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What to Look for in a Property Management Company Before You Hire

What to Look for in a Property Management Company Before


What to Look for in a Property Management Company Before You Hire

Data shows that there are around 48.5 million rental units in the U.S.

If you own one of these rental units, you might find yourself struggling to cope with the responsibilities of being a landlord.

If that’s the case, you may want to think about hiring a property management company. In doing so, you can enjoy the benefits of being a landlord, without having to deal with the stress that comes with managing tenants.

This post will provide you with some tips on how you can find a reliable management company. Use these tips, and you’ll be able to lower the amount of stress you experience as a landlord.

Let’s begin!

Verify Their Reputation

Before working with a management company, you should try to learn as much as you can about the experiences of their clients.

One way you can do this is by reading the reviews posted by past and existing customers.

Perhaps the easiest way to find such reviews is by typing the name of the company into a search engine. You might even want to see if the management company has a presence on dedicated review sites such as Trustpilot.

Check Their Policies

When speaking to management companies, it can be a good idea to ask about their policies. In doing so, you can work out the steps that they’ll take, should any problems occur.

Such policies might describe how they’d deal with a tenant that’s taking a long time to pay rent. The policy might also describe how the company will keep the property in good condition. 

You also want to find out what the management company will do should an emergency occur outside of traditional office hours. 

When reviewing their policies, you should also inspect the rules they have in place when it comes to hiring.

It’s vital that you work with a company that provides their staff with sufficient property management training. Failure to verify this might lead to you working with a company that’ll cause a lot of problems down the line. 

Be Careful When Signing Contracts

You often have to sign up to a contract before you can use the services of a management company. However, it’s vital that you read the contract carefully before you sign anything.

This is because you might have to sign up for three to six months of service at a time. If you’re not aware of the terms of the contract, you might find yourself stuck with a management company, even if you’re unhappy with the service on offer.

That said, you can also use contracts to protect yourself from large, unexpected bills. The best way to do this is by including a clause that describes how much the company can spend without having to seek permission from you.

Time to Hire a Property Management Company?

If you use the tips in this post, you should find it easy to hire a property management company that’ll provide a good service.

You might be under a lot of stress, and so you might want to hire a management company as soon as possible. However, it’s critical you take your time, as hiring an incompetent company can create more problems than solutions.

Doing things this way will probably add a couple of months to the entire process. But if you want to work with the best, this approach is the right way to go about things.

Did you enjoy this post? If you did, make sure you read some of the other content on our blog!

Business

7 Reasons to Hire a Professional Office Cleaning Service

7 Reasons to Hire a Professional Office Cleaning Service


7 Reasons to Hire a Professional Office Cleaning Service

Your office is probably dirtier than you think. A study found office desks are 400 times dirtier than a toilet seat. You want your office to be clean and getting it as clean as it should be can be challenging.

A clean work environment leads to better productivity and employee satisfaction. Read about more great reasons to hire a professional office cleaning service.

1. Create a Healthier Workplace

You want your employees to be healthy. All these germs lurking around your office could lead to more sick days, which ultimately affect your productivity.

Allergies are another big reason people miss work. This is why it’s important to have a professional cleaning service to help reduce the buildup of allergens.

2. A Clean Office Makes a Good Impression

You want your customers and visitors to feel welcome in your building. It takes 3 to 5 seconds to start off on the right foot with your customers.

Having a clean office helps make a good impression. You can be sure your bathrooms and reception areas are clean when you use a professional cleaning company.

3. Reduce Stress

Having clutter and dirt can be stressful. You have more important things to do instead of cleaning. Leave the cleaning to the pros to help you feel refreshed and not worry about cleaning.

4. Higher Quality Cleaning

A professional cleaner has the tools and knowledge to make your office sparkle. They will focus on the cleaning and can tackle multiple areas without interruption. Some companies, such as Like Never Before Janitorial Service Inc., offer green cleaning services that are better for the environment and your employees.

5. Free Up Time

It takes time to run a business, and you shouldn’t have to worry about doing the routine chores around your office. Imagine how nice it would be to just focus on your business and have a reliable company come to remove all the germs and grime from your office. 

6. Save Money in the Long Run

A cleaning service tackles the stains and contaminants before they get worse. Without proper cleaning, you could have to remove mold or mildew which is costly. You can also make your carpet last longer since it is regularly cleaned.

7. Increased Productivity

Employees would be much happier in a fresh, clean office. The clean air is easier to breathe. The EPA says that indoor air quality is one of the top risks to human health.

Your employees won’t be as productive if they are facing allergies or having to stop working to run a vacuum. Dirty air can diminish your cognitive function and will make you not think clearly.

Ready for Professional Office Cleaning Service?

You want your employees to be healthy and happy. You need a clean office to keep the germs away and prevent employee sick days. Hiring a professional office cleaning service will ensure you have a professional level clean—and save you time.

Looking for other business advice? Check out our site to learn more about digital marketing and content strategy and how to drive traffic. You can learn how to drive more customers into your newly cleaned office space for a great first impression.

 

 

 

 

Technology

5 Reasons You Need to Hire a Professional Website Designer for Your Blog

5 Reasons You Need to Hire a Professional Website Designer


5 Reasons You Need to Hire a Professional Website Designer for Your Blog

Having a basic Squarespace site for your blog is a good start, but it isn’t enough to help you fund your dreams.

Take Ariana Huffington’s word for it. The Huffington Post started out as a simple blog but is now worth around $1 billion.

If you’re ready to step up your blog game, you’ll need a bit of professional assistance. Here are five reasons why you should hire a website designer for your blog.

1. Hiring a Website Designer Gives You More Time to Blog

There aren’t enough hours in the day as it is. Between writing, editing, publishing, and mingling with your audience, there’s hardly a free moment.

Fortunately, pro web designers can alleviate some of the burdens.

By allowing them to work their magic, you’ll have more time to do what you do best — blog.

While they won’t be able to help you develop a website from scratch — website designers and website developers are two very different positions, which you can compare here — you’ll still save time.

Instead of spending hours learning CSS and hoping your newfound skills serve you well, use that time to come up with more content. In the long run, you may even save money this way.

2. A Professional-Looking Blog Brings in Revenue

According to Statista, there are over 4 million blogs on Tumblr alone!

Since that number doesn’t factor in blogs from professional and personal websites, you can rest assured that the actual number of blogs online at this moment is far higher.

Because of the competition, it’s vital for bloggers to gain their readers’ trust. Not only will this trust result in more readers, but it may help you make more money.
A quality blog with a proven readership is far more likely to attract advertisers.

3. Your Blog Will Load Faster

Few things are as frustrating as waiting for a website to load. Even a few seconds can seem like an eternity to most web users.

Web designers can help you optimize your images and tailor your URLs so that your readers can access your great content in a flash.

4. No Need to Worry About Sitewide SEO Compliance

Not only will the help of web designers speed your site up, but a redesign may result in better search rankings.

Website designers can help you improve your on-site SEO in a variety of ways, including adding markup structures that are web crawler friendly and creating sitemaps.

5. Website Designers Can Help Reinforce Your Brand

You may think of yourself as a blogger or content creator, but you’re also a brand. Everything you put on your blog reinforces or detracts from that brand.

Web designers can help your blog better represent the ideals and beliefs you’d like to portray through the use of color, fonts, and more.

Revamp Your Blog With Professional Assistance

Partnering with a website designer is a fantastic idea for bloggers of any scale.

Whether you’re a small blogger hoping to grow or an established blogger hoping to make it even bigger, a web designer can help you get where you want to be.

Now all that’s left is to create great content! Check out our article on writing SEO-friendly posts to learn more.

Technology

Saved By The Web Development Firm: When You Should Hire Help For Your Website

Saved By The Web Development Firm: When You Should Hire


Saved By The Web Development Firm: When You Should Hire Help For Your Website

What can you do in 50 milliseconds? People looking at your website will make a decision about engaging with your brand in little more time than the blink of an eye. 

If your website isn’t easy to use, engaging from the first moment, or attractive, you’ll lose potential customers. 

You may think your website is functioning fine, but in reality, you’re missing out on potential opportunities. Here are the top signs you need some help to develop, grow, and build your site with a web development firm.

Four Signs You Need a Web Development Firm 

Running a website on a do-it-yourself level is tempting for startups and small businesses on a tight budget. However, a little investment could make the difference between staying small or huge growth.

Here are six signs you need to call on a professional to help with your website.

1. You Haven’t Updated Your Site in Months

Regular and fresh content is the number one way to achieve continuous organic traffic. However, when you’re running your own website it’s easy to fall behind and forget to refresh your content from week to week.

Worse still, you’re probably neglecting plugin and security feature updates. That leaves you open to hackers and also risks parts of your website not functioning. There is nothing more frustrating for a user than images that don’t load, broken Flash files, or missing hyperlinks.

2. You Don’t Know if You Have Any Broken Links

Speaking of links, when was the last time you ran a check to find any 404 errors? Have you made sure your pages aren’t redirecting to blank pages? Do you know if backlinks to your site are still relevant?

Professional web development firms have software that runs checks on things like this for you. You don’t need to click every single link on your website. You also don’t need to invest in expensive software subscriptions for a comprehensive search.

Instead, the professionals will use their own software access to check missing and broken links for you and repair them. This saves you significant time and stops users from bouncing off your site in frustration.

3. You’re Doing Everything Else for Your Business, Too

Running your own startup, small business, or freelance side hustle means you’re doing everything else on top of website development. You’re an accountant, a CEO, a marketer, a business consultant: do you have the time, depth of knowledge, and resource pool to do your website, too?

Investing in a professional website development firm will save you significant time. You can use that extra time to focus on your true skills such as marketing and finding sales opportunities for business growth.

4. Your Site Doesn’t Have an SSL Certificate

Do you know what an SSL certificate is? Does your website have one?

Without an SSL certificate, you’re missing out on website traffic. Google now uses secure websites as a priority ranking factor. That means if your website still uses http:// instead of https:// you’re losing out on potential traffic.

A website development firm will manage security updates and other important changes to make sure you’re always ahead of your competition and continue to rank well in search listings.

Time Equals (Lost) Money

If you know you’re harboring any of the above problems when it comes to managing your website, it’s time to call the professionals. 

A web development firm will always work with you and your budget to find a solution suitable for your business. Some capital investment in web design will save you time and money in the long-term.

Before you reach out, have some ideas in mind to help steer the project and stay on budget. Check out these incredible web design tips to trigger your imagination!

Business

Be Sure Before You Hire: The Importance of Pre-Employment Background Checks

Be Sure Before You Hire: The Importance of Pre-Employment Background


Be Sure Before You Hire: The Importance of Pre-Employment Background Checks

Looking to hire a new set of staff for your business?

It is always a gamble to hire new people for your business. Most of them are new people looking to start a career, which means no one will be available to ask about them for reference. You either hit and hire the right person, or you miss and cost your business a lot of resources.

This is why pre-employment background checks are important. Doing a background check allows you to take a deeper look at an applicant’s history. Doing so makes sure that you hire better employees, reducing your need to turnover your staff.

It also allows you to avoid cases of negligent hiring practices. There are many more reasons that stress the importance of background checks. Here is a list of why you should consider doing background checks on your candidates before you hire anyone.

1. It Ensures You Hire High-Quality Employees

Your pre-employment background screening process should have an extensive look at someone’s qualifications. This will make it so no one will be able to lie to you through their resume. Doing this makes sure that all your employees meet the qualifications and standards of your business.

Upon receiving a candidate’s resume, you should take time to look into each of his claims. Some will be easy to verify like the university they claimed to graduate from, their diploma’s authenticity, and their certificates. A lot of people buy fake diplomas because it’s easier than getting an education, after all.

Some certificates and licenses may be more tedious to confirm than others. This is because it will require a call to the agency they claim to have gotten the certificate from. Most of the time, it will take them a couple of days to call back, but the returns of this action will be worth it for your business.

You will also be able to call your candidate’s references. Their resume will often have a list of many references for their OJT or previous jobs. You can give them a call, but you can never be certain if they’re a legitimate source or a friend playing along.

To be even more thorough, you should do a check on their references as well. You can do so by asking some questions like what company they work for. Then verify if the company exists and if they worked there.

2. It Allows You to Have a Safe Work Place for You and Your Employees

Employment background checks allow you to recruit new employees that don’t pose a threat to you or your current employees. You will be able to request to see a candidate’s police clearance when interviewing them. If they don’t have one, you can tell them to get one as anyone can get a hold of one if they request it.

Their criminal record will contain the candidate’s criminal history. This will tell you of anything that the candidate did in the past that will be cause for alarm. This also comes with the candidate’s fingerprints for verification.

In this document, you will also be able to see if the candidate got arrested before. This depends on which state you’re in, though. This is because some laws prevent you from asking about arrests, but you can still ask other law agencies for more info about the previous crimes of your candidate.  

Dismissed cases will also show up on the record. Even if the candidate received a not guilty verdict in a case, the criminal charges still stay on the record. This will help you determine if their crime was a case of mistaken identity or if they have a way of shaking a guilty verdict off in court.

You can also require drug testing for your candidates. No one likes having a substance abuser in their staff. This will help you weed them out and keep your staff clean of the influence.

3. It Allows You to Check Your Candidate’s Financial Responsibility

During an interview, you can ask for many things that help check a candidate’s responsibility with finances. This includes their personal finances and the business’s resources. This is an important step if you are hiring an employee to handle your business’s financial issues.

You can check the potential employee’s criminal record for any signs of embezzlement in the past. This will help you see whether they’ve been honest with you upfront. If they’ve lied to your face in the interview, how can you be sure they won’t do so while handling the business’s finances?

You can also ask your candidate’s previous employers for a reference. They will likely have had experience handling money for other businesses in the past. This will allow you to find out if they’re as good as they say they are.

You can also ask to see their credit history. This will contain information about your candidate’s responsibility with their personal finances. If they handle their finances well, they will likely be handling yours with care as well.

4.  It Makes Sure You Hire Employees with a Clean Bill of Health

Health is a big issue in a business. You need to make sure that when someone gets a disease, it won’t spread to your other employees.

It’s all well and good to get seasonal sicknesses like hay fever or the flu. This is because there is medication at the ready and will treat the sickness in no time at all. However, it’s a different story when it’s a genetic disease.

Background checks give you the opportunity to look into a candidate’s health records. Here, you’re able to tell if they have any genetic sickness that raise a red flag.

Learn About the Importance of Pre-Employment Background Checks

A lot of people lie on their resumes. Use pre-employment background checks to make sure they qualify for the job today!

Did the people you hire show promise throughout their career? Here are 5 thoughtful ways you can show appreciation to your employees. Let them know that their hard works didn’t go unnoticed now!

Technology

5 Things You Need to Do Before You Hire a Website Designer

5 Things You Need to Do Before You Hire a


5 Things You Need to Do Before You Hire a Website Designer

There are over 1.5 billion websites on the internet today – but have you ever thought about how many of those are actually active, well-made sites?

The answer: not even 200 million websites on the internet are active right now. Of those, it’s hard to imagine they’re all on-trend and making good impressions on users.

It’s not enough to be just another domain among the many, many websites out there. If you’re creating a website for your business or trying to start a high-performing online business, you need to hire a web designer.

Web design determines how well you reach, engage, and convert your audience. It’s critical to making money and growing your presence online.

But, you can’t hire just any web designer to create something for you.

Here are 5 things you need to do to find the right person!

1. Identify Your Needs

Are you building a website from scratch or are you in need of a redesign? Do you want to transfer data from one domain/hosting site to another or would you rather have someone build the backend for you?

These are just a few questions to ask yourself before hiring a web designer. They help you focus your search once you start looking for people to hire. Identifying your needs also keeps you on track as you get into discussions about contracts and services.

2. Set a Budget

It’s one thing to establish everything you need from a web designer and another to know how you’re going to pay for it. This is why you need to set a budget before you start reaching out to different designers.

You don’t want to be ready to hire someone just to realize their services are completely out of your price range. Go into your search with a number in mind so that you don’t have any surprises as you narrow down your options.

3. Do Your Research

Speaking of narrowing down your options, keep in mind that there’s no limit to the designers you work with. You can choose to hire a local web designer that you can meet with in person or to hire one from overseas who specializes in building websites within your industry.

It’s worth taking your time to explore all your options. See what kind of web designers are in your area, then expand your search to be sure that you really are hiring the best one.

4. Look at a Designer’s Portfolio

A web designer can tell you all they want about their quality of work, but the proof is in their portfolio. You should always ask to see a designer’s portfolio before you even start talking specifics about what you need from them. This will give you a clear idea as to whether or not they fit the bill or if you should keep looking.

If they can offer additional services like Hook Agency can, even better. Investing in things like site security or SEO campaigns can do a lot more for you than aesthetics alone can.

5. Ask Questions

Just when you think you’ve found the right web designer, take the time to ask them a few more questions. You want to be sure you smoothe out all the details of a contract with them before you end up in a situation that doesn’t satisfy you.

Some smart questions to ask are:

  • Can I see a list of references?
  • How long have you been designing websites?
  • Are you familiar with working with businesses like mine?
  • Do you have a timeline for this project in mind?
  • Does the cost include future edits?
  • Will I be the owner of the website once it’s done?

Don’t hire a designer without bringing up these things. The last thing you want is to decide to redesign later down the line just to realize you don’t own the domain of your site or that you’re tied into working with the same designer!

These questions will help you be sure that the person you’re thinking of working with is reputable, qualified, and ready to get to work.

Not Sure If You Should Hire a Website Designer?

Maybe you’ve been thinking about hiring a web designer, but you’re not sure if it’s time for a redesign yet. Maybe you’d rather try to design a website on your own before you look to hire someone to do the work.

The truth is, the best thing you can do is hire a website designer. The sooner you invest in this service, the faster you can start to take advantage of everything a well-built website can offer.

Skip the guess and check and get caught up to the design trends of today.

For more web design insights and words of advice, click here.