Staffing Industry Software

Use Your Staffing Software to Ensure Candidates Meet Client Requirements

July 14th, 2010

Whether you are staffing IT professionals, clerical candidates, or light industrial workers, your clients have all sorts of screening needs and requirements. Plus, you’re probably selling potential staffing buyers on your superior process, which includes all sorts of screening: interviews, reference checks, skills testing, background checks, drug testing, and credit checks. Your prospects and clients have varying pre-employment screening demands: one client requires 10-panel drug testing, while another client does not require drug testing.

The last thing you want are staffing coordinators to place a candidates that have not been properly screened for particular clients. At the same time, you don’t want the screening process to be any more laborious than it already is. This is where your staffing software can streamline the process and set- up of automatic checks to make sure candidates meet client credentials during the placement process.

Here are some steps you can take to improve your credentialing process in your staffing software:

1. Identify all the screening requirements your clients have.

For instance, many of the professional, commercial, and industrial staffing firms who use our staffing software have clients that require:

Criminal background checks: Some do not accept candidates with any misdemeanors or felonies on record. Others will, but the offense must have occurred at least a certain number of years ago.
Drug testing: Some staffing buyers require specific types of drug testing, i.e. 5-panel or 10-panel. Also, some of your clients may not accept candidates that haven’t been drug tested past a certain number of years and months.

2. Design and create a way to track your clients’ pre-employment screening requirements in your staffing software.

You’ll probably need to get your staffing software provider or systems consultant involved. Here are some of the data screens and fields we’ve created for staffing agencies that use our software. It is important to note that we didn’t have to use expensive customized programming to create this; instead we used the standard workflow and data customization tools that come with our software.

In this example, a blended staffing firm had us create fields to indicate if the client requires drug testing, the type of test, and if a criminal background check is required.

Tracking the Types of Drug Tests Client Requires in AST's Staffing Software

Indicating the type of drug testing the client requires in AST’s staffing industry software

We also created additional data fields to track the clients’ credentials regarding misdemeanors and felonies that may turn up from background checks.

Tracking type of Background Check Client Requires

Indicating the type (if any) of criminal history a client would allow.

3. Create the corresponding pre-employment screening fields in your staffing software’s candidate database.

The following print screens show the additional data fields we created to track whether or not the candidate had a drug test, the type of drug test, and date of the test.

Indicating type of drug test candidate received in AST's staffing software for the staffing industry.

Indicating type of drug test candidate received in the front office side of AST's staffing software

We also added the corresponding criminal background fields to make sure felony and misdemeanor specific requirements of certain clients are met.

Defining candidate criminal history.

4. Set up checks during the placement process in your staffing software to ensure that candidates meet all the requirements and credentials of the client during the placement process.

For instance, when a staffing coordinator tries to place a candidate that has not had the background screening that the staffing client requires, the placement is automatically blocked and the following message is displayed.

Make sure you can setup these types of checks in your staffing software solution

5. Test customizations and automation you put in place within your staffing software and get feedback from your staffing coordinators.

Once you start automating and customizing your staffing software system, you can actually “over-automate” and put rules and messages in place that actually don’t work with the way you do business, and become a hindrance. So be sure to test out your automation and get buy-in from the people who use the system on a daily basis.

Contact us if you have questions on streamlining your screening and placement processes, and would like to see more on how we’re helping staffing companies make and save money through the implementation of our fully integrated front and back office staffing software.

Everett Reiss
Director of Marketing and Communications
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1102
ev@astusa.com
Connect with me on:
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss
Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss

Tags: client credentialing, client requirements, fully integrated front and back office staffing software, pre-employment screening, staffing industry software, staffing software
Posted in Customer Service in the Staffing Industry, Efficiency Tips for the Staffing Agencies, Efficiency for the Staffing Industry | 1 Comment »

AST’s Fully Integrated Staffing Software Now Integrates with Microsoft Outlook

July 6th, 2010

Applied Systems Technology, Inc. (AST) has developed email and contact integration between their fully integrated staffing software system and Microsoft Outlook. This integration greatly increases the productivity and mobility of the salespeople and and staffing coordinators of staffing companies using AST’s software.

Cornwall, NY July 7, 2010 – Contacts and e-mail communication are now easily synchronized between Microsoft Outlook and AST’s fully integrated staffing software system.

AST has integrated their staffing software with Outlook

Easily move contacts and email between Outlook and AST's staffing software system.

With the touch of a button, e-mails sent and received within Outlook are automatically documented in AST’s staffing industry softw are and associated with the applicant/candidate/employee or client contact to whom they were sent. If the relationship does not exist in the software, a short form pops up in Outlook allowing you to quickly create the relationship in your staffing company’s AST system. This integration with Outlook is part of a larger initiative to make AST’s staffing software easy to use and adapted to the way people naturally do their daily tasks.

In addition to the ever expanding web interface throughout AST’s software, this feature allows AST to provide the power of a sophisticated fully integrated staffing software system in a package that is easy to use and highly functional.

Taking advantage of Microsoft’s Add-ins feature, AST added a button-bar in Outlook that their clients use to intuitively select and move e-mails and contacts back and forth between Outlook and their staffing industry software. Since Outlook is used as the primary communications tool for many business users, AST has automated the process of keeping e-mails and contact information synchronized between both applications. Existing or new contacts in Outlook can generate new applicants/employees/contacts and customers in the AST system’s database.

We are expecting these features to substantially enhance the productivity of the service and sales departments in our clients’ staffing companies. Contact us or email me if you have further questions about Outlook integration, and other ways staffing companies are saving money and gaining efficiencies through our fully integrated staffing software.

Dave Reiss
Founder and CEO
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1101
dave@astusa.com
Connect with me on:

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-reiss/4/37b/218

Twitter: http://twitter.com/dave_ast

About Applied Systems Technology (AST):
In 2010, AST is celebrating 25 years of helping staffing firms improve profitability by combining automation and best practices within our fully integrated front and back office staffing software. With Persona, our web-enabled role based software, you can reduce workers comp and unemployment, and go paperless.

Tags: microsoft outlook, outlook integration, staffing industry software, staffing software
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