Should Firms Buy Talent – Like In Pro-sports?
Most of you who follow professional team sports like football will be familiar with the concept of buying and selling sports star talent. Here, talent is a commodity that can be bought and sold, possessing a monetary value that can go up or down according to risk and opportunity. It's a bit different in the corporate world; there's simply no mechanism for you to walk up to a company to...
Read MoreRunning a Startup? Here's 6 Reasons why you Need a Virtual Assistant
Startups are everywhere—literally. According to an infographic by Mashable, there were 514,000 new business owners in 2012. And a 2013 Forbes article offered some very interesting facts about the rise and popularity of startups: -More than 50 percent of the current working population in the United States works in a small business -In 2013, there were almost 28 million small businesses in...
Read MoreCover Letter Generators: Useful or Dishonest?
I've never been bothered by the existence of resumé-writing services — you know, people who will critique your resumé (or even write the whole thing for you) for a fee. It seems, at first glance, like cheating — getting someone else to do your work for you! — but, think about it: a resumé is, at its base, a fairly objective thing. It's simply a factual history of your career. Resumé...
Read MoreZALP Launches Strategic Consulting Panel
Leading employee referral solutions provider, ZALP, recently announced its association with four renowned industry consultants as part of its Strategic Consulting Panel, a new initiative designed to give ZALP's clients a valuable experience before and after the implementation phase of the software. The Strategic Consulting Panel is the first wing of ZALP's Partner Program, which was...
Read MoreWhen Sourcing Candidates, Don't Rely on Your Gut
It was one of those calls. We were talking with a client that'd purchased a Job Slot and Premium Search package with Beyond about a month prior and wasn't happy with the response. I began by taking the "seek to understand" approach and asked the client to explain their concerns. "Well", the VP of HR said. "We just don't feel like we're getting enough candidates." He went...
Read More8 Tips for Summer Networking Success
The sun is out and the temperatures are rising: It's summer time! And although the summer brings BBQs, pool parties and "summer Fridays" in the office, there's one area, although often overlooked, that is also associated with this season—networking. When the weather is nice, the majority of us want to be outdoors, right? The folks at businesses and organizations are no different. And...
Read MoreCharacter vs. Personality-Based Hiring: Is One a Smarter Customer-Service Hire?
Is one of these the smarter hire: a customer rep who will do a great job because (s)he, by dint of (psychological) personality or inclination, enjoys serving customers and clients, or one who does it from an unshakeable sense of duty at the core of his or her (moral) character? Or is there a) no difference, b) no possible generalization, c) no importance in deciding? If the answer to each of...
Read MoreIs Your Firm Creating its own Personal Talent Shortage?
Not a month passes by without another report illustrating the full extent of the global talent war. Employers are struggling to find talent in good time, and according to the Manpower Talent Shortage Survey 2014, 50 percent of employers say that talent shortages reduce their competitiveness and productivity and impact their ability to meet client needs. But, the most telling finding from the...
Read MoreIndeed.com Acquires MoBolt Mobile Job App Technology Provider
Indeed.com has announced that it has agreed to acquire the business and assets of MoBolt, a leading provider of mobile job application technology. Indeed reports that nearly half of all job seekers are looking for and applying to jobs through a mobile device. With this acquisition, Indeed will enable employers to take advantage of accepting job applications through a mobile device, without any...
Read MoreG2 Crowd Shares Best HR Management Suites Based on Professional Reviews
Based on more than 325 reviews from HR professionals, the inaugural Grid for HR Management Suite software, recently announced by business software review site G2 Crowd, ranks 11 products to help HR software buyers in their selections. The Grid, G2 Crowd's software recommendation engine, factors in customer satisfaction reported by users and vendor market presence determined from social and public...
Read MoreTowers Watson Launches Analytical Platform for Employee Survey Data
Towers Watson, a global professional services company, has announced the launch of an integrated employee engagement survey platform. The new platform will allow managers, HR leaders and executives to identify deeper insights from their employee survey results and take action more quickly. "One of the primary attributes of this enhanced platform is that it saves organizations time while...
Read MoreBest/Worst Paying Jobs for Education Professionals and Grads
The education sector includes a broad variety of occupations paying anywhere from just over $25,000 annually to well into the $100,000s. Relatively recent (May 2013) Occupational Employment and Wages data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) helps to determine the best and worst paying jobs in the Education, Training, and Library Occupations, plus education-related jobs in several...
Read MoreTake the Interview Helps Streamline Process with Interview Management Platform
Take the Interview, recently announced details of its Interview Management Platform, a new, innovative tool that helps streamline the interview process. The new technology is designed to solve interviewing challenges while improving communication and collaboration between job candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. According to Take the Interview, the cutting-edge Interview Management...
Read MoreCan Agile Working Fix a Broken Workplace?
With global employee disengagement levels riding at about 87 percent, it's probably fair to say that talent management teams are facing a bit of motivational crisis, which is leaving productivity and profit levels in a depressed state, relative to what would be achievable with a more engaged organization. But, this is not to say that talent management teams haven't tried to fix these problems;...
Read MoreHow Older Workers Can Stay RELEVANT
OK, so it's bad form to type in all capital letters because it makes it seem as if you are yelling. But RELEVANT in this case is an acronym that can help older workers feel more relevant in the job market. "As they retire, baby boomers need to stay true to their reputation for grand statements, and to mobilize their skill set in the business world," says Steve Kayser, author of "The...
Read MoreThe Power of an Internship
An interesting infographic was recently sent to my inbox. Created by WhoIsHostingThis, the "Do Interns Secretly Run the World's Largest Tech Companies?" infographic details how, unlike in past times, leading tech companies recognize interns as the future of their companies. The infographic begins supporting this claim by offering 16 examples of people who started out as interns and...
Read MoreCasualizing the Labor Force: Tim Fung of Airtasker on Crowd Labor
Tim Fung, the co-founder and CEO of Australian crowd labor platform Airtasker, has what you might call the exemplar resumé of gen Y's multi-careerism. Fung has done finance; he was a talent agent with a celebrity management firm; he helped start Australian telecom service Amaysim — and these are just some of the highlights. It was during his stint at Amaysim that Fung and his coworker...
Read MoreKavaliro Launches New Company Website
Award-winning national professional services and staffing company, Kavaliro, recently launched its new company website. The new site combines Kavaliro's company culture with services offered by integrating new features, such as HTML5 video, location specific functionality, social media capabilities, simplified job navigation, and responsiveness. "Information technology is definitely on the...
Read MoreThinking About Quitting? Ask Yourself These 10 Questions First
While the economy is still suffering, many workers are doing more than their job merits, creating low morale. If you're reading this you're probably part of that population. While you may have survived the layoffs, you're working twice as hard for the same pay. If you're burned out working in your current position you may be thinking about quitting. You must weigh this option carefully before you...
Read MoreLabor Department Reports Jump in Payrolls as Unemployment Rate Falls
Job creation surged beyond expectations in June and the unemployment rate fell to an almost six-year low, underscoring the strength of a U.S. labor market that will help spur a rebound in growth. The addition of 288,000 jobs followed a 224,000 gain the prior month that was bigger than previously estimated, Labor Department figures showed. The number of long-term unemployed Americans fell to 3.1...
Read MoreUniversity Gates with Job Ads Instead of Ivy
As I read this sign posted on a campus gate wall, street-side in Nagasaki, I was taken aback by the fact that not only were internal detailed job postings displayed on the city street, but also that the precise numbers of staff to be hired and required qualifications for jobs in the respective departments within the Graduate School Department of Economics were listed. That seemed unusual,...
Read MoreThree Data Synchronization Solutions for the BYOD Era
There is certainly an increase in companies adopting BYOD (Bring Your Own device) policies. According to IT research firm, Gartner, 73 percent of small-to-medium businesses supported BYOD policies in 2013. And the research firm predicts that this number will jump to a whopping 90 percent by the close of 2014. Yet, that isn't all that Gartner predicts when it comes to BYOD. According to the...
Read MoreIBM Unveils Social Software for Breaking Down Collaboration Barriers
IBM has introduced a new cloud and on-premises social software to help clients better connect, collaborate and share information with key stakeholders inside and outside their organizations. The latest version of the IBM Connections platform features an open and fully integrated suite of social and real-time collaboration, analytics and content management tools, all securely delivered on any...
Read MoreIs Passive Talent Better Than Active Job Seekers?
In the past, the dark art of head hunting was a skill reserved for a very select group of talented executive search agencies that had built up a powerful and unassailable network of clients and candidates. But, all this has changed now. Everyone is a potential headhunter, and everyone can be easily head hunted thanks to social media and the ease with which any one can research and contact...
Read MoreThe Conference Board Report: Online Labor Demand Rises in June After Flat First Half
Online advertised vacancies were up 155,900 to 5,060,100 in June, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series. The May Supply/Demand rate stands at 2 unemployed for each vacancy, with a total of 4.9 million more unemployed workers than the number of advertised vacancies. The number of unemployed was 9.8 million in May. "The June increase of 155,900 is positive news....
Read MoreLebron James and the Case of the Prodigal Employee
If you're a basketball fan (and even if you aren't), you've undoubtedly heard the news broadcasted—or shall I say published?—last week: Lebron James has decided to return "home" to the Cleveland Cavaliers. For anyone who doesn't know the back story, in 2010 after seven years with the Cavaliers (the first team James was drafted to right out of high school) James announced that...
Read MoreIntuit Reports Fourth Consecutive Month of Small-business Growth
U.S. small business employment grew for the fourth consecutive month in June, adding 20,000 jobs. While the labor market continues to show signs of revival, small business employment remains 900,000 workers shy of the peak reached in March of 2007. These are among the findings of the monthly report Small Business Employment and Revenue Indexes: • Small businesses have added 595,000 jobs...
Read MoreCampus Recruiting More Important than Ever in Today's Business Climate
Just a generation ago, young people graduated from college and went on to a job that turned into a lifelong career. Loyalty was a given, and there was no need to switch companies; plenty of opportunity existed for moving up the corporate ladder while increasing salary and prestige. Fast forward to our current reality–the post-recession VUCA era, where we simply cannot expect stability and...
Read More3 Steps to Spot a Team Player
A Businessweek study of office-based professionals revealed that 82 percent of them believed that they needed to collaborate and partner effectively through the course of the day to get their work done. Effective people collaborate in hallways, at desks, water-coolers, and flexible meetings spaces. Technically brilliant but self-isolating candidates may not cut the mustard or perform anywhere...
Read MoreEquifax Workforce Solutions Helps Businesses Understand "Affordable Care"
With the Affordable Care Act (ACA) under way, Equifax Workforce Solutions wants to help employers understand and calculate business costs of "affordable care." The leader in HR, payroll and tax management, compliance and workforce insights has used its data to create "The Affordable Care Act and the Hourly Workforce" infographic, which offers a snapshot of hiring, pay and turnover trends. The...
Read MoreRecruiting 'Dominant' Types—a Guide [Part II]
Having demonstrated in Part I that "dominant" candidates should not be defined or selected primarily or exclusively in terms of their aggressiveness, capacity to intimidate, their nepotistic connections or success in "getting their way", the analysis continues here with exposure of the shortcoming of other concepts of dominance before offering a tentative formulation of a workable, even...
Read MoreTalentReef's JobApp Receives Upgrade with Social CRM, End-to-End Collaboration
The newest JobApp product aimed at recruiting Millennials has been deployed, enabled by the company's Social-Mobile Recruiting Start-Up Program. JobApp enhanced the product platform within its core data set of millions of current job seekers looking to engage with potential employers via their smartphone to bring this new product to market. The company has introduced a differentiated Social...
Read MoreColorism in Recruitment Focus of Study
There's an ongoing trend of black on black discrimination in recruitment called colorism. The authors of a study on the topic say it can be avoided with a simple personality assessment. The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology recently released a study on colorism, which refers to people who experience discrimination based on their skin tone—a process known as colorism....
Read MoreIs Your Career the Best Factor to Determine Self-Worth?
The University of Phoenix School of Business recently reported the results of a survey showing that almost half (47 percent) of working adults in the U.S. gain equal or greater feelings of self-worth from their jobs and careers as they do from their personal lives. The survey of more than 1,000 working adults in the U.S. also shows that even though we're still in tough economic times and have a...
Read MoreRefresh Your Cover Letter This Summer
Summer is a slow season. The long, hot days are better suited to playing outdoors or lounging by the pool than hunting for work. Unfortunately, for the un- and underemployed, there's no such thing as summer vacation. Instead of letting your job search languish in the dog days of summer, roll up your sleeves, grab an ice-cold beverage, and give your cover letter a tune-up. Here are four areas...
Read MoreJob Openings up More Than 10 Percent In June 2014, Reports Simply Hired
Simply Hired has released its July 2014 Employment Outlook report showing that nationwide job openings increased 10.6 percent month-over-month and 34.7 percent year-over-year in June 2014. This is the single largest monthly increase posted in 2014, and includes gains in 17 out of 18 industries and 21 out of 23 occupation categories. "Our July Employment Outlook report shows very solid growth...
Read MoreInfographic Offers Survival Guide for First Day in Office
With an estimated 1,606,000 new graduates now searching and applying for job opportunities in the UK, and with employment levels on the rise once again, we can expect offices everywhere to inherit a couple of eager-eyed additions to their teams fairly soon. That first day at any new job can be daunting, but it doesn't need to be a stressful experience. Preparation is key, and Office furniture...
Read MoreWhy it Pays to be Pushy at Work
Does it seem to you that the people who appear to be pushier and less accommodating at work tend to get the better terms and conditions and are paid more? And, that the more accommodating employees tend to be paid less? Do nice guys really finish last or is this a myth? There's no question that some degree of pushiness, and rejection of what is offered, is beneficial as the working world is...
Read MoreHow the Rise of Privacy in Social Media Will Change the Way We Think About Employees
Social media has by and large been a boon to recruiters and HR professionals. Once upon a time, employers had fairly scant information about the candidates they came across. Resumés reported professional highlights, and employers could glean some small insights into a candidate's personality via interviews and behavioral assessments. If you were lucky, a professional reference might offer some...
Read More4 Interview Questions to Identify Top Performing Salespeople
A great salesperson has a unique combination of skills—a combination that is difficult to find and just as difficult to interview for. They have to balance persuasion with likability, relationship quality with quantity, and your company's reputation with the need to make the sale. And this is just the beginning. So how do you screen for qualities like these? The answer is: very carefully....
Read MoreRecruiting 'Dominant' Types—a Guide [Part I]
"Dominant" has a nice powerful ring to it—and conjures up images of a jut-jawed Marine colonel's command and control, a billionaire's influence, a pit bull's aggressiveness, Gandhi's charisma and an unyielding "Braveheart" will. It also tends to conjure up the idea that if you hire someone who is dominant, he will dominate others and thereby help your organization achieve...
Read MorePPACA Not Helping SMB Owners Receive Improved or More Affordable Benefits
Newtek Business Services, Inc. has announced the findings of its monthly SB Authority Market Sentiment Survey. A key finding from the June survey is that 51 percent of business owners say their company has not received healthcare that is both better and more affordable under the Affordable Care Act. Additionally, 55 percent of business owners say they are unsatisfied with (34 percent) or unsure...
Read MoreCareer Cloud Launches Twitter Job Search Engine, Jobcritters.com
We've all undoubtedly heard of job boards like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Indeed. And with social networks like LinkedIn getting in on the action, it was only a matter of time before others followed suit. Well, the folks from Career Cloud have created a way to simplify and improve the job search and job posting process on Twitter. The company recently released Jobcritters.com, a new...
Read MoreDo You Undervalue Middle Management?
There is increasing evidence to show that middle management is not valued that highly within the corporate world. For example, this study by www.hrps.org has revealed that few than 25 percent of companies think that their middle managers are effective and this Gallup study shows that 90 percent of employees are disengaged or actively disengaged. The profile of line managers has hit such rock...
Read MoreAccountemps Survey Finds Micromanagement a Common Occurrence
In a recent Accountemps survey, a majority of workers polled said they have firsthand experience with an overbearing boss. Fifty-nine percent of employees interviewed reported working for a micromanager at some point in their careers. The survey also found the constant scrutiny has a negative impact on most workers. Of those who felt they'd been micromanaged, 68 percent said it decreased their...
Read More11 Questions to Examine Workplace Culture
Culture is a huge part of any organization, and it can make a big difference on the type of talent you attract to your business. This is one of the reasons why it's so important to invest in the "health" and effectiveness of your organization's culture, ensuring that your company's mission and culture are not only clearly defined but upheld. According to the infographic, "Is...
Read MoreReference Checks Are in a Sad State; Here Is One Way to Fix Them
"Reference checking is the last thing in the hiring process that nobody has ever really innovated around," says Greg Moran, founder of Chequed, a company that provides "predictive talent selection technology." "Phone-based reference-checking is done today the same way it was 50 years ago," Moran explains. "The problem is, it stopped working about 20 years ago. Companies really...
Read MoreAttention Candidates: How to Get in the Digital Game
If you haven't heard the buzz on social networks yet, then I don't know what to tell you. Except, it's never too late to crash the party. Initially, social networks took on a different meaning from what we now know them as. Social networks are 24/7 social outlets that connect users and businesses to never-ending conversations. And guess what? Employers and recruiters are lurking around and...
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