Tom's Talent Blog

You might think it odd that a company that sells training is telling you not to train.  Although training is extremely useful in onboarding and development, it is not always the answer to underperformance.  Unfortunately, I’ve seen managers waste time and money on training that is not going to fix the problem.  What do you do when you have an underperformer?  How do you know when training is NOT the answer?

There have been numerous posts on industry forums from staffing executives and owners about the new Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) salary levels.  The new overtime rule takes effect on December 1^st of this year (https://www.dol.gov/WHD/overtime/final2016/).  Many executives are still planning for this significant change to how exemption from overtime is effected by the new salary levels.  Many firms will need to either change employees’ status to non-exempt, which means paying overtime for hours over 40 in workweek; or, increase exempt employees to the $47,476 annually.  One post noted that that their firms’ recruiters make ~$40,000 annual in salary and are exempt from overtime pay. The post proposed changing the recruiters to salary, non-exempt with a 60-hour workweek. It asked if any other firm was taking this approach.

Referrals are extremely valuable for building candidate pools, but we rarely actively do it. Generally we are passive about referrals. A candidate or recent placement may happen to recommend a friend or neighbor, but not because we solicited the referral. If you proactively seek referrals you can reap the benefits. Here’s why you want referrals and how to get them.

You arrive at work and before you know it it’s lunchtime, or better yet you didn’t even take a lunch and it’s the end of the workday and time to leave. But, you can’t leave because you feel like you didn’t get anything critical done. Does this describe your typical day as a recruiter in a staffing office? I know it did for me when I was in a recruiting “bullpen”. Here are three to-do’s to make the most of your recruiting time.

Are you up to date on your employment and labor laws? Since the early twentieth century, our federal and state governments have enacted extensive laws and regulations to protect employees. We see a number of employment practices that, I bet, you did not even realize violate the law. Let’s talk about three common labor issues that will put your staffing firm on the feds radar.

A few weeks ago we shared an article on our research study to hire only A-player recruiters. That article focused on only professional recruiters. We also gathered and analyzed data for commercial recruiters. For the study, we defined commercial recruiters as those that focus on positions in light industrial, manufacturing, construction, trades, logistics, warehousing, hospitality, general labor, and so on. There were clear distinctions for high-performers depending on whether they identified as professional or commercial recruiters.

The skills gap is widening and it’s getting harder to find great internal talent. In the November-December 2015 edition of the ASA Staffing Success Magazine, staffing execs were asked, “What do you look for when searching for a great recruiter?” In addition to experience, characteristics like self-motivation, sense of urgency, being detail oriented, and people skills were included in most comments.

Interestingly we asked ourselves a similar question just a few months ago. How can we increase our chances of hiring an A-player staffing recruiter? If you’ve been a leader in the staffing industry for a while you could come up with a viable list of characteristics similar to those comments in the magazine article. But, how do you know for sure that you’re going to get an A-player? We still seem to have recruiters that just don’t perform at the level we expected when we hired them. Maybe performance isn’t to the point of being fired, but the result is our office is filled with mostly B- and C-players that just don’t produce high results.

Instead of just using our gut, we sought a scientific approach to identify key traits and competencies.

We recently shared a blog post about background checks and the notice requirements under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). A recent case settlement on this topic stresses the importance of following the FCRA regulation as well as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  

This month BMW Manufacturing Co. agreed to pay $1.6 million and offer jobs to dozens of applicants to settle a federal lawsuit brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2013 based on the company’s previous guidelines on criminal background checks. 

I’ve sat around a table with managers on a number of occasions and speculated about what employees were thinking - if they were happy about coming to work. Because we all know, from our own experiences, if we’re happy about our work, we’re more productive and likely to stay awhile.  Well logically, if you want to know what someone’s thinking, ASK!

We’ve been getting questions lately about background checks and the laws surrounding them in terms of applicants. It is extremely important that you and and your recruiters know the law, and you have a legal process in place to prevent your staffing firm from not following the laws for pulling background reports. There are steep fines for non-compliance.