May 01, 1999
Meetings & Conventions Do the Right Thing May
1999

May 1999
Where Have All the Planners Gone?By Sarah J.F. Braley
Wanted: Meeting planner with three to five years’ experience
and strong negotiation and on-site management skills. Candidate
must be detail-oriented, have excellent communication and
interpersonal skills, be a team player and be flexible. Candidate
must be computer literate. Travel required (including many
weekends).”
Employees fitting the above description are becoming scarce, now
that anyone in the United States who wants a job probably can get
one. Last year’s unemployment rate averaged 4.5 percent, dropping
to 4.3 percent in December 1998 and January 1999, according to the
Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. And Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicts the unemployment rate will
remain steady through year’s end.
Still, for meeting planners across the country seeking qualified
staff from a dwindling labor pool, employment experts offer a
number of ways to find the right person for the position. There are
steps that can be taken, they say, although the effort may be
arduous.
For companies in isolated locations, small populations and low
unemployment combine to create particularly thorny staffing
problems. “We make hiring decisions based on whether, when we put a
mirror under their noses, there is fog on the mirror,” jokes Kathy
Smith, CMP, meeting operations manager for the American Association
of Electrodiagnostic Medicine in Rochester, Minn., where the
unemployment rate was 1.8 percent in January.
Some predictions about the next 10 years in the business world
paint a bleak picture, in which marginal workforce growth fails to
mitigate the impact of baby boomers retiring en masse. “The labor
force grew 1.1 percent from 1997 to 1998, and that’s the rate we
project for each year until 2006,” says Howard N. Fullerton Jr., a
demographic statistician with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“After that, with the slower population growth, the increase in the
labor force will slow down.”
Hiring trends at many U.S. companies are not helping the
situation. Because the economy is so healthy, many corporations
have plans to fatten, not trim, their staffs. According to the
Employment Outlook Survey for April to June 1999, conducted by
Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc., one of the world’s largest
staffing-services firms, 29 percent of the 16,000 U.S. companies
queried plan staff increases, while only 6 percent expect to
announce layoffs.
Planners who recently have tried to fill an empty seat in their
departments, like Carol Muldoon of KPMG in Montvale, N.J., have
felt the squeeze already. In March, Muldoon finally welcomed a new
meeting planner to her office after interviewing more than 25
candidates since the search began last November.
“It was a struggle to find the right person,” says the director
of meeting services for the professional services firm. “Our group
does 1,600 meetings a year between 11 planners, so to be short one
person is a real nightmare.”
It has not taken four months yet for Michelle Moore of Kaiser
Permanente’s Northern California events unit in Oakland to find an
events coordinator, but the process is taking longer than she would
like. “Coming from a human resources background, I’m mortified at
how long this is taking,” says Moore of the two months she has
spent thus far searching for the person who will be her peer.
The lack of skilled planners in the industry today stems in part
from the rampant downsizing so prevalent in the early ’90s. Meeting
planning, in those recessionary times, was not a profession whose
future looked bright, and many young adults chose to pursue other
careers. The result is a dearth of people with five to seven years’
experience under their belts, says industry employment specialist
Dawn Penfold, CMP, president of the Meeting Candidate Network Inc.,
a New York City-based national search firm.
Where to find them
So how can a meeting manager find a qualified employee in these
difficult times? The most important step planners must take in the
hiring process is to define the job clearly, identifying its duties
as well as the characteristics, skills and knowledge of the person
who will fit that position. “Many people don’t do this one well,”
says Wayne Outlaw, employee recruitment and retention consultant
and author of Smart Staffing (Upstart Publishing Co., Chicago,
$19.95). “They run an ad and start looking at candidates without
stopping and deciding what they need.”
The next step in the hiring process is to get the word out in
the appropriate places. Meeting managers should be sure their
department is represented at chapter meetings of industry
associations, where a chance conversation over a cocktail may lead
to a promising interview. Basically, determine where potential
candidates are hanging out, and send someone there to investigate
the prospects.
Another trick, according to Joan Brannick, Ph.D., president of
Tampa, Fla.-based Brannick Human Resource Connections, is to use
the best and brightest among your staff as recruiters. “Your
current star performers are probably your best place to go for
referrals,” she says. Brannick also suggests setting up a bonus
program tied to recruiting, where current employees are rewarded if
their referral is hired; as an added incentive, she recommends
rewarding the employee again a year later if the new hire is still
on the company’s payroll.
The Internet is the happening spot to list job openings, at such
sites as HotJobs.com (www.hotjobs.com), where hiring
officials pay a minimum of $600 a month to post up to 20 positions;
Monster.com (www.monster.com), which charges $225
to post a single ad for 60 days; CareerMosaic (www.careermosaic.com), where
each listing costs $160; and America’s Job Bank (www.ajb.dni.us), which is free for
both employers and job seekers.
But planners probably will have more success at meetings
industry-focused sites. Kaiser Permanente’s Moore placed a listing
on the free Internet job board of the Northern California Chapter
of Meeting Professionals International (www.nccmpi.org). “I felt we would get
very qualified candidates that way and we wouldn’t get résumés from
people who ‘thought’ they were planners,” she says. “The newspaper
is not planners’ first resource for finding jobs.”
Job openings in the meetings industry also can be placed on
MPI’s main site (www.mpiweb.org) at a cost of $50 for
members and $100 for nonmembers; the Professional Convention
Management Association site (www.pcma.org), free to members, $75 for
nonmembers; the American Society of Association Executives’ site
(www.asaenet.org), $200 for members,
$250 for nonmembers; and the Meetings Industry Mall (www.mim.com), $75.
Matchmaker, matchmaker
Because sifting through résumés and weeding through the first set
of candidates can be so time-consuming, many managers turn to
recruiters to do the initial dirty work. This adds another step in
the process, however, so it is especially important to communicate
the job’s key requirements and to characterize in detail the ideal
candidate. Be sure to give recruiters feedback on every applicant
they propose; it will enable them to narrow the search.
“You should make sure the recruiters know your needs and that
they treat candidates the way you would treat them,” says human
resources expert Brannick. “You want them to ensure that every
applicant has a positive experience during the process, no matter
whether they were right for the job at that time.”
Generally speaking, recruiters fall into two categories:
retained recruiters, who are hired exclusively to find high-end
executives ($75,000 salaries and up) and are paid a fee during the
process, and contingency recruiters, who work with many clients on
jobs of all levels and are paid only when a match is made.
Recruiters are not too hard to track down. Asking fellow planners
about companies they have used in the past can turn up some
reputable names. (For a list of placement firms working solely with
meetings-industry candidates, see “Planner’s Helpers,” below.)
Yes, compromise
As the pool of potential employees continues to shrink, managers
may have to adjust their requirements a bit if the perfect
candidate fails to appear in a timely fashion. “Our industry has
become so niche-oriented, and that’s how people are hiring,”
observes Penfold of the Meeting Candidate Network. “A financial
company will ask me specifically for a road-show planner, and I ask
if they will take a strong traditional planner. They will say, ‘No,
I want someone who has planned road shows.’” And they will wait and
wait to fill the position.
Sheryl Sookman, CMP, another placement specialist, has noticed
the same trend. Companies contacting The Meeting Connection, her
search firm in Novato, Calif., already have spent several months
searching for the right candidate and still are not satisfied with
the résumés they are seeing. “We have one person who has been
looking for someone since October, and she is willing to work the
extra hours to make up the gap of not having that position filled,”
says Sookman.
Many hiring managers are so discriminating because they are too
busy to take on untried talent. “We have 80 events on the calendar,
and I do not have time to train someone,” Kaiser Permanente’s Moore
says. “The new person needs to hit the ground running.” In the next
few years, though, meeting managers will need to invest time in
training in order to have a competent staff, experts contend.
Another argument in favor of compromise: employers risk losing
an otherwise good candidate while waiting for Mr. or Ms. Perfect to
show up. Penfold points out the luxury of waiting is slipping away.
“By the time the hiring manager makes a decision, the original
candidate is already gone,” she says.
Anne-Marie Taylor of Dr Pepper/Seven-Up has experienced this
phenomenon. “Sometimes I’ll get 15 résumés that look splendid, but
when it comes time to hire them, they have new jobs already, and I
have no new résumés,” says the Plano, Texas-based corporate
meetings manager. Taylor recently did what many directors will find
themselves doing in the next few years: She hired someone from
outside the meetings world, a woman who had been in the health
industry. “She was very multitask-oriented,” explains Taylor. “She
had a skill set I knew I could develop.”
For some planners, compromise will mean employing someone from
the supplier side, specifically hotel staffers who have a number of
transferable skills. Five months ago, Candi Walker, CMP, hired a
conferences and meetings assistant for the Credit Union Executives
Society in Madison, Wis., where the unemployment rate is about 3.5
percent. “We wanted someone who was familiar with the industry, so
we hired someone from a hotel,” says Walker, who is the society’s
conferences manager. She is one of several planners who say they
receive plenty of résumés from hotel people looking to cross over.
“We got about 50 applications; I’d say the majority of them had a
hotel background in sales, convention services or the front
office,” she says.
Penfold views those with hotel experience as strong candidates:
“They have the people skills, the meeting skills and the computer
skills. They have knowledge of contract negotiations. Hiring
officials are losing a lot by not taking suppliers.”
When “young and energetic” are requirements for the job, a
college campus may be the place to find the perfect employee. Many
universities have programs on meetings management. Their department
heads or campus recruiting offices are other places to look for the
CMPs of the future. Institutions with meetings programs include
Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.; George Washington University in
Washington, D.C.; New York University in New York City; Roosevelt
University in Chicago; the University of Houston; the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas; California State University in Long Beach; and
the University of California, San Diego.
The
Third
Degree
When
interviewing a potential job candidate, ask questions that get
beyond the candidate’s résumé, ones that will give you insight into
her personality and her work and life ethics. The following
examples are adapted from Smart Staffing by Wayne Outlaw (Upstart
Publishing Co., Chicago, $19.95).
How would you describe your performance at your last
position?What do you like most about your current or previous job?What do you like least about your current or previous job?Describe a typical day at work.How did you gain your knowledge of the meetings industry?What kind of attendee contact have you had?How do you handle attendee complaints?What are you looking for in your next job?What do you look for in a company that you would like to work
for?Why should I hire you?What training or qualifications do you have for this job?What do you think will be the most challenging aspect of this
job? How will you handle this challenge?Why do you want to change jobs?How will this job be different from others you have held? How
will it be similar?What have you been praised for in the past two years?What have you been criticized for in the past two years?How does a supervisor get the best out of you?Give me an example of how you handled a work crisis.What would you do if management made a decision you did not
like?How do you handle conflict with co-workers?How do you set goals/manage your time?Describe a situation in which you performed at an exceptionally
high level.How would a friend describe you?How do you establish working relationships with new
people?Describe success.Describe a successful career.Whom do you admire and why?How long will it take you to make a contribution here?
S.B.
He’s Good. Will He
FIT In?
Before offering the job to the first
warm-blooded biped that fulfills the requirements, hiring managers
should evaluate carefully whether the candidate will thrive in the
company’s work atmosphere.
At the Oakland-based California Cable Television Association,
where a new director of events just started and an opening for an
events coordinator has yet to be filled, the department’s attitude
is flexible and balanced. New hires have to be able to perform in a
laid-back, drama-free environment.
“We very much value balanced lives and the importance of
family,” says the association’s vice president of industry affairs,
C.J. Hirschfield, whose department pioneered a job-share position
in the organization. Hirschfield discourages a “workaholic”
lifestyle. “Some people ‘get’ the value of this sort of workplace;
some don’t,” she says.
“People don’t connect with jobs; they connect with cultures,”
according to Joan Brannick, Ph.D., president of Brannick Human
Resource Connections in Tampa, Fla., and co-author with Jim Harris,
Ph.D., of Finding & Keeping Great Employees (Amacom,
New York City, $24.95). “Those companies with great employees have
one core culture, and everyone supports that purpose,” says
Brannick.
In their book, the two human-resources consultants identify four
core cultures: “customer service,” where the competitive edge is
fueled by a close relationship with the customer; “innovation,”
where ideas and creativity are cultivated; “operational
excellence,” where the company is focused on efficiency and high
performance while minimizing costs; and “spirit,” defined by a
community- oriented, employee-driven workplace.
Customer-service skills top Michelle Moore’s wish list for the
person who joins her as an event coordinator at Kaiser Permanente’s
Northern California events unit in Oakland. “I’m looking for
someone who can be very diplomatic,” she says. “My department falls
under the sales and marketing umbrella, so we deal with both
internal and external customers. Making people happy is a big part
of our business.”
Matching new employees to the work environment can ensure their
smooth transition onto the team. Says Harris, Brannick’s writing
partner, “When you align your recruiting devices to your core
culture, you’ve created a secret glue for your staff.”
S.B.
Planner’s
HELPERSThe following are three recruiting companies
that specialize in finding and placing meeting planners.
The largest is the Meeting Candidate Network
Inc., a national search firm based in New York City (Dawn
Penfold, 212-689-7686; www.meetingjobs.com), with 6,000
people in its database. Managers can work with the network in four
ways: For $75, an ad goes on the Network’s Web page. For $750, the
Network sends out a targeted mailing to up to 200 people in the
database who meet the criteria for the position; candidates respond
to the hiring official. For $2,500, a similar mailing is sent out,
but all responses come to the Network for further qualification;
this method is used for confidential searches, when the hiring
official does not want the name of the company known or is
replacing someone currently on staff. For a contingency fee,
usually 20 to 30 percent of the first year’s salary, the Network
handholds the client and the candidate through the entire search,
interview and hiring process; clients pay only if a Network person
is hired.The Meeting Connection, a national placement
firm based in Novato, Calif. (Sheryl Sookman, 415-892-1394; www.meetingconnection.com),
has a database of about 250 people. For 14 to 30 percent of the
first year’s salary, the company provides clients with a maximum of
four candidates. The Meeting Connection calls the candidates first
to see if they are interested in the position and to get their
approval to forward their résumés to the client. The Meeting
Connection is involved right up to the time an offer is tendered
and is paid only if a match is made.ESP* Meeting Minders (*Event Specialist
Placement), based in San Mateo, Calif. (Ellen Sandler,
650-349-8806; www.espmeetingminders.com),
is a placement service for temporary and full-time staff that
serves the Bay Area exclusively, with a database of about 150
candidates. In choosing four to six candidates for a client, the
database is searched by skill set, experience in the field,
geographical preference and salary, and Sandler makes some judgment
calls on whether a candidate and a client will go together. The
service costs a flat fee of 15 percent of the first-year’s salary
when an employee is placed.S.B.
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