In James E. Boone’s vocabulary, there’s no such thing as work force. Yet, as president and CEO of CORESTAFF Services Inc., he manages his own employees and tens of thousands of others.
But to him, “work force” is an oversimplification — like “automobile.”
“There’s virtually all types of automobiles, from small compacts to luxury vehicles,” Boone says. “There’s a mistake in that some organizations look at people as a unified entity — and, of course, they’re not.”
In addition to managing his own 292 full-time employees, Boone issued 21,789 W-2s to temporary employees last year. Because he places that many employees in occupations as varied as accounting and engineering, in offices from Boulder to Boston and beyond, Boone can’t approach hiring as a simple function of plug-and-play.
When it comes to filling internal positions at CORESTAFF, he takes each candidate as an individual to determine who is right for the job. Some words of wisdom from Cecil Dye, his former district manager at Digital Equipment Corp., revealed what a challenge that can be.
“He said, ‘When you’re interviewing people for positions, the obvious A’s — the ones that clearly have all the boxes checked — that’s about 10 percent, and those are easy decisions,’” Boone says. “‘Likewise, the people that are obviously not right for the position, that 10 percent is also extremely easy. It’s the other 80 percent that will determine whether you’re going to be successful or not.’
“What I gleaned from that is judgment is going to be a major factor as a manager. You have to really trust your innate skills and abilities when you’re speaking with people because ultimately you will answer for those decisions.”
Boone has honed his judgment abilities when it comes to hiring and developed a disciplined interview process to usher the right people into position.
