Tag: recruitment trends

Freelance vs. Full Time: A Recruitment Comparison

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Responding to the Trends

There are a number of trends in the employment and staffing worlds that impact both employers and prospective employees. Many companies are now outsourcing an increasing amount of work to freelancers and part-time workers. Likewise, many professionals now choose freelancing as a preferred lifestyle choice, not simply as a desperate alternative to a full-time position.

These trends impact the recruiting industry in several ways. The process of selecting a freelancer for a task or project is qualitatively different from seeking out a full-time employee. Many of the criteria for hiring someone to serve as an internal staff member aren’t applicable when using a freelancer. In fact, most of the popular websites for providing freelance talent don’t provide any real background information or credentials of the freelancers themselves. The most an employer can hope for is how well a freelancer has performed for clients on the website through something such as a star system.

As companies consider the advantages of these resources, such as no benefits and fewer continuing obligations, they find more positions that they are willing to trust to this form of part-time work. If a freelancer disappoints, it is vastly different and less expensive than making a bad hire.

Two very Different Tasks

Selecting a freelancer for a company is much more of a contracting process than a hiring assignment. Most of the EEO and related hiring issues, in addition to many of today’s sensitivities and HR guidelines are irrelevant to engaging or terminating a freelancer relationship. The recruiter simply has more freedom, from asking for specific referrals to not having to ensure a non-discriminatory review and selection process.

Of course, the other side of this coin is that a recruiter brings far less in the way of value-added services to the equation when selecting a freelancer rather than a full time employee. Recruiters are paid to have networks, find diamonds in the applicant pool, and to navigate all the intricacies of the hiring process. Absent that additional effort, the compensation that is involved will be significantly lower.

The Importance of Creative Job Titles and Killer Copy

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that job numbers edged up in July. Nonfarm payroll employers (goods, construction and manufacturing companies) added 162,000 jobs, which sent the unemployment rate down to 7.4 percent. Increased employment means a tighter job market, so many employers will have to work harder to find applicants. For human resources professionals looking to attract the best qualified and sharpest candidates to hire, this tighter job market calls for marketing creativity.

Bells and whistles – such as videos on your company website, or exhibits at job fairs – are acceptable ways to attract candidates, but there is a more effective way to target the hottest properties in the candidate pool. Here, the importance of creative job titles and killer copy in your marketing materials cannot be overstated.

Creative Job Titles

To catch the interest of the best candidates, creative job titles are essential. Forbes magazine recently published an article exploring this topic, and discovered that attention-getting marketing job titles expected to become more common over the next 10 years. These included Transcultural Anthropologist, Truth Engineer and Mobile Marketing Jedi. These examples might sound silly, but once the eye of a possible applicant is caught, however, the creative job title has set up killer copy.

Killer Copy

The most important concept to remember about the relationship between an employment ad’s title and its copy is that they must be integrated. If you catch the eye with Sales Terminator, but follow with a generic paragraph unrelated to the creative title, you’re likely to lose the prospect’s interest. Adding creative copy to supplement the title shows cohesiveness, and a dedication to detail that will impress the cream of the applicant crop.
For example, it’s much better to follow up on the title Sales Terminator with copy that starts like this:

“Our team of rebels is working to secure the future of a great [furniture, tile, medical equipment, etc.] company. We’re looking for a sales machine who can target opportunities with laser focus and convert prospects into customers …”
Of course, your copy will vary, but the key is to integrate your clever job title with relevant copy. This will help keep an applicant’s interest high all the way through the interview process.

The Importance of Employee Retention in a Healthy Economy

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Human Resource metrics can reveal information that can help your organization identify the causes and patterns of employee turnover. Employee retention is again becoming a problem for employers. During recent economic trouble, employees were staying put, but now, the economic climate is improving, and employers must take a serious look at how to retain their best talent.

In November of 2011, an online survey indicated that more than 84 percent of employees wanted to find new jobs. This survey was conducted on a cross-section of 1,000 people across the United States and Canada. Another survey conducted by Mercer revealed a shocking revelation: Workers planned to search for a new job. The initial survey was done in 2005, and the numbers indicated that 23 percent of workers wanted to search for a new job. In 2010, the numbers had jumped from 23 percent to 32 percent.

Human Resource professionals must measure voluntary turnover versus involuntary turnover. In short, turnover simply means the number of employees that stay in an organization versus the number that leave the organization. The focus should primarily be on the voluntary turnover. Employers have to take a serious look at retention. Some turnover is healthy; it helps weed out the low performers and trouble makers, but how does an organization know how much is healthy?

HR professionals must benchmark the turnover in their organizations to determine what level of turnover is harmful to the business. One way to improve retention is to improve hiring practices. Hiring the right people is a significant way to improve employee retention. Bringing candidates in for a multiple-interview process can produce better hires.

HR professionals must keep an eye on those employees that are most likely to leave. This requires being in sync with the morale and engagement of top performers. Exit interviews are one important way to get feedback on why an employee is leaving the company.

Research has indicated that an exit interview done immediately after leaving the company will be more negative than one done several months later. There is more emotion involved immediately after exiting the company. Employers must look at the data of retaining top employees. Employee turnover is costly, and it impacts the bottom line of the organization.

Human Resources—Preparing for 2011

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As HR professionals, we’re looking forward to the future as new trends constantly emerge. Today, the landscape of hiring quality employees is shifting more rapidly than ever. 2011 will be no exception—expect plenty of changes that affect the way your organization recruits new talent.

According to the HR Management blog, there are 10 major changes to the way recruitment will work in 2011. Here are the highlights:

1. Rise in health care costs.
2. Focus on domestic safety and security.
3. Use of technology to communicate with employees.
4. Growing complexity of legal compliance.
5. Use of technology to perform transactional HR functions.
6. Focus on global security
7. Preparing for the next wave of retirement/labor shortage.
8. Use and development of e-learning.
9. Exporting of U.S. manufacturing jobs to developing countries.
10. Changing definition of family.

(Thanks to http://www.humanresources.hrvinet.com/hr-trends-2011/)

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