Recruiting & Hiring Blog for HR Professionals

The job market has seen its ups and downs over the past few years and so have job seekers. As we explored in a recent blog, job seekers face plenty of obstacles as they search for work. Oftentimes, HR reps and recruiters can make it more difficult for job seekers to overcome those obstacles. For example, posting a job description that does not accurately describe an open position can leave job seekers unsure as to whether they’re a good fit for the position.

Where do we draw the line between chaining our workers to their desks, and letting them run rampant in the streets? 

That’s the question that some HR policy makers face when designing (or in some cases, re-designing) a company’s vacation plan. Finding the right balance is no easy task. In a perfect world you would be able to offer your employees the sun, the moon, and the stars... but ultimately you settle for the standard time off for national holidays and (hopefully) 2 weeks paid vacation.

However, if you DO have the power to shake up the status quo when it comes to time off at your company, here are 7 vacation policies to consider...

If you’ve ever been single, pursuing a relationship of some kind, then you know how unsettling the process can be. One person tries to impress the other, communication flies back and forth, and if, at any point, one person thinks he or she is doing well but the other does not, everything breaks down. The expectations of the eager person are crushed, and the other person moves on in pursuit of something better. 

Job seekers face similar perils when job hunting. There’s the anxiety of the unknown and the reality that rejection will probably happen before the search is over. But the responsibility of presenting well does not strictly fall upon the pursuing job applicant—companies have an obligation to attract the best candidates, too. And not all companies do a good job of putting their best foot forward.

Job seekers from around the word visit major job sites every day looking for available positions. In fact, an estimated 140 million people visited indeed.com last month looking for employment opportunities.

But, if there’s supposedly such a large pool of potential applicants, you may be asking yourself: “Why is no one clicking on MY job posting?”

The answer is simple – you need to update your job title and description.

Successful businesses are productive businesses. One way to achieve high productivity is to keep employees motivated—a task easily achieved if the only thing required were a company party once a year. But as nice a notion that may be, it won’t make employees feel any more included, and it won’t make them more productive.

No HR professional wants to sort through endless stacks of resumes for every open position, but a manual hiring process often leads to this common conundrum. You know the skills and qualifications that your candidate needs to have in order to be a top performer at your company, but searching through a resume database for that one candidate that meets all of these requirements can be a time consuming process.

To easily identify top candidates, pre-screening questions can be a powerful tool in the early stages of the hiring process. While it’s always important to clearly evaluate everything that a candidate can bring to the table, a few simple “Yes / No” questions at the very beginning can save you a lot of time and energy in the long run.

Recruit, interview, hire, repeat. I don’t have to tell you just how exhaustive hiring new talent can be. Without solid processes in place, hiring new employees can be delayed or the wrong individual will be considered over the right one. The good news is there are a number of simple ways you can make your hiring process more efficient. Here are four recruiting tips to get you started:

The interview has always been a key component of the hiring process. It’s a chance to meet applicants face-to-face to gage their personality, professionalism, and how they might fit into your company culture.

However, it’s easy to fall into a stale interview routine (asking the same questions over and over again) and seeing the same results.

In recent years, there has been considerable discussion among HR professionals about how to “get a seat at the table” and be viewed as a strategic partner by other functional areas of the organization. Improving HR productivity is one way to make progress toward this goal.

Most franchisees and small business owners struggle to find customer service representatives that can help their organization grow. In the past we’ve shared general hiring tips on how to hire your next employee, but we know that finding a CSR is a unique hiring process. Always remember, CSRs are the face of your business. You need to find savvy individuals who can build a strong rapport with your customers so that they remain loyal to your company for years to come.