Trakstar Hire Blog / Hiring Strategy

Many folks look forward to the holiday season or the summertime as a time to kick back and relax, catch up with family and ease themselves away from the daily grind. But for others, the work is just getting started. November and December, as well the summer months, represent two times of the year when…

Employee referral programs are gaining in popularity and for good reason. Referrals have been shown to reduce the time to hire by almost 50 percent compared to candidates who come from a company’s careers site. Of course, these programs should never take up all of your recruitment focus, but there are a lot of benefits…

Graphs and curves are plotted to get a visualization of the data we collect. Ideally, we use these strictly for representational purposes. Too often, though, we attempt to reverse engineer and force fit people’s performance into it. Such efforts gave rise to forced ranking, a performance management practice that’s become increasingly unpopular in recent years. By…

For four years, Cole Lindbergh had one of the most fun jobs you can imagine. But it was also pretty tough. In overseeing the games department at the Worlds of Fun amusement park in Kansas City, Mo., Cole managed between 125 and 145 teenagers each summer. Teenagers aren’t known for being the easiest age group, and Cole’s employees were…

Onboarding your first hires is a challenge. The most important thing at stake – especially for small organizations – is employee retention. You’ve surmounted one big hurdle by recruiting great team members. Now you want to retain them. These tips will increase the likelihood that your first employees are with you for the long haul.…

Content. You’re probably sick of hearing about it, but it matters. One of the best ways to attract great candidates is to create awesome recruiting content. Recruiting content can take many forms. Event landing pages, “meet our team” videos, photos on Instagram and yes, even the tried-and-true job posting are all forms of recruiting content. When…

When it comes to staffing, one bad hire is expensive. In fact, 41 percent of respondents reported that it costs more than $25,000; another 25 percent said it exceeds $50,000. Traditionally, hiring has been handled almost exclusively by the HR and recruiting departments. Department leads get involved only at the end of the process. But…

It’s all about the game, and how you play it. Mark Pincus, an undergrad from Wharton and a Harvard MBA sure knew how the game was played. But the jury is out on the fate of his creation, Zynga, which in today’s financial reality trades at $6.03 a share and has a market cap of…

As the war for talent amps up, recruiting gangs are popping up across the nation. Recruitment is beefing up by blurring the departmental lines and creating entire gangs dedicated to their efforts. Traditional recruitment efforts aren’t cutting it anymore and recruiters are getting serious about their attraction tools and techniques. Marketing Department Recruiters don’t have…

The company site is often the first impression for candidates. Aside from job listings and ads, this is the first place that candidates will get a glimpse of a company’s culture. Naturally, candidates will head straight for the careers page , and quite often they’re left underwhelmed by the lack of information and overwhelmed with…