1. It’s all about the candidate experience

Today’s candidates are time and attention-strapped so they need a staffing experience that’s quick and easy to use. Several Globus Heroes credited Globus for being extremely user-friendly. As Hege Hasla, Staffing Consultant at Acapedia explains, “Candidates get all the information they need automatically without having to ask us for more details.”  

This is particularly useful in sectors with urgent roles and short-term placements. For example, in heavy industry, where personnel work offshore for an average of two weeks at a time. As Øyvind Rogdeberg, Department manager at Uniflex Bemanning has experienced first-hand, “When they return to shore they want to know what they’re working on next. Globus helps me plan and deliver the next trip for them, faster. It saves me time, delivers a better experience for our people, and I also can see availability quickly without having to phone around everybody.” Candidates simply have to click on a link in a text message to let Øyvind know if they are interested in a role or not — significantly streamlining communications and enabling candidates to answer messages on the go.  

It also helps to have a deep understanding of what candidates need, their experiences, and concerns. Hege, who previously worked at many different kindergartens across Norway, adds “Sometimes a candidate might need some moral support and my experience influences the way I help them. It’s also something I draw on when placing candidates, many people believe that working in a kindergarten involves just playing with children, but there are so many other important activities taking place. I use my background and experience to help my customers and the children get the best candidates. It’s crucial to provide the right people in the right place — and Globus helps me achieve that”.  

2. Consolidation is key

In the past, staffing agencies were reliant on reams of paperwork, endless emails, constant phone calls, and many more siloed, and disruptive processes throughout their workday. Important information could go missing, orders could be lost or not answered in time, and if a recruiter was out of office for any reason, it was a lot harder to pick up where they left off.  

Digitizing the whole staffing process enables faster responses because everything is stored in a central place. As Lene Terese Berg, Team leader, Healthcare at Reflekt explains, “It’s also a lot easier to pick up a colleague’s work as their tasks and progress are all there in Globus. I would say the full overview that it provides the Reflekt team, our candidates, and customers. It makes everything a lot more visible and our candidates are more engaged in our work opportunities. We have a full overview of what requests we manage to fill and what requests we are not able to fill. This also gives us important information on what to focus on during recruitment.”

The best staffing platforms help staffing agencies to manage and solve all open vacancies in one single screen. That includes vacancies and job requests from email, phone, VMS portals, or Globus’ own client portal — all displayed in one unified interface. And that means no shift requests are missed.

When Lucas Löfgren, consultant manager at Sverek, joined his firm, Globus was implemented a week after he started. In just that week, he had already noticed the amount of time his colleagues were spending scrolling through their inboxes to stay up to date on new job requests that were coming in. He explains “[Globus] gave me so much more immediate control and overview on available jobs, what was relevant for my candidates, and what was in the process of being fulfilled. To be able to offer jobs to candidates, you first need to know what jobs are available. By having Globus Staffing, my time spent on searching for relevant jobs has been drastically reduced from about an hour a day spent searching, to just ten minutes to get the same overview. When you consider that the working week is around 40 hours before I would have spent a fifth of that (8 hours) searching my e-mail-inbox for job requests.”

This immediacy of information supports Lucas in improving his candidates’ experiences and deepens his relationship with them. He says, “I use [Globus] to quickly display all requests so when a doctor calls me, I can instantly tell them what opportunities I have available, that might interest them. I filter job requests on many different criteria, like specialist-competencies, and that makes it much more efficient and easier to search compared to an email inbox. I don’t have to create manual lists of each region where there are open jobs to fill, instead, [Globus] filters this automatically for me. It’s a huge help and saves me a lot of time and work.”

Having a single source of truth for all vacancies and available candidates doesn’t just improve the staffing process but it supports recruiters and staffing managers in working remotely or hybrid. Ann Elin, Senior Advisor and recruiter at Personalhuset, found that Globus really helped her collaborate with colleagues during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns. She explains, “With all information stored in [Globus] I can see what’s been done so far with an order or assignment and I can easily take over if needed. There’s less back-and-forth with colleagues to catch up on the status of an order. This has really improved team collaboration, particularly during the pandemic when we switched to working from home. No matter where we are working, remotely or in-office, we can stay up to date on orders and collaborate on the same work.”

With everyone on the same page, orders can be filled more rapidly and candidates are kept fully up-to-date with relevant opportunities.  

3. The importance of a user-friendly platform

The above goes hand-in-hand with having a user-friendly platform. If your staffing managers, candidates, and customers find your technology difficult to use, they won’t engage as readily. It needs to fit in seamlessly with their work lives, and that means it needs to adapt to different types of roles, shift patterns, and lifestyles. Whether that’s a doctor who works several nights in a row, an engineer who is primarily project-based, or a teacher who needs to fill an urgent shift.  

An intuitive platform can make all the difference — as Hege has experienced, “When I started working in Acapedia I got familiar with Globus very quickly, it was such an easy system to get started with. Things ran by themselves, I simply had to add shifts and Globus would help me find the right people.”

4. Never forget the human element of staffing

Technology is there to improve the work of human team members — not replace them. The best staffing decisions are made with technology intelligently matching candidates to suitable roles based on their past experiences and skills. However, there will always be a human staffing manager in control, looking at the recommendations and building critical relationships between candidates and customers. Hege explains, “The system also considers the human aspect of staffing. One of my candidates that was unable to find full-time employment started working for us and just recently got a full-time position in the kindergarten she started working for via Acapedia. Stories like that make me happy.”

5. Remain agile

It’s safe to say that all organizations had to adapt to sudden changes over the past few years but those changes are just the beginning. In healthcare, for instance, demand for healthcare professionals is increasing as populations age and their health needs become more complex.  

Then there’s the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to consider on staffing, with advances such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI) changing the way candidates are found, placed, and upskilled for the future. This is something Lene is well aware of, with her specialism in healthcare. She says, “The demand for healthcare professionals is rapidly increasing and it’s getting harder to hire nurses and other healthcare workers. There simply aren’t enough of them available in Norway. Our customers turn to Reflekt because they’re struggling to hire people in full-time positions. With Reflekt, they get access to an engaged pool of healthcare talent, people who are available part-time or full-time, who are attracted to work with us because of the flexibility and autonomy we offer.”

6. Facilitate remote work

The remote/hybrid work shift has changed both candidate and staffing manager expectations. Candidates want more flexible roles that fit their other commitments. They also want greater autonomy over how they complete their work and that’s why temporary, short-term projects appeal to them. The same applies to staffing managers who are seeking new ways to do their work. Using technology can make them more responsive and give them greater freedom over their workday. As Ann Elin describes, “In the past if I wanted to work from home or somewhere else I’d have to do multiple print-outs of the availability overview. Those reams of paper went with me everywhere — even, at one point, to a party. And it wasn’t easy to assign roles because I’d have to log onto my PC and view the ATS alongside the papers. But with Globus, I can do everything on my laptop and phone. I’m able to work more effectively, on multiple devices, wherever I choose. That makes me more responsive too. If something comes in at 8.30 pm, I can use Globus to send it out then the system gets to work finding me the best candidates. I don’t have to spend ages logging in and out of systems or sifting through paperwork, I just wait for Globus to notify me that matches have been made.”

7. Check your data = becomes insights

What gets measured gets managed. If you want to improve your staffing processes over time then you need a way to analyze and measure your key success metrics. These might include successful placements, customer feedback, job orders filled, time-to-fill, and more. In the rush of day-to-day, it can be easy to overlook the vast data your staffing agency is likely sitting on. But delving into this data on a regular basis (like monthly or quarterly) will help you optimize processes and spot areas for improvement.  

It can also be a huge motivator. Hege explains, “It’s interesting for me to see the numbers as it’s not something I’ve thought about while doing my job. We use Globus all the time, so the sheer number of placements isn’t something I think about regularly and it’s great to see how many people we’ve helped.”

Lene adds, “The second benefit is through the insights that the Globus platform provides on our performance, so we can constantly improve our service to our candidates and customers. It was previously labor-intensive to do this.”  

Food for thought

Between them, our Globus Heroes have filled tens of thousands of roles, drastically cut their time-to-hire, and boosted their candidate-recruiter relationships. They’ve clearly had many successes over the past months. Hopefully, their stories have provided you with inspiration and insights that will help you on your own staffing automation journey.  

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