ERE.net

Recruitment stocks were no exception to the hammering stocks took today as investors worldwide drove down markets, sending a message to finance leaders that they were unimpressed with Friday’s U.S. bank bailout.

A spotcheck of several publicly traded HR vendors showed most of them were off by at least as much as the overall markets, all of which closed down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 370 points, a 3.58 percent drop that was actually considerably improved from the 800 points the Dow was down at one point Monday. The NASDAQ was off 84 points for a 4.34 percent drop.

In the last 90 minutes of trading the New York Stock Exchange saw a sharp upturn that recouped some 400 points. The rising tide lifted most boats, including the shares of publicly traded HR recruitment, staffing, and tech stocks. Even so, among the companies we checked, only Monster (profile; site) was up on the day, closing at $14.81, up 6 percent. Dice Holdings (profile; site), like Monster a job board, was down 7 percent to close at $6.05 a share. Workstream (profile; site), which owns 6FigureJobs.com, closed at 7 cents a share, a 12.51 percent plunge for the troubled company.

Among the HR tech vendors, Taleo (profile; site) was down 9.77 percent to $16.07, while competitor Kenexa (profile; site) closed at $12.94 for a 5.75 percent drop.

Some of the staffing companies performed better, a relative term considering the size of the market drop. Manpower, for instance, was down $1 to close at $36.92, a drop of 2.64 percent. Kelly was off 3.38 percent, down 60 cents to $17.13 a share.

There may yet be more bad news. In after hours trading prices began declining again.

Robert Genetski, a speaker at ERE’s conference next Spring in San Diego and whose financial forecasts have been spot on, says that if the U.S. government behaves itself, we could turn the corner by year’s end.

Genetski says the nation’s current economic problems are due to a number of factors, such as a “collapse in the housing market caused by overspeculation”; the Fed’s rock-bottom interest rates that made it so attractive for people to overspend on real estate; and “the government persuading banks to lend people money even though they couldn’t pay it (back), even though the homes weren’t necessarily located in the greatest areas.”

He says the “housing correction is not yet over” and could be somewhere around a year away, and declines could be somewhere around another 10%.

What’s really getting under Genetski’s skin is the government’s stimulus program (Dave Barry sums it up succinctly). “Once again our government came in and tried to help us,” Genetski says. “I think they made the situation worse.”

That’s because, Genetski says, the government had to borrow $170 billion to pay for the checks, and “there’s only so much credit out there, which made credit even tighter than it otherwise was … the checks were of course a one-time thing and the economy is weaker.”

Now, Genetski says, “we don’t know what the government has up its sleeves for its next move. Another stimulus package will delay any recovery. As long as the government doesn’t do any further damage, we will see some relief by the end of the year.”

“I know the economy looks very weak at the moment,” he says. “(But) by the end of the year you will see signs it’s not as bad, people are starting to spend. Recruiters really want to be prepared for when that thing starts to turn around. Don’t look at the situation of the moment and say, ‘Let’s freeze everything.’ Those who do aren’t going get the workers with the skills that they want.”

Merrill Lynch, he predicts, will shed a lot of people as part of B of A. Whole departments will get slashed, and “some people who are very good and very talented will end up being available.”

OK, we lost 84k jobs, with June and July revised upward by 56k. Puzzling indeed with Q2 real (after inflation) GDP growth revised upward from 1% to 3.3%. How could this be? Last month we seemed to be turning the corner in job losses — only 51,000 with downward revisions of previous numbers — and now these numbers are going backward again.

The government loves to watch its rear-view mirrors, second-guessing the numbers. Q4 GDP last year was just revised down to -0.2% after the two usual revisions during Q1, which finally agrees with what the rest of us have known all along — we suffered through some sort of recession.

Ah, shades of the last slowdown after 9/11 when six months after the fact, these ‘certified geniuses’ finally agreed we did indeed have a very short recession. This time around it’s much milder, with job losses less than half of the 2001-02 numbers.

Another indicator, weekly jobless claims, a healthy 320k in January, averaged 370k a month February-July, moving over 400k in August, 444k this week — also showing a mild sort of recession.

85k jobs lost per month during Q1, 75k during Q2, and 71k so far in Q3 — it defies a healthy 3.3% economy. The cuprit? Productivity, up 4.3% in Q2, but 2.6% in the last year. Since GDP grew coincidentally at 2.6%, it takes the same number of workers today than a year ago to effect 2.6% growth. How could this be, as we all know a-million-plus were added to unemployment rolls, gave up, or went to part-time? Mostly, it’s the million who returned usually to Mexico, usually due to the residential building slowdown.

Looking at the 6.1% unemployment figure: is it the worst in five years, or is it? Rising from 5.0% in April, the July and August jumps can be attributed to benefits extended by three months, with one more month of unemployed not dropping off the rolls. In October the upward pressure should subside. And if oil prices
continue to crash, lower unemployment is indicated.

Finally, the dollar is on a roll, having recovered 12 months of losses, basically because Europe and Japan are six months behind us in Q2 GDP -0.2% and -0.6% recessionary readings. And with the Chinese stock market off 62% in the last year, despite the Olympics, investors see a rough road ahead there too.

Until next month.

During hard economic times, it’s survival of the fittest. Yet many corporate recruiters fail to understand or acknowledge the cyclical nature of our business; every five to seven years, recruiters are let go en masse.

If you work for an auto company in Detroit or an airline or a mortgage company, the time to prepare for layoffs has already past. For the rest of us, the time is now to improve your job security.

While recruiting can be a team effort, it is also essential that you take some time to be selfish in order to protect your own career.

Here are 15 concrete steps to improve your job security as a corporate recruiter:

1. Make the business case for the department. Before you start being concerned about your own job, consider building up the reputation of the recruiting department as a major contributor to corporate success. The best approach is to lead a team that builds a strong economic case for the direct dollar impact recruiting has had on business revenue (work with the CFO’s office to make those calculations credible). Help the department demonstrate the catastrophic recovery time required following the last dramatic reduction in the recruiting function. Not only will this effort help limit departmental layoffs, it will also demonstrate to recruiting leadership that you know how to make a strong business case and that you’re doing your part to support the team. Build the case for continued hiring during tough times because of the wealth of talent that is available. Demonstrate to managers the high quality of hires who can be obtained by poaching the very best from firms that have been weakened by the economic downturn.
2. Be recognized externally. If any recruiters are to remain, those who have received external recognition for their excellence traditionally have been much more likely to be retained. External recognition can include winning awards (like ERE, RASBIC, or Optimas) or becoming an officer in professional recruiting associations like EMA. Write articles for the leading recruiting websites (like ERE.net) and the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. Speaking at local and national recruiting events can also improve your credibility internally as well as your visibility externally at other corporations that might consider hiring you.
3. Focus on growing business units. Most corporations have learned the value of continual hiring in certain key strategic business units even while simultaneously laying off employees in others business units (ask someone in strategic planning to point out the growth areas). Focus on requisitions for these key business units or consider a transfer so that you become the assigned recruiter for one of these growing business units, because this will decrease your chances of being laid off. If you can impress the GM of that business unit by producing some significant recruiting results, they might agree to go to bat for you with your director of recruiting. If you make yourself indispensable, some business leaders might be willing to actually fund your position during down times.

keep reading…

There’s news - none of it good - from The Conference Board today.

In conjunction with a new index it began issuing today, The Conference Board said that the U.S. economic woes are going to continue and even worsen in the months ahead. This new Employment Trends Index was down in June and is off 8 percent in the last 12 months, standing now at 111.9.

“Most leading indicators of employment point to an even sharper deterioration in the labor market in the months ahead,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “The steep decline of the employment trends index in recent months, and the fact that its weakness is spread throughout all of its components, does not leave much room for optimism.”

Before introducing the new index, Conference Board economists computed it back to 1973 using data from a variety of sources including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor and The Conference Board itself. (For the complete list go here.) According to the Board, the Trends Index “has accurately signaled every rise and fall in employment over the last 35 years.”

Why add yet another index to the dozens already out there? Says The Conference Board, “Aggregating individual indicators into a composite index filters out so-called ‘noise,’ to show underlying trends more clearly.”

There are plenty of indices, measurements, surveys and other bits and bytes of economic data that are published monthly, including several of The Conference Board’s that have been around for years. But The Conference Board’s Trends Index is a new one.