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Although there were some naysayers about my predictions for job growth in 2011 (Dec 14, 2010 ERE), it’s more clear that 2011 will be banner year for professional hiring, coupled with the added impact of employee churn. Even if the prediction is somewhat premature, get ready for it anyway. What else are you going to do?

With that as a backdrop, consider the impact Facebook’s new career network BranchOut will have on the world of recruiting in general, and its direct effect on LinkedIn in particular. It’s certainly a knock-off, but as a start I would have expected a more original name. LinkedIn is less about its name and more about the depth of its interconnectivity and its growing ability to automatically connect people with open opportunities.

Since BranchOut is just starting up, it’s less robust and less useful then LinkedIn, but this will change, so start building your empire (their term). Let me start off this comparison with my point of view (POV). keep reading…

For our inaugural webinar of 2011, we had a panel discussion of what we might expect of the next twelve months. Our all-star panel was moderated by Gerry Crispin and included such thought leaders as Lou Adler, Elaine Orler, Dr. John Sullivan, John Sumser, and Kevin Wheeler. We covered such important topics as the economy, advancements in technology, trends that are reshaping the industry, and more!

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

Reuters is reporting that LinkedIn is moving ahead with plans to go public this year and has already picked the banks it will work with.

Citing three sources, Reuters says the financial institutions include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and JPMorgan. The company supposedly heard presentations about IPO prospects in November.

Based on individual sales of the private company’s shares, as reported by SharesPost, LinkedIn is currently valued at around $2.1 billion. Speculation is that the company has revenues of $200 million and has been cash flow positive for at least two years. It makes money by selling premium services to its 85 million registered users, providing access and job postings to recruiters, and through advertising. keep reading…

The monthly Monster Employment Index, out this morning, showed a slight decline in December. It went from 134 points in November to 130 last month.

A decline in any jobs index, even slight, is not a good thing, considering the fragile state of the economy. However, December is typically the slowest hiring month of the year, and snowstorms in the Northeast and inclement weather elsewhere played a role.

Not to worry, says Jesse Harriott, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at Monster Worldwide. “The Monster Employment Index has recorded a stable annual growth rate for three consecutive months, underscoring a trend of moderate labor market improvement,” he says in the press release accompanying today’s report.

So though down in December, the Index is up 13 percent for the year. The trend is certainly consistent with other reports. The chart that accompanies this post tracks the Monster Index against the monthly job gains and losses as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Just eyeballing the trajectories, it’s obvious there is a relationship there. What’s not so obvious because of the different scales is that the Monster Index offers an early indicator of the national jobs trend. keep reading…

That “Revenue Accelerator” system I mentioned this week isn’t the only new tool created to help companies with sales positions. A new site called StrictlyClosers will launch next Tuesday to match candidates seeking sales jobs with employers seeking the same. keep reading…

This morning’s incredibly bullish jobs report from ADP is being greeted with outright skepticism by investors and economists, who think the 297,000 new private sector jobs in December is overblown.

“ADP has had some spectacular misses and I’m a little bit hesitant at this point to fully buy into the data,” Joe LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank in New York, told CNBC.

The reaction — the stock markets reacted not all —  is certainly understandable; the jobs number is the highest ADP and its partner, Macroeconomic Advisers, have reported since the National Employment Report was launched in 2001. The average estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg in advance of the report’s release was 100,000. The highest prediction among its surveyed economists was 150,000. keep reading…

The holiday season may be drawing to a close, but repercussions of being on the naughty list are only just starting to be felt. This isn’t a reference to those snide remarks behind a friend’s back or the sick day that truly was taken to watch the season finale of Dancing with the Stars on the DVR. No, this naughty list is the one that includes any company that took advantage of the recent economic challenges to reduce labor costs through excessive downsizing and that then wrung every last bit of productivity out of their layoff survivors. Hiring figures are starting to creep up, and as employees learn to trust the uptick is solid, the great employee migration will begin. keep reading…

Sales consultant Lee Salz will soon launch a tool that’ll be used to better “onboard” and train salespeople. He says there are plenty of learning management systems, onboarding systems, and sales tools, but he thinks this is the first to focus on all three, to be a “learning management system applied to onboarding salespeople.” keep reading…

We learn some of the damnedest things in our work.

One of my telephone list builders works part time at the Y as a lifeguard. She’s a 50-year-old woman who has been married for 30 years. She and her husband have been living apart for the last couple years and it appears that each of them is creating their own separate life in preparation for what appears to be divorce.

I got to know Jean late last year in casual conversation as I bounced around in the pool doing my 45 minutes of pool work that I get to less and less these days. Talking to someone else in a pool while you’re doing jumping jacks is a good way to make the (boring) time pass.

Jean impressed me early on with her intelligence. She is soft-spoken and listens intently to what another is saying. I’d watched her interact with some of the other old farts as they came and went from the senior pool and many seemed to really enjoy talking with her. What I noticed most about her from my watery viewing point is she spoke far less than she listened to the others.

Some would stand there for a good number of minutes and yak away at her and she’d politely pay attention to whatever it was they were sharing.

I knew some of them were tiresome to listen to as I had seen the reaction of others to them in the social setting that the geriatric warm pool is.

I mostly stay to myself in the pool, social skinflint that I am.

But talking to Jean was different.

She asked questions.

Few people do this, you know.

Flattered as I was to be asked about myself, I very soon recognized the glimmer of a phone sourcer in Jean. keep reading…

Just when it appeared the year would end without more consolidation in the talent acquisition arena, two deals managed to get in under the wire.

On the penultimate day of 2010, First Advantage was acquired by a private equity firm that also holds a sizeable chunk of Lawson Software. Symphony Technology Group, based in Palo Alto, California, bought First Advantage for $265 million in cash from owner CoreLogic.

First Advantage is involved in multiple aspects of talent acquisition, including background screening and assessments, applicant tracking technology, onboarding, and candidate sourcing and recruitment marketing. keep reading…

John Smith began 2010 with the hope that hiring would ramp up slowly over the year and that he would be able to re-establish his crackerjack sourcing team that was eliminated in 2009. He believed that sourcing passive candidates off the Internet would provide enough candidates, with very little need for job postings or agency involvement.

Instead, he found that hiring in some niche areas greatly exceeded his expectations, but that overall, hiring was slow. The slew of candidates just applying for anything grew all year, swamping his team’s ability to evaluate and respond to each candidate. But at the same time, the candidates he desperately needed were not among them. Internet searching turned up a few candidates, as did employee referrals, but there were many unfilled requisitions as 2010 came to a close.

As he crafted his plans for 2011, he pondered the use of social media, which they had only dabbled in and not very successfully in 2010, and well as whether he really needed his sourcing team — at least as it had been designed with a heavy emphasis on Internet sourcing of passive candidates.

If this story rings true to you, here are some ideas on what 2011 may bring. keep reading…

For two days last week, counselors with Challenger, Gray, & Christmas fielded calls from more than 1,500 job seekers seeking advice on everything from resume-writing to finding job openings.

Some were so discouraged about their plight they didn’t have anything specific. “They were frustrated,” reports James Pedderson, director of public relations for the global outplacement firm. “They just wanted to talk with someone about it.”

While most of the callers taking advantage of the free service were unemployed (80 percent), almost half (47.5 percent) have been out of work for a year or more. Nationally, the percentage of those unemployed for more than 26 weeks — the ‘long-term unemployed’ — was a seasonally adjusted 41.9 percent in November. For the Challenger, Gray, & Christmas’ call-in service, 62.5 percent reported being out of work for more than half a year. keep reading…

All new hires have the potential of bringing with them game-changing thoughts and ideas, but no matter how rare the talent found, seldom are major business successes ever attributed to recruiting, except in the case of “lift-outs.” While not for everyone (few recruiters have the cojones or the planning skills to attempt a “lift-out”), a lift-out is the pinnacle of recruiting because it has the potential to provide an organization with all of the capability of another organization but without the expense and hassle of a corporate acquisition. It’s a powerful approach. keep reading…