You Don't Have to be an Information Technology Recruiter to Fill IT Openings with Your Clients, or "IT, it's all Greek to Me."
Let us imagine a situation in which your best client enthusiastically comes to you with a great new position for you to fill. The salary is significantly higher than what you usually recruit for the client, which means a very large fee. You are beyond excited with your good fortune, and then the bomb is dropped. The person they need is for a highly specialized IT position and your niche is way...
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Social Media Surges South Floridians' Commitment to Fun
Everyone knows that social media has changed the face of marketing in the U.S. The thing is that not every business has someone who can make a fluid transition from their older advertising techniques to newer trends and technologies. Recruiters may notice that more job positions hope to hire job candidates with some social media know-how. Social Media's effect on the changing face of...
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Being vs. Becoming: The Metaphysics of Making Money
"The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being."—Albert Einstein If you are a recruiter who is also a home owner or if you buy lottery tickets, you are well-prepared to understand the first of the two main points of this article: the real excitement in a recruiter's job and more generally in life itself...
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Career Salaries: Are You Getting Paid What You Are Worth?
The amount of money a person earns is often a taboo subject, especially among co-workers and particularly in American culture. Whether due to social faux pas or company policy, finding out what others in your position and industry earn for a yearly salary can be tough to figure out. While it may not make much of a difference when you are happily employed, it can be an important bit of knowledge...
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Recovering from 2009 Layoffs, Top Minnesota Companies Recruit Again
As you think about what economic recovery and recruiting practices will look like in your field of work, you can think creatively about new job markets or you can think about those jobs that were cut in 2009. Economic recovery will not just be about new jobs and job creation, it will also be about reinstating jobs that temporarily vanished. Hopefully, like in Minnesota, we will begin to see...
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Brave New Soccer
Although my knowledge of soccer rules mostly originates from Google searches, I'm the assistant coach for a soccer team of rugged, brawling, and competitive... five-year-olds. With near-hurricane winds and a temperature suitable for ice-fishing, our soccer season began with its first practice. The younger siblings and parents huddled together for warmth on the sidelines, their cheeks streaked...
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Push to Restore the Gulf Coast
Cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico is going to take a lot of work. Some call new cleanup work as "early restoration projects." It's hard to believe that we are still in the early stages of cleanup from this disaster. Recruiters may want to be privy to the number of jobs that must accompany the cleanup. The Natural Resource Trustees for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Trustees), BP has...
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Good Sign for Economy: Housing Market Improves
As we've all heard so often, the financial woes our country has been facing were brought on to a large extent by the subprime mortgage crisis. Since it was a mortgage crisis that helped bring on the recession, the housing market did not go unharmed during the financial crisis, rather, it came to a virtual halt. But now that we are in a recovery (tenuous though it may be), it is useful to look...
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Employment Increases in Several States
We're in an economic recovery, or so we've been told. But this recovery has felt very slow to the millions of people who are still unemployed. Slow to the point of being non-existent. And as recruiters, well it's not easy to place people in jobs when jobs are so few and far between. But things are looking up - at least in some states. Employment figures released today for some states...
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What Makes a Top Recruiting Firm, Anyway?
If you want a good laugh, do a quick Google search for "top recruiting firm." Seriously, go ahead, do the search. Now, what do you notice? Probably the same thing we noticed. Nearly every recruiting firm out there, big and small, new and well-established, is using the phrase "top recruiting firm" on their website. Now, let's be realistic. We can't all be the top recruiting firm...
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New Jobs in Louisiana Despite Growing Unemployment
The economy is slowly changing in Louisiana. In March, employers added 10,300 nonfarm jobs over the year. Since a year ago last March, 20,800 private sector jobs have come into the state at the same time as 10,500 government jobs ceased to exist. When those government jobs disappear, who is paying the consequences? Children? Workers? Senior citizens? Most of the industry sectors...
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Iowa Looks Forward to More Green Jobs
While every economy and every ecosystem aches for a focus on green jobs, every place has different capabilities and resources to put toward this end. A committee of people from Iowa Workforce Development, several other state agencies, and Iowa Central College under the direction of the Enterprise Planning Team for Energy and Environment determined that Iowa's green jobs will predominantly fall...
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HRsmart Seeks Partnership with Saudi Arabia
Sometimes paperwork seems to be like gas. The pieces of paper seem to expand to fill all possible containers-- no matter how big they are. Everyone involved in hiring processes must come up with their own personal best system for dealing with all of the information that goes with the job. That said, it is certainly convenient if you can come up with a system that doesn't leave you with...
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Bullets and Flashlights: The Quantum Ways of Being Honest
"When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat."—Ronald Reagan You have had moments when you've wanted to or had to tell an applicant or an associate (and maybe even a client) the hard truth, but hesitated, because you didn't want to "hurt" his or her "feelings", or maybe it was professionally and "politically" too risky. You've probably had other...
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Google Panda Update – Implications for Job Boards, Community Sites, and Publishers
Google's new search algorithm update (codenamed Panda) sent shockwaves across the web this past week. This update marks a fundamental shift in search ranking - a move that has all but left content farms (re: sites with "low quality" or duplicated content) for dead, and dramatically changed the way we think about SEO. The 2 metrics now considered to be the most important in the new algorithm...
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New Jersey Lessens the Anxiety of Waiting for the Check in the Mail
How much human creativity is squandered waiting for a check in the mail? Anxiety ensues with every sound waiting for the mail carrier. Sometimes, the trip to cash a check leaves you feeling frustrated that you had to spend money to get money. Likewise that money that is meant to ease your recuperation after a surgery is actually difficult to access when leaving your home feels like a...
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Handling Overflow Work: Freelance Recruiter, Agency or New Hire?
We all want to be in a position where we have so many job openings to fill that we have to turn away work. But when you do reach the point of having overflow work, you will quickly realize you don't want to just walk away from potential opportunities for profit. If your recruiting firm is lucky enough to be in this position, you may be scratching your head and wondering how to take on the...
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Zebra Stress Management Techniques for Recruiters
"I'm not the type to get ulcers. I give them."—Edward Koch, former New York mayor Modern medical science has identified a nasty bacterium, Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), as a key causal factor in the development of most human ulcers. However, there remain important psychological and environmental factors at work in your office and in your mind that may contribute to your getting...
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"The Borderless Workplace" Promotes Leadership Development
What creates a team of workers that is committed to staying and improving a company? Often, analysts look to employee engagement as a key component to workers' continued commitment. As people take on more responsibility, they must develop a deeper practice of leadership. Bersin Associates, a research and consulting firm, has announced new research that shows that organizations are...
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National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is Born
For years, thieves have had to outmaneuver brilliant security systems on movie screens. But it seems like security in a digital age has not reached its ultimate stage. Whether it's a person at home weary and frazzled by memorizing dozens of passwords or a parent trying to assure that their child is only interacting with peers on the internet, growing technology to protect consumers has a long...
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OSHA Straightens Out Hair Care Industry
What do workers already know? Is there a body of knowledge that you know to be true that you would only think about if you worked in your field? Have you heard workers' hunches about a product or a new medium? So often, workers know what takes consumers and scientists a little longer to figure out. For awhile now, workers in hair salons have complained of dizziness and watery eyes. But...
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Recruiter Group Dynamics: Fostering a Team Environment in a Competitive Industry
Recruiting is, by nature, a very competitive industry. We face competition from other firms that specialize in our niche. We compete against our own clients at times to source the perfect candidate. And unlike most other industries, we even compete within our own teams for the highest paycheck, instead of working together. It is a fact that the vast majority of recruiters work on a contingency...
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Recruiter Fortune Cookies
"A commission is like a fortune cookie—sometimes there is no need to split it to succeed."—recruiter fortune cookie No. Not a joke. Seriously—consider contracting with a Chinese fortune cookie manufacturing company to make "recruiter fortune cookies" as a promotional tool. The idea is serious enough for it to have been and remain a standing practice for more than 25 years...
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Disparity in New York Job Markets
Why is it that jobs in the public sector take such a beating when private sector jobs seem to be growing? In New York, the statistics for March employment show a glaring discrepancy between growing jobs in the private sector and large scale layoffs in the public sector. New York State's economy gained 5,000 private sector jobs, or 0.1%, in March 2011 on a seasonally adjusted basis. Since New...
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ADA Standards Required in Puerto Rico
Sometimes a meeting seems like a treacherous journey. Imagine if you couldn't exit to use the bathroom! When a job candidate is hired, a commitment is made to that employee to make sure that time spent working is spent in a safe and dignified manner. This week the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, charging the Puerto Rico...
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What happened to our Facebook Page?
As many of you know, Recruiter's company page on Facebook used to be http://www.facebook.com/recruiter. We've been steadily promoting this page for the past 7 months - on the Recruiter.com website, on our downloadable Recruiter desktop toolbar, on our LinkedIn groups (to over 250,000+ professionals on a weekly basis), and even via paid advertising on Facebook itself. Like most companies who...
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Recruiting Software Provider Click To Cloud Integrates with Google Search
More technology starstups than ever are focusing on integration and compatibility with major web services. The recruiting software field is no different - instead of building only native functionality, many new companies are building platforms which leverage the power of social networking and search engines. Click to Cloud is a recruitment software company that is a good example of such...
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A Critique of The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)—Part Two: a Personal Review
Recently, I "peeked" at the results of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory—without ever having taken the test, and faced a very puzzling outcome: Upon carefully reviewing the detailed official Myers-Briggs descriptions of the 16 MBTI types, I discovered that even though the MBTI gives and claims only one type as a personal "score", there are at least seven different purportedly...
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Should Executive Compensation be Public?
When you forget to hit the double-sided icon on the Xerox machine, that's a waste of paper. When grocery stores put a flier on every door in the neighborhood on a windy day, that's a waste of paper. When you print out the same driving instructions every holiday on how to get to your aunt's house, that's a waste of paper. When a corporation needs to do some math to figure out how much their...
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Gasoline and Retail Sales
Yes, our society is excessively dependent on gasoline. Yes, we know that gas prices are rising. Yes, we know it's a dwindling resource. But sometimes it's easy to forget just how much gasoline consumption comprises the makeup of American purchases. During the month of March, ten percent of the total retail sales in the United States were conducted at gasoline stations. Gasoline with a...
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Labor Force Participation Rates
Recently, several college students have been complaining that they lost their jobs. It's certainly not easy to pull an all-nighter to finish a research paper and then be polite to customers at 8:oo a.m. Recent numbers show that college students are working much less than high school graduates who are not enrolled in college. While this statistic may mostly reflect the fact that in the...
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Is Top Prospect Competing with Recruiters?
There are lots of companies springing up in the general area of social recruiting. Many of them leverage your social networking connections to create recommendations for jobs and job referrals. It's a very interesting area of recruiting technology right now. One of the companies to watch is Top Prospect. However, you also have to ask if Top Prospect and other job referral systems are actually...
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About Being "Serious"
"The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously."—Samuel Butler, Victorian satirist, author of Erewhon In matters of personal professional performance and job and applicant selection, "serious" is generally considered to be a generally good thing—unless the job is clown or court jester. Across the gamut of jobs and in one way or...
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LF Staffing Services Agrees to Settlement
A thousand dollars may seem like a lot of taxes to pay or too much to fork over for rent. But is a thousand dollars really that noticeable of a chunk of change for a corporation? Charged with discrimination, LF Staffing Services Inc. was forced to pay $1,100 in civil penalties. Recruiters who are vigilant about enacting just hiring practices may be disturbed by how little employers are...
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More Americans Will Save their Tax Refunds
"A lot of money goes to money-heaven," explained Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson of Iceland. Where does money in the U.S. go? Where do people want to put their money? Where do they feel they must put it to use? One indication of the U.S. economy is what people do with their tax refunds. Some years the money seems to evaporate into an amorphous heaven. Other years, people are able...
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Government Funds Focus on Returning to Normal
What is remaining money in the U.S. budget going to be used for? Will any of these expenditures generate new jobs? While the U.S. doesn't seem to be leading the race to build more energy-efficient public transportation, it does seem to be focused on fixing the damage caused to infrastructures across the country. Imagine how much it costs to fix one guard rail or replace one traffic...
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Problems Identified with Recruiting CEOs
The Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney have released a report that may be troubling to those who recruit high-level corporate positions. The findings suggest that companies are better served by hiring from within their own company than recruiting workers from outside their pool of employees. The report, entitled "Homegrown CEO:...
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Re-Employment Services Granted to Wisconsin Workers
For those who didn't really study Latin, you might have tried to cram a bunch of roots, suffixes, and prefixes into your brain before some standardized test. "UN" is so harshly definitive. To seek UNemployment services feels like condemning yourself to a lifetime of unemployment. To seek RE-employment services is another story. Here, a mood of optimism abounds. That previously held job...
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Personal Income Rises Amid Breadlines
The number of job seekers compared to available jobs may dishearten recruiters, but this real problem is not indicative of all aspects of the state of the economy. As huge numbers of people remain unemployed for another month, the fact is that the entire country's population is making more money from their income. Just in the month of February, personal income increased by $38.1 billion. ...
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Special Free Trade Agreement with Colombia and South Korea
Currently, plenty of labor activists are concerned about shifts in the role of unions in the U.S. workforce. In other parts of the world, the life of the union organizer is perilous. Colombia is particularly infamous for its large number of assassination of labor organizers. Just in 2010 alone, 51 unionist organizers were murdered. What does it mean to develop favorable trade policies with a...
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HRMarketer Shows Optimism Among HR Professionals
"Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!" wrote Oscar Wilde. It makes sense that Human Resources, a profession designed for working well with other people, is among the fields expressing optimism about work opportunities. HRmarketer recently released it finding from surveys of people in HR. The report...
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COBRA Strong in its 25th Year
In a struggling economy, many of the programs that citizens have grown accustomed are subject to budget cuts. What remains untouched might indicate what a society truly values. The Department of Labor has recognized the 25th anniversary of a program ensuring that some American workers are taken care of. The health insurance continuation provisions in the Consolidated Omnibus Budget...
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Animal Farm and Recruiters
"Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer—except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs."—narrator George Orwell, in Animal Farm In the April 1st online edition of the Wall Street Journal, an article by WSJ senior economics writer Steven Moore was published with the eye-catching title "We've Become a Nation of...
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Ask Jill: What I learned from walking my dogs this morning...
Dear Jill, It seems the winter months give me the blues. I notice that I am more "on edge" and not as motivated. Now that spring has sprung (sort of), what tips do you have for us to keep our chins up in this tough recruiting environment? Sincerely, Blue in Baltimore ************* Hey, Blue, I saw some Iris' start to pop their pretty, purple heads up with morning will I was out...
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What Kind of Jobs are Being Created?
As we talk more and more about job creation, one question that keeps popping up, right along with, "how do you do it?" is "what kind of jobs will be created?" What jobs will eventually replace the millions that were lost in the recent recession? If recent statistics are any indication, it looks like we are more than ever gong to be a service economy. During this past month of March,...
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Federal Reserve Continues Quantitative Easing
The Federal Reserve today released the minutes from the March 15 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC is the part of the Federal Reserve that oversees the purchase and sale of U.S. Treasury securities, which is the Federal Reserve's principal tool for implementing monetary policy. Since the beginning of our current financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been taking...
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Unemployment at Standstill
The good news: the unemployment rate seems to have stopped rising. Unfortunately, it not falling either. March unemployment numbers show little change since the previous month. The number of unemployed persons remained around 13.5 million, and the unemployment rate of 8.8 percent also changed little. No matter how you break down the numbers, be it by gender (adult men - 8.6 percent), adult...
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An OK Personality Theory for Recruiters
"I'm OK, make sure you're ok..no matter how long it takes."—lyrics, "I'm OK, You're OK", by the 70s punk group the Dickies Given that there are so many personality-type classifications that are floated, many of which sink after even the casual scrutiny test, it's nice to find one that is at least on intelligent inspection not only interesting and fun, but also useful...
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