Inside Staffing – Human Resources – Keepers of the Gate

Often times the staffing world butts heads with corporate human resources. Often depicting them (HR) as the mighty gate keepers preventing the firm from working with a hiring manager and ultimately making money.

Before fleshing this out, it’s important to understand the roles and motivations of those involved when dealing with a job vacancy.

The Firm

No, not the Grisham novel, the IT staffing firm. The sole purpose of the firm is to place a candidate at a company and charge the company an hourly rate while paying the candidate for doing the job. The account executive wants to deal with the people that make the final hiring decision and are holding the money.

Human Resources

HR will be typically be responsible for posting the job, gathering the applicants, phone screening the applicants, partaking in the face-to-face interview, construct an offer, extend an offer and on board the hire. Some will say this is a key responsibility of the HR rep and ultimately save the company the expense of hiring a firm. The HR rep will feel it’s their job. If a firm does this, then what’s the value of the HR rep. When I refer to HR rep it’s typically not a corporate recruiter, necessarily, but can be.

The Hiring Manager

The hiring manager is the ultimate decision maker and needs a person for the vacancy in a timely manner. While they collaborate with the HR rep, they know what they’re looking for – experience, skills, industry lingo, and have more weight in the hire or not hire decision. They also have the budget ok to make the hire, hence they hold the purse.

You can make the above relationships work, but there has to be mutual respect among all parties.

Considerations

Is using a firm to staff the vacancy a viable option?
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Web Analytics – What Do They Mean?

I worked for small firm here in the Madison area. Yeah imagine the reactions some clients had when I left a web account manager for a corporate IT recruiter position. I digress. I learned a lot about project management, selling e-marketing solutions, and understanding client needs. I also learned a bit more about web analytics.

I used to think I knew what web analytics was all about. I had it on a few websites of my own and took a look at them from time to time. Well I did not have a good understanding, and I still don’t. Not fully. Why? Because it’s a tricky space. Many rookies and professionals tend to think they know what the numbers mean, but they misinterpret them or think that more is better. That’s not always the case. I give you the following example…
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Quick List of Things to Consider for a Podcast

Just a quick list of things to consider should you want to explore the possibility of doing a quality podcast. I have done limited podcasting in the past and am far from an expert. However, I have some interest in juicing up the mics for a new recruiting podcast, but I don’t want to go in half-ass. Here are just some details, as part of a master outline. I’ll take the following and nail down even finer details. I thought this could also help other exploring the idea. Sure, you can get a web host, fire up a built in mic, hit record, upload and call it a day, but this post is for someone to consider other details. I hope you find it helpful and get you thinking.

  • Name of podcast
  • Hosting
  • Length of episode – set, flexible
  • Release frequency of episodes – weekly, biweekly
  • Day(s) of the week to release
  • Day(s) of the week to record
  • Format – segments, etc
  • Music – intro/outro
  • Creative commons
  • Disclosures for guests – royalties, rights, understand all audio can be used, etc
  • Tagline
  • Description
  • Types of guests
  • Technical – skype, software, computer
  • Logo
  • Uploading to iTunes – account
  • RSS Feed
  • Topics
  • Guests
  • Ads/bumpers – enter into cast & supply them to other casts
  • Propagation
  • Email address – feedback, etc
  • Voice mails

 

IT Manager-Application Development – Madison Wisconsin

Work Location: Madison, Wisconsin

We are seeking an uncommon professional to join our team as a IT Manager-Application Development. This position is open due to an internal transfer that ocurred months ago as well as continued growth within the supported areas. A qualified candidate would have 3-5 years of experience managing a team within the app dev space. This individual will be managing a team of 5-7 application developers that support our Field Sales and B2B Marketing areas. Managing of budgets on a per-project basis ranging from 100k to $1M will be required by this person. Since this is application development, knowledge of SDLC, to include Waterfall & Agile, methodologies are preferred. The department is very project driven so project management experience would be a plus. Due to evolving changes within the area, contact & call center workflow experience would also be nice to have.

Apply Online

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Inside Staffing – Visiting a Staffing Firm

You’re going to use a staffing firm to help you with your job search. What do you need to know? How should you prepare?

Staffing firms can be great resources for those that need help with a job search. They know a ton of people in the industry and work with some reputable companies in your region as well as across the nation. They know companies that are awesome that you will never know about by just living in an area. It’s part of their job.

A good recruiter will tell you what to bring in with you and it’s typically the following:

  • Copies of your most recent resume
  • Information for your I9 – state ID, passport, permanent resident card, birth certificate, etc
  • References

Did I miss any?

A good recruiter will also tell you what to expect when you come in by setting the agenda up front, you’ll:

  1. be greeted by our admin.
  2. complete an application and fill out paperwork to include I9 and W2.
  3. be given a couple skills evaluations – and should list them based on your experience.

Continuing on with the spiel… Continue reading Inside Staffing – Visiting a Staffing Firm

2012 Fusion CEO CIO Symposium Madison Wrap Up

CEO’s, CIO’s, VP’s, Directors, Managers of information technology converged upon the Fluno Center in Madison, Wisconsin, to talk to each other about technology trends, strategies, challenges and experiences. It’s the Fusion CEO-CIO Symposium. It kicked off on Wednesday and wrapped up Thursday, March 8th. I attended the full day session on Thursday and attempted to live tweet the event.

It has been a successful event in years past and while this was the first one that I attended, I’d have to say that I did not have a hard time understanding why it’s been successful and the feedback positive. It’s the contacts, the speakers and the information that is shared that brings the value. How many days in a year can other CIO’s talk about what’s going on in the industry and know what other peers are handling the common challenges?  Each speaker addressed a particular experience, trend or technology, and presented it with their own approach. While this may be elementary, CTO Sears Holdings-Phil Shelley’s demonstration of Hadoop‘s parallel processing of using ‘smart’ audience member (representing a RDBMS) and ‘dumb’ members (nodes on a Hadoop cluster) provided amusement while also providing a live analogy that many attendees will not forget. Mark McDonald, PhD, from Gartner Executive Programs and author was intense and passionate about Technology being greater than IT. If you can go to an event where Mark is speaking, go. You won’t be disappointed. Put Tom Koulopoulos, CEO, Delphi Group in the same room and you won’t have people nodding off at all. The energy of Tom and Mark could power an Enterprise for a year.
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Job – Application Developer II – Madison Wisconsin

Work Location: Madison, Wisconsin

We are seeking an uncommon professional to join our team as a Application Developer II

This is a newly-created full time employment position that requires a self-starter with a positive, can-do attitude.  Under the direction of Information Technology Management and advanced levels of professional staff, successful applicants will provide professional and technical support in the development, installation and maintenance of custom-built and vended applications supporting our Retirement Plan Services line of business.  Qualified applications will have knowledge of all phases of the system development lifecycle – and demonstrate the ability to quickly learn and apply knowledge to their day-to-day support of our application portfolio.

Apply Online

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Inside Staffing – Fielding A Client’s Request

Here we outline how a staffing firm fields a request from a client.

This article may seem to address a new sales exec. Either way, it’s part of knowing about the staffing industry.

Some staffing firms call them job orders, orders, requisitions, positions, leads, etc. It’s what happens when a sales, or account executive, person finally encounters a client that has need of the firm’s services. This could be achieved from a cold call or as a result of their previous 100+ calls to the company.

Standards range from firm to firm as to what actually constitutes a viable request from a client. Some staffing/temporary firms will have a set of criteria that needs to be met before the order is worthy of the team’s valuable time. There are some firms that merely know the client is looking for help with a particular skill set and that is enough for them to consider it an active request. Mileage varies. The more info you have, the quicker and easier it is to facilitate a great experience for everyone – firm, candidate, and client.
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