The Cavalry is Coming?

This is a favorite phrase of my favorite TV host, Larry Kudlow, on his daily show on Fox Business.

But, for those of us in the small business community, what does it mean?

First, I think Larry would say that the House and the Senate revert to Republican control.

But, but, but, to use Larry’s favorite phrase, what does that mean? We’ve still got Biden in the White House.

I think we could say there will be a reduction in oil drilling impediments, which will lower gasoline and other petroleum costs, which will slowly take some of the pressure off those costs continuing to rise. Crude prices have dropped a bit in just a week after we announced a cessation of buying oil from Russia.

If you depend on your goods from China, as many retailers and drug companies do, you might continue to have problems; most of our clients have sourced formerly China-produced goods into other countries, such as Thailand, India and Mexico.

I think there will be some decrease in silly regulations, but Dems are still running the agencies such as FERC, EPA, OHSA and DHS that impact your business lives.

What will happen to the millions of unfilled jobs? I find that number rather illusory, since we did a hiring campaign for 12 security guards, and got all the positions filled in two weeks, albeit by offering a somewhat higher wage than others. We’ve written elsewhere of using Indeed and Zip Recruiter, and the fact that we thought the latter was better. There’s another online job board, Monster, from which I’ve received some solicitations to be President of this or that, and that seems to work for higher level positions.

But, you will probably see some unavoidable increases in your raw materials costs, or your service costs, which you might not be able to recoup through price increases, despite what the pundits say. We’ve also written in this blog about how you can mitigate price increases.

So, and we will probably update this blogpost down the road, as we’re updating the one on stagflation, as the way becomes more clear.

 

 

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Indeed vs. Zip Recruiter

We recently did a hiring campaign for one of our clients for security guards, and we used both Indeed and Zip Recruiter.

Of the two, we preferred Zip Recruiter, because it turned out to be cheaper for the client, and we found Indeed a little deceptive in their claims.

First, both sites do offer free periods, and we were able to find enough qualified candidates inside the free period.

However, there was a qualifier: Indeed tried to charge us for each resume submitted, regardless of qualifications, which they didn’t disclose on their website, and $99 per resume passed through to the client. These two charges make Indeed quite pricey relative to Zip. Indeed did, however, refund the per resume charges when questioned, because they agreed they didn’t disclose them

Zip said straight away that their cost was $16 per day, regardless of how many resumes the site found for us. And they stuck to that. Using the same ad on Zip, results weren’t quite as good as Indeed, but there wasn’t enough difference to justify Indeed’s higher price.

As it turned out, our client also recruited from his existing employees, which produced as many applicants as either Zip or Indeed.

So, if you’re using one of the recruiting sites, read the fine print!