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People are
our business
the H&S Personnel
Department in Action
It goes almost without saying that the
business of any personnel department
is people. The responsibilities of the
personnel department of Haskins &
Sells are to devise the most effective
means of attracting and retaining good
people for H&S.
The task is not easy, because we live
in a time when the profession is undertaking
ever greater responsibilities for
the public welfare and protection, and
accountants are in very short supply.
Everyone is trying to get the best college
graduates—those young accountants
who show the greatest capacity for
all-around professional growth. The
competition for talent is intense.
An organization chart of the H&S
personnel department in action might
resemble an intricate spider web. At the
center in the Executive Office is a small
staff headed by Edwin R. Lang, partner
in charge of personnel. This group
in the EO devotes full time to personnel
work. But in the majority of the practice
offices the functions of the department
are carried out by partners or principals
active on client engagements who have
been given this assignment in addition
to their other duties. In a number of
our larger offices, however, there are
personnel specialists who are not accountants.
All these people responsible
for personnel functions keep in close
touch with the department at the EO,
and they frequently confer with one
another. Thus the strands of the spider
web, or lines in the diagram, run in
several directions. To put it in practical
terms: H&S personnel people check
with colleagues who are performing
similar work in other parts of the country,
find out what they are doing, and
so learn from each other.
In the EO, Ed Lang is the partner
with general responsibility for the
Firm's personnel administration in the
domestic practice offices. Working with
him is one of his partners, Irwin C.
Rust, known throughout the Firm as
"Rusty," who directs our national college
recruiting program. Although recruiting
is Rusty's primary task and occupies
what he estimates is about two-thirds
of his working time, he and Ed
Lang work very closely as a team in all
H&S personnel work. In fact, people
who have seen them operate consider
each man as an extension of the other.
Not that anyone who has met either
would ever confuse the two. Ed Lang
is a big man who looks as if he might
hold his own in a pro football scrimmage,
whereas Rusty is slightly built,
and has the manner of the accomplished
speaker, actor and m.c. that he is. Both
Ed and Rusty are unusually genial, outgoing
men with the capacity to laugh,
and to listen, that marks them as people-oriented
types. In carrying out the
Firm's personnel functions, Ed and
Rusty work very closely with Malcolm
M. Devore, Executive Office partner
responsible for the overall administration
of the domestic practice offices.
For many years the Firm has followed
the policy of bringing a partner
to the Executive Office to direct the
personnel department for a period of
five or six years, after which he would
return to a practice office. It has been
thought that a partner should not be
taken away from active practice for
such a period of time that he would
lose a significant degree of technical
competence. Mr. Lang, who came from
the Cleveland Office, has been in the
EO for four years. Working with him
in addition to Mr. Rust are five others.
Pete Costigan, Executive Placement Director,
and Hugh Scanlon concentrate
largely on assisting clients in finding
the right people to fill executive positions
requiring financial and account-
