Willful Violation of the H-1B Program Undermines Foreign Teachers
Amidst national debate centering on collective bargaining among public workers, one school system is being held responsible for violating workers' rights. In Maryland, on district decided not to pay its foreign teachers the same wages as it other teachers. This was no small-scale violation to save a little bit of money for a school's band uniforms. This discrimination affected 1,044 foreign...
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Agriculture Industry Grows, Fuels Jobs
As spring shuffles in, recruiters may be observing some new openings in different lines of work. Few businesses are more dependent on the weather, however, than farming. Now is the time that farmers are able to say what their plans are for their land this year. If you have been following the economy, you may have noticed that agriculture was a main profitable business in the United States...
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Juice Inc. Works to End Nurse-on-Nurse Hostility
What issues loom in your line of work that higher-ups regularly pretend they don't see? What are the elephants in the room that prevent the workplace from being a healthy environment for all its workers? Recruiters are familiar within their industry what the jobs are that see the most regular turn-over or abandonment of the profession. Recruiters in the healthcare industry may be familiar...
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Are Most Entrepreneurs Really Entrepreneurs?
If you subscribe to Inc. or Entrepreneur magazine, or just keep up with web startups and tech companies, you know the particular sort of feeling you get when you see a handful of grinning 20-somethings talking about how they made their first ten million. It seems like these groups of skinny young technologists belong to a secret cult of success, blessed by an unseen god of web wealth. While...
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Filling Your Own Job
"They took 'er jobs!."—angry unemployed local in the "Gooback" episode of South Park, season 8, protesting the mass arrival of job-seeking immigrants from the future. A very well-dressed man walks into a self-employed recruiter's agency office. He unbuttons his Cesare Attolini long coat and Armani suit jacket, glances at his Rolex, adjusts his unusual ring and takes a...
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Panama Provides Corporate Tax Haven But Seeks Special Status
For many of us, it's time to pay taxes. Taxes owed seem like a huge hunk of dough, but when you consider how much is accomplished with tax dollars, that chunk of change seems a bit insufficient. At times like these, one hopes that corporations are paying their share in taxes as well. A good deal of American innovation is squandered on tax evasion. The means of tax evasion are as diverse as...
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Partnership for Public Service Recruits Workers with Disabilities
The Partnership for Public Services posts the following on their website: "Building, energizing and maintaining a high-quality workforce is the key to success for any organization — and the federal government is no different." The Partnership for Public Service is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that seems to do a lot of the work that recruiters are familiar with, like trying to get the...
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Chinese Workers Say "No Thanks" to Offers of Work from Western Companies
Recruiters have long sought exceptionally skilled workers from China. They looked for people who might be able to really help serve American-owned companies and appreciate the opportunity to work for a western company. According to a report from the Corporate Executive Board, recruiting workers from China has become much more difficult. In an effort to address this difficulty, the Corporate...
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Networking Tips
I had the privilege of attending the kick-off luncheon for a local chapter of the National Association of Female Executives (NAFE). Associations like NAFE are great avenues for networking with other business professionals. Here are a few networking tips: To help you remember names of those you meet for the first time, repeat their name at least three times during the...
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What Does Google +1 Equal?
This week, Google rolled out a new social recommendation element to its search engine. Google announced the new feature on Wednesday. They call it +1. When checking out Google +1, you may experience a sense of déjà vu. It's almost exactly the same concept as the Facebook like button. Google +1 is a way to personalize search results according to the preferences of the people that matter most...
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A Critique of The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)—Part I: One Expert's Review
"Although the MBTI is an extremely popular measure of personality, I believe that the available data warrant extreme caution in its application as a counseling tool, especially as consultants use it in various business settings"—Dr. David J. Pittenger, psychometric researcher and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Marshall University, in "Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Brigg...
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Busier Skies: Increase in Air Travel since 2009
Have you encouraged job candidates to board a plane and go to a job interview? Is your line of business dependent on air travel? Even if you don't get to fly in the business class, it may well be that you find your work intertwined with traversing great distances quickly. Although every recruiter is familiar with the trials of the job market in today's economy, one could do worse than to...
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Work: Safer Than It Used to Be
What is the nature of work? Recruiters work themselves and then consider what it means to work in various different settings around the world. When a job candidate gets a job, it feels good to think that he or she will be working in not only a stimulating, productive environment, but also a safe one. Often the focus on workers' safety has to do with tools and environmental conditions, but it...
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Most Employees Are A Phone Call Away from Quitting
Recruiters are familiar with the myriads of reasons why employees begin to shop their resumes around to other businesses. Or perhaps, you are familiar with eager glint in the eye when you tell someone that you're a recruiter. Does it seem like everyone wants to leave their current job-- even if they aren't actively looking? Employers must confront the fact that a large chunk of their...
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Benefits and Limitations of White Label Recruitment Technology
For any recruitment technology, there comes a point when they need to decide how they are going to expand and innovate their platform. Do they build in-house or do they look for partnerships with white label technology providers? There are positives and negatives of both strategies, however, let's take a look specifically at white label technologies and the value it provides to technology...
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How to Beat Back Candidate Awe
Candidate communication is such a regular part of a recruiter's daily activity that it's usually no big deal. Recruiters learn to have thick skins and are usually able to call candidates "out of the blue" with no real issue. However, calling certain groups of very accomplished candidates tend to make a lot of recruiters very uncomfortable. You have probably experienced...
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"No Problem...." Is a Problem
"I welcome him like I welcome cold sores."—Paula Abdul (speaking of American Idol's Simon Cowell) "Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."—former Vice President, Dan Quayle, who was not an astronaut One gauge of the state of manners and civility in modern professional and personal life is the ritualized expressions—both verbal and...
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National Emergency Grants for States with High Unemployment
"Searching for a new job is difficult enough without worrying about paying for health expenses out-of-pocket if the job seeker or a family member needs medical attention," said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. For whom would you like to remove the stress of health expenses? Perhaps, you have a family member you wish could go to the doctor without worrying about pre-existing conditions. ...
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Employers Must Broaden their Definitions of College
After reading copious resumes and cover letters, what have you noticed about the education of the job candidates you represent? In general, what types of assumptions are employers making about the level of education they seek in employees? Are students encouraged to go into an academic disciplines for career reasons that actually no longer lead to better job opportunities? Employees are...
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Drastic Difference in Unemployment from State to State
The gap between the rich and the poor remains canyon-like. Increasingly, people seem to simply be interested in whether or not people are employed or unemployed. Within a circle of friends or a community potluck, employment is the gauge for distinguishing the haves and have-nots. Employment might be considered nationwide in this light. Whose citizens are employed? Whose children are...
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Review: Integrated Recruiting with the iCIMS Applicant Tracking System
As you may already know, iCIMS is one of the largest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers of talent acquisition solutions. With over 10 years of experience in talent management technology, iCIMS has grown to have nearly 900 customers worldwide. iCIMS continues to focus on the customer experience and empower HR professionals with the technology to augment their recruitment efforts....
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Managing IT Vendor Relationships
Vendor relationships can have the potential to go south in any business, but this can be particularly true with IT vendors. The world of information technology can be very confusing to those who aren't educated in technical matters, so it can be easy for miscommunications to happen between businesses and technology vendors. These miscommunications are the main reason why relationships can turn...
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Project Management Best Practices: Project Value Propositions
Some of the best practices for project managers include convincing others of the value of your project. When selling a project to a customer (either internal or external), you want to make sure and give a clear statement of how your project will help meet the customer's needs. This is called a project value proposition, and the best project managers understand how to present project value...
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Anticipated Shortage of Canadian ICT Workers Prompts Plan of Action
Recruiters that work with communications and technology may wish to turn their energies northward. According to a press release and report from the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), Canada expects to be hard-pressed to find skilled workers in communications and technology in the near future. The new report predicts that Canadian employers will run into problems if...
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Employers and Staff Benefit from Making it Happen
If you are looking to have a mediated conversation with an employee or with your employer, there may be something new to help facilitate this process. viaPeople, Inc. a leading provider of Performance and Talent Management Software and Consulting Services has announced the release of "Making it Happen!" A Guide to Performance-Driven Development Goal Setting. Interested parties can access...
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Florida Human Resources Departments Recognized for Achievement
Did you know that you can print nifty little certificates off the internet? No joke. If you have particularly enjoyed working with a particular HR department, you might want to consider giving them an award. Not every company is easy to work with, and the human resources departments that go out of their way to help recruiters navigate the hiring practices win a special place in a...
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Eye-People vs. Ear-People
—An AV Show-and-Tell Input-Output Model You are an HR manager formally making and soliciting suggestions about creating a professional network. You hate writing and are not much of a reader. Do you make your presentation an oral/aural one, i.e., everybody just listens and talks, or do you circulate a document asking for written suggestions? Is your choice based on your presentation...
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Winchester, Virginia Faces Accusations of Discrimination Against Members of the U.S. Armed Forces
If anyone wishes to employ another person, it becomes critical to familiarize oneself with all of the labor laws. If one makes sloppy decisions about hiring and employment, a person can make serious enemies with people no employer wants to upset. Like, the U.S. Marine Corp, for instance. Under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), law requires employers to...
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Class Action Settlements Create Sustainable, Measurable Change
Sustainability is not only important in environmental practices. It is critical in developing changes to many different practices in the workplace. While some people consider what can be done to immediately create changes, others may wish to find a way for the changes to last over time. The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) has released a report that argues that class action...
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Children Experience Fewer and Fewer Employed Parents
In 1994, the U.S. began to record the percentage of families that include one member that is unemployed. Certainly, plenty of factors influence these statistics. How have changing roles of women, for instance, impacted these numbers? Have there been significant enough changes in race relations to influence the figures? Of course, the current economy affects the figures, too. This year's...
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Mind the Gap! —Guidelines for Interviewing "SESL" Candidates
You thought that the last job applicant you interviewed who was a Speaker of English as a Second Language (what I shall call an "SESL" for short) understood everything you said because you understood everything she said. Or, you thought another SESL applicant understood very little of what you said, because you understood very little of what he said. Or maybe you thought the...
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Creative Thinking – The Recruiting Tool You Can Use Today
You can't always use that same old system for every placement you make. Sometimes, you've got to change up your approach to make the win-win happen. Recruiting can be a wonderful thing. As an independent recruiter you make your own hours, work from wherever you want and choose whom you want to work with. It's not always mangoes and sunshine, but it's a wonderful feeling when you...
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Interview with Ian Siegel, CEO of ZipRecruiter
As part of an ongoing series with the faces of our industry, today we sit down with Ian Siegel, Cofounder and CEO of ZipRecruiter.com. ZipRecruiter (launched in March of 2010) offers what may be the simplest free job board distribution service on the market. They currently feed to over 19 sources including eBay Classifieds, craigslist, SimplyHired, JuJu, JustJobs, etc... and they plan to add...
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Tangled Recruitment
"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."—Thomas Jefferson This happens to all of us, all of the time: When we try to remove our laptop adaptor, mouse and cable, and headset (with wire) from their carrying case, they've magically become an impossibly tangled mess, resembling knitting or Celtic knots. The same thing always happens with any other wires,...
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Listening to Women's Guts
What role do feelings-- especially sickening ones-- have in the workplace? So often, workers do not have access to all their employers' data about pay scale. Therefore, workers are left to try to deduce whether or not they are being discriminated against. Recruiters may want to think about what kind of perceptions may be subtly influencing their work with a company. A new study from...
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President Proposes Tax Credit to Create Jobs
With unemployment hovering at around 9.5%, it's important that our government implements policies that lead to more job creation, preferably policies that lead to not only low-paying service area jobs, but higher paying jobs as well. One idea for just such a targeted job creation strategy, that President Barack Obama included in his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget proposal, is to expand and simplify...
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Men and Women's Annoyances in the Workplace
When recruiters make placements for job seekers, they are dealing with people who have refreshingly clean slates. No one has asked brand-new employees to stay late yet. No one has spread rumors about their romantic lives. No one has implied that their child is funny-looking. One of the perks of recruiting is that many of the people the recruiter encounters are on their best behavior with...
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Best Practices for Marketing Professionals
The most successful people in the marketing industry are always seeking ways to progress their careers and make their marketing more effective. Long term success in the marketing profession requires a planned approach to career progression and an unwillingness to stagnate. Here are some considerations and best practices to think about in relation to your career in marketing. Think like...
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Introverts Can Make the Best IT Leaders
Most people who consider themselves introverted would never think that they could be a leader professionally or personally, and this can be especially true in the IT industry. Because many IT professionals consider themselves to be introverted, they may not go after leadership positions that could make them more money and advance their careers. However, there's no need for introverted IT...
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No-Name Jobs
—hunting for work at a no-name company An ordinary fellow, just returned from a fruitless search in Los Angeles for a Hollywood job, walks into a recruiting agency in Flint, Michigan, and sits at the first available recruiter's desk. She asks, "How may I help you?" He says, "I want a no-name job with a no-name company." Recruiter: "What do you mean?" Man: "A...
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U.S. Department of Labor as Pension Protectors
There was a time in this country when people could reasonably expect if they played by the rules, found a job, and worked hard until their retirement, they could retire with a pension that would afford them a modicum of dignity. Alas, those jobs have become few and far between. So if you're one of the lucky few to land a job with a pension plan, you hate to think that those in charge of your...
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Fewer Mass Layoffs Than January
One is hard pressed to find a silver lining in our current cloudy economy. And maybe it is hard to see any good news in 1,421 mass layoff actions (layoffs involving 50 persons or more) involving 130,818 worker. Those were the numbers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month of February, 2011. But there is some good news. The...
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New Ways to Navigate Bureaucracy
Sometimes it's hard to figure out what services the government provides, given the byzantine nature of the bureaucracy. One can drown in the red tape. Well, the U.S. Commerce department is trying to do something about that, one city at a time. Following the launch of its Michigan office last September, the U.S. Commerce Department's CommerceConnect is expanding into Boston – one of...
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The Path to CFO Isn't as Clear as It Used to Be
In the past, financial professionals could start off as an accounting clerk and work their way up to CFO if they were dedicated and hardworking. These days, corporate structure has changed and so have the qualities that recruiters and HR managers are looking for in high level financial officers. Many companies are hiring externally to fill CFO positions and passing over internal CFO candidates...
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Qualities a Successful Project Manager Needs to Have
Being a successful project manager takes an investment in your own skills and a dedication to getting the job done, but there are other qualities you must have in order to have a stellar career as a project manager. One of the leaders in Project Management training, ESI International, conducted a poll of industry leaders in project management to ask them what qualities they look for in an...
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Emerging Skills Needed for a Successful IT Career
The IT industry is constantly changing with emerging technologies, and the skills you need to have a successful IT career are changing as well. In order to move up in your company and stay in demand as an IT professional, you need to be on the leading edge of current skill sets. While it's always a good idea to keep current on your technology skills, IT professionals who want to get promoted...
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How to Make A Great First Impression
In the Concise Oxford Dictionary, image is described as "the character or reputation of a person or thing as generally perceived." Within seconds of meeting you, based on a single observed physical trait or behavior, people will assume to know everything about you (Social Psychology by H. Andrew Michener, John D. Delamater and Daniel J. Myers). Furthermore, according to research by Dr....
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Lending Your Staff: the Fed and Main Street Bank Way
"I haven't inherited the earth from my parents. I am borrowing it from my children."—U.S. Senator, from Colorado, Mark Udall (D) "The foolish notion that unlimited amounts of money and credit created out of thin air can provide sustainable economic growth has delivered this crisis to us."—U.S. Congressman, from Texas, Ron Paul (R) Imagine that, on analogy with Main Street...
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