One way to recruit talent in Dallas like an A-Level startup

It’s time to shake the bootstrap mentality. We need to offer talented engineers and executives opportunities that are compelling in Dallas. There are many ways to do this. Today, I want to discussion non-salary compensation.

Successful startups all across the country are doing really innovative things to entice top-level talent to join the teams and example is 37Signals offer a four day work week as a standard part of business. Friday’s are off. They also offer people fully remote work options as well as providing employees discretionary spending account and trust that people make reasonable spending decisions. They empower their employees to make good decisions and most often they do.

Another company I work with in San Francisco offers flex time off – not paid time off. Under flex time off, the company enables employees to take time off as needed. If they have a talent engineer who wants to take a month off from work, they allow that. Basically, this allows all full-time employees the freedom to take time off as they need.  Of course, the time would need to be approved by their manager and they would be responsible for making sure their work is covered.

It’s not your standard two weeks of accrued vacation time. This is one way they are able to capture great talent for their team. With all of the work-life balance issues like longer hours at a startup, this is an amazing benefit that is offered in order for them to attract top-level talent but also compete in the extremely competitive environment of talent acquisition in the Bay Area.

Dallas has amazing talent and we need to cultivate opportunity for that talent. This is a great town with good people and I hope that as we continue to evolve, that our entrepreneurs will take the lead in our young startup community.

Vahid Behzadi is Senior Executive Recruiter with CyberCoders. He is based locally in Plano, TX as suburb of Dallas.

 Connect with me ——- Vahid Behzadi, Senior Executive Recruiter

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Blog: http://vahidbehzadi.wordpress.com

Find all of my open roles at: http://goo.gl/LXh3a

 The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.

What should I major in for my undergraduate degree? Major in ROI

I get messages from UCSB students on Linkedin and on FaceBook asking what they should study. I find myself telling them to pick a major that will give you immediate profession after graduation. Examples include Accounting (Accountant) and Computer Science (IT and Software Engineer).

If you chose to pursue a graduate degree, a JD or MD or other higher level of education, you can always leverage these base majors at your Bachelor’s program. But if you were to pick something like say…psychology (my own major), you have to get a Master’s or higher to become a professional psychologist. Plan for ROI (Return on Investment) in your degree and set yourself up for success after school.

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How did I get into this mess? Finding a Mentor

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/06/us-management-tip-idUSBRE8480ST20120606

(Reuters) – Rather than the kindly mentor you can go crying to when you fall and scrape your proverbial knee, you might be better off with the one who doles out tough love to really test your mettle, says Harvard Business Review.

This is a dramatic retelling of the history of a recruiter or two that you may know, training styles may have changed.

 “In the early 2000’s, a recent college graduate walks into the second floor of a very nice building in Westwood, CA. He is interviewed by a couple of people who call him a few days later to let him know he’s been extended an offer to join their company.

He happily accepts, not knowing what to expect but as importantly not really knowing how this will change his life forever. The new employee sits a desk across from his trainer at 7 am in the morning who greets him with a smile and politely introduces herself. She’s strong and caring and looks like she’s ready to get this young man a new lease on life.

The clock strike 8 am, the team meets to discuss the plan for training and what a day will look like. The new employee shakes his head, nods and finds himself often saying that he understands (which is probably his fatal flaw at this stage in life).

The day kicks off with phone calls… lots of phone calls…endless phone calls. By 11 am the new hire connects with someone on the phone and is engaged in a “situation” he immediately does as he is told and start to parrot everything the person on the other line is saying. His trainer, guides him through the response, but he doesn’t listen. She starts getting louder, and he starts to sweat, getting more nervous. He repeats 90% of what she tells him to say, but doesn’t finish her thought with the person on the other side of the line. The call ends…no dice!

The trainer raises her voice, proud that he made it through the call, but furious he didn’t follow her words to the very end. She glazes over at him and say “Listen, if you want to be successful, you need to be on this, my way”. Nervously, he agrees but throughout the rest of the day he does the same again when he gets into his next “situation”.

By the end of the day (around 7-8 pm) he’s exhausted, his neck hurts from the calling and cramping of the phone under his ear and he probably needs to change his undershirt.

He leaves work that day, more scared than when he started – Both for the life he has now embraced and the manager he now reports to.”

Years later I am a better recruiter than I could have imagined possible and I had to sweat to get here, and I still have room to learn and grow. I owe you a lot Nitu. Just wanted to say thanks!

 

 

LinkedIn was hacked and passwords leaked. Here is what you can do. http://ping.fm/2mHOw

Google Acquires Dallas Startup Quickoffice! Congrats to our friends there http://ping.fm/cNAzm #Plano #in