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Five MORE Work Hacks for Successful Full Desk Recruiters

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Are you new to recruitment or looking to develop your work ethic?  Here are  five more invaluable work hacks to help you make the most of your time; and offers heartfelt advice to those considering a career in recruitment… 

Miss the first five work hacks for full desk recruiters? Check out the first post on our blog to catch-up.

  1. Start early, leave late

When I was new to the industry, I was always interested in how full desk recruiters who started early and left late tended to be the most successful.  It’s not about being seen in the office at those times, it’s about maintaining a busy day.  There’s a lot to do on a recruitment desk and 9 to 5 simply isn’t enough time to cover it.  Always be conscious that arriving early to learn, make contacts and post and fill jobs is what makes one recruiter stand out from another.  You don’t need to be ‘always on’, but you do need to put yourself in your clients and candidate’s shoes.  Your clients don’t want to speak with you outside of office hours but your candidates might!  So, if you want to speak with them, you must be available.

  1. Take a lunch hour

Calling candidates on their lunch hour may seem like a good idea but, in my experience, it’s rarely successful.  Lunch hours vary from company to company, so you’ll need to know when your candidate takes lunch and have their mobile number…it soon becomes tricky.  If you’ve made previous contact with them and you’re building a good rapport, they’re more likely to take your call during lunch.  So, my advice is – take a lunch hour and give yourself a break.

  1. Have an ‘open phone’ policy

Depending on the market you staff for, most jobs are 9 to 5 so you’ll probably be speaking with candidates outside of these hours.  Have an ‘open phone’ policy where you’re willing to take calls before and after your working hours (including starting early and staying late).  Say, anytime between 8am and 11pm.  Give your candidate time to get home, put their kids to bed, have dinner and then have time to speak with you.  If 10:30pm is their only free time, call them at 10:30pm – especially if they’re a good candidate – it’s worth your time.  That half hour outside of office hours will pay off.  Sometimes, it’s the most important half hour of your day, and sometimes it’s the most important half hour of the day you never had.

  1. Don’t be ruled by email

If someone wants to speak with you, especially if it’s urgent, they will call you.  If they email mentioning they would like to speak with you at some point, it’s probably not that urgent.  When you finish for the day, have a family life, have a social life, put your phone down and forget about it.  If you’re constantly checking emails, you’ll feel like you’re working all the time and risk burning out.  If you need to make a call at 10:30pm, make that call and put your phone down again.  Build some boundaries into your busy day.  Move from ‘I’m working all the time, I’m checking my emails.’ to ‘I don’t check my emails between 5pm and 8am.’  Consider an out of office email response with words to the effect of: ‘If you’re a client or a candidate with an urgent issue, please call me on my cell phone now.  Otherwise I will respond to your email tomorrow.’  It’s not going to benefit you, your client or your candidate to reply to emails in the late evening, it might make you look like you’re working hard, but I would prefer seeing someone working smart.

  1. Remember, recruitment is not an easy option to make money

Recruitment is a long game.  Once you’ve developed your pipelines, you may be able to take more work home with you (and I recommend doing some aspects of your work outside of office hours, such as client research), but the important thing is your mindset.  Get into the same mindset as other full desk recruiters and let your Manager see it.  Prove to your Manager that you’re a recruiter for the right reasons and you’re not expecting an easy money-making option.  You can earn a lot as a recruiter, but it’s not a quick and easy 9 to 5 job.  If you treat it that way, you’ll see your colleagues performing better than you and get frustrated – or you simply won’t deliver what’s required to sustain your desk, or your job.

Is recruitment right for you?

If you’re questioning whether recruitment is right for you, if you will like it, if you can do it…you may need to take a step back and evaluate what you really want from a career.

Full desk recruiters can’t make everyone happy all the time.  Colleagues, clients, candidates – you’ll do everything you can, but due to the nature of the job you might not make them happy.  When you put five candidates forward, only one is going to get the job.  When you put five candidates forward and none get the job, you’ll upset six people – five candidates and your client…

Recruitment is a lifestyle in how you get out there, meet people, engage them, learn their needs, aspirations, and genuinely help them.  Whether it’s helping an organization to succeed or helping someone find their dream job, working as a recruiter can be extremely rewarding – if it’s right for you. If you’d like to learn more about how your recruitment software can help streamline your workflow for maximum efficiency, contact us today! 

Five Work Hacks for Successful Full Desk Recruiters

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New to staffing or looking to develop your work ethic?  Below are five invaluable ‘work hacks’ for full desk recruiters new to the job to help you get up and running, make the most of your time and achieve more every day… 

During my time as recruiter, I noticed several behaviors which were very telling when it came to how long people stayed in the staffing industry.  People who did certain things and behaved in certain ways tended to stick around and keep their jobs, and those who didn’t often struggled.  The following tips aren’t ‘bullet-proof’, but they can certainly aid your development as a recruiter from day one.

  1. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

I’ve seen a lot of people hiding in corners, trying to avoid making phone calls for fear of making mistakes and facing the criticism of their peers.  It’s not worth it.  Office criticism is just something that happens and, more often than not, it’s a term of endearment helping you to become part of the team.  Everybody’s been there, nobody makes a call and ‘nails it’ on their first attempt; and your colleagues know that.  It’s all about practicing and developing your phone skills.  When you ‘fluff’ a call, roll with the punches and soon enough you’ll improve.

  1. Research outside of office hours

When I started as a recruiter, one thing that helped get me up and running was doing my research during the evening or outside of office working hours.  That way, during regular business hours I would have my research ready with a list of numbers to call, and I would be on the phone non-stop.  Allocate an hour to business development, start dialing and as soon as you hang up (and document the call in your recruiting software), dial again.  If you stop dialing and start looking-up company websites, you’ll break your flow (and it is possible to find out too much about a company).  The most important thing is to get on the phone and talk with people.  Unless you’re an extrovert it’s uncomfortable initially, but if you develop your research and calling ethic, both will become second nature.

  1. Listen to your Manager

Genuinely listen to what your Manager says.  They’re not there to make you ‘do stuff’ that’s irrelevant or unimportant.  Do what they say, don’t over-complicate it, don’t turn it into rocket science, literally do what they say.  If they say ‘Call this person, find out where they worked in their last five jobs and what they expect out of their next position.’ – do exactly what they ask because they are giving you the best way to get things done.  Recruitment Managers or Owners haven’t just fallen into their positions by luck, they’re there for a reason and they want the best from you.  As a rookie  recruiter, I was guilty of over-thinking things, but you can keep it simple and succeed quicker than I did.

  1. Quality and quantity

When it comes to business development calls, being successful is very much a case of making a high-volume of well-informed calls.  I’ve seen people make calls and obtain insightful information, but not enough of them; talented people who eventually dropped out of recruitment because they were unable to meet the required volume of calls.  When you’re working through a call list, it may seem a little monotonous at times but it’s part of the job.  Hang in there, be tenacious and get through your lists – your effort will be rewarded in the long term.  Recruitment isn’t about a quick deal here and there – yes, those are cool – but it’s about building-up your contacts and the future pay-off.

  1. Play the long game

I’ve seen plenty of people get caught-up in the results others were getting.  Recruitment isn’t about short term gain.  You can deliver a hundred perfect phone calls every day for two weeks and your colleague can still pick up one incoming call and do more business then you’ve done in all that time.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s not about answering that one phone call, it’s about being persistent and doing the right things – long term.

Remember, it’s ‘water off a duck’s back’

Successful rookie full desk recruiters develop a thick skin.  Think ‘water off a duck’s back’, don’t think about what your colleagues are doing.  Listen to your Manager, forget about everything else, focus on your work and it will work for you.  Staffing and recruitment is an interesting, rewarding profession and getting to the stage where it becomes fun is just brilliant.

Contact us today to learn more about how our staffing software solutions can keep you efficient!

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.

How Recruiting Managers Can Improve Communication With Body Language

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Previously, we discussed how your sales team can use body language to improve performance. This week it’s the managers’ turn to learn how to improve management communication skills, connect with your team and know what they’re really saying, with words and without.

Effective leaders understand how to use body language. When you’re giving your recruiting team a LinkedIn networking training session, explaining a new industry your firm is targeting or going over staffing software statistics about close rates, you want to know if your team members grasp what you’re saying. The body language you employ can strengthen or dilute the effectiveness of your message.

Manager Communication Skills

Use body language to reinforce your message.

Along with using management communication skills to emphasize your meaning, reading the body language of your team can offer insight into their receptivity. Certain physical cues communicate openness, confusion, or reluctance. As you denote cues from your team, you’ll be able to give more details about, for example, why you’re increasing follow-ups with placed candidates. Whatever the message you’re delivering or receiving, there are a number of ways to utilize body language for better communication with your recruiting team.

As you work with your team to develop a performance-driven culture, learn more valuable strategies to help your team grow by downloading the Bond US Sales Selection, Training and Development Report 2014.

Ways to Be a Better Communicator with Body Language

If failure rates are up and job placements are down, you’re going to have to lead a tough conversation with your team. You may spend part of the meeting discussing topics you view as closed — such as requiring recruiters to spend more time connecting with passive candidates. However your body language might become more open when you begin a brainstorming session about strategies for coaching candidates for upcoming interviews.

Any time you are communicating with your team, especially in a tough situation like this one, you can use these body language tactics to give the right message to your team about your expectations, authority and openness:

Have open space between you and your team

Have open space between you and your team

  • Remove physical barriers if possible. Take away anything that blocks your view or forms a barrier between you and your team, especially if you’re seeking their input about new companies to contact or ways to use LinkedIn to find Java developers. Barriers include larger physical obstructions such as podiums and smaller items such as coffee cups.
  • Think tall. By standing tall and assured, you’ll feel more confident and positive. Carol Kinsey Goman, PhD, Forbes leadership blogger and body language expert says that leaders can send signals of status, authority and power by standing tall and taking up more height and space. Moving around the room also affirms the perception of having influence when you require that every salesperson brings clients a minimum of three candidate resumes.
  • Keep palms down. If you want to look decisive, stand with your palms down — palms up signals openness to negotiation. Palms down on a table signals “no questions asked” as you relay that every salesperson needs to call the managers of your top candidates so your firm will be in a position to offer replacements when the candidate resigns.
  • Stand open to increase collaboration. If recruiting managers stand in a relaxed posture, open with arms uncrossed, you’ll send subconscious cues that you’re open to suggestions and are inclusive. Your team, which unconsciously watches your nonverbal cues, will likely respond with feedback and input about the best ways to get testimonials from repeat clients and placed candidates.

    “Nonverbal signals can also convey empathy, likeability, friendliness and inclusiveness,” says Goman. “These signals include open palm gestures, leaning slightly forward, giving people eye contact when they talk, nodding your head when someone is speaking or tilting your head slightly to encourage them to speak more. When you are trying to engage people or foster collaboration, these are the more important signals.”

A true smile lights up someone’s face.

A true smile lights up someone’s face.

 

What Others’ Body Language Can Relay

Some of your recruiting staff members are outgoing and readily speak their minds, while others may be more reluctant to voice their opinions. Not only can you use body language to back up what you’re saying, but you can improve your management communication skills by watching team members’ nonverbal cues for hints into what they think. For example, if you’re implementing a new process to follow up on leads and members of your team have a defensive posture, ask if they see obstacles to your plan of which you’re unaware.

  • Watch the eyes. The pupils of someone’s eyes can give you clues into how someone is responding. If you’re near enough to see someone’s eyes up close, dilated pupils show interest. Your team member might be on board with a strategy for pinpointing potential clients. Pupils that are constricted mean that your team member is feeling less receptive to your ideas. Follow up by helping them locate start-up companies in your niche.

    “When someone is disengaged, the amount of eye contact decreases, as we tend to look away from things that distress us or people we don’t like,” says Goman. “Team members who feel bored may avoid eye contact by gazing past you, defocusing or glancing around the room.”

  • Gauge smiles. A genuine smile usually signals agreement, while clenched jaws and pursed lips mean disagreement — even if it’s not being said out loud. A bona fide smile will be reflected in the eyes, not just the lips, and light up your recruiting team member’s entire face when they find their social media training compelling and engaging.
  • Feet can show stress.

    Feet can show stress.

    See the arms. Open arms typically signal openness, as do movements reaching toward you and welcoming gestures. Closed arms or clenched fists indicate defensive or angry feelings, which is not unusual when you’re going over missed placement goals. Doodling, resting their head in their hands or tapping fingers may indicate that your team member is bored. Ask them questions to get them engaged in the conversation.

  • Note feet. Although you shouldn’t be staring at the floor, keeping your eyes on someone’s feet in your peripheral vision can be telling. If someone’s feeling stressed, they may have fidgety feet that shuffle or wind around each other — perhaps your new salesperson fell short on his quota of face-to-face client visits. If your team members have their legs stretched out toward you, they are more likely to be feeling positive.

“Remember, with nonverbal communication, it’s not how the sender feels that matters most, it’s how the observer perceives how the sender feels,” says Goman. “If you frown in a staff meeting, your team will think you don’t like what you just heard, and they’ll keep their opinions to themselves.”

There are a number of insights you can take from nonverbal communication. From being able to better read your recruiting team’s reactions to asserting your authority or conveying openness to ideas, body language can help you improve your management communication skills. You’ll be better at communicating to your team and also better at reading what they’re thinking so you can be a more effective leader.

Learn how to improve your management communication skills further by building a performance-driven culture and developing an outcome-driven sales funnel with our webinar, Discover the Metrics That Will Drive Your Growth and Profitability.

 

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.

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.

 

Take Home the Gold in 2014 when you Stay Ahead of These Staffing Trends

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Mentally Prepare, Physically Train, Gloriously Fail. Get up. Repeat. And Keep Going for the Gold.

This year’s winter Olympians have done that all their lives. Truly great players like Kesler, Carlson and Quick show us how to look to the future, how to train, how to improve. And ultimately how to make a vision a reality… like playing on the 2014 U.S. Olympic Hockey team.

Here at Bond, we are honored to bring the best staffing and recruiting software to staffing pros who are poised to take home staffing gold this year. They have been studying the trends driving the industry. They dial-in and not only react, but predict and deliver what is needed in order to drive efficiencies into their staffing businesses.

With them, we have identified 5 trends which we feel ALL staffing and recruiting pros should study, and plan for carefully.

Could this year be a “Miracle off the Ice” for you? Get ahead of these 5 trends and claim the gold for yourself!

 

Staffing Trend 1 – The Need to Cast Wider Nets to Recruit Talent is Growing

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In order to achieve great results, champions know no bounds. This approach to the game is what moves NHL greats to Olympian status.

Today’s recruiters face the same opportunity. To score the best talent, recruiters must not see obstacles. Rather, they need to set up wider nets.

Even with the unemployment rate of ~7 percent, talent seems to be scarce. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers U.S. CEOs are sharing that a shortage of skills is a potential threat to growth.

Staffing firms can get ahead of this trend by using social media, video interviewing, and actively courting qualified referrals.  Managing the deluge of candidates found through these (and other) methods can be done more efficiently with well selected recruiting software.

 

Staffing Trend 2 –   Labor Pool Access is More Open – Yet Challenging to Manage

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From a VERY deep talent pool, only 25 players were selected for the men’s U.S. Hockey team. It wasn’t easy and it was definitely a thorough process.

Likewise, recruiters have few boundaries and lots of access to candidates especially online job seekers (and non-seekers). With the growth of social recruiting (from 56 percent of employers in 2011 to 77 percent of employers in 2013) the addressable labor pool has grown at staggering rates. But let’s be honest, bigger has not necessarily meant better.

The opportunity for recruiters is to invest in the right systems, processes and recruiting software designed to rapidly source qualified candidates, especially those with a high degree of specialization.

 

 

Staffing Trend 3 – Mobile Recruiting is Becoming a Must!

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Olympians have heart. They have brains. And bottom line, they have the pure will to win. They are different from most of us in that they persevere when in pain. They get up and keep going when – for most of us – we might prefer to take a nap.

Mobile recruiting will be a key focus for staffers in 2014.  86 percent of jobseekers use mobile phones. 90 percent of job seekers read emails (potentially from recruiters with career opportunities) on their phones. And 82 percent expect to apply for a job via a mobile device.

Will you win market share by developing and enhancing your mobile presence? It means more work than simply maintaining a traditional web presence. For those of us not up to the mobile challenge, it might just be time for that nap.

 

Staffing Trend 4 – Social Staffing – It’s no Secret – Is Here to Stay…and Grow

shutterstock_80672521Suiting up since they were three. That’s the story of most of this year’s U.S. Olympic Hockey team. And to make it this far, they have been dedicated to studying and practicing the nuances of their sport.

While 95 percent of LinkedIn members are open to relevant InMails from recruiters, the magic is finding the right candidate and romancing them enough to find interest in the career opportunity you hold in your hand.

Hiring managers and staffing offices will continue to use social media as part of their recruiting process. But those who study the nuances of social recruiting and learn how to integrate with their staffing and recruiting software will have success courting highly qualified – often passive – candidates.

Some staffing companies no longer require resumes, replacing them with a candidate’s LinkedIn profile. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to study up and adapt to social recruiting. Hit it with eyes of wonder. Like a 3 year old future Olympian!

 

Staffing Trend 5 – Contract Workers are Nearly Doubling

shutterstock_72956344In 2010, 8 percent of U.S. Hockey Olympians were returning to the Olympics. This year over half the team is composed of returning Olympians.

Building bench strength can lead to a stronger future workforce.

42 percent of employers plan to hire temporary or contract workers in 2014, up from 40 percent in 2013. 57 percent plan to increase the number of contingent hires. The reasons vary, but the reality is the same.

Develop the processes and grow the systems to become not only a skilled recruiting agency, but also a staffing firm, with a recurring revenue stream, and you will be relied upon by your clients to fill their contingent workforce.

Study up staffers and recruiters. This year is destined to be a golden year for you. All you have to do is follow the biggest industry trends and setup your business to stay ahead of them.

Sound simple? Well remember to mentally prepare. And know that you may gloriously fail. If you do, get up my friend! Repeat. And keep going for staffing and recruiting gold. 

Staffing & Recruiting Software Lessons from Super Bowl 48

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Russell Wilson, Seattle Seahawks QB

Staffing & Recruiting Software Lessons from Super Bowl 48

Did you watch Super Bowl 48?

Better yet, what did you learn?

Staffing and recruiting professionals learned A LOT from the team that executed at the top of their capabilities!

Here are 6 Sweet Lessons from the Seahawks.

RECRUITING SOFTWARE LESSONS

Offer a vision of your client’s future when you present “Player of the Year” candidates.

Suss out super stars fast with recruiting software that offers super effective resume management.

No matter where you look, you should always have instant access to important staffing data via your recruiting software.

Plan for it.
And it will happen!

The future of SaaS-based recruiting software is NOW.

And soon it will
differentiate you.

Start thinking about how cloud-based recruiting software can reduce total cost of ownership, simplify IT maintenance and enable you to be more nimble as you grow.

Guide your candidates throughout their career.

Carefully select monitoring and tracking tools which help you nurture your most talented recruits and place them in the best positions as they are ready to advance.

Ensure your recruiters and sales team can accomplish 80% of their tasks from a single screen.

Seriously!
It’s that important!

The more quickly & effectively they can manage their activity the faster job orders will be filled and sales will be closed.

…FROM THE PLAYBOOK…

Prophecy was fulfilled when Russell Wilson was named starting quarterback for the Seahawks in 2012.

The future $100 Million Man helped trounce Denver as he led the team on a crushing 43-8 Super Bowl conquest.

Wilson consistently has mystical access to 3, 4 and sometimes 5 receivers during a play.

It’s not an accident.

As the first QB to post a 100+ passer rating in each of his first two seasons, he PLANS for it and it HAPPENS.

With histories of practice and games at CenturyLink Field, the Seahawks’ defense performed like a brick wall. Linebacker and the game’s MVP, Malcolm Smith, made the point of pride when he said, “We attack all over the field.”

It’s about being ready.

Contact Bond when you’re ready for the future of cloud-based recruiting software.

The Seahawks saw insane talent in Bruce Irvin.

With Coach Carroll’s guidance he’s been able to showcase multiple talents as linebacker, outside linebacker and (Fans didn’t have to WAIT for it ) defensive end!

The Seahawks’ laser-like commitment to a small yardage strategy clearly got results.

The team spends a phenomenal amount of time in their opponent’s end zone.

Ah, to taste a touchdown!

The Seahawks Super Bowl 48 win
inspires staffers and recruiters alike.

This year, let’s all follow Pete Carroll’s Mantra
“Always Compete”.

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

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

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

Percentage of women in IT industry grows

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

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

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

Positive change in the tech industry

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

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

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