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Using Effective Recruiting Metrics to Drive Results

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Every good recruiting agency has a mission and every mission includes a path to success. In some cases, the path to success is unplanned and even driven by luck, but generally, the most successful recruiting agencies have a thoughtful, well-defined plan. They know what they need to do to be successful. Defining your path is only the beginning. You must also ensure you are following that path. This can be achieved by using and measuring effective recruiting metrics.

Why track metrics?

Metrics offer a variety of uses. First, they are used to keep your team focused on the path to success. In their busy day to day lives, recruiters and sales reps often turn their attention to the next trend, technology, prospect, or client request that comes across their desk. If it doesn’t fit into the company’s mission, then it is a distraction. Publishing metrics reminds team members of which company priorities should receive their focus.

Second, metrics help you identify areas where the company is straying from the plan. Exception reporting in your metrics allows you to easily and quickly react to things blocking your path to success. If customer satisfaction is a major driver of your success, then you can use exception reporting in your metrics to identify low customer satisfaction scores to prevent one time service failures from turning into unhappy customers.

Which metrics should you track?

There are an endless number of different metrics that can be tracked for your recruiting agency. Your agency must narrow down the choices to find the metrics that are most effective in driving your success. Where do you want to focus? Customer satisfaction, speed of service, candidate retention, or something else? ERE Media offers a standard set of recruiting metrics that might be a good place for you to start.

As you evaluate which metrics will best drive the performance of your team, remember the following:

  • Too many metrics can lead to a lack of focus and an inability to excel in any one area.
  • Too few metrics can lead to adverse effects. For example, if you focus strongly on speed to interview, then you may sacrifice candidate or customer satisfaction when trying to decrease the time spent leading to the interview.
  • Complimentary metrics lead to balance and focus.
  • Time is of the essence. Too much time spent on a specific metric calculation and you might find yourself racing against the clock on customer and candidate workflows.

How do you use metrics to drive results?

Once you identify your metrics, there are a few processes to implement in order to use the metrics to effectively drive results.

  1. Define the metric. Metrics can be interpreted differently, so ensure that your metric is well defined. For example, if you are tracking candidate satisfaction, then the candidate needs to be defined. Will it only be candidate’s you place on jobs or any candidate that comes to the recruiting agency?
  2. Communicate the metrics across the company. When you first introduce the metrics, present them and their definitions. Share the results you are expecting from driving the business with the metrics.
  3. Measure the metrics frequently and publish the results.
  4. Celebrate the wins and dig into the losses. Evolve as needed.

How can your recruitment software help?

Effective recruiting metrics can play a large part of driving your success, but the measurement process should only be a small part of your efforts. If you have the right software, then you should be able to track and display your metrics in a dashboard or a report. Tracking metrics directly in your staffing and recruiting software means they can be easily and frequently accessed and provide your team up-to-the-minute views of how you are doing.

Analyzing your metrics directly in your software centralizes the data and simplifies the process. The activity performed by your team is facilitated by your recruiting software and the metrics are reported from the data created. By tracking your metrics directly in your recruiting software, you enable your team to drill-down for immediate exception reporting of areas where you failed to deliver instead of waiting for a monthly or quarterly review of metrics. Adapt’s Reporting & Analytics tool provides you that functionality. To learn more about our recruiting software, please contact us for a demo.

The Top 15 Recruiting Experts to Follow on Twitter

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Take the 20 percent of US adults who use Twitter, add in 9,100 tweets per second and that equals one great big pool of people, posts, advice and information. Recruiters hustling between candidate interviews, scouring responses from job board postings and contacting clients about new talent have limited time to check out their Twitter feeds. Those who hop on periodically can get valuable recruiting advice and insight from recruiting experts — if they know whom to follow.

With that in mind, I’ve created this list of the top recruiting experts on Twitter to be a beneficial starting point for recruiters, who can follow recruiting experts, tweet them questions and use that input and advice to grow their careers. From tips on recruiting passive talent to strategies on using high-tech solutions and recruiting software, these experts do the research and pass along their best practices so recruiters everywhere can benefit. Here’s my list!

Active Recruiting Experts on Twitter

1. @greg_savage | Greg Savage

Tweets about: Recruiting strategies, KPIs, challenges and tips — such as how to manage candidates’ salary expectations.
Followers: 34,500

 2. @Blogging4jobs | Jessica Miller-Merrell

Tweets about: Recruiting and HR tactics, how to stay resilient and tips for staying organized while recruiting.
Followers: 111,000

 3. @LouA | Lou Adler

Tweets about: Avoiding hiring mistakes, pinpointing a candidate’s motivation and recruiting passive talent, including, “Recruiters, find out how to make better hires more quickly.”
Followers: 5,960

 4. @jimstroud | Jim Stroud

Tweets about: Social recruiting and finding top performers, including through internal recruitment and by seeking diversity on your team.
Followers: 21,600

 5. @shally | Shally Steckerl

Tweets about: Recruitment best practices, improving recruiting processes and how to become better at making judgments about talent.
Followers: 19,900

 6. @TheRecruiterGuy | Chris Hoyt

Tweets about: Lessons from what other companies are doing to improve their recruiting, industry news and how to recruit elusive “top talent.”
Followers: 22,800

 7. @FishDogs | Craig Fisher

Tweets about: Recruitment sales advice, insight into dealing with professional challenges and statistics such as, “80% of job seekers expect to be able to apply to a job from their phone.”
Followers: 67,500

 8. @LevyRecruits | Steve Levy

Tweets about: Using social media to recruit, the latest technologies, and recruiting for high-tech areas. He also answers questions from job seekers and recruiters.
Followers: 15.3k

 9.  @MeghanMBiro | Meghan M. Biro

Tweets about: Using Twitter to boost your business, specific social tips such as how to get the most out of your LinkedIn photos and the best use of blogs.
Followers: 78,400

 10. @bryanchaney | Bryan Chaney

Tweets about: Creating candidate pipelines, utilizing social engagement, thinking creatively to be a more effective recruiter and topics such as “Startup companies hate recruiting, how can we make it better?”
Followers: 7,994

 11. @WinningImpress | Katrina Collier

Tweets about: Specific ways to use social media to recruit, including advice about using Twitter tools, LinkedIn and other social tactics.
Followers: 2,507

 12. @Work_GR | Miles Alters

Tweets about: Insightful questions to ask candidates, how to find top talent and tactics for growing careers in recruiting.
Followers: 2209

 13. @SIADailyNews | Staffing Industry Analysts

Tweets about: The contingent workforce in North America and around the world, economic trends that affect the staffing industry and recruitment markets.
Followers: 719

 14. @mattcharney | Matt Charney

Tweets about: Conducting more insightful interviews, tightening up job descriptions, mobile job seekers and topics such as, “Why Candidate Experience is More Than Another BS Buzzword.”
Followers: 8,850

 15. @Josh_Bersin | Josh Bersin

Tweets about: Mobile recruiting, workplace culture, building a Twitter following and talent management recruiting software.
Followers: 20,200

These recruiting experts have valuable insight to share, from big picture encouragement to pinpointed tactics for using LinkedIn to find STEM candidates. By following them on Twitter, recruiters can adopt what’s relevant and stay on top of industry trends to grow their careers and their business.

Learn strategies for integrating Twitter and other social platforms into your staffing growth strategies by downloading 6 Ways Staffing Agencies Can Engage Their Social Channels. 

The Role of Motivation in Winning the War for Talent

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One of the most frustrating aspects of being a recruiter has to be getting to the offer stage only to have your candidate not make a move. We’re all familiar with the scenario where we’ve guided a candidate through every stage of the recruitment process and acted as their advisor only to have it go sideways once the client has extended an offer. We’re also aware of all the reasons a candidate gives us for not moving forward and accepting the offer.

I’d much rather know why a candidate won’t accept an offer up front than after the fact. In any sales environment, the reasons for a lost sale can often be isolated to mistakes made in the beginning of the process. So how can we fix this AND win the war for talent at the same time? The answer is a lot simpler than what you may think. In fact, if you consistently do the following three things as a recruiter, you’ll overcome recruiting challenges and consistently do better than your peers in getting candidates placed.

First, you need to understand your candidates’ operational reality.  Simply put, this means understand why they are looking to make a move. The best recruiters I’ve known were always able to understand every aspect of why their candidate wanted to leave their current role. Understanding the extrinsic and intrinsic motivational factors driving your candidate will be the difference between winning and losing the war for talent. One of the best recruiters I knew was able to create a mental list of external and internal factors driving her candidates and was almost prescient in her ability to predict which candidates were more likely to get “squirrely” during the offer stage. Any “real” candidate will have a good combination of factors driving their move and if you don’t understand those factors up front, you’re setting yourself up for a loss.

If you’ve done a good job in understanding why your candidate is making a move, the next step is to uncover all the other opportunities they are interviewing for. It’s a good idea to build a comprehensive list of all of the opportunities as you are interviewing the candidate, document it within your recruiting software, and use it later when you are trying to close them on your opportunity. While knowing the “other opportunities” is important in order to overcome recruiting challenges, you must also take time to understand why the candidate is interested in each opportunity. This step again ties back into the motivation component. You can gain tremendous insight when you pay particular attention to how the candidate ranks each opportunity and compare that to the reasons why they want to make the move.

Once you’ve successfully uncovered your candidates’ operational reality and the other opportunities they are considering, the rest of the process is just trial closing on your opportunity. At this point, you’re just getting confirmation that all of the factors your candidate mentioned as important are present in your current role. At this stage, it’s critical to learn what factors influence the candidate to consider alternatives or stop the search process.

As the job market heats up, the war for talent is just going to continue to get more intense. As that occurs, it becomes critical that recruiters and firms become adept at understanding recruiting challenges and their clients and candidates’ operational realities. Bond’s 40 years of experience in the staffing space delivering technology has uniquely positioned us as valuable partners in our staffing and recruiting clients’ success. Let us know how we can help you in winning the war for talent.

Learn how to offset businesses that are borrowing recruiting companies’ tactics by downloading our whitepaper, How Staffing Professionals Can Counter Companies That Re-Recruit.

Recruiting Software That Helps Your Recruiters be 5-Tool Players

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A 5-tool baseball player has it all — a good eye at bat, speed to steal bases, a cannon arm, great glove work and strength to hit home runs. Along with baseball season it’s recruiting season too, with the U.S. contingent workforce growing and 3 million people employed by staffing companies every week.

“Over the last decade there has been general improvement among buyers who find certain factors more encouraging towards the use of temps, suggesting greater acceptance of temp labor usage,” writes Staffing Industry Analysts’ Subadhra Sriram in her post, Learning the Temp Lesson. “In fact, it goes one step further beyond acceptance. In many cases we see very savvy use of temp labor providing greater efficiencies as well as cost savings.”

As the contingent workforce expands, it’s the perfect opportunity to take advantage of industry growth at your recruiting firm. We’re offering lessons for growth from famous 5-tool baseball players and recruiting software so your team can attain their own 5-tool player status with keen eyes, speed, good throwing arms, glove work and the ability to hit for power.

  1. Ty Cobb | Good Eye: Ty Cobb hit .420 and stole 127 bases in the same season. Top hitters like Cobb need a good eye for knowing what to swing for. Your recruiting team needs fast, clear, comprehensive sight into prospective candidates so that they can see every detail critical to placing that “just right” talent. Recruiting software can help your team dig through the data connected to prospective candidates and search by various parameters. 

For many of our clients, being able to search their candidate pool by employment history, job title, skills, profiles and social networks is key to obtaining clarity into who will be a perfect fit for top clients. Learn how to get a good eye using LinkedIn with our paper, 7 Ways Staffing Agencies Can Leverage LinkedIn.

  1. Dave Winfield| Speed: Dave Winfield was a great hitter with a strong arm in right field, but his speed was extraordinary. He stole over 20 bases four times in his career. A 5-tool player has the speed to steal bases when an opportunity presents itself. There are a number of ways that recruiting software can give your recruiting team speed to advance. For example, website access for candidates allows them to update their profiles and resumes, search for jobs and check the status of jobs for which they’ve applied.

Allowing candidates access moves tasks from your recruiters to candidates. Many of our clients appreciate the time this saves recruiters since they don’t have to follow up with prospective candidates via emails or phone calls, but rather have their candidates view job statuses and other information and update their profiles online. Discover how using the cloud can help your team move fast with our paper, Five Reasons Why Staffing Firms are Rising Into the Cloud.

  1. Recruiting Software That Gives Your Recruiting Team a Good Eye, Strength and Speed from the Bond BlogKen Griffey Jr. | Strong Arm: Ken Griffey Jr. was a graceful player with speed — but his arm really made him shine. Top baseball players need strength so they can throw the ball in from the outfield accurately. Your team needs software that strengthens your recruiting process by interfacing with necessary tools and incorporating business processes for clients. 

You may have clients who want to ensure that certain prerequisites are fulfilled before candidates are brought in for interviews. Those requirements can be included in your candidate status pipeline as a seamless part of recruiters’ workflow. That includes tasks such as background checks, drug testing, skills assessments or tax documentation. Learn about selecting a software that gives your company a seamless recruiting process with our white paper, 10 Steps to Successful Staffing and Recruiting Software Selection.

  1. Willie Mays | Great Glove Work: Willie Mays was a strong player in all areas, and arguably the best centerfielder of all time. Recruiters need to be able to catch the strongest candidates’ information and relay it to clients. 

Recruiting software can give your team a cannon arm by taking candidates’ resumes and automatically creating ones per your firm template. With a few clicks, your recruiters can tweak resumes per job orders and send them to clients. Learn how one company is using recruiting to capture top talent with our paper, How Recruiting Stole the Show at Netflix. 

  1. Babe Ruth | Strength for the Wall: The Bambino had 714 career home runs, leading the American League for 12 seasons. Your recruiting team can hit for power when they have the right analytics that give insight into performance. Recruiting software can provide management with information about individuals’ scheduled and finished activities, communications, interviews, goals for placements and other insight. 

Many of our clients use metrics as a basis for training and ongoing education. They can see areas where a certain team member might be struggling and implement strategies to help. That way recruiters can overcome areas that are challenging so they can perform better and achieve more home runs. Our webinar shows you how to access the metrics that matter — Discover the Metrics That Will Drive Your Growth and Profitability.

Pass by your local ball fields and you’ll hear the crack of the bats and calls from the umps. The cheers from the crowd indicate a great play — maybe even a home run. Get your team into position to win and take advantage of the growth being seen throughout the contingent workforce. Make sure that your recruiters have access to recruiting software that helps them have a good eye, speed, a cannon arm, glove work and strength to get more recruiting home runs for your agency.

Learn how Bond AdaptSuite recruiting software can help the members of your team become 5-tool players by downloading our AdaptSuite brochure.

Developing Your Internal Sales Team: Retention Strategies That Prepare Your Best People for Future Leadership

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Now that we’ve figured out how to select top performers and learned how to keep our teams motivated we should be in the clear, right? Well, if your firm is like the vast majority of those in staffing struggling with turnover in the 30 to 70 percent range, there’s a lot of work left to be done. It’s not enough to select the right people and keep them motivated. Attention needs to be paid to understanding why they stick around.

Firms in every industry find themselves in situations where they have found great talent and invested in them only to lose them when the employee “was just starting to get good.” So what really happens in these scenarios? Understanding why people leave a company is the first step in stopping the bleeding and developing strong retention strategies. There are tons of reasons why someone will leave a company but the most common reasons people leave an organization are due to conflicts with their immediate supervisor (leadership issue) or lack of professional growth (leadership issue). The top three reasons an employee leaves an organization are directly or indirectly attributable to leadership issues.

So recognizing that the most common reasons for why an employee leaves a company has to do with leadership, how can we fix the situation and hold on to our best talent? The answer to that question is actually simpler than what you may think. It starts with understanding that under most circumstances, an employee leaves an organization because of something they’re missing from us. Simply put, it’s not them, it’s me. When we think of leadership as a concept, it’s made up of three aspects: supervisory activities, mentoring activities, and training/coaching activities. As leaders of our organizations and teams, most of our time should be spent doing mentoring and training/coaching activities. Unfortunately, most managers end up spending most of their time managing the metrics-oriented supervisory aspects of their role.

In order to shift this supervisory paradigm that we’re all stuck in, we must do three key things. First we must teach a simple workflow for our lowest-level people to make sound decisions without our intervention. I call it the decision pyramid and it’s made up of three questions:

  1. Is this action good for the customer?
  2. Is this action good for our company? and
  3. Is this action ethical?

If your employees can say yes to all three questions, they should be able to act without your intervention. I would add that letting your people know “that there isn’t a mistake that they can make that we can’t fix” is an important coaching tip that should be part of your organizational DNA.

Once you’ve empowered your people to make their own decisions, you’ve laid the ground work to prepare them to grow within your organization. The second step in shifting the supervisory paradigm is to shift the focus of your conversations from being metrics-driven to being vision-driven. It’s important to talk about the metrics required for success in our organizations but that shouldn’t be the focus of the conversation. Oftentimes managers focus on the numbers without giving consideration for why an employee should even strive to achieve the numbers. Do we take the time to understand our employees’ passions and vision? If not, we need to. As part of our retention strategy, we need to meet our employees where they are and understand where they are going before we ever dive into the numbers. If we do this successfully, no employee will ever ask the question “Why am I here?”

Many firms think of the concept of growth and leadership in terms of promotions and the organizational chart. While that may be true for some, a real growth culture is a lot more than just promotions and the vertical hierarchy. The third step in the process of keeping and growing your talent is to build a culture of inquiry and innovation. This may sound complex, but if you’ve done the first two steps, this step is easy. You’ve empowered your people to make sound decisions, you’ve taken the time to learn what drives them, and now this step allows them to execute. All you’re doing is creating a culture where your team can look at any aspect of the business and identify the gaps in how things are done. Then you’re empowering them to find solutions for that problem. By taking this approach, you are preparing your people to stay with your organization and really make an impact independent of the size of your company.

Keeping your top talent is a critical issue for many firms. Any staffing firm that can speak to systems and processes they have in place to get the most out of their people will have significant competitive advantages. Shifting the focus of leadership from managing metrics to inspiring your people and creating an empowering culture will provide the necessary fuel for your people to keep moving your firm forward.

Discover how recruiting software from Bond can provide actionable information that can give leaders like you insight into employee retention strategies.

Selecting Sales Candidates: How to Hire Wolves

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I have found that one of the more common problems staffing firm leaders encounter is finding and hiring top-level salespeople. More specifically, it seems that hiring the farmer profile seems to be much easier than hiring hunters. It seems that this challenge applies to not only startups and small firms but large firms as well. So what’s the solution?

Believe it or not, this is a challenge that’s common in many industries. I’ve been involved in the hiring process in the retail, technology, and automotive sectors and hiring managers struggle with overcoming the same challenges. What I have found, through observation and experimentation, is that there is a fairly simple four step process that can be used to identify and hire sales people who fit the hunter/wolf profile you are looking for.

The first step in the process is to look within your organization and identify your own hunters and build a baseline profile. Hunters and farmers work differently so it’s important to document the way both types of salespeople work—you may choose to utilize your recruiting software for insight. This step in the process requires some level of business process analysis and the ability to look at every step in the sales cycle and how the individual behaves in each step.

The next step in the process of hiring sales people is to incorporate psychometric testing into your selection process. While this may seem like an unnecessary expense to some, it’s important to keep in mind the costs associated with making the wrong hire. Research has shown that firms can spend two to three times the first year salary of the “wrong” hire to fix the mistake. Adding psychometric testing reduces the risk of making that wrong hire and adds a research-backed instrument to your hiring process. I have found that both the Predictive Index (PI) and the Life Styles Inventory (LSI) are effective diagnostic tools with documented reliability and validity. Conversely, stay away from Meyers-Briggs or similar tools since their predictive capabilities have recently been called into question.

The third step in the process of hiring sales people is to understand the psychological profile of the hunter mentality. I have found that the candidates who best fit the profile have the following attributes: patience, resilience, confidence, humor, curiosity, service-orientation, learning-orientation, and competitiveness. There are wide-ranging research opinions on what attributes carry the most weight but the key takeaway is that your “perfect” hunter profile will have all of these attributes. As a result, your interview process needs to include behavior-based questioning that distills out the presence or absence of these attributes.

The fourth and final step in the process is interviewing and selecting the hunter profile. Like just about everyone else, I’ve been on both sides of the interview table. What I’ve found particularly interesting is how sales interviews are conducted. Generally speaking, interviews have been structured in such a way that hiring managers aren’t testing for capability or profile. Oftentimes the process itself really doesn’t gauge if the candidate has the necessary competencies. Organizations looking to hire hunters need to gauge performance under pressure and should be interviewing candidates with that in mind. A simple approach would be to tell the candidate (in a polite way) that they’re not good enough and see how they respond. Most sub-par candidates will crumble. The ones left over provide you a “semi-qualified” pool of candidates to evaluate further.

The process of hiring sales people is a complex one for most organizations. Hiring for the hunter profile can prove to be one of the bigger challenges a sales organization can face. As a result, it’s critical that firms take a systematic approach to the process that includes both quantitative and qualitative criteria. This four-step process should provide a good foundation to build from. Then, once you’ve found your ‘wolves’, Bond will be there for you with the tools they need for hunting success.

For more insights from leading staffing industry experts on how to build, coach, and train your sales team, get a copy of our Bond US Sales Selection, Training and Development Report 2014.

Imagine If Your Company’s Recruiting Software Supported Your Best Hiring Practices

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If you’re a staffing and recruiting professional, you’re no stranger to software and computer issues. Unfortunately, problems related to software functionality all too frequently impede your daily recruiting activities. When you’ve pinpointed the perfect candidate for a perfect job opening, you want to move quickly and get a jump on the competition—not conduct a poll of the office because you can’t for the life of your figure out how to get your software to cooperate. While you’re banging your head on your desk in frustration, what kind of recruiting software do you wish for? What’s your dream solution that would help you streamline workflow and implement best hiring practices?

Imagine if your software supported best hiring practices with customized resumes.

What if your software could take a candidate’s resume and automatically create a new one for you, branded in your recruiting firm’s template per their standards? With just a few clicks you could edit it to better meet your client’s job order and send it to them quickly and efficiently. You would avoid the hassle of combing through different versions of contacts’ resumes that you’ve kept on your computer. There would be no more time-consuming edits to undertake or cutting and pasting back and forth, saving you time and effort.

Imagine if your company’s best hiring practices were augmented via interfaces with valuable applications.

What if your software was able to interface with third-party applications that support your recruiting firm’s best hiring practices? For example, your software could require that before a candidate could be placed, certain required tasks be completed and documented, such as background checks, skills assessments or drug testing. You could eliminate the stress of rushing to get a candidate’s testing completed before his or her start date. Instead, you could feel confident, knowing that every requirement has been successfully completed per your clients’ needs and company policies.

Imagine if you had more time for implementing best hiring practices.

No one likes to waste time at work. Instead of spending 10 hours per week on administrative tasks such as creating reports and updating Excel spread sheets, what if precious time could be used on selling or recruiting? You could have a role-based centralized dashboard that allows you to access reports, tracks contacts with clients automatically and alerts you to upcoming meetings and phone calls. In addition, it could compile the reports you need to track metrics and compare them to set goals.

Imagine if you had streamlined processes that supported best hiring practices.

If we conducted a poll, it’s safe to say that most recruiters would love to weed out the tedious points of their daily processes where things tend to bottleneck. Consider the possibilities if your front office sales and recruiting software could be seamlessly integrated with contingent employee payroll and customer billing. This integration would streamline your back-office processes, reduce data entry efforts and errors and enable your firm to deliver consistently reliable service.

Imagine if you had speed on your side when undertaking best hiring practices.

What would you do if it no longer took days to acquire the necessary tax forms and documentation from candidates? Rather than mailing out forms and waiting for them to be filled out and sent back, or waiting for candidates to find the time to come into your office, you could have  access to e-forms management that would collect client-specific documentation. Instead of taking hours or days, it would allow you to interface with software that could have it completed in minutes.

If you’re daydreaming at your desk waiting for your software to improve, know that your “imagine ifs” can become a reality with the right recruiting software. Learn more with Bond’s whitepaper, “10 Steps to Successful Staffing and Recruiting Software Selection.”

The Ideal Home Office Setup to Help the Telecommuting Professional’s Work Life Thrive

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Is your home office décor “Feng Shui minimalist” or more “Next episode of Hoarders?” Or do you find yourself working at your favorite local coffee shop where the barista has your order memorized? Nearly 10 percent of Americans work at least one day a week from home—that adds up to about 13.4 million people. As more people enjoy flexible hours, have flex schedules, and work from any place, any time, the home office—wherever that may be—is becoming a vital workspace and component of the telecommuter’s work life.

Here are some features that can make your home office (or coffee shop setup) a productive space that supports a thriving work life.

Connected

  • Fast internet connection needed. You need to move fast in business, and nothing is more frustrating and detrimental to your workday than waiting for pages to load or having your computer crash. For recruiters and many professionals, time is important to beat out the competition. A slow internet connection that bogs you down simply won’t suffice when you need to move quickly and efficiently. According to PC Magazine, the fastest options include Verizon FiOS and Midcontinent Communications—contact your Internet service provider to see what upgrades may be available to you.
  • Security is a must. Top security for your work is required—many telecommuters work throughout the day with privileged information, which for recruiters may include private data for both clients and candidates. Make sure that you have both physical and data security for your system that will protect your company and your clients. Follow your employer’s guidelines, require a password to access your home’s wireless router, and keep antivirus subscriptions up to date. In addition, be sure to keep your operating system, browser, and other software up-to-date with the latest security patches. Finally, be aware that public Wi-Fi hotspots are never going to be as secure as your home Wi-Fi – so be careful about what you share and when.
  • Supportive software is critical. The third component to staying connected is having the right software to support your work. It should be internet cloud-based so you can work from anywhere at any time, and allow you to seamlessly conduct your tasks and remain in an efficient, productive workflow. For recruiters, the right recruiting software will support your work and allow you to work faster and smarter, no matter where your office is on any given day.
  • Stay powered up. Wherever your setup, make sure you have enough outlets to plug in the electronics you need. It doesn’t take long to learn which tables at the coffee shop or airport are closest to working outlets—whether your cell phone is low on batteries or your laptop is giving you warnings, you’ll need access to electricity. For neatness at your home office, use a product that hides cables from view to keep your space appearing tidy.

Organized

  • Add storage. At your home office, or in your car if you’re often on the road, make sure that you have enough storage space (see some cool solutions from How Stuff Works). Every item and file should have a dedicated rightful place, keeping you on track, organized and efficient.
  • Incorporate tools. You’ll want to utilize tools that keep you organized within your home office setup. Keep a whiteboard available for taking quick notes when you have a great idea or need to jot down notes during a phone call with coworkers or clients. For recruiters, some professionals find it helpful and motivating to create a dedicated “client board” that highlights top clients’ needs or candidate qualities that you are pursuing.
  • Remember office basics. Since you’re acting as your own remote office manager, you’ll need to stay on top of office items that you need. Keep a master list of basics, including printer ink, sticky notes, files, computer cleaning wipes, and other office items and make sure to note what you are running low on so you never run out.
  • Stay flexible. When you’re looking into your home office setup, try to lay it out to be adaptable as your professional life evolves. Alyssa Gregory is a small business expert, and she says that a home office should be flexible. “As your small business grows, or your living arrangements change, be open to changing the configuration of your home office or workspace. It’s always a good idea to take a look at your set up from time-to-time and re-evaluate so you can reorganize and redesign your office when necessary.”

Comfortable

  • Stay physically comfortable. If you’re able, your home office setup should include both a space where you can stand while working but also have an ergonomic chair and desk. Researchers have found that sitting all day is hard on your body, so any chance you have to get up and move, sit on a ball, or stand will be a more healthful way to work.
  • Tweak lighting. Whether you’re at home or working from a café, remember that you’ll need the right amount of lighting—not too little or too much. You’ll need adequate task lighting for your desk area and window shades to block the sun’s rays and any glare coming in through nearby windows.
  • Create your ideal space. If you’re working from a home office, look at your work space with a critical eye. If possible, set up your office in a room with a door so you can more easily transition mentally between time at home and time at work—and keep your space quiet from dogs barking or active kids. You’ll want a space that blocks out noise when you’re on the phone or working through a complex problem. Recruiters often speak to clients and candidates throughout the day, so having privacy and quiet when needed is important.

Attractive

  • Add some beauty. You want your home office to feel businesslike and set the tone for your work day but also be visually interesting. Think about what art items inspire you and contain a professional vibe. You may choose to select items that you rotate through quarterly to keep your office feeling fresh and renewed, for example a plaque or certificate of professional recognition, a motivational phrase or poster, amusing cartoons, or a photo of you at a professional event. A low-maintenance plant is also visually interesting—and plants have been found to reduce stress levels and increase productivity.

The percentage of Americans who work from home is expected to rise in the coming years. An office space will become an integral part of your home, and you want it to be comfortable, attractive, organized and connected—an area that makes it easy for you to succeed and thrive.

Staffing professionals, if your home office setup lacks recruiting software that supports your work efforts wherever you work from, view our whitepaper on the 15 Steps to Select the Right Staffing Software.

Recruitment Advice from X-Men: From Clarity to High-Tech Solutions

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Photo credit: IMDB
Photo credit: IMDB

Talk about a master of recruiting—the character “Professor Xavier” of the X-Men movie franchise is constantly recruiting powerful mutants to join his team and try to save the world. And this is not an easy sell. His team has to accept dangerous, life-threatening work; endure being feared and derided by the very people they’re trying to save; and deal with potential back stabbing and infighting.

But as X-Men fans count down to X-Men: Days of Future Past and its upcoming release, we can look at the movie in another way. Among the high-speed chases, action sequences and other special effects there are thought-provoking lessons and recruitment advice.

Wolverine can’t do it alone – and neither can you

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Professor Xavier knows that his team must work together to succeed. In the upcoming film, he sends a member of his team, Wolverine, 50 years into the past to recruit himself at a younger age for a very important mission. In recruiting, you need to stay connected and build a team around you that can help you grow in your profession.

 

Building your team takes strategy and a blend of old-school networking and new-school social media.

  • Attend conferences, seminars and webinars to engage with people in your profession.
  • Use social media to solidify those relationships, keep informed about the industries you serve, and stay in touch with former colleagues.
  • Think of ways you can be helpful to your contacts—send them occasional links to interesting articles, retweet their insight, and send them referrals that you can’t utilize.

Building a team will take time and energy, which is challenging when you’re busy. But it’s worth it. In X-Men, Professor Xavier knows how to build a talented team. The recruitment advice we adopt is that recruiters can continue to network “old school” style, then solidify those relationships with social media. You never know when a relationship you’ve been building might send you a referral or help you determine a “just right” candidate for a favorite client.

Know your talents, know your mission

Professor Xavier knows that the characters he’s recruiting have their own unique abilities, and with his guidance they can optimize their talents to help him accomplish his mission. He knows their unique skillsets that he can use to his advantage. In recruiting, staffing professionals can use LinkedIn and social media tools in addition to conducting enlightening interviews to get an authentic picture of candidates. Seeing personal backgrounds can help you view individuals’ preferences that aren’t included on resumes, helping you determine who might be a better fit at certain companies.

Kevin Grossman writes about the importance of cultural fit on TalentCulture.com:

“[F]or the modern dispersed workforce, the unprecedented levels of stress today in the workplace means that we want more than the money; we want cultural fit with like-minded folk to collaborate, innovate and invigorate our workspaces everywhere we go.”

Although delving into social media sites takes extra time, recruiting software  solutions that include one-click connections to candidates’ profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook will enable recruiters to view insightful data with one click as part of a smooth workflow process. Recruiters can use social media to obtain a clearer view into a candidate’s authentic self to determine would be a good, mutually beneficial fit, or conversely to pinpoint red flags.

Use technology to help you succeed

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Professor Xavier has access to technology that allows him to send his teammate back in time. Recruiters can utilize the latest technology that helps you improve your workflow, reducing time spent on administrative tasks. Recruiting software solutions that are adaptable are key—if you use Outlook, for example, you want software that will sync with it so you don’t need to re-enter the data in two places.

Similarly, when you update meetings, phone calls, emails, job orders, or other communications that you wish to track, your software should automatically update and immediately sync that data to Outlook.

 

Today’s software:

  • Has more capabilities
  • Is intuitive to use
  • Can be used on mobile devices
  • Allows users to organize contacts and search by categories, companies, upcoming meetings and communications

Professor X uses high-tech solutions to prevent catastrophe. You should take full advantage of technology available to you—stay up-to-date in our data-driven, connected world via mobile applications that allow you to work smarter and faster anywhere at any time.

Summer blockbusters will soon be coming to theaters near you. When it comes to X-Men, we can look at the leading character of Professor Xavier and learn what lessons to adopt that apply to recruiting, from embracing authenticity to using technology to get ahead.

Discover more about the high-tech solutions that Bond can provide by downloading our AdaptSuite brochure.

Latest jobs report paints shaky picture of the economy: What this means for recruiters and staffing professionals

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For staffing and recruiting professionals, the latest jobs report, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is an opportunity to review numbers and figures about the employment market backed by a trusted resource and determine whether indicators experienced personally align with the statistics. Certainly, not every staffing and recruiting firm will have data or metrics that agree with the findings of the federal government, including industry or regional pockets that are either exceeding or falling below the average. However, the national averages provide recruiters valuable insight into what might be on the horizon concerning the hiring market.

Overall growth predicted for the U.S. 

According to the BLS, the number of jobs in the United States is expected to grow by 10.8 percent in the next decade. The projections cover 2012 to 2022, and predict that 16 million jobs will be added in the nation. Occupations and industries related to healthcare are projected to make up the largest percentage of job growth for the decade. Positions related to social assistance workers are another employment sector that, when combined with healthcare, account for a third of overall total job growth or 2.6 percent with more than 2 million jobs added between 2012 and 2022. Most of this growth is attributed to the aging baby boomer population, who are also expected to make up over one-quarter of the labor force in 2022. The 5 million jobs that are to be created in the healthcare and social-assistance sectors are projected to have the fastest growth – a 13.6 percent increase. Other industries that are expected to post gains include professional and business services by 13.3 percent and state and local government jobs by 12.4 percent.

As the economy continues to grow and improve following the recession, it’s no surprise that employment opportunities, especially for in-demand sectors, will increase. The BLS predicts that, overall, job opportunities for positions that require secondary education or higher will continue to post the fastest employment growth. Workers with a post-secondary education or higher earned a median income of $57,770 in 2012 – compared to a$27,670 median income for those people holding a high school diploma.

Projected growth, yet still shaky hiring

The overall labor market is poised to improve, which is good news for staffing and recruiting professionals who will have to use their skills to place people in quality positions. However, not all facets of the hiring market are expected to remain strong or even improve from current levels. According to figures from the BLS, the construction sector, which admittedly took a hit during the housing crisis and subsequent recession, is expected to add about 1.6 million jobs by 2022. This is positive news, yet, the industry will never reach the same hiring frenzy it attained during the housing boom. Employment in the manufacturing, federal government, agriculture, information and utility sectors are also showing signs of a decline in hiring over the next decade. Knowing these figures will allow staffing and recruiting professionals to fill their staffing and recruiting software database with the appropriate candidates.

The figures show another key trend that will interest staffing and recruiting professionals – in four out of five cases or occupations, openings derived from replacements are projected to exceed openings from real job growth. This means that the transitions that companies are going to experience will keep the staffing industry on its toes, but it also means less people are at work at the same time, which could potentially stall the economy from really improving.