13A – Reading Reflection No. 1

1) I read about Steve Jobs:

What surprised you the most?

• What surprised me the most was how singularly focused Steve Jobs was to make Apple products an extension of the user. He truly felt that people could change the world by using Apple products.

What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?

• I honestly admire his conviction. He made many unpopular decisions at the time, some worked out and some didn’t, but he remained steady based on how strong his convictions were that he made the correct decisions.

What about the entrepreneur did you least admire? 

• I am a big family man and have extremely strong friend relationships. I did not like how Steve at many points in his life prioritized work above all personal relationships. There certainly were some negative consequences as a result.

Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?

• Yes, he encountered adversity and failure multiple times. When he did, he always got to a point of picking himself back up an using it as a chip on his shoulder to improve and get back what was his.

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited?

• The best competency I noticed was his ability to inspire. He was gifted in communicating his vision and getting others bought in, even though it meant they would be going against the grain and would have to sacrifice so many personal things while working on his projects.

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

• I don’t believe any part was confusing to me. There were a few parts, related to some decisions of how he approached certain situations that negatively impacted his personal relationships, where I was sitting there questioning why he was making those decisions. But it wasn’t confusing when you understand who he is, it was more contrasting to how I would have done it, which caused me to question why he made some of those decisions.

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

• Would you do it all over again the same way knowing how/where you and Apple end up today? I’d be curious about this because by every measure he and Apple were/are successful, but there was a lot of heartache along the way.
• Can I work for you? This is obviously self-serving, but I’d love the opportunity to be around him if he was still alive.

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?

• I think his opinion of hard work was if it wasn’t hard, impactful, and a passion of yours, you shouldn’t be doing the work.

12A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

For this assignment, I chose to interview 3 financial leaders from fast-growing companies in South Florida that currently have around 100 employees and are expected to grow their headcount by 20 to 30% over the next five years. I chose this segment as I feel these leaders and companies would be some of my first target customers. I was encouraged by my conversations with them. Each leader clearly communicated that for their businesses to continue to grow at their desired rates, it will come down to their ability to strategically hire well. Two of the leaders have a hands-off approach when it comes to who gets hired – they trust that their HR teams are doing what needs to be done. The third leader is more engaged with hiring, even to the point of leveraging his LinkedIn network for referrals. Regardless of their approaches, each leader said more can be done. The two leaders that are hands-off do attend industry conferences and seek out other business leaders to get their perspectives on how their companies are hiring. The engaged leader is active in South Florida networking groups and stays on top of industry research and trends by following Gartner and SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), which are the two leading authorities when it comes to hiring.

I certainly feel this segment is aware of the need to hire better. Their approaches are different, but they all recognize the financial impact it has when they do not hire the right people. All three seemed willing to learn how they can gain more information and skills in order to help their business continue to grow. The leader who is more engaged than the other two seems to be more passionate about hiring better. Knowing this helps me to further define and target a segment of businesses that have financial leaders engaged in the hiring process versus more hands-off financial leaders.

11A – Idea Napkin No. 1

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

I am currently enrolled for the online BA in Business degree at UF. I work full time as a Sr. Talent Acquisition Advisor for a $17 Billion automotive company that is recognized by Fortune as one of the best companies to work for in the US – I’ve had this job since September 2016. I spent 6.5 years as a headhunter, with the last 3.5 of those years before joining my current company helping a company in Chicago expand into the South Florida Market. I was the first hire in South Florida and built the office into a team of 12 generating $2.5 million of revenue yearly before I left. I see this opportunity as a way to eventually run my own business. With the 6.5 years as a headhunter for recruiting agencies and the 3.5 years now on the corporate side, I feel I have the experience needed to start my own business.

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs).

I am offering customers a way to grow their revenue by improving how they hire. My firm would train their employees, redesign their hiring processes, and help them select the best technologies needed to have an effective talent acquisition program.

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

In general terms, I’d be offering this to any companies who want to grow their revenue by hiring better people. More specifically, companies that have current challenges hiring and retaining top performers due to limitations with their people, processes, and technologies would be my target customer.

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service.

They will care because my solution will have significant long-term ROI for them. My firm would not be coming in for a one-time fix. We’d be positioning the companies to have sustained success after our engagement is over. My firm would be providing value like the Chinese proverb "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has?

I personally already have 6.5 years as a headhunter in South Florida where I acted as an external consultant to companies who were not able to recruit for specific positions. I had to negotiate contracts with leaders from Fortune 500 companies down to family-owned small businesses in which I provided a custom solution to fill their positions. I am skilled and influencing and changing business behaviors by leveraging data and getting emotional buy-in.

In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others.

I feel my experience and career/education choices have positioned me well to tactically execute on this business opportunity. Additionally, I have worked very hard over the last 3.5 years to grow my emotional intelligence. I have been a part of a start-up environment before when I was hired to start a South Florida office for a company in Chicago. I know what it takes to enter a new market segment and how to scale processes and teams to meet business objectives. I have established relationships and an established brand in South Florida, so I feel I am positioned as well as I can be.

10A - Elevator Pitch No. 1

YouTube URL: Justin Davis 10A - Elevator Pitch No. 1

9A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

To test the hypothesis for the second time, I decided to interview five people who work in two companies in South Florida that I feel may not have the need for effective talent acquisition programs – an air conditioning company and a call center outsourcing company. Both companies have continual advertising that they are hiring for all positions.

Who:

I interviewed two HR leaders and one Area Manager for the air conditioning company and two supervisors for the call center company. Each interviewee communicated that they are always looking to hire, but the goal of their hiring was not due to a lack of people talent. The very nature of their businesses are built upon hiring candidates that will be able to follow repeatable processes such as repairing an air conditioner step by step in accordance with company and state standards or following a call script for each customer calling into the call center, not on the talent of the candidates they are hiring.

What:

Their hiring needs differ from other companies who are focused on increasing the talent. These companies are interviewing for and hiring candidates they feel will be comfortable working in the same environment performing the same tasks over and over for long periods of time. Due to this, they will actually hire more candidates than necessary, knowing that after the standard 90-day probationary period that they will have some new hires quit after realizing they don’t enjoy the work or they will have to fire some of the new hires who were not able to demonstrate they can perform the repeatable tasks at a satisfactory level.

Why:

The cause of their hiring is different than hypothesis part one because it is not a talent-based need. It is a volume-based need focused on one skill – following directions. They are typically not hiring college degreed candidates, so there is not as much competition among other competitors for who they are hiring.

Inside the Boundary	Outside the Boundary
Who: Tech companies or companies with “sexy” products	Who: Companies that are either skills-trade based or customer service outsourcing
What the Need Is: Better talent acquisition programs in order to attract and hire better people talent than their competitors	What the Need Is Not: It is not talent; The need is to cast a wide net in order to hire people who will follow processes
Why the Need Exists: For the companies, the better people talent they hire, the greater the likelihood is that they will develop better products which will help increase revenue.	Alternative Explanations: These companies are providing services to other companies and customers that aren’t about continually improving the work, it is about consistency and having the same expected results every time.

8A – Solving The Problem

The opportunity I see is to start my own consulting business to partner with companies in South Florida that have ineffective talent acquisition programs, which is impacting their ability to attract and hire the caliber of talent they need in order to be successful. I spent 6.5 years working as a headhunter in a recruiting agency before transitioning into a corporate Talent Acquisition Advisor role for the past 3 years for a multi-billion company. During the 6.5 years as a headhunter, companies of all shapes and sizes paid me large fees to go out and hire people of them that their own talent acquisition teams were not able to get themselves. My experience as an agency headhunter and now on the other side of that as a corporate Talent Acquisition Advisor has shown me there is an opportunity to help companies in a larger way than just hiring one person for them at a time – my company would teach them by showing and help them build a sustainable talent acquisition program. A couple of solutions below:

1.      Provide a service to come in and assess the company’s talent acquisition program. We’d then build out a customized solution for them based on their needs and provide tools and training for them to implement their own solutions.

2.      There would be a higher-level service offering where we’d not only provide the tools and training, but where we’d also lead the implementation and provide post-implementation support.

3.      A third option is also to partner with specific talent acquisition software/technology companies in a channel sales model to sell their products as solutions to the companies we’d be consulting with.

7A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

·        Opportunity: Companies in South Florida do not have the caliber of people talent to meet future business needs due to not having effective talent acquisition programs.

o   The Who: Companies in South Florida

o   The What: Do not have the caliber of people talent to meet future business needs

o   The Why: Due to not having effective talent acquisition programs

·        Testing the Who: Companies outside of South Florida certainly have this need. Every company would like to increase the caliber of their people talent since it correlates with being more profitable or having a bigger impact for their cause.

·        Testing the What: Not every department within every company will have the need to increase the caliber of their people talent. Some companies based on them being family owned and ran or due to financial struggles may not be willing or financially able to hire more talented people.

·        Testing the Why: Based on supply and demand, some companies may have excellent talent acquisition programs but they highly talented people they need may not be in supply locally. Companies may also have a negative reputation that could inhibit who they can hire regardless of how good their talent acquisition programs are.

o   Interview #1: I interviewed a local HR Manager in my network, and she agreed that her company does not have the caliber of people talent that they need. Interestingly though, she said their main issue had nothing to do with their talent programs. She said the product they sell is not “exciting”, so they are having issues hiring talented people who want to work at companies with better products.

o   Interview #2: I Interviewed a local Talent Acquisition Advisor who said their current company is currently going through a project to redesign their talent acquisition program. They hired an Industrial Organizational Psychologist to evaluate the effectiveness of their TA program and to provide change management coaching in order to make it better.

o   Interview #3: I interviewed a local hiring manager and he said he does not trust the talent acquisition team at his company. The lack of trust comes from the talent acquisition’s team failure to build strong relationships with him and his team and they don’t fully understand what his team does, making it difficult for the to find the correct talent to hire.

o   Interview #4: I interviewed a local recruiting agency headhunter who has the same view about the opportunity as I do. She said the reason why recruiting agencies like hers exist and make money is because companies hire them to help them attract and hire people that their own internal talent acquisition teams are not able to do on their own.

o   Interview #5: I interviewed a local candidate who is currently looking for a new opportunity. He said he makes very quick judgments about a company based on the experience he has as a candidate interviewing. He feels if it is a clunky interviewing process and the talent acquisition team does not do a good job of trying to recruit him that it is indicative of bigger problems at that company.

·        Summary: It was a great exercise to test my own idea and to also get perspective from other people. I learned some new things about people in different areas of a business will perceive the same problem differently. I certainly still see the opportunity exists, and if anything, having the new perspectives to think about helps me refine the opportunity better and will help me as I look to create a solution.