Fast Workforce Management Blog

Bulk Applicant Status and Shortlist Updates - New Feature

A new feature was added to the applicant spreadsheets today to enable bulk updates of status and/or shortlists (projects). 

To use, check the checkboxes to the left of Applicant Name(1). Either Select All on page by clicking top checklist, or check individual applicants.  Once you have selected your applicants, click on the Update Button on right side(2).

 

When you click the Update Button, you will get a popup(shown below) that enables you to choose the Status and/or the Shortlists you would like to change all selected applicants to.  Once chosen, click the Update button within the Popup and you are done.  All selected applicants have been assigned to the new Status and/or Shortlist.

The functionality of clicking in the Status or the Shortlist dropdowns directly on spreadsheet and changing individual applicants remains for when you want to change one by one.

 

 

Yellow Cab of Colorado Automates Driver Contracting with FastRecruiting.com

Yellow Cab of Denver has taken automation to a new level in the process involved with contracting cab and shuttle drivers.  Using the Fast Recruiting system, Yellow enables their specific process to be automated as follows:

• Ads are placed via Fast Recruiting

• Prospective Contractors go through an online pre screen questionaire, which serves to disqualify about 20% of the applicants from being considered for interviews.

• Those that qualify from the pre screen fill out the contractor application, complete other custom documents for Yellow Cab, and agree to a background check.

• Once they complete these documents, they are invited to pick an available time and date for an interview, based upon the recruiters Fast Recruiting Availability calendar, maintained by the  recruiter within their log in.

• Applicants show up for an interview, and their application is reviewed.  Those matching the qualifications are then background checked within the Fast Recruiting program by TalentWise, our integrated background check provider.

• The qualifying applicant is pre contracted and scheduled for Orientation and Safety classes using the Fast Recruiting system for the scheduling.

• Upon successfully completing the orientation/safety class the driver is Contracted and assigned a contractor number automatically through the Fast Recruiting system.

• License and other critical information is scanned into the Fast Recruiting system, and alerts Yellow via email and within the system to any pending expiration's.

"The time savings is enormous and the contractor information is always complete. Bottom line is we are able to keep our fleet on the road with less resources involved and in a much more organized fashion. " said Cory Mack, Contracting Supervisor for Denver Yellow Cab.

Maintaining the contractor files is another area in which Yellow is benefiting from going paperless with FastRecruiting.  "Before contracting an applicant, we can easily see that all required documents have been completed.  Once contracted, we are alerted to any expiring documents.  Having the files talk to us, insures we are 100% compliant and up to date on all contractor files.  Before using Fast Recruiting, this was not nearly as easy a task," commented Mack.

Bart Bement, CEO of Fast Recruiting added, "It is nice to see a client employing all the automation we have built into the system, and to see it working exactly as intended.  Although not all our clients choose to take the automated path to this degree, based upon the results of Yellow, they may want to reconsider their Fast Recruiting setup to include some of these optional tools."

Craigslist Job Ads - Maximize Response and Project a Positive Company Image

It is simple to create good craigslist ads, however many companies still utilize poorly produced ads, which generate lower level response and create a poor company image.  With the overwhelming use of craigslist by hourly/entry level, blue collar and other non executive job seekers, combined with the low cost to advertise; Craigslist is the obvious choice for companies hiring this type of worker.  But putting a less then great ad here, is basically broadcasting a poor image for your company to all that view it.  In most cases with small to medium sized businesses, this equals more “hits” on your site then the company website gets from all other areas while ads are running.  With that in mind, why not use this cost effective medium to maximize your ad response, and to project a positive company image?  Below are factors to help make both happen:

Ad Frequency/Producing Lifecycle of your Ad

With the manner in which craigslist ads fall lower and lower on the list matching your jobs criteria, you have to understand the true “lifecycle” of your ad.  It is far less than the 30 days your ad is actually buried on the craigslist site.  To gauge your ads lifecycle, look at the job area for the category you are using, and figure the time between most recent ad shown and the oldest ad visible on opening page.  That is one measure of the ads true “Producing Lifecycle.”  Another is to go to the overall JOBS category, and enter in the basic job title you are advertising for.  Again measure the time between most recent and oldest on the page. To divide further into what is the “high performing lifecycle” of your ad, do the same time measurement but only measure the top “fold” of the first page.  The top fold is everything you can see on your browser without scrolling.  To continue to get good results from your ad, you have to Repost/Pay for a new ad to coincide with the end of your ads true lifecycle.

Understand the mentality of a Craigslist Job Seeker

A craigslist job seeker steps into a place where there are job opportunities being shouted to him/her from all directions.  They are looking for something that grabs their interest, catches their eye.   To begin, they are only looking at the very important Titles of the ads, as that is all that is visible at first view.  When they do open an ad, they do so knowing there are a zillion other ads to look at.   With this in mind, the below are some tips to help maximize your craigslist ad dollar.

Headlines/Titles of your Ads have a Big Effect

On Craigslist, at first view all the job seeker views are the ad headlines.  This is the first step, designing a headline that will be noticed and opened.  The manner in which the titles are listed in Craigslist, longer titles are easier to pick out of the crowd.  Shorter titles get lost in the crowd.  The title is one place on your craigslist ad that using the maximum number of allowed characters is best.  You will be surprised at the difference a title can make in the ads performance.  Experiment with different titles and track their performance on the same ad.

 Grab Readers Attention/Immediately Engage

Within craigslist, the goal of your ad should be to grab the reader’s attention, and immediately engage them off the craigslist site.  As far as grabbing their attention, nice graphics, simple, not too much text all work.  I have seen ads with three simple lines and a link to the company website in which to apply that are great.  You do not necessarily need graphics, but they do work.  Quick hitting, with a Call to Action is what you want.  You do not want overly wordy job description type ads.

By immediately engaging the job seeker, you are taking the lead in the race to hire the best candidates.  And with Craigslist, you need to immediately engage the applicant or they will be working somewhere else by the time you do, and you will be stuck with looking at applicants of inferior quality that have yet to be hired. 

These candidates are online, thus an online application process is far better than making them call a phone number.  Likewise the “reply to” function on craigslist does not engage the prospect, as they remain on the CL site.  Linking your website or specific job application to your craigslist ad enables you to get the applicant off of craigslist, and engaged in your application process. 

When you do link to your website, make sure you make it easy to find the job the prospect is looking to apply for.  This is not the place you want to put up road blocks and obstacles for applicants.  If you make it frustrating to find the actual application, you will lose many of these potential employees who will just go back to the job search.  If you are not linking to the actual start of the application for this position, it should be to a page where this link is readily available.  Having the application for this position anything more than one or two clicks away will cause a leak in your applicant pool back to their job search.

Use simple HTML tags and Link Images on your Ads

It is easy to use simple graphics in your craigslist ads and simple html to format your ad so that it catches the eye of the viewer, and presents a positive image of your company.  Yet most companies do not use images in their ads, nor do they use simple formatting for bold, italic, larger text, bullet points, etc.  Stand out by using these simple tags. See http://www.craigslist.org/about/help/html_in_craigslist_postings/ for details.

Overly Wordy Ads have same effect as Charlie Browns Teacher

When an ad is opened and it is basically a long wordy job description, this is not doing anything to help catch the prospects attention.  You want quick hitting ads with fewer words, and a clear and present Call to Action for an effective ad.

Timing of Ad Placement

The best timing of your posting depends upon the worker you are looking to hire.  If you are hiring a closing bartender who gets off work at 3 am, an early morning post is not going to be in prime position when this person wakes up, has some coffee, and gets on their computer with a yawn at 3pm.  For business hours jobs, I like to post craigslist ads as early as possible in the AM on weekdays, and usually do not post on Fridays, as the response is noticeable lower. 

Summary

As recruiters of entry level, contract, or hourly workers, knowing how to market your jobs on craigslist is a skill every recruiter needs.  Craigslist is quite simply the one ad source that if used properly, will far out shadow all other ad sources available at a very cost effective rate in comparison.  It needs to be part of the advertising mix for all companies successfully recruiting these types of workers.  Using the tips here will result in you maximizing what should be the highest yielding source in your job advertising arsenal.

 

 

 

Automated Interview Scheduling

Fast Recruiting's automated interview scheduling system, enables you to stop playing phone tag with your top prospects, and get them scheduled for an interview quickly, easily and effectively.  To setup your FR automated interview scheduling system, you first set your availability as shown below.  Setup each Interview time period you wish to enable an applicant to choose for each day of the week you wish to conduct interviews.  You can setup and manage your Phone and Personal Interview settings here.  If there are specific dates off you would like to block off of availability, you can also do this here.  The number of days forward determines how many days into the future you would like applicants to be able to register for an interview.  Click on image for full screen.

 

The other thing required on setting up your automated interview system is to create email templates that will serve as the "Invite to Phone" or "Invite to Personal Interview." You need to create a template for both Phone and Personal Interviews. Below is an example. Click on image for full screen.

 

Now that you have everything setup, all there is to using the automated interview scheduling is to checkmark the prospects/applicants you wish to Invite, and then hit the Invite to Phone or Personal interview buttons. You will get a confirmation that the email was successfully sent, and the Applicants status will automatically change to "Invited to Personal Interview" or "Invited to Phone Interview."  Once the applicant selects an interview Date/Time, this will show on your Dashboard "Fastlinks" as well as within your calendar.  The recruiter will also then receive an email with the Interview details.  Click on image for full screen.

 

Confirmation and Change of Status.

 

Mapping Applicants Proximity to Worksites

This feature enables you to see your applicants and their proximity to your worksites.  First, you pre select your worksite locations within your admin panel as shown here.  This only needs to be done once, or as your worksites change:

Now that you have worksite locations configured in your admin panel, you can go to View Applicants/Locations, and from here, you select which of your worksite zones you wish to see on the map (they will appear in green on map, applicants appear in red)

Now you are ready to narrow down the applicant list with the search parameters atop the page.  As you can see, there is an added search filtering parameter for mileage from worksite zone.

You select Applicants from list and hit the Mark Applicants button and these will now show on the map along with the worksite marker.  You can also select a page range if you wish to map over 50 applicants.  Clicking a marker on map brings up applicant info.  Also the list of those applicants within the mileage range you have selected shows below the map, enabling you to quickly access these applicants info and to direct communication their way.  The further most right column displays the mileage to the worksite zone from the applicants home address.

 

Custom Name and Assign Status to your Spreadsheets

We have a new admin tool that enables you to name each Spreadsheet and also assign status's to it.  As are most things in FR, it's pretty easy to setup.  This will additionally give you the ability to have different spreadsheets for certain Positions, should you have this need.

Fast Recruiting,Inc Partners with Discount Cab to Create A Better, Faster & Greener Application Solution

Costa Mesa, CA and Glendale, AZ/ October 22, 2009 — Fast Recruiting, Inc,  a provider of Web-based recruiting management and scheduling solutions and Total Transit, Inc, of Glendale, Arizona, which operates several leading transportation companies including Discount Cab,  have joined forces to implement the Fast Recruiting paper-saving, web-based application process for contracting cab drivers.


"Fast Recruiting's online application process fits into Total Transit's mission of being the greenest transportation company we can be,” said Craig Hughes, CEO of Total Transit, Inc.  “Prospective drivers now apply directly on our website and our recruiters then automatically schedule interviews, run background checks, enroll prospective drivers into our training classes, and get them through the approval process and into a green cab."

Fast Recruiting’s Web-based system is truly a win-win for transportation companies that must process a high volume of applicants.  Online recruitment not only provides Discount Cab’s management with time savings and other efficiencies; it is also primarily paperless.

“We estimate 75% less paper usage when a company converts to online recruiting,” said Bart Bement, CEO of Fast Recruiting, Inc.   “In this economy, companies such as Discount Cab are getting many applications each day.  At an average of five pages for each applicant, the annual savings in paper is huge and truly helps companies to reduce their carbon footprint.”

And most importantly, online recruiting helps to screen out the approximately 38% of applicants who do not meet the basic requirements of the position. This enables the recruiter to focus on the 62% that are actually qualified.   Previously, all applicants qualified or not, would just show up to apply.

Before meeting the applicant, integrated background checks are completed within the Fast Recruiting system, alerting the recruiter to any past criminal and traffic convictions as well as incorrect Social Security numbers.

"The biggest challenge for us in this project was to accommodate the regulatory issues inherent in contracting cab drivers, while at the same time making the application experience an easy one for even the novice Internet user," commented Bement.   "With the help of Discount Cab’s recruiting, safety and management staff, we designed an online application process that works for even the newest of Internet users.” 

___________________________________________________________________________

Discount Cab: Now in its 25th year of operation, Discount Cab is Arizona’s largest cab company, operating more than 550 cabs throughout Phoenix and Tucson. For more information on Discount Cab, please visit www.discountcab.com. Find Discount Cab on Twitter at twitter.com/discount_cab or on Facebook at Facebook.com/discountcab

Media Contact:  PBS/FastRecruiting

Name: Bart Bement

Phone number: 949-608-7141

e-mail address:  bart@fastrecruiting.net

FR Joins AmericanForest.org "Releaf" project

FastRecruiting has joined the AmericanForest.org effort to protect, restore and enhance the natural capital of trees and forests.  A tree is planted for each new client, as well as for all visitors to our trade show booth.  We love what AmericanForest.org is doing and are happy to join in this effort.  It's also a great way to highlight the paper savings inherent in our web based Recruiting and HR/Contractor Document Management system.

Fast Recruiting Introduction and Background

So here it is…the very first Fast Recruiting blog post.  A good time to let you in on who we are, where we came from, and how we got into the Applicant Tracking System and Workforce Management software business.  We didn’t get into this business willingly; we had every intention of finding an existing solution that really would work for us. 

To bring you up to speed, we owned a 1,400 employee Driver Staffing and fleet outsourcing business and really needed a system for driver recruiting, remote hours collection, and real time management of each days remote positions staffing. I must have personally looked at 30+ systems in the HRIS, Applicant Tracking System, assessment testing, background checks and time and attendance space for high volume employers.  We saw some great features and products, but we did not see anything that had all that we required wrapped up into one solution.  The overall solutions we did see were too spendy, and for our type regional management…well they would never have been able to figure it out without much hand holding and training, something we did not relish doing.  Not that there’s anything wrong with holding the hands of your staff, but hey, we only have two each!

In 2000, still without a complete solution, we sold our company.  With the capital from the sale, and some excellent local programmers, we started Databay, which was a very specific web based system for just the type of company we had sold.  The “dream system” we had always wanted and could not find….A system that is easy for the staff to use, yet powerful in its abilities.  Our first client….you guessed it, the management of the old company.  This system still runs this company’s and others Recruiting, HR management, Customer Service CRM, Hours collection, payroll, billing, margin analysis and first level accounting!  It is quite an encompassing system, but very specific to the needs of this type company.

In 2007 we spun off the recruiting portions of what we had created in Databay and founded FastRecruiting, a very flexible web based applicant tracking system for high volume recruiting using both web and IVR automated phone interviews reporting to the comprehensive applicant tracking and communication system. In 2009, we incorporated our onboarding, shift scheduling and performance management features enabling us to encompass a full range of key needs in all our client companies.

To sum it up, the result of our 20 yrs of experience with this type workforce is included in every line of code in our system.  We understand the realities involved in managing a remote workforce and our system accounts for this with easy to use functionality, user accountability, and easy applicant experiences.