4 New Job Search Tools to Check Out in 2012
The year 2012 seems to be the year of innovation around the job search. They say great inventions come when people find a better way to solve a problem. Others say laziness is the mother of all invention. But I say that great innovations happen when millions of Americans are out of work and finding a job sucks. So in honor of America's comeback, here are four of my favorite innovations in...
Read More
Odd Jobs that Pay a Lot
If you tell people at a cocktail party that you cook meals for sailors on a submarine, steal back planes, or clean up bloody crime scenes, you might get some odd looks. But if you do have one of these odd jobs, you'll have more than colorful stories to tell at cocktail parties - you'll also be earning a lot of money. Here's an infographic created by PayDay One that illustrates some wacky...
Read More
Productivity not always Spurred by Biggest Prize
Financial incentives are largely accepted as one of the primary motivators for increasing the performance of employees, but are it actually true that the larger the sum the more people are willing to do obtain it? Research out of Caltech seems to indicate that this is not really the case. After examining data from brain scans, the researchers posit that was actually happens is that once the prize...
Read More
Paycheck Fairness Act Under Debate
The Paycheck Fairness Act, currently being considered in Congress as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), has been the subject of much debate. At the center of the debate is the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) that strongly opposes the bill. It has attempted to mobilize its members in campaigns against the bill. In summary, the bill would: • Expand damages under...
Read More
Top Legal Issues for HR Pros to Watch
From labor lawyers Richard Brann and Patrick Stanron, speakers at the recent LEAP conference is Las Vegas, comes a list of the biggest legal threats HR should look out for during the remainder of the year: 1. The biggest HR threat of the year is that of retaliation. For employees who find it difficult to win higher-caliber cases, such as discrimination and harassment suits, may have much more...
Read More
How Do I Make My Company Interesting?
One of my passions is talent community building. This also encompasses one of my other passions, employment branding. When I speak to recruiters, executives and HR directors, one question always comes up. How do I make my company interesting? Recently I gave a very tactically focused discussion on how to build a no-frills, platform agnostic talent community. Like anything I write, the plan...
Read More
SuccessFactors Enhances Workforce Solutions
Business execution and HR software provider SuccessFactors has announced a host of new enhancements to its cloud-based Workforce Analytics and Workforce Planning solutions, running on data-aggregating platform SAP HANA, by Q3 of 2012. SuccessFactors aims to aid organizations in making better workforce decisions through access to more complete, real-time data. "The benefits are immediate and...
Read More
HP to Cut 7% of Workforce
Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to cut about 27,000 jobs in its most recent round of job cuts. The technology giant continues to struggle with streamlining its PC and services businesses and adapting to a stagnant PC industry. The massive layoff would account for about 7 percent of HP's global workforce which currently employs nearly 350,000 workers worldwide. As the PC industry continues to...
Read More
Referral Program Best Practices
With specialized talent shortages currently gripping the nation (even with high overall unemployment), and sector after sector struggling to find the critical talent to drive their business forward, wouldn't it be good if there was a magic wand you could wave to bring the talent you need right to your doorstep? Of course, I am not in possession of Gandalf's staff, but in the world of hiring...
Read More
6 Mobile Job Search Apps
Did you know that seventy seven percent of job seekers use mobile job search apps? In this difficult job market, it has become critical to job seekers that they are available for new career opportunities 24/7. This means that potential candidates in the job market worldwide are taking their job search with them, on their Android, iPhone or other smartphone devices. If you're looking for...
Read More
Secure Retirement Driven Primarily by Savings Behavior
Putnam Investments' most recent Putnam Lifetime Income Score report has revealed that one of the primary factors that continues to determine the preparedness levels of retirees is savings behavior. Most U.S. households are set to replace only 65 percent of pre-retirement income after entering retirement. Employees best placed for financial stability are those with access to workplace savings...
Read More
Cyber Vetting!
Recent surveys show that LinkedIn's membership has reached 147 million, with 58.5 million of these being US based. If we cross reference these statistics with the estimated US working population of 180,000,000, we can estimate that 32.5% of the US workforce have LinkedIn profiles. A similar calculation suggests that just over 50% of Americans have Facebook accounts, and 34% have Twitter...
Read More
What is Cloud Computing Anyway?
Leading IT staffing firm TEKsystems has released the results of their new IT survey. Their Q2 2012 survey of over 1,500 IT leaders, mostly IT managers and directors (77 percent) and IT executives (23 Percent) has found that while 78 percent of IT leaders define the cloud as including web services, 70 percent report that it includes SaaS, 62 percent say it can also refer to external application...
Read More
How to Encourage Higher Employee Retirement Contributions
For employees who refuse to beef up their retirement contributions, a recent statistic may work to change their minds: According to a Fidelity Investment's healthcare cost estimate, a 65-year-old couple retiring in 2012 with traditional Medicare coverage will require $240,000 to cover medical expenses alone. This figure is 4 percent higher than last year and continues the trend of annual...
Read More
Employers Likely to Keep Providing Defined Benefits Plans
Companies that continue to offer defined benefits (DB) pension plays are likely to continue providing those benefits to new exempt employees, according to a new Towers Watson survey. The survey also discovered that some employers are mirroring their defined contribution (DC) plans to a defined benefits design to eliminate savings gaps from the shift from DB to DC plans. The survey found that...
Read More
Ready, Set, Go: Running Your Career Race
Some do not realize that their "career race" is not a sprint. It is a marathon. So many people grow weary doing their race and never reach their full potential. In our "career race", we have to stay focused on finishing the course. You cannot waste time looking back or watching the competition. Too many people waste time thinking about what could have happened or dwell on the...
Read More
DOL Releases Newest Summary of Benefits Rules
In order to address the details of the embattled health reform law, the U.S. Department of Labor has released a new FAQ regarding the requirement of plan sponsors to provide beneficiaries with a Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC). The update clarifies several key points: • Plan sponsors are allowed to disperse SBCs electronically to plan participants when they enroll or renew online. An...
Read More
Corporate Recruiting is Changing
The rise of social media, globalization, and the never ending technological revolution are three highly disruptive forces that are reshaping the world, society and business even as we speak. While we fascinate ourselves with the latest technological release to hit the market, you can be sure the next big transformation is being quietly incubated in Silicon Valley, just awaiting to explode onto...
Read More
Mind the Gap
You see that sign all over the place in the London Metro (or tube). It's even shouted over the loudspeaker. Similarly, when recruiters, hiring managers and HR professionals see a large gap on a resume, they know to proceed with caution, carefully stepping over that pesky open space. And while some jobseekers know this and it's practically a mantra at Recruiter U, it's become an even bigger issue...
Read More
New Trends in the Executive Employment Marketplace
ExecuNet, a well known private membership service that focuses on connecting executive leaders and developing executive recruiter relationships, has issued new research pertaining to executive job trends. ExecuNet's 2012 Report on Executive Job Market Intelligence has revealed that executive recruiters are the most optimistic that they have been in five years. Surveying over 5,700 business...
Read More
Is an Employer Pushing your Social Boundaries Online? Push Back!
Quick - what would you do when you get home from a successful job interview only to find you've been friended by the hiring manager on Facebook? In an ideal world, this scenario would never arise, but in reality this situation is occurring at an accelerating pace and can be a tough issue to address with any sort of grace. And instead of responding with a feeling of flattery over the immediate...
Read More
The Real Reason Why We Need Recruiters
It must seem pointless or comical to ask, "Why do we need recruiters?" Ask any recruiter and, after the laughing stops, you'll hear all the reasons you—or at least that recruiter—could possibly imagine. Yet, even though the list of reasons will be compelling, anyone who is the stubbornly curious type will still want to know the reason, the main reason and the real "prime...
Read More
APTMetrics Introduces New Assessment Suite for Executive and Manager Evaluations
APTMetrics has recently announced LeadIN Leadership Assessment Suite, the company's web-based software suite for executive assessment and diversity measurement. The suite provides for creating evaluation tools for measuring an employee potential, readiness and fit for leadership roles. Additionally, tools can help diagnose leadership gaps so that problem areas may be isolated and developed for...
Read More
Job Disillusionment: What NOT to Expect from your Job
Be it your first job out of college, your first after an extended period of unemployment, or your first position in a new career, chances are you don't have a full idea of what to expect from the experience. There are always necessary adjustments that must be made to adapt to the new surroundings. Despite the unfamiliar territory, many employees may still hold unreasonable expectations about...
Read More
Going Mobile
Mobile Recruiting, will it work? Can it work? Is there a market there? Depending on who you talk to, mobile is either the next best thing to hit talent acquisition or a silly fad that can't really affect how we recruit. The smart money may lay with what jobseekers are doing and saying. A 2011 survey by PotentialPark showed that 19% of jobseekers have used their mobile phone for career...
Read More
Compensation Study Shows Moderate CEO Salary Increases
A Wall Street Journal / Hay Group Study has revealed that public companies gave modest CEO pay raises in 2011 although profitability remained strong. In 2010, CEOs saw pay increases of 11 percent but direct compensation grew just 2.8 percent in 2011. For the year, base salaries rose by 1.5 percent while annual incentives remained flat. Long-term incentives continued the growth begun in 2010...
Read More
New Social Recruiting Platform Aims at High Tech
Headhuntable.com has announced its first social recruiting platform aimed at tech startups and established organizations alike. The core of the platform, simply named Headhuntable, is a social network designed for engineers and developers who compete against each other for rank in order to receive access to top employment opportunities. By having job seeking developers recommend each other and...
Read More
ADP Releases New Talent Management Solution with Integrated Learning Management
ADP has announced a new end-to-end platform to aid organizations in the recruitment, professional development, and retaining of talent without a drop in overall performance. Designed to allow the integration of talent acquisition, compensation, performance management, succession, and learning process into one solution, the platform leverages learning management tools, learning content, and an...
Read More
Mobile Workforce Management goes Social
ETAdirect SmartCollaboration from TOA Technologies is a context-aware communications platform for the next wave of socially-connected service enterprises. SmartCollaboration works to automatically connect people based on information such as location and contextual needs. The suite allows users to bypass traditional means of locating resources by automatically identifying and connecting workers...
Read More
SmartJobBoard Version 4.0 Offers Design Improvements and Core Optimization
SmartJobBoard, a leading software platform for developing job board websites, has undergone its most recent renovation with the release of version 4.0, offering an upgraded billing system, enhanced design features, and optimization of core processes. The new billing system, now called "Products," offers a flexible and easy-to-use tool for creating commercial models for each job board. Added...
Read More
UpMo Adds to its Social Talent Engine Platform with Talent Marketplace
Social talent provider UpMo has announced Talent Marketplace, a talent acquisition tool for recruitment collaboration and corporate role filling with internal talent. Talent Marketplace is an addition to the company's Social Talent Engine and works to match existing talent with open jobs within an organization. Talent Marketplace's search algorithms also integrate social feedback and...
Read More
Education Employment Growth Continues to Outperform
While the gap is beginning to narrow, the number of higher education jobs continued to outpace the overall national job growth rate in Q1 2012, says a new report from HigherEdJobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that jobs in the sector grew 1.8 percent during the quarter, 0.3 percent higher than the overall jobs growth rate. The pace has moderated, however, as in Q1 2011 higher-ed jobs...
Read More
HireRight Adds Executive Screening Service
On-demand employment screening solutions provider HireRight has announced its HireRight Executive Biography Verification program to help organizations vet executive biographies for accuracy in regards to education, employment, and other added credentials. In an internal survey, HireRight found that about one-third of its applicants provided inaccurate depictions of their education and employment...
Read More
New Website Demystifies Insurance Jargon
As the insurance landscape grows more complex and more people look to better understand their health insurance coverages and benefits, the potential to be confused or misinformed increases. Benefits provider Unum has responded with a new website designed to give real-world explanations to benefits questions that may arise at any stage of life. The site, GetBenefitSmart.com, provides information...
Read More
Recruiting the Old Fashioned Way
With the growth and proliferation of on-line jobs boards, social recruitment channels and now mobile recruitment, you could be forgiven for thinking that the traditional channels of recruitment, such as college recruiting, job fairs, newspaper ads, were all but dead. And, of course you'd be correct in this assumption as, according to the CareerXroads Source of Hire Study, last year Careers...
Read More
Avoid the Small Mistakes of Job Search
While it is quite common knowledge that first impressions are the most important (especially during a job hunt) many applicants fail to understand that the most obvious trip-ups in this regard are the small mistakes made in an application or interview. And while many of the following small steps can be considered "obvious," more applicants make at least one of these mistakes than...
Read More
Should Mensa Matter?
Suppose you aren't a job applicant who is merely rather intelligent—a very likely prospect these days, given what is called the "Flynn Effect", a well-documented historically very recent global increase in average IQ from 100 to 115. Instead, let's suppose you are very, very intelligent. So smart that you've mentioned your Mensa membership in your resume. Was that, in fact, such a...
Read More
Recruiting with Video
Figures from Comscore show that in June last year 178 million Americans watched online video for an average of 16.8 hours per viewer. With over half of America viewing video content for at least half an hour a day, video is fast becoming the norm, with Internet audiences rapidly becoming expectant of video engagement on any site that they visit, whether consumer, entertainment or employer...
Read More
New Mobile App Enhances LinkedIn Networking Experience
Start-up developer Here On Biz has released its new app that integrates chat and location awareness to LinkedIn through any iDevice. The program allows traveling professionals to locate other Here On Biz users around them and engage in online conversations that may lead to real-world meetups. "Some apps are great at helping people locate their Facebook friends or romantic interests nearby, but...
Read More
New App to Automate and Simplify the Job Application Process
While most employers still accept paper employment applications despite preference for paperless apps, the centralized candidate analysis and automation of the application process offered by paperless systems makes the hiring process simpler on both the candidate and management ends. Efficient Forms, LLC's Efficient Employment Application is a web-accessible system based in the same onboarding...
Read More
ISO Officially Launches New Business Continuity Management System Standard
The International Standards Organization (ISO) has launched ISO 22301, the new international standard for business continuity management, entitled "Societal Security – Business Continuity Management Systems – Requirements." The standards create a formal set of requirements for business to undertake in the event of a disruption such as a major disaster. The new standard will replace the...
Read More
Steps to Finding Your Passion
It is difficult to focus on finding your passion while you are trying to focus on paying the rent, car payment, car insurance, etc. However, it is important for people not to just show up to a job everyday with no passion or remain in a career that seems to go nowhere. Everyone was created with a specific purpose; however, it is up to each individual to find and fulfill that purpose. In...
Read More
Why is Nobody Talking about the "Wage Motive"? — Attempted Explanations
Asked what the driver of our largely capitalist economy is, most entrepreneurs, shareholders and CEOs will insist it is "the profit motive". But, even though wages and salaries are, by definition and in practice, also essential economic motivators, virtually no one will mention "the wage motive" or "salary motive" (although I did, in Part I of this analysis, " Where is Henry...
Read More
Companies Expect to Spend more on Social Media in 2012
GM pulling their Facebook ads may not indicate any sort of trend. A recent survey by The Creative Group (a specialized creative, advertising, and marketing recruiting firm) has discovered that a majority of businesses may be willing to increase marketing investment in social media (particularly Facebook) in order to form a more positive corporate image and reputation. The survey found that 53...
Read More
LPL Financial Releases New Retirement Planning Platform
LPL Financial has recently announced a new support platform for retirement plan advisors. The platform, entitled The Rollover Results Program, and its key feature, the Retirement Results Desk, are designed to educate participants separating from their employer about rollover options while giving retirement plan advisors the tools to grow their businesses by serving those employees separating from...
Read More
Weird Resignation Excuses on the Rise
While most anyone will agree that a stronger economy is in the best interest for everyone, the climate may also bring out behavior not typically observed in more financially risky periods. If employees feel its ok to quit, it's probably a good sign. However, managers often have to deal with some oddities. For example, consider the perplexing and weird excuses offered when quitting a job as found...
Read More
Study Lays Out the Top Business Practices for Managing Technical Talent
Research and benchmarking firm APQC has released its newest study "Technical Management: Sourcing, Developing, and Retaining Technical Talent," to identify those best practices used by recognized leaders in recruiting and retaining scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) talent. An earlier APQC study revealed that 80 percent of employers find it difficult to very...
Read More
Job Alert Tool Tips
In the current economy, it is no secret that job seekers are looking for ways to stay on top of any and all new opportunities that may arise. However, keeping abreast of the recent developments of all of the companies you are pursuing can be difficult, especially considering the amount of restructuring that has been done since the recession began. While there are any number of ways in which...
Read More
