Resourcing – How can social media enhance the process?

This is the 12^th blog in a series of 13 and considering I’ve trained a Resourcer 101 course this week and delivered a speech on utilising Social Media in attracting and retaining Gen Y candidates, it seemed like a logical progression to use this info.

I am amazed at the amount of resourcers and recruitment consultants that are not taking advantage of sites such as LinkedIn. As a recruiter, as well as being a fountain of knowledge on candidates, clients, competitors, industry sectors, specialisms and companies alike it is also fantastic for generating leads of companies recruiting for specific positions in your chosen location. It’s like all of your research is being handed to you on a plate – or at the click of a button! And this is all free. If you want to upgrade, then there’s even more available to you.

Contracts still in demand

According to KPMG, and the REC engineering, construction, IT, temporary nurses, medical and care workers are still in high demand. Grainne Martin our contract experts advised in early 2011, for companies to invest in their IT contracts desk to yield strong returns on the back of strong growth in March and after these recent figures it seems her advice was spot on!

Structuring Sales – Part 1

Last week we looked at communication within sales. This week I want to write about why it’s so important to plan your sales and have a structure to what you do.

One of the key competencies that a recruitment consultant should have is planning. Having worked with a few thousand consultants in my career, I can confidently say that the difference between a good consultant and a great one is planning. Top consultants plan their day, week, month, quarters and year. They plan their sales strategies, their candidate care plans, their targets, goals and objectives,  their client meetings, their sales calls and above all ‘themselves’… I could go on!

The following structure can be utilised for both client meetings and individual sales calls. It’s for a conversation where you wish to present solutions to your customers’ needs – in other words ‘sell’ to them. The reason that it resonated with me and I still use it today is that it doesn’t feel salesy. I can’t stand pushy sales people who don’t listen to what you say and just assume they have what you need.  With this sales structure, you won’t be accused of doing that. In part 1 we will go through the first 3 points.

Training Needs Analysis Explained

A training needs analysis does exactly what it says it should –assess your training requirements. There is no point planning and delivering training that you think your people need, as this may not be where the skills gaps lie and where the knowledge is required. A training needs analysis is designed not only to address these gaps but also to identify strengths and then take those strengths to a higher level.

Especially in tight markets, many people may have the skills and abilities needed for their role but that this isn’t always enough. There needs to be a frame of reference for the challenging market we’re working in. Yes, your team may have the skills to perform well in a strong market but this won’t help if they cannot adapt the way they use them in a downturn. In other words there may not be a skills gap, but a knowledge gap instead. When you have identified these gaps and the areas where there is potential to raise the level of skill even further, you can then set about devising a strategy of training solutions.

But how do you go about undertaking this task?

Keeping your team motivated in times of uncertainty

It’s important to appreciate that what people fear most is the unknown. Consequently, they will not be motivated if they’re feeling scared or suspicious about the current climate and what it could lead to. For this reason, keeping everyone informed is key. Let your staff know what you are doing and what plans you have in place. Discuss your plan B and communicate to your team how that plan will involve making sure everyone is aligned and knows what they’re doing and then engage them by getting their ideas and input. Forward thinking companies will also have plans C and D thought out, so inform everyone that these exist to show that you have planned how you will take more control and carry out damage limitation, should the need arise. Revisit this on a regular basis so that everyone feels reassured that you have everything under control.

It’s the management team’s duty to keep everyone focussed and encourage open communication. Additionally, organisations should be aware that younger members of staff who have joined the workforce since 2003 may not have ever worked through difficult markets and may therefore find themselves in an unfamiliar, and perhaps scary, situation. Mentoring and buddy schemes are a great way of overcoming these issues and can allow employees to share knowledge and experiences to hopefully diffuse any worries that may be present. Combine this with training and coaching to arm your staff with the skills they need to work effectively, if they don’t have the knowledge in place to succeed in their role, their motivation and confidence levels will remain low.

We asked some of our specialist trainers for their top tips too.

Keyword yourself to the top

Monitoring the keyword function in your Google Analytics can really help you to refine your websites search engine rankings.

As I touched upon in “Where does my traffic come from” you can utilise this information to refine your keyword list.

To refresh:

• Make a list of your ideal keywords for your business
• Cross reference this list with your analytics
• Which words appear?
• Which don’t?

Tip: I also put the keywords into Google to find where my website ranks

So now you have a list of keywords you need to improve on. You can invest in PPC campaigns which can be quite beneficial if you have a budget to do so. Yet there are some effective tips you can do yourself to help improve SEO that don’t cost a thing.

The Case study: After doing the keyword analysis and checking our Google rankings, I discovered that one of our core courses was not only non-existent in our keyword list, but it couldn’t be found on a 100 pages of Google!

My course of action:

Prepare to fail

As the old adage goes – fail to prepare, prepare to fail. It’s a well known phrase, but somehow businesses in the UK don’t seem to be listening to its sound advice. According to a recent survey by the Open University Business School only one in nine SMEs (11%) are implementing post-recession recovery plans; that means 89% of small businesses aren’t planning for the upturn. Not surprisingly, this 11% is the most optimistic about its future prospects.

How to motivate your team in 2010

  

We’re all hoping for a brighter 2010 after the tough year that was 2009 is now behind us. It is vital to fully engage your people and motivation plays a major part. Motivation is key during a recession, but it’s absolutely critical in a recovery. Why? We’re not out of the woods yet – many companies are still facing difficulties and they need to have hard working and motivated teams to ensure they make it through them. On other hand, as market conditions do start to improve, so will the jobs market – and unless they’re happy and well motivated, those people that you’ve retained over the past year will be plotting their move. So what should you be doing to motivate your team?

Social media: Can’t keep up, won’t keep up!

I don’t know about you but I find the daily emergence of new social media trends can leave you a little overwhelmed and more to the point scrambling to keep up! Using social media in your organisation doesn’t have to be this way, think quality not quantity. There is no advantage in having every trend going only to be unable to keep up with it all or, more importantly, keeping up a high standard of quality. Think about what is important to your company and what will help you to achieve your goals. Take a look at the technologies and mediums you are currently using and asses their relevance to your business and your social media strategy.

Look at your current social media strategy and each individual tool you are using and think about issues such as:

•  How does it represent your company’s brand?
• Is it beneficial to your strategy?
• Can you keep up with its demands? If not will the quality suffer?
• Are you using it to its full potential? If not is it because it’s not as important in your list of social media priorities or could it be beneficial but you need the time to invest in it?
• Asses your networks to see if you are reaching the people/customers that you want to reach and if this approach helps you to develop a relationship with them
• Are the new trends you are considering going to be complementary to your existing strategy?

Once you have filtered out what isn’t working, you will be left with what truly matters to your business. Focus on these trends and use them to their full potential and you will see more benefit in keeping that quality, rather than trying to ‘keep up the with Jones’.

Posted by Rachel Gould