Staffing Robot - Web design and marketing services for companies in the staffing industry

Instagram is A Great Way to Promote Your Staffing Company Socially

When it comes to social media, staffing companies have a lot of options these days for recruiting top talent and earning new customers. The big questions we get from most staffing companies are 'which social networks should I use' and 'What kind of content should I post?'

As far as determining which social networking platforms are the best to use, it really depends on what works for you and where your audience is. Try experimenting with different sites from Facebook, to Twitter, to LinkedIn. However, we also encourage companies to branch out and experiment with new platforms. One new social networking app that can produce great results for your staffing company is Instagram.

If you haven't heard of Instagram you soon will. Instagram is a mobile app that works on iPhones and Android based smart phones. It lets you take photos, apply custom filters that make your photos look awesome and share them with your friends on Instagram and other social sites. It's simple to use, fun and a bit addicting.

So why should your staffing company use Instagram? It's about answering the content question.

This infographic below from M Booth shows one thing is clear - when it comes to social media, images are THE winning content strategy and a great way to promote your brand. The infographic reveals the following:

• Videos are shared 12x more than links and text posts combined 
• Photos are liked twice as much as text posts
• Photos on Pinterest refer more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and Google +

The infographic also shares something even more interesting. Facebook is known as the social network with the largest user base. It earned over 100M users in just four years. However, Instgram is currently on pace to beat that! This recent study by social analytics firm Distimo found that Instagram is now the second most popular social app behind Facebook. This would also make sense as to why Facebook recently acquired Instagram.

So what's this all mean? It means that people love photos and Instagram has a growing user base you can't ignore. Get your staffing company signed up for Instagram and start connecting in a new way with your audience.

Need help getting started? We'll post tips on that topic next. In the meantime, contact Staffing Robot if your looking for social media tips for your staffing company.

New Sites Make Social Recruiting Even Easier

All good recruiters know that social media isn't really about connecting with friends and family. Instead, it's really about finding great candidates.

A recent survey from Jobvite revealed that over 90% of employers will use social media for recruiting in 2012. This kind of data suggests that traditional methods of sourcing candidates are no longer effective. This also mans that traditional tools for finding a job are also outdated. For example, the resume.

Even at our company, the first thing we do when screening a new hire is look at their social presence represented on professional sites like LinkedIn. In today’s economy, most companies can't afford to make a bad hire. You can gain so much more information from someones online profile than you can from a simple summary, tailored and reduced to a single piece of paper.

For a long time LinkedIn has been the go to site for reviewing professional information about potential candidates. Others like Branch Out are gaining traction and Facebook is even rumored to be getting into the job game. However, there's a new site that launched last week from a Portland Oregon company called Vizify that is sure to be a game changer.

Vizify is a stunningly visual way to view a complete overview of someones career, work history, education and overall social presence. (You can check out my personal Vizify profile here). You can see years of experience, topics they discuss on line, and interesting factoids about them. One of my favorite features is viewing their locations page - a interactive guide to where this person has lived. All of this information is laid out in a beautiful presentation that is easy to navigate and incredibly interesting to look at.

As more and more sites pop up that visually represent individuals in interesting and engaging ways, it's only a matter of time before resumes are no longer even requested. Sites like About.me and Flavors.me also offer visual representations and aggregates social profiles. However, we think Vizify far outpaces these services and it's only in beta.

What's your opinion recruiters? Are you still working off of resumes or are online sites taking over that function for you?

Also, what are some of your favorite sites for gathering professional information on candidates? Share them with us in the comments below.

How Staffing Agencies Can Reward Employees For Exceptional Customer Service

Customer service is the key to success for almost every business - especially when it comes to staffing agencies. Your employees spend hours every day talking to your customers and candidates. Their interactions can make a huge difference in your customer satisfaction and ultimately your bottom line. 

Measuring customer happiness for your staffing company is critical. However, motivating your employees to provide great customer service is also something you should should focus on. If you're like a lot of companies though, it can be difficult and time consuming to know where to get started with all of this.

Look no further! Today we are happy to announce the simplest way to instantly motivate and reward your top performing employees for providing exceptional customer service. Introduction Kudos - a new feature in Hively!

What are Kudos?

Kudos are a simple way for employees to give each other feedback or for managers to reward employees. Think of it like a ‘thanks’ or a ‘pat on the back.’ 

Just like with Hively customer feedback, if you receive a Kudo you will be instantly notified and have the Hively Kudos badge prominently displayed on your leaderboard profile for your team to see. You will also receive +1 count for each Kudo you receive. Kudos are separated from customer feedback and don’t effect your customer happiness scores.

But we didn’t stop there!

What’s better than getting a Kudo? Getting a Kudo with a gift card reward! We recently partnered with Tango Card to enable our customers to provide real time rewards to top performing employees. Tango Card provides virtual gift cards that can be redeemed for cash or other gift cards like Amazon, Starbucks, Nike and Zappos. If you’re a Hively team member, simply sign up with Tango Card and you can start adding gift cards to any Kudos you send your team members.

To learn more about the other great features we released in Hively today check out the full announcement here and let your staffing company get started with rewarding your employees! Sign up for Hively. It's free to try!

 

Props From A Customer And A Shout Out To Portlandia

Our main goal with Staffing Robot is to make customers happy. We recently had of those happy customers write an entire blog post about how happy they were in working with us. Even better, they talk about their experience with visiting Portland and the popular show 'Portlandia.' We had to share.

“Portland is the city where young people go to retire.”
-Portlandia IFC Comedy Show

Last year we made a decision to obtain a new website that combined stylistic and technical prowess while exhibiting the core values that make Advanced Medical unique. The search was on in finding a company who could collaborate with our terrific IT and Marketing departments. The company would need to exhibit creative drive with structural efficiency. The path somehow lead to Portland, Oregon-a place with plenty of creative drive but at first glance not the place to look for structural efficiency. My knowledge of Portland consisted of drinking their coffee and watching the lovingly quirky television show: Portlandia. A show making me give serious thought to rent a bike instead of a car upon arrival.

Read the full post here on the Advanced Medical Travel Therapy Blog.

Hively Upgrade: The 'WOW' Release

We're very excited to reveal the new version of Hively we have titled the 'WOW' Release. This release was almost completely based on customer feedback (thank you so much!). Read on to learn about all the improvements and new features now available in Hively.

First, the 'WOW'

What's a WOW? You know those times you go the extra mile for a customer? Well now they can let you know. Hively has always let your customers indicate if they are Happy, Satisfied or Unhappy. However, now they can also let you know when you have WOW'd them! If you go above and beyond for a customer they can give you a WOW and provide specific reasons for how you WOW'd them.

As with all Hively customer feedback, if you receive a WOW you will be instantly notified and have the Hively WOW badge prominently displayed on your leaderboard profile for your team to see. You will also receive +1 point for a WOW, increasing your personal and team customer satisfaction score! So get out there and start WOWing your customers!

Call-to-Action Buttons

Now, in addition to thanking a customer for leaving you feedback, you can create custom call-to-action buttons. For each button you can choose a label and provide a link (URL) the button will direct to. For example, you could create a button leading customers to a landing page, YouTube video, survey or to send you an email. You can create a different set of call-to-action buttons based on the type of rating the customer leaves you (Happy, Satisfied, Unhappy).

Custom Messages and Redesigned Customer Rating Page. Hively now enables you to customize the message a customer sees once they provide you with a rating. Each message can be customized based on the rating the customer provides.

We've also improved the speed and workflow of the customer rating page to better encourage customers to leave comments, and you now have the option of deciding if customers can you leave you anonymous feedback. This page is also fully optimized for smart phones!

 

Improved Application Integrations with Salesforce.com, Zendesk and Desk

You can now get custom URLs and rating snippets to integrate more seamlessly with your Salesforce.com, Zendeks and Desk.com accounts. This way, your custom email templates in these accounts can identify individual team members in Hively that ratings get sent to. There are more applications we will be adding soon. If there's a specific application you'd like us to add just let us know!

Thanks to all the customers that provided us with feedback to help make this release. There are many other updates inside of Hively as well but we'll let you have some fun discovering them instead of listing them all out here. Let us know what you think of the new improvements to Hively. As always, if you would like to send us feedback or give us your feature ideas we're always ready to listen.    

How is your staffing company measuring customer feedback? Learn more about Hively.

 

Still Not Advertising Online - You're Doing It Wrong

Just a few short years ago people were still trying to figure out what social media was. Now it’s a major part of any marketing budget. Well, almost any.

Digital platforms have seen double digit growth for years and are now responsible for the majority of growth in advertising in almost every industry. So, what does it all mean?

Well, as this inforgraphic from ROI Media points out, digital ads aren’t a fad. Still spending the majority of your marketing budgets on traditional media? If so, perhaps it's time to look at that budget again.

AMN Study: Use of Social Media and Mobile by Healthcare Professionals

Last Week AMN Healthcare put out their 2nd annual study of the social media and mobile usage by healthcare professionals.

According to the results of the survey, when it comes to social media usage -

...physicians, nurses, allied health professionals and pharmacists are networking with colleagues, tracking down job leads and applying for new positions at a significantly higher rate year-over-year.

Key Social Media Survey Findings

• In 2011, 1 in 3 respondents cited use of social media when searching for a job, compared with 1 in 5 in 2010.
• Nearly half of all healthcare professionals surveyed said they use social media for professional networking.
• More healthcare professionals are using mobile job alerts year-over-year and success rates are up as well. Of those using job alerts, 10% received an interview, 14% received a job offer and 8% secured a job (compared to 1% securing a job from social media in 2010).
• Physicians continue to be the heaviest users of mobile devices among their medical colleagues for professional reasons; 41% of physicians cited use of mobile devices or tablets for healthcare-related content or jobs in 2011.
• Facebook was once again chosen by 3 out of 4 healthcare professionals surveyed as their most favored site for career-seeking opportunities.

You can download the complete survey on mobile and social media usage by healthcare professionals from AMN here.

Infographic: Tips for Recruiting on Facebook

Nice infographic by Hire Rabbit about recruiting on Facebook.

Infographic: Very Pinteresting

Pinterest is hot right now. Crazy hot! Get on it.

While everyone is scrambling to figure out exactly how to best use this new social site, check out this great infographic on the site.

 

 

 

Caught In The Act - Pets Behaving Badly: Medical Solutions Photo Contest

 

 

“Caught in the Act- Pets behaving Badly” is the name of a photo contest Medical Solutions, a Travel Nursing Company, is currently running.

To enter, submit a picture of your pet misbehaving for a chance to win a ProperPet.com gift card to perhaps replace whatever it is the pet destroyed. Pictures will be voted on and can be shared via social media channels so be sure to let your friends know.

Entries will be judged on the basis of creativity, level of mischievous, photographic quality, number of votes and average rating.

Prizes:

• Grand Prize: $150 Gift Card to ProperPet.com 
• 1st Runner Up: $75 Gift Card to ProperPet.com 
• 2nd Runner Up: $25 Gift Card to ProperPet.com 

The contest is currently running and goes through 11:59 PM, Wednesday, March 7, 2012. Voting will continue through 11:59 PM, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 with the winners picked shortly after. Visit the Official Contest Rules page to learn more about the contest.