American companies are reluctant to hire, and the proof is in the Bureau of Labor Statistics new report, released early Friday morning. Here are some glimpses from the economic report, broken down into digestible nuggets:

Recession is real. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, says there is "no debate that the economy is in a recession." Among other worries for the average American, beyond a lower net worth and smaller purchasing power, Zandi says it is tough to find a job, and "if you lose a job, it is tough to get back in."

Jobless jump. The new BLS report shows that May's jobless rate jumped to 5.5% from 5%, a sounding bell that U.S. growth is stalling.

Job losses. Since the beginning of 2008, job losses have totaled 324,000.              

Optimistic pessimism. The 49,000 loss is actually smaller than initially forecast, after a 28,000 drop in April that was more than initially reported.

Who is hit. So who represents that 5.5%? The pain is sparing no one, with adult men, adult women, teens, whites, and blacks equally affected. Of note, among the 8.5 million unemployed Americans, the largest segment is among 16- to 24-year-olds. 

The ADP report. According to a report from ADP Employer Services, U.S. companies unexpectedly added 40,000 jobs in May, the most since January. The ADP report doesn't include government jobs, and the report tends to over-inflate private employment data.

Healthcare still hot. In the healthcare sector, 34,000 new jobs were added in May.

Construction not hot. Employment in construction, meanwhile, declined by 34,000. The BLS says that, since its peak in September 2006, construction employment has fallen by 475,000; two-thirds of that decrease, or 320,000, has occurred in just the past seven months.

A maybe on manufacturing. Among manufacturing jobs, employment declined in May by 26,000 jobs. Declines continued in two construction-related manufacturing industries -- wood products and nonmetallic mineral products.

Retail cuts. Retail trade employment in department stores and similar declined by 27,000 in May. Since peaking in March 2007, the industry has lost 184,000 jobs, says the BLS.  

Temp help. Temporary help services shed 30,000 jobs in May, with a total of 110,000 job losses over the past four months.  

The Employment Guide has launched www.WiserWorker.com, an employment website dedicated to job seekers age 40 and older.

It says its mission is to connect older workers with appropriate jobs, but since when did 40 become old?  

If by old they mean "experienced," or perhaps simply, "wiser," then time will tell whether baby boomers and fringe Gen Xers find the site worthwhile.   

Jeff Littlejohn, vice president and general manager of The Employment Guide, says younger job seekers have better resources through college campus job fairs and other career helpers.

For recruiters interested in the life skills and experience that older workers bring, WiserWorker.com bridges this communication gap, explains Littlejohn.

The home page offers a bright "Font +/-" button that can make the font size really, really big or really, really tiny, depending on your vantage point and bifocal strength. Certainly a nice touch for those "wiser" workers, indeed.

The site has launched with more than 53,000 job listings, but a few search strings for random keywords (i.e., director, writer, editor) brought back an overwhelming number of postings from the same company, Talent6 Casting Network. This employer is of the "Actors, Extras, Models, Dancers (full and part time)" posting variety, so we're not sure that 53,000 is entirely brag-worthy.

Still, searches for other keywords (i.e., business, marketing, nursing, IT, engineering) brought back a variety of postings from scores of employers and staffing agencies.

The site certainly has a lot of potential, but it could be improved with more content (i.e., more blog postings, links to actual job fairs under the Job Fairs button), and more interactivity overall.

And in this day and age of $4/gallon gas and more and more smart employers embracing the power of telecommuting, there is a noticeably absent option to search for "telecommute only" jobs. Not a necessity for job boards, but certainly a nice green touch.

The Money Niche…

Some shoot for 100K+ jobs, other shoot for just half of that. And it's this market, those seeking a starting salary between $50,000 to $100,000, being tapped on the new 50kandup.com niche board. The company says this job board can help you filter out individuals who are under-qualified or over-qualified. The site is helpful, though not signficantly full of drastically different features that separate this niche board from its competitors. 

Still, the full-service site has been up and running for a month now and is gaining steam. John Ruppel, president of 50kandup.com, says he had no doubt this was a critical demographic "but there was just no predicting the amount of attention we would receive from human resource managers and recruiters around the country who wanted to find candidates within this salary range."

Smart MBAs Look for Perks…

Then there are those definitely seeking more than $50,000.

Take MBAs, for instance, who are still quite hot for Google. (The Mountain View, California-based company says it gets 1,300 resumes a day, but some top management has recently jumped ship for Facebook. Decide for yourself here whether the company is still hot or not.)

This is the second year in a row Google has won the top honor in the IDEAL Employer survey of 5,769 students from the nation's top 52 MBA programs. Following Google, which won 24% of the votes, was McKinsey & Company (16%); Goldman Sachs (15%); Apple (14%); and The Boston Consulting Group (12%).

As for career goals, it's a tie at 58% for "being competitively or intellectually challenged" and "having a work-life balance," followed at 55% by "being a leader or manager of people." Another 37% aspire toward "being entrepreneurial or creative/innovative" and 28% strive for "being dedicated to a cause or to feel that they are serving the greater good."

This talent doesn't come cheap, either, with most MBAs expecting $90,232 after the first year and $180,030 after five years.

Job Corps Changes Ahead…

Expect some changes to the nation's 44-year-old federally funded Job Corps program.

U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao released a new report from a blue ribbon Advisory Committee on Job Corps that recommends enhancements to education and training policies and management.

The Labor Department notes these changes will help make Job Corps more successful in "preparing students for real-world jobs in the 21st century worldwide economy." 

Along with recommendations for better "real-world" career and technical education and training curricula, the report also urges more postsecondary education for students.

Another recommendation is to build better partnerships with educational institutions, and especially high-growth industries, to showcase Job Corps youth as highly sought after students and employees.

Job Corps trains approximately 62,000 young people between ages 16 through 24.

Dice.com (profile; site) has signed on as "brand integration partner" with the National Lampoon, Inc. comedy franchise. Why would a niche IT job board partner with a company best known for Animal House?

Dice.com, which is sponsoring maniaTV's new sketch comedy show, National Lampoon's The Lemmings, gets some pretty unique branding out of the deal and a new way to talk directly to engineering and IT professionals.

And Dice will definitely attract more of these professionals online, as maniaTV, a new trend in online viewing, has nearly 4.1 million unique visitors a month, according to ComScore.

As part of the branded entertainment sponsorship package, show producers have created a recurring character called Dice Man, a super-hero who saves people from taking jobs for which they are over-qualified, helps people find fulfilling employment, and assists companies in search of valuable talent.

Dice Man also fights against the evil antagonist, Doctor Drudgery, and his henchmen Pink Slip and Dead End.

Amber Lawson, maniaTV head of comedy, says producers are excited to integrate Dice Man and the antagonists into the plot lines. Lawson notes that "it is fantastic working with a brand that gets the power of integration because it has empowered us to develop a set of characters that will maintain comedic integrity and achieve the goal of creating a lasting impression."

Others find it, well, rather lame. One poster on the Dice.com message boards sums up his feelings by stating that "National Lampoon is great, but it looks like they whored out a spot in order to make a couple of dollars, not their fault, money is money."

Dice Man (played by actor Andy Goldenberg), made his debut on the May 26 episode.

You probably know of Working Mother magazine for its annual list of "100 best companies" that actively recruit and retain those multitasking wonder women known as working moms.

But the magazine for career-committed mothers, which reaches two million readers, also has an annual award to honor companies committed to diversity.

The magazine's new list honors 20 companies that require manager training on diversity issues and rate manager performance partly on diversity results, such as how many multicultural women advance.

Let's face it. A lot of companies say they have diversity programs, but not a lot can show metrics as impressive as the companies awarded on this year's 20 best companies for multicultural women. 

The magazine says these businesses recognize that it's not just about recruitment. Many use "real" inclusion programs to actively develop, retain, and promote their multicultural employees.

In fact, this year the magazine says it noticed a dramatic increase in the number of women of color who are senior managers. Also, women of color represented 13% of all new hires last year, 14% of all employees, and 7% of top 20% earners at the winning firms.

Here is a snapshot into what makes some of these super-star companies so great:

• Citi. Thanks to recruiting efforts at schools such as Howard University and partnerships with groups like the National Society of Hispanic MBAs , 28% of new hires last year were women of color, up from 25% in 2006. Even better, 16% of newly hired managers were multicultural women, up from 12%.
• MetLife. On the list for the third year in a row, one cool feature is its social Global Women's Leadership Forum that was launched in 2007. In this networking forum, MetLife's senior women officers and diversity leaders tackle diversity, inclusion, and women's advancement, and also host webinars and regional meetings.   
• Deloitte. Among leading U.S. accounting firms, it boasts the highest percentage of women partners, principals, and directors. Currently, 84 women of color hold corporate executive positions. The firm offered more than 400 networking, mentoring, and professional development events for women in 2007.
• IBM. One cool best practice is its "Basic Blue" week-long class that all new managers attend. It includes a three-hour diversity workshop addressing what is expected of managers in today's global environment. In its "Shades of Blue" class, the company teaches managers about different cultures and values.
• Pepsico. So many things to note about the beverage giant, run by Indra Nooyi, one of the most powerful women in business. In 2007, PepsiCo's revenue grew 12%, to $39.5 billion. For the past six years, PepsiCo has focuses on multicultural hiring and retention through its Women of Color Multicultural Alliance. In addition, the company's "Power Pairs" mentoring program creates relationships between employees and their managers; the turnover rate for women who participate in Power Pairs is half the rate of those who do not.

This is a new take on old-fashioned summer jobs.

Hundreds of teens from across the five boroughs in New York City, who are part of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, are looking to "make a job, not take a job."

These students certainly have the entrepreneurial spirit.

Take Amanda Loyola, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at Horace Mann in Manhattan. Her eco-friendly pet business, EcoDog Treats, produces inexpensive, vegetarian dog treats.

Or look at Jelani Anglin, a 16-year-old junior at Elmont Memorial High School in Queens. His company, No Bones, provides exclusive electronic equipment priced at least 10% below its competitors.

Loyola and Anglin are just two students competing for venture funding of as much as $1,200 to help them launch their start-ups. This is all part of the annual New York Regional Business Plan Competition, slated for June 10.

Spoken like a true entrepreneur, Loyola says her eco-pet business "is way better than a summer job, because with a summer job it's just the summer."

As part of this competition, Loyola and others will learn business concepts such as developing income statements; conducting market research; and completing and presenting business plans.

"When you have your own business it could be a stable thing throughout the whole year as your income," she says.  

Still, don't rule these ambitious students out as future workers at your company. Barbara Reuter, metro executive director of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, says "many of our NFTE students may return to traditional employment, yet they've learned how the economy operates, which makes them much better business people."

In addition, Reuter points to research from Harvard and Brandeis universities that the NFTE students tend to set their sights on higher academic goals such as attending and completing college.

Teen summer employment is expected to fall to the lowest rate in the 60-year history of government jobs data. The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University says working teens ages 16 to 19 will slide to 34%, down from 45% in 2000 and a high of 48.5% in 1989. A lot of this increased competition can be attributed to adults competing for the same low-skilled, hourly jobs in the service and retail industries.

If you need parallels between our softening economic conditions and the job market as a whole, consider this depressing fact: after hitting all-time highs in 2007, hourly wages for highly skilled technology professionals dropped year-over-year during the first quarter of 2008.

Yep, tech professionals. There is no denying the market’s sluggishness after you skim the Yoh Index of Technology Wages. Tech professionals' salaries are falling, with wages dropping 2.7% in the first-quarter, when compared to the same period in 2007.

Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh, points out that "this drop in wages this quarter, coupled with April's negative Bureau of Labor Statistics report on employment, paints a very lackluster picture of the economy."

"However, this continues to be a skill-driven market and we’re still seeing pockets of strength in the tech sector, such as SAP, Oracle, security, and product development, and software and hardware engineers," says Lanzalotto.

If the strength found in these sectors permeates the weaker sectors of the market, there is a chance that it could ultimately produce stronger wage growth for the second half of 2008.

The Yoh quarterly report also identifies the top job titles in highest demand. Based on conversations with more than 9,000 hiring managers in over 15 major metropolitan areas, Yoh says the following roles have appeared most frequently nationwide: 

• Biostatistician
• Civil Engineer
• Clinical Research Associate
• Firmware/Embedded Engineer
• Java Developer
• Mechanical Engineer
• .Net Developer
• Oracle DBA
• Project Manager
• SAP® Consultant (Functional/Technical)

Fries with My Software...

Kronos has launched Kronos for Dining, a software platform designed to help restaurants recruit and retain the best people, forecast and schedule to meet customer demand, track time and attendance, and manage absences.

Beyond the recruitment and scheduling features, it offers a way to automate compliance tasks, which can help to reduce liability and let managers focus more time on taking care of hungry guests. 

Beaker's New Science 'Hood…

We first chatted about this new online community back at the ERE Expo Spring 2008, and now Beaker.com has launched its community for professionals in the life sciences industries.  

The site merges social networking, career advice, multimedia education, and online recruitment catering specifically to the life sciences industry.

The Beaker management team includes CEO Jeffrey Clark (former president/COO for Ken Clark International); VP of Sales Josh Akers (formerly with Monster.com and Direct Employers Association); and Chief Information Officer David Evans (formerly with America Online, CareerTours, Jobing, and Cendant).

Changing Face of Microsoft…

Watch for Microsoft to soon launch a campaign to showcase the diversity in its employee ranks, and ultimately attract more women and minorities to the company. (Todd Raphael has a more in-depth look at diversity coming up in the July Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.)

In partnership with ad agency Worktank, Microsoft conducted focus groups of both internal and external employees to understand what was important particularly to Native Americans, females, Hispanics, and African-Americans. It learned to put authenticity first, and to ditch the corporate speak.  

In search of authenticity, the campaign is featuring rank-and-file employees, rather than Microsoft execs or an emphasis on Microsoft HR people. Among the employees featured prominently: one of the top-20 females in gaming in the country, as well as an African-American general manager who handles a 79-country region in the Middle East and Africa.

Microsoft will kick it off with a May 29 webinar.

TheLadders.com Says Bye to Bios…

TheLadders.com has unveiled new resume functionality, saying good-bye to "bios" and hello to the old-fashioned term resumes.

It's essentially a matter of semantics, of course, but the change now gives candidates a chance to upload or create a resume in one step before letting recruiters skim through the latest postings. Candidates will still have the option to keep their personal and contact information confidential.

However, the company is making a plea with candidates on behalf of recruiters. In a letter to job-seekers about these new changes, it says "we have heard loud and clear from recruiters that they much prefer to know your name and current company. If you must, please use this confidentiality feature; but please do realize that it comes at the cost of making your resume a bit less transparent to those who are looking for you."

Most recruiters know that a developer who is amazing is worth 10 times as much as an average developer. But do you know how to get great developers excited to work at your firm?

Don't be naive and think that you can just find someone by asking all the people you know. One of the participants at the NextNY event on tricks and tips for hiring great developers claims, "You really don't know as many people as you think you know!"

Don't be desperate to hire anyone who knows basic code. With the right planning, you can recruit and retain a super programmer, and here's how:

Got stress?

Just before we head out for the long Memorial Day weekend, let's review how stress can be the silent killer of retention in your recruiting department.

Think "silent killer" is being a bit dramatic?

Recruitment analyst Peter Weddle doesn't think so, coining stress "the silent killer" because he thinks no one is paying much attention to how stress breaks down an otherwise healthy staff.

In Watson Wyatt's 2007/2008 Global Strategic Rewards report, 40% of employees cited stress as the number-one reason for leaving their last employer. But when asked why their employees jumped ship, the bosses ranked stress at number five.

Be Resilient

Weddle encourages adopting a slower pace to embark on a recruiter's stress reduction program:

• Step 1: Conduct a test among your recruiting team. This blind survey can pinpoint what's currently causing any pressure or anxiety, and nothing should be off limits. Weddle says the goal is to identify the fixable sources of stress within your organization. Weddle acknowledges that the team will likely complain about leadership, culture, or compensation policies, but you should really determine the growing irritants that collectively shadow a recruiter's perceived ability to succeed on-the-job. Some worries, for example, are unrealistic workloads, insufficient training, unpleasant work environment, or unrealistic schedules.
• Step: 2: Identify any "stress-reduction resources" you could use. For example, a nonconventional resource might be found within your own staffing group. During a budget crunch, it might leave some open time on someone else's schedule. Voila! That's recruiter talent that's normally committed elsewhere. Also look for things outside of the staffing group. For example, Weddle suggests that a reduction in workload in the finance department may enable someone on that staff to invest some time in tutoring recruiters on building the business case for corporate investments.
• Step 3: Allocate the resources you have to address the sources of stress that you've identified. After you've determined what stresses you out and what resources, if any, could help, build and prioritize a list of specific stress-reduction actions. Then brief the entire recruiting team on your plan, and finally, execute the steps to help lower stress for you and your team.

Stress is a state of mind, sure, but these tips can help you keep the right frame of mind all year long. At the very least, maybe these tips will help you rest better this long holiday weekend and return to work on Tuesday significantly refreshed!

Just when it seems that recruiters are shunning the power of Web 2.0, along comes perennial hot employer Southwest Airlines.

The company is chatting with you, your neighbor, and your potential next star candidate about lots of Southwest-related things in a new blog, aptly titled "Nuts About Southwest."

On the blog, the company notes that "we want to build a personal relationship between our team and you, and we need your participation. Everyone is encouraged to join in, and you don’t need to register to read, watch, or comment. However, if you would like to share photos or videos or rate a post, among other things, you will need to complete a profile."

The JobsinPods.com team calls it "probably the best employment branding site we’ve ever seen," noting its use of a blog; photos via Flickr; YouTube-hosted videos; polls; RSS feeds; and podcasts.

So if you're contemplating a career in the airline industry, let's compare Southwest to how other airlines are communicating with an audience full of potential applicants: Delta Airlines has a few creative things but is mostly ignoring any use of interactivity anywhere on its site. The same goes for the websites for American Airlines and Continental Airlines, both drastically devoid of any human-esque interaction, though they tie for having the most boring and static career sites. Even JetBlue Airlines, considered one of the more "inspiring" airlines, has a rather flat, "log-in required" website that isn't much higher of the cool scale.  

What About Me?

Well, if you're like most other companies, you're not as cool as Southwest. (But you might not be as bad as some of Southwest's competitors though.)

ERE's recent webinar pointed out that social networking tools allows personalization and control; is fun and engaging; has global reach; and provides for in-depth customization.

| View | Upload your own

Also, a study conducted recently in the United Kingdom shows that only 10% of recruiters use social networking sites and only a small minority use blogs, videos, or other Web 2.0 technology for recruitment. The research suggests that one of the reasons why social networks have been slow to take off as a recruitment tool is because recruiters do not consider them a credible way to communicate, despite large numbers of their target labor market using them regularly.

"Recruiters may be missing a trick by not adopting Web 2.0 technology. They need to engage with job seekers to encourage them to apply for jobs. Text-heavy recruitment pages with no interactivity will not win the hearts and minds of the Web 2.0 generation," said Cranfield University research fellow Emma Parry, in the study.

What to Do

You can do it yourself, finally tapping into the power of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., or you can pay someone for help.

SuccessFactors, for one, has a new "Web 2.0-based collaborative network," a solution that helps you learn about tagging, social networking, and other tools.

Kevin Wheeler wrote a whole column about this, said it's here to stay, and shared tips on how to gain a competitive edge.

In reality, Web 2.0 is so here to stay it's practically over. So what is your company waiting for?

You can only hope that the best A-level candidates in Sarasota, Florida, are two-pack-a-day smokers and get turned down for employment with the county and ultimately end up working at your company.

While everyone can agree that smoking is unhealthy, should it be the primary reason to close the door on prospective new applicants? Especially prospective "star" candidates?

Well, Sarasota county government seems to think so. On Monday, it implemented a tobacco-free hiring policy for all new job applicants.

On the one hand, everyone should applaud this healthy step forward. On the other, what's next? Testing for the presence of excessive levels of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey or a few too many Twinkies?  

But Sarasota is serious about this new policy, stating that all applicants for jobs with Sarasota County will be required to acknowledge during the application process that they have not used tobacco products for the preceding 12 months.

Applicants who refuse to verify that they do not use tobacco products will be deemed ineligible for employment. In addition, applicants will be screened for tobacco use during the new-hire physical exam process. If the screening indicates the presence of nicotine above a specified amount, the applicant will be considered ineligible for employment.

Why Change Now?

The county says its revised policy is based on years of research regarding the negative effects of tobacco use on the personal health of individuals and employer organizations.

For example, from 1997 to 2001, cigarette smoking was estimated to be responsible for $167 billion in annual health-related economic losses in the United States.

Sarasota County says its decision to adopt this tobacco-free policy will promote a healthier workforce and benefit taxpayers' dollars.

Of course, Sarasota is not alone. Due to higher insurance costs and the drain on productivity, employers around the country have considered such measures.

(We checked its online jobs board, but R.J. Reynolds is not one of these more progressive employers.)

If your company is thinking of such a policy, make sure to learn from other companies that have faced lawsuits from employees. For example, a Miracle-Gro employee challenged the policy last year.

Nursing shortage? Yes, we've all heard of it, and most people would agree that a properly staffed hospital is a basic human necessity, not a luxury.

And if you're been hospitalized recently, or even had to wait in a doctor's room lately, you're probably aware that even the best nurses are over-worked and under-paid.

So no matter what side of the immigration debate you're on, is there really a legitimate argument left over why we're blocking the efforts of highly motivated nursing students to stay in our country and aid the sick, tired, and needy?

Category Three Hurricane

Workforce analyst Peter Buerhaus, a Vanderbilt University professor, says new data points to a gathering storm that will be "like a Category Three hurricane, but one that hits the entire nation."

During a May 6 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, he predicted that the current nursing shortage, which began in 1998, could hit 500,000 by 2025.

"A shortage that size could incapacitate the healthcare system," Buerhaus said.

Green Card Caps

Retrogression has significantly impacted the hiring practices of organizations across many industries and the healthcare field is no exception. 

Agnes Rudinsky, an immigration attorney for VisaNow, says many foreign graduates of U.S. nursing programs are unable to work following the expiration of their Optional Practical Training (OPT) as they wait to move through the backlog of green card applications.

"Based on the current processing time, they must wait two to three years for their green card cases to be approved," says Rudinsky.  

"While their green card cases are pending, and with the H-1B work visa cap reached in record time again this year, they often are not able to secure any nonimmigrant visas to legally work in the U.S. while they wait for their green card applications to be approved." 

Emergency Nursing Supply Relief

VisaNow explains that the Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act bill introduced to the House aims to address the challenges many hospitals are facing to fully staff their organizations with registered nurses and physical therapists. 

"The bill will take nurses out of the green card caps until 2011, with a limit of 20,000 principle applicants per year. This means that nurses will not take green cards away from others currently queued up. In addition to the removal of nurse petitions from the green card caps, which this bill proposes, the requirement for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to review the I-140 of the nurse petition within 30 days of submission is a crucial step in expediting this process," says Rudinsky.

Currently, the average time for an approval on this piece of a green card application is eight to 12 months, she explains. 

"Obviously, this bill is a significant step in the right direction for hospitals that struggle with the well-known shortage of healthcare workers," adds Rudinsky.

Ever wondered how many online job boards -- and which sites -- professionals post their resume to when searching for a job? Beyond.com recently asked more than 6,400 visitors, "How many online job boards do you have your resume posted on?" and here are the results:

• 24% have their resume posted on one to two job boards.
• 29% have their resume posted on three to four job boards.
• 18% have their resume posted on five or more job boards.
• 29% do not have their resume posted online.

Of the professionals who currently have their resume posted online, 54% said geographic and industry-specific job sites are most effective when searching for a job, while the remainder chose general job boards.

Sure, you may be thinking that job boards have been absorbed left and right by larger boards, but let's face it: more keep appearing and the growth is not slowing down. No question, the use of niche-specific job boards has grown, so now the question remains whether -- and for how long -- general job boards can remain effective.

Peter Weddle, who came out this week with his 2008 Users' Choice Award winners, says most job seekers use a number of different sites, usually about five boards. In an interview with Fortune magazine, he shared his advice for how today's candidates should approach the job hunt:

"I recommend using two of the big general sites like CareerBuilder.com or Yahoo! HotJobs and three specialty sites -- one that concentrates on your career field, one industry site, and one that focuses on the location where you live or want to live. That way you're covered from all angles," said Weddle.

Under the "niche" category, he acknowledged the following best-of niche sites: CareerBank.com (accounting, finance), ComputerJobs.com, Dice (IT jobs), HealthEcareers Network, and JobsInLogistics.

New Niches

Here are a couple more that have sprung up recently.

If you're looking for computing or engineering professionals, read on. The IEEE Computer Society's newly launched job board is in partnership with the American Institute of Physics, a great way to scour the market for computer scientists and engineers. In addition, the site has a career center that offers candidates a "Build Your Career" option with career news, articles, online courses, and more.

If you go there in search of your dream whiz kid, you'll probably have luck: the Computer Society has more than 85,000 members around the world, while the AIP serves a global audience of 120,000 scientists and engineers.

Meanwhile, the newly launched JobsForPTs.com leaves no guesswork as to what niche it serves, with its specific focus on reaching physical therapists and physical therapy assistants.

These licensed physical therapists and physical therapy assistants may be interested in full-time traditional employment or hourly per diem or contract assignments. One cool feature is that the site links directly to every state licensing board and state professional PT association chapter.

JobsForPTs.com says it accepts payment through PayPal, with job posting packages starting at under $100. Annual membership subscriptions can be purchased at various levels as well. JobsForPTs.com is a service of JobsForAllTherapists.com, based in Greater Binghamton, New York.

And if you're looking for more established best-of healthcare-niche boards, Weddle's list of the best by this industry in 2008 includes Absolutely Health Care, AllHealthcareJobs.com, Bio Space, Hcareers (hotels, hospitality), HealthCareerWeb.com.

An eHarmony of Recruiting?

RealMatch says keyword matching is so yesterday, so it's out with a new profile-matching system that compares profiles of jobs with the profiles of candidates. While that seems potentially confusing, the company says it just means that the profile matching considers industry experience, title, and the skills that are associated with each job and each candidate along with their preferences.

What we like is how RealMatch's interface lets anonymous candidates see jobs in real-time, while recruiters can see candidates filtered and ranked according to their suitability for the position, all in real-time and without any cost.

What we don't like is how the company charges a fee when they want to reveal the contact information of the matching and interested candidate. On the other hand, RealMatch says its technology powers about 1,000 job sites, so a nominal fee may turn out to be money well spent.

HireVue Competitor?

Todd talked with Calgary-based Darryn Severyn, the CEO of InterActive Applicant (it'll be at this link, but don't expect much now beyond a construction site). Severyn hopes to launch in the next couple of months, marketing to a Canadian audience, and to the United States by year's end.

InterActive will be a video-and-audio-interviewing competitor to HireVue, though Severyn says he'll add features in 2009 that will differentiate his product. Also in this genre: interviewstream.com and interviewstudio.com.

Consultants continue to talk about whether the Taleo/Vurv deal is particularly good for the Vurv customer base, as one of the risks in becoming the customer of a rapidly growing private software company is not knowing what the ultimate exit will be for the investors.

"Being acquired by a leading talent management solutions company is a very solid outcome, and the customers should have confidence that their interests will be held in high regard," says Ed Newman, founder of The Newman Group (profile; site).

However, consultant Rick Fletcher with HRchitect (profile;site) mentions that some Vurv customers consciously chose to go with Vurv, instead of with Taleo, because Vurv has traditionally been the more innovative firm with some unique leading-edge product features. Some Vurv customers may initially balk at being asked to migrate to the Taleo applications over the coming year.

"Vurv's CEO, Derek Mercer, has great ideas and has been highly innovative, but Taleo has been the better-run organization with stronger professional services and customer support. Taleo is a very disciplined organization, while Vurv is a much more free-thinking organization," says Fletcher.

"One environment fosters innovation, while the other may offer stricter processes. The merger of the two cultures may ultimately be a really good thing for both existing sets of customers," says Fletcher.

And Newman points out that he expects Taleo (profile; site) to throw away as little as possible.

"Keep in mind, Taleo has two platforms today, Enterprise and Business edition. The parts that don't fit with Enterprise may well fit with Business Edition, making both platforms more complete in terms of the talent management spectrum," says Newman.

For its part, Taleo says its goal is to incorporate the best of the Vurv intellectual property and product line into the Taleo Platform, delivering a unified recruiting, performance, and compensation solution.

Taleo says its "new" customers will have a simple upgrade path to a unified talent management platform.

"Taleo will continue to leverage cross-company domain expertise to fuel innovation and product leadership as we drive toward product integration, which will likely occur in late 2009," says Dave Michaud, Taleo's VP of product marketing.

"Upon closing the acquisition, we will work closely with Vurv customers on appropriate migration strategies based on their business requirements," says Michaud.

Vurv's Strengths

Taleo says Vurv's Jacksonville, Florida, location will be a key North American operations hub for Taleo, including but not limited to, engineering, production, and support resources.

"We will be working through the entire portfolio of facilities over the next several months to determine how to best optimize our assets. In regards to staffing, we expect synergies between the two entities and some duplication of functions. We will not be able to give more specific information about any redundancies until after the close of the deal and organizational structures have been finalized," says Michaud.

While the company remains tight-lipped on the future of Vurv's current staff, Fletcher says he hears that some "Vurv people are out looking for positions, but I would love to see Taleo keep a lot of the R&D people from Vurv, and add some of Vurv's customer service representatives to Taleo in order to meet their increasing combined customer demand."

Business as Usual?

Taleo runs a well-disciplined machine, says Fletcher, though he points out Vurv's several strong areas.

"Vurv has stronger compensation, competency management, and workforce transition software, which is primarily an offboarding system," says Fletcher.

"I believe Taleo will throw everything else away. For them to support two applicant tracking systems makes no sense, so you go with the more stable one, which is Taleo's Enterprise ATS. And Vurv Express will also be wiped out by Taleo Business Edition," he says.

They have 48 of the Fortune 100 when you put them together, Fletcher points out. He also says there is room for both the talent management suites and the pure plays in the marketplace.

In fact, Fletcher says that when you merge Vurv and Taleo, it actually helps out other ATS pure-plays.

"Peopleclick, iCims, First Advantage, and even Sonic Recruit, for example, are going to end up ranking higher on the list and getting more market attention as you consolidate some of these top-tier companies," he says.

Taleo's Michaud notes that the company "will be working with Vurv counterparts to develop a detailed roadmap over the next several months to ensure we leverage the best capabilities of both companies. Once we have completed this roadmap, we will communicate our go-to-market plans."

Newman points out that this is certainly the biggest news we have had in our industry in quite a while, and the most substantial in terms of consolidation.

"Overall, I think this is quite an aggressive move and a decision that I am sure was not made lightly. As with everything though, success is about 10% decision, and 90% execution, so the ultimate outcome remains to be seen. I certainly hope it's a raging success," adds Newman.

The title "working dad" might seem silly, borderline redundant. Yet, no one pauses when they hear the phrase "working mom," a title that now applies to me and one I wear with pride as I cruise into my first Mother's Day this weekend.

As a new working mom, I realize that not everyone is lucky enough to work for a company as progressive as ERE Media. Not everyone gets a fair maternity leave, and not everyone gets to work with a team of really amazing people who value family life and relationships.

In fact, a new CareerBuilder.com survey finds that 43% of working moms would choose a pay cut in order to spend more time with their kids. Something tells me that 43% is a rather low figure, assuming the other 57% haven't spawned a "problem child" who clings to them like a rhesus monkey that practices his high-pitched shrieks at 3 am.

CareerBuilder's survey of 880 U.S. female employees (employed full-time with at least one child under 18 years old living at home) also revealed that for those choosing the pay cut, 34% would be willing to give up 10% or more of their salaries.

Assuming a majority of your best talent managed to snag not just a job at your company, but also snag a spouse with a well-paying salary, you should be scared. Definitely scared enough to make real work-life policies that actually mean something -- not merely an "employees can arrive at 7:30 instead of 9am!" mentality.

Why? The CareerBuilder survey also points out that for working moms with more than one source of income, 51% indicated they would leave their job if their spouse or significant other made enough money to support the entire family.

In the survey, 34% of working moms said they spend less than three hours per day with their children, 17% reported they had missed three or more significant events in their child's life in the last year, and 27% had missed two or more. Most disappointing of all in this day and age of "flex time" is that 24% said work had negatively impacted the relationships they have with their children.

"As companies continue to experience a tighter labor market, the importance of retaining star employees is requiring them to implement benefits that actually encourage workers to improve the balance between their professional and family lives," explains Mary Delaney, chief sales officer at CareerBuilder.com and mother of three.

"From flexible work schedules to job sharing to telecommuting, company-wide work/life initiatives are becoming much more universal," she says.

Retain Star Employees

Sure, they might be universal, but are they enough to retain your star employees?

LifemeetsWork.com, a website dedicated to fostering the flexible work movement, confirms that companies that fail to offer flexible work are missing out on some of the best talent available and will be at a distinct recruiting disadvantage within the next five years.

"Companies should think about flexibility as a way to manage their labor needs instead of as a perk for high-performing employees," says Kyra Cavanaugh, a former marketing manager in the food industry and a mother of three.

"It's getting harder to find skilled workers from the full-time job pool. Smart companies are tapping into alternate sources of workers, like stay-at-home moms, and implementing programs to retain younger workers and retiring boomers," she says.

Cavanaugh's site also includes an online job board, and each job post is reviewed to ensure it meets flex criteria.

"Flexible jobs benefit everyone," she says.

"Companies see improvements in loyalty, productivity, and recruitment, while families experience reduced stress and improved health for both parents and their children," adds Cavanaugh.

Authoria's (profile; site) president and CEO, Tod Loofbourrow, chatted with ERE about Taleo's recent acquisition of Vurv. He says this acquisition, part of an ongoing consolidation from 45 recruiting technology vendors to a handful, represents what customers want: a complete talent management solution.

Three best-of-breed vendors, Authoria, Taleo, and SuccessFactors, are going after that market seriously, but he says pure-play recruiting software vendors will not survive.

Here he offers additional insights into this latest round of talent management drama:

ERE: Do you think these acquisitions aid, or simply confuse, the typical recruiter?

TL: Short term, the consolidation from 45 to a handful simplifies recruiters' technology choices. But the factors driving the consolidation -- the broader talent management opportunity -- will force recruiters to go beyond a recruiting-only mindset, and come to grips with more strategic organizational needs and talent management opportunities such as quality of hiring; filling gaps in leadership pipelines; and retaining high performers.

ERE: What is "border-less HR" and how does it affect recruiters?

TL: Border-less HR is forcing recruiters to look beyond simply headcount metrics to business impact. In other words, successful recruiters already know that they must align to the business needs of the hiring manager. Likewise, next-generation recruiting approaches must be part of a more comprehensive approach to the full lifecycle to talent.

ERE: You say it'll be a $2.3 billion software business in 2008. Where is it headed in the next 5, 10 years?

TL: Industry analysts agree that talent management solutions will remain one of the fastest-growing segments of enterprise software. Employers are inescapably drawn to the value of optimizing one of the last and largest assets classes within their organizations, their people.

ERE: How does Authoria differentiate itself in the marketplace?

TL: We have three key areas of differentiation. [First, a] focus on the manager's success through simplicity and ease of use; breadth and depth of our comprehensive offering across Recruiting, Compensation, Performance, Development and Succession; and 11 years' experience meeting the complex talent management needs of the world's most demanding employers.

ERE: Any other insights you wish to share about the future of talent management?

TL: Authoria believes talent management will prove to be the largest software category ever. We see tremendous momentum with customers, and industry activity such as this is further evidence of the value organizations attach to optimizing talent.

Gobble, gobble.

That's the sound you just heard as Taleo (profile; site) swooped in and gobbled up Vurv Technology (profile; site) for approximately $128.8 million in cash and stock.

Taleo says it opted to acquire Vurv to enhance its position in talent management and be able to meet the growing market demand for talent management solutions.

Taleo's announcement on Tuesday "marks an inflection point for talent management, making it easier for customers to realize the full benefits of unified talent management applications," said Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire, in a statement.

The combined company will serve over 3,400 customers around the world, including 48 of the Fortune 100, and more than 2,800 small- and medium-sized businesses.

Also on Tuesday, Taleo announced its Q1 results, noting revenues of $37.2 million, an increase of 30% year-over-year, and 8% quarter-over-quarter.

In addition, Taleo announced it signed 197 new customers in Q1, bringing Taleo's customer base to over 1,700 organizations around the world. New customers include Burns & McDonnell, CIBER, InfoPrint Solutions Company, and Vail Resorts. Internationally, Taleo grew 52% over the same period last year, adding Merck KGaA and Renault SA as new customers.

Less risk? Less fraud? Less litigation? Happier employees?

Think that's an impossible order? Allegiance, a Salt Lake City-based company, says it doesn't have to be, though most companies "don't know where to begin" and are sadly behind the curve on adopting an ethical culture of their own.

Its chief operating officer, Greg Heaps, suggests that "today's employees want to work for an organization that has built a foundation on integrity and that cares about operating an honest company, hiring other principled people, and working with ethical partners."

Think fuzzy ethics seems so yesterday, so Enron, so over? Not so much. Companies are still sliding down the slippery slope of warped ethics, from the mild incident at handbag retailer Coach to explosive bribery allegations at Siemens.

Even though Allegiance's six steps toward maintaining an ethical culture at your company are far from revolutionary, maybe it's never too late for companies to brush up on the basics:

1. Establish an enforceable code of conduct. The process should be led by those at the top of the company and should include employee input.
2. Initial and ongoing training. Training begins once a person is hired and should continue throughout the life of the employee.
3. Regular communications. Ethics should be a live, ongoing conversation.
4. Anonymous reporting hotline. Companies should provide employees with a safe, anonymous and confidential way to report inappropriate, unethical, or illegal activities.
5. Enforcement/action. Companies must be willing to do whatever it takes to enforce the code of conduct.
6. Rewarding employees that live the culture. Companies should let employees know that an ethical culture is important to the organization and should recognize and reward those employees that help to establish the culture.

If you know any good foodies or druggies, today is their lucky day.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday that it has plans to hire more than 1,300 people.

The FDA needs to fill openings for medical officers, consumer safety officers, chemists, nurse consultants, biologists, microbiologists, health/regulatory/general health scientists, mathematical statisticians, epidemiologists, pharmacologists, pharmacists, and veterinary medical officers.

Most of the jobs are located in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, where the FDA oversees human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, food, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation. The FDA needs to protect the country in numerous areas, and as such, also will be expanding at more than 179 resident posts and the newly created FDA offices overseas.

(Of course, protect can be interpreted many ways.)

As part of this multi-year hiring initiative, the FDA hopes to fill 600 new positions and hire about 700 others to fill older positions. The FDA says this is nearly triple the number of people hired from 2005 to 2007.

While it's always a challenge to find quality candidates with science and medical backgrounds, the FDA is banking on a couple of things to get the job done.

First, the Office of Personnel Management has granted Direct-Hire Authority to the FDA, an operating division of the Department of Health and Human Services. Direct-Hire Authority can expedite the hiring of qualified candidates during "critical" times and have them on the job within three weeks.

Second, the FDA will be participating in and holding job fairs throughout the country.

Only 23% of hiring managers plan to hire seasonal workers for the summer this year, but of that figure, 66% expect these summer hires to stick around for eventual permanent placement.

What makes these companies so cocky? While other companies are struggling to find enough talent, this group of employers thinks money is enough to keep their new hires happy.

In fact, 24% of employers plan to pay their summer hires and/or interns more this year than they did last year. But as we all know, money is no guarantee that these seasonal workers will stick.

According to CareerBuilder.com's latest survey of more than 3,000 U.S. employers, 47% plan to dish out $10 or more per hour; 7% will pay $20 or more per hour; 29% anticipate paying between $8 and $10 per hour; and 11% expect to pay less than $7 per hour.

Praise is Priceless

But so what? Is money what matters? Survey after survey finds that quality-of-life dreaming is not just a desire by those demanding Gen Y kids. Most surveys point out that while salary can buy a lot of things, more and more workers prefer other benefits. Things such as telecommuting and flex time, sure, but even more holistic measures like a sense of purpose or consistent praise.

(Check out "Seven things employees want most to be happy at work," which points out the obvious: "Praise does not cost anything to give, but its benefits on employee morale are priceless."

But still, the CareerBuilder.com survey says 7% of seasonal workers are still going to get more than $20 an hour. That beats scooping ice cream or mowing lawns for peanuts.

So just who is hiring seasonal workers? The survey finds that hospitality (40%) and retail (39%) are leading in the number of hiring managers planning to recruit summer workers. Among all employers, the most popular summer positions being offered include office support (28%); customer service (19%); landscape/maintenance (14%); research (14%); restaurant/food service (8%); construction/painting (8%); and sales (8%).

Challenging the Google Gods...

The new Fetch Footprint is promising recruiters "deep Web extraction technologies," which is a really fancy way of saying the company will scour public-data sources and lurk on social/professional networking sites to gather information.

The company's president, ex-ADP exec Jerry Thurber, says Footprint is designed to intelligently parse data relevant to hiring decisions.

In addition to vetting corporate employment candidates, the Fetch folks also can help with background checking, applicant tracking, and job fit assessments.

Stamping Qualified on Sales Candidates…

Go-To-Market Strategies, a sales and marketing online community with claims of about 150,000 users, has a new niche job board, promising recruiters access to "qualified" sales and marketing professionals.

One-part gimmicky, one-part unique, the process allows applicants who both meet the hiring company's qualifications and successfully pass Go-To-Market Strategies' prescreening process to be stamped "Qualified."

Because it does not blindly post jobs found across the Internet, the company says its members can trust the job board to find the best employers.

Despite it being free for employers to post their sales and marketing positions, the site is still pretty bare in the postings department.

If you visit, the site requires that each job include salary expectations. The website will also verify each week that the position is being actively recruited by the employer.

Learning to Share…

A new sourcing cooperative, JobScore is getting a lot of buzz because it allows recruiters to build a candidate pipeline and swap "war stories" with other companies over certain candidates and their resumes.

We like that the "JobScore SHARE plan" lets recruiters share resumes to earn credits, then contact as many candidates as they share for free. But the JobScore SUBSCRIBE plan doesn't allow sharing of resumes, so you pay a monthly subscription fee.

While you can use JobScore as your applicant tracking system, the company says its focus is on sourcing candidates and cooperative recruiting, not applicant tracking. But if you already use an ATS, you can still use JobScore by running your sourcing through JobScore, exporting the resumes from JobScore, then importing them into your ATS.

Well, it's about time!

Recruiters everywhere should be rejoicing over the latest news from Vurv (profile; site) and the Human Capital Institute, hinting that recruiting is finally getting the respect it deserves in the corporate boardroom.

According to "The Role of HR in the Age of Talent," which surveyed almost 800 HR professionals and non-HR professionals, more and more CEOs and corporate board members are viewing acquiring, retaining, and engaging talent as the most challenging business problem they face.

Strategic, Critical…and Respected

While talent management has become a board-level concern, the question remains: can HR climb the corporate ladder and receive the same respect and responsibility as other important business functions?

According to the survey, 66% view talent management as either respected or highly respected and occasionally or frequently consulted on corporate strategy.

This number echoes a recent Mercer study suggesting that 67% of respondents think HR is seen as a strategic partner, one that also participates in strategy decisions.

No Wikis? Tsk, Tsk…

But it's not simply "redefining the role" that will move recruiters to the forefront. For recruiting to truly keep up this impressive pace, it has to get better with technology. No social networking? No wikis? No blogs? According to the report, despite concerns around talent acquisition, few recruiters take advantage of "Web 2.0" technologies such as social networking, blogs, or wikis.

And as former Valero genius Dan Hilbert once stated, "When the war for talent is waged over the Internet, major corporations will be won and lost over staffing technology."

As popular ERE columnist John Sullivan has warned, the way to an executive's heart is not through a tedious online application process.

As Sullivan points out, sending the best talent you can find to your corporate website to make them fill out the same painful application anyone else coming to the site would fill out is beyond ineffective.

And a new study shows that Sullivan's philosophy is right on the money.

This latest study by Norwalk, Connecticut-based ExecuNet (site; profile) says executives seem to be a paranoid bunch, not only doubtful that their resumes will land on the desk of the right decision-maker, but also skeptical that the position even exists.

The firm's 2008 Executive Job Market Intelligence Report on trends affecting the corporate leadership employment market shows that approximately 74% of executives believe their resume probably never reaches the decision maker when submitted electronically through a company website.

And 72% of executives agree or are unsure that most positions listed on online job boards are phony or already filled.

Of course, the survey also shows that nearly 86% of corporate HR executives and 61% of search firms don't normally post positions with a total compensation of $200,000 and above on public websites.

According to ExecuNet, this is because corporate recruiters lack the time to sift through unsolicited resumes. They turn to their networks or employee referrals for leads, while search consultants also prefer to initiate the outreach rather than dealing with the thousands of resumes they receive online each day.

As ExecuNet notes, there is simply no substitute for an expanded diverse network of connections to compensate for the lack of public job postings at the executive level.

Other Executive Findings

The firm's 16^th annual survey of 4,349 executives and 718 search firm consultants and HR professionals shows other interesting trends:

• Be prepared for the departure of some of your key executives this year, but don't expect an improved compensation to keep them. Despite total executive compensation increasing 5.7% in 2007 -- and expected to grow another 6.2% in 2008 – just 12% of executives jump ship because of money.
• Executive recruiters expect search assignments to climb 17% in 2008, while corporate recruiters are forecasting a 10% increase in executive-level job opportunities at their companies.
• The industries expected to generate the most executive job growth in 2008 include high-tech, healthcare, business services, pharmaceuticals/biotech, and energy/utilities.
• Approximately 60% of employed executives report they are satisfied with their current jobs; the remaining 40% are bored or crave advancement.
• About 51% of all executive compensation packages negotiated in the past 12 months featured perks, including company cars, club memberships, housing, and favorable loans -- up from 38% in 2006.