fyi solutions

Author: Janine Kramer

I recently read an article in Recruiter.com by Maren Hogan, called “Motivate, Recognize, and Reward:  The Generational Approach.”   As a Staffing Practice Lead at FYI Solutions, the Recruiting Team here and I find ourselves not only keeping up with an every changing marketplace, but also the generational demographics in the workforce.

As Maren states in her article, “the workforce currently contains four generations, and while it’s not news anymore, it’s still a brand new situation to many in HR and Management.”  These four generations, working together, side by side at times, can make for interesting challenges for management to motivate and reward each generation for organizational effectiveness.

Below are some excerpts describing characteristics of each of the generations and tidbits on their differences and how to motivate individuals within each group.

Millennials are tech-savvy

…which translates as connecting responsibility to personal goals. While Gen X might bristle at having to prove ROI or having compensation tied to specific goals, Gen Y thrives in this environment.

Key Phrase: “You made a (more…)

Author: Bill Grammaticas (in reference to an article in Focal Point)

Cold calling is hated by most salespeople.  It can generate quality leads, but you must approach cold calling with the right mindset.  You’re not selling; you’re gathering information and developing qualified leads to help.  As you speak with gatekeepers and stakeholders, you’ll also gain excellent insight into their situations and where they can use you and your products or services.  You could even discover a new unmet need you could develop.  However, cold calling is an art form.  It can be daunting.  It’s always a lot of work and you need to make a good impression, so you need to do it right.  Following are time tested ways to do that.

 1.  Record everything.  Always write down all the details of every phone call.  Write down any names and titles you learn, not just the name of the person you’re trying to contact.  The receptionist’s name can be vital to remember because they are often the gatekeepers.  Write down when you called and when you said you’d call back.

2.  Use a database, CRM tool or spreadsheet to record everything.  You’ll never (more…)

Author: Allison Unger

I recently read an article posted in one of my LinkedIn Groups titled, “Tips to Improve Your Productivity at Work”.  As the Administrative Assistant at FYI Solutions, it is my responsibility to support all divisions of the office, operations, recruiting and sales.  On a busy day, I find myself being pulled every which-way and can feel my productivity dwindling.  Sometimes I have no choice but to temporarily leave a task unfinished, while taking on a new one that might be more time critical.  The thought of prioritizing my workload can leave me frazzled at times!  Luckily,  I stumbled across this article and used the tips below to conquer my task load and improve my productivity.

“Maintain a to-do list

It sounds simple enough, but it’s easy to let even a basic to-do list become too much to handle. If you’re managing multiple projects with multiple to-dos for each one, create a master task list and divide it up into sections based around the projects you’re managing. Every day, identify the most (more…)

Author: Jeff Busch

Of course accurate data always matters, right? We BI report developers spend hours making sure every digit in our reports is calculated correctly. Of course the data matters! But what if no one pays attention to the report because it doesn’t answer the question they have? What if they do run the report, but can’t completely understand what the results are telling them? If no one is even looking at the data will they care that it’s calculated to perfection?

Personally, I have a problem with numbers. Numbers are cold, lifeless things from last month and last year. To me, they are a necessary evil in the BI world. I think if numbers were really that useful by themselves we could have stayed with the old green-bar reports. I want to breathe life into those cold dead numbers! “Our sales total this month was ‘2’.” Fantastic! Is “2” good or bad? Is it up or down from last month? It’s the intelligent analysis that makes the data matter; and particularly, from a reporting perspective, the visual representation of the data that enables that analysis. That’s why, to me, the visual design of a report is (more…)

Author:  Barbara Schiffman

FYI Solutions is a member of TechServe Alliance, an organization comprised of IT & engineering staffing and solutions firms, clients, consultants and suppliers dedicated to advancing excellence and ethics within the IT & engineering staffing and solutions industry.  Very recently, TechServe collaborated with Inavero to conduct a survey of the staffing landscape to help clients, candidates, and staffing firms identify key opportunities – and challenges – in IT and engineering staffing.

Inavero interviewed 96 IT and Engineering staffing firm leaders, 274 clients, and 377 job candidates/consultants.  We are happy to be able to share this important survey with you.

A STARTING POINT FOR DISCOVERY

Amid market conditions characterized by low budgets and cautious hiring practices, recent years have been a time of both opportunity and challenge for staffing firms working to meet the demand for technical talent.  To help members and their clients navigate these waters, TechServ Alliance commissioned a 360-degree study of the lT and Engineering staffing industry.

The TechServ Alliance study examines the lT and Engineering staffing industry’s opportunities and challenges from three distinct perspectives:  clients, candidates, and staffing firms. The findings (more…)

Authored By: Hank Specht

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the CIO Visions’ Cloud & BI Summit held in Brooklyn, New York.  This conference, which FYI Solutions was a proud sponsor of, is a three-day affair that offers firsthand perspective to what IT decision makers face on a regular basis when dealing with Business Intelligence and/or the cloud and provides its attendees and sponsors a chance to network, listen to CIO presentations and get an understanding of the new technologies and solutions that are out on the market via targeted research meetings.  These meetings, with executives representing various vertical markets, came fast and frequently and provided great insight into their struggles with business intelligence, understanding what it means, its process, the resources needed as well as the overall impact it has on their organization.

While business intelligence/analytics are much ballyhooed buzz-words these days and are now at the forefront of most organizations’ initiatives, the concept has been around for a while now.  It is only now that most organizations are starting to scrutinize the end result.  And it’s here where most of the issues and pain start to manifest themselves for managers and end-users.  Most business units utilize (more…)

Author:  Jason Apwah

FYI Solutions has been involved with Quality Assurance for nearly 30 years.  Having provided QA Centers of Excellence to many of our clients, we would like to share some of our experiences and ideas for how we approach this.

1) Document the QA Methodology

Document the policies of your QA model. You should ensure that you document policies for your project. It will be difficult to achieve ‘quality’ if all team members do not have a unified understanding of what you are seeking to achieve. 100% perfection is not usually a (more…)

When anthropologists tallied the use of emotional words through a century of literature to see if patterns could be identified, they included many books without clear emotional content — technical manuals, for example, and automotive repair guides. We found the article below from a recent publication of Shots: Health News From NPR that illustrates yet another example of the way that data analytics is being used to understand our past and help predict the future. Following is an excerpt from that article.

Were people happier in the 1950s than they are today? Or were they more frustrated, repressed, sadder? Is it even possible to compare the emotions of one generation to another?  A recently published study may offer a few answers. A group of researchers used data analytics to (more…)

Author: Brian Birkbeck

Just last week I had the privilege of participating in an AIRS training course, titled “Certified Social Sourcing Recruiter 4.0”, to learn about the variety of social media sites you can use to impact your social recruiting initiative.  Social Media is the medium for leading edge recruiters to locate and engage with the passive top talent candidates they need for their organizations.  With more than 200 well known social networking websites (such as Facebook , Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+.. etc.) that have between 200 million (LinkedIn) and 1 billion (Facebook) registered users, this makes social media a great source for recruiters to find talented candidates.  The session focused on two key components; the ability to attract and find talent.  As an active job seeker, it is crucial for you to (more…)

Author:  Hillary Delabar

Is your company is currently experimenting with Big Data Analytics? 

From years of experience with data and business intelligence, I have learned that If you are going to prove anything –it better be business value that you are proving.  Many of the executives I speak with about a Big Data Analytics strategy are struggling with executing their strategy because they are  just beginning their exploration of it.   It appears most companies are developing a Big Data Analytics proof-of-concept rather than a full-out strategy.   But Big data is now! The volume, variety and velocity of data coming into your organization continue to reach unprecedented levels. This phenomenal growth of data requires that you not only understand big data to decipher the information that counts, but more importantly, to envision the possibilities of what you can do with it using analytics.

So the solution to the big data challenge then becomes obvious – big data requires high-performance analytics to process and figure out what’s important and what’s not.   How do you get started? (more…)