Monthly Archives: May 2012

Is Your Staffing Company E3 Certified?

Posted by on May 23, 2012 2 comments

E3 CertificationWhether an employee of staffing company, a candidate working with a staffing company to find their next career, or a company that has hired the services of a staffing company,  one had better make certain that it is E3 Certified. What is an E3 Certification you ask?

The E stands for EMPOWERMENT. The 3 represents the EMPOWERMENT of the following 3 groups:

1. Employees
2. Candidates
3. Clients

OK…you got me. An E3 Certification is not currently a recognized industry certification, but it ought to be. If you are not empowering or enabling your constituents (the three groups listed above), this means you are typically falling short of satisfying your bottom line whether your company priority is to satisfy stakeholders, shareholders or both.

The staffing industry is filled with brand names that claim to put “people first” and are dedicated to their clients and candidates. Many firms would like to say that they have been voted “Best Staffing Company to Work For”, sadly this is not the case. The fact is that many companies find themselves not capable of empowering one or more of these groups at the expense of the others.

Employee Empowerment

For example, if a staffing company is unable or unwilling to invest in ongoing training and technology for recruiters, the company runs the risk of recruiter burnout. This affects how recruiters communicate with candidates and clients. Has your company invested in recruiting automation or CRM technology that empowers them to make placements rather than unnecessary manual data entry? If you are a company that provides consultants or temporary services, do you provide your consultants or contingent workforce with online timesheets? Are your employees recognized for beingpeople oriented people?  It is critical in a service oriented industry such as staffing and recruiting to recognize how you recognize employees.

Candidate Empowerment

If you empower candidates with job requirements that are in-line with their skill sets and make it a point of providing timely feedback whether it is by phone or an automated email, this reflects on the quality of your recruiters, services and your company overall. We’ve all seen unsavory posts about how a candidate was perceived to be treated by a recruiter? These comments are costly. How about empowering candidates with a candidate portal? Are candidates able to easily upload resumes? How about other documents and online evaluations? Do they receive an acknowledgement that the resume and documents have been received? Attention to these details creates a positive candidate experience.

Client Empowerment

If your staffing company utilizes technology that enables you to fulfill open job recs quicker, bridges the gap with timely communications between client and candidates and makes the staffing process seamless and comfortable for all involved, this empowers clients to continue a strong partnership with your company and positively influences their reputation as a great company to interview with, especially through a third party recruiting firm.

Can a staffing company satisfy the needs of employees, candidates and clients? Only you can answer that. Do you have an organizational, technological or economic reason holding you back and why?

Questions for you:

If there was a real E3 Certification, would your staffing company qualify?
If the answer is yes, we’d like to know how you empower each group.

Let us know at info@targetrecruit.net

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Get in Touch with the author of this article Heather Venesile.

  

The War for Talent’s Secret Weapon: Technology

Posted by on May 4, 2012 No comments

ERE.net posted a blog outlining four strategies to implement as we face the War for Talent. This War for Talent has been blogged about and tweeted about ad nauseum and will continue to gain hype as the days and weeks go by, that is for certain.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a very well written and easy to understand blog with several high level strategies to think about and implement before a company invests in what the author labeled, “new-fangled” technology, and I agree.  A solid foundation of basic recruiting principals should be identified and carried out to all levels of the organization.  But assuming (and you know what they say about assuming)  your organization has an exemplary executive and recruiting staff, your recruitment technology will either help you to triumph over or lose this War for Talent.

As a technology firm that has built our reputation by creating solutions to automate the recruitment, sales, marketing financial & back office processes, we believe  that winning the War for Talent is a combination of best recruiting practices, strategic business development strategies and of course, technology solutions to support both strategies.

The Cloud has made it possible for a staffing company, or any company for that matter, regardless of size, not only to compete but Win this War for Talent.

Here is our own list of technology strategies to consider once you have re-solidified your value proposition to candidates and clients and thoroughly developed your enterprise business processes so that they encourage efficiency to lower the operating costs of doing business.

1.  Invest in the Cloud.
2.  Consider Internal Collaboration Tools.
3.  Advanced Candidate Search Tools.
4.  Technology Marketing Tools.

Invest in the Cloud

It takes time and money to make the switch, but many times, not a lot.  Find a consultant to advise you or conduct a thorough Technology Inventory Review if you are still on a server based model and plan on crawling not sprinting to the cloud. The benefits far outweigh any of your current fears about privacy & safety and besides, you can back up everything so if you’re an organization that needs safety nets, “it’s all good” as they say.

Staffing firms must at least consider the cloud to stay flexible and accessible to new applications that will empower them with increased efficiency.

Consider Internal Collaboration Tools

TargetRecruit is built on the Salesforce.com platform so in terms of internal collaboration, Salesforce’s highly acclaimed Chatter feature creates a way for your entire organization from recruiting to accounting to collaborate on accounts, documents, business deals in progress and the approval processes that so many organizations have implemented. In addition, it creates a level of accountability that is critical in an organization with so many moving parts.  Now, many companies wish to limit the transparency from business unit to business unit and permissions are in place to limit accessibility.  You must be prepared internally to compete externally.

Advanced Candidate Search Tools for Sourcing

Technology makes it so that searching for candidates has become an artform, not just a job within a recruiting firm. In layman’s terms, Boolean searches allow you to combine words and phrases using the words AND, OR, NOT and NEAR (otherwise known as Boolean operators) to limit, widen, or define your search. There are also toolbars that have been created to enhance the search process.  Are you using a Social Media technology tool for sourcing hard to identify candidates?  Is it integrated in your ATS?
Does your database have a search function that automatically matches open job orders to candidates in the system and vice versa? The technology is available!

Technology Marketing Tools

The recruiter that gets to the candidate first …wins.  So, marketing open job orders as quickly and efficiently as possible to the pool of qualified candidates in your database or on social media sites is way too important to ignore. Email marketing that gives you the ability to mass email candidates for jobs, and similarly, templates that give you the ability to conduct a business development campaign for clients are a step in the right direction.

Questions for you:  

What cloud based technology decisions have you made to ensure you are an unstoppable force in the industry?

Like This Article? Please Share It With Your Friends!

Get in Touch with the author of this article Heather Venesile.