How to boost staffing performance by improving follow through

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As a staffing professional, do you have a responsibility to follow up with a candidate? It’s a debatable point. There are articles out there claiming that failing to contact a prospective job candidate after a decision has been made about a position is leading to the erosion of the industry’s reputation. On the other hand, the time crunch and fear of making a legal blunder are real concerns.

I’m sure most of us would agree – we want to be able to get back to every job candidate we screen to let them know if they got the job. After all, we understand what that tortured limbo status feels like! Plus, the potential candidate who fails to get one job may be ideal for another position you’re staffing for. However, if you leave this person in limbo land and give him or her a negative experience, your chances of successfully recruiting them for another job have seriously decreased.

I know, I know. You’re probably saying to yourself that you know the benefits of contacting prospective job candidates. You just don’t have the time! Well, there are ways for you, as a staffing professional, to increase productivity and improve your performance so that you have the time to return a few calls and get back to those waiting in staffing purgatory.

First, you know that hiring is picking up across multiple industries, which means your client load and the number of potential candidates you’re talking to is on the rise – making it even harder to track the work flow of a job. Make sure to leverage your skills and your ability to take advantage of your cutting edge recruiting software. It can help you track job candidates from first contact to client billing. The software will provide you with a manageable candidate tracking system – allowing you to know who to contact when in regards to the conclusion of filling a job.

The staffing software will provide you with the mobile-accessible solution you need to ensure that candidate communications are completed in a timely manner – leaving no one feeling as if they are stuck in limbo. Boost the reputation of your industry and your organization by using a system to improve candidate relations from the start.

Common resume lies recruiting agencies catch every day

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As a recruiting and staffing professional, you’ve seen it all. From the potential job candidate who acts like the bee’s knees to the person who struggles to articulate a thought in an email. It’s the staffing industry after all, and everyone is after that next big professional break and they think you’re going to be able to give it to them. I’m sure you’re watching out for those job candidates who are stretching the truth, but are you paying attention to those who are trying to take on the role of the Big Bad Wolf and lie on their resume?

As you well know, lying on a resume is not as uncommon as many outside the staffing and recruiting industry might think. According to Statistic Brain, 53 percent of resumes and job applications contain falsifications. ADP has reported that 46 percent of employment, education and/or credential reference checks on job applicants have revealed discrepancies between what the applicant provided and what the source provided.

But, why do applicants lie? Obviously, lying on a resume is foolish. If you’re not immediately caught, you will be sooner or later and those lies will immediately get you tossed out the door. Still, some job candidates still feel that lying is there best chance at getting your attention.

When you’re reviewing a candidate’s resume, are you screening it for potential fibs to outright lies? You have a number of tools that can be used to check the validity of a job candidate right at your fingertips. Your recruiting software helps you manage the details of an applicant, check resume credentials, job history and other background details as it tracks his or her progress through the entire recruiting process. With your software system acting as your ‘fact-checker’ you can more easily determine the details that are the key to catching a liar. Because of the massive amount of talent you deal with on a daily basis, it can sometimes be hard to connect the dots, which is why having a software that enables you to effectively grow, track, and manage your candidate pool is critical.

With that in mind, here are the top three things job candidates are likely to lie about on their resume that your recruiting software can help you catch:

1) Employment gaps.

Forbes reports that the most common resume lies involve playing with employment dates to hide gaps. This can be because a person is trying to hide being fired, a period of job hunting or even an embarrassing prison stay. Women may even stretch the employment truth because they believe leaving the workforce to start a family could be viewed negatively by potential employers. You can use your staffing software to better track employment dates and see if there are any inconsistencies that might pop up.

2) Experience.

It’s not uncommon for a job candidate to embellish the truth on a resume. After all, the entire purpose of that piece of paper is to get someone to make a call. However, when embellishment stretches into a grey area and the candidate can’t back up his or her claims, there are problems. You’re trying to fit the person to the right job and if a worker lies about his or her credentials and the lie isn’t caught, the resulting situation is going to be bad for everyone involved.

3) Certifications or degrees.

It’s such a simple thing, but the news doesn’t lie. Many people, even chief executive officers (CEOs) in charge of global companies, have been caught lying about the degrees or certifications they may hold. It’s an easy thing to check for and can help you immediately cross someone off the candidate list.

At the end of the day, you want to place candidates or employees that will serve the needs of your clients and reflect positively on your staffing and recruiting expertise. Using all of the tools at your disposal to find candidates that meet both of these requirements is just plain good business sense.

How staffing firms can extend social media reach (Part 2)

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Let’s continue to discuss the various ways you can best leverage your social media accounts to extend your reach. As a staffing professional you could be managing multiple audiences – potential job candidates, clients and even other industry experts. While the purpose of social media marketing is easy – to create content that adds value to your brand and increases lead generation, it can sometimes be hard to know best practices.

Here are the final two suggestions for our top five list of ways to leverage your social media presence:

4) Use and promote infographics. Have you clicked on an infographic? Those extended graphics full of easy-to-digest information are everywhere and for good reason – they work. Infographics provide you with a powerful tool for link generation and can increase web traffic because they are so easy to share. Once you have an infographic uploaded online, make sure you promote it intelligently on your social media networks so that it can become “viral bait.” According to PR Marketing, best practices for creating and sharing infographics have developed (like using a qualified graphic design to make an original product) and it’s most likely in your best interest to follow them. An infographic is not intended to be a flier for your business and should not be promotional in nature. Therefore, make sure promotional details are kept to a minimum – max should be about 20 percent.

5) Create a community. Engaging your users is the premier way for your social media presence to stay active and gain a following. Guest blog posts, mentioning others when you share their content and sending out congratulatory messages are all great ways to boost a community. Guest blog posts gain a lot of attention because, just like when people used to be mentioned in the newspaper, they share with their friends the post they were included in or wrote for your blog. As a result, you get more views, Google believes you’re a popular site and boosts your search standings and more people could potentially become regular followers of your blog or social media accounts.

These strategies and others can help you extend your social media reach and provide more fodder for your staffing needs. Remember, as your network expands due to the successful implementation of a social media strategy, you’re going to need to keep track of these connections and the right staffing software will be necessary. Social media is all about building a community – make sure you don’t forget the details!

How staffing firms can extend their social media reach (Part 1)

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Is your social media campaign actively working to extend your reach as a thought leader in the staffing industry? It might be, but chances are there is something you can do to further boost the effectiveness of this marketing medium. You’re already using social media to research and gain insight into potential job candidates, why not optimize it to further manage your brand identity?

Tech Crunch reports that sharing produces an estimated 10 percent of all internet traffic and 21 percent of referral traffic to sites from search and social. According to a study done by ShareThis, Starcom MediaVest Group and Rubinson Partners, 38 percent of link sharing channels originated with Facebook, 34 percent by hyperlinking on blogs, 17 percent by email and 11 percent with Twitter. It’s not hard to conclude then that your content and overall social media strategy needs to be developed to facilitate sharing.

Here are five ways you can extend your social media reach:

1) Share useful, informational and funny content. What gets a person to click on a link? With so many options on the web, you need to display and share the best content possible. You can’t just promote your presence on social media, you have to contribute something that is worth following. Your Facebook and LinkedIn posts and Tweets need to consist of valuable, engaging content. Industry news, funny GIFs and instructional materials can boost your engagement on the web and have your followers spread your brand by pressing the share button. People aren’t going to follow your brand because you are promoting a new product – they want to get something useful out of following you. If you don’t provide your social media audience with engaging content, you may soon find they are tuning you out and will soon click the unfollow button.

For example, there are plenty of people looking for work in the United States – even if they already have jobs. Passive job seekers are casually monitoring job boards and social media networks to see if an opportunity crops up. By sharing the positions you are trying to fill and a link to follow for more information, you could be gaining a potential job candidate who is ideal for a position you are trying to staff. Once they’ve made contact with you, your recruiting software can track their progress throughout the application process. This entire ball started rolling because you began sharing useful information on your social media account – leveraging the tool to help you accomplish your job.

2) Strategize your link placing. According to ShareThis, different social networks have different link clicking rates. Each link shared on Twitter receives roughly 4.8 clicks, Facebook links get 4.3 clicks and email only attains 1.7 clicks. You still want to share all of these links on the various social media and digital platforms you have, but make sure to vary your taglines and the meta-data. Auto-populating networks using a social media manager is one of the big no-nos. If your followers are dedicated, they are going to be watching you on Twitter and Facebook and will see that you shared the same content in the same exact way without customizing it for the platform.

3) Add social sharing buttons. Are your social sharing buttons easily accessible? If they aren’t, you could be losing out on a significant number of organic marketing opportunities. Place social sharing buttons on all of your content so that you are enabling your audience to share your content with their personal networks and increase your potential reach. The potential clients and job applicants, and even other staffing industry professionals that you could reach, can increase if you include individual sharing buttons for each blog post, infographic or account.