Guessing game time: What’s the #1 failure for the year in the recruiting world?

Oh, so many choices for the top (or should that be the bottom?) spot. The irreverent Jason Buss offers his list of seven “Recruiting Fails for 2012,” which includes those shiny new objects, Pinterest (for recruiting? Oh, come on. Did you really believe you could use it to source anything but recipes, cutsey animal pictures, and home decorating ideas?) and BranchOut.

One (that would be us) could quibble over the inclusion of mobile recruiting, and the exclusion of Monster and its slow-motion implosion. And argue about whether the Facebook job board disaster is really worthy of the #1 spot. But you (that’s you, and  us, too) have to give Jason credit for the absolute best recruiting quote of the year. Commenting on the Facebook job board, Jason credits this to an anonymous recruiting leader:

The 5 organizations behind one of the biggest recruiting fails in the past 5 years should be spanked, and spanked hard.

Really Great Discrimination keep reading…

We have finally found the reason why the American economy has been able to do so much with so few employees. Before we explain the roots of this high productivity we need to explain that a new survey shows that “nearly 50% of men are hiring the women they date in this economy.”

Who were the respondents to this survey? None other than 40,000 members of SeekingArrangement.com, which bills itself as “the world’s largest dating website where women seek (the) ‘well-to-do.’” Yes, this totally perfectly clearly scientific report shows that “46% of ‘Sugar Daddies’ have employed, gone into business, or helped start a small business with their ‘Sugar Babies.’” keep reading…

How is a job search like an Ironman triathlon?

Bet you’ve never been asked that question before. How is it like a marathon? Sure. Now it seems we — OK, not we, but TheLadders — has kicked it up a few notches. It’s not enough anymore to liken a job search to a 26.2 mile run so grueling people die. A job search is a triathlon where before you do that little run, you do a 2.4 mile swim, and bike 112 miles.

What do you get at the end? Alex Douzet’s “Ironman’s Seven Rules of Job Searching.” Douzet, co-founder of TheLadders and its COO, just completed his first Ironman triathlon (you knew that was coming), and from his experience came up with his list, beginning with “Have a map.”

Along the way to Rule 7, Douzet says, “It’s 75% Physical and 75% Mental.” It’s that kind of thing that makes us glad we’re more the passive job seeker kinda guys.

Proven Ability; Transferable Skills

Still on the job search thing, Monster has come up with a handy translation for common resume phrases (of course, recruiters have their own code words, too). Just like when the real estate listing calls a tiny shack a “quaint cottage,” the translation for “transferable skills” is “I’m not qualified, but do me a favor.” keep reading…

There’s a better-than-even chance you don’t know what the cloud is. Fluffy white things in the sky is not correct. And the bad news is that if you polled the audience, that’s about what you would have heard.

Seems a majority of Americans think “the cloud” has something to do with weather, and about half of you think rainy weather interferes with your cloud computing.

Now this little survey from Citrix isn’t recruiting specific, but we’d guess that a big percentage of you are in the cloud on a regular basis. All those SaaS systems out there are cloud-connected. keep reading…

If you have Twitter envy, we have a solution. Just buy your followers.

Sure, you could stay up all night tweeting and retweeting, praying you’re witty enough, observant enough, or helpful enough that the Twittersphere will reward you with thousands of followers, some of whom might even be candidate-worthy.

Or, you could do what PR firms, celebrity marketers, even Mitt Romney has done and spring for 10 or 20 thousand — or more — followers. You can buy more, lots more, but really, everything in moderation.

We, the ever-so-helpful ERE editors, did some price shopping, and found Twitterfollow on Fivver offering 21K followers for the low, low price of $5. We think that’s a steal, considering Barracuda Labs found the average price to be $18 per 1,000. keep reading…

So Raghav Singh gave us a little sneak preview of his upcoming ERE Expo presentation about recruiting in China and we couldn’t help but share one of his slides, taken from a Shanghai newspaper. Those with too much time on their hands can play our fun parlor game called “Count the EEOC Violations if This Was in an American Newspaper.”

The Cheez is Moving

Anyone still around from the old days (that would pre-the Great Recession) will undoubtedly remember Cheezhead, an utterly irreverent blog about all things recruiting. Written by Joel Cheesman, the blog could be at turns informative, satiric, newsy, and polemical, especially when it came to job boards, and especially when it involved CareerBuilder or Monster. keep reading…

Have you ever gotten on an elevator and had to stand there floor after floor while some jerk is practically breathing in your face while discussing their personal affairs over a cell phone that keeps cutting out on them?

Oh yeah. It’s times like that we wish the same death upon them as befell Nora Carpenter. So it was with great glee we discovered this week we are not alone. CareerBuilder says 35 percent of American workers agree with us that talking on a cell phone is one of the most annoying elevator habits of others that we must endure. (Endure, unless we happen to know Death.)

Right behind that is not holding the door open for someone, which 33 percent of the workers abhor. (Jerk and friends make up the 16 percent who admit pushing the “close” button when they see someone rushing.) Just about tied with that at 32 percent are the folks who can’t abide having someone stand too close when there’s plenty of room in the elevator; and the same percent don’t get why someone would push themselves onto a crowded elevator.

What are the weirdest things people have seen on an elevator? For a survey of 3,892 full-time workers over 17, we have to admit being sort of surprised that changing a diaper, pantsing a co-worker (that was the 18-year-old in the survey, we would guess), and teeth flossing made the list. We once got on an elevator with a man with a parrot on his should and a monkey on a leash.

Rainbow Resume keep reading…

Challenger, Gray & Christmas says good Americans should spend more and stay later at work.

Really.

That’s at least how we, in our own twisted way, read a press release this week from the global outplacement firm. Monday morning, after a full weekend of Olympics watching, CG&C sent out a note saying “many fans who want to watch live events will do so from their work desks.” You know what that means, accounting will be watching live ping pong instead of getting to month-end closing.

Not to worry, soothes CEO John Challenger, “In reality, it will have no measurable impact on the overall economy.” Why so, you wonder? “At the end of the day, productivity will be no worse for wear, as employees who slacked off during the workday, stay later to complete their projects or take work home…”

Los Angeles councilmembers evidently didn’t agree with Mr. Challenger, harrumphing that “City employees aren’t paid to watch the Olympics.”

If those slackers really want to step up to help the economy, they’ll do what you should be doing: SPEND MONEY WILDLY. “Cautious consumers may hurt the tenuous recovery,” the CG&C press release goes on to say. “Hiring going forward will, in large part, be defined by the demand of consumers,”says CEO Challenger.

Are Cyborgs Covered by The ADA? keep reading…

Here are a few of the new sites, updates, and other product-and-service vendor goings-on you may not have heard about.

Booyango

A new site, called Booyango, is aimed at what the company calls the “almost 80% of the professional market where their information is hard to find online due to lack of privacy.” So it’s a job site — sorry, the company says it’s a “career network,” which is more than a job site, that will offer career planning tools and more — for people who aren’t looking for jobs and posting their resume all over kingdom come.

Employers post a job, and Booyango lets them know when there’s a match based on factors such as skills, experience, and type of work the person is interested in. Later, the match will be based on more: for example, physical appearance such as eye color, for entertainment-industry jobs.

Right now, there’s no charge during what it calls an “exclusive access period.” Later this year, it’ll cost a monthly fee, rather than per post.

Three co-founders and a small group of Angel investors have funded Booyango (which is pretty much a random word they pulled out of nowhere, with no particular meaning, if you’re curious). It has nine employees, and is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

More Tidbits keep reading…

Where’s it easier to get candidates to move to, and where’s it harder? That’s a question the search firm Heidrick & Struggles asked 50 of its U.S. search consultants. The least “recruitable” cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit (we’d have posted the results sooner, but we were stuck in LA traffic).

The easiest place to get people to move to is Atlanta, followed by Chicago.
It depends on the industry. San Francisco did better, for example, for technology, finance, and professional services.

What candidates don’t like is bad schools, bad weather, a bad commute, high housing costs (or trouble selling their current homes) and limited opportunities if you end up leaving the job you’re being recruited for. They also want a good business culture with big companies, partly for job options for the spouse, as well as an airport with good flight options, and as safe a town as they can find.

Living in LA, we can tell you the weather is a plus, though some natives do complain that’s it’s too hot when it’s over 75 and too cold when it’s under 74. But with so many folks we know looking to flee the city because of the schools, as well as having a tough time with underwater homes, we get all that.

An Embarrassment of Riches

With all the whining about how hard it is to find quality hires we thought we were in a parallel universe when we read that the supply of “extremely bright, qualified, and eager candidates is so high that it is nearly problematic.” keep reading…

What’s the opposite of a dreadfully boring recruiting video, featuring employees or the CEO talking in corporate-speak about your workplace, your team environment, your diversity, your work-life balance, and your blah blah blah blah blah? Perhaps it’s the video below.

It’s promoting jobs at Aldebaran Robotics, a company that says it wants engineers who are “the most creative and experienced” … different, humble, and ambitious … if on top of that you are a funny geek, come join us!” keep reading…

A new testing company, a new way to keep candidates up to date with their applications, and more, today in our short look at some new recruiting services.

keep reading…

All hail the gruntled worker. You are the salt of the earth; the cog that only sort of squeaks. Without you the office coffee pot would never be cleaned; there would be no “best place to work” lists; those surveys of disaffected, disengaged workers would always be at 100%; and the office refrigerator would simply be emptied without warning.

So glad are we that you exist we’ve set aside today in your honor. It is Gruntled Worker’s Day. keep reading…

This is one amazing week. Over there in Switzerland, physicists say they’re pretty sure they’ve discovered the “God particle.” If you’re a physicist it’s a really big deal. The rest of us were all pretty happy for them, even we can’t tell a Higgs Boson from a bison.

What you didn’t know, though, is that now that they’ve found it, it won’t be long before you’ll see the effect it has on recruitment.

How’s that? keep reading…

Here’s a quick look at some startups and other new launches in recruiting, human resources, and sourcing.

• JobVidi is a “social network for jobs.” It’s explained here, and allows people to log in using their LinkedIn profiles. JobVidi’s James Brookner says via email that “70% of recruiters are using their LinkedIn status to promote job updates — JobVidi is the first platform to enable recruiters to post directly from their LinkedIn status onto another platform. We also have a candidate value tool which can be used to engage passive job seekers. So candidates who are just seeking to find out their value and marketability in a certain market can submit requests for advice and career management to recruiters specializing in a certain sector.” Based in London, JobVidi has £100,000 of angel investment from Nabila Sadiq, who used to head temporary recruitment at the recruiting agency Joslin Rowe. keep reading…

Did you hear News Corp. may buy Monster? How about how Manpower is pitching webinars to keep HR professionals out of jail? And, if that’s not enough to get you reading this, then try the cliche-riddled video entitled S*** Recruiters Say.

To answer our first question: We hadn’t heard the news about News Corp. and Monster since 2005 or maybe 2006, when we hacked old Rupert’s voicemail. Back then, his password was $$$$, which got us a few messages from Andy McKelvey explaining how you do this thing with the calendar and everybody gets rich off the options.

Now cometh The New York Times to report that in the breakup of News Corp., it might assign things it doesn’t own to a new publishing division. We are not making that up. The Times said: keep reading…

Stress, hair parts, offer rejections, Groupon’s job seekers, background checking, and disabilities — we weigh in on all of them in today’s roundup.

Speaking of weight: the world’s people weigh a collective 316 million tons, of which 17 million tons is in excess globs of body fat. Who knew? Thanks to the researchers at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, now you do.

Wondering what this has to do with recruiting? Nothing, near as we can tell. (Oh, sure, we could have said hiring a fatty will mean time wasted snacking, since the average American needs almost 250 calories just to maintain the excess weight.) But we just thought this is great water cooler talk.

Now, here’s the skinny (no, we couldn’t, can’t, and won’t resist punning): North America has 6 percent of the world’s population, but carries 34 percent of the weight. Don’t go blaming Canada. The U.S. weighs in as the heaviest nation, where it takes a mere 12.2 adults to equal a ton. From now on, we’re counting how many people get on the elevator with us.

Food Stylists Are to Blame

It’s not our fault we eat too much. If those food stylists didn’t make all those dishes look so delicious, who’d eat them? It’s an up-and-coming profession that’s part of the seven awesomeist jobs we never heard of, says Brazen Careerist, a carer site for the under-30s.

keep reading…

Last time we did this, we focused on startups. We’re going to branch out a bit and include some new services/tools that aren’t just startups.

More below, including two launches we see as most significant: Bright, and Ascendify.

Bright Idea

Launching today: Bright.com. Its team has spent 18 months in stealth mode, with a group of wonks working on a better way to screen candidates, analyzing “8.6 million job seekers, more than 2.1 million job descriptions, and over 2.8 million resumes.”

What they came up is this, in short: Bright gets people to enter a resume into its site. A candidate — rather than searching for jobs, like on a typical job board — then gets a list of jobs for which they’re a fit, ranked using a “Bright score” on a 1-100 scale, developed by the Bright scientists. From there, the candidate can apply for a job. A recruiter can see who’s a fit, too, and can, for a price, unlock people.

Unlock: OK, here’s how that works. I see a job at Pfizer. I decide not to apply. The recruiter sees that I looked at the listing, am ranked a high fit on the Bright 1-100 scale, but just didn’t pull the trigger. As mentioned, for a fee, they can “unlock” me — contact me — rather than losing me because I bailed.

Bright, which raised $6 million from angel investors, has 20 employees, 15 of them engineers. “A deep, deep, deep, technology company” — one with with more of a technology background than HR/recruiting background, says CEO Steve Goodman.

Cloud Forming keep reading…

Lucky for Shami Marangwanda she landed a recruiting job with Starbucks, because the irascible and profane Gordon Ramsay and his cohorts dashed her hopes of becoming a MasterChef. The Zimbabwe native had been laid off from her previous recruiting position when the opportunity came along to participate in the third season of Fox’ cooking show.

“I went in just having fun,” she told the Seattle Times. She made oxtail stew in a wine sauce made with sadza, a cooked corn meal that is a staple of traditional Zimbabwe diets. Alas, it fails to impress the judges and she was sent back to Seattle sans the apron that denotes a MasterChef semi-finalist.

Get Thee to a Gym

Boss been a monster lately? Then boost those endorphins. We mean the boss, though a little more exercise all around couldn’t hurt.

Turns out that abusive bosses can be tamed (though we doubt domesticated) by some time in the gym. There’s real science behind this. Three researchers experimented on 98 workers and their bosses and found “that increased levels of supervisor-reported stress are related to the increased experience of employee-rated abusive supervision.” Okay.

But here’s the biggie: “We also find that the relationship between supervisor stress and abusive behavior can be diminished when supervisors engage in moderate levels of physical exercise.”

So next October 16, instead of taking up a collection for a lunch, or cookies, or those soon-to-be-extinct party balloons, buy the boss a gym membership. keep reading…

Video screening; the most-preferred employers for MBAs; training new hires; thoughts on the labor market; and screening with social media. And, of course, Wowzer. All in the roundup, below.

Bullhorn says recruiters post more jobs on LinkedIn through its freemium Reach service than any other social media site.

Just out, Bullhorn’s Social Recruiting in the U.S. report says 77 percent of the postings that go through Bullhorn Reach go to LinkedIn. Twitter gets 54 percent, with Facebook far down the posting popularity list. Only 25 percent of the jobs get posted there.

You can put your hands down. We know that adds up to more than 100; some ads (34 percent) get posted to two sites, while 21 percent get posted to all three sites. And 21 percent get posted to no social network. (You in the front row. How many get posted to only one site? Answer: 24 percent.)

The report is drawn from the more than 300,000 jobs posted by the 77,500 recruiters using Bullhorn Reach to manage their social media services and job postings. The report shows heavy usage of social media in the Northeast, which may have something to do with Boston being home to the recruitment technology company. But we admit to a bit of befuddlement over Mississippi and Alabama making Bullhorn’s top 10 social posters list.

Still, it’s kind of interesting to see that restaurant industry recruiters make the most use of social media for recruiting, Probably makes sense, considering the industry hires huge numbers of kids who are all (or mostly all, anyway) on Facebook and Twitter. But LinkedIn? Mining and security recruiters also made the top 10 Facebook user list, which, at least when it comes to security, make us worry a little.

Short Ribs keep reading…