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SAP announced this morning that it is buying SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. The $40-a-share all cash deal is a 52 percent premium over SuccessFactors’  $26.25 closing price Friday.

The unusual Saturday announcement made much of the part the acquisition will play in “accelerating SAP’s momentum as a provider of cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure.”

During a conference call Saturday with financial and industry analysts, SAP’s Co-CEO Bill McDermott enthusiastically declared that the acquisition of SuccessFactors will “create, yes, create a cloud powerhouse… This market, ladies and gentlemen, is just beginning.” keep reading…

Great customer experiences depend heavily on companies creating a great experience for their employees. Executive VP Jim Bush acknowledged this relationship from the outset of his quest to ramp up customer satisfaction at American Express. The company polled existing customer care agents to find what would boost the quality of their service. Among their answers were improved incentives, more career mobility, more flexible hours, and streamlined processes.

In response, American Express increased job flexibility and created new job categories so agents could progress through four levels rather than remaining stuck in one. The company also changed its compensation plan, allowing agents to more easily earn bonuses based on customer service scores.

In addition, the company changed the job title from customer care representative to customer care professional. Agents got business cards for the first time.

These were more than symbolic gestures. Agents no longer merely recite company scripts, but use their discretion to figure out how American Express products can help customers solve problems. That’s made the job harder in a way. Agents like Teresa Tate, who works out of an American Express service center in Phoenix, now have to think on their feet. But Tate wouldn’t have it any other way. “We are getting more and more power to make the decisions at our level,” she says.

Tate, who used to run a restaurant, takes calls from AmEx cardholders who operate small businesses. She is now freer to share her wisdom and her concern for these customers. “I genuinely feel like I’m in this company’s finance department,” she says of her callers. “Having been in small business myself, you need that support.”

This sort of passion and compassion for customers translates into high levels of service, into reciprocal relationships. keep reading…

The unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent in November, the lowest it has been since March 2009, as the U.S. economy added 120,000 jobs.

The job growth announced this morning by the U.S. Department of Labor was at the low end of the various estimates of what economists were expecting, though some predictions were upped following a robust report Wednesday from payroll and HR services firm ADP. The company said 206,000 private sector jobs were added.

The U.S. Labor Department report said private sector, non-farm payrolls increased by 140,000 jobs, but cuts in government jobs decreased the overall number.

The government also revised up the number of new jobs originally reported for September (158,000 to 210,000) and October (80,000 to 100,000).

Wall Street responded to the report by driving up stock prices, not with the same frenzy as it did earlier this week, but still with strength. At mid-morning in New York, the Dow was up almost 100 points. keep reading…

Of late I’ve been making the contention that the strategies and tactics used to recruit active candidates is fundamentally different than the ones used for passive candidates. Until this foundational difference is resolved, companies will never be able to hire enough top talent to meet their needs, unless they have a big employer brand to hide their process inefficiencies.

Employer brands, however, have limited shelf lives in maturing markets. As an example, just compare Google today and its continuing series of product blunders to the Microsoft of 10-15 years ago. When a company’s business strategy changes due to changing market conditions, its talent acquisition strategies must immediately follow suit.

Quickly, here’s what I believe are at the root cause of most companies’ hiring challenges: keep reading…

Twitter: for some, it’s a great source of news. For others, a way to broadcast jobs. For still others, a quick n’ dirty way to comment, spread links, or have the proverbial “conversation.”

Jody Ordioni, who’ll be leading a session at the Expo in March, and I talk about Twitter — what we notice, what seems to work, and what seems to not. It’s a bit over six minutes, below.

keep reading…