Five Creative Ways to Recruit Staff

Recruitment processes can be lengthy and arduous affairs that are often perceived as boring and lacking in creativity. The worst part about this is that a number of recruitment processes are also ineffective, simply using valuable time and money that could be invested better elsewhere.

In order to make the most of the recruitment process it is therefore important for businesses to implement creative methods. This will attract increased attention and facilitate the process of recruitment.

Here are five great and creative ways for you to recruit staff:

1:  Use Social Networks

A great and creative way to hire people is to advertise vacancies on social networking sites. Not only can you simply update your status to something as simple as “recruiting”, but you can also post lists of job vacancies in order to attract attention. With millions of users checking their accounts on a regular basis, even multiple times a day, social networks are a key resource when it comes to recruitment.

You could even go as far as to hold the ‘first round’ of the recruitment process entirely online. This could involve getting applicants to send their CV to your contact details or even to have them submit a short paragraph as to why you should recruit them

2:  Go Public

Another innovative idea is to go public with your job advertisements by utilising all forms of media. This does not simply apply to the usual methods of newspaper and radio publications, but can include more unique and creative ideas.

Think of new and exciting ways to advertise job vacancies. For example, the daily mail reported on a college graduate in America who wore a sandwich board with the words “hire me” written across it last month. Similar ideas could be implemented by businesses in order to make themselves stand out from the crowd and create a unique image of their company.

3:  Use Events

It may seem like a traditional method of recruitment but there is no reason why using recruitment events and fairs can’t be creative. They offer a great opportunity to attract large numbers of potential staff so make sure that you make a good impression. Think of a creative way to display yourself at the fair in order to stand out from the other companies. Consider offering food or other free gifts to attract attention.

4:  Go to the Applicants

Don’t just wait for the applicants to come to you, go to the applicants yourself! Instead of posting vacancies on large recruitment sites, look at smaller and more specific ones. You could even visit local colleges and services to find out about notice boards – both in the realms of the internet and the physical world. Advertising here will make sure that you attract a lot of applicants as well as making sure they are from the right discipline areas.

5:  Be Prolific with Writing

Another great way to recruit creatively is to use a range of written mediums in order to advertise that you are hiring. Blog posts, news reports, anything that will help to make sure that you are getting noticed. Publicity is a great tool so make sure that you are as prolific as possible and put your advertisement in as many different places as possible.

This article was written by Snowdrop KCS, leading providers of HR software.

Outsourcing Your Website's SEO: Why and How?

With the evolution of technology over past few decades, the Internet has grown as a platform being utilised by businesses to increase their sales and exposure. The internet can expose your business to a countless number of users from all over the world. In order to gain a competitive advantage on the Internet, you can utilise the online marketing techniques that can help establish your business as trustworthy and reputed among your target users. One of the most rewarding marketing techniques to increase the organic traffic to your website is by using SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques.
SEO companies have grown in almost every part of the world. You can outsource the SEO aspect of your online marketing campaigns to a professional company that can ensure that your website gets the maximum traffic directed from the search engines. While you can optimise your own website to attempt to help it gain good placements on the search engines, it is usually much more effective to consider hiring an SEO company to do the job for you. The following are examples of situations in which you may want to hire a business to take care of your SEO needs:

• You are involved in the main operation of your business and are not able to concentrate on the SEO of your website, monitor its progress, or even hire a dedicated resource which can take care of it without your directions.
• There is a learning curve involved in understanding the entire end-to-end SEO process, which can be tedious for those who hold a position of responsibility in their businesses.
• If you are not noticing any significant improvement in the volume or the quality of traffic, you should consider consulting with experts from dedicated SEO companies. They are often well-versed with the techniques and are aware of what to expect with the given level of SEO efforts.
• If you run a serious business and are looking to try to optimize your website for the first time, it’s worth thinking twice before you delve into the SEO process yourself. There might be risks that an expert SEO professional might be better aware of. For example, there are risks due to black-hat SEO techniques, which may even end up lowering your website’s ranking in search results.

There are many advantages of hiring a dedicated SEO company to optimise your website and generate more targeted traffic, but it's not always easy to find reliable SEO service providers. You should spend some time exploring your options when you have decided to outsource the SEO of your website to one an SEO company.

• Do not trust the claims of those who guarantee topmost placements. This is something that cannot be guaranteed, because search results are governed by the search engines, not by the SEO companies.
• Ask your preferred companies to send you the list of their previous clients (particularly from your own field of business) and the optimised keywords/keyphrases. Check them for their results and, if possible, try and find out whether the list of clients they provided was genuinely their list of clients.
• Ask them about the types and frequencies of reports they would provide you. Go ahead with them only if they are capable of showing you the progress your website can make in terms of search-based traffic.

Your chosen SEO company should be able to brief you about the advantages and disadvantages (if any) of the activities they are going to perform for optimising your website. In order to be on the safe side, you should also educate yourself about the process of SEO and the effects of various activities on your website’s search engine placements.

Business Telephone Features Worth Paying For

 It is quite simple to understand the importance of a good telephone system for your business. Indeed, a majority of your business operations rely heavily on communication related equipment. This is why a suitable business telephone system for your business is a crucial investment that needs to be made with care. However, finding the most suitable telephone system that can address all the communication related needs at a reasonable cost can be a daunting task.

Selecting the best business telephone system for your organization is a difficult task because of the numerous providers of business telephone systems and the countless features that are offered. They all sound so attractive, whether or not they are of any actual use for your business, and of course, cost a lot. This is why it becomes very important to understand the most common features the modern business telephone systems come equipped with. Then, you should consider which of the features are worth paying for, and what additional features you would like to have in your telephone. Some of the commonly available features of these systems are:

Call Recording:

You can record any calls for a number of purposes. You can use the recorded calls for any future references, or for training your staff regarding the subject discussed during the telephone calls, or for observing the quality and performance of the tele-calling staff using the telephone system.

Call Distribution:

Call distribution is a very important feature that is required for routing calls to the desired recipients of the calls automatically without the manual intervention of a receptionist. This feature is particularly important when people of your organization are not sitting in one single hall and are, instead, in different rooms or floors of the building.

Conference Calls:

Conferencing over the telephone simulates a real conference where more than two people are simultaneously speaking to each other. It is an important feature that allows people located out-of-office to collaborate and conduct meetings without losing a detail.

Call Parking:

This feature allows you to put a call on hold, allowing someone else to resume it from any other telephone in the same system.

Caller’s Identification:

This feature requires a reasonably large screen on the telephone equipment. It allows the number of the caller to be displayed on your phone. It can also show the name and other details of the caller if they are stored in the phonebook of the telephone equipment.

Call Diverting:

Call diverting is required for diverting your calls to an alternate number when you aren't around the main telephone. For example, if you are expecting an important call on your office number after your office hours, you can divert it to your cellular phone and receive the call when you’re home.

Voicemail:

Voicemail allows your callers to leave you voice messages on your telephone when you cannot receive their calls. You can later go through each of the stored voice messages and respond to the important ones.

IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System):

If you expect your callers to follow a certain fixed set of steps, you can program this using the IVRS facility. This is a very useful feature that can save a lot of money required for hiring dedicated employees. Examples of IVRS can be seen with the customer care centres of banks, telephone companies, investment banking organizations, and various other large organisations.
There are numerous features for business telephone systems you can take advantage of thanks to the recent developments in communication related technology. However, it is not wise to go for the features that just sound interesting; instead, you should assess your current and future business needs and then choose the features that are worth paying for.
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