Case Study: Sean Gilligan Executive International Recruitment

Running an international company as an owner manager puts additional pressure on my time. If I’m not careful I can end up working not only European time zones but also American time zones. Clearly this is unsustainable and so smarter ways of working need to be sought.

In business process engineering, there are value added steps and steps which do not add any value. Trying to schedule telephone interviews is bad enough in the UK as you have to come to an amenable time, which is appropriate for both the candidate and for the recruiter. More often than not these telephone interviews happen early on a morning or later on during the evening after working hours. This is anti sociable for both the candidate and the recruiter especially if they have young families. If you add international time zones to this as a dimension scheduling telephone interviews becomes even more complex.

This is why I have approached telephone interviews in a different way. If you do away with the need for a set date and time you can create both a better customer experience for the candidate and greater flexibility to you as the hiring manager. Probably about 1 year ago I started using voice messages as a means to recruit talent.

Reading a CV can give clues and guidelines as to whether a candidate is a good fit for your business in terms of their skills and experience. Turning that CV into an audio profile gives you further insights to a person’s proficiency in oral communication. Of course, your audio can be played back and shared with other managers within your organisation which means you don’t have to repeat yourself on a person’s credentials.

Below are five simple steps on how I use voice messaging and audio profiles to filter through my talent pipelines. By using such a technique you can speed up your time to hire and Sound Branch will improve the quality of hires within your organisation.

Step 1 – Thank the candidate for applying and ask them to download the Sound Branch app and to send you a voice note by searching for your name.

Step 2 – You receive notifications via the Sound Branch app from prospective candidates.

Step 3 – You listen to the voice messages and elevator pitches and the best candidates are invited to create an audio profile.

Step 4 – You listen to the audio profile and the best candidates are shared with other managers involved in the hiring decision making process.

Step 5 – Once all hiring managers have fed back their thoughts you can then schedule either a Skype interview or indeed a face to face interview.

So why does this approach work? Firstly, voice messaging makes interviews time independent rather than dependent. Furthermore, the recruitment process instead of being a quick telephone interview is spread out over a number of days or perhaps even weeks giving more time to both the candidate and the recruiter. This means you can look at how quickly people get back to you, and their tone and inflection can be measured. All of this can be played back so no details go missing. Afterall bad hiring can cost a business more than not hiring at all! By eliminating the telephone interview this is a more productive way to filter your talent pipeline whilst keeping a work life balance in check.

With the rise of the gig economy and more knowledge workers based at home how do you maximise team productivity and connectivity?

Formal online meetings have their place and are necessary for various cadence within your business. However, more often than not these meetings interrupt the flow of work being delivered for your customers.

With the rise of voice technology including smart speakers, connected cars and mobile phones more businesses are adopting bring your own device policies within the workplace.

Sound Branch is a new platform which enables you to connect to your workforce using the power of the voice. Legacy systems including ERP, CRM are complimented by this voice technology. Sound Branch acts as the glue keeping your remote workers engaged and informed.

The Sound Branch business console allows you to add, edit and delete users, create groups, change settings and gives you business insights with conversational analytics. You can also search all the conversations going on in your business.

All good business leaders know that you must get your people talking. Sound Branch using modern technology enables this  and saves time and money in the process.

Using Sound Branch we believe you can reduce your email consumption by up to 40% and reduce meetings by up to 50%. We’ve all been there when an online meeting or conference call does not start on time. These situations can be mitigated entirely. Sound Branch allows you to have just in time meetings and all the meeting minutes are automatically transcribed for approval and distribution as soon as the meeting closes.

Your business branding and corporate look and feel can be applied to Sound Branch to make it seamlessly integrate with your intranets, G Suite, Office 365 and salesforce.com platforms. This gives users a seamless experience to your audio messaging forums.

We can all speak faster than we can type. The voice gives you a motion and therefore allows you to really understand how your teams are feeling. Understanding all of this means you can drive performance, engagement, happiness and therefore productivity.

Finally, as all businesses are people businesses you can use Sound branch as a candidate management system. External candidates are asked to create a Sound Branch account and then to create an audio profile. You can then play each candidates’ skills education and experience instead of doing a traditional telephone interview.  Again this means you can save lots of time by avoiding telephone interviews. Between interviews candidates can be kept warm and feedback can be given to unsuccessful applicants. Candidates can also give you references through audio testimonials.

In the fight for talent Sound Branch allows you a new way to acquire talent and keep your talent. This point of difference will give you a competitive advantage in your marketplace.

So what’s stopping you get started today with Sound Branch voice notes today and accelerate your business with the speed of sound.

Create a Sound Branch Business Account

Today we’re launching Sound Branch, featuring a new mobile app built for effortless podcast creation (free for Apple iPhone and Android Phones), a brand new website soundbranch.com with creation tools and audio inbox, and unlimited podcast hosting that’s 100% free. It’s the easiest way to get started podcasting.

Podcast are now in the mass market but like radio podcasts are difficult for people to create. Sound Branch makes podcast creation easy letting you focus on your creativity. Current podcasting tools are expensive, difficult to use and confusing. Sound Branch simplifies podcasting and makes it social. Podcasts can be created for the public or can be created privately in groups.

So we built Sound Branch as a social audio platform for voice.

Sound Branch removes all of the difficulty of getting podcasts made and shared.

With a new mobile app, web tools, and 100% free podcast hosting for everybody, Sound Branch is the place to create podcasts you’re a professional or a beginner getting started out.

A new mobile app made for podcasting

Sound Branch’s free app for Apple iOS and Android designed for making a podcast, right from your phone. The moment you open up the app you are taken to the timeline where you can create seeds which are 10 second audio clips from which you other users can branch. Audio can be public and searchable on the timeline or can be put into private groups where only people you invite can listen. All audio is transcribed to text making it searchable.

Users on Sound Branch can send each other private 1 to 1 voice messages and all users can create audio profiles with their skills, experience, education and background.

All seeds and branches can have images attached making your audio come to life. There is now a new feature for building audio slideshow which can be shared and is a cheaper way of creating engaging multimedia over video. This can then be shared on major social media networks as Twitter cards or on Facebook and other platforms.

Easy to use web tools for making podcasting simple

With Sound Branch, you can now make or manage your podcasts with ease. The web tools sync seamlessly with our app, making it easy to switch between your desktop browser and mobile app. Start recording on your desktop and finish off on your mobile if you like.

There’s a lot you can do with the new web tools, including:

• Access your private audio inbox to listen to all your new messages
• View conversational analytics that let you know what people are talking about on public posts, private groups or in chats
• Manage all of your audio from the web and see how many people have listened to your clips
• Create audio slideshows for presentations

Sound Branch gives every user their own audio profile on the web.

Get started now!

If you’ve ever wanted to make a podcast, there’s really never been a better time to get started. No more dealing with the hassle of buying expensive equipment, learning confusing software, paying for file hosting or any of the other annoying aspects of podcast creation and sharing.

Sign up for your Free Sound Branch Account

Lots of people live on their inbox aiming for zero inbox and frantically reply to emails as soon as they arrive.

There are quicker and more efficient types of communication which are faster than email.  With email you can’t see who is online and it’s easy to get lost in nested threads.

Millennials think their email is slow and passive. In fact many millennials don’t check their email and only use it for official communication with external customers. For internal communication they’d much rather use WeChat, WhatsApp and similar messaging applications.

For quick discussions around important issues chat applications are far superior to traditional email. More and more people are favouring chat and voice applications to reduce their dependency on email and to save time.

Some people are still heavily dependent on email.  People email important documents to themselves as a means of archiving.  So the question is not how we eliminate email but how do we reduce our time on it when other applications are simply faster, quicker and easier to use.

Our email obsession starts first thing in the morning. Over half of people on the planet feel relieved when they get to zero inbox. The trick is to take people off email by using more effective types of communication.  Internal communication is a good starting point to take people away from email and on to other platforms such as voice messaging.  It’s much quicker for people to talk and listen than it is to type and read.

With more and more people checking their email on mobile phones other applications such as Sound Branch voice notes offer serious alternatives for richer types of communication.

You can sign up for a free Sound Branch account using the link below:

https://www.soundbranch.com/sign-up

You can access voice messaging via a web browser at soundbranch.com and mobile apps are available on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

Whether it’s smart toilets ordering extra toilet roll and improving the sanitation of facilities. Fridges which calculate when the food is going to expire and tells people in their homes. Or mirrors which you can speak to “mirror mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all!“.

Voice technology is here to stay and it’s predicted that less and less will be touching our screens and more and more will be talking to our smart televisions, smart homes, smart speakers and connected cars.

From saying “Hey Google to turn my heating on” at home or “Alexa open the garage door” these commands will become part of our daily lives. And in fact Alexa has programmed something called routines where by saying “Alexa I’m up” you can get your coffee machine to make a cappuccino, turn the lights on, play the news and turn the car engine on to heat the vehicle.

While some people might say this is plain lazy, it is undeniable that the lower value routine tasks can be eliminated to allow humans to focus on more creative, personal and largely higher value tasks, be that at home or at work.

Which leads me to the point around work. Again we see the consumer tech world overtaking the business tech world. Voice technology is much more prevalent within our homes than it is our businesses. This means businesses need to catch up with voice technology and cash in on the benefits.

Examples might include “Alexa play me my work schedule” or “Alexa book the board room for 10 AM”. “Alexa we run out of coffee” to order more or even better “Alexa order some coffee from Starbucks and deliver to City Exchange”.

Again some people might say this is eradicating the job of a personal assistant whilst others might proclaim that the personal assistance can focus on higher value tasks.

For the travelling salesman speaking to Alexa and other voice assistance in their cars is not only a safer way of driving but a productive way of preparing for meetings and following through with meeting minute actions. Instead of the travelling sales rep getting home late at night and having to type up his laptop notes into a CRM this will already be done!

Millennials might find adapting to this technology easy but other workers within organisations will need to learn the new lingo of Siri, Cortana, Alexa and of course Hey Google. People will need to change their habits to a voice first approach to technology is fast becoming a reality. Although I can’t see people talking to mirrors in communal toilets at work I can see video conferencing through voice activation speeding up connectivity and saving massive amount of time.

How often have we all been in meetings where the technology becomes part of the conversation? If the technology can blend into the background and become silent and unnoticeable we can then focus on the real business and real content of such meetings. After all the voices are much faster method of communication than the fingers.

When the voice technology becomes so powerful and our intent is understood more possibilities will become available. One example might be voice technology taking meeting minutes notes transcribing the voice to text and computing the decisions or actions needed. Automatically everyone who attended the meeting could then be informed.

We can now login to our banks using our voice apparently the human voice is a unique as our DNA. Whether the voice will take over as the next great bastion of IT remains to be seen. One unfortunate side effect voice technology is that some babies first words will now be Alexa or maybe Siri!

Sharing opinions on websites already exists through traditional website commenting forms and approvals by publishers. These comments could be a review of products or services to feedback on articles on websites. People want their opinions and thoughts to be heard more than ever. Text comments can be ambiguous.

More and more brands need to connect the online world with the offline world. Most websites have website comment functionality so the blog posts and other types of articles can receive user comments. Whilst this can drive user engagement when it comes to connecting emotionally with your end-users, voice comments have a distinct advantage.

A voice first approach to website comments means that your users can listen and engage with your community in a much richer way. It’s not what the user says but how they say it which matters.

All of this can lead to increased times on site, better user engagement and more customer referrals all of which are good for business.

With 67 million Americans now listening to podcasts on a monthly basis, voice notes on websites allow you to have a more intimate relationship between your brand and your customers.

Just one line of code from Sound Branch allows you to embed voice comments on your website. Sound Branch is free for all businesses to use and the code does not affect page loading times.

Not only can your end users post voice comments on your website, they can also enquire with you using their voice. Click to talk functionality is available so that enquiries can be rooted instantly to your sales and customer service teams. User generated voice comments on your website can build further trust between your brand and your users. Voice is more personal so your users connect better!

Further information can be found at soundbran.ch on how to retain users on your side with voice comments.

Have you ever thought about using Sound Branch on your smartphone with voice notes (like a PTT walkie talkie), text and photo? Here are 50 reasons for you to consider using the app:

1. 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020
2. Thinking more and speaking less is what all good leaders know
3. Allows people to prepare for answers
4. Playback conversations
5. No need to take meeting minutes
6. Reduce your reliance on email
7. Communicate across time zones avoiding anti-sociable meeting hours
8. Use conversational analytics to make data based decisions
9. Measure people’s engagement
10. Gives people a voice
11. Get people working outside of silos
12. Flatten the hierarchy
13. Communicate the way millennials want to be communicated to
14. Learn languages in new ways
15. Get to the customer truth
16. Use the wisdom of the crowd
17. Feel the empathy of the human voice
18. Evidence your work and build a portfolio
19. Create a podcast on the fly and in the cloud
20. No need to edit your audio because all audio is in 10 second chunks
21. No need to script your podcasts
22. Like and share people’s opinions
23. Post audio on Twitter using Twitter cards
24. Create podcasts for all your blogs
25. Interview people in an innovative new way
26. Create audio based frequently asked questions
27. Re-imagine the telephone interview
28. Create audio profiles with people skills and experiences
29. Conduct interviews over weeks not set days in time
30. Improve your communication skills and play back what you have said
31. Create voice memos and to do reminders
32. Understand it’s not what somebody says but it’s how they say it
33. Manage your Salesforce in an innovative way
34. Better connect your remote workforce
35. Increase transparency within your organisation
36. One in four Americans listen to a podcast on a monthly basis
37. Support staff at the point of need
38. Understand what’s going on at Ground Zero
39. Turn some meetings and online meetings into voice messaging conversations to save time
40. Transfer knowledge between people
41. Play your audio on Amazon echo and Google home devices
42. Allow people to connect using their voice in connected cars
43. One-to-many voicemails so people are kept in the know
44. Businesses and other organisations are starting to use messaging apps to speak to customers
45. Giving feedback is no longer a chore
46. A new innovative way to gain feedback versus the boring online survey form
47. Remove the time dependency and pressures of a phone call
48. Powerfully search for keywords in audio conversations
49. Understand the mood of your key stakeholders and their agenda
50. The voice is the best human organ of communication, not the fingers – get people looking up away from their smart screens!

It’s no secret that one of the biggest challenges in a business is effective team communication. Whether it’s poor feedback between a manager and an employee or how a business resolves its conflicts, there’s always room for improvement in how a company communicates.

The internal and external sales team at Webanywhere, an award-winning tech company based in Leeds, UK, has been using Sound Branch as a team communication messenger for the last six months. Here are the thoughts and experiences of some of the sales team.

“Sound Branch is a quick and easy way for myself to communicate with my field sales team, I can get an overview of their day without having to play phone tennis throughout the afternoon and into the evening. An email is not very personal and can be interpreted in the wrong way, audio allows people to detect your tone and mood. It also allows for regular short group catch ups, when working hours and travel commitments make team meetings impossible.”

Sam Dixon, Education Manager, Webanywhere

“The implementation of Sound Branch within Webanywhere has not only streamlined communication within our sales team but also inter-departmentally as we now have a quick and easy way to communicate feedback, issues and praise to all departments of the primary division. Our team is split between two different offices in two different countries. Sound Branch has enabled me to create strong relationships with colleagues I have never met, meaning we work as a far more efficient team, delivering a far stronger product.”

“A key benefit that I feel has drastically benefited our team is using Sound Branch to deliver our daily debrief. It means that everyone no matter where they are can relay how their day went, whether a success or not, passing on key information or knowledge gained to the rest of the team. This particularly helps new starters as they can draw from this knowledge base and learn tips and tricks from colleagues that have been succeeding in their role for a number of years.”

Luke Clarke, E-Learning Consultant, Webanywhere

“Sound Branch has helped us to develop a convenient, consistent foundation of communication for the team. Before, we’d have to wait until people were in the office to hear what’s new – restricting us to idle chatter. Now, we get personalised insight on how everyone’s doing each day, paving the way for our team to learn from each other’s perspectives. Up until you try it, you don’t realise how simple it is – I’d have never expected the voice was the ‘next step’ for social media at work. It really shows just how much you can learn in so little time. For us, it’s redefined how long ten seconds actually is.”

Dan Boyd, Business Development Manager, Webanywhere

“Sound Branch has been a pivotal tool used company wide for the past 6 months. During that time communication has been massively increased worldwide connecting our company offices around the world. With a wide range of uses like end of the day debriefs, brainstorming branches and private voice notes, communication between members of staff has never been easier and more efficient. Not only is it incredibly easy to use it also has a professional look and feel that fits in with any business. Sound Branch is a must have in any business where communication is key. I highly recommend it to anyone.”

Michael O’Donnell, Business Development Manager, Webanywhere

“Sound Branch has changed the way that we communicate, here at Webanywhere for the better. Innovation is easily summarised with this quote ‘There’s a way to do it better’ – I believe Sound branch is the key to improving corporate communication, not only on a small scale but it has application for every level. The 10 seconds it allows, makes each message concise and informative, it allows no room for misguidance or bumble. The public page is a perfect home for the learning animal, branching the user into a world of information and curiosity. Plant your own seed and watch it grow, as the many users all with a passion for growth, comment and leave their ideas. Sound Branch has become the foundation on which our sales communication is built on and i look forward to seeing it compliment other companies, as it has ours so well.”

Jordon Bolton, E-Learning Consultant, Webanywhere

The ability of Webanywhere to communicate with Sound Branch was crucial to their success. The app dramatically improved the quality of communication between sales executives and management, which led to increased effectiveness and efficiency.

As the ultimate communication solution Sound Branch can help you transform your business. Get in touch with us today.

When it comes down to it, a business is only as good as the relationships it fosters, the quality of the conversations and the expectations that are set.

If you work on the basis that you recruit the right people who fit your organisation and build appropriate relationships, and that your staff handbook and objectives set the management’s expectations and those of your customers, then all that’s left is the quality of the conversations.

Now when it comes to conversations you can look at their depth and breadth. A deep conversation, more often than not, will be face-to-face and one to one. You probably can’t have a deep conversation by email or on the phone; you need to see the whites of their eyes!

When it comes to considering the breadth of conversations, many people are likely to be dancing around emails or jumping from one meeting to another, either virtually online or face-to-face.

Now anything that can save time is worth money – not only to a corporation – but also to the individual because they will have more time to focus on other work.

We’ve all had experience of attending meetings that don’t start on time because the technology isn’t working; we may spend more time organising and rescheduling a meeting than the meeting itself. And, of course, the first question to ask when planning a meeting is do we really need it?

Whether we are wasting time trying to empty our inboxes or wasting time in unnecessary meetings which drag on, there has to be a better way!

You will have read in the press the great success that Slack has had with teams and latterly whole organisations. Slack is great for both keyboard warriors and introverts in organisations. It’s often adopted by a small team in IT and then through ‘land and expand’, makes its way to other parts of the organisation.

However, the problem with Slack is that it doesn’t convey people’s’ emotions. You’ve got the team communication in a timeline which reduces email but you don’t have the team’s temperature, their feelings or their emotions.

And of course in communication isn’t just what somebody says, it’s how they say it that matters. Just as emails can be misconstrued so can Slack text messages. Furthermore, some people are just sick of emails or people who avoid verbal conversations hiding behind emails.

In enters Sound Branch to save the day. Top management prefer face-to-face communication and want to hear somebody’s voice. Phone calls are old school and you still have the issue of pinning a person down to a time slot similar to trying to organise a meeting. Sound Branch leverages the idea of voicemail and brings it into the 21st century. Where traditional voicemail is one to one, its digital equivalent can also be one to many allowing wider communications, thereby eliminating the need for long email chains and threaded conversations.

Sound Branch has particular value in solving the problem of field sales communication. Before a sales meeting a sales rep can listen to audio messages to prepare themselves. After the sales meeting they can record voice notes on Sound Branch and pass them to the CRM to avoid having to type the meeting notes later.

Sales managers and directors can quickly interact with their field teams to understand what opportunities are surfacing and what problems might be occurring. Sound Branch enables your sales people to have conversations they wouldn’t ordinarily have.

Slack might be great for team communication but for sales teams, it’s not fit for purpose. CRMs are useful for tracking companies, contacts and opportunities but they don’t adapt to the natural way a salesperson communicates which is with their voice.

The best salespeople are hopeless when it comes to administration. As a team communication messenger, Sound Branch allows sales forces to play to their strengths by using their voice to record and capture all the opportunities keeping customers, colleagues and management happy in the process. Sound Branch can be used to level the hierarchy, get people working outside silos and bring great transparency to organisations.

Learn more by visiting:

https://www.soundbranch.com

The sales process is more complex than it has ever has been, with the rising use of the internet, consumers are more knowledgeable about your product or service than they ever have been. This trend is putting a strain on the modern sales professional. How do they keep up to date with the latest trends, how do they acquire knowledge faster about their products, what are the challenges their clients are facing?

In fact, the modern day consumer has researched your product or service that much that 60% of the buying decision is already made before they connect with your sales professionals.

‘’The modern sales professional needs knowledge at their finger-tips which is faster than ever.’’

Businesses are starting to leverage sales enablement tools to support their sales teams in the sales process. Unfortunately, a lot of these tools are focused on the Customer Relationship System, effectively a bunch of databases with special reporting and fields to type in information about your clients.

Are we missing the learning angle here?

Sales enablement is about providing information, content and tools to allow sales teams to perform better.

According to Shalina Mitha, Head of Global Solution Marketing at SAP;

“Having powerful tools at their fingertips, anywhere, on any device, allows sales professionals to keep the customer at the center of their focus, which is the secret to customers becoming loyal advocates of your brand.”

Providing this information in real time can make the difference between winning and losing in sales, especially with larger and more complex sales processes.

Breaking down the silos

A common problem for business is the information silos in sales and marketing. A recent report published on Forbes, found that 87% of companies with below average revenue results had poor sales and marketing alignment. Businesses are using sales enablement tools to break down the barriers between marketing and sales teams.

Using sales enablement tools, sales and marketing are able to;

• Provide client insights
• Keep up to date about product updates and promotions
• Ensure the team is communicating in real time

Furthermore, the Forbes research found that sales enablement tools were the top investment (55%) for boosting sales productivity, followed by analytics (54%), CRM (53%) and learning technologies (45%).

If you’re interested in sales enablement tools using audio messaging, you can make an enquiry via Sound Branch by clicking here.