In any business, it’s important to leverage the right tools to keep things productive and efficient. Whether it’s database management, inventory systems, analytic trackers, or even a new coffee machine; the goal is to increase the efficiency and productivity of your workplace.

At Morton, we depend on a variety of applications, websites, and systems to keep our recruiting process on track. When you devote time to each applicant to researching and interviewing as well as ensuring the client’s needs are met, you must have a smooth process in place. We thought we’d take a minute to highlight a couple recruiting tools we have found very useful in our daily work.

TalentWise is everything you’re looking for in a supplementary recruiting tool – specific in its applications, flexible with existing systems, and efficient in how it performs. They offer multiple solutions for employers and recruiters, of which we utilize their Background Checks.  Their checks are thorough and reliable, covering criminal records, credit checks, SSN trace, education verification, and professional references. Furthermore, it integrates with our applicant tracking systems. Just as a proper tool should, it gives us exactly what we need from it and it does it well.

Likewise, Yammer has done much to streamline our internal communications. Email chains and chat sessions are well and fine, but in a business like ours internal efficiency and organization are absolutely critical. We depend on a high level of collaboration and coordination between our recruiters and account executives, and Yammer helps us achieve that in a variety of ways. Yammer gives us the whole package under one roof – group coordination, public and private messaging, file sharing, internal directory, knowledge base management, mobile support, and more.

Adopting new tool in a business setting can seem daunting; some will resist change, it takes time to implement, and you can’t be sure a tool will be effective until it’s tried. But nothing ventured, nothing gained – as anyone in the IT industry worth their salt can tell you. Adaptation and flexibility are the name of the game, and making strategic choices for the tools you use day-to-day is one way you play it.

When you’re in the IT staffing industry, you start to pick up on a unique language of terms and phrases. You might call it “industry-speak” – every industry has their own, and they’re not well known outside of it.

One such term in the recruiting industry, though you don’t hear it as much today as in years past, is the “purple squirrel.” I’ve noticed over the past couple years, as it’s fallen out of popularity in the industry, its definitions and connotation have been portrayed differently the times I’ve heard or read it used.

In the interest of defending this noble term from obscurity, let’s talk it out. What exactly is a purple squirrel?

A purple squirrel, simply put, is the perfect candidate for a job. In the staffing industry there are many facets to the job we do, but the primary directive is this: find the best-qualified person to take this job position. We go about this fundamental task in many ways – research, interviews, networking, testing, evaluating, negotiating.

And every now and then, you strike gold immediately. Sometimes the stars align and you find the perfect person for the job – just the right qualifications, with exactly the specific set of skills the position requires. That person is the purple squirrel.

One of the places I saw the term used was in this CBS New York blurb (a bit short to call it an article). It ends with “There is a down-side to these new job descriptions.  Even people with years of experience in their chosen field are no longer qualified to work in them.”

This is one example of people giving the old term a negative spin. Others describe a purple squirrel as too good to be true; something that doesn’t exist. I can see where they get that, but I’ve always preferred a rosier spin on it.

If you ask me, “purple squirrel” is a more optimistic spin on the old standby, “a needle in a haystack.” Where the latter is an impossibly hard thing to find, a purple squirrel to me is when you’ve found a perfect fit for your position.

For Morton Consulting, we’ve found the purple squirrel when we’ve found the professional that not only fits all the qualification of a position – the position is the right fit for them.

Mark is pleased to let us know that his application has been approved for membership in the Young Presidents’ Organization, or YPO. Mark will join some of Virginia’s most dynamic leaders as YPO members, where they are enabled to forge new connections and discuss and develop their ideas.

The YPO was founded over 60 years ago with the goal of creating a community where business leaders could come together in an environment of open discussion and mutual encouragement. It gives its members a forum where they can explore new ideas, discuss challenges, and learn from their peers in the business community.

But why put words in their collective mouth, as they explain their organization quite well on their national website.

“YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) is a not-for-profit, global network of young chief executives connected around the shared mission of becoming Better Leaders Through Education and Idea ExchangeTM. Founded in 1950, YPO today provides 19,000 peers and their families in more than 100 countries with access to unique experiences, world-class resources, alliances with top learning institutions, and specialized Networks that help them enhance their business, community and personal leadership.”

Mark is looking forward to getting to know the Virginia YPO’s members, sharing what he’s learned here at Morton Consulting, and learning from some of the best.

We’re very pleased to report that Morton has been nominated for the RichTech Emerging Company Award for the second year in a row.

The Emerging Company Award is one of RichTech’s annual Technology Star Awards, recognizing excellence in the Richmond industry. The official description of the award reads:

“That local technology company that has demonstrated recent growth in revenues and/or employees – a company whose recognized accomplishments and prospects demonstrates the ability to achieve commercial success.”

RichTech started as the Greater Richmond Technology Council in 1989, and serves to promote Central Virginia’s growing technology community. This will be the 17th year they have done the Technology Star Awards. To be recognized as part of the continued growth and success of that community is itself a great honor.

Last year, Morton was a finalist for this award. The final application has been turned in, and we wait to see if we are chosen as a finalist again this year. Thanks to the RichTech folks and, of course, the wonderful Richmond industry we have the pleasure to be a part of.

We’ve added a new member to our team…meet Morty the Betta Fish!

Unless you’ve been hiding under some sort of digital rock, you’ve probably heard about H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act that is under consideration in the House of Representatives. The purpose is to thwart the streaming, downloading of, and linking to copyright-protected content. Supporters argue that more aggressive means of blocking and removing sites providing copyrighted material are necessary to enforce copyright law. Critics argue that the bill, as written, will not only fail to accomplish this goal, but will open the door to Internet censorship and a vast host of unintended consequences that will violate the First Amendment.

The issue has sparked a vast controversy, and has become a major topic of debate in the Internet community. Major providers of intellectual content, such as the MPAA, RIAA, and Entertainment Software Association, are among the chief supporters of the bill. On the other side of the issue, a wide variety of Internet-based businesses and organizations have spoken out against the bill, including Mozilla, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Zynga, and AOL.

There is no doubt this is a complicated, complex issue. There is no doubt piracy is a major concern, and opposing it is a difficult yet necessary job. Anyone who creates intellectual property deserves to have it protected, just as any entity that creates a product. But the objections and concerns about this bill are lengthy and very valid. Let’s take a look at some of them. Lots of links incoming.

A great place to start is CNET’s article How SOPA would affect you: FAQ.  It breaks the issues down into digestible chunks, and explains them in detail with plenty of links. Read it through and you will have a commanding understanding of the situation.

I’ve read many criticisms concerning SOPA, as well as articles supporting it, but I think the weightiest of them I’ve read was The Heritage Foundation’s. One of the nation’s most influential conservative think tanks, the Foundation is known as a venerated voice of conservative ideals. Their article discusses the validity of the goals of SOPA, but outlines the many unintended and undesirable consequences for a society that values free speech and free enterprise.

Similarly, when the Stanford Law Review speaks we would do well to listen. Their recent article Don’t Break the Internet is an even stronger sentiment against SOPA, calling it “an unprecedented, legally sanctioned assault on the Internet’s critical technical infrastructure.” They characterize it as a sledgehammer solution to a problem that requires a scalpel.

Then there is the Department of Energy’s subsidiary, Sandia Labs, who recently sent a letter to Congress containing its findings; that SOPA would not be effective in its goals, that it would negatively impact U.S. cyber security, and would delay the adoption of DNSSEC. They are very serious warnings from people who know what they’re talking about.

This blog post, already well too long, could continue for pages and pages cataloging the objections, concerns, and debates over SOPA. So I will leave it at this. Adam Savage of the MythBusters is against SOPA. Enough said.

Christmas with the VA Home for Boys and Girls

One of those most worthwhile things we do is to support the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls. We can’t say enough about the great work they do there for children in Richmond and all over Virginia. Earlier this year we had the opportunity to host a picnic for them, which was a big hit.

This Christmas we were able to again support the VA Home for Boys and Girls, and we recently heard back from them. We were sent some photos of a boy receiving his Christmas gifts, and he was so excited. It’s so rewarding to hear about and see the direct impact of your support, and we’re so happy to hear back from them.

April from the VA Home for Boys and Girls told us about one boy who received some of the gifts we sponsored, “He was VERY excited about his Christmas gifts!  He spent about 5 minutes debating which hat he wanted to wear first and ended up wearing both (switching every few minutes) while in the home last night.  He was also asking about going to the basketball court today so that he can shoot hoops with his new ball.”

“We’re so grateful for your help in transforming the holidays to a time of joy for our foster children.  This has been a great year for kids and we are looking forward to more success in 2012.” To which we say we were more than happy to help!

Today’s post will discuss a matter that is central to everything Morton Consulting does – making the right hire. Actually, it’s not so much about the right hire as it is the pitfalls of hiring the wrong person for a position. A survey was recently released concerning whether and why placements didn’t work out for various tech companies. TechRepublic does a good job of listing out some of the quotes and conclusions from the professionals who responded.  They highlight some of the costs and causes of making a bad hire.

A bad hire can have ripple effects throughout a business. For one, there is the time spent training someone who will ultimately (hopefully!) not remain with the company. Then there is the potential lack of productivity from the bad hire themselves and/or from distraction to other employees. This is tied closely to the moral of employees – something that can be seriously hindered by the wrong placement. Another less frequently reported but potentially devastating effect is a negative impact on client relations – something no IT business can afford to happen regularly.

The most frequent trait showed by bad hires in the survey was a bad personnel fit – or someone who doesn’t work well with others at the business. Just a hair behind was the quality of work being less than satisfactory.  Customer complaints, deadline issues, and attendance all ranked among the top culprits for why a hire was unsatisfactory.

Why do we make these mistakes? Sometimes things simply don’t work out. Now and then a hire will show up as a completely different person than they seemed in an interview.  But more often than not, it is a result of a rushed filling of a critical position.  Not spending enough time on character, lack of personal interviews, poor recruitment practices, and a hundred other oversights can conspire against even the best-intentioned searches.

And of course, that’s where Morton Consulting comes in! We’re about giving companies the ability to find the right hire – not just someone who “might fit.” It’s precisely because it’s such an involved process to find and process potential candidates that we can be of such benefit – we put all out resources into searching, interviewing, reviewing, and placing candidates so our clients can stay focused on progress.

Get your groove on this holiday season!

We’ve talked multiples times about the potential impact of cloud computing, and a few times as well about SaaS as well. Most of the discussion has been about their potential, and how they can change the way we approach IT. But there are risks, and many questions for those considering adopting on a large scale. It is with that in mind we consider another perspective – the potential lack of transparency that can come with them.

A recent article in ComputerWeekly.com highlights this issue. Their article in turn was inspired by a recent study done by Compuware that focused on CIO’s and what risks they see in IT consumerization, cloud computing, and mobility.

The study shows that a majority of questioned CIO’s sees increased risk in cloud and SaaS because of a lack of transparency currently inherent in adopting the technologies. According to these CIO’s, IT departments are seldom involved in these patently IT decisions. When third-party solutions are implemented but not open to internal IT, the ability of those IT departments to diagnose and solve problems is significantly hampered.

The lack of transparency and involvement of IT departments can also be seen in mobility projects and consumerisation, according to survey results. It adds up to a shift in focus – away from in-house and towards web solutions in all aspects of IT. Only it seems we’re forgetting to involve the IT departments when these shifts are made.

Part of the blame lies with the providers of these new services – if businesses are to rely on web services and re-focus to mobile applications, then their IT personnel must have the ability to support those services. Elsewise, how can any business make claims as to their reliability and service – when those things are not under their control?