HRinmotion Blog – Career advice from HR Pros

Seeing so many poorly prepared candidates is why HRinmotion have added candidate preparation to their service. Job seekers may not know how best to prepare themselves for a job interview and recruiters often are too busy to really to thoroughly prepare their candidates.

Here is a great article on how important it is to prep your candidate and some tips on how to do this.

If you would like to know more about HRinmotion’s job preparation software created specifically for the staffing company’s candidates, contact us for information or demo at:

Invest in your candidates and make a positive impression by sending well prepared candidates to employers.

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Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.

Many experts have estimated the cost of turnover between 1 to 2 times the annual salary of the position. Indeed when talented employees leave a company, the cost is great. This cost is even greater if the employer used the services of a professional head hunter.

In response to the turnover problem and competition in the recruitment and staffing industry, some agencies are now offering a guarantee. Summit HR Worldwide, a California-based $375-million recruitment company, will guarantee the minimum period of retention of an employee it is recommending. That is if the employee that Summit recommended leaves within one year, Summit will compensate the employer. While it could be argued that the causes of turnover lie completely with the employer (bad management, etc.) and beyond the placement agency’s control, you have respect this commitment to service. While I am not sure how prevalent this practice is in North America, one can imagine what could be next if this is a glimpse of the future. Perhaps, there could be contingencies based on the employee’s performance. For example, the recruitment agency pays a penalty or waves the hiring fee if the employee they recommended got fired. It it interesting to speculate the future of recruitment and staffing guarantees.

If you liked this article, check out Growing Your Recruitment Company with Retention. We also invite you to subscribe by email or RSS feed.

Recently, I wrote an article about the one page resume, it’s prevalence in the job market. This topic came from an discussion I had with the Vice President of a national recruitment company in Canada. He observed that some of his clients had been requesting that his recruiters only send one page resumes.

Having been in corporate HR recruitment and selection, I had a few questions in mind regarding his observation of this growing request. Did these employers request this shortened resume from all applicants or just the ones from staffing agencies? Did they make this request for all placement agencies? Why would an employer suddenly institute a limit on resume length? Could this be a response to the quality of resumes submitted?

When I was in HR for a large provincial employer, I was in charge of looking after the entire hiring process. I worked with a list of over 150 recruitment and staffing companies. One of the biggest pet peeves when dealing with staffing companies is when they send lousy resumes or poorly prepared candidates. Some recruiters looking for short-term gain, will throw any name in the hat in an attempt to make a placement and their commission. Some headhunters will often try to submit multiple candidates even when the employer has instituted a one resume per job requisition to increase their chances. The result of this kind of practice is a poor image of your recruitment company and a perception of your staffing service as a low value transactional service. Other consequences of submitting lousy resumes to employers include limits placed on resume length, number of submissions, and being removed from the vendor list.

So as an owner or manager let’s hope you know better but how do you ensure that the junior recruiter looking for a quick buck does not practice the “toss any name into the hat” recruiting method? Well, proper training, regular feedback from the employer is a start. In addition, you may want to monitor the number of interviews per submission metric. The higher the quality of resumes submitted, then the number of interviews granted per submission should be closer to 1. By monitoring and reviewing this metric regularly with your team, you will be communicating the importance and accountability of quality to your recruitment team. In the long run, this will pay big dividends for you, your recruiter, and your client. After all, why would an employer hire a professional headhunter if the result is more work from having to review low quality resumes?

For more practical job preparation tips see our online job interview and resume writing courses. So until our next post, we wish you much luck and success in your career search.

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Need help with your resume? Get your resume written by HR professionals!

Would you prefer to do it yourself? Take our interactive online course for skills to last a career!

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Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.

Don’t Stop Short, Go All the Way!

With the labour market heating-up, staffing companies are faced with trying to find highly qualified individuals in a difficult market. Staffing companies around the globe seem to be facing the same challenge; lots of demand from clients, but not enough supply. So what are staffing companies doing differently to find qualified resources in this tough market? After speaking with various companies within Canada and USA, the answer is not too much. Staffing companies continue to sift through databases, look for splits, advertise on their websites, job boards, newsprint etc. Regardless of the market, the process of finding qualified candidates remains status quo. But why change if the profits are still coming in? Continuing with the same assembly line recruiting results in a commoditization of your product. The result commoditizing your service is a downward pressure on prices. Off the rack recruitment leads to a perception from employers that you are simply a “body shop”.

How can staffing companies improve their process? From our human resources experience interviewing candidates on the other side of the table, the answer is simple; better screening when interviewing potential candidates and more thought before sending them out to employers. While there are many things you can do to ensure better screening like skills and aptitude testing, biometrics and psychometrics but we will focus on interviewing since this is a simple, low cost method that can give you the most return.

When it comes to interviewing, make sure you and your staff follow a standardized interview process, asking the vital questions. Make sure staffs all get comprehensive training on interviewing techniques and how to interpret responses in a consistent way. They should be well-versed in the various interview techniques, methods of inquiry, and so forth. They should know how to use basic techniques like behavioural interviewing and understand how to interpret answers. Believe it or not we have met professional recruiters who do not know how to use this technique effectively.

Let’s face it you see a lot of poorly written resumes. The other thing is to prepare your candidates on paper and in-person before submitting them to clients. Remember that the resumes you submit to your client reflect on you. Sending weak resumes communicates a bad message to your client. Often recruiters spend more effort trying to pump out more resumes to employers than sending one good one. If your candidate does not have a well-written resume that stands out from the stack, then invest the time to address this. This may entail providing feedback for the candidate on how they can improve their resume or it may require you to do a little editing. Of course too busy and focus on selling so another option to refer them to a professional resume writer. By presenting a well-written resume your candidate have better chance to get interview.

Sending candidates with sharp interview skills is vital. Staffing companies must take the next step and either spend time coaching their candidates on interview skills. ……..know the manager, company, culture, interview style and format all helps to prep your can. Also cover the basics since many cans don’t have the basic. Quote our stats of perceived vs. demonstrated skill. In our observation many candidates fail due to the soft skills questions. Again your candidates represent you to your client. Your candidates want to impress hiring managers and you want to preserve good relationships with client.

In summary, by spending more time and effort to screen, prepare your candidates on paper and in-person before submitting them to clients you will increase your chances at making a placement and maintain a positive relationship with both your candidates and clients. In doing so, you will elevate your business from a “body shop” to “boutique”.

For additional information regarding our candidate preparation software contact us via

This software was created by certified human resources professionals specifically for the staffing company’s candidates.
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Need help with your resume? Get your resume written by HR professionals!

Would you prefer to do it yourself? Take our interactive online course for skills to last a career!

Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.

When your internal recruitment and staffing database does not have the talent you need, you do what do most recruiters and staffing agents do. You turn to the job boards searching for resumes or post a job ad hoping that your prayer will be answered. For professional recruiters this strategy often does not result in the top candidates especially considering the time required to search the thousands of resumes on job boards. As well another drawback to this approach is you may be inundated with hundreds of applications in response to your job ad. What’s more, providing candidates that the employer can find by posting on a job board or searching it’s resume bank only communicates that your service is a low value commodity. When you can find qualified candidates that employers cannot find themselves, you elevate your value proposition (And employers do pay attention to the quality of candidates that you send to them, those eliminated from a vendor list should know).

More and more, successful headhunters are tapping into the passive candidate pool. Here is an interesting article how to tap into passive candidates and focus your search to save you time. This is a great article for recruiters, headhunters, staffing agents and those in the employment industry.

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Need help with your resume? Get your resume written by HR professionals!

Would you prefer to do it yourself? Take our interactive online course for skills to last a career!

Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.

In marketing they say sex sells, but in human resources we say sexual harassment costs.

We have all witnessed inappropriate behaviour at our place of employment that would be considered sexual harassment. Often in appropriate job behaviour takes the form of an off-colored joke, inappropriate comment or perhaps it is more subtle with an innuendo and look .

A few years back I handled a sexual harassment complaint for a large national company. As an HR professional, I know first hand the cost of these types of complaints on the complainant, the respondent, the morale of their work group and to the company. Those directly involved in these cases were concerned for their professional reputation, personal relationships, their marriage, legal action, the future of their work environment, and the future of their employment. And those around them were not immune to the negative effects. Colleagues felt they were being asked to take sides during the investigation and even after in the day to day job interactions with the complainant and respondent. Believe me it was no laughing matter for anyone involved. So employment legislation is not the only reason to comply with the policies.

Some may feel respectful workplace and harassment policies over-sanitize our work environment, then again what are the consequences without such employment policies?

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Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.

An interesting employment article about creating your employer brand as the best way to attract talent in this demand employment market that is in short supply of qualified workers. It definitely mentions some good points to consider when creating your employer brand such as knowing the demographics of your audience, creating an employer brand that creates the “wow” effect, how to write a compelling job ad and so on.

I would like to see more written on the link between the marketing of the employer brand promise and delivering on this promise. Employer branding strategies to ensure marketing, communication, and public relations work together along with human resources to ensure a company delivers on the promises it makes. Since spending time and money to create a “brand” or perception of the work experience that is not aligned with the actual employment experience is simply not going to work in the long run. In some cases, a misleading employer promise will only last as long as the first day on the job.

Employer brand experience framework

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Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.

Recently we had the pleasure to meet Dan Campbell in San Antonio where he spoke at the 2007 Staffing World Convention. Dan spoke of how his recruitment and staffing agency focuses on retention as a strategic advantage.

Dan is CEO of Hire Dynamics, which provides recruitment and staffing services through its 15 offices in Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. The company has been recognized by Staffing Industry Report for three years in a row as one of the fastest-growing private staffing companies in America, and by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as one of the best places to work and one of the 50 fastest-growing private companies based in Atlanta. Hire Dynamics started in 2001 with seven employees, 37 clients, and 1 million in debt. Last year Dan’s recruitment and staffing agency exceeded $50 M in revenues. The secret to his success is keeping his top headhunters happy.

Employees are given a Rolex watch at their 5-year service anniversary. While he spoke, I couldn’t help but notice the all the managers and owners of recruitment and staffing companies who wrote down all the details of the Rolex watch program. I also couldn’t help but think how they missed the point.

The point here is not whether to give a service anniversary gift or the type of gift that you give. The lesson here is the success that can be achieved when upper management recognizes that retention is a key strategic advantage and commits to it. It is an example of business leaders who have put employee retention on their radar and have demonstrated their commitment to this issue.

Hire Dynamics retains talented recruiters not because of the watch, nor would they want to. Hire Dynamics appears to have found the right formula to select, train, recognize, reward and ultimately retain their headhunters. Again, it is not the watch but all the things that the watch program represents and communicates to their employees. It is all the things that happen behind the watch program that keep their top headhunters performing on the job. It would be a grave mistake for other recruitment companies to blindly copy the Rolex watch program if they don’t have the other pieces of the management puzzle since they may be inadvertently creating a system where recruiters only stay at their jobs for an expensive watch.

Some recruitment and placement agencies get this and some don’t, and it’s refreshing to see this agency understanding the key to retention.

If you enjoyed this post, check out Writing the Right RFP.

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Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.

An interesting article about employer branding that not only speaks to the importance of creating the employer brand promise but also acknowledges the importance of delivering on the employment promise. Building your employer brand promise, but not delivering simply creates employment costs in turnover, productivity and so on. How your employees perceive you, plays an important role in how your employer brand is perceived by the public. Questions to consider in assessing your internal employer brand perception include:

• How do your employees describe what it is like to work for your company to others?
• How often they will recommend you as employer of choice?
• What do they say about your products and services?

The successful companies have already discovered, their best ambassadors and recruiters are their employees.

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Blog posted by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software

HRinmotion works with over 20 high profile recruitment and staffing companies that include David Aplin, Holloway Schultz, Systematix, Quartech Systems Ltd, and WPCG.

Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.