So as ERE Expo keynote speaker and ESPN analyst Steve Lavin warmed up the crowd at Expo on Thursday morning, it was unclear how his theories on people management — on really building a solid team — were applicable to his audience.

Lavin started the game slowly, but as he shared his passion and outlook on choosing the right people, his passion became palpable. He’s not talking ATS, he’s not talking ROI, and he’s certainly not talking time-to-fill metrics.

But what Lavin knows – and knows well – is sticking to a core belief system and applying motivating tips to help you create your own winning, successful teams. Here are traits of winning people for a winning team:

• Eternal learners. Pick candidates who have the following traits: an appetite for knowledge; a natural curiosity (”If you’re not naturally curious, practice it and raise your level of consciousness; listening is a skill!”); a thirst for finding a better way; and avid readers.
• Passion. Pick candidates with enthusiasm, zest, and zeal. He quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson on soul: “When it breathes through intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through will, it is virtue. When it flows through affection, it is love.”
• Bounce back. People who achieve at the highest level have resiliency. Find applicants who can overcome any obstacle.
• Mentors. Lavin had a dream to coach college basketball, so he put pen to paper and wrote to “the Jeffersons, Franklins, Lincolns – the founding fathers of basketball. There is something about receiving the snail-mail letter with a nice stamp. I have every letter I have received from John Wooden over the years!” As you refine your thinking, writing, and speaking, he suggests it will improve the effectiveness in your vision and getting others to buy into that vision.
• Physical. At some point, he says, start on that path of good health, even if it’s incremental and 10 minutes a day, then 20 minutes. “Physical health will impact everything else. The physical has to be there!” he says. Encourage this in yourself and in your team.
• Gratitude. Give thanks every day of the week, he advises. “If you have gratitude, you have grace and perspective. Humor and humility also come out of grace,” he adds.

That means most candidates are lost as soon as they stumble on one of these sites, Crispin told a pre-conference workshop at ERE Expo on Tuesday.

As you contemplate your own system, check out a few other insights Crispin shared with attendees:

On virtual career fairs:
“I see some pieces to this, but I don’t see it adding value to the candidate experience. If the company doesn’t provide any additional data or value, in the end, it doesn’t add value to your candidate experience,” he says. 

He points out that Phillips has the “most interesting approach” to this, with a series of people willing to talk to you.

On checking your careers site:
“I challenge any company to check their own jobs at least once a month,” he says. Many sites, he says, lose credibility with broken links, outdated job postings, etc.

On internal movement:
More positions are filled with internal employees than any other source, he says. 

“It is kind of fascinating to me,” he admits.

The most important thing is a map on the corporate careers site to show how people move within organizations. Look at source of hire, be transparent, and let people choose to come to you.

“You say you develop employees, but not a single company in the United States publishes internal employee movement. Most won’t even reveal it to their own employees,” says Crispin.

“The only company I know that does it in a transparent way inside their company is Pepsi. Every month they publish how many people were promoted from division to division, level to level, etc. Those figures are then broken down by race and gender,” he says.

On managing job expectations:
“You have to be able to say why you come and why you stay,” he says.

He points to RIM’s site, as well as KPMG’s site.

At KPMG, for example, prospective applicants get deep data in terms of a profile of an individual and why they are there.

“Different value propositions can let you search on profiles of partners. If that person isn’t like me, it’s very simple, and I can navigate it quickly, and that adds a lot of value to me,” he says.

All training grads are home-bound, combat-wounded, or disabled veterans, fully skilled in call center and contact center technology, and all have successfully completed an online training program offered through the Purple Heart Service Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

According to Greg Bresser, executive director of the Purple Heart Service Foundation, “we recognized two years ago that if combat wounded or disabled veterans were properly trained, they could work from home. We saw an opportunity for this group of veterans to become a vital, remote work force for many large Fortune 1,000 companies, as well as smaller family-owned businesses.”

The first phase of the partnership will see 20 virtual agents deployed to Disaboom, responsible for approaching local and national businesses to sell listings in disaboom.com’s online business listings. Disaboom plans to expand the number of graduates employed to 150 virtual agents by the end of the year.

The veterans’ training course work maximizes their military training, according to Disaboom. Applications for participation in the program are currently being accepted at www.combatwoundedcallcenter.com.

Alan Tonelson, who represents small- and medium-sized manufacturers, called this “ultimately a losing proposition” and feels that no amount of labor-saving technology can offset the low wages, huge pools of workers, and lower overall capital costs in China, India, and some Third World nations.

In his book, Race to the Bottom, he writes that the United States “will never be able to compete with them simply by cost-cutting.”

He points out that in the past 10 years, imports have gained a larger share of the U.S. home market, and that free trade agreements, beginning with NAFTA in 1994, fueled a surge in imports by ‘’sending jobs, production and, increasingly, research and development overseas.”

In an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal, he acknowledged that some U.S. manufacturers (i.e., Illinois-based equipment company Caterpillar) have managed to “keep their employment levels pretty high by cutting wages.”

He highlights its “two-tier wage systems” where workers are now making $10 to $14 an hour at jobs that had paid double that or more.

He thinks that ultimately, the U.S. middle class will be gutted.

”The division of the country into a relatively small number of high-income earners and a much larger pool of working poor will greatly accelerate. In other words, the social profile of the United States will start to resemble that of Third World countries,” he said.

New I-9 Form Released…

U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services just released its new version of the I-9 employment verification form, so make sure to update your records. (You can download it here; note that the new expiration date in the right-hand corner reflects 6/30/09.) You can move to an e-file for these forms, and perhaps you should: employeescreenIQ says its data shows that more than 85% of paper I-9 forms are filled out incorrectly. And electronically verifying this step is certainly a “greener” thing to do, and companies like Verified Person, Inc. agree. Its CEO, Jim Davis, says his Verified Person I-9 solution “affirms Verified Person’s belief in promoting an HR process that benefits the environment.”

From Resume Fluffing to Conviction Bluffing…

The folks at employeescreenIQ also say one of the hottest background-screening trends centers around the importance of thorough background checks in a shrinking job market. In fact, considering the state of the economy, “the job market is destined to become even more competitive, which in turn could lead some individuals to stretch the truth in order to secure employment,” according to the company’s new list of 10 background screening trends. Also, employeescreenIQ says conviction rates among job applicants are on the rise, and points to a 56% discrepancy rate between what is reported on a resume and what is found when conducting employment and education verifications.

TMI on MySpace?

Does the idea of lurking on someone’s MySpace page make you yell, “Too much information!” or do you view it as a (lurid) source of quality screening? What about reading someone’s biographical data on LinkedIn? Though stylistically very different (LinkedIn is more button-down; MySpace is more, er, unbuttoned?), these websites provide glimpses into the backgrounds of hopeful job candidates. Just remember two things if you decide to spend more time on these sites: failure-to-hire lawsuits can be a real headache, be it from MySpace, Google, or any other website, and avoid “friending” Natasha Kone on LinkedIn at all costs.

Genie on a Job Board…

In the June 26 issue of WEDDLE’s Newsletter, by industry analyst Peter Weddle, he advises that the key to using the Web for employers and job seekers is to manage your expectations.

“What’s out of whack is our perception of what the Internet can and cannot do,” he says. Though, “this technology is probably the single most effective means of connecting” employees and employers, it takes time to work. He advises job-seekers, in particular, that “The Internet is not some genie,” nor is it “a magic carpet that can carry you off to employment bliss the minute you hop on. No, the Web for all of its reach and technological power is bound by the pace of the humans who use it at the other end–the employers and recruiters who turn to the Web to find new talent.”

Government Security Clearance…

Weddle also reports that ClearanceJobs.com’s recently released snapshot of security clearance salaries finds that those who have a security clearance earn 25% more than those who do not. This is not without hurdles, because “you have to be able to pass the intensive screening that’s involved in applying for a clearance, plus be in a job where a clearance is required for job performance. Even then, it may take a long time to acquire this advantage, as the backlog of Federal background investigations is already huge and growing,” says Weddle.

]]> http://www.ere.net/2008/06/26/the-new-i-9-form-and-other-screening-trends/feed/ http://www.ere.net/2008/06/13/death-taxes-and-diversity/ http://www.ere.net/2008/06/13/death-taxes-and-diversity/#comments Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:39:55 +0000 Elaine Rigoli http://www.ere.net/?p=3190 While historically devoid of much diversity, the tax profession is starting to change.

Tony Santiago, who recently launched the niche site TaxDiversity.com, says he started this site to change the perception of an industry dominated by white males.

“As a recruiting firm and industry resource, we saw a lack of diversity particularly among minorities in the tax profession, as well as a lack of women in senior leadership roles,” says Santiago.

“While individual companies have developed certain initiatives, no one has stepped up to create a comprehensive plan encompassing the entire tax profession,” he says.

The site has job openings, forums, case studies, and video commentary from successful minority tax professionals.

Santiago says he has hopes of setting up scholarships and providing mentors to those who are interested in the profession.

Microsoft must have heard Santiago’s pleas, because just last week the company pledged $1 million to the National Association of Black Accountants.

Microsoft says this gift — a mix of cash and software over the next three years — can help to build a pipeline of African-American talent in the accounting and finance professions.

Microsoft is already getting started in its own backyard, sponsoring a portion of the Seattle-area NABA chapter’s scholarship fund and general fund, and its accounting career awareness program designed to entice high school students to enter the profession.

This couldn’t come at a better time. Santiago says he recently surveyed U.S. tax professionals, and 68% think racial diversity at the senior executive level is below average or poor. Nearly half say the availability of support systems to promote diversity among tax professionals is below average or poor.

Real Tips for Real Diversity

Employment attorney Natalie Holder-Winfield recently wrote Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce, and in an interview with the New York Times, she questions the steps companies are taking to actively fill jobs with diverse workers.

She suggests finding better ways, “for example, interviewing at historically black colleges and universities, tapping into women’s networks at the colleges where you are trying to interview, or connecting with professional and trade organizations that represented the underrepresented. Then I’d ask if you’re aware of your company’s reputation when it comes to hiring and promoting and people of different backgrounds — maybe you should be looking at blog posts by disgruntled employees or company rankings within publications that cater to diverse audiences.”

Where the CPAs Are 2008

Another study, this one by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and titled “2008 Trends in the Survey of Accounting Graduates and the Demand for Public Accounting Recruits,” shows African-Americans account for 8% of all newly hired CPAs.

The survey also asked, “Is the number of experienced recruits hired by your firm likely to be higher, lower or the same as the previous year?” and here are the results:

Recession is real. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, says there is “no debate that the economy is in a recession.” Among other worries for the average American, beyond a lower net worth and smaller purchasing power, Zandi says it is tough to find a job, and “if you lose a job, it is tough to get back in.”

Jobless jump. The new BLS report shows that May’s jobless rate jumped to 5.5% from 5%, a sounding bell that U.S. growth is stalling.

Job losses. Since the beginning of 2008, job losses have totaled 324,000.

Optimistic pessimism. The 49,000 loss is actually smaller than initially forecast, after a 28,000 drop in April that was more than initially reported.

Who is hit. So who represents that 5.5%? The pain is sparing no one, with adult men, adult women, teens, whites, and blacks equally affected. Of note, among the 8.5 million unemployed Americans, the largest segment is among 16- to 24-year-olds.

The ADP report. According to a report from ADP Employer Services, U.S. companies unexpectedly added 40,000 jobs in May, the most since January. The ADP report doesn’t include government jobs, and the report tends to over-inflate private employment data.

Healthcare still hot. In the healthcare sector, 34,000 new jobs were added in May.

Construction not hot. Employment in construction, meanwhile, declined by 34,000. The BLS says that, since its peak in September 2006, construction employment has fallen by 475,000; two-thirds of that decrease, or 320,000, has occurred in just the past seven months.

A maybe on manufacturing. Among manufacturing jobs, employment declined in May by 26,000 jobs. Declines continued in two construction-related manufacturing industries — wood products and nonmetallic mineral products.

Retail cuts. Retail trade employment in department stores and similar declined by 27,000 in May. Since peaking in March 2007, the industry has lost 184,000 jobs, says the BLS.

Temp help. Temporary help services shed 30,000 jobs in May, with a total of 110,000 job losses over the past four months.

It says its mission is to connect older workers with appropriate jobs, but since when did 40 become old?

If by old they mean “experienced,” or perhaps simply, “wiser,” then time will tell whether baby boomers and fringe Gen Xers find the site worthwhile.

Jeff Littlejohn, vice president and general manager of The Employment Guide, says younger job seekers have better resources through college campus job fairs and other career helpers.

For recruiters interested in the life skills and experience that older workers bring, WiserWorker.com bridges this communication gap, explains Littlejohn.

The home page offers a bright “Font +/-” button that can make the font size really, really big or really, really tiny, depending on your vantage point and bifocal strength. Certainly a nice touch for those “wiser” workers, indeed.

The site has launched with more than 53,000 job listings, but a few search strings for random keywords (i.e., director, writer, editor) brought back an overwhelming number of postings from the same company, Talent6 Casting Network. This employer is of the “Actors, Extras, Models, Dancers (full and part time)” posting variety, so we’re not sure that 53,000 is entirely brag-worthy.

Still, searches for other keywords (i.e., business, marketing, nursing, IT, engineering) brought back a variety of postings from scores of employers and staffing agencies.

The site certainly has a lot of potential, but it could be improved with more content (i.e., more blog postings, links to actual job fairs under the Job Fairs button), and more interactivity overall.

And in this day and age of $4/gallon gas and more and more smart employers embracing the power of telecommuting, there is a noticeably absent option to search for “telecommute only” jobs. Not a necessity for job boards, but certainly a nice green touch.

Some shoot for 100K+ jobs, other shoot for just half of that. And it’s this market, those seeking a starting salary between $50,000 to $100,000, being tapped on the new 50kandup.com niche board. The company says this job board can help you filter out individuals who are under-qualified or over-qualified. The site is helpful, though not signficantly full of drastically different features that separate this niche board from its competitors.

Still, the full-service site has been up and running for a month now and is gaining steam. John Ruppel, president of 50kandup.com, says he had no doubt this was a critical demographic “but there was just no predicting the amount of attention we would receive from human resource managers and recruiters around the country who wanted to find candidates within this salary range.”

Smart MBAs Look for Perks…

Then there are those definitely seeking more than $50,000.

Take MBAs, for instance, who are still quite hot for Google. (The Mountain View, California-based company says it gets 1,300 resumes a day, but some top management has recently jumped ship for Facebook. Decide for yourself here whether the company is still hot or not.)

This is the second year in a row Google has won the top honor in the IDEAL Employer survey of 5,769 students from the nation’s top 52 MBA programs. Following Google, which won 24% of the votes, was McKinsey & Company (16%); Goldman Sachs (15%); Apple (14%); and The Boston Consulting Group (12%).

As for career goals, it’s a tie at 58% for “being competitively or intellectually challenged” and “having a work-life balance,” followed at 55% by “being a leader or manager of people.” Another 37% aspire toward “being entrepreneurial or creative/innovative” and 28% strive for “being dedicated to a cause or to feel that they are serving the greater good.”

This talent doesn’t come cheap, either, with most MBAs expecting $90,232 after the first year and $180,030 after five years.

Job Corps Changes Ahead…

Expect some changes to the nation’s 44-year-old federally funded Job Corps program.

U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao released a new report from a blue ribbon Advisory Committee on Job Corps that recommends enhancements to education and training policies and management.

The Labor Department notes these changes will help make Job Corps more successful in “preparing students for real-world jobs in the 21st century worldwide economy.”

Along with recommendations for better “real-world” career and technical education and training curricula, the report also urges more postsecondary education for students.

Another recommendation is to build better partnerships with educational institutions, and especially high-growth industries, to showcase Job Corps youth as highly sought after students and employees.

Job Corps trains approximately 62,000 young people between ages 16 through 24.

Dice.com, which is sponsoring maniaTV’s new sketch comedy show, National Lampoon’s The Lemmings, gets some pretty unique branding out of the deal and a new way to talk directly to engineering and IT professionals.

And Dice will definitely attract more of these professionals online, as maniaTV, a new trend in online viewing, has nearly 4.1 million unique visitors a month, according to ComScore.

As part of the branded entertainment sponsorship package, show producers have created a recurring character called Dice Man, a super-hero who saves people from taking jobs for which they are over-qualified, helps people find fulfilling employment, and assists companies in search of valuable talent.

Dice Man also fights against the evil antagonist, Doctor Drudgery, and his henchmen Pink Slip and Dead End.

National Lampoon Lemmings: Diceman To The Rescue

Powered by maniaTV.com

Amber Lawson, maniaTV head of comedy, says producers are excited to integrate Dice Man and the antagonists into the plot lines. Lawson notes that “it is fantastic working with a brand that gets the power of integration because it has empowered us to develop a set of characters that will maintain comedic integrity and achieve the goal of creating a lasting impression.”

Others find it, well, rather lame. One poster on the Dice.com message boards sums up his feelings by stating that “National Lampoon is great, but it looks like they whored out a spot in order to make a couple of dollars, not their fault, money is money.”

Dice Man (played by actor Andy Goldenberg), made his debut on the May 26 episode.

But the magazine for career-committed mothers, which reaches two million readers, also has an annual award to honor companies committed to diversity.

The magazine’s new list honors 20 companies that require manager training on diversity issues and rate manager performance partly on diversity results, such as how many multicultural women advance.

Let’s face it. A lot of companies say they have diversity programs, but not a lot can show metrics as impressive as the companies awarded on this year’s 20 best companies for multicultural women.

The magazine says these businesses recognize that it’s not just about recruitment. Many use “real” inclusion programs to actively develop, retain, and promote their multicultural employees.

In fact, this year the magazine says it noticed a dramatic increase in the number of women of color who are senior managers. Also, women of color represented 13% of all new hires last year, 14% of all employees, and 7% of top 20% earners at the winning firms.

Here is a snapshot into what makes some of these super-star companies so great:

• Citi. Thanks to recruiting efforts at schools such as Howard University and partnerships with groups like the National Society of Hispanic MBAs , 28% of new hires last year were women of color, up from 25% in 2006. Even better, 16% of newly hired managers were multicultural women, up from 12%.
• MetLife. On the list for the third year in a row, one cool feature is its social Global Women’s Leadership Forum that was launched in 2007. In this networking forum, MetLife’s senior women officers and diversity leaders tackle diversity, inclusion, and women’s advancement, and also host webinars and regional meetings.
• Deloitte. Among leading U.S. accounting firms, it boasts the highest percentage of women partners, principals, and directors. Currently, 84 women of color hold corporate executive positions. The firm offered more than 400 networking, mentoring, and professional development events for women in 2007.
• IBM. One cool best practice is its “Basic Blue” week-long class that all new managers attend. It includes a three-hour diversity workshop addressing what is expected of managers in today’s global environment. In its “Shades of Blue” class, the company teaches managers about different cultures and values.
• Pepsico. So many things to note about the beverage giant, run by Indra Nooyi, one of the most powerful women in business. In 2007, PepsiCo’s revenue grew 12%, to $39.5 billion. For the past six years, PepsiCo has focuses on multicultural hiring and retention through its Women of Color Multicultural Alliance. In addition, the company’s “Power Pairs” mentoring program creates relationships between employees and their managers; the turnover rate for women who participate in Power Pairs is half the rate of those who do not.

Hundreds of teens from across the five boroughs in New York City, who are part of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, are looking to “make a job, not take a job.”

These students certainly have the entrepreneurial spirit.

Take Amanda Loyola, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at Horace Mann in Manhattan. Her eco-friendly pet business, EcoDog Treats, produces inexpensive, vegetarian dog treats.

Or look at Jelani Anglin, a 16-year-old junior at Elmont Memorial High School in Queens. His company, No Bones, provides exclusive electronic equipment priced at least 10% below its competitors.

Loyola and Anglin are just two students competing for venture funding of as much as $1,200 to help them launch their start-ups. This is all part of the annual New York Regional Business Plan Competition, slated for June 10.

Spoken like a true entrepreneur, Loyola says her eco-pet business “is way better than a summer job, because with a summer job it’s just the summer.”

As part of this competition, Loyola and others will learn business concepts such as developing income statements; conducting market research; and completing and presenting business plans.

“When you have your own business it could be a stable thing throughout the whole year as your income,” she says.

Still, don’t rule these ambitious students out as future workers at your company. Barbara Reuter, metro executive director of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, says “many of our NFTE students may return to traditional employment, yet they’ve learned how the economy operates, which makes them much better business people.”

In addition, Reuter points to research from Harvard and Brandeis universities that the NFTE students tend to set their sights on higher academic goals such as attending and completing college.

Teen summer employment is expected to fall to the lowest rate in the 60-year history of government jobs data. The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University says working teens ages 16 to 19 will slide to 34%, down from 45% in 2000 and a high of 48.5% in 1989. A lot of this increased competition can be attributed to adults competing for the same low-skilled, hourly jobs in the service and retail industries.

Yep, tech professionals. There is no denying the market’s sluggishness after you skim the Yoh Index of Technology Wages. Tech professionals’ salaries are falling, with wages dropping 2.7% in the first-quarter, when compared to the same period in 2007.

Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh, points out that “this drop in wages this quarter, coupled with April’s negative Bureau of Labor Statistics report on employment, paints a very lackluster picture of the economy.”

“However, this continues to be a skill-driven market and we’re still seeing pockets of strength in the tech sector, such as SAP, Oracle, security, and product development, and software and hardware engineers,” says Lanzalotto.

If the strength found in these sectors permeates the weaker sectors of the market, there is a chance that it could ultimately produce stronger wage growth for the second half of 2008.

The Yoh quarterly report also identifies the top job titles in highest demand. Based on conversations with more than 9,000 hiring managers in over 15 major metropolitan areas, Yoh says the following roles have appeared most frequently nationwide:

• Biostatistician
• Civil Engineer
• Clinical Research Associate
• Firmware/Embedded Engineer
• Java Developer
• Mechanical Engineer
• .Net Developer
• Oracle DBA
• Project Manager
• SAP® Consultant (Functional/Technical)

Kronos has launched Kronos for Dining, a software platform designed to help restaurants recruit and retain the best people, forecast and schedule to meet customer demand, track time and attendance, and manage absences.

Beyond the recruitment and scheduling features, it offers a way to automate compliance tasks, which can help to reduce liability and let managers focus more time on taking care of hungry guests.

Beaker’s New Science ‘Hood…

We first chatted about this new online community back at the ERE Expo Spring 2008, and now Beaker.com has launched its community for professionals in the life sciences industries.

The site merges social networking, career advice, multimedia education, and online recruitment catering specifically to the life sciences industry.

The Beaker management team includes CEO Jeffrey Clark (former president/COO for Ken Clark International); VP of Sales Josh Akers (formerly with Monster.com and Direct Employers Association); and Chief Information Officer David Evans (formerly with America Online, CareerTours, Jobing, and Cendant).

Changing Face of Microsoft…

Watch for Microsoft to soon launch a campaign to showcase the diversity in its employee ranks, and ultimately attract more women and minorities to the company. (Todd Raphael has a more in-depth look at diversity coming up in the July Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.)

In partnership with ad agency Worktank, Microsoft conducted focus groups of both internal and external employees to understand what was important particularly to Native Americans, females, Hispanics, and African-Americans. It learned to put authenticity first, and to ditch the corporate speak.

In search of authenticity, the campaign is featuring rank-and-file employees, rather than Microsoft execs or an emphasis on Microsoft HR people. Among the employees featured prominently: one of the top-20 females in gaming in the country, as well as an African-American general manager who handles a 79-country region in the Middle East and Africa.

Microsoft will kick it off with a May 29 webinar.

TheLadders.com Says Bye to Bios…

TheLadders.com has unveiled new resume functionality, saying good-bye to “bios” and hello to the old-fashioned term resumes.

It’s essentially a matter of semantics, of course, but the change now gives candidates a chance to upload or create a resume in one step before letting recruiters skim through the latest postings. Candidates will still have the option to keep their personal and contact information confidential.

However, the company is making a plea with candidates on behalf of recruiters. In a letter to job-seekers about these new changes, it says “we have heard loud and clear from recruiters that they much prefer to know your name and current company. If you must, please use this confidentiality feature; but please do realize that it comes at the cost of making your resume a bit less transparent to those who are looking for you.”

Don’t be naive and think that you can just find someone by asking all the people you know. One of the participants at the NextNY event on tricks and tips for hiring great developers claims, “You really don’t know as many people as you think you know!”

Don’t be desperate to hire anyone who knows basic code. With the right planning, you can recruit and retain a super programmer, and here’s how:

Just before we head out for the long Memorial Day weekend, let’s review how stress can be the silent killer of retention in your recruiting department.

Think “silent killer” is being a bit dramatic?

Recruitment analyst Peter Weddle doesn’t think so, coining stress “the silent killer” because he thinks no one is paying much attention to how stress breaks down an otherwise healthy staff.

In Watson Wyatt’s 2007/2008 Global Strategic Rewards report, 40% of employees cited stress as the number-one reason for leaving their last employer. But when asked why their employees jumped ship, the bosses ranked stress at number five.

Be Resilient

Weddle encourages adopting a slower pace to embark on a recruiter’s stress reduction program:

• Step 1: Conduct a test among your recruiting team. This blind survey can pinpoint what’s currently causing any pressure or anxiety, and nothing should be off limits. Weddle says the goal is to identify the fixable sources of stress within your organization. Weddle acknowledges that the team will likely complain about leadership, culture, or compensation policies, but you should really determine the growing irritants that collectively shadow a recruiter’s perceived ability to succeed on-the-job. Some worries, for example, are unrealistic workloads, insufficient training, unpleasant work environment, or unrealistic schedules.
• Step: 2: Identify any “stress-reduction resources” you could use. For example, a nonconventional resource might be found within your own staffing group. During a budget crunch, it might leave some open time on someone else’s schedule. Voila! That’s recruiter talent that’s normally committed elsewhere. Also look for things outside of the staffing group. For example, Weddle suggests that a reduction in workload in the finance department may enable someone on that staff to invest some time in tutoring recruiters on building the business case for corporate investments.
• Step 3: Allocate the resources you have to address the sources of stress that you’ve identified. After you’ve determined what stresses you out and what resources, if any, could help, build and prioritize a list of specific stress-reduction actions. Then brief the entire recruiting team on your plan, and finally, execute the steps to help lower stress for you and your team.

Stress is a state of mind, sure, but these tips can help you keep the right frame of mind all year long. At the very least, maybe these tips will help you rest better this long holiday weekend and return to work on Tuesday significantly refreshed!

The company is chatting with you, your neighbor, and your potential next star candidate about lots of Southwest-related things in a new blog, aptly titled “Nuts About Southwest.”

On the blog, the company notes that “we want to build a personal relationship between our team and you, and we need your participation. Everyone is encouraged to join in, and you don’t need to register to read, watch, or comment. However, if you would like to share photos or videos or rate a post, among other things, you will need to complete a profile.”

The JobsinPods.com team calls it “probably the best employment branding site we’ve ever seen,” noting its use of a blog; photos via Flickr; YouTube-hosted videos; polls; RSS feeds; and podcasts.

So if you’re contemplating a career in the airline industry, let’s compare Southwest to how other airlines are communicating with an audience full of potential applicants: Delta Airlines has a few creative things but is mostly ignoring any use of interactivity anywhere on its site. The same goes for the websites for American Airlines and Continental Airlines, both drastically devoid of any human-esque interaction, though they tie for having the most boring and static career sites. Even JetBlue Airlines, considered one of the more “inspiring” airlines, has a rather flat, “log-in required” website that isn’t much higher of the cool scale.

What About Me?

Well, if you’re like most other companies, you’re not as cool as Southwest. (But you might not be as bad as some of Southwest’s competitors though.)

ERE’s recent webinar pointed out that social networking tools allows personalization and control; is fun and engaging; has global reach; and provides for in-depth customization.

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Also, a study conducted recently in the United Kingdom shows that only 10% of recruiters use social networking sites and only a small minority use blogs, videos, or other Web 2.0 technology for recruitment. The research suggests that one of the reasons why social networks have been slow to take off as a recruitment tool is because recruiters do not consider them a credible way to communicate, despite large numbers of their target labor market using them regularly.

“Recruiters may be missing a trick by not adopting Web 2.0 technology. They need to engage with job seekers to encourage them to apply for jobs. Text-heavy recruitment pages with no interactivity will not win the hearts and minds of the Web 2.0 generation,” said Cranfield University research fellow Emma Parry, in the study.

What to Do

You can do it yourself, finally tapping into the power of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., or you can pay someone for help.

SuccessFactors, for one, has a new “Web 2.0-based collaborative network,” a solution that helps you learn about tagging, social networking, and other tools.

Kevin Wheeler wrote a whole column about this, said it’s here to stay, and shared tips on how to gain a competitive edge.

In reality, Web 2.0 is so here to stay it’s practically over. So what is your company waiting for?

While everyone can agree that smoking is unhealthy, should it be the primary reason to close the door on prospective new applicants? Especially prospective “star” candidates?

Well, Sarasota county government seems to think so. On Monday, it implemented a tobacco-free hiring policy for all new job applicants.

On the one hand, everyone should applaud this healthy step forward. On the other, what’s next? Testing for the presence of excessive levels of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey or a few too many Twinkies?

But Sarasota is serious about this new policy, stating that all applicants for jobs with Sarasota County will be required to acknowledge during the application process that they have not used tobacco products for the preceding 12 months.

Applicants who refuse to verify that they do not use tobacco products will be deemed ineligible for employment. In addition, applicants will be screened for tobacco use during the new-hire physical exam process. If the screening indicates the presence of nicotine above a specified amount, the applicant will be considered ineligible for employment.

Why Change Now?

The county says its revised policy is based on years of research regarding the negative effects of tobacco use on the personal health of individuals and employer organizations.

For example, from 1997 to 2001, cigarette smoking was estimated to be responsible for $167 billion in annual health-related economic losses in the United States.

Sarasota County says its decision to adopt this tobacco-free policy will promote a healthier workforce and benefit taxpayers’ dollars.

Of course, Sarasota is not alone. Due to higher insurance costs and the drain on productivity, employers around the country have considered such measures.

(We checked its online jobs board, but R.J. Reynolds is not one of these more progressive employers.)

If your company is thinking of such a policy, make sure to learn from other companies that have faced lawsuits from employees. For example, a Miracle-Gro employee challenged the policy last year.

And if you’ve been hospitalized recently, or even had to wait in a doctor’s room lately, you’re probably aware that even the best nurses are over-worked and under-paid.

So no matter what side of the immigration debate you’re on, is there really a legitimate argument left over why we’re blocking the efforts of highly motivated nursing students to stay in our country and aid the sick, tired, and needy?

Category Three Hurricane

Workforce analyst Peter Buerhaus, a Vanderbilt University professor, says new data points to a gathering storm that will be “like a Category Three hurricane, but one that hits the entire nation.”

During a May 6 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, he predicted that the current nursing shortage, which began in 1998, could hit 500,000 by 2025.

“A shortage that size could incapacitate the healthcare system,” Buerhaus said.

Green Card Caps

Retrogression has significantly impacted the hiring practices of organizations across many industries and the healthcare field is no exception.

Agnes Rudinsky, an immigration attorney for VisaNow, says many foreign graduates of U.S. nursing programs are unable to work following the expiration of their Optional Practical Training (OPT) as they wait to move through the backlog of green card applications.

“Based on the current processing time, they must wait two to three years for their green card cases to be approved,” says Rudinsky.

“While their green card cases are pending, and with the H-1B work visa cap reached in record time again this year, they often are not able to secure any nonimmigrant visas to legally work in the U.S. while they wait for their green card applications to be approved.”

Emergency Nursing Supply Relief

VisaNow explains that the Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act bill introduced to the House aims to address the challenges many hospitals are facing to fully staff their organizations with registered nurses and physical therapists.

“The bill will take nurses out of the green card caps until 2011, with a limit of 20,000 principle applicants per year. This means that nurses will not take green cards away from others currently queued up. In addition to the removal of nurse petitions from the green card caps, which this bill proposes, the requirement for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to review the I-140 of the nurse petition within 30 days of submission is a crucial step in expediting this process,” says Rudinsky.

Currently, the average time for an approval on this piece of a green card application is eight to 12 months, she explains.

“Obviously, this bill is a significant step in the right direction for hospitals that struggle with the well-known shortage of healthcare workers,” adds Rudinsky.

• 24% have their resume posted on one to two job boards.
• 29% have their resume posted on three to four job boards.
• 18% have their resume posted on five or more job boards.
• 29% do not have their resume posted online.

Of the professionals who currently have their resume posted online, 54% said geographic and industry-specific job sites are most effective when searching for a job, while the remainder chose general job boards.

Sure, you may be thinking that job boards have been absorbed left and right by larger boards, but let’s face it: more keep appearing and the growth is not slowing down. No question, the use of niche-specific job boards has grown, so now the question remains whether — and for how long — general job boards can remain effective.

Peter Weddle, who came out this week with his 2008 Users’ Choice Award winners, says most job seekers use a number of different sites, usually about five boards. In an interview with Fortune magazine, he shared his advice for how today’s candidates should approach the job hunt:

“I recommend using two of the big general sites like CareerBuilder.com or Yahoo! HotJobs and three specialty sites — one that concentrates on your career field, one industry site, and one that focuses on the location where you live or want to live. That way you’re covered from all angles,” said Weddle.

Under the “niche” category, he acknowledged the following best-of niche sites: CareerBank.com (accounting, finance), ComputerJobs.com, Dice (IT jobs), HealthEcareers Network, and JobsInLogistics.

New Niches

Here are a couple more that have sprung up recently.

If you’re looking for computing or engineering professionals, read on. The IEEE Computer Society’s newly launched job board is in partnership with the American Institute of Physics, a great way to scour the market for computer scientists and engineers. In addition, the site has a career center that offers candidates a “Build Your Career” option with career news, articles, online courses, and more.

If you go there in search of your dream whiz kid, you’ll probably have luck: the Computer Society has more than 85,000 members around the world, while the AIP serves a global audience of 120,000 scientists and engineers.

Meanwhile, the newly launched JobsForPTs.com leaves no guesswork as to what niche it serves, with its specific focus on reaching physical therapists and physical therapy assistants.

These licensed physical therapists and physical therapy assistants may be interested in full-time traditional employment or hourly per diem or contract assignments. One cool feature is that the site links directly to every state licensing board and state professional PT association chapter.

JobsForPTs.com says it accepts payment through PayPal, with job posting packages starting at under $100. Annual membership subscriptions can be purchased at various levels as well. JobsForPTs.com is a service of JobsForAllTherapists.com, based in Greater Binghamton, New York.

And if you’re looking for more established best-of healthcare-niche boards, Weddle’s list of the best by this industry in 2008 includes Absolutely Health Care, AllHealthcareJobs.com, Bio Space, Hcareers (hotels, hospitality), HealthCareerWeb.com.