Staffing issues are common with larger businesses that is expanding their team. Generally, in bigger firms, the human resource department is a complete entity by itself which takes care of all the staffing activities.

Maintaining a human resource department can be an expensive affair for most.

Unfortunately, bringing staff on (or letting them go) has a number of additional costs associated with it. Hiring staff means you need to conduct interviews, and you need to read resumes, and take people off of their duties to evaluate candidates.

For companies that run very lean, it may cost you more in lost productivity to do this hiring than you’re likely to get out of the candidate for several months. Letting staff go is also expensive – there’s the time and investment you put into training that employee that’s now walking out the door.

These costs can be reduced or avoided by utilizing a temporary staffing agency.

Advantages of Temporary staffing services

There are other benefits to outsourcing these tasks as well:

2. Temporary Cover: Ideal to fill a role temporary when an existing employee takes extended or unexpected leave

4. Flexible staffing: You can increase your temporary staff with the increase in work load. During off season, these employees can be sent back to the agency and reassigned to the other jobs

3) Training. While temporary staffing workers may not be completely trained in everything you need, they are screened to have the minimum skills that you need for the employee to be successful.

6. Reduction in administrative costs: This also helps in decreasing the work load related to paperwork and pay roll expenses

7. Short term assignments: It could be a great solution for project work or headcount difficulties

8. Temporary Staff Cover: Ideal to fill a role temporary when an existing employee takes extended or unexpected leave

A well written CV will increase your chances of being selected for a job interview.

In the current employment market it is imperative to create a CV that would stand out from the rest. A personal profile that would convince the employer that it will be beneficial to meet with you.

Start off your CV with basic information, including your name and your contact details. Make sure that you provide more than one method of contacting you, like mobile number and email address. This will ensure that you do not miss out on any opportunities.

In some cases depending on which industry you specialise in and also the country you reside in, you may also need to put down things like your age, gender and nationality. This is a practice that is swiftly falling out of favor, but it is still occasionally used.

Always remember that all of your information should be up to date.

Just below your contact details, write down something about your career ambitions and goals. It is recommended to keep this part of your CV down to three brief lines.

Following your career objective, write about your academic background and qualifications. Start with your most recent studies and make sure that you write down the name of the institute as well as the dates of course taken.

Work experience should be listed down, starting with the most recent or current role. Make sure that you include the title of the job you held, whether it was full time or part time and how long your employment lasted. List your duties and the responsibilities, using bullets if possible.

Finally, remember to make sure that you have contact information for your previous employers.

When you are looking to register your CV on the leading job boards and CV databases, keep in mind that they often make use of in-house software to complete their searches, based on specific key words. It is therefore imperative that you also include any skills, training, software knowledge and achievements.

More employers are asking “What’s Psychometric Testing, and why should we consider it?” This form of career assessment is an important element in employement strategies.

Any new hire is a potential risk for a business. You need to know if they’re going to be a hard worker, if they’re smart, and how well they adapt to particular types of jobs. Sometimes, due to increased demand, it’s a necessary risk, but it’s a risk nonetheless. Testing is there to find out the answers to questions like “Does this person get bored easily? How well does this person learn new skills or absorb data? Is this person introverted or extroverted?”

Reducing Uncertainties Through Testing

Answering those questions about a new hire is a critical data point that may slip past resumes and interviews. The wrong hire can cost the business more than twice what they’re paying him in salary in missed sales opportunities or production failures. Psychometric testing offers ways to get the answers to these questions. While it’s not a replacement for the traditional interview and resume process, it’s a good supplement to it. They’re batteries of standardized tests that have been in use for nearly a century, with continual refinements.

What Kinds Of Tests Are There?

The granddaddy of all psychometric tests is the Stanford-Binet standardized IQ test. It’s been the subject of rancorous debate ever since its introduction in the 1910s, before World War I. As a business application it’s not ideal, because it takes several hours to administer, and only measures one type of intelligence. Getting measurables in less than three hours of testing time is where commercial psychometric tests come in.

Getting the predictive capabilities of the Stanford Binet in less time is the real reason for the Wonderlic test. It’s got a scale from 1 to 50, and takes 30 minutes to administer. It’s widely used for any kind of paraprofessional recruitment, and is even used by the NFL to evaluate draft choices at the NFL combine.

Where is The Market For Psychometric Testing?

The primary appeal of psychometric testing, beyond the ability to weed out unsuitable candidates before hiring, is to find out which applicants can reason, draw inferences from limited data, and have mental flexibility. People with those abilities, in abstract reasoning, are strongly in demand in the modern economy, where it’s necessary to be able to reason carefully and quickly.

What Kinds of Tests?

Psychometric tests cover the gamut from the more widely known (IQ and its analogs) to social stress tests, to boredom thresholds. A lot of police departments use a type of psychometric test that’s geared to measure stress responses, which can be critical in predicting how someone will react in an emergency.

Another kind of test that gets used is the basic personality test; whether someone is an introvert or extrovert, whether they’re self driven or motivated by the approval of others. These personality inventories are useful for determining how a candidate will ‘fit in’ to a given team environment.

Writing a job description for a job advert and identifying suitable candidates who are qualified to meet the demands of the position and who will be a good fit in the corporate culture, is one of the most important tasks faced by companies in general, especially HR departments.

To attract qualified candidates, there are several factors which should be considered. Other than the obvious need to pay a salary which is competitive enough to attract skilled candidates in the industry and sector you occupy, people who are searching for employment opportunities need to have a clear understanding of what the position entails.

This is where writing job descriptions comes in ” and it is an area which is neglected by many, to the point where companies have difficulty getting the very applicants they are looking to hire interested in the available vacancies.

Words are powerful tools. Writing a good job description is far more important to a companys ability to attract interested and qualified candidates, than many of us realise. The way that a job advert is worded, can make all the difference in the number and quality of applicants you will receive.

Just as the wording of a resume can influence hiring decisions, job seekers will closely examine job descriptions to determine whether or not they are interested in the situation vacant.

When writing job adverts, a first draft is a must. Many make the mistake of creating a rough description of the position which is far too detailed or alternately and just as damaging to the prospect of recruiting qualified job seekers, entirely too vague.

A job advert needs to convey clearly the important duties of the position without overwhelming readers with a laundry list of each and every detail. Starting with a first draft, list everything you want prospective hires to know about the position; then take a second pass through and rewrite it, whittling away those elements which are likely to be seen as irrelevant.

Remember that writing job descriptions for online adverts requires that you get across as accurate of a description of the positions as possible while exercising economy of language. The idea is to list the most important duties included in the position and to list the core competencies and necessary qualifications.

Clarity is also important. If a position reports to more than one department head, mention it in your description. Writing a job description allows you to communicate to candidates; in fact, this is your first point of contact with job seekers, an opportunity to leave a good first impression.

Some of the essential points to remember when writing a job advert are the title of the position (which will in most cases be the headline), reporting structure, duties involved, qualifications or experience needed for the role and finally the scope of the position.

Despite the repeated advice here to keep job adverts short and to the point, there is certainly a place for longer job descriptions. This is for internal use and also to provide shortlisted candidates with a more in-depth knowledge of what the role entails. Shortlisted candidates will naturally want to know more about the position and the company, to enable them to prepare for the final interview.

You should maintain both short and concise job descriptions (for use in advertising vacancies) as well as longer descriptions for internal use. A detailed, longer job description can essentially be a rewritten and polished version of your first draft, albeit formatted and rewritten to come up with a better finished product.