Was on the American Staffing Association conference call regarding the Chimes (we all know that the parent company is Axium International, but I’m going to refer to this as Chimes since this is how we’re affected). The bankruptcy attorney on the call was New York-based Lee Stremba of Troutman Sanders.

Please keep in mind that I am NOT an attorney and you should not take the following as legal advice. The following are my PERSONAL notes from the call and not meant to be taken as commentary or as my employer’s position on the matter. Entienden? Cool.

The letters most staffing firms got are pretty routine, apparently. If you received payments within 90 days of Chimes filing for bankruptcy, you probably got a preference demand letter from Howard Ehrenberg (the trustee).

What I (please read my disclaimers again) take away from this is that just because you received a preference demand letter from the trustee does not automatically expose you to a lawsuit. You have no legal obligation to even respond to it. But it also won’t hurt to write back and say that you’re looking into it.

The trustee has two years to assert preferential claims and sue creditors. We’re six months away from that time limit. No one knows whether Howard Ehnberg intends to sue Chimes’ creditors, only that (according to Stremba) he is a pretty active litigator.

What are your defenses for preferential treatment?
(Stremba emphasizes that while these sound simple, how the courts interpret each one can vary).

Ordinary Course – You can say that the payments you received from Chimes (which the trustee is now attempting to collect back) was received in the “ordinary course of business,” within the agreed credit terms and in a manner and timing customary to normal business practices (eg Chimes had been paying you every month on the 15th like clockwork and the payment you got right before they filed for bankruptcy).

Contemporaneous Exchange - If there is no such history for “ordinary course,” you can say that the payment terms was “immediately upon billing.”

New Value - If the payment somehow was outside “ordinary course” of business you can say that the additional payments were for additional services.

Soooo…now…you got that scary letter, what is Stremba’s advice (again, what I take away…don’t use this as legal advice)? Gather your records. Look at your payment history with Chimes.

Someone at the call asked if they should get collective representation to save money. His advice? What you basically have to do is analyze your own situation. Amounts that are being demanded vary from one firm to another, and payment terms and history also vary. He emphasized that you have to look at your own situation. Bonding together with other firms who may not be in the same boat won’t help you do that.

What if you just do nothing and don’t act on the demand letter? According to Stremba, if you don’t communicate with the trustee, maybe nothing will happen, but you might also get a complaint, which really is the earliest stage of the legal process…and then you can negotiate a settlement.

(From my estimation, it seems it’s not a bad idea to write a letter and say you’re looking into it…).

Here’s Lee Stremba’s information:

Lee Stremba
Troutman Sanders LLP
lee.stremba@troutmansanders.com
212.704.6143

She’s looking for other firms in this situation and as a favor, I’m posting about it (thank god, the firm I work for had minimal exposure). If you are in this situation, please leave a comment or send me an e-mail at lisaamorao at gmail.com so that I can connect you.

So I’ve been sidelined at home the last couple of days to take care of my kids, ages 9 and 7.5. They had the sniffles and with the whole swine flu scare and precautions, the school advised me to keep them at home and I was happy to oblige.

I don’t like it when my kids are sick, but I enjoy taking care of them when they are. When they are well, they seem like ungrateful little creatures. They sit at the dinner table, demanding to be fed. They expect that I would wake them up in time for school every single morning, breakfast waiting on the table. They expect their lunches to be ready. They expect that they will be picked up on time after school and that they will get their time on the playground. They can rely on these things day in and day out, and as a mom, I’m just expected to do these things and expect no appreciation other than the privilege of maybe getting a hug at night. But when they are under the weather, things definitely change. They don’t run around as much. They eat the chicken porridge I make like it’s the best thing they’ve ever had. The same boys who are embarrassed to be seen with me around school now want nothing more than to just sit in the couch with me, cuddle up in a blanket and watch Spongebob…and they don’t want anyone else but me.

Not all of it is lovey-dovey. There are those nights when I don’t sleep because I’m watching their temperature, listening to each breath, inhaler at hand…hideous, tiring nights…but these are also the moments that separate me from everyone else in their lives. When everyone else won’t touch you with a 10-foot pole because you’ve got some hideous virus, your mom would still be there to take care of you.

I think we all agree that the economy is pretty much in the tank and a few of our clients are…well…feeling under the weather. I was just chatting with a client of mine a few days back and he mentioned that he’s getting a lot of phone calls from staffing firms and he was a bit depressed telling people that he had no reqs to tell people about. “They couldn’t get off the phone fast enough,” he said. “They are just too eager to call the next person on their list of calls to do that day. Maybe they have reqs.”

When the economy is hot, our clients have reqs and they rely on us to fill them. They can’t sit down and talk because they simply don’t have the time to have that relationship with us, and we, in turn, are busy working on their reqs. We’re staffing firms. It’s what we are paid to do. But right now, they are feeling under the weather. Budgets are shrinking, very few are actually hiring, and unfortunately, the staffing firms that were eager to listen and take down reqs just a few months ago aren’t so attentive now.

Now, just as no mother will admit to or feel good about not taking care of a sick child, no staffing firm will admit to abandoning their clients in a downturn. But take a look at the survey results conducted by the Staffing Industry Analysts: 30% of staffing companies feel that providing excellent customer service was a key to their success to 2008. In 2009, only 22% of staffing companies feel that providing excellent customer service is a key factor to their success. Seriously? Thirty percent was already an embarrassing number, 22% is simply horrible. The same survey also revealed that 56% of staffing companies feel that “increasing revenue” was their top priority.

Increase revenues by taking care of your customers less. Seriously? Even more astonishing, no, wait, embarrassing, is that at 56%, a majority of staffing firms subscribe to this baffling concept.

Going back to the mom analogy, that’s like saying I only want to deal with healthy children and when they get sick, well, maybe I can just stick them in a room, check on them the next day and maybe they’d be well again and everything will be just fine.

Just as I don’t really like it when my children are sick (who wishes illness on their child?), this downtime that we’re all having is a good opportunity to nurture relationships and pay closer attention to our customers, because they sure are recognizing who they can really rely on. Relationships. It’s what sets you apart as a business partner from everyone else, simply known as “vendors.”

I am easily amused. 

Out of all the blog posts I’ve written in my lifetime, I am particularly fond of a paragraph that I wrote in a post for ATR’s blog, The Staffing Minute: The post was about a particular encounter during Web2.0 Expo.

It’s not a mortal sin to not be on Facebook or LinkedIn (I know plenty of people who don’t want any part of it), but this was Web2.0 Expo. In this particular situation, not being part of Facebook or LinkedIn is like going to a Weight Watchers meeting and proclaiming you don’t want to lose weight.

Read the whole post here: http://www.atrinternational.com/atrblog/2009/04/live-what-you-sell/

Well…until I came home that Friday afternoon, when I was supposed to walk into my house and admire my brand new floor. 

The new floor in the living room was nice, but I was too distracted to notice it. My furniture was in the kitchen. The baseboards weren’t done, and the hallway carpet was ripped off but not replaced. Apparently there was a “problem” with “something” and they have to come back and finish another time. 

 It wasn’t a problem with my guy, but I guess in an effort to cut costs and compete on pricing, he is now working with cheaper installation people…and they were able to charge cheap because they book a whole bunch of installations at once, start several projects just to hook the customers — when your floors are already ripped off, would you be calling someone else? 

Now, I’m a reasonable person, except he agreed that the job would be COMPLETED before the end of the day. Sure, issues can come up, we can’t help that, but none of it was communicated to me. 

Furious, I demanded that the job be done that night, or I wasn’t going to pay. (My ex-husband did say that I was the customer from hell…it would be a shame not to live up to the expectation). I did not put down any deposit whatsoever and agreed to pay 10 days after the job was completed. 

My guy eventually had to go find some other installer to finish the job and he didn’t find one until late. But the job was done that night. My guy and his installer was working in my house until 1 am. 

Oh but there’s more to the story! 

The following morning I went into my garage and found that everything was covered in sawdust. Because they were working late the previous night, the installers cut wood inside the garage instead of the driveway to avoid making excessive noise and having my neighbors call the cops. Sure, that’s fine, but for crying out loud, clean up. Vacuum or something. 

So I called my guy again and he saw the thick layer of dust in my garage. He knew it was his responsibility to clean up, so he offered to take off $100 from the total price and labeled it as “cleanup.” 

The moral of the story…

We’re all hurting due to the economy and we’re all tightening our belts. But what sorts of corners are we cutting? Does it adversely affect customer experience? Are you losing clients because of your cost-cutting measures?  I could’ve brought “my guy” more business through referrals and even though I still like him, I’m not so sure about the service vendors he’s using.  

My guy not only lost whatever future business I have to offer plus referrals, he had to knock off $100 from the total amount I owe him. I’m ok, my floors are ok, my garage got cleaned up…but  I wonder if he is aware how much cutting corners ended up costing him.

I called the same person that installed the carpet I currently have 10 years ago. The same person also installed the tile floors that I have in my kitchen and my bathrooms three years ago.

When he got here, we chit-chatted a little bit…how are you, I’m fine, thanks…how’s business? He said he was glad I called, things have been really slow for him. He mentioned that he had to let go of three of his project teams (he used to have five) because business has been bad.

I told him that I was thinking about replacing my carpet with wood. He then started shaking his head.

“What about your kids,” he asked. Ok, so what about them?

“Yeah, the carpet is dirty but why don’t you just get it cleaned?”

And? Are you selling carpet cleaning services now? I thought to myself.

“If your kids run around and they fall, they’d get hurt more on wood floor than on carpet.”

I was a bit confused, then amazed. Here was a man who was hurting for business, and he was discouraging me from buying from him because he was concerned about my kids getting hurt. Heck. I’m surprised he even remembered that I had kids!

I explained about the dog, then I reassured him that my kids don’t quite run around as much as he remembered the last time he did some work in my house.

I was going to shop around for a better deal, I even planned on asking him for his “best price.” But at that point, I trusted that he was going to give me a fair deal. Heck. He was ready to walk away from my place without a sale.

He said he’s sure that my selection was in stock and that he can get my new floor installed before the week is over.

I’m really excited to be doing business with him again. I know he would do a good job as he did twice previously, and I also trust that he has my best interest in mind.

In the staffing industry there are firms who feel they need to sell on offering the lowest mark-up. But it feels much better to sell based on trust and expertise. The buyer or end user is happy to do business with someone they trust will deliver the best service at a reasonable price as opposed to being forced to buy from the cheapest. The staffing firm is not constantly on edge about having to cut-corners just to remain competitive on pricing, which in turn, allows them to focus more on quality.

Gregg says advertising jobs on Monster is a huge waste of money and ineffective because your competitors are out on Monster as well, and Jason says if Monster is the marketplace where candidates are, why would you stop advertising there just because your competitors are also there?

I think both gentlemen have valid points. Gregg is right, employers can eliminate “monster fees” by using search engine optimization techniques. The idea, however, isn’t exactly ground-breaking and does not take into the account the real reason why companies continue to post on job boards.

So I see Jason’s point of view. Monster is the market and if that’s where the customers are, that’s where you should sell, regardless of whether they also carry your competitors’ products as well.

I’m going to take Jason’s point of view and take it one step further. The Internet is The Market, and job boards such as Monster, Dice, etc, are retailers. If you’re a farmer (using Jason’s analogy), you can sell directly to your consumers by having them come directly to your farm, or you can take your products to your consumers via the various distribution channels.

But yeah, wouldn’t it be nice if we just eliminated the X dollars spent on job boards?

True, you can use SEO techniques, but that would be an overly simplified solution.

The thing is, most employers do not have the kind of candidate traffic that job boards get, and even with SEO techniques, it would still be quite difficult to beat job boards when it comes to search results. The explanation itself also comes down to SEO. These boards simply rank higher, they have more content, they have more inlinks, they advertise aggressively to attract the kind of traffic that they do. I do believe that vertical job search engines will change the way this all plays out, but I don’t think job boards are going away anytime soon, either.

Again, it comes down to candidate traffic. This is where they are, and while employers are definitely employing SEO tactics to attract candidates to their own job listings on their own websites rather than Monster’s, from an employment branding perspective, it’s still not a bad idea to have a presence in those job boards.

Photo from Dan Lyon’s Blog

I receive a lot of comments from my friends, family, and co-workers about my Facebook usage. The comments are usually in the vicinity of “wow…you sure are on Facebook a lot!” I also get “do you even work?”

Oh…where does a single mom find the time to maintain and develop websites, develop new online services, monitor traffic, blog, watch Woz on Dancing With The Stars, AND be on Facebook all day?

Here’s my coming out post. I have Oompa Lumpas who impersonate me on Facebook. They comment, click “like” on people’s pictures and links every so often, send out links and update my status every five minutes.

Kidding.

Alright. Here goes:

How To Look Like You’re On Facebook All Day When You’re Really Working.

First, you’re going to need some basic equipment. I have a Windows desktop computer at work, a Macbook Pro for my mobile office (aka the kitchen table, the playground, Chuck E Cheese), and my iPhone.

I have quite a few social networking accounts that I have feeding into Facebook, but I do have a few people in mind writing this post, so I will keep it down to my most commonly used accounts: Twitter, and this blog. 

Basically, every time I post on Twitter, it shows up as my Facebook status. You can link up these two accounts by installing the Twitter application on Facebook. 

Now, I use several Twitter clients so that I am not on Twitter all day. I send tweets and monitor the people I’m following from my Windows desktop using Twhirl, from my Macbook Pro using Twitteriffic, which also has an iPhone version that I use. If I’m driving, I use an application called Vlingo, a voice-powered app that allows me to update my Twitter status by speaking, instead of typing. On 3G dead zones, I send text messages to 40404 to update Twitter.

I’ll stop there. My Twitter usage is a post in itself.

To stay visible in my contacts’ Facebook feeds, I have to make sure that content goes in there. An easy source of content is my blog, which is a self-hosted Wordpress blog. To automatically publish my blog posts on Facebook, I use the Wordbook plugin. You can also do this on a Wordpress.com blog by using the Wordpress application on Facebook.

Knowing that my 675 friends on Facebook want to see pictures of my dog or stuff that I did over the weekend, I post a lot of it. The amount of pictures I post on Facebook has some people thinking that I sit around uploading pictures all day. I do this a couple of ways. When I’m outdoors, I usually take a picture, go on the Facebook app on my iPhone, then post it from there. That takes about two seconds, which is not bad if you’re posting one or two pictures. If I have a batch of pictures that I am uploading, I plug in my iPhone or my camera to my Macbook Pro, which automatically opens up iPhoto. I “select all” the pictures from the “last import” and export them using the Facebook exporter for iPhoto. The application takes you to Facebook for approval and that’s it.

Links are also a great way to add content to your Facebook profile. I read the New York Times online and I browse the web using Chrome on Windows and Safari/Firefox on my Mac. All my browsers are equipped with the “Share on Facebook” tab, which allows me to post links and comment on them while I’m browsing. Easy. For all you Mozilla people out there, there’s also an excellent add-on  for Facebook. 

Of course, the real value of Facebook for me is in consuming content that my network shares with me through their feeds. I usually reserve the content consumption for the morning (when I read my news and RSS feeds), at night, and when I’m stuck in traffic. I live and work in Silicon Valley, which means a good portion of my day is spent literally sitting in a non-moving car on this high-performance parking lot we call Highway 101. Commenting, writing on people’s walls, is usually done on my iPhone.

As you can see, you can definitely incorporate your social networking activities into your everyday tasks. With the proper equipment, applications and setup, you too can look like you do nothing but “Facebook all day” while you’re really working.

Any guesses?

He poses the question, why haven’t we found 1500-word postings about how much we love a particular enterprise app? I know there are VMS vendors that come to this blog, and if you sell one, what do your users rave about?

Before I go further, we should probably define the term “user.” Which cross-section of your users do have in the front of your mind when developing your software? Your clients? Your hiring managers? Your suppliers?

Lest I get labeled again as the Anti-VMS (which, I’m not…I would **love** to love VMS, I just haven’t found The One To Love yet), Michael Nygard’s post is about enterprise apps in general and lists the following reasons why users aren’t writing love essays about them.

They serve their corporate overlords, not their users.
VMS is sold on streamlining processes and also reporting capabilities. Perhaps it simplifies it for purchasing organizations. Perhaps its reporting capabilities give a sense of control. However, at the kernel of it all, is the hiring process. Are requisitions distributed more efficiently because of VMS? Are vendors submitting the best candidates, at the shortest time possible, because of VMS? Can you answer this from your suppliers’ point of view? Remember, your suppliers are your users, too.

They only do gray-suited, stolidly conservative things.
The post uses the example of corporate instant messaging. Let’s apply this to VMS. Oh no, she didn’t! You might say. Are you really talking about allowing staffing vendors talk to hiring managers? Yeah huh. It seems the whole idea is to make sure that doesn’t happen. Sure, vendors can get annoying, and yeah they tend to do “backdoor” stuff behind the VMO’s back, but if communication between right vendors (ie, the ones with legitimate reqs) and hiring managers is allowed, there would be no need to go behind the VMO’s back. Vendors don’t enjoy sneaking around. It’s exhausting, inefficient, and risky. But sometimes, a vendor’s gotta do to get the right information. So. How about it? How about something radical like built-in instant messaging client for VMS? Complete with “ignore” button. Heck. A vendor asks way too many stupid questions over IM? A vendor pings a hiring manager “just to say hello?” IGNORE. Too many “ignores” on a vendor? Kick them out.

Nygard goes on some more, but let me ask the question again. Do you have a VMS that you just absolutely love? We’re not talking VMO’s, just the software. Do you love it enough that you might blog about it? I’m not beyond writing about things I love. I’ve declared my love for all things Mac on many posts and around the blogosphere and yet I’m not being paid to do it, nor is Apple promising me any business.

I’m rambling here, but let me pose a question. How can the staffing industry create passionate users?

I watch the traffic on this blog and most are still coming here looking for information: “who are so and so’s clients?” Let’s get beyond this for a little bit. If you are a VMS company and you were to find that coveted list of VMS users here…what would you tell those potential clients? What makes you so awesome? What are your users raving about?

Let’s take a closer look at what HireMeNow.com (or doesn’t) offers.

For candidates:

I’m not aware of temporary staffing firms that ask you to pay for an application. Without candidates/applicants, our databases are worth nothing. In fact, we go through great lengths to seek candidates out. A candidate should never have to pay a staffing firm to sign up, not even to utilize a service such as getting a video resume done.  It is counterintuitive for a temporary staffing firm to charge people for signing up.

Temporary staffing firms, their recruiters, in particular, are your advocates. They are not there to make your life difficult. They screen your resumes, copy-edit them in case you missed any typos or grammatical errors, reformat them in their clients’ preferred formats, submit them through their clients’ preferred methods, prep you before you meet their clients in an interview. They can give you insights about their clients that you would not otherwise get just posting your resume out on a job board.

The website features a testimonial from a Global VP of Human Relations: 

“I never understood why I had to rely on a temp agency to pick workers for me - I would rather do it myself - online, faster, cheaper, better. With HireMeNow.com, now I can.” 

42% is TOO EXPENSIVE FOR A PAYROLL SERVICE
At 42% mark-up, you are taking on the recruiting process and just having HireMeNow payroll the workers. This option is actually available through your temporary agency, at a much LOWER cost. I am willing to bet that there are agencies out there who would love to payroll a worker that you found yourself at 32%, way less than the 42% that HireMeNow is quoting. For a much lower rate, a temporary agency will even do a background check for you. It would cost you a “small fee” on top of HireMeNow’s 42%. 

Heck, depending on the position, some will even recruit at 42% mark-up. They will source, qualify, interview, coordinate interviews between you and your candidate, do hire paperwork, etc. All that, for 42% mark-up. If you can’t find an agency that will do that, send me an e-mail. 

While it might seem “faster, cheaper, better” to hire a temporary worker yourself, there are many things to consider. Is it really cost-effective for an executive to spend time sourcing, qualifying, interviewing, recruiting, on-boarding a temporary worker? Perhaps, for one or two contingent workers. But even then, as I said, 42% is way above industry standards. 

Am I missing totally missing the point about HireMeNow?