Lessons from flight 1549

I recently listened to the cockpit audio from Flight 1549 which crash landed on the Hudson river last month.  You can find the audio with some video below.  What I find amazing about this is the absolute calmness that the pilot shows.

Given that the recruitment industry as a whole lost power in both engines in November of last year, and the forecast for RPO is pretty bleak throughout the rest of the year, I’ve heard a lot of panic in the voices of various RPO leaders I’ve spoken with.  But now is not the time for panic.  If anything, now is the time for calmness and a blank slate look at your organization.

I’d recommend that the leadership of all providers take a hard look at their business and make the decisions they need to make to ensure the survival of their company.

• Staff - don’t carry excess capacity.  It may be painful, but cut once and cut deep and get your business sized appropriately for what you have coming in right now.
• Expenses - travel, entertainment, cable TV, employee benefits, 401k matching - everything must be on the table for discussion.  Don’t be afraid of your employees.  In this market they aren’t going to quit because you stop sponsoring Beer Fridays or free dry cleaning.
• Sales and Marketing - ramp up expenses in anything that directly leads to new business.  Whether it’s pay-per-click, direct mail, or hiring additional salespeople, if you can tie a dollar spent to a few dollars of revenue, it’s a good investment.
• Vendors - talk to your vendors and see if they can help you control expenses.  Especially if you overbought and now need to ramp down, you have nothing to lose by asking to renegotiate.  Monster.com is notoriously unflexible (yet another reason so many people REALLY hate them, but that’s for another post), but a number of smaller ATS, job board and other companies may be willing to work with you.
• New revenue streams - there may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are probably 100 different ways to make money in the recruitment space.  A number of companies are coming into the RPO space to help create additional ways to monetize.  If you haven’t already, take a look at BountyJobs and GetListed.com

Above all, remain calm.  It’s impossible to take an analytical view of your (shrinking) business if you are panicked.

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