May 14th, 2012 → 10:02 am @ Carissa Crittenden
At BirdDog, we’re all about helping you grow your business, because we know that amazing talent will help you get more customers and provide those customers with the best experience possible. So here’s a tip on one way you can gain more customers. A Pew Research Center study revealed that the percentage of adults who use check-in services on their phones (like Foursquare or Gowalla) has increased from 4% last May to 10% in February. That means one in ten adults are utilizing these location-based services to determine where they can go and what they should do.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, if you’re a home services company in an area with a growing population, putting your business on Foursquare can help new residents find help they need from your business. You can run specials on these geosocial sites, exclusive to the site. If you’re a business where you often have customers come in to your physical location, then offering them specials by checking in will encourage them to come back – especially if you change these specials on a regular basis. Plus, many geosocial users have these sites connected to other social networking sites, like Facebook. That means their network will be exposed to your brand as well, gaining you a little free exposure. And the best part? It’s free (unless you need to claim your venue – then it is a one-time fee of $10)!
On Foursquare, you can create either a brand page (probably best if you won’t have customers coming to your venue) or a physical venue page. The instructions on how to set these up are relatively self explanatory.
The point here is: You always want to be growing in some way – whether it be your customer base or making more people aware of your brand. And utilizing the growing number of adults using these services is just one more way to get your name out there.
May 9th, 2012 → 10:48 am @ Carissa Crittenden
Perhaps the title of this blog entry is unclear. By no means am I suggesting you literally play fetch with your employees. But rather I want you to know about the power of the employee referral – and how BirdDog can help you take advantage of them.
One of BirdDog’s most underutilized features is the distribution list. Inevitably, you’ve heard from our Customer Care team about how to set these lists up and leverage them to their best advantage, but have you ever paused to consider how truly valuable an employee referral is?
Dr. John Sullivan advises Fortune 500 firms on HR matters. I ran across an article written by Dr. Sullivan the other day on the benefits of employee referrals. Some of these benefits include high quality of hire, better fitting candidates to company culture, and higher employee retention. He also discusses some benefits to the recruiting function upon implementation of an employee referral program including things such as: growing social networks making referral programs more effective, executive search capability, and improved college / trade school recruiting.
I have by no means listed all of the benefits or hard facts depicted in Sullivan’s article (which you can read by clicking here), but I did want to share these perks with you to remind you that your employees are one of your best resources in finding candidates. And when an employee comes to you with knowledge of a friend or someone in his or her network who they feel would be a good fit in your organization, remember that by using the Distribution List feature on BirdDog, you can add that employee referral to your list and send all the referrals an email anytime you post a new job on BirdDog.
By utilizing BirdDog’s features, you can easily have all of those employee referrals in one place and with just one click you can make sure new job postings are sent to them. If you’d like to know how to utilize these lists (or you’d just like a refresher), feel free to give your Customer Care Manager a call and Karen, Rachel, or Spenser will walk you through the process.
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April 30th, 2012 → 10:31 am @ Carissa Crittenden
While we absolutely LOVE to tell you about current trends in the industry and how we can help you combat them to keep your talent pool building, we also like to give you some general tips on things you can do to help grow your business. Obviously, marketing is an important tool in this mission. As more and more people create profiles on social networks, your opportunites to interact directly with your customers – and gain some new customers – expands. If you check out our Facebook page, you’ll see that we try to interact with those who like us. Obviously, this is difficult when you’re not getting customers or clients to interact with you on social media – perhaps because we’re a B2B company, rather than a B2C. If you take a moment to check out our Google+ page, you’ll see we update this regularly, but try to put up different content than on our Facebook page.
We also have numerous Twitter handles – one for employers, one for jobseekers, and then some for our individual employees. We feel that doing this allows our customers to see the people behind the brand. And hopefully you’re finding that helpful.
So our tips to you are to implement some of these things. If you upload different content to each of your social media platforms, you force your followers to check each of them to know what new thing you’ve put up – especially when you tell them on one site that the information you’ve posted on another site is exclusive to your profile on that particular site. It may seem confusing, I know, but it helps. And in the end, it’s all about getting that exposure. Just imagine how much new attention you could get if just a third of your fans on Facebook see something cool you post. They could share it with their friends, who in turn may share it with their friends. Do it often enough, and you’ve just found yourself some more fans.
While I haven’t mentioned LinkedIn in this blog post, I would like to remind you that LinkedIn is itself a valuable tool, especially when it comes to building your professional network. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ can get you the customers – but LinkedIn will help you find more customers, and also let you connect to the talent you need to grow your business. BirdDog is, of course, here to help you find that talent in addition to the other tools on the Internet. And those other tools won’t offer you what BirdDog will – a way to keep track of all of your interactions with your talent pool.
We’ve adapted our strategy from some tips in Justin Levy’s Facebook Marketing and just wanted to share them with you.
Just remember – growing your online presence will require three things: time, effort, and patience (note that I didn’t say direct cash). But remember that our world keeps getting more technologically savvy, and your efforts will ultimately pay off in the end.
April 25th, 2012 → 3:27 pm @ Carissa Crittenden
I ran across an article this morning about some tips on how to use LinkedIn to its best advantage. The article is fairly short and sweet, so if you’re interested I’ll let you check it out for yourself.
As we always say at BirdDog, people drive business success, and one of the best way to find those people is by networking. LinkedIn provides a phenomenal tool for doing just that, so give this article a look-see and put a few things into use to help grow your business – and your network.
Just remember one thing when you hit slide nine – that’s one area where BirdDog can offer more cost-effective solutions.
Without further ado, here it is: How To Make The Most Out Of LinkedIn
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February 29th, 2012 → 9:49 am @ Tom Mileham
“We began using BirdDog because we were expanding nationally into markets where we did not have a presence and needed an easy resource to quickly identify candidates in those new markets.
Since we made the move to BirdDog we’ve been able to easily diversify how we build our candidate pool. We are able to attract some great people and have been able to seek out candidates with various skill sets in a very easy manner and have made 27 hires through BirdDog in 2011. We love the flexibility of the system and that we can change our direction easily based on our needs, easily adjust focus fast so that we can continue to grow into the markets we are targeting.”
Zach Wingerter, Deem, LLC
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February 23rd, 2012 → 4:57 pm @ Bryan May
Thanks again to the people at CareerXRoads for producing such a rich and high content study on the Channels that influence hires.
At Birddog, we’ve know there are FOUR mega resources that produce the majority of hires for all companies. Those of you on our BirdDog “Always On” software are way ahead of the pack. We are helping you utilize:
Take a look at the CareerXRoads study to learn more about these channel and how they influence hires! If you are not yet engaging the outreach lists or easy social sharing features of your Birddog program, talk with your account manager today! You can no longer afford to wait!
Hunt – Track – Fast
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January 5th, 2012 → 5:37 pm @ Rachel Dell
Most companies don’t have the resources to invest in a web designer or consultant. So what are some basic housekeeping items that can help you transform your website from ordinary to ridiculously awesome?
There are four ways you can optimize your website:
1. Keep it fresh! Give customers a reason to visit. Think about your favorite websites and what attracts you to them? What content are you looking for? Consider polling your employees for their opinion. After collecting this data…use it! Try to incorporate some of everyone’s favorite features, content and make it relevant to your industry.
2. Integrate with Social Media. Social media is a great tool to utilize on your webpage. If you blog, use Facebook or twitter, you can set up your website to automatically update from those sources. Try to encourage participation from your customers. Each has a voice and like to use it. Allow users to provide relevant information. The more fresh, relevant content, the better your site will rank in the search engines – Brand Recondition!
3. Make e-commerce easy! It’s been proven. We are more impatient than ever when shopping around. Some people don’t want to talk to a sales person. Most require the “information” is literally at their fingertips. With our shortened attention spans, allowing customers to order online makes it easier and allows you to capture more of the potential opportunity.
4. Use SEO to its full potential ( Search Engine Optimization)! In order to become more visible, optimizing your website is extremely important. Be thinking in terms of synonyms. Consider the different key word searches a customer might use when they are looking for a part or service. This should allow you to capture more opportunity and help Google understand your relevance.
BirdDog wants to keep you top of mind!!
Read more: http://mashable.com/2011/12/30/small-business-websites-sales/
December 22nd, 2011 → 5:37 pm @ Rachel Dell
Today I read an article from Forbes Magazine Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent I thought this piece offered a lot of beneficial insight and I was inspired to share it with our Birddog readers. We are all in business, and oddly enough no matter the industry hiring is always in the top 5 of the priority list. The question is if we retained our great people, would this be such an issue? I was inspired to share this because what better feedback than to know what isn’t working.
Here’s the Top Ten Reasons People Leave……
1. Big Company Bureaucracy
2. Failing to Find a Project for the Talent that Ignites Their Passion
3. Poor Annual Performance Reviews
4. No Discussion around Career Development
5. Shifting Whims/Strategic Priorities
6. Lack of Accountability and/or telling them how to do their jobs
7. Top talent like other Top talent
8. Missing Vision- Future of the organization
9. Lack of Open-Mindedness
10. Who’s the Boss?
Top talent has to assume some responsibility as much as the organization. However, with the scarcity of talent which will only increase in the next 5 years. Smart Organizations are now looking at this trend and planning for these ten things. Goal for 2012…Retention!!
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December 22nd, 2011 → 10:48 am @ Rachel Dell
Some entrepreneurs gave no sign that one day they would be their own boss so how can you tell if you have picked the next BIG extension of yourself and business? Based on Margaret Heffman a serial CEO out of Texas with businesses like InfoMation Corporation, Zinezone Corporation and iCAST Corporation. The conditions she uses are easy, only four major core conditions she instills in her company culture that keep her cranking out some of the most productive talent.
So what were those conditions?
An open atmosphere. Every team we have ever run has been highly democratic. Any good idea gets attention. Ideas didn’t have to fight their way through a structure. They could be blurted out.
Extravagant diversity. Our youngest employee was eighteen and our oldest was 68. They’d worked in different countries, states and industries. Some demonstrated enormous emotional intelligence; some had virtually none.
Time didn’t matter. Time frame wasn’t as much a priority as much as their productivity. Individuals figured out what worked for them, and for their families—and that worked for the business. Too many companies seem to feel they have to fight for priority over family life and in that jealous feud, vast amounts of energy and workplace enjoyment are dissolved.
Stretch goals were just the start. Almost everything the company faced was difficult. We liked big challenges and cheered anyone who met them.
Doing great work and thinking outside the box is hard, that’s why great people love it.
Read more: http://www.inc.com/margaret-heffernan/you-cant-predict-talent-foster-it.html?nav=next
Here is a great idea for all business owners and hiring managers, build the atmosphere that promotes professional growth and you will go far, great people like a challenge and want to continue being the expert in their field.
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November 17th, 2011 → 2:59 pm @ Gabe
Did you know that by a margin quickly approaching 2-1, job seekers are crediting Facebook with helping them land their latest gig?
In the article, “Job Seekers Turn to Facebook for Job Hunting” by John Zappe on ere.net we find out that according Jobvite’s Social Job Seeker Survey 2011, LinkedIn is actually in a distant second with 46 percent of job seekers attributing their new position to that business-oriented network. It is important to note as well that because most job seekers use more than one social network the numbers add up to more than 100 percent.
According to Dan Finnigan, Jobvite president and CEO, “Our new national survey shows that socially savvy job seekers have an advantage over their fellow job hunters and it’s paying off. While referrals are still the top source of new jobs, online social networks play an increasingly important role in job hunting today.”
Jobvite reports that more than 22 million workers said they found their job through social networking, which is an increase of 7.6 million since last year’s survey.
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