Solar Reflections Blog
The fourth in a series of interviews with Pete Testa, founder of TestaSolarJobs.com:
So far you’ve identified quality and quickness as important attributes that a recruiter has to offer employers. This week you’re adding accuracy to that list – how does that come into play here?
What it means is to make sure that I listen carefully to what the employer is telling me. That’s where accuracy starts, it’s getting a very clear understanding as to their requirements, technically as well as personally.
The technical component is relatively easy to assess – that’s the criteria that a company establishes for specific product knowledge, specific level of experience, specific education. Those are important criteria, but easy to define.
The personal component is equally important. That means discovering, “What’s important to the hiring manager?” That’s where my listening skills become key. It really comes down to a chemistry hire: Is there synergy between the two people?
“Synergy” is a word that comes up all the time. Why is it important in a personnel situation?
It comes down to the question, “Can they work together? Can these two (or more) people get along? The candidate may meet all of the technical criteria that the company is requiring, but if they can’t get along on a day-to-day synergy level, then it’s not going to work.
So my job as a recruiter is to get a clear understanding of the personal needs that this hiring manager is asking me for to find. What are their personal likes and dislikes in a candidate? My personal opinion of the candidate’s personality is not important on this level. What is important is the needs of the company, and then the needs of the hiring manager, because they have to live with that person day in and day out.
Is that synergy discernible immediately?
Yes, it’s established very quickly: Usually in the first five to six minutes, people will know that they’ll be able to get along. The rest of the interview is generally spent confirming their initial feelings.
So in getting feedback on those initial meetings, my first question to a candidate is, “How did you feel about this man or woman that you met? Is it someone that you can work with and for?” That speaks to the chemistry.
If the chemistry is there, I believe it means that I’ve accurately heard the requirements of the hiring manager.
How do you address accuracy on the personal chemistry front with your offerings?
With my one-to-one recruiting, Pete Testa Elite (PTE), both that personal aspect of accuracy, along with the technical side, is a very manageable part of the process. On our Website, TestaSolarJobs.com, the technical aspect is obviously easily covered with the wordings of job postings and resumes. But since this is a Website that’s highly focused on the solar industry, there’s a chemistry immediately established there: Everyone involved is in the community of the solar industry, so there’s an immediate connection right there. From that standpoint, the best possible match can result, and the employer benefits from having hired someone that came through a process where accuracy is paramount.
Based upon the 24 years of experience I have in recruiting, I feel proud to have brought such a high level of technical accuracy to TestaSolarJobs.com. But as this online jobs platform evolves, my interest is to see how we can measure not only that technical matchup, but the personal tie as well?
That’s an important part of the industry, and as we obtain feedback from people that have hired or obtained jobs through TestaSolarJobs.com, we’ll continue to evolve the site itself to make it the most accurate – and therefore most effective – recruiting resource in the solar industry.
5/17/2009
The third in a series of interviews with Pete Testa, founder of TestaSolarJobs.com:
Why is it particularly important for a recruiter to be able to work quickly?
An employer needs to know that their job is a top priority. Be it a hiring manager or HR personnel, they need to know that their position has been given prominence in the queue. In my 24 years of experience in recruiting, the system I’ve developed for working is actually that there is no queue: When a position develops, I act on it immediately. That’s ingrained with my basic attitude – it’s how I would want to feel when I ask somebody for customer service.
On the employer side, what’s typically happening that’s spurring their need for fast action?
When they come to me, there’s often a sense of urgency. They need a position filled immediately, and the lack of the person they need could impact their own revenue stream, their own ability to execute great customer service…it runs the gamut of the company. Something that was getting covered now isn’t, and if it’s a hands-on hiring manager, they may be the one doing the work. They really need help because they’re doing two or three different jobs.
Compounding that situation is the fact that they’re now in a competitive mode for the best talent in the market, whether that talent is actively looking for a position, or not looking and needs to be recruited. We want to help them get to the top talent first, and my responsiveness – a do-it-now attitude -- at those times is crucial.
What time factors are in play on the jobseeker side?
If the jobseeker is unemployed, then there’s a sense of urgency on their part to find a position. If they are employed, then that means they have options, and we may only have a limited time to make the best offer.
Looking at the solar industry in particular, this urgency gets compounded yet again. This is a sector that is very dynamic, very fluid, and TestaSolarJobs and our one-to-one recruitment arm, Pete Testa Elite (PTE) is very in touch with that rapid growth.
TestaSolarJobs.com is a real-time platform that extends what I’ve been doing for 24 years as a contract recruiter and realizes it as a Web-based tool, with all the immediacy that implies. But it also comes back to a one-on-one platform with PTE, where employers can work directly with me for contingency and retained searches that are particularly intensive, complicated or confidential in nature.
Everything about our society is fast-paced, but how do quickly-resolved recruitment efforts specifically pay off for companies?
The search gets filled, and they can move on. Hiring managers and HR personnel have so many other areas of responsibility, they’re extremely appreciative when TestaSolarJobs or PTE can come in and help out. On the other side of that coin, it’s certainly satisfying for the jobseeker that quickly got the career-enhancing position they were looking for.
4/14/2009
The second in a series of interviews with Pete Testa, founder of TestaSolarJobs.com:
How would you say the solar industry is evolving?
The solar industry is a relatively new industry, in terms of a job market. It may arguably still be in its infant stage, but it’s rapidly approaching adolescence. This quick road to maturity is being substantiated by the government. Their focus is to create an energy independence for America, and to do it in a green environment.
The technology for solar is there, now it needs to be developed and brought to the public on a larger scale, both in the commercial and residential sectors.
With explosive growth expected in solar, how do employers and services like TestaSolarJobs help to manage the transition of so many people who will necessarily be new to the industry?
Congress and the President have acknowledged that millions of jobs need to go over to the solar industry, but it needs to happen one position at a time. That’s realistic, and that’s how this industry will build. Talking about 4,000,000 jobs going to solar over the next ten years is staggering, but true, and it starts with one person getting the next available job in the solar industry. That’s where the focus of TestaSolarJobs is: one company, one person, one job at a time.
What’s needed to fuel this development?
Professionals within the industry, within an organization, top to bottom. It’s the people within the industry that are going to drive it and make it successful.
Employers, and the hiring decisions that they make, are a vital part of helping to grow the solar industry. They need to focus on the functionality that they want this person to bring to the industry. A marketing professional can be functional in the semiconductor space, but we need to make sure that they have the functionality and experience that translates easily and readily to solar.
How does an employer know which job candidates will translate well when transitioning into the solar industry?
Their accomplishments and achievements within a specific industry will tell you a lot. An important feature of TestaSolarJobs is employers’ ability to work directly with me via Pete Testa Elite to assist further with the pre-screening for a contingency (meaning fee contingent on a successful hire) or retain search.
There are very few online recruitment platforms that provide employers with that opportunity to get recruitment assistance from a highly experienced professional in the field. Monster has no link that says, “I’ve got a search. I’ve exhausted my other resources, and I need someone to help me.” But TestaSolarJobs does exactly that.
How do you evaluate if a particular job candidate is right for a position?
Actually, it’s not up to me to make that determination. It’s really all about what the company or hiring manger is looking for. I listen carefully to the specific needs of the hiring manager, who in turn is representing the company, and I rely on them to provide me with the criteria, or filters, for that search.
So my attitude is that I’m not making the decision about who gets hired. Instead, my responsibility is to determine everybody who’s available who meets the company’s needs, and then let their hiring managers choose from that carefully selected pool. It’s in the screening process where TestaSolarJobs can help those managers, especially if many of the candidates come from another industry – someone has to help screen them and make sure that their skills will be transferable to the solar space.
On the other side of the coin, I get a lot of satisfaction out of bringing a jobseeker to the position that he or she was looking for. Absolutely, over the course of my nearly 25 years in recruiting, I’ve been able to help thousands of jobseekers to better their careers and better their lives.
Today’s technology-oriented candidates know that given where we’re going as a nation, change has to happen. So there will be a lot of people coming into this industry, and any tools that will make the process of recruitment more efficient, for employers and jobseekers alike, is that much more valuable. That’s the purpose of TestaSolarJobs: to help fill each available position with the best qualified person.
March 2009
Employer’s Recruitment Process
There are five main things that an employer is looking for from the recruitment process as they look to fill a position.
They are:
- Quality
- Quickness
- Accuracy
- Responsiveness
- Relevancy
Let's look at quality first. One of the most important parts of evaluating if someone is a quality applicant is the question, "Is this person's experience relevant to my needs?" In the solar space, that relevancy is very important. For example, a solar process engineer is different from a solar installer. The process engineer is involved with the development of the technology, while the installer is involved with its implementation in the installation stage.
The HR executive at a company needs to know that the tools they're using, like TestaSolarJobs, is going to be able to break down the specific components within the search that leads to a quality candidate. TestaSolarJobs is a pre-screening tool for the solar industry, and then we help to break it down even further for enhanced relevancy and speed.
This is important to HR personnel, because in general they have to wear a lot of hats -- recruiting is just a small part of what they do. At any one time they may also be dealing with Equal Opportunity issues, medical benefits, disciplinary issues, and beyond. So the quicker we can make the recruiting process by leading them to a quality candidate, the better.
The people in charge of hiring at companies - whether it's for the solar industry, semiconductors, or greeting cards - actually have many other issues that they actually have to give priority to over recruiting. If they haven't been able to pay a lot of attention to it, they could find themselves suddenly under pressure from their line managers to quickly fill a position with a quality applicant.
So even though applicants see these HR professionals as the gatekeepers who are in control and in command, the fact is that they need a lot of help themselves! A tool like TestaSolarJobs can be a big assist in locating the quality candidate that employers need, and making the hiring process as seamless as possible for HR specialists everywhere.