Cioffi: What's more important — people or processes?

Human-resource departments and hiring managers are in the people business, literally, but I would argue that, regardless of your job title or industry, all business is ultimately about people.

Not everyone understands that. I learned it from an experience with one of my first clients.

This was a top 10 manufacturer, and my team had worked our way up to handling almost all their corporate-level recruiting. I had frequent meetings there with multiple departments and at times the CEO.

This company was facing some adversity in the market, and HR directors started to turn over with a disturbing amount of frequency. Eventually, the sixth person to land the HR leadership position decided to terminate the relationship with my group.

He was a highly touted turnaround specialist and very focused on instituting a new process that he believed would be very successful, and the first step was "cleaning house."

How this situation ultimately worked out was ironic and taught me one of my most enduring lessons about the business world. But before going into that, let's first take a quick look at the economy and jobs market.

The U.S. economy added 150,000 new jobs in October, a bit below expectations, and the unemployment rate rose slightly to 3.9%.

These numbers were not helped by a United Auto Workers' strike, which has now ended. Another development is that the red-hot new jobs figure from last month — 336,000 — has been revised down to 297,000.

That's still a strong number, of course, and the "advance estimate" of third-quarter economic growth also came in strong at 4.9%. So, there's still nothing like a recession visible in the data.

Job growth helps consumers continue spending money, which in turn helps support more job growth. For now, the circle is still working in our favor, but since more Federal Reserve interest rate hikes may be coming, many are still watching for an eventual economic landing if not an actual recession.

Closer to home, the data are a bit more reflective of this cautious outlook.

In rubber product manufacturing and tire manufacturing, U.S. employment was down for the third straight month, to 134,500 and 58,200, respectively. One year ago, those figures were 138,400 and 58,500.

Overall, the industry still seems to be in a state of limbo — not too bad, not too good. But before over-analyzing the situation, I'll get back to my story.

When my team was fired from the manufacturing client, I didn't hold any grudges. The new HR director, after all, simply wanted to enact a system that he thought would work well for the company.

I understood enough about the business world not to take that personally. but I knew something else as well. Five other HR directors had left before him, so he might not last long either.

As things turned out, he didn't. When his replacement arrived, he heard about the value we once had brought to the table, reached out to me and brought my group back as suddenly as we had left.

The business world tends to work like that. Analytics, processes and shake-up plans come and go. People remain.

When you learn that, you already have won, because you know that the objective is to help others succeed. If you play the game that way, people appreciate it, and when circumstances come full circle (as they often do), they will remember it.

Staying in the trenches and helping my clients succeed is how I plan to survive and thrive in this industry for decades to come, and I recommend that others approach their business the same way.

In the end, it's about people.

Mike Cioffi is the founder of Tire Talent, a boutique recruiting agency dedicated to our industry. You can reach him directly: [email protected] if you have any questions about this article.