by Fronetics | Jul 24, 2014 | Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
The supply chain industry has a talent crisis. The question is: how can we solve this crisis? To answer this question I turned to Rodney Apple, founder of the SCM Talent Group. Apple has worked as a supply chain recruiter for the majority of his 19+ year career within the staffing industry and he has filled more than 1,000 positions within the industry ranging from executive-level in Fortune 500 headquarters settings to leadership and staff-level roles across large networks of manufacturing and distribution facilities within North America. Apple’s role affords him the ability to witness the talent crisis from the perspective of the industry, the company, and the job seeker.
Kate Lee: The supply chain talent crisis is a hot topic. Is the job market as crazy as it is being made out to be?
Rodney Apple: The job market has been hot for years and there is always a crunch to find and source top supply chain talent. Baby Boomers are retiring in droves and there just aren’t enough people with the necessary skills and experience coming in to fill that gap. With that being said, I don’t think the job market is as crazy as the media makes it out to be. However, we still need the media to continue researching and reporting on this critical topic as this builds more awareness and helps to generate new ideas and solutions for solving the talent problem.
Lee: When it comes to supply chain talent, what is the biggest challenge?
Apple: We don’t have enough students at the K-12 levels that are saying “when I grow up, I want to be a Supply Chain Manager.” Many students coming up through our educational ranks don’t even know what supply chain is or they perceive supply chain as a blue collar industry where you either drive freight trucks or load and unload them at a warehouse dock.
There needs to be big thinking and big solutions to change this image at the macro level. The industry needs to make a concerted effort to communicate to K-12 students what supply chain is and what the career paths look like. Ultimately, it needs to find a way to brand supply chain as a top career choice. Investing into K-12 outreach programs and mass media campaigns, similar to how our military branches advertise for recruiting purposes, could be a great way to educate the future workforce about the supply chain and get them excited about pursuing degrees and careers within supply chain.
Lee: What other challenges do you see?
Many companies haven’t taken the initiative to develop best-in-class talent acquisition resources and programs. Companies that perform the best are the ones that treat the recruiting department like a strategic, value-added program versus a low-level, tactical HR cost center.
In addition, many companies are being too strict and inflexible with their hiring requirements. Instead of defining the job when they write out their job descriptions, they focus on defining the candidate by listing out a ridiculously long and unrealistic list of skills and qualifications that the “ideal candidate” must have to be “qualified”. This antiquated technique usually ends up deterring top candidates from applying and disqualifies candidates that have what it takes to do the job.
Lee: What can companies do to attract top talent?
Apple:
- Develop a best-in-class talent acquisition strategy and program
o People – hire the best talent sourcers and recruiters that you can find and make sure you have a properly staffed department so they’ll operate in a “proactive” versus “reactive” capacity.
o Process –streamline the end-to-end talent acquisition process with the goal of alleviating administrative, burdensome tasks and unnecessary touch points.
o System – implement a robust Applicant Tracking System, one that integrates with the company career site and ideally the HRIS or ERP system.
o Employee Referral Program – referrals are typically the top source for hires so companies should invest into developing a best-in-class employee referral program. Get the CEO and all senior executives to champion the program so all employees are involved and incented to participate.
o College Recruiting Program – partner with supply chain universities and proactively recruit students from these universities, early and often.
o External Supply Chain Recruiting Partners – identify supply chain recruiting agencies that specialize in the areas where hiring help is needed the most.
- Upgrade Career Branding Materials – Develop attractive branding/marketing materials to include a separate company career website that highlights company culture, history, key stats, job opportunities, career paths, etc. Incorporate interviews from employees and testimonials that illustrate why your company is a great place to work. In addition, learn how to write job descriptions that attract top supply chain talent.
- Create a Supply Chain Leadership Development Program –This is a great and cost-effective way to attract top entry-level talent and aggressively train and ramp them up to speed by rotating them into different functional areas within the supply chain. GE is well known for having best-in-class leadership development programs.
- Be open-minded when it comes to considering top talent from other fields/industries. Many candidates in other professionals have very transferable skill sets for careers within supply chain.
- Develop a program for employing Veterans, candidates with disabilities and long-term unemployed.
- Invest more into job training and mentoring programs e.g. supply chain certifications and tuition reimbursement.
Lee: What is the role of social media in recruitment?
Apple: Companies and their recruiters need to be on social media to establish their employment brand, to attract talent, and to share job openings and upcoming recruitment events. Furthermore, social media can be leveraged by all employees as a talent acquisition tool. For example, companies could require all employees to distribute jobs out to their social media connections/networks.
Lee: What advice do you have for job seekers?
Apple: A job search should be conducted strategically, not haphazardly. It’s all about laying out a robust job search strategy with a corresponding action plan. In addition, networking is where job seekers should spend the bulk of their time versus applying online and waiting for the phone to ring.
Lee: Do you have any advice for job seekers trying to break into the supply chain industry?
Apple: Changing industries is tough to do but not impossible. Start by looking at what skills are transferrable and highlight these skills on your resume, LinkedIn profile, and in interviews. In some cases going back to school may be necessary. This may mean a degree program, or it could mean obtaining a supply chain certificate.
Networking is paramount. Join local chapters of supply chain associations, attend their meetings and network your butt off.
Finally, remember that it may be necessary to take a step back in both job level and compensation. Often times taking one small step back in your career could result in three giant leaps forward.
by Fronetics | Jul 23, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain, Talent
With more than 300 million active users, LinkedIn is one of the largest social media networks. LinkedIn is an incredible tool for networking and professional development. LinkedIn is also an essential component in a job search strategy. Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is crucial to your success.
Here’s how to optimize your LinkedIn profile:
Look the part. Upload a photo. LinkedIn profiles with photos get viewed 14 times more than profiles without photos. When selecting a photo to use for your profile, choose one that is professional. A photo of you with your friends, children, or pets is not appropriate. And don’t fall victim to the cropped arm/hand – the photo should be of you, and only you.
Create a URL. LinkedIn allows you to customize your URL. Do it! A customized URL is easier to remember than the default, it makes your profile more searchable, and it just plain looks more professional.
Headline. By default most people have their headline as their current job title and employer. To optimize your profile don’t rely on the default. Why? As The Muse points out: “Because this little 120-character section is prime marketing real estate.”
Write headline that speaks to your audience, showcases your specialty/value, uses keywords, and is creative.
Summary. Your summary should be between 3 and four short paragraphs in length. When creating your summary use target job descriptions to your advantage. Use keywords that not only enable your profile to be found in searches, but will also catch the eye of recruiters and prospective employers. Keep in mind that keywords are not buzzwords. Steer clear of buzzwords.
Experience. This is the section where you showcase your skill set and achievements. Be precise and include detail that will add value. If appropriate, include rich media.
Like the summary section, your experience should include keywords that speak to your target industry and to the type of job you are hoping to land.
Skills. Profiles that include skills are around 13 times more likely to be viewed than profiles that don’t list skills. Include your skills and order them so that more important skills are listed at the top.
Education. Profiles that include education are 10 times more likely to be viewed than LinkedIn profiles that don’t include education.
Certifications. List certifications that you have received. Certifications not only show your commitment and drive, they can also increase the number of times your profile is found and viewed.
Volunteer experience and causes. Include your volunteer experiences in your profile. Forty-two percent of hiring managers surveyed by LinkedIn say they view volunteer experience as equivalent to formal work experience.
Samples of work, patents, awards, publications, etc. As appropriate, include samples of your work, patents awarded, awards received, publications, etc. Again, this speaks to who you are, your interests, skills, and what you can bring to the table.
Recommendations. Recommendations can be a great addition to your profile when done right. Want to know how to do it right? Check out Jörgen Sunberg’s piece on the Undercover Recruiter.
Groups. Join LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your interests and industry. Joining groups and becoming active in these groups have many benefits – optimizing your LinkedIn profile is just one of them.
Housekeeping. Make sure that your profile has no typos or mistakes. Make sure all dates align and are accurate. A sloppy profile will turn off recruiters and prospective employers.
by Fronetics | Jul 23, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain, Talent
With more than 300 million active users, LinkedIn is one of the largest social media networks. LinkedIn is an incredible tool for networking and professional development. LinkedIn is also an essential component in a job search strategy. Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is crucial to your success.
Here’s how to optimize your LinkedIn profile:
Look the part. Upload a photo. LinkedIn profiles with photos get viewed 14 times more than profiles without photos. When selecting a photo to use for your profile, choose one that is professional. A photo of you with your friends, children, or pets is not appropriate. And don’t fall victim to the cropped arm/hand – the photo should be of you, and only you.
Create a URL. LinkedIn allows you to customize your URL. Do it! A customized URL is easier to remember than the default, it makes your profile more searchable, and it just plain looks more professional.
Headline. By default most people have their headline as their current job title and employer. To optimize your profile don’t rely on the default. Why? As The Muse points out: “Because this little 120-character section is prime marketing real estate.”
Write headline that speaks to your audience, showcases your specialty/value, uses keywords, and is creative.
Summary. Your summary should be between 3 and four short paragraphs in length. When creating your summary use target job descriptions to your advantage. Use keywords that not only enable your profile to be found in searches, but will also catch the eye of recruiters and prospective employers. Keep in mind that keywords are not buzzwords. Steer clear of buzzwords.
Experience. This is the section where you showcase your skill set and achievements. Be precise and include detail that will add value. If appropriate, include rich media.
Like the summary section, your experience should include keywords that speak to your target industry and to the type of job you are hoping to land.
Skills. Profiles that include skills are around 13 times more likely to be viewed than profiles that don’t list skills. Include your skills and order them so that more important skills are listed at the top.
Education. Profiles that include education are 10 times more likely to be viewed than LinkedIn profiles that don’t include education.
Certifications. List certifications that you have received. Certifications not only show your commitment and drive, they can also increase the number of times your profile is found and viewed.
Volunteer experience and causes. Include your volunteer experiences in your profile. Forty-two percent of hiring managers surveyed by LinkedIn say they view volunteer experience as equivalent to formal work experience.
Samples of work, patents, awards, publications, etc. As appropriate, include samples of your work, patents awarded, awards received, publications, etc. Again, this speaks to who you are, your interests, skills, and what you can bring to the table.
Recommendations. Recommendations can be a great addition to your profile when done right. Want to know how to do it right? Check out Jörgen Sunberg’s piece on the Undercover Recruiter.
Groups. Join LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your interests and industry. Joining groups and becoming active in these groups have many benefits – optimizing your LinkedIn profile is just one of them.
Housekeeping. Make sure that your profile has no typos or mistakes. Make sure all dates align and are accurate. A sloppy profile will turn off recruiters and prospective employers.
by Fronetics | Apr 16, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media
For every blog post, tweet, and Facebook update, you should ask yourself: Who is listening?
Without a comprehensive social media strategy, your message may be getting lost in the chatter. There are a number of tools that will help you monitor your online influence and, effectively, make the necessary adjustments to ensure your efforts are paying off.
Here are 10 free tools to help you measure your social media ROI. The basic features of each of these tools are free.
1. Hootsuite
Considered one of the top social media management systems, Hootsuite is a web-based dashboard that enables your business or organization to execute campaigns across multiple social networks. This tool helps you identify audiences, distribute targeted messages, launch marketing campaigns, streamline workflow and much more. It also provides weekly reports on your social analytics. Social network integrations include, among others, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
2. Facebook Insights
Sometimes the best analytics tools are built into the platform, like Facebook Insights. After your Facebook page receives at least 30 likes, Insights can be applied to break down the metrics of your content. See how people discover and respond to your posts and use the anonymized demographic data to analyze trends and tailor your message.
3. Google Analytics
By using Google Analytics you will have access to a wealth of strategic data across multiple venues such as ads, videos, websites, tablets, smartphones and social tools. The result is a complete profile of your potential customers and their needs. Learn, for example, how visitors find your site, what they like and don’t like, and what they technology they use to access the information.
4. TweetDeck
TweetDeck resembles Hootsuite but is exclusively focused on your engagements on Twitter. This real-time tracking and organizing tool allows you to customize your Twitter experience in one interface. You can manage multiple accounts, build timelines, and track hashtags, events, and topics.
5. SumAll
SumAll connects you to all the services you use in one interactive chart. SumAll enables you to monitor and measure more than 30 services (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, PayPal, Google Analytics) – for free. SumAll is a great option for small and medium sized businesses who want to be able to monitor all of their platforms in one spot – and have reports delivered via email on a daily basis.
6. Twazzup
An ideal tool for those new to Twitter, Twazzup enables you to follow a real-time stream of updates about keywords of your choosing. The interface presents a clear look at your related real-time tweets as well as trending and user information. It also identifies the top influencers in your field.
7. IceRocket
Specializing in displaying the most up-to-the-second search results, IceRocket covers blogs, the web, Twitter, and Facebook. Find out who links to your blog posts and search the IceRocket database of 200 million blogs. Your monitoring results can be viewed on a single, easily digestible page.
8. Klout
How influential are you online? The so-called “Klout score” reveals your effectiveness on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wikipedia, and Instagram. The company recently added business analytics to its list of services to assist users learn more about their online audiences.
9. HowSociable
HowSociable measures the impact of your brand across multiple social media platforms, helping you identify which one is the best fit for you. By analyzing the metrics of your presence on 36 popular social media sites, this tool produces a score between 1 and 10 to indicate the activity around your brand during a given week.
10. Addictomatic
Addictomatic is a straight-forward application to monitor your brand’s reputation and industry developments. Simply select your keywords and Addictomatic will scan a variety of platforms such as Google, Bing, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube and Flickr.
by Fronetics | Feb 13, 2014 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
Despite the considerable amount of attention paid to demand generation, many companies (including some companies actively employing a demand generation strategy) do not have a clear understanding of what demand generation actually is.
When asked to define demand generation, a common response is: the generation of demand. Another common response: a marketing strategy. An honest response: I don’t know; what the heck is demand generation?
Demand generation is the creation of awareness and excitement about your company and your products and services. Demand generation is not a one-off; rather it is a continuous process of engaging and nurturing both current and future customers. Demand generation helps you attract new customers and engage (or re-engage) current customers. Demand generation grows your business.
Components of a demand generation strategy include: blogs, social media, podcasts, video, newsletters, email, white papers, and case studies. These components work together. They position your company as a thought leader, expert, and influencer in your industry. They build trust. Importantly, they drive engagement and communication. The foundation of demand generation is the creation and sustaining of relationships between your company and your customers – current and future.
According to DemandGen, 90 percent of business buyers say when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you. How will they find you? When B2B buyers were asked to rank where they turn to find a new solution, 46 percent listed a “web search” as their first source for information. The leading choice for both the second and third ranked sources was vendor web sites.
With respect to social media, DemandGen found that blogs are considered to be the social media channel with the biggest impact on the researching process (46 percent). LinkedIn was also found to be a place where buyers turned to conduct research (41 percent).
The survey also found that content had a significant impact on the decision to buy. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said “a vendor’s content had a significant impact on their buying decision,” and 34 of respondents “strongly agreed that the winning vendors provided a better mix of content to guide them through each stage of the researching and decision-making process.”
What is the take away? The take away is that a company with a strong presence and a demand generation strategy is more likely to be successful than a company who does not have a strong presence or a demand generation strategy.
What is the different between a successful demand generation strategy and one that falls flat? A successful strategy incorporates communication, engagement, and quality content. Furthermore, a successful demand generation strategy is built upon an understanding of customer needs and interests –real, not perceived.
At Fronetics we work with our clients to design and implement a demand generation strategy that is right for them – for their company and for their customers. We know how to create awareness and excitement about our clients’ companies and their products and services. We also know how to help our clients engage with and nurture their customers.
Through our demand generation service, Engage, we help companies acquire new customers and grow their businesses by penetrating new markets and deepening their presence and impact in existing markets. If you are interested in learning more about Engage and about creating a successful demand generation strategy, we’d love to talk with you.
