Okay, I got the memo. We are in the midst of a busy holiday season. Our time is precious. We can count the days – and the hours – until the Christmas/Hanukkah break. And if I wasn’t on your radar/agenda/to-do list for a while, it’s [...]
From the category archives:
Advice
As a Vice President running a growing manufacturing company, it’s not uncommon to have 2-3 staffing agencies stop by my office on a daily basis and perhaps one or two annoy the heck out of me by trying to slip in the backdoor with a [...]
“Does Better Productivity Kill Jobs?” That was the headline of a TIME magazine blog I read and set aside last winter. It also happened to coincide with a lecture I just attended by productivity expert and sometime Staffing Talk contributor Tor Dahl who says high [...]
We all hate to fire someone, though Donald Trump seemed to relish the role and George Clooney got pretty good at it in Up In The Air. It’s definitely safer to say we all hate to be fired. But sometimes it’s simply not our fault, [...]
Want free, useful data about job postings in your line of business, in your area? Overall trends in specific jobs, year to year or month to month? Average salary for a specific job in a specific place? Who your competitors are looking for, and at [...]
During peak periods – around the holidays, tax season or over the summer – it’s critical that businesses can easily manage the addition of temporary employees and quickly get them up to speed. And from recruiting and training to offboarding, seasonal employees can put your [...]
Hi! I’m Amy Bingham, and I’m an 18-year veteran of the staffing industry. I spent more than a dozen years with Spherion in field and corporate roles learning the business from soup to nuts and winning many awards and trips for beating my numbers along [...]
“Monkeys with machine guns.” That’s how international search consultant Claudio Fernández-Aráoz refers to many in the search and recruiting business. Of course that statement is a slight bit inflammatory, so I should quickly follow it up by saying what he means is that hiring managers [...]
There is a huge difference between e-mail marketing and spam, but some people just don’t seem to get it. I rarely pick on just one company, when so many have absolutely no idea how to market themselves via e-mail. But I’ll make an exception here, as [...]
Productivity is defined as: Doing the right thing (effectiveness) in the right way (efficiency) all the time (occupancy). The only way poor quality can happen is if you do the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong way, or if you don’t do [...]
There are literally hundreds of reasons to build an intranet for your staffing firm. I obviously can’t list all of them here, but I will share with you a few first-hand stories of how an intranet completely changed one staffing company for the better. Let [...]
Job search coaches are guilty of telling people to try unique ways to job hunt, to make yourself stand out from the competition. Are you willing to hire the candidate who conveys his skills on a sandwich board? Or is it just a waste of your [...]
It’s easy to find scores of how-to articles on making a good impression in the interview and how to score your dream job. Most of it is common sense. But what if you don’t want a full-time, permanent job? Life’s full of things to do, [...]
You know the drill. You get all excited about this great new candidate that you sent to your customer for an interview. He or she seems to be perfect — matching all of the requirements and even having a little more experience than what was [...]
There was a point in my career when I dreaded the Interview: the questions were always the same. It had even gotten to a point where I could almost predict every answer (thank goodness for Google). Stock interview questions made for generic answers and didn’t [...]
When it comes to choosing your customers, does it pay to be picky? Every staffing agency at some point has to deal with a difficult client. Some clients don’t pay you on time, while others mistreat their temporary workers. Surely you have a customer or [...]
Hypothetical situation: I’m writing a story about a nationally known U.S. company, for a blog, and need a photo to go with it. I’ve decided to take a screen shot of the company’s logo, and I’ve placed it on my own blog as an enhancement. [...]
Do you have fun at work? Is the environment full of energy and enthusiasm? Is smiling and laughter the rule, or is it more like fear and intimidation? John Christensen, CEO and self-described “playground director” at ChartHouse Learning says we all have a choice about [...]
