Have you considered using temporary staffing for your next hiring need? The benefits of working with a local service can include savings of time and money, but can also augment your hiring process.  Professional recruiters prescreen each candidate and only submit the very best for your review. Consider these four ways a staffing agency can help put their skills to your service.

1. Assist with establishing goals. Your HR department is often pulled in multiple directions. They need to handle payroll and employee retention as well as a number of other functions. Because our recruiters are dedicated to the hiring process, we can provide this service to your company. A staffing agency can work with you and your hiring managers to determine your needs and help find the best candidates for your open positions.
2. Prescreening and Testing. Screening products are a significant investment, especially when you only need to make use of them occasionally. A staffing service will have access to these tools as part of their day to day business. Figured into the cost of your next hire will be items such as skills testing, background checking, and drug screening. Talk with your local staffing company to see what screening they can provide.
3. Managing expectations. The most important part of any hiring process is an effective job description. Our recruiters can work with you to develop a killer description that will attract the best candidates. When a recruiter can provide details about skills, salary, and environment the candidates will have a better picture of your business. Give the staffing agency 20 minutes of your time and they will be able to put together a job description for your next opening.
4. Fall back plans. Bad hires do happen even to the best recruiters. While the prescreening process will help alleviate some of these headaches, occasionally a situation will occur that is less than perfect. In the event that an employee is not meeting their potential a staffing agency can work with you to find a replacement candidate. Temporary to hire agreements can give you 90 days to assess your new employee and determine if they are the best fit.

Are you thinking about working with a local Pasadena agency? Contact Meador Staffing today to see how we can help you! 

It is important to understand exactly how hiring managers use social media online to find candidates. This will allow you to participate on the best sites to attract recruiters. Gone is the day you can arrive at a business with your resume in hand and expect to speak with someone about a job. LinkedIn and Facebook is just the tip of the social recruiting iceberg. Here are four places you will want to consider a presence on the Internet.

1. A Blog. Recruiters want to see subject matter experts and industry leaders. Develop an online brand that will attract them to you rather than only concentrating on applying to jobs online. Create a blog and consistently post relevant information. Comment on other industry blogs to link back to your own. Include this link on your resume along with LinkedIn and your other contact information.
2. Look at job feeds online. Companies are embracing technology to allow them to reach more candidates than ever before. They will often push job postings to the web with links directly back to their company website and an application. Look at the companies you most want to work for and follow their job feeds.
3. LinkedIn. 93% of all recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates, according to a survey by Jobvite in 2012. For LinkedIn to be effective, it is important to create a complete profile which includes a photograph and a well worded headline. Join groups that are relevant to your industry or hobbies as well as your university alumni group and groups local to your area.
4. Instagram. The popular photo sharing site probably isn’t the first place you think of when looking for a job, but recruiters are getting creative in their searches. Like Twitter, Instagram uses hashtags (#) to make searches easier.  Recruiters are able to find passive candidates by searching for phrases that may have been tagged by photo uploaders. Consider putting your photos on Instagram and tagging things like your city, your job, or your interests.

Do you want more advice about job searching and the Internet? Contact the professional staff at Meador and see how we can help you! The Pasadena TX staffing experts have the experience and network to help you advance your career and land your next job!

Professional Electrical Engineer needs for an Austin Consulting Firm.

Our client company has been in business for 20 years and they are looking to add an experienced P.E. to their team. The right Professional Electrical Engineer must have five to ten years of experience as a in the industry. Qualified candidates will have extensive experience in medium or high voltage installation, commercial construction, utility pumping, power generation facilities, and public infrastructure. LEED certification is a plus but not required. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) experience is preferred, including instrumentation and controls.

Project management skills will be incredibly important to ensure that deadlines are met. This position will be responsible for analyzing plans and specs for compliance along with sealing plans and commercial certification. The right candidate will be knowledgeable in CAD and all MS Office applications.

This organization is looking for a team player who can work with the team and grow within the organization. The career path of this position is potentially to become the head the department and eligible for bonuses on the projects. This is a great job for the right engineer.

If you think you are the right fit for this Professional Electrical Engineer position, contact the recruiters at Meador Staffing today!

Are you looking for ways to increase your employee engagement without breaking the bank? Luckily there are several budget friendly ideas that can help reinvigorate your team and build better morale.  Here are four ideas that are simple and cost effective that can help transform your office to an engaging place to work.

1. Work from Home. While many smaller organizations are reticent to allow their employees to work remotely many Fortune 500 companies have been doing it successfully for years. So far it has not been found to decrease performance or effectiveness. Try it on a temporary basis and see how it works for your employees. Rotate a schedule so everyone has an opportunity to work from home and yet your office will still have coverage. If the workflow does not suffer consider offering more work from home opportunities as a reward for work well done.
2. Invest in social enterprise. Social media has become a concern for many businesses. Management often needs to find a way to curb the overuse of Facebook on company time. One solution is to use social enterprise software to create a connection within the office and collaboration between various departments. One of the most common options is SalesForce.
3. Recruit through social media. Social media does have its place in businesses and corporations. More and more potential candidates are seeking jobs through social networking outlets so it is a good idea search in these places. Since most social media is free and accessible this can allow for your human resources department to spend less time on recruiting new and replacement employees and more time on retention programs for your current staff.
4. Encourage a healthy lifestyle. Stress and poor choices can cause a number of problems for individuals in the workplace. Do what you can to encourage wellness in your office. Remove the snack and soda machines and provide fruit and water instead. Encourage your employees to use their break time away from the office to decompress and come back refreshed. You may even bring speakers in to discuss healthier lifestyle choices.

Do you want to create a better employee experience in your office? Contact the team at Meador Staffing to see what other ways we can work with you.

At Meador Staffing, we take the time to seek out tools that best help us help you. One of the tools we have recently made a high-price investment in is something called Supply and Demand Portal, provided by our partners at CareerBuilder. Talent pools grow and shrink depending on the labor demand by job type in particular markets. By understanding labor demand of the U.S. workforce, you can more effectively guide your recruitment strategy in terms of employment brand, compensation and overall advertising placement.

This economic data tool is available to you, our client, to help stay informed of what is going on in the industries we help you service. You will gain real-time access to the availability of active candidates for any position, salary compensation for a specific area, as well as locations where you will find the most and least competition is for that talent. Supply and Demand filters by geography, industry, company name, keywords related to specific skills, job title, certification, and education. In addition, you will be able to view trends from the last two years to adjust your recruitment strategy as needed. The portal’s accurate talent intelligence covers 90 percent of the online job market.

With the Supply and Demand Portal, the data presented to you, and with the costly investment made in this tool, in your business, we hope to provide you with the best possible results and outcomes when it comes to our services. This is an added service we will provide to you, used by less the five percent of the companies in the staffing industry.

Supply and Demand Portal

What is it? Supply and Demand is analytical data based off 90% of all online hiring sites. This new tool will allow our recruitment team to develop accurate recruitment strategies based on trending data.

What does it do? Supply and Demand shoe the supply, demand, and labor pressure by market based off job titles; financial averages by market based off job titles.

What does it mean? With Supply and Demand, recruitment reams can develop accurate strategies for recruitment. This alleviates the problem of guessing. Companies can offer competitive wages to prospective candidates.

Save time. Supply and Demand is a tool used to improve results of current tools by using them in a more effective way. This can be extremely effective in pricing out bids as well as business development. For companies, having the ability to offer a competitive wage allows you to not waste time when recruiting.

Success stories. A client was posting for a PHP developer. This position was open for eight months. This client looked at the data and identified that they were not offering enough money. The company learned they were offering 15% less than the average. The client increased their offer by $15,000 and made a hire after 45 days.

Sologig

Sologig is an employment website that connects experienced IT and engineering professionals, and matches them with relevant opportunities. We will be using Sologig to provide this unique set of candidates.

We are always looking for new, attractive ways to draw the attention of top talent. If you have any questions about the tools we use to place the right people in the right jobs, we would love to discuss them more with you. As always, our Meador teams work to ensure our clients are knowledgeable of how we do what we do best.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about the Supply and Demand Portal, please contact your staffing consultant or recruiter. We would be happy to review this tool in detail so that you best understand how it can help you.

As always, thank you for your business. We value your relationship with us and your continued trust in our services.

Interviewing well is a talent for both sides of the desk. It is an art that takes two people to perfect. The interview should be a give and take and everyone involved should leave with a complete picture of the potential partnership. Here are seven tips for improving your skills as an interviewer.

1. Read and research. Potential candidates are expected to have researched the company and the job before showing up to an interview. The same respect and preparation should be given by the interviewer. Review their resume completely and check out their LinkedIn profile for additional information. If both sides are well prepared the conversation should be easy and informative.
2. Your complete attention. It is sometimes difficult to forget about all of the other things happening in the office during the interview. Your candidate deserves your undivided attention and it is respectful to provide it to them. Listen carefully and don’t feel the need to fill any silence. If you don’t fill the gaps the candidate is likely to continue sharing information with you.
3. Scenarios not questions. Behavioral interviewing is a process by which you learn how a person would react in a specific situation. Think about a real situation that has or could happen in your department. Present it to them and ask how they would react in that situation. This will typically give you a more honest understanding of their personality for the job rather than answering general questions they practiced before arriving.
4. Avoid the quirky questions. Some interviewing advice suggests that you ask some unconventional questions to make the interviewee pause and consider their answer. Questions might include “if you were any animal, what would you be?” This method doesn’t really provide any value and only makes the potential candidate uncomfortable speaking with you. Avoid these questions.
5. Unspoken language. Body language is another good way to understand each other. You can gauge a lot by noticing if they are nervous or if they make proper eye contact. Are they sitting back with their arms crossed? Are they leaning forward and mirroring your body language?  All of these can be clues to their personality.
6. Individual and company values.  Your organization already has a developed company culture. It is important that the new candidate fit in well with your current team and share the same values as your organization in general. This might be the most important aspect of the interview because of this kind of chemistry doesn’t exist it can’t be forced.
7. Give them homework. You want to see how your potential candidate performs so give them a task to complete. When you schedule the interview suggest that they bring in a formatted letter or a spreadsheet with specific information for your review. This way you can truly understand how well they do at the skills you need.

Are you looking for your next superstar candidate? Contact the recruiters at Meador Staffing to see how we can help you today! 

Over 90% of recruiters are using LinkedIn to find candidates for their open jobs. It is important as a job seeker to be where the recruiters are looking. Here are seven things that it is important to know about linkedin in to help you find your next opportunity.

1. Be complete and be connected. LinkedIn uses algorithms that sort connections by relevance. You will show up at the top of the search for people to whom you are already connected. Increase your network through first level connections to maximize this. Also, be sure your profile is listed at 100% complete as the searches are also showing completed profiles at the top of the results.
2. “Keywords” are not meaningless. With the major changes in Google searches many professionals are saying that peppering your profile with keywords is no longer necessary. However, recruiters are still using keywords in their LinkiedIn search. Linked in still uses smart searches and will return results based on where in the profile the keywords are included. Your headline, job title, and skills are good places to include this information.
3. Use all the characters, join all the groups. When writing your headline it is a good idea to use all of the available character spaces. Also, LinkedIn has a cap on how many groups you can join so use all of those slots and find as many groups that relate to your industry or hobbies as you can. Creating the most detailed and complete profile means using all of the space and connections available to you.
4. The “contact me” section. Your LinkedIn profile has an option to include advice for how to contact you directly. Keep in mind that LinkedIn does not use this field for their searches so adding key words isn’t necessary. However, you should maximize this space by including all of the ways a hiring manager can reach you including your phone number and email address.
5. Synonyms. It is impossible to know exactly what combination of words a recruiter will use to search on LinkedIn so you may as well use them all. Consider all the ways you can phrase what it is that you do. If you work in Information Technology you may want to include the entire phrase, IT, support engineer, computer support, and any other combination of words that may pop up in a typical search.
6. Review your progress. Every once in a while click on the sidebar option that reads “Who’s Viewed Your Profile.”  Not only does this give you some insight on the individuals who have clicked on your information but also provides a chart that shows you how many searches you’ve appeared in. Each search on LinkedIn returns a list of names, profile photos, and headlines. If you’re appearing in a number of searching but not getting a lot of views you can revisit these aspects of your profile.
7. LinkedIn is Number One. LinkedIn results appear more than any other social networking site in Google searches. By completing your profile you are not only inviting recruiters to view your information from within the site but also those who are searching externally.

Are you looking to optimize your LinkedIn profile? Contact the professional recruiters at Meador Staffing today!

Meador Staffing is always seeking qualified individuals for our available positions. Contact us today to see our latest opportunities.

Accounts Payable and Receivable

Are you looking for your next AP and AR position?

We are currently seeking candidates for immediate openings in the accounting department of a fast-paced and challenging industry. Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable jobs are currently open with a client in our staffing territory. The client is seeking dependable candidates local to the area who want to build their career. At least 3 years’ experience with both receivables and payables is required. Quickbooks or similar software experience is desired. This is a temporary to hire position with opportunity for advancement. The position starts at $14 to $16 per hour depending on previous experience and skill level. This is on par with the average starting salary for accounts receivable and payable positions in the area, according to Salary.com.

Candidates must demonstrate experience in both accounts payable and receivables to be considered for the opportunity. Only qualified candidates will be considered. Use your skills in accounting to establish a career with a dedicated local company and find out where this job can take you.

Electrical Designer

Is electrical design your passion? Are you looking to take your experience to the next level?

Company in the Channelview area is seeking a skilled Electrical Designer with experience working in a manufacturing environment. This position will assist with the preparation of drawings and specs for electrical systems for the organization. Candidates will have at least two years’ experience with a consulting firm or as a design engineer or designer. A degree in Electrical Engineering is highly desired but not required.

Only qualified candidates will be considered. Previous experience within a manufacturing environment is required. Salary range starts at $55,000 to $60,000, which is a strong mid-level starting salary according to Salary.com. Experienced candidates are encouraged to apply to be considered for this opportunity to stretch your engineering and design skills with a dedicated organization in Channelview. This local company is looking for your skills and talents, so why not apply today?

Meador Staffing specializes in positions local to the Houston and Austin area and is always on the outlook for qualified candidates to present to their clients. Contact us to apply now!

Keeping your employees engaged and happy on the job will ensure that your company has an opportunity to stay competitive in today’s market. Employees are spending more time engaged with Facebook in the office than their own job functions and this is costing companies a lot of money in lost production. How do you make the job as engaging as social media? Here are three practical tips for enhancing your employee engagement.

1. Direct Supervisors. The most important relationship in the office is the employee/boss partnership. If either party doesn’t like or doesn’t trust the other the employees will look for ways to avoid engagement with their jobs.  One common reason that employees and supervisors don’t get along is because of the generation gap in today’s workforce. Generation Y and Baby Boomers are often pitted against each other and their work ethics and communication styles couldn’t be more different. Gen Y is truly looking for mentors to help them advance their career so refocusing your Generation X and Boomer management team in this direction can be a good first step. Talk to everyone about their experience and develop a plan to make improvements.
2. Effective communication. Many disengaged employees feel that the company is not honest or open enough about their goals or processes. In order for employees to feel like they are part of the team they need to fully understand what is happening with the business. Provide quarterly reports to them and keep them up to date on changes in processes, enhanced procedures, and even the financial situation of the company.
3. Company values. In today’s globally aware business environment employees like to know that their employers are socially conscious and environmentally sustainable. However you chose to implement this within your own organization be sure to communicate it to your existing team and to potential candidates. If you spend time determining if a candidate is the right fit for your company culture and excited about the business from day one you will find that you aren’t losing money on replacements.

Do you want more tips on hiring engaged employees for your business? Meador Staffing  can help you today! 

Healthcare costs continue to rise and stress is the number one factor for employee burn out. Why not take matters into your own hands as an employer and embrace a wellness program in your office. Many people feel they don’t have the time to commit to working out or eating well because they spend 40 or more hours at the office. Give them time each day to kick start their healthier habits and the tools to continue them at home with their families. Here are 4 simple strategies that you can implement today and make a real difference in the lives of your employees.

1. Flu shots. Flu season seems like a long way off but it might be a good idea to create a plan to bring in a vaccination team to offer vaccinations to your employees. This will keep people healthy and on the job rather than unable to perform or possibly coming in to work while sick and spreading their germs to the rest of the office. You can work with your current healthcare plan to set up this service when flu season comes around again. If your insurance plan doesn’t cover it you can reimburse your employees for the cost.
2. Wellness education. Bring instructors in during breaks or lunches to promote various healthy lifestyle changes. They may be local chefs to teach about healthy cooking. Perhaps consider hiring a yoga or tai chi teacher once a week. You can’t make these programs mandatory but encourage your employees to attend by providing incentives. It may even be just the break they were looking for in their day.
3. Speaking of incentives. Employees respond well to rewards for their good work the same may be true for their new healthy lifestyle. It is worth the monetary investment in rewarding healthy behavior to retain good employees. One trend includes reimbursing employees additional medical benefits costs if they maintain a certain standard in their health.
4. Don’t forget mental health. Stress can be an indicator of a much more complex problem. It can also lead to more physically presenting symptoms like heart disease and insomnia. You never know what kind of additional stress an employee is facing so offering shame-free options for dealing with problems is essential to maintaining a happier workforce.

Are you looking to implement a healthy initiative in your organization? Contact the team at Meador Staffing to see how we can be a partner to you.