Think your interview skills are top notch? Do you find the best of the best–the perfect fit–every time? Bet you have some tough questions in your arsenal….
How did you do? Considering some of these questions for your next interview?
Maybe a better question is “Does it work?” Apparently, after years of honing the interview process, Google has discovered that its hiring practice is flawed. According to Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research:
“…one of the best indicators of success within the company was getting the worst possible score on one of your interviews.” Read more…
Oops! Maybe it’s time to review your hiring process. Is it working for you? Does it really matter if you new hire can tell you why manhole covers are round?
It’s one of my favorite activities of the fall. Carving pumpkins! It is always fun to turn an ordinary pumpkin into a work of art. Here are a few of my favorite websites I go to for inspiration before I start carving!
Every year we seem to go through the same painful process in the weeks leading up to Staffing World – a mad scramble to get everything done on time. And I’m not talking about our own materials here. We were scrambling to get our clients’ tradeshow projects finished.
Frequently we get requests to develop booth displays or tradeshow collateral a week or two before the show begins. I can understand when there’s a last minute decision to attend a conference, but I’d be surprised if all of these decisions were last minute ones.
Why does this matter? Well, it comes down to this: the less time your creative agency has to develop your materials, the fewer choices you will have in getting them produced and, sometimes, the lower the quality will be. That doesn’t mean your agency will cut corners on the design – we will literally work around the clock to develop the artwork. But it can mean that some compromises have to be made in order to meet the deadline. This is where the printer or other vendors come in. Some booth display companies require a minimum of three to four weeks to produce materials. Deciding on new booth graphics less than a month before the show automatically eliminates those vendors that can’t fit your work into their production schedule. And they can refuse to take on your project if it means jeopardizing delivery of the work already in their queue. If they do take it, they may charge rush order fees to squeeze your job in.
When you rush last minute work, you may be forced to use your second or third choice of vendor, or only complete a scaled down version of what you’d really like to have. What else does a compressed work schedule mean? What if there’s a printing or production error? Or a shipping problem? There won’t be time to get the materials corrected or replaced. You could end up with no booth at all.
When you have a conference invitation, the first thing to decide is whether or not you’ll attend. The second decision is how do you want to promote yourself at the show—and what’s the best way to accomplish your goals? As soon as you’ve made those decisions, contact your creative agency and get cracking on solutions.
Yes, I’d like our clients to give us more time to work on their projects, but it’s not because I don’t like to be busy. It’s because we want to make sure your projects are done right, delivered on time and, most importantly, do what they are meant to: promote your business as effectively as possible!
With the state of the economy being strained throughout 2009, it didn’t come as a surprise that there were some initial concerns over attendance and participation at this year’s staffing world.
But a spark of hope and an undercurrent of guarded optimism had those in attendance gladly declaring the recession over and setting their sights on the future. Mindful that a number of these people have been on this roller-coaster ride before, there were those who mentioned that it should generate a different outcome this time through.
Those clients in attendance could easily be looked at as the benefactors of a “survival of the fittest” competition. A number of them did not sit on the sidelines throughout 2009 and do nothing. They adapted, changed, self-audited, re-focused, re-positioned themselves, marketed and survived. A number of clients were here at Staffing World to gain more insight and knowledge on helping them get stronger. These survivors acknowledged that the past year eliminated some of the weaker, smaller companies, and that there is now a larger pool of talent and business available to them. Now is an opportunity to get a larger share of the market and help themselves grow stronger than before.
The keynote featured speaker, Joe Calloway, addressed the audience with a matter-of-fact approach presentation geared toward basic common sense questions about one’s business. Some key questions and points that he had people in the audience ask themselves were as follows:
The Commodity Trap – Complete this statement: Our unique, distinct differentiator – what clearly sets our company apart from our competition - is _________.
” If you don’t have a sense of urgency now, you’d better get one fast.”
“For staffing companies, innovation is vitally important, especially now” – If you agree that innovation is important, how does your company encourage innovative thinking?
Constant improvement – “For my company to stay competitive, we have to be better tomorrow than we were today”
Focus on the basics
Relevance – “The ability to advance the client’s strategy is HUGE” – Are you aware of your client’s strategy? Are you a part of it?
The relationship between business & personal involvement – “Leadership has to be personally involved like never before”
Business development – “75% of your time should be spent on business development. You’ve got to come out of this recession with a broader base of clients.”
There is an offering of some free material at joecalloway.com.
Another point brought to light – now is the time to attract and retain the best talent. Clients now have access to a larger pool of talent today more than ever. It’s also important to self-audit the existing talent your company has to make improvements overall.
The industry as a whole is improving in people’s opinions, yet the talent has less favorable opinions of their employers. There needs to be some measuring tools implemented to access where companies can improve throughout their business. Aaron Green, CSP, president and founder of PSG Global Solutions and Professional Staffing Group, held a session addressing the use of Net Promoter Score to help measure some of the opinions of your clients and your talent to gain insight on how to increase the levels of your loyalty and level of satisfaction.
Other Perspectives
Speaking with a number of the staffing industry vendors at the show also brought to light that this year was a noted “quality over quantity” level of discussion and contact. More decision makers and high level positions were seen on the floor this year, and conversations were more focused on tactics and strategies for their companies.
I believe this is an exciting time for the staffing industry. It’s positioned some to become leaders post-recession, and to become stronger from lessons learned. The importance of being active and pushing your company forward will allow you to become stronger and increase revenues in the long term. I’m excited about the buzz going on in the staffing industry and look forward to contributing to its success.
If you have only a superficial knowledge of building a website, it is possible to get quality work on budget and on time. You just have to know how to speak with your vendor, whether that firm is a small design shop, a larger ad agency, or an in-house team responsible for building websites.
Some simple questions to begin with in order to help begin the process.
What is the role of your website?
Informative.
Sales Focused.
Product Driven.
Company Branding.
Improve Business Operations.
Humorous.
How well do I know the Agency?
Reputation.
Industry Expertise.
Quality of Work(Technically & Design-wise).
Staff.
Procedures.
Who is my Audience?
Who is coming to my site?
Is the right message being stated for that group?
What do I want my audience to gain or do on my website?
How can I be different?
Content is King!
SEO
Design
Innovation
Each of these questions and points are a reference for a conversation with your marketing advisor and they can assist you with the decisions for your website.
When dealing with website designs it’s always helpful to have some reference material for me to begin with so I can maximize my design time and make sure I’m within the scope of the client’s desires. A helpful process for staffing clients looking to redo or begin a website design would be to do a little research first.
Who are your competitors and what do their websites look like? It’s important to know who is successful and possibly why but also to establish a level for one self to surpass. It’s also helpful to write down any features that you come across which you may desire on your website. A discussion with your web design agency advisor can help assess what features make sense and which ones don’t.
Make sure to look at other company websites outside of the staffing industry who are successful as well. This can lead to more innovative thinking and a breathe of fresh air to how material can be presented to your audience. Supply your creative agency with any marketing materials you have been using over the past 6 months. This will assist in continuity of some of the design elements.
Copy and paste into a word document or write down the web addresses of the sample sites which you have researched and include them with any additional notes. This helps me out a lot in my follow-up research process. I have a list of other “questions” to keep in mind when beginning the process of auditing your website.
Vertical Accordion Menus
TSI Professional had a lot of information to include in the ‘Employers’ section of their website. We used jQuery accordion menus to organize the information. Click here to see the final product.
Horizontal Accordion Menus
FurstStaffing wanted to display their service process in an interesting way. We used a jQuery horizontal accordion menu for a simple, yet interactive way to view the information. Check it out here.
Lightbox
TORQworks needed to show screen-shots of their software on their website. We decided to use a jQuery lightbox technique to display the images. When you click on a thumbnail, the larger image appears in a lightbox over the top of your screen. You can see the jQuery lightbox here.
If you would like to use jQuery on your website, please email me at lac@haleymarketing.com.
Can you hear that? It’s the sound of Walter Cronkite letting out a disappointed sigh.
A new survey by Zogby Interactive says that the internet now beats TV, radio and newspaper as the preferred news source. And that’s certainly understandable. With our immediate need for news and information we have become extremely dependant on our computers, iPhones, WiFi, Blackberrys, etc. Some would even say we are TOO dependent on these gadgets. But that’s another opinion for another time.
The most shocking part of this study is that nearly 40 percent of those surveyed think that the Internet is the most reliable news outlet. What?! The Internet is filled with every Tom, Dick and Harry with an opinion, that can operate a simple blog site (yours truly included). Most just working on knee jerk reactions to stories without checking the validity of facts. For most of the second half of the 20th Century, TV and newspapers were the dominant source of news. People like Kronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, and Brokaw were the people we trusted to bring us the news of the day, oftentimes taking on a father figure status because we trusted them so. Today, it’s “YankeeHater123″ or “ObamaFan09″–nameless, faceless people behind a computer who bring us our “news”.
Just today in fact, ESPN was reporting that Minnesota Timberwolves Head Coach Kevin McHale was fired. Their source for this story? A players Twitter post. Ughh. I don’t want to sound like some old curmudgeon here, I do that enough in “real life”, but it makes my skin crawl when I see Twitter as a source for a serious news story.
But the fact is that the world is changing…how we communicate is changing…where we get our news from is changing. The question is, how will your company adapt to these changing times?
I guess it’s not all bad, if it wasn’t for the internet and blogs we would have never had this.
Now, on to ‘dessert’. One evening during the convention, my boss, a client and I wanted to grab some dinner. We ended up settling on Mexican food and made our way to Oh! Mexico restaurant. We had reservations already but were given the option of eating outside. Our hostess suggested indoors since the sky that night suggested rain. We were seated and our orders were taken. Suddenly, the roof above us began leaking water down onto our table and drinks.
The hostess came over and promptly apologized, relocating us to another table. The owner then stopped over and informed us that our entire evening’s bill would be on-the-house. We were blown away by the swift response, politeness, and fantastic customer service shown to first-time patrons. Just to be clear, we had only been sitting at the first table for five minutes. No food had been served. No water had landed on us. Yet the owner simply did the right thing, actually more than the right thing. I would highly recommend any traveler to stop by their establishment.
Well, there you have it. My high’s and low’s of customer service experiences. First impressions are sometimes everlasting. I urge you to think about the impression that you and your marketing material are making upon others. Whether it’s your logo, staffing website, brochure or sales force, or even your receptionist, make sure you send a consistent corporate message and it creates the correct first impression. It may be the only chance you have.
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