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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-