This little red rider is our CEO’s Vespa. It’s usually parked in front of our office in the VIP spot (that’s about 2×3 feet) right in front of our office doors. When questioned about his scooter, and he is questioned quite a bit since we are based in New England with all its wonderful weather, his response is usually the same:

“It’s compact, speedy and agile. It’s awesome.”

It’s a great description of our own business (we’re definitely still a start up) and many of our customers’ businesses as well since we have clients as small as one-person firms. A lot of businesses are in a hurry to grow into behemoths, and while everyone wants to be the next Apple or Google, there are advantages of being a smaller company. Agility, as touted by our CEO about his Vespa, is one of the main benefits of being small. So how can you take advantage of being a smaller recruiting firm?

1. Idea to Execution in Hours

Large companies move slower. There are a lot of checks and balances, due-diligence, and egos to take into consideration when making large changes. A small business usually doesn’t have those limitations. Decision-makers are on hand to take an idea and run with it so campaigns are often set live within hours, rather than the days it might take to go from brainstorming to proposal to approval to execution.

One of our clients saw that their data quality score was below what they would have liked. Since a high data quality score is the root of good analytics, they wanted it to be a priority to get fixed. So incredibly, they put an all-hands-on-deck effort to fix the errors we helped flag. In a matter of a month, they went from 60% to nearly data-error free.

Could a large firm do something like this? It would take a herculean effort. A small firm can make things happen and reap the benefits faster than their big brothers.

2. A Limited Data Set to Sift Through

If you’ve got a drawer full of black and white socks, you’ll choose the pair you need in half a second. If you’ve got every color in the rainbow you’ll find yourself taking longer and longer to make a decision. This “paralysis by analysis” is well documented in The Paradox of Choice by psychologist Barry Schwartz.

Large recruiting firms often have so much historical “Big Data” that they find it difficult to parse the noise from the metrics that actually matter. As a smaller firm, especially if you’re just starting your business, you have the luxury of picking and choosing what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to pay attention to.

Simple way to put this idea into practice: track which Activity Ratios historically translate to Placements made. Do Calls:Placements matter more than Emails:Placements? In other words, does higher call volume matter or higher email volume? One should win out (usually calls) and you can eliminate tracking Emails sent as a KPI.

3. Switch Focus to What Works

As most will attest, the largest benefit of being a small company is the ability to quickly switch directions. If something works in Marketing, Sales, or whatever else, those lessons can be applied across the board rapidly. If a recruiter has a killer month, his/her methodology can be quickly taught to the team. The ability to switch focus and fail quickly is the best advantage your small firm has.

Let’s say you run an efficiency report (simplistically, Bookings divided by Total Activities in a given period of time) on your clients and you see this:

Turns out Walgreen was middle-of-the-pack in total bookings, but a stand out in efficiency. What if you switched your best efforts to work on this client? With that efficiency, increased effort should result in a slew of placements being made on Walgreen. This is basically low-hanging fruit, and it’s hard to imagine larger companies being able to take advantage of this sort of information quickly. Meanwhile, a smaller firm can make the switch that same day.

Don’t be in a hurry to grow up so fast. Enjoy the benefits that come with being a smaller firm.

It was an eventful day at the AkkenCloud booth

Yesterday’s events were full of some excellent speakers, including Pam Devata, Esq. and Gerald L. Maatman Jr., Esq. on Analyzing New EEOC Guidance and Strategies. One of the other big topics in yesterdays presentations was regarding Direct-Hire Contracts and how to enforce your contracts and collect your fees by Jack Downing and Mike Rode who made some great points on the Misconceptions of Fee Collection and Backdoor Hires.

Today we are looking forward to the speakers on the panel discussion for the new healthcare reform, a topic that we’ve been following closely. We are hoping that these speakers will be able to give some insight on how staffing companies can expect to implement the new laws associated with the Affordable Care Act. We also hope that the experts on this panel will be able to give some additional insight on how they think the new rules will affect the staffing industry in the years to come.

The Conference is being concluded by a Town Hall style forum, Moderated by Stephen Dwyer, general counsel for the American Staffing Aassociation. We expect that there are going to be some excellent conversations that crop up, and hopefully we’ll be given some insights into some of the other issues that are facing the staffing industry.

The day concluded with a great reception, and perhaps a cocktail or two.

Akken is looking forward to another great, and infor

mative day at the Staffing Law convention. If you are also attending the conference, make sure to stop by our exhibit for the AkkenCloud, and tell us what you think. We want to know what you are thinking about what you’ve learned at the conference, and what your opinions are on what the future of the staffing industry will look like.

Join Akken at the 2013 Staffing Law Conference

If you don’t get the chance to come to the conference we will be providing an overview of the events that we are able to participate in, and hopefully we will be able to relate some of the interesting things that we learn over the next couple of days to you. Please check out our blog and social media over the next couple of days for updates. 

There is going to be plenty of relevant content, and great speakers presenting over the next couple of days, and we can’t wait to hear what they have to say. Some of the events that we are looking forward to listening in on in particular for Tuesday are the events regarding the collection of fees for direct hire contracts, with speakers Mike Downing, and Jack Rode; as well as the section regarding guidance on background checks,
with speakers Pam Devata, and Gerald Maatman Jr. 

The 2013 Staffing Law Conference is underway with great turnout!

The events on Wednesday will be kicked off with a panel discussion on the Affordable Care Act, and we will be paying particular attention to this one, as so many in the industry have questions about how the implementation of this law may affect their staffing company, and the industry as a whole.

This year’s conference promises to provide a wealth of information for the staffing industry, and we are looking forward to what we will be learning about over the next few days. We hope that you are attending, and if you are please feel free to stop by and check our exhibit on the revolutionary AkkenCloud.

Also, check out our pictures from the event on our Facebook page! 

If you are looking for an in-depth look into the law as it stands, and how it could affect your staffing company there is an article “The Good the Bad and the Uncertain” by Craig Johnson; which goes into how the law could affect staffing companies. We’ve discussed before about how the law could be a benefit to staffing companies, and its true that there are opportunities for the Affordable Care Act to affect the staffing industry in a positive way, but there is also a lot of ambiguity with how these laws could affect staffing companies overall.

We at Akken cannot say that at this point we have all of the answers. One of the main issues with analyzing the law is that it hasn’t yet been fully decided legally as to what rules will be officially be implemented. For instance; there will be a public hearing on employer penalties on April 23rd, and rules on discrimination have not yet been decided.

While there is still uncertainty about the law; Akken will be keeping up with the latest developments of it, and how it will affect your business. We are committed to providing the tools that your business will need to help implement these new rules, and will make sure that compliance with the Affordable Care Act is as simple for your company as possible.

With the AkkenCloud we have provided a platform that can be updated to the latest needs of our clients within a very short period of time. As the needs of our clients change with the rules of the Affordable Care Act so will the AkkenCloud. 

On Wednesday morning of the conference there will be a panel discussion with top executives and managers and legal council from the staffing community. The panel discussion will be open to attendants, and will go over the many aspects of how the Affordable Care Act will affect the staffing industry. Moderating the event will be Edward A. Lenz, Esq. Senior counsel for the ASA.

Members of the Healthcare Discussion Panel

Edward A. Lenz, Esq

As senior counsel for the ASA; Lenz is the chief legal and legislative advocate for the staffing industry. He has served the ASA since 1989 in a number of counsel and leadership positions. Currently as senior counsel, Lenz is the top advisor for the association in both policy, and regulatory matters. This includes one of the top issues facing the industry now; the Affordable Care Act. Lenz has served in the staffing industry since 1982, and in 2001 was made a fellow to the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

Also a part of the panel will be; Alden Bianchi, Michael Epstein, James Essey, and Jason Leverant. These experts will be looking at, and discussing what impact the Affordable Care Act will have on the staffing industry. This will include steps that your business can take to prepare for provisions that begin January 1st 2014; what the “look-back” rule is, and how it can be used; and what your coverage options are for temporary, and contract workers.

The ASA Staffing Law Conference is an excellent place for staffing industry managers and executives to gain an understanding of the changes that will be coming to, and affecting the staffing industry. The Akken Blog will be providing coverage for the event, and keeping our readers up to date on opinions, and best practices for implementation of the Affordable Healthcare Act.

Questions still loom on how implementing the ACA will affect American Business.

There are still a lot of questions swirling around about how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will affect staffing and temp agencies. It will be difficult to tell how those questions will ultimately be answered until the act becomes officially enacted in January 2014. There are many valid worries that staffing companies have about how the act will affect them, but in a recent article by Jay Hancock, for the Saint Louis Post – Dispatch, he argues that in the end the ACA could have a positive result for the industry.

In January, when the ACA goes into effect the law will force companies with over 50 full time employees to provide affordable healthcare for them. This, Jay posts, is where staffing agencies may come in, as companies on the cusp of 50 employees could turn to temporary, and part time workers to avoid being forced to comply with the law.

This years Staffing Law Conference will be focusing heavily on the ACA. The Akken Blog will be providing coverage of the event, and what the ACA will mean for the industry

The article points out that when Massachusetts implemented similar laws to that of ACA, demand for temp jobs increased at a rate six times greater than the rest of the country. Still, there is doubt from those within some of the larger staffing agencies that the law will have a very large impact. Carl Camden, of Kelly Staffing thinks that the new laws will only provide “a modest opportunity” for staffing companies, and doesn’t believe that companies will try to shirk responsibilities by shifting towards staffing agencies.

In the end it seems that there will only be one way to find answers to how the staffing industry will be affected by these laws, and that will be to wait until the laws are implemented this January. But if you are interested in learning a bit more, check the article Affordable Care Act could boost the use of temporary workers, by Jay Hancock.

Custom Tabs

What you may not know is that your Facebook page can be much more powerful than simply a posting wall. One of the tools implemented by Facebook specifically for business pages is the ability to create custom tabs. You are probably already familiar with the default tabs available to your Facebook page; pictures, notes, events, etc. While these apps can be useful they likely don’t add much value to your business page.

How do we Implement Custom Tabs in Facebook?

So how can you implement tabs that are useful? Facebook allows you to create custom tabs for your page. What can you do with a custom tab? Essentially anything that you would be able to do on a normal webpage, and its here that we get to how you can use Facebook directly to help with your recruitment campaign.

An example of what a default custom tab looks like

With custom tabs you can create pages that highlight job postings from your website, and provide links that guide job seekers straight to your online application forms. Essentially these steps can transform Facebook from merely a marketing page into your social media recruitment platform.

Maintain Exclusivity

Another thing to consider for your facebook tabs is making them for “fans-only.” The idea behind this is that the content behind your tabs is hidden to regular visitors to your page; however, once a person has liked your page they will be have access to the content on your tabs. This is a great way to help your Facebook page gain likes, as well as add an exclusive feel to your job postings.

Why Bother?

Beefing up your Facebook page can be an excellent way of gaining new job recruits. This doesn’t necessarily make Facebook a better solution than your Website, but there is a huge benefit stemming from the ease of use for potential job seekers who have accessed your business page through Facebook.  Every little thing you can do to simplify the process for potential leads is worth exploring and custom Facebook tabs is no exception.

Troubled waters could lie ahead for the prominent job search/recruitment service The Ladders. Last week a class-action consumer lawsuit

The suit includes claims that the company falsely promoted itself as offering $100k jobs for $100k talent, when in fact the company did not, and could not perform such service. An article by John Zappe goes into detail about the suit against The Ladders; describing how their subscription based service was misleading to both job seekers, and recruiters. It was filed in New York Federal Court charging the company with a number of counts of fraud.

The suit; filed March 11th, and originally reported by Nick Corcodilos, represents as many as one million of the company’s customers; seeking the return of money paid for premium subscriptions, profits the company made, and punitive damages.

This isn’t the first time that The Ladders has faced criticism for its lack of service, and if it is proven that the company’s advertising, “Only $100k+ Jobs. Only $100k+ Candidates.”  was misleading to customers then the company could be facing a slew of serious issues in the future.

Hopefully as the application is refined it will become an even more powerful tool for users looking for jobs. But Facebook is also looking to implement new search tools that could benefit recruiters. Recently Facebook also announced that it would soon be rolling out Graph Search, a tool that would give users the ability to find others on Facebook based on their user information. It is possible for users to sign up for a beta version of Graph Search, but Facebook admits that this is only a limited version of the final product they hope to release. This tool would also be available to companies, and could give recruiters the ability to identify possible candidates for jobs.

Every user on Facebook has pages of data that they have posted. Everything from pictures, to where they have lived, the jobs they’ve had, their education, and more can all be located on a user’s profile. When Facebook releases Graph Search this information will all become searchable, (as long as the user is friends with you or has made this information public.)

The scope of possible applications that this tool has is grand indeed. For job recruiters though, it gives the ability to find possible candidates that meet specific requirements. Instead of sending out ads, or posting job openings on message boards and hoping that candidates with related experience and education apply, Graph Search gives the opportunity to find those relevant users.

Have a job listing that requires a certain degree, or level of education? Graph search can be used to pull up users that meet those criteria. Use it to find users that have work experience for companies in a certain field.

As the release of Graph Search draws near, companies and users will be taking note of the new capabilities that it will provide to the social media giant. Recruiters of the Staffing and the recruiting firms Job recruiters should also take note.

The Staffing Industry Analysts recently held their annual Executive Forum in sunny Orlando. The event drew staffing and recruiting executives from around the world. Akken is proud to have sponsored a number of the Strategy & Opportunities Track events at the Forum. Here are a few of the important highlights from the first two days.

Day One:

Healthcare Reform was the only session on tap for this event. An ever growing important cog of the staffing, and recruiting industry. Folks gathered to absorb what they could about implementing the affordable care act into their staffing business. Though the measure does not take affect until 2014 This act poses a very large change for the industry, and it was encouraging to see so many taking a proactive approach to addressing the issue.

Day Two:

With the Forum in full swing; Akken CEO, Giridhar Akkineni, opened the Strategy & Opportunties Track with an introduction of AkkenCloud™. The staffing, and recruiting efficiency improvement platform and how it can help a staffing firm’s strategic approach to business. Mr. Akkineni then introduced guest speaker and SIA VP of Research,  Jon Osborne.

Mr. Osborne spoke about 20 under appreciated business opportunities and best advice for staffing firms. His presentation involved; business opportunities, and low hanging fruit a staffing firm may have passed by; actionable items, and big ideas to improve your business.

The day closed with a bang, as keynote speaker Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics took the stage. Beane is considered one of the most talented baseball execs in the game, and has made the Athletics a perennial contender since 1997. In this keynote, Billy presented his innovative and winning style of management which involves identifying undervalued assets to sustain a competitive advantage.  Beane’s energetic and entertaining parallels between baseball and business kept the crowd engaged for over an hour. Definitely a good story.

In Summary:

The first two days of the SIA Executive Forum proved to be an informative and entertaining conference for Staffing Executives around the globe. Many critical topics regarding the industry were highlighted; including the impending Healthcare Reform Act, and Beane’s keynote was certainly a highlight of the entire conference.

We at Akken were thrilled for the opportunity to present for the Strategy & Opportunities Track, and the feedback on the AkkenCloud™, our cloud based staffing and recruiting efficiency improvement platform, was fantastic.