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So often pronounced dying, dead, and all but useless for job seekers and employers alike that it’s passing into legend, job boards somehow manage to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of their pyres to successfully deliver candidates and hires to employers worldwide.

For being so out of fashion, so yesterday, job boards manage to come out on top or top-adjacent on nearly every source of hire study. In a Bersin & Associates survey this fall job boards tied for first with internal transfers as the leading source of all hires. CareerXroads says job boards produced 24.9 percent of all external hires in 2010, second only to employee referrals (27.5 percent).

The latest survey comes from tech vendor Talent Technology, which reports that job boards are the leading source of candidates, according to the 1,100 North American HR professionals who participated. Job boards account for 17 percent of the candidates, followed by employee referrals, which provide 15.8 percent.

What’s remarkable about the evidence is how few accept it. Even after reporting that “job boards remain popular and are used to fill 19 percent of open positions – making job boards the No. 1 source for candidates,” Bersin titled that section of the report “Job Boards: Not Dead, but Dying.”

Even more remarkable is how little the job board industry has done to promote itself. The major boards have their own, proprietary data, guarded more carefully than the U.S. does its diplomatic messages. Second tier and certainly mom-and-pop operations have little data beyond gross traffic counts. So for all practical purposes employers do their own market surveillance.

Now, finally, seven years after it’s founding by Peter Weddle, the International Association of Employment Web Sites has bestirred itself to do some serious research about the industry. keep reading…

HR services company ADP says the U.S. added 170,000 private sector jobs in January, providing more evidence that while the economy isn’t backsliding, it also isn’t advancing.

Indeed the January number came in below the average of 182,000, which is what economists in a Bloomberg survey were expecting. A Dow Jones Newswires survey however put the number right at 170,000.

The ADP report also adjusted down the December numbers from the initial 325,000 to 292,000.  Nearly all the January gain, says ADP, came from companies with fewer than 500 workers, and all but 18,000 of the new jobs were in the service sector. Manufacturing added 10,000 workers during the month.

A year ago, ADP said 190,000 private sector jobs were created in January.

This morning’s report, says Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, “compares to the 2011 monthly average of 160,000 and thus points to a continued recovery but the mediocre pace this far into a recovery still remains frustrating,” He estimates that Friday’s official report from the U.S. Department of Labor will show 165,000 non-farm jobs created in January. keep reading…

It’s a brand new year, great things are on the horizon … and for me, I have had it up to my eyeballs with a particular topic. I am so fed up with this topic that I want to climb to the highest peak and scream, bang my head against a wall, and even toss my desk around the room over and over. This topic that’s making me and others so irritated is Passive Candidates.

Yes, that’s right. The topic or even the mention of passive candidates now a day makes me want to throw up. In conducting my own personal year in review and through scouring HR topics, articles, blogs, etc., it seems as if 2011 was the year of the “Passive Candidate.” My response … so the heck what.

I guess I am at a loss as to why there is so much over-emphasis on “passive candidates.” Whatever happened to simply hiring the most-qualified, best-fit individual who can add their strengths in order to advance the organization? Now we have resorted to “Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates,” “Rules to Recruit Passive Candidates”, “Your Guide to Passive Candidates” — you get my point.

So here are some questions for you to ask yourself and answer: keep reading…

“Unemployment is expected to remain above 8 percent for the next four years.” That gloomy assessment of the U.S. economy from FedEx Chief Economist Gene Huang is echoed in any number of reports and economic predictions.

“Most predictions,” says an economic analysis by the Society for Human Resource Management, “are less optimistic now than they were when 2011 began.”

What especially worries economists is whether the slow job growth is due to employer cautiousness — in which case growth will accelerate when economic confidence returns — or whether it is structural, meaning some jobs have been permanently eliminated, much the way automation obsoleted elevator operators.

“It is a fair bet that aggregate demand remains the main problem while pockets of skills mismatches persist, despite the high number of job seekers,” says the SHRM analysis.

The latest economist to weigh in is Gad Levanon, director of macroeconomic research for The Conference Board. Last week, he dissected recoveries of the past to examine the rate of job growth across multiple industries. What he found is that “the current employment recovery is the second slowest on record.” keep reading…

I was just reviewing the predictions I made for 2011 written at roughly this time a year ago. Much of what I thought would happen unfolded as expected, except for talent management. I had thought there would more focus on integrating the employee development and recruitment functions, and more internal hiring. I still think that’s on tap for this year. I was on target regarding hiring: There was no great uptick in the volume of hiring, and unemployment remained static. And I was on target with predicting that social media would be core to recruiting success and that RPOs would thrive.

Over the past two years, the way we think about work has changed. Perhaps accelerated by the recession, there is more focus now on finding satisfying and rewarding work than on just finding a job that pays the most.

More people are thinking about finding something interesting, challenging, and perhaps even fun to do that provides enough income. The key words here are interesting/challenging and enough. Fewer expect to get rich and there is less focus on the money. There is more focus on lifestyle, flexibility, free time to pursue other learning or hobbies or sports, and less interest in family. I’ll do more columns on these trends soon, but partly because of them here are the major changes that I see happening this year.

Internal Recruiting Goes Mainstream

Perhaps one of the most significant trends will be a greater focus on finding current employees to fill existing jobs. keep reading…

After spiking last spring, unemployment claims have been declining, reaching their lowest point last week since April 2008.

The report this morning from the U.S. Department of Labor says 364,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits were filed last week, a decrease of 4,000 from the week before and 59,000 fewer than the same week last year. It’s the third consecutive weekly drop. (Numbers are seasonally adjusted.)

A Reuters poll of economists in advance of this morning’s release predicted the number of new claims would rise to 375,000. The lower-than-expected number helped get stocks off to a strong start this morning despite a Commerce Department report that the third quarter GDP grew at a revised 1.8 percent rate. Previously, the rate had been estimated at 2 percent. Economists were expecting the 2 percent growth rate to stand. keep reading…

Manpower says the U.S. hiring outlook for the first part of next year is the most positive since 2008. That’s not saying much, though.

The quarterly Manpower survey of hiring intentions released today shows 14 percent of employers expect to add to their workforce in the first three months of 2012. Nine percent expect a decline; 7 percent don’t know; and, 70 percent predict no change. With Manpower’s seasonal adjustment, the net result is nine percent overall increase in job growth intentions. keep reading…

It’s always better to be prepared than surprised.

By definition, being strategic requires that you look forward — identifying trends, opportunities, and threats. With the December lull looming, now is a great time to plan for the future. I’ve listed the “top 10 talent management trends” I foresee that require your attention. keep reading…

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

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

“Technology — rather than hiring — is on the minds of most executives of mid-market companies.”

So says Mid-Market Perspectives: America‘s Economic Engine – Competing in Uncertain Times, a Deloitte survey of almost 700 executives at companies with revenue of $50 million to $1 billion.

A majority of the executives expect both revenue (61.2 percent) and profitability (52.6 percent) to increase next year, despite limited faith in any significant improvement in the national economy. What drives their optimism is a continued focus on cost controls and increased productivity.

Of the 70 percent of executives reporting an increase in productivity, the average saw a 6.1 percent improvement since the beginning of the recession. The majority of executives credit the rise to improvements in business processes (62.2 percent) and technology (50.3 percent), especially the automation of business operations and increased use of data analytics for business intelligence. keep reading…

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

Nerds in Paradise

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

U.S. consumer confidence in August dropped to the lowest point in two years, the result, analysts say, of the protracted debate over the debt issue and the continuing employment situation.

The 14.7 point drop in The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index is the largest since October 2008, at the very beginning of the recession when banks and investment houses were failing. The Index now stands at 44.5, its lowest level since April 2009.

Among the components that make up the Consumer Confidence Index is the jobs picture. There, 49.1 percent of consumers said jobs are “hard to get,” an increase from July’s 44.8 percent. The percent saying jobs are plentiful declined to 4.7 percent from 5.1 percent.

Asked about job growth, consumers were even more pessimistic. Almost a third of consumers (31.5 percent) expect there to be fewer jobs available in the next few months. Just last month, 22.2 percent expected fewer jobs. Employment optimists — those expecting more jobs in the months ahead — declined to 11.4 from 16.9 percent. keep reading…

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

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

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

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

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

The number of  “free agent” workers has nearly exploded in the last three years, and now 44 percent of working Americans describe themselves that way.

A Kelly Services survey says  economic necessity, the desire for more freedom and flexibility, and age have driven up the number of workers not tied to a single company for their livelihood. It’s a dramatic change from 2008, when Kelly’s survey found 26 percent of workers describing themselves as free agents.

Also fueling the rise is the increasing reliance of American business on contingent and contract labor, say the authors of a whitepaper detailing the results. Companies, note Jocelyn Lincoln and Megan M. Raftery, “can scale up and down faster and easier by adopting more flexible workforce strategies.”

A significant driver is the economy. Respondents to the 2011 survey were twice as likely as their counterparts in 2008 to say they became free agents because they were laid off or couldn’t find another job.

That suggests, the authors say, that as recovery occurs, some of the newly minted free agents will return to a traditional employee role. However, “the trend toward more free agents is still very strong and is increasing worldwide. Accounting for differences in legislative frameworks and social and cultural norms, we estimate that the global free agent population is at
least 20 – 30% of the entire workforce, and growing.”

Recently, USA Today wrote about the phenomenon of well-established professionals abandoning comfortable jobs to pursue their own interests.  “Employees bid goodbye to corporate America” chronicled several workers, including two recruiters, who quit to follow their own path.

As the Kelly Services report makes clear, the move by knowledge workers to keep reading…

Negotiating the conditions of employment, hedging one job with another, being wary of accepting full-time jobs that put at risk other work or that compromise skill — those are becoming the normal patterns for accomplished professionals.

Individuals are finding new freedoms and exploring their own capacity and taste for change and entrepreneurism. Some organizations are looking for ways to adapt to all of this without endangering their own success, but it may be that these two different needs are not compatible. We will find out over the next 10 years or less. Certainly manufacturing firms and companies where hands-on work is required will not be able to be flexible enough to these changes. They will face friction between the workers whose jobs allow them to be virtual or part-time or flex-time and those whose work does not.

Here are some of the issues, paradoxes, and changes that employers, candidates, recruiters, and human resources are faced with. keep reading…

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

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

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

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

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

4.0?

We’re only just digesting 3.0. But what direction are we heading in? Is it a coherent journey? Is there a clear destination/end goal?

4.0. What on earth could that include? How’s this?

• Recruitment transitions from being a “cost center” into a “profit center”’!
• The collapse and insolvency of many recruitment agencies.
• Job boards stuttering and collapsing … and repurposing themselves
• Companies hiring “through the sky” through external referrals and crowdsourcing
• Exclusive/VIP/premium paid in-community content and paid mobile apps
• Gamification shapes recruiting strategies and generates stickiness and virality
• Companies rated globally by crowd opinions

Before anyone screams “unrealistic” or “utter fantasy” or cries B.S., let’s be clear that Recruitment 4.0 moves into the territory of vision. This is some years off. But by calculated hypotheses it is clear there will be a 4.0 and that it is a natural progression of 3.0 and builds sensibly on its foundations.

Let’s recap the different versions of recruiting.

Recruitment 1.0 encompasses traditional recruiting over a huge timeline, including good old-fashioned fax machines, print advertising, (post, spray ,and pray), and Rolodexes moving into traditional ATSs. Recruiters more focused on processes than end results. The basic any-bum-on-any-seat philosophy.

Recruitment 2.0 saw the move onto online and using technology for recruitment purposes, including the advent of online job boards & online CV searches. While the technology moved forward, the traditional methodology of 1.0 was prevalent, including online post, spray, and pray candidate attraction (aka the recruitment lottery of let’s hope the right-ish person looks at the online advertisement, at the right time and feels willing to go to the effort to apply).

Both Recruitment 1.0 and 2.0 were/are fundamentally focused on the active job seekers, (applying to vacancies, on agency books, and those watching job boards like a possessed predator).

Recruitment 3.0 is a huge leap as it moves recruitment out of its comfort zone. The beating heart of 3.0 is the non-active/passive individual and a focus on “best talent” and building predictable talent pipelines. In addition, the philosophy of “everyone is a potential candidate so engage them” is central. 3.0 takes us into building engaged, two-way, free-conversation based, transparent communities. This is anchored by things like employment branding, marketing, and PR. 3.0 is not only concerned with building communities but mapping key competitors and seducing cream-of-the-crop talent with your brand and in-house opportunities.

What is Recruitment 4.0?

Recruitment 3.0 is all consumed and focused on building communities. 4.0 is all about the value of those communities, both real and perceived. keep reading…

A declining Employment Trends Index is signaling job growth stagnation lasting through the end of the year, says The Conference Board. The Index, released today, was down in July, its third drop in four months.

The 100.6 the Index registered in July is off from June’s revised 100.9, so the drop isn’t substantial. It’s also up 4 percent over July of 2010. However, says  Conference Board economist and associate director of research, Gad Levanon:

The Employment Trends Index declined in three of the past four months, and is signaling employment growth of less than 100,000 per month through the end of 2011. Despite weak employment growth in recent months, GDP has been growing even slower in the first half of 2011. There is simply not enough growth in production to warrant stronger hiring.

While there’s been plenty of bad economic news in the last two weeks to support his conclusion, there a few glimmers to suggest job growth might be just a bit better. keep reading…

Some points to make before you read this article:

1. 

   It’s somewhat controversial, but by the end you’ll agree (if you get that far).

2. If you’re a corporate recruiter or HR leader, put your confirmation bias in the parking lot before reading this article.
3. You might want to listen to this YouTube video of a webcast (Future of Recruiting Circa 2020) we recently held. It will give you a sense what’s happening now and what will happen soon.

No surprise here, but the answer to the headline’s question is an unequivocal yes. Here’s why the current version of the corporate recruiting department is heading toward extinction: keep reading…

Following the release of the June unemployment figures, House Speaker John Boehner released a statement that began with: “The American people are still asking the question: where are the jobs?”

Boehner is not alone. A lot of people of all political, economic, and social persuasions seem to be asking the same question. But because many of us have been exhorting for years that such a scenario was inevitable, the current job crisis should be no surprise. More importantly, it should be more than obvious that strategies that worked in the past would not work in the future. As Peter Drucker once said, “the greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”

A new report released by McKinsey Global Institute seems to confirm that political rhetoric and populist driven strategies won’t be enough to see the United States return to full employment before 2020.

The report includes quite a few compelling statistics that I hadn’t seen before, at least not in these terms: keep reading…