 interviews with the movers and innovators in talent acquisition, staffing, and corporate human resources. INSIGHTS: AMPLIFIED is a production of Riviera Advisors, helping organizations improve, enhance, and optimize their corporate recruiting and staffing capabilities through sophisticated levels of expertise in tactical and strategic global talent acquisition; and by TotalPicture Radio - the voice of career and leadership acceleration. Principal's Overview: Hi, this is Jeremy Eskenazi, Managing Principal of Riviera Advisors. On this edition of INSIGHTS: AMPLIFIED, Melissa McMahon, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition at CDW joins host Peter Clayton.
Why did we choose to interview Melissa? Melissa is a results driven Talent Acquisition leader with over 20 years of experience and a proven track record of successfully leading, building and re-engineering recruiting functions from entry-level through executive level.
Peter: Thanks, Jeremy. A little background to get started: CDW is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government, education and healthcare. Based in the Chicago metro area, CDW has distribution centers and offices throughout the US and Canada. Ranked No. 38 on Forbes' list of America's Largest Private Companies, in 2007, CDW was acquired by Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity firm.
Melissa, thanks so much for taking time to speak with us today on INSIGHTS: AMPLIFIED. Tell us about your background. Prior to joining CDW, you worked at Accenture?
Melissa: Yes, I was in a very fortunate position to have an exciting and progressive career with Accenture. It was truly one of the best places to build a foundation or career as a recruiter and eventually into a recruiting leader. The things that stand out for me about my career at Accenture was the process in systems infrastructure which was absolutely solid but more it was just so motivating to work with such bright and talented people every day. Like I said, it just created the best foundation for my career.
Peter: Great. Let's switch to CDW here. Several years ago CDW acquired Berbee, a top tier reseller of IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft products and services. What have you learned through this process that you could share with other recruiters when it comes to an acquisition as major as this one was?
Melissa: Well, as you can imagine, it's not always easy blending two recruiting organizations with two very different sets of processes, systems and protocol, but what I learned most of all is the importance of constant communication, collaboration and true expectation setting. The nice thing is our CDW executives really set the tone around ensuring that we blended the best of the best from both companies and talent acquisition and recruiting was not exempt from that. Berbee also had a very successful recruiting model that we wanted to sustain, and we also knew that we truly were in the position to leverage the strength of two very solid corporate and employment brands. Both companies had such a tremendous sense of pride in the two organizations and that's one of the many reasons that we came together, is that similar spirit and culture, but also because of the power of the two business models and product and service offerings. I think it's up to us, the recruiters, who are that voice, to collectively keep that sense of pride alive and that recruiter spirit is really what feeds into attracting engaging talent in the marketplace.
Peter: In reading your LinkedIn profile, I know you worked for an executive search firm. What's different in talent acquisition when you're in-house, versus working as a third-party recruiter?
Melissa: I happen to work for a small generalist boutique firm and I was working from my home and for me, the big difference was I just absolutely miss leading and collaborating with the team of recruiters. So when I was in search, I was essentially on my own developing new business, finding the talent and managing client relationships, and while I do have a passion still for executive recruiting in the instrumental role that search partners and recruiters play in placing executive talent, my heart, what I learned from that experience and it was a short stint, is truly being part of shaping, growing and leading a team to success. For me it's about the power of we versus the power of me and I feel like in a corporate environment, I get more of that we experience and ability to influence.
Peter: Well, that's some great insight, so here's my perspective - CDW doesn't manufacture anything, you're a reseller of tech products that are available from many different competitors. Lots of the stuff you sell has really razor thin margins. You really can't compete on price, which says to me that much of the success of your company rests on the shoulders of your account managers and solution architects. Am I right?
Melissa: Well, it is true. CDW does have deep roots in providing technology products to customers. We have been able to successfully leverage our expertise to transform ourselves into one of the largest and fastest growing full service providers of IT solutions and services, so our success as a full-service IT provider is really tied to our ability to establish and maintain those strong customer relationships, which has always been a differentiator for CDW. Our objective is to help our customers manage the complexities of IT and maximize the return on their IT investments. And so while we know that marketing conditions around us may always change, everything we do for us revolves around the customer, understanding their business, their IT needs and investing and serving them, and we know that we've been successful because that approach that we've used is reflective in our success.
Last year, CDW reported $8.8 billion in sales in 2010 which is a record-breaking increase over 2009 and we were operating in a highly competitive market, so again for us, that full IT solution provider and customer focus is our huge differentiator.
Peter: CDW's business really depends on having the right employees in the right jobs? How do you find, attract and retain the talent you need to grow your business?
Melissa: I look at it as it starts with the talented recruiting team because I believe you can have the best candidate attraction and sourcing strategy, but if you don't have the right team of recruiters being your voice and passionately telling the story of CDW, our successes, our career opportunities, how we invest in people both personally and professionally, we're never going to be able to clearly articulate our value proposition, our differentiator. So for me, the difference is, it's all about the recruiter and the people that are selling and telling the CDW story with conviction and passion.
Peter: We'll be back to discuss the war for talent with Melissa after this short break.
This is Diana Meisenhelter, Principal of Riviera Advisors. I'm working on a new post for our blog Insights from the Riviera called Making a Life, Making a Living and Recruiting. What Melissa is talking about ties to this new blog post I'm working on. What makes a good recruiter is a passion of mine. In this blog article, I share some of my favorite and simple advice on making sure recruiters discover what they're good at and enjoy as the first step towards making sure they are in the perfect job.
I hope you visit our blog at RivieraAdvisors.com/blog and share your feedback and ideas with our growing community of HR and recruiting practitioners.
Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the podcast.
Peter: Is there a war for talent in your industry, Melissa?
Melissa: Absolutely, and especially the engineering talent that we're trying to attract and hire. The demand for the engineers that we're looking to hire in some markets truly exceeds available supply, which to my earlier point makes the power of a recruiter and the recruiter voice and the story telling, the key differentiator in winning the talent.
Peter: I've read that 40% of your experienced hire openings are filled by current employees? Is that right and if so how are you able to accomplish this?
Melissa: Yeah. Not in all cases year over year, but CDW does have a high rate of filling positions with internal talent. We are very committed to the transitioning and development of our internal talent and yes, over the years we've had a high percentage of our positions filled with the progression of internal talent. But as we continue to grow with an organization, we really need to balance that transitioning and developing of the internal talent by augmenting external talent to build on what we already have. So we do take tremendous pride and as a first place that we go, we look at our existing co-workers. We have a formal talent review process where we're constantly looking at existing talent before we go to the outside.
Peter: Do you invest in social media specifically for talent acquisition - Facebook or LinkedIn?
Melissa: We do and today we invest most heavily in LinkedIn because most of the candidates that we are attracting, it's a passive candidate play and that is the best place to go. We've done a lot in the past on Facebook and Twitter and certainly we have an opportunity to continue to build on our integrated social media strategy and we do that quite successfully with our current recruitment marketing partner as we look at our overall candidate attraction and engagement efforts. Social media is absolutely a critical part of that strategy, but it's one piece of many things that we need to do to engage and attract candidates.
Peter: Let's expand on this then. Do you use job boards, or third party recruiters or staffing agencies?
Melissa: We do. We use all three but job boards primarily and only for our high-volume and entry-level sales position. We've done a lot of research around industry averages and click-through rates and we continue to perform high on that high entry level position