An ATS Primer: What You Need to Know
I have never recruited without an applicant tracking system (ATS) and if you've been in the game less than 15 years, chances are, neither have you. It's a staple of the hiring function, something useful to manage the tsunami of resumes that come at anyone with an open position, especially in the last five years or so. But it might surprise you to know that lots of new recruiters, hiring...
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Finder's Keepers: How to Hire Loyal Staff
Research from MetLife shows that 1 in 3 employees hoped to be working for a different employer last year and this figure was much higher where generation Y workers were considered. We talked recently about how the gradual easing of the global recession was creating a clearing in the clouds, meaning there is new optimism that may lead employees to look to make that next move to a new employer,...
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Cover Letters: The Icing on top of the Resumes
Picture a bag of chips. Let's assume that you have never eaten this type of chip before, so you're trying to figure out if they're a snack that you would like. You read the outside of the bag and check the ingredients (and if you're like most Americans, the caloric content as well). The outside of the bag is the only legitimate thing that you have to go on when it comes to deciding...
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ADP Reports U.S. Added 192,000 Jobs in January
According to a report from payroll-processing firm ADP Inc. the U.S. added 192,000 private-sector jobs in January, led by a 177,000 jump in the number of service-providing jobs. This increase is around 19,000 more jobs than economists had predicted. Business and financial news site MarketWatch said the economists it polled had expected the ADP data to show a gain of 173,000 jobs for the...
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Tech Firm Releases Innovative Mobile Recruiting Solution, Apply Feature
Strategic design and technology firm Sanger Eby just announced the release of an innovative solution in mobile recruiting. The new solution takes mobile recruiting one step further by allowing job seekers to search and apply for jobs via mobile devices. Before this new feature, the option to apply on a mobile device was a major stumbling block in mobile recruiting. The new mobile recruiting...
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Wellness Programs Realizing Real Results for American Workers
The latest Principal Financial Well-Being Index: American Workers has found that 62 percent of workers feel that their workplace wellness activities are paying off through better health and lower health risks. The number of satisfied workers has risen 7 percent over 2011 where 55 percent felt positively about their organization's wellness programs. Indeed, in 2012, 51 percent of program...
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A New Recession? Economy Shrinks for First Time Since 2009
New data from the U.S. Commerce Department has confirmed that the U.S. economy shrank during Q4 2012 as defense spending took record cuts, exports were slashed, and company stockpiles grew only slowly. Even as consumer spending and business investment rose, the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent, a remarkable slowdown compared to the 3.1 percent growth rate that occurred in Q3....
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Will They Stay or Will They Go?
You know how they say recruiting is like dating? If so, it's not too big a stretch to say that a job can be a marriage between employer and employee. And like any marriage, there are ups and downs, one of which is that crucial period when an employee is thinking about leaving. We've written a couple of articles here on Recruiter about why that might be, based on various research and...
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Career Change? Modify your Resume for Different Industries
It's very common for job seekers to apply for a variety of positions in many different industries. One place where we see this transition a lot is actually in human resources where the function of the position is generally the same, but the environment is different. The HR functions share a common thread in healthcare as they would with automotive; it is just a matter of adaptation. We see...
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Humana Exceeds Veterans Hiring Commitment, New Pledge to Hire 1,000 More Vets
Leading healthcare company Humana just announced that the company has surpassed its goal of hiring 1,000 U.S. military veterans and/or their spouses by mid-2014. Humana made the hiring commitment in August 2011 as part of President Obama's challenge to the nation's employers to hire 100,000 veterans and/or their spouses over the following three years. "Humana is honoring the...
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Working in the Dark: Coping with Scotland's Winter Solstice
A travel memoir As I wrote this, on December 22nd, I was looking through a glass darkly, out an Edinburgh window at a very dark world and the black silhouette of a darker Edinburgh Castle. ________________ It's only 3:00 PM, "mid-afternoon" in my understanding. But it's black outside. Scotland's winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and shorter here than anywhere...
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"Overqualified" Means What?
A recent study reports that nearly half of working Americans with college degrees are "overqualified" for their jobs. The Washington, D.C.-based Center for College Affordability and Productivity study predicts that this imbalance will persist for the next ten years as a "new normal". Citing the plight of the iconic, overqualified degreed taxi driver, Richard Vedder, an Ohio University...
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Let's talk about Tech, Baby
When you do a lot of writing about recruiting and HR stuff, you can become overwhelmed with report findings, survey conclusions and emerging technology. But today, I want to talk to you about something very normal—tech salaries. It may sound boring at first—unless you work in technology, recruit for technology or are hiring for technology type hires right now—which, according to the...
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CCAP: Nearly Half of Recent College Grads Underemployed
According to a newly released study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, nearly half of recent graduates are working in jobs that they are overqualified for. The study, entitled Why Are Recent Graduates Underemployed? University Enrollments and Labor-Market Realities, revealed that about 48 percent of the nation's employed college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of...
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Workers with Disabilities Have Post-Recession Unemployment Low
According to a study by disability appeals and compliance services provider Allsup, the unemployment rate in Q4 2012 for people with disabilities was at a four-year low. Also at a four-year low was the rate of people with disabilities applying for Social Security Disability Insurance. While these new data support the idea that unemployment for workers with disabilities is improving, the...
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Layoff Trends Suggest Rising Job Gains and Improved Hiring Rates
The January jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to show that employers have ramped up hiring as layoffs have continued to drop into the New Year. Unemployment aid has hit a five-year low as many industries, such as health care, retail, and restaurants are steadily hiring. However, national job growth has remained relatively flat as the unemployment rates hovers at a...
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5 Reasons why you Aren't Getting Enough Applicants
When it came to unfulfilled jobs, last year's reoccurring theme was the "skills gap." We all know the issue: There are more qualified jobs than qualified workers. Employers were (and still are) having trouble finding candidates who possess the necessary talent to fill a role. Yet, interestingly enough, a new study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity revealed that nearly half...
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The Top Five Job Application Lies
A job application or CV is one of the most commonly falsified documents around. It has been estimated that as many as 30% of job seekers will either hide some truths, exaggerate or outright lie on their CV to get a foot in the door. This is especially true for jobs in smaller companies where candidates may assume there are less likely to be background checks performed. 1) Covering...
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Facebook Job Board
Many companies who are looking to save money on their recruitment generally use their own social media accounts to spread the word. The most common platforms used in this instance include Twitter, Facebook and most predominantly, LinkedIn. The owners over at Facebook are very savvy to this and have taken the opportunity to launch their own Job Board which was aired in the US on the 14th of...
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"If Work is so Ennobling, Why is it the Last Thing the Nobility Ever Does?"
"If work is so ennobling, why is it the last thing the nobility ever does?" That's on my short list for the best line ever in a movie (as I recall it). The film was "For Richer or Poorer" (1992), with Jack Lemmon, who portrayed "Aram Katourian", a self-made, sleeve-rolling millionaire, whose spoiled, recently graduated son "Michael" (Jonathan Silverman) just can't seem to...
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GoodHire.com Launches as Fully Compliant Screening Service for SMBs
Information and data commerce company Inflection has announced GoodHire.com, a new pre-employment screening option for small-to-medium sized businesses that is Fair Credit Reporting Act compliant and delivers comprehensive background reports for safe and efficient hiring. GoodHire provides a body of screening tools including social security number trace, address history, national criminal...
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States Competing for Jobs Spend Billions Wooing Companies
In its newest report, non-profit, non-partisan research center Good Jobs First reveals that state and local governments are spending billions of dollars annually on luring companies from one state to another instead of focusing on creating new positions. Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First and principle author of the report, entitled The Job-Creation Shell Game,...
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Top 10 Hiring Mistakes Employers Make (Part 2)
The hiring process is the crucial gateway to your organization, which enables your organization to filter the candidate marketplace to ensure that only a stream of top talent flows into your organization. It is vital, therefore, that you assess your hiring process from time-to-time to ensure it is in tip-top shape. To help you do this, I have prepared a list of the top 10 hiring mistakes...
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10 Critical Steps to Achieving Magnetic Leadership [Part 2]
Recruiter.com had the opportunity to speak with author and President and Founder of Loyalty Factor Dianne Durkin to discuss her concepts from 10 Critical Steps to Achieving Magnetic Leadership . Check out what she had to say about her insight into what it takes to become a magnetic leader: How did you develop your 10 Critical Steps to Achieving Magnetic Leadership? Over the last 17 years...
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The Business Case for Recruiting Technology
In any industry, when there is rapid development and consumerization of technology, there comes a time when a lot of folks start feeling left behind. Not only is HR Technology growing in stature throughout the organization, it's growing in prestige. Now, don't laugh, but I believe that recruiters are directly responsible for this, creating innovative hacks in software designed for entirely...
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HireVue Launches 1st Cloud-Dased Digital Recruiting Platform, CodeVue
To help in the war for technical talent, video interviewing solutions provider HireVue is launching CodeVue, the world's first cloud-based digital recruiting platform built to rapidly and effectively identify, screen and assess technical talent. HireVue says the new solution allows candidates to more "conveniently and expressively" display their coding talents through a series of...
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Top 10 Hiring Mistakes Employers Make (Part 1)
The hiring process is the golden gateway in to your organization, and handled well it will deliver a timely and constant stream of good quality, loyal talent to the doorstep of your business. This is why it's so important that you ensure your hiring process is in tip top shape and following industry best practices. However, many hiring processes are falling below standard in some areas; there...
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Tough Labor Market Predicted after Employment Slump
Leading HR consultancy firm Human Alliance Ltd. reports that its analysis of December 2012's employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has led it to anticipate a troubled labor market through at least the first half of 2013. "Job growth remained steady this month at 155,000 jobs created which is a little bit more than the average for the calendar year of 2012. I think...
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Bloomberg Article on Recruitment Generates Backlash
A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek on the impact of in-house recruiting on the executive search profession was met with backlash from the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC), which countered that the perspective provided by the magazine is only one side of the story. An AESC survey conducted in 2012 found that most Human Resource executives feel that external executive...
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Startup Hiring Myths
When it comes to start-ups, hiring is a breeze. At least that's the view from someone who's never actually done it! In reality, hiring for startups can be one of the hardest recruiting jobs you ever have but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to make it a little easier. Unfortunately, many of the standard truths that make sense for mainstream recruiting are actual myths when it comes to hiring...
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Social Resumes Increase in Recruiting and Job Seeking [infographic]
We all know that social media use has been on the rise in the recruiting industry, but did you know that 1 in 6 job seekers credit social media for helping land their current job? That's the latest statistic according the How Job Seekers and Employers are Connecting Online by OnlineColleges.com. And just how did social media help? Through using social resumes, of course. The infographic...
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The Second Technological Assault on Memory
I can't prove it, but I have a hunch that technology has, once again, weakened our capacity to remember things. I say "once again" because it seems clear that the invention and deployment of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press in the 15th century, as a first assault on memorization, has made the routine kind of auditory-oral memorization (of the "oral tradition") that preceded it...
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The Five Requirements to Getting a Startup Job in 2013
I like Dan Schwabel and I like the Intuit social recruiting and career blog and I really like the recent blog post by Dan posted there called the 5 Requirements to Get a job in 2013. However, as I read through the list, I realized that these were requirements that came, by and large, from how one would present oneself to a corporate entity, or even a medium sized business. In fact, as I went...
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5 Things that HR Predictive Analytics will Actually Predict
Big data will move HR from darkness into the light... Big data is big news in HR and talent management. We hear a lot about how big data is set to transform the world of HR; how it will move us from darkness into light. But, data has been around for many years in HR, so what's all the excitement about now, suddenly? Well, traditional HR analytics has been very much focused on the present,...
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3 Areas for Increasing Personal Productivity
In some form, at some point in time, in one day or another, we all waste time. You may think it's easier to lose track of time doing menial tasks outside of the office, but that's not always completely true. Most often it can be just as easy, if not easier, for time to slip away from us during the work day, especially if you do not care for the work needed to be done that day. According to...
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ThomasNet.com Launches Journal to Aid Manufacturing Workforce
ThomasNet.com, publisher of the leading online manufacturing and industry news and trends publication and e-newsletter Industry Market Trends (IMT) just launched IMT Career Journal, a web publication and weekly e-newsletter designed to educate employers on creative ways to attract and train new talent. The company said that the new journal is also "a resource for job seekers interested in...
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Too Tempting to Employ?! Fire Them!
Recently, a Fort Dodge, Iowa woman was fired after 10 years on the job for being too "irresistibly attractive" to her married boss. A court upheld that firing decision as the employer's right (despite a collegial, uncompromised working relationship between them lasting years). That's likely to seem odd on many levels—to both men and women, and maybe even to aliens. But for the...
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Leaders Rarely Expected To Tell the Truth
This statistic probably won't surprise you. The 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer has found that less than 20 percent of respondents to its survey feel that business or governmental leaders are truthful regarding contentious issues. The level of trust held by the American public for business leaders lags far behind the rest of the world, which trusts leaders to do the right thing 50 percent of the...
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MedZilla Reports on Employment Statistics for January 2013
MedZilla.com's employment report for January paints a relatively optimistic employment picture of 2012 and suggests hope for the New Year. Using December as a well-rounded summary of the entire year, the report notes that job creation for the month was up by 155,000 jobs, well above predictions. Further, the most recent turnover and job openings report released by the Bureau of Labor statistics...
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Can you Determine if a Candidate is Telling you the Truth?
Do you think it doesn't happen? Candidates not telling the truth, that is. Then think again. Eight percent of 8,785 U.S. workers polled in a CareerBuilder survey admitted that they had "fudged some aspect of their resume." Within that same survey they polled just over 300 employers and found that 49 percent had discovered an applicant stretching the truth on his/her resume. This research is...
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How to Turn Digital Connections into Tangible Job Leads
Digital networking is one of the most common ways for today's job seeker to access prospective employers. Social sites such as LinkedIn are crucial to establishing and maintaining professional connections, as well as showcasing a job seeker's experience, accomplishments, relationships, and other information beyond the traditional paper resume. However, building and maintaining your online...
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CDM Media to Host Inaugural CFO Summit
CDM Media is slated to host its inaugural CFO Summit, the premier event for CFOs and finance executives from leading organizations across the country. The exclusive event will be held in Chicago on March 17-19, 2013, at the Trump Hotel Chicago. The CFO Summit will give attendees a unique opportunity to share insight and make critical business contacts through engaging educational sessions and...
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My Battle against Drums-for-Brains Marketing of Noise: a Lesson in Niche-Management
My head is not a drum. Treat it as though it is and it will become a war drum in a battle waged against those drums-for-brains types who think clients, guests or customers must have service in the form of non-stop skull-pounding pop-music. Either the Edinburgh staff at the niche hostel where I am writing this thinks I am already deaf or nuts, or they don't care whether they will make me so....
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On Being Excellent: Seinfeld, Bad Advice and Best Practices
There's something in the air, I think. I've noticed many conversations around the term "excellence" and what it really means in the last few weeks and it's got me thinking. Perhaps it's the coming of a New Year, and everyone getting back to work after a prolonged state of suspension between multiple holidays or maybe we're all holding ourselves to a higher standard, but whatever it is, it has...
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Employee/Employer Confidence Low on Finances in 2013
The Prudential's study, The Seventh Annual Study of Employee Benefits: Today Beyond has found that even though employers and employees are better off financially now than they were during the recession, both report being less optimistic about their short-term financial futures. According to the study, 14 percent of employers and employees expect severe economic effects to block financial...
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CareerBuilder Releases 2013 Job Forecast for 10 Largest Global Economies
CareerBuilder just released its first annual job forecast for the 10 largest world economies, and Brazil and India boast the greatest confidence with more than two-thirds of employers in these markets planning to add full-time, permanent headcount in 2013. Italy came in as the least optimistic economy with more employers who expect to decrease staff than those who expect to hire. "The job...
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Survey: Employers Making Retirement Preparedness Top Priority in 2013
According to a new survey global HR solutions company Aon Hewitt, employers are making improving the financial wellness of their workforce a bigger priority. The survey of more than 425 U.S. employers representing 11 million employees revealed that workers need 11 times their final pay to meet their financial needs during retirement, yet the average American worker has a savings shortfall of 2.2...
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Empower Software Solutions Enhances Workforce Management Solution
Leading provider of workforce and human resources solutions Empower Software Solutions recently announced it has made enhancements to improve the usability and mobile functionality in the company's workforce management solution, EmpowerWFM™. The upgraded solution's new user interface is designed to be compatible across all browsers and fully deployable on tablets. Features...
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