This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: iPhone 5 Maps Failing to Find Hospital ERs Tuesday: What's Driving Healthcare Mergers? Wednesday: Indeed Acquired by Recruit Co. LTD Thursday: Healthcare Faces Acute IT Staff Shortage Friday: RN's Can Now Prescribe Birth Control in California Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

There's a saying you may have heard before - "the cobblers children have no shoes." This saying could definitely be applied to us. When we launched Staffing Robot as a website design and marketing services firm for staffing companies we were overwhelmed with the amount of companies seeking out our services. We love all the companies we've had the opportunity to work with and are really proud of the work we've been doing together. But we've been doing so much work we never really took the time to do any for ourselves. Until today! We're completely excited to now show you the new look of Staffing Robot. Next week we'll be launching our new brand to include a new website, mobile website, blog, social pages, portfolio site and much more! Here are the new items we're looking forward to showing off. New Logo: We've always had a bit of a retro look and color palette but wanted to take this even further. We've created lots of different robots but we'll let you find them all on our site next week. New Website: With our website we had 3 main goals (stop me if you've heard this one before): Simple Useful Creative We think we achieved these goals. Instead of having too many options and a bunch of content to navigate through we've created only two main navigation options (About and Services) that take your through a few slides each, describing the services we offer and information about our company. From... Continue reading

Headed to Staffing World this year? Sweet! So are we. This year the American Staffing Association is hosting the event on Oct. 9 - 11 in Las Vegas in the Venetian hotel. If you've never been it's a great place to stay. Come visit Staffing Robot in booth number 1207. We'll be doing free website assesments for your staffing company to tell you how to improve and get the most out of your website. We'll also be moderating a session titled “How to Use Your Website to Grow Your Business” on Wednesday, October 10, from 2:15–3:30 p.m. This discussion will be held in the Sales and Business Development room, Lando 4302. Also, if you stop by our booth we'll give you one of our new Staffing Robot T-shirts. And, if you let us take a photo of you donning this highly fashionable T and post it in our social stream we'll enter you to win an iPad. Yep! Be sure to take photos while you're at the event and post them with the hashtag #staffingworld to Twitter or Instagram. We'll be streaming all of these photos here: http://letsgetsnappy.com/staffingworld. If you're not attending, this will be a great way to check out all the photos from the event. If you are attending, you can see what other people are doing while there and check back after the event to see all the photos. Hope to see you soon! Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Healthcare Where You Work? Tuesday: Hospital Construction Booming Wednesday: ACS Acquires Comforce Thursday: Study: Patient Satisfaction Influenced More By Hospital Staff Friday: SIA LAUNCHES CONTINGENT WORKFORCE PROFESSIONALS CERTIFICATION PROGRAM Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

Great infographic about the current state of social media at work. Continue reading

Great infographic on the highest paid nursing professions from Scrubsmag.com. Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Hospitals Face Lawsuits for Needless Procedures Tuesday: Rise of the New Contract Worker Wednesday: MSN Acquires Pathway Medical Staffing Thursday: Staffing Revenue To Beat Pre Recession High Friday: Mapping The Next Three Decades of Health Technology Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

When it comes to social media, staffing companies have a lot of options these days for recruiting top talent and earning new customers. The big questions we get from most staffing companies are 'which social networks should I use' and 'What kind of content should I post?' As far as determining which social networking platforms are the best to use, it really depends on what works for you and where your audience is. Try experimenting with different sites from Facebook, to Twitter, to LinkedIn. However, we also encourage companies to branch out and experiment with new platforms. One new social networking app that can produce great results for your staffing company is Instagram. If you haven't heard of Instagram you soon will. Instagram is a mobile app that works on iPhones and Android based smart phones. It lets you take photos, apply custom filters that make your photos look awesome and share them with your friends on Instagram and other social sites. It's simple to use, fun and a bit addicting. So why should your staffing company use Instagram? It's about answering the content question. This infographic below from M Booth shows one thing is clear - when it comes to social media, images are THE winning content strategy and a great way to promote your brand. The infographic reveals the following: Videos are shared 12x more than links and text posts combined Photos are liked twice as much as text posts Photos on Pinterest refer more traffic than Twitter,... Continue reading

Great infographic by SmartRecruiters on why jobs remain unfilled, despite high unemployment. The infographic shows complicated and broken hiring processes as being a major issue for companies and a huge drain on resources. For candidates, the infographic suggests long wait times for applications to is a major issue. The infographic does suggest some potential solutions to these issues through mobile and social recruiting and on boarding. For instance, 57% of respondents said they would prefer applying via mobile device. Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Patients Trying to Sue Staffing Agencies Tuesday: New Data Sharing Tech Makes EHR Use Obsolete Wednesday: Healthcare Analytics - The Next Big Thing Thursday: Seventeen States Now Prohibit Mandatory Overtime for Nurses Friday: Finding Occupational Therapists Not Getting Easier Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

How does your staffing firm see its website? Have you ever really put much thought into it? Each business looks at their website differently. Some see their website like an online brochure. These sites are typically not very interesting and lack any interactive value. Other businesses see their website as a place to show off their development and design chops, often times going overboard on cool features that produce very little value. And sadly, some businesses see their website as a dumping ground for every piece of information they have about their business (and on the home page above the fold no less). The sites simply cause confusion and turn users away. I'd like to make a suggestion on how your staffing company should view its website. I suggest you look at your website as if it were a person. A very important person you've hired to do a job. Start by asking yourself, what job do you want your website to do? Bring in more leads? Attract more candidates? Address customer service issues? Educate your clients? You might have a few jobs you want the website to perform. That's fine, just don't give these jobs equal weight. Prioritize each jobs and focus on the single most important job first. This will help you start to see your website as a functioning member of your team that is expected to produce results. Keep in mind that no matter what job you hire your website to do it will always have... Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Staffing Firm Acquisitions Rise Tuesday: Hospital CFOs Adopting New Tech Post Medicare Cuts Wednesday: 2012 Nurse Salary Survey Results Thursday: States Receiving Funds to Expand Nursing Education Friday: Top 20 Features of Future Hospitals Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

Great infographic from Medical Solutions ecently polled their nurses on fun statistics about their scrubs and created a great infographic on the results! Check it out: Designed by Medical Solutions Continue reading

Guest blog post by Mike Wejrowski, VP of Agency Sales for API Healthcare, Inc. Selecting the right software solution(s) for your healthcare staffing agency can be a daunting task. After all, this is not a decision that should be taken lightly. Your purchasing decision could ultimately determine the successful, or unsuccessful, outcome for your business. Your decision should be made with careful thought, evaluation and consideration. Purchasing software is a process. Regardless of whether your agency is a startup or a successful enterprise agency, it is important to understand the daily tasks, activities and core business functions your organization will need to address with the new system. Prior to investigating a software solution, your evaluation team should itemize any business process issues that need to be addressed, the daily functions that need to be automated, the budget available for software, and the target implementation timeframe. Fortunately, I have the pleasure of speaking with many agency owners and officers throughout the business day. Agencies of all sizes agree that the following business areas should be addressed when considering a new or updated solution for their healthcare staffing business: Recruiting and on-boarding of new healthcare professionals – Your agency should be constantly seeking new talent to join your agency team. This will involve capturing the healthcare professionals’ demographics, skills assessments, clinical competencies, and numerous employment documents. In today’s competitive environment, capturing these data points and securing an electronic signature will dramatically increase your recruiting percentages. Capture Availability – When will your healthcare... Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Shortage: Hospitals Desperate for Specialty Nurses Tuesday: 6 Things Patients Want From Social Media Wednesday: TeamHealth Acquires Delphi Healthcare Partners Thursday: 2013 Nurse Job Forecast Friday: IT Healthcare Professional Surge Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

Great infographic by Scrubs Magazine about the highest paying nurse specialties of 2012. Continue reading

Learn about proper preparation for success in achieving the Joint Commission Healthcare Staffing Services Certification in this free, 4-part series – “Making Joint Commission Requirements Easy” launching Aug 23rd at 2 p.m. EST. Prophecy Professional Services’ Chief Clinical Officer Christine Carrington, RN, MS, will host the free 4-part webinar series discussing proper preparation for success in achieving the coveted JCHCSS Certification. Achieving TJC certification distinguishes organizations among the elite in the country, as they must meet the highest standards in the industry. Since the Joint Commission standards support best practices that lead to the delivery of safe, quality patient care many hospitals now require Joint Commission certification to participate in the RFP process. In addition, hospital associations and some VMS & MSP organizations are requiring agencies to be certified to participate as a subcontractor. Carrington, having over 30 years leadership experience in the healthcare industry has a 100% success rate with leading organizations to be TJCHCSS certified. Her success ranges from large, national staffing firms to start-up agencies alike. The focus of each webinar in the series is as follows: Aug. 23rd @ 2pm EST: How Ready is Your Firm? Sept. 27th @ 2pm EST: Understanding the Leadership Standards Oct. 25th @ 2pm EST: Understanding the Human Resource Standards Nov. 15th @ 2pm EST: Understanding the Performance Measurement & Information Management Standards Reserve your spot for each of the webinars in this series to position your organization for success the first time around with achieving the JCHCSS Certification - a... Continue reading

Staffing companies that measure customer feedback and reward employees for delivering outstanding customer service can gain a competitive edge and boost their bottom lines. These companies will see greater customer loyalty, less employee turnover and improved morale. Hively is the first web based system that offers you a complete ‘closed loop’ feedback system from customer to employee. Our goal with Hively is to create the simplest way for companies to gather and measure customer feedback, and reward their employees for providing exceptional customer service. The diagram below is our way of visually explaining how this process works. Sign up for Hively today and see the benefits for yourself! Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Growing Health Issue: Hospital Staffing Shortage Tuesday: What Hospitals Can Learn From The Cheesecake Factory Wednesday: Massachusetts Bans Mandatory Nurse OT Thursday: Shortage: Hospitals Desperate for Specialty Nurses Friday: Map of U.S. Hospital Health Outcome Metrics Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Maxim Healthcare Agrees Pays $12.3M to Recruiters in Class Action Lawsuit Tuesday: Top Ways Healthcare Staffing Agencies Prepare Employees for Placement Exams Wednesday: Staffing Firms Report Deceleration In New Orders Thursday: Could Facebook Recruiting Unseat LinkedIn? Friday: Nursing Schools Brace for Shortage Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

All good recruiters know that social media isn't really about connecting with friends and family. Instead, it's really about finding great candidates. A recent survey from Jobvite revealed that over 90% of employers will use social media for recruiting in 2012. This kind of data suggests that traditional methods of sourcing candidates are no longer effective. This also mans that traditional tools for finding a job are also outdated. For example, the resume. Even at our company, the first thing we do when screening a new hire is look at their social presence represented on professional sites like LinkedIn. In today’s economy, most companies can't afford to make a bad hire. You can gain so much more information from someones online profile than you can from a simple summary, tailored and reduced to a single piece of paper. For a long time LinkedIn has been the go to site for reviewing professional information about potential candidates. Others like Branch Out are gaining traction and Facebook is even rumored to be getting into the job game. However, there's a new site that launched last week from a Portland Oregon company called Vizify that is sure to be a game changer. Vizify is a stunningly visual way to view a complete overview of someones career, work history, education and overall social presence. (You can check out my personal Vizify profile here). You can see years of experience, topics they discuss on line, and interesting factoids about them. One of my favorite features... Continue reading

For many staffing agencies, the final hurdle that stands between a new hire and their placement is testing. The need for assessing a caregiver’s ability to provide competent, safe, and effective patient care is not the topic of this article. So, let’s jump over that topic and get right to the 5 easy things you can mention to your caregivers to set them up for a positive competency testing experience. 1) Recommend Reviewing all Provided Materials Typically there will be prep materials offered prior to starting a competency exam. For some caregivers, it may have been quite some time since their last standardized test. So, the #1 recommendation we have for preparing for a competency test it to study the prep materials provided. Prophecy’s Clinical Assessments either come accompanied with a study guide (for all education modules) or a content outline (for specialty specific competency tests). The study guides contain all of the information needed to successfully pass the assessments. Content outlines, on the other hand, may contain important formulas, conversions, or abbreviation legends to assist the caregiver in completing the assessments, however they do not provide guidance on actual answers. Since the specialty specific competency tests are evaluating the caregiver’s ability to provide the job knowledge, skills, and abilities required on the first day of the job, no prompting should be needed. 2) Remind Them to Read all Instructions Time and time again reading instructions would actually help us complete daily tasks more efficiently - assembling new furniture, driving... Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Healthcare staffing company in Nebraska sued in Hep C case Tuesday: Hively Announces Employee Rewards with Kudos! Wednesday: Hospital Robots Link Doctors and Patients Thursday: Registered Nurse - Best Job in U.S. Friday: Hospitals Ignoring Requirements to Report Errors Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading

Customer service is the key to success for almost every business - especially when it comes to staffing agencies. Your employees spend hours every day talking to your customers and candidates. Their interactions can make a huge difference in your customer satisfaction and ultimately your bottom line. Measuring customer happiness for your staffing company is critical. However, motivating your employees to provide great customer service is also something you should should focus on. If you're like a lot of companies though, it can be difficult and time consuming to know where to get started with all of this. Look no further! Today we are happy to announce the simplest way to instantly motivate and reward your top performing employees for providing exceptional customer service. Introduction Kudos - a new feature in Hively! What are Kudos? Kudos are a simple way for employees to give each other feedback or for managers to reward employees. Think of it like a ‘thanks’ or a ‘pat on the back.’ Just like with Hively customer feedback, if you receive a Kudo you will be instantly notified and have the Hively Kudos badge prominently displayed on your leaderboard profile for your team to see. You will also receive +1 count for each Kudo you receive. Kudos are separated from customer feedback and don’t effect your customer happiness scores. But we didn’t stop there! What’s better than getting a Kudo? Getting a Kudo with a gift card reward! We recently partnered with Tango Card to enable our... Continue reading

This weeks headline news stories from The Healthcare Staffing Report. Here is a list of this weeks top Headline News: Monday: Hot Areas for Healthcare Staffing Tuesday: Index of Staffing Prices Edges Up Over Year Wednesday: Most Connected Hospitals 2012 Thursday: New Nursing Schools Up All Over the Country Friday: Hospital Heavy Lift Machines Lighten Load For Nurses Please follow The Healthcare Staffing Report on Twitter. Continue reading