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Facebook is emerging as the leading social network when it comes to job hunting. By a margin approaching 2-to-1, job seekers credit Facebook with helping them get their current job.

LinkedIn ran a distant second, with 46 percent of job seekers attributing their job to that business-oriented network. Twitter, the short messaging network, got a thumbs-up for its job help from 36 percent.

Those are among the findings of Jobvite’s Social Job Seeker Survey 2011 released this morning. The survey doesn’t say how the social networking helped the job-seekers. Other data suggests it may mean seekers researched the companies on social networks, reached out to their contacts for information, got a referral, or were contacted directly. Since most job seekers use more than one social network, the numbers add up to more than 100 percent. keep reading…

With every good intention, American employers are honoring the nation’s military veterans today with promises of jobs and redoubled recruiting efforts.

From Washington, where Michelle Obama announced yesterday that corporate leaders will hire 100,000 vets and military spouses in the next two years, to a Phoenix job fair today where Chase Bank is encouraging veterans to attend its job fair, the focus has been on addressing veteran hiring. Late Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a veterans jobs bill.

Without a doubt, it is a worthy effort. But it is also one that faces challenges very much like those plaguing the civilian employment situation. The fact of the matter is that unemployed veterans look a whole lot like unemployed civilians: young and undereducated.

A second, smaller, but still substantial problem, is the one facing Reservists and the National Guard: multiple call-ups and the legal obligation to rehire them when they return from duty, makes many employers reluctant to hire them in the first place. keep reading…

The last time I talked to Morningstar’s Bob Johnson, it was 2009 and we wondered if we’d “hit bottom.” Two and a half years later, things still feel a little similar.

The jobs report we wrote about today was more of the so-so stuff, with fears of a recession decreasing but life still tough for job-seekers in many fields. Here’s what Johnson and I talked about today as we thought more about the numbers: keep reading…

Look around at most any HR conference and one of the profession’s little secrets is instantly obvious: HR is the domain of white, middle-aged women.

A little harder to see is that they are better educated than most of the population, and far better off financially.

Catbert notwithstanding, human resources is a pink-collar profession that looks very different from the rest of the corporate workforce, let alone the U.S. as a whole.

More than a few surveys have noted the gender imbalance in human resources. A dozen years ago the federal Office of Personnel Management reported the dramatic change in its own workforce. In 1969, 30 percent of the HR jobs were held by women. By 1998, the percentages were reversed, with men holding 29 percent of the jobs. A SHRM survey from 2007 came up with similar numbers.

Now, one of the most extensive profiles of HR professionals ever conducted not only confirms that what the OPM found in the federal workforce applies to the private sector, but the diversity there is just what you would expect from eyeballing conference attendees. keep reading…

One of the easiest ways corporate advisors and consultants help their clients improve performance quickly is highlighting and putting an end to dumb things being done that negatively impact results. Over the years I have developed my list (some of it is shared below), but I would love to hear your thoughts on what you are seeing today that makes you scratch your head, or worse, makes your skin crawl with anger.

The Staffing Management Association of Seattle (one of the nation’s most progressive professional associations for recruiters) has selected this topic for the closing keynote session I will deliver at its seventh Annual Symposium on November 9.

I’ll incorporate your views into my presentation and share my final list with the ere.net community following the event. Helping rank my list and identify missing things shouldn’t take more than five minutes and could prove very helpful to the entire recruiting community. Look through my list of 30 dumb things and select the five that you see as the most common and most egregious. keep reading…

Falguni Chitalia, a native of India, speaks three languages and holds a degree from Rutgers. She also has cerebral palsy that has affected her speech and limited the use of her left hand.

She struggled to earn a living, for a time clerking at Wal-Mart. But her goal was to find work as a professional in a career that could allow her to be independent. With the assistance of Virginia’s Department of Rehabilitative Service, Chitalia received job counseling and speech therapy.

Today, she is a project manager with Anthem Wellpoint and was recently lauded in the company newsletter.

Her story is but one of dozens being cited as examples of the success disabled workers can have when, with a little assistance from the government, employers reach out to the disability community.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The U.S. Department of Labor is taking the lead in promoting the month around the theme of “Profit by Investing in Workers with Disabilities.” Managed by the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, the month-long campaign to build awareness of the contributions of the disabled includes the posting of stories like Chitalia’s, as well as lending support to state and local efforts to increase the hiring of disabled workers. keep reading…

The March 16, 1998 issue of Fortune showed a picture of one Roberto Ziche, a software engineer, and his bird, Reika, a little lime-green and red parrot. Demand for tech talent so outpaced the supply then that his employer had agreed to his demand to let Reika hop about Ziche’s office all day, jumping from his keyboard, across the top of his monitor, and stopping for a rest sometimes on Ziche’s head. “She’s a pleasant diversion,” says Ziche. But there are drawbacks. “When I am on the phone she gets jealous and starts screaming and biting and messing up everything on my desk.” And of course, unlike a dog, the bird was not house trained, so messing up on the desk meant more than mixing up the papers.

Nerds in Paradise

Well, if that story seems quaint, your next tech hire may be demanding she bring her pet to work too. Think that’s unlikely? Well think again. keep reading…

A European version of BeKnown’s iPhone app was released today by Monster, the latest in a string of enhancements and features the company has been making in its careers-oriented Facebook network.

Last week, at Facebook’s f8 developers conference, Monster said it was tightening the integration between its BeKnown networking app, and Facebook, on which it built the professional network. The enhancements will make it easy for BeKnown members who update their business profile to add those updates to their more social Facebook profile.

In the weeks before, Monster released smartphone apps for the iPhone and Android devices, allowing members to update their BeKnown profiles, send messages, make connections and, naturally, search Monster for jobs. Now, European members of the BeKnown network have the same capabilities. An Android version was released in Europe previously.

With the sweeping changes being made to Facebook, Monster’s decision to build its network-in-a-network on the social site seems almost prescient. Despite the current roil by the users who will have to get used to the changes Facebook is making, they eventually will. As they fill in their new Timelines, some of it will spill over into their BeKnown profiles. As Monster’s announcement last week noted, the opposite will also happen. keep reading…

Google+ went public yesterday,  opening up its three-month old social network to anyone who wants to join. At the same time, it also announced what it said were eight new improvements, principally to the live video section it calls Hangouts.

Following close behind, Facebook unveiled some sweeping changes of its own, rearranging its News Feed and adding a real-time update ticker to profile pages.

The nearly simultaneous announcements, probably just a coincidence, are nonetheless evidence of the escalating competition between the two powerhouse companies.

Ever since Google+ launched in June (growing quickly to 25 million users who had to be invited to join), Facebook has aggressively added, enhanced, or otherwise changed key features of the site. Hangouts, which lets Google+ users video chat, was Google’s one-up on Facebook. Not even two weeks later, Facebook called a press conference to announce a partnership with Skype and its own video chat service.

When it launched, one of the more compelling Google+ features was its “Circles,” allowing users to organize connections as they see fit. Different messages can be sent to different circles.

Facebook’s one-group approach didn’t allow for different levels of connectedness; lists were available, but so clunky to create and manage that few people used them.  Last week, Facebook addressed that shortcoming, improving Friend Lists. Now, not only can users easily create lists where photos and posts are in one place, but the Smart Lists features automatically assembles groups based on common interests. The latter feature is optional to use. keep reading…

I’m a zero. So are many of my friends. The wonder is, I really don’t care and I’m not going to do anything about it.

Let me explain. Yesterday, Forbes, TechCrunch, and some others detailed the beta launch of Identified. This is a startup that connects to your Facebook profile and assigns you a score that in the words of the company’s PR “shows people how their professional brand is perceived by the world.”

Identified assesses your work history, education, and your social network, crunches it together, and voila, a score. Since this is supposed to be a recruiting tool — it’s billed by the founders as the “World’s Largest Professional Search Engine” — companies can use Identified to search for candidates with certain qualifications, plus a score range. And just so everyone knows they really are using Identified, there’s an activity box that lets you know “Levi Strauss & Co. has viewed profiles of candidates with scores from 16 to 77.” keep reading…

Taking the next logical step in its evolution from job search engine to job board, Indeed today unveiled its resume search service.

The carefully planned launch had been scheduled to occur tomorrow, but an error in distributing the press release forced the company to lift the embargo it had placed on bloggers, analysts, and others who got a preview of the service earlier this week.

It’s a straightforward search, identical in most regards to the site’s job search. It is keyword based, though it will accept some Boolean and Google query types. Searches can be easily narrowed by simply selecting from a menu on the left that shows up on results pages. keep reading…

“Get in the mindset to recognize what you need, and avoid being distracted by shiny new tools,” said Shannon Myers, from Walton Search, talking about technology tips and tools yesterday at the fall ERE Expo.

But she did list some of the sites, applications, and services she finds interesting. Here’s a sampling of those services to manage your time, life, contacts, and information online (and in the comments section, add any you find valuable):

keep reading…

Welcome to Labor Day and the last day of summer.

Yes, I know. Astronomically, summer won’t end for another 18 days. But, I’m talking symbolically, not scientifically. And in that context, the U.S. Labor Day marks a transition from summer white to fall brown. It’s when kids go back to school, and the pace of the office quickens as workers return from vacation.

Once a day of parades and political speeches in praise of American workers, which still occur here and there across the country, Labor Day is mostly now a time to head for the beach or the park, fire up the barbecue, and kick back.

In the spirit of years past, however, I present you some inspirational words on life and work in the 21st century, from two of the most widely seen commencement addresses ever delivered.

First, is the advice given to the graduating class of 2010 at Auburn University by  Tim Cook, then Apple’s COO and now, its CEO: keep reading…

Consumers may be pessimistic about jobs, but investors clearly were not today, bidding up the stock of the three publicly held career sites.

So aggressive was the action on Monster in particular that its stock soared 21.45 percent today, leading the gainers on the S&P 500 Index. Monster’s shares closed the day at $9.91.

LinkedIn rose 6 percent today, closing at $87.49. Monday, LinkedIn was up 7.5 percent. Dice Holdings was up 2.16 percent to $10.40.

All three companies had a tough few days last week, with LinkedIn sinking on Thursday to $70.05, its lowest price since going public in May. It closed its first day of trading back then at $94.25, after hitting a high of almost $123 a share.

Monster, which has been drifting in the mid teens for months, started heading south in late July, closing on August 22 at a low of $7.13.  Friday, the stock began inching up, and Monday, despite news the company had replaced its CIO Darko Dejanovic, it continued to rise. Today, after the company reported that three of its senior executives cumulatively bought more than 87,000 shares, the stock took off.  keep reading…

You always suspected you didn’t get that promotion because the boss played favorites. Now there’s evidence you’re right.

The majority of bosses in a new study admit they knew who they wanted to promote before the formal process got underway.

Published by Georgetown University, the study by Jonathan Gardner, COO and senior managing director of Penn, Schoen, & Berland Associates, found 56 percent of large company (with more than 1,000 employees) executives with more than one candidate for a promotion already had a favorite. After going through the evaluation process, 96 percent of those managers with a favorite gave them the job. Twenty-nine percent of the managers had only one candidate.

No wonder, then, that 78 percent of managers said their promotion decision was easy. And no wonder, too, that 92 percent say favoritism exists in most large organizations. keep reading…

With 25 million Americans out of work or underemployed, you’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to find a teacher, an admin assistant, or an accountant. But you would be wrong, according to Manpower.

Those jobs are among the 10 toughest jobs to fill in the U.S., says Manpower’s annual Talent Shortage Survey, which also reports that 52 percent of the employers in the survey are having trouble filling jobs.  Only in Japan and India do more companies report talent hard to find.

Globally, a third of all employers say they have difficulty filling jobs.  Lack of experienced workers is the most frequently cited reason,  globally, as well as in every region in the survey. In the Americas, lack of experience was followed by a lack of skills.

Particularly surprising was the the rise in U.S. companies reporting hiring difficulty. In the 2010 survey, only 14 percent of companies reported problems filling jobs. Now the percentage has nearly quadrupled.

If it seems unlikely the hiring situation could have worsened so much so fast, part of the disconnect may have to do with when the survey was conducted – months ago, long before the current round of gloomy economic reports started coming out. keep reading…

There’s nothing that different about Millennials that age doesn’t explain. So concludes an interesting study by the Kenexa High Performance Institute on the work attitudes of Millennials.

“Millennials are, in fact, much like their older counterparts,” says the study authors, who compared the results of current surveys and historic surveys of Boomers and Gen Xers.

What they found is that contrary to the stereotype of being a malcontented, coddled, naive lot, Millennials, the Gen Y generation, are in many ways more satisfied than their older counterparts.

“The data refutes the ‘millennial malcontent’ stereotype,”  write authors Brenda Kowske and Rena Rasch. As part of Kenexa’s WorkTrends survey of some 30,000 workers in 28 countries, they asked a series of attitude questions, finding that 60 percent of Millennials are “extremely satisfied” with where they work. That’s well above the 54 percent of Boomers and Gen Xers who said that.

Millennials were also more satisfied with the recognition they receive, more satisfied with their opportunities for growth and development, and as excited about their work and their pay as Boomers and Gen Yers. keep reading…

Is your company among those who reject the unemployed because they are unemployed?

If you are — and a report from the National Employment Law Project suggests the list is longer than you might think — be careful. You’re walking a thin line between legal discrimination, and the kind that just might result in a disparate impact complaint from the EEOC.

At the behest of some 50 members of Congress, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a day-long hearing on the matter several months ago. No formal statement has come out of the hearing, but the attention focused on the issue by the EEOC and Congress is raising concern among the employment bar. Labor lawyers are counseling employers to act carefully, avoiding blanket policies against hiring the unemployed.

Unless you are hiring in New Jersey, it is legal to include language in a job posting discouraging the unemployed from applying. In the Garden State, however, it became illegal on June 1 to discriminate against the unemployed in print or online ads. But everywhere, it’s bad PR to include the kind of wording that turned up in the now-infamous Sony Ericsson job posting.

Legal or not, employment lawyers at Foley & Lardner warned a few months ago that “employers can expect their hiring practices concerning the unemployed to be scrutinized.”

With an unemployment rate (in June) of 16.2 percent, twice that of whites, blacks could well be disproportionately impacted by a blanket “no unemployed” policy. Thus, said the Foley & Lardner lawyers, “The issue also seems ripe for a disparate impact test case, perhaps even one brought by the EEOC itself against an employer.” keep reading…

A number of the big-name innovators in talent acquisition — the Sodexos, the PepsiCos, and others — are all trying to find a smooth way to get candidates using smart phones excited about a job at their companies, to apply for jobs without having to navigate a corporate careers site on the phone, all the while staying compliant with government rules, and not wreaking too much havoc on the employer’s applicant tracking system.

Matt Jeffery, who wrote that article on ERE that went quite viral, says his employer, Autodesk, is among the leaders in the mobile race. More on Jeffery and what his company is unveiling in a minute; first a look at how we got to this point.

A page from the Autodesk iPad version

What the amorphous term “mobile recruiting” has meant to many people so far is encouraging candidates to send a text message companies about jobs, like UPS has done, or the tinkering around with a careers website to make it show up better on smart phones, like companies such as Hyatt have done. Randy Goldberg and the Hyatt team are looking into having candidates submit some quick information on themselves using a cell phone, so they wouldn’t have to type in a whole resume or application. But right now, Goldberg believes that having candidates actually apply for a job using their cell phone would be quite a hassle for a candidate.

Most everyone tends to agree — including many folks you may have heard of who have an interest in mobile recruiting, people like Geoff Peterson, Craig Fisher, Gordon Lokenberg, and Chris Russell.

Lokenberg has helped Deloitte-Netherlands with its mobile recruiting. “There are a lot of apps out there that are mostly shortcuts to an Internet career site of the company,” he says. “That makes it hard to navigate.”

“The technology’s not 100% there,” says Peterson. “You’d have to have your resume already loaded up online and have a link to share, or something else like that. In theory (applying straight from a mobile application) can be done for sure, but do I see a lot of being done now? No, I don’t think so.”

“I’ve seen promise from a few different companies,” says Fisher. “But I’ve never seen a working product yet.”

Many of the applications out there are for certain groupings of people, like Lokenberg’s application created in 2009, which works only for companies that are a part of his database, and is called “Shake Your Job.” Or, Monster’s mobile application, for candidates to apply with the Monster accounts. LinkedIn says it does not yet have an “apply now with LinkedIn” mobile-phone application; Russell believes that in general, as LinkedIn makes its moves, it “should speed up the innovation around mobile applying.”

Anyhow, multiple recruiting departments I’ve talked to over the last few months are working on this, with help from various technology vendors. Among those many vendors is a small husband-wife Ohio consultancy working on an “apply now” mobile application, whose work is so private that it doesn’t want its name to be mentioned.

Pepsi, one of the innovators in the mobile arena, was aggressively working on an apply-with-a-cell-phone project, the company told me in the spring, though a spokeswoman tells me it’s not there yet. A little-known UK firm called AllTheTopBananas is its vendor of choice, a company that raves about the success of Pepsi’s mobile efforts to date. AllTheTopBananas has only about 13 employees, mostly developers. It started off in April 2007 as a job aggregator, sort of like a British version of Indeed or SimplyHired in the U.S.

AllTheTopBananas notes that “from the first 60 days from the apps going live, a soft launch only in the U.S., with the apps only being featured in only two places, on their careers website and in the app stores, PepsiCo had received over 3,500 downloads. Out of the 3,500 downloads, 85% of the candidates had job alerts set up on their device for targeted jobs they are interested in. When tracking the candidates who came from their apps, they have hired two new employees and have 10 in the recruitment process. Again, this was within the first 60 days of launch.”

Sodexo, not yet naming the vendor it’s working with, expects to launch its mobile application in about a month, allowing candidates to search and apply for jobs on their phones. keep reading…

If you recruit in Italy, don’t check the social networks when you background a candidate. In Spain, you can monitor the time your workers spend on social networks, if you warn them in advance you’re going to. But without their permission you can’t monitor the content.

And do you have a company policy regarding social networking? Only 55 percent of the companies do, according to a survey by the International Labor & Employment Group at Proskauer Rose.

The high-powered law firm conducted what it describes as an “informal survey on emerging trends and practices on the use of social media in the workplace,” finding that 76 percent of the 120 responding companies use social media for business purposes.

The results of the 10-question survey are supplemented by brief summaries of rules and regulations around the world, which, as in the U.S., can be fairly loose, or, as in Italy, so restrictive that employers can’t even monitor what their workers are doing on company time using company equipment. (Employers there can, however, prohibit the use of social networking sites during work hours.)

Rather than rely on existing company policies, Proskauer Rose says, “businesses need to have distinct and specific social media policies and practices in order to harness the benefits and minimize the risks these new media present.”

It’s telling that although 55 percent found value in the business use of social media during work hours, but not in its personal use, a significant 31 percent found an advantage in allowing both business and personal use.

The survey also found 31 percent of the companies took disciplinary action against an employee in connection with their use of social networks, while 43 percent have faced an issue with misuse of social networks.

Proskauer suggests companies consider three factors whether they use social networks for recruitment and selection or in disciplinary action: keep reading…