Talent attraction is no longer merely a case of supply and demand – the “we have a job open and you need one” approach is a thing of the past, period. A quick scroll through LinkedIn will soon have you finding tons of advice and information for job seekers about how to write an amazing resume (click here for our own take on this!), how to impress at interview, how to make that all-important first impression a good one. But it’s 2021 – and recruitment has never been more of a two-way street.

So today, we’re turning the tables. You the employer are obliged – moreover expected – to put care and effort into the first impression you make, too. And first impressions for employers happen to be a 3-step process. Read on to learn what they are.

The “pre-recruitment process” first impression:

First impressions for employers begin begin with your job advert – realistically, that’s where your potential new hire is first going to hear of your business and the role itself. Just as we’re likely to build a first impression based upon an applicant’s resume, the same can be said for them when they come across your job advert for the first time. Your job ad needs to engage and excite them enough for to not just warrant an application, but to leave them waiting on and hoping for a response.

This means taking real care and paying real attention. No cookie-cutter job description, long list of responsibilities and an even longer list of requirements. Try talking about your business, the opportunity working here presents, and what a career within looks like. What’s in it for the jobseeker?

Talk about the role itself, outlining what a day in the life might look like. Make it relatable, realistic; challenging, but not overwhelmingly so. We want to excite, not intimidate.

And, overall, think about the presentation. Write your job adverts with passion, show you’re taking it seriously, and watch as your applicants do the same.

The “before you meet” first impression:

You’ve received an application from a fantastic candidate – now it’s time to get in touch. First off, doing so promptly is key – essentially letting them know that this job is a priority to fill from your side, while it’s still fresh in their mind.

Next, your communication style and presence couldn’t be more important. That first interaction is crucial, whether by email or otherwise. Make sure it’s friendly and professional in nature, informative, and enthusiastic. Be flexible and work around your jobseeker when it comes to scheduling. Demonstrate your commitment to filling this role efficiently, but with the right person. Explain the process, and manage their expectations throughout.

Ultimately, reflect the way you do business in your recruitment process and make sure that the “pre-first impression” is a good one.

The “actual” first impression:

Remember, two-way street: you’re here to sell the opportunity as much as they’re here to sell themselves to you! Be friendly, professional, open in your communication. Leave your ego at the door and put the business first.

Whether you’re meeting over the phone or face to face that crucial first time, be welcoming and grateful for their time. Represent your business with pride, and do so to your very best ability. From this article, it may seem or sound like you get three chances at a first impression – but it’s this one which counts the most.

First impressions are something we at NLG do well. When you’re being represented by our agency, it’s our brand name and standing in the industry which does some of the hard work for us from the off; it’s our incredibly talented team of consultants who take ownership of the process from there, and ensure that the first impression any jobseeker gets of your company is an exceptional one.

To learn more about what working with Next Level Group for your recruitment and payrolling needs looks like, get in touch.

Sure, you’re finding people for the positions you advertise; but recruitment is not necessarily a case of whether it’s working or not. Like you would with any other process or aspect of your business, it’s about asking if it could be done better.

Here are 3 key deliverables in how to measure recruiting success, along with advice as to how to improve each aspect.

1. Time-to-hire

Time to hire refers to the number of days between beginning a recruitment process (which could be the day the board sits down to outline a required profile, or just the date you post a job online) to the moment your new hire starts in their role. Obviously, the shorter the process the better; great talent isn’t on the market long. Take stock of your hiring process and measure how long it takes to fill each role (bearing in mind that level of seniority, technicality, profession etc will change this) and above all be aware of how long each aspect is taking.

Find out where any delays are happening (is the role being prioritized by the hiring manager and/or HR and pushed to be filled ASAP? Is there a lag in responding to applicants? Are hiring managers unable to make time for interviews fast enough?) then use this to measure recruiting success, and take pains to speed up any problem areas.

2. Cost-per-hire

Cost per hire doesn’t just come down to the individual’s salary or package, but every cost related to bringing them on board. We’re talking advertising, man-hours spent sourcing and then interviewing and onboarding, purchasing any necessary equipment/tools they need to do their job, and all the administration involved, plus any agency fees if you’re using one. To bring your cost-per-hire down, you first need to have a transparent, honest look at how much time is being spent recruiting and what that might be costing the business.

Talent pipelining (succession planning and promoting from within), employee referrals and partnering with a strong agency are all great ways to improve your cost-per-hire. Agencies in particular can be a sound investment in terms of strategy, given that every piece of the process you delegate to them leaves your own team free to complete their usual duties and responsibilities – saving crucial time as well as money.

3. Qualified candidates by opening

What we mean by this is not the number of applications you receive, but how many are relevant and suitable for the job in question. The total number is less important – you could have a hundred which are completely irrelevant and simply don’t fit the bill, which gets us nowhere. Largely we class qualified candidates as those who pass the initial application screening to be moved on to the next stage, which would usually be your first conversation or meeting.

It’s important to understand how many qualified candidates you’re receiving for each role you advertise, as this will open up questions about your entire process – your employer brand perception, online presence, quality of adverts, and package competitiveness to name just a few. As such, make sure to keep track of recruitment metrics, particularly conversion rates from application to first stage of interview, first to second, and so on throughout the process. If you’re receiving a very limited amount of qualified applications, we can take from this that you’re not necessarily attracting enough of the top talent on the market – which needs to be improved as part of an overall recruitment strategy overhaul.

With these 3 deliverables in mind, you should be able to get a handle on how successful your recruitment campaigns actually are – furthermore, you’ll give your team the ability to improve that as such. As a professional staffing agency, these are all things we stay on top of as standard; our job isn’t just to find qualified staff for our clients, but to take an overarching look at the strategy in place and make suggestions based on the expertise we’ve developed over the years.

Like we said, everyone can source and hire a person – but how do you know you’re getting the absolute best?

That’s where we come in. Get in touch to learn more about the successes we’ve had with clients across North America, moreover how we’re able to help you improve metrics across the board.

Any views or opinions expressed within this blog do not necessarily reflect the official policy of  NLG. Any points made are for general information only, and none should be relied upon as a basis for making any business, legal or other decisions. Neither NLG nor the author can be held responsible for any reliance placed by you on any information or material within this article.

So it follows that your recruitment process should adapt too – particularly to being carried out largely, if not entirely remotely. The art of remote recruitment poses many challenges, none which are in any way insurmountable; it simply requires different skills, new systems and a flexible, thoughtful approach.

Read on for our how-to guide for adapting your recruitment process to account for all of the above.

1. Video interviews for the win

Zoom and various other video conferencing facilities are now a household name in the world of business, so they should be being used to streamline your recruitment process too. Video interviews are a fantastic way to get “face to face” with an individual, without having to be in the same vicinity; still, it’s important to conduct them properly.

Make sure you’ve thoroughly reviewed the candidate’s profile and know what you want to get out of the interview ahead of time; this way, you can focus on asking key questions and learning what you need to. With that being said, building rapport in a video setting might come less naturally, so dedicate time to this also. Work hard to identify a cultural fit as well as technical/professional, but don’t spend too much of your energy trying to analyse body language and presentation skill, which simply won’t come across at their best in these circumstances!

Finally, check your tech ahead of time – don’t put candidates on the back foot due to a poor internet connection or microphone creating awkward pauses or difficulties in hearing one another. Video doesn’t come naturally to many, so help rather than hinder.

Video interviewing means giving people the benefit of the doubt; always bear in mind that it may not be a true representation of the individual’s abilities or personality. That being said, it’s a great way to identify core skills and attributes in order to establish suitability for a role before progressing to the next stage!

2. Communication & expectations in equal measure

When hiring remotely, setting expectations from the outset is more crucial than ever to a successful process. When a candidate enters your talent pool, immediately ensure you help them understand your timelines, the recruitment process itself and what they can expect from you. Leave no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding in terms of when they’ll receive feedback from interviews, on what medium and through which means.

With this comes a commitment to communicating – clearly, regularly and reliably.

This applies during the recruitment process – as in whilst interviews are taking place – and moreover to that crucial post-offer period. Pre-Covid, once we’d made an offer to a candidate, we might arrange a coffee or catch up before their start date just to cement the relationship; the pandemic makes this more difficult. So, we can’t reiterate enough the importance of assuming nothing and keeping in touch.

3. Get the team involved

Just because the team isn’t all in one place doesn’t mean that remote hiring shouldn’t still be a team affair! Now more than ever, it’s important to reiterate the culture your workforce embodies. So, get more than just a candidate’s direct manager and the HR team involved in your remote hiring process. The more team members a prospective employee meets, the more you’re going to gauge; with each person they speak to you’re going to gain more insight, whether in a formal remote interview setting, an assessment or simply a friendly meet-and-greet capacity.

Furthermore, it means that should they be successful, they’ve already gone part of the way to building strong relationships with various contacts within. Which in turn leads to a happy, cohesive team!

Remote hiring: how to adapt your recruitment process

All in all, remote hiring simply requires more due-diligence, patience and flexibility than the traditional methods we’re used to; but, as with anything, practice makes perfect.

To learn more about how the team here at NLG is helping clients across North America build strong hiring strategies ready for the remote world, get in touch today.

Any views or opinions expressed within this blog do not necessarily reflect the official policy of  NLG. Any points made are for general information only, and none should be relied upon as a basis for making any business, legal or other decisions. Neither NLG nor the author can be held responsible for any reliance placed by you on any information or material within this article.

Which makes your interview process and technique all the more important to get right.

When hiring individuals for your manufacturing business, it’s crucial to identify the behaviours an individual will exhibit as well as finding those key skills and a great cultural fit.

We can do this by utilizing behavioural vs situational interview questions.

The idea behind behavioural interview questioning isn’t to find out what they can and can’t do, but to understand how they go about doing so. It applies to both their actual job responsibilities and how they interact with the team, their day to day communications and approach to problem solving. Behavioural questions are particularly helpful to understand how an individual faces and overcomes challenges in the workplace – which, as we all know, manufacturing can present a multitude of at any given moment.

Behavioural vs situational interview questions: what does a behavioural question sound like?

Examples could include the following:

• How do you handle conflict in the workplace?
• How do you work when faced with time pressure or a strict but very tight deadline?
• How do you adapt and respond when your workload is increased significantly for a short period of time?

You’ll see that these questions are likely going to begin with the word ‘how’ and are often left extremely open-ended. This allows the candidate to interpret them as they like, which can be very telling in itself. Do their answers demonstrate accountability for their own behaviours and actions? Do their answers speak of a positive, logical approach, or an emotional upending? Consider writing a list of the ‘behaviours’ or general ‘feel’ for your business and the working environment as it is, so you can match these attributes to your interviewee’s answers.

As for situational questions – well, these are ultimately going to allow us to visualize a scenario and get a feel for how they’ll respond in kind on a more technical and practical level. Instead of the more abstract behavioural side of things, a situational question throws the candidate a curve ball in that they need to draw upon real-life experience to answer.

Behavioural vs situational interview questions: what does a situational question sound like?

Examples of situational questions could include:

• Describe a situation in which you had to use initiative to solve an urgent problem on the job.
• Tell me about a time you worked on a team project where your colleagues had differing ideas on how to complete the task. How did you resolve the situation?
• What has been the most challenging situation you’ve found yourself in throughout your career so far, and what did you learn from it?

All of the above questions can be tweaked to relate directly to your environment and industry – the automotive sector for instance, and common challenges which arise, or food production and the strict safety protocols which are to be adhered to. Situational questions help us envision this individual in our own facility, reacting and responding to the daily issues and happenings which arise – and ultimately whether or not we feel they’ll be able to be successful within.

As a recruitment partner, this is all part of our job. We interview the industry’s top talent on behalf of the clients we work with, so that when you do receive a resume for the position, we’ll have many of the answers ready. Here at NLG, our team is both educated and experienced in probing for the right information – the information that’s going to help you make an informed decision, and save you time doing the qualifying yourself.

To learn more about our in-depth outsourced recruitment process services, or for more interview tips like those outlined in this article, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Any views or opinions expressed within this blog do not necessarily reflect the official policy of  NLG. Any points made are for general information only, and none should be relied upon as a basis for making any business, legal or other decisions. Neither NLG nor the author can be held responsible for any reliance placed by you on any information or material within this article.

Which is where we come in.

Often, the simple fact of not having to worry about having to personally manage everything which comes along with making a hire can be a huge relief. Add to that the potential savings in both costs and time, and many wonder why they didn’t do it sooner. Have a read below as to why, as a manufacturing business, payrolling through an agency (better yet, an industry expert) simply makes sense.

Doing the hard work for you

In payrolling through an agency like us, you’re choosing to get rid of much of the cost – not to mention hassle – associated with employing staff. We cover the taxes, general liability insurance, actually paying your staff and more. When you have a business to run, doing all of this and more for individuals who may only be around for a short while – a six month contract here, a temp job there – simply isn’t a sustainable use of your time.

The responsibility for all of the above falls to us, your recruitment partner – so you have more time, and headspace, to spend on the stuff that matters.

Put administration out of your mind

And focus on onboarding your staff in the optimum way.

Hiring a new employee whether temp, perm or contract involves administration – paperwork which takes time to complete, check, file and more. When someone new comes aboard, it’s time to show them the ropes, get them bought into your business and on the job – not bogged down filling in forms and completing time-consuming admin.

Payrolling through an agency generally means that all of this and more will be entirely looked after, long before day one – meaning you have more time to spend onboarding your new employee(s) and cementing that relationship from the get-go.

Employment law and legislation, covered

Trying to keep up with the ever-changing rules regarding employment law can sometimes feel like a full-time job in itself. When you partner with an agency like NLG for payrolling, the decision comes down to more than saving costs here and there and meeting budgets; doing so gives you back precious time and relieves the worries that often come with ensuring everything you’re doing is compliant with local laws and regulations.

It’s our job to stay on top of employment legislation, so that we’re able to advise you when you need it – and it’s something we take pride in doing thoroughly, completely and regularly. It’s not just the service we offer; we’re also here as consultants, relaying advice, knowledge and expertise along the way.

All in all, the pros to using a staffing agency for the payroll of your temp staff are far-reaching. As a business leader, your job is to tend to the business-critical matters which keep the wheels turning (quite literally, in some cases) and the lights on. Leave the nitty-gritty to us.

To discuss payrolling through an agency and other services we offer with a member of our expert team, get in touch on +1 (888) 404-9990.

Any views or opinions expressed within this blog do not necessarily reflect the official policy of  NLG. Any points made are for general information only, and none should be relied upon as a basis for making any business, legal or other decisions. Neither NLG nor the author can be held responsible for any reliance placed by you on any information or material within this article.

Here are the top four benefits of outsourcing your payroll services to an agency like NLG.

1. They are Experts

Outsourcing your payroll means you are handing over the reigns to an expert, who handles payroll day in and day out. When processing your staff’s payroll is someone’s sole function, you can almost guarantee that their work will be precise, accurate and mistake-free.

Payroll experts are also going to have an ear to the ground about ever-changing compliance issues and regulations surrounding payrolling that you may not have time to look into yourself. The potential repercussions, financial or otherwise, can be quite detrimental when simple compliance or filing errors are made by ineffective payroll departments.

2. Some Tasks Need YOUR Attention – Payroll Does Not

Deloitte found that 57% of businesses used outsourcing to focus on their core business functions. As a manager, you often have a lot on your plate at once, and there are certain tasks that only you can do, such as providing onboarding and training, engaging with your team, and managing your day-to-day. These are the kinds of tasks that can’t be outsourced or performed by a stranger. However, there are other tasks – such as payroll – that don’t necessitate being handled by an internal individual. Outsourcing the somewhat mundane task of payroll allows you to focus on the big picture!

3. Outsourcing Payroll Can Be a Huge Cost Saver

Unless you are a large corporation, having a dedicated payrolling department can end up becoming a huge cost variable for many businesses. Of course, the individual affordability of outsourcing will differ among companies, but it typically results in cost-reduction: according to PwC, companies that outsource payrolling save, on average, 18% more than companies that handle it in-house. Outsourcing HR services such as payroll can help you to reallocate funds in better, more efficient ways – and who doesn’t want to save a few dollars here and there?

4. Outsourcing Payroll Can Relieve Stress

At the end of the day, making sure your hard-working employees are paid on time and without any issues is one of the most important factors in making them feel engaged, motivated, and respected. In addition, many people rely heavily on a standardized pay schedule, especially when working temporary positions – any disruption to this can cause a lot of problems and reflect poorly on you as an employer.

When you know that your team’s finances are in the hands of an expert, at least one source of stress is relieved from your day-to-day. We would be happy to give you one less thing to worry about!

Interested in learning more about NLG’s payrolling services? Click here to find out more or reach out to us today!