Employers today are facing many more applicants than there are open assignments available. In many instances, there are literally hundreds of applications and resumes being received for a single open position.

One way business owners and hiring managers are going about the process of sorting through the long line of resumes is with the assistance of an employee tracking system.

Why are Employers Turning to Tracking Systems?

While some job candidates feel slighted by the process altogether, employee tracking systems are a valuable tool for recruiters. However difficult it is to know that you’re investing time, effort, and energy into the job search process only to be removed from consideration by a computer program or algorithm, it’s oftentimes necessary to manage candidate selection.

Companies aren’t likely to change their stand on candidate tracking systems for several reasons, including these.

1)   Employee tracking systems save time. Businesses today are being forced to do more work with fewer people. It’s a given. The one thing they don’t have in excess is free time to sift through hundreds of applications to find the few standout candidates. If they did have the time, there wouldn’t be a need to hire more workers.

2)   These systems help businesses avoid any appearance of discrimination or any other type of hiring misconduct. The systems don’t judge suitability based on age, religion, race, or any other defining and legally protected characteristic that doesn’t pertain to the responsibilities of the job and experience in the industry. Even better, for many business owners, is that the system makes it easy for them to show compliance with federal laws concerning discrimination if a question ever does arise.

3)   Tracking systems save businesses money. In the end, that’s what it generally comes down too. Many of the systems are free for businesses to us and it frees up precious man hours (that cost quite a bit of money) to be spent on the business of making money for the company rather than reading through resume after resume.

What do Candidate Tracking Systems Mean for Job Seekers?

The long and short answer is that they mean you must learn to create resumes designed to make it past the employment tracking software. Once you begin creating resumes intended to make it through the first round of elimination you should start to see a few more calls for interviews coming your way. Here are a few steps you’ll want to keep in mind when creating resumes for these systems.

1)   Create resumes the systems can read. Most of these systems cannot read PDF files and have a difficult time understand graphs and tables. The simple solution is to leave them off your resume.

2)   Include work experience on your resume and label it as “work experience.” This is language the systems are taught to read and comprehend. The order of items in this section is also important. List the place of employment first, followed by the job title, and then the dates of employment. Creativity was once the key component. Now, however, you want to design resumes to appeal to the sorting software.

3)   Write a longer resume. Short and sweet was once the order of the day. The rules have changed once again. Longer resumes give you more opportunities to work the appropriate keywords the company is looking for into your resume. Fill out your resume and create one that is 2 to 4 pages long instead.

Once you understand why employers are using employee tracking systems and what the systems want from you, you are in a much better position to help yourself make it through to the interview process.

Enjoy a previous post on a job search related topic from Davis Staffing:

Stop Screwing Up Your Job Search

When you’re a business that’s actively recruiting job candidates, it’s more important than ever to have a high ranking in Google’s search results. Unfortunately, that, in and of itself can be a challenge. You’re not in the business of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). But, it can seem like you need to be an expert in that and countless other foreign sounding words in order to make your presence felt on the World Wide Web. Here are a few things you can do that will make a huge difference in your Google Ranking.

Use WordPress for Your Website

Not only does WordPress make the website design process simple for the non-technical person to do, but it’s also extremely SEO-friendly. If you aren’t going to hire someone to handle your website design, this is by far the best solution for businesses to use today. WordPress will take care of many of the off-page SEO things that are needed in order to help Google notice your site.

Understand Keyword and do Your Own Keyword Research

Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines to find what they’re looking for. The more frequently the keywords are used, the greater the competition will be for those words when it comes to ranking well on Google. But you want to find at least three well-searched phrases (keywords) that will help people to find your site and optimize your site around those keywords.

Provide Valuable Content

Your website is your virtual storefront on the Internet. It allows people to do a little window shopping to see if they want to come inside or cruise on over to the next website in the search results. Google sees your site the same way. They need to see content that is relevant to the topic of your site and the keywords you’ve chosen. This will help them determine how useful your site will be to the average user and rank you accordingly.

Content is king and always will be when it comes to getting good search engine ranking. Include content on your site about jobs your have available, recruiting efforts, the company culture, the research you’re doing, new products in the work, and the products (or services as the case may be) you have on the market today.

Finally, use social media to announce the presence of your site and solidify your corporate branding efforts. Not only does this help increase your brand recognition with consumers but also with job seekers. More importantly, it creates vitally important backlinks to your site that indicate to Google that you’re site is worthy of their attention too. The more good press you generate about your company and your site the better it will be for your Google ranking.

Enjoy a few related posts on using technology and web marketing to promote your business to attract better candidates:

Do’s and Don’ts of a Company’s Social Media Page

Online Brand Management: Protect Your Company’s Identity

The world of business is changing fast. Organizations interested in fast growth must do things a little differently than they may have a few years ago. One of the biggest differences is the necessity of using social media to create a buzz and awareness about your business.

A surprising trend that we are seeing with social media is that no business is really spared the need for using it. LinkedIn remains one of the underutilized but oh-so-important social networks that’s ideal to tap into if you’re really interested in growing your business. Here are a few ways you should be using LinkedIn for that purpose.

Join Groups and get Conversations Started

LinkedIn may be the more “grown up” version of social networking, but it’s still very social. You have to really participate in order to make the splash you need to in business today. Join groups that are relevant to your business and participate in the conversations that have been started. Create your own if there aren’t any. Just make sure you follow the rules of each group or it could reflect unfavorably on your business instead of making the positive impression you’re going for.

Ask for Recommendations

This is something you might want to do from employees (past and present—provided they left and/or are employed on good terms) as well as clients you’ve served. It’s not enough to simply grow your business with other consumers. You also want to set your business in a prime situation to attract a talented pool of potential employees too. This is a great way to do that and LinkedIn is one of the best social networks to turn to for professional employees you might want to have as part of your organization.

Keep it Interactive

The sole purpose of social networking, after all, is to socialize. With this in mind you want to keep your networking efforts up day after day and week after week. When someone asks a question that’s perfect for your business to answer, then it’s in your best interest to answer and participate in any follow-up discussion that may be necessary. Interact with the other people in your “groups” as well as those who become part of your circles. It will pay off over time.

LinkedIn can be an excellent tool to help you take your business to the top—especially if you incorporate tips like these into your social media marketing plans. Use it also to help find great candidates who can support your business growth. Let Davis Staffing show you their skills when it comes to sourcing candidates utilizing the best of social media today.

In the world of business, your reputation is everything—especially the way today’s business market moves. The problem is that rumors, whispers, grunts, and grumbles today move at the lightning fast speed of the World Wide Web. In other words, bad news spreads fast on the Internet. Protecting your corporate brand can be a full-time job in and of itself. The bigger the brand; the more protection it requires.

It’s not only prospective clients who pay attention to your online reputation. It’s prospective and current employees as well. People want to work for a company where current employees are generally happy with the state of things. Those who already work for your business love sharing bits and pieces gathered from the rumor mill around the water cooler. Bad news and misinformation can do a lot of harm to morale in the workplace.

Taking Control of Your Company’s Brand Reputation

It’s not always easy to know where to begin when it comes to getting things under control concerning the reputation of your business brand. But, it’s something that must be done. These tips will help you take matters into your own hands and get the results you’re looking for.

1)   Find out what’s being said about your company. This is something that can be accomplished with a simple “Google” search of your company’s name along with key words of phrases such as: reviews, complaints, workers, salary, employees, and careers. You must know what’s out there in order to address potential problems within your company or rumors on the Internet about your company.

2)   Encourage people who are happy working with your company to post online about their positive experiences working for your business. It really doesn’t take much more than to ask your employees. Everyone who works for your company has a vested interest in protecting and defending its reputation. The more people who post positive experiences with your company, the greater the likelihood will be that those results begin to carry more weight with the search engines than the negative results.

3)   Create your own online presence. Start a company blog, create a Facebook page, and begin a Twitter account. Each of these things allow you to control the script about your company that’s being played out across the social network. It puts you in the driver’s seat.

Once you begin to retake control of your online brand presence in order to secure your company’s reputation you should begin to see more favorable results in your recruitment efforts. You’ll be able to bring in top-tier candidates for positions that are available and morale within the ranks will improve day by day.

Recruiting the top talent in the Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana requires more than just a branded presence. It means working with a quality staffing agency like Davis Staffing to find skilled employees.

In your job search, networking is an important component to success. However, if you are not doing it properly, all of the networking you are doing may be for nothing. The process of networking involves talking to numerous people and building up the number of people you know within your industry or in correlating industries. The goal is to get your name out there to ensure that if someone knows about a position, they think of you.

Networking Can Go Wrong

There are some cases in which networking doesn’t aid, but actually hurts a person’s ability to find a job. If you are like most people, you do talk to friends and family on a regular basis. But, are you talking to the right people in the right way? Here are some ways networking could be working against you.

• You are not talking to anyone that could hire you. In short, you are spending too much time talking to and getting to know other people doing the job you are doing. If you are not networking with human resource professionals, managers or business owners, you are missing out.

• Are you desperate? It’s obvious if you are. Don’t network in such a way as you end up looking like you are begging for a job. In fact, you should not start networking when you are out of a job, but while you are still employed. You don’t want to be the person thought of as desperate for work.

• You love to add names but you are not building any relationship with those you are speaking to through your networking. It is not about quantity. Often, there’s talk about how many people you have following you on your favorite social media platform. The problem is, if you are not engaging the right people often enough, they will not remember you.

• Do you have goals? If you don’t have goals for your career or know what type of position you are looking for, those you are networking with will not know either. That’s the problem with networking – you have to work to define the career path you are taking.

• You aren’t talking to the right people. Ask yourself if the person you are networking with has connections to the people you want to work with in the future. Too many dead-end contacts will hurt you in the long-term and they definitely will not help you to find the job you want.

How are you networking? Is it paying off? If not, now may be the time to take some significant steps to make changes.

Ask yourself what you could be doing to better your network of people, such as building your network in a different way or better engaging the individuals you are networking with. There’s no doubt you need to talk to people to find a job. However, it’s all about talking to the right people in the right way to get the results you need.

Social media is all the rage these days – for many reasons. Businesses, of all shapes and sizes, need to incorporate social media into their business plans. With that in mind, however, there are certain things you should and should not do with your social media efforts. This is especially true if you plan to use social media as a means to reach out to new and highly qualified candidates for jobs you have available. Here are a few things you should consider when using social media if you want to appeal to a wider audience of potential employees.

What Candidates Wished Employers Posted on Social Media Pages

MiracleWorkers.com conducted a survey of healthcare workers which revealed that 40 percent of workers in the healthcare industry wished companies would post job listings on company pages. They’d also like to see more information about various career paths in their organizations posted on these pages.

WorkInRetail.com conducted a similar survey of retail employees and discovered they would like to similar information on job openings. But they had an additional request. 18 percent of retail employees responding to the survey also want organizations to list something fun about working for them as well as employee testimonials.

IT employees, according to Sologig.com are also looking to learn something fun about working for the company and hearing employee testimonials. 39 percent of workers in the IT industry are also interested in seeing job listings go social by appearing on company’s social media pages. They also want to know what types of products and/or services the company is working on too.

What Companies Should Not Do with their Social Media Efforts

There were several things that workers across the board (in all the industries surveyed above) agree companies should not do. Companies should not be sporadic in their social media updates. Businesses should not fail to respond to questions that are asked of them. They should also avoid company communications that read like advertisements.

The filtering of comments was another thing that really bothered job seekers in these industries. People would much rather hear the good, the bad, and the ugly about a company before deciding if they can live with the perceived negatives.

More importantly, they want to see how the company responds to the negative. An aggressive campaign to respond in a positive manner to the perceived negatives shows that the company is interested in resolving the situation while filtering the content or removing the comments completely will make it look like the company is more interested in pretending it never happened than solving the problem.

Social media can be a real boon for businesses today – especially when it comes to attracting the ideal candidate. But using social media for recruitment requires consistent work and a consistent message to really attract the best of the best job candidates. Be prepared to make social media a key player in your company’s plan for recruiting today and in the future.