Staffing and recruiting professionals, are you staying up to date about the ACA?

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Health insurance is a hot button issue in the nation right now, as small-to-large businesses try to determine the scope of the changes to health care policies under the Affordable Health Care Act. The ACA is the most sweeping health care legislation to come out of the White House in ages. The ACA has made headlines for a significant period of time now, and it’s just getting started. Staffing and recruiting professionals understand that the changes to how health insurance coverage works, and how employers are now required to provide coverage to those employees that fit certain criteria, will now impact hiring decision making. Companies are now asking, “is it more affordable to hire one full-time, salaried worker who is required to have health insurance, or, is it more affordable to hire two contract workers who don’t work enough hours to qualify for health insurance?”

Changes are coming to health care coverage
As the federal government tries to fix the kinks in the deployment of the ACA this fall and winter, staffing companies are simultaneously trying to prepare for the potential repercussions of the ACA. This means hiring professionals who are well versed in benefits deployment and have strong backgrounds in health care. Professionals in the staffing industry, like John Vanderkin, President of Employers Overload, an innovative workforce staffing company, warns business owners that recruiting firms cannot act as a scapegoat for companies trying to avoid paying for health care coverage to workers.

“The staffing industry should not become an avenue for companies to try and avoid the ACA requirements, but the ACA creates some opportunities for the staffing industry if companies adopt the use of certain staffing industry services. Used properly, the staffing industry can help a company minimize some of the impacts of ACA,” said Vanderkin. “Utilizing temporary employees for short- term business growth or projects can alleviate the tracking and notification requirements that a company needs to follow for ACA. Using temp-to-hire services to fill permanent positions can help to reduce turnover and avoid more costly ACA administration tasks until the company is sure that a candidate will really be a good fit for the organization.”

He went on to say that “the ACA has also created numerous challenges for the staffing industry. The increased costs associated with longer term temporary project placements, administration and tracking of the ACA requirements as well as educating the staff and candidates of the staffing company are just a few of these challenges. As staffing organizations recognize the increased costs of administrating and paying for the ACA, they will need to determine how to pass those costs along to their clients in a fair and reasonable fashion.”

How companies can work with staffing partners to adapt to the ACA
Businesses attempting to adapt to meet the new standards outlined by the ACA may find working with staffing and recruiting firms as partners in the endeavor to untangle the web of health care legislation may be the right way to go. Staffing professionals are finding that streamlined technology solutions are able to increase workplace efficiency, like staffing and recruiting software. As a result, all that is needed for added benefits to the deployment of the ACA is a team of people who are dedicated to learning everything there is to know about the ACA.

“We have done a tremendous amount of work to prepare for this change. We have spent a great deal of time educating key members of our staff, we continue to meet with customers and businesses within our service areas to educate them about the ACA and its effect on staffing, we are working closely with our software vendor, Bond International, to enhance our applicant tracking system so we can meet the requirements of ACA and we are continually working to answer questions by our candidates and employees on how the ACA will affect and support them,” said Vanderkin. “Keeping abreast of the changing ACA regulations is an important task of a staffing vendor and we provide this service and support to our customers to ensure that they have the latest information to base their hiring decisions upon.”

Changes to the ACA in the last quarter
Unlike what the previous paperwork stated, if a business or individual wants health insurance coverage to begin on Jan. 1, 2014, they now have until Dec. 23, 2013 to purchase a plan – this is eight days later than the initial enrollment deadline. However, according to the Detroit Free Press, this deadline is hardly a fast and hard line as well. The news source reported that the deadline for purchasing a plan is March 31, 2014.

This is good news for those people who have a current, steady health insurance coverage plan. However, those individuals who have gone without insurance could be required to sign up for at least a one year policy immediately. The ACA reforms also states that those individuals who are currently signed up for a group health plan are not required to find an alternative health insurance coverage option. The previous plans that people were signed up for will continue to work as they did before the implementation of the ACA.

Issues the ACA has created will pop up in the careers of experienced staffing and recruiting professionals. What’s important is the ability of a quality recruiter to take the new knowledge, chew it over and be able to understand how the changes to the legislation will impact the hiring process and whether a client is required by law to offer health insurance to a potential employee. These details are best left in a secure location, where data is protected, yet accessible. Staffing software and recruiting software provides this exact blend of features, which is why it is an invaluable tool for a firm.

Learn more about managing the ACA as a staffing agency from Bond’s ACA whitepaper.

Brightwater Selects Bond Adapt as Software of Choice for Offices Across Ireland

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Brightwater Recruitment Logo 270x100

Brightwater Recruitment Consultancy is a professional services firm placing candidates in permanent and temporary positions, with over 70% of candidates being placed in permanent positions. Brightwater has become one of the five biggest employment consultancies in Ireland.

Prior to selecting Bond Adapt, Brightwater was relying on a bespoke in-house system. This system was administratively heavy; had no access to CV parsing, and lacked social media functionality. While the system was flexibly built, it failed to add the necessary value and time savings which are required to enable the organisation to work smarter.

Mairead Fleming, Managing Director, Brightwater Recruitment comments, “We conducted a thorough and comprehensive review of the market when looking for a software provider and eventually created a shortlist of three. We knew exactly what our pre-requisites were: the software had to be quick, efficient and easy to use as well as having social media functionality. We also wanted a provider that we could trust to support us, a piece of software that was robust and an end to end solution that included fast transfer of all our existing data. – Bond Adapt stood out amongst competitors as it ticked all of these boxes and more.”

Bond Adapt makes a recruiter’s daily tasks efficient and co-ordinated, bringing together contextually relevant data from multiple sources to enable the recruiter to perform searches and match candidates quickly and efficiently. In addition, social media content and profiles can be linked to associated records within Bond Adapt; while the Information Fly-outs module provides candidate profile information derived directly from LinkedIn. 

Fleming says, “Our data is our livelihood. Bond not only has a track record of successfully deploying recruitment systems but could also seamlessly transfer data from our existing system to the new one. As the leading recruitment consultancy in Ireland it is important that we stay ahead of our competitors and the software and functionality from Bond will enable us to retain that competitive edge.”

Fleming continues, “Bond Adapt is adaptable to our business and really does work smarter. As all of the information on our systems is presented to us, it works in the background – as vacancies and candidates come in it is constantly searching, it really is an excellent piece of software. When I saw the functionality which Bond Adapt could offer us I knew that the benefits and efficiency which it would bring to our business will really make a difference.”

Fleming concludes, “The central system will enable our business information to be shared across our offices in Dublin, Belfast and Cork which again was a critical pre-requisite. The service from Bond and ability to match the software to our requirements has been excellent – we really feel like Bond understands us as an organisation and we look forward to working with them and developing the relationship further in the future.”

Brightwater Recruitment Specialists website

Recruiting Software: Envision the Final Frontier

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“There’s nothing wrong with the bloody thing!” Scotty so famously told Spock (numerous times) in response to his emotionless inquiries regarding the warp drive.

And that’s how many of us feel today. Leave us alone. Our recruiting software is just fine. Well, maybe so, for today’s needs. But what kind of industry leader would Bond be if we didn’t dare to explore a future world of recruiting technology that not only keeps up with, but takes us beyond the “final” frontier of staffing needs.

So give us permission to speak freely as we dare to boldly make four Final Frontier predictions of the future of staffing software.

 

The Final Frontier of Recruiting Software is ASSIMILATION

The emphasis is on One Place! Yes, that’s right. Assimilation. Maybe the Borg had it (somewhat) right. After all, their vision of collective consciousness was really only to raise the quality of life in the universe. But the Borg’s focus was unfortunately on people and not the disconnected work-processes that breed inefficiency.

Let’s face it: multiple platforms for managing your operation is not the best way to operate a streamlined staffing and recruiting business. A centralized database should be the entire industry’s vision for 2014 and beyond. Future-focused staffing pros should demand streamlined data sharing across departments via a single web-enabled tool.

Imagine – this year – all of your team members being able to engage with intuitively easy access to:

  • Candidate contracts
  • Job Orders
  • Task Scheduling
  • Job Posting
  • Background Screenings
  • Incident tracking
  • And even Accounts Receivable

Oh, and by the way, in this vision of Utopia, recruiters and sales reps will have unified interfaces to instantly access 80 percent or more of their daily work. What’s more, none of your team members will ever have to leave a staffing system in order to draft an email. MS Outlook will be truly integrated into their future Recruiting Software.

Like Spock says:

The Future Needs a Smart Mobile & Friendly Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

From an applicant tracking perspective, you have three audiences: your employee, your customers and your candidates. You will be able to have access to all of them (and them to you) in a future which offers a mobile-enabled applicant tracking system (ATS). A mobile system with fewer features than is illogical. The interface will – of course – be user friendly and simple.

It will enable:

–      sales reps to search via keywords for candidates and view their availability;

–      if they wish, clients will be able to receive text summaries of interview times with click-through access to candidate references;

–      and candidates will be able to browse job openings and complete an application, and submit their resume or LinkedIn profile.

Mobile evolution – specifically in support of applicant tracking  – is critical. We must envision the future. Now! Smarter mobile recruiting will open our reach to a wider pool of candidates, help retain our best staffing base and attract even more clients who are living life as “on-the-go” Staffers.

Follow the Enterprise and go where no one has gone before!

The Undiscovered Country of Recruiting Software Offers Quantum Search Capabilities

And we’re not just talking resume search. We’re talking an epic database built on a platform which truly predicts which candidates are the best fit for a position based on skills, education and workplace culture.

This search system will grow your applicants based on job history, specific skills, their references and whether they look left or right when they answer your questions.

This technology will, of course, be mobile-enabled (see the Future of Mobile above) and accessed by SIRI. In essence it will be Google (times 10) for staffers and recruiters.

Who was it who said, “Think and it will become a reality”? Well as Captain Jean-Luc Picard says, “Make it So.” Let’s take our orders from the Enterprise and envision our next frontier of hyper-powered applicant search and resume harvesting.

Engage!

The Future Holds an Integrated Payroll

Double data entry will be a process of the past as we look to what the future holds for recruiting software. A single job order, once filled, will trigger secure, cloud-based, payroll and billing capabilities in an integrated system. Valuable time saved will be reallocated to sales and recruitment efforts. Operational inefficiencies will be eliminated that will thus improve profit margins.

The system will require no need to enter hours and rates into a payroll system with a separate login and interface. Rather, contract employees’ timesheets will seamlessly integrate and require single voice-commanded approval from clients’ cell phones.

Paychecks will be distributed to your temporary or contract employees’ mobile devices so they can bump and spend anywhere.

Integration into third party – if desired – payroll, accounting and billing systems will be plug and play and require zero customization. And of course, payroll will automatically sync your payroll with the latest Federal, State and local payroll tax regulations.

Star Trek’s Data summed up the concept of integrated payroll nicely when he said, “Our neural pathways have become accustomed to your sensory input patterns.” That’s right. Payroll needs to be friends with recruiting software.

The future of recruiting software is (to steal a line from Data) “superior in many ways”, and once achieved will not be given up to go back to 2013.

So let’s do as Scotty does and “Give it all we’ve got”! The future is really not that far off.

CoWorx Selects erecruit to Empower Client and Candidate Focused Commercial Staffing Services

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erecruit’s enterprise staffing software platform enables CoWorx to innovate service delivery while maximizing operational efficiency


CoWorx Staffing ServicesBOSTON — February 24, 2014 — erecruit, the emerging leader in enterprise staffing software for large firms, announced today that it has partnered with CoWorx Staffing Services, one of the largest commercial staffing firms in the U.S., to deploy erecruit across its more than sixty locations nationwide. CoWorx will leverage the flexibility and configurability provided by erecruit’s front-to-back office staffing platform to innovate service delivery, increase operational efficiency and enable growth.

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Recruiters Beware: The perils of a stock message

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Social media has certainly changed the staffing and recruiting industry. After all, never before have recruiters been able to contact professionals in a wide range of industries by simply searching for various keywords used in social media profiles. All of the information found online about a worker is accessible in a profile found in staffing software and recruiting software.

 The issue with generic introductions

However, it’s not uncommon for a recruiter to try and make contact with dozens, if not hundreds of workers during the course of an average week. This may mean that a staffing professional finds himself or herself using a template for making initial contact with an individual about a particular position. Using the same introduction, or one that rarely changes, may seem like a good idea in the beginning. But, just like potential employers can identify stock cover letters and resumes, a worker will know if a staffing professional used little effort to make contact.

Depending on whether the individual is an active job seeker or passively looking for a new position if it offers the right benefits and features, a generic introduction on LinkedIn, Twitter or any other means could come off as insincere. As a result, it’s likely that the worker will forgo responding back to a staffing professional’s initial emails or message.

Online recruiting starts with a strong introduction

Finding the ideal potential candidate for a client depends on impressing both sides. The bond between an employer and worker is a co-dependent relationship, which means that both sides have to feel comfortable with a staffing professional’s ability to bring everyone together. A generic introduction letter is hardly going to instill confidence in anyone.

The benefits that come with online recruiting are dependent on a strong introductory message from you while you are in the office. Make that initial contact something to remember by mentioning specific points in a worker’s online professional profile or presence. This requires slightly more effort than a boilerplate template, but it could drastically increase the chance that a recruiter receives a positive message back in response to the initial contact.

When a recruiter is building an online network and a comprehensive staffing and recruiting software database, he or she needs to make sure that the people who are included have a positive opinion. Not only should the introduction email make a comment about something included in an individual’s profile, but if a staffing professional has a particular position in mind, talking about the company or the role could be a great way to entice a response.

Use the golden rule

The phrase “treat others as you would like to be treated” is famous for a reason. Regardless of whether this lesson is applied to kindness in a grocery store or protocol about a job offer, it’s important to take it to heart. As a recruiter, it’s hard to imagine feeling positive about receiving a generic message on social media or an email that demonstrates just how little effort was taken with the missive. Therefore, it’s important for a recruiter to acknowledge how the golden rule applies in this situation as well.

A recruiting and staffing team can easily increase the number of positive responses it receives from potential job candidates if the generic messages used to make initial contact for a lead are updated and personalized. Just a few extra minutes can have dramatically better results and improve a staffing firm’s figures for the year.

 

Beacon Hill Staffing Group Streamlines Operations with erecruit

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erecruit’s Enterprise Staffing Software Platform Generates Productivity Gains Across all Operations

BH_Twitter_logo_-_newBOSTON — February 19, 2014 — erecruit, the emerging leader in enterprise staffing software for large firms, announced today that Beacon Hill Staffing Group recently deployed erecruit across all of its twenty-seven branches and specialty divisions to support its continued, market leading growth. Beacon Hill has experienced rapid user adoption, implemented best practice processes across the organization and reduced overhead costs in the onboard-fill-to-bill cycle with erecruit’s fully configurable and integrated solution.

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Master the Language of Social Recruiting and Staffing

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5 Key Lessons to Fluency

Savvy travelers who plan extended visits to foreign countries have learned that the best experiences are presented when they assimilate with the locals. So they immerse themselves as much as they can in both the language and culture.

Social staffing and recruiting can feel like “a new land” for many of us. It represents a language many of us strive to master. The good news is that learning social recruiting is far easier than mastering a new language. Tour guides are everywhere. All we have to do is follow them, learn and practice the art of social recruiting.

A few of our favorite social guides have offered lessons which appropriately prepare us for 2014.  Join us this year as we listen and mimic the social recruiting lessons they are teaching us.

Oh, and don’t forget to follow these social gurus. They are some of the best choices for guiding you around the land of social recruiting.

Social Recruiting and Staffing – Lesson 1

“Work LinkedIn for Referrals”

Bond Insight:

Recruiters Work your LinkedIn Network susan heathfield

“Stay in touch with former, valued, trusted colleagues”

Susan Heathfield
Management Consultant, HR and Employment Expert for About.com

Connect with Susan on LinkedIn and Twitter

Share ThisLinkedIntwitter

Search for candidates on LinkedIn by job skill. If a member of your network is connected to them you have a referral in the making. This is especially effective if you do your job as a social recruiter by maintaining and nurturing a vast number of meaningful relationships. And, of course, you do this in a non-spamy way.

Stay in touch in an authentic way with your LinkedIn network. When you do, reaching out to your WARM referral community will feel as easy as lounging on the beach on St. Barts!

Social Staffing and Recruiting – Lesson 2

“Looks Count”

Bond Insight:

Recruiters Need a Professional Imageandrew greenberg

“Your photo will most likely be the first interaction with job seekers”

Andrew Greenberg
Managing Partner, The Recruiting Division, a Leader in U.S. based RPO and a Recruitment Innovator

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn and Twitter

Share ThisLinkedIntwitter

It’s proven! Search anywhere and find studies that agree. Photos create engagement. And that’s what you want. Right? When a candidate visits your personal profile page you want them to clearly understand your personal brand. You certainly don’t have to look good in a hula skirt, but reflect on what your photo really says to your candidates.

Does it say, “I’m a recruiter who’s here to help you advance your career.”

Or does it say, “Hurry up now, I’ve got some job orders to fill.”

So take note and assess your photo. Perhaps a professional headshot is due!

Social Staffing and Recruiting – Lesson 3

“Honor Social Profiles”

Bond Insight:

Social Profiles are the New Resumejohn sullivan

“Accepting social media profiles in lieu of resumes opens the door to many passives”

Dr. John Sullivan
Internationally recognized HR thought-leader

Connect with John on LinkedIn and Twitter

Share ThisLinkedIntwitter

Top candidates are often not in “job search” mode. So why should they spend any time updating their resumes? Likely they’d rather spend their free time planning their next trip to Fiji!

They are seemingly just fine to be working in their current job. On the outside maybe. But isn’t it your job to see what’s really on the inside? Remember, you need to demonstrate the opportunity that exists with your client.

So why find a great candidate only to halt the discussion by putting up a “resume” hurdle?  If they are on LinkedIn, they have likely documented their job history. After all LinkedIn prompts members do so each time they log in (and log out)!

Bottom line, adopt the use of social resumes and you’ll widen your candidate pool.

Social Staffing and Recruiting – Lesson 4

“Remember to Tweet”

Bond Insight:

A Little Bird Talks to a Lot of Candidateslauren dugan

“Over a million job postings are announced on Twitter every 60 days”

Lauren Dugan
Social media consultant serving SMB’s, founding AllTwitter editor and online social media instructor

Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn and Twitter

Share ThisLinkedIntwitter

Twitter is easy to search. In fact many consider it to be a search engine, running right behind Google and YouTube. When you search for candidates, get creative. Search for concepts your candidates might be tweeting about. Or search for hashtags like #jobs. Because your next perfect candidate might be tweeting about their desire to leave their current #job and escape to #Jamaica!

You can also broadcast your job – ideally to a following of past, present and future candidates. Reduce your job description to 140 characters, and even less so it can be re-tweeted.

Social Staffing and Recruiting – Lesson 5

“Google is for Techies”

Bond Insight:

Google+ Attracts STEM Candidateserin bazinet

“Technology pros are attracted to Google+”

Erin Bazinet
Social Media Manager | Talent Acquisition at Seven Step Recruiting

Connect with Erin on LinkedIn and Twitter

Share ThisLinkedIntwitter

Looking to fill STEM positions within an ever shrinking pool of qualified candidates? Get on Google+.  It may seem as foreign as a vacation to Minnesota, but Google+ is the land of tech candidates! Upload your list of past candidates and see who they are connected to. +1, comment and engage in a meaningful way.

And don’t forget to setup your circles. Circling is basically a Googly way to describe list segmentation. With Google+ you can easily sort your candidates by skills, location and more. Then send messages targeting your communities with relevant job offers and referral requests.

Ready? Repeat after me: “Social Recruiting” and “Social Staffing.” That’s right.
Now with more emphasis on the “SOCIAL.”

Excellent!

Connect, follow, like and circle our favorite social recruiting pro’s. Study their lessons and you’ll soon master the language of social recruiting. Do this and you’ll have a greater chance of vastly increasing your placements!

And after you close out a record year of filling job orders, we highly recommend you reward yourself with a bit of R&R to an exotic location like Maldives!

In a War for Top Talent, Regular Communication Wins

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Treat your candidates like customersAre you communicating regularly with clients and candidates? Or, to put it another way, are you treating job seekers like potential customers?

It seems like a no-brainer, something everyone should do. Isn’t there a “Golden Rule” that states you should “treat others as you want to be treated?” But if we are honest, for a variety of reasons, we rarely communicate as we expect others to communicate with us.

In the staffing and recruiting world, this couldn’t be truer. Candidates lack visibility into the recruiting process, and a lack of follow-up and check-ins can create a black hole that alienates high-potential candidates. This is especially devastating for firms that differentiate based on talent and speed to market.

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Research measures gender wage gap

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Staffing and recruiting professionals, as experts in hiring practices, may already know the results of a new earnings report from Pew Research Center. According to the agency, women earned 84 cents for every $1 made by men in 2012. Depending on the industry or sectors in which a recruiting and staffing professional specializes, this figure could be surprising or feel right on target.

The earnings figure Pew found is slightly higher than the 81 cents to every dollar figure reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. One reason for the earning discrepancy is that the Pew study estimated the gender wage gap in terms of hourly wages, while the government research took account of weekly earnings. Simply put, the differences in income are the result of a difference in hours.

The differences in reading wage statistics

According to the Pew study, women are twice as likely as men (26 percent versus 13 percent) to work part time. This naturally would have an overall impact on the earnings of women in general, if you compared the weekly wages of both genders. To reduce the skew, the government study only used figures from full-time workers, those who work at least 35 hours a week.

The differences in earnings is said to somewhat be derived from the break most women take in the middle of their careers to raise children. However, figures that dissect earnings for women and men throughout the progression in their careers show that even at the beginning of their careers, when women are right out of college, there is a discrepancy.

How millennial women react to the news

Among workers between the ages of 25 to 34, women’s hourly earnings last year were 93 percent of those of men. The LA Times reported that this wage gap is even more severe considering that 38 percent of women between 25 and 32 have a bachelor’s degree – more than the 31 percent of men of the same age group.

“Recent cohorts of young women have fallen further behind their same-aged male counterparts as they have aged and dealt with the responsibilities of parenthood and family,” Pew researchers wrote. “For women, marriage and motherhood are both associated with less time spent on paid work-related activities.”

Many of the women interviewed in the study and by various news networks found that there is still much to be desired for equality in the workplace. Positive movements have certainly been made, but some view that there is still more to be done to ensure women and men have the opportunity to earn equal wages for the same work.

Possible ways staffing and recruiting professionals can help narrow the earnings gap

While staffing and recruiting professionals are unable to decide the income men and women receive for a position, they can better prepare candidates for salary negotiations. Experts have argued that the wage gap is partially the fault of women being unable to effectively negotiate higher wages, while men are often more likely to demand higher compensation in initial meetings. By evaluating candidates from staffing software and recruiting software and providing negotiation technique tips that will highlight an individual’s talents, a recruiter could help his or her client achieve a better salary.

This will hopefully help reduce the wage gap that still plagues female and male relations in the working world. Every little bit to help bring equality to the workplace can help, and benefiting clients is the real win for recruiting professionals.