Tips for taming your inbox

How often have you returned from a meeting to find your inbox overflowing with emails demanding your attention? It’s not an uncommon sight for most of us who work in the professional staffing world. Clients, candidates and coworkers all have questions and requests, and while it may be tempting to press the delete button for them all, we both know that isn’t going to happen!

According to one study done by Atos Origin, the average worker spends 40 percent of their work week dealing with internal emails alone. The Guardian reports that this is the same as if every professional didn’t show up to the office until Wednesday morning! The paper’s own analysis of employees’ email communications found that out of the 95,000 emails sent during the week about 75,000 were internal. Out of the 127,000 emails received by staff about 68 percent also came from an internal source.

“People have so many demands and so many things others want us to do. This is why our emails need be organized,” said Alex Moore, CEO of Baydin Inc., a startup focused on email organization, according to the Huffington Post.

Research company Fonality has found that most employees spend half of their day using email in counterproductive ways. Every time a worker decides to check his or her inbox quickly they are wasting 64 seconds of time.

“The worst is checking your emails throughout the day. You don’t want to live in your inbox,” Moore told the news source.

Think about your own inbox. Is it overflowing with emails? How many of these correspondents are internal or external? Do you save emails in your inbox because you know they contain important information that will have to be used later?

As a staffing and recruiting professional, the first thing you can do to drastically reduce the clutter of your inbox is to invest in and use the email integration with your staffing and recruiting software. This offers some significant benefits to you, as it helps you to focus on sales and recruiting activities that result in better business performance. Equally important, your staffing and recruiting software then becomes the central repository of all of your email activity with candidates and customers, so that you can better track and manage those all-important relationships.

Just as the staffing software you use helps you manage your work more efficiently, it’s time to begin to use a number of email settings and tools to further reduce the digital clutter in your life. Depending on your personal organization style, you will find the right combination of tools to effectively manage your mail. According to Gigamon, there are three types of organization styles for email – searchers, who prefer to only use search tool filter options to find items, filers, who believe that everything has a place, and taggers, who remain in the middle ground of the two.

Here are three ways to organize your email:

Unsubscribe
Do you frequently subscribe to various industry publications because they just might offer you a tip or insight? If yes – think back. How often do you actually read the daily, weekly or monthly newsletter emailed to you? If you typically end up deleting these messages, you may want to dedicate a few minutes of time to unsubscribe. While it may only take one minute of your day to delete the message, that time will begin to accumulate and soon you will have consumed over 30, 40 or 60 minutes of your year deleting newsletters. If you really feel that the service is worthwhile, consider having the newsletter sent to a particular folder or filter so that it skips your inbox and you can find it easier.

Apply filters
One of the premier functions of almost any popular email system is the ability to apply filters to emails from certain senders. For staffing professionals this means setting up filters for individual clients so that you can follow the chain of communication easily and always know where messages are being directed. This also will help you decrease the burning need you have to check your email when you receive a notification that a message has been sent to your inbox. Instead, you can finish your project or task and then scroll up and down the filters column to see if anything has come in. If you are afraid you are going to forget a task that needs to be completed in the future you can often set up a boomerang application that resends the message or notifies you of the email in a reminder for a date you choose.

Delete it
How often do you hold onto your emails? Just like the items in your closet, if you haven’t used it for a significant period of time and it is getting in the way it’s time to direct the missive to the trash can. The Huffington Post reports that workers delete about 71 messages every day. Deleting messages takes an average of 3.2 seconds. However, clicking and de-selecting those same messages that get in your way on a daily basis is more of a distraction. So, make time and delete away!

Bond Adapt Integrates with cube19 to Boost Recruiters’ Performance

Cube 19 Logo

As a result of this integrated technology, the recruitment industry will be able to draw upon analytics and performance management data taken directly from Bond Adapt v11 and view them using cube19’s highly visual user interface. These analytics will help individual recruiters to improve performance  as well as making it easier for Managers and Directors to manage their business and people.

cube19 is proven to accelerate sales growth by delivering actionable analytics to recruiters. The focus on creating consistency in the recruitment process leads to higher job fulfilment rates and an increase in revenue. Through using the data gathered by Bond Adapt v11, a recruiter can view relevant and optimised data specific to their individual requirements in addition to team and group data. As such, recruiters are able to see which of their processes drives revenue, amend current practices and tailor internal targets accordingly to increase billing activity and enhance overall business performance.

Toby Conibear, European Business Development Director, Bond International Software, comments, “Bond Adapt brings a unique flexibility to recruiters and is the ideal CRM system to work in conjunction with cube19. The powerful insight which can be delivered from the integration brings recruiters a unique method of self-assessment and introspection. Having the capability to integrate valuable activity based data recorded within the Adapt CRM platform at a holistic level, with a powerful visual analytics tool, enables us to deliver a clear and bespoke representation of business performance to our customers.”

Dan McGuire, CEO, cube19, concludes, “In order for users to get the best out of their analytics, the data which the system provides must be reliable. We know that the Bond Adapt platform is sufficiently robust to present dependable data and therefore our analysis is relevant, accurate and valuable. Through having access to the right data, we have proven that our analytics can highlight improvements to business processes that deliver significant sales uplift. We challenge conventional thinking when it comes to creating performance metrics and have identified new ways to measure and motivate recruiters which are unique to cube19. This results in changing the manner in which recruitment teams interact with their candidates and vacancies ultimately benefiting recruiters and clients alike.”

The duo will be showcasing their software at the Recruitment Agency Expo, 26-27th February 2013, Olympia London. Bond Adapt will be located at stand 18 at the Recruitment Agency Expo, while cube19 will be located at stand 64.

cube19

erecruit Offers In-House Payroll For Enterprise Staffing Customers

Boston, MA – February 27, 2013 – Today erecruit, the leader in enterprise staffing software, announced its new comprehensive in-house payroll solution for the staffing industry, in addition to existing integrations with third-party payroll providers. Extending its long standing, direct integration with MS Dynamics GP to its Payroll Module, the new in-house solution gives mid-market and enterprise staffing firms more control over how they pay employees while reducing cost.Payroll is a key component of any staffing firms’ business process and value proposition. Since erecruit stores all employee, pay and time information, those firms that require the control and flexibility of processing payroll in-house now have an efficient solution that reduces complexity, eliminates double entry and data entry errors and provides greater payroll, tax and burden reporting capabilities.

Read more

Tips for enhancing professional credibility

How you’re perceived by others has a lasting impact. Impressions and credibility can go a long way toward determining whether you will receive that job offer, a promotion or get selected for a new development group. And unlike in high school, how you are perceived by your professional peers is more than just about who you hang out with and what you wear (luckily!).

Your ability to succeed in the workplace can often come down to your professional credibility. If your peers, colleagues, managers and clients feel as if you can deliver them an exceptional product or service, you will most likely feel confident in your abilities. However, gaining this gold star on your professional report card isn’t as easy as showing up to the job and completing assignments. You have to work to develop a reputation as someone who can consistently perform.

A recent Yahoo News article observed that your credibility is made up of three main components – your behaviors, your values and your reputation. As a result, it will take a three-pronged attack for you to build up your credibility. You can’t just walk into your office and hope people recognize what you can bring to the table if you haven’t developed a professional reputation of credibility and accomplishment.

Clients are looking up professionals on social media networks and using the crystal-ball abilities of Google to try and see into individuals’ past. It’s now a lot harder to hide those inappropriate tweets or embarrassing Facebook photos. Research has found that more than one-third of companies are using social networking sites to check out job candidates – that’s in addition to the 37 percent who are using social media to make their hiring decisions, reports CareerBuilder. If companies are doing this research about job candidates, they most likely are also researching the staffing firms and professional recruiters they are dealing with.

“Because social media is a dominant form of communication today, you can certainly learn a lot about a person by viewing their public, online personas,” Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuiilder, told the news source.

Your behaviors in and out of the office will impact your ability to create a professional reputation of credibility. You may be thinking to yourself “But, that’s not fair!” One of the unfortunate casualties of the increasing digitalization of our lives means that the house party you went to in college or a flippant comment could come back to haunt you. Just as your staffing software compiles the details of candidates and how they appear on the web, your own past may be used to determine your strength as a team member. However, you can’t just start to erase your entire presence online. First off, it’s not going to work. Second, your online profiles are an asset that can help you achieve professional credibility. Posts, papers, comments and forum discussions where you contribute ideas or resources can demonstrate your staffing industry knowledge and expertise.

In the professional sphere, behaviors that can boost your credibility include only promising what you can successfully do, instead of overselling. Overly sales-oriented communication can leave a hollow feeling between you and the other person, and that’s never good!

Another key practice: try and maintain honesty in your communications. Similar to the last point, people are much more forgiving if projects don’t make a deadline or something is lackluster if you were up front with them from the beginning.

You know what is really going to help set you apart? Facts and figures. Research and knowledge about the trends that are impacting the staffing industry show your colleagues and recruiters that you actively ensure you’re up-to-date about what’s going on. When talking to potential clients, research and know their industry in detail so that you can offer a quality service. Instead of resting on your laurels, you’re educating yourself about things that can contribute to the development of new products or services – and that’s what businesses really want!

erecruit Re-imagines Candidate Sourcing

Integration of DaXtra Search™ within erecruit Optimizes Scheduled and Real-time Candidate Sourcing

BOSTON — October 22, 2013 — erecruit, the emerging leader in enterprise staffing software, today announced it has integrated DaXtra Search™ within its enterprise software platform for large staffing firms.  The integration gives recruiters a modern, seamless sourcing experience to find, match and place candidates faster than their competitors.  Read more

Common mistakes made on LinkedIn

It’s hard to believe, but people actually make mistakes using LinkedIn that could cost them a job. Despite the fact that the forum is entirely comprised of tools dedicated to making professional connections, some workers are managing to deter potential employers because of what is included or not included in their online profiles.

As a staffing professional seeking to fill a position for a client, you can’t have your job candidates linked to social networking profiles that feature glaring mistakes. Make sure to explore a candidate’s LinkedIn profile to ensure the individual has appropriately filled out the necessary information and leaves out embarrassing details. While a job candidate may care about linking to his or her daily horoscope, a potential employer is most likely less interested. Make a note of any mistakes found in a person’s LinkedIn profile using staffing software and potentially discuss making changes to improve a candidate’s chance of filling a position.

Here are four common LinkedIn mistakes:

1) Typos galore  

You’re perusing a potential job candidate’s profile and they have everything filled out and all of a sudden you realize something… the summary, job descriptions and other key tabs are riddled with typos. The sentences are also poorly constructed and have misspelled words. If a customer looking for a new hire were to check out this candidate’s profile he or she would immediately hit the “next” button and immediately discount the worker. Typos and poor grammar and spelling indicate a lack of attention to detail at the very least, and at worst, make a potential employer believe the individual is unintelligent.

2) Blank or inappropriate picture 

They say an image is worth a thousand words, well, a professional’s LinkedIn picture is just as chatty. According to Yahoo News, studies have shown that LinkedIn profiles with pictures are significantly more likely to get clicked on than those without. A profile pictures gives a personality behind the words and demonstrates a willingness to be seen. However, LinkedIn is a professional network, so any photo used should only include the individual candidate in question and not be an image taken from last year’s vacation or a party.

3) Empty summary and skills section

Is a candidate leaving the summary box empty? This is a big no-no. Employers read this section of the profile because it is the best indicator of what a worker wants to accomplish and where they are coming from. Unlike some of the other sections of the social network site, like previous work experience which can run like a resume, the summary portion requires focused concentration to fill out and is a bit more conversational.

“The summary is the most important part,” said Kim Brown, assistant director for Syracuse University’s Career Services department, according to Business Insider. “Having search terms and keywords in your summary that are related to the job you’re doing or want to do is going to make you more likely to be found by the recruiters and hiring managers who are searching LinkedIn for talent.”

Candidates who also leave the new skills section added to LinkedIn are failing to provide viewers the opportunity to quickly gain knowledge about their talents. A quick perusal of listed skills could be all it takes for a potential employer to determine whether or not the company wants to schedule an interview. In addition, the recent addition of peers and colleagues being able to endorse a specific skill shows critical professional credibility in the workplace.

4) Never sharing 

Part of the reason for the overall success of social media networks is the ability to easily share information, links, photos and video. Without this function, most of us would still be forwarding long email chains! A job candidate who uses his or her LinkedIn profile to share news or trends about the industry they are working in or trying to break into shows that they are trying to remain aware and informed – definitely an attractive quality.

These and other common LinkedIn mistakes can detract from a potential candidates attractiveness. A staffing professional may want to consider researching workers’ profiles before advancing them to the next stage of the recruitment process to ensure they are the right fit for a client.

How Facebook’s new Graph Search could change recruiting

If it seems to you that there’s a new social media phenomenon coming out every day, well, that’s probably because it’s basically the truth. Seriously, at what point are the people creating these cutting-edge ideas going to run out of unique names for each of these platforms? Probably never!!

For many industries, each new creation can often serve some purpose. For the staffing industry, though, we all know that it’s typically been LinkedIn… and then everything else. In recent years, however, Facebook – and even Twitter – have begun to carve out important roles of their own in the recruiting sphere. For Twitter, the value is in the immediacy of the message. For Facebook, it’s the sheer volume of users.

Facebook’s already dipped its feet in the recruiting waters with applications like BranchOut and BeKnown, but when it’s all said and done, the recently unveiled Graph Search may have the biggest impact for recruiting agencies.

Graph Search, which is still in the beta stage, revolutionizes the way you search on Facebook. As a recent Mashable article put it, Graph Search makes it so users are now defined by what they “like” and who they “friend.” Graph Search allows you to search for connections who like a certain television show or product. It can narrow the search results to specific location as well. It opens the door to potential connections based on interests and personality traits, rather than simply skill sets like you’d find on LinkedIn.

What’s this mean for recruiters?
One of the best things about the new Graph Search that recruiting firms can take advantage of is the ability to locate the hard-to-find candidates. More specifically, you can search for that diamond in the rough candidate who not only has the necessary skills for the position you’re looking to fill, but also the personality traits and interests that will make the individual a strong fit for the company’s culture.

At the end of the day, the methods you’re using on the recruiting trail are changing as much as the candidates themselves. If you want to identify the “star” employee who has the right skill set and will fit into your corporate culture, tools like the new Facebook Graph Search will likely become more and more important.

The pros of a tablet

Are you salivating at the idea of getting your hands on one of those shiny, new tablets? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Tablet envy is a real thing – Dr. Phil may even do an expose on it soon (just kidding!)

The versatility, the speed and the all-around attractiveness of those digital devices are making everyone consider just how they can justify putting a request in for a tablet. However, businesses may be wary of investing in the technology and then determining how it would effectively incorporate itself into workers’ daily tasks.

Business managers don’t have to worry that outfitting their workers with tablets will result in a decline in office productivity. After all, those Angry Bird competitions can’t last all day, or can they?

It’s safe to say that tablets are going to become a permanent fixture in the business world. There are a number of different characteristics that give tablets a definite advantage in the office.

Portability
There is no greater benefit of a tablet than how easy it is to carry. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the middle of walking down the office corridor and someone needs a question answered, I don’t have my laptop in my hands and if I do I am not setting up shop right there. However, with a tablet I can access my staffing software right there and deliver the information my colleague needed without time lag.

And if I need to blast an email off or send a quick social media update? Not a problem! A tablet allows me to easily hop online and accomplish a task.

These devices are also large enough so that you can read an article or look at a spreadsheet without having to minimize or scroll constantly, which is often a problem with viewing things on a smartphone. Tablets typically have a display screen that ranges between 7 inches and 10 inches and they are usually less than 1 pound. Despite that size, data storage is typically not a problem.

Lack of moving parts
According to ZDNet, one of the features of a tablet that excited IT professionals more than anything is the lack of moving parts. The number of IT requests can significantly decrease when there are no hinges, latches or other hardware to break. Large companies will especially learn to find this feature helpful because it will decrease operational expenses by a substantial amount.

Performance and battery life
Because of their size and the evolution of modern technology, tablets have an incredible battery life in comparison to most traditional office equipment. Many tablets have a battery life that extends 8 to 10 hours long, which is significantly longer than most laptops. In addition, these pieces of technology don’t have a long boot-up time. Instead of facing the frustration of waiting for the computer to turn on just to check an email or two, you can swipe your tablet and easily find the information you need – no muss, no fuss. This will also help staffing firms decrease time waste that can lead to periods of low productivity. Think about how much time you waste having to go back to your desk from a meeting to look up a piece of information, or having to wait for a computer to boot up for a simple task? You can get rid of this!

Consume media faster
At a staffing firm, you’re using your employment software constantly to check and double check facts. You’re most likely checking candidates’ Twitter feeds, their blogs, resumes, cover letters and any other materials that are necessary for the job. The touchscreen will make browsing for the right document easier and faster – letting you get back to other work quicker.

Uncertain beginning to the quarter could drive contingent staffing

How positive are you about the future strength of the staffing industry? It seems that many executives are hesitant about the future economic outlook of the nation and maybe even their own organizations. In fact, the prevailing mood is down enough that many corporations are lowering their 2013 financial forecasts and decreasing the number of hires they are planning to make this year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that fourth-quarter operating earnings from 2012 more than overcame forecast expectation. However, despite the good feelings accruing from this positive news, many companies are warning that the first quarter of 2013 will be more challenging. With that in mind, 63 S&P organizations have decreased their earnings forecast. In addition, the lack of confidence is leading to a decrease in investments, which is signaling a potential drop-off in revenue opportunities.

This general lack of confidence is a good thing for the staffing industry. When there is doubt companies will use temporary employees instead of hiring fulltime employees. This gives them the flexibility they need to fulfill the increased demand but react quickly if business slows. If the business climate continues to improve they have ready trained and proven employees that can be quickly and easily brought on board as full time associates.

From what I hear staffing firms definitely have more orders on their desk than last year and they are scrambling to fill these orders. Are you ready to handle the demand, where are you finding your best candidates? Now is a great time for the industry to grow and exceed prior levels of contingent staffing penetration. As a staffing software provider we are always focused on helping match great candidates to great opportunities. We are ready…. Are you?