Blog
September 2022 Jobs Report – Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Kellie Lail The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its September 2022 Report, so let's take a look at how employment fared over the last month. *Important Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that the September Employment Survey was completed before...
IdealCharities – Be the Match
By Kellie Lail IdealCharities is an IdealTraits employee-driven charitable fund, used to support charities and organizations important to our employees. Participating employees vote on a charity to support each quarter of the year. Be the Match was suggested to the...
Managing Someone with High Structure/Routine
By Mara Miller When it comes to your team's success, your role as their manager is vital. Business goals, priorities, training, communication, and understanding of each individual’s different personalities all play a part in creating a solid team. To make that happen,...
What is Salary Transparency and Why is it So Important?
By Eric Waldowski Not sure how to advertise your pay plan? Candidates are looking to compare opportunities while scrolling the job boards now more than ever. Make sure the right candidate takes the time to read and potentially apply to your ad. Indeed, among other job...
10 Reasons Candidates Are Ghosting You in Today’s Job Market
By Mara Miller You've decided to hire someone. You posted your job ad. You've gone through the process of reading resumes and reviewing assessments. Out of several candidates, one stands out. You invite them to schedule an interview. And then you wait. You...
August 2022 Jobs Report – Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Kellie Lail The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its August 2022 Report, so let's take a look at how employment fared over the last month. The great news: In August, employment rose by 315,000. with the unemployment rate rising to 3.7%, a 0.2% increase in...
Utilizing the Assessment to Baseline Your Staff
By Kellie Lail So you're looking to add a new member to your team. That's great! But how are you going to utilize the IdealTraits assessment to ensure that you are picking the best fit for your agency? First, you have to decide what you're looking for. Do you have a...
Improving My Ad’s Quality
By Kellie Lail Between the current state of unemployment and the competitive hiring market, you want to make sure you are doing everything you can to have the most successful hiring experience possible. There are many factors that go into hiring including making sure...
Advertising Work From Home Flexible Jobs
By Kellie Lail Remote work - it's all the rage these days, but what if you're okay with your employees working from home every now and then, but aren't ready to let them work fully remote? Since the beginning of the pandemic, work from home options have become...
July 2022 Jobs Report – Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Kellie Lail The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its July 2022 Report, so let's take a look at how employment fared over the last month. The great news: In July, employment rose by 528,000, narrowing unemployment to 3.5%. This means that in July, the United...
The Great Resignation Began Nearly 2 Years Ago and It Isn’t Slowing Down
By Mara Miller Unemployment Rates In April 2019, the labor market was on a positive and powerful course. Over 263,000 new hires were added as the unemployment rate was at an all-time low of 3.6%, much better than the expected rate of 3.8%. This was the lowest rate...
Hiring Process – Utilizing Hiring Stages
By Kellie Lail One of the most important things when it comes to hiring is making sure you are organized. You want to stay on track with where you are at in the hiring process with each candidate that you encounter, which can sometimes be overwhelming. This is where...
Important Updates to Indeed’s Salary Transparency Guidelines
By Kellie Lail If you are not yet aware, Indeed updated their Salary Transparency guidelines earlier this month with important changes that might impact you. If you haven't seen these updates yet, be sure to check them out here, but I will break them down for you in...
June 2022 Jobs Report – Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Kellie Lail The great news: In June, unemployment remained at 3.6% for the fourth month in a row since March 2022, maintaining its two-year low. As a reminder, at 3.6%, unemployment is still only a tenth of a percent away from its pre-pandemic historic low of 3.5%....
IdealCharities – Multiple System Atrophy
By Kellie Lail IdealCharities is an IdealTraits employee-driven charitable fund, used to support charities and organizations important to our employees. Participating employees vote on a charity to support for each quarter of the year. The Multiple System Atrophy...
Utilizing Your IdealTraits Career Page
By Kellie Lail One of the most important recruiting tools in the current market is ensuring that you have a positive online presence. Remember, candidates are interviewing you just as much as you are interviewing them. Having a positive online presence is going to...
Understanding Mid-Range Personality Scores
By Kellie Lail So you've learned how to identify a candidate's strengths and areas that could use some improvement when you're looking at high scoring personality results and low scoring personality results, but what happens when your candidate's results fall...
Understanding High Personality Scores
By Kellie Lail Are you reviewing assessment results, excited to see that your candidate has scored over 60 in some sections of their personality assessment? You might even be thinking "they must be amazing and perfect for any role I could possibly throw them into...
May 2022 Jobs Report – Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Kellie Lail The great news: In May, unemployment remained at 3.6% for the third month in a row since March 2022, maintaining its two-year low. As a reminder, at 3.6%, unemployment is still only a tenth of a percent away from its pre-pandemic historic low of 3.5%....
3 Benefits for Hiring Remote Employees
By Kelly Wilmott We understand hiring can be stressful, especially in the current market. You want to have the perfect candidate hired and bring in the $$$, well… yesterday. However, times have changed. Hiring has become extremely competitive, especially since the...
Understanding Low Personality Scores
By Kellie Lail When hiring a new employee, you probably have hundreds of questions about what to expect. How will you know where to set your expectations for their performance in your office? How will you be able to quickly identify their strengths and the areas where...
Staying Engaged with Your Candidates
By Eric Waldowski As the hiring market and landscape change, our hiring processes and ideology needs to change with it. Over the last two years, in particular, following up with applicants and staying engaged has become one of the most simple and least expensive ways...
April 2022 Jobs Report – Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Kellie Lail The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its April 2022 Report, so let’s take a look at how employment fared over the last month. The great news: Remaining at 3.6%, unemployment is still only a tenth of a percent away from its pre-pandemic historic...
Why Am I Getting Candidates from Out of State?
By Kellie Lail Hiring is always difficult whether it's sourcing candidates, creating job ads, sponsoring your ad, deciding which candidate is the right fit, or training your new hires. Are the job boards enough? How do I know what type of candidate I am looking for?...
I’m Here to Replace Jason Bourne
By Kellie Lail Is this where I apply to be an Insurance Assassin? Coming up with a job title can be tricky. I get it, you want to stand out and attract the right candidates to apply to your position. You want to show that you have a fun office personality and people...
IdealCharities – T.A.P.S.
By Jamie Zananiri IdealCharities is back with 4 new organizations they're supporting in 2022! IdealCharities is an IdealTraits employee-driven charitable fund, used to support charities and organizations important to our employees. Participating employees vote on a...
March 2022 Jobs Report – Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Jamie Zananiri The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released their March 2022 report, so let's take a look at how employment fared over the last month. The great news: At 3.6%, unemployment is only a tenth of a percent away from its pre-pandemic historic low of 3.5%....
Building a Better Benefits Section
Part three of our three part Building Better Job Ads series. See part one here. See Part two here. By Kellie Lail The best way to ensure your ad shows up in candidate's searches is by offering all the benefits you possibly can. Competition is incredibly high, now more...
Building Better Responsibilities and Requirements
Part two of our three part Building Better Job Ads series. See part one here. See part two here. By Kellie Lail On average, most candidates only spend about 15 seconds looking at an individual job ad. That's insane right? That means you only have a few seconds to...
Building a Better Job Description
Part one of our three part Building Better Job Ads series. Continue to part two here, and part three here. By Kellie Lail To ensure the candidates you want are finding your job ad, you want to make sure you're including the right keywords to make your job more...
February 2022 Jobs Report- Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Jamie Zananiri The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released their February 2022 report, so we're back to take a look at how employment changed over the last month. The great news: Unemployment is trending back down, now at 3.8% with 678,000 jobs added in February....
What Are You Missing Out On By Passing On Inexperienced Candidates?
By Jamie Zananiri For many employers, they see experience as a silver bullet that will solve their internal labor shortage. They may believe they want a "plug and play" candidate that knows it all is exactly what they need, or that they just don’t have time to train a...
Being Prepared To Conduct Interviews
By Ashley Nowicki Have an interview and not sure if you're fully prepared or not? There are a few things you can do to be prepared to have an interview with a candidate. Being completely prepared to have an interview will make the process go a lot smoother. If you're...
Salary Transparency
By Jamie Zananiri Something many employers struggle with is the idea of listing a salary range on their job ads. Some worry they may be less competitive than other similar employers in their area. Some worry it may cause contention in their office if current staff...
January 2022 Jobs Report- Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Jamie Zananiri The first Employment Situation for 2022 from the Bureau of Labor has been released, so let's take a look at how employment fared in January. The great news: January saw nearly half a million jobs added (467,000), a drastic contrast to the projected...
My Ad is Expired, What Happened?
By Kellie Lail Ads have the potential to expire after going 15 days or more in a row without receiving any applicants. Ads can also expire if you have received applicants on the ad, but it's been live for over 30 days and the applicant traffic has begun to slow down....
Increase Your Job Ad’s Visibility
By Kellie Lail Let's be honest; hiring is hard. Uncertainties about job board guidelines, candidate's needs, and even the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic make it even harder. We are here to help make it as easy as possible, but receiving an email letting you...
Always Be Hiring
By Faith Dawson Client Relationship Manager Lead Faith Dawson is back with another video post about our recommendation to Always Be Hiring! Those articles Faith mentioned are "Why You Should Always Be Hiring" by James Ient on LinkedIn, and Why Small Businesses Should...
December 2021 Jobs Report- Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Jamie Zananiri The December 2021 Employment Situation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been released, so let's see how we ended the year! The great news: Unemployment continues to trend down, now sitting at 3.9%-lower than at the start of the pandemic in...
IdealCharities – Oxford Community Memorial and Victims Fund
By Jamie Zananiri On November 30th of 2021, our close neighbor Oxford was rocked by tragedy. 4 students had their lives cut short, six other students and a teacher were injured, and the rest of the school and community were forever changed. It was an easy decision by...
What Should My Sponsorship Budget Be?
By Kellie Lail In the current market, competition is crucial.With so many people looking to add staff, the number of jobs showing in candidate’s search results can be overwhelming. This is where sponsoring your job ad can come in handy. When it comes to setting your...
Updates to Indeed’s Job Search and What this Means for You
By Kellie Lail Indeed has always made it clear that candidates are their number one priority. Because of this, all of their posting guidelines are in place to make the job search as seamless as possible for candidates. Recent updates to Indeed's platform have made it...
Job Ad Red Flags: Words & Terms To Avoid Using
By Ashley Nowicki If you're in the middle of writing a job ad and not too sure on what words or terms you're not supposed to use, you've come to the right place. Have you ever looked at an ad or a newspaper article and thought to yourself 'What were they thinking when...
November 2021 Jobs Report- Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Jamie Zananiri It's that time again! The November 2021 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been released, and here's what they found: The unemployment rate fell another .4% to 4.2%, for the sharpest one-year decline in unemployment since these...
Remote Work- Interview with Kevin Mlynarek
Featuring Eric Waldowski and Kevin Mlynarek Client Success Manager Eric Waldowski sits down with one of our IdealTraits founders and current Allstate Agency owner, Kevin Mlynarek, to discuss how his views on remote work have changed and how it has impacted his hiring...
What Candidates Want Most: Remote Flexibility
By Faith Dawson Retention Team Lead Faith Dawson here to share about candidates and remote work! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44adRDTktMQ&ab_channel=idealtraits Articles Cited: New Survey: 61% of Americans Would Take a Pay Cut to Keep Working Remotely The State...
Our Remote Office- How Sales Personalities Adjusted
By Jamie Zananiri When IdealTraits initially began having employees work remotely, our sales team was not expected to make the move out of the physical bullpen. The conventional wisdom was that it was vital to be in person in order to hear how other sales...
October 2021 Jobs Report- Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Jamie Zananiri The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for October 2021 has been released. The unemployment rate fell again, reaching a new Pandemic low, falling .2% from September to 4.6%. 531,000 jobs were added to the workforce in October,...
Where to Find Your Next Superstar: 5 Sources for Finding Top Talent
By Kelly Wilmott In the current hiring market, sourcing the ideal candidate has been no easy feat. Competition is high, open positions are plenty and job seekers have a monopoly over where they want to work. More so than ever, employers struggling to hire great talent...
Making Our Move To A Remote Office & A Nurturer’s Experience
By Jamie Zananiri Accelerated by the pandemic, many businesses have moved some, if not all, of their staff to working remotely. Now, the vast majority of job seekers (84%) are searching for remote flexibility in their next job opportunity. The benefits for remote...
Onboarding and Training in the Remote Space
By Eric Waldowski So you are planning to bring on more staff, and exploring the option of remote or flexible work for this new position. Though this is a change for some businesses, others have successfully hired and trained remote or remote flexible employees for...
September 2021 Jobs Report- Bureau of Labor Statistics
By Jamie Zananiri The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for September 2021 has been released. While the unemployment rate continues to inch closer to its pre-pandemic low, the rate is stagnating. Falling only by .4% from August, unemployment is...
IdealCharities: Outreach East
By: Jamie Zananiri IdealCharities is pleased to announce their 2021 Quarter 3 charity, Outreach East! IdealCharities is an IdealTraits employee driven charitable fund that supports organizations important to our employees. Outreach East was nominated by Sales...
Importance of Sending Rejection Letters
By Kellie Lail Rejecting candidates during the hiring process can be tough. Whether they’re just not the right fit for your company or their experience doesn’t fully prepare them for the role, there are a number of reasons that you might choose not to hire a...
Effective Phone Interviews
By: Ashley Nowicki You received some candidates and you're wondering what to do next. Sure, you can send an email to the candidate to show your interest. But calling candidates creates a good first impression of the interview process. Doing phone interviews helps you...
Building Your Online Presence
Social media is becoming more popular than ever, making it an even more powerful tool in getting to know people. Just as you want to learn more about the candidates that you're potentially going to hire, candidates want to learn as much about you and your agency as...
Why Candidate Engagement is Important
By Eric Waldowski You have created your ad, posted it online, and are beginning to receive applicants. What's next? The recruiting landscape has changed a lot over the last 2 years. Regardless of what kind of candidate market we find ourselves in, there is one very...
Why Experience Isn’t Always the Most Important Factor When Hiring
By Katie Thornsberry When searching for a new employee, a candidates' work experience is often the most important thing hiring managers are looking for. It gives insight on their career progression, what skills they already possess, and their general knowledge of...
LAAIA Conference
By Monica Donias The weekend of August 12th, my coworkers (Nolan and Raquel) and I were given an amazing opportunity to travel to Florida to participate in the Latin American Association of Insurance Agencies (LAAIA) convention. With this being my first convention...
5 Tips for Making Your Job Ad Content Competitive
By Katie Thornsberry There are many factors that go into hiring a new employee; What qualifications they need to have, what their pay will be , if they'll be in office or remote, what their training schedule will look like, etc. Then of course, creating a job ad to...
7 Tips for Remote Training
By Katie Thornsberry As the pandemic is winding down (..hopefully) many companies have come to realize the benefits of remote/flexible scheduling, and are embracing this change as part of their company culture. Also, having a choice of work environment and location is...
IdealCharities : Wounded Warrior Project
By Jamie Zananiri IdealCharities is pleased to announce their 2021 Quarter 2 charity, Wounded Warrior Project! IdealCharities is an IdealTraits employee driven charitable fund, used to support charities and organizations important to our employees. Participating...
IdealCharities : Detroit Dog Rescue
By Jamie Zananiri IdealCharities is pleased to announce their 2021 Quarter 1 charity, Detroit Dog Rescue! IdealCharities is an IdealTraits employee driven charitable fund, used to support charities and organizations important to our employees. Participating employees...