Troxell says this comfort stems from the “frightening” belief among senior management that turnover will stay low.

Below, Toole talks about these job-market trends, and the upcoming need for a lot of recruiters who have left the profession to come on back.

(Bear with us as we work out the kinks with this new technology; the audio starts off a little rocky but should improve — at least a little bit — after a minute or so.)

Amazingly, that’s what Fellows and Associates has done. And just to make sure you get it, the firm issued a press release over the weekend discussing the video.

“The aim was to find an idea that was provocative in order to elicit a response and maximise the video’s potential for spreading virally whilst maintaining a balance of responsible advertising” says Fellows and Associates Managing Director, Pete Fellows.

I don’t know about the provocative part, but the viral part seems to have fallen flat. According to You Tube stats, the “Goose Attack At Wedding” video has not yet broken 1,000 views after 7 days online. Compare that to the branding video for Caterer.com that I wrote about in July. It got almost 38,000 views on its first day.

The press release notes that “Fellows and Associates are the first UK recruitment firm in the Intellectual Property sector to experiment with viral video advertising.” But issuing a formal press release isn’t quite what viral marketing is all about, even if it has gotten some online mileage.

On the other hand, when you’re launching a new business into a competitive market, any publicity is good publicity. We wrote about it, didn’t we?

We’ve got the Fall conference in Florida well stocked with social recruiting sessions, if you missed the event we just had. Marvin Smith of Microsoft will be presenting; there’ll be a couple of legal-related sessions about recruiting using Facebook and other sites; Knowledge Infusion is talking about putting together a social-media strategy; and we’ll be adding another social media session in the coming days. Shoot me an email if there’s specific information on the topic you’d like. In the meantime, a few of the videos are below.

A Conversation with LinkedIn Co-Founder & CEO Reid Hoffman

Ubiquity & Authenticity in Social Media with Laurie Ruettimann (Audio Only)

Awesomest Job Search Ever! with Sacha Chua

LinkedIn Networking with Shally Steckerl

Online Employer Reputation & Social Recruiting with Shannon Seery Gude

Social Recruiting Summit Wrap-up

If you missed any of the sessions, several of them have been archived here.

Also check out this video put together by our chairperson Susan Burns and ERE’s Production Manager Brendan Shields, which kicked off the summit. The video tracks the evolution of the recruiting profession and the tools available to our industry from its primitive beginning to where we now stand. We don’t know what’s next, but we do know it isn’t too far away.

We’re not talking here about the sandwich sign guys or even the athletic sign spinners you see on street corners pointing to check cashing businesses, tanning salons and new home developments. (Though you would be surprised at how much the jobs pay and just how cutthroat the business is.)

Nope. We’re talking about the president and founder of a technology sales lead company wandering around the showroom floor at SHRM’s upcoming conference in New Orleans handing out $100 bills. All you have to do is find Clay C. Scroggins, a/k/a Claydough, walk up to him and say “Hi, Clay” to get one of the five hundreds he’s going to be handing out.

There’s a hitch. (You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?) You can’t be wearing the logo of any vendor, unless it happens to be CompareHRIS. You have to consent to having your picture taken with Clay, and having it posted to his blog. And you have to be among the first to greet him.

You’ll probably also have to listen to a pitch about CompareHRIS. In the long run, that could be worth more to you than the $100. CompareHRIS makes its money from selling leads to HR technology vendors, but don’t let that deter you. The site has a wealth of information about systems, features, and the buying process. I wrote about it a few weeks ago. To be fair, it’s not the only site that lets you compare and select systems, but it is one of the better ones. And Scroggin is pushing hard to promote the site and a new sister site for Europe, HRcomparison.com.

So now, how do you find Scroggin? It won’t be easy, given the thousands of people expected at the conference. He’ll be the guy wearing a logo of CompareHRIS.com on his polo shirt.

I preferred his original idea, which was to wear an LED-laced shirt flashing the logo and whatever else he thought of. But at $5k to buy it, plus however much for training and support, Scroggin figured his money would go further doing something different. “No $5,000 t-shirt for me,” he confessed today from his office in Florida. He was a little more florid on his blog, “I’m so bummed.”

So am I. Ever since seeing this (below) little confection from Wales, which made the rounds of the canine herding lists a few months ago, I’ve been hoping to see the real thing. They’re available from a few places. Scroggin got his quote from Lumalive.

I now return you to the Social Recruiting Summit.

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Riviera Advisors consultant and former ERE expo chairman, Jeremy Eskenazi, joined us at at the ERE Expo 2009 Spring to moderate a panel discussing the challenges and strategies of change management. The panel also included Rodney Moses of Research In Motion/Blackberry, Vicki Perry of the Avery Dennison Corporation, and Aziz Chowdhury of the Baker Hughes Corporation.

Throughout the course of the session, the panel discussed the various changes they have encountered over the years, as well as what has worked and what hasn’t. Rodney Moses brought up an excellent point about how issues can arise when the focus is placed on why the change must happen rather than how the change will happen. Moses emphasized that communication, role responsibility, and openness are crucial during the process.

Another major change that many encounter in their organizations is the change from a decentralized business model to a centralized one. Vicki Perry addressed some of the challenges and resistance faced, especially regarding role responsibilities. Perry found the “myth of the month” strategy to be especially effective, helping to dispel rumors about the new system.

Aziz Chowdhury spoke on the same subject, discussing some of the mistakes that were made and things that were overlooked during the change. He also stressed the importance of communication and dispelling rumors during the process.

The panelists were all in unison regarding the importance of communication during the process, as much of the discord is a result of false expectations. Watch these highlights from the presentation for more!

Can a situation ever arise where a company is too successful for its own good? Scott Pitasky from Microsoft addressed this very question at the ERE Expo 2009 Spring in San Diego.

While Microsoft is one of the greatest success stories in modern business, Pitasky said that success can cause a company to become complacent. When this occurs, companies may become set in their ways and fail to adapt with the times. As he simply put it, “you can’t just know what you know.”

Not content to let this happen, Microsoft has made numerous efforts to stay ahead of the game, including its Web 2.0 initiatives for which the company recently received an ERE Recruiting Excellence Award. Microsoft’s Marvin Smith will be covering this in greater detail at the ERE Expo 2009 Fall.

As the presentation went on, Pitasky covered some of the ways to transform your staffing organization “from checkers to chess.” In other words to know where you want to go and think ahead, in place of a more reactionary approach. Pitasky continued on this topic and discussed ways to dramatically change the focus of your company’s workforce within five years.

In addition, an important point was made about the necessity of knowing not just about your company’s demand, but the available supply. By using a funnel methodology, Microsoft developed a system of quickly finding which candidates are qualified for interviews, narrowing down the market, and saving valuable time. Elaborating on this, Pitasky covered Microsoft’s index for quality of hire, helping to identify the most effective sources of hire.

Lastly, the importance of telling your company’s story was made clear. The crucial question brought up was “do you want to create your employment brand or do you want to let someone else do it?” Pitasky discussed some key strategies for using your employment brand to communicate with people in a way that is relevant with them. Watch these highlights from the presentation to learn more!

Classical Economist Adam Smith

Leading economist Dr. Robert Genetski joined us on April 1 at the ERE Expo 2009 Spring to share his wisdom regarding the current state of the economy.

Genetski began by explaining the classical principles of economics and the factors that dictate how the economy works in modern day society. From there, he proceeded to explain issues that have contributed to our current economic downtown, illuminating exactly how things became as serious as they did.

Of most interest to the audience were Genetski’s predictions on how the economy would affect labor markets in the coming months, the challenges we can still expect to face, and an idea of when we will begin to see the economy recover. Watch these highlights and prepare yourself to take advantage of the inevitable economic recovery.

Claire Prager of the Cheesecake Factory describes the making of this $30,000, four-minute video developed and produced in two months last year as “pretty painless” — which is not how I’d describe trying to finish off its entire dinner-size Thai Chicken Pasta.

Job seekers are viewing the video at a rate of about 40,000 per year. Their eyes are peeled for an average of 3:48 minutes. (The average for similar videos is 2:33.)

Prager, senior manager, talent selection, was responsible for the overall execution of the video, a task she says MadDash’s good work made easier. The video, aimed particularly at the passive job seeker, was posted on Monster, CareerBuilder, AHRE.org, and HCareers. The Cheesecake Factory shows it again during new-hire orientation (which, we report with jealousy, involves a meal at the Cheesecake Factory), as well as at college career fairs and other job fairs, and on the company’s careers site.

The Cheesecake Factory selected an Area Director, Senior Vice President of Kitchen Operations, Executive Kitchen Manager, and General Manager to play key roles in telling the story. While developing the video, it selected the following elements to include:

1. Who is The Cheesecake Factory?
2. Quality
3. Our People and Our Culture
4. Technology and Innovation.

The uber-consistent restaurant chain also owns the Grand Lux Cafe and now RockSugar.

A year ago 22 percent predicted hiring gains. Curiously, about the same number of companies expect to reduce the workforce in the 1st quarter as did last year. Thirteen percent now say cuts are coming compared to 12 percent a year ago.

It’s in the big, wide middle where the numbers have shifted. The 67 percent of the companies that say they’ll neither grow nor shrink is almost 12 percent higher than a year ago. In the outlook for the 1st quarter of 2008 Manpower said 60 percent of the surveyed companies foresaw no workforce changes. What changed were the number of hiring companies.

As you might expect, construction expects to continue to shed workers; 22 percent of the surveyed companies say their payrolls will shrink during the quarter. Transportation & Utilities and the two manufacturing sectors — durable and non-durable goods — all predict a net loss of jobs during the quarter.

Surprisingly, the Leisure & Hospitality industry expects hiring to pick up. Despite suffering severe losses in the last few months, 21 percent of the surveyed companies in the sector expect to be hiring. Mining companies, though, are even more optimistic about their hiring. A quarter of all the surveyed companies say they plan to hire during the next quarter. It would be better news if mining wasn’t the smallest in terms of total workers employed.

Manpower also released a list of 201 metropolitan areas in the U.S., ranking them according to their prospects for job growth. Topping the list is Lafayette, Louisiana, followed by the Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas area, and Houston. At the bottom of the list is Barnstable, Massachusetts, out on Cape Cod, where companies shedding jobs outnumber those hiring. It’s followed by Reno and San Diego. Los Angeles also makes the bottom 10.

Globally, the picture looks similar to the U.S., even though employers in 25 countries say they expect to be hiring. The Manpower report tempers that news, saying: “Notably, employers in 21 countries and territories are reporting the weakest hiring intentions since the survey began in their respective countries and territories. Where year-over-year data is available, outlooks in 25 countries and territories have declined compared to last year at this time.”

To get a copy of the report and a listing of the outlook in the U.S. by metropolitan area, click here.

From her post:

Oh, what a month! The U.S. lost 533,000 jobs in November, the highest rate in 34 years (since 1974). This moves the nation’s unemployment rate to 6.7%; it was 6.5% in October.

According to fresh Labor Department data, economists had actually predicted a 6.8% unemployment rate for November — yet they only predicted that 320,000 jobs would be slashed.

Either way, this is bad news across the board: construction employment was down by 82,000 over the month; retail trade employment fell by 91,000 in November, with the largest job loss among automobile dealers (-24,000); and leisure and hospitality employment lost 76,000 jobs in November.

For me, the most disturbing part of the report was this:

Employment also declined throughout the service-providing
sector.  The largest loss (-101,000) was in employment services,
which includes temporary help agencies.  Employment services has
lost 495,000 jobs so far in 2008.

Employment is usually thought of as a lagging indicator of the economy — companies only slash jobs after they realize that sales are going south. But temporary help is more of an indicator of things to come, since it’s easier to adjust the number of temporary workers than it is to hire and lay off permanent employees.

Buckle up, folks. This isn’t over, and it’s going to continue to be a wild ride.

With the growing number of providers, starting a private label corporate network or participating in a MySpace or Facebook is about as easy as launching a blog. And just like a blog, social networks need thought, planning and work to be successful.

“It’s important,” says Karen Lash, regional director / interactive strategy at TMP Worldwide, “when you are engaging with the social networks that you do have a strategy.”

So what sorts of things should a recruiter consider before launching a corporate network? We asked Lash and Ryan Esits, senior vice president a chief talent strategist at NAS Recruitment, for their advice. Here, in 2 minutes and 48 seconds, are the basics: