"The Secret" and Its "Law of Attraction": Costing You Job Applicants?
SOME LAWS OF ATTRACTION/Image: Michael Moffa Is it possible that a hugely popular 2007 "New Age" inspirational film is costing you job applicants in 2011? If stories I have heard from more than one unemployed job-hunter are any indication, there are job seekers out there who seriously believe that "manifesting" (attempting to get something by imagining getting it) and the "law...
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Five Signs your Candidate is Leaving You
"It's not you, it's me." Everything seemed like it was going great. Your star candidate was head-over-heels for the new job opportunity. They talked with you about their long term career goals and you got to hear about their kids' basketball games and ballet recitals. The stars were aligned and there was recruitment romance in the air. But then... Somewhere, somehow, the relationship...
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Candidate Quality versus Quantity: Which Is Really Better
Chances are that if you've been in the recruiting business for more than a few months, you've run into that age old question that plagues recruiters: Should you strive for quality or quantity? Certainly there is an easy answer to this question...but easy doesn't necessarily mean realistic. In a perfect world, with perfect candidates behind every proverbial bush, quality candidates in...
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Over 200 Jobless After Newspaper Scandal
For 168 years, Great Britain's best selling newspaper had captured the hearts and minds of its dedicated following. But as of yesterday, 7.5 million readers will have to find a different source for their daily fix. The last issue of "News of the World," ran Sunday. It was recently discovered that News of the World employees were engaging in a practice known as, "phone hacking" - or tapping...
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The Employee Benefits Survey Results Are In
Ever wonder which retirement plans employees are using the most? The graph below outlines the most popular investment choices by employees during the years 2003, 2005 and 2009. "Diversified investments was the most popular investment choice in 2009, with an 81 percent participation rate for employee contributions, followed by common stock funds at 63 percent," says the Bureau of Labor...
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June Employment Numbers Drop
Only 18,000 jobs were added last month - the weakest increase in nine months, The U.S. Labor Department reported. Analysts had expected much higher numbers. Wall street took a tumble today as a result of the poor forecast. The Dow, Nasdaq and SP all dropped more than 1 percent. In the meantime, the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent. "Our nation's labor market experienced slower...
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Employer Branding
Recruiting Techniques: Employment Branding Recruiting and marketing have a lot in common because recruiters have to market an employer's positions to applicants and sell an employer to candidates. Part of a marketing-based recruiting strategy is employer branding, or positioning the employer as the best place for candidates to work. Marketing professionals talk a lot about branding, what a...
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Staffing Manager
What is a Staffing Manager? Staffing managers are the human resources professionals responsible for every aspect of a company's staffing needs, including recruiting, training, retaining and sometimes firing employees. Staffing managers must be recruiters when they find qualified applicants, but they must also be human resource managers because they handle hiring and employee retention. In...
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EmployeeScreenIQ and ERC Dataplus Team Up
ERC Dataplus and EmployeeScreenIQ just announced in a recent press release they will be working together to deliver a high-quality combination service that will tackle talent acquisition as well as background screening. "As we talk to clients across the country, their top priorities are efficiency and value," says Nick Fishman, co-founder and executive vice president of EmployeeScreenIQ....
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Employee Turnover
What Recruiters Need to Know About Employee Turnover Employee turnover is the term applied to the cycle of hiring and firing that happens within companies. A company is said to have high employee turnover rates or "employee churn" when their employee routinely leave or are fired, necessitating the hiring of more people to fill open positions. When some employees leave and new hires take their...
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3 Occupation Groups Hit Hardest by Mass Layoffs
Here's a quick look back at the past. A study of mass layoffs from 1999 to 2008 showed, "the largest number of jobs lost after a layoff were in occupations that involved clerical or nonanalytical labor—including occupational groups such as production (?119,373), office and administrative support (?72,532), and transportation and material moving (?40,043)," the Bureau of Labor Statistics...
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eQuest and OptiJob Form Partnership
eQuest and OptiJob announced an exclusive partnership today, one which allows companies more visibility as they search for prospective candidates. The special service, called MIX - brings together a vast network of participating social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Viadeo and XING - as well as other unannounced or emerging social networks. "Both organizations are committed...
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Recruiter Software
Professional Function and Designation When looking for a new recruiting software system for your team of recruiters, the first step is to identify the core function that you wish to serve. Are you looking for a sales system for agency recruiters, a corporate applicant tracking system, or an end-to-end managed solution that encompasses everything from sourcing to onboarding and performance...
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HR Newsletter
Because Human Resources encompasses so many rapidly changing fields (employment law, technology, workforce trends, recruiting, benefits, etc...), it can be difficult to keep up with the profession. However, HR professionals that take an active interest in staying on top of the latest developments and trends can enjoy a very strong career path. HR newsletters and publications are abundant. In...
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Users Flock to Twitter Town Hall
President Obama live tweeted during the first ever "Twitter Town Hall," hosted by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. During the broadcast, users were asked to tweet the President their most pressing questions, limiting the range of discussion to focus on the economy and jobs. According to TwitSprout, more than 70,000 tweets were sent. Barack Obama gets bragging rights as, "the first president...
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5 Red Flags to Avoid on Your Resume
How important is your resume? Some say VERY important. Others aren't so sure. Your resume may not make or break you, but it will get you through the door and in front of a hiring manager. But before that can even happen, there's a cold-hearted automated gatekeeper lurking out of sight who holds all the keys. This is a cautionary tale... Of Robots and Resumes Too dramatic? Every...
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Five Trends in Project Management Jobs
Project Management as a professional career has certainly matured. While once delegated to a function within other jobs, project management is now a distinct career itself. The profession owes a lot to PMI, the professional certification and member organization that formalized a lot of the disciplines of successful project management. The growth of standards and certifications fueled the...
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Labor Cost
Labor cost is the overall costs to a company associated with one employee, including wages, benefits, taxes and insurance. Recruiters and human resources managers have to take labor costs into account in every aspect of their jobs. How much the department or hiring manager can pay for an employee will inform everything from the job description, the job title, the way the job is marketed to...
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Weekly Wages on the Rise
It's good to be big, right? All of the 10 largest U.S. counties have shown an increase in average weekly wages over the past year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. But those numbers can be misleading. Often times an average wage increase mean that lower-paying positions have been eliminated, leaving higher-paying positions behind to scale-up the new average. So have things gotten better?...
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Raging Fans: Dealing with Difficult Recruiting Clients
Everyone has had that dreadful call...you know the one. The one with a client calling you irate that they haven't received enough perfect candidates. Or maybe the call from an angry client who discovered (after the 3rd interview no less) that the candidate isn't the one for them. Oh how you've wasted their precious time. Or my personal favorite; the angry client who insists that your...
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KellyOCG Leaders Take Action
In response to the increased demand for outsourcing over the last few years, 25 top leaders from Kelly Outsourcing and Consulting Group will participate in a Certified Outsourcing Professional (COP) Master Course. The course, offered by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, should provide new insights and help Kelly leaders take on the challenges of a booming...
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Doing Well vs. Doing Good
"The young man from tough streets of Compton, CA has set a great example after winning $40,000 in a free-throw shooting contest at his former high school. Well done, Allen Guei. Well done."—Editorial comment at theblaze.com after Guei, an Ivory Coast immigrant and high school basketball player, who had already won a full college scholarship, gave all of his winnings to seven other...
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Deferred Compensation
Deferred Compensation refers to payment to an employee that allows the employee to defer income to the future. Usually set up for tax purposes, many large employers have such programs as a benefit to their senior executives and highly paid employees. Most plans for deferred income are administrated by a third party financial firm, much like a 401K plan. Employees participating in the programs...
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Agency Recruiters: Things to Consider Before You Jump
Recruiting or Headhunting. Whatever you call it, it's a big, booming business with the possibility of an even bigger payday. And in that wide world of recruiting, there are plenty of opportunities, a thousand different pay structures and a lot of competitors. But while we're experts in other peoples' careers, choosing a new path can be as daunting for us as it is for anyone. If...
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Applicants
Generally speaking, when we refer to applicants, it means people who apply to job postings at companies or recruitment agencies. It is the initial step in the recruitment process and the term does not confer any status or level of qualification. You might hear either a corporate recruiter or agency recruiter say, "We received 56 applicants to our job post, but none were qualified. So we have no...
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Facebook Fights Back
Looks like it's getting serious. The Facebook vs. Google battle is heating up as the Mark Zuckerberg giant blocks a popular Google Chrome extension that allows for easy contact info exporting. The "Facebook Friend Exporter," was a tool that enabled users to gather their friends info into a file or directly into their Gmail account. It seems Facebook is attempting to hinder (or...
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Unemployment Rates Improve
Jobs are slowly coming back it seems. U.S. metropolitan unemployment rates were lower this May, as compared to a year earlier, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to their data, 274 of the 372 areas reported lower figures. When compared against the U.S. unemployment rate of 8.7%, 214 areas experienced improved employment. Overall, Bismarck, North Dakota, has the lowest...
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JobSpeek Answers Call for Mobile Recruiting
The JobSpeek App has an innovative solution for posting jobs on the go. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad 2, you can download the JobSpeek mobile recruiting app for free and start posting jobs with pictures and audio to all the major job search engines. "Recruiters can now create a compelling job ad that differentiates their company and syndicates the job in one click", JobSpeek...
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Job Titles
Job titles are bogus. There, we've said it. What is a "Senior Software Engineer" anyway? It tells you nothing. If you're a candidate, you can't tell anything from that job title. As a recruiter, you can't count on the title to tell you anything. If job descriptions were "real," it might be better. But they aren't. Job descriptions are usually collected from stock job posts from HR or...
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Referrals
The Power of Referrals Recruiters often look to their talent pools, on the Internet and within their business networks for candidates to fill a position, but referrals can also be a powerful tool in the recruiter's arsenal. An employee referral is an industry term for when a current employee supplies a candidate to a recruiter from their own network. If they are serious about their careers,...
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Improving Trade to Spur the Economy
The U.S. trade deficit is one (of many) economic bogeymen that economists and politicians point to when explaining our slow economic recovery. On Tuesday U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, on behalf of the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee (TPCC), released to Congress the 2011 National Export Strategy: Powering the National Export Initiative (NEI), as a way to deal with the trade imbalance....
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TIGER Grant Program – More Job Creation from the Dept. of Tranportation
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced yesterday that $527 million will be available for a third round of the highly successful TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) competitive grant program, which funds innovative transportation projects that will create jobs and have a significant impact on the nation, a region or a metropolitan area. "Through the...
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Recruiter Jobs
For people that like a fast-paced career, a job in recruiting can be a good career path because you are constantly on the move, learning from companies about the positions they need to fill, searching out the perfect candidates for the position and seeing your candidates through the hiring process. Recruiting can also be incredibly rewarding, as your candidate's success becomes your...
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Employment Marketing
What is Employment Marketing? The recruiting industry used to be considered just another aspect of human resources management, but things are beginning to change. Businesses and recruiters alike are beginning to recognize that recruiting has a lot in common with marketing and sales. Employment marketing is one of the newest buzzwords in the industry that captures this connection. For many...
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Qualities of the Best Recruiters
The best recruiters possess an uncanny ability to match people with careers. It's an intangible quality, and one that is hard to pinpoint. Recruiters are the human resources professionals responsible for getting the word out about great job opportunities and getting qualified candidates to fill these positions. There are many different types of recruiters out there, from those who work as part...
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Best Practices in Recruiting
Best practices refer to the leading thinking in any industry. It's a bit of a corporate buzzword - consultants typically charge lots of money to "bring a company up to speed" with the "best practices" of their industry. Recruiting is no different - best practices refer to the often simple wisdom derived by practice. However, if you are leading a recruitment department or company, it is a good...
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Lackluster Maternity Care
Although people have been fighting for a long time for better rights for working mothers, maternity care is still limited for many insured workers. New statistics from 2009 suggest that the situation can be pretty bleak even for insured women trying to bring another person into the world. Two-thirds of participants in both fee-for-service health care plans and health maintenance...
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Chicago's Best and Brightest Companies to Work For
Chicago is the next city to announce its companies most beloved by workers. The National Association for Business Resources (NABR) has announced "Chicago's 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For." Winners will be honored at a symposium and awards luncheon on Mon., Aug. 1, 2011 at the Chicago Oak Brook Marriott. What makes people value the company that they work for? The NABR...
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Pesticides and Language Barriers
In your line of work, how many languages are spoken on a daily basis? What measures are being taken to make sure that everyone can fully participate in all aspects of work? Some modifications might seem unnecessary, but others seem entirely commonsensical. Public Citizen is looking into what materials should always be in multiple languages. This consumer advocacy group is urging the...
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Time Illusions and Workplace Boredom
Boredom is a risk with any profession, especially those that are repetitive and routine—which can include all jobs, if they are viewed, reviewed and described abstractly enough or in very limited detail, even the job of being a U.S. senator, a jet fighter pilot, mom, astronaut, brain surgeon, novelist, deep-sea diver or a recruiter.I've known Cessna pilots who concisely expressed their...
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PeopleAnswers Digs Deeper
PeopleAnswers has long had the goal of helping companies hire people who are going to want to stick around for awhile. This company announced several new improvements to its talent assessment software suite. Now PeopleAnsers offers new business intelligence capabilities, behavioral onboarding tools and a flexible interview guide. They expect that these tools will help recruiters streamline...
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Sun Brings Together Real Estate Brokers and Scientists
"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining," said former President John F. Kennedy. Similarly, while there are still some fossil fuels left, it might be the right time to really develop our country's access to renewable energy. Recruiters can expect a growing need for more workers in the solar power industry as well as in other industries devoted to alternative energy. Recent...
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New Jobs, Higher Standard in Colorado
Things are looking up in Colorado. More people are finding work, including in fields that continue to slump in much of the country. Just from April to May, employers in Colorado added 4,200 jobs. The state government was responsible for 900 of them. Unfortunately, workers in Colorado are working more hours and getting paid less. Their average week increased from 34.8 to 35.1 hours of...
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Competition is King
We were out the other night at Richter's, oldest bar in New Haven. Or at least, Richter's WAS the oldest bar in New Haven until last weekend, when it finally turned those taps on for the last time. Yeah, Richter's is closed The current owner cited financial troubles; the recession, not enough customers, increasing regulation. Too bad really. Good food, good people, great...
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Healthy Waterways and Job Growth
American cities were largely built on the livelihood of its waterways. Whether it was to use the force of a river to create mills or to export goods in a port, the economy of a city depended on the health of its waterways. This dependence has been de-emphasized over the years, but the EPA is joining forces with other agencies to bring back the notion that cities will thrive alongside healthy...
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Affirmative Action Program Extends to Contractual Workers
Affirmative Action Program continues to evolve in its practice in the United States. Now federal supply and service contractors can utilize a new process to receive the full support of the Federal Contract Compliance Programs. This update to Affirmative Action establishes that any company with 50 or more employees and a federal contract of $50,000 or more is required to develop a written...
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Who Seeks Union Representation in Modern Corporations
While many people gratefully sing the praises of their union representatives and organizers for ensuring their benefits and job security, other people are trying to figure out how to thwart the creation of new unions. In a survey by the organization Modern Survey, the study attempted to figure out what causes some workers to seek unionization. The likes of Joe Hill and Pete Seeger have been...
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Who is Working from Home?
Free range access to the refrigerator and the lack of a dress code are often celebrated by people who work at home. Some of the benefits are more vague but even more important. One non-profit director reported that he enjoys "the free-thinking environment" that working at home ensures. He finds that he is able to think better away from the institutional setting of an office. He also noted...
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