Author Archives: Larry Janis

Playbook for stockpiling AI talent: Buy, borrow, build

By Clint Boulton

Many IT leaders will tell you hiring tech talent is right up there with culture change as a chief hurdle to business transformation. Finding enough software engineers, Scrum masters, DevOps leaders and other potential change agents remains a burden. But experts agree the top challenge is hiring experts in data science, including those with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence skills.

From healthcare to financial services, every sector is embracing some form of AI as a core business strategy. Eight-four percent of 500 business leaders surveyed online by consultancy EY in 2019 said that AI is critical in facilitating efficiencies and reducing costs, gaining a better understanding of customers and generating new revenues.

But the road to success depends heavily on the talent pool, as 31 percent of those same leaders said that a lack of skilled staff is the No. 1 barrier to AI adoption.

Here experts share their experiences with mining AI talent and provide tips for how CIOs can lure the right mix of data scientists, ML engineers and AI experts. (more…)

Should I stay or should I go?

The topic of counter offers is an interesting one. I am sure you have seen articles and thoughts about the subject and they are usually one person’s perspective on the topic. For a somewhat different approach, we’ve reached out to people in our network to gain their thoughts and perspective on the topic.

 

 

We asked:

You have just received an offer to join a new firm. You are giving notice to leave your current position and your employer makes a “counter offer” to keep you from leaving. You start to think about whether or not to take that “counter offer.”

 

Not a big fan of counter-offers.  In my experience, in addition to the conscious decision to leave there is an almost subconscious detachment of the person from their current role and organization.  So even if you counter-offer to get someone to stay, a significantly high percentage of people end up leaving within a year or two anyway.

Having spent most of my career in high growth companies, if somebody is going to leave for a reason that is “counter-offerable”, they probably weren’t fully committed to your journey to begin with.

Paradoxically (perhaps), I have found that when people leave for something that turns out to be a mistake, taking them back results in a team member that more fully appreciates the opportunity so the engagement and commitment leave they come back with is that much higher.

Mark Trepanier,  Chief Operating Officer,  transformAI

 

For me it is about ‘why’ are they looking to leave. We had a high-potential developer communicate he was leaving last year. He was leaving to join Disney. On the surface you might say ‘wow, that’s a great company’. But he is a developer in a SaaS company leaving to join a big company to write code for internal use. Didn’t seem like the right career move. I got involved, talked to him about why he would leave / why he might stay and we created a reason for him to remain and now 8+ months later it’s been a win for both. Might he leave down the road. Sure. If he does and when he says it is time to go, I offered to connect him to every CTO I know.

There have also been other times when I have chosen to pass on a counter.  If it is just about money and it is going to raise it’s head again, I’d rather part ways now.

Jay Ackerman, President & Chief Executive Officer at Reveleer

 

What do counter offers tell us about the individual employment relationship?  That a counter offer is made reveals something about the employer as well as about the employee.

On the employee side, has the employee failed to effectively demonstrate his or her value to the organization?  In the current corporate world, we are each trustees of our own assets, and we have to be ready to demonstrate our current and future value to our employers.  Sometimes in the rush to make deadlines for deliverables, we fail to remind the organization how that deliverable was pulled together and the experience and care that went into it.

The first question I ask recipients of counter offers is why they resigned and if they failed to convey their restlessness and feeling that they were not valued.  If that is part of the problem, what behavioral changes will be necessary to see that it doesn’t happen again.  If it is not reasonable to expect that behavior will change, it may be wise to reject the counter offer, but doing so without changing the employee’s mind set may mean the pattern will be repeated in the new job.

Finally we should also question whether the employee failed to groom a successor and the counter is just a stop gap until a successor can be trained up or found.  If that situation exists, the long-term prospects for the employee are not great.

On the company side, counter offers frequently come about because management is not listening to its employees and pro-actively developing employees’ careers.  Again, succession planning may be faulty and that is why the counter is generated.  The immediate boss may be weak or uncaring.  Unless some organizational change is made, the employee will have the problem all over again.

Unless the root causes of the resignation and counter offer are understood, accepting a counter seldom solves any of the longer-term problems.

One exception to the balanced equation problem described above occurs when the central problem is pay.  If the employee has been straining for additional pay, and salary administration guidelines preclude a substantial increase, a counter offer with a substantial increase may be a solution that will be endure.  The employee will be satisfied in the medium term with the new number, and the company will realize that the finding, retraining and lost productivity costs entailed with a new employee exceed by far the raise that was contained in the counter offer.

Lowell Williams, Executive Director, Contingent Worker Center of Excellence at KPMG, LLC

 

 

We hope you find these perspectives interesting. If you would like to share your thoughts on this for future blogs, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Larry Janis, Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group

P-516-767-3030

Email: janis@issg.net

ISSG I Twitter I LinkedIn

 

Director Account Development/Sales-US

Our Client

Is an analyst and advisory firm with an evidence-based approach to market and service provider assessments and an unrivaled BPO and outsourcing knowledge covering an extensive range of business processes and industry sectors.

We work closely with our clients to create a value-based relationship using their unique outsourcing knowledge to act as a trusted advisor, providing answers and making business sense of the complexity and challenges faced by both service buyers and service providers within the global outsourcing market.

The Position

Director Account Development should demonstrate a consistent ability to build partnerships, manage global relationships, and successfully grow business through direct sales and alliances. The role is focused on building trust-based relationships across key stakeholders to meet understand and meet client needs.

The account executive is a field sales role responsible for direct client contract value retention, as well as growth through contract expansion and the introduction of new products and services.

Requirements

  • 8-15 years of external experience, preferably in at creating and developing relationships with major U.S.-HQ accounts such as Accenture, IBM, Cognizant with evidence of prior success
  • To excel at developing personal relationships, and in promoting and building relationships with their analysts, across the various stakeholders within major accounts such as AR, execs, marketing
  • Needs to be able to sell subscription services and access to subject matter experts
  • Ability to identify key purchasing points and influencers within stakeholders and manage each appropriately
  • Needs to be able to develop and maintain relationships with a view to medium-term, rather than taking a short-term transactional view
  • Demonstrated intellect, drive, executive presence and sales acumen
  • Strong team player

If you are interested or know someone who might be, please let me know

Larry Janis

Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group

P-516-767-3030 I C-516-445-2377

ISSG I Twitter I LinkedIn

Are You Pursuing Your Vision of Career Success — or Someone Else’s?

by Laura Gassner Otting

You’ve checked all the boxes. You’ve graduated from the right college, held the right internship, flourished in the right graduate program, and landed the right job at the right company. You’ve followed the path that everyone else told you would be the one to lead to success — to your dream job — only to find that your dream job doesn’t feel so dreamy after all.

The good news is that you aren’t alone. Across each generation, the realization that success hasn’t brought with it the expected happiness has created a zeitgeist moment where conversations about purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction reign supreme. In fact, a 2015 study by Gallup showed that only one-third of the American workforce feels actively engaged in their work.

Each generation is experiencing its own work identity crisis, trying to determine why their work isn’t working for them. Millennials — social media natives who have never lived separate lives at work and at home  —  don’t look for work-life balance, but rather work-life alignment, where they can be the same person, with the same values, at home and in the office. Boomers are turning the standard retirement age of 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day, but are not ready to put their hard-earned toolboxes on the shelf to gather dust. One-third of Americans over the age of fifty —nearly 34 million people — stated that they were seeking to fill their time with some professional (paid or unpaid) purpose beyond just the self. GenXers, finding themselves caught between raising children and nursing aging parents, are looking for work that contributes to managing these demands rather than working against them.

While these generations may differ in terms of what’s most meaningful to them, across each generation, meaning matters. (more…)

This is what leaders need to do to prevent work-life stress from taking over

By: Tracy Brower

Leaders have a huge responsibility in contributing to work-life fulfillment, but they often forget what they can do to help employees achieve that. In a lot of work-life recommendations, we empower ourselves to balance brilliantly (despite problems with the idea of ‘balance’), find fulfillment, and seek satisfaction.

This is all good. After all, it’s essential to be empowered and make things happen for ourselves. But, in addition to individual empowerment, leaders also have a crucial role to play in creating the conditions for work-life satisfaction in their place of work.

As a leader, you should make sure that you’re fulfilled in your personal and professional life. But you also have a lot of influence to create an environment that allows for work-life fulfillment and stop work stress from taking over. Here’s how.

MODEL THE WAY

The first step in leading for work-life satisfaction is finding your own fulfillment and being transparent about it. Social science research tells us that humans learn through watching and emulating others. We do this both consciously and unconsciously. That means how you act and the choices you make have a powerful effect on those around you—even if that’s not your intention. Be transparent about the choices you’re making. If you’re leaving the office early to catch your daughter’s soccer game, mention it to others. If you’ll be late to the office because you have to take your new puppy to the vet, be open about your timing and the reason behind it. When you’re open and transparent about your life outside of work—and that it’s okay to have one—you’ll empower others to do the same. (more…)