LIVE CHAT: Jobs Help Desk (10/20/11 on 11Alive Morning News)

More than one in 10 Georgians is jobless.

The Georgia Department of Labor released new figures Thursday morning showing a jump in the state’s unemployment to 10.3 percent, a full percentage point higher than the national average.

Roughly 487,000 people in Georgia are out of work. In September alone, 15,000 people lost their jobs.

Many jobless have been searching for work for months. Others have given up.

However, there are jobs out there. You just need to know where to look and how to get them.

LIVE CHAT: Jobs Help Desk (transcript of the 11Alive Live Chat from 10/20/11 – Hire Dynamics’ own Kim Wallace, Executive VP, was there representing SHRM to answer questions about jobs).

Hire Dynamics is pleased to announce that it has been named to Inavero’s 2011 Best of Staffing™ Talent list. Best of Staffing, presented in partnership with CareerBuilder, is the nation’s only satisfaction award that recognizes staffing and recruiting firms who provide an exceptional experience for the talent they help find jobs. Less than 1% of North American staffing firms have been named to the 2011 Best of Staffing Talent List.   Hire Dynamics also made the 2010 Best of Staffing Talent list. 

“Hire Dynamics values the contributions of our talent and I am pleased to see it is recognized in these results. It is also consistent with our vision of being the #1 Staffing Company that you would refer to a friend.” Dan Campbell, CEO of Hire Dynamics.

Staffing firms competing to make the Best of Staffing list underwent a rigorous survey process followed by careful analysis of responses to determine satisfaction levels. Hire Dynamics received satisfaction ratings of 9 or 10 out of 10 in service from their talent, significantly higher than the industry’s average of 50% percent. Best of Staffing participants secured a place on the list by earning an average Net Promoter ScoreÒ that was nearly double the national staffing industry benchmark for talent who had been placed in a job.

According to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, staffing firms have created more new jobs since the end of the ‘Great Recession’ than any other industry, accounting for 91% of the total job growth. “There is still so much work to be done,” said Eric Gregg, Inavero’s Founder and CEO. “The most recent BLS report shows 14 million unemployed, nearly half whom have been out of work for six months or more. Job seekers are using staffing and recruiting firms now more than ever before, and it’s our hope the Best of Staffing List will help guide them to the firms who have truly created an exceptional experience for the talent they are helping put back to work.”

Inavero’s complete Best of Staffing list can be viewed at www.bestofstaffing.com. For more information about Inavero, visit www.inavero.com.  To learn more about Hire Dynamics visit www.hiredynamics.com.

About Hire Dynamics

Hire Dynamics is an industry leading contract-to-hire staffing provider for contact (call) centers, manufacturing facilities, distribution centers and corporate offices. Hire Dynamics is consistently recognized as one of the fastest growing private companies and was named “#1 Best Places to Work” in the Staffing Industry out of 10,000 (Staffing Industry Analyst) and “Best of Staffing” having received a client Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 82 which is twice the industry average (Inavero Research). Hire Dynamics’ ability to provide talent on demand has increased the quality of placements at over 500 companies in the Atlanta metro area out of its 18 locations. 

About Inavero, Inc.

Inavero designs and manages satisfaction surveys for a global list of clients in more than 15 countries.Inavero’s proprietary technology platform gathers and reports staffing firm client and talent satisfaction information through online surveys. Inavero’s team analyzes satisfaction feedback from more than 400,000 staffing firm clients and talent each year, and serves at the American Staffing Association’s exclusive research partner. The firm’s surveys protect more than $5 billion in staffing firm annual revenue.

For more information contact Inavero at (800) 921-2640 or email bestofstaffing@inavero.com. www.inavero.com | www.bestofstaffing.com.

® Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

###

DULUTH, GA (August 29, 2011) – Hire Dynamics, LLC has announced the purchase of Talagy’s Atlanta commercial staffing operation. The Atlanta offices acquired by Hire Dynamics include Conyers and Union City.   

Talagy provides both professional and commercial staffing out of its six locations nationwide. The Atlanta commercial staffing operation primarily staffs manufacturing facilities and distributions centers as well as various office positions.

“We are excited to acquire the Talagy operations as it fits our strategy of becoming the leading staffing provider in the Atlanta metro area. We also believe there are synergies with Talagy management that will allow us to work together on a going forward basis,” said Hire Dynamics CEO, Dan Campbell.

About Hire Dynamics, LLC

Hire Dynamics is an industry leading contract-to-hire staffing provider for contact (call) centers, manufacturing facilities, distribution centers and corporate offices. Hire Dynamics is consistently recognized as one of the fastest growing private companies and was named “#1 Best Places to Work” in the Staffing Industry out of 10,000 (Staffing Industry Analyst) and “Best in Staffing” having received a client Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 82 which is twice the industry average (InAvero Research). Hire Dynamics’ ability to provide talent on demand has increased the quality of placements at over 500 companies in the Atlanta metro area out of its 18 locations.

On June 28, Business Leader held an awards dinner recognizing the Top 300 Small Businesses of the South. Hire Dynamics ranked 6th out of 30 in Atlanta and 29th out of 300 in the South (which includes Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Raleigh, Greensboro and Charlotte). Hire Dynamics was also the highest ranking staffing and professional recruiting company on the list.

The companies are ranked based on a combination of factors, including percentage of sales generated in their local market, revenue growth, businesses achievements and civic contributions.

For more information on this award, click here.

In the midst of our 10 year anniversary, Hire Dynamics wants to recognize and give special thanks to our hard-working talent who have committed to making Hire Dynamics an industry-leading, award-winning staffing firm in Atlanta, GA, Reno, NV and York, PA. In honor of these dedicated individuals, Hire Dynamics has named Friday, June 24 “Talent Appreciation Day.”

Since 2001, Hire Dynamics has built its company around the concept of loyalty, not only to our clients and internal staff, but to the talent we place. To show our thanks, each branch will provide a day of snacks and each member of our talent will receive a customized Hire Dynamics t-shirt. We feel it is important that our talent know they are an active member of the Hire Dynamics team on our continuous road to success.

“Our success would not be possible without the commitment and performance of the more than 2,000 talented associates who represent Hire Dynamics everyday at our clients’ location,” said Dan Campbell, Chief Executive Officer of Hire Dynamics.

Hire Dynamics hosted its 26^th Contact Center Executive Forum on June 15 at Villa Christina in Dunwoody, sponsored by inContact and Kaplan Communications. This event presented the opportunity to learn industry “best practices” and network with over 100 other contact center executives, managers and practitioners throughout metro Atlanta.

This year’s Contact Center Executive Forum focused on social marketing techniques and how they can be utilized in contact centers to drive performance. The keynote speaker, Dave Sutton, discussed the reality of social media as well as how the different channels are consumed. For instance, 59 percent of consumers use social media to vent their frustrations, 72 percent use it to research company reputations, and 74 percent choose to do business with a company based on online reviews.

Sutton explains, before diving in, it is important to know the facts surrounding social media:

• It is completely Peer-Moderated – direct, honest and out of your control
• It is ridiculously Noisy – simultaneous, unsolicited feedback, Ad-hoc, unrehearsed tone
• It is fundamentally Mobile – any device, anytime, anywhere
• It is potentially Efficient – Low-cost access, workload shifting, productivity gains
• There is a Technology Abundance – no shortage of tools or experts  

In order to use social media in your organization’s marketing plans, you will need to have a strategy: Generate a unique and valuable position involving a different set of activities, serving few needs of many and broad needs of few. Make trade-offs in competition by choosing what not to do. Create fit among all company activities, making it hard for imitators. 

Ask yourself these key questions regarding your company and its role in social media:

• What conversations does your company need to be a part of?
  • Service interruptions, complaints, suggestions, recruiting.
• What conversations should your company not be a part of?
  • Competitor bashing, pricing, union debates, etc.
• Where are those conversations?
  • Blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook.
• How can your company listen to and assess conversations?
  • Setup social “Outposts”, join forums, monitor what is being said about your company.
• Who at your company will participate in/respond to conversations?
  • Marketing, customer service, sales…everybody? 

Contact centers are distinctively positioned to manage multi-channel communications for the enterprise, via phone, e-mail, snail mail, fax, internet, text and chat. There are a number of various social channels that can be used, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. 

Sutton also shares the changing role of technology from center-centric to center+outposts. Center-centric includes service center technology (customer problem resolution and retention), marketing center technology (customer experience enhancement), and sales center technology (customer acquisition and development). Contact centers need to move towards center+outposts to utilize the benefits of new technology. This process includes reaching your customers through Facebook, Twitter, blogging and other forums.

There are five key buckets for multi-channel communication and its operating model:

1. Culture: moving from Persuasion to  Authenticity (Authority to Advocacy)
2. Process: moving from Reactive to Proactive (Scripted to Customer-Generated)
3. Technology: moving from Center-Centric to Center+Outposts (Many-to-One to Many-to-Many)
4. Measurement: moving from Satisfaction to Sentiment (Responsive to Empathetic)
5. Organization: moving from Command & Control to Adhocracy (Authoritarian to Democratic)

Sutton offered a social media roadmap to consider when determining your marketing efforts. First, strategize and organize – formulate a social strategy and identify/train team members. Next is internal alignment – initiate social listening process and establish social outposts. Then, focus on external activation – build private social forums. The final stages include execution and measurement – channel sort public vs. private and institute social QA processes. Integrate with CRM and measure your results. 

When building a social media team, watch out for the ones with anti-social behavior. The ones who don’t believe in positive results and make every excuse in the book to avoid jumping on the social media train. There is also another behavioral side to this; the social media “expert.” Don’t hire anyone who claims to be a social media expert; they don’t exist. A quote from Peter Shankman explains it best:

“Being an expert in social media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.”  

In the midst of “the great recession,” companies are less fearful that their employees will flee for a better job offer. With the decrease in hiring, many businesses are focused on cutting costs, but will ignoring benefits now lead to disaster later? Researches and high-performing companies seem to think so.

The recession has lead to cutbacks in benefits, resulting in unhappy employees. According to a resent MetLife study of Employee Benefit Trends, one in three employees hopes to be working elsewhere in the next 12 months. Yet companies don’t appear to be aware of this potential flight risk.

Hire Dynamics has built its corporate culture around employee satisfaction – keeping its good workers and making them better. “It’s a central strategy for us, said Dan Campbell, CEO. “We view the retention of employees as one of the most important things we do as an organization. At the end of the day, we think that our ability to recruit and retain quality employees is one of the main things that separates us from other companies in the staffing industry.”

To read the Atlanta Business Chronicle article, click here.

Companies should be wary of workers flight risk

It could be a match made in job-matching heaven, especially for people getting back on their feet after hellish times.

A newly formed partnership between Hire Dynamics LLC and First Step Staffing has the potential, its respective leaders hope, to help put some 300 formerly homeless individuals back into the workforce.

First Step is a full-service staffing firm that places people who are moving out of homelessness into employment. Hire Dynamics is a fast-growing, award-winning staffing and professional recruitment firm.

First Step has one office; Hire Dynamics has six Atlanta offices and 20 on-site locations. Hire Dynamics also puts 2,000 people to work everyday, Campbell said. Through First Step, more than 1,400 formerly homeless men and women have been placed in employment.

The chief executive of Hire Dynamics and First Step Staffing, Dan Campbell and Greg Block, respectively, know each other; Campbell is on First Step’s board. After finding out about Campbell’s company’s desire to help the community, and that First Step could use additional support, the two entities decided that they each had what the other was looking for.

To read the entire Atlanta Business Chronicle article, click here.

Firm help homeless take First Step to work

By Dr. Bob Nelson

There are five major trends that will increasingly impact the workforce for all organizations: 1) The Growing Shortage of Skilled Workers, 2) The Rise of the Millennials, 3) The Increase of Contingent Workers, 4) The Evolving Role of Virtual Employees, and 5) The Globalization of the Labor Market.

With unemployment still hovering around 9-10%, it is hard to grasp the concept of an impending skilled labor shortage. However, this is exactly what is unfolding and will continue to unfold in the decades ahead. The evidence for this is based on the current demographic trends, which indicate a declining birth rate in industrialized countries, combined with an aging population that is heading into retirement.  This will be the most significant human resource trend over the next few decades: “Not a labor shortage, but a skilled labor shortage.”

The Rise of the Millennials is a significant part of the shift in demographics. Those born between 1980 and 2000 will soon make up the largest segment of the U.S. workforce in both number and attitude, reshaping the workplace for all workers. This generation of 90 million prospective workers thinks and is motivated differently from previous generations. They expect work to be part of their lives, not to define who they are, yet they also expect meaning in their job from Day 1 and are not interested in “paying their dues.” This group is shifting work expectations from “career ladder to career lattice.”

The recovery from the “great recession” has led to a significant Increase in Contingent Workers. In fact, the temporary employment segment has generated more jobs than any other segment since the recession has technically ended. Businesses have been hesitant to hire back full time employees due to the uncertainty and volatility in the economy. Many believe this change to be permanent in nature versus just part of the economic cycle. There are currently 10 million contingent workers, greater than union membership. There are also now 22 million companies that do not have a payroll. This group’s work expectations are shifting from “lifetime employment to lifetime employability.”

The Evolving Role of Virtual Employees is also noteworthy. Forty-two percent of all organizations currently provide some type of flex time or option for telecommuting, job sharing, or alternate work schedules, yet we haven’t yet mastered how to make technology replace the social bonds in the workplace. Often the more connected we are at work through technology, the more alienated we tend to be in our jobs and less connected we often feel with others. “Work is increasingly becoming a state of mind more than a place to be.” 

Finally, the Globalization of the Labor Market markets continues to take place. The geographical bonds between producer and consumer are gone and work and jobs are increasingly transferable around the globe. Companies will increasingly need to decide what their core competitive advantage is and for those things others firms can do better to “move the work or move the worker.”

Human Resource leadership needs to better lead the charge in helping their organizations prepare for these significant workplace trends by bringing proactive in making the case for action now and bringing solutions to the organization before the workplace trends become overwhelming. “A function shift from transactional to transitional to transformational.”

For more information on Dr. Bob Nelson, visit his website at Nelson Motivation.

Hire Dynamics was recently named “#1 Best Places to Work” by the Reno Business Journal – the first company to ever receive this honor 4 Years in a Row.

Winners were announced at an April 28 event at Harrah’s Reno. Thirty-nine employers in northern Nevada were named as finalists in the fourth annual Greater Reno/Tahoe Best Places to Work program. Each of the finalist companies received a rating of 80 percent or higher in an employee opinion survey and Hire Dynamics took the number one spot for the fourth year in a row.