MRINetwork Recruiters Report both Confidence and Caution about Current Job Market
Large global recruiting organization MRINetwork recently surveyed its recruiters for the purposes of determining the hiring condition among clients, changes to the hiring process, and the main drivers behind job openings, among others. Out of the 163 recruiters responding to the survey, 56 percent say the current talent market is candidate-driven and 44 percent believe it is employer driven. The...
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Productivity and Labor Costs in Fourth Quarter 2011 (Revised)
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that productivity within the nonfarm business sector increased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent during the final four months of 2011. The acceleration is a result of a 3.7 percent increase in output coupled with a 2.7 percent increase in number of hours worked. Productivity, output, and hours worked rose 0.3 percent, 2.3 percent, and 1.9 percent over...
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Jobookit Technologies Introduces Largest HR-focused Semantic Engine
Out of Tel Aviv, entrepreneur Arik Filstein has unveiled his new semantic search engine for employment addressing keyword-search failure during the job-matching process. Filstein notes, "In many cases the employer cannot find a talent or the talent can't find an employer. The reason is simply due to the fact that the match between employers and talents in most cases was initiated by keywords or...
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Companies in Talent Management Survey Report They are Focused on Learning Programs
In a recent online survey, talent-optimization company Global Novations found that talent management investment continues to shrink, on average, but pushes for leadership training, self-paced, and blended learning were all up over instructor-led learning and more modern 3D (immersive) methods. A growing awareness was also noted in the importance of managing skills in a multi-generational...
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Protiviti Sheds Light on Data Management Strengths and Weaknesses
Consulting firm Protiviti has released its report entitled The Current State of IT Security and Privacy Policies and Practices, surveying over 100 IT professionals on how their organizations manage sensitive data in regards to customer privacy and legal compliance. The results indicate that while companies are becoming more adept at accumulating large amounts of data, they are less astute at...
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Employee Referrals: A Human Process
Referrals, referrals. Listen to some and they'll tell you they're the best source of hire since sliced bread (you know, if anyone used bread to recruit...maybe Panera...) others will scoff at the bamboo forest of platforms that have sprung up seemingly out of nowhere, all trying to capitalize on employee referrals as a process or practice. Read the Wikipedia definition of employee...
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HR Professionals Report Healthcare Costs Top Concerns for 2012
Consulting firm Deloitte and the International Society of Certified Employee Benefit Specialists, jointly administering the Top Five Total Rewards Survey, have reported that 25 percent of respondents were concerned with acquiring and retaining qualified talent, a 9 percent increase over last year's survey. This shortage of talent amidst high national unemployment is especially pronounced within...
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February Consumer Price Index increases as Gas Prices Spike
As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased by 0.2 percent for the month of February 2012. Accounting for over 80 percent of the of the rise, gasoline advanced sharply leading to a 3.2 percent increase in energy index, more than offsetting a decline in natural gas. The food index remained the same over the month. The...
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The Benefits USA 2011/2012 Survey Reports Companies Struggling To Afford Retiree Health Benefits
Companies are finding it more difficult to provide health benefits for retirees in the struggling economy. The Benefits USA survey reports that 21.9 percent of companies provide retirees with the option of obtaining health coverage, which is slightly lower than the 22.9 percent reported in 2006. In order for retirees to be eligible for health benefits, they are required to work an average of...
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Career Directors International Offers Free 2012 Teleclasses For Self-Employed Resume Writers and Career Coaches
Career Directors International (CDI) is offering free member teleclasses for self-employed resume writers and career coaches throughout 2012. CDI's Board of Advisors and Education Committee has decided to offer three free member teleclasses to help professionals grow and boost their productivity: Tactical Biz-Tech Buzz (TBTB), Next Practices (NP), and Honing Your Craft (HUC). Tactical Biz...
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Proforma Screening Solutions Offers Free Matrix Tool To Allow Side-By-Side Comparisons Of Screening Service Vendors
A free tool that allows a side by side comparison of different background screening companies is available from Proforma Screening Solutions. Performa specializes in recruitment, employment background checks, and employee engagement solutions in the U.S. Available in both Word and PDF formants, the tool has selection criteria for eight categories that are important for selecting vendors. Two...
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The Global Leadership Forecast Reports Slow Leadership Progress In Innovation
According to the sixth edition of the Global Leadership Forecast, leaders are not as prepared as they'd like to be for future innovation. The reasons cited are lack of quality leadership practices and less emphasis on innovation by most companies. The latest Global Leadership Forecast conducted by Development Dimensions International (DDI) surveyed 1,897 HR professionals and at least 12,000...
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ACI Specialty Benefit's Corporate Wellness Program Expands
ACI Specialty Benefits has expanded and is now using innovative, cutting-edge user tools to be better accessible, increase engagement, and reduce costs. The new CORE wellness program is based on a personalized program for each employee depending on individual needs and desires. Various initiatives are used and programs are customizable for maximum results. Erin Krehbiel, ACI Senior Vice...
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Limits on How Fast We Have to Work: The Company's Space, So the Company's Pace?
In most Western jurisdictions and jobs, there are legislated limits on how long an employee can be made to work per day, week, month or year. Even where the hours are long, mandated work breaks are the rule rather than the exception. But how about limits on work-rate, on how fast employees have to work? Do the property rights that are associated with company ownership of the workspace allow...
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Y Generation
Generation Y (called Gen Y or the Millennial Generation) refers to the group of people that were born in the mid 1970s to the early or mid 1990s. Their parents generally belonged to the "Baby Boomers." Because of the rapid growth of the baby boomers, there was a burst of births in the 1980s, which were then called the "Echo Boomers". It is these "Echo Boomers" that make up the largest contingent...
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XML
XML refers to Extensible Markup Language and is a language and system that defines rules for document encoding and translation into machine readable formats. The XML standard attempts to create a simple, text formatted language that is readable by people, yet provides context to software programs. For example, in finance, XML is used in the filings of financial documents and is called...
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Zero Based Bonus
When designing compensation programs that include special bonuses, pay-for-performance, and other variable pay factors, sometimes a company will wish to exclude a particular set of employees from a compensation plan feature. A zero based bonus system categorizes a particular group of employees as being ineligible for a certain set of bonuses or other compensation. For example, there may be...
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Upward Mobility
In economic terms, upward mobility is the rate that individuals can change their economic status or class. When there is a high rate of upward mobility, it is in general a sign of a healthy and free society. In one particularly striking example of class mobility, George Taylor came to the United States as an indentured servant in 1736. He rose from indentured servitude to become a wealthy man...
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Personality Test
Personality testing is often used as part of pre-employment testing and assessments. They are used to help ascertain an applicant's type of personality. These tests provide valuable and often detailed information about aptitude, values, skills, interests, emotional management, and extroversion. The most distinguished personality test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which is used by...
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Negligent Hiring
Negligent hiring is a legal or formal complaint or claim made by an employee against an employer. The claim involves the situation when an employer hires someone who then mistreats other employees or in some way causes a severe disruption in the workplace. To prove a claim like this, the employee must show that an employer had specific knowledge that the employee would behave in a certain...
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Merit Pay
Merit pay refers to a corporate system for employee compensation that focuses on individual performance in order to determine pay levels and compensation. Generally, pay based on employee merit and performance is opposed to a system based on tenure with the company. Companies that use tenure based compensation reward employees based on their time with the company, combined of course with their...
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Knowledge Mapping
Knowledge mapping is usually performed by an HR Generalist or employee development/learning management specialist. Companies undergo the process in order to create an orderly map of the knowledge inside the organization that is required to meet the objectives and goals of the company. A knowledge map describes the intellectual human capital and competencies of departments and employees. It may...
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Incentive Pay
The normal compensation and benefits package that an employee receives should align with market demand for that role, combined with the employee's performance, seniority, and tenure with the company. In special cases, an employee is called upon to perform additional work in order to meet the demands of business operations. This work may include additional hours or highly complex or taxing...
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Workplace Emotion Management: Men Are Better at It?
"Both (men and women surveyed) also tend to agree that men are more effective at speaking up at meetings and managing their emotions at work."—Bain Company (Australia) brief, "What Stops Women from Reaching the Top? Confronting the Tough Issues", November 2011 "What a weird thing to pluck out of that report and focus on in the headline."—Brisbane Times reader comment on...
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Rise of the New Metrics
You're sitting in a darkened theater. The curtain rises. You hear the announcer's voice: Once, time to hire was good enough. It is, no longer. Welcome, to the RISE of the New Recruiting Metrics. Okay, okay, only if you're sitting in the nerdiest theater ever. but the truth is, there is a shift happening on the metrics scene, as it were. As recruiting technology gets ever more sophisticated...
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Late Adopters: When it Pays to be Old School
It's not easy being a cutting edge recruiter these days. Even five years ago, you could have a solid reputation on LinkedIn some rudimentary knowledge of Twitter and have a child on Facebook and it made you considerably ahead of the social recruiting curve. These days if you're not using YouTube, Pinterest whilst simultaneously updating your SaaS career site, keeping track of your social ROI...
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New FMLA Forms Arrive
The end of 2011 saw the expiration of the Department of Labor's Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) forms and the new models have finally arrived, the employers may continue to use the older forms until they receive the updated version. The new forms have been approved by the Office of Management and Budget through February 28, 2015; a significant change from the previous expiration date and the...
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What CEOs Really Think about HR
Five interviews given by columnist Meredith Soleau to CEOs of various sized companies reveal a telling (and painful) trend among top-ranking corporate officers in regards to their opinions about the performance and functions of their HR departments: they ain't happy with them. Highlights of the interviews include several criticisms about priorities, responsiveness, and capabilities of HR...
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Most Companies Blame Employees for Data Protection Errors
The report "The Human Factor in Data Protection" has indicated that the majority of organizations fault malicious or negligent employees for causing the majority of data breaches. Nearly 80 percent of surveyed executives believe that the behaviors of employees have accounted for at least one breach in the prior two-year period. The top reported causes for the intentional or unintentional...
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Training and Development App MTM Dashboard Hits iPad
KnowledgeAdvisors, a leading provider of training and development solutions, has announced the release of its new metrics-sharing tool MTM Dashboard for professionals who seek to exchange real-time visuals and learning metrics and improve the effectiveness of learning. Integrating and extending the reports from KnowledgeAdvisor's marquee Metrics That Matter learning measurements suite, MTM...
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Recruiting in the Age of Big Data: A Guide for Recruiters
Big Data is hiring, and three of the fastest growing areas of expertise and job growth are in marketing (data-analytics), finance (quant or quantitative finance) and healthcare (bio-informatics). Few understand what "Big Data" means - much less what it hopes to accomplish. Hiring for Big Data If you what to know what these terms mean to employers, and how they're accomplished, a few...
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Robert Half International Reports Executives are Optimistic
Though hiring in professional fields should continue to increase during the second quarter of 2012, it is expected to do so at a much slower pace, states the Robert Half Professional Employment Report. Of those executives interviewed for the report, a net 2 percent plan to hire full-time staff during the period of May through July 2012. This statistic is down from 10 percent during the first...
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Employees More Concerned about Social Media Usage then they were Two Years Ago
A recent research survey by Pew Internet has found that users are becoming more discerning about information shared on social media networks and on the people whom they "friend" on such websites. The survey found that 63 percent of social media users have recently deleted people from their friends list; an increase of 7 percent over 2009. An additional 44 percent of users have deleted...
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Is Being a Good Employee Out of Style?
Remember your first real job? The one of which you were proud? The career defining moment when you knew you wanted to be....whatever it is you are? I do. I remember the first time a manager gave me praise, my first killer performance review and the first time I nailed a project right on the nose. Being a great employee is not as valued as it once was. As unemployment wobbles back to pre-2008...
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Can We Do Better Than 'Full Employment'?
"Full employment" sounds great and like something that is sure to benefit everyone. But suppose that, in practice and in general, despite an economy's achieving full employment in some sense, somebody is going to suffer. How can that be? How can full employment be achieved at somebody's expense? Here's how. Official and Commonsense Concepts of "Full Employment" To see how,...
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WSJ Shares Hiring Trends to Help Ease the Burden of Resume Oversaturation
Rarely in the nation's history have so many people been looking for work. One effect of this heightened job interest is an "embarrassment of riches" for hiring managers who finding they have too little time to review every resume that reaches them. Aiding this upward trend in resume submissions are online job boards that make applying for positions simple, even if an applicant is not...
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Nexonia Releases Android App for Expense Reports
Nexonia Inc. has just released its subscription-based expense management solution for Android devices. Entitled Nexonia Expense Reports for Android, the program allows users to track expenses, visually record receipts, and submit expenses right from their Android device. All reports, receipts, and modifications created with the app can then be synchronized with Nexonia's web-based expense...
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Unemployment Insurance Claims for Week Ending 2-25-12
As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, initial unemployment insurance claims under all state programs for the week ending February 25 numbered 331,906, which is a decline of 14,717 claims over the prior week and about 21,500 claims less from the comparable week in 2011. During the week ending February 18, the insured unemployment rate was 3.1 percent while the overall number of...
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New HCM Trends of 2012
Aberdeen Research Group's most recent Human Capital Management Trends 2012 report, conducted during the final two months of 2011, examines best-in-class talent management strategies and the technologies used to deploy them in practice. The study works to show common characteristics among best-in-class companies and their attempts at creating greater organizational efficiency through the use of...
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2011 Regional and State Unemployment Annual Average Summary
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the annual average unemployment rates fell in 48 states and increased the final 2 and DC. The unemployment rate for the year was 8.9 percent, a decline of 0.7 percent over the year. All four of the major national regions recorded significant unemployment rate decreases. The region reporting the highest decrease in its jobless rate was the Midwest,...
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TimeMD Partnerships Lead to GPS-based Time Tracking Options
TimeMD, provider of web-based time and labor tracking solutions, has announced a newly available GPS-based time-tracking solution distributed through partnerships with the Professional Employer Organization and other payroll companies. With the app, clients gain the ability to pinpoint a precise location and time a time punch was performed. Of particular interest to organizations with a...
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Flex Hour Jobs Announces New Pricing Plans for Job Posts for Small Businesses
Flex Hour Jobs has developed a new pricing structure for small businesses looking for telecommuting and flex-plan employees. The site creates the opportunity for job-seekers unable to relocate or work a traditional work schedule to find jobs that fit their lives. The site, flexhourjobs.com grants job-seekers free access to job postings. Jobs are prescreened for legitimacy and may be seasonal,...
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Employee Morale and the Positive Habits that Create More Productive and Engaged Workers
Harvard Business School research Shawn Achor recently discussed research involving the participation of employees in activities he calls "positive habits." The activities included: writing down a list of three things the employee felt grateful for; sharing a positive message with a member of the employee's social circle; meditating for two minutes, performing light exercise for 10 minutes...
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PeopleMatter Develops Mobile-Scheduling App Focused on Service Industries
Talent management solutions provider PeopleMatter, serving hourly workforces within the service sector, has released its new smartphone-driven labor management app, aptly call SCHEDULE, to do away with the paper aspect of a traditional scheduling system. SCHEDULE provides the tools to manage shifts and remain connected with a service organization's workforce. With the app, shift managers are...
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New Job Search Site Aims to Connect Smart People with Smart Jobs
Newly founded jobs site HireSmartz.com presents another way to connect interested people with open positions. As a new web portal for job searches, HireSmartz.com offers free job search features for job hunters and low-cost job postings for employers of any size. The idea is to fill positions with qualified candidates that companies report to be hard to find; even while skilled applicants...
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Talent Technology Corporation Buys HR Integrations LLC
Talent Technology Corporation, a leading recruiting and HR technology focused firm, has acquired HR Integrations, LLC, providers of cloud-based HRNX. HRNX is integrable with all SaaS applications and enables integrated online workflows, removing the need for costly paper and fax processing. HRNX grants access to many HR services such as online assessments, background checks, and video interviews...
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Apperian's New Mobile App to Enhance Collaboration and Information Sharing
Mobile Application Management (MAM) company Apperian has announced its Epicenter "social corporate directory" app aimed at the mobile workforce in addressing the problem of keeping workers connected and sharing knowledge. The iPad app functions as a one-stop information hub sharing relevant information about everyone at an organization. Accessible information includes standard corporate data...
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Technology Media Company BizCloud Launches Job Board for Cloud-Based Job Search
BizCloud has recently launched its BizCloud Recruiting, Talent Placement and Career Job Board offering a variety of cloud-business services such as offshore development, contract to hire, and retained search placement. BizCloud's cloud-technology-centric recruitment business model consists of placement services, retained search, contingency placement of onsite and offshore temporary contract...
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