Recruiter Today | Recruiting Trends and Tips for Recruiters - Page 158

Cloud-based IBM Kenexa Talent Suite Combines Social Business Capabilities

IBM has announced the SaaS-based Kenexa Talent Site allowing C-Suite executives and CHROs to obtain insights into the data shared by their workforces. This means organizations can streamline and modernize hiring practices, increase employee productivity, and connect workers with social tools in ways that positively impact the bottom line. Through these tools, businesses can more effectively...

Chewing Gum a Good Measure for Job Seekers?

Here's a suggestion for questions to ask job seekers: Are you a gum chewer? On the flip side, it might not hurt to offer an interviewer a stick of gum to demonstrate how good your cognitive skills might be. Turns out chewing gum, which some deem annoying, can actually be effective for developing mental acuity. Maybe those Doublemint Twins weren't dumb blondes after all. Writing at...

Three Skills to Immediately Boost Your Upside at Work

Although "what have you done for me lately" attitudes abound in today's fast-paced business world, projecting a strong upside of your future talent and potential is the best leverage you wield in a competitive job market. For example, a hiring manager may not see everything she wants in you as a candidate, but if she perceives potential for your combination of raw ability and experience...

Top 3 Areas to Invest in Recruiting in 2014

They say an organization is only as good as its people. Anything that goes into recruiting the best talent available in the market is therefore the first valuable investment towards building a successful organization. Many organizations have a January 1st fiscal year, which means there is an opportunity to improve a process, fix something that is broken or invest in something new. Here are...

DirtSearch LLC Releases 2013's Top 10 Searches

Reports say that around 15 million U.S. residents have their identities used fraudulently each year, which amounts to a financial loss totaling upwards of $50 billion. It's clear to see why now, more than ever, it's important to manage your online reputation. To help people not only discover if their background search results are "dirty," but also to reveal annual search statistics,...

U.S. Workforce Constrained by Multitasking, Disengagement Reports FuzeBox

FuzeBox, a cloud-based provider of real-time communications and collaboration services, has announced the results of its survey investigating organizational behavior. Broadly, the study concluded that the hyper-connected nature of the modern social (workplace and personal) environment is creating a distracted and less-efficient workforce. Of the 2,000 workers surveyed, 92 percent admit to...

Do Firms Need a Chief Re-hiring Officer?

Hay Group is expecting worldwide employee turnover to accelerate in 2014. After being pretty flat over the last few years, they are predicting that 160 million workers will quit in 2014, which is a huge 12.9 percent increase over 2012. This trend is expected to continue over the next four years, with average employee turnover rates set to rise from 20.6 percent to 23.4 percent. With Hay Group...

December Sees Jump in Payroll in 30 States, Unemployment Drop in 39

According to U.S. Labor Department data, payrolls increased in 30 states in December as the rate of unemployment fell in 39, indicating widespread improvement of the job market. Texas topped the nation in payroll gains adding 17,600 followed by Florida at 14,100. The largest fall in unemployment occurred in Louisiana for December and in North Carolina for the year. The national labor market has...

Evolv Launches Workforce-management App to Streamline, Automate Workforce Optimization

Evolv, a provider of big data solutions for workforce optimization, has announced an updated version of Evolv Workforce Optimization Cloud that includes newly developed predictive analytics application, Evolv Insights. Combined with Evolv Selection, the company's hiring and assessment app, Evolv's suite uses big data to bring to bear predictive analytics, machine learning, and workforce...

Are Cover Letters Pointless?

We've all had to write one: the dreaded cover letter. It's no surprise that applying for a job can take up a great deal of time, and having to also submit a cover letter certainly doesn't shorten the process. Sometimes those online applicant tracking systems can take up to 30-45 minutes to fill in (I especially hate the ones that require you to manually add all your work history like the...

A Diploma from 'Wikipedia University': a Future Job Requirement and Candidate Asset?

The year is 2020 and the strong covergram you're reading is signed "J. Smith, M.D. Dip.W., Medical Science". "Dip.W."?—What's that? At the moment, only an idea; but considering the not-so-distant future, maybe something to be made available and strongly recommended, if not mandatory: a "Wikipedia University Diploma". Flash back to the present; let's say you are...

This Might Make You Reconsider Your Application Process

It all stems from this little quote from Forbes contributor Liz Ryan, "Before you automated a process, every business analyst and programmer told us, it had to be a sensible process on its own." It makes complete sense doesn't it? Ryan wrote a pretty eye-opening piece on the root of a lot of recruiters' issues with everything-automation, called "How Technology Killed...

The Taffy Model of Work-Stress Diagnosis, Control and Exchange

I don't particularly like taffy. I like stress even less. But gooey taffy and job stress seem to have more in common than my dislike for both: In fact, sticky, stretchy taffy represents a good conceptual model for identifying, differentiating and coping with—and, yes, even exchanging—the forms of stress that can be experienced at work, or anywhere, for that matter. Good...

Working in Solitary: The Impact of 'Tele-Isolation' on Job Performance

There are reportedly few studies about the impact of prolonged isolation on work outcomes. But, on reflection, there are plenty of questions to ask and answers worth having, e.g., when is virtually complete isolation a positive influence on job performance? When is it a recipe for catastrophe? What personal traits, attitudes and skills are best or worst-suited to it? Stereotypes of solitary...

10 New Year's Resolutions for Revolutionary Recruiting

Are you ready to revolutionize the way you hire candidates? It's easy, really. And totally free. Just follow these 10 New Year's recruitment resolutions and you'll be on your way to winning the talent game. 1. Show those pearly whites A smile — like a picture — is worth a thousand words. So give it and receive it happily. It puts candidates at ease and shows off your great...

2014 Workplace Trends: What to Expect from the Corporate World in the Coming Year

As 2014 gets underway and everyone's schedules gets back to normal after holiday vacation and extended snow days, many people are looking ahead to what the year will bring. Between President Obama's State of the Union address and predictions for a slowly improving economy bringing hope to millions of out-of-work Americans, people are closely watching jobs numbers. Along with the...

4 Search Engine Tips To Attract Top Talent

In an age where jobs boards, social media and employee referrals remain the most popular ways to attract talent to your firm or agency, it's easy to forget the role that search engines, and basically Google can have on your talent hunt. With there being over 360,000,000 long tail job-related searches (e.g. highly targeted searches such as java develop jobs in Birmingham) in a typical month on...

Interact Intranet 7.3 to bring Higher Engagement, Faster Decisions, Better Problem Solving

Intranet software provider, Interact Intranet, has announced the release of Interact Intranet 7.3 with a feature list rich in social capabilities. Implementing an intranet with social enterprise tools improves employee engagement, speeds up the decision making process, facilitates more effective problem solving, and reduces reliance on email for greater overall productivity. "It is great to...

Long-Term Unemployed Need Social Networking

There's a problem in the job recruiting process for the long-term unemployed: they are discriminated against more than the currently employed. That's the finding of a professor from the MIT Sloane School of Business who suggested they need to fully embrace social networking to get hired. Speaking on the NPR radio show "Where We Live," Ofer Sharone of the MIT Sloan School of Management said...

Recruitment Rocket Arrives as First Video Recruiting Agency

Unlike traditional recruiting agencies, newly minted, Canada-based Recruitment Rocket is founded on recorded video interviews. Like other employment agencies, Recruitment Rocket sources candidates, reviews resumes, and provides notes to employers, but the company also instructs top candidates to answer a set of interview questions from their own computer with equipped webcam. Those responses,...

Effective Employment Branding: Online Review Sites

Employer review websites like Glassdoor have become extremely popular over the past few years. Offering a peek into "real life" as an employee at a particular employer, review websites offer job seekers a better way to research companies prior to application or interview. Whether or not you're aware of this, these types of online hubs for current and past employees and new job seekers can...

KEDAR IT Cost Optimization Service Solution Addresses IT Spending Management

KEDAR Information Technologies' Cost Optimization Service (COp-S) solution Version 3 helps companies better manage and optimize IT spending across all IT services. Users simply enter existing data from spreadsheets, the GL, and project budgets and metrics from ITSM tools into COp-S for automatic optimization. The result is a selection of dashboards, scorecards, and other budget and spending...

Is This Really 'The Real Reason' New College Grads Can't Get Hired?

In a November 10, 2013 Time Magazine article, titled "The Real Reason New College Grads Can't get Hired", various surveys were reported as suggesting there is one explanation for failed grad job hunts: a lack of "soft skills", such as: Effective communication Problem solving Focusing Critical thinking Creativity Collaboration Motivation Other...

Most In-Demand Programming Languages [infographic]

What I don't know about programming is a whole lot. What I do know is that no matter what field you're in, what industry you market to or what vertical you recruit out of, these programming skills matter. Furthermore, they change from time-to-time and if you are not working directly with programmers in office, day-in and day-out, you have a limited view on what's the latest, most important or...

Applications for Unemployment Rise More than Expected at January's End

Applications for jobless benefits rose higher than predicted during the week ending January 25, reaching the highest level in over a month. The surge comes after a modest slump following the holidays. Claims spiked by 19,000 to 348,000 for the period while the median forecast by Bloomberg-surveyed economists was at 330,000. "Weekly layoffs have been low over the past month," Ryan Wang, an...

Take Your Career Horizontal for Long Term Growth

As the workplace undergoes tectonic shifts under the weight of rapid technological change, a social media revolution, and new global economic realities, we need to rethink how to protect and grow our careers—by moving away from traditional, vertical job tracks, to a more holistic and horizontal approach. It's time for a paradigm shift, and executives at all levels must think hard about...

7 Great Candidate Negotiation Tools Other Than Salary

Candidate negotiation can be tough at the best of times, but it can be especially hard when you don't have any more wiggle room in terms of salary. Imagine you have a great candidate sitting there and you are finding that you are just not able to meet their salary expectations. What do you do? Let the person go without a fight? Of course not, you begin to focus on areas other than salary, which...

Negative People May Have a Positive Impact

OK, how many of you truly enjoy being around perky people? After a while, we all end up questioning their sincerity, yet many employers look for positive attitudes when hiring. It turns out negative perceptions might be better for some positions. That's the main point of a study for the Academy of Management Journal (PDF) by Ronald Bledow of Ghent University, Belgium; Kathrin Rosing of...

PI Worldwide Offers Best Practices for Improved Engagement and Retention

Leader in science-driven insights, PI Worldwide, has put together five best practices to help organizations maximize employee engagement and retention of top talent. The best practices tips are designed to help employers overcome engagement and retention battles as a 2013 Gallup study on The State of the Global Workforce revealed that just 13 percent of employees worldwide were engaged. Gallup...

PPACA to Have Minimal Effect on Hiring, say Economists

Data from the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) indicates that the vast majority of companies will see little to no effect on hiring plans due to the Affordable Care Act. About 75 percent of respondents to the NABE survey said that the PPACA has not influenced planning or expectations for 2014. About 20 percent said that the law would have negative effects on business conditions...

Asure Predicts Top Influencers of Workplace Strategies in 2014

Workplace management solutions provider Asure Software has unveiled its list of top three factors that it predicts will most influence workplace strategies in 2014. These factors include mobilization, globalization, and technology. "Organizations are constantly striving to more effectively manage their largest expenditures, which typically are labor, real estate and technology," said Asure...

6 Tips to Balance Your Work Effectively in 2014

Are you ready to tackle work head-on this year or do you need extra motivation to get through the next 11 months? It can be challenging to start a new year with refreshed goals and responsibilities, possibly because you don't know where to begin. Many people start the year with a single-minded focus on their work goals and let their personal lives fall by the wayside. But is that the best...

9 Difficult Types of Employee (and how to handle them) Part 2

In the first part of this article we looked at four talented but difficult types of employee, (based on the negative aspects of Belbin's team roles), that you might face and how to handle them. The first 4 of these talented but difficult types of employee were: The Mad Scientist Mozart Clean Hand Luke Four Weddings In this article we will look at the next five: 1. Mr. Inflexible:...

How To Satiate Demand for More College Grads

The National Association of Colleges and Employers is predicting robust growth in the hiring of the Class of 2014 with growth in jobs around 7.8 percent when compared to the Class of 2013. Throw in opportunities at international operations and the number jumps to 12 percent. Overall, the report (PDF) said, degrees in business, engineering, computer/information science, sciences, and...

Why I "Like" Facebook's "Look Back" Idea

To celebrate its 10-year anniversary (didn't that fly by?), Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team created personalized "Look Back" videos for the social networking sites users. The 62-second videos are a compilation of users' most "liked" pictures and statuses set to "reflective" music. It starts by saying, "You joined Facebook in ____ year," and then proceeds to...

Is Entrepreneurship the Way to Go?

Everyone knows that part of the reason the Super Bowl is so popular is because of the commercials that air during the big game. And while this year's offering certainly served up plenty of laughs and "awe moments,' there's one commercial I'd like to specifically focus on—and it's about a lady named Gwen. The commercial started with actor John Turturro walking into a house as he...

Super Bowl Sparks Job Seekers' Interests in Seattle

Although the Seattle Seahawks were a fan favorite for their 43-8 win over the Denver Broncos Feb. 2, 2014, did you know the two teams affect more than people's choices on who to root for? According to an infographic from Simply Hired, both Denver and Seattle saw an increase in job seeker interest on the site after the January 2014 playoffs—and like the Super Bowl, Seattle took first...

9 Difficult Types of Employees (and how to handle them) Part 1

No matter the size or type of your business, and no matter how smooth and streamlined your talent management processes you will come across difficult employees. By difficult I don't mean a chronically bad employee, because from a philosophical perspective, they are easy to handle, that is, they need to improve or move on. When I say difficult, I mean those talented employees who are perhaps...

Riptide and Axosoft Introduce OnTime Connector to Integrate Data into Salesforce

A partnership between custom software developer Riptide and Axosoft, maker of OnTime Scrum, has culminated in the release of OnTime Connector to enable OnTime users to integrate agile project data into their Salesforce environments. Available now in the Salesforce AppExchange, OnTime Connector lets project development teams streamline their operations with access OnTime data in Salesforce. The...

Skating vs. Climbing: a Defense of Working With[out] Ambition

With respect to effort, there are only two ways to work: with or without ambition. Those who happily work without ambition are just ambitious enough to get a job and to keep it, despite whatever scorn, teasing, pity or ridicule they face for their contentment. Those who work unhappily without ambition are, in general and unfortunately, those who have lost hope. Obviously, jobs without...

New ATS from HireSafe Expands HR Products for Small Businesses

Background screening company HireSafe has expanded its assortment of HR products and services with a free onboarding and applicant tracking system (ATS) targeted at small businesses. A more comprehensive and dynamic paid version is also available for larger employers who want to streamline the hiring process. Called HireList, the free version suits the needs of many employers while the premium...

This Recruiting Advice Helps Open Closed Doors

David Rogier claims to have unearthed the magic advice of job hunting: recruiting advice no one tells you. Among his best advice is to develop results for a company before you even apply. It's an unorthodox strategy but one that has worked fabulously. Rogier, a Stanford MBA graduate, has compiled an essay at medium.com on the recruiting advice that works but he had to learn it through hard...

Can Staff Recognition Boost Staff Retention?

Managing and motivating employees is really hard in many respects, but a research piece from Bersin shows that at least in one respect it is very easy when you know how. They found that employers who say, "thank you" to their staff using employee recognition initiatives have a massive 31 percent lower voluntary turnover than peers with ineffective recognition programs. Engagement, productivity...

Should You Panic When Staff Resign?

All this talk of talent wars, global talent mismatches and brain drains has created a kind of frenzied state in talent management with HR teams upgrading, repairing, and turbo boosting their talent retention initiatives for fear of their top talent walking away in droves. But, of course in the more circumspect moments, most professionals realize that staff turnover is a natural part of the...

Are 'Bottom-Level Workers' Undeserving of a Minimum Wage Increase?

Give America a raise. This was undeniably one of the most memorable (and talked about) lines in President Obama's State of the Union speech Jan. 28, 2014. And that's more than likely because of what the President said his actions will be soon afterward. To get the ball rolling, Obama plans to sign an executive order increasing minimum wage from the current $7.25/hr. to $10.10/hr. Although...

How Relevant Are Job Boards in 2014?

Human Resources software developer PeopleMatter has developed a webinar called "Naughty or Nice? Top 10 Workforce Trends and Whether They'll Be Good or Bad for Your Brand in 2014." Among other topics it discusses whether job boards will be relevant in 2014. In an article about the webinar, the Society for Human Resources Management reported, "The question is not whether job boards are...

iCIMS Updates Educational Site, First Time Offering Job Seeker Content

Leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition software solutions iCIMS recently enhanced its educational site, Hire Expectations Institute™ (HEI), which is dedicated to talent acquisition innovation. The updated site offers the latest information about industry trends, new technology tools, best practices for employers and job seeker-related content. "Information on...

Commuting Shortens Some Women's Life Expectancy?

Commuting from home to work, or even for shopping, can be very annoying and boring—especially when the trips are long. But, research outlined at the 2013 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Los Angeles by social geographer Erika Sandow of Sweden's Umeå University reported that long commutes can also be deadly, as a health risk (and presumably not because of increased...