As the nation prepares to celebrate Veteran’s Day Sunday, there is encouraging news about the progress American business has made in hiring veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unemployment rate among veterans of what the government calls Gulf War II is the highest of all veterans.
Collectively, veterans have an unemployment rate of 6.3 percent, well below the national rate of 7.9 percent. However, post-9/11 veterans have an unemployment rate of 10 percent.
A year ago in October (the most recent month for the data), the unemployment rate for those veterans was 12.1 percent. That month the national rate was 8.9 percent. The gap between the national unemployment rate and that for veterans is still wide, but it has closed considerably in 12 months, narrowing from 3.2 points to the current 2.1.
What’s helped is the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, and in particular the Vow to Hire Heroes Act, which gives employers a tax credit of up to $9,600 for hiring unemployed and/or disabled veterans. That program, like so many other tax programs and rate reductions, will end on December 31 unless Congress acts to extend it. keep reading…
Good news for all the “Larry the Cable Guy” types: You’ll never get a Ph.D., but you will get the job.
Start by applying to be a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. The dean there, Roger Martin, says in a blog post on the Harvard Business Review site that he’s more or less inclined not to hire the smartest person he can find.
Resurrecting a 21-year-old article “Teaching Smart People How To Learn,” Martin says it “convinced me of the exact opposite of what I had believed before I’d read it.” And that was that the smarter the people he hired, the better.
If Tom had a smartness rating of 10 and Sally was a 12, then she was just plain better. And if Jorge was a 15, he was better still.
Nowadays, he’d be hiring Tom. keep reading…
Demand for recruiters has slowed in the last few months, but the overall job count remains strong across the U.S.
Wanted Analytics says the number of jobs for recruiters is 12 percent higher than a year ago, with some 14,000 ads for recruiting jobs posted online last month. That’s down from the peak in May, but, says Wanted, the effect may simply be seasonal, as a similar dip occurred a year ago, continuing through the end of the year, before rising sharply. 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.
“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…
Just out this morning: Jobvite’s annual Social Job Seeker Survey and this third edition says fewer working Americans are actively looking for a job, even as the survey found that most of us are open to opportunity should it come knocking.
Of the 1,029 employed workers taking part in the survey, 9 percent said they were actively looking for a job. Last year, 16 percent said they were looking.
Yet even as the active seekers declined, more employed workers moved into the “active” passive category this year. Jobvite says 69 percent of the employed are either seeking a new job or would be open to hearing about one. Last year, 61 percent were in that category.
Add in the unemployed respondents, and it turns out 75 percent of the workforce — employed and unemployed alike — are open to opportunities. Last year, that percentage was 69 percent. keep reading…
Calling it the “most optimistic fourth quarter projection since 2007,” CareerBuilder said this morning that 26 percent of employers expect to add full-time, permanent workers by the end of December.
The percentage rivals those for the same quarter pre-recession, and is a full 5 points higher than the 21 percent last year who predicted their company would be adding permanent staff. keep reading…
Two days before the U.S. government releases its official estimate of September’s job growth and employment, payroll processor ADP says the economy added 162,000 private sector non-farm jobs last month, most of them coming from businesses with fewer than 500 workers.
Economists in surveys by various business news services, had, on average, expected the ADP number to be closer to 150,000. The report also adjusted down its initial count for August to 189,000, a reduction of 12,000, and cut July’s numbers by 12,000 to 156,000.
Although the count rarely jibes with the report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ADP’s National Employment Report is looked to by economists and the financial markets as an early indicator of what the official numbers might show. Economists are, on average, predicting September produced a net jobs increase in the range of 110,000 to 120,000. The BLS will issue its preliminary numbers Friday.
Some, however, say the actual number of new jobs may be closer to the ADP counts. TrimTabs Investment Research issued its own jobs estimate this morning, putting the number of new private-sector jobs created in September at 210,000. keep reading…
Attend any recruiting conference, or read just about any recruiting blog, and you’ll find a steady drumbeat about passive candidates: Why they’re better; How to source them; What to say to convince them to work for you, and; What you need to do to attract them and then keep them.
Active candidates are OK. But current fashion is to go find the people who don’t want your job.
Now we find that some of America’s biggest companies — collectively hiring hundreds of thousands of workers annually — hire only active job seekers, while more than two-thirds of them fill three-quarters of their jobs with actives.
These no-so-surprising revelations are in a new survey from the recruiting consultancy CareerXroads. keep reading…
Background checks have been in the news this week. CareerBuilder says 51 percent of employers have hired people with criminal records.
At our sister site, FordyceLetter.com, lawyer and recruiter Jeff Allen offers some legal advice about what can, can’t, and might be ill-advised in checking references. At TLNT.com, another lawyer weighs in on the significance of the NLRB taking Costco to task over its social media policy.
All that’s important stuff. But can you really say you’ve done a thorough job if you haven’t done a past life background check? Especially when it’s so easy and free? Simply enter the candidate’s DOB here and press Diagnosis. keep reading…
A CareerBuilder survey released today says 51 percent of human resources managers report their company has hired workers with a criminal record.
It’s an almost impossible-to-believe finding, given the constant drumbeat by criminal rights organizations over the challenges those with records face in landing jobs. However, in light of the National Employment Law Project estimate that 65 million Americans have some kind of criminal record, it’s not so surprising that many are on payrolls across the country.
The online survey was conducted for CareerBuilder by Harris Interactive, which polled 2,298 U.S. hiring managers and human resource professionals about the issue. The records here are those that would typically show up on a background check: convictions for both misdemeanors and felonies, but probably not arrests. 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…
While you’re trying to convince that hot prospect that a week of vacation is pretty standard, be glad you’re not competing against a UK employer. There, employees at more than a few firms can get time off for cosmetic procedures like Botox shots, facials, and haircuts.
And that’s not even the most unusual bene. Nigerian workers get an electric generator to use at home, says Mercer. In China, you get at least three days off to get married. The Aussies reward their employees for loyalty, typically giving them three months off after 15 years. It grows by a month for every additional five years.
And you thought free Starbucks in the break room was a big deal.
The Happiest Places
Living here in Southern California, you kinda get to believing the happiest place is Disneyland. Turns out that’s only 26 miles off. CareerBliss says the #1 happiest U.S. city for young professionals is Los Angeles. Irvine, which is 19 miles away from Mickey’s California resort, is #6 on the list. keep reading…
This is probably only something a man who carries a gun could get away with, putting your wife’s picture on a billboard under the heading “Please Hire My Wife.” Oh, the embarrassment of it all.
We don’t know just what, exactly, Holly Stuard said to her deputy sheriff husband, when she first saw herself on a Toledo billboard. A few days later, what she told a Toledo newspaper was, “I didn’t know what to make of it … I had to go back and look.”
The MBA grad — which may explain a lot – had not heard from any employers at the time of the newspaper interview, so, good sport that she must be, said, “I’m going to try to have fun with it.”
And so are we.
As the debate over the value of an MBA slogs on, tech workers are fairly convinced that adding the business degree won’t do much for their careers.
IT specialty job board Dice surveyed job seekers a few weeks ago about the value of an MBA, finding that 52 percent of them believe it’s not important to future technical careers. Only 32 percent saw it as adding value.
That might be expected, as the question was asked only of those who didn’t have a Masters of Business Administration. But even among those who do have the degree, many doubt its value. Dice asked MBA holders how having the degree changed their career. The most popular response was that it got them a bigger paycheck. Next most frequently cited response, though, was that it had no impact on their career. keep reading…
There’s a better-than-even chance you don’t know what the cloud is. Fluffy white things in the sky is not correct. And the bad news is that if you polled the audience, that’s about what you would have heard.
Seems a majority of Americans think “the cloud” has something to do with weather, and about half of you think rainy weather interferes with your cloud computing.
Now this little survey from Citrix isn’t recruiting specific, but we’d guess that a big percentage of you are in the cloud on a regular basis. All those SaaS systems out there are cloud-connected. keep reading…
Gen Y workers are a surprising group. They’re almost twice as likely as all workers to have majored in neuroscience or bioengeering, yet nearly five times as likely to be working as a merchandise displayer or clothing sales clerk.
More than twice as many of them work at a company with fewer than 100 employees than work for one with more than 1,500.
Their median pay is $39,700, which compares handsomely to the $26,400 median pay of all U.S. workers. Yet some — those working as petroleum engineers ($98,100), or software engineers ($80,600), or account directors ($76,200) — earn three or more times the national median and twice that of their peers generally.
Despite the variety of their jobs, and the companies they work for, Millennials share (no surprise here) a common interest in social media. The job skills they most share all center around blogging, content authoring, and social media marketing. keep reading…
Physical therapists are the new nurses of healthcare recruiting, so much in demand that help-wanted ads for them are now among the most commonly advertised healthcare jobs online.
In fact, Wanted Analytics reports there are now more jobs advertised for physical therapists than any other job in any occupation, exceeding even those for nurses, which have held the top spot for years. And that’s after accounting for a 26 percent year-over-year decrease in the number.
Now a survey done by CKR Interactive’s Peer Group U.S. and healthcare marketing specialist Katon Direct helps explain why it’s so difficult to fill physical therapist openings. Besides simply the growing demand for those services, professionals in the field simply don’t want to change jobs.
“Only 4.1 percent of survey respondents say they are currently looking for a new job,” according to the 2012 National Physical Therapist Survey. That’s far less than the 38 percent of all workers a Globoforce survey said were looking. And it’s less than half the national unemployment rate. keep reading…
Have you ever gotten on an elevator and had to stand there floor after floor while some jerk is practically breathing in your face while discussing their personal affairs over a cell phone that keeps cutting out on them?
Oh yeah. It’s times like that we wish the same death upon them as befell Nora Carpenter. So it was with great glee we discovered this week we are not alone. CareerBuilder says 35 percent of American workers agree with us that talking on a cell phone is one of the most annoying elevator habits of others that we must endure. (Endure, unless we happen to know Death.)
Right behind that is not holding the door open for someone, which 33 percent of the workers abhor. (Jerk and friends make up the 16 percent who admit pushing the “close” button when they see someone rushing.) Just about tied with that at 32 percent are the folks who can’t abide having someone stand too close when there’s plenty of room in the elevator; and the same percent don’t get why someone would push themselves onto a crowded elevator.
What are the weirdest things people have seen on an elevator? For a survey of 3,892 full-time workers over 17, we have to admit being sort of surprised that changing a diaper, pantsing a co-worker (that was the 18-year-old in the survey, we would guess), and teeth flossing made the list. We once got on an elevator with a man with a parrot on his should and a monkey on a leash.
How much after-hours work are your recruiters putting in? For recruiters who often reach out to a hot prospect outside of work hours, 24/7 connectedness is becoming the norm. As demand for mobile access has grown, ATS vendors have responded by making access on demand simple and versatile.
All of this mobility means more and more work is being done outside of what used to be regular working hours, raising the question of what rules and policies companies should have to govern all those wireless communications that occur after recruiters leave the office for the day.
New research from SHRM says more than half the companies responding to a survey about wireless usage policies don’t have any.
“Employers are not creating policies that delve into employees working outside of the traditional workday,” said Evren Esen, manager of SHRM’s Survey Research Center. “Whether an employee responds to e-mail at night or during the weekend is usually linked to organizational norms. If there is such an expectation, then employees are likely to follow suit.” keep reading…
All hail the gruntled worker. You are the salt of the earth; the cog that only sort of squeaks. Without you the office coffee pot would never be cleaned; there would be no “best place to work” lists; those surveys of disaffected, disengaged workers would always be at 100%; and the office refrigerator would simply be emptied without warning.
So glad are we that you exist we’ve set aside today in your honor. It is Gruntled Worker’s Day. keep reading…
As the nation prepares to celebrate Veteran’s Day Sunday, there is encouraging news about the progress American business has made in hiring veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
