clients a varied approach to talent acquisition at a different cost per hire. The pricing varies from ‘Least’ to ‘Most’ and is subject to the urgency of your hiring need.

By adapting your point of entry onto the “recruiting value chain,” our methods let you ‘test the waters’ before jumping completely into the talent pool. Depending upon urgency, your first point of entry can be the running an ad on our international job board (www.rejobnet.com) at a very low cost of entry.

Alternatively, you can engage our ‘job ad agency’ (www.retalentselect.com) to implement a job marketing and employer brand management strategy to target market your position to relevant candidates.

If your need requires immediate resolution, your third option is to engage our team of experienced recruiters who will pro-actively seek talent within your targeted talent market (www.nextalent.ca).

Properly employed, the cost savings are significant; a job advertising and employer brand marketing campaign through REtalentSelect.com is equal to the cost of an average career ad in the Wall Street Journal.

“What if a pro-active job ad campaign doesn’t produce results?”

If the REtalentSelect.com ad campaign doesn’t produce desired results, we allow you to credit one half of the REtalentSelect basic fee to an upgraded NEXtalent recruiting option. With this approach, depending upon urgency, you are able to begin your talent acquisition process utilizing a very robust low cost recruiting option in advance of engaging a headhunter.

RUTHERFORD GROUP OF COMPANIES

Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc. - Executive/Board Search, Succession Planning & Team Analysis, Facilitate M&A opportunities specifically Roll-Up of Real Estate Service Companies, Match High Performing Executives and Capital Investors, Asset Stabilization & Platform Restructuring, Support Client Growth into New Markets by Identifying Platforms that are open to Acquisition or Strategic Alliance, Behavioral Research – www.rutherfordinternational.com;
NEXtalent Inc. – Paid on a success basis, this company supports recruitment assignments where base salary is under $150,000.00; and/or identification of project teams. We’re open to corporate volume contracts where there is an annualized human capital resource plan in place. Offices currently in Toronto and Calgary with planned expansion to Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver by Q1-2014. Having access to Rutherford International’s research department, NEXtalent currently recruits throughout Canada in the following sectors: Lenders, Direct Investors, Advisory Firms, REIT’s, REOC’s, Property/Facility Managers, GC’s and Retailers/Hospitality – www.nextalent.ca;
REtalentSelect.com is an Interactive Real Estate Job Ad Agency that markets your employer brand including active job openings utilizing Web 2.0 & SEO technology, newsletters and targeted emails. The firm puts your opportunity directly in front of relevant candidates, our researchers process the response and experienced recruiters are on-hand to short-list for you on a time and material basis. Depending upon the base salary, this process is approximately a quarter of a recruiter’s fee. In fact, one client was able to hire two individuals from the single ad campaign thereby achieving incredible savings over traditional recruiting methods. – www.retalentselect.com;
REjobnet.com - International Real Estate Job Board aggregates job opportunities from 53 countries. Clients are able to purchase a single ad or a package of five or ten postings at a volume rate. For larger volume clients, we host a micro-site for you that can be actively linked to the homepage of REjobnet.com and your web site Career Page. – www.rejobnet.com

Retail Real Estate - Observations from the Edge

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 15:23:00 +0000

Observations from the Edge…….

By Forbes Rutherford, Rutherford International

One of the distinct advantageous of an executive search professional is their ability to observe the interaction of a company across the breadth of ‘like’ companies within a given sector. A consultant with a high degree of organizational awareness is not only able to peel back the layers of a single organization to reveal its internal strengths, weakness, threats and potentiality but is able to aggregate this same information across multiple organizations to uncover sectoral trends and unseen market opportunities.

One example of this lateral view of an industry is our published behavioral analysis suggesting the caliber of retail leasing professionals in Canada will significantly weaken as the ‘fifty-something’ generation begins to retire. In brief, the study bench-marked the key performance traits that one would typically find in a retail leasing professional employed with an owner/developer. The results are quite provocative indicating that the behavioral traits possessed by significant number of retail leasing managers in relation to what constitutes “high performing” leasing traits translates into their being average performers with respect to leasing stabilized retail assets, and irreversibly poor performers in green field or repositioning leasing.

Considering retail leasing is highly relationship based, the benchmarking study considered the demographic realities of the aging high performing leasing professional. We’ve determined that the “mean age” of retail leasing intermediaries is increasing and will continue to increase for five or so more years as “down-sized” and “semi-retired” retail executives re-invent themselves by leveraging their industry relationships and pursuing careers as consultants advising small to medium size retailers on network strategy and lease transactions.

Competition is good; the value proposition of an ex-retailer in this consultative role as network strategist is their intimate understanding of operating margins. But how will the tenant representative brokerages respond to this increasing incursion on their client relationships? There was a time when the tenant representative brokerages would leave each other clients alone; it was feared that the cost of cracking a relationship would commoditize fees and ultimately cost too much. This professional consideration not to poach has been set aside – all retailers are open-game.

The status quo no longer works. This transactional business model based on the singularity of a relationship is difficult to sustain with so many retail agents and consultants boasting a similar relationship with a single tenant. Too many transaction intermediaries are chasing a semi-elastic market share of lease deals. This fracturing of the market is pressuring the bottom-lines of dedicated retail tenant representation brokerages; which means they will need to evolve and place less faith in achieving their gross revenues solely on transactional activity. As this sector of the industry ages, it’s becoming ripe for consolidation through merger and acquisition. Unfortunately a considerable number of the leasing agents have shown little interest or perhaps are unable to evolve behaviorally from a transactional to a consultative sales approach and will be of little use to these merged entities.

This leads me to another industry trend which seems to be taking shape – the evolution of tenant representation from pure transaction to multidimensional services. The rise of the retail advisory shop that offers one-stop access to a variety of back-office store network services including transaction is the likely evolution of tenant representation. There are several examples of this globally; in Canada we will observe an increase in full-service platforms for retailers as the larger corporate real estate services companies seek to increase market share by supporting large retailers’ efforts to ratchet down their real estate costs.

We’ve already seen and will continue to observe private stakeholders in large format retailers tap the equity markets by securitizing their assets. The penchant of the financial market to penalize operating errant behavior will further drive efficiencies down to the property level thus requiring a more comprehensive service provider.

I suspect however, that it will take five years for this one-stop retail property services platform to achieve its own momentum as it’ll take Canadian retailers this long to interpret trans-nationally the benefits of out-sourcing property services. This rise to prominence of one-stop retail services shop is inversely timed to the demographic erosion of old-line but retiring relationships; and further enhanced if the consumer economy softens and pushes large store network retailers to increase their efforts to uncover operational efficiencies.

Relative to other assorted global markets, Canadian retail has had an amazing run these past few years. However if I was a retailer, facing a weakening economy, Amazon’s offspring and a Baby Boomer customer base that is rapidly shifting its purchasing patterns, I think I would be far more content with a ‘trusted adviser’ that can offer me solutions to reduce operational expenditures in my store network. Certainly I would be far more content, than placing my company’s welfare in the hands of a transaction specialist that might be inclined to swap me out of a ‘home plate’ location for another client in their roster.

Forbes Rutherford (855-256-5778) is a twenty-five year veteran in international real estate executive search. He began his career in 1986 recruiting GM’s for retail developers such as Markborough, Campeau, Marathon, Cadillac Fairview, Cambridge and Trilea. He’s survived multiple real estate cycles, has sufficient scars to prove it; and is able to recognize a frothy market when he sees it. He currently has particular interest in speaking with real estate professionals that are highly resilient to change, understand financial restructuring and are able to manage and lease assets in an under-performing economy.

Part II: Targeting High Performers - Avoiding Confirmation Bias

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 11:32:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

The following is the second of a three part series detailing some simple steps one can take to identifying high performing executives and staff; along with improving the outcome of your hiring.

Part II: Targeting High Performers - Avoiding Confirmation Bias

It’s been suggested by pundits that the talent acquisition and employment interview process is an exercise in mitigating hiring risk. Some argue that the odds of success are no different than playing craps in a casino. While this view might be considered as a little cynical, studies have determined that the average CEO’s tenure is a mere four years, with his or her lieutenants not remaining unscathed either. In fact, 40% of all senior hires fail within 18 months. So perhaps the cynicism is well placed.

Taken in this context, clearly the hard and soft cost of hiring and/or firing (regardless of tenure) has become inordinately expensive to the firm’s bottom-line; and would (or should) directly impact the hiring manager’s annual performance bonus.

How does one improve the odds for a successful hire?

Reality Test Your Interview Biases

“We have chemistry” “Let’s spitball this” “Seems like a fit” “I have a gut feeling” “I knew in 30 seconds” “I’ll know the right person when I see them.” “So tell me about your life” …. so I can glean enough information to support my pre-determined opinion.

We have all heard the above phrases in and around the interview process….and unfortunately, the reliance on chemistry and gut has contributed a great deal with dismal results. The root problem is confirmation bias.

In other words, regardless of the decision to be made, individuals are two times more likely to focus on specific information about a candidate that supports their opinion, while actively filtering out information that does not confirm their opinion.

Case studies used so frequently in management schools are designed to foster critical thinking and creative solutions to previously existing reality-based scenarios. You’ll achieve better hiring results if you frame a real life situation into the interview assessment. It’s a simple process. Take a critical decision your company arrived at within the last five years, then provide the candidate with the relevant details. Ask them to deliberate on the problem and offer a solution. Give a sufficient amount of time for them to respond with a reasoned answer.

I had a Chief Investment Officer client ask three VP Acquisition candidates to analyze two commercial assets he was contemplating to acquire. Not only was he getting some very effective acquisition analysis for free, he was also learning how the prospective colleague went about analyzing and responding to the scenario.

As a result of his association with the client, the successful candidate went on to become a senior acquisition executive acquiring trophy office assets throughout the Eastern Sea Board of the United States; the runner-up became the Real Estate Country Head for active off-shore bank. The third candidate – who resented the exercise – has over the years, managed to achieve some success but much less than than the first two who enthusiastically rose to the task at hand. The first two candidates understood the client’s effort to mitigate the potential for “confirmation bias” by reality testing his assumptions.

A simple method to improve the outcome of a hire is to guard against confirmation bias by reality testing your assumptions about how the candidate thinks and approaches problems. Real-world scenario based questioning can uncover more accurate and revealing information about a candidate than abstract or generic interview questions for which candidates may have stock answers ready-made.

I invite you to join me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl or follow my Blog at http://rutherfordinternational.blogspot.ca so we may notify you when we publish the final installment of the series.

A brief outline of my recruiting companies and their related services is listed below. We would welcome an opportunity to assist you with the growth of your firm.

Sincerely,

Forbes J. Rutherford

Vertical Offering of Recruitment Services

By adapting your point of entry onto the “recruiting value chain,” our methods let you ‘test the waters’ before jumping completely into the talent pool. Depending upon urgency, your first point of entry can be the insertion of an ad on our international job board (www.rejobnet.com) at a very low cost of entry.

Alternatively, you can engage our ‘job ad agency’ (www.retalentselect.com) to implement a job marketing and employer brand management strategy to target market your position to relevant candidates.This service can be an adjunct to your internal corporate recruiting department.

If your need requires immediate resolution, your third option is to engage our team of experienced recruiters who will pro-actively seek talent within your targeted talent market (www.nextalent.ca).

Properly employed, the cost savings are significant; a job advertising and employer brand marketing campaign through REtalentSelect.com is equal to the cost of an average career ad in the Wall Street Journal.

RUTHERFORD GROUP OF COMPANIES

Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc. - Executive/Board Search, Succession Planning & Team Analysis, Facilitate M&A opportunities, Match High Performing Executives and Capital Investors, Asset Stabilization & Platform Restructuring, Support Client Growth into New Markets by Identifying Platforms that are open to Acquisition or Strategic Alliance, Behavioral Research – High Performance www.rutherfordinternational.com;
NEXtalent Inc. – Paid on a success basis, this company supports recruitment assignments where base salary is under $150,000.00. We’re open to corporate volume contracts where there is an annualized human capital resource plan in place. Offices currently in Toronto and Calgary with planned expansion to Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver by Q1-2014. Having access to Rutherford International’s research department, NEXtalent currently recruits throughout Canada in the following sectors: Lenders, Direct Investors, Advisory Firms, REIT’s, REOC’s, Property/Facility Managers, GC’s and Retailers/Hospitality – www.nextalent.ca;
REtalentSelect.com is an Interactive Real Estate Job Ad Agency that markets your employer brand including active job openings utilizing Web 2.0 & SEO technology, newsletters and targeted emails. The firm puts your opportunity directly in front of relevant candidates, our researchers process the response and experienced recruiters are on-hand to short-list the response for you on a time and material basis. Depending upon the base salary, this process is approximately a quarter of a recruiter’s fee. In fact, one client was able to hire two individuals from the single ad campaign thereby achieving incredible savings over traditional recruiting methods. – www.retalentselect.com;
REjobnet.com - International Real Estate Job Board aggregates job opportunities from 53 countries. Clients are able to purchase a single ad or a package of postings at a volume rate. For larger volume clients, we host a micro-site for you that can be actively linked to the homepage of REjobnet.com and the Career section of your corporate web site. – www.rejobnet.com

Part 1: Targeting High Performers - Framing Your Needs and Making Better Hiring Decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 19:54:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

The following is the first of a three part series detailing some simple steps one can take to identifying high performing executives and staff; along with improving the outcome of your hiring.

Part I: Targeting High Performers – Framing your Needs and Making Better Hiring Decisions

What keeps most CEOs up at night and is often framed in terms of a succession planning problem?

The quick answer is access to competent and motivated staff. Scarcity is the root cause of the CEO’s insomnia because there are simply not enough high-performing employees with subject matter expertise available in today’s market. This talent scarcity is a systemic problem, impacting some regions more than others while affecting multiple levels of an organization. The term scarcity typically implies shortage, and given the demographic squeeze faced in both the public and private sectors, there is truth in this perspective. Scarcity also, however, is a consequence of corporations’ and search consultants’ habit of narrow-framing the experiential requirements for a specific role.

How can you improve the probability of a successful hire?

Begin by more broadly framing your need and thereby increasing your options or selection ratio. For example, Chip Heath, a management professor at Stanford University, references the decision making process of his teenage son. His son “narrow frames” his choices or rather limits his options to A or nothing at all – “stay in or go out”. He won’t add a ‘B’ or a ‘C’ option into the decision process. He’ll apply this process to 60 plus percent of his decisions.

Heath’s studies have uncovered similar narrow-framing within the corporate world. In fact, 70% of the organizations studied limited their options by narrow-framing 71% of the time. That’s even worse performance than the average teenager. As a parent I am quite relieved; as a shareholder I’m concerned.

Whether teenager or corporation, one critical step in improving the outcome of a decision is simply to generate more options. In fact, adding just a single additional option to a given problem increased the likelihood of achieving a more successful outcome by six times.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhs1rjLJqhw

In hiring, there is a tendency to narrow-frame need by arbitrarily requiring certain skills or years of experience not critical to the position. What empirical evidence exists that stipulates that a person with ten years of retail development experience is more likely to succeed than a person with five years? It’s an interesting question and one that should be asked if you want to avoid narrow-framing your needs. Opening your field of vision wider with respect to candidate requirements can increase your candidate pool and may yield surprisingly improved results. In addition, consider the role and value of transferable competencies rather than experiential check-marks to broaden your options further, without sacrificing focus in your search.

Avoidance of narrow-framing is equally pressing from a legal perspective. In the United States, the question above is increasingly being asked of corporations by human rights lawyers acting on behalf of clients who believe their skills relative to experience were improperly assessed. This question is not necessarily limited to candidate experience but can also be applied to education. Corporations are struggling to definitively answer this question and are increasingly finding themselves on the losing end of an action.

There are ways to buttress your defense in this regard, which I’ll address in the third part of this series. The second article in the series speaks to reality testing your biases when assessing candidates. By carefully implementing this methodology in your hiring process, you should realize a significant improvement in your overall hiring track-record.

I invite you to join me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl or follow my blog at http://rutherfordinternational.blogspot.ca . Parts 2 and 3 of the series are now available on the Blog.

Sincerely

Forbes J. Rutherford

Targeting High Performers - Introduction to a 3 Part Series

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 23:51:00 +0000

Targeting High Performers – An Introduction to a Three Part Series

As Principal of Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc., I have observed economic inflection points that have caused shifting employment trends within the Canadian commercial real estate industry since 1986. Today, the industry continues to adapt in response to a rapidly evolving environment. Technology and the Internet have democratized access to knowledge, improved capital flows, and condensed decision trees to the point where the dynamics of a deal from inception to completion are no longer constrained by transaction friction.

Employment opportunities that exist today were mere futuristic musing in the 1980s – or entirely unanticipated. From engineering science to operational analytics, from emerging sustainability frameworks to shifting ownership structures, building owners and operators face wide-ranging new challenges. Each new inflection point in the economy fosters opportunity and in many instances generates the need for new functional roles that demand a completely different make-up of skills. The following is a brief review of some of these inflection points.

Consider the early 90s, which ushered in shifting ownership structures including the move to public REITs. These, in turn, prompted the creation and ascendance of the Asset Manager role. Few could define this new role at the time, but somehow everyone just knew it was needed. The question of where to focus the role – property management, leasing, finance or investment – was destined to be answered by each organization a little differently, depending on its culture and business objectives. Today, however, the position is firmly entrenched within owner and advisory organizations.

The new millennium saw virtually every city planner become a Jane Jacobs acolyte. Along with tiered and rampant development fees, they championed intensification of our work, recreational and living space. This urban renaissance not only led to the comeback of the 80s style entrepreneurial commercial developer focused on the high-rise condo market, but also fostered the creation of a myriad of new jobs. Within major Canadian markets, high-rise mixed-use office, retail and residential developments introduced an immense economic multiplier effect across the breadth of the urban business community.

Capital pools shifted their investment weightings in favor of commercial real estate. Once considered aggressive, a 5 to 8% percent allocation of pension fund assets in real estate is now perceived as conservative. Through effective use of technology and access to big data, pension funds are far more efficient in underwriting their investment risk today than they were in the late 80s when I first began monitoring their activity.

Canadian REITs will be celebrating their 20^th Anniversary this year. When first launched as an investment vehicle, REITs prompted more than their fair share of skepticism. I recall conversations with CFOs and capital market professionals confessing their lack of confidence in the platform. The smart money wasn’t sure if this embryonic concept would become an acceptable retail investment vehicle. The early institutional first movers in this space would need to trade their units in order to create a robust secondary market. That took a few years to happen, but now every savvy boomer with a thirst for investment yield has an allocation of REIT units in their portfolio. REITs have impacted the employment of and wealth creation opportunities for real estate professionals in a manner that far exceeds what was available to the industry professional in the late 80s and early 90s.

Consider the application of technology in my profession. I recall recruiting the president of a major development company while driving up Toronto’s Don Valley using a car phone that cost more to wire into the trunk of my car than perhaps the car itself. Now this same call is made via video conference from the deck of a sailboat on a wafer thin tablet. Time, distance and location have become irrelevant to effectively conducting business.

But for all the wealth and job creating inflection points in our economy, ask a CEO what is relevant to maintaining a continuously improving business process, the likely response is not “access to capital” but rather “having ready access to talent, the ability to hire right, and knowing how to motivate human capital.”

This challenge is what keeps most CEOs up at night and often presents itself as a succession planning issue. The problem, however, is more one of scarcity than deployment; there are simply not enough high-performing executives available. Recently, I matched a CEO with a Chief Investment Officer, when asked if we had found the right match relative to the CEO’s personality, my behavioral scientist indicated that the likelihood of finding another candidate as closely matched was 1:25,000. While admittedly gratifying to me given my role as an executive search consultant, the statistic underscored the harsh demographic reality our industry faces, and will continue to face for the foreseeable future.

In this vein, Gallup has predicted the emergence of a global war for talent. Thought leaders of all stripes concur with this view and are prodding public policy makers to embrace this reality. What can we expect in a war for knowledge workers? Any well fought war involves strategy and tactics. A conventional campaign within that war requires effective logistics, while an unconventional one demands audacity. Winning the war will require all four traits and more.

Accessing, hiring and motivating talent human capital need not be hard, but success demands that we set aside our assumptions, resist the illusory comfort of following instinct, and instead place confidence in the actuarial math that underpins science based hiring. 40% of all senior level hires in corporate America fail within 18 months, meaning organizations that neglect science based hiring do so at their peril. Mistakes are costly, and happen far too often.

There is a simple means to improving these odds and ensuring the probability of success. I have some thoughts on this subject which I’d like to share with you over a brief three-part series called, “Targeting High Performers & Predicting Performance.”

As well, I invite you to join me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl or follow my blog at http://rutherfordinternational.blogspot.ca.

To receive notification of my posting the first part of the series, simply link on "Follow this Blog" and the system should notify you when I post the article.

Science Based Hiring & Running The Crap Tables

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 23:51:00 +0000

PREDICTABILITY OF LEASING SUCCESS – SCIENCE BASED HIRING
by Forbes J. Rutherford, President & CEO, Rutherford International
LinkedIn Profile: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl
Email: forbes@rutherfordinternational.com

Imagine you are standing at a crap table in Vegas, the crowd around the table is yelling, the bells are ringing over in the slot section of the casino, the oxygen is having the desired effect making you feel a little heady, eager to play the odds. The Croupier is asking you to place your bet, poised to part you from your hard earned money.

What do you do? Do you play the ‘Come’ line – the odds are 50/50; do you really stretch the odds and choose a number but increase the pay-out? How much of your money are you prepared to risk on a roll of the dice?

Your stack of chips have grown through the night, you’ve had quite a run – a crowd is gathering, everyone is living vicariously through your success, wondering if your luck will hold. You slide half your chips onto the table, placing them strategically – as strategically as one can get in a Crap game. Everyone goes quiet; they’re amazed at the foolishness of your recklessness, however unbeknownst to the crowd you have a system that has increased your odds to 85% probability of success. There is no such thing as a sure bet but is 85% probability of success worthy of taking the chance? After all, you are in a casino, this is a game of chance – why be there if you’re not prepared to take a measured risk?

You roll the dice, the Croupier turns pale, a smile creeps across your face – the crowd goes wild.

You’re back in the office; resumes of prospective retail leasing candidates are spread across the Boardroom table. The acquisition team has just assembled a site that’s perfect for mixed-use urban retail combined with a residential tower. The city wants urban intensification; the planning department agrees to fast track the permits, but insists on a retail mix that compliments the neighbourhood. Financing terms are in place, they have never been better but are contingent on pre-development leasing of anchor retail tenants that support the project’s vision.

Everyone’s eyes are on the success of this project, departmental bonuses could be substantial. The development team has three more projects in the pipeline; however your leasing team’s capacity to lease built inventory in combination with Greenfield projects is woefully lacking. In fact only 25% of retail leasing managers within the industry have the behavioral wherewithal to be “high performing” in a Greenfield environment and none belong to your current leasing team.

What to do? Much of the pre-development leasing falls on your shoulders; you’re 53 years old, the development horizon is more than five years – less on approved sites. How successful could the company be, could you be - if you were able to compress this development horizon? This scenario is far from unusual but rather an altogether commonly expressed frustration by your fellow Vice Presidents of Retail Leasing across the industry. The majority of “high performing” Greenfield leasing executives are above the age of 45.

You have three options, the first is to engage a captured broker and give her the listing for the first half of the project – it’s expensive and the outcome of her last project offers little to write home about.

The second option is to assign Joe, an internal senior leasing manager to the project. Joe has the most Greenfield experience on the team, a great retailer network, he is a proper ‘gad fly’ – everyone loves Joe, first choice for a golf foursome – perfect for leasing existing inventory but lacks vision. He can’t seem to grasp and apply the concept of ‘highest and best use.’

Next to you, he’s the highest paid member of your team but can’t meet the demands of the development pipeline. It’s difficult to understand why he can’t – he has the perfect sales personality but that’s not the benchmark you want. In fact, there is no correlation between traditional sales personality characteristics and that of the characteristics typically found in a “high performing” retail leasing professional.

Your third option is to hire from outside. You have three candidates to consider, all have basically the same education and relative experience leasing to national tenancies.

One candidate is currently a listing broker experienced with representing owners of ‘urban street front and urban plazas.’ He makes a reasonable living but wants to work directly for an owner; he has never actually done Greenfield or repositioned an urban Centre. He benchmarks as one that would have ‘reasonable’ performance leasing Greenfield however he’s a bit lacking with process and paper. From a team perspective, he’s not very collaborative or enthusiastic about team performance bonus structures. The most important consideration is that he’s burned out; when you factor in ‘career satisfaction’ he drops another 15 percent in overall benchmark score. He really should be looking for another career because he no longer enjoys leasing; however it’s all he knows. Shifting to an Owner is the safe bet for him but not for you, your ranks are already filled with average performers.

You second prospect is Frank, a Senior Leasing Manager, he’s never leased an urban centre or anything remotely resembling ‘High Street’ but he’s done plenty of suburban Greenfield Power Centres. He understands ‘massing,’ has good relations with the large format national retailers – he’s even brought a national tenant to the table as a co-venture partner in a development deal. He lives for the deal. He benchmarks as a very high performing Greenfield Leasing Executive but has an average benchmark score as a Vice President with respect to managing a leasing team. He’s a veritable deal junky that likely thinks he’s your succession plan. How will you manage his and everyone else’s expectation that he’s your heir apparent?

Your third prospect is Beth, a Senior Leasing Manager who is employed with a regional mall owner. She has similar education and tenure but isn’t as conversant with the complete lease document as the other two candidates. She’s frustrated by that reality, and is smart enough to recognize the limitations the asset management and legal departments have placed on the scope of her function. She hasn’t done any Greenfield but has had some input into the tenant mix of an enclosed mall repositioning. Beth’s at a juncture in compensation where she can make a change to improve her career. She seems like the least probable candidate in terms of your immediate need and yet she scores higher than all the prospects in both Greenfield leasing and as a VP Retail Leasing. The predictive accuracy of the benchmark is 85% - she’s not your ‘Present’ but she’s your ‘Future.’ What to do?

Your first priority is to secure leasing talent for the current development and expedite the development pipeline by increasing your leasing team’s Greenfield bench strength. You hire Frank - prospects like him don’t come along often; in terms of industry professionals the research suggests that 75% of Managers, Retail Leasing and 58% of VP Retail Leasing do not have the wherewithal to be “high performing” in a Greenfield leasing environment.

You do the deal, your peers on the Executive Team are ecstatic – in one surgical strike Rutherford International has enabled you to increase your development capacity and undermine your competition. Everyone’s all smiles until you tell them that you’re cutting Joe loose. You can’t afford the new Greenfield hire and continue employing Joe. Besides, you have less costly Retail Leasing Managers that are adept at in-fill leasing and managing the existing portfolio. If only Joe had the wherewithal to lease-up a development project….

But wait, you’re not finished! You’ve taken care of the ‘Present’ but what about the ‘Future’ – one hire doesn’t shore up your Greenfield bench strength. What about Beth from the regional mall owner with the “Potential for Success Score” that exceeds more than 50% of current Vice Presidents of Retail Leasing and ranks equally high in Greenfield leasing? She is more rarer than Frank, your new Greenfield leasing executive!

With Joe’s departure, you still have some chips to place on the table – you hire Beth and have HR structure a management and personal development program around her. She needs a Mentor that benchmarks as high as she does, so you carve some time out of your schedule for her. You can’t be too obvious, the rest of your leasing team have some “near strengths” that if properly developed could push them into a “high performing non-Greenfield leasing benchmark.” You arrange for them to take personal development programs customized to their “near strengths” and measure their improvement against the benchmark.

Your team’s gaps have been filled, near strengths are being improved upon, new deals foster enthusiasm, morale rises, and you become an employer of choice….

You rolled the dice having fixed the odds by utilizing a science based statistical “Predictability of Success” benchmark equaling 85% accuracy; your running the table with new tenancies, your competition turns pale, a smile creeps across your face – you can’t wait for the ICSC in Vegas.

Acknowledgement:

This narrative was extrapolated from research competed by Rutherford International and Dr. Larry Cash, world renowned expert in behavioral based performance measurement. Rutherford International had the top retail leasing executives throughout Canada participate in a behavioral study conducted by Dr. Cash which allowed us to create a behavioral benchmark profile for three specific roles in retail leasing. Proprietary to Rutherford International, the retail leasing benchmarks are able to determine within 85% predictive accuracy a person's potential for "high performance." We've established similar propreitary benchmarks for a number of key key real estate, finance and investment functions within the global real estate community. Other than improving hiring success, sample application of the benchmarks are: identify hidden organizational talent, develop succession strategy, determine team gaps, target employee development, career counseling and avoidance of improper hiring litigation. A copy of the research highlights may be acquired by connecting to Forbes Rutherford’s LinkedIn account.

About the Author:

Forbes provides executive search, facilitates the creation of strategic partnerships/alliances, including the management of a roster of turnaround specialists. He supports real estate, finance, investment, construction, infrastructure, logistic’s, resorts, specialized manufacturing and private equity firms who face complex organizational challenges within a changing global marketplace.

His business strategy is directed towards establishing a long-term "trusted advisor" relationship with an exclusive mix of international contacts and clients. His company’s private network spans 727,200 individuals and supports the following business verticals: Commercial & Retail Real Estate; Planned Lifestyle & Resort Communities; 3P, Airports, Infrastructure & Civil Construction; Integrated FM & Corporate Real Estate; Private Equity Investors; Life Sciences & Bio/Nanotech; Nuclear, Cleantech & Sustainable Technologies; International Trade & Logistics; Business Continuity & Corporate Security; Retailers and Corporate Turnaround.

Company's Owned:
1. Rutherford International - Executive/Board Search, Turnaround, Private Equity, Succession Planning
2. NEXTalent Inc. - Staff/Management Recruiting/Assessment
3. REtalentSelect.com - Interactive Ad Agency - Careers in real property & finance (Direct targeting without the cost of a recruiter.)
4. REjobnet.com - International Real Estate Job Board - soft launch August/2012

Specialties:

Executive Search, Project Team Development, Private Equity Matching, Strategic Alliance and Partner Search, Restructuring & Turnaround Advisory, Succession Planning, Scientific Behavioural Analysis

Digest of Global Reports - Fall 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:42:00 +0000

Commercial Real Estate Markets

A Digest of Global Reports – Published in Fall 2011

Global Brokerages and Property Services Companies

NAI Global Capital Markets Webcast – October 2011

http://www.linnemanassociates.com/video.php?id=6

Hard hitting commentary from Dr. Linneman, widely recognized as one of the leading strategic thinkers in the real estate industry, was recently cited as one of the 25 most influential people in real estate by Realtor Magazine. He serves as Principal of Linneman Associates. Moderated by Jeff Finn, CEO, NAI Global

Cushman & Wakefield – Global Office Forecast 2012-2013

Cushman & Wakefield's Global Office Forecast provides an outlook for market conditions in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific through 2013.

Download Report

CB Richard Ellis – Global Capital Market View: Focus on "Stability" (Q3 2011)

The global economy encountered myriad obstacles this quarter, which collectively served to stunt economic growth and downgrade expectations for performance in the near term. Together, the European and U.S. sovereign debt debates generated significant financial angst and volatility, and increased risk aversion across many market sectors, including commercial real estate. Figure 2 shows the divergence in economic growth (GDP) per capita across countries over the last four years. Note that the countries lying on the left-hand side of the chart, which are growing quite well, are generally those that have account surpluses, while those on the right are suffering under account and sovereign debt burdens. There is a distinct correlation between economic growth and lower external and internal debt burdens. Link Here

Colliers International –

Global Investor Sentiment 2011 Survey
Global economic conditions have changed significantly since the last Global Survey of Investor Sentiment was undertaken in 2010. Consumer and business confidence is low in large parts of the world and sovereign debt issues remain a significant risk factor in Europe and the US. Learn more about the view of global investment

Q1-2010 Canadian Real Estate Employment Survey Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 03:32:00 +0000

Rutherford International’s Employment Survey is designed to provide a first quarter forecast of senior executive opinion on employment expectations within their industry through 2010. This survey is a sub-set of a much larger survey questionnaire, which canvassed opinions on market conditions related to acquisition, disposition and financing of commercial real estate. The survey was directed to the top- and first-tier executives within the Owner/Developer/Lender/Service sectors of Canada’s commercial real estate industry.
Opinion was measured on the following:

Employment demand within the industry in 2010;
Functional changes likely to take place within respondents’ organizations over 2010;
Critical human resource priorities within respondents’ organizations;
Economic factors shaping their opinion.

Highlights:

Selected highlights suggest that corporate downsizing has reached its lowest point in the economic cycle with 28% of respondents anticipating expansion of management opportunities, and 56% forecasting growth in staff functions. Employee retention remains top-of-mind with “churn” of non-management and staff functions paralleling the economic recovery. As a result, we anticipate that companies and individuals are less likely to sit tight with the status quo; and will opt for change now as job growth mitigates career risk and size of severance awards.

As for the “Executive Suite,” turnover is anticipated by respondents to be relatively modest – less than 3% of survey respondents forecast further decline in executive positions.
Stated as a “percentage” of survey respondents, employment in the following functions is expected to increase: Administrative functions incorporating Admin, Finance/Accounting and IT - 21% positive response; Corporate roles encompassing Legal, Investor Relations and Analysis - 17%; Value creating positions such as Acquisition/Disposition, Development, Construction and Leasing - 10%; while Operation functions such as Asset and Property Management - 22%.

Respondents were asked to identify the most critical human resource priorities in their organizations for 2010. “Employee Retention and Employee Development” continues to be ranked high priorities by respondent organizations although the importance of “Knowledge Transfer or Tacit Knowledge” declined by 10.2%. Surprisingly, “Bonus Structure” dropped as a priority by 15.4%, while “Pay Equity” rose from 0% in Q3-2009 to15.4% in Q1-2010. Other notable declines in human resource priorities were “Benefits, Motivation and Corporate Values.”

Conclusion
Managing In A Long-Wave Economic Cycle & USA Sovereign Debt

A long wave economic cycle has smooth tops and round bottoms; predictably and inexorably it introduces every generation of real estate professional to the concept of financial euphoria and gravity. We’ve had a series of substantive fiscal catastrophes' within a short time relative to long wave economic theory, and it’s not likely to be over. The world faces a sovereign debt crisis that has the potential to cascade across nations as monetarists run out of options for protecting the real economy. The long-wave is likely to become choppy, leaving the corporate strategist with two human capital options – play out the hand you have with the talent you have; or strengthen your access to unencumbered capital and hire the human capital that knows how to create value in any market.

Top performance today may not be top performance tomorrow. Recently we bench marked the “Key Success Traits” of Canada‘s Top Leasing Performers. The results suggest the make-up of today’s Top Leasing Performer is weighted in personality and relationships, which is likely to be severely tested if faced with more troubling times. It’s evident from this study, that there are certain “Success Factors” one need not consider when hiring a Top Performing leasing executive during a buoyant market. However market forces are fluid, continually effecting supply and demand of space. The timing of shifting market forces is impossible to predict but wise to presume, so defensive hiring against the perceived long-wave economic cycle is an optimum asset strategy.

USA Sovereign Debt – A Generational Opportunity to Create Wealth

The tenor of opinion for the latter half of 2010 is one of “conservative optimism,” but it’s not a time to be meek. Large “private equity” real estate capital pools are flowing in the direction of North America with increasing interest in discounted markets within the United States. The world is less concerned with USA sovereign debt than it is with Japan or Europe. Japan continues to struggle with its political dysfunction; while the concept of the Euro as a reserve currency has imploded along with the founding principles of its Union.

Historically, the world has learned on more than one occasion that Americans are a resilient and highly productive nation and not one to bet against. Capital continues to flow into the United States for reasons unrelated to its status as a reserve currency, but for reasons rooted in the national character of the citizenry. National traits such as optimism, confidence bridging on arrogance, enterprise and individualism underpin the strength of the American greenback. It won't be added stimulus and national indebtedness that will drive the eventual recovery of America's real economy - it will be the application of the nation's character, it's willingness to forgive failed risk, and its rediscovery of national vision.

Canadians whether they like it or not, possess the same genetic code of their cousins to the South however their cultural, political, labour and selected liberal corporate elites smother these inherent strengths by tempering national confidence and celebrating mediocrity. They perpetuate a philosophy of risk aversion, inflict rapacious public sector entitlements upon the "real economy," and foster contractual featherbedding that's become part of the fabric in Canada's social and corporate practices. Collectivism trumps individual spirit, entitlement supersedes merit - historically, it's been a morass of festering oligarchic mediocrity that's been content with a parochial vision of the future.

By and large, this is not the case within Canada's commercial real estate community. Many of the Scion's of Canada's development elite are the progeny of forebears that ventured beyond their homeland; it's in their genes to think beyond regionalism. The Canadian real estate community has been a bastion for entrepreneurialism; it has a proud history for reaching beyond its national borders. Providence has not always been kind, but the legacy of some of Canada's iconic developers dot the central business districts of major global cities. The accomplishments of Canada's "Builders" and financiers is a testament to Canada's individualism and ability to succeed internationally; this out-ward focus of vision is the well-spring that lies deep in Canada's genetic national code waiting for liberation.

The United States beckons with the continued de-leveraging of it's commercial assets. Canadian owner/developers, investment advisers, pension funds and bankers should begin preparing for what is perceived by many savvy real estate professionals as a generational opportunity to create wealth in the United States. Canada's commercial real estate community is well placed to benefit from these capital flows into North America; especially with individuals possessing US market knowledge returning to Canada.

How does one take advantage of this opportunity?

Not unlike the visionary builders of the 1970's and 80's and the Acquisitor's of the 90's. It's a matter of aggregating the human capital into a single cohesive team where the complimentary and collaborative 'grey matter' is capable of recognizing opportunity when others see only problems. This alchemy of identifying and blending "high performing" minds is difficult to achieve - success is a combination of confidence in vision, leadership, constant refinement and serendipity. It requires careful research, thorough investigation, application of behavioral science and applied understanding of the connectedness within human relationships.

We welcome the opportunity of assisting you in this effort.

To receive a copy of the Employment Survey results, please contact Forbes Rutherford at 416-250-6300 Ext. 227 , by email at forbes@rutherfordinternational.com

Follow Forbes on Twitter at www.twitter.com/rutherfordintl or join his LinkedIn network at www.linkedin.com/rutherfordintl

Global Real Estate Executive - Q1/2010 Employment Status Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Q1/2010 Global Real Estate Executive Employment Status Survey
Rutherford International (http://www.rutherfordinternational.com/) analyzed approximately 170,000 commercial real estate and construction/design executives within its data base to determine what percentage had undergone some sort of material change in their status over the last 18 months. This data base analysis spanned four major English speaking countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.The analysis did not include staff and middle-management positions, nor real estate professionals in financial services or investment management. We discovered that approximately 42 percent of this analyzed executive grouping had undergone some degree of change in their current status. A “change in material status” means that they are no longer in their current position; however one should not necessarily construe from this change in status that the executive is not gainfully employed elsewhere. Even taking into account normal data base attrition, the percentage of changes reported would suggest that at a global level, no quarter or safe haven within the real estate executive community was to be had – the job loss within this sector exceeds that of countrywide averages.

The percentage changes (all in the negative) are quite astounding; and frustratingly annoying to behold when one considers that the “echo” cohort of our post-war baby boom generation is at an age where they are choosing life long careers. The Canadian commercial real estate industry lost a generation of youth after the early nineties real estate recession; is it feasible the global industry could loose a large segment of its echo cohort this time around as well?

I’ve been involved in real estate executive search since 1986; prior to the search profession, I practiced real estate development in Canada and property investment overseas. Rutherford International has experienced all the market cycles, and is intimately aware of the economic machinations associated with oil price shocks, double digit interest rates, “loan to own” commercial lending, tax driven priming of industry sectors, economic recessions and industry specific depressions. Real estate is the first industry sector to be cooled by a country’s monetary policy; and the last to be warmed by it.

As a passionate observer of the industry, and given the reported percentages; Rutherford International humbly imparts a bit of advice to individuals concerned over their security, and/or their choice of real estate as a career. We also offer firms contemplating future organizational plans and pursuit of opportunities some advice as well.

Advice to Individuals:
Real estate is cyclical and dynamic; to choose a career in real estate, or resolve to remain in it, one should be comfortable with the concept of living with uncertainty. A fundamental consideration for choosing a career in real estate is to understand its structure and economic role in our lives. In business theoretical terms, commercial real estate is a “complex adaptive system;” meaning it can move to the brink of chaos before new patterns emerge and new forms of organizations take place. The framework for doing business today may not exist tomorrow; uncertainty is part of the natural order of a market economy in which real estate is a firm adherent.There is little doubt that at a global level, the industry is undergoing a purging of phantom wealth and a systemic “Resetting” of values. One might relate it to a metaphorical fiscal neutron bomb that has wiped away real and perceived investment values but left the physical assets standing. Short of one’s own entrepreneurial and deal-driven optimism – traits that true real estate executives are in no short supply of; practitioners need to take comfort in knowing that although ownership positions melt away, the assets remain and require management; tenants contract and shift to lower cost facilities but need service and amenities; vacancy needs to be leased, projects completed – asset and project value erosion must be mitigated. To that end, you can choose to become collateral damage or be part of a creative response in preparation for a recovery.

Advice to Companies:
There are few times in business history where a single sector is able to deliver up a smorgasbord of talent across all functional roles in multi-national markets. Now is the time to identify competency gaps within your organization through the lens of performance and psychometric based assessments, and put in place a strategy to upgrade your team; and/or align the firm with joint venture expertise outside of your company’s traditional boundaries.

It’s a simple analysis, however if one subscribes to the 80/20 rule meaning 80% percent of your corporate wealth is generated by 20% or your organization; then one might assume an industry undergoing dislocation of talent for no other reason than “macro economic” implosion should have a substantial ‘selection ratio’ of talent available to you that would immediately benefit any hiring organization.All real estate is local – but the reach of associations, the make-up of trans-border acquisition, development and lending teams, the seamlessness of technology platforms can ease one’s efforts to go global. The cost-of-entry, and the potential for non-parochial SME’s to play in the same markets as the larger yet less nimble sovereign and institutional capital pools will constantly improve as real estate professionals rebound from this global recession.

Nimble companies should use this time to improve the quality of their management and executive teams; and/or explore strategic alliances with competent market savvy yet under-employed entrepreneurial executives outside of their traditional geographical boundaries.

Download the Survey

Q3-2009 Canadian Real Estate Employment Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:44:00 +0000

The following is an abbreviated version of our more comprehensive survey on Canadian market conditions effecting finance and acquisitions. This version focuses specifically on our findings and commentary regarding employment.

The survey assesses executive opinion regarding the following:

Employment demand in 2010;
Functional changes likely to take place with respondents organizations over 2010;
Critical human resource priorities with respondent’s organizations;
Economic factors shaping respondents opinion.

The survey will be repeated in Q4-2009 to empirically measure any subtle changes in executive opinion.
Receive instant notification of the survey’s publication by subscribing to this Blog or via the Rutherford Real Estate Newsletter.
The complete survey may be found on this Blog by linking HERE.

Download Employment Section of Survey Here:
Rutherford_Emp_Survey_Q3-0909.pdf

Q4 - 2009 Calgary Investment Cycle Interim Report

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:17:00 +0000

The review is designed to highlight senior executive opinion on the "direction" of investment fundamentals and volume transaction activity. This is an "interim" report - final report will be published January 2010. This is the first of a series of reports that will span a variety of cities throughout North America, Europe, Asia and BRIC countries.

Rutherford_Cycle_CG-Q409-print.pdf

Canadian Real Estate Executive Market Condition/Employment Survey Results

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:14:00 +0000

Measuring opinion during third quarter 2009:
1. Fundamentals for acquisition and financing up to 2011,
2. Employment demand for 2010,
3. Functional changes over 2010,
4. Critical human resource priorities,
5. Economic factors shaping respondent opinion

Rutherford_Survey_0909.pdf

Canadian Real Estate Executive Market Condition and Employment Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Rutherford International’s will be distributing the results of its Market Condition and Employment Survey - Third Quarter 2009 through its newsletter next week. To receive a copy of the complete survey, Rutherford International blog readers should go to our Home Page at http://www.rutherfordinternational.com and register on our Newsletter link, or via the REmatrix.com Commercial Real Estate Portal at http://www.rematrix.com/newsletter/rematrixnewlet-registration.html

The survey was designed to provide a third quarter snapshot of senior executive opinion on the state of their industry during the latter month of July and early August 2009. The questionnaire was directed to the top and first-tier executives within the Owner/Developer/Lender/Service sectors of Canada’s commercial real estate industry.

Segmented by sector, opinion was measured on the following:
a) Fundamentals for acquisition, disposition and financing for the next two years;
b) Employment demand within the industry in 2010;
c) Functional changes likely to take place within respondents’ organizations over 2010;
d) Critical human resource priorities within respondents’ organizations;
e) Economic factors shaping their opinion.

Two survey reports are available. First, a comprehensive sector-based analysis for respondents and second, a general overview for the industry at large. Some of the questions and excerpts of our analysis are highlighted below.

Excerpts:1. Fundamentals for acquisition and disposition in 2009 through to 2011/04.The results suggest the vendors’ lack of market cycle certainty in 2010 with the pricing gap between ‘buyer’ and ‘vendor’ expectations continuing well into 2010. "There is a perception that lenders are afraid to foreclose, which is keeping sellers hopes high."

2. Fundamentals for financing and refinancing in 2009 through to 2011/04.Lender" respondents were more inclined to choose "Favorable" for both ‘financing’ and ‘refinancing’ in 2009 and 2010; however they were less sure of conditions in 2011. We believe their uncertainty for 2011 is due to ....

3. Based on current economic climate, employment opportunities in the commercial real estate sector will:
Be limited to modest growth in leasing, accounting, asset and property management. Vacancy will be primarily due to normal attrition and voluntary turnover with general, employment opportunities within the industry remaining "static" well into 2010. If recovery is in the offing, it will be a "jobless" recovery. The impact of retirements, "geared back" or semi-retirement life/work styles, and the incoming "baby boom echo" or "double cohort" offspring entering lower middle management positions should be evident by 2012.

E: Key Findings – By Sector with Commentary
(This information is available in the survey results reserved for respondents.)

F:Commentary Excerpts
"Appraising Back to the Future"In terms of acquisition and disposition, aggressive valuations have been blamed for contributing to the variance between "Buyers" and "Vendors."

"I’ll Have a Bromo with that Denominator Effect"
It is also assumed that an increase in the equity markets will result in ameliorating the ‘denominator effect’ leading to a return of institutional capital to the real estate market for Class AAA and AA assets.

"Sitting on a Picket Fence can Hurt!"It’s a bit of high stakes game that’s being played in some shops – ante up with house stakes – ‘Check’ when able – and enter 2010 with a plan to make fine adjustments and seek quick opportunity plays; but in general – mark time until the industry completes its de-leveraging.

"Retaining your Walking Assets"The predicted demographic labour supply bust, which all industry and government sectors are currently experiencing – and self evident by respondents concerns over ....

"Forward to the Future"The worrisome trend that emerged from the analysis is that respondents appear to place little importance .....

"Peter’s Principle Exposed"We purposely referenced the term "effective" to emphasize a human resource reality that generally becomes evident in recessionary markets after a long wave rise in the economy.

"Economic Recovery and Generational Knowledge Transfer"Good managers are the product of acquiring "tacit" knowledge, ....

In general, anyone under 45 today wasn’t in a position of management and leadership during the last major recession .....

"Best Case – Leveraging Brand & Grabbing Talent on Waivers"Companies that prepare for recovery ......

"Worst Case - A Dead Cat Bounce"Lenders are less sure about the fundamentals for real estate in 2011 then that of the Broker and Owner respondents....

It would seem to us that the ability to think laterally, to problem solve creatively; to sort out the winners and losers when identifying tenants for "blend & extend" negotiations (or to inoculate an asset’s mix with a good balance of recession and high interest rate resistant tenants); or to squeeze out additional "Net Operating Income" or negotiate financial workouts will be long-term and valued skills in our industry going forward.

Three Market Opportunites & What We Can Do For You

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:36:00 +0000

Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc.
We support clients that need to: improve their executive, staff, investment and development teams; insert interim CRO and/or CFO expertise into an organization; and/or identify strategic and alliance partners in local and foreign markets, which includes coalescing expertise for Public Private Partnerships.

Real Estate:
We have experienced more than one recession as a real estate search consultancy; late 1989 to late 1994 were years of hardship for any profession that serviced the commercial real estate industry. Rutherford International was new, and we adjusted to this lengthy recession by staffing financial service companies with mortgage valuation and restructuring experts; leasing executives that understood blend/extend strategy; and property managers that understood tenant retention and the importance of “Net Operating Income.”

This credit crisis in Canada is much different than in the United States; conventional commercial mortgage lenders in Canada (with the exception of certain strained markets) are not convinced that they will see any significant increase in their “Special Loan” files.

We have approximately 2000 individuals in our resume files who claim to have expertise in real estate repositioning and workout, so we decided to find out if there would be a requirement for this skill set by surveying the lending community. Surprisingly, the consensus is that we are six months ahead of ourselves in terms of demand for a clearinghouse of experts with this kind of experience.

Current interest rates and deep pocketed ownership are the primary reasons for this perspective; however we’re not convinced that the industry can sit in sublime isolation, inattentive from what’s going on within the commercial real estate world. Real estate may be local, but Canada sits at the wrong end of the global supply chain. The lender’s primary concern is the cost of long-term capital in thirty months or less as the international capacity to borrow reaches its limits, and global capital begins to flow to the highest interest unhindered by national borders.

Expertise in mortgage workout is not in high demand as of yet; however knowledge in stabilizing values through operations and leasing will more likely be a requirement at the ownership level; REITs with limited cash reserves, dispositions and erosion of unit values will undergo stress. As well, the restructuring of real estate service companies (particularly those focused on transaction and development) along with home builders and owners of retail and industrial property in tertiary markets will have need of legal services, and perhaps a renewal of their executive team.

The “Denominator Effect” – as it pertains to the fall in equity portfolio value relative to real estate portfolio value – has destabilized the traditional asset weighting in investment portfolios. This appears to have constrained the domestic real estate investment activities of the major private pension funds. Some funds may consider a disposition of non-strategic elements in their portfolio as a means to re-balance their asset weighting.

The concurrent impact of face rate erosion; and social movement for environmentally efficient structures or the “Green Effect” will have a dual impact on asset retention decisions. The erosion of face rates may no longer justify the capital reinvestment to achieve a LEED’s standard, especially institutions that are driven by investment yield.

Life cycle obsolescence is a little known but important element of consideration when “buy and hold” portfolio strategists conduct their acquisition and disposition due-diligence. In the mid-1990’s, experts in the revaluation of commercial real estate claimed that more than fifty percent of Manhattan’s commercial real estate stock (much owned by pension funds) was reaching technical obsolesce. Most large American cities continue to face this same reality. I would expect assets that are reaching the limits of their life cycle and are slated for re-valuation to a LEEDS standard are ripe for acquisition by private equity funds and deep-pocketed interests.

In key markets throughout North America, erosion of commercial property values in this down cycle, combined with the need to revalue mid-life-cycle assets to a LEED’s standard offers a unique opportunity for the application of existing, and the aggregation of opportunistic capital into debt and equity funds.

Rutherford International has the ability to bring together the expertise for staffing and/or creating these funds. For further information on our real estate search services, please contact Forbes Rutherford.

Infrastructure and Public Private Partnerships:
Faced with increasing deficits, eroding tax revenues and concern over legal liability associated with catastrophic failure, governments have acquired a renewed sense of appreciation for the private sector role in delivering services and infrastructure to the public domain.

When we consider what’s happening in the United States, clearly Public Private Partnership has an important role to play in this current economic maelstrom we’re facing.

“US GDP contracted at an annualized rate of 6.1 percent during the first quarter, little improvement on the 6.3 percent fall in the last three months of 2008. US exports fell by 30 percent, the US Commerce Department reported. New US business investment, normally made when companies are planning production increases, tumbled by a record 37.9 percent in the first quarter. US capacity utilization is at a rock bottom 69.3 percent. In real economic terms, this amounts to almost one-third of all plants standing idle. The number of US jobs has fallen by 3.9 percent, exceeding the 3.2 percent decline in the 1981-82 recessions. The 15.4 percent fall in US industrial production is worse than in previous recessions.”
Bill Buckler, Privateer Economic Newsletter - May/09

"Public Private Partnerships and economic stimulus have become synonymous."

Rutherford International has access to a network of analysts and experts with experience in PPP endeavors throughout the industrialized world. We can help you structure your PPP initiative; or staff an existing project. For more information, contact Forbes Rutherford

Corporate Restructuring and Insolvency
There was a time when a country’s success was measured by the hard goods it produced, however “off-shoring”, “near-shoring”, predatory pricing, uncompetitive taxation, knowledge deficit, succession challenges and a cultural ethos of “entitlement” compounded by a malaise in visionary leadership to re-invest has all but contributed to the hollowing-out of key sectors in North America’s manufacturing industry

For example, California, Eastern Seaboard and Great Lake States and Province’s ignored the needs of their manufacturers – consumerism drove public policy - construction and rising home values were a Kafkaesque masquerade for economic vitality. “One can not build a sustainable economy on a housing boom” - that is the essential truism re-learned - the dislocation associated with the de-leveraging of the sub-prime and prime mortgage industry simply punctuates this tenet. Historically, "real estate has followed economic cycles not led the forefront"; however I believe it would be fair to suggest that this fundamental truism was lost on public policy makers during these past three years.

In all industry sectors, the business of business is in need of serious and sober introspection; governments need to set the rules and step aside. Manufacturing risk should be rewarded even celebrated; real risk and not contrived failure easily forgiven. These are fragile times – companies will restructure – industry sectors will consolidate – those who are resilient and agile will lead our economic recovery.

It’s during a recession that one prepares for recovery – this is the optimum time for Stakeholders to tweak their executive and managerial teams. I have a growing list of “Chief Restructuring Officers” and “Chief Financial Officers” that we are able to insert into and be effective immediately in a broad range of industry sectors.

Rutherford International has access to an international network of full-time and interim “Turnaround” executives. We would welcome the opportunity to assist you on files where this type of interim or permanent executive requirement is needed. We'll even leave a portion of our fee on the table in return for "prefs" or "warrants." For more information or to be considered for membership within our network of "turnaround" executives, please contact Forbes Rutherford.

Is The Non-Corporate Branded Managed Real Estate Services Network A Flawed Business Model?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:40:00 +0000

Is The Non-Corporate Owned Managed Real Estate Network A Failed Business Model?

by Forbes J. Rutherford, Rutherford International

The following is a re-print of an article I wrote in 2009 predicting the erosion of the independent broker "managed network" business model. The article questioned whether the 'center' of the business structure could sustain itself financially and culturally into 2014. I'm interested in your comments.......

A review of Lipsey’s Top 20 List of Industrial, Commercial and Investment Brokers has a number of organizations which characterize themselves as a managed network of independent brokers and property service companies. These companies claim an active global network, and are knitted together by a central organizing entity that generally holds the global brand. Its mission of course is to facilitate interaction between network members at a global scale, however some confuse their raison d’être with the selling of licenses or franchise rights versus the fostering of client-focused excellence.

Whenever I’m asked to conduct an executive search for a franchiser, I generally ask the CEO if he or she is in the business of selling franchises or product/service. Invariably fifty percent of the response is “franchise rights.” I would submit that this percentage is no different with that of managed networks of independent brokers. In fact, many talk a good game (and may be generally sincere), however an easy way to determine their interest in transnational transactions and advisory services is by asking how many corporate staff are tasked with the mandate of fostering interaction among its membership. Most have very few, and in this period of economic turmoil the majority have laid off a large percentage of their network managers.

Real estate is local, however many brokers operate in the belief they must be aligned with an international brand in order to have credibility with national or international clients. There is some truth to this belief although only a small percentage of professionals within these brokerage organizations have any significant interest in transacting outside of their regions. It’s this orientation to parochialism that is the fundamental flaw in the independent broker network’s utility as a global service provider.

Some may consider this viewpoint as a harsh criticism, however few members of independent networks will deny that a vast majority of their network peers are interested in receiving network leads, but only a limited number actually push leads into their networks. This failure to foster cross-network activity is the bane of an independent network manager’s existence. “How does one correct a licensee’s non-participative network behavior especially if they’re paying their fees?” If you’re in the business of selling licenses, you don’t really care; you simply increase your license fee and rely less on percentage splits through network transactions.

Most members are purchasing, and many international brands are supplying their network licensees with the appearance of size with little underlying substance. It’s the “Deluder” leading the “Delusional.” Granted, it’s more than just letterhead marketing; for a fee, one receives a central website, a transaction management system, specialty councils of peers, competitive intelligence, market overviews and macro economic prognostications but generally after the fact and invariably advice denuded of reality.

Considering that license fees are ever increasing; and with a network transaction fee that is often ten percent – five taken from each member, one might question the value proposition these structures truly offer. The model is broken, it offers little that can’t be purchased or accessed on the street for considerably less.

The future is rapidly changing their business model. The application of technology through the advent of social communities and crowd-sourcing is changing the business model for managed networks.

Within the next five years as the world economy recovers, I suspect technology will expose the weakness of globalized real estate service companies that are built around managed networks of independent licensees. The core of this business model has a mushy center; it offers little that a competent "affinity business network" can't offer. Through an "ABN," brokers and individual agents will be able to widen their personal sphere of influence by reaching across branded platforms. Regardless of affiliation, they will be able to seek out and choose the best service providers within a given market to handle a client's account.

It’s with this expectation of the future that I foresee the advent of the “Un-managed Managed Network” where independent and forward thinking real estate brokers are able to breech the limitations of “closed ended” real estate networks; and interact or transact with peers of their choosing utilizing an amalgam of “best in class” web enabled tools.

"Top Tier" commercial real estate investment professionals (both intermediary and non-intermediary) will be able to interact cooperatively with each other in over 1000 different markets around the globe and publish their "Haves" and "Wants" within a closed cross-platform communications loop, or opt to list publicly to well over 100,000 transaction driven real estate professionals.

What does the future hold for a managed network of independent brokers?

One of eroding market coverage, a diminished client base, membership attrition and subjugation of their brands. I would submit that the owners of these organizations are not only whistling past the graveyard but also lack the foresight to even realize it.

To be connected to Forbes J. Rutherford via:
LinkedIn – go to: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl

Xing – go to: https://www.xing.com/profile/Forbes_Rutherford

What's Happening To My Little World?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:01:00 +0000

Call from a friend:
We just had another client cancel one of their contracts for this year and my lay-off list is growing... What's happening to my little world??

I should've heeded your "doom 'n gloom" and taken off my rose-coloured glasses much sooner.

Forbes J. Rutherford:
Just a minute, I'm becoming optimistic that we'll see light by the end of third quarter in Canada - unemployment is 5 percentage points below the double digits of last recession and only 2 points above structural unemployment. The consumer hasn't completely stopped buying and might be experiencing some level of Obama led euphoria. It could be a "dead cat bounce" and everything will tip over the edge, but Receivers in perpetual recession prone Atlantic Canada aren't busy....YET......

You may be experiencing an "over reaction" by client's canceling projects, their Board is expecting cost reductions and can't reconcile cost/benefit of the output. It's an easy target...to not invest in one's corporate brand...and a silly response to a recession...as now is the time to increase brand visibility in preparation for the eventual recovery. However, in times such as these most executive teams become reactive, and the mantra is often "cut it and if we made a mistake, we'll cross that bridge when the realization of the mistake comes."

Every major recession has changed the economic culture and forced (to use an overworked phrase) a paradigm shift in the make-up of business organizations. For example, the 1983 recession eradicated any remaining vestige of the "company man" and the workers commitment to a single company for their working life.

The early 90's recession embraced youth at the expense of age and the importance of archived knowledge walking around the office.

This recession, regardless of Canada's financial services industry strength will generate (if it exceeds 18 months) a realization that the revered importance of the "financial sector" with its delusional cadre of Financial MBA's is made up of men and women with feet of clay; and that they actually have no idea how to create real value.

America's Joe Citizen's backlash, especially if Obama piles on with tax increases will rightly view these grasping architects of financial mismanagement as being for all their education nothing better than that of a used care salesman or a municipal politician. This recession has the potential of making it clear to all, that the levers of power are pulled by charlatans and that they can trust no one but their immediate friends and family.

A backlash would be a good thing, as clearly the people would realize that government is the responsibility of the people and not of the elites. But this is not likely to happen - the only paradigm shift out of this economic morass will be the disassembling of international corporations; and geographical regions of the world shifting into bastions of bilateral trading blocks. National and regional interests will be driven by access to energy, and in some cases...water.

A Fortress Asia and Fortress North America is likely to be the long-term outcome of the economic recovery; however China is a mercantialist free-booter - their economy is based on selling its production capacity externally. They don't have a domestic market and their burgeoning middle-class is dependent on foreign sales. They are sitting on a sea of foreign commercial paper, which may temper their actions - but expect China's Politbureau to externalize blame for their predicament if the recovery takes too long to arrive.

We'll have Fortress Europe but we're seeing signs of it turning on itself - there are two competing social cultures - Old Europe and its sense of entitlement, and the new democracies formed from the former Soviet Republics that don't take freedom for granted and were cashing in on easy credit to build their economies and become a bulwark for New Europe's northern borders. This is likely to implode, and we may well witness a reconfiguration back to the Old Europe, once they cast the New European democracies back into the demilitarized zone between Russia and NATO. This will be achieved by grinding their economies with Brussels sponsored regulatory friction. As Canada and the United States has learned in the Balkans and Afghanistan, Old Europe's commitment to alliances is as weak and as self-serving as their duplicity is strong.

Russia might want to get used to the idea of adopting Canada's industrial policy and become experts at being hewers of wood and drawers of water as commodities will be the only game the Oligarchs can play for the next ten years.

India has a domestic market large enough to sustain itself; however it will continue to commoditize knowledge management as it's prime export.

At the corporate level, I believe that knowledge based and service driven companies such as yours will likely restructure into fractured business units and individual skills, that orbit collaboratively around projects . Supported by the Internet, these business units will be held together by Account Executives and plug and play CRM technology platforms - only to spin off in different trajectories when the job is done. Business organizations have been moving in this direction since 2000 - this recession simply advances the "paradigm shift" more rapidly than most workers are able to fathom.

Change sucks! Rules of Engagement will shift. Perhaps a more flexible resource management strategy where twenty or thirty percent of a company's staff operate as "contractors" on specific projects that plug in and un-plug will be the way "creative and knowledge" based companies will be able to manage their overheads. The ability to marshal talent and proven skill will be critical.

Going forward, I suspect HR department's will be mandated to establish a "clearinghouse" of itinerant project specific contracted workers that can ramp up and ramp out under a very flexible arrangements.

Your little world my friend is simply a reflection of what's going on in the big world. Don't think in terms of hiring back staff if canceled projects are revived or new business landed - think in terms of creating a flexible supply of contracted staff - permanent employment going forward is measured in months.

Hard to fathom any optimism in these statements considering my Doomster views 18 months ago, but frankly.....

....in these times, the ability to adjust to change underpins one's sense of the future.

Right Sizing in Recessionary Times

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:10:00 +0000

REmatrix.com
A Portal To International Commercial Real Estate & Careers

REmatrix Interview Series with Forbes J. Rutherford, President of Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc. on Right Sizing and Cost Management in Recessionary Times

REmatrix.com offers real estate professionals the means to communicate, learn, transact, invest, and expand their international network. REmatrix functions as a "one-stop aggregation of industry trends and transaction information." Our strategy for attracting lenders, advisors, buyers and sellers from around the world is to cater to individuals with similar professional interests, provide the best value for one's time on the Web, and ensure the scope of content and services is international.

December 27, 2008 – Toronto, Canada

Topic: Right Sizing In Recessionary Times

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com

Is there a formulaic response to rightsizing in a recession?

Forbes Rutherford
Most companies, especially in real estate – whether it’s the manufacturing, servicing or transacting of real estate fail to recognize the hard reality that gravity does exist in finance and that market cycles by definition – do cycle. The failure to recognize this reality generally results in a reflexive management response, which often has the earmarks of a formulaic response.

To be frank, it depends on the leadership, the level of uncertainty relative to market circumstances and the degree of financial hemorrhaging. According to a Bain Consulting study as reported in the Harvard Business Review, there are three types of executives one might observe in the face of an impending recession. The first type was “over-confident and likely to under-respond; the second was “under-confident and likely to over-respond,” while the third type was likely to respond to an approaching recession in a “balanced” fashion.

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com

How do you recognize the “over confident and under-responsive” executive?

Read the complete version of the interview at: http://rematrix.com/careers/careers_09sum-let-1.html

Recessionary Jitters - Phantom Wealth and Financial Colonics

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:28:00 +0000

REmatrix Interview with Forbes J. Rutherford, President of Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc.

November 19, 2008 – Toronto, Canada

Topic: Recessionary Jitters – A Commentary

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com
You wrote last January that an unstable sub-prime and derivative market would precipitate a market correction of major proportions. What would you advise your clients, now that the correction has arrived?

Forbes Rutherford
What we’re experiencing is a de-leveraging of a financial industry that was built on fatuous property values, easy credit, gravy train group think and financial architecture that leveraged gullibility with guile. If consumer confidence and the real economy can be insulated from the fallout then this de-leveraging will simply purge the system of phantom wealth – think of it as a financial colonic reboot. Survival of the real economy will depend on the banks not tightening their sphincters when it comes to maintaining the flow of short-term credit to industry.

There are always opportunities for those that have the creativity to see it – we have entered a chaotic phase in the business cycle, however in “chaotic systems” one can find, albeit ever so briefly substantive patterns – in real estate as in any business, there are opportunities to be found within chaotic economies.

Getting back to your question, my advice to clients would be to not overreact. If continuous cost management was not part of their corporate culture during the good times then now is a good time to embrace it but not in a wholesale fashion that undermines the company’s ability to have momentum when the market rebounds. “Layoffs in force” without determination of who to shed based on performance criteria has been proven to retard a company’s ability to take advantage of the eventual recovery relative to your competition. In fact, nimble companies should use this time to improve the quality of their management teams. It’s easy for mediocrity to lay hidden when all the boats are lifting with the tide – not so when market position and margins are eroding.

REmatrix.com www.rematrix.com
What would you advise job seeking clients?

Forbes Rutherford
It’s probably best that we clarify who my client is. The simple description of a client is “one, who pays my fee,” which in all search assignments is the hiring company. I do provide career counseling and some degree of executive coaching, however the majority of my practice is “creating wealth for clients by matching talent and ideas with capital.” Over the next eighteen to twenty-four months a portion of my practice mantra will be, “we help clients preserve capital by matching them with adaptive and agile talent.”

As for individuals, it’s likely the standard response to the greeting, “How are you?” will be a credulous – “I have a job, how about you?” All kidding aside, regardless of economic condition, quality employees will leave for greener more challenging pastures. The mediocre will leave in good times if they think they’ve played out their hand and the jig is up; whereas in tough times, they’ll generally sit tight, keep their head down and not entertain any form of change. The mediocre employee rarely makes an effort to manage their career – for them change is merely the outcome of happenstance.

My counsel to those concerned about their job security is to first understand that this correction is a metaphorical fiscal neutron bomb. The explosion has wiped away real and perceived investment values but left the physical assets standing. Ownership positions meltdown but assets remain and require management; tenants’ contract and shift to lower cost facilities but need modern amenities; vacancy needs to be filled – asset value erosion mitigated. You can choose to become collateral damage or be part of a creative response.

If like me, you see opportunity in unsettled times – you need to elevate your game, stay informed, widen your network; and most importantly, you learn to recognize business opportunities

Continuation of article may be found on the REmatrix.com web site at: http://www.rematrix.com/careers/careers_08sum-let-4.html

About the Author
Forbes Rutherford provides specialized human capital consulting and executive search services to both national and international property and investment firms. He has practiced his profession for twenty-two years; and has sat on the Board of a number of professional real estate associations based in Canada. Having dealt with a broad cross section of the industry’s senior executives and rising stars, Mr. Rutherford is in a unique position to observe the changing macro trends and oncoming challenges facing the Canadian and International real estate community. Additional information on Mr. Rutherford’s background may be viewed at the following web links: www.rutherfordinternational.com or http://www.linkedin.com/in/rutherfordintl

“Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and 'the financial market' cauldron bubble”

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:17:00 +0000

Executive and Board Performance – Disavowing Financial Gravity
By Forbes J. Rutherford, President, Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc.
www.rutherfordinternational.com – www.rematrix.com
May 2008

“Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble”
Macbeth Witches, Scene 1

Little has changed – the pursuit to disavow the existence of financial gravity inflated the Dot Com bubble, continued into a home equity bubble and will likely feed the commodity bubble. We’ve learned little - the manipulators of corporate stock values slipped from the constraints of Sarbanes Oxley and moved downstream to apply their talents at excavating middleclass wealth by pump/priming home values and debt. This time, instead of engaging stock brokers to sell the phantom values, they used real estate agents and mortgage brokers to sell the American consumerist dream which eschews sacrifice and toil. Dupes or “useful idiots,” the retail financial services sector sold debt and empty dreams utilizing fraudulent financial mechanisms that were created by “financial grifters” on Wall Street.

The sub-prime melt down, the predictable collapse of a 140 year old investment bank, the approaching derivative tsunami that is expected to sweep away more historical investment banks is simply a consequence of monetization of ethics and delusional deception of financial principles – all with the assistance of the Federal Reserve, a fawning supplicant which colluded by selling cheap money by accepting junk bond quality mortgage backed securities as collateral. The system is cracking under the weight of this inflationary madness.

August 2002

This following commentary on creating shareholder value by linking staff bonuses, business unit managers and first tier executive compensation through the establishment of a hierarchy of performance measurements was written in 2002. It has even more relevancy today.

My horoscope suggested today was a good day to sit down and read books on mysticism, metaphysics and ancient religions. It went so far as recommending the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” as a suitable summer read. I’m not in the habit of stocking the corporate library with such titles, although I do have a few executive resumes that might qualify. However, the daily reports on Enron, Worldcom and various “mini-ron’s and com’s” in the financial press of late, should suffice as a comparative alternative. Certainly, there will be no lack of reading material over the ensuing months, as further accounting distortions are reported by financial forensic investigators.

How has the executive suite and investment community of corporate America reached such an all-time low in the eyes of stakeholders with respect to ‘trust’, that a politician feels obliged to lecture Wall Street on ethics! A politician lecturing on ethics is akin to the philanderer expecting their spouse to be virtuous. The political response will result in increased regulation, and conveniently eschews a loosely held belief in the principle of ‘market forces'. The solution to regaining the retail investors trust in our financial markets is not by increasing the regulation of business, nor is it a vacuous promise to take a few unscrupulous executives out to the symbolic woodshed.

Complete Text - Link to REmatrix.com Career Section