Although I always agree in adjusting your strategy as cycles alter, DON’T STOP SELLING! Remember how hard it was to get a sale, 12 months, even 6 months ago? Don’t lose that tenacity you had, instead continue to utilize the things you learned when you had to truly sell your services hard.

Some of the best staffing and recruiting firms are those that start with a candidate not a job. So, we know the best way to make a placement is to fill a candidate when a job never existed. But once selling becomes easier again, we go back to what is comfortable, just filling orders.

I love the thrill of the hunt and creating a job is much more satisfying then filling an order. I thought I would pass along some of my favorite tips in case you have gone back to the comfortable zone of just filling orders.

1. ALWAYS ask a candidate where they would like to work – A conversation with a client or prospect always goes better when you start off with” I just met with somebody that specifically said they want to work for your company”. Do you have a field in Bullhorn to document this? You can even create a field that is a list of companies so you can do a backwards search!
2. Search your old (Lost) job orders – Why is it that you find that candidate for an order the day after you lose the opportunity? You never know how that candidate is working out for your competition. For those who didn’t know this, you can actually conduct a detailed search on all your jobs in Bullhorn. Just go to the Jobs Menu and then Search.
3. Set a goal – I never used to like doing this activity, but after I made myself make three calls a day it became habit and once I got my first hit… I was hooked!
4. And last but not least: managers, create a competition to foster an environment that encourages candidate marketing. After all, if you don’t encourage it, it most likely won’t happen.

So, take a look at your candidates (tearsheets hopefully) and find your top three right NOW. Find out where they want to work and call those clients! True recruiting combines the best of recruiting AND selling!

In response to this feedback, we have just released the first of what will be a series of new structured help articles and videos that we call role-based learning. Role-based learning is content organized by your role, and we have published the first one for Bullhorn Administrators. We’ll have more soon for other roles including Sales, and Recruiting.

Administrator Role-Based Learning
The Administrator role-based learning guide is like a “curriculum” or “table of contents” relevant to admins. While you can still search for information, this outline guides you through the Bullhorn content so new admins can learn about everything from what their role is, to understanding what departments and private labels are, how to customize a record, adding a new user, requesting a feature, and getting information about Marketplace and Reach.

The admin role-based learning encompasses a number of big changes, beyond an outline of content.

- We overhauled nearly 250 Admin articles flushing out the details about specific features.
- For each article we identified which Product editions (Team, Corporate or Enterprise) the content is relevant to, any specific feature limitations, requirements to use the specific features, and when you need to engage Bullhorn Support.
- We relabeled the content so articles are better named and now grouped into sections.
- We created shorter YouTube like videos to cover major features thereby replacing the existing Admin eLearning.

Our goal is to make information easier to find and help you do your job faster and more effectively. Take a look at the admin role-based learning and tell me what you think. To access the admin role-based learning guide click “Resource Center” from the Support menu in Bullhorn, then click the Administrator button in the upper left corner.

Once you check it out, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think of this first role-based learning guide, what you love and what we can continue to improve.  Please let me know what you think in the comments below.

Jennifer de los Santos
Manager, Customer Information Services

The article described candidates’ experiences using outsourcing services to blanket their resumes all over job board cyberspace by leveraging keyword recognition. If a keyword match was found, these services would send off a resume and a cover letter in response using the candidate’s own email address, so that the application appears to be from the candidate. In one case, more than 10,000 different job applications were made for a single candidate. In one example, an outsourcing agency submitted a sales director to any job with the word “sales” or “retail” in the job description. Quite unsurprising, it ended up that he was overqualified for most of the jobs including one as a receptionist for a hair salon. The stories continued, but, in the end, workers said that they are using these services because they feel it gets them in front of a recruiter. After all, aside from paying a fee from $40-$500 per month, they don’t have to do anything to have their resumes submitted to you 10,000 times.

These services seem to be going strong and generate a lot of revenue from candidates looking to automate the job application process. This leaves me with a bad feeling and raises some interesting questions–

How DOES a staffing agency manage the tremendous volume from these outsourcing agencies?

If you get 200 responses, do you review all 200 to find that 1 perfect candidate?

What is the right sourcing strategy that will make the most of a recruiter’s time?

Do you hire somebody to screen these people, or consider an outsourced solution?

Now is the time of year where job board and other sourcing alternatives contracts are ready to renew and clients find themselves asking if they need these services or how they can make better use of them. Along those lines, how do you measure the impact of a solution to assess its value?

I often get clients asking about sourcing strategies and if they should utilize a sourcing or resource team. My answer is always the same– it depends. Each business is different because of company culture, clients and competition. Even though the end result may be the same, the way in which you get there is not cookie cutter. There is no magic formula. Certainly you can embark on a new adventure and try something new, but how are you planning on evaluating if it works and how are you going to integrate it into your current process so that it has the greatest chance of success? How do you know that you are choosing the best option for your business and not just a good option? This can make all the difference.

As a former Bullhorn user, I am the first one to admit that I bleed Bullhorn and LOVE the software. While Bullhorn can make the world of sales and recruiting amazingly more efficient, it can only get you part of the way there. If your internal processes aren’t aligned, there is only so much software can do. Over the past few years here at Bullhorn, my role has been to help clients integrate their processes within the Bullhorn system, as well to help them start from scratch and reinvent more efficient ways of running their businesses. Our Bullhorn Professional Services team has consolidated the experiences from these engagements and started a new division that is solely focused on refining and improving client process and workflow. We want to help clients to address those questions listed above and make the best choices. This new division is Strategic Consulting. We provide 5 types of consulting offerings that can provide you a deep dive into the people, process and technology of your recruiting and sales processes.

As you start to think about your sourcing strategy and how you manage candidates, we recognize that it is the right combination of technology and process that can make the difference to your business. To give you some tips on the technology side, Bullhorn Professional Services will be offering a free webinar series beginning next month. The first topic is about Effective Candidate Management on Wed, September 14^th. To register for this webinar, click here.

To get more information on Bullhorn Strategic Consulting Services, click here or feel free to reach out to myself directly at mrosen@bullhorn.com.

To view the original WSJ article, go here.

• Search the entire Bullhorn Knowledge Base (over 2,000 articles and growing)
• Find the latest Bullhorn product updates and support news
• Submit and easily manage your tickets
• Subscribe to topics to receive all the latest updates
• Access Bullhorn’s Blogs, Brainstorm, Support Forums and status.bullhorn.com

What you can expect

• Quick access to our latest features, most popular articles and support updates

• A simple, yet intelligent way to search our Knowledge Base
• The ability to subscribe to Knowledge Base articles ensuring you will always be up to date on the latest changes to Bullhorn
• Articles that are easy to forward and share, so your co-worker’s knowledge grows along with yours

• Easy to use ticket submission and management

• Automated email responses that include your ticket number along with suggested knowledge articles
• Automatic creation of tickets from emails so your issues will always be easy to track on the Resource Center

Behind the scenes
Back in Boston, our support teams will be leveraging RightNow’s automated workflow, knowledge base, ticket management and ticket reporting features to provide a higher level of service to our clients.
 

Launch Date
The Bullhorn Resource Center will be available on 3/30/2009 and can be accessed in Bullhorn by clicking Support and then by selecting Bullhorn Resource Center.
 

Learn More
For more information on using the Bullhorn Resource Center, watch our 15 minute pre-recorded webcast and view our Quick Reference Guide/or FAQS.

If you have questions or comments, please let me know. I look forward to your feedback as we continue to find ways to improve our level of service to you.

Matt

For those of you that are here with us, I want to thank you all for your time and the input you have provided us so far.  It is truly appreciated and please know that you have a say in the future of Bullhorn.  For those of you unable to attend, please keep your eyes on Bullhorn Brainstorm as I am sure you will see some great new features that were discussed at Bullhorn Live for you to Vote on.  Can’t wait for our next one!

My main objective of attending the conference is to speak face to face with our clients and understand how all of us in Technical Support, Client Services and eServices can better serve our clients. So far we have received great feedback to take home with us. We are also hosting a lunch this afternoon to really drill into our client’s specific feedback and present some of the changes that will be coming to all of our teams. This type of feedback is invaluable to make sure we are moving in the right direction and delivering the service our clients need.

We have a lot of changes planned for 2009, starting with the launch of our new Client Services team and a revamped Bullhorn Resource Center. Both initiatives will be put in place with the goal of placing more knowledge in our client’s hands and to make sure they are leveraging Bullhorn to its full potential.

I look forward to our session this afternoon and if you were not able to join us this year, I would love to hear your feedback also.

I was really struck by Danny Cahill’s presentation today.  With every bit of media helping us to think “the world is coming to an end,” he put some great perspective on it.   This is NOTHING new, we have weathered this before and we will do it again and even come back stronger.  I wrote down a really interesting stat he gave us.  Back in 1984, the government bought an 80% share in Continental Illinois Bank.  Why was this so profound?  This bank is now known as Bank of America. 

I presented a session this morning on using Bullhorn as a Sales tool.  It was interesting to see how many customers truly forget all these tools are there.  We all know that to pull us out of this we have to work harder and these sessions are great avenues to helping clients create new ideas to do this. 

I would like to thank Danny for a great thought I walked away with…”I create my own reality,” because we truly do. 

Ultimately, it is attitude that gets us through the rough times and I am so moved by the excitement at this conference.  Those who are attending need to go back to your organizations and spread the buzz.  

• How does your organization measure an individual’s success as a Staffing Professional?

• Do all individuals in your organization have access to tools that measure their performance?

• Does management have tools that provide KPIs when measuring staff’s performance?

• Do you share any metrics with your current clients or prospects?

The responses to these questions vary greatly. It is not uncommon to find that clients are measuring for measurements sake – perhaps not measuring effectively or not measuring that which they consider important. The old adage is true – you measure what you value and value what you measure. 

Given the advent of the New Year and Metrics Matter session at our upcoming user conference Bullhorn Live 2009, this is the ideal time to get you thinking about metrics and measuring what matters. I have outlined some best practices that should be considered when thinking of metrics.

Best Practices: 

• Identify your metrics and ensure all users are consistently recording activity associated with these metrics in Bullhorn.

• Communicate metrics with your staff and stress the importance of what they mean for individual success, career growth, and the company’s success. This will help define clear goals and provide insight into how their efforts directly correlate to the success of the company.

• Provide tools your staff members can utilize to monitor their performance against their goals. Staff members can also perform comparative analysis to historical results as well as to top performers.

• Share relevant metrics with your clients and prospects. The amount of activity your company performs to fill a job requisition is a valuable data set to share with clients and prospects. When working with clients, they will be impressed by the level of detail and amount of knowledge you present them. Not only does this provide a client outreach opportunity to present the progress of your efforts, it often results in more job orders.

• Adjust metrics as needed. Metrics should be adjustable as they can change over time. They may also be impacted by many factors including, but not limited to: economic conditions, skill level/experience of employee and type of job requisition to fill.

Not Sure where to Start?

• Poll management to determine their Key Performance Indicators for a staff member’s success.

• Review Bullhorn Standard Reports and the associated definitions of these reports that can be found in Bullhorn Help.

• Attend Bullhorn Live 09 and attend the Metrics Matter panel discussion designed for industry experts to share their best practices.

We greatly appreciate your input and look forward to using your feedback to deliver an even better Bullhorn experience.