How Perfect is Your World?

If you’re thinking of adding to your staff, congratulations!  You are in a market glutted with qualified, skilled people.  This is the best buyer’s market for employers in living memory.  It’s natural to look at this fact and assume that an ad on Craigslist or one of the popular commercial job boards is the most efficient way to find what you’re looking for.

While that’s true, it is a great way to get that resume you’re looking for, however, it will probably come with 97 others that you don’t want.  Sifting through the paper mountain is a daunting and wearying task.  In some circumstances you may get such a huge response that you could actually find yourself discarding the one you’re looking for simply because you overlooked it on your way through the mountain.

When comparing the costs of hiring it’s worth comparing the traditional “post and pile” method to using an agency to get you to the same place.

Looking at the above chart, we compare the costs to you, the employer, to get your new employee through the front door on his first day.  We’ll assume that the staff person you assign to sort through the resumes earns $15 an hour and costs you $20 with payroll taxes and benefits.  As you can see there is a large range for on-line job posting costs.  You can have far more exposure using our free resources than a single ad on Craigslist ($75) or Careerbuilder ($419).  With Bolt your job will be posted on Careerbuilder in addition to Simply Hired, and Indeed.  You will also have access to our extensive database of local people as well as our own word of mouth grapevine.

A 100-resume response is not unusual for typical office or industrial positions.  Your trusty staff person will probably get through the resumes in an hour and then spend another 7 hours emailing, calling, and coordinating with the three top candidates for interviews ($160).  You can plan on another two days interviewing and reference checking them ($320).  Let’s assume you will test your top candidate successfully ($100).

Congratulations!  Your new person will be starting Monday.  If you were thrifty and used Craigslist it only cost you $655 to get to this point.  On the other hand, if you splurged with Careerbuilder it’s $999.  Of course you could have called Bolt and have your new person ready to go free of charge!  Hmmmm.

For most positions we recommend a 4 hour working interview rather than tying up your staff interviewing people we’ve already qualified.  It works like this:  instead of spending the time and money to find someone who interviewed well and tested fine, why not pick up the phone, dial us and bring in a qualified, tested, drug and background checked person for $0?  Rather than take all the paper and charm of pretty resumes and good interviews at face value, bring someone in today and see how they actually do in your company, at the job you want them to do, working with your own employees.

Let’s say you’re paying Bolt $25 an hour for your new $15 an hour employee.  The four hour working interview would cost you $100.  If everything works out, you just saved yourself $555 to $899 to get to the same place in the hiring process.

What happens if things don’t go well?  With Bolt you pick up the phone and get a replacement.  The other way you can plan on spending another $500 to $999 to do it all over again.  Don’t forget the impact of the lost time on your business’ productivity.

Keep in mind you’re paying Bolt an additional $5 an hour for your Bolt assigned employee.  That means he will be working for you for 131 to almost 200 hours before the cost of a Bolt employee catches the cost of your own hire.  Usually you can hire our employees for little or nothing after 3 months.  In other words, in three months, you’ll pay us about what it would cost you if your first choice didn’t work out and you had to repeat the hiring process.

For that premium you get to know your prospective employee and the quality of his work.  You also benefit from the fact that he is Bolt’s employee as you become comfortable with his work ethic, trustworthiness, and the ups and downs of your own business cycle.

Sure in a perfect world, someone from Craigs or Careerbuilder may be less costly than hiring through Bolt, but really, how perfect is your world?

Joanne Sanders

Beginning this year, Bolt Staffing started performing criminal background checks on all employees prior to placing them on long term assignments with our clients.  Until now, we’ve followed industry practice and performed checks on people placed in positions of trust such as accounting personnel, or when requested by our clients.

While that has proved adequate, we decided that these days the risk of a bad decision is just too high. As a result we’ve incorporated the policy into our standard operating procedures.  As with all procedures, there arise situations where judgment suggests maybe it’s not necessary.

One place this can arise is with a payroll service employee. In these situations our clients ask us to put a person they would like to have work for them on our payroll.  There are many reasons for clients to do this, and since the client makes the decision to invite the person to work for them, there’s an argument that says a background check by the staffing vendor is unnecessary in this case.

Last month we were faced with this  exact situation.  Our client had found someone on Craigslist and asked us to “payroll” her.  We sent a recruiter to the client’s office to meet the prospective employee.  In the course of the routine paperwork, the prospect mentioned she’d lost her wallet over the weekend and didn’t have any ID whatsoever.  (Warning bell number one chimes.)

Further into the process, we learn the only reference she has for a former employer is a cell  phone without voice mail. No one answered the phone.  (Bell two chimes.)

At this point our recruiter began to wonder if putting this person through a background check might alienate our client.  After all, the client thought enough of this woman to invite her aboard. Would they be insulted if we found something untoward?  Nonetheless there are more than enough warnings to demand it.

During the interview process, our recruiter mentioned that we do a criminal background check on all prospective employees as part of our hiring procedures.  By this time, the recruiter decided the need to follow procedure overruled any concern about hurt feelings. It amounted to choosing between exposing the client to loss and hurting some feelings.  Looking at it from the bench that’s not a big deal. Things are different on the field, however.

Our recruiter parted company with  ”that feeling” that all was not quite right.  After all, the applicant had no ID and no references; all we knew about her was that the client found her on Craig’s List.

This was a problem that was about to fix itself.

Before the recruiter got back to the office, we got a call.  The prospective employee called and withdrew her application. She said she had “made a mistake” in the past that might show up on the background check.  What was the problem? Oh a small offense that resulted in her being charged with Grand Theft!

Ah the comfort of good procedures!  However the best procedures aren’t any help unless they are followed.  That’s where having the ownership of a staffing company on hand to make those judgment calls makes all the difference.

At Bolt Staffing, our owners are Morgan and Joanne Sanders.  They are both involved in managing the business on a daily basis.  They work with their loyal staff members and clients to create policies such as our new background checking procedures because they understand personally how important caution and care taken before a hire prevents huge regrets later on.

Before taking a chance with your company’s future, why not give us a call?

Eligible Workers?

Are you considering taking advantage of flexible staffing to meet the challenges facing your business?  There are many good reasons to do it.  Obviously temps give you insulation against uncertainty, whether it’s coming from the business climate or the unpredictable nature of the human being.  While it’s clearly a buyers’ market for employers the overwhelming response to a help-wanted ad is another reason to capitalize on the efficenies of outsourcing your recruiting.

While there are enormous savings and organizational benefits to using agencies, we’ve recently learned of a serious downside that not only reflects poorly on our industry, but also exposes companies untold woe.

In the past week, I’ve heard from two new clients that had used other agencies that recruited and staffed good workers.  Both employers took the time to train, evaluate and decide to hire the agencies’ employees.  In both cases, when they ran the employee’s social security numbers they failed to match.  Needless to say, all the client’s time, money and emotional investment in these people was lost.

Both reports were shocking to me.  Bolt Staffing has always used an independent background checking company to verify the social security numbers of all the people we place.  I had assumed our competitors did likewise.  We take every possible measure to ensure that each person we send to a client is eligible to work in the USA.  I never considered the possibility that others didn’t.

On reflection, while it’s unfortunate it isn’t all that surprising.  Economic pressures can make people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.  Obviously this is a corner some people are willing to cut.

If you have personnel supplied by agencies other than Bolt, you may want to review their verification procedures and demand evidence that your temporary employees are eligible to work in the USA.  In addition to financial considerations, they could also be exposing you to legal trouble.

Whenever you use Bolt you can be assured that we’ve taken every precaution to protect you against this kind of surprise.  We keep objective evidence of eligibility on file for all employees.  We can present it to our clients whenever they ask.  Make sure your current agency can do the same.

Writing effective job descriptions is part art, part science. The difference between a good job description and a great job description can mean the difference between recruiting average and exceptional talent.

So to steal a line from author Jim Collins, how do you go from “Good to Great”?

Here are a few essentials to crafting “Great Job Descriptions”:

Start with “the end in mind.”
As you get ready to craft a job description, ask yourself the following questions:
If you could find the perfect person, what would you want that person to truly accomplish in the position? If you need a web developer, for example, how many websites do you hope the person to build in a month/year? If you’re looking for a merchandiser, how many displays do you expect that person to build and set up each week?

From the accomplishments you wish the position to make, you can then work “backwards” in your job description.

Be specific.
When specifying the tasks the person will be performing, be sure they are what the employee will actually do; don’t let these become confused with what the person’s qualifications should be. Qualifications are the skills, credentials and experience a person has.

Include priorities.
Don’t just list the tasks of the position. Be sure to include the position’s priorities and be sure to identify them as such.

Specify required vs. desired qualifications.
If you specify certain degrees, credentials or licenses, be sure that they are absolutely necessary to the position. These qualifications should have a direct bearing on a person’s ability to be able to perform the position’s duties and tasks.

Don’t be too specific.
Okay, I know this goes against an earlier tip so let me clarify…avoid placing several tasks into one job description. Doing so may see you creating a position that very few people could actually perform.

Avoid cliches.
Be specific in your language. For example, instead of “good communication skills,” use “Needs to be able to communicate comfortably with executives and other high-level customers.”

Or, you can simply call Bolt Staffing.  As Sonoma’s leading staffing and employment agency, we help local employers find the skilled talent they need.  Contact Bolt Staffing today.