EEOC Compliance in the Modern World

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established on July 2nd, 1965, under the wing of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. Although the EEOC has sustained some criticism over its practices throughout the last five decades (too much oversight / not enough oversight / backlogs of complaints), it has proven an overall success. The EEOC has helped usher in a modern, diversified world of employment, where companies that discriminate against gender, ethnicity, age, religion and disability are to be held accountable.

Although the system is still far from perfect in rooting out all discrimination, EEOC compliance still holds a huge sway over the hiring practices of businesses across the U.S. Companies must comply with a number of complex and in depth forms and logs, such as the EEO-1, which the EEOC will analyze to determine if compliance standards have been met. For many companies, the time of year that such hiring compliance deadlines must be met coincides with taxes, annual reports, and other time-consuming filings.

For small business and start ups that are closing in on 100 employees, the EEO compliance process can be quite confusing and daunting. During the scramble to raise funds, build infrastructure, get the company off the ground, and hire the best talent out there, equal opportunity record-keeping often falls to the wayside, which can come back as a big problem if a discrimination charge were to be leveled against the company in the future.

So how can companies make sure that they are keeping their ducks in a row as far as EEOC compliance and filing? In general, keeping the necessary data in order is the first rule of thumb : With the proper data entry practice and ongoing upkeep, reports like the EEO-1 should be a bit less scary when the time comes.

A new option is to take a modern technological approach to EEOC compliance best practices. There are a few commercial options out there for EEOC compliant software solutions that track hiring and recruiting practices. These automated solutions not only save time for hiring managers, labor attorneys, and executives, but also alleviates the stress of scrambling to tie up loose ends. Many of these EEOC compliance fixes are packaged as specific features within applicant tracking bundles.  So, not only can a company make their hiring and applicant tracking process more efficient, but they can also make sure they are staying on track for EEOC compliance throughout.

Top 5 Analytics Software Solutions

Humanity’s true advantage over any other species is our ability to build on past information.  We have a keen sense of observation to determine how the world around us works, and we possess language to record and pass on those observations.   Thousands of years of compiled information in  mathematics, science,  architecture and engineering has steadily advanced cultures around the world.

When simplified, much of this observation, trial-and-error and progress boils down to one word – Analytics.   Our ability to analyze past records and utilize the resulting statics  has been paramount to our species’ progress.   In a sense, analytics has existed since our modest beginnings, sitting around a cave fire:   “Note to self.  Eating rotting meat does not bode well for digestion. I will tell Grok of my findings. Next time, we won’t eat rotting meat.”

Today, analytics has progressed to a technological art form built on decades of information compiled into networks of computer databases.  Cutting-edge computer software allows massive amounts of information to be analyzed, compared and directed towards executing a strategic ‘next step’ in a fraction of a second.   Governments, economies and industries sway to the beat of analytics to determine their next logical step.

There are a number of analytics software solutions today that specialize in a variety of industries.  I’d like to highlight five great solutions below, each pertaining to a different industry.  Feel free to add to the list with any other top-notch analytics software that you know of.

1.  Google Analytics:  Google is the king of analytics with its easy-to-install, in-depth and widely used online software package.  Google Analytics allows a web site creator to easily track their site’s statistics :  from basics like average visitors and time on site to more specific stats like browser-type and geographic breakup.  Any webmaster that doesn’t have Google Analytics installed might as well be sitting by the fire eating rotting meat.

2.  Mint.com : Mint is a user friendly personal finance application that lets you download, categorize, and graph all of your finances on a day-by-day basis.   The site offers seamless analytics: from graphs that project what your savings will be in 6 months to comparison charts that determine whether you are spending more than the average person on coffee.  A must have for anyone that needs help during this economic downturn to track and curb their spending habits.

3.  Newton Software: Newton is an intuitive online recruiting software solution that allows a company to manage and track hiring, announce job openings and review resumes.  One if its best features is a cutting-edge analytics module that allows a business to easily evaluate its recruiting program:  from pinpointing bottlenecks to determining the average speed of hiring.   It enables a company to view their hiring and applicant management from either a birds-eye-view or from the lens of a microscope.     Newton is essential for any business that wants to improve their recruiting process.

4.  TubeMogul.com: TubeMogul is a nifty web 2.0 site that allows you to upload your user-generated video content to multiple  sites in one fell blow (YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Revver, Brightcove, and many more).  Its most impressive feature is an extensive analytics suite that lets you track various statistics across multiple sites, including view minutes, viewer attention, per-stream quality and syndication tracking.  In-depth viewership statistics is an invaluable feature for companies that are trying to virally spread their brand message.

5.  Power E-Trade Pro: E-Trade’s Power Pro Online Stock Trading software enables even the most savvy investor to improve their performance by utilizing a well-crafted analytics suite.  The analytics includes advanced charting features, unlimited customization, and a range of technical studies to help capitalize on every potential market opportunity.

How Small Business can compete in Big Recruiting

In today’s economy, as industry giants are faltering, much of our hope rests with the small and medium sized business owners across the country.   Small businesses have the ability to adapt to the current economic environment and provide consumers or other businesses with exactly what they need at this integral moment.   Small businesses can rapidly change direction and point their bottom-line at goals that fit niche necessities.   Big business wears the iron-clad boots of shareholders, age-old assembly line processes and unwavering corporate management;  they are hardly in the right position to navigate the narrow straights of this economic downturn.

The question is:  how can small and medium sized business (SMEs) stay competitive with larger firms, who posses far more resources to hire the best talent out there?  It is in the talent acquisition arena that SMEs need to utilize every advantage that they can get their hands on to lasso the brightest minds available.  They must guarantee that productivity is at a constant increase and that all of their human capital is being utilized to the utmost.  This is harder said than done, considering that the pool of job applicants for SMEs is dwindling due to international outsourcing.  It is a never ending challenge for SMEs to increase the quality of their hires, while at the same time keep their costs at a healthy minimum.

The key to an SME’s advantage is the utilization of technology- more specifically web technology.  Web 2.0 is a term thrown around quite a bit, but for small businesses it has a very specific meaning.  New web technologies symbolize the new-found ability for SMEs to compete with big business in various arenas – from hiring and recruiting to mass production and advertising.  Need to get out a press release?  No longer does a small business need to hire a fancy PR agency.  They just need utilize a web product like PR Web, which enables a business to blast out news to thousands of online sites for a fraction of the cost.   Need to design some brand apparel like a T-shirt of coffee mug?  No longer does a business need to outsource to an expensive design firm.  Online start-ups like Cafe Press or Zazzle enable SMEs to mass design and produce apparel on pre-set molds.

The situation is no different for hiring.  New web technologies enable SMEs to handle their applicant management, applicant tracking, and recruiting needs for minimal costs.  Cutting-edge, yet easy-to-use,  new Recruiting and Applicant Management solutions enable small businesses to manage and track a a central database of potential candidates.  Many of these solutions live completely online, much like their Web 2.0 brethren, which cuts down the barrier to install and access hires.

Also like modern Web 2.0 social networks, new recruiting software solutions promote collaboration.   The ability for hiring mangers and recruiters to collaborate with one another with the end goal of finding the best hire is probably the biggest advantage that web technology bestows on SMEs.   Even though big businesses have more resources to put towards hiring, modern recruiting technology allows small business to gain the edge.

Taming the Beast: Get a hold on your recruiting software

In today’s age of human resources enterprise technology, everything seems to revolve around utilizing software to get ahead in the business world.  Whether it  be making work flow more efficient, cutting costs, or organizing team collaboration- there are a myriad of functions that enterprise recruiting software and applicant management systems can serve.  However, with the number of options for software out there and the number of features per piece of software, it can often be a daunting and confusing process to pick and set up the perfect solution for your company.

We need to remember that the technology is there to serve us- not the other way around.  So the question is, how can we create a work environment where our recruiting software is serving us, making us more efficient, and boosting the collaboration our company requires?

The first step is to find recruiting software that is dead simple to set up. The setup is often telling of how smooth the whole process will go- so make sure your recruiting and hiring solution fulfills the requirement of simplicity first.  No matter how many bells and whistles the software touts, if the process is too complicated for your hiring managers and recruiters to utilize, nothing else matters.

In today’s technological age, software that you need to install directly to your hard drive (the type that comes as a CD installation disk) is an artifact of the past.  Utilizing HR software that lives in the cloud (or online) will save you a ton of hassles and will work to keep your company’s applicant management process simpler.  There are a number of reasons that working online can save your company time and money.  It is as simple as your employees logging in and accessing data from any computer that has internet access.   Greater access to your applicant management system means greater efficiency- whether a hiring manager is working from home and needs to collaborate with a recruiter downtown, or a manager is away on vacation and needs to deliver urgent data.

Collaboration is king in the recruiting software field, I cannot stress this enough.  No matter how fast a piece of software runs, or how many bells and whistles it has, its primary function needs to be a conduit that your employees can communicate through.

Sometimes it helps to look at your recruiting software like any other nifty online applications or social networks that people utilize on an everyday basis for communication.  Imagine if Facebook or Myspace lacked the functionality to make it super-easy to communicate, message, post and browse.   No matter how many other bells and whistles the social network had (video uploading features, location based technology, etc.) it wouldn’t matter- the application would not get any users.

Recruiting and Applicant Management software should not differ from your everyday social networking site in this manner.  It needs to fulfill its basic needs before it can offer anything beyond that.  When you are shopping for an enterprise HR software vendor, make sure you keep this in mind as you demo and preview their product.

Five Commandments for Picking your Company’s Applicant Management Software

An efficient and easy to use Applicant Management Solution for your company can often be the difference between countless hours of unnecessary work and smooth sailing. This is why picking the right software solution for your applicant management and recruiting needs is a very big deal.  Because there are so many options out there, I decided to create a top ‘Five Commandments’ to help you pick out the right solution for your company. Enjoy.

1. Thou shalt pick an applicant management solution that is completely online.

Many software solutions require lengthy and large downloads that can bog down your computer system and time efficiency. Welcome to the age of the internet. Unless you are flying a satellite, you shouldn’t have to download software to your computer, or worst, use a CD-ROM installation disk.

Your applicant management solution will be far easier to manage across multiple hiring managers and recruiters if it lives online. It will also boost productivity. Recruiters can log in at work, at home, on the road, at the airport or on vacation (if they are really devoted). Pretty much anywhere they have internet access, which today consists of a large portion of the modernized world.

2. Thou shalt pick applicant management software with good features, not more features.

Many applicant management solutions tout the endless amounts of bells and whistles which makes their product better than the next guys’. Realize that this is just a marketing ploy. More features are not better. In fact, too many useless features can hinder an efficient hiring process by distracting your hiring managers.

Look out for the important features that will make it cheaper and easier for end goal of hiring people. Tools that let people collaborate, inform, and recruit.

3.   3. Thy applicant management software must be easy to set up.

This one is a no brainer. The initial stages of using a product usually speak to what the entire process will be like. If the software is easy to access and set up, it probably will be easy to use throughout.

4.   4.  Thou shalt find applicant management software that provides human support

Very often the help and support you will receive for a piece of recruiting software will be limited to a readme.txt file located on the CD-Rom you purchase. Make sure you find a solution that provides real, live human beings to back you up when the going gets tough. Whether it is email, chat or phone support, it will be helpful to have someone on the other line.

5.   5. Thy software shall possess the ability to track history

One overlooked feature is the ability to look back and see what’s worked and what hasn’t. This is an important addition to your hiring software solution. How organized and efficiently does it lay it all out there? Just by looking at the history overview you should be able to make informed decision on who and what is making the right moves.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tips in Recruitment

I recently came across this very insightful article on applicant management, tracking, and recruiting.

From Article Base, by Oz Free – Jobs:

Decades ago, employees would just stick on their shops “Hiring,” and choose employees from the hundreds who attempted to apply. That was the old recruitment pattern. Employment process before was not that fast track, snappy and highly technological. Only when the revolutionized techy world existed that recruitment went in a different process.

Recruitment is a very tiring yet exciting process. Tiring for an employer since hundreds of applicants wishing to be recruited walks in for an interview. The stressful part of it is gouging which is right. While it may be negatively taken as a tiresome activity, recruitment in one sense it makes it exciting and challenging. Meeting people challenges both the capability to think and analyze. Different personalities and behaviors can be observed.

With over millions of hunters searching for a fresh meat in the employment market, how will an employer choose the best hunter?

Try this best shots and catch for the best job hunter.

Tip 1

Informations, from resumes to applications must be placed in a database. This can help in the recruitment process, by allowing to retrieve pertinent data just by entered a keyword. Easy! This unloads the burden in recruitment process. There is no need to pull out from the boxes and take five hours looking just for one record. With the database, everything you need a can be accessed instantly. Keeping this records filed is at times very useful for reference purposes. By looking at the database, applicants who are shortlisted can be called in case the choices were in a no-show or no-call. The maximum years to keep the records would at least for five years. References would matter from time to time.

Tip 2

While in recruitment, every applicant woes, sometimes there are too good to be true. Contact references written on the face of the resume or application form is vital. It is best that before undergoing the process of recruitment, requiring the applicants to provide for references can be helpful.

When references are supplied, you can call on each for verification. The mere interest on the applicants does not alter the importance of having the reference. The latter can serve as an important link in the future. Some references can be future partners or some would probably be the best prospects for future job recruitment.

Tip 3

Get in touch with the data periodically. With the systematized data collection, news, updates and informations can be sent to applicants in a speedier and more systematized manner. It is easy to inform them whether they got the job or they failed in the recruitment process, in case call is not successful. For sure, you would not want your recruitment process be the talked of the town because of inadequacies. It even makes recruitment formal.

Tip 4

In advertising your recruitment, the Internet is a good choice. Employed and unemployed, the web reaches both. Getting a wide range of market is positive. With millions of searchers going online, the best potential candidate might be one of them on the look for a job. Great ad would be a nice strategy to lure them. It is one way to sell your company and attract applicants.

Tip 5

Since job listing would make you one step closer to a good recruitment deal, the need to let the applicant know what is expected from them is great. An ad that would be appealing catches good fish.

Tip 6

An effective job recruitment process not only is the process of hiring the best applicant. When good people shift from their job to yours, you are selling good career opportunities This can be an avenue for a healthier and more successful start of professional development for both. The next time that recruitment takes place, it would be easier to sell opportunities based from the experience.

Tip 7

It is not bad to post on different sites and different categories. The more job listings you have the more chances of getting the best. Searchers sometimes shift from one site to another without browsing the rest. If the job is listed in not just one site, the more opportunities for recruitment to take place.

Tip 8

Try creating a website. This can make your recruitment standout. When applicants learns that you’ve got all the aces. They will surely be walking towards your doorstep wanting to be recruited.