ERE.net

Walk into any workplace and what’s in the air? Besides the burnt popcorn. We mean that other thing. That sweet scent of romance.

Yes dear reader, just in time for Valentine’s Day CareerBuilder tells us what you’ve been suspecting all along: your office mates are mating up. If the survey is to be believed — and why not?; they surveyed 7,780 people who all can’t be pranking us — then almost 4 in 10 workers have dated someone they met on the job.

Awkward, if one of them thinks it’s going places and the other one … you get the idea. Fortunately, 31 percent of those relationships lead to marriage. (Which is no guarantee things won’t get even more awkward a little down the road. But this is the season for love, so ignore our dose of ugly reality. Or read on to the part where we tell you how Challenger, Gray, & Christmas snuck in a warning about office violence.)

HR people out there, this stat’s for you: CareerBuilder says 18 percent of office dating is between boss and their report. Women were more likely to date up than men, 35 percent to 23 percent respectively.

Of the industries reported, you just had to know that hospitality by far (47 percent) has the most co-dating co-workers. Healthcare also made the top five list, which, considering how many parents hoped their offspring would marry a doctor, is no surprise. But financial services (40 percent)? And transportation and utilities (43 percent)? And IT (40 percent)? These also made the top five? Really?

Now moving on to that warning about workers pulling a Valentine’s Day Massacre  from Challenger, Gray & Christmas (hereinafter CG&C). “Some companies are facing an entirely different problem: their workers have lost that loving feeling and the consequences can be dire,” reads the press release we got from the global outplacement firm.

“Often in situations where managers are aware of a problem between two or more coworkers, they merely look the other way, letting the employees work it out amongst themselves.  This may work in some situations, but in others, this hands-off approach can have disastrous results,” says CGC CEO John Challenger.

The press release offers a whole bunch of ideas to increase civility and reduce animosity. Missing from the list, and very conspicuously considering Valentine’s Day started this whole thing, is the free supply of large amounts of chocolate.

A Vowel Please

From the “Can I buy a vowel?” department comes Goood Job, the latest in a long line of companies entering the employee-referral-social media business we’ve talked a lot about (and includes socialcruiter, socialreferral, and many others). In short, here’s how Goood Job works:  keep reading…

Oracle announced this morning it will buy HR software vendor Taleo for $46 a share, a deal worth about $1.9 billion.

It’s the second major acquisition of an HR firm in three months, and continues an Oracle buying spree that’s so far added some 70 companies at a cost of about $40 billion, according to Bloomberg.com. Last fall, Oracle bought RightNow Technologies, a cloud-based CRM provider.

The Taleo deal, however, falls far short of what SAP is paying for SuccessFactors. The German tech firm announced in December it would pay $3.4 billion for the HR vendor. The acquisition is key to “accelerating SAP’s momentum as a provider of cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure,” the company said in making the announcement.

SAP has run into delays completing its acquisition. The deadline for the deal has now been extended for a third time to Feb. 15th while regulators, principally the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., investigates the transaction. SAP said today it was waiving the requirement the investigation first be complete before the expiration of its tender offer. The company said it already has been tendered 86 percent of the SuccessFactors, enough to close the deal. keep reading…

What would you do if the person interviewing you fell asleep? What Irwin did turned out to be worth $100. You’ll find out more if you read through this week’s roundup. And, as a little incentive to make it to the very end, there’s a link to some nifty free marketing analytics tools.

One suggestion: You might want to keep a glossary of acronyms handy. Those of you who can correctly identify ANSI, ATS, SaaS, and SMB — you are excused from the glossary requirement.

Freshening Stale Resumes

When a resume is stale, but the skills and experience are just what the hiring manager ordered, what do you do? You call, you email. You don’t hear back. Or if you do, you find out they’re perfectly happy in the new job they started six months ago.

There goes your time-to-fill right down the drain. keep reading…

Today’s end-of-the-week roundup begins with a quiz and ends with a quickie update on OneWire, a clever, and certainly — as an investment report says — intriguing take on candidate matching.

So let’s get on with it: Guess who says they want to grow their influence at the top corporate levels?

HR you say? Sorry, not the answer we were looking for. The answer comes from MarketingCharts, which says, ”An overwhelming majority (79%) of global CMOs say they want their influence in business strategy and development to grow.”

Here’s another factoid from the article, which is based on a survey from Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles: 89 percent of CMOs identified visioning and strategic thinking as a top competency. There now, don’t you feel better? keep reading…

A quick look at some of the goings-on in recent days from the recruiting/human resources world:

• If you’re looking for a gift for the busy New York professional who has everything, you can now get them a “PA for a day.” The new temp firm, founded by a PR/events director for a New York ad agency, offers personal assistants for a day — actually for as little as two hours, at a rate of $20 an hour. The company says that “personal assistants cannot and will not assist with any tasks that are illegal, illicit, or questionable.” In addition, “PA For A Day currently does not offer babysitting/childcare services.” We’re not sure if they’re referring to the boss’s kids, or the boss himself.
• Hey LinkedIn, better sound general quarters. You’re under attack by a Norwegian startup. JobCruiter sent out an announcement about its launch with the in-your-face headline “JobCruiter.com Challenges LinkedIn.” The site, says the announcement, has “ambitions of being the best global career network.” Now, here’s the fightin’ words: “Many see today’s career networks just as boring overviews of their contacts where nothing is ‘happening.’” keep reading…

A $5 million investment in a company that charges nothing for its product would seem to have the same shot as a straight bet in roulette. Yet the Mayfield Fund just gave SmartRecruiters a $5 million boost to fund new development in its SaaS-based free ATS.

It’s certainly a vote of confidence in the company and the business model launched by Jerome Ternynck. He  introduced SmartRecruiters to the SMB market in 2009 when he still owned and ran MrTed, a European ATS company that was entirely SaaS.

MrTed was an enterprise system. SmartRecruiters was intended for smaller companies, many of whom had either no ATS or rudimentary products. Promoted as “Free and Easy” — which it was and is — so resonated with recruiters and hiring managers that Ternynck quickly had hundreds of customers paying nothing. keep reading…

Financially troubled Arbita has closed its job posting service and transferred its remaining clients to Broadbean, one of the leading vendors in the field.

News first broke yesterday when Arbita’s CEO Don Ramer sent emails to customers notifying them of the decision to shut down the OnePost job distribution service. Broadbean, meanwhile, issued its own announcement saying it would take over the balance of uncompleted customer contracts.

“We are excited at the opportunity to work with Arbita’s client base and will, first and foremost, provide a high-quality, stable platform that meets their global posting needs,” Broadbean’s CEO and founder Kelly Robinson said in the company’s announcement. keep reading…

Here are some of the events making news during the week:

Recruitment MarComm Firm Sold

NAS Recruitment Communications has been bought from Interpublic Group by a private equity firm in partnership with senior management. The new owner, Stone-Goff Partners, called the acquisition an “excellent match” with its “strategy of investing in strong niche businesses with established track records and experienced management teams.”

Key members of the management team, including CEO James Miller, will stay with NAS. In the announcement of the deal, Miller said, “Interpublic has been a great owner and partner over the last decade; however, under this new structure, NAS will be more nimble and better able to adapt to a constantly evolving set of dynamics in our space.” keep reading…

HR talent software vendor iCIMS has a new business partner and $35 million to spend on expansion. The company announced this morning that private equity fund Susquehanna Growth Equity has taken a minority stake in the firm.

“The company,” says today’s announcement, “plans to significantly increase investments in marketing, product development, and additional acquisitions that will further accelerate the organization’s rapid growth and expansion plans.”

Founded in 1999 by its CEO Colin Day, iCIMS offers SaaS-based talent acquisition, onboarding, performance and talent management tools. The company has made the inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies for six consecutive years, finishing 2010 with revenue of $25.6 million (2011 rankings won’t be released until later this year). keep reading…

Thinking of heading to the cloud in 2012? Everyone seems to be, including some of the biggest HR vendors in the world.

Just a few weeks ago, when SAP snapped up SuccessFactors, the buzz was all about the cloud. A similar buzz ensued when Oracle bought RightNow Technologies.

Even though Wall Street reacted to the SAP/SuccessFactors deal as if the cloud had just been discovered, the reality is cloud computing has been around almost as long as the Internet itself. What the excitement is about is how HR software services are delivered, and the big deal is that increasingly, companies aren’t buying systems, they’re licensing seats.

For HR, that means SaaS. SaaS, the acronym for software-as-a-service, is the type of cloud computing with which HR professionals are most familiar. Yet, like the cloud itself, SaaS has about as many different flavors as there are vendors offering it.

Before discussing what you should know before going SaaS, let’s take a moment to talk about just what it is that distinguishes it — and the cloud — from other forms of computing. keep reading…

When we said VisualCV was shutting down at the end of the month, we hedged with a Hail Mary closer: “unless, we suppose, a buyer swoops in.”

So this morning we discover that Talent Technology did the swooping and scooped up the site for job seeker portfolios. Financial details weren’t in the announcement, but Talent Technology made clear the site would continue. “The service will continue to operate as a standalone offering,” said Talent Technology.

Just in case you don’t recognize the corporate name, Talent Technology is the Canadian firm that sells the HireDesk ATS, and a sourcing system it calls Talementry. A new version of the latter was just released.

Even if you’re not a job seeker, and don’t plan on being one, VisualCV is worth a look. It’s a great place to showcase work for anyone building or managing their personal brand. It supplements your LinkedIn profile.

As Amybeth Hale wrote on our sister site, SourceCon, the site enables professionals “to easily build and manage an online career portfolio that comes alive with informational keyword pop-ups, video, pictures, and professional networking.”

All good for VisualCV, but what’s in it for Talent Technology? The announcement doesn’t really say. There’s only this: “As part of Talent Technology, users can also look forward to new innovations to help them create even more engaging online resumes faster and easier in the future.”

For users of the site, VisualCV says everything will stay as is, except that it will now be free. The premium service is being discontinued. Subscribers should already have gotten a refund.

Ending what, for most, is a short week, we bring you the penultimate Friday roundup for 2011. Today’s collection includes mystery applicants, a police recruiting campaign gone bad, and Salesforce’s Rypple.

We start with a job seeker good deed from the Challenger people:

Free Job Hunting Advice By Phone

For two days next week, job seekers will be able to get career advice directly from professional counselors at no charge. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST on December 27 and 28, counselors will accept calls from job seekers nationwide, answering questions and offering advice about the job hunting process.

The number is 312-422-5010. Job hunters can get more information about the call-in at firm’s website and blog.

This is the 26th year that the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray  & Christmas will offer this free call-in service .

Salesforce Acquires Rypple

Rypple, the company that brought a social, collaborative networking approach to performance management, is being acquired by Salesforce.com. The CRM company announced last week that it was buying Toronto-based Rypple for an undisclosed amount. keep reading…

The pairing of Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett is talent acquisition’s Hewlett and Packard; its Ben and Jerry.

Sullivan’s name is on the firm, his wife is his partner, and there’s no doubt he’s the sensei. But over the years, Burnett came to be an alter ego, presenting at conferences, consulting with companies in the U.S. and globally, writing and co-authoring articles by the dozens, and, when Sullivan himself was unavailable, Burnett was the public face of the firm.

Now, after a decade with, Burnett is leaving for a global role as director of strategy for UK-based BraveNewTalent.  keep reading…

The emails in your inbox may be fewer in December and your phone less busy, but not all’s quiet. Here’s what’s turned up in our mailbox so far this month: keep reading…

This morning, three days after the news that SAP is acquiring SuccessFactors, comes the announcement that SuccessFactors is buying recruitment marketer Jobs2Web for $110 million.

SuccessFactors says it will combine its “social, mobile, and collaborative recruiting management solution with Jobs2web’s leading recruiting marketing platform, creating an end-to-end recruiting system.”

Saturday’s SAP SuccessFactors acquisition touched off a rally Monday among the publicly traded HR tech vendors, as well as speculation about further consolidation in the industry. However, no mention was made of Jobs2Web.

Based just outside Minneapolis, Jobs2Web specializes in enhancing employer job postings to boost their findability by job seekers. The company optimizes job listings to improve their position on search results pages by, among other things, building micro-sites for each listing. Listings are also redistributed to multiple job boards, aggregation sites, and other places, with codes inserted for each listing so recruiters can identify the most effective marketing channels. keep reading…

There’s nothing like a big-buzz acquisition to lift the boats in the HR SaaS harbor. Taleo, Kenexa, and even pricey Salesforce saw jumps in their stock today as investors reacted to the weekend news that ERP vendor SAP was buying SuccessFactors.

Taleo and Kenexa were both up by double-digits. Salesforce, trading well over $100, was up 4.5 percent. SuccessFactors, as to be expected, was the big winner, catapulting nearly 52 percent to close just below the $40-a-share SAP will pay.

The rally was to be expected, given the speculation about who might next be an acquisition target in the talent management/HR software sector. It was mere minutes after the conference call SAP held Saturday morning to discuss the sale that analysts began speculating about which company would be next to get bought up by whom. keep reading…

SAP announced this morning that it is buying SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. The $40-a-share all cash deal is a 52 percent premium over SuccessFactors’  $26.25 closing price Friday.

The unusual Saturday announcement made much of the part the acquisition will play in “accelerating SAP’s momentum as a provider of cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure.”

During a conference call Saturday with financial and industry analysts, SAP’s Co-CEO Bill McDermott enthusiastically declared that the acquisition of SuccessFactors will “create, yes, create a cloud powerhouse… This market, ladies and gentlemen, is just beginning.” keep reading…

Following the departure of master sourcer Shally Steckerl, the recruitment services company Arbita has closed its sourcing unit, laying off its employees, and may dispose of its job-posting business as well.

Don Ramer, CEO and founder of Arbita, said three employees were laid off Friday. One or two independent sourcers will close out the remaining projects, but by the end of the year Arbita will be out of the sourcing business.

The future of the OnePost job distribution service, is also “in flux,” Ramer said. The service distributes employer job postings to multiple job boards, tracking responses to provide source analytics. What exactly is to become of OnePost isn’t clear, though Ramer said he might “spin off” the posting business. However, he was adamant that its future will not include him in any kind of leadership role.

Ramer says the company has been “financially stressed and challenged since Q1 2010.” Responding to reports of delayed paychecks, missed reimbursements, and deferred payments to vendors, Ramer said, “Like many small businesses we have had to be open about cash flow with our employees and flexible in timing disbursements. During the last three years we have paid or earned out the bulk of the company’s debt to our job board partners.” keep reading…

This week brings a crop of new job sites, including an ambitious (should we say quixotic?) effort to change the very nature of third party recruiting. We also tell you about Kenexa’s latest acquisition, heralding another step into providing a full-service solution.

First up, is the story of Staffingbook and one man’s quest to alter the course of recruiting:

Steve Harari has ambitious hopes for the recruiting industry. Not content to simply help recruiters place candidates and employers find talent, Harari wants to convince recruiters to mentor their talent over the long term.

“I don’t think it’s too far-fetched that a recruiter might be mentoring a candidate,” says Harari, who has launched his culture-changing effort at Staffingbook.

Were he talking about boutique search firms working at the highest levels, it wouldn’t be far-fetched at all.  Even less-lofty placements involve some amount of coaching and mentoring to at least prepare a candidate for an interview. keep reading…

News about internships, employee referrals, resumes searches, social media recruiting, and a video-oriented job board — it’s all in our roundup, below. keep reading…