Got Talent? The HR Dilemma

Do you have the HR blues? Well, it wouldn't be surprising—hiring and retention woes are seemingly epidemic in the channel these days. Solution providers both large and small have struggled to find, land and hold onto skilled employees for their organizations. The difficulty extends to hiring both sales and technical staffers.

If you're trying to grow your business, the hiring challenge looms even larger. According to research by the Institute for Partner Education & Development (IPED), more than a third of solution providers cite hiring technical and sales staff as their biggest obstacles to growth. That doesn't even address the problem of retention in a high-turnover industry also known to suffer not-insignificant talent-poaching among solution providers, IT vendors and even their clients.

CAROLYN A. APRIL Can be reached via e-mail at capril@cmp.com.

Consider Logicalis, which is not a typically sized solution provider at a hefty $769 million in revenue last year. But it has endured the same types of HR problems as those of you with 10 employees and one stubbornly open position. For Logicalis, the hiring and retention issues became acute as the company expanded its footprint from regional to national. Logicalis couldn't hire enough people to scale its services effectively. And often, it had trouble holding onto those propsects it did land. The company did the legwork to find candidates, hired those it thought were best, trained them for professional certifications and other skill sets. All that good stuff. Not long after, the employees gave notice, heading afield for higher compensation and/or a loftier title.

So what can you do? Making HR a priority in your organization is critical. Hire a human resources director if at all possible, and make sure that the highest levels of management—preferably the president/CEO of your company—are intimately involved in recruitment and interviewing.

Other best practices can help you assuage the HR woes. First off, understand why you are in business in the first place, and then tailor all your recruitment efforts toward finding people who fit your business mission and corporate culture. Recruitment should be continual, especially for sales reps. Don't look for candidates only when you have an opening. You should be constantly searching for the highest-caliber sales reps to expand your business development capacity.

Once you find the right person, retention kicks in. Best practices revolve around setting clear expectations, goals and review processes, but also financial and nonfinancial incentives and rewards and the opportunity to develop additional skills. Cross-training between technical and sales staff both motivates the employee whose skill set has expanded and bolsters your underlying business. "Hybrid" types of workers have been found to be more effective in the field.

HR is not an exact science, though it's smart to initiate solid processes for recruiting, hiring and retention. But keep in mind that a methodology alone doesn't address the human aspect, so devise an HR strategy that considers corporate culture and the many different personalities.

How do you feel about the state of solution provider hiring and retention?
Carolyn A. April is Principal Analyst for IPED. Contact her at capril@cmp.com.