Salaries for tech workers in the U.S. will rise almost twice the national average in 2013 — some will increase even more, up to 12 percent — a symptom of how competitive the competition for talent has become.
“The hiring environment for technology talent is only going to become tougher for employers in the year ahead,” says Robert Half International. As a result, tech salaries, already among the richest in the country, will see an average increase of 5.3 percent, compared to a national average for all occupations of about 3 percent.
Many jobs, however, will see substantially higher increases. Mobile developers will see the biggest increase; their 9 percent average reflects the dramatic growth in mobile applications and the shortage of specialists in this area. Web developers and data professionals can expect an average 7.3 percent increase. Wireless network engineer positions will average a 7.9 percent bump. And when candidates with additional, and highly specialized skills are required, Robert Half says they can expect to average as much as 12 percent more than others with the same job title. keep reading…
Over the last two years, LinkedIn has used its fast-growing user conference to roll out products that have become such a part of the daily life of LinkedIn-o-philes that we barely remember when they didn’t exist. The idea of pushing really targeted jobs to passive job-seekers was highlighted in 2010. Last year, LinkedIn unveiled the since-improved tool for managing candidates called Talent Pipeline. Those looking for an even-bigger announcement this week may be disappointed, but LinkedIn is, however, rolling out multiple improvements to existing products, and launching significant new ones.
It’ll soon make big, not-yet-specified changes to the profile pages. For now, though, here’s what’s new: a way to measure your brand against others; an index of the most in-demand employers; “sponsored jobs” to get your listings up higher in the results on LinkedIn; and, upgrades to LinkedIn Recruiter. keep reading…
Google. Google. Google. Let’s just give the company the permanent cup, and then disqualify it from consideration for all those best of talent acquisition, and best company to work for lists for at least five years.
I say this because the company-who-shall-not-be-named is now at the top of yet another best list. Universum says Google is at the top of both the global business and global engineering lists in “The World’s Most Attractive Employers 2012″ survey. In case you’re wondering, Google was at the top of both lists last year.
What this means is that the company was again the top choice of business and engineering students in 12 of the world’s leading economies: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, UK, and U.S. Universum, a global employment branding firm with a strong focus on students and recent graduates, surveyed some 144,000 students in those countries to come up with the rankings. keep reading…
Buoyed by the early returns from the launch of its mobile-optimized career site, Microsoft is working on what for some companies is a major goal of mobile recruiting: a way for candidates to apply for jobs straight from a mobile phone, without going to their computer later in the day. The apply-from-your-phone experience is a “top priority” of the Microsoft team, one that is being pursued as its other work on mobile recruiting goes on simultaneously.
The company joined the early movers in mobile recruiting this year with the launch of its mobile career site. Those movers, among many others, include Pepsi, UPS, adidas, McDonald’s, Intel, Citi, and Sodexo. Microsoft had started working on the site last summer, 2011, and had brought on Punchkick Interactive for help. On the Microsoft side, the players included Heather Tinguely, as well as others in recruiting, staffing marketing, and the global talent labs division.
There was some interesting discussion within the Microsoft walls: keep reading…
Just as Saturday football and Greek rush weeks signal the start of another college year, so does the start of campus visits by recruiters seeking the best prospects among another senior class.
If that’s you, don’t bother, unless you’re hot on the trail of sociology or poli sci majors. The engineering students, the techies, and many of the scientists have long been spoken for.
In a world getting more competitive all the time for top, even average, engineers and computer professionals, it’s probably no surprise that the biggest and most competitive companies begin forging relationships with prospects when they’re freshmen. If that seems early, you’re already behind; many of the most aggressive companies are offering internships to high schoolers.
Building a pipeline of future prospects by establishing a relationship with students at the outset of their education gives these companies the edge when it comes to recruiting them into full-time jobs at graduation. The internships they offer is a benefit to both the company, as it gets to test the prospect, and the student who gets real work experience. keep reading…
When I started ERE Media in October 1998, it was a labor of love. I was a 23 year old, and spent every spare moment after my day job thinking about how to grow my hobby into something real. When we launched the first ERE Expo, I wore a suit and glasses so people would think I was older than I was. I’m pretty sure that nobody was fooled.
Next month will mark ERE’s 14th anniversary. The company now operates four brands, and has become the preeminent source of information for the recruiting profession. Thanks to TLNT, our footprint among HR professionals is rapidly growing. The team is the best in the business, and has been working together for years. I’ve had Lasik surgery, and wore jeans to the seven conferences that we produced last year.
In short, the company has matured. Despite my best efforts, so have I. It’s an exciting and important time in the recruiting/HR world, and it’s the right time for ERE to step up with new ideas, new information, and new services — things that will help us continue to better serve our community. And I’ve discovered that even though this company feels like a part of who I am, I like being the underdog more than I like running the show.
And so after a period of soul searching, I have decided to step down as CEO of ERE Media.
I’d like to introduce Ron Mester, ERE’s new CEO. Ron is uniquely qualified to grow a company like ERE Media. His understanding of recruiting and HR runs deep. He ran Towers Perrin’s San Francisco based Strategy & Organization consulting practice. More recently, Ron served as CEO of Staffing Industry Analysts, where he and Founder Peter Yessne grew the business dramatically before its sale to Crain Communications.
ERE’s team is the best group of people I’ve ever worked with, and with just over a dozen people, they regularly accomplish things that much larger companies are unable to. It’s going to take a special person to lead this team. keep reading…
Charlie Brown never got much respect. Not from Lucy, who when she wasn’t snatching the football away at the last minute, was making fun of his pitching skills, nor from the Little Red-Haired Girl, with whom he was so infatuated.
Now, as it turns out, Charles Brown doesn’t get much respect from Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. Out of his 100 applications for a job as a marketing manager, the Charlie Brown of our story has no idea where he stands with six out 10 of the companies.
Six weeks after applying, Charlie heard directly from only 28 companies that he isn’t getting a job. Seven more gave him a reference number, but despite having an MBA from Michigan and BA in mechanical engineering, Charlie didn’t know what to do with it. Three companies allowed him to check his status through their website. One — REI, the outdoor company that has been on the 100 best list for years — actually gave him a call.
As the other Charlie Brown would say, “Good grief.” keep reading…
Down on the day. Up on the evening. If they’re not drinking champagne at LinkedIn HQ they should be. Not only did the company meet the optimistic 16-cent-a-share earnings estimate of Wall Street, it blew through the revenue guess, beating the $216 million estimate by a cool $12.5 million.
Net profit was lower than last year’s second quarter, because the company is spending at a faster pace as it aggressively grows domestically and especially abroad. Sales and marketing was the fastest growing expense category, more than doubling in cost.
But that spending, company officials say, is powering the expansion of the client base, which increased by some 1,600 customers during the second quarter, and prompted them to raise both their revenue and earnings expectations for the current quarter and the full year. keep reading…
As you may have heard, the company contracted to provide security guards to the London Olympics announced a scant three weeks before the event that – [psych! sorry!] — it was going to be (by some accounts) 7,000 guards short. This apparently caught nearly everyone, including the CEO of G4S (the largest security company in the world — at least up ’til now) off guard (no pun intended.) The hapless CEO, Nick Buckles, admitted to British lawmakers that his firm has embarrassed the nation.
The extent of the fallout from this debacle is not yet known for the Olympics, G4S, or its competitors (who seem likely to benefit from the over-commitment and incompetence of their industry’s giant). But in the meantime, there are key lessons to be learned for HR and talent acquisition professionals (not to mention business leaders): keep reading…
As Amazon prepares to open two, massive warehouse facilities in the next six months or so, the company took the unprecedented step of announcing a new employee benefit on its homepage.
In a letter addressed to “customers,” CEO Jeff Bezos said Amazon would now pay up to $8,000 toward tuition and expenses for full-time hourly workers who want to learn a new trade. “For people who’ve been with us as little as three years, we’re offering to pre-pay 95% of the cost of courses such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, nursing, and many other fields,” says Bezos.
What’s particularly unusual about the Amazon program is that only education leading to a well-paying, high-demand job will be funded. It doesn’t matter, says Bezos, if the training is relevant to a career with Amazon. keep reading…
Monster and its client Marussia — a British auto-racing team — are running a turbo-charged recruiting campaign for car-racing-related jobs, one that’s relying heavily on social media and video, and in particular a contest, a bit reminiscent of Sunglass Hut’s, that has entrants essentially doing a bunch of employment marketing for Marussia on Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube.
This all began in the latter half of 2011. Marussia was a newer team (once called Virgin Racing) on the Formula 1 circuit that has hired 13 people this year and has 21 open jobs now.
Its HR team was practically a one-woman band, using Excel spreadsheets. That one woman was Katie Allen. Allen had been using agencies, as well as magazine ads, to attract people. The candidate experience was suffering a bit. Unbeknownst to her, her marketing department had been talking to Monster about a marketing partnership. Monster was, truthfully, a company that gave her slight hesitation. In her mind it was associated with, she says, a “high volume of candidates, with limited results.”
As conversations with Monster began, she began to change her thinking.
Marussia and Monster were, and are, looking for some fresh ideas for finding people, something to reduce headhunter spending in such a competitive industry with jobs like one involving buying metallic components. Marussia wanted Monster to help it appear “cool” and to have jobs that were so; in turn, Monster was happy to have a way to raise its cool factor — more on that latter point in a minute.
Marussia lacked the funding of some other teams, and was in less of a position to compete on what David Henry calls the “merry go ’round” of Formula 1 talent. It’d be harder to poach people from other teams. keep reading…
The Summer Olympics start soon and most will be focused on the athletic achievements, but the Olympics can provide many valuable lessons for recruiters. Recruiting leaders often say that they’re looking for “outside-the-box” approaches and it’s hard to argue against the fact that the Olympic recruiting approach differs significantly from the corporate recruiting model.
London 2012
What better example to emulate is there than a system that motivates and convinces thousands of individuals to make extraordinary sacrifices and to develop themselves beyond the capabilities of the athletes who preceded them? This Olympic people-management model routinely brings out world-record-breaking human performances.
So, while you’re watching the events, think about the powerful way that Olympic teams recruit and how their strategy and methods differ from the traditional and more conservative corporate approach.
Top Recruiting Lessons That Should be Learned From the Olympics keep reading…
up high in the EA lobby
High pay, high housing costs, and an increasingly global recruiting environment have sent the recruiting market in California’s Silicon Valley back to the late 1990s.
Leaders from Genentech, Brocade, Electronic Arts, and other Valley companies talked about Silicon Valley recruiting at a July 18 event at Electronic Arts, put together by, among others, Brenda Rogers of Roku (the streaming-player company sporting a 67% employee referral rate) with help from CKR Interactive’s Andrew Gardiner, known by many as the founder of BAjobs.com.
Below are some highlights of that discussion entitled “recruiting top talent in the wake of a tsunami” put on by the Bay Area Human Resources Executives Council.
Moving From “Pay to Opportunity” keep reading…
When you look to recruit this year, you’ll almost certainly be looking at social media as one of your methods for getting the word out.
That’s what the latest numbers from Jobvite’s annual social recruiting survey said for 2012. And while more than 9 in 10 are using social media for recruiting, 73% have made a successful hire using social media.
In the survey, they also asked about what specific networks employers are using, as well as attitudes toward candidate behavior on social networks.
Here’s a hint: don’t worry too much about the political and religious posts but do make sure you’ve practiced up on your grammar.
Network Importance
Not surprisingly, LinkedIn is the No. 1 social recruiting source (with 93% of respondents using it). Of course, the very definition of job posting on LinkedIn’s network might not meet some people’s ideas of what is and isn’t social recruiting.
Facebook continues to grow as a source, with two thirds of those surveyed using it for recruiting purposes (and perhaps more will be if and when the company launches its new jobs section).
Twitter is growing at a similar pace, with more than 50% using the social network for recruiting. keep reading…
Labor economists are expecting that June was another lackluster month when it comes to job creation, forecasting that the U.S. economy added barely 100,000 jobs. The official report from the U.S. Labor Department is slated to be released Friday morning.
If it turns out they’re right — and we’ll get a hint when ADP releases its report on private jobs Thursday — it will mean that for the third consecutive year, job creation has gone into a summer slump. Though better than May’s 69,000 jobs, the forecasts, which are nearly all in a range from 90,000 to 100,000, evidence a growing suspicion that little improvement in employment is likely any time soon. keep reading…
Lucky for Shami Marangwanda she landed a recruiting job with Starbucks, because the irascible and profane Gordon Ramsay and his cohorts dashed her hopes of becoming a MasterChef. The Zimbabwe native had been laid off from her previous recruiting position when the opportunity came along to participate in the third season of Fox’ cooking show.
“I went in just having fun,” she told the Seattle Times. She made oxtail stew in a wine sauce made with sadza, a cooked corn meal that is a staple of traditional Zimbabwe diets. Alas, it fails to impress the judges and she was sent back to Seattle sans the apron that denotes a MasterChef semi-finalist.
Get Thee to a Gym
Boss been a monster lately? Then boost those endorphins. We mean the boss, though a little more exercise all around couldn’t hurt.
Turns out that abusive bosses can be tamed (though we doubt domesticated) by some time in the gym. There’s real science behind this. Three researchers experimented on 98 workers and their bosses and found “that increased levels of supervisor-reported stress are related to the increased experience of employee-rated abusive supervision.” Okay.
But here’s the biggie: “We also find that the relationship between supervisor stress and abusive behavior can be diminished when supervisors engage in moderate levels of physical exercise.”
So next October 16, instead of taking up a collection for a lunch, or cookies, or those soon-to-be-extinct party balloons, buy the boss a gym membership. keep reading…
Earlier this morning, The Verge reported that a user in a Russian forum had obtained nearly 6.5 million passwords from the business networking site LinkedIn. The passwords, which didn’t include attached usernames and were encrypted according to the reports, don’t seem to be in immediate danger of being used to compromise accounts. Security experts are nonetheless advising LinkedIn users to change their passwords as soon as possible.
Beyond this individual breach, LinkedIn has a bigger problem to face: how did this information get out into the open and how do they respond in order to calm possible fears of uploading any sensitive information to the company’s site?
keep reading…
A day doesn’t go by that I don’t read a blog, LinkedIn discussion, or business article challenging the existence of a skilled worker shortage.
Just last week I presented a keynote address to the Executive Women’s Roundtable in Dallas, Texas. Most of the attendees were shocked by the statistics and trends I presented about skilled worker shortages. As suspected, I encountered a few objections. Most of the arguments targeted employers. The antagonists say that management in many companies simply refuses to pay qualified workers what they are worth. I can’t argue with them on that accusation. That is absolutely true.
Some employers still don’t get it — that high unemployment does not equal more qualified workers in this new global and technology-driven economy. The bar for minimum requirements has been raised substantially. Many previously employed and experienced workers now fall under the bar. To recruit and retain skilled workers, employers will need to re-examine how they compensate their workforce.
Supply and demand also plays a part. The supply of workers — domestic and international — available to do many task-oriented jobs far exceeds demand. Jobs that were once a sure bet to middle-class wages can now be performed at a fraction of a cost in developing countries or by automation. For those workers holding a high school diploma or less with no secondary education or trade school experience, I see low-wage, low-skill positions in your future.
But none of these arguments negates the fact that the U.S. has a significant and growing skills shortage. You need look no further than educational attainment, high school dropout rates, and basic literacy to see that U.S. employers are facing an acute shortage of skilled workers.
I can summarize my “case” for skilled worker shortages with two points. keep reading…
The fastest-growing human resources technology company many have never heard of is having its own challenges attracting technology talent, and has begun a recruitment advertising campaign.
Cornerstone's billboard tonight on Santa Monica Blvd
It’s very early in the branding-advertising effort by Cornerstone OnDemand, one its CEO Adam Miller says will involve social media, and has already involved 18 employees running the LA marathon with company shirts on, partly to raise the firm’s profile.
Los Angeles is a massive, sprawling (the 37-mile drive home tonight from the Cornerstone conference took me a mind-numbing 3 1/2 hours) metropolitan area of about 13 million, but it’s not a magnet for tech talent like Silicon Valley is. (This despite a growing number of tech firms — including some in the HR field – that are setting up shop and calling the tech community by the monicker “Silicon Beach.”)
The value proposition for Cornerstone OnDemand candidates is multi-fold. keep reading…
Salaries for tech workers in the U.S. will rise almost twice the national average in 2013 — some will increase even more, up to 12 percent — a symptom of how competitive the competition for talent has become.
