ERE.net

A survey of regional, national, and international business schools has been released, and the study’s authors say the results can help business schools determine how recruiters think and what they look for.

The Seventh Annual Business School Survey, conducted by Harris Interactive and The Wall Street Journal, gave the top national business school award to Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.

The survey shows that recruiters give top ratings to Tuck for its students’ well-roundedness, their personal ethics and integrity, interpersonal and communication skills, and team-work abilities. Berkeley captured the no. 2 spot, then Columbia University, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon.

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Passive candidates are, by definition, people who are not currently looking for a job. Despite this, most people in this category would be willing to discuss a new career opportunity if it offered some significant upside opportunity.

Since people in this category aren’t looking, you need to contact them, usually be phone. Getting them to call you back is far less than certain, and in most cases, those who do call you back aren’t appropriate for the job at hand.

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While hardly a day goes by without recruiters bemoaning the worker shortage due to baby boomer retirements, a new study points to an alarming lack of focus on the associated threat of losing those workers’ organizational knowledge.

If your company is one of the 77% that lacks a formal strategy to manage and retain worker knowledge, read on.

In a new report, entitled “Building and Securing an Organizational Brain Trust in an Age of Brain Drain,” it appears to be a classic case of what you can’t measure, you can’t manage. Only 23% of firms report having a formal method to actually identify the knowledge that needs to be protected and retained.

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Clinical services firm PRA International has just selected Raleigh, North Carolina, for its new, expanded headquarters.

The move will create nearly 500 jobs, and the company has pledged to invest $2.89 million over the next four years.

The company says its current headquarters in Reston, Virginia, is a corporate administrative office with no operational functions.

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I read around 50 blogs on a regular basis and find myself scanning more and more of them. They are replacing newspapers and even magazines as a source of information. Some blogs are taking over the product review business and give you and me the chance to express our candid opinions about products and services we use.

This means that, eventually, blogs will comment on your recruiting process, your career site, and even on how people were treated when interviewed by your organization. They bring what used to be private, or at least fairly contained, to a much wider audience. Hence their power and their potential to do harm.

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I get asked quite often, “How many names do I need to order to make this work?” The answer is deceptively simple: “Usually 30 to 50 names will effect ONE immediate hire,” I warn.

It’s a big “usually” because it depends on the veracity of the names sourced, of course; but it also depends on the skill level of the recruiter. I can only bring you the names; what you do with them is entirely up to you.

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Vault.com, which is growing at 30% to 50% a year, is selling a majority stake to media bankers Veronis Suhler Stevenson.

The 11-year-old job-posting website, which also provides surveys and other information about colleges and employers, generates most of its revenue from advertising.

While financial terms of the deal were not released, the deal is estimated between $60 million to $85 million.

This investment signals the emergence of two important points of view, according to Peter Weddle, publisher of WEDDLES.com.

“First, online employment services are increasingly recognized as one of the most successful sectors of e-commerce and a line of business with significant upside potential,” he says.

“Second, although it is possible to enter this sector by building an enterprise from the ground up, the more efficient strategy is often the acquisition of all or a stake in a site that has already established a powerful brand,” says Weddle.

Weddle notes that Vault.com is not the first site being “cherry-picked” in this industry, pointing to the successful acquisition of Mediabistro.com in July.

“This is proof positive that online employment services are no longer the Sleepy Hollow of Internet commerce,” adds Weddle.

Expect more growth at Vault.com through acquisitions, which the Wall Street Journal calls “a mainstay of Veronis’s investing strategy.”

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As millions of U.S. workers gear up for this year’s open enrollment season, global consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide is predicting several major trends:

• Cash in on good health. Financial incentives for good health is increasing, as 46% of employers currently offer economic incentives and another 26% plan to do so in 2008. A few companies take the opposite approach and penalize workers for unhealthy choices, such as smoking, by charging them higher premiums. Some companies give workers a financial incentive to complete a health risk assessment.

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Decreasing turnover and increasing productivity can be a natty problem. Solutions usually come in one strength: weak. That is, incentive programs, public awards, and social get-togethers generally fail to make a long-term financial impression.

I won’t claim that employee appreciation programs aren’t a nice touch; after all, everyone wants to feel appreciated. But such recognition does not solve the real problem.

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Monster’s woes over the illegitimate use of its resume service may be the most public of job board security breaches, but it is far from the only one. Many of the job boards attending the International Association of Employment Web Sites congress in San Francisco last week admitted to having been the target of attacks by hackers, spammers, phishers, and others.

“All of our members are being attacked day in and day out,” explains Peter Weddle, executive director of the job board trade group. “There were a lot of kimonos being opened up,” a reference to the candidness of the conversation.

The half-day congress was the second since the IAEWS was formed more than a year ago. It happened to coincide with the August disclosure that Monster’s resume database had been accessed and contact information for some 1.3 million job-seekers had been stolen. The information was then used to send official looking notices to many of the job-seekers in an attempt to get them to give up confidential information — a scheme known as phishing. Others also got notices that appeared to come from Monster inviting them to download software that would actually steal personal data.

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“We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl 10 times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.” - Tom Brown, Jr., The Tracker

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One of the few certainties in life is that companies inevitably go through cycles of growth and downturns. Most business professionals understand these cycles and thus prepare for them. It’s hard to find a CFO, an investor, or these days a real estate agent who doesn’t plan ahead for these cycles.

Unfortunately, few individuals in HR can be considered as well-prepared for these cycles. For some reason, HR professionals tend to be optimists who instead constantly talk about the need to be prepared for the upturns.

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Several weeks ago, many ERE readers along with other recruiting and HR practitioners completed our annual survey on the trends and issues they are facing. The entire report is available at http://www.glresources.com/.

We asked respondents to rate the importance of 14 different issues that could impact them in the coming year. The issue rated most important was that of broadening the sources of hire. The issue rated least important was moving all or part of their recruiting to a third party. They rated 11 of the 14 as “important” or “very important,” clearly underlining the many critical issues facing the recruiting community.

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The Best Free Job Sites…

eQuest has come out with a list of what it thinks are the best free job boards, measuring several technology indicators that calculate overall candidate traffic patterns and job board advertising effectiveness.

The list includes Jobster, The Ladders, GoogleBase, SimplyHired, and Indeed.com.

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Marvin Smith, project manager for Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, co-wrote this article.

Diversity is a subject of great importance to recruiters. Most organizations have some stated diversity goals. Larger employers have director-level positions and even entire departments devoted to the goal of increasing diversity. Corporations are estimated to spend over $8 billion annually on diversity programs. This all has a purpose, presumably that more diversity is better.

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Need background screening advice? The folks over at employeescreenIQ have assembled what they believe to be the top-10 trends to watch next year:

1. Privacy, data protection. Privacy issues will continue to be a “hot topic” and dominate the news and industry dialogue, as several bills are currently before the U.S. House and Senate.

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I was in a client meeting recently and had a request from one of the participants. “Help us fool-proof selection decisions to ensure only the ‘right’ people are always hired,” he said.

Instantly, my mind started compiling a list of solutions. Targeted selection interviewing training for all hiring managers. A list of the common interview tendency “errors” such as the halo or horn effect. Competency models with corresponding interview guides to provide additional clarity on the “right” people.

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This is a true story. Years ago, I interviewed for a job with a well-known, multi-billion-dollar global company. I was flown in the night before, and interviewed with the hiring manager, the hiring manager’s boss, and the hiring manager’s HR partner.

The interviews ended at noon, so around 1 p.m., the agency managing the search called me to ask how it went.

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While most people know a weak credit score can hurt their chances of getting a home loan, just 20% of your job candidates know that a bad credit score can harm their chances of getting a job.

According to a new Visa USA survey, the overwhelming majority of today’s job seekers have no idea that many employers have made checking a credit score part of the job application process, similar to drug testing or criminal background checks.

Jason Alderman, director of financial education for Visa USA, points out that “a bad credit score can send an otherwise well-qualified job applicant straight to the unemployment line.”

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Most career sales professionals have learned that it is easier to sell reluctant customers face-to-face versus remotely via phone calls and emails. As recruiters are essentially professionals selling career opportunities, it makes sense that nearly every recruiting strategy should leverage one or more face-to-face approaches such as an invited open house.

Unlike some approaches, the invited open house can be tailored to fit nearly every situation and industry around the globe.

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