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Are you attracting the passive job seeker?

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It’s a changing workplace. I know it, you know it, and we both realize that the staffing world is being impacted by advancing trends.

Today, about 80 percent of workers are considered passive job seekers. This means these individuals already have jobs, but if the right opportunity came along, they would consider it. The other 20 percent are sending out resumes and actively pursuing job boards.

What real-world results have occurred because of this?

Social is on the rise. Reuters reports that LinkedIn, the popular professional social media network, achieved a 81 percent increase in fourth-quarter revenue in 2012. Following the release of this news, shares of LinkedIn Corp rose nearly 21 percent in midday trading on February 8, 2013.

Meanwhile, the online recruiting company Monster.com is struggling. According to News and Insight, Monster shares fell about 14 percent to $5.01 on February 7, 2012. The organization posted its second net loss in two years during the fourth quarter of 2012.

What does that mean for staffing firms?

Identifying the high-quality workers isn’t about finding a resume anymore. It’s about monitoring the social sphere. Who’s showing the qualities and skills that could wow a potential client? Staffing firms need to target these passive candidates if they wish to appropriately fill the roles their customers are looking for.

The most highly advanced staffing software can help a recruiter better tackle the task of organizing and placing the right professionals with the right skills to achieve instant success at a client’s company. Get aboard the social train and seek out the passive job seeker who can offer a customer the combination of skills that will get the job done – in whatever industry.

Staffing firms are building brand recognition using LinkedIn

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You can’t read anything about current trends in staffing and recruiting without hearing about social media. The evolving world of media consumption and talent acquisition is impacting the staffing industry just like any other. Staffing and recruiting firms are building greater brand recognition from clients and job candidates by using professional social media sources such as LinkedIn to act as a funnel for their candidate sourcing efforts.

As of January 9, 2013, LinkedIn was the largest professional network online with more than 200 million members in over 200 countries and territories. In the United States alone there are about 74 million members. In September 2012, people were signing up for the network at a rate of two new people per second.

Staffing and recruiting professionals are taking advantage of this exceptional resource by using it as a great place to start talent acquisition. Using the search tools provided by LinkedIn will allow a staffing firm to identity and source top candidates for individual industries. In addition, staffing firms are finding the resource a strong tool for locating passive versus active job candidates in the market.

All of this sourcing is ideally done prior to the integration of an individual’s information into their recruiting software. This reduces the amount of ‘chafe’ – unnecessary data – in the staffing and recruiting software. Once the relevant candidate data has been entered into your software, you are better able to highlight and match potential candidates against the requirements outlined in a customer’s job order.

One of the unique advantages of Bond International Software’s staffing systems is that recruiters can accomplish 80 percent of their daily tasks from one screen – saving time and effort. This enables recruiters to leverage their social media sourcing efforts effectively so that once a candidate is in the system, your staffing firm can present job offers as needed to the professionals who best meet the needs of your customers.

Staffing companies are serving their customers better with the help of a versatile and user-friendly staffing software.

 

 

 

Contract and temp employment staffing grows – can you handle it?

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Companies are learning to do more with less following the economic turmoil of the Great Recession. As a result, many organizations in the United States are becoming adept at running on new technology and the skills of temporary or contract employees. To meet the demands of their customers, it is necessary for staffing and recruiting agencies to ensure that they are capable of responding to the intense requirements of their customers by deploying the newest technologies within their business to deliver qualified temporary or contract employees to their customers.

In the third quarter of 2012, U.S. staffing firms employed an average of 2.95 million temporary and contract workers per business day, according to the American Staffing Association (ASA). From July to September, there was an even greater amount of these workers – by approximately 4.3 percent on any given business day.

“Even though the rate of growth slowed during the fall, third quarter staffing employment was the highest it has been in five years,” said Richard Wahlquist, ASA president and chief executive officer.

So, what does this mean for your staffing or recruiting firm? It means that you too are trying to get more done with less. It means that your business is probably growing in terms of the number of job orders and assignments you have to fill, but that you too are not in a position to add more internal staff resources to help with the added work.

That is where new technology comes into play. The most cost-effective help to this need to “get the work done” for staffing and recruiting firms is to implement appropriate recruiting and staffing software designed to improve staff productivity beyond where it is now.

With the ever-increasing presence of temporary and contract employees in the workforce, staffing and recruiting agencies may struggle to efficiently keep track of applicants from the start to finish of the hiring process. Equally important, to maximize their own profitability on each assignment or placement, staffing and recruiting firms need to provide their internal staff members with tools that enable them to accomplish their tasks with the least effort. Thus, staffing and recruiting firms looking to streamline efforts for efficiency can use a staffing software system based on advancing technology that has been designed to handle the increasing quantity of job orders and of qualified temporary and contract workers without increasing their internal resources.

 

 

You Can’t Meet Your 2013 Staffing Goals With 2007 Staffing Software

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New Year

With the arrival of 2013, the optimism felt in most staffing agencies is tempered with the impending challenges of a new year.  Perhaps the biggest trepidation felt by these agencies is determining how best to achieve overall goals in the new year.  If these agencies are still running with old technology, old staffing software for instance, this sense of trepidation can become even greater.  Antiquated staffing software systems that haven’t been replaced or upgraded to meet the new business opportunities in today’s market pose a significant challenge to overall success.

For an example as to why, let’s take a closer look at the rise of social media – perhaps the biggest game changer in the staffing industry over the last several decades.  The rise of smartphones and mobile applications has made Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn even more ubiquitous.

But five years ago Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were relatively new social media platforms.

Fast forward to today, and LinkedIn has grown into one of the world’s largest professional networking communities.  Facebook, meanwhile, has recently launched a Job Board that opens up millions of job openings to the network’s enormous user base.

It goes without saying that staffing agencies of 2007 were not optimized to leverage the power these platforms would eventually generate.  However, as these platforms grew in numbers and functionality, it became increasingly evident that staffing agencies required a social media staffing plan in order to succeed.

Because the staffing world of 2007 was so markedly different than the one we will enter in 2013, the staffing software solutions of that time will simply not take into account all the needs we will experience in the new year – particularly when it comes to needs generated by the growth of social media and mobile technology.

While integration with social media and mobile technology are perhaps biggest issues with outdated staffing software, there are other issues with archaic software that limit the potential for meeting 2013 staffing goals.

Today’s staffing software solutions are scalable and configurable, while providing the ability to generate the powerful analytics necessary to gain a competitive advantage.  Soon, many solutions will also be available in cloud or web-browser based versions, that offer the same level of security and performance that has always been a hallmark of leading solutions.

In a dynamic staffing industry, failure to innovate is not an option.  And for agencies still relying on software from 2007 or earlier, this means upgrading to a powerful new staffing software system, built for 2013, will provide the critical advantage necessary to survive and thrive.

If you are ready to move forward with new staffing software and technology in the new year, I encourage you to request a free demo of staffing software by Bond.

Why James Bond Villains Need Better Recruiting Software

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In honor of 50 years of 007 James Bond, and the 23rd movie, ‘Skyfall’, in the franchise; a look at why his many opponents need better recruiting software.

Over the five decades that James Bond has been thwarting the plans of various would-be world-dominating megalomaniacs, one clear fact has remained unassailable. James Bond is the ultimate type ‘A’ employee that MI6 has been all too happy to recruit, train, equip, and deploy to ensure their continued success. Conversely, while Bond has faced innumerable villains, many of whom would seem to be smarter and have lots of henchmen to help, they have all failed miserably in their attempts to dispatch Bond.

Therefore, I would suggest that the leadership of the villains suffers from one glaring fault besides their obvious megalomania – lousy recruiting software.

After all, these villains, from Auric Goldfinger to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, apparently had pretty good recruiting processes within their sometimes vast international criminal organizations. They found many capable scoundrels to help them, like Oddjob and Jaws. Yet, if their recruiting processes had the software to back them up, surely they could have found a few type ‘A’ heavies of their own with the skills, brains, and focus needed to take out James Bond.

So, let’s see how good recruiting software could have helped the villains achieve their own nefarious goals.

First up, your recruiting software really needs to be able to handle a lot potential candidates, er, henchmen, then, when you search for the right person for the job, you should be able to rank them according to their skills, experience, job history, and training. One example where good recruiting software might have helped the villain is that of henchperson Tiffany Case, played by Jill St. John, in Diamonds are Forever, which would seem to work well with Bond’s well-known weakness for beautiful women.

Unfortunately, if the villain’s recruiting software had noted her job history, it might have clued the recruiter that Tiffany was a ‘job hopper’, as she switched sides to join Bond in his fight against her employer (start the video below at 5:30 to see Tiffany’s ‘conversion’).

http://youtu.be/oC1016Gu2R8?t=5m30s

Lesson: Make sure your recruiting software can pull in all relevant henchperson data from their resume and populate the database for future searches.

Second, another example is Red Grant, the highly-trained psychopathic assassin in the 1963 Bond movie, From Russia with Love. Grant seemed to be a perfect fit for his assignment, emotionless and completely focused on killing James Bond. Alas, he failed in his task when distracted by the potential offer of more cash – Bond was thus able to overcome him.

Lesson: It’s not enough to be able to recruit henchmen based on skills. Your recruiting and staffing software, with a great, fully integrated payroll system, will enable you to make your offer and payroll that should be able to keep them happy enough that they don’t actively seek more pay at inconvenient times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b10MvNfvoWM

Third, recruiting software is a great enabling tool, with its ability to automate the dull and mundane tasks that should leave your recruiters with more time to call, interview and select the right henchmen for the assignment. This is vital when you have a lot of job openings to fill. And it usually seems that there are a lot of bad guy job openings after James Bond has killed off the henchmen and thwarted the villain’s evil plans in some spectacular fashion.

http://youtu.be/QaQp_qKC5RA

Lesson: Your recruiting and staffing software needs to be able to scale up to your needs, whether you’re a boutique recruiting business specializing in assassins with unique skills like Xenia Onatopp, or a global terror organization such as SPECTRE.

In the final analysis, it would seem that the only person with a reasonable chance of killing off James Bond is…James Bond.

http://youtu.be/O9C7yYomVuo

Finally, if you are in the market for really great recruiting software or staffing software to help you find type ‘A’ agents – and are NOT part of some organization led by a megalomaniac bent on world domination, please click or call us today. We’re ready to help!

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Lock Down Your Staffing Software Budget With A Demo At TechServe

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TechServe 2012The 2012 TechServe Alliance Conference & Tradeshow, held this November 8-10 in Miami, promises to be an information-rich event engineered to inspire and energize members of the IT staffing and professional services industry.  Conference attendees will have the opportunity to network with top executives and thought leaders in the industry and discover technologies that help organizations execute critical strategic initiatives.

My company, Bond International Software, will also be on hand sharing how our staffing software provides a competitive advantage to agencies servicing the IT and professional services industry.

Via personalized demos, which I invite you to register for in advance, you will see how your agency’s organizational goals can be met with our cost-effective and feature rich solutions. As your 2013 budget plans wrap up, now is the perfect time to discover how Bond recruiting and staffing software will help you efficiently facilitate the discovery, placement and management of talent by:

  • Alleviating the administrative burden associated with onboarding talent
  • Streamlining all documentation and related onboarding forms. In other words, go paperless!
  • Improve metrics ranging from order-to-fill ratios to new hire retention rates

Make sure that your 2013 budget includes a comprehensive staffing and recruiting software solution that is optimized for candidate discovery and employment quickly, accurately, and efficiently.  Register for a demo of Bond recruiting and staffing software, during or after this week’s TechServe Alliance.

Event Details:

What:     TechServe Alliance 2012
When:     November 8th-10th, 2012
Where:    Loews Miami Beach Hotel, Miami, FL

5 Reasons To Invest In Staffing Software Regardless of The Election Outcome

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Economic Uncertainty

Those of us working in or servicing the staffing industry find ourselves on the economic front lines, and are among the first to see changes on the horizon.  And with the election this week, the outlook has perhaps never been more cloudy – as we see four more years of continued recovery or doom & gloom, depending on which way we lean and what we predict in terms of results.

With this much uncertainty, sure to spill well past November 6th, is it the ideal time for your staffing agency to even consider adding new staffing software into its budgeting plans for 2013 – or even late 2012?  As you tire of election day ads and coverage that serve spin and uncertainty, here are five straightforward reasons why the answer is ‘yes’

1. Temp Hiring To Remain Strong Regardless of Election Outcome
As I commented last week, 2013 temporary hiring will reach historic highs in certain segments, according to Staffing Industry Analysts.  A fortunate outcome of this development, in my opinion, is that strong temporary hiring is oftentimes one of the first signs of real recovery.

But we are not living in ‘oftentimes.’  The challenges of our times are new and unprecedented, and as a result, so will the surge of temporary hiring we are about to see.  And quite honestly, it will be difficult to contain the surge of 2013 temporary hiring with software built around 2009 needs.

2. Busy Holiday Hiring
Forbes reports that nearly 700,000 new retail jobs – many of them temporary – will be added for the 2012 holiday season.  While I certainly understand that staffing software selection is something that must be carefully considered, I also know firsthand that it can be quickly implemented and tested – helping you prepare for real-time needs mere weeks away.

3. You Need to Prepare
Scott Wintrip, president of Wintrip Consulting Group, president of StaffingU, named to the Staffing 100 by Staffing Industry Analysts in both 2011 and 2012, calls our economic landscape the Avoidant Economy, defined by:

“delayed decisions, fear of overhead and the permanent change in the psyche of buyers as a result of the Great Recession.”

Wintrip also sees this environment as:

“the single greatest opportunity the staffing and recruiting industry has seen in the past three decades…an unprecedented opportunity to bring value to companies and profits to your bottom line.”

And an economy this unprecedented will not change based on the results of one election.  What
can change, however, is how prepared  you are to handle this opportunity.  Again, are you preparing for 2013 with tools and software from 2009 – or are you ready to move forward with tools built during and for this current landscape?

4. Technology Investments Help You Improve
In describing how to succeed in the Avoidant Economy, Wintrip goes on to indicate that agencies “will need to be more nimble, more responsive, and more innovative.”

If you are using a software package from 2009 – can you truly make the claim that your agency is as nimble, responsive and innovative as it needs to be in 2013?

5. You Have The Information You Need
As I note above, staffing software selection is not an overnight decision.  To help you make the most informed decision for your company, I invite you to review two unbiased staffing software selection resources offered by my company:

I also invite you to register for a free demo of Bond staffing software at anytime.

Tomorrow – I encourage you to get out and vote for the candidate that you feel will best move our nation forward.  But remember, whoever wins, uncertainty continues to lie ahead.  Fortunately, it will only hurt those that are truly unprepared.  Let’s ensure this is your agency’s competition.

How Will The Election Impact The Staffing & Recruiting Industry?

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I’m not going to get into the debate over which presidential candidate is better for the country – or even which is better for the staffing and recruiting industry.  But, I will discuss some ways in which political forces have been impacting the jobs market – and the likelihood that the effects of these forces will continue well beyond November 6th.

A Strong Temporary Workforce

With so much uncertainty in how the election might impact the economy, companies are seemingly even more cautious about bringing on full-time employees.  Astonishingly, this trend is climbing up the ranks of executives, too.

The simple fact is that contingent and temporary employees have become a prevalent norm in the hiring industry. Since September 2008, in fact, 88% of companies have hired temporary workers. Temporary and contract employment has grown 26.6%, since the beginning of 2012 according to the ASA’s September Staffing Index Monthly Report.

Another political force impacting the staffing and recruiting industries is the Affordable Care Act.  Some experts believe this could reduce fraudulent worker’s compensation claims because workers would have better healthcare coverage.  The savings experienced from the Affordable Care Act would be passed on to the companies hiring temp workers because they would have less reason to use workers’ compensation.  Aside from payroll, worker’s compensation is the biggest expense facing companies.

Finally, there is the election itself directly impacting the temporary workforce. Contingent workers in cities all over the country have been hired to test the ballot machines and man the polls on Election Day. Second the campaigns themselves are huge employers of hundreds, even thousands of contingent workers. Once the election is done, most will probably have to find new temporary work, regardless of whether their candidate won.

Will the Trend Continue?

Staffing Industry Analysts suggest that temporary employee demand in certain segments will reach historic highs in 2013.  Additionally, with the sluggish growth the economy has been experiencing and the holiday hiring season ramping up, I think it’s safe to say temporary workers will be in high demand for companies of all shapes and sizes through the end of the year.  And this is all rather independent of who wins the election.

Regardless of who wins the election – the truth is this.  As the economy recovers, contingent and temporary employees are those that are brought on first – prior to the recovery in full time hiring.  And whether we have four more years of Obama, or the first four of Romney, our economy will likely be perpetually recovering – at least for the next several years.  How long the staffing and recruiting industry remains such a fertile field depends solely on how quickly either candidate moves our economy from ‘recovery’ to ‘recovered.’

Our recruiting software solutions can help you recruiting or staffing agency regardless of our economic state.  To learn how, request a demo.

Bring Front & Back Offices Together On Staffing Software Selection

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Front and back officeYour front office finds, manages and places the candidates that drive the success of both your clients and your staffing agency as a whole.  Your back office helps to manage the fiscal impact of these actions, whether its coordinating payroll or managing billing processes.

It could be argued that the front office focuses more on people while the back office focuses more on numbers.  But regardless of primary focus, what both sides of the house need to run smoothly is processes that are easily managed and adhered to.  This is where staffing software comes into play.

Unfortunately, it can oftentimes happen that a staffing software selection is made that helps to streamline front office processes while completely ignoring the back office, or vice versa.  In the short term, this creates communication and integration issues. Worse, in the long term it necessitates additional spending on new modules – or even an entirely new staffing software platform.

Implementation of staffing software is simply the last step in a successful front and back office integration initiative.  Before thoughts of using staffing software to integrate front and back office processes even enters into the picture, front and back office ideas need to be integrated.

Building Front & Back Office Unity

When a new staffing software platform that both the front and back office will be trusting to ease their worlds, both the front and back office need to be consulted on just what parts of their worlds need to be eased.  In other words, the front office and back office worlds need to unite.

Final decision makers need to be acutely aware of not just what the back office wants – but what the back office truly needs.  For instance, the back office will appreciate the ability to configure hundreds of different types of reports.  But what the back office absolutely needs is the ability to consolidate payroll and billing into one system.  The front office wants to be able to integrate with mobile – but absolutely needs a better way to find candidates.

Keep in mind that the specifics may change across each agency – and nearly any platform can be configurable to a very specific set of features and needs.  Because of this, it is important for decision makers to adhere to a discovery process involving both sides of the house early.

When conducting this discovery process, steps I recommend include:

  • Identifying who the key stakeholders are in each side of the house
  • Scheduling a live session with stakeholders to determine what processes the current software is supporting, what processes the software is not supporting at all – and what processes will need to be supported in the future
  • Leveraging stakeholder feedback to create a checklist needs analysis, clearly identifying what features need to be implemented

Not only will this needs analysis provide you with a staffing software selection checklist – it can quickly become a use case as you can leverage when finalizing – or asking for more – budget.

Apart from the steps above, what have you found to be helpful when bringing your front and back office together on a project as critical as staffing software selection?  I encourage you to share via a comment below.

If you are ready to move past discovery and needs analysis, I encourage you to request a free demo of staffing software by Bond.

How Front Office Staffing Software Helps Create Paperless Agencies

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Paperless“Computers will make your life easier and require you to use less paper than ever before,” I was told.  But quite the opposite has happened.  The Information Age seems to have resulted in more paper around some offices than ever before.  And the office of a staffing agency is no different.

Until now, that is.  You see, front office staffing software is helping to quickly make paperless staffing agencies a reality.  It’s later than all the computer salesmen told us a couple decades ago, but it is no doubt here. Hopefully, our flying cars and light sabers aren’t far behind, but for now, let’s explore the technology that’s available.

How Front Office Staffing Software Can Take Your Agency Paperless

“Paperless” is a strong claim.  But, I’ll happily show you three concrete ways front office staffing software can help transition your agency to a paperless environment.

The first one is easy – scan those paper resumes into your system.  It’ll be time consuming at first, but you’ll thank yourself for taking the time to convert them to a digital format.  Just take a look at the long-term benefits – fewer lost resumes and an easier time finding the ones you need.

The second example I have for you here is killer.  Think about the older, typical application process.  You sent out a packet of application materials, waited to hear back, and tried to decipher the handwriting received.  In the digital age, some agencies still adhere to this paper-based process.  Software not only helps automate the application process and make it electronic, it results in dramatically lower usage of paper.  Not only that, it can save countless future hours, as organizing and searching for digital application information is just so much faster.

Finally, you can keep better track of all of those W-4s and I-9s.  What about all of those other employment forms?  They can be stored by your software, too.  What a relief.

Take the Transition to Paperless One Step at a Time

Once you go paperless, you’ll never want to go back.  Take it slowly if you have to, but keep in mind that going paperless means you’ll be more organized, save on space, and save money on ink and paper. And personally, you will be more efficient, meaning you will be able to spend more time finding the perfect job candidates for the perfect clients.

To learn more about how front office staffing software by Bond US can help your agency make the transition to paperless, request a free demo.