Go Figure Configure – Recruitment Software

configurationBlog for Global Recruiter by Toby Conibear, Business Development Director, Bond International Software:

‘Configurability’ is fast becoming a buzz word when it comes to software. More often than not customers are demanding an off the shelf system that can be configured – historically this has been a complete paradox. Many software providers create an illusion of configurability – yet as more people buy into these ideas, they realise that these offerings do not deliver what is required.

The variety of roles and the numerous sector-specific legislation demands make it very difficult to create a ‘one size fits all’ solution for recruiters. To accommodate the many demands from recruiters would mean that all sector specific requirements need to be catered for – this would result in a system which is unusable due to the vast array of detailed information which would need to be managed.

Many recruitment agencies place candidates across a variety of industry sectors therefore to accommodate all of this information on a standardised system, all industry sectors and their related requirements would need to be displayed at any one time.  Such a system would be extremely cumbersome and difficult to use, as well as leaving the consultant with a barrage of compliance information that isn’t relevant to their market focus.

A good software solution will bring configurability to a standardised system, but will also provide the ability to switch it on and off as necessary. This means that if the agency is recruiting supply teachers, all of the requirements for that specific group can be switched on and all other compliance information can be switched off, but always available when required.

In addition, when any legislative changes occur, the user should have the opportunity to either update the system manually or wait for the software supplier to provide a generic upgrade. Configurability should ensure that the system is as intuitive as possible and give the end user exactly what they require in order to run the business and its divisions as efficiently as possible.

Staffing firms are building brand recognition using LinkedIn

You can’t read anything about current trends in staffing and recruiting without hearing about social media. The evolving world of media consumption and talent acquisition is impacting the staffing industry just like any other. Staffing and recruiting firms are building greater brand recognition from clients and job candidates by using professional social media sources such as LinkedIn to act as a funnel for their candidate sourcing efforts.

As of January 9, 2013, LinkedIn was the largest professional network online with more than 200 million members in over 200 countries and territories. In the United States alone there are about 74 million members. In September 2012, people were signing up for the network at a rate of two new people per second.

Staffing and recruiting professionals are taking advantage of this exceptional resource by using it as a great place to start talent acquisition. Using the search tools provided by LinkedIn will allow a staffing firm to identity and source top candidates for individual industries. In addition, staffing firms are finding the resource a strong tool for locating passive versus active job candidates in the market.

All of this sourcing is ideally done prior to the integration of an individual’s information into their recruiting software. This reduces the amount of ‘chafe’ – unnecessary data – in the staffing and recruiting software. Once the relevant candidate data has been entered into your software, you are better able to highlight and match potential candidates against the requirements outlined in a customer’s job order.

One of the unique advantages of Bond International Software’s staffing systems is that recruiters can accomplish 80 percent of their daily tasks from one screen – saving time and effort. This enables recruiters to leverage their social media sourcing efforts effectively so that once a candidate is in the system, your staffing firm can present job offers as needed to the professionals who best meet the needs of your customers.

Staffing companies are serving their customers better with the help of a versatile and user-friendly staffing software.

 

 

 

Is employee turnover good or bad?

Employee turnover – we’ve all heard of it and often the subject matter is painted in a poor light. After all, trusted, efficient workers who are experienced are sometimes hard to find and it takes time to replace them. Staffing firms that take full advantage of staffing and recruiting software are able to offer their customers the right professionals that fit their corporate culture and business needs quickly and efficiently, minimizing the impact of employee turnover to their customers.

CNBC News reports that one in three employees (approximately 33 percent) have claimed that they will begin to look for a new job in 2013 and almost one in five (about 18 percent) will begin their search in the next three months. With so many employees just waiting for the chance to quit, staffing and recruiting agencies are under pressure to quickly identify a pool of potential replacement candidates to minimize transition issues.

The controlled response to turnover provided by a qualified staffing firm can ensure that a quality group of potential job candidates are provided to their customers seeking to fill openings. The addition of new professionals supplied by staffing firms can spark innovation and increased productivity in the business sector. Staffing and recruiting software can help your staffing firm to identify, qualify and present potential job candidates with ease.

A staffing firm can easily accomplish this task by establishing a clear applicant infrastructure. Don’t second guess yourself about which employees offer the right combination of characteristics for your customers’ business. Instead, turn toward an employment agency software solution that includes an applicant tracking system, contact management tools, a resume database and much more.

Contract and temp employment staffing grows – can you handle it?

Companies are learning to do more with less following the economic turmoil of the Great Recession. As a result, many organizations in the United States are becoming adept at running on new technology and the skills of temporary or contract employees. To meet the demands of their customers, it is necessary for staffing and recruiting agencies to ensure that they are capable of responding to the intense requirements of their customers by deploying the newest technologies within their business to deliver qualified temporary or contract employees to their customers.

In the third quarter of 2012, U.S. staffing firms employed an average of 2.95 million temporary and contract workers per business day, according to the American Staffing Association (ASA). From July to September, there was an even greater amount of these workers – by approximately 4.3 percent on any given business day.

“Even though the rate of growth slowed during the fall, third quarter staffing employment was the highest it has been in five years,” said Richard Wahlquist, ASA president and chief executive officer.

So, what does this mean for your staffing or recruiting firm? It means that you too are trying to get more done with less. It means that your business is probably growing in terms of the number of job orders and assignments you have to fill, but that you too are not in a position to add more internal staff resources to help with the added work.

That is where new technology comes into play. The most cost-effective help to this need to “get the work done” for staffing and recruiting firms is to implement appropriate recruiting and staffing software designed to improve staff productivity beyond where it is now.

With the ever-increasing presence of temporary and contract employees in the workforce, staffing and recruiting agencies may struggle to efficiently keep track of applicants from the start to finish of the hiring process. Equally important, to maximize their own profitability on each assignment or placement, staffing and recruiting firms need to provide their internal staff members with tools that enable them to accomplish their tasks with the least effort. Thus, staffing and recruiting firms looking to streamline efforts for efficiency can use a staffing software system based on advancing technology that has been designed to handle the increasing quantity of job orders and of qualified temporary and contract workers without increasing their internal resources.

 

 

Do You Love Working From Your Phone? 5 Must Have Apps!

In December I told you to ‘Stop the Syncing!’… so I guess now I am telling you to start using your phone again? Fickle I know. You can’t always be at your desk or in front of your laptop, but the business world keeps moving without you. For anyone that travels for work, works from their car, or likes to always feel connected, here are a few of the phone applications that I just can’t do without!  It’s a short list so I had to pick carefully:

E-mail
Well obviously… if you are working, you can’t do without e-mail right? Depending on the smart phone you have, the native e-mail program should work fine for you. Be sure to set the syncing time frequency and also decide if you want to sync all of your contacts, tasks and calendar appointments. If you have an exchange server at work for your e-mail, you probably want to check with your I.T. department for all of the necessary settings to get things up and running with your phone but it should be pretty easy.

CamScanner
CamScanner is available for either iPhone or Android phones.  I love this app, it has helped me out of many a bind. Essentially it allows you to take a photo of a document with your phone, which then creates a scanned quality version which can be saved as a PDF, image file or other document type. Documents can then be e-mailed out directly through the app, sent to a printer, faxed or even uploaded to a file sharing site. I don’t have a fax machine or scanner at home and certainly don’t intend to get one when I can do all of that with CamScanner on my phone!

Google Drive
Google Drive is pretty much Google Docs, don’t be fooled by the name.  It is essentially a free file storage and synchronization service provided by Google. You must have been under a rock if you haven’t heard the term ‘cloud computing’ by now. Google Docs gives a user 5 GB of cloud storage (you can purchase more should you need it). The Google Drive app allows you to create and send documents to your account, which then allows for online editing and collaboration in real-time with other users. Great for others working from their phones when you need to get a project finished!

LinkedIn
Are we connected on LinkedIn? I love the popular social professional site and enjoy communicating with others via the app on my phone. They have done a fantastic job with the app (at least for Android, haven’t used the iPhone version).  I can do almost everything I need to do on the site via the app on my phone. There doesn’t appear to be the ability to provide status updates for a LinkedIn Company Page just yet, but other than that, the experience is pretty close to that when on my laptop.

FlightTrack & Fly Delta
Ok, so yes, I know this is really two, but I really use them both in conjunction with one another.  FlightTrack is available on all major smart phone devices. The app allows you to search for and save domestic and international flights. I have used this for flights I was travelling on, and for incoming flights of friends and family members and it is very accurate and fast to update. On occasion I have received notifications about flight changes or cancellations BEFORE boards are updated in the airport. That is fast! It also shows the flight path in motion, and the exact times the plane leaves the gate, and then takes off, lands and then gets to the gate. Did I mention that I love FlightTrack? No? Well I do!  As for Fly Delta, I typically fly Delta as I live in Atlanta. I downloaded it around the time that you could start checking in for a flight via your phone and have your boarding pass stored on your device. If you haven’t ever used your phone to check in and you travel a lot, I urge you to do so now! It is SO much easier. I prefer to have my boarding pass with me before reaching the airport which in the past meant I had to try and check in and print at a client’s site first. This allows me to check in wherever I am and have my boarding pass to hand on my phone. If you don’t Fly Delta that much (or at all) try searching for apps for other airlines instead.

Well, those are my five… what apps can you not do without in the business world and the staffing software industry? Let me know in the comments section below!

Your Best Recruiting Bet? Hire a Vet.

walmart-resized-600Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest Your Best Recruiting Bet? Hire a Vet. retailer, announced a plan to hire every veteran who honorably left the military in the last year over the next five years. It is expected that more than 100,000 people are expected to find work through the program, making Wal-Mart’s effort one of the largest hiring commitments for veterans on record.

There are roughly 900,000 unemployed veterans in the U.S. according to the Department of Labor. When signing the “VOW to Hire Heroes Act” in 2011, President Obama said when referring to veterans’ wide range of skills, “… it is exactly the kind of leadership and responsibility that every American business should be competing to attract.”

Many employers fail to recognize the unique value military experience can bring to the workplace. Job skills are learned through previous experiences and military service should be recognized as a valuable addition to any resume. So here are five reasons why you should start recruiting veterans:

Leadership: The military trains people to lead by example, creating a more respectful and productive workplace environment.

Teamwork: Veterans understand how genuine teamwork grows out of a responsibility to one’s colleagues and superiors.

Performance under pressure: They know the critical importance of staying with a task until it is done correctly, no matter the circumstances.

Diligence: The work ethic of veterans is incomparable due to their front line experience. Veterans know how to get things done, are goal driven and results orientated. Problem Solving: As the Marines say, vets are able to “improvise, adapt and overcome.” Regardless of the issue at hand, vets are likely to come up with a creative and effective solution.

Military personnel skills obtained during military service will benefit employers. Considering these attributes, veterans could be great hires who can add value to the workplace by contributing the skills acquired through their military experience. With Wal-Mart spearheading the veterans hiring effort, recruiters should refocus their staffing efforts on sourcing candidates who are making the transition from military to civilian life.

What do you think? Have you placed candidates with past military experience? Let us know in the comment section below, we would love to hear from you.

Image Credit: ABC News



LinkedIn’s 200 Million Members [INFOGRAPHIC]

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has announced that they have reached 200 million members. This infographic from the LinkedIn blog breaks down how they are made up. Here are a few facts that stood out to us most:

– 74 million of LinkedIn users are from the United States.
– 2 new members are added per second.
– Information Technology is the largest industry represented with 4 million members.
– If LinkedIn were a country, it would have the 5th largest population in the world.

200M_Milestone_Final-resized-600

LinkedIn has become a “must have” in the staffing industry, and as the network continues to grow and expand globally, it will only create more opportunities by connecting recruiters and prospective candidates.
Where do you think LinkedIn will go next? Let us know in the comment section below, we would love to hear from you!

Photo Credit: LinkedIn



You Can’t Meet Your 2013 Staffing Goals With 2007 Staffing Software

New Year

With the arrival of 2013, the optimism felt in most staffing agencies is tempered with the impending challenges of a new year.  Perhaps the biggest trepidation felt by these agencies is determining how best to achieve overall goals in the new year.  If these agencies are still running with old technology, old staffing software for instance, this sense of trepidation can become even greater.  Antiquated staffing software systems that haven’t been replaced or upgraded to meet the new business opportunities in today’s market pose a significant challenge to overall success.

For an example as to why, let’s take a closer look at the rise of social media – perhaps the biggest game changer in the staffing industry over the last several decades.  The rise of smartphones and mobile applications has made Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn even more ubiquitous.

But five years ago Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were relatively new social media platforms.

Fast forward to today, and LinkedIn has grown into one of the world’s largest professional networking communities.  Facebook, meanwhile, has recently launched a Job Board that opens up millions of job openings to the network’s enormous user base.

It goes without saying that staffing agencies of 2007 were not optimized to leverage the power these platforms would eventually generate.  However, as these platforms grew in numbers and functionality, it became increasingly evident that staffing agencies required a social media staffing plan in order to succeed.

Because the staffing world of 2007 was so markedly different than the one we will enter in 2013, the staffing software solutions of that time will simply not take into account all the needs we will experience in the new year – particularly when it comes to needs generated by the growth of social media and mobile technology.

While integration with social media and mobile technology are perhaps biggest issues with outdated staffing software, there are other issues with archaic software that limit the potential for meeting 2013 staffing goals.

Today’s staffing software solutions are scalable and configurable, while providing the ability to generate the powerful analytics necessary to gain a competitive advantage.  Soon, many solutions will also be available in cloud or web-browser based versions, that offer the same level of security and performance that has always been a hallmark of leading solutions.

In a dynamic staffing industry, failure to innovate is not an option.  And for agencies still relying on software from 2007 or earlier, this means upgrading to a powerful new staffing software system, built for 2013, will provide the critical advantage necessary to survive and thrive.

If you are ready to move forward with new staffing software and technology in the new year, I encourage you to request a free demo of staffing software by Bond.