Bond Contract Extended

Elwood Staffing and SOS Employment Group Banner730x115

Elwood Staffing, following the acquisition of SOS Employment Group in February of 2013 has annual revenue of more than $800 million and ranks in the top 20 of all U.S. staffing companies. Elwood Staffing will gain operational efficiencies among its now nearly 1,000 employees with the deployment of Bond’s recruiting and staffing software throughout the combined organization.

Bond’s software is a robust, fully-integrated front-to-back office offering which is uniquely suited to large enterprise staffing organizations such as Elwood Staffing, who have been using the software since 2001.

The relationship with Elwood staffing and Bond International Software spans 13 years and has grown from 40 licenses to nearly 500 licenses. The expansion of the contract throughout the combined organization will increase the number of licenses to nearly 1,000. Importantly, Bond continually adds enhancements to the solution that builds on its ability to aid staffing and recruiting companies like Elwood to deliver exceptional customer service and profitably manage its operations from front office through to back office.

John Elwood, President of Elwood Staffing commented:

“We selected Bond’s staffing and recruiting software rather than other solutions for a number of reasons. First, Bond’s reputation within the industry played a strong part in our decision. We needed an integrated solution with a strong back office that could scale to meet our growth plans.”

“Our review of our processes and software was driven by the needs of our well-established cultures of sophistication, entrepreneurship and innovation. Bond’s software came out on top as our choice to support our vision for several reasons, but perhaps most important to us was Bond’s commitment to us over the years – and in the future – to deliver the software and services we need to reach our goals.”

Steve Russell, CEO of Bond International Software, commented:

“Elwood Staffing is an amazing story of success. With the acquisition of SOS Employment Group, the firm now services 6,000 clients annually and places some 27,000 temporary associates daily. We are very pleased that they’ve chosen Bond to support their operations and help them achieve their vision. Elwood’s trust in Bond’s capabilities is a testament to Bond’s excellent support, reliable software and the formation of a good partnership consistently demonstrated over many years. This is the kind of winning partnership we want to have with all of our customers.”

Elwood Staffing website

SOS Employment Group website

Future sight: ‘Big data’-enabled staffing and recruiting software to create actionable insights

The future holds big promises for big data

There has been a lot of conjecture about what ‘big data’ – massive databases of information managed by super-computers and powerful software — might be able to do to improve virtually every aspect of our lives. IBM, for example, has recently released its ‘five in five’ predictions for Innovations that will change our lives in the next five years, and these five innovations have amazing potential. But closer at hand, and more relevant to we in the staffing and recruiting industry, is how ‘big data’ can be used in the future to improve business processes, efficiency, revenues, and profits.

From today’s ‘regular data’ to tomorrow’s ‘big data’

Today, through the innovation of recruiting software technology and inclusion of new processes, we are able to evaluate information in near real-time. With that ability managers can consider the merits of a data set compared to past data and decide whether a course of action is appropriate or needs to be altered. Taking those small steps further into a giant leap in the future, staffing and recruiting professionals can see how big data has the potential to have a transformative impact on the success of candidate resourcing strategies and customer care, as well as sales and operational processes.

The future of comprehensive staffing data solutions

Data is a paramount source of information. While many staffing firms use a wide variety of separate staffing and recruiting software systems across the enterprise, such as an ATS system, Customer Relationship Management system and a Payroll system and another Accounting System, it has been difficult or prohibitively expensive to even consider integrating them. Big data-enabled software will herald the end of silos of information that hinder the overall development of real-time solutions. Data should available so that information analyzers and various systems can find patterns from within the endless configuration of numbers.

Full-enterprise cloud-based staffing and recruiting software solutions are becoming the norm in staffing and recruiting operations for just this reason. The availability of one integrated information process server that can take data from different business functions and processes and enable the creation of a clear picture of a scenario in the past or potential for the future will be crucial to competitive success.

Recently Pinstripe, a recruitment process outsourcing provider, suggested that “the true sign that analytics have arrived in the staffing software space is the presence of visual reporting tools, customizable data relationships and cross-platform data integration in nearly every product. Staffing and recruiting software vendors clearly understand how important analytics are to staffing and recruiting, and they are building analytics functions into their products.” Big data offers far more than just analytics for human use as many describe them. Big data is really about incredibly powerful software that looks deep within the data to reveal relationships, dependencies, and to perform predictions of outcomes and behaviors.

The deployment of big data-enabled staffing and recruiting software systems allow for succinct and accurate decisions make decision-making for staffing professionals much more reliable. Without the comprehensive solutions of the future that are designed to consolidate the various sourcing of information, a recruiting agency or staffing firm will be without a key component in the development of a strategy for their own future.

You can learn more about Bond’s unified staffing and recruiting software solutions by emailing us.

 

Staffing and recruiting: Are you seeing more women in the tech industry?

It’s old news that women, by in large, have been underrepresented in the information technology industry for decades.

Unlike in many other fields, this misrepresentation is not just for corner office, top managerial positions, but from the ground up. Positions that range from entry level to chief executive officer are taken by men. Some argue that this isn’t so much a fault of the industry, but is the effect of the decreased number of women entering science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

Percentage of women in IT industry grows

Regardless of the reason for the imbalance, the fact that men so outnumber women in the IT sector is common knowledge. However, that may all change soon. For the first time ever, the majority of the jobs created in the IT sector this year have been filled by women, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by Dice.com.

During the first nine months of 2013, about 39,000 jobs were created in the industries labeled “computer system designs and related services” by the federal government. According to Infoworld, of those newly created jobs, about 60 percent went to women – a drastic increase from the 34 percent for all of 2012. This is a trend that staffing and recruiting professionals have to monitor closely to ensure their staffing and recruiting software database reflects the change. Over the last decade, there have been about 534,000 jobs created in this industry and about 30.8 percent have been filled by women.

“Companies have been focusing on getting more women into technology for a long time. This year those efforts appear to be paying off – with 60 percent of new tech jobs created in 2013 filled by women, according to government statistics. To have the best tech organization, companies want to pull from the entire talent pool and we need to do more to get young girls thinking about technology careers early and often. That’s why Dice is supporting efforts like Code.org and Donors Choose to reach the next Marissa Mayer and may there be many of them,” said Shravan Goli, President of Dice.

Positive change in the tech industry

The figures about the relative increase in percentage of women hires in the technology sector have everyone talking. Some question whether this is an outlier year or if it demonstrates the changing values of the industry and the emergence of greater equality. Infoworld reports that one interesting fact for staffing and recruiting professionals to know from the data is the number of women hired in the tech industry for the first nine months of 2013 is the same as past years – it’s the number of men hired in the industry that has declined in comparison to previous years. So far researchers and industry experts don’t have any theories as to why there is a decline in men being hired, while the number of women filling new positions has stayed the same. This change is another that needs to be monitored closely with staffing and recruiting software, if your agency hopes to place the correct ratio of qualified employees.

“Is this really positive change? It’s too early to say,” said Elizabeth Ames of the Anita Borg Institute, an advocacy group for women in tech, according to the news source. “But we are seeing more awareness of the issue and seeing leaders in the technology business realize it is an imperative to bring women into tech workforces.”

Overall, as employment in this industry continues to increase as the nation recovers from the recession, staffing and recruiting professionals will see more and more clients asking for qualified candidates. Regardless of the reason, more of these hires may be women in the near future, if this trend continues. So recruiters may want to consider who is filling their staffing software and recruiting software database and see if there’s a rise in women being hired by clients.

 

Taking it to the Cloud: Selecting the best for your recruitment company

Cloud (1)Do you take the one size fits all approach with technology? No matter the size of your recruitment company, how you build your business environment can be the difference between success and failure.

With the recruitment industry as competitive as ever, agencies are continually looking for the most efficient ways to secure the best candidate for the job. The rise of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and Cloud technology has enabled recruiters to stay constantly plugged-in to the latest opportunities and potential candidates. Companies can now focus efforts on the important business goals, rather than the day-to-day technology concerns such as data control.

That said, with a wide variety of solutions and products available, recruiters should be asking what is best for the business before taking this critical technology decision.

Size doesn’t matter

Whether you are a small start-up or global enterprise company, there are a number of important factors to consider. Selecting the right provider will help to eliminate any concerns, such as security and continuity, both of which still remain at the top of the list for any business. The most important factor is finding a solution which works for you.

What’s next?

When thinking about implementing new or reviewing existing technology, here are some questions to consider:

  • What are your considerations? If you are a recruitment manager, should the IT department be involved? How will the new technology fit with the overall IT strategy – and will the IT team provide a series of pre-requisites to ensure the new solution or product will fit within the current technology architecture? If you are in the IT team, do you need to get senior members of the executive team involved to help with company-wide roll-out?
  • What is important to you? Understanding core business goals – whether that is to increase efficiencies, help reduce costs or improve remote working flexibility for employees – is essential. Determining and fine-tuning business pre-requisites will ensure the solution makes a valuable impact. Each business environment is unique, and making presumptions about priorities – rather than taking a step back and reviewing as a whole – could lead to confusion later in the process.
  • What are your concerns? Do you require full ownership of business data, or want to retain control over back-ups off site? Is security a concern? Identifying and airing these issues now will help shape conversations with vendors, enabling you to address them head on. The solution you choose needs to be right for your business, and after investing time and budget, you don’t want to be left with an expensive contract that simply does not fit the bill.

Outlining answers to the above questions before approaching technology vendors or suppliers will help both refine requirements and stay focused. Getting your business environment right is important, and considering technology that works for you – rather than ticking a box – is one way to ensure the emphasis remains on what you are doing, not how you are going to do it.

Does your staffing and recruiting sales team have a champion?

Every sales team has a champion.

No, this person hasn’t ridden into the office on a white steed to save the princess from an evil witch, but he or she is a hero. An office sales champion is someone in the organization who is able to reel in the big fish clients, who understands the marketplace and thrives in the organization. In terms of the staffing and recruiting industry, every firm must have a champion staffing sales person. This sales leader will bring in the big fish clients and are a trusted resource. Behind this champion staffing sales person is a staffing and recruiting software database that enables them to succeed at the highest level.

Characteristics of a staffing sales champion

According to an article in Staffing Industry Analysts, sales champions are characterized by three primary skills. In the article, author Donna Carroll, vice president of sales, North America, for the Professional Services Staffing business at CDI Corp., stated that sales champions listen to their clients and really take the time and effort to understand the individual needs of the person speaking on the other side. Instead of walking into a meeting with an agenda, a sales champion understands that his or her primary focus should be to learn the objective and desired outcome of the partnership from the client. All of these details are then carefully recorded in a staffing software and recruiting software database to provide a team with the necessary information to find the right person to fit the job.

Once this is accomplished, a true staffing sales champion is able to reiterate the needs of the client and discuss the pros and cons of a strategy or potential solution without negating what the other person is saying. A champion establishes trust between the staffing firm and the client. The ongoing dialogue between a staffing sales person, account management and the client will create a successful partnership.

Importance of developing champions

Champions are not simply born into the world of staffing. The skills and strategies are taught over time, which is why it is important not to become complacent with one staffing sales champion, but to continue to train others to take this role on as well. Harvard Business Review reported on the importance of creating a strong network and multiple sales champions because unexpected things can happen at any moment and it’s not uncommon for people to quit, get fired, take a prolonged hiatus, etc. For example, Aimee, a senior executive at a global financial services firm, recently watched as the contacts she built over 15 years at a company became useless as people left due to corporate restructuring and the dip in the economy during the recession.

“Many of the leadership team whom I had worked with for a number of years changed,” she explained to the source. “You feel you’ve lost the equity you built up over the years – people knowing what you do and how you perform.”

In a staffing sales environment, the loss of a champion professional could have drastic results, which is why it is important to cultivate multiple champions. Talented sales professionals working for a staffing agency can achieve greatness or polish their skills, if the resources are available. In fact, research from Staffing Industry Analysts shows that recruiting agencies that invest in the latest tools like staffing and recruiting software as well as the training and support required to turn a good staffing sales person into a champion experience higher and more consistent profitability.

Want to make champions of your sales team? Give us a call at 800-318-4983 or email us for details on how Bond’s software can energize your sales staff.