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Calilfornia’s governator, Arnold Schwarzennegger who, if anybody, ought to know a thing or two about engineering having played a cyborg in three Terminator movies, has declared a statewide engineer shortage and a plan to solve it.

“California needs more engineers to achieve the improvements to our roads, schools and other infrastructure that voters envisioned when they passed the Strategic Growth Plan bonds last year,” says the Terminator in a day after Christmas message.

How many is more? 20,000 in 10 years, according to the press release that reads, well, like even the government writers are on strike.

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CEOs of larger public companies not only receive greater total compensation for their responsibilities, they have more “skin in the game” than their counterparts at smaller publicly traded companies, according to a report on executive compensation released today by The Conference Board. The report precedes a release of a 2008 study, which reveals that CEOs of the largest 10% of publicly traded companies earn just over 48% of their total compensation in at-risk compensation, in the form of stock and stock options, as opposed to roughly 18% for the CEOs of the smallest public companies.

The release of the study follows the first full-year of the new SEC disclosure rules around executive compensation, which require public companies to describe the compensation packages of their top executives to shareholders via proxy statements. In addition to the correlation between greater responsibility for revenue and increased stock-related compensation, the report also reveals a number of other interesting trends about the compensation packages of top executives:

• The highest median total compensation of $3.9 million went to CEOs in the utilities, food and tobacco, and insurance industries with CEOs in the construction industry coming in right behind the CEOs in the leading industries. CEOs in the financial services industry ranked last, at $733,000 in median total compensation, among the top executives in the 22 industries surveyed.

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I still remember the first time I heard about the Millennial generation. I was at a recruiting conference in New Orleans about 10 years ago, and one of the presenters was commenting about how the boomers were about to turn 50. He said the bulk of workers who would be replacing them would be coming from a generation we now know as Millennials.

I can still see the crowd’s reaction as the speaker talked about how this generation would be particularly coddled (raised by overly indulgent parents), have off-the-charts self esteem, and focus on a “what’s in it for me?” attitude.

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Maintaining beneficial relationships with hiring managers improves the chances of making a quality hire and creates an open arena for shared knowledge and effective teamwork. When it comes to closing the deal, the candidate’s opinion of the interview process could be the deal-killer.

After a scheduled interview with a potential employer, it’s best for recruiters to get the candidate’s feedback within one hour. This gives us information fresh on the candidate’s mind and a chance to clarify any misconceptions they may have developed during the process. Misconceptions can lead to deal-killers if given time to settle in.

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Now here’s a handy new feature from iCIMS: A report card.

If you’re an iCIMS client you’ll be getting a twice-annual checkup on how your use of the company’s talent management system compares to other iCIMS clients. Here’s what the company’s press release says: “The 60-point Report Card is a full audit on a client’s usage of iRecruiter benchmarked against iCIMS’ growing customer base.”

Are you thinking this is just what you need? Yet another way to remind you of your recruitment shortcomings and even a grade to compare you with the so-called “Best of Breed.” Not to worry. You get the report, not your mom or your boss, unless, of course they insist.

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Slow, but steady. That’s the prediction for job growth in 2008 from CareerBuilder. The largest job board in the U.S. says about a third of the hiring managers and HR professionals it surveyed expect to be adding new, permanent workers. Just under half say they expect no change.

Released today, CareerBuilder’s “2008 Job Forecast” report more or less tracks with a forecast issued earlier this month by Manpower. The staffing firm’s “Employment Outlook” found 60 percent of the employers it surveyed expect no hiring increase, 22 percent did. While the numbers don’t match because the methodologies are different, both surveys point to continued recruiting challenges in 2008.

CareerBuilder found that 27 percent of the survey respondents complained that the quality of job applicants had declined since last year, which may explain why 40 percent of employers have open positions for which they can’t find qualified candidates. The “Job Forecast” identified eight recruitment and retention trends for 2008:

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Interviewing candidates and gauging their fit for a culture and position is one of the most indispensable tasks a recruiter performs. The more a recruiter knows about a candidate, the better equipped they are to add value to the hiring process. That’s why getting to know the candidate and understand what they are looking for, along with overall qualifications, is so critical. But there is more about candidates you should uncover if you want to do the best possible job of providing information (read: value) to hiring managers. Below are ten points in key areas that all recruiters should investigate for each candidate they interview ó before they present the candidate to the hiring manager.

1. Complete compensation details. Understand exactly how the candidate’s current compensation program is structured. This means more than the candidate’s base salary; the base salary is just part of the overall package. Be sure that you ask about bonuses; if, how and when they are paid out, stock options or grants that have been awarded. Compile a complete list of benefits and how they are structured (e.g. PPO vs. HMO; there is a difference) and know when the candidate is up for his or her next review, because this can alter cash compensation.

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As far as I’m concerned, the use of traditional qualifications-based job descriptions are the primary reason companies are not finding enough top people.

In this article, I’m going to prove that they are unnecessary, counter-productive, reduce the size of the applicant pool, encourage sloppy management, and are the cause of most hiring mistakes. Of course, your comments are welcome.

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If you routinely call gatekeepers and get lines like, “You need a name to be transferred to anyone,” it could be that you are routinely doing or saying something that is causing that gatekeeper to view you as a threat to her company’s infrastructure.

Effective communication skills allow you easy entrance to most any gatekeeper’s psyche. The first thing you must do to effectively communicate with anyone is put the other person at ease when you call.

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In this final installment of the four-part series, I tackle a critical issue: making content on your careers site seem genuine. When candidates are asked about careers sites and their shortcomings, one of the biggest issues identified is the lack of candor nearly every site presents. Most candidates know that it would be nearly impossible for an organization to adequately describe every aspect of what it would be like to work for the company, but they also know that not every firm can be a recognized leader. They are looking for more than marketing points; they are looking for facts and honesty. In addition to tackling this issue, we will finish off the feature categories and briefly cover metrics for assessing your efforts.

Features That Bring the Firm to Life and Make the Firm Appear Genuine

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In the news:

• Lawsuit filed after a 58-year-old job applicant was allegedly told the employer was looking for someone “not quite so old and with as much experience.”

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Phong, a smart Vietnamese-American student majoring in accounting, has had three solid job offers this year, and she doesn’t graduate until May. Other students report increased interest from employers who, after many years of relative apathy, are now looking at campus hiring with vigor. Some of these organizations are fearful of losing their baby boomers to retirement and of not having anyone to replace them. Some are just trying to build bench strength as they grow and find that they need more managers than they have. A few are seeking foreign students to hire and then employ back in their home countries.

Because of this interest and the increased competition, it is getting more difficult to attract the best college graduates. Just a few weeks ago, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) released a report entitled “Job Outlook 2008,” which indicates that employers expect to increase college hiring by 16% during 2007-2008. And, this demand is spread across many majors, not just engineering and the sciences, but also for graduates in business, government, accounting, and communications.

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The good news: recruiters should see an increase in applicants with college degrees and high school diplomas; the bad news is that those applicants might not succeed on the job. A study conducted by Wonderlic, Inc. reveals a steady decline in the cognitive ability scores associated with specific education levels. The analysis compares a decade of occupational norms from a sample of over 200 employers, 2,000 jobs, and 100,000 applicants to comparable occupational datasets from previous normative studies.

“What we can take from this study is that employers can no longer presume that a candidate with a certain education level will necessarily have the cognitive ability to take on-the-job tasks,” says David Waldschmidt, director of Research and Development with Wonderlic. “Cognitive ability measures a person’s ability to be trained and to learn, along with their ability to solve problems. The more complex the job, the more the employee must learn on the job everyday and the greater the relationship between cognitive ability and job performance.”

Cognitive ability is measured through administration of a series of questions with varying complexity, often structured as analogies. Waldschmidt says that more students are graduating from high school and that more high school graduates are moving onto college. Given the increase in educated candidates, there’s a larger variance of aptitude among the graduates, so degrees and diplomas are no longer sure-fire indicators of cognitive ability.

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Numerous studies have confirmed that nearly everyone who eventually gets hired by an organization visits the organization’s corporate careers site at some point prior to being hired. Most leave disappointed, having had received no value whatsoever from a site that is supposed to be all about them. The first two parts of this series presented a lot of ideas about how to change that, but we are only half way there.

This article focuses on gathering information from visitors and on presenting content to sell visitors on the prospect of joining the organization.

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Pharmacy professionals are still in high demand. The aging population and the growth in prescriptions are just part of what is fueling the need for pharmacy personnel and driving wage increases. Although the rate of salary increase for some positions, such as retail staff pharmacist, has slowed, other pharmacy positions are experiencing pay increases that are nearly double the increases over the prior year. Geography strongly influences the total compensation for pharmacists.

That’s the conclusion of the latest salary survey on pharmacy personnel conducted by Mercer. The semi-annual survey contains detailed information on pay levels and pay practices for pharmacy personnel reported in more than 380 metropolitan areas across the U.S. The position of regional pharmacy operations manager earns median total cash compensation of $130,400 compared to $122,100 in 2006, which is an increase of 6.8 % and more than twice the pay increase of 3.1 % in 2005. Similarly, clinical pharmacists saw pay raises increase from 3.9 % in 2006 to 6.3 % in 2007.

Here are some of the results from the Mercer survey — year-over-year pay comparison of select pharmacy positions.

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The holiday season arrives and that infamous determination still hangs over us. Whether to be “naughty or nice?” That perception drives “holiday earnings.” Personally, I was raised in a family in which “nice” was the only option. “Nice” was smiling, behaving, complying, agreeing, and cooperating in every way. “Naughty” was pouting, dissension, talking back, and questioning parental authority. “Naughty” was never acceptable any time of year. It virtually evaporated during the holidays.

I carried forward with my “nice” persona. I feel recruiters are similarly inclined as a group. In an effort to please the hiring manager, we bend over backwards trying to comply and be as unobtrusive as possible. We’re ever service-oriented and trying to deliver to the end. What results is that the hiring manager has very little time for us and doesn’t value what we do. At the last ERE convention in Washington, D.C., one of the biggest challenges I heard from staffing professionals was gaining enough time, attention, and cooperation from their hiring managers to properly fulfill their needs. If turning ourselves inside out to please doesn’t cut it, what should we do?

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JWT, the specialized communications firm which partners with clients such as: Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing, AT&T Wireless, Nissan, and Compaq, announced that it has changed its name to JWT Inside. The name change coincides with a shift in the firm’s strategic positioning and an internal structural change. JWT, which has been known for its communications programs tailored towards the recruitment of external candidates, intends to offer more comprehensive communications programs targeted toward internal employees as well.

The press release from the company states that employers are looking to align their internal and external communications and branding strategies as a way to drive employee engagement and increase productivity. The firm’s name change, positioning shift, and structural changes are designed to meet changing client needs. JWT Inside will be led by Jerry Touslee, as its president over North America, and Peter Womersley, as managing director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

In last week’s article, I kicked off this series citing the importance of developing and maintaining a corporate careers Web presence that not only enables people to apply online for jobs, but that also excites people about the prospect of working for a company regardless of their reasons for visiting the site. To get started on architecting such a site, I outlined the first four of 18 categories of features a “wow” career site would need to have. In this issue, my attention turns to the next four categories, all of which have to do with segmenting the viewers into groups and delivering personalized, relevant content. We’ll start with developing content for high-priority visitors and end up on features for active job seekers.

Providing Specialized or Localized Information to High-Priority Visitors

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This article describes the most important factor involved in individual-recruiter success. From my personal dealings with over 2,500 corporate and third-party recruiters in the last five years, it seems that only 10-15% of recruiters develop this to improve their overall performance. In the past year, I’ve written a number of articles about the importance of applicant control and understanding real job needs, and, while these are vitally important, they are far less effective without this third factor in place.

But first, a little background.

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You heard it here before: Jason Goldberg is leaving Jobster.

Today, a new report out has investment banker Jeff Seely replacing Goldberg and says Goldberg will serve as Jobster vice chairman of the board.