General Consultant Discussion

a question for all you business owners out there - How to you recruit your consultants? We are growing and need a new consultant to step into the Sage100 arena and we have had a hard time finding someone who has the starting product knowledge to hit the ground running and is wiling to relocate to Colorado. Does anyone have any tips to find the talent?

I have always been successful taking them from my clients. ;-)

Kate, we have had the same problem. I think we have to stop looking for trained people and start planning on growing our own. If we don't contribute to the building process of the consulting community, there won't be one for us to transition or companies to. Also, I would challenge your mindset on having to have your staff in Colorado. We only do about 20% or our work on-site and I think that can be reduced further than that. Our last hire lives 4 hours from our office. We bring all our remote team members to Tulsa once a quarter to ensure they are able to build connections with the other members of the team. Last, I have a business friend I have know for over 10 years that was a PFW consultant. I am training him on Sage 100 at the same time I am training our newest ERP hire. I am treating the contractor just like an employee in so far as education. In return for my time, he is helping teach the new hire Crystal and other tools that are common to both PFW and Sage 100

Kate, I have to disagree with Shawn. I have found that if an employee is more than 30 minutes away you will have a very difficult time managing that person. Also on site appointments generate billable hours. Remote is just get it done get out as fast as possible, where on site gives you the opportunity to generate more projects and more work a lot easier. Call me old school.

Jon, I don't argue that on-site is better. However, we have customers in 47 states. Our HRMS team has worked with customers for over 10 years each having rarely gone on-site. We have a full time account manager who calls into each A level customer no less often than once per quarter just to check in. We also include system audits for every customer on a support plan. This gives a reason to have a consultant review the installation and set up of the system we support annually. This ensures we look at the way the software is installed, discuss options not currently being employed, discuss how the business is doing, where they are heading and just stay in touch with the customer in general. For those customers who are on a premium support plan, either Gary or I meet with the client for a couple hours once a year to review the company's strategic goals with management and provide feed back regarding what Sage 100 can do to support those goals and reinforce executive managements objectives. On-site is best, but not every consultant has to be on-site all the time. Not everyone has to look and behave the same within the organization. That's why you have many seats on the bus.

Thanks for taking the time to comment! I see both your positions. I actually work remotely (45 minutes from office) and I am rarely onsite. There are always those customers who like to have a breathing body onsite and it would be inefficient to fly a consultant out for those clients. I also agree that new consultants have to be created and this is really frustrating. Six or seven times my boss hired someone with no ERP or consulting experience (usually right out of college). They get trained and start implementing or supporting. Within two years they have decided they don't want to be ERP consultants and leave for a different job. The company is great to work for and compensation is not usually the issue. Maybe we need to look at our hiring practices more than anything else. Are there any earmarks that stand out to you as characteristics you look for in a new-to-ERP/consulting employee?

Kate, many years ago Sage implemented a partner program to assist partners hire and ramp-up new consultants and salespeople. As part of that program, they worked with a company to develop a personality profile to use in the hiring process. We work with one of the guys who originally worked in the process. He helps generate candidate leads, conducts first interviews, and runs personality profiles if we are ready to extend an offer. Here is his contact information: Don Francis dfrancis@nationhire.com 949-812-5606 office 949-584-8967 cell Hope it helps. If you choose to reach out to Don, please be sure to let him know where you got his name.

Kate, the thing to understand is that for about 95 percent of the population they cannot handle this kind of work. Most people want a job with a show up on at a certain time, get told what to do and then go home. I love doing this kind of work and I would not want to do anything else but what I realized is that I am unusual.

I 100% agree with Jon. That's why 1) we discuss the details of the job with the candidate, the good, the bad, and the ugly. 2) That's also why we use Don because he looks not only at the persons credentials and experience, he looks at persons profile to determine if he thinks they will be a fit. We find it harder to take a person from industry and move them into this kind of a job. This is a knowledge worker job type with heave service undertones with multiple clients, competing deadlines, and high expectations. It takes a lot of work to get up to speed. People don't call to tell you the blue birds are singing and all is well; they only call when their hair is on fire and want you immediate, undivided attention. Like Jon, I love what I do and can't imagine myself doing anything else but that's part of having a consultant mentality.