ERE.net

Two months ago, the dispute over Employ Media’s rights to register and manage .jobs Internet addresses went to arbitration. Since then, nothing about the process has been made public.

This is in sharp contrast to the detailed correspondence that was posted as it became available in the weeks following the notice of breach sent Employ Media by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Between the breach notice dated Feb. 27 and May 3, when Employ Media informed ICANN of the arbitration, there were six postings. A seventh relating to the dispute was dated May 6.

Since then, only a single document — Employ Media’s arbitration request — has been posted to ICANN’s special page specifically set aside for “documents in the arbitration.”

The lack of information was blasted by the leading critic of Employ Media’s .jobs management. The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition sent a letter to ICANN complaining: keep reading…

Two good news developments for colleges and their students: starting salary offers are up , and a new Facebook app to help career centers promote jobs officially launches.

First, the salary news.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported Wednesday that the average starting salary for newly minted college graduates is $51,018. That’s up 4.8 percent from last year’s $48,661.

It’s the third time the quarterly NACE salary survey has reported an increase. It contrasts with 2010, when average starting offers were below those in 2009.

“The steady increases in starting salary offers we’re seeing this year is a good indication that the job market for new college graduates is gathering strength,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

Engineering graduates saw some of the biggest increases — and biggest salaries generally. Petroleum engineering graduates got average offers of $80,849, up 8.1 percent over the summer 2010 survey. The average offer to computer engineering graduates rose 7.6 percent to $64,499.

While their starting salaries were much lower, even students in humanities and social science programs saw increases. keep reading…

ERE.net has learned more details about LinkedIn’s July 1 decision to cut off Monster’s BeKnown and BranchOut’s API access. We’ve also obtained copies of the emails that LinkedIn sent to both companies.

If there was any doubt that commercial reasons were behind the move, it’s gone now. Both emails end by proposing that the companies join LinkedIn’s “Partner Program for enterprise products.” A representative for LinkedIn has confirmed that the companies would pay for this access.

While BranchOut and BeKnown got all the attention, LinkedIn also cut off access to at least four other companies. Startup mixtent and resume parsing company Daxtra are two more companies that serve recruiters that were affected. As of this morning, the import function that is the core of mixtent’s service appears to be completely broken.

keep reading…

There is going to be an exodus of workers soon from businesses all across the U.S. It seems that for all the work recruiters do at the front end, organizations are undoing it at the backend. Frustrated employees are seeking new opportunities in record numbers, but if you are prepared, your talent shortages may be over.

Earlier this week, Mercer released its What’s Working survey that found that “one in two U.S. employees [are] looking to leave or [have] checked out on the job.” Other surveys support these findings, including ones by Right Management.

Is this simply the grass-is-greener syndrome, or is there something else going on? Even though there are plenty of jobs for certain types of people — Amazon is adding 5,000 people, and McDonald’s, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple are just a few others that have announced fairly large hiring plans — we are not actually out of this recession, and changing jobs is a risky business.

While money and benefits are not the primary reason people leave their employers in normal times, these times are very different. keep reading…

For the first time in the history of the industry, a job board will soon be able to see how well it is performing compared to its peers.

In a survey launched this morning, the industry’s trade association, the International Association of Employment Web Sites, is looking to establish benchmarks for dozens of performance metrics.

How much traffic do sites get? How do job seekers find their way there? How much do the sites spend on promotion? What does it cost to post an ad? What kind of response do the ads get?

These and a host of other questions will finally have answers that the participating job boards and members of the IAEWS can use to compare how well they are doing against the industry as a whole. Job boards, regardless of size and locale, and at no cost, can participate here.

Peter Weddle, founder and executive director of the IAEWS, says the industry needs benchmarks. “Pages of very in-depth data will be collected so we can establish some benchmarks for the industry,” he explained. Professional organizations and trade associations have to have some “means of comparing themselves against others so they know how they stand.” keep reading…

Halogen and SuccessFactors have settled their lawsuit, with Halogen paying its competitor in the HR software business an undisclosed sum and admitting it created a bogus company to scam information.

It probably was inevitable that the Ottawa, Canada, company would want to settle the case. From the evidence SuccessFactors allegedly had, Halogen, if not caught red-handed, certainly had a lot of ‘splainin to do. Plus, the whole episode was embarrassing, made for very bad PR, and, as I said when the news first broke, it made a mockery of Halogen’s social responsibility statement. keep reading…

The extended version of this article will be published in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster. –Professor Geert Hofstede, Dutch social psychologist

One of the greatest challenges facing global companies right now is their ability to exploit synergies and efficiencies in their global talent acquisition and retention programs. When considered with the fact we are about to enter an era of unparalleled talent scarcity around the world, the role of the global employer brand manager is set to become one of the most critical roles inside global companies.

Global talent acquisition has become increasingly complex. The need for systems integration, understanding of culture diversity, social and technological changes, jobless, uneven economic recoveries in many countries, the threat of declining fertility rates, inequality in global education standards, and the impact of aging populations in many developed economies has created multiple challenges for global companies which show no signs of easing soon!

Leaders I speak with around the world are saying they are running hard to stand still and where previously they could take 1-2 years to research, develop, and implement talent acquisition and retention strategies, the competitiveness for talent is demanding leaders react quicker and more decisively to stay ahead of the competition.

Even top employer-branding companies like Google, Adidas, and Deloitte are constantly seeking innovative ways to source, develop, and retain talent. If that’s what is happening with the market leaders, consider the millions of other companies around the world who have similar challenges. At a global level the problem is magnified to unthinkable proportions and the solutions are going to need a mix of short- and long-term initiatives including collaboration between companies, industries, universities, and governments. There is no benefit to global corporations if leadership talent is in high supply in Scandinavia when manufacturing operations are in India and there is a dearth of leaders with the right skills.

The Reality of Globalization and its Impact on Employer Branding

The social and culture integration brought about through globalization can foster broader understanding and co-operation between employees around the world, and potentially economies of scale in the allocation of human resources, but is it really that simple? keep reading…

Indeed’s monthly job trends numbers are out, and if they are any indication of what’s ahead this week when official employment numbers are released, the news is going to be, ahem, mixed.

On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department will release its monthly employment report for June. Surveys of economists put June’s job in range from the 100,000 predicted by Bloomberg News to Marketwatch’s more optimistic 115,000.

Better than the 54,000 new jobs in May, the estimates are still well below the 182.2 thousand average of the first four months of the year. As a result, economists are not expecting any change in the 9.1 percent unemployment rate.

ADP’s National Employment Report, due out Thursday, will offer some guidance about the magnitude of the growth. Even though the  reports measure employment differently, and rarely track perfectly, ADP report is closely watched by analysts and investors for signs of what to expect in the government’s Friday report. keep reading…

Another shot has been fired in the war to own the social career networks — TechCrunch reported today that LinkedIn has cut off access to its data to both BranchOut and Monster’s BeKnown.

As we’ve reported, both services are designed to leverage Facebook’s social graph and more than 750 million users to help them find career opportunities through their friends. Until LinkedIn’s move, they had been able to use the API to give those Facebook users a shortcut in creating a resume on their own services, making them easier to set up.

As this conflict unfolds, we are going to hear a lot from each party about how they are acting in consumer’s best interests, while the other side is trampling their rights. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric though — all three companies are simply following the money and acting for their own best interests.

LinkedIn has not yet commented publicly about this situation, and its blog doesn’t even hint that anything out of the ordinary is going on. But when it does, LinkedIn will likely claim that it is protecting its users’ privacy. Who could argue with that?

But the real motivation here is something else. LinkedIn’s rapidly growing business depends entirely on its proprietary data; there’s just no way that it is going to let other companies use its own data to compete with them. In fact, the LinkedIn API’s Terms of Use, section 1.5.n., explicitly states that companies using the API agree not to “use the APIs in an Application that competes with products or services offered” by LinkedIn, something that Monster and BranchOut were surely aware of when they built their applications.

Monster’s Vice President of Product Management Matthew Mund posted Monster’s official response to the API shutdown. In it, he says:

We are disappointed by this decision. Why? It’s not good for LinkedIn users: blocking the API effectively limits LinkedIn members’ ability to import their own profile data or invite their own connections to another environment, whether BeKnown or others.

See? Monster is doing this for the poor suffering users who just want to post their data anywhere they want.

Except that Monster’s entire business is charging for access to a closed database. In the Monster Terms of Use, the company specifically prohibits anyone who would “aggregate, copy, or duplicate in any manner any of the Monster Content or information available from any Monster Site, without express written consent from Monster.” What’s good for the LinkedIn goose is clearly not good for the Monster gander.

As for BranchOut, its public position is similar to Monster’s. As the new kids on the block, it also seems happy to be getting this kind of attention, and used its response to the TechCrunch article to promote the superiority of the Facebook audience over LinkedIn’s.

This move by LinkedIn will not greatly hurt either BranchOut or Monster’s services in any big way — importing a resume was just a convenience for their users, who can still create profiles the old-fashioned way. But its a clear sign that LinkedIn recognizes that these services are taking aim squarely at its market, and that it won’t just roll over and let them do it.

Or to quote Monster VP Eric Winegardner, “game on.”

In this session, Arbita founder Don Ramer will present highlights from a process used to identify opportunities that achieve this leverage through expert benchmarking against best practices.

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

Often, managers think they know what they want in a candidate, but the person they want wouldn’t actually want to work at their company.

Carol Schultz and I talk about this conundrum in the 9 1/2-minute video below. We also talk about recruiters being undervalued and underpaid in some companies, and why that’s a penny-smart, pound-foolish plan. Schultz, a speaker at ERE’s conference this fall in Florida, shares her thoughts in the video below. keep reading…