Convenience Store Employee Scheduling and Labor Management

By Anthony Presley

Even in a thriving economy, optimizing the workforce and reducing labor costs at convenience stores is an important task. Unfortunately, it is complex, time consuming, and tedious. And essential. Over-staff your c-store and you lose money. Under-staff your convenience store and you lose customers.

Luckily, TimeForge can cut the time spent doing routine but time-consuming tasks like building a convenience store employee schedule from hours to seconds. And it gives you the tools you need to fine-tune your work force and reduce costs with attendance management controls.

Luckily, TimeForge can drastically improve the scheduling process while increasing profits at your convenience store. Scheduling time can be reduced from hours to seconds. And TimeForge gives you the additional tools needed to fine-tune your work force and reduce labor expenses with time and attendance controls.

And all of time required to build the schedule and make changes doesn't consider the enforcement of the labor schedule, monitoring attendance, and forecasting labor costs. All are vital in any economy to increase profits at a convenience store business.

But with TimeForge you can:

- Build employee schedules for one or many locations - in seconds.

- Approve and export payroll to many popular payroll providers - such as Quickbooks, SurePayroll, ADP, Paychex, and CompuPay - with a single click.

- Notify staff members instantly of any schedule changes or newly created schedules by email or text message - removing all employee confusion and missed shifts while reducing turnover.

- Notify employees of schedules or schedule changes by text message or email - eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts while reducing turnover.

- Stop early clock ins and late clock outs or buddy punching to provide immediate labor cost controls.

- Provide remote access for employees to view schedules, review timecards, request time off, change availability, swap shifts with other staff members, and receive daily schedule alerts via email or text messages.

- Provide remote access for employees to view work schedules, request time off, review timecards, change work availability, swap shifts with other staff members, and receive daily schedule alerts via email or text messages.

TimeForge does more than build effective, efficient employee schedules quickly for your convenience store. TimeForge is also a powerful tool in workforce optimization for c-stores. With TimeForge you can also:

- Automatically schedule employees with the strongest skills during your busiest times.

- Notify you of potential labor shortages for your c-store business.

- Monitor your labor costs - in real time on the computer, Facebook, iPhone, or Blackberry.

- Provide access to more than forty labor reports for monitoring labor costs, and reviewing schedule trends.

- Reduce your turnover - use your current staff more efficiently.

- Try out various "what-if" scenarios to visualize staffing changes - without losing your original schedule.

- Increase store profits by 3-5% at each location.

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for convenience stores, providing one-click seamless access to employee scheduling, time and attendance, and payroll reports. Use the whole TimeForge product suite, or only the parts that your business requires.

Time is money. If you're still not convinced, read what other TimeForge users say about the time and money they've saved with this powerful employee management software here. Or sign up today for your free trial and see for yourself. - 32171

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How Is Social Networking Effective For Recruiters?

By Amit Bhagria

How much social media or networking helping organizations to hire talented people? We find many recruiters nowadays effectively using social networking for hiring the best people for an organization. Now the question which needs to be answered is on whether this social networking can replace other recruiting tools.

Social networking these days is considered to be one of the most sought out solution for sourcing and recruiting employees in an organization by recruiters. However, the potential that lies in social networking still needs to be tapped to a greater extent.

Social networking have been successful to a handful of recruiters but that doesn't mean it would be beneficial to all. Organizations need to figure out the answer to whether is it the right time to diverge from conventional tools to social networking approach as more and more recruiters preach and confirm social networking to be the best solution in the market these days.

What are the thoughts that go in people's mind when they are online and on social networking sites? We need to study how this behavior affects the online networking platform.

Psychology of the Recruiter or Head Hunter:

The hiring consultant is confident that as soon as he joins any social media site he is definitely going to get an access to an immense pool of talented professionals. On the various communities or specific networking groups he is confident to find people related to his industry or market. To check whether this statement is true we have to analyze what people want or think when they interact with one another on the social arena.

Thought that goes in people's mind when they join social networking websites:

They want to keep their existing social connections alive. It is been found that most of the people socialize online to retain and strengthen their relations which are offline. To build on their social capital and connections. Social capital refers to the value individuals can extract in terms of information, personal connections, interests etc from their online buddies or connections. Very few individuals have been found investing in building social connections to talk about career prospects or to tap upon any employment opportunity in the future. Here I am not mentioning sites like LinkedIn or Recruting Blogs which are solely dedicated for professional interactions. What seems on the most of the social arena is that people are more interested in sharing their life activities to an outer world rather than networking with others which prevents them from exploiting other possibilities of social networking.

The usage behavior here suggests us that:

Individuals network size is quite small in comparison to their overall connection strength.

Men responses are less if we compare it to any women. Six or more will be an average number of people with whom a female will be interacting while a man would manage to handle four at any point in time. The mixing of people with common background or profession is seen less as major talk revolves around sharing personal details and achievements. You are also not able to judge where that individual is working or what are his qualifications as people tend to avoid mentioning such details on their social networking profile. You are also not sure whether he has been successful in his profession or what his current employment status is till date.

The study above influences our decision and challenges us to revisit and analyze whether it is beneficial to judge people on the various so called social networking sites. Much deeper study is required before declaring this tool to be complete in all aspects.

How much successful is Social Media?

Hardly have we come across people chatting on how they will like their career to be or what competencies they need to build upon for future growth. Location details can be found but beyond this you really have to work hard to take out information. The only way left is to scrutinize and shortlist people on the basis of the information which is available. The consultant at times rejects people as they are not smart or are more fun lovers as perceived from their personal photographs attached to their profiles. This may lead to rejecting worthy guys and which is not appropriately justified.

How Do You Verify Online Details Of Candidates?

Assuming that a recruiter has finally shortlisted few candidates based on his assumptions and information provided on a networking site. The challenge lies here is on the verification of information collected to assess an individual's background. There are very few resources like LinkedIn to rely upon to confirm the details shared by an individual in his profile. It is advisable to be more cautious on relying on social media at this point.

Efforts and work needs to be done at both ends in order to take decisions on the social media information. Whether this would be the next generation recruitment tool, I am doubtful. - 32171

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Psychiatrist Jobs are Being Offered More Benefits

By Adriana Noton

Psychiatrist jobs are becoming more and more in demand, which is driving up the salary and benefit packages employers are willing to offer for them. In 2001, the National Mental Health Association found that the USA was losing as much as $113 billion dollars to the costs of untreated and mistreated mental illnesses, faulty or poorly planned mental health spending programs, discriminating business practices and fear and misunderstandings of functioning individuals with mental health issues in the workplace. With so much loss from a lack of understanding and treatment of mental illness in the USA, it's no surprise there's an ongoing effort to bolster the industry. With more than thirty thousand practicing psychiatrists in America, though, you may think that the market is pretty well saturated. That's simply not the case. In 2002, 40% of psychiatrists in the USA were over the age of 55 and headed towards retirement. And with more than an estimated 50 million Americans suffering from a mental disorder in any given year, the demand for psychiatric care is not likely to slacken.

A lot of other factors are contributing to the high demand for psychiatrists. Growing population density, higher average educational achievements that result in increasing numbers of high income families, a rapidly growing health care industry, longer life expectancies and an ever expanding understanding of the field all lend to psychiatric care becoming more and more commonplace.

Psychiatrists who operate private practices are feeling the benefits of these circumstances in much the same way that other successful entrepreneurs would, that is, in an increasing demand for their trade. Employers of psychiatrists, on the other hand, are offering higher wages and more comprehensive benefits packages, not only to attract new talent to the field but also to keep existing psychiatrist jobs well taken care of.

In today's market psychiatrists can not only expect a stable work environment and a considerable salary, but also a wide variety of employee benefits. While paid holidays, vacation time, sick leave, medical, dental and vision coverage are all fairly standard, many employers are also offering pension plans and a diverse array of deferred retirement funds complete with a percentage of employer matched contributions. Some employers go even farther in offering certain types of paid professional insurance, paid licensing fees, and various other benefits.

Aside from increasing employee benefits, psychiatry is an incredibly rewarding field to begin with. Most psychiatrists work in a calm, quiet environment, contribute daily to other people's health and welfare, and are able to learn and grow professionally all while sustaining a more than modest income of between one and two hundred thousand dollars annually. While psychiatrists certainly endure some stress involved in being exposed to their patients's sufferings and personal challenges, this stress is often far outweighed by their ability to substantially contribute to those patient's quality of life. Psychiatry is a generous and nurturing practice at its core, and while it takes a person who is deeply invested in the care of others to be successful in the field, it's incredibly fulfilling in its own right to the correct kind of person.

With such a growing demand for psychiatrists, and such a diverse offering of benefits, committing the time and money necessary for the proper education and training to enter the field is a better investment now than ever. - 32171

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Career Fair Strategy - Executive Networking with Company Representatives to your next job

By Jason Lee

In addition to understanding the fair's twist on resumes, you will need to hone your job-fair-networking skills to master the job fair. While job fairs are certainly great opportunities to drop resumes at many companies, they require more than just printing out fancy papers and leaving them with recruiters. You will have to interact with representatives in order to leave your resume, and you want to leave a good, lasting impression.

Networking at a job fair involves the process of getting to know representatives and hopefully obtaining their contact details. Job fair attendants need to go through this networking process because representatives want to know if they are good fits for the company. Showing that you are a good fit is hard to do on a resume alone, so you need to take it into your own hands to show that you mesh with the company representatives present at the fair. To get thing a good handle on what companies and fairs are coming up, take a look at JobConcierge.com where they have a comprehensive list of career expos and networking events.

Before you leave your resume with a recruiter, you ought to look for any senior people (or hiring managers) that came to the fair. All representatives are great, of course, from human resources to entry-level employees, but you really want the higher-ups with influence to remember that you are a great fit for the job. At the end of the day, they are the ones who will be making decisions about who to hire.

Additionally, before speaking with the representatives, you should have prepared a short statement (thirty seconds to one minute) about your background, why you would be a good fit, and why you are enthusiastic about working for the company. This statement does not need to be memorized, but you will need to have some outline of what you want to say to the recruiters before you go. You want the representative to know that you aren't just there to drop resumes at every stand, desperately hoping to catch any interview thrown your way. It would be a good idea to find a friend before the fair and practice your response to the question, Can you tell me a little about yourself? Other possible questions may revolve around your potential career plans or past work experience.

Researching in advance also opens up opportunities beyond simply sounding well-read and intelligent. For example, if you know from your research that the company is starting new projects or selling new products in China, you will be able to let representatives know that you are fluent in multiple dialects of Chinese, have worked in China before, and can help execute their project or product launch by serving as a first line of interaction with the native workforce (but only if this is all true). You?re doing everything you can to leave a long-lasting, favorable impression with company representatives.

Before you go to your next job fair, don't forget to thoroughly practice, research, and prepare yourself. We recommend you review JobConcierge.com for career advice and more job fair information. This is the best way to make sure you leave a good impression with each representative at the fair. If you're fortunate, your networking preparation (and strong resume) will result in the start of a new career. - 32171

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