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Greetings!
More from the little town
One morning, not long ago, Town Manager Stan Smartasawhip was sitting at his desk minding his own business doing what town managers do when the red phone on his desk rang... boy, was it LOUD!
In fact, it was so loud it almost knocked poor Stan right out of his chair. Somebody (and he had a sneaking suspicion who) had turned the ringer all the way up. "Stan, it's the Mayor."
'And who else would it be," thought Stan, 'he's the only other person connected to the red phone.' In spite of the fact that Mayor Putoff's office was right next to Stan's, the Mayor with the dawdling council used the red phone more often than not when he wanted Stan 'right away'.
"Smartasawhip," bellowed the Mayor, bypassing the red phone all together "come in here, we need to talk." Stan ran his fingers through his hair a couple of times, threw on his jacket and headed for the Mayor's office.
It only took Stan, who has an intuitive grasp of the obvious; a couple of seconds to figure out what was going. The Mayor had travel brochures scattered all across the top of his big oak desk.
"We are gonna give you a big send off, Stan!" bawled the Mayor ...he always got louder when he was excited. "If you're really serious about this retirement thing, the town wants to do it up right! Of course we'll have a dinner. Then we figure to send you and your Missus on a cruise."
It had been three weeks since Stan had dropped the 'retirement bombshell' on the dawdling Council. Since that night, if the Mayor had asked him once, he had asked him a thousand times if he really intended to retire and move away to Pleasantville. "It's really true," Stan insisted...we have our gardening gloves packed" "What are we gonna do without you Stan?" Council had asked. "Where are we gonna find a new Town Manager?" Stan had tried to explain that he was literally one of dozens of City and Town Managers all across Canada who would be retiring this year ..."Call it the Class of 2010," he had told them.
Now, finally persuaded and faced with the difficult task of finding a new Town Manager, Mayor Putoff didn't know where to turn. He fussed and he fumed for several weeks. Then one morning he was having coffee with a group of mayors from other towns and cities. Mayors are generally pretty good about networking and helping each other, so when someone mentioned Mayor Ken Lemke, of Stony Plain, who was a friend of some mayor's brother-in-law's uncle, Putoff's ears perked up. As he listened in, he heard this: "Stony Plain is going through a search for a Town Manager," said someone further down the table, "and I understand they are using the services of a professional recruiter."
With a sudden burst of uncharacteristic urgency the Mayor could hardly wait to get back to his office ... Putoff picked up the phone and called Stony Plain. "Mayor Lemke," he hollered into the phone (he couldn't help himself he was that excited), "tell me about your recruiter, what kind of a job is he doing for you?" The Mayor of Stony Plain, who was a lot calmer than his counterpart, had nothing but good things to say about Ravenhill Group Canada's Municipal Recruiting Specialists.
He recounted how Ravenhill had first determined exactly what his town was looking for. He added that Ravenhill didn't believe in expensive advertising because advertising usually serves to find unhappy and/or unemployed people.
Next, Ravenhill went to work recruiting. Using their proprietary recruiting tool called the A.S.K.Selection Process™, Ravenhill provided a long list of excellent candidates for the town to choose from. Finally, the town chose six to invite for interviews. Mayor Lemke went on, "Not only has Bruce Malcolm found some great candidates, he has organized the interviews, provided excellent questions and got all the members of Council to participate in the process. On top of that, it isn't costing us a fortune. In fact, enthused Lemke "we'd use them again." Why don't you contact them, Mayor Putoff?
Putoff was champing at the bit to make his next call. That afternoon he called Ravenhill Group. Two days later he got a package by courier. It included an Executive Summary for the dawdling Council and a contract to help the little town find a new Town Manager in 8 weeks or less.... and today, the little town is another happy client of Ravenhill Group.
Their new Town Manager, Sid Smarterstill, starts Monday! |
