Move over, country stars! The talk of the town around Nashville last week wasn’t country stars (sorry, Taylor Swift, hope you can shake it off) — it was staffing professionals who descended upon Music City for the annual Staffing World 2015 ASA Convention and Expo. And we were there to cover it all.
Here, in random order, are some takeaways we walked away with:
1. Use good data to solve business problems. Stephen J. Dubner — award-winning author, journalist, and radio and TV personality and co-author of Freakonomics — discussed how to retrain your business brain. We’re good at using data that confirms our prior beliefs and ignoring everything else, but you can’t do that if you want to solve business problems, he said. Data may not be the best way to understand the world, but it’s impossible to understand the world without data. His advice is to get data that shows revealed preferences, or what people actually do, and not what people say they do. Predicting what incentives will work is hard. But you can use data to create incentives to change behaviors. … First redefine the problem you’re trying to solve by taking a step back and looking at it from a diff perspective your peers haven’t tried. Don’t pay attention to artificial barriers. Identify any artificial mental barriers to the problems you’re trying to solve and stop them from limiting you.
2. Don’t underestimate the power of engaged employees. Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup and best-selling author, discussed how to achieve sustainable organic growth through engaged client relationships if you want to move the needle on client relationships to become a trusted partner. In today’s ever-changing world, a one-size-fits-all cannot work. For instance, when millennials walk into your clients’ workplace, they have different motivations from previous generations. They want to be valued and they want to make a difference. According to Clifton, millennials’ mantra can be summed up as: “If my job doesn’t have meaning, my life doesn’t have meaning.” They want purpose, not a paycheck. So it’s important to consider their strengths and place them in roles where they can make a difference. It’s important to be able to show all employees that you care about their development, Clifton said. But too often, we approach development by fixing people’s weaknesses instead of building on their strengths. What we need instead of bosses are coaches. How is it possible that as many as 50 percent of employees don’t even know what is expected of them at work? Supervisors need to give people jobs that they have the capacity to do and ask how they can add value to the work they are doing.
3. Explore exciting new technologies that will help you do your job better. We attended a session on hot technology to hit the staffing industry – and we’re proud to tell you all about Textkernel, a CareerBuilder company, that was featured. What is Textkernel, you ask? It’s a leading-edge software company that provides semantic recruitment technology to the global market. … and delivers powerful, multilingual semantic search and matching technologies to recruiters.
Textkernel provides semantic search and matching technology to automatically suggest the most relevant profiles in a client’s resume/CV database based on a job description. It also offers highly accurate multilingual resume/CV parsing. Combined with Textkernel’s candidate routing workflow, it can convert any resume/CV or social media profile into a complete and searchable database record in any system. Textkernel’s HR modules are customizable, and can be integrated as building blocks into any process, platform (such as CareerBuilder’s pre-hire platform) or HR system.
So if you want to get the most out of your recruitment process, look into Textkernel — it can give you smarter data on people and jobs and bridges the information gap between employers and candidates.
4. Stand out from the pack by understanding your clients, candidates and the landscape. The search is always on! Did you know that 75 percent of full-time employed workers are actively looking for or open to new job opportunities? Jon Maly, a national account director at CareerBuilder, discussed the importance of having a great brand — not only do clients and candidates need to experience what makes your firm better than the rest, they need to experience it through the marketing and branding of your firm and they also must hear about it from others. Want to provide more client service? Discuss current hiring trends and respond to requests within two hours. Want to provide more candidate service? Offer coaching and additional resources during the job search. From more personalized communications with candidates to ensuring your website is mobile-optimized and easy to use, do what it takes to stand out! Differentiating client and candidate experience will sustain a brand, so don’t let negative interactions define yours.
5. Stay on top of the latest industry research to learn from the best staffing firms. If you aren’t already keeping up with the latest staffing research, it’s time to start. Find out what the fastest-growing staffing firms are doing differently. Have you heard about CareerBuilder and Inavero’s annual Opportunities in Staffing Study? It’s one of the longest-running and most comprehensive studies on the staffing industry and it’s released annually. Eric Gregg, CEO of Inavero Inc., discussed how important it is to work on your brand. If you don’t take care of what your brand means, your brand will become meaningless, he said. We live in an era of transparency, and it’s more crucial than ever to DO what you say and be authentic.
For more tips and strategies to take your staffing firm to the top, don’t miss out on the 2015 Opportunities in Staffing study.
Want to understand what truly drives satisfaction and loyalty? The 2015 Opportunities in Staffing study will help you move the needle with your clients, candidates and internal staff.