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.

If you haven’t tried it for yourself, go here and test it out. What you’ll discover is that you can source candidates (if you really want) simply by entering a job title. Look at the results. Add a specific skill or a degree or some other parameter and the ranking changes.

What makes Power Resume Search different — and better — than the typical keyword resume search is that it has the intelligence to cut through the duff. The examples the Monster folks used in the demo were searches for bankers and lawyers. But try your own search, for, say a bookkeeper. Instead of getting a list of hundreds of resumes with bookkeeper in the text, you get a few dozen candidates who are bookkeepers and are most likely to be looking for that kind of work.

Trovix built its job-matching capability around context and concepts. A bookkeeper doesn’t need an understanding of Sarbanes-Oxley; a CFO does. You know that. But unless you exclude candidates with that term in their resume in a standard keyword search, you’re going to get CFO candidates with bookkeeping in their backgrounds along with accountants and … you get the idea.

It’s “the world’s best search engine,” said Monster’s Javid Muhammedali at the beginning of the demo. Google might take issue with the boast, but he is certainly on the mark when he says one of the virtues of Power Resume Search is that it is a search engine “that really helps you stop searching.”

One incidental, yet valuable feature is how a search can unearth skills not listed in the job req, which could or should be. It helps drive the recruiting process forward by arming recruiters with information they can take back to the hiring manager, Muhammedali explained.

It has some other nice touches, including how it presents candidate information and the side-by-side comparison of candidates.

Power Resume Search has a counterpart for job seekers in Power Job Search.

I ran a few job searches on a variety of different titles and got great results, which, in my case, meant fewer, but more accurate results. Monster showed this off during the demo using “business development manager” for the search with the result that all nine listings were specific to the title.

Monster points out that this search has benefits for the employer: the ad visibility improves, as does the likelihood that the applicants will be of higher quality since an ad won’t just turn up in a search because it happens to contain the seeker’s keywords.

Before you go away thinking all your sourcing problems are solved, know that this is a premium service, for which Monster will charge $845 for a two-week access. Right now, it’s a bargain at $260 for three days of searching in an area.

It’s also better at sourcing some types of jobs than others. New job terminology has to be added by Monster, though you can search for a specific keyword in a resume. And it won’t store search histories for OFCCP auditing until early next year.

Even so, it’s a big step. For Monster, it’s a $100 million-plus step. The company spent $72.5 million to acquire Trovix and $30-$35 million more integrating it into the job board. Monster intends to get back its investment and then some.

Muhammedali and Louis Gagnon, SVP Global Products, said the new search opens the door to differential pricing for resume sourcing. It probably won’t be long before Monster puts a higher price on CFOs than on bookkeepers.

Why can’t they do that now? They probably could, but the technical management is a challenge, since the resumes of CFOs and bookkeepers may well be part of the search results in a standard keyword search. But the Trovix powered search is smart enough to know that when you’re looking for a CFO, you don’t want a bookkeeper who reports to a CFO.

Narrowing down results with high precision saves time. Lots of time. And gets better results. That’s worth something.

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.

Only CFO base pay was up. Not much — barely 1 percent — but it was up. The press release from Compdata doesn’t say what the average CFO earns, but it does offer some industry examples: “The average base salary of a Chief Financial Officer in the insurance industry is $232,200, while CFOs in healthcare earn $208,900. The utilities industry pays their CFOs $194,900 on average, compared to those in banking and finance, $191,500. CFOs earn the least in the not-for-profit industry, $173,900.”

Lest you think that these numbers are skewed by the inclusion of some of those highly compensated C-people, even modest-sized firms with 500-1,000 workers pay their CEOs an average of $361,300. At a company with under 100 workers the CEO averages $264,700.

The $600 report has much more information than this, of course. It covers 65 job titles — including HR — and has the data arranged by region and industry, covering bennies like company cars, travel expenses, stock options, and the more usual health, life, and other insurance coverage.

If you decide, despite the decline in salary, to climb up the alphabet titles, keep an eye on your company’s succession plan. Or, if there isn’t one, get one started.

Korn/Ferry says more and more companies are developing them; so many, in fact, that the giant talent management firm issued a press release saying it has seen a 400 percent surge in its CEO succession planning consulting work. And that’s just in the first six months.

The company didn’t offer a number, but it did say, “This is more than twice the number of succession planning projects in the prior two years combined.”

It currently is at work on more than 25 CEO succession planning projects.

“With increased government business regulation, the turbulent business environment and real-time examples of corporate boards that did not have immediate CEO replacements at the helm, we are seeing a significant increase in corporate boards planning for CEO succession,” said Joe Griesedieck, vice chairman and managing director of Korn/Ferry’s Board & CEO Services.

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.”

For $50 and a few minutes of your time you get a press release (which you write, they edit) sent to an online newsservice and PlaceYourName submits your name and some bio info and your photo to what it says are four “high ranking websites, blogs, and news portals, viewable in search engine results.”

For $100, you get double the distribution plus a vanity website of your own.

There’s nothing PlaceYourName will do that you can’t do yourself. But the truth is most people don’t. Sarah Welstead, a Toronto recruiting marketing professional, a few months ago wrote about the importance of building a personal brand. Yesterday, ERE offered a webinar on this topic: “Creating a Personal Brand: Increasing Your Online Presence.” Presented by Toby Nathan of RecruitaStar is the nuts and bolts of how you build a personal brand and it’s archived here.

There’s also a valuable personal branding blog started by Dan Schawbel, a guru of personal branding.

While a service like PlaceYourName.com can get you started — and you may want to consider it and other branding tools like Personavita or VisualCV if you lack the discipline — in order to sustain the effort, you need endurance, and something to offer.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

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. I haven’t recruited for Wal-Mart. Last week I watched a show on the Discovery Channel about Wal-Mart’s Super Store operations. They have onboarding sessions and songs that everyone sings that promote team spirit at Wal-Mart. They showed the droves of people who drove for miles to work there. Right after I watched the show, my iPod had to be replaced. Since I was too lazy to go to the Apple store, and I wanted it right now, I went to Wal-Mart. While I was standing at the counter trying to get this chick to hand me the iPod, she turns her back to me and starts complaining about her hours being reduced to another guy who is complaining about his benefits. I finally interrupted them and asked her to please hand me the iPod and take my money. I got home, got down to my iTunes work, and opened up my gmail account, and there was an email about boycotting Wal-Mart on account of some hideous thing that it did to bust a union. In the course of one week, I had some serious employment brand material in my consciousness.

What is interesting about the TV show, the store experience, the e-mail, and the press about Wal-Mart is that there is a level of chatter about its brand that is beyond their control. Wal-Mart feels it is well on the way to rehabilitating its image through a new logo and green Super Stores; yet, that doesn’t match my personal experience in that week. What can it do about Twitter, e-mail chains, at the store, in the news, and across the Thanksgiving dinner table, especially if one incident adds fuel to the fire?

I chose Wal-Mart because well, that happened to me last week, and that is a fairly large target. I won’t be the first one to raise this reputation issue about them. Frankly, it probably doesn’t matter what people think about its “employee” brand because they employ groups of people who have limited choices and who presumably grow in faster and larger numbers than let’s say, semiconductor design engineers with PhDs. What is interesting is when all of those things collide and affect more vulnerable brands.

The war for top talent is going to get fought and influenced by Twitter, Vault, users groups, and former employees. And in a country like the U.S. where services and design are the only real place where job growth is, people know each other. Maybe some companies should consider cutting down spend on money for logos and Superbowl ads, and treat people better.

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?

Here are my thoughts:

Possibility #1: The position is not really open and the recruiting department is just collecting resumes to find out who is out there.

This has a high likelihood of being the case, but is borderline unethical and certainly does nothing to build the brand or create goodwill among people that you might someday really want to hire.

There are much better ways of finding these people.

Possibility #2: My friend does not have the qualifications that the hiring manager is looking for.

Even if this is the case, he should get the courtesy of an email or phone call letting him know that. On the other hand, if the job description is even close to accurate, he meets and exceeds most of the criteria. He is also referred by a current employee and that should, according to all that we write about on ERE, make him a higher quality candidate than an un-referred one. This also makes not getting back to him worse, and it embarrasses the employee.

Possibility #3: The position has been filed and just not taken off the website.

Highly unlikely as he has checked with his internal friends who have told him it is still open and that the hiring manager is frustrated with the lack of good candidates.

Possibility #4: The recruiting department is inefficient and lacks good processes and discipline in dealing with candidate flow.

This is the most likely one in my mind and needs to be addressed quickly and firmly. Once this recession has ended (and for high-end jobs it was never really that bad), these poorly treated potential candidates will be hesitant to try you again.

There is really no excuse for not dealing with candidates in a systematic manner. No matter how many apply, your systems should be capable of dealing with the volume or you should remove the job posting until you can handle it. By letting more people apply than you can review and answer, you are creating an irreversible degradation in your reputation, brand, and future ability to hire the best people.

Needless to say as a foundation your department needs a set of protocols and procedures that every recruiter follows. These should lay out enforceable requirements for response time to candidates, how referral candidates are treated, what is communicated, and how shortfalls are explained to people who are declined.

Other procedures should govern how many resumes are received for a position before no more are accepted and how these are reviewed and presented to managers.

Websites need to be clear and should be interactive, interesting, and engaging. They should answer the questions candidates are likely to have with honesty. Your rules and response protocols should be publicly displayed.

Until we respond with the kind of service candidates are accustomed to from retailers and other service providers, we should be prepared for a backlash of anger and disappointment that has only grown louder over the past year.

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.

Vivek Wadhwa

Vivek Wadhwa, executive in residence at Duke University and a senior research associate at Harvard University, surveyed some 1,200 immigrants who returned to their native country. He reports that improved opportunities at home, coupled with U.S. visa policies, makes it likely that up to 200,000 white collar migrants will return to China and India in the next five years.

A UPI version of the story includes this comment from Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington: “China needs a lot of well-trained personnel.”

No surprise there, especially no surprise after you peek at The Global Snapshot report that says 74 percent of the surveyed companies in China report they are hiring skilled managers and other white collar professionals now. Also not surprisingly, the report commentary notes that there has been a better than 10 percent rise in the companies shedding workers, which the report notes, suggests “that employers are taking advantage of current conditions to ‘weed out’ less productive members of staff.”

Other hot Asian markets for these same workers: Singapore, Pakistan and Hong Kong. India is bit less robust with 51 percent of the surveyed companies hiring now. But give it a quarter and 66 percent say they’ll be looking for managers and professionals.

In the U.S., 55 percent of respondents report hiring, with the same percentage planning to hire next quarter.

The recession has also got workers thinking that it may be wise to find a new career.

Monster released a poll of workers in North America and Europe showing 89 percent of them would consider or would make a career change if it meant finding a new job. While only 11 percent of the 22,444 visitors to Monster’s sites in Europe, Canada, or the U.S. said they wouldn’t change careers — at least not now — 49 percent said they’ve been wanting to change careers and are ready now.

In Spain, 92 percent of the visitors to the Monster site who took the poll said they were ready to make a career change. They’re feeling the pressure; 44 percent said they feel they must take the first job that comes along. That percentage contrasts sharply with respondents elsewhere, only 23 percent of whom felt they needed to pretty much take anything.

No doubt those who visit Monster sites are motivated job seekers, and probably more willing to switch industries than those who aren’t looking. But when half of those taking the poll answer the question, “Would you consider a job in another industry?” with a “Yes, I’ve been wanting to make a career change,” you can figure that change is underway.

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.

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?

You’ll most clearly know you have a good headline statement when candidates you interview tell you so. Your message will get candidates thinking, wanting to know more, and ultimately, responding to your ad. Headline statements are about positioning and most tout the strengths of the position, opportunity, situation, and/or company. When done well, the statement will differentiate one job or company from another.

How can you create a great headline statement?

A good headline depends on identifying what all the strengths of the opportunity are, choosing the strongest of those, and then communicating that in a well-crafted phrase. To start the process, ask and answer the following questions:

• What are the key positives prospective candidates must know about your company and/or job opening?

• What makes you (or the position) different and/or notable?

• What do your current employees like about working at your organization?

• What tone in a headline statement best fits your image/culture? (Cleverness, Humor, Formal, etc)

• What are your competitors saying in their ads?

• After compiling the above, what single key advantage do you have that should be front and center?

Key Areas

There are a number of key areas around which headline statements can be built. These include, but are not limited to:

• Awards won/recognition given
• Strength of the company – stability/longevity/culture
• Strength of the product
• Needs/wants of the candidate
• Dollars and cents
• Quality of location/atmosphere
• Culture/mission of the organization
• Quote from employee(s)
• Play on words

Here are two examples of headlines positioning the advertiser as an “Award-wining” employer:

Want to join a company that was awarded more Media and Methods portfolio awards than any other company last year?

Join a company recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the most admired food companies!

Stability and longevity of your organization can be very attractive to job seekers. If it works in your favor, consider using it:

Since the opening of its first franchise in 1940, International Dairy Queen, Inc has established itself as one of the world’s best-loved brands of food and dairy treats

Or, a more concise example:

Customer Service Rep – 110 year-old company and stronger than ever!

(Note: this ad received 73% more views and more than twice as many applies as competing ads simply titled Customer Service Representative.)

Just as Saturn pioneered the no-haggle pricing that customers enjoy, they position this as a benefit to their salespeople. This tackles several areas (strength of the position & culture, wants of the candidate – i.e. not having to haggle as a primary duty) with one headline:

Auto Sales – “No haggle” sales philosophy!

Another car dealer stands out by promoting the strength of the product:

Sales Career – fastest growing product in the U.S.!

Case in Point

One advertiser was receiving a low response to a posted ad and sought assistance. The job title? Inside Sales. We didn’t need to probe much further for the reason for their low response – the title generates no interest or differentiation.

After a few questions about the organization, the title was revised to highlight their company culture:

Inside Sales – Family-owned, great work/life balance!

The results? During the two-week period prior to the title change, the ad received 132 views. During the two-week period after the change, 290 people viewed it. That’s an increase of 220%! Clearly, job titles matter.

What Do Your Employees Say About You?

In business-to-business dealings we often use testimonials because often what your peers say carries more weight than what a Sales Representative says to you. The testimonial not only speaks to your product or service, but also to the belief the person giving the quote has in you. It’s no different with prospective employees — they want to know what their prospective peers say about the organization. Using employee quotes can have a powerful affect on candidates.

The culture at Eide Bailly has directly influenced my ability to succeed. I’m trusted in my work and have the freedom to make decisions. — Shannon (with the Firm 12 years)

Eide Bailly, a Top 25 CPA firm, uses quotes like this in its recruitment advertising. So, does it work?

I used to think (using the quote) was a little hokey… until I tried it in an ad. I received more comments regarding the employee quote we used. One person even wanted to meet the person who was quoted. The comments I received ranged from ‘the reason I applied was because of the quote from your employee’ to ‘that quote made me want to find out more about your company’. With that in mind, I would say that using quotes can really add an element of personalization and differentiation to your ad, as long as your company is depicted accurately by the quote. –Lauri Dahlberg, PHR, HR Manager

Using a quote from an employee can be a terrific way to pique interest and get more candidates in your pool. By using this or some of the other techniques pointed to above, you will increase your chances of attracting talent that otherwise might have overlooked your opportunity.

Tone

In addition to the key areas to build your title around, you will want to consider the tone of your headline as it relates to your image and/or culture. The tone can be:

• Serious

• Fun, playful

• Inquisitive (ask questions)

• Creative/outside the box

You might think a legal publishing firm would project a staid, stuffy image. To combat that, one advertiser has used the fun, play-on-words headline: Do Your Career Justice. Now they don’t sound so stuffy after all — right?

Which large bank do you think uses the headline: Success Comes in Stages (hint: stagecoach)? Another case of a play-on-words, which in this case, ties into a company symbol and shows a sense of humor that others in banking do not.

Getting Non-conventional

Some advertisers use a traditional approach and embellish it such as: Auto Sales – Capitalize on the hot new Saturn products! Others scrap the conventional angle all together. A district manager at one of the country’s largest financial and insurance services companies, says, “I try to consider the basic facts about the opportunity, and then highlight a selected part which the reader might find especially intriguing.”

For example, while his competitors use traditional (i.e. boring) titles, the district manager mentioned above uses the headline: Take Charge of Your Career Selling Products Everyone Needs! While his competitors’ ads lead to pre-conditioned or limited ideas about insurance sales, re-framing it with a headline statement presents a positive and informative picture. This brings results.

The district manager says, “I often ask responders what caught their attention in my recruitment ad. More often than not they reply, ‘The headline, that got me thinking…’ When I hear that, I know I have a good headline.”

Another recruiter in the Financial Services field presents his job as a “Small Business Opportunity.” His title reframes the posting and turns it from a “job” into a different kind of opportunity, one that attracts entrepreneurial people.

Why Re-invent the Wheel?

In addition to brainstorming new ideas, don’t overlook past ideas that can be re-worked. It can make the job of finding new headlines easier and be as effective (or more) than dreaming up new ones. Also, you can possibly piggyback on the branding message of the company.

For example, you may have heard the Saturn tag “A Different Kind of Car Company.” Recently, one Saturn group conducted a search for a sales team — two individuals to share the role of one sales position. It’s a different approach to a traditional role. Their headline?

A Different Kind of Car Company — Again

According to Lou Adler, you have 10 seconds to capture readers’ attention. A strong headline statement that helps you stand out and strongly positions the strengths of your opportunity will help you capture that readership and deliver candidates.

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?

It could very well be that as the economy has begun to recover and opportunities have started reappearing, just having a job is no longer good enough.

So people are getting itchy and are starting to do some preliminary searching.

While a hypothesis right now, we should be able to get confirmation of this by conducting a cross-question analysis comparing job-hunting activity by level of satisfaction. The results from this analysis are still preliminary, but this trend is quite apparent and is shown in the graph titled, “The Most Satisfied are Starting to Look.”

As part of the survey, we asked respondents to describe their current job-hunting activity level. The choices ranged from not looking to aggressively looking. In early August, 78% of the extremely satisfied said they were absolutely not looking. This dropped to 57% by the end of August.

A similar drop was noted for those who classified themselves as being satisfied with their jobs, dropping from 51% who were absolutely not looking to just 18%. As you can see by the graph, there was also a major increase in both groups who indicated they would consider something if called by a recruiter.

This drop in job satisfaction in combination with an increased level of job-hunting activity is a strong indicator that employment churn is about to increase dramatically in the next month or two. If this is the case, you’d better get ready right away.

Here are some ideas to consider:

1. Rebuild your recruiting team. If you don’t have enough recruiters to handle the load, you’ll get behind long before the recovery really starts. Then you’ll never be able to catch up.
2. Conduct your own internal satisfaction survey to validate these results and pinpoint your most vulnerable areas. While the survey results are reasonably statistically valid, they’re not specific enough to uncover specific problem areas by industry or job function. Many companies are now aggressively launching internal satisfaction surveys to ensure they’re not caught unaware. This way, they’ll minimize the impact of any potential retention problems.
3. Accelerate your sourcing efforts for your most critical positions. You’ll need to begin an aggressive recruitment advertising effort for those positions that seem most critical and where you are most vulnerable. If you’re a corporate recruiting leader, you might want to use your employee referral program and get everyone to provide you the names of the best people they’ve ever worked with anywhere. Then contact these people and put them in your talent pool. (Here’s a recorded webinar we did showing how you can use LinkedIn to accelerate this effort.)
4. Learn to use hiring ROI to justify to your CFO the cost of any new recruiting or sourcing program. If you’re going to be hiring a bunch of new people before your company’s hiring forecast is approved, you’ll need a creative approach to justify any expenditures. I’m preparing a white paper on a new approach to calculate ROI by measuring the impact any new hiring initiative has on changing a company’s overall talent mix. Email me if you’d like a sneak peak. Here’s a recent article with some background on this important topic.

While it will be a rocky road to recovery, the replacement market is likely to heat up first, and soon.

If you get behind the power curve in these early next few months it will be very difficult to ever catch up. New sourcing technologies offer great new techniques to find the best, but don’t forget: they’ve never been tested in a hot market where the demand for talent exceeds the supply. Some forward planning and some big contingency programs will get you through the worst of it, if employment churn accelerates faster than anticipated.

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.

Jeff Jarvis writes in his book–What Would Google Do?—about the first law he learned on the Internet:

“Give the people control and they will use it. Don’t and you will lose us.”

Think: It Is Not About Us!

Giving up control is scary, but the alternative is downright frightening. If you would like to see that picture, just read Jarvis’s famous blog post about “Dell Hell.”(Use keywords “dell hell” in Bing.) It is the story of Jarvis in a moment of frustration with Dell that caused a groundswell of public opinion and caused Dell an amazing amount of pain (i.e. lost sales, bad PR, etc). Dell eventually got the message, but at what cost? To say that this event has caused a sea change is an understatement.

Think Distributed, Not Destination

Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do) suggests that companies (like Google) that act as a distribution system have been more successful in the Web 2.0 world than organizations (like Yahoo) that have focused on building portals and destination points. When you build a destination site, it is as if you are taking the prospect where you want them to go, as opposed to using the site as a method that they can go where they want to go. The Microsoft Talent Engagement Model (see graphic below) is more of a marketing distribution system for our jobs and jobs-related content than to a single talent community site. In fact, as you dig into the model, you will notice that activities and information flow in a myriad of directions as opposed to a single web site.

Not Creating New Communities!

We joined existing communities (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) and used their platforms to engage the appropriate segments of their membership. Not only do these social networking sites have a large number of active participants, the very audience we are trying to reach contained in their ranks. Forrester’s Technographics research indicates that a Groundswell has occurred and the majority of adults in our society (especially the best educated, highest-paid professions as well as the new entrants to the job market) have joined social networking sites. It is very apparent that our target audience is online and in these existing communities or social networking sites.

We are creating community, but not necessarily creating new communities (if that makes sense). Perhaps a way to good way to think about it is that we are organizing a community in way that can make the community function better to better meet the interests of our target audience. For active job seekers, we can provide a higher quality experience and help them navigate Microsoft. For the more passive individuals, we can provide the “inside scoop” on technologies; what it is like to work at Microsoft; and engage current employees in conversation.

An Alternative to Goodbye!

At Microsoft, we are pipelining talent in communities as an alternative to saying goodbye. These communities are located on social networking sites (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) as well as our vendor’s (Jobs2Web) platform. We use communities to

1. Offer an alternative to prospects who are not ready to apply
2. Offer an alternative to prospects who are screened out
3. Offer an alternative to prospects who do not complete the application process.

The Microsoft Talent Engagement Model (see graphic) illustrates that there is a lot going on in our approach to pipeline and creating community.

The pie chart in the upper-left hand corner is a reminder that the talent supply is comprised of active, casual, passive, and non-job seeking talent. And it points out the active job seeker is only about 14% of our potential audience. That leaves approximately 86% of the potential audience—causal, passive, or non-job seekers that could be part of the talent engagement equation.

The center of the funnel illustrates that we feed our SEO results; our SEM activities; our TalentStream (A CRM-based pipelines/community engaging approach that maps a target audience’s behaviors, attitudes, and interests to our outreach) campaigns; and the prospects generated from live and virtual events. Previously, I argued that SEO Is Not Enough: that tactic alone does not reach a large percentage of the potential talent supply. So we add TalentStream campaigns, events, and other outreach strategies to reach deeper into the potential talent supply toward where the more passive prospects are. We use a variety of approaches that are based on an understanding of our target audience’s behaviors, attitudes, and common interests.

The left-hand side of the Microsoft Talent Engagement Model depicts how we use a number of different opportunities to distribute information to active, as well as some casual and active prospects. In this way, we allow the prospect to decide how they want to engage or hear from us. For example, the passive job seeker might want to subscribe to a job agent that will alert them when a certain type of opportunity becomes available. The casual job seeker might have been referred by an employee to a specific job and we want to move them forward in our process. The prospect that is not looking might show up at a virtual event that has a Microsoft leader discussing an important new technology.

Not ready to apply? Not the right fit? Came in second? Regardless of the reason, the right-hand side of the Microsoft Talent Engagement Model graphic illustrates the ability to offer the prospects the opportunity to remain engaged. If they join a community, we will listen, answer questions, and converse with prospects. If they are “non-applicants” at the present time, we offer a variety of ways a prospect can decide how to receive information. For the person who is screened out of an interview process, we can offer them the opportunity to stay engaged while they wait for a better job fit. For the candidate who came in second in an interview panel, we can actively assist them in considering other opportunities within Microsoft. And for the person who has left Microsoft for other opportunities, we can keep in touch. In many instances Microsoft Alumni wish to return after a short length of time in their new venture.

This behavior of not allowing for conversations with prospects is going to catch up with the recruiting profession—and it is not going to be pretty for some of us. But we still have a chance to get in front of this. Apply or Goodbye is no longer the only option.

The THX commercial tickles our ears in the movie theater, loudly proclaiming the “Audience Is Listening.” The lesson of the Web 2.0 is the “Audience Desires a Conversation” and recruiters had best join in the dialogue.

One purpose of this article is a preview of a presentation for the Fall 2009 ERE event, where our talent community pilot will be discussed in the broader context of Web 2.0 Beyond the Social Recruiting Hype: Microsoft’s Approach to Building Talent Pipelines and Communities. While the presentation will be much broader than a discussion of “apply or goodbye”—one of our core beliefs is that Web 2.0 demands that we have conversations with prospective employees at all phases of the job search cycle. Failure to do so will result in our recruiting the best talent for Microsoft, and that significantly impacts our business.

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.

Even more dramatic has been the number of those 65 and over reentering the workforce. For years, between 11 and 12 percent of retirement age Americans have worked. In 1998, on average, 11.9 percent of the 65 and over group worked. In June, it was 16.8 percent.

The explanation for the uptick in older Americans working is not too difficult to guess at: Longer life spans, better health, and access to health insurance whether private or through Medicare, the decline of the defined benefit pension coupled with the increase in the Social Security age, and, in the last two years, the recession, which has devastated many workers 401(k)s.

The implications, however, are harder to forsee, as is deciding if this is a structural change in the American labor force or a temporary economic blip. A BLS economist told me a colleague of his is researching these very questions.

Regardless of the cause of the return to work by older Americans, there’s no denying the graying of the workforce. For the first six months of this year workers 55 and over accounted for 21.8 percent of the labor force. That’s the highest percentage since 1971.

Meanwhile, the percentage of 25-34 year olds has taken a nose dive. From a high of 36.6 percent in 1986, the percentage has dropped 11.5 points to 25.1 percent for 2009. For the 25-54 year age group as a whole, there’s been a decline of almost eight points since 1993, when 86 percent of the workforce fell into that age group. For the first six months of 2009, 78.2 percent do.

Consider now the demographic factors we’ve detailed: an aging workforce, reentry into the workforce by workers who in years past would be retired, lower workforce participation by workers in the entry-level age group of 25-34, and, finally, the sheer reduction in employment by that age group caused by layoffs and other factors.

The implications of this are immense for employers and recruiters.

Among them is the increase they are seeing in mature workers seeking jobs. That 37 percent of recruiters who told CareerBuilder they’ve received applications from mature and retired workers for entry level jobs is, therefore, not that much of a surprise after all.

Even though the CareerBuilder survey says 65 percent of the employers report being willing to consider overqualified candidates, the reality is probably closer to the 44 percent of mature workers who say they’ve been told they are overqualified. Recruiters who reject overqualified mature workers may find it increasingly difficult to find the young workers who might otherwise take those jobs.

Should recovery from the recession prove to be as long as some economists are now fearing, retirements will continue to get pushed off and retirees with diminishing payouts from their 401(k)s and other savings will reenter the workforce at an accelerating pace.

Evidence of the former is in the CareerBuilder survey. One in five employers report being asked by employees to postpone retirement. Most of those employers (86 percent) said they would consider it.

If the demographics are any guide, 100 percent may come to wish they did.

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.

You may have already heard of some of the resume managers, like ResumeBear. The Bear’ll follow your resume and tell you who’s opening it, forwarding it, and printing it. New features are on the way. Or you may have come across the Resume Donkey. The Donkey’ll rewrite your resume, using professional writers.

Let’s not forget VisualCV. Recruiting-industry junkies might recognize this guy’s resume using the VisualCV tool.

Likely, you’ve heard of Zapoint, which will “take a resume and transform it.”

And a friend of mine (who has to toil in the uncomfortable environs of Laguna Beach) will be launching a “free, online professional resume builder.” Jeff says his new tool will allow employees to create or redo their resumes the way employers want ‘em.

Those are just a few. You’ve got your Pongos and your Emurses; you’ve got your Resume Creator, Resume Maker, Resumizer, and resume everything else, some of which seem a little blah compared to all the new multimedia sites out there like VisualCV.

Now, at least three new players, some you may not know about, are joining the field:

• Verbal Summary. Recruiters can use it either to present a candidate to a hiring manager, or to describe a job to candidates. The important part is the audio; see its demos. What Verbal Summary’s doing that’s a little different is focusing on third-party recruiters (the founder was amazed to see how little money is spent by agencies to differentiate their candidates compared to how much is spent on sourcing, social media, tracking applicants, and branding). Verbal Summary is $50 a month, $500 a year paid in full.
• FacesForce, in beta, obviously excluded the word resume and its many variations, deviations, and permutations, from its name; the company hopes to be more than just for job-seekers. FacesForce wants to stay with people throughout their careers, such as if people want to record a video to pitch new business. Pricing, it says, is simple.
• Rezbuzz. This offshoot of Corp Shorts offers a long list of features, but in a nutshell, candidates pay $495 to have a resume made, and housed for a year. For the time being, at least, companies access the resumes for free. It sees consistency as its advantage: one community of quality professional resumes, not a hodge-podge of do-it-yourself bios. The CEO is executive search veteran Mark Sadovnick, who’s enjoying the good PR Rezbuzz is getting.

The careers columnist Joyce Lain Kennedy, author of Resumes For Dummies, says that when it comes to all these new fancy resume variations, she’s “up for anything new and improved that connects people with jobs.”

But, she warns, “the new wave of infinite Internet spotlighting can have unintended consequences.”

For one, Kennedy says, the multimedia features “revive with a heavy dose of steroids the classic photo-on-resume argument — legal exposure to charges of bias against protected classes.”

Kennedy also says the “wild card for the recruiting industry is what will happen when the federal government takes an updated look at discrimination and the ‘Internet Walking, Talking Applicant.’”

One of Kennedy’s favorite resume writers is Kathryn Troutman. Troutman is the CEO of The Resume Place, among the oldest resume services in the U.S. still operated by the original owner. Her firm’s sales doubled this year over last.

Troutman explains the multimedia-resume startup boom this way.

“Entrepreneurs recognize that the vast majority of potential customers have little idea of how to go about living their job hunts in public — adding videos, video clips, audio bites, and even RSS feeds to flesh out their digital beings. Resume providers are counting on a lack of technical skills, especially in adults of earlier generations, to boost demand for their wares. That’s probably why anyone who understands technology and writes well, but who lacks deep pockets for heavy investment in other industries, decides to start a resume-writing service on the cheap and jumps in. This inclination is especially true if the entrepreneur has a background in HR, recruiting, or some other claim to career management fame.”

Troutman says that if history repeats itself, the industry will shrink in a few years when the job market revives. “By then,” she says, “job seekers will have become more adept at preparing their own digital presentations.”

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?

One way to consider whether an individual is a star is to consider their ability and desire for focused development, challenging job assignments, and potential leadership career growth, says Doris Sims, author of The 30-Minute Guide to Talent and Succession Management. This definition works well within an organization, but how do you identify stars across organizations?

Lisa Haneberg, VP and OD Practice Leader of MPI Consulting and author of High Impact Middle Management, has developed eight key criteria that define star performers:

1. They are well-rounded. In addition to strong technical expertise in their functional area, they also have a solid understanding of how business works — even if they are a rock-star developer.
2. They get results. More than meeting performance expectations, they are known for getting results. And, more often than not, their approach to getting results is innovative.
3. They are builders. Whether they work inside a turnaround, a startup or a mature organization, they are known for building the organization to make it stronger and more nimble.
4. They are flexible. In fact, you can put rock stars in charge of most any department and they will flourish.
5. They are open. Contrary to the stereotype that rock stars can be prima donnas, real rock stars are open to input from others, responsive to requests, as well as candid and assertive.
6. They keep their commitments. If they said it would be done on Monday, it is.
7. They are team catalysts. They know that no man is an island and that every rock star depends on a strong team. Rock stars do whatever it takes to build the team.
8. They are respected. Rock stars are respected by their peers and direct reports for the results they produce, as well as the way in which they get things done.

And finally, Lisa Haneberg offers a bonus criteria for identifying rock stars:
“They are not likely scanning online job postings!” she says.

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.

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.

The unemployment rate is likely to rise as jobs continue to be shed. Christina Romer, chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC, “Employment and unemployment are lagging series. So we are in for some more job losses.”

Most of the other indices that track jobs and public confidence support Romer’s view. The Monster Index, released the other day, was essentially flat from May, while the number of jobs posted online declined after a robust jump the month before. Consumer confidence was down about 10 percent from the previous month.

In the BLS report itself there is evidence that while monthly job losses have eased since the winter, the economy is not yet in recovery. The average workweek is now at the fewest hours since the data was first collected in 1964. On average, those production and non-supervisory workers still employed are putting in only 33 hours a week. That’s due to furloughs, reduced hours, and shortened workweeks, which have the effect of cutting wages, even though the government reports that hourly income has increased 2.7 percent in the last year.

Job losses were worst in the manufacturing sector, where the auto industry slump was largely responsible for the decline of 136,000 jobs. The professional and business services industry contributed 118,000 losses in June, while the construction industry shed 79,000 jobs. The balance came from retail, information (which includes the publishing industry and is not just IT), and finance.

Health care added 21,000 jobs in June.

The Spoke and the Wheel

“Smart Experimentation” is the motto at DaVita, whose recruiting department was recently honored by peers. The Colorado company hires nurses, social workers, dieticians, technicians, and others for its dialysis operations.

A social media research team, including three DaVita recruiters and Shaker, reviewed the Web 2.0 landscape to decide where to initially focus the company’s efforts, in addition to its corporate careers site. One topic of conversation, for example: Should MySpace be on our target list?

In February, they presented their findings to Tony Blake. As a result of the study, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube topped DaVita’s short list of social-media favorites. All 50+ recruiters have LinkedIn accounts, and an internal Spring audit showed 80% had Facebook pages.

DaVita had a Facebook careers group, but is migrating toward a better fan page, with the help of Shaker. It also uses Facebook for an internal blog, where recruiters post best practices, such as increasing followers on Twitter. Interest in that blog has been modest so far.

Although Blake and others have jumped on the Twitter wagon, it will be in Q3 when Twitter will follow Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube as the object of DaVita’s attention. What’s now DaVitaJobs will probably change to a variety of sub-divided jobs — DaVitaNursingJobs, or something like that. A number of other tactics are in the works for the rest of the year. It’ll try JobsinPods and will probably have another go at TweetMyJobs. When it posted one job there, 19 people looked into it. DaVita liked the results, but cut back when the company started charging.

This Fall, Davita will also work on a new social media plan, based on what it has learned from its “smart experiment.” Among the metrics it’ll use to judge its success: LinkedIn page views; user ratings for answers provided by DaVita recruiters on LinkedIn; Twitter followers and other recruiter-network growth; source of hire, which it’ll measure monthly; growth of Facebook fans; wall posts; and Google analytic information showing movement from social media sites to DaVita’s careers page.

Says Watson: “Our goal with the social networks and career site is to function like a spoke-and-wheel where all social sites are the spokes feeding into the center of the wheel which is our career site.”

Spreading the Word by Video

This quarter, the DaVita recruiting team will turn its attention to YouTube. Watson wants employment-branding videos made that are “really raw, the true nature of what it’s like to work there.” Perhaps, he says, the company will hold a competition where employees make their own videos showing what it’s like to work in facilities, or nursing, or other jobs.

KPMG has been at this a while. For a year and a half, interns and new hires have been putting up videos on YouTube about what it’s like to work at the company. This will be the third summer that interns can participate in a best-video contest. KPMG uses its career site to spread the best videos, and takes advantage of “campus ambassadors” who tell other students about the videos and about their internships at the company.

That’s just the tip of the social-media iceberg for KPMG, which brings in about 2,100 full-time college hires and about 1,700 interns annually.

Beyond video, other KPMG tactics include virtual career fairs, as well as one intern’s blog about the company on Jobsinthemoney.com.

Kathleen Schaum, director of the company’s campus strategy, has been at the company 20 years, the last half in HR. She says several tools developed by the company are aimed at helping candidates answer the question: “If I went to KPMG, would I be stuck in one little job my whole career?

Its employer brand (or employee value proposition; choose your jargon) is three-pronged. Candidates are told they can have three things at the company: fun; leadership opportunities; and a global career.

Recruiters can tap into an alumni network for boomerang hires. Employees and candidates each have sites to map out their career trajectories. For employees, once they map out where they want to go and have a sense of which KPMG-ers may already be doing similar work, they can use a separate mentoring tool which allows them to connect with those employees for advice.

“Didn’t Pay a Dime”

When it comes to social media, LinkedIn is a winner for Christina Ousley, a senior HR generalist in California for CO-OP Financial Services.

She recruits sales, HR, accounting, and other jobs for the company, which is involved in the electronic funds transfer business. Last year, she helped bring in about 100 people to the 250-person company. Recently, to backfill a PR manager job, she emailed targeted people who were part of her LinkedIn network. They emailed it and re-emailed it and sent it to marketing and PR groups. The result is a new employee, and, she says, “I didn’t pay a dime.”

She has also used LinkedIn to get a hold of recruiters at credit unions where she reads about layoffs. In one case, she contacted such recruiters, and ended up conducting a little outplacement session at the company. She had three really qualified people for an open job. Did she hire one? “Almost,” she says. “It would have been a great success story.”

Jeff Todd, also in California, is using LinkedIn at Berkeley. The state is so broke that it’s talking about shutting down parks, freeing prisoners, and selling off landmarks. School funds are being cut and some University of California-Berkeley employees who handle IT, publications, and fundraising, and other areas, will lose their jobs. Todd is teaching them to build LinkedIn profiles and join LinkedIn groups, as well as learn their way around Facebook.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, he’s posting articles about the school from his Twitter page, and using HootSuite to measure success. With HootSuite, he can set up a special URL to see what’s generating traffic and what’s not; politics (such as a post in which he said “UC Berkeley lab conducts stem cell research, free for the first time from restrictions lifted by Obama”) and entertainment seem to sell. The goal: to build a relationship that’ll be necessary when things turn around. “When things get hot,” he says, “the people who are going to talk to you are those you paid attention to when times were slow.” His wife would probably agree, as she recently hired someone at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who had been forwarded her job-opening post on Twitter.

“In the Future, They’ll Be There”

Brianna Foulds, who has been Tweeting using her married name BrieNadal, is the senior manager of recruiting at California Pizza Kitchen. She works on the hiring of restaurant managers in the Western U.S., oversees the corporate recruiting, and is involved in internal promotion and succession-planning initiatives.

While the chain would prefer an expanding economy, one thing that’s helping it hold up well is its thank-you card program, where repeat customers have the manager open up a card entitling them to a gift.

Anyhow, Foulds is experimenting with social media like so many others. “We’re really just trying to get on the big ones,” she says. “We’ve decided it’s best to be on a couple sites and really own them, rather than a lot and not really be effective.”

The restaurant doesn’t have a formal plan in place, but the marketing department is building a Facebook fan page (which Foulds’ department will then help keep up). It’s going to be one Facebook site for fans, whether you like your job being a hostess, or you like the Thai pasta. Meanwhile, the PR department is Tweeting about the thank-you cards mentioned earlier, as well as other topics, under the handle http://www.twitter.com/calpizzakitchen.

For office jobs like HR, “LinkedIn is a fantastic place,” Foulds says. The company isn’t finding as many restaurant manager candidates on social media as it’d hope, but “in the future, they’ll be there,” Foulds says.

John Nykolaiszyn, one of four senior corporate recruiters for Burger King Corp, is also dabbling in social-media for restaurant-industry jobs. “We want to be ahead of the competition,” he says. “We’re quietly using Twitter. We’re using LinkedIn. We’re exploring search engine optimization and search engine marketing to promote our brand.” That brand has four parts to it; “Bold, Accountable, Empowered, and Fun.”

Right now, the modest steps are getting good buzz. A June 9 list of top Twittering recruiters (say that 10 times fast) included BK, as well as the line: “This list is almost as interesting for who’s NOT on it at this point. We have Burger King, but not McDonald’s.”

“People Are Terrified”

Matt Alder is the director of product strategy for Barkers, the largest recruitment communications agency in the UK. He’s helping clients manage their employer brands online, which involves, he says, two things. The first is getting the message out about their companies, whether through videos, Twitter, or something else. The second is monitoring what people are saying about them.

Privacy, he says, is a bigger issue across the Pond than in the U.S. As mentioned before, it’s easy to be uneasy about what you find on social media sites.

“People have a real potential problem with people looking up on Facebook and things like that. Facebook is still considered quite private. The press over here jump on every single invasion of privacy that social media throws up.”

Advertising on Facebook, he says, is fine. But researching candidates: not as much. “There are fewer employer Facebook fan pages in the UK at the moment. LinkedIn and Twitter seem to be something companies are comfortable with. But who can see what they’re doing on Facebook — people are terrified about that in the UK. Facebook has had massive, massive growth year over year and people are very keen to share … but with family and friends.”

Christina Ousely, from CO-OP Financial Services, is using Facebook “for personal use, but I haven’t really tapped into it (for recruiting). I’m hesitant to add people to my page, because it has pictures of my daughter, stuff like that.”

These are challenges at Berkeley, too, according to Jeff Todd, the fellow mentioned earlier who’s helping with outplacement and testing out Twitter there. The university is still trying to figure out who should be looking up what on social media sites: Should it be HR? Search committees? Someone else? Todd says there are innumerable issues that arise when viewing a Facebook profile and finding out a person’s religion, politics, and appearance. The problem, he says, isn’t just about rejecting someone because of what you learned about them – something that hopefully won’t happen much. It’s that once you take a look at their profile, there could be the perception that you rejected them for that reason.

Foulds, from CPK, occasionally posts a job on her personal Facebook page, or otherwise receives an careers inquiry there. But, she tells candidates: “I try and keep Facebook a little more personal, for friends and family. Let’s connect on LinkedIn.”

“Loaded Up on Tweets”

Managing all this social media is also a challenge.

Christina Ousley has a close relationship with CO-OP’s marketing department, and is talking to the marketers about the best way to send out jobs via Twitter in the future. For now, if she wants to Tweet jobs out, she’ll do it by hand, not RSS.

She’s still using Monster, for entry-level positions in particular. Ousley’s “trying to find the manpower” for Twitter and other social media.

Mainly, she’s using Twitter to find good articles about best practices, and network with corporate recruiters who are also using it. But, she says, “As the only recruiter, it’s hard for me to sit there and Tweet all day (something she says often goes on with independent recruiters). I’m not a beginner with Twitter. I think I know more than a lot of people out there. But it’s time-consuming. I am glad I work really fast. I’m glad I can multitask. My cell phone is loaded up on tweets. Some people just Tweet all the time.”

Similarly, CPK’s Brianna Foulds (who also likes the restaurant community Fohboh as well as the Talent Revolution site) is using Twitter to learn about best practices in recruiting. “The thing I found that is absolutely wonderful about Twitter,” she says, “is the networking with others, sharing best practices and information. There’s a huge presence of professionals. I try to go in a couple of times a day and read Tweets, and try some re-Tweeting of my own. It’s adding on to my normal, typically busy day. Some days I just don’t find the time.”

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.

The deal — the value wasn’t released — is not only noteworthy for the size of the SaaS deployment, but also that it is one of the largest single-vendor HR selections of its kind. While Oracle/PeopleSoft and SAS have equally large employers as customers, they are sellers of enterprise, on-premises systems.  So signficant a deal is this for the still-developing cloud computing approach that tech site Zdnet says “this company wide rollout really draws attention to the maturity of cloud computing.”

Based in San Mateo, Calif. in Silicon Valley, SuccessFactors was founded in 2001 providing HR services over the web. The company today, before the Siemens deployment, serves 2,700 customers and 4.7 million users in 31 languages and 185 countries.

Before it settled on SuccessFactors, Siemens evaluated nearly 40 vendors and system providers. We conducted an in-depth market evaluation of 30 leading vendors and seven system providers Siemens already had over five months, with our end-users stress testing the software quality, global scalability, and innovation potential,” explains Marion Horstmanm, who heads corporate HR for the company. She says in a press release that, “SuccessFactors was the clear winner by a significant margin based on its usability, ease of integration, and rich functionality.”

The delight in being selected by so large an employer as Siemens, which last year did (US) $107.4 billion in business, is evident in the SuccessFactors press release and the comment by its CEO, Lars Daalgard. “For such an amazing company as Siemens to decide to eliminate so many systems and standardize on SuccessFactors in the cloud is obviously a testimony to SuccessFactors delivering more large business clients over the web than anyone else.”

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.”

Several indices have shown signs of improvement. The Conference Board reported consumer confidence rose in May as did the number of jobs advertised online. The Monster Index, though dropping two points, has halted its rapid decline since May 2008 when it stood at 166. Last month it was at 118.

Economists have been predicting a slow recovery and the BLS report certainly offers support for that view.  The average workweek fell to 33.1 hours, a record low, evidence that employers are still cutting hours. At the same time, those working part-time because they have no other choice, and those considered marginally attached to the workforce also grew in May. When added to those out of work, the unemployed and underemployed rate hit 16.4 percent, about 40 percent higher than a year ago.

The biggest losses were in manufacturing, where 156,000 jobs were lost. Most of that came in automotive related sectors. The BLS reported, “Three durable goods industries — motor vehicles and parts (-30,000), machinery (-26,000), and fabricated metal products (-19,000) — accounted for about half of the overall decline in factory employment. Since its most recent peak in February 2000, employment in motor vehicles and parts has fallen by about 50 percent.”

Construction was also off, though the 59,000 jobs lost was half the 117,000 average of the last six months.

There were also significant losses in finance, professional and business services, and in retail. Only health care showed real gains, adding 24,000 jobs in May.

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.

New Haven’s dilemma was neatly described by Justice David Souter during the Supreme Court hearing on the matter in April.

David Souter

“The problem I have with your argument,” he told the attorney for the firefighters, “is that it leaves a municipality or a governmental body like New Haven in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation… If they go forward with their hiring plan, they certify the results and go forward with it, they are inevitably facing a disparate impact lawsuit.

“If they stop and say, ‘Wait a minute, we’re starting down the road toward a disparate impact lawsuit and, indeed, there may be something wrong here,’ they are inevitably facing a disparate treatment suit. And whatever Congress wanted to attain, it couldn’t have wanted to attain that kind of a situation.”

Key questions

The key question the Supreme Court must decide is: Can a municipality — and potentially any employer — can reject the results of a test for racial reasons, even if a disparate impact is not proved? There are two other specific questions presented for the court, but they boil down to the same fundamentals.

Under court decisions and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended by Congress in 1991, an employer can be found to have discriminated, and thus be in violation of the law and subject to civil penalties, if a “facially neutral employment practice… has an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class.”

But if the employer can show the test is job-related and there is a business necessity for its administration — say, testing the ability of a firefighter candidate to hoist a ladder while dressed in full gear — then the employer may be able to escape liability. However, there is a loophole here. The group claiming discrimination may still prevail if it can show that there are other, equally valid assessment methods meeting the employer’s objectives that don’t result in a disparate impact.

Job simulations

In the only published academic research comparing the results of pencil-and-paper tests (like the one administered to the New Haven firefighters) and interactive simulation testing, Amy Mills, of Aon Consulting, and Dr. Neal Schmitt of Michigan State University found little difference in the predictive value of the two on job performance. They did find that with the simulation, the performance of minority candidates was similar to that of white candidates. On the pencil-and-paper tests, minorities scored significantly lower.

“There’s less of an adverse impact in simulations than in the pencil-and-paper tests,” Schmitt told us for an article published in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

In fact, in the New Haven test, the city weighted the written multiple-choice part, which is the subject of the lawsuit, at 60 percent of the overall score. An oral exam was weighted at 40 percent.

Though the disappointed firefighters presented evidence supporting the test, while the city offered statistical data to demonstrate a prima facie case of disparate impact, the validity of the test as a promotional tool was never actually at issue. Instead, the federal court ruled that the city had the right to throw out the results.

In ruling for the city, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton called the city’s decision “race neutral,” since “all the test results were discarded, no one was promoted, and firefighters of every race will have to participate in another selection process.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeal upheld the decision in a single paragraph, that has now become a central part of the national judicial debate because Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was one of the three judges to hear the firefighters appeal.

What will the court do?

Many observers think the court will rule in favor of the firefighters.

Chief Justice Roberts

Chief Justice John Roberts signaled his dissatisfaction when he asked during the oral arguments if the city was to “get do-overs until it comes out right?”

Justice Antonin Scalia challenged the idea that the city had been racially neutral in tossing the results. “It’s neutral because you throw it out for the losers as well as for the winners? That’s neutrality?”

If the court does overrule the lower courts, it could simply order the case back to the lower court to decide the city’s motives in tossing the test. The city would then be in the uncomfortable position of attacking the validity of a test it commissioned and approved, but Title VII would remain intact.

The possible, broader implications of a reversal could be the watering down of the “disparate impact” portion of the Civil Rights Act. The court could say the city had no right to refuse to certify the test simply because of the outcome.

At the extreme, the court could go so far as to rule sections of the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, though almost no one expects that broad a decision.