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Interns offer a number of advantages for businesses, including access to free or discounted labor. However, if you want the experience to be a positive one for both interns and staff, there are a few steps you need to take. Here are some of BGSF’s suggestions for making internships worthwhile for both parties: Assign responsibilities. Think your interns’ main role is to run to Starbucks? On the contrary, the most successful internship programs require workers to take on real responsibilities at the company. Instead of hiding your interns away in mailrooms or sending them out to get lunch, give them a chance to experience the business’ day-to-day operations. Not only does this expose them to daily life in their chosen field, but it can also give your full-time staff time to relax. Create office mentorships. Want to get the most out of your interns? Start out the by assigning each new worker a mentor. Along with helping interns get up to speed, mentors can ensure new employees feel comfortable and at home in their new environments. In the long run, mentors can even help you identify those employees who are most deserving of long-term positions at the company. Keep in mind future opportunities. Internships aren’t just an opportunity for a company to access free labor. In fact, smart businesses use internship season to find those workers who would make good long-term additions to the business. Because you already know how an intern operates, you aren’t hiring blindly. Additionally, you can save time and money on training costs, as the intern is already up to speed to a large degree. As an added bonus, offering full-time roles to past interns can ensure great people continue to sign up for the program in the future.

Being an administrative assistant is no easy feat. After all, you have to anticipate the needs of your employer while dealing with other workers and customers and keeping the office running. As difficult as it is to succeed as an admin, acing that administrative assistant interview can be even more challenging. Here are some of BGSF’s tips for being prepared at your next admin interview. Review Your Tech Skills When was the last time you brushed up on your technical skills? As an admin, you may be called upon to type emails, enter company data in Microsoft Excel, or even perform basic HTML work on occasion. As a result, it’s wise to make a list of your technical skills and qualifications and summarize them during the interview. These skills are a great place to differentiate yourself from other candidates. Just be sure you actually have the skills you claim, or you might risk losing your new job soon after landing it. Showcase Your Multitasking Are you the type of person who can talk on the phone while typing an email and filing old financial docs? Because admins have a wide array of responsibilities, the ideal candidate can both multitask and prioritize jobs according to their importance. For best results, describe to the interviewer a time when you handled several key tasks in a short period. Behavioral interview questions are very popular, so be able to provide examples. Focus on Teamwork An admin isn’t just the first person customers see when they come into an office or shop — they also act as a point person for employees. The smile doesn’t just greet visitors but also can be the first face your organization sees each day. As a result, the best administrative assistants are able to boast about their teamwork skills during interviews. Along with describing your talents for communication and cooperation, try to share a moment when you helped a fellow employee out of a jam.

People often make the mistake of assuming that interviewing is only stressful for the job candidate. However, the truth is that the process is often no picnic for the interviewer either! Not only does an employer need to find the right person for the job in question, but they must also consider the safety of the team as a whole. This is especially true when hiring someone who will control heavy machinery such as a forklift. Here are three of BGSF’s top tips for assessing the skills of potential forklift operators. Safety One of the most essential qualities of any forklift operator is the ability to do the job safely. When evaluating potential job candidates, ask them to describe accidents or injuries that occurred as a result of their actions on previous jobs. The best employees take responsibility for their actions and express genuine concern for establishing good safety measures moving forward. It’s also a good time to ask candidates about what they would do if they noticed areas for improvement in safety, and how they would approach managers about dangerous situations. Education To ensure the safety of everyone on the team, forklift operators need to update their training and education on a regular basis. During the interview, inquire about times when the candidate attended classes or seminars. Additionally, companies should seek out workers with a desire to learn, as they are more likely to rise through the ranks to better positions in the business. If you aren’t learning, then you are falling behind. Teamwork Working in a warehouse requires a certain amount of “people skills.” As a result, prospective forklift operators must possess a talent for teamwork. When evaluating candidates, ask them to describe a work situation that required them to work with others in order to overcome a problem. Employees with a strong history of cooperating with others will likely be able to work well with your team too. The workplace culture will really thrive with all employees bought into the teamwork and supporting each other. When hiring someone who will control heavy machinery such as a forklift, safety, education and teamwork are important.

Your LinkedIn profile is the easiest way for someone of a hiring capacity to know that you are open to new opportunities. Not managing this platform correctly, does a huge injustice in the market place to yourself. Keywords: LinkedIn, like most sites is a search engine. This means that recruiters or hiring managers will be searching for specific keywords. Add complete job descriptions: it is CRUCIALLY important to keep your profile up to date. As a recruiter more times than we can count, we see profiles that disclose their last project from two years ago and not what they are currently working on. The best way to fill in the description from previous posts or projects is by using the very description given when you first applied. That way most of the verbiage is filled in, you just have to edit with any other tasks or related learning experiences. Organization is KEY: It’s extremely easy to rearrange your LinkedIn profile. If you have an extremely hard skillset, make sure that is at the TOP of your profile – you can add it to your blurb that shows up under your name for ‘what you do’. As a recruiter I don’t read every profile word for word, that’s why specific keywords, impressive skillsets, and pertinent training are important. LinkedIn can be one of your most powerful career tools and it’s free! I would recommend if you are on the job market, take ten minutes and look at your profile – give it some love! You never know, BGSF might be the next recruiters to contact you for a job!

Tired of moving from one job to the next? Feel like you’re always a rung below where you should be on the corporate ladder? A good staffing agency doesn’t just connect you with your next position but should work tirelessly to help you build a meaningful and lasting career. Just as all job candidates aren’t created equal, neither are all staffing companies. Here are some top tips for evaluating and choosing a staffing firm: Industry Expertise Just as companies specialize in providing various products and services, most staffing agencies focus on a particular type of staffing. Before selecting a staffing agency, do some research regarding its industry expertise and range of connections in the area. If you’re looking to take on more responsibilities as an executive, make sure the staffing company you choose boasts experience in executive recruitment. Similarly, if you’re seeking a manufacturing job, make sure the agency has connections in this field. Strong Reputation Reputation is everything in the business world, and a company with a poor reputation may not be able to land you the job you deserve. Before signing with a staffing agency, do some research regarding its online reputation. After all, you want to make sure the agency you choose can connect you with all the best companies in your region. Caring Recruiters Does your recruiter take your calls? Respond to your email in a timely fashion? If not, you may be at the wrong staffing agency. Because a recruitment relationship really is a partnership between agency and candidate, it’s important that job seekers feel as though their recruiters genuinely care about them and their career goals. It’s no surprise that the best staffing agencies hire the most compassionate and effective recruiters to support their job-seeking clients.

Determining if your call center is functioning at optimum efficiency can be tricky. With any given call, there are a number of variables at play, and the aggregated data from all those customer interactions can be difficult to interpret. Still, you can’t just assume your customers are getting the service they deserve, you have to take action to measure your employees’ success. Here are three key figures to keep an eye on, along with tips for how to interpret the data. Call Wait Time Unfortunately, wait times are unavoidable, and measuring the raw numbers for the amount of time customers have to wait on hold can be misleading. The key to interpreting wait time data is to pair it with customer satisfaction on the same call. Even if wait times are higher than you’d like, if customers are still satisfied with the overall experience then reducing wait times may be less of a priority than you think. Efficiency and speed are not necessarily the same thing! Resolution Rate One of the key measures of a call center’s efficiency is its ability to resolve a customer’s issue the first time that they call. In order to get a reliable measure of this data, many centers implement a customer satisfaction survey. Sometimes these surveys are completed on the calls themselves, while other times customers are encouraged to fill out satisfaction surveys online following the completion of the call. Using this data, you can determine which representatives are better at resolving customer issues and get a better understanding of the general areas your call center may need to improve upon. Reason for Call Often, call center workers find themselves fielding similar questions or complaints from a number of customers. Strangely though, a lot of centers don’t have a process in place to aggregate this kind of data. By keeping track of this information, you can better educate representatives on how to handle the most frequently occurring issues, and help to keep your call center running smoothly.

Want to know the quickest way to lose a customer for life? Break a promise you made regarding a product or service! Yes, the fact is that most clients have long memories, and a business that fails to keep its promises is almost surely destined for failure. Be promise keepers. Comprised of your sales team and anyone else who converses directly with customers, promise makers tell your clients what they can expect from you. On the other hand, promise keepers are the ones responsible for delivering on the vows made by the sales team. The operations staff, product developers, and customer service team all make up your company’s promise keepers. Be transparent. When something goes wrong, and customers are less than pleased, business owners must figure out whether the promise makers made a promise they shouldn’t have, or if the promise keepers failed to follow through on what they should have been able to achieve. As a business owner, you must ensure that promise makers and keepers are on the same page when it comes to communicating with customers and representing the company’s brand. Treat your employees like clients. Of course, it’s pretty hypocritical to treat your clients one way and your employees another. If you want to train your staff to be promise keepers, start by treating your own employees with dignity and respect. Along with keeping your promises, take the time to reward workers for jobs well done. Additionally, you should offer plenty of opportunities for great employees to rise through the ranks.

Your business is only as strong as the employees who represent you to customers and clients. For this reason, businesses need to work extra hard to find job candidates they can count on to show up and get the job done. While every hiring manager wants to know if a candidate is trustworthy, few know the best questions to ask to determine this fact. Here are three ways to evaluate the reliability of job candidates before you hire them. 1. Ask why they want the job. This question seems simple, but it can reveal a great deal about a candidate’s intentions. Applicants who are genuinely interested in doing good work tend to answer this question from the heart. Additionally, they can speak to the company’s goals and product offerings. For best results, choose a candidate who demonstrates a genuine interest in the company as well as growing their career. 2. Check employment history. If you want to evaluate a candidate’s reliability, start by checking their performance at previous jobs. While the occasional job gap isn’t necessarily a bad sign, repeated lags and job jumping can indicate a problem with authority. Don’t be afraid to ask about experience with past jobs and stay alert to candidates who seem to hold a grudge against all their previous bosses. 3. Contact a recruitment agency like BGSF. Not only can a bad employee cost your firm money in lost time, but they can also cost you clients. If your last few job candidates have been duds, you may want to consider working with a staffing agency moving forward. Not only do recruiters have access to larger talent pools, including passive candidates, but they also have the resources needed to perform extensive background checks and screenings. Working with a staffing firm, can increase the odds that your next hire will be reliable before they walk through your doors.

Planning, preparing, training, and smart staffing are the 4 keys to success to ensure you’re not left in the dust during those busy and lucrative times. 1. Plan. Use data collected from the previous year’s plans to confirm your highest and lowest producing days, weeks, and months. This will help to determine which ones required the most or least staff. You can also see what type of workers were needed and how often. Planning enables you to compare and recreate past successes when your goals were exceeded, and production levels were highest. Additionally, always plan for the unexpected as you can guarantee fewer problems during and after ramp-ups by creating a contingency plan. A comprehensive plan will provide more flexibility for unexpected turns and can help ensure productivity goals are met. To elevate administrative burdens associated with ramp-ups and downs consider using staffing solutions that can take off any undue burden. 2. Create a calendar. Calendars are a fantastic way to record your highs and lows of the season. They also provide valuable, relevant history, enabling you to anticipate future needs by utilizing last year’s recruiting forecast. If you feel like you already know when there will be increases in demand, don’t forget to build those into your peak season plans. 3. Calculate your staffing needs. Use your calendar reflecting highs and lows to calculate how many of each type of worker you’ll need to work with differing demands. A staffing provider can assist in the creation of a strategic workforce plan. Because you’ll need varying levels of skillset, they’ll be able to source the specific talent needed for both highly skilled and semi-skilled positions. 4. Update your training processes and procedures. Develop training programs to target and prepare each type of new hire in advance and as soon as possible. You’ll also want to make sure that everyone involved with your planning has a clear understanding of the standardized processes and procedures needed to make a successful transition. To ensure the process is smooth, you may consider utilizing similar operating procedures for on and off-boarding training to minimize the burden on internal teams, especially during your peak seasons. Don’t get left in the dust this season!

Timing is Everything. The hiring process can end up feeling like a game of “hurry up and wait.” Due to this mindset, even the most qualified candidates can fall into a cycle of believing they have time to burn and miss out on making the first impression. If you are truly excited about a project, don’t wait until tomorrow to let recruiters know! According to LinkedIn, 40% of contractors who signal on LinkedIn that they’re open to new opportunities respond within 24 hours and 20% respond within a few hours. Don’t be late to the party! You need to reach out now. Get out in front fast. A busy hiring manager does not want to spend hours skimming through resumes – that’s why they rely on people like us at Extrinsic! We have a reputation in the industry of providing qualified, reliable consultants. In a competitive market, the first few candidates that come across a hiring manager’s desk will likely be in the best position. Not to mention, the last thing a manager has time to do is coordinate interviews all week. Some clients will simply move forward with an offer as soon as they find a good fit, even if it’s the first candidate they interview. What’s the hold-up? To shed a little light on our recruiting process, we are not just sending out your resume and crossing our fingers! There is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes to set you up for success like the following: Right to Represent: First and foremost, we cannot submit you without your written approval. This email serves as the green light to move forward for both parties. It also includes the rate agreement and client information, so you can make sure you’re not double submitted. Checking professional references: If we have already worked with you or have checked these in the past, we can skip this step. If not, this can be the biggest roadblock! When consultants delay this process without explanation, it can also signal a red flag. Our clients trust us because they know we are completing this step for them upfront. Creating your profile for EVERY role: Before a hiring manager even opens your resume, they are looking at a snapshot that we have created, highlighting your relevant skills and experience based on the scope of the project. We draw this information not only from your CV but from our conversation with you about the role, so go ahead and elaborate! To speed up the process, feel free to send a few additional bullet points to help you stand out. Think of it as a quick, easy way to get the manager excited about opening your resume and eager to schedule your interview. Hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky said, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Our tip for you is: don’t let a lack of urgency prevent you from taking that shot!

Think social media is optional in today’s working world? Well, think again! Although you might not need to be a regular on Twitter or Instagram to score that new job, LinkedIn is one social platform that’s an absolute must for the modern job seeker. However, it’s not enough to establish a presence on the site; you should also create the strongest possible profile to boost your chances of career success. Here are some top tips for improving your LinkedIn profile: Update your headline. Want to stand out in the LinkedIn landscape? Instead of just using your current title and company name, it is recommended that job searchers craft an original headline stating their area of specialization. Many employers mine the LinkedIn listings for potential hires, so don’t be afraid to add a couple of keywords related to your professional expertise. Take the time to create a truly awesome headline for your profile and see your view rate rise. Add a picture. Think headshots are just for aspiring actors? In the world of LinkedIn, a good professional headshot can be the difference between scoring that dream position and getting lost in the crowd. In fact, studies show that HR managers are more likely to click on the profile of a candidate with a headshot than one using the generic photo supplied by LinkedIn. Upload a recent pic and reap the rewards in more job offers. Secure recommendations. It’s no secret that referrals can have a significant effect on hiring decisions, and the world of LinkedIn recruiting is no exception. Along with showcasing your skills to potential employers, recommendations demonstrate that you can get along with colleagues and peers. Ask former supervisors and clients to post testimonials to your LinkedIn profile to show prospective hiring managers you’re up to the task. From keeping up with industry trends to connecting you with potential contacts, LinkedIn is a powerful tool for professional networking.

One of the most valuable tools for job seekers is LinkedIn! If you do not have a LinkedIn profile, we highly encourage you to create one. LinkedIn is the top professional social networking site with over 133 million users in the U.S. alone. LinkedIn has made it very easy for recruiters to quickly identify candidates that meet the requirements our clients are looking for. Here are a few top tips to follow when creating and updating your profile: Make sure your profile is up-to-date and consistent with your resume Make sure to list all your relevant skills; adding keywords helps recruiters find you Make sure your profile picture is conservative and professional Let recruiters know you are available. LinkedIn allows you to list that confidentially where only recruiters can see.