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Friday was a tough day for the world’s stock markets. Rattled by the events in Egypt, investors worried that the upheaval there could worsen, even spread, and the uncertainty lead to a sell off that drove the Dow down 167 points.

As big a number as that it is, it represents only a 1.39 percent decline.

Monster Worldwide, however, took a 25 percent beating from its closing stock price on Thursday. Today, Monster is improving more than the market as a whole. The stock was up 3.76 percent at midday to $16.55.

Part of the reason was Monster’s financial results for the last quarter of 2010. The company reported that it earned a profit in line with analysts’ estimates. But its revenue came in lower than estimates and both revenue and the dollar value of contracts signed during the quarter were at the low end of what the company had predicted a few months ago.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn filed for an IPO Thursday, its registration statement confirming that it was building its business on recruitment advertising.

It was almost a perfect storm, with the financial results and the IPO announcement coming amidst the growing social media buzz. From the Wall Street Journal to CNBC, and even among bloggers outside the U.S., the talk is that job boards are on the same slope that newspapers were in the 1990s. Newspaper recruitment advertising peaked in 2000, dropping from $8.7 billion then to $786 million in 2009. keep reading…

90% of performance appraisal processes are inadequate. –Salary.com survey

In conversations with HR leaders and employees, the talent management process that suffers from the most disdain around the world is the performance appraisal. It’s one of the few processes that even the owners of the process dread. keep reading…

As I opened up my Twitter log this morning to check out the latest tweets, I was blitzed with an overwhelming amount of social media messaging. It seems like everyone nowadays is a social media expert. Do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Say this. Say that. Etc …

Do these people seriously sit around all day and tweet and retweet everyone else’s information and call themselves experts? It’s no wonder why there is such confusion and negativity in the workplace when the topic of social media arises. While there is no doubt that the world is in the midst of a social media revolution, the reality is that social media is a basic, simplistic concept — but you have to, like anything else, have a plan for it. If your organization has already made the plunge or if you are thinking about joining the vast and crazy world called the social media universe — it’s of utmost importance that you have a detailed strategy in place. keep reading…

Bad weather and government budget dalliance underminded Monster’s hopes for a strong finish to 2010 and it’s giving the company a slow start this year.

Though Monster finished 2010 meeting Wall Street’s profit expectations of 6 cents a share, its revenue of $258.3 million was below the $262.5 million analysts estimated. For the year, Monster reported $919 million in revenue and a 7 cent a share loss.

In after-hours trading, Monster’s stock was down about 3.7 percent and selling at $20.60 a share. keep reading…

LinkedIn did the expected today. It announced it was going public.

The privately held company filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying it intended to list on either the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange. No initial offering price was listed, nor was the intended number of shares to be sold.

That LinkedIn was preparing for an initial public offering has long been rumored. Earlier this month Reuters said the company had been meeting with financial institutions and would begin offering shares this year.

The company has multiple shareholders, including founder Reid Hoffman and his wife who own 21.4 percent of the private stock, and three venture capital companies.

In its SEC filing LinkedIn reported it has been growing revenue rapidly. For the first nine months of 2010, the company had $161.4 million in revenue, twice the revenue for the first nine months of 2009. It also posted a $10.1 million profit through the end of September versus a loss of $3.4 million for the first nine months of 2009. keep reading…

We were joined this week by John Zappe to discuss how to narrow the funnel and mine the wealth of talent available on social networks. Learn how to attract and engage the candidates you really want in this new frontier of social media.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

When a new tool can deliver better fitting jobs, while also offering users control over their online privacy, you have to think win-win.

That’s what Monster’s updated CAN ads can do. For the first time in any of the job ad networks, and certainly rare among all behavioral advertising, online users can refine their job preferences or opt-out of the program all together.

Tom Chevalier, Monster’s product manager who lead the development team, explained that giving users more control over the advertising they see is at the leading edge of an industry trend. With more users savvy to behaviorally targeted ads, research shows they prefer them to scatter-shot ads. But there’s also an interest in controlling their preferences. keep reading…

In Part 1 of this series, I introduce the argument that in addition to the obvious upsides, substantial negative consequences are also created through social media’s impact on recruiting. Social media is creating problems for recruiting, but few people are talking about this topic. keep reading…

Bet the millionaire line got your attention. It should, because I really believe someone out there can make big money with my latest out-of-the-box idea. Those of you who have been following me for a while know I don’t quite see this recruiting thing the same as most do — probably because of my West Virginia heritage. My roots and broad background have made me an ideas guy who enjoys trying new things as a way to improve. Some of my craziest ideas actually work and have been very successful, as evidenced by CACI’s rapid rise as a national leader in recruiting. I would be remiss without adding a caveat that not all my ideas pan out — but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

My latest idea I’m tossing out to you to ponder could definitely make you rich if you just go for it. Sure hope you remember me when you roll in the big bucks. My idea is a really simple one. Historically my simple ideas turn out more successful than the complex ones, so that’s why I think this is a real gold mine with the potential to propel your income into seven digits.

This simple idea also keeps with my philosophy that if you want to advance your game, you need to try something different. Here’s my idea, and it focuses on how to improve recruiter results, which is important to all of us. You improve recruiter results by improving recruiter training. keep reading…

As the years have rolled by I have become increasingly aware of how poorly internal recruiting functions perform when compared to recruitment process outsourcing organizations or agencies. These have to make a profit or go out of business. They have to operate efficiently and continue to innovate and stay ahead of the demands or questions that clients will have.

Internal functions don’t have to do any of these things. They are entrenched in almost all organizations, and because their function is perceived as incidental to overall organizational performance or success, not much in the way of efficiency is really expected or, unfortunately, rewarded. This means that few recruiting leaders have any incentive to improve their function. In fact, doing so may mean a smaller budget, less headcount, and even less status.

So this leads to the headline question: Do we need an internal function at all? Does it do something that an external provider cannot do? Can it do it at least as cheap or as fast? Can it provide a higher-caliber candidate?

Some thoughts: keep reading…

What sourcing channels should we invest in?

That’s one question we at Quintiles Global Staffing are trying to figure out. It resulted in the development of a tool we talk about in an upcoming Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. We plan to use this tool on an ongoing basis, and I wanted to give you a taste of it here. keep reading…

In my last article about hiring salespeople I focused on the need to evaluate trust pre-hire. In this article, I’ll discuss the need to evaluate candidates for questioning skills, and why this skill is more effective than delivering a sales pitch. But some might be asking where I learned this stuff. keep reading…

Note: This is a “think piece” written to stimulate your thinking about strategic HR.

The idea of having a corporate function focused on managing labor resources is one that has been around for more than two centuries (corporate functions emerged following the advent of labor unions in the late 1700s). Since then the function has gone by several names, the most commonly applied being “human resources.” Unfortunately the name “human resources” has gotten in the way of what the function was created to accomplish (bringing labor and management together in a manner that benefits both).  keep reading…

Long time no Howard. If you’re wondering whatever happened to Howard Adamsky, author of some highly commented upon articles on this site, he has been toiling over a new book. (The writing took only 23 days but then he had to deal with those pesky editors.)

In the podcast below, he talks about his upcoming book, called “Employment Rage.” keep reading…

As the hiring recovery gains momentum, some older recruiting strategies are coming back in vogue. One that seems to be high on many HR executives’ action plans is the need to develop an internal executive search capability within the corporate recruiting department. While the idea offers great merit, the approach many companies take is hiring recruiters or researchers who have worked in retained executive search and have them implement their personal “best practices.”

In my opinion, the likelihood this approach will work is problematic at best, idiotic at worst. keep reading…

Fortune magazine is out with its annual list of 100 Best Companies To Work For and the names there are recognizable to anyone keeping track.

SAS, the North Carolina software giant, is No. 1 for the second year in a row. The company, with onsite childcare, healthcare, employee gym, and more — lots more — is a regular. It has made the list for the last 14 years.

Wegman’s Food Markets, and Google, Net App, and Boston Consulting are all still in the top 10.  Zappos, the much-admired shoe company now owned by Amazon, and REI, the camping and outdoor recreation provisioner, are the only newcomers. Zappos is 6th and REI 9th on the 2011 list. keep reading…

Government background checks of federal contract employees are constitutional, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

“Reasonable investigations of applicants and employees aid the government in ensuring the security of its facilities and in employing a competent, reliable workforce,” said the opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. That the workers who sued the government on privacy grounds were contractors and not civil servants was a formality and all but irrelevant, Alito wrote.

The case was brought by 28 scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena  The sprawling facility is operated by the California Institute of Technology. The plaintiffs are employees of Caltech. keep reading…

Stephen Balzac joined us this week to take a look at some important steps you can take to improve motivation amongst your employees. Unmotivated employees cost an organization time and money and can be a drag on resources. Make sure your team is fully on board and ready to give their best!

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Even though we are in an economic down cycle and unemployment in the U.S. is hovering around 10%, recruiters are still struggling to find people with the skills and experience their hiring managers are looking for.

Partly this is driven by the commonly held assumption that these skilled and experienced people have been affected by the recession and are actually in the job market. Recruiters know this is not the case and that many candidates have become even more difficult to find and entice away from a secure position.

While demand for lesser-experienced, educated, and skilled candidates has slacked, it has risen for those with higher-level skills. Many firms are trying to replace the employees they had with moderate skills or who were in learning roles, with people already accomplished in their profession. keep reading…

This is a time when many organizations are scrambling to produce sales. Some will be successful and some will not. Sales success and trust-building skills go hand in hand; yet, a salesperson’s ability to develop and maintain trust often goes unmeasured in the pre-hire phase.

Fundamental Sales Abilities

Put on your customer hat. Do you enjoy listening to a salesperson blab? Feel like you are in a verbal contest with someone whose only objective is to get your money? Get frustrated when a salesperson does not take the time to understand your situation? These are symptoms of poor sales hiring practices. keep reading…