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Smart Business Magazine July 2006

Troy McCracken has experienced both the pleasure and the pain of owning a fast-growth company.

From its launch in 1999 through 2004, Spectrum, Inc. grew 85 percent each year.  In 2005, its sales ballooned at the neck-snapping clip of 120 percent. Now a company with $20 million in annual sales, Spectrum provides clients with telecom management, equipment solutions and document management technologies.

McCracken, Spectrum's founder, president and CEO, a former top salesman with Cincinnati Bell, has formed partnerships with the likes of AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, and says finding business isn't his biggest challenge.  Instead, he says his most pressing problem is finding the right people to fill the ranks of his growing enterprise, particularly for jobs requiring higher skills, and avoiding biting off more business than the company can chew without sacrificing growth.

McCracken spoke with Smart Business about recruitment, retention and knowing when to say no.

Q: What's the biggest challenge for Spectrum?

Finding qualified individuals to fill the positions that we're looking to fill.  We need to find the right person with the right skill sets for the job. 

What we've seen is other employers will hire people because they like them, because they have certain skill sets, but maybe not the skill sets to perform the specific job function.  Just trying to find the type of individuals that we want at Spectrum has definitely been the most challenging thing that we've had because of growth.

Q: What are your best sources for personnel?

Referral, referral, referral.  Use that network of people that we know, try to find out from other software companies, friends in the industry that know the type of talent we want. 

We've put in an employee referral program which allows them to get out and find the qualified talent, the people they think would be an asset to them, and we're rewarding them for those efforts.  We work with a couple of recruiting companies but most of the hires we've gotten have been through networks and referrals from companies, customers, that kind of thing.

Q: How does the people issue change as you grow larger?

When you're a small company, the goal is get the job done, however, you've got to get it done.  But when you get up to 10, 20, 30 people, you've got to have an efficient way to get the job done. 

If the person that's doing that job leaves for any reason, then who's doing that job?  The things that we found helpful were processes and methodologies.  You've got to be able to pull in the next person with the right skills and say, "Here's the process you need to go though."  To be able to document that is critical.

Q: How do you foster retention?

One of the obstacles right now with the growth is the career path.  We've got people that have done a very similar job for seven or eight years and, obviously, they're wanting to branch out. 

So we're trying to create those career paths as we grow, yet they're doing such a phenomenal job in that position, you've got to make sure you have the time to bring somebody in, have them trained and then train the existing person for their new position.

During the evaluations we do every year, we go through the things that they're doing, find out if they're happy with what they're doing, try to identify what it is, what they'd like to be doing in two or three years.  If there's an opening in that position, we want to make sure that they have an opportunity for it. 

It's not a given that they'll get  it. They still have to interview for it with the other candidates.

Again we want to hire the right person with the right skill set for every position.  We feel that's critical for our growth.  Otherwise, you do see turnover.

Q: How do you balance your resources with your growth?

You need to be able to grow at a good clip, but you can't say yes to everybody.  We have an opportunity with a very large company in Miami, Fla., that we're telling we can't do business with them at this point.  I'd rather tell them that we're not in a position to do it than to try to do it and fail.

Sometimes that's the hardest thing to do, but it's the right thing to do, because if you go ahead and say yes to the money, you could throw all of your resources into it and leave everybody else out to dry and lose the base of clients you've built up to that point.