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When Monster bought Trovix in the summer of 2008, the blogosphere popped with wonder at how the job board would make use of Trovix’ job matching technology.

Forrester Research analyst Zach Thomas suggested that, “By making this acquisition, Monster is putting a real emphasis on search and they believe it will help them leap-frog the competition.” Others were less generous.

The answer has been coming ever since Monster began beta testing Power Resume Search several months ago. A few weeks ago, confident that its $100 million investment was the homerun it expected, Monster turned Power Search live, premiering it during an analyst meeting that was also webcast over a marathon five hours or so.

Tuesday, the company demoed the new search for a group of recruitment consultants and bloggers. And the result was no mere home run; think grand slam.

In a word, Monster’s new Power Resume Search is stunning. Stunning in its simplicity. Stunning in its speed. Stunning in its ability to intuit skills from a title, and to rank and rerank the resulting candidates depending on what skills and other qualities you decide important. Stunning in its potential for changing the job board business. keep reading…

The global recession has taken a toll on workers everywhere, but except for a few high-profile departures and bonus forfeitures, CEOs have seemed mostly immune. Now comes a report from Compdata Surveys that says CEO base pay declined an average of 9.3 percent since 2008.

In fact, most of the C-suite has seen their base take a hit, says Compdata, which surveyed some 5,000 organizations across the country to compile its proprietary report Executive Compensation. CIO pay is down 2.1 percent while COOs are down 11 percent.

But unless you happen to hold one of those titles, don’t get all weepy over the news. The average CEO is still earning $346,000 in base pay a year. COOs average $214,000 and CIOs average $175,300. keep reading…

Yahoo, Beth Israel Deaconess, and Hyatt each handled the recession and the prospect of layoffs differently. Hyatt, says branding/culture speaker Lizz Pellet in the video interview below, deserves a big thumbs-down.

keep reading…

What do you get when you search your name online?

Aw, come on. Of course you’ve looked yourself up on the Internet. Almost half of all Internet users did in 2007. The latest survey puts the number at 59 percent.

And if you really, really haven’t then you may want to retake recruiting 101.

Just as companies no longer are masters of their own brand, neither are you. There are sites to rate teachers, cops, doctors, even parts of your anatomy. Then there are the pictures and comments well-meaning friends have posted about you.

Google yourself and you may find those bleery-eyed conference party photos of you rank higher than than does the whitepaper you authored. Or, you may discover you rank lower than the death notices of others with like names.

To help remedy that there’s PlaceYourName.com. It’s a personal marketing service that promises to help users “manage and control what is seen about them when their names are searched online.” keep reading…

The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson is about an emperor who hires two swindlers to create a new suit. The emperor presides over a kingdom of prosperity and peace and is pretty concerned about appearances. The swindlers manage to sell him a new suit of invisible material that they claim is visible only to those worthy to lay eyes upon him. Once it is “finished” they drape him in pantomime and he proceeds to swagger naked amongst his minions only to called out by a child who says “the emperor has no clothes!” The moral of the story is that none of his loyal inner circle bothered to tell him he was naked. It had to be a kid on the street who didn’t have anything to lose to point out his folly.

In today’s age, the fable is a metaphor for those in HR who are unwilling to state an obvious truth to a higher up out of fear of appearing stupid, sacrilegious, or politically “incorrect.” They would sooner let a company’s reputation stick out buck naked than tell the truth about the company culture and reputation. This is co-dependency with a superior who wants Yes-men, not accountable partners.

I arrived at this observation because I am always struck by the stark difference between what companies think their employees think about them and what they tell me when I interview them. I also am always shocked about what those employees will say on Twitter, Vault, and any other number of “pink slip” sites about these top-rated employers. I wonder if anyone in competitive intelligence, PR, marketing, or HR ever reads about the fallout of bad managers making bad decisions, including furloughs, reduced hours, wearing double hats, etc. When did having a bad reputation not count?

I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me at Wal-Mart. keep reading…

Top-notch job candidates are tired of the recruiting mess we have created in the U.S. I would guess that well over half of all recruiting functions are dysfunctional. By that I mean they have no standard process for dealing with candidates, treat some candidates much differently than others, respond sporadically to requests and phone calls, fail to follow through on verbal commitments to candidates, and let themselves be constantly swayed by hiring managers who are unaware of the talent market.

I say this because I have recently talked to a dozen or more people who I know personally and have worked with over the years. I can vouch for their skill, professional abilities, and reputation. While they may not be a good fit for the particular job they were seeking, they were worthy of respect and of receiving a consistent and predictable response.

One particular friend of mine recently decided to switch jobs. He was not laid off and was not unhappy. He just felt the longer-term opportunity was better in a different place. Being a educated candidate, and with some advice from me and others, he laid out a plan. He started by asking friends about opportunities and also by choosing a few specific firms he might like to work at and finding LinkedIn friends who worked in those firms. The net result was referrals to a possible four or five potential jobs.

He then decided to check out the corporate websites of these few companies to see if the positions were listed. His first shock was at the poor quality of these sites. Most of them lacked good general information and offered nothing specific about the kind of work he was interested in. Only one of the sites listed the position he knew was open, offered little information about the position except the usual boilerplate, and then asked him to go through a tedious process of uploading a resume. None of them really learned anything about him or his referral. No questions, no interactivity, nothing. He didn’t know what they really wanted to know about him, and they certainly weren’t providing him much that was useful.

At this point he was already a frustrated potential candidate. While in no hurry to change jobs, he was the borderline passive candidate: sort of looking, interested, easy to recruit to the right situation, and totally unknown. He is also very competent and talented.

He had also given his resume to his friends to submit to the recruiting function and had even helped a friend upload his data into an employee referral site. Yet, after several weeks he had heard nothing at all of meaning. No email, no phone call. He tried to call several times only to receive a voice mail saying they would call back, but no one ever did. He kept checking with his friends and all the positions are still open more than six weeks later.

What is going on? keep reading…

A raft of recent surveys shows that the recession is having a profound impact on workers and employment trends worldwide. Even though they measure different things — global hiring, immigration repatriation, and career trends — there’s a theme here, which is that the economy is global and when it recovers, things will not go back to the way they were.

There’s the report from Monster this week that says vast numbers of workers are ready to switch careers for a new job. Another survey, this one from SearchPath International and Antal International, give us a global view of hiring — and firing — trends.

The Global Snapshot offers clues to where the hottest markets in the world are for managers and professionals. (Hint: Think Russia, China, India, Egypt, and Eastern Europe.)

That report dovetails with last week’s USA Today report about an emerging brain drain of managers and professionals from the U.S. to China and India. keep reading…

Steven Toole doesn’t seem as high on social media recruiting as we are. But he is upbeat about employment, saying that a “perfect storm” is brewing for recruiters in 18-24 months as Americans begin a game of job-hopping musical chairs.

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.

keep reading…

Shopping for a car? Need groceries? Want new clothes? Looking at trying a new restaurant? Whether we are actively searching for a given product or not, we form opinions and make decisions based, at least in part, on the marketing messages we receive about them.

The world of employment advertising is no exception. Attractive logos, extensive benefits packages, flexible schedules: all these can be used to make an impact on job candidates and affect how many people read and reply to your postings. When considering how to initially attract readers to your employment ads, the key opportunity may lie in your job title and/or headline statement. These prominent statements give advertisers the chance to attract the attention and readership of job seekers, and motivate them to respond.

According to marketing legend David Ogilvy, five times as many people read a headline as do the entire ad. Therefore, without a strong headline statement, your ad may be skipped entirely. Another source (copyblog.com) says that while 8 out of 10 people will read a headline statement, only 2 in 10 read the entire ad. By designing a strong, compelling lead-in, you’ll increase the number of candidates who do go on to read your ad, and apply to your job, while your competitors’ ads get skipped over.

Creating Job Titles or Headline Statements

What makes a good title/headline? keep reading…

Over the past few months, I’ve been tracking employee satisfaction vs. job hunting activity. Here’s the link so you can take the survey yourself, see the results, and forward it to others.

The idea here is that by tracking changes in satisfaction and the job-hunting activity level for the fully employed, we’ll have a leading indicator of employment churn.

Fully employed people switching positions with other fully employed people doesn’t do much for the national employment rate, but it can still keep a recruiting department extremely active. This employment churn becomes a problem when a company is forced to find a bunch of new hires to replace a significant number of tenured employees who have left voluntarily. This becomes a really big problem when it’s unanticipated and when it’s a company’s best people. Replacing them is then even more difficult.

The underlying cause of employee churn is similar to any financial or real estate bubble — greed, or the feeling of not wanting to be left behind. On the hiring side it’s nothing more than a few people getting better jobs, which leads to more people getting more active and finding better jobs, which in turn leads to even more activity, and so on, until you have a tidal wave or avalanche effect.

On the job-hunting side, it’s obvious that once a few new jobs are created, those who are fully employed, but most dissatisfied with their current jobs, will jump ship first. As these people are replaced, it will create a wave of job-hunting activity for those slightly less dissatisfied, and as these positions are replaced, even more people will start sensing the economy is recovering, and begin looking as well.

This churn will accelerate rapidly, as the pent-up demand for better jobs and salary increases is unleashed.

Based on our survey results, this could happen sooner than expected. These surveys are starting to indicate a decline in overall job satisfaction coupled with increased job hunting activity. None of this job switching will affect the overall employment rates, but this replacement activity will force corporate recruiting departments to gear up their activity level at a rapid rate. Things will be much worse if these replacement hires haven’t been forecasted.

The accompanying chart shows the decline in satisfaction over the six-week period from mid July to late August.

What’s most surprising is the decline is from the group of people who indicated just a few weeks earlier that they were extremely satisfied with their jobs. This has dropped from 21% to 13% in just a few weeks.

Those who indicated they were satisfied didn’t change much, with the biggest pickup in those who indicated they were neither satisfied nor unsatisfied with their jobs. This increased from 11% to 21%. Essentially, 40% of the group who were initially very satisfied with their jobs no longer feel this way.

What happened in two to three short weeks to cause this decline? keep reading…

“Apply or Goodbye” is a great metaphor for a transactional recruiting process. Sadly, “apply or goodbye” seems to be the end result with most recruiting processes. Everything seems to be about a transaction—filling the open requisition. If a prospect is qualified and interested, then they are moved through the process. If they are not qualified, then at best, they receive a letter of rejection. If a prospect is not ready to apply to do a job, we usually do not know about them. We have de facto told them “goodbye.” And given the prospect-to-candidate falloff rate (research projects application non-completion rates as high as 70-80%), a great number of prospects get lost because of the transactional nature of recruiting technology.

In a moment of frustration (or epiphany) I quipped that candidates were seeking relationships and our recruiting technology offers them the equivalent of a one-night stand (or more accurately a chance to complete an application). Looking past the potential off-color nature of the comment, the truth is there is a gap between what people in this world of Web 2.0 desire and what a typical recruiting operation allows. That gap is the williness on the part of recruiting to have a conversation with you unless you are part of the chosen few that meets with requirements of a specific job. keep reading…

CareerBuilder says unemployed older workers are having a tough time finding jobs. A survey released last week says only 28 percent of workers over 54 laid off in the past 12 months found new jobs compared to workers 25-34 who are quicker at finding work. In that age group, 71 percent found a job within 12 months.

As a result, says CareerBuilder, 63 percent of the 55 and up group have applied for lower-level jobs, including entry-level positions and even internships.

That’s probably not much of a surprise to recruiters; 37 percent of them told CareerBuilder they have received applications for entry-level jobs from retirees and workers over 50.

What may well come as a surprise is the rise in older workers and the impact the recession is having on their ranks.

Layoffs and job losses have hit the younger workers hardest. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the 18 months since January 1, 2008, the number of workers in the 25-54 age group has declined by 5.1 million. For workers over 54 though, there are 624,000 more working. In fact, there were gains in the number of older employed workers in every age group the BLS tracks except one — 55-59 year olds who saw a modest decline of 79,000 in the 18 months.

Before you point out that the sheer number of older Americans has been rising, which is certainly true, consider for a moment the participation rate. Based on a monthly survey conducted by the U.S. Census for the BLS, the participation rate is independent of population size. It describes the percent of various population groups in the labor force.

The data shows that for the last 10 years, more and more older Americans are working. Since 1999, the percent of working Americans 55-64 has grown by 10 percent, while the over 64 age group has jumped — and that’s an apt word — by almost 40 percent. Contrast those changes to the 25-34 year olds who have declined from 84.6 in 1999 to 82.9 percent for the six months ending in June.

In the 61 years for which the BLS has data, this many older Americans have never been employed. In the mid-50s the percentage began to rise until 1967 when, at the peak, an average of 62.3 percent Americans aged 55-64 worked. The percentage began to decline until it bottomed in 1986 at 54 percent of the age group working. There it remained, rising modestly until the recession of the 90s when it started its upward climb.

keep reading…

The list of companies offering resume writing, enhancement, and tracking continues to grow faster than you can say LinkedIn, with new vendors entering the market this summer. keep reading…

In an in-depth Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership article in September, I describe how you can figure out whether recruiting “stars,” or A-players, pay off.

You’ll get formulas and a software-company case study to see how it’s done.

If you’re a subscriber, you’ll get that in the mail. In the meantime, though, this begs the question: what in the world is a star? keep reading…

SHRM had employees use a 4-point scale to indicate what’s “very unimportant” (that’s a 1) or “very important” (that’s a 4).

The percentages below indicate how many people gave the item a 4, meaning “very important.”

The 601 full- or part-time employees were randomly selected from the U.S. telephone population. keep reading…

More workers than there are people in all of Miami were put out of work in June, a development that surprised economists and sent U.S. financial markets into a tailspin. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 467,000 jobs were lost last month, pushing the unemployment rate to 9.5 percent, a 26-year high.

A Bloomberg survey before the numbers were released this morning said economists were expecting a decline of about 367,000 jobs. Other surveys suggested an even lower number. Either way, the report was bad news and investors reacted by selling stocks, pushing prices lower the day before U.S. markets close in observance of Independence Day.

Monster Worldwide, which makes its money when companies are hiring, lost $1 on the earnings report. It was trading at $10.92 a share at midday in New York.

The job loss barely nudged the unemployment rate, which rose only one-tenth of a point from May. That suggests discouraged and long-time unemployed workers are taking themselves out of the labor market.

The BLS report says: “The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 433,000 over the month to 4.4 million. In June, 3 in 10 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.” These are still included in the unemployment rate. However, the report notes that about 2.2 million more Americans are out of work, want to work, but have grown so discouraged that they have largely given up. These workers are not included in the unemployment figures.

When discouraged workers are included in the calculations, the unemployment rate is actually 10 percent nationally. keep reading…

As the summer’s gathering of social-media-using recruiters kicks off at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, recruiters at DaVita, KPMG, CO-OP Financial Services, Burger King, California Pizza Kitchen, and the University of California we talked to over the last couple of weeks say that social media is an ongoing experiment, one that in some companies is being done without any specific plan, but is nonetheless yielding results. keep reading…

One of the largest employers in the world has embraced cloud computing for HR in a way so big that Siemens AG will have one of the largest, if not the largest, enterprise cloud computing deployments in the world.

The lucky beneficiary of the German electronics and electrical engineering giant’s decision to replace its multiple talent systems globally is SuccessFactors, which will see most of its performance and talent management modules deployed to Siemens’ 430,000 employees in 80 countries and 20 languages.

Dr. Norbert Kleinjohann, head of corporate information technology for Siemens, says in the press release announcing the deal, “The enterprise cloud computing business model is a strategic direction for us. It not only lowers IT costs, and creates faster end-to-end processes, but can also grow with our requirements both globally and locally.”

SuccessFactors says the Siemens deployment will include its compensation, goal, performance, and recruiting management, career development planning, variable pay, and succession planning tools. SuccessFactors willl replace Siemens’ existing multiple talent systems globally. keep reading…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics surprised economists when it reported that job losses in May slowed dramatically over the previous months. The 345,000 job loss was the lowest since September and about half the rate of the previous six months.

The number was 180,000 less than a Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists predicted. It was also significantly less than the 565,000 jobs Wanted Technologies said were lost in May.

Stocks rallied on the news immediately after the market opened, but turned negative in part the Associated Press reported, on a rumor that the government’s job loss number was wrong. The Labor Department said the numbers are correct.

Despite the encouraging job loss numbers, the BLS report showed the unemployment rate rose to 9.4 percent, a little higher than had been expected. The rate, up half a point over April, grew the number of people out of work by 787,000. Officially, 14.5 million people were unemployed in May. Of that number, 21 percent have been out of work for 15 or more weeks. These long-term unemployed, as the government calls them, have now reached 4.5 percent of the entire U.S. workforce, a percentage not seen in the 51 years the data has been collected.

“There is pretty good evidence that the recession is bottoming,” Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist of ChannelCapitalResearch.com, told the AP. “The real question is the type of recovery. Just because we’re reaching a bottom doesn’t mean a bounce is imminent.” keep reading…

Sometime this month, perhaps even today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hand down a ruling with potentially far-reaching implications for employers.

So much has been reported and written about the case of Ricci v. DeStafano that it’s almost impossible to have missed the story of how 20 New Haven, Conn. firefighters were denied  promotions although they came out on top in civil service tests for lieutenant and captain. Eighteen of the top scorers were white; two Latino. None were black, although the city is 37 percent black and blacks made up 30 percent of the fire department in 2003, when the test was given.

When the city’s Civil Service Board got the results, it feared certifying the test would expose the city to a Civil Rights lawsuit on the basis that the test had a disparate impact on a protected minority. But not certifying the results meant an almost certain lawsuit from the successful candidates who might claim, as they later did, that they had been discriminated against based on their race. A part of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal to “alter the results of, employment related tests on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.“

The Morton’s Fork faced by the board was underscored by its 2-2 vote on certification, an outcome that meant the test results were not certified. keep reading…