Steel, Stone, and Film Crews
Job creation usually looks to the future. However, sometimes the past has some opportunities for job creation as well. Learning from the past is not always a solitary act in which someone reads a book or meditates. Sometimes, preservation and education demand large, collective efforts. The Department of the Interior has announced the continuation of a large effort that began in 2006 to...
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Survey Reveals Shrinking Benefits for HR Workers
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey report has revealed some curious findings. The organization surveyed 600 HR professionals to determine how the economy impacted their benefits. The survey uncovered that seventy-seven percent of surveyed HR professionals said in 2011 that the economy weakened their benefits. Among the benefits that have diminished since 2007 are some...
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Consumer Safety Not a Priority in House of Representatives
It's easy to have mixed loyalties when it comes to the economy. Recruiters faced with many inquiries about job openings may want to greet every new job is a great thing. On the other hand, every company still needs to be held to just standards for safety and consumer protection. Currently, the House of Representatives is choosing to prioritize job creation and uninterrupted production over...
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Transitional Jobs Pegged as Critical for Promoting Self-Sufficiency
That hole on the resume is daunting. In hindsight, it's tempting to wish that you filled some of that time with an enriching activity-- a job or a class or an internship, but what do you do when you really feel like you need to start from scratch? Building up work experience can be challenging, especially when the competition for most jobs is so stiff. Recognizing the difficulty of...
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Corporate Voices for Working Families Celebrates its Tenth Anniversary
Aren't most families working families? What exactly are non-working families? It seems like most families have people in them who are workers or were workers until they lost their jobs. Nonetheless, people still must fight hard to get all the support they need as workers. The organization Corporate Voices for Working Families just celebrated its tenth anniversary. The organization aims...
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How to Write a Great Resume
Learning to write an effective resume is a life skill most people cannot afford to ignore. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median tenure for most professionals is about 4 years. For employees between the ages of 25 and 34, the median tenure is only 2.9 years. Since most of us will change jobs a number of times in our career, we need to become proficient at selling...
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Candidate or Wooden Duck? First Interviews and Candidate Decoys
When buying a house, most people don't pick the first one they visit. Even if that house has everything they could ever wish for, they still feel like they haven't seen everything that's "out there." The real estate agent that took those people to their dream house first just made a costly mistake. Now those buyers have to tour all the houses that match none of their criteria so that they can...
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Department of Energy Excels in R&D Magazine's Annual Competition
RD Magazine has been around since 1959, reaching out to research scientists, engineers, and technical staff members at laboratories around the world. RD Magazine aims to broaden readers' knowledge of the research and development industry and improve the quality of their work. Reading about the type of work honored by the magazine may be a way for recruiters to learn about what...
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National Grants Fund More Green Jobs
Just because you want a job that helps minimize environmental problems doesn't mean that you know how to do it. Much of the momentum to support green jobs is directed toward training people in the skills they need for some of these tasks. The Department of Labor has announced grants to six organizations that train workers how to perform in the green industry sector. Most of these...
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Losing It: Office Lessons from Hockey Riots
Perhaps the lunacy-inducing full hockey-puck moon dangling over the city like a tempting, provocative but out-of-reach piñata was to blame for the Vancouver Stanley Cup 2011 riot. Or perhaps it was some rampant, childish belief that a Canucks jersey, like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak, could conceal what the posturing arsonist posers nonetheless wanted to reveal. Fortunately for...
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Fair Labor Association Strengthens its Standards for Recruitment
Who will set the standard for what is considered fair and just? Many organizations attempt to define workers' rights, and these definitions, guidelines, and codes need to undergo occasional scrutiny to keep apace with developments in labor policy. The Fair Labor Association (FLA) began in 1999 to bring together companies, colleges and universities, and civil society organizations to improve...
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Military Base Closing? Dept. of Labor Wants to Help
Many communities depend on military bases to support the local economy. Aside from the military personnel whose hard earned dollars inevitably make their way into local business coffers, these bases hire thousands of non-military support staff. So when a base is closed or relocates, these communities can be very hard hit. Even in the best of economic times, the loss of such a significant...
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Nevada Ekes Out Some New Jobs to Topple Staggering Unemployment
Although plenty of hotels have grown accustomed to emptiness and most construction has stalled to a halt in Nevada, the state of Nevada still saw some improvement in employment last year. Out of all states, Nevada-- the state with the highest unemployment-- saw the largest jobless rate decrease. From May 2010 to May 2011, Nevada recorded the largest jobless rate decrease (?2.8 percentage...
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Trust and Delivery: Becoming a Trusted Recruitment Partner
Great clients for recruitment agencies don't just come along, ready made. It's like any great relationship...while there may be some instant chemistry and sparks right off the bat, it takes time and commitment to make it work. Working around the socks left on the bathroom floor (or the hiring managers that are eminently reasonable, yet incredibly picky) can result in either a disastrous...
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Florida Tops Nation's Job Growth in May
Last month, fifteen states reported major changes in their employment records. The four states reporting over-the-month statistically significant job gains were Florida (+28,000), Arizona and Louisiana (+10,100 each), and Wyoming (+2,200). Why are workers in this state experiencing this influx of jobs? Florida, the state with the highest job growth last month, is happy to announce that...
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Charter Schools Must Determine How to Recruit Talented Teachers
Education is often thought of as a field outside of the realm of the recruiter. But a recent report from the Center for American Progress highlights the issues challenging schools as topics in which recruiters are well-versed. In the report "Preparing for Growth: Human Capital Innovations in Charter Public Schools," the authors Christi Chadwick and Julie Kowal determine that some of the...
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Getting More vs. Getting Moral: the Struggle to Right Business Wrongs
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."—Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) Last night, a close friend and CEO of a technology corporation sent me an email link to a short video. I am not going to tell you the title of the video or describe its contents in any detail. But what I will tell you is that after viewing this widely seen 11-minute and 50-second...
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Free Press Criticizes Takeaway from FCC Report
Sometimes acknowledging a problem can be a first step to a solution. Other times, an acknowledgment with no action plan seems counterproductive. Free Press, an organization dedicated to media reform, determined that a major new report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) falls short in its objectives. The FCC's report "The Technology and Information Needs of Communities" was...
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SelectUSA Entices Businesses to Move Back to the U.S.
There's a lot of talk about job creation. Job creation sounds great. Hopefully, lots of innovative people are working on developing some new ways to get things done and improve the quality of life for everyone. That said, there are a lot of jobs that have already been envisioned and put into place but then have been escorted away from the United States. Among the plans to improve the...
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Companies Embrace Pinstripe for the Long Haul
Pinstripe, Inc. is among the leaders in recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). This company has announced that two of its clients with sizable staffing and HR needs have renewed their contracts to do business with them. Johns Manville and Rayonier have announced their readiness to commit to Pinstripe. These companies that Pinstripe represent the kind of diversity to which many recruiters...
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Screening vs. Profiling: Are You Confusing Them?
Screening and profiling are supposed to be different. Merriamwebster.com distinguishes them along these lines: Screening: examination, usually methodically, in order to separate into different groups. Profiling: the act or process of extrapolating information about a person based on known traits or tendencies, e.g., consumer profiling Description vs. Inference: Not the...
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U.S. Seeks to Empower Migrant Workers from Guatemala and Nicaragua
Often, the way people learn about their rights is through word of mouth. One tenant will tell another that they have the right to stay in their apartment. Or one coworker will help another stand up against sexual harassment. While this type of grassroots advocacy is a long-standing tradition which isn't going anywhere, there is certainly room for more clarity and visibility about the rights...
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Business School Students Courted by Videos
Just because someone does well in business school doesn't mean that they have insider information about how to find the perfect job. New technologies seek to identify top students at business schools and connect them with recruiters and good opportunities. MBA Focus is a company utilized by over 2,500 corporate recruiters to source MBA student and alumni talent. MBA Focus is pairing up...
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Mayors Propose Ending War and Creating Jobs at Home
Tonight mayors from all over the country will be playing bocce in Baltimore. Surely, these political leaders will appreciate the relative ease of aiming balls, compared to the larger tasks that make up their jobs. Mayors are gathering at the 79th Annual Conference of Mayors. Their discussions reveal the unique challenges that mayors are facing today. Mayors are invited, for instance, to...
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Foreign Direct Investment Boosts U.S. Economy
There's a prevalent attitude in the United States that our country is the one funding businesses abroad. In fact, this is a two way street. In the past decade, foreign investments have supported five million jobs. These aren't low paying jobs either. On average these jobs backed by foreign investment pay 30 percent more than other jobs. This information comes from a new report called...
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Recruiter Feng Shui...The Art of Workspace Management
Over the last few years, recruitment has undergone a true transformation. With unemployment skyrocketing, experienced Recruiters have found themselves in a tougher, leaner environment than even just 5 years ago. Employers are more wary of where and when they spend their money and in many cases, they have lost their sense of urgency. Many of those in the staffing world have found their...
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Worthwhile Filings in California
Unemployment has hit California hard. Many people can breathe a sigh of relief as some federal money enters into the mix. The U.S. Department of Labor has certified for release $838,680,283 in unemployment insurance modernization incentive funds to the state of California. "The federal government made these funds available as an incentive for states to strengthen their safety net as our...
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STEM Occupations Maintain High Salaries
In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll asks, "Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife-- what's the answer to that?" The delicate mathematics of dividing bread is entrusted to different economists, politicians, and people with capital. At the end of the day, however, people who are in mathematics, technologies, or the sciences seem to come out ahead when it comes to...
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What Candidates (and Politicians) Ought to Know
As Recruiters, our daily focus necessarily falls on finding, qualifying and placing good candidates. From that first cup of coffee to that last email sent from a Smart Phone, Recruiters are all about placing candidates. But what about after the placement? A Recruiters job doesn't stop when the offer letter goes out...on the contrary, it can be the most tenuous part of the cycle. Making...
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ClickZ and Search Engine Watch Launch Recruiter-Friendly Job Boards
ClickZ has already established itself as a leader in interactive marketing news. In a logical leap, this company is launching a new job board. The company joined with Search Engine Watch to create ClickZJobs and SEWJobs. Recruiters will be able to access more than a million unique interactive and search professionals throughout their network of brands. Recruiters can utilize the...
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RescueTime Introduces Workers to Like-Minded Companies
Did you ever read the book Cheaper by the Dozen? In it the book, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey tell the story of what it's like to always worry about efficiency above all else. The story tells about the household of twelve children growing up with efficiency experts Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. One memorable example was the moment in which the father teaches...
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JobGoRound Orients Lost Job Hunters
Sometimes when you're looking for work in a new area, it's a daunting process-- not because of the economy or the new climate, but just because you don't know where everything (or anything) is. When you move to a new place, it takes a long time to sort out which suburbs are nearby and which too far away to justify the commute. This can make looking for a job really tricky. JobGoRound.com...
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Recruiting Tips: How to Stay Focused
Recruiters are a funny bunch of people. From the outside it can appear that recruiters have an easy, flexible job with plenty of time for surfing the net, chatting on the phone or running out to grab a cup of coffee. But in reality, Recruiters are some of the busiest, hardest working professionals around. The fact of the matter is that we're almost always working. We're working our...
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Micro-Resumes
"http://t.sina.com.cn/1986010511"—Tom Cruise's Sina weibo public account You've received 250 resumes for one job and have narrowed the list to three candidates: "VK9978899697", "VK9898899697"," and "VK9978899697". But these are not applicant numbers—they are their score codes, much like bar codes, DNA codes or police codes (Coke can bar code, nucleotide AGCC...
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Manpower Acquires Recruitment Company in China
ManpowerGroup has a long history in China. The company began to work in China in 1964, seventeen years ago. In 2007, it became the first foreign multinational corporation to obtain a temporary staffing business license in China. It is once again expanding its scope, this time in the Guangdong Province. Manpower has acquired REACH HR, a human resources provider in Guangdong Province and...
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Most Productive American Companies
Consumers must pay careful attention if they want to "buy American." As many people glibly comment that nothing is made in the United States anymore, one company has alerted people to American companies that are especially productive. Profiles International, a company that aims to increase the productivity of various businesses, has announced the 2011 America's Most Productive Companies...
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The White House Rural Council Plans Ahead
"Ironically, rural America has become viewed by a growing number of Americans as having a higher quality of life not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have!" said Don A. Dillman, a rural sociologist. While many people romanticize life in rural America, the people who actually live there feel like they need more opportunities to develop their lives there. Whether...
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Legit to Quit: When to Accept a Candidate's Reasons for Quitting
When interviewing employed candidates for a new job, one thing is certain. To take your job, they need to quit their job. In the back of your mind, you always ask, "Why do they want to quit their current job - what's wrong with it?" You might even ask yourself, "What's wrong with this candidate?" Candidates always say that they want a better opportunity at your company: advancement, new...
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My Geo-social Thirteen Minute Mile
If you haven't seen the Nike+ iPhone running app, you have to check it out. It's a little app to track your jogs and inspire you to run a little further or a little harder. Since millions of people have downloaded it, I know I'm a bit late to the table, but if you're into technology, it's worth your attention - runner or not. The Nike+ app is the perfect confluence of social networking,...
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EEOC Discusses Leave As Reasonable Accommodation
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a milestone in the history of the rights of disabled Americans. Passed in 1990, the law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations when necessary so that people with disabilities can perform the essential functions of their jobs, unless doing so would constitute an undue hardship to the employer. Soon after the law was passed,...
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Job Distribution in the Private and Public Sector
What do teachers and correctional officers have in common? It's not just a day filled with disciplinary actions. It's also who writes their pay checks and who pays for their visits to the doctor. These are two of the professions most dominated by government workers, according to recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In local government, 5 of the 6 largest occupations were...
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More Job Creation from the Dept. of Transportation
Over the past year, the U.S. Department of Transportation, has been investing in projects that will meet the combined goals of improving the country's transportation infrastructure, lower the country's carbon footprint and move toward a transportation system that has less of a negative impact on the environment, and spur the economy, specifically by creating jobs and as much as possible...
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Your Bubble Village
"You can take the villager out of the village, but you can't take the village out of the villager"—a temporarily accurate observation about Chinese villagers You work in a bubble—one that contains you, your clients, colleagues, candidates and applicants. Paradoxically, the more "professional" your bubble is, the more its atmosphere and workings resemble the vanishing...
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mResource and JSTN Merge to Multiply Media
One recruiter made a 2011 New Year's resolution to spend less time in front of screens. This may become a more and more difficult challenge. Soon, it may be work-related videos that flutter across the recruiter's retinas at night. Responding to a culture that loves the video as a medium, some companies are looking to connect more easily with job candidates through this technology. This is...
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Retail Benefits from Swipe Fee Reform
For all the talk about the importance of the alleged mom and pop businesses, it often seems like little is done to really help all of these independent entrepreneurs. This just changed. Retailers around the country are celebrating a new law in effect. As of July 21, retailers will be paying much less to banks. This new regulation of swipe fees was authored by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.)...
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Three Million Jobs a Month
In February, March, and April of this year, nine million jobs opened up. That's three million jobs a month consistently for those consecutive months. The most evasive jobs were government jobs. Few people seem to be leaving these coveted jobs, and few new positions are being created. In government the job openings rate was 1.4 percent in April. Despite devastating cuts in school...
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Should you start a recruiting business?
If you're a corporate recruiter, you've probably talked to friends in the agency world that have made big money in the business. If you're an agency recruiter, you've probably wondered why you give 50, 80, or 92.676% of your revenue to your employer. Starting your own recruiting business is tempting. The open seas call to you: $60,000 a month checks! Short hours! Vacations once a year in the...
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Internet Security – Not Just About Naughty Pictures
Internet security has been in the news recently. And now that Anthony Wiener has admitted that he, and not some mischievous hacker, was the one that sent that naughty picture to a college coed, maybe we can turn our focus to the estimated $10 trillion in global online transactions that may not be as secure as we would all like. Well, maybe not all of us. The hackers out there like things...
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