Staffing Talk | Staffing Software | Industry News, Humor and Opinion

Zoomer 3d Demonstration of TempWorks Staffing Software

2009-12-09T20:56:00.001-08:00

Ever wonder what Tempworks Enterprise looks like from the inside? This Zoomer 3d demo shows how the visual object tree gets rendered in WPF and gives you an idea of the work that went into making TempWorks a showcased business app on Microsoft’s .Net WPF app profiling site.

Temp Nursing Industry Attacked Again in Media

2009-12-09T18:42:00.001-08:00

Last week I wrote about a flawed article in the LATimes that sought to discredit the temp nursing industry, and this week a public radio station in Southern California took the story further.

Michael Weinholtz, board member of the American Staffing Association and President and CEO of CHG Healthcare Services, joined the show and did a great job maintaining calm in the face of an annoyingly anecdotal attack on the temp nurse industry.

I added my comments to the the public radio post:

Temp nurses face many practical hurdles with each shift - from the mundane of figuring where supplies are stored to the more complex like getting along with a brand new set of co-workers. The skills of temp nurses in my experience are at least the level of perm nurses, and they're often paid more as well.

They often work odd shifts and do wonders for making quality healthcare affordable by providing just-in-time service. Anecdotal evidence aside, the vast majority of established temp nurse agencies operate with the highest standards and are held to those standards by their clients and employees.

My software company supplies many temp nursing firms with compliance and web-based screening and credential verification systems. Imho these tools often work as effectively as the internal systems hospitals use.

Smoking Still Trumps Twitter for Inter-departmental Communications

2009-12-09T12:13:00.001-08:00

TempWorks employees out enjoying a break in the middle of a post-blizzard windstorm.

They say that the only people that know what happens in other departments are the smokers. There’s still truth to that!

Environmental Whacko Embraces Mean-Business: Live Demo of Tempworks Paperless Employment

2009-12-08T12:37:00.001-08:00

Employers can eliminate on-boarding paperwork with TempWorks paperless solutions. TempWorks developer Brandon Johnson demonstrates how an employment candidate could submit W4 and other paperwork.

The Fallacy of Social Media

2009-12-08T07:31:00.001-08:00

It's a fallacy that social media replaces the ATS or for that matter job boards. Email didn't replace the fax, the fax didn't replace the letter, the letter didn't replace the personal visit etc ad nauseum.

Things evolve. New, thriving job boards emerge in niche spaces on a regular basis. Enterprise software now integrates ATS, social media, CRM, HRMS, payroll and more.

The Case Against Government Healthcare

2009-12-07T12:04:00.001-08:00

This is a guest post by Pete Arnold in response to an ongoing debate between him and http://www.staffingrobot.com.

Pete writes:

As someone who works in healthcare, I have to respond as many of these items seem to be in line with the talking points to defend government run healthcare. The devil however, is in the details.

Higher Satisfaction in Canada?

"However, according to the stats, the vast majority of Canadian's are satisfied with their system of care. "

The Wikipedia article you referenced here referenced a Gallup poll from 2003. And while I do not trust polls in any case (epically when it comes to politically charged issues, If you are going to reference one, I would at least ask for the most recent one. The 2006 Gallup poll (3 years newer then the 2003 pool) lists quite a different story:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/20821/Americans-Canadians-Britons-Similarly-Rate-Their-Healthcare-Systems.aspx

Broken down, the results are as follows:

"The results of three recent Gallup Polls* show that more than half of residents in the United States (53%), Canada (52%), and Britain (55%) describe their respective healthcare systems as "excellent" or "good." "

United States

Excellent: 16%

Good: 37%

Only Fair: 33%

Poor: 14$

Canada

Excellent: 8%

Good: 44%

Only Fair: 34%

Poor: 14%

Great Britain

Excellent: 11%

Good: 44%

Only Fair: 30%

Poor: 15%

But that aside, I do not trust polls, and will get into why as I continue.

VA Care

In regards to care you have received at the V.A., to this I can only agree that those who serve our country defending our freedom, risking life and limb for the rest of us had better be receiving better care than normal.

The Government said that in 1990 Medicare would cost $12 billion despite it costing $107 billion. Can you imagine what the actual cost would be if they say only $1 trillion?

Shortage of Staff and Glut of Beds and Equipment?

“Often times, private hospitals, clinics and imaging centers will establish their entities next to competing medical centers creating a shortage of staff and a glut of beds or imaging equipment such as MRI’s. This equipment and these facilities are expensive."

Yes, multiple entities do compete, giving us all a choice of where to go. As I have stated earlier, I have seen clinics in situations such as this use even the savings/ease of parking as a benefit to choosing their hospital/clinic over a competitor. I would rather have competition put in place through capitalism then the stagnation that would take place in the face of a government run "We're Your Only Choice" facility.

As far as the "glut" of beds goes, we can use this "glut" example for not only hospital beds, but equipment and staff. Much like any businesses, if the workload does not require a full time staff, the hospital will not provide it.

A survey of hundreds of physicians rated the MRI and CT scanner as the most important medical innovations of the late 20th century.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/20/5/30.pdf

The United States does indeed have more of these devices (or the "most important medical innovations") then most of the world per million people:

http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,3343,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html

Canada: 12.0

United States: 34.0

MRI

Canada: 6.7

United States: 25.9

I am grateful that my wait time for a CT Scan or MRI is not what it is in Canada:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/12/a_10month_wait_for_a_mammogram.php

The data behind a “glut” of hospital beds however just doesn’t add up

Hospital Beds per Per 1000 People

Canada: 3.4

United States: 3.2

Same with the Shortage of Staff.

Practicing Physicians, Density per 1,000 Population (head counts)

Canada: 2.18

United States: 2.43

Practicing Nurses, Density per 1,000 Population (head counts)

Canada: 9.02

United States: 10.57

We have more tools then Canada for our healthcare providers to do their jobs, more nurses and more providers, while having fewer hospital beds.

Unnecessary Facilities?

"These facilities are unnecessary in terms of needing more beds or care options in a particular area that already had a lack of demand."

Multiple locations in one area = Choice for the consumer. In this case, that is Choice of the patient.

"Situation has happened several times here in the Portland market causing situations of vacancy in the newly established medical center, as well as exacerbating those in the centers with which they’re competing."

Competition breads innovation.

US Medical Advancements

"There's no question that having a privately run healthcare system in the U.S. has led to major advancements in healthcare and medicine."

Agreed. Did you know that 84% of the Nobel prizes for medicine have gone to Americans in the last 43 years? This advancement, given to the rest of the world is here BECAUSE of the system we have.

America develops new treatments, gets them first, and yes... pays more for them.

When plasma TVs came out, many of them cost in excess of $40,000. The people who had to have them spent the money. That’s America. We are the rich guy down the block to the rest of the world. We are the wealthiest one percent on the earth, and our wealth is able to sell new technologies like this. Now, Plasma TVs don't cost $40k anymore. You can get a 42" unit for less than $800. as much of a shame as it was that someone paid $40,000 for that same thing 7 years ago, those who paid for it paved the way for newer cheaper versions that we all could afford.

Now with Healthcare. There is a new high tech medical something-or-other out that might save my life. But my insurance does not cover it (even though I am one of the 310+ Million insured in the country).

Am I out of Luck? Do I now go without that possibly life saving treatment?

Perhaps.

Or, like many Americans, I can do the same thing the guy with the Plasma TV did. I can borrow, ask my parents, my family, my church, take out a loan, and get that new-high-tech possibly life saving treatment.

The point is while it is groundbreaking, and insurance wouldn't cover it, it is still an option for me.

The free market makes it so. The government is not even controlling our healthcare as much as they want to and they are already saying things like "maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the pain pill."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-dQfb8WQvo

I do not trust them to fork out the $40,000 for my Plasma-TV of new uncovered treatment and am grateful that we live in a place that not only pioneers advancements, but where there is always a way when one has the will.

Healthcare Costs are Simply Too High?

"The costs of healthcare are simply too high, the system is broken and we need a new solution."

I agree to the level that costs are high and that the system is not perfect. However, Government is not the solution. Freedom and competition, in my opinion and my experience in the industry, is the solution.

We should be able to pick and choose what insurance we want. We should be able to choose insurance from another state. We should be able to keep the same insurance even though we switch jobs.

Government Regulation limits our choices here. And when limits in choices are made, competition falls to stagnation.

Family Income is Lower Now than Eight Years Ago

"Average family incomes are lower now than they were 8 years ago."

Your source from this is from 2004 and talks of 2000. A recent source shows the average family income to be greater now than 8 years ago.

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/inchhtoc.html

Costs Are Rising

"What employers paid for workers increased by 25%, all due to healthcare costs. The costs are expected to rise by another 10% in the next year alone."

The more regulation you get, the more government control... the more things cost. This is true as much with healthcare as it is with automobile costs (which have also risen dramatically in the past 10 years)

Also look at how people spend their health-care money. The average person spends more time researching that Plasma TV purchase then they do a major surgery.

Additionally, most people don't use tools available to them to compare prices of services:

http://mainstreetmedica.com/

As an example, while working for the Universality of Minnesota, people could come in and have Service A performed by Dr. X at the U for $40,000. If they went to a U of M clinic outside of campus, they could have that same procedure performed by the same doctor for $20,000. If they went to the private clinic of that provider, the service would be closer to $10,000.

I do not have a source for this other then my own experience with billing folks at the U and looking up various services on mainstreetmedica.com before I go in for any health service.

But, the same service could cost X, or 2x or 4x. If I am an educated shopper, I can save my insurance company thousands of dollars in just one service, thus saving my insurance company money and thus keeping the cost of health insurance policies down.

In this example, I agree that it is too bad these prices have gone up but the more we as shoppers pay attention to prices, the more we can keep them down. The more competition there is, the more they will decrease. (Though I would not trust your source ( http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/hiddencosts/index.html) which is clearly biased on the issue for any data on healthcare reform)

Bankruptcy Costs

"62% of all bankruptcies in the U.S. are caused by healthcare costs. "

I do not refute this number in any way. And it is indeed unfortunate that the high costs of some components of Healthcare have been a factor of some bankruptcies. A question to ask however is: Would these people have survived if they would have not had the care? Also, what was it that caused their bankruptcies? Did they have insurance? Were the procedures not covered? You can see why these are important questions. It is a completely different story if 100% of the bankruptcies caused by healthcare costs were plastic surgeries.

With my examples above however, I would rather risk Bankruptcy then be denied service form my government because I will not be a proper return on investment for how much longer I have to contribute tax money into the health system. The point here is that we as Americans still have more of a choice and have options available to us (even if that choice is fiscally damaging) that others do not.

The US is Behind Cuba?

"The U.S. is 45th in the world when it comes to infant mortality – behind Cuba."

This is a fun one. The infant mortality is a poor thing to judge a healthcare system by. Not because we are listed as 45th but because of the system used to calculate this.

(your source here, a site praising Michael Moore’s movie Sicko is highly dubious by the way)

There is an incredible disparity in the ways this statistic is measured around the world.

Example: While 45th place for US infant-mortality rate is attributable to infants who die on the day of their birth, some countries don't "reliably register" those deaths at all. In the US, if a Baby shows ANY sign of life whatsoever, it is considered a "Live Birth".

In other countries, a "Size" or "Weight" standard is used to determine whether a birth is "live"

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060924/2healy.htm

"In Austria and Germany, fetal weight must be at least 500 grams (1 pound) to count as a live birth; in other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, the fetus must be at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) long. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless."

So, if I count my automobiles by the number of Sets of 4 Tires I have, but you count your automobiles by the number of cars you have, we will arrive at two very different numbers.

Also, Cuba aborts many at the first sign of trouble.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3568278

Moore didn't mention this in his movie though.

On top of this, the United States has a higher rate of "Very Pre-Term" babies then most other countries. (Babies born less than 32 weeks and die about 30 times the rate of our average)

In fact, this number, of "Very Pre-Term" accounts for ONE HALF of all infant deaths in the United States. Why is this?

As someone who has aided in fertility clinics, I can tell you that not all citizens of the world are capable of spending tens of thousands of dollars to attempt to have a child when they are unable. This is another example of where our richness as a nation, though a benefit, doesn't help our infant mortality rate.

Otherwise, we have the same infant survival rate as Norway when all these standards are applied across the board. Norway as you know has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060924/2healy.htm

US Life Expectancy

"When it comes to life expectancy the U.S. is 50th – behind Bosnia and South Korea. "

Life expectancy is another terrible way to judge a healthcare system. Many people die for reasons that cannot be controlled by doctors.

This can be skewed hard core by two things: Cars and Murder.

America loves our cars. Other countries don't drive nearly as much or as far as we do. more driving means more accidents. I would encourage you to look up this statics for the 49 countries ahead of us listed there on Wikipedia. Something tells me that there more deaths due to automobiles in the United States per capita then Liechtenstein or Faroe Islands.

Also, America’s national murder rate (thanks to a few high crime cities in the nation) bring up our national murder rate to a point that can be up to 4 times greater than that of some European countries.

Murder and car accidents have nothing to do with the quality of our health-care system despite the fact that they lower the overall American life expectancy. (As an ex-Canadian physician explains) when those factors are taken into account, some argue that the US has the highest life expectancy:

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_ibd-canadian_doctor_describes_how.htm

Is our healthcare system at fault for gang violence? I submit that it is not.

Millions of Uninsured Americans

"47 million Americans are without health insurance, 8.7 million are children. "

10 million of these people are illegal aliens or other non-citizens who wouldn't qualify for "Universal" care even if we had it. Not that I am against giving healthcare to people in need, but if you violate federal law by committing identity theft to come into the country...

(sourced in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Check-Unreported-About-America/dp/1596985607)

So, we're down to 37 million. Of this number, this is where Personal Responsibility comes in.

About 18 million of these people have a household income of over $50,000 a year.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf

More than half of them (over 9 million) make over $75,000 a year.

(same source).

Now, how many of these people who don't have insurance are able to afford cable TV or Cell Phones? Not choosing health insurance is their fiscal Freedom of Choice.

14 million already have access to insurance though they choose not to apply for it:

http://www.coverageforall.org/pdf/BC-BS_Uninsured-America.pdf

Now, it is impossible to tell exact numbers for the Uninsured, as many of these categories overlap. But the number of uninsured is far lower than the 47 million number that keeps coming up. I could provide additional sources if you wish, but this should be enough for a little research now. I appreciate your excitement on this topic, and I hope this information is helpful to you.

Additionally, this point is about Health Insurance, not healthcare itself. Much like “millions of Americans do not have car insurance” is separate from the ability for those same people to receive preventative care and the quality of the services when a catastrophic failure occurs. If the issue is simply the percentage of people who are covered by Insurance, they that should be addressed.

But even now, as pointed out by the Census, millions of Americans qualify , but choose not to have insurance.

I too think the healthcare could use an overhaul; I just think any fix needs to include the reduction in the Federal government’s control, not an increase. And as shown above, you have to be careful where you get your information from, especially when (dare I say) that information is given by those who wish to grow government. Because as Government power grows, our power shrinks.

Pete Arnold

Analyst Continues Hold Position on Monster (MWW)

2009-12-06T15:29:00.001-08:00

Investment banking house Stifel Nicolaus maintained its hold rating on Monster.com (ticker MWW) , discounting any benefit MWW may have gained from an improved job economy worldwide.

Monster’s new ‘power-user’ offering that has gotten a lot of attention on bulletin boards like ERE also seemed to have no impact as it was not mentioned in Stifel’s 12/3 press release on Monster.

According to Stifel:

With temporary employment up for a third consecutive month in October and the initial claims four-week moving average steadily moving to the important sub-400,000 level, there is potential for nonfarm payrolls to begin growing in 1H10. However, there are remaining headwinds in the form of uncertainty surrounding the sustainability of the economic recovery and challenges facing the small/medium-sized business demographic, the main job growth engine in the U.S. We could get more constructive on our staffing/employment-related stocks, including Monster Worldwide, should evidence materialize that those factors are dissipating, all else being equal.

The Onion: Temp Worker Hides Fun Life from Perm Co-Workers

2009-12-06T09:04:00.001-08:00

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/temp_hides_fun_fulfilling_life

The Onion succeeds with this humoristic piece because it’s as believable as it is ludicrous.

Temp Worker Stories and Newspapers

2009-12-06T07:53:00.001-08:00

The story out of the San Francisco Chronicle this morning offers the usual throw-together platitudes about the temp industry. Staff-writer Tom Abate tells us that “employers are applying just-in-time tactics to labor”. VMS. Clutch for the recovery. Blah, blah, blah. Snore.

But the readers chimed in to wake us from our slumber. HappyMike44 tells us his temp story [typo corrections, mine]:

12/5/2009 9:22:35 PM

Yes and temp services don't pay health benefits it is just a flat fee for the hourly employee.
Many of these employers hire temps because they can't employ regular employees due to the abusive work environment. I worked temporary for a large nationwide service and was sent to work for a company. The owner of the company was a charity and forced his belief of working forty hours a week but only wanted to pay for twenty hours.

He confronted me about this and I politely told him I could not afford to work for free.
There had been no complaints about my work for two months. I went home that night and was called by the firm and they informed me I was being terminated for not completing enough work in the day. I learned from working as a temp was the reason they had temps was the top dogs were so screwed up and afraid for their job.

They didn't want any competition to show how incompetent they were.

Not bad Mike44. Sounds like you were treated unfairly, and nothing creates good writing like injustice. The Chronicle struck a nerve with its article. Why pay staff writers to do great writing when they can get their readers – their customers – to do it for free.

Socialism surfaces quickly. sbpnli apparently still believes in regulation:

12/6/2009 2:31:23 AM

Temporary agencies should be heavily regulated or outlawed entirely. This is just a scam for companies to have zero responsibility for their employees. The workers provide the labour and when they are no longer needed, or when the boss decides he can make more cash by eliminating them, then it is "* you, there's the door".

Not all San Franciscans are communists though. de_lhandes challenges us with a good what-if scenario.

12/6/2009 5:06:44 AM

Temps and outsourcing are the only tools left available for small and medium businesses to survive. Just once it would be nice if the Chronicle business section would do a simulated small-business start-up and then describe what happens when an entrepreneur wants to make a go of it in our fine City. What obstacles do the City and Obama throw in the way to prevent the start-up from happening?

Start with a seed budget, say, two hundred grand. With that amount, what does one have to endure to open a small business and survive? Can it be done? A good place to start would be Wells Fargo. What would the terms of any loan be? Then comes the City...
It won't be long before the idea of temps and outsourcing starts to look like the only way out.

It’s a good read. The Chronicle is making its own use of temps in the form of free content contributed by readers. Smart business.

Los Angeles Times Posts Flawed Article Attacking Temp Nursing Firms

2009-12-05T09:28:00.001-08:00

Where to begin? Let’s start with the title. The headline “A Times Investigation” is incorrect. It was not a Times investigation.

It was done by a Charles Ornstein, a member of “citizen journalism” group propublica.org, a site that “shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong” (cough). Sieyès and the rest of the Third Estate would approve heartily.

Translation: the financially broke LATimes can’t afford its own investigations and instead uses politically-inspired column fodder that comes cheaply.

Here’s the Cliff Note version of the article: evil, profit-seeking temp nursing firms (the ‘strong’) – I guess they don’t see as many balance sheets as I do – sloppily send out discredited, uncertified nurses to treat the sick and dying.

Ornstein gets a lot of details right. It takes almost nothing to start a temp nursing firm. And as for the temp nurses, he writes:

Emboldened by a chronic nursing shortage and scant regulation, the firms vie for their share of a free-wheeling, $4-billion [temp nursing ed.] industry. Some have become havens for nurses who hopscotch from place to place to avoid the consequences of their misconduct.

If Ornstein had condensed his five page article into two maybe he could have avoided being sloppier than any back-alley temp firm. Commenting on Paystaff of Monterey Park that continued to send out uncertified Rafael Obiora to various medical centers, Ornstein’s can’t help himself from adding this irrelevant detail: “Obiora, an evangelist who preaches at a Celestial Church of Christ in Gardena, ultimately lost his California license.”

If this were football, Ornstein would get 15-yards for piling on here. Obiora’s religion has no bearing on his medical qualifications.

Technology offers some solutions for the legitimate problems that Ornstein raises. Accurate, auditable electronic copies of certifications go a long ways towards stemming abuses. Timely, event-driven notifications of elapsing credentials also help. Warning systems that issue pop-alerts like “Do not send” make it easy for placement specialists to avoid perpetuating mistakes.

[self-promotional Tempworks whitepaper on healthcare staffing features omitted :) ]

In the end there is nothing that can be done to eliminate outright fraud. And often the staffing mistakes are made in equal measure by the temp-pools managed by in-house administrators.

Rebuttal to My Competitor’s Post on Healthcare

2009-12-02T14:58:00.001-08:00

My competitor Jason Lander keeps a great blog on staffing and VMS, but his recent post on healthcare in Canada didn’t sit right with me, particularly comments to the effect that private market forces (like profit-seeking businesses) detrimentally impact healthcare delivery in the USA.

My friend Pete Arnold (husband of Alisha Arnold, Director of Training at Tempworks) felt the same and chimed in with a rebuttal:

I have worked with government run healthcare before. A group out in California for example, was completely run by the local government. Their project was beyond its completion date by 2 years and over budget by 6 million (the original budget was 7 million) and they wanted another 11-15 million to continue.

The nurses were all members of the nursing union and made between 150-200k a year. Their union contract was very specific and negated the possibility of having SuperUsers without rewriting the union contract due to the slight increase in work for some that would be caused... thus hampering implementation due to the need for super users.

They had a 2 page list of acceptable terminology, as phrases like "Pros & Cons" and "Electronic Learning" were too offensive, and had to be replaced with things like "Positives and Deltas" or "Self Guided Online Training" whenever referenced. If an offensive term was found, whatever you turned in had to be re-written.

I have sat in meetings with 10 people each making over six figures in the room talk about acceptable teratology while they complain at the cost of printing in color.

While this was within the United States, I have also worked with groups in Iowa, Texas, and Washington DC with providers in each that have fled the Canada healthcare system to have practices in the United States, citing things like how many more CT/MRI facilities there are here due to most of them being privately owned.

While I am ignorant to the business of staffing, from what I have seen in regard to the business of healthcare: there is no such thing as "there are too many, unnecessary for-profit healthcare delivery organizations". The competition between “for profit healthcare delivery organizations” is in my opinion one of the primary factors that can help to make a better system. As a consumer, we have a choice of where our money goes.

I have been in discussions where a private clinic goes so far as to take into account ease of parking as something to offer to their patients over the competition. In reproductive health clinics (where little to no money from government or insurance enters their hands) the efficiently of work down to the implementation of an electronic medical record system is better handled. This can be seen with Lasik providers or plastic surgeons as well.

Multiple healthcare delivery organizations have to compete so that we choose one over the others, and this competition breads innovation instead of the typical stagnation that accompanies government control.

Microsoft Showcases TempWorks as Model .Net/WPF Software

2009-12-02T14:48:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to my guys for working closely with Microsoft on design principles that among other things netted us a #1 position on Microsoft’s .Net showcasing site.

Barbarians at the Gate

2009-11-30T20:48:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time some brash young programmers changed a lot of things at TempWorks. And they created a video to tell about it:

Interviews with Tempworks Green Employment Developers

2009-11-30T15:41:00.001-08:00

Video Demonstration of Paperless Employment Forms

2009-11-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

Brandon Johnson, Product Manager of TempWorks DocCenter, gives a quick walk through of a job candidate filling out requisite paperwork online.

Check out our recent press release for more information.

Special thanks to Drew Bomett of TempWorks for conducting the interview.

Video Clip of TempWorks Staff in the Midst of a Cutover

2009-11-25T15:19:00.001-08:00

I caught Jathan Moline and Alisha Arnold in the midst of a big cutover going on at Tempworks this weekend.

Pay-Per-Click Still the Crowned Prince of Inbound Marketing

2009-11-19T12:32:00.001-08:00

Say what you want about social media and organic search results, pay-per-click is still the crowned prince of lead generation.

I’m reposting this clip I did on search engine guru Clint Danks of Thinksem, a consultancy that handles our pay-per-click advertising with Google and others. He continues to do an incredible job maximizing our ROI by writing ads, making suggestions and monitoring our bids.

How an Impromptu Promotional Clip on Time Clocks Went Viral

2009-11-19T11:27:00.001-08:00

Ok maybe not LonelyGirl15 viral, but for a slapped-together, boss-walking-around-the-office-with-camera doing blatant self-promotion video, hitting the 1k view mark is pretty cool.

At first I just stuck it on my blog. Then our newsletter editor picked it up as a sound-bite for the month. Sales people started sending it to prospects. Then we put it on our website, and the hits started coming. A competitor actually commented to me about it: “Gosh, you guys actually get to have fun.”

How to Lose a Star Performer In 10 Days

2009-11-19T08:23:00.001-08:00

This is a repost of my Dad's story about how he built up a New York based technical services company and ended up leaving it for Manpower in 1966:

Take This Job and Shove It

The company was doing about $2.5 million in sales when I joined [in the early 1960s]. Mr. Signorelli was handicapped as a result of having suffered Polio as a child. He came to work about an hour before closing and I would brief him on what I had accomplished that day. He often would request that I join him for dinner at his favorite Italian restaurants. This meant I arrived home quite late, since commuting late in the evening from New York to New Jersey resulted in long waits for the trains.

I soon started to commute by auto so that I could join our family before the children went to bed. In the four years that I worked for the company, I built the business to the $14 million sales level with a great increase in profit. Mr. Signorelli never gave me a raise.

I noticed an ad in The Wall Street Journal for a Director of Technical Service with Manpower Temporary Service. The requirements spelled out in the ad gave me the assurance that if I applied I would be hired. I then approached Mr. Signorelli for a raise in salary and he turned me down. I was hired by Manpower and I gave notice that I was leaving.

During my tenure, Mr. Signorelli would be advised when I was letting an employee go or had been notified that an employee was leaving for another job. He always advised me to immediately have the employee leave but to pay them for whatever time they gave of notice. I assumed that he would do the same to me, so I gave him a one-month notice that I was leaving. He first offered me a raise, but I told him I had already committed to my new company.

He then let me know that I would have to continue working that final month. My hope of a month’s vacation with pay vanished. After I left, I learned sales had dropped to $8 million. Signorelli sold the company to Victor Calculating Co., who finally closed it down because of losses.

Career Builder Soon to Have Monster Problems

2009-11-18T20:38:00.001-08:00

I’ve been using Careeer Builder on and off over the last few years to search for candidates. My usual process is to enter my skill criteria “Microsoft SQL Programmer and Accounting”, and out it spits a list of candidates. Beaucoup candidates.

Too many, and that’s been the problem. By entering limiting criteria like location or education, I can shorten the list but the result is largely unordered and still way too long. Other job board technologies I’ve tried (standard Monster, Dice) suffer from the same weakness – too many results.

Enter Monster’s new “Power Search” facility. Rather than keyword or density matching, they’ve upped the game and built in Google like relevancy to their result sets.

Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a hot topic in the search business. Rather than matching on keywords, keyword densities or synonym rings, LSI moves beyond terms and concepts by allowing relationships to be built between terms and documents.

If you remember matrices from high school algebra, you can get an idea of the calculations that go on with LSI. And with the speed of modern processors these matrices can now be super huge and processed by complex mathematics with the result being a wide array classifications. Those classifications can get astonishingly accurate when applied to a specific domain like job candidates.

I’m not privy to Monster’s source code, but the search results (see below) reflect what you’d expect from an LSI based engine. Thus in a matter of seconds it’s able to give me a ranked list of candidates. It seems to get the idea of what a SQL programmer is. It knows a SQL programmer is not an Oracle DBA or a schema architect.

The search business is not for the faint of heart. For all I know Career Builder has something similar in the works. Or maybe 800-lb gorilla Google will preempt them all. But for the moment Monster has an offering worth looking at.

Google’s Adwords Program Getting Better But Still Bad

2009-11-17T05:02:00.001-08:00

Last year Google’s employment branding reached its peak. Baristas, 20% time off to work on what you want, free gourmet cuisine. Who would want to work anywhere else?

This year, backlash. Every HR blogger out there is telling the story of a Google interview gone bad.

Myself, I don’t care about their employment practices. I would just like their Golden egg of an adword system to work better. Wouldn’t you if you had a $200 billion market cap that was riding on the effectiveness of a single program want to make that program really easy to use?

This morning I was looking at the Google Adword “day-parting” feature that lets you set higher bids during the day. I’ve been noticing competitors jack up their bids during the daytime hours. I’m not sure why – nighttime leads are just as good from what I’ve seen. Nevertheless, if the bidding goes up, it goes up, so I have to raise our bids to get the positioning I want.

The day-parting form provides a flip between a basic mode and a bid adjustment mode (see screenshot), except that it doesn’t work anything like what the labels would suggest. To wit, if you decide to investigate the Basic mode, you have to wipe out all your Bid Adjustment mode settings.

Also, you have to go through day by day, hour by hour making your settings. If you run 20 or more campaigns like TempWorks, this can be a real pain. And remember, if you ever decide to look at the alternative mode (Basic), all your settings get wiped out.

Sloppy stuff. Sloppy like all the interview nightmares the HR bloggers are writing about.

Stuff you only get away with only if you have a monopoly.

Unemployment by Metro Area?

2009-11-15T19:54:00.001-08:00

Popular finance blogger Paul Kedrosky posted this graph of unemployment rates across 50 metro areas but he doesn’t give a source for the data and a lot of it seems suspect.

Sure Detroit is hurting and government-intense Washington DC is doing better than average, but he’s got three Ohio cities average to above average. Ohio above average? Besides Michigan, Ohio is the most hurtin’ place in America from what I see.

He shows Florida hurting which makes sense but Texas only fair to midland. Strange because Texas has been doing well especially with the oil prices back up.

What do you see? Does your metro area appear in the place you’d expect it?

What Does Green Employment Mean Today?

2009-11-15T09:27:00.001-08:00

I’m not a big fan of IBM’s advertising, especially the annoyingly repetitiveads they tend to run during those really big games. But their series on green initiatives and how they tied the environmental notion of green to the bottom-line green, that I did like. Trying to do the same here.

A Summary of the TempWorks Venture Offering

2009-11-14T13:40:00.001-08:00

Cost Control Became the Motivator for VMS in 2009

2009-11-14T12:52:00.001-08:00

This last week a staffing client won a large contract because they got to know their customer really well and also because they presented a solution that reflected underlying economic realities.

In fact, throughout the recession of 2009, our client deployments of VMS brought an increased emphasis on extended cost control as companies are placing increased scrutiny around the process of vendor selection, and trending certainly suggests an increase in business process outsourcing.

As BPO offers the opportunity to eliminate many fixed costs while creating operational and fiscal efficiencies, more and more companies are turning to vendor management solutions that will allow for increased reporting functionality, turn-key style functionality for line managers, and seamless integration with front and back office functions.

Of all the components in the cost control diagram above, flexible workflow may have the most consequential effect on costs. If contingent staffing decisions can be efficiently routed through the correct approval processes, everyone wins.

We also recently introduced a major upgrade to the TempWorks VMS Workflow Engine. The new facility supports a variety of serial or parallel approval processes that can get routed either to single contacts or groups of contacts. It supports tiered approval processes that would for example include the CFO for a six figure job order but little more than the branch manager to replace a receptionist for a day.

With that and the recent success of our clients in this space, I’m anticipating an exciting year coming up.