Business Social Media - The Advance Group

Attract the Best Talent to Your Business with a Defined Brand

Raza Rauf on April 4, 2013

Your business thrives because of the good people you employ. But have you given much thought to how your company brand may be affecting the experience of candidates who walk through your doors? This is something you must plan for because of several factors taking place in the job market.

Specialized skill sets are getting harder to find in the candidate pool.
Baby boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 employees per day.
Industries need talent with advanced technology skills to maintain innovation.

A brand is the message that you communicate to the rest of the world about your business, what it stands for, and the culture of the workplace. Do this right and your business can attract top performance candidate. Do this wrong, and you’ll encounter an overflow of unqualified candidates.

In a special report released in the third-quarter of 2012, LinkedIn ‘s The State of Employer Brand indicated that many employers are concerned with their employer brand as a way to attract better talent. The figures in this report, gathered from over 3,000 global employers, revealed a recruitment brand strategy.

83 percent of the polled employers said that a well-defined corporate brand can attract higher quality candidates.
The leading factor in the decision to invest in corporate branding is efficient candidate acquisition 61 percent of the time.
More than half of all employers in the report are actively taking steps now to improve their corporate brand strategy to attract candidates.

There are several ways to define your brand so that it becomes an effective candidate magnet. These social branding methods can give you access to the cream of the crop in terms of future employees, which can give your business a leading edge in your industry.

Create consistency with your brand – Your brand should be the same across all outreach methods and online marketing campaigns. Keeping a brand message consistent proves that you are in touch with candidates and the objectives of your company.

Establish your brand as the best – A well-defined brand also speaks volumes about your company leadership as the experts in your industry. Make sure all corporate communications reflect this to impress high performance candidates.

Demonstrate your corporate culture – One of the ways your brand influences targeted talent pools is by giving a glimpse into what daily life is like within your business. This is especially important as new generations of workers are looking for fun and collaborative workplaces to build a career.

Social Tools to Improve Employee Onboarding

Raza Rauf on March 7, 2013

The first few days and weeks at a new job are critical for each new hire. This experience can leave a lasting one that either gives the employee the encouragement to be productive or the disappointment to become just another cog in the wheel. The Aberdeen Group released the Onboarding Benchmark Report which advised that 90 percent of all employees make their decision to either stay or leave a job during their first 6 months of employment. That means, the onboarding experience is your first chance to impress employees enough to stick around.

How well you manage your new hire onboarding processes depends on the methods and resources your HR team uses. Automating these processes can be helpful, especially if you are recruiting on an ongoing basis. Since so much of the onboarding experience is tied to the social culture of the workplace, one of the many possible ways you can create a positive employee onboarding experience is through the use of social tools. Let’s learn more.

Making the Workplace More Social

There are several ways that the HR and recruitment team can provide an environment where social connectivity tools are encouraged. First, the recruiter can reach out to potential candidates by way of social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, which helps the candidate to feel a connection to someone at the company. This same person can facilitate any applications, telephone screening, and on-site visits where this becomes the personal point of contact for a future employee.

Once a candidate has accepted a position, there’s likely to be several weeks while they are getting adjusted to living in a new city or learning about the culture before their first day. The recruiter can provide access to a wide range of resources using social tools. Consider that the new hire will appreciate being introduced to others on the team, having information about the local community, and advice on the best places to shop, dine out, and even social hotspots to make this a smoother transition.

On the employee’s first day, make this as social of an experience as possible. Introduce the new hire to key personnel and give them access to the resources they’ll need to be successful. This can include being set up on the company’s intranet and email systems, as well as corporate instant messaging. Have the new hire’s team mates send invitations to connect on the IM platform, and take the new hire out to lunch using a social app to send out a reminder.

New hires are generally eager to get started on their tasks, yet they are nervous about this prospect. Ease their mind with frequent social synching using company email, in person meetings, and access to an internal help community. In fact, you should encourage all employees to share resources and tips for doing the job more effectively using a secure community environment, where employees can set up personal profiles and connect.

Managing New Hire Tasks with Social Tools

As for the paperwork and training that goes along with onboarding, social tools can be a great way to streamline things. Set up a web-based document system that allows employees to complete and upload their new hire paperwork. Use this same portal as a central resource with a downloadable employee handbook, access to benefit enrollment, training materials, and general company information.

You’ll find that using social tools can be a very helpful aspect of managing all your employee onboarding activities. Choose the resources that provide the most value to your company and your new staff.

Enjoy a previous post on this topic from the team at Advance Staffing Solutions:

It is Time to Fully Embrace Social Media for Your Business | This is no Time to be Shy

Big Data Intelligence to Help Your Business

Raza Rauf on February 28, 2013

The IT sector is all a-buzz about big data. Even so, many businesses are finding it hard to actually use big data analytics in their organizations. There is no doubt executives want to beef up data management, as many worry it will lead to problems such as lost revenue. Many are interested in putting new strategies in place to minimize this risk.

Who Needs Big Data Intelligence?

Big data is something that is attracting the attention of many, including those in the areas of finance, sales, marketing, operations management, and within compliance roles. Within these areas, executives hope to use this data to:

Help to drive down overall costs
Improve the company’s cash flow
Improve revenues
Drive sales
Reduce the risk of compliance errors.

While many executives want this information, many use methods that are prone to errors to managing data. That’s just not cutting it.

What’s Coming and Why Does It Matter?

Many experts believe that a meshing of business intelligence and big data analytics is one the way. Many IT leaders are working to tap into these large data fields and use this information to benefit themselves.

Some experts looked at the similarities found in business intelligence (which is also known as applicant-drive intelligence) and in data-driven intelligence (more commonly known as big data.) What they found is that there is a wide range of similarities already in play. In application-driven intelligence, the data fills a very specific type of need. An example of this is in supply-chain management. It also applies to online transaction processing or to customer relationship management.

In data-drive intelligence, the software aids in the management and the analyzing of huge amounts of already collected and processed data. This difference, in the data used, does not limit the overall importance of using this data properly. Bringing the two forms of data together could mean big things for any business.

A third option is already on the table. Some news sources are using what is known as data-centric data. This type of data is a hybrid of the two. In this method, it is possible for business decisions and IT decisions to be made with a combination of capabilities, including big data analytics and business intelligence. In this manner, it is possible to determine which solution offers a better fit for the business based on the current functions.

In short, businesses need to consider what big data means to their needs and then implement the best methods for utilizing information to achieve business goals. Doing so could mean reducing risks and increasing profits across the board. That is something that all business leaders are working towards implementing.

Enjoy a related post from Advance Staffing Solutions:

Why Your Manufacturing Company Should have a Blog

It is Time to Fully Embrace Social Media for Your Business | This is no Time to be Shy

Raza Rauf on February 21, 2013

Social media isn’t going anywhere. There are a lot of small businesses out there that have been hoping social networking is just a passing fad that will eventually go away. That isn’t happening however. Business owners who don’t rush to embrace social media run the risk of being left behind by those who have invested in this course for their businesses.

Why is Social Media a Business Must?

If you’ve waited this long to join in, there’s probably a small part of you that thinks it can’t be all that important. For some people, their understanding of social media is that it is nothing more than playing games on Facebook or some giant online chat room where former high school friends and “frenemies” get together to compare notes twenty years later. There are a lot of myths out there about using social media in the business world.

The truth of the situation, however, is that social media represents so much more than chatty encounters and unwelcomed distractions for employees. It’s a tool for building relationships with your customers that goes far beyond anything that’s ever been available to business owners before. It’s a means of giving your customers access to you as the business owner so their voices can be heard. More importantly, it gives your customers access to you so that they can feel as though their opinions, questions, concerns, and even complaints matter to you.

Why Doing Nothing Doesn’t Work

Doing nothing has been the “go to” choice for many businesses in the past. It has worked – to some degree. Now, however, customers expect businesses to offer a social connection of some sort. If you’re not actively participating in some form of social media that’s widely accessible to your customers, then you’re likely to lose some of your customers to businesses that are available to them via social media.

It’s also becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to build a significant web presence without the boost social media provides. The bottom line is that your business can’t afford to skip social media. It’s too important for your success.

How to Make Social Media Work for You

Of course, walking blindly into the world of social media could completely backfire on you. That’s why you need to set goals for the social media outcome you’re interested in achieving. Then you need to come up with a substantial plan designed to help you achieve those goals. These are a few things you can do that will utilize social media in a meaningful and positive way for the sake of your business:

1) Raise awareness about causes, campaigns, products, and services.

2) Start conversations about important issues and upcoming events.

3) Ask customers what solutions they’d like to see from your business.

4) Point out worthy causes and influential people in your industry.

Perhaps the most important reason for you to take the reins and control the social media conversation about your business is that if you don’t control the conversation, your competitors will. No business today can afford to let its competition control its social media presence.

Enjoy a previous post from Advance Staffing Solutions on this topic here:

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