Culture Drives Success

Highly engaged employees will promote a winning culture.

About 92% of job seekers say corporate culture is valuable to them and that it would influence their decisions to accept job offers. Everyone wants to be part of a progressive organization that builds and promotes winners. Companies that focus on culture are becoming icons for top job seekers.

Top candidates are fighting to land at great places to work. That is why many companies are waging war to build the “best workplace in the world.” Employers are trying many new perks to attract and engage staff; firms are implementing things like free food, unlimited vacation, yoga classes, beer bashes, and bright, open spaces.

The executive teams must be responsible for driving the organizations’ cultures. Smart companies are emphasizing employee engagement to lower the risk of turnover, boost customer satisfaction, and increase overall success. The challenge is that a workplace culture of engagement can’t be forced; it must be ingrained in your business model and within each individual employee.

DaMar Staffing Solutions takes an unconventional approach to recruiting and staffing solutions for clients. As a strategic partner, the DaMar team is constantly on the hunt for those rare people who are among the best at what they do.

Why Your Talent Brand Matters

Hilton tops the 2019 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For®

Global talent acquisition leaders (75 percent) agree that a company’s talent brand can have a significant impact on its ability to hire great talent.

A strong talent brand can reduce cost-per-hire by more than 50%, but it can actually help attract top-tier candidates in a crowded market. Still not convinced about this “talent brand” thing? Here are four more reasons why you should focus on establishing your talent brand:

1. Talent branding helps engage passive candidates: passive candidates are the Holy Grail for recruiters. Passive candidates are those highly skilled individuals who are not looking for jobs right now. Passive candidates are nearly 80% of the workforce; so finding and attracting PCs should be a high priority.

2. Talent branding influences the retention of current talent: An effective talent brand does more than just help you attract the right talent; it also helps you keep them once they’re in the door. And, turnover has a dramatic effect on a company’s bottom line; experts estimate the cost at more than double the initial salary.

3. Talent branding generates more referrals from employees: When employees enjoy working for their companies, they’re happy to tell friends and colleagues about their experiences. Talent branding makes this easier by providing multiple methods for employees to easily share the latest news, reports, and job openings within your company.

4. Talent branding allows you to take control of the firm’s reputation: When it comes to employees that were fired or laid off, 38 percent tend to post negative reviews about their former employers online. Having a strong talent brand can help you combat any less-than-stellar reviews that former employees make about your company.

The advantages of a strong talent brand include attracting the best candidates, higher employee retention, cost savings, and time efficiency. In addition, your organization has more control over its public reputation.

DaMar Staffing Solutions of Indianapolis is a full service, contingency-based recruitment firm, focused on administrative and professional staffing for all industries. There are many staffing agencies, but you want a staffing agency that will work for you. With over 20 years of experience, DaMar Staffing Solutions has built a reputation for providing quality service, top-notch professionals and flexible recruiting solutions for Indiana companies.

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Improve Your Talent Brand

Talent branding is a company’s reputation as a place to work, the company is seen from the eyes of an employee and not a customer. It’s what makes a company desirable to work for, and its ability to hire and retain great employees.

Many experts believe the U.S. is about six years away from a catastrophic lack of skilled and experienced workers. In fact, by 2023, employers will see a shortage of nearly 18 million college-educated workers. This will lead to a war for talent in many industries.

Few companies are effectively addressing their recruiting process and talent brand. As a result, most firms will feel the bite of trying to fill critical leadership roles. Smart firms are improving their recruiting and talent brands. Executives are starting to understand how important their talent brands are to their overall success. A strong talent brand reduces the cost per hire by over 50 percent and lowers turnover rates by 28%.

Recruiting is becoming more like marketing; companies must embrace the idea of developing and protecting their talent brands. Leaders need to be sensitive to what employees think and feel, and what they share with others about the companies as workplaces. A strong talent brand will increase a firm’s ability to hire top talent. A weak talent brand will cause recruiters to continue struggling to attract and maintain quality talent.

Tiffany Thompson, President of DaMar Staffing, believes “most recruiting executives will find it harder to hire great talent for a company with a poor talent brand.”

The CEO and leadership team must be the evangelist for their talent brand. Building a strong talent brand will require input from HR, marketing, and communication, each contributing to how your company is perceived by potential applicants. Ultimately, the employees are the driving force behind your company’s talent brand. Their experiences, testimonials, and reviews are what makes for a truly great talent brand.

A strong talent brand gives an organization a significant competitive edge in recruiting, retaining, and making the most of employees; it is a differentiator, aimed at building engagement and loyalty through identity.  Companies experience an exceptional return on investment from a solid talent brand.  There is an increase in productivity, retention rate, employee engagement, quality of hire, and a lower cost per hire.

However, to unlock this positive vision, your talent brand and workforce strategy must be your key business imperatives. This means designing a sound lifelong branding and learning system, investing in human capital, and collaborating with other stakeholders. It’s a new game.

DaMar Staffing Solutions of Indianapolis is a full-service, contingency-based recruitment firm, focused on administrative and professional staffing for all industries. There are many staffing agencies, but you want a staffing agency that will work for you. With over 20 years of experience, DaMar Staffing Solutions has built a reputation for providing quality service, top-notch professionals, and flexible recruiting solutions for Indiana companies.

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Think Strategically. Plan Practically. Act Precisely.

Top-level executives believe it is important to be involved with managing talent.

High-growth companies are thinking about talent more strategically to attract and retain top performers. Talent managers need a seat at the table to play a critical role in improving talent acquisition. Recruiting quality talent has become a holistic and integrated function.

C-suite executive teams are becoming more proactive in looking at the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that drive business success. It is important to understand and measure recruiting metrics that tie into business objectives. Building a strong talent brand and recruiting process will deliver results and improve your recruiting KPI.

There are more than 6.2 million job openings, during the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. However, there are still an estimated 7 million unemployed Americans needing work. Reconciling this situation has been difficult. There are two fundamental problems businesses face. Finding qualified workers to fill the job openings and unemployed workers complain they can’t find a job that pays enough.             

Be strategic about addressing recruiting problems that are coming down the road. Top-level executives must become more involved with understanding and managing corporate talent.  

5 Recruiting Metrics that Matter

Time to Hire
The time to hire metric should be a leading indicator that determines recruiting forecasting rather than efficiency.

Source to Close
Source to close measures how quickly you close candidates once they enter your interview pipeline.

Conversion Rates
Monitoring stage conversion rates allows your Talent team to identify where candidates are dropping out, and why.

Source Quality
Instead of simply measuring the number of candidates a source provides, you must also measure how far candidates from a particular source get in the interview process.

Quality of Hire
Companies should consider the monetary value a high-performing employee contributes to the organization.

Businesses that outperform their competition know that strategic talent management is essential in building the right workforce necessary for future growth. These executives use analytics and diagnostic tools to track recruitment drivers. How will your recruiting activities address these talent objectives to move your company forward?

Find Them | Grow Them | Keep Them.

DaMar Staffing is constantly looking for people who want to be their best.

Great talent is priceless and many businesses struggle to attract top-tier talent for a variety of reasons. Quality talent is hard to find, hard to grow, and hard to keep. One big reason is, unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 50 years—the game has changed. Let's face it, recruiting and hiring are very expensive. That makes keeping your top people who are essential and necessary for success.

Keeping top talent is critical and unpredictable. Consider this, 32 percent* of new employees leave the company within the first six months.  This may seem unthinkable, but it happens. Regardless of the reason, every business needs to be able to attract and keep good people.  Throwing more money at the problem is not the answer. 

Finding the best candidates for positions in your organization is only part of building an effective team. The process of onboarding new employees can be one of the most critical factors in ensuring new talent feels welcomed, productive, and accepted by the team. DaMar Staffing shares seven tips to help you grow and keep superstars.

Onboarding new employees is a process of getting people embedded into the company and integrated with the team and the culture. Here are seven tips to help cultivate a positive environment for helping people be their best.

Seven Tips to Develop Superstars

1. Management: Build a positive, trusting, and mutual relationship. Staff members want access to their direct supervisor and to have managers involved in their day-to-day.

2. Responsibilities: Employees need to understand exactly what their responsibilities and expectations are in the workplace. People desire clear guidelines.

3. Training: Effective training will empower people. Twenty-one percent of employees cited a lack of training as a reason for leaving their job.

4. Acceptance: People need to feel accepted by their team. Promote unity and comradery among the team.

5. Feedback: Employees need effective feedback. Detailed guidance will help assure they’re headed in the right direction.

6. Mentors: Matching an employee with a mentor or a “growth buddy” is important. Fifty-six percent of employees believe mentors will improve culture and productivity.

7. Focus on STRM: People want to focus on stuff that really matters (STRM) for success. In short, don’t sweat the small things.

DaMar Staffing Can Help. Call Tiffany Thompson at 317.566.8320.

DaMar Staffing Solutions takes an unconventional approach to recruiting and staffing solutions for clients. As a strategic partner, the DaMar team is constantly on the hunt for those rare people who are among the best at what they do. DaMar Staffing is located at 8900 Keystone Crossing, Suite 1060, Indianapolis, IN 46240. Where People and Careers Meet.

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DaMar Staffing is Inspired to Innovative.

Think Apple, who comes to mind-Steve Jobs? Not Steve Wozniak, who is the person that kicked off the personal computer revolution. Steve’s vision and passion for creative thinking and problem solving inspired him to invent the desktop computer. Before he designed the Apple II, computers were not available to ordinary people.

Steve single-handedly designed all the hardware and software for the Apple II, all while working his day job at Hewlett-Packard. Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer in 1976. Wozniak was a technical visionary and Jobs had mesmerizing energy, it was a powerful team. Apple went public in 1980, creating more instant millionaires than any other company up to that point.

DaMar Staffing shares Wozniak’s vision and passion for creative thinking and problem solving. We’re inspired by his dedication and tenacity. Woz changed lives and therefore changed the world.  DaMar wants to inspire clients and employees to be better.     

Under Tiffany Thompson’s leadership, DaMar focuses on offering effective solutions to real staffing problems to give your business growth opportunities. DaMar provides total HR consulting from research to cost effective, on demand and flexible recruiting solutions.

DaMar Staffing Solutions is a certified Women Owned Business Enterprise, registered to do business with the state of Indiana, City of Indianapolis, a SBA 8(a) participant and Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) certification as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE). 

The Heart of Service is the Key Greatness.

DaMar pays homage to George Washington Carver one of the greatest thinkers, servants and humanitarians in U.S. history. George Washington Carver was an American botanist and inventor. During his lifetime, he developed 325 products from peanuts, 108 products from sweet potatoes, 75 applications of pecans, 118 industrial products from agricultural products and over 500 dyes from the plants.  

Dr. Carver worked day and night to make various products including peanut butter, shampoo, milk, cheese, mayonnaise, instant coffee, flour, soap, plastics and pickles.  He did not profit from his discoveries; he gave them to mankind. He was never interested in the profit.  He believed God gave them to him and did not think it was right to sell them to someone else.

Ready to Go the Extra Mile
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, and to have life make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

DaMar Staffing Solutions is keeping the legacy alive by serving clients, candidates and the community. Our team thrives on helping or doing work for others. DaMar Staffing will treat you and your people with respect and professionalism. You can expect the DaMar team to listen to you and learn what needs are important to you.  By asking thorough questions our staffing team will better understand you, your company and your open positions.

DaMar Staffing Solutions is a certified Women Owned Business Enterprise, registered to do business with the state of Indiana, City of Indianapolis, a SBA 8(a) participant and Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) certification as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE). 

Be Fast, Quick and Swift.

Eight tips to streamline your hiring process.

If you are a business leader, you’ve probably heard the advice “hire slow and fire fast.” And, in some isolated cases there may be justifications for this approach, but in reality it makes no sense for today’s fast-paced business world. Hiring slow will cost you money and reduce your ability to attract top talent. Before adopting this approach, consider the logic of streamline your hiring process to be fast, quick and swift.

If your company is concern about bad hires that will slow your hiring process. The fear of making a wrong hiring decision can be real and understandable. Hiring mistakes are costly. However, operating short staffed may be worst. It’s not only costly but also painful, distracting and requiring managers to do three times the work. The longer the hiring process drags on the greater chances are for making mistakes. It can be a vicious cycle. 

If you can eliminate the fear, and streamline your process, you will have the confidence to move fast to make offers to the best candidates. With qualified talent in short supply, you need to hire quickly and effectively. This may require collaboration and help from external staffing experts. An expert staffing firm can offer you a talent pipeline, better interviewing methods and greater accountability.

It is important to find a staffing partner that understands your expectations and will move with speed and accuracy. Streamlining your hiring methods will promote rapid decision-making and liberate managers to hire sooner. Free your managers from the shackles associated with bad hires. Encourage managers to be fast to hire, quick to inspire and swift to hold people accountable. That is called leading and that’s what you want managers to do for the company.

Start by considering these tips for streamlining your hiring process.

• Review and updated all job descriptions for each position in every department. That will require additional time and work, but you will be ready when a position opens.

• Build your referral network and use social media to get the word out that you have an open position.

• Review all resumes promptly, avoiding the paperwork bottlenecks. Identify and review all job openings and candidates to prioritize the hiring process.

• Thoroughly screen all candidates carefully, first on paper and then by phone or video, before you consider scheduling in-person interviews.

• Provide recruitment training for all people involved in the hiring decisions.

• Always check and review references to avoid any last minute surprises.   

Once you've decided on a candidate, move quickly and make an honest offer.  Don’t waste any time, if you believe they are a good hire other companies probably do as well. 

Good Education. Strong Work Ethic. Dreams Do Come True.

Ursula Burns is chairperson of VEON

Dreams do come true, but not without the help of others, a good education, a strong work ethic and the courage to lean in. Ursula Burns was raised by a wonderful single mother in the rough public housing project of Baruch Houses in Manhattan, NY.  Ursula had three strikes against her: black, female and poor. However, her mother didn’t see it that way. On a modest salary, Ursula’s mother managed to send her to good Catholic schools.

Ursula Burns did not allow her environment to define who she was and knew that education was her way up and out.  It would have been so easy for Ursula to give-up on her dreams. But she didn’t; she embraced a series of “lean-in” moments: taking an internship with Xerox in upstate New York, going to an Ivy League school for a graduate degree. Ursula’s dreams did come true. She believes through a good education, a strong work ethic, and the courage to “lean-in,” anyone can improve their position.

In 2009, Ms. Burns became CEO of Xerox, making her the first black woman CEO to head a Fortune 500 company. As the CEO of Xerox, Burns “greened-lighted” a major acquisition which transformed the company from a copy and printing firm to a technology and services enterprise. Forbes rated Ursula Burns the 22nd most powerful woman in the world. Among other civic positions, she was a leader of the STEM program for the White House from 2009 to 2016, and served as President Obama's chair of the Export Council.

Today, she is currently chairperson of VEON, a senior advisor to Teneo and will join the board of the beverage company Diageo and Uber. Ms. Burns works hard to serve as an inspiration to what is possible and to offer access to opportunities. She teaches young people how to “lean-back” and then “lean-in.” This is the reason Ursula works with so many organizations that help minorities and women gain the education and self-respect they need to take risks and to dream big. Ms. Burns believes in paying it forward.

Dreams. Fierce Determination. Joy.

Joy Mangano, the star of the movie Joy, has sold more than $3 billion worth of home products.

Joy Mangano grew up on Long Island, tinkering in her father’s metal shop. She dreamed of inventing things that would improve life. But, sometimes life can be unkind. After a failed marriage, Joy, a single mom, spent many days struggling just to make ends meet.  She worked as a waitress, a reservation clerk and selling homemade grapevine wreaths.

Despite all the obstacles and frustrations, Joy never gave up on her childhood dreams. One random day while cleaning the floor, she had a light bulb moment: The concept of the Miracle Mop was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

The producer of the movie Joy said, “The idea that drew me to Joy, was the story of more than 40 years of a women’s life; from the magic of childhood, through a failed marriage, divorce and single parenthood, to fulfilling her dreams.  How do you tell the story of a person’s soul?”

Over time, Joy developed a quietly fierce determination that sees her through to build a business empire. There were lots of naysayers, but Joy never gave-up. She pushed through many external obstacles. In the film, Joy battles a mysterious man in Texas who claims to hold the patent to another self-wringing mop, invented in China. She flies to Dallas to confront him and discovers information that bolsters her case. It's a perfect scene to illustrate Joy's determination.  

Joy believed in herself even when the whole world didn’t. She said, “Sometimes it feels like the whole world is watching and waiting for you to fail. When you surprise everyone with all the success you’ve achieved, it makes you feel that much more amazing.”

Achieving success is a hard and arduous journey. You have to gather your courage and never give up. Success isn’t pretty and it is not convenient. However, Joy’s story shows you that if you keep going, the rewards are worth the wait.

Five tips to “joy-ous” success:  

1.       Always be yourself. 

2.      Don't be afraid to stand up for yourself.

3.      Don’t take “no” for an answer.

4.      Put in the work.

5.      It’s not about where you start, but where you’re headed.

Don’t let a crappy job or life’s obligations stifle your ambition. Everyone starts at the bottom, but what matters is where you end up at the end of it all. Don’t quit until you reach the finish line, because it may be more glorious than you could ever imagine.