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In recent weeks there has been a lot of news about SB 1070 — The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act — enacted by Arizona. The law brings into focus the need for immigration reform, but other than that, the reaction to the law has been hysterical, over the top, and often grossly inaccurate. keep reading…

Today’s ADP employment report showed the private sector added jobs for the third month in a row. The 32,000 jobs added in April was in line with what economists expected, while the report itself is expected to foreshadow an even more robust jobs  report coming Friday from the  federal government.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected by economists to show the U.S. economy grew anywhere from about 180,000 to 189,000 jobs in April. If so, that would be the biggest gain since Nov. 2007. In March, the economy added 162,000 jobs, a number the BLS is likely to revise when the April numbers are released in two days. keep reading…

No matter how authentic and insightful your research and creative synthesis in refining your organization’s talent brand, if you want it to mean anything in the real world, you will likely need to present it in a palatable, compelling, and actionable way to enterprise leadership.

Your objective should be two-fold. One, to convince and inspire your management with the potential corporate-cultural value of the brand platform for recruiting, retention, inclusion, or engagement initiatives, and any other human capital purposes you identify. Two, to help them see how they can implement it in practical terms in any or all these contexts.

Here are a few components you might consider incorporating in your presentation to company and HR management. keep reading…

Everyone is on LinkedIn and so are we! Join us there for more of the interesting news and conversations that ERE is known for.

Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:

1. Think Twice Before Hiring an Overqualified Candidate
2. Devaluation Of The Sourcing Role
3. What Keeps You Up at Night?
4. Candidate Experience Survey – Survey Questions?
5. Where Should I Post Sales Jobs in Canada?
6. He’s MY Candidate!

1. Think Twice Before Hiring an Overqualified Candidate

Mark Bregman writes that you should think hard before hiring someone who is overqualified. He writes, “The one real issue with overqualified candidates is whether they will stay. When a person steps down a level, and takes less pay, there is a real risk they will be vulnerable to recruiters, or will even seek another opportunity, seeing your position as only a stop-gap, or a way station on the path to something better.

Is there a such thing as an overqualified candidate? Is it a big deal? Check out the great discussion going on in the comment section and weigh in yourself.
keep reading…

The government is giving away free money and you can get some. As much as $6,622. And it’s easy.

All you have to do is hire an unemployed worker this year to fill a new, or vacant position. So long as they’re not a company owner or relative of one, the company gets to pocket an immediate 6.2 percent of the new hire’s weekly salary.

It really is that simple. Sure, there’s an IRS form involved. Mostly the government wants to make sure the person you hired was unemployed for the 60 days before they started the new job and that they didn’t work more than 40 hours during those two months.

That’s the essence of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, which President Obama signed into law in March. Mike Temkin blogged about the provisions right after the signing. More details are available here. keep reading…

A year after posting a $34 million loss, Kenexa reported today that it broke even for the first quarter of 2010. Technically, the company reported an $18,000 loss, chump change on $39.7 million in revenue.

That news, and the splash Kenexa made yesterday promoting its long-awaited 2x platform, weren’t enough to keep the company’s stock from closing down on the day. Kenexa closed at $15.15, off 2.57 percent on the day. The Dow Jones was off 2 percent.

Still, Kenexa CEO Rudy Karsan said in the financial release that the company expects to grow revenue in the current quarter and could end the year with revenue in the range of $162 million to $169 million.

“While we remain somewhat cautious from a near-term perspective,” he said, ” our longer-term optimism continues to grow.”

Monday, after some 18 months in development, Kenexa made a splash promoting its 2x platform. This is the promised integration product that will eventually link all the talent management modules that Kenexa offers.

For now, the new platform brings together the BrassRing, Recruit, Onboard, and Mobile products. The announcement says that performance management will be offered in the third quarter.

“Kenexa 2x is a secure SaaS based platform that integrates five individual solutions together into a Unified Talent Record,” says Derek Bluestone, vice president of product marketing. The employee record ties together the various talent management tools and, when the performance element is added, will produce a fairly comprehensive lifecycle view.

“Kenexa’s key differentiator is the integration across Recruitment, Onboarding, Mobile, and Performance management business processes,” adds Bluestone. “Additionally, 2x Mobile is the first ever talent management application designed specifically for BlackBerry and iPhone smart phones.”

Kenexa 2x Mobile is the newest of the components. Natively designed for the iPhone and Blackberry (no mention of Android), it allows these device users to handle routine, if pressing tasks, such as approving job reqs and job offers. Smartphone users will also be able to manage candidate contacts and handle similar communication while on the go.

The 2x platform has been in development since at least 2008. Gartner’s Jim Holincheck blogged about it during Kenexa’s user conference in September 2008. He said an early customer of the (then)-unreleased 2x platform and 2x Recruiter was impressed. A learning management tool, which Kenexa had just acquired, was optimistically predicted to be 2x ready by the end of 2009.  It still will happen, says Bluestone.

Kenexa is positioning the 2x platform for large and mid-size employers, with around 2,500 employees and up. Customers can choose the complete suite or a la carte the components they need.

“Existing 2x BrassRing (formerly Kenexa Recruiter BrassRing) customers,” Bluestone adds, “get the latest version of the 2x BrassRing solution free of charge and there is no impact to or migration work required.”

Why don’t physicians bleed patients anymore to let out the “bad” blood? Why did they stop freely administering opiates, radioactive water, and addictive drugs as cure-alls? Why don’t they feel the bumps on your head to diagnose personality type? Because these are voodoo science. But voodoo science is not limited to medicine. It is still alive and well in testing and selection. keep reading…

A lot of employers that have started using social media are doing so without fully understanding the opportunities and challenges associated with it. The tendency is to treat social media as a mechanism to broadcast jobs; in other words, as an advertising medium.

This reminds me of an interview I heard some months ago, with someone in Fargo, preparing for flooding of the Red River. keep reading…

Standout Jobs, a Canadian recruitment marketing company that debuted at ERE’s Spring 2008 EXPO, has been sold.

TechCrunch reported the sale this morning. No details, including price or even who the buyer is, are available, although the website speculated it was sold to a “mid-tier jobs site looking to ramp up its social features.”

Founder and CEO Ben Yoskovitz, who blogged about the sale of his company today, said the buyer asked not to be identified other than to say it’s “in the HR space.”

Standout Jobs launched in early 2008 with $1.57 million in seed money. Its first offering was a self-service career site builder for small and mid-size companies. The service was initially free. Fees for premium services were to be added in time.

Last fall, the site was relaunched emphasizing more services than technology. The career site builder was (and is) a core element, but Standout Jobs also offered SEO and social media services.

Yoskovitz said he doesn’t know what the buyer’s plans are for the site.

SuccessFactors, a provider of workforce management tools, has acquired Silicon Valley startup CubeTree.

The deal, worth up to $50 million, will give SuccessFactors a business-focused social networking component to add to a product suite it describes as “business execution software.” The company also reported that it lost 6 cents a share for the first quarter of the year, down from 10 cents a share last year.

Stronger than expected bookings (sales) helped improve the quarter and also prompted the company to revise its full-year outlook to break-even on revenues of $180-$182 million. While an improvement over past estimates, the new numbers are still below Wall Street’s expectations.

The CubeTree acquisition was called “key to accelerating SuccessFactors’ BizX opportunity and expand our leadership,” by company CEO Lars Dalgaard.

According to the announcement, “CubeTree solves a critical challenge in business execution: how individuals and teams communicate, share ideas, and come together across organizational silos and geographies to get work done.”

Undoubtedly you have heard about the passage of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the controversial immigration bill that makes it a crime to be in the state without proof of citizenship or legal immigrant status, but have you thought about what it means for you as an employer?

Even if your organization does not employ individuals in Arizona or have employees who travel to or through Arizona, chances are the new legislation will impact your organization in one way or another. SB 1070 has rocketed race relations issues, on a decline in recent years, back to a spotlighted position on the national and some would argue global stage.

While you may or may not support Arizona’s attempt to curb illegal immigration, the important thing is that you take action to prevent it from negatively impacting the productivity of your organization. keep reading…