The August Career Conference in Charlotte, NC is now complete. Our client companies are leading their way out of this recession by focusing on getting the “right people on the bus” as Jim Collins says in Good to Great. The result: candidates averaged over 9 interviews each and every candidate achieved success at the Conference. 10 support team members attended, helping candidates convert initial interviews into an average of more than 5 companies expressing interest in each. The combination of great candidates, great companies and great preparation continues to pay off. The August Conference results show the true “win-win” scenario when military leadership experience meets Corporate America’s need for results.
We’ve added a new feature to our Facebook page (http://tinyurl.com/dfqoq4) where you can see videos of our August candidates discussing the Conference. I’d encourage you to use this opportunity to hear directly from them on their thoughts and recommendations. We were even able to track down one of the 15 C-B alumni who was back recruiting, and who gave his thoughts on his career. In this post, we’d like to share with you trends and an example of a business initiative that helped drive opportunities that companies brought to the August Conference. Our goal is to help you understand why companies are hiring military officers now. In our next post, after we have completed some of the follow-up process, we’ll post steps you can use to turn this insight into action to help you connect with business needs.
We continue to see opportunities for each candidate to interview across a number of career fields and industries at each Conference. As our economy recovers, our relationship with a broad range of client companies gives us unique insights into some “macro-trends” that relate to your career. In April, we heard from many companies focused on driving revenue to combat the economic slowdown who were looking for “top line” impact-oriented leaders. In our last letter, we discussed the “view from the corner” as companies took lessons from the downturn and were hiring into improvement initiatives designed to help them through the recovery. In our August Conference, we continued to see both of those efforts creating leadership openings and also saw a third area pick up steam – Operations/Manufacturing. In addition to sales and process improvement, our August client companies have strong needs in production and supply chain areas as they look ahead to the upturn. This helped drive the rising number of interviews per candidate from April through June and August as we continue to see companies inject great leadership into the areas that need it most.
An example of the types of initiatives gaining steam in business operations, manufacturing, and engineering, is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). TPM is a process where equipment operators share in the responsibility of equipment maintenance. This may sound familiar to military personnel because it can be the case there as well. TPM is not a new concept because many businesses start this way when small, but growth and increased production can lead to more focused specialization of personnel. TPM is a way to reduce specialization and decrease the downtime needed to maintain equipment, while increasing employee productivity. In an economy where we’ll need to step up production to meet increased demand but keep expenses down, TPM is one way companies decrease cost while increasing production. It takes leadership to get a team to adopt a new process, as many of you have already experienced. That is just one of the many reasons why businesses will be interested in your leadership. No matter the development career field you see yourself starting in: Sales, Manufacturing, Operations, Business Analysis, Engineering, Marketing, or any others – you will see opportunities to drive performance in a business that is focused on success.
When discussing development opportunities, we focus on the future. For candidates transitioning out of the military to business, you may find yourself explaining your decision to family, friends and co-workers around you. They are likely focused on the past and asking about your decision to step out into a tough economy. You can have the confidence to look ahead at your career in Corporate America and your opportunity to be part of the recovery. Take the time to listen to the August candidates as they recommend points for you to turn that confidence into a successful business career.
Scott LePage
Sounds like the group of candidates did very well, and as a candidate that makes me feel great. Did you have a larger group of people with backgrounds in maintenance management in this year group? I know you increased the amount of maintenance/production interviews but did we alter the spectrum of skill sets brought on board to Cameron Brooks to help meet that demand?
Eric,
Thanks for the comment! Keep in mind that our companies come to us for leaders, not necessarily any one type of specific background. Were the different types of opportunities we saw at the Conference a match for the leadership experience of our candidates? Yes! Were the candidates a fit for the leadership needs of these organizations? Yes! Did the candidates see these opportunites as a great fit for their career goals? Hear their Yes! on our Facebook page.
Your question gives me the opportunity to talk about some of the areas where our process and our hard work result in the kind of success we saw at the August Conference.
– Getting to know our candidates – Average time for a candidate in our Development and Preparation Program (c) is 9 months. By investing a significant amount of time in our candidates prior to a Conference, we are able to help them understand the full extent of their marketability. This means that, as we see trends in the market, we are able to help our candidates match their leadership abilities to the areas where there are opportunities.
– Quality companies and candidates – Cameron-Brooks has a track record of putting together successful conferences over the decades due to the effort we’ve put into working with quality companies and selecting quality candidates. If you’d like to know more about our clients, I’d encourage you to read Joel’s post on Aug 6th “Cameron-Brooks Review of the Economy”. On why being a C-B candidate helps you achieve your goals, I’d encourage you to see Joel’s post from May 11th “Why Companies Hire the Cameron-Brooks JMO Despite the Current Financial Crisis”.
– Matching process – We spend the month prior to the Conference in a critical phase of the process – matching candidates to company openings. This is where all the hard work with companies and candidates pays off. When you see the average number of interviews of 9.2 for the August Candidates, that is the opportunities that were matched to their career goals based on all the factors above. The effectiveness of the matching process is clear in the “conversion” of these interviews to an average of over 5 companies interested in each candidate.
I like to recommend that candidates use DPP(c) to “rule career fields and opportunities in” to their career search. In other words, there is no reason to “rule out” career fields where your experience is a fit. By using the Conference as an opportunity to see a broad range of career fields, you’ll be able to take advantage of “trends” in the market like the ones we communicated in this post. We’ll do our part by continuing to bring opportunities across the career fields so that you’ll have success in achieving your goals.
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