Toby
We pause now, before beginning our workday, before we plunge into this post about Mars and Monster, to pay homage to television’s most real unreality comedy show, The Office.
The show’s finale aired last night, ending nine years of episodes that anyone who has ever worked in an office, especially a sales office, would instantly recognize as real life snippets slightly disguised. At one point or another, we’ve all had a boss or known of a boss as quirkly lovable as Michael Scott.
And what The Office did for — or is that to? — HR, but cast it as the stereotype of itself. Toby, the mild-mannered, accidental HR representative of corporate in the Scranton branch office, will forever be who every viewer of working age will picture when HR comes a’calling. (Unless they think of Catbert, who inhabits the opposite end of the HR spectrum.) keep reading…
More tech startups than at any time in the last four years will be looking to hire this year, says Silicon Valley Bank, but they worry they won’t be able to find the talent they need.
Even as most leaders and founders of the firms surveyed by the bank for its annual Startup Outlook say conditions in the U.S. are better this year than last, the number of them who report hiring talent is their biggest challenge has grown. Nine out of 10 executives report finding and hiring the talent they need is their biggest challenge. keep reading…
With only days left before this year’s college seniors become alums, those who don’t already have jobs are going to find it as hard to find work as last year’s grads did. And for those in the liberal arts, in the last few weeks, three different surveys of hiring managers and recruiting leaders found employers are only planning slight — if any – increases in the number of entry-level grads they bring on board.
Most striking about the surveys is that while they measured different aspects of hiring plans, and talked to different types of companies and employers, the bottom line was the same: entry-level jobs in a grad’s field are few.
Here’s what the three surveys found: keep reading…
Who is the best recruiter in the world? Would you believe it’s Joshua Brady, a 26-year-old Virginia man, who lives with his mom, grandmother, and young brother, and used to play a whole lot of EverQuest until he got caught stealing virtual money.
No way, you say. Yeah, well, before you shoot that down, hear this. Brady, posing as a CIA operative, recruited not one but two ordinary, otherwise law-abiding folks to rob banks.
Brady, or Theo as he identified himself, never met the two 20-somethings. All his recruiting was done over the phone, yet he managed to get the man and woman to rob, or attempt to rob, several banks, even convincing friends and relatives of the two that this was indeed all in the interests of national security.
They all got caught, though it looks like everyone except Brady is getting off, and he’ll probably only get probation.
Granted, the robberies were all botched. But you know how hard it is to find skilled talent these days. Read the entire, amazing story here on Businessweek. keep reading…
Today we pause in the hunt to source RNs to recognize nurses for the work they do and the dedication they bring to a profession that is among the most in-demand recruiting challenges in the U.S.
This is National Nurses Week, and today in particular, is set aside as both National Student Nurses Day and National School Nurse Day. In many of the English-speaking nations of the world, including the U.S. and Canada, May 6-12 is a week to honor professional nurses. The timing coincides with the May 12 birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.
Born 197 years ago into a wealthy, upper-class British family, Nightingale would be both amazed and pleased at how the work she did tending the wounded in Crimea has today become in the U.S. a profession of 3.1 million with responsibilities second only to the doctors with whom they work. keep reading…
After a mediocre jobs report from ADP on Wednesday, and the government’s own anemic March report last month, economists and the financial markets were hoping today’s report on April employment would make it at least into six digits.
No worries. The report from the U.S. Department of Labor this morning said 165,000 new non-farm jobs were created last month, while the unemployment rate declined slightly to 7.5 percent, even as the size of the workforce ticked up slightly. (It is still lower than at any time in more than three decades.)
The government also adjusted up its initial numbers for both February and March, increasing the new job estimates by a combined 114,000. With the revisions, job growth in the first quarter totaled 618,000. That’s just slightly behind the 208,000 monthly average during all of last year.
The April job growth was better than analysts were expecting. Before the release in Washington, surveys of economists showed them expecting job growth to be in a range between about 125,000 and 155,000. keep reading…
Are you sure you want to reject that former CFO who applied for an accounting manager job because she’s “overqualified” for the job?
In Massachusetts, a McDonald’s franchise advertised for full-time cashiers who “smile while serving lots of guests daily” and have at least a year of experience. And, oh yes, a B.A is required. keep reading…
Shares of LinkedIn and Monster moved in opposite directions today, although both careers sites met or exceeded, or, in the case of LinkedIn, blasted through, Wall Street’s expectations. Monster was up; LinkedIn is sinking.
Both companies reported their first-quarter financial performance today.
Reporting before the market opened, Monster said it earned 8 cents a share on revenue of $212 million. It was the first time in seven quarters the company beat Wall Street’s revenue expectation, which was $210.5 million. That surprise, and the company’s announcement it may buy back up to $200 million of its stock, drove the price up almost 9 percent.
LinkedIn reported earning 45 cents per share on revenue of $325 million. That was 15 cents higher than Wall Street’s estimates average of 31 cents per share earnings and well above its $317.1 million revenue estimate. What hurt the company was its Q2 forecast of revenue of $342 million to $347 million. Analyst estimates averaged out to $359.2 million. The stock lost 10 percent of its value in after hours trading. keep reading…
The news about April’s job growth is not looking good. Economists were predicting a mediocre month even before ADP released its estimates this morning, but the company’s numbers took even the more bearish of them by surprise.
The HR services firm, which handles payrolls for more than 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, reported that the nation added 119,000 private sector jobs in April. ADP lowered its March number from 158,000 to 131,000 jobs. Surveys of labor economists had the consensus estimates of the April ADP number in a range of 150,000 to 155,000.
The ADP report is seen by investors and economists as a predictor of the official government employment report that will be released Friday by the U.S. Labor Department. Because of different counting methods (the government uses a survey, ADP uses actual payroll information) and the inclusion of government jobs in the Labor Department numbers, the two jobs reports rarely synch up precisely. However, both are closely watched for signs of employment trends.
“While it cannot be said enough that the ADP report, while helpful, is hardly a perfect guide to Friday’s payroll report, weakness in the number is never welcome,” Dan Greenhaus, an analyst with BTIG LLC, an institutional brokerage firm, told The Washington Post. “And by and large, that’s what today’s report was; weak.” keep reading…
While the debate rages on about the future of the resume, there’s angst, but not as much, over the destiny of the cover letter.
A year ago Fortune asked “Are we killing off the cover letter?” The answer, at least according to the survey the article references, is a resounding yes.
Earlier though, Ruby on Rails creator and 37Signals partner David Heinemeier Hansson insisted, “A great resume will get you not-rejected, a great cover letter will get you hired.”
But compared to the “Resume: Love ‘em or Leave ‘em” controversy, the cover letter discussion comes down as more Solomonic. Four years ago, ERE’s founder and chairman David Manaster analyzed the relevance of the cover letter in the (then)-still-dawning age of social recruiting, summing it up this way: keep reading…
David Nosal
A former Korn/Ferry regional director who launched his own search business has been convicted of hacking and trade secrets theft. David Nosal was found guilty last week on six federal charges that, in addition to three counts of computer hacking and two trade secrets charges, included one conspiracy count.
What makes this case especially noteworthy is that Nosal did no hacking nor did he download confidential Korn/Ferry files himself. Instead, former colleagues did it on his behalf. They later cooperated with the FBI and testified against him.
The case goes back to 2004 when Nosal, an eight-year veteran of Korn/Ferry, left to start his own search firm. For the first year, federal prosecutors said, Nosal partnered with his former employer, signing an agreement not to compete and not to use its trade secrets. Prosecutors said, he convinced two of his Korn/Ferry colleagues to quit and start their own firms, which he used as cover for independent searches until the non-compete agreement expired and he launched Nosal Partners. keep reading…
If you’re beginning to think every one is using LinkedIn to source candidates, you’re close to right.
Nearly every survey on source of hire or use of social media by recruiters shows LinkedIn to be a key part of the mix; often it leads all the listed social media sites. The company itself reported adding 2,400 customers in just the last quarter of 2012, bringing the total to 16,400 organizations under contract.
Now comes a Bullhorn survey to report that of the 160,000 registered users on Bullhorn Reach, 97% use LinkedIn to source candidates. That’s not as surprising as it might seem at first glance. keep reading…
If Dice Holdings is any kind of bellwether, Q1 is looking like it got off to a slow start for the publicly held job boards. The company reported this morning it earned 12 cents a share on $50.4 million of revenue, which put it mostly in line with what Wall Street was expecting and what the company predicted in January.
However, that was down a penny per share from the same quarter last year, and the analyst estimates were lowered after Dice issued a forecast below what Wall Street was looking for. The other indicator of a general job board slowdown is that most of the $4.3 million increase in revenue comes from the company’s acquisition of Slashdot last year. Taking that out of the equation, Dice Holdings grew organically by $300,000, and the tech and security sector saw a 2 percent increase. keep reading…
The way Chris Holmes quit his border security job must have made Gordon Ramsay proud.
It wasn’t a bad-boy, burn-the-bridge resignation that has garnered all the attention for the 31-year-old new father whose friends and co-workers call him Mr. Cake (for reasons that will become obvious in a moment). That might have been more the Ramsay style.
Holmes let them eat cake. keep reading…
Jody Ordioni wrote a prescient view about the ROI of social recruiting which posted Monday morning. Monday night I discovered first hand just how prescient, at a recruiting roundtable that marked the opening of the ERE Recruiting Conference & Expo.
I moderated two separate discussions of social media issues in 90 minutes. ROI concerns were uppermost in the minds of the recruiting leaders who joined our conversation. (More than 25 different topics were available at roundtables set aside in the ballroom of the Marriott here in San Diego where the conference is being held.)
It wasn’t surprising that these leaders who hailed from firms both very large and more modest size struggle with proving the value of social media as a source of hire. LinkedIn, I should point out, was an exception. Most of the 20 or so recruiters at the roundtable, and several others I spoke with later at the evening receptions, were enthusiastic users of LinkedIn Recruiter for sourcing. Most, though, admitted that getting their senior corporate managers and leaders to be active in posting and commenting on LinkedIn Groups is a struggle.
What was more of a surprise, and what makes Jody’s article so spot on, is that I heard emerging among recruiters a recognition that social media is a marketing and promotional tool. The effectiveness of sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, even Pinterest is probably not in the number of hires or even applicants a company can trace directly to one of the social media sites. Instead, as recruiting consultants Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler reported last year, social media is a channel of influence. keep reading…
This an “eyes-only” post. Under no circumstances let a hiring manager or your CFO see this. Now, close the door; darken the blinds, and be ready to blank your screen if anyone walks up to you.
Ready? There’s a robot getting ready to take your job.
I’m not talking some automated software process like an ATS ranking algorithm. I’m talking a Robot & Frank, R2D2 cute kind of robot the Aussies have built that conducts interviews and assesses what the candidates say and their emotional response to the questions.
Sophie the robot, and her pals, Charles, Matilda, Betty, and Jack, are a joint project between La Trobe University Business School in Melbourne and Japan’s NEC Corporation, involves students and faculty from management, health sciences, sociology, psychology, and education. keep reading…
Danny Cahill, Knutson Award winner
Describing recruiting as an “industry remarkably bereft of recognition,” Ted Konnerth says it’s time that the efforts of individuals who stand out for their ethics, their honesty, and the excellence of their work be honored.
That’s why the International Retained Search Associates, a global corporation of boutique search professionals of which he’s executive director, founded an award that Konnerth hopes will one day be to recruiting what the Heisman is to football.
The David Knutson Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Recruiting is given to an individual, Konnerth said, who has dedicated his or her professional life to making “significant contributions to the art of recruiting, and maintaining the highest ethical standards to serve both the client and the candidate.” Recruiters in all areas — corporate, retained, contingent, contract — are eligible. keep reading…
New Recruiter Homepage
Sporting a new look and with some new features — including a recommendation engine that ‘learns’ the kind of people a recruiter most want — LinkedIn Recruiter is getting an official relaunch this morning.
The redesign itself is an update of the classic LinkedIn Recruiter look to make it more consistent with the LinkedIn homepage redesign that was introduced last fall.
Parker Barril, Linkedin’s Talent Solutions head of product, unveiled the fresh, new LinkedIn Recruiter at a live and webcast user event — ConnectIn — in San Francisco. As he put it, “the consumerization of the enterprise,” the trend toward making products and services easier to use, “is influencing a new generation of products.” keep reading…
It is not going to be a good day in the financial markets. The government this morning reported that March saw only 88,000 non-farm jobs added to the U.S. economy, the worst showing since last June and far below the 200,000 range economists were anticipating.
European financial markets dropped sharply after the Labor Department released the numbers, hitting a one-month low. In the U.S., Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 143 points and S&P 500 futures were down nearly 17 points in the minutes after the 8:30 a.m. report.
Investors were poised to act quickly, put on the alert Wednesday when ADP’s monthly estimate of private sector job growth came in at 158,000, which was also significantly below what economists expected. “This is very weak labor market,” economist Martin Feldstein told CNBC after the report was issued. keep reading…
Of all the occupations in the United States, which has so few practitioners that if you got them all together — a possibility since there are only 310 of them — they’d comfortably fit in a middle-school auditorium? (Maybe not in those eighth grader-sized seats, but they could all be accommodated.)
Need a hint? They comprise one of the nine specialties recognized by the American Dental Association, specializing in the restoration of natural teeth or replacing missing teeth or oral structures with artificial devices, such as dentures. These would be prosthodontists.
This is one of the little tidbits the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tosses out every so often, just to make sure the world doesn’t think it’s only about the unemployment rate and how many jobs got added last month, which is how we mostly hear the Bureau’s name mentioned. keep reading…
