SkyWater Blog

Are you stuck in a job you hate? Over the course of a career, most of us will endure a bumpy patch here or there: moments of feeling overworked, unchallenged, underappreciated, disappointed, badly bossed – or just plain bored. They’re awful. But they’re usually brief.

As part of our commitment to our communities, SkyWater Search Partners has developed an Employee of the Quarter Award. Each quarter, we honor a top-performing team member by making a substantial financial gift, in their name, to a nonprofit organization of their choosing.

It was yet another conversation with yet another highly talented candidate. The job I was recruiting had everything on his extensive list of must-haves, and nearly everything on his wish list. He, in turn, brought the credentials, experience, and stellar communication skills my client needed most.

Yet, I didn’t leave that conversation ready to place him at the top of my shortlist. Here's why...

At the core of the SkyWater Search Partners promise is our commitment to the twin cities community. One way we celebrate that commitment is through our Employee of the Quarter award. Every quarter, we honor a top-performing team member with the gift of a substantial financial donation, in their name, to a nonprofit organization that is meaningful to them.

This quarter, we are delighted to say…

The concept of workplace flexibility is one that is front and center of nearly every client conversation we have at SkyWater. We hear employers describe their worries that dispersed teams will be less able to collaborate, engage, perform, and lead than teams who physically come to work every day. We empathize. At SkyWater, we knew we’d invested mightily in creating a shared work environment that facilitated closer connections and that hard-to-define but so important sense of belonging.

It's a tough mindset to rethink. But we have. And we continue to do so, paying careful attention to how our team members are doing, and what they’re telling us. The key has been our own willingness to be flexible, adaptable, and open. It’s also been about one additional, critical factor: the willingness of our own executive team to walk the talk. We hold ourselves to the same expectations that we establish for the whole team. Turns out, this may be even more important than we realized.

You may be asking yourself: Is it worth it to pay a headhunter? 

Working with a recruiter to fill your company’s key roles and source the best available talent is a benefit that many employers recognize in today’s competitive employment market. How can hiring managers ensure they fully benefit from working with a search company?

At SkyWater Search Partners, we believe that one of our greatest strengths is our commitment to our community and how actively our team members engage with the many different communities they call their own. Each quarter, we honor a top-performing SkyWater employee with a substantial financial gift in their name, to a nonprofit community organization that is near and dear to them. This quarter, we are very proud to say...

As we start 2022, there are a lot of dynamics in the market.

If you’re like most employers, you might be underinvesting in this critical hiring and retention tactic.

According to a 2021 Gallup article, 70% of employees who would rate their new employee onboarding experience as “exceptional” also say they are in “the best possible job.” Yet, according to that same article, nearly 20% of employees say their recent onboarding experience was either poor or nonexistent. What do these statistics tell us? At a macro level, it seems obvious: employer onboarding practices are almost universally abysmal. But at the individual employer level, they point to a real opportunity. In this age of employee attrition, labor shortages, and general uncertainty about future staffing stability, these numbers suggest that there is a reason for optimism for any organization that is willing to invest in robust, multi-level onboarding practices.