Blog
The Art of Negotiation
November 18, 2021
By Celeste Gable, Marketing Coordinator
Hiring Managers rarely make their best offer first, and candidates who negotiate their salary tend to earn more than those who don’t. Most often, people who at least attempt to ask for a higher salary are perceived more positively because they are demonstrating the skills the company is hiring them for. So where do you start? In this blog, we will outline our best tips for negotiating salary.
Do Your Research
Before beginning the negotiation process, and in most cases, before the first interview; conduct some preliminary research. There are many resources available online that can provide estimations of salaries based on role and location. If working with a search firm, the recruiter should be able to advise you on a salary range for the position you’re interviewing for. At Direct Recruiters, we offer free, downloadable Salary Guides for a variety of industries that we serve.
Don’t Talk Money Too Early
You should never ask about salary during the first interview. While we all want to earn more money, no hiring manager wants to hire someone who’s only motivation is money. In many preliminary interviews, the hiring manager may ask about your salary requirements. This where your research becomes helpful! Try to give a range that’s indicative of someone in your position and with your experience applying for this role. Your goal when negotiating is to find the balance between what you’re worth and the employer’s budget.
Sell Yourself with Confidence
As you go through the interviewing and negotiating process, remember to continuously sell yourself. Perhaps you have certain skills and experience that would eliminate the need for an outside vendor, leverage that. Justify your request with confidence. When you make request, don’t go on and on stating why its justified. Offer a short and simple explanation for why the amount is appropriate.
Negotiate Extras
If the employer is unable to adjust the salary offered, try asking for other valuable options that might not cost as much. You can try to negotiate for yearly salary reviews, sign-on or performance bonus, or more vacation days. For the best negotiating strategy, ask for a few benefits or perks you don’t want that badly. Then you can concede and agree to the employer’s terms without those added benefits if they meet all your other requests.
In an ideal negotiation situation, both parties will walk away from the engagement feeling satisfied with what they have gained. This is especially true when you’re dealing with salary negotiations. You want your employer to feel secure in the price paid for your services so that your working relationship begins on a positive note.
DRI Interviews Joe Wentzell, VP of Revenue for Cure Solutions
Max Resnik, Medical Cannabis Practice Leader at Direct Recruiters, had the opportunity to connect with Joe Wentzell, VP of Revenue for Cure Solutions, during MJBizCon in Las Vegas. Together, they discussed retail strategies in cannabis, how Joe made the industry leap and the pandemic’s impact on the space. Check out Joe’s insights in this latest Thought Leader Interview on the cannabis space.
Cure Solutions is a multi-state management company operating in the medical and adult use cannabis space. Currently operating retail, cultivation, and processing facilities in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Oklahoma.
Joe Wentzell, VP of Revenue for Cure Solutions
You came into the cannabis industry from the bicycle world. What’s it like navigating this space and how are things different?
There are some important similarities between the two industries. I came into the cannabis industry through retail and bicycle retail specifically; both industries have an extremely passionate employee and customer base who are often choosing these products to improve their health and wellbeing. And even though employees in both industries are subject matter experts, often, customers and patients are so well-informed that they can give our employees a run for their money. Recruiting, developing, and maintaining well educated and enthusiastic employees in retail is often a challenge. My prior experience leading large specialty retail teams in the bicycle industry was helpful in navigating that challenge.
Did you experience customers trying cannabis for the first time during the height of the pandemic? What was that like?
Prior to the pandemic, we provided a physically close and high touch retail environment where our employees could answer questions and spend time with patients, especially new patients. Once all of the social distance measures were put into place, we lost a lot of that opportunity to educate. We gained a significant number of new patients during the pandemic who only knew the quick transactions of a socially distant shopping experience. It was really exciting, and I think we’ve learned about all the different ways we can reach people, whether that’s through Zoom conferencing to provide education, or through online ordering and curbside pick-up.
In Pennsylvania for example, the regulations require that the first point of contact a patient has is with a pharmacist. Pre-pandemic we were limited by how many patients could get time with a pharmacist. When the state allowed for remote consultations we were able to double the amount of consultations each pharmacist could have in a given day.
As to patients trying cannabis for the first time during the pandemic: that has been an important theme for us throughout the pandemic. We met a lot of new patients who turned to cannabis to help them deal with some of the challenges that the pandemic imposed on us all, particularly in the early days. And one of the most important things we were able to do for these new patients was meet them where they were in their personal cannabis journeys. For instance, when talking about potency. As you know, many people believe that higher THC in a product means higher quality. But when we’re talking about patients who are new to cannabis, that’s just not true. For new patients, generally speaking, less is more. I think the worst thing you can do for a new patient is sell them a product that’s too strong, and then they have a negative experience and don’t get the relief they’re looking for, and then conclude that cannabis is not part of the solution to their challenges.
How do you approach a customer in Ohio, who’s a patient, versus a recreational customer in Colorado? Is the strategy different?
Yes, absolutely. It’s the difference between patients and customers. You have to understand where they’re coming from, and what their needs are. They approach cannabis differently, starting with how they even find the brand or the dispensary they choose to support..
I want to note that Cure, at its heart, is a medical cannabis company, from its roots in Colorado in 2009. It's our belief that if you treat all patient / customer interactions from a health and wellness perspective, you won’t go wrong. Starting with that mindset is who we are and from there each interaction begins with understanding what the patient’s current knowledge of the products is, and what it is they are trying to achieve with the products they purchase. Getting to the essence of those questions requires people that are willing to work hard and take the time to listen to the customer. In other kinds of retail, salespeople are taught to maximize the value of every sale. But that’s not always the right thing to do, and so sometimes we have to work with new staff to unlearn that lesson. To succeed, we have to earn our patients’ trust every time they visit us. And that’s hard, but it works!
With that in mind the challenge isn't so much treating medical and recreational customers differently, it's trying to scale processes in states that have drastically different regulatory environments. To solve that problem, it requires a lot of hard work and finding small opportunities to replicate processes. There’s not as much opportunity to be efficient, therefore, It requires more time and more people to operate in each of those states than would be required in a traditional multi-state retail environment.
What do you make of where the space is today and maybe where we are at the next MJBizCon?
The pandemic marks a turning point for cannabis. To me, the fact that dispensaries around the country were immediately designated essential businesses reflected a fundamental shift in how the public and our lawmakers view this industry. Beyond acknowledging that cannabis industry workers are essential to their communities, at a time when public health was top of mind for everyone in America, access to safe, regulated cannabis was at the heart of our states' public health strategies. I think that our industry's track record of safety, compliance and patient care over the past two years have done more in service of broadening access to cannabis than any ballot measure ever has.
To my earlier point about educating new patients, going forward, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for educational platforms to help brands engage directly with patients as well as dispensary employees. And I think that the pandemic really gave us an opportunity to explore those in more detail and more rapidly than we may have done prior to the pandemic . At Cure we are now merging some of the high touch shopping experience with the efficient and convenient shopping experience that emerged during the pandemic. As a vertically integrated operator we also recognize the need to get product and brand information in the hands of many employees that may not necessarily work for one of our dispensaries but who nonetheless need to have an in-depth understanding of our products. The fact that we are here talking today shows how far we have come since the start of the pandemic. Next year the pandemic will hopefully be in the rearview mirror and we will see the benefits of combining the lessons learned during the past two years, the growing acceptance of cannabis in our culture and in our politics. The future is bright and it’s exciting to be a part of that evolution.
You’re relatively new to the space. What would you tell someone who wants to get into this industry?
I think this space has so many opportunities for people who have experience in other worlds. There’s a lot of different ways of approaching a multitude of challenges that we face every day. Grab onto one of those challenges and come prepared with a solution for solving it. I think that if you can show you can think flexibly and bring some experience that we haven’t thought of yet in this industry, then there’s a place for you. That’s for sure.
DRI Interviews Ron Basak-Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Sana Packaging
Max Resnik, Medical Cannabis Practice Leader at Direct Recruiters, had the opportunity to connect with Ron Basak-Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Sana Packaging, in Las Vegas during MJBizCon. Together, they discussed sustainability in cannabis, how Sana Packaging is leading the charge and how Ron views the potential for federal legalization of cannabis. Check out Ron’s insights in this latest Thought Leader Interview on the cannabis space.
Sana Packaging is a sustainable packaging brand that designs and develops cannabis packaging for a circular economy using plant-based, reclaimed, and recycled materials.
Ron Basak-Smith
CEO & Co-Founder
Sana Packaging
Ron, what drove you to launch Sana Packaging?
I’ve always grown up outdoors. It’s been a huge focal point in my life and place of peace, happiness and enjoyment. And so, the current world we live in it seems like there’s environmental issues all around us. Being a human being on earth, going around and seeing the waste that I, myself, create and all the products I consume, and we all consume, there’s just not a way that properly manages that.
And so, the cannabis industry being another place that I’m very passionate about – the cannabis plant has been super helpful to me – it was just combining those two passions. I was able to approach my co-founder with this concept at the University of Colorado Boulder, and from there, we were able to build the business. The cannabis industry has been super receptive to better packaging, more sustainable packaging.
What makes your packaging different?
There’s a big difference in the cannabis industry around the types of packaging available and can be used because of regulations around child resistance. And then each state has various rules around opacity, wall thickness, etc., and so first we had to design packaging that meets the needs of the plant, the consumer, and then we try to pick material types that help support the faults that we see within each system.
For example, we see recycling. Everyone’s trying to recycle, right, but we don’t have enough companies using recycled content, and that’s a huge factor leading to the ocean plastic we see. So, we try to then support recycling industry by using ocean plastic to manufacture products. By doing that, we’re hoping that the recycling system in the U.S. will be effective basically in managing these materials. However, we’re going to need companies to manufacture products out of it. So, there’s this oversupply of recycled material and this under-demand of people buying recycled content. And that’s really where we come in. We believe that industries can help support that.
What can we do better to help this cause of sustainability?
Try to localize your mindset around sustainability. When you think about all these issues, they all vary from location to location, and that’s what’s really happening – we’re altering the world and different parts of the environment in different ways. What might be great for the air might not be great for water consumption or vice versa. There’s all these different tradeoffs that need to be considered when thinking about sustainability, and I think everyone kind of wants the easy fix. But in the world of sustainability there’s a tradeoff, so we’ve gotta start having conversations about what tradeoffs we’re making versus what we’re perceived to be fixing.
What do you make of the last year for the industry as a whole?
I think the whole event of COVID has shown that people are using cannabis. Whether the world is in a perfect place or a not so perfect place or anywhere in between, that’s just a known. I think that was happening whether there was a legal market or non-legal market or decriminalized market. It’s just been known people are using cannabis. And so, through the pandemic and seeing it deemed as essential in many areas, that’s huge, right? We know that when things are getting real bad, there’s going to be a need for cannabis all over the country. That’s one huge thing. Also I think it’s been a long period of time since COVID started, and I think it’s been adoption in the industry. More states opening up, more states maturing and so I think that’ll just continue to happen.
Care to place a bet on legalization federally?
I think it’s going to take longer. Now, I think there’s so many incentives for it not to go federal from each state level, like in terms of their tax set ups and the money being invested at each state level in terms of grow ops, etc., which I assume will change once federal legalization happens. Then, there will be a huge shake up. Some states may win. Some states may lose. Who’s incentivized? Who’s not? It’s going to happen eventually, but it’s likely to take several years. Let’s see what happens with banking. It’s one I thought would’ve happened already.
7 Things to Leave Off Your Resume in 2021
October 21, 2021
By Celeste Gable, Marketing Coordinator
Job seekers often do themselves a disservice when they send out resumes that include unrelated or confusing information. Hiring Managers don’t have the time or patience to sort through resumes having too much or inaccurate info. Just stick to the basics and make sure you leave off these 7 things on your resume:
Irrelevant Hobbies and Interests: Love camping? Hiking? Fishing? Great, but unless the job you’re applying for is to be a park ranger, most hiring managers aren’t interested in how you spend you free time. When including hobbies on your resume, make sure its relevant to the industry you’re applying for.
Too Many Soft Skills: Soft skills are a good thing, to a certain extent, but too many can cause the candidate to lose credibility. Including both hard and soft skills demonstrate tangible and intangible traits that can help the hiring manger or recruiter understand your work ethic. When including soft skills, make sure they’re demonstrated and not just stated.
Headshot: There’s no reason to include a headshot on your resume. Some hiring managers even find it to be unprofessional. Instead, include your LinkedIn URL or a QR Code to your portfolio. Here you may have a picture of yourself.
Personal Pronouns: When writing your resume, try to leave out personal pronouns like “I,”, “me,”, and “we.”. It’s your resume so it’s implied that everything is about you.
The Wrong Kind of Email: Including your email is important when filling our contact information on your resume but using your personal email can be tricky. Its best to have a professional, simple email, that is easily associated with your name. Stay away from casual email addresses like soccerchick85@hotmail.com that can be seen as inappropriate to unprofessional.
Your Mailing Address: Including your mailing address used to be standard practice. Now, it's unnecessary information. If you’re applying for out-of-state jobs and looking to relocate, it might be best to leave out because some employers only want to consider local candidates. Instead indicate your plans of relocation within your contact information.
Job Positions Older than 10-15 years: Unless you’re a recent graduate or a senior executive, you should include no more than 4 or 5 positions that span more than 10-15 years. The older the position, the less likely the hiring manager will care about it. Instead of filling your resumes with dozens of outdated, irrelevant positions, use that space to detail your most recent positions. Quality over quantity.
When applying for positions, its best to tailor your resume to reflect the advertised role. If you’re applying for a tech-based job, it might be better to emphasize your skills with data learning programs. If applying for a communications role, highlight your soft skills and accomplishments. Writing a resume can be difficult when choosing what to include or not include, but use your best judgment. Quality over quantity wins every time.
Graduated and Jobless: What Now?
September 30, 2021
By Celeste Gable, Marketing Coordinator
The class of 2020 graduates entered a very different economic future than their predecessors the year before. The recession caused by a pandemic has been especially hard on young workers. Well over a year past their graduation and 45% of the class of 2020 are still looking for work, according to a survey conducted by Monster. The challenges of a pandemic economy are evident in the labor market outcomes for these 2020 college graduates.
What’s the best way for grads to get back in the game?
Keep resume fresh and fine-tuned. Make sure you are presenting the latest and most compelling information to employers. Ask friends and mentors to critique your resume and cover letter and provide feedback. Use the gap between graduation and full-time employment to learn a new skill or volunteer your time.
Contact your college career office. Set up a meeting to explore options and make sure that you have tapped into all the resources available. Most offices have a roster of available jobs and internships. Online job posting sites like Handshake, LinkedIn, and Indeed are good resources too.
Ask employed friends to help you. Perhaps you have a friend or two in your field that would be willing to speak with their own company hiring officials about any upcoming hiring needs. Turnover is at an all-time high, so companies are hiring at increased rates. It doesn’t hurt to ask!
Network, network, network. It is absolutely true that most graduates who find work after they have left campus do so through some form of networking. Ask your career office and/or alumni office for a list of contacts in geographic and industry sectors of interest. Follow and connect with relevant experts on LinkedIn. In addition, contact relatives. Everyone knows someone.
Have a strong online presence. Make sure you’re LinkedIn profile is complete and up to date. Use your online presence to attract hiring managers and recruiters. Join groups for your college and career fields of interest. Reach out to fellow group members for informational interviews. Nowadays, most companies advertise their open jobs on their social platforms. Make sure you are following them for all their updates.
Consider temporary employment jobs, entry level positions and internships. Once your foot is in the door of a company, meet as many of the staff as you can and try to make a favorable impression. You never know where this could lead.
If you’re about to graduate or a recent grad, share your story on social media. Tag us! @Directrecruiters on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram and @dri_inc on Twitter!
How to Best Support Working Parents
September 16, 2021
By Celeste Gable, Marketing Coordinator
Parents make up 40% of the workforce. They are managers, supervisors, and essential employees vital to the company. And now, more than ever, working parents need new and improved benefits to support their families and prevent burnout. For a majority of the last year, schools, daycares, and offices were closed. Parents were juggling being teachers, caregivers, and employees. Lines between work and home life were indefinitely blurred. The COVID-19 Pandemic created many challenges for parents and brought to light gaps in support that they need from employers.
With the challenges that working parents face put on display, companies have new priorities to make parents feel supported at work. Parents that feel involved and included in their workplaces are 41% less likely to leave. Below, we will outline a few specific ways you can build a culture of support for working parents, and retain them at your company.
Maternity and Paternity Leave
Allowing parents time to with their newborns is crucial for the baby’s health and your employees’ wellbeing. By offering a great, paid maternity and paternity leave for employees, parents ca Parents were juggling being teachers, caregivers, and employees. n focus on what matters most: their baby. Federal Employee Paid Leave Act recommends 12 weeks paid leave for new parents but the average maternity leave often ends up being shorter. 70% of women take about 10 weeks and 16%–only take one to four weeks off work following childbirth. Mothers who utilize paid leave have only a 2.6% likelihood of quitting their job and a 92.3% chance of returning to the same employer after birth.
Flexible Work Schedule
Parenthood offers both the expected and unexpected events that interrupt the average 9-5 workday., Companies that offer hybrid work can help to alleviate the stress parents face in balancing work and life. Flextime can offer unique solutions for working parents by allowing them to accommodate for dropping off and picking up kids from school. Employers still have control over core hours when everyone must be working but employees control the rest of their schedule. There are even more advantages associated with fully remote positions, offering mom or dad the freedom to care for their child without falling behind.
Child Care
For many, remote work isn’t possible and for kids not yet in school, childcare is essential. Some companies may be able to offer on-site daycare options, making the transition of sending the little ones off easier. Overall, 7% of U.S. businesses offer on-site childcare benefits. Companies unable to provide on-site childcare may find other ways to accommodate parents. This could include subsidized childcare, cost-matching programs for childcare accounts, or partnerships with nearby facilities to offer priority slots and discounts.
Other Benefits
Progressive companies may offer working parents additional options to support them and their families. These could include Lactation support through private rooms, free breast pumps, or free breast milk shipping for traveling moms. Fertility and adoption benefits could also be enacted by creating policies to subsidize the cost of fertility treatments and adoption fees.
Above all, as an organization, manager, or employee, it is important to show compassion and understanding for working parents. Each and every individual has a different situation whether her or she is a parent or not, and it is extremely important for companies to create an environment where employees will thrive.
September 16th is Working Parents Day. This is an unofficial holiday created to praise those parents who work every day, in and out of the home, to provide a healthy and safe life for their families. Take a moment to recognize someone for their hard work and dedication as they work to support their families and keep up with family meals, practices, new school environments, or just the laundry. To all the working parents out there, Direct Recruiters truly appreciates all that you do!
Why Companies Hire the Wrong Person (And How to Avoid It)
September 2, 2021
By Celeste Gable, Marketing Coordinator
As a relationship-focused search firm, our employees are our greatest assets. Internally and externally, they represent the company’s core values. At DRI, we want our people to be passionate, positive, goal oriented, and a team player. Our goal when hiring our own employees is to get the right people in the right seats. Occasionally, as all humans do, we make mistakes. People don’t fit, skills don’t match, and we make bad hires. Below we will outline the most common reasons on why companies hire the wrong person and how you can prevent it.
Maximizing potential is reliant on your employees. Each employee represents a percentage of probable annual revenue and if every employee is not performing to their potential, it’s unlikely you will reach your goal. Finding a candidate that checks all your boxes is rare but there are steps you can take to ensure that you get the right person for both your needs and theirs.
1. Reevaluate your Hiring Process
Most often, we hire the wrong person because we are rushing to fill the spot. The turnover that the economy is currently facing certainly is not helping. But settling on the first person who meets the minimum criteria may end up in a vacancy later down the line. The best way to combat this is to clearly define your “must-have” qualifications. Outline the key criteria that a candidate should have to not only fit the job description but you company culture too. Hiring Managers should create a cost analysis of onboarding anew employee. By putting a price on how much it costs to get a new employee fully trained, you can invest early in the right candidate.
2. Experience isn’t Everything
Experience is not expertise. A candidate’s attitude and disposition are equally as important as their skills and experience listed on a resume. It’s easy to be starstruck by a resume. A well written resume is important but not the end all be all. Behind the resume is a person who is going to be successful in only a certain environment. Remember that a resume shows chronology but what’s most important is solutions that the candidate presents today.
3. Be Cost Efficient
How much does it cost to onboard and train the wrong employee? According to the 2020 Training Industry Report, the average company in the U.S. spent $1,111 per employee on training costs. Not only are you wasting time and energy but you’re wasting resources too. Managers and teams will be required to spend time training the new hire. This can result in a loss of productivity and efficiency. Besides training resources, you are compensating an employee who may not be meeting expectations. When that employee leaves (and they will), you have to start the process over. Not only is this draining financially but your team’s morale suffers too.
People are your organization’s most prized asset and hiring the wrong one can be costly and draining. Collaborate with your team to build an accurate evaluation of candidates to spot red flags early on. Go beyond the resume and ask critical thinking questions to help you asses a candidate’s behavior and attitude. You can never 100% know whether a candidate will work out or not, but prevention is key.
Employee Drug Testing Amidst the Legalization of Marijuana
August 19, 2021
By Jason Herbert, Partner
Marijuana legalization has made strides in the United States in recent years. As of 2021, 18 states (plus DC) have completely legalized the recreational adult-use of cannabis and 37 states have legalized medical use of marijuana. However, there is still a stigma around cannabis – medically prescribed or not. In many places, marijuana usage can be a barrier to a job. It is completely legal for a potential employer to administer drug tests. Laws vary from state to state but there are guidelines that most everyone must follow.
Applicants are required to know that they could potentially be drug tested as part of the screening process. This information can be listed in the job application or posting. Similarly, you could have already been offered a job, contingent on passing a drug test. Overall, most companies that intend to drug test candidates include that information in their job applications. In most cases you have little choice but to agree to drug testing or drop out as an applicant. In addition, all applicants for the same position must be tested similarly and all tests must be administered by a state-certified laboratory.
To Test or Not to Test; That is the Question
How does this affect states where recreational use is legal? This creates an interesting paradox. Without testing, there could be more job applicants and employers have better chances of getting the strongest candidates with a larger pool of prospects. On the other hand, with testing, employers can be sure they hire drug-free employees who will be safe on the job. Safety on the job is paramount therefore having an outright ban on marijuana usage is simpler for employers than handling it case by case. Depending on the business, drug testing might be essential. Truck drivers, bus drivers, and train operators are still tested for marijuana under the U.S. Department of Transportation laws. Many companies that contract with the federal government and receive federal grants are required to maintain drug-free workplace policies as well. According to the , they believe there is no level of cannabis use that is safe or acceptable for employees who work in safety sensitive positions.
Trial and Error
With the ever-changing state of cannabis law on a federal level, the nation is essentially in a “trial and error” situation. Employers have no choice but to keep up with these circumstances. The medical aspect of cannabis further complicates the matter. Several states have specific laws protecting medical cannabis patients from employment discrimination. Employers can require drug testing before and during employment if medical marijuana users are exempt from discrimination. As it pertains to recreational use, testing can return positive results weeks after a person uses marijuana. There is no way to tell if someone is a habitual user or if it was a one-time event.
Instead, companies should look for tests that measure performance impairment—some of which specifically target marijuana’s impact on qualities such as short-term memory. “One trend we are seeing is that employers are not getting rid of drug testing completely, but they’re rethinking the frequency with which they test and/or the amount of time between testing,” explained Jonathan Havens, a partner and co-chair of . Some employers are also “cherry-picking” which roles they drug test candidates for, focusing on roles that pose safety concerns. Less commonly, companies are transitioning away from screening candidates and employees for marijuana use.
Currently, employers and employees must continue the “waiting game” until federal and state employment laws come to a decision on the legalization of cannabis. As recruiters, we have seen a variety of methods for drug testing and screening candidates in general. What has your company done, and how do you see this evolving in the future?
Intern Spotlight: Danny Myeroff, Zack Olgin, and Jared Rosner
Over the years, Direct Recruiters has had the privilege of hiring several talented interns over the years. This year was no different, as we welcomed three interns to our team this summer. As a relationship-focused search firm, we serve over 30 different industries connecting qualified candidates to our diverse and well-established client list. Since we provide service for a variety of industries and companies, each intern has a different experience. We asked our 2021 Summer interns to share about their internship at DRI below.
Danny Myeroff 
“I’m Danny Myeroff and I attend Miami University of Ohio. I am pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Marketing. This is my third summer interning with DRI, as an Executive Search intern for the Robotics team. This has been the biggest and busiest summer for me. I’ve really felt more like an actual recruiter versus an intern. I was able to get on the phones more, help with more searches, and work with different industries. My favorite thing about DRI is playing basketball with the team during lunch. It’s always a good way to break up the day and get out of your head. I love the camaraderie we have as a group. Through working with the Industrial Group, I’ve learned so much about robotics and automation. I’ve also learned a lot of strong sales skills. However, the biggest takeaway has been learning how to network with people, especially those more experienced, smarter and more skilled than myself. In addition, learning to take the “No’s” of recruiting and not let that stop me from trying. Recruiting has helped me become a better salesperson, public speaker, and team player. Upon my graduation, I hope to return to Direct Recruiters as a full-time employee.”
Zack Olgin 
“My name is Zack Olgin. I am a communications student at the University of Cincinnati. This is my first full summer with DRI. I spent my summer working with the Healthcare IT team as an Executive Search Recruiter. It was a pleasure to work with this team of highly skilled individuals. As a recruiter, I loved being able to form new relationships with Candidates over the phone. Through working with my colleagues and potential candidates, I was really able to hone my networking and communication skills. These skills are beneficial for anyone regardless of career choice. I definitely feel like this has opened my eyes to all of the great things that DRI has to offer.”
Jared Rosner
“I’m Jared Rosner, a senior at Miami University of Ohio, studying Emerging Technology in Business and Design. This summer, I worked with Leo Golubitsky and Aaron Kutz doing everything from sourcing and calling candidates to marketing via LinkedIn posts, flyers and sending out email blasts. My favorite thing I’ve done is getting on the phones and talking with people, as I can tell how much I improved upon this even over such a short period of time. I learned a ton about the recruiting process from start to finish, and all the detail that goes into finding the right candidate to go through the interview process with a client. Learning and gaining experience cold calling people helped my communication skills tremendously. Understanding how to improvise on the fly when things didn’t go as planned is a skill, I used a lot that will be utilized throughout the rest of my life. I also improved my ability to actively listen, which is obviously vital when talking to someone, whether recruiting or not. This internship has allowed me to experience being in an office setting for the first time, seeing all the different parts that make a business successful. It was also great getting to learn about how important culture is to a company, something DRI takes very seriously. From playing basketball every week to going to Top Golf and the Indians game among other activities, it’s clear to see how much of a positive impact all the effort into having a good culture has had for the success of the company.”
How to Build a Winning Team: Sourcing and Retaining Top Talent
As a part of DRI’s Olympic Summer Series, we are offering you exclusive advice on how to achieve your dream team. Whether you are a manager or a president, we offer you leadership advice to best propel your team into the future. Olympians aren’t born, they’re trained.
Training Your “Olympians”
As a leader, you are only as strong as the weakest member of your team. Your job is to make sure that everyone is in the right place to work towards the whole group’s success. By giving them opportunities that can lead to increasing their own capacities, you invest in your team. When you place high value on each individual member and share their contributions openly, bonds deepen, and teams can understand the greater purpose.
Getting the “Go(a)ld”
Start with communicating clearly and concisely. Don’t expect your team members to just know exactly what you mean. If you have communicated your goals clearly, they will feel more driven to provide it for you. To reach and exceed goals, your team must all be on the same page. By sharing a roadmap for success, all team members can have a clear idea of where exactly they are going. Start by setting SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented, and with a Timeframe. By setting goals with these attributes in mind you and your team can deliver results.
Championing your Team
Listening leads to Leadership. By appreciating your team members and championing their greatness, you can more easily communicate your goals with your team. Winning teams are developed under leaders who can flex and bend their own personalities around each team member’s needs.
Create and cultivate your team’s culture. Whether it comes from leadership or is discussed as a team, creating shared guidelines can ensure a streamlined process for how people will work together. You must commit to this culture. The most important thing for a company to live by is their stated values. When you find people that exemplify your core values, it is easier to promote and reward them.