Archive for February, 2009

Okay, I don’t usually watch The Millionaire Matchmaker.  I only happened to catch it last night because (and I’m totally stealing my co-worker Craig’s lame excuse here) I lost my remote somewhere in my house last night, thus crippling my efforts to change the channel and forcing me to watch it.  If you’re not familiar with this Emmy-worthy show, it’s about professional matchmaker Patti Stanger’s adventures in finding love matches for single millionaires.  

Anyway, somewhere between scenes of awkward date #1 and awkward date #2, it occurred to me how much Stanger (baby doll dresses and generous use of bronzer aside) is like a headhunter.  After all, what recruiter can’t relate to the pressure to deliver the best matches possible to a customer in hopes that one of these candidates will be become its happily-ever-after?

Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on February 27, 2009
• There are 5 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Employee Attraction

I don’t often invoke the music of Survivor in my posts — okay, make that never. But who am I kidding? I’d do it all the time if I could. We’ve talked before about cutting corners in your recruiting process to make your life a little less stressful and find better-suited candidates in less time. Our Resume Search Agents have been around for a while — did you know?

The dish: CareerBuilder’s Resume Search Agents, or RSAs

The gist: Conduct a Resume Database search, save that search, and have your new resume matches e-mailed to you as frequently (or infrequently) as you’d like.

Also known as: The tempting dessert tray of CareerBuilder’s Free Tools. The best of the candidates you’re looking for, brought right to you. View resumes in your inbox right away, or take a more in-depth look once it’s convenient for you. Like after dinner.

• Posted by: Amy Chulik on February 25, 2009
• There are 0 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Employee Attraction, Free Tools You Can Use

Lost your BlackBerry somewhere along St. Charles Avenue (you know you had it with you at Popeye’s…) during your visit to New Orleans for Mardi Gras?  You might come back to more efficient employees because of it…at least that’s what you could take away from this recent Harvard Business Publishing article.  

In his post about helping employees choose by eliminating choices, blogger Peter Bergman includes an anecdote about an employer who wanted to get his employees in the practice of going to each other instead of him (presumably, I’m hoping, to encourage collaboration and innovation and not so he could play endless hours of peaceful, uninterrupted Facebook Scrabble), so he took a three-week vacation and didn’t check his email or voicemail once.  Ah, of course.

Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on February 25, 2009
• There are 20 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Employee Attraction

It’s 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday morning. As you’re drinking your double espresso and fumbling through a slew of new e-mails, your phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Hi, boss. It’s Steve.”

“Steve, your voice sounds really muffled. Everything okay?”

“Um, not really. You see, I’m locked in my car trunk. That’s right – I am calling you from the inside of my car trunk. I’m not going to be able to make it into work until I get out of here.”

Hmm. You’ve never got that phone call from an employee? Well, chances are you’ve heard a similarly outlandish excuse at some point. Workers have a slew of crazy excuses for being late to work, and “I got locked in my car trunk by my son” tops our most recent survey of over 8,000 workers. According to the survey, 20 percent of workers arrive late to work at least once a week, up from 15 percent in last year’s survey. One in ten (12 percent) said they are late at least twice a week.

The most popular “standard” reasons for running late are due to traffic (33 percent); lack of sleep (24 percent); and getting the kids ready for school or day care (10 percent). Public transportation woes, wardrobe issues (not of the Janet Jackson-malfunction kind), and dealing with pets are also also common reasons.

But mixed in with those “common” reasons are those that are, well, a bit more odd.

• Posted by: Amy Chulik on February 24, 2009
• There are 8 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Branding, Generational Hiring, Leadership Development, Survey Results

According to IBM employee and blogger Adam Christensen in his recent post, The Impact of Corporate Culture on Social Media, “[Corporate] culture is…the most overlooked, underestimated factor determining whether social media succeeds or fails in a company.”

He ought to know. IBM has successfully implemented social networking into its day-to-day employee and customer relations – something Jennifer McClure of the Society for New Communications Research talks about in this recent interview podcast from Marketing Voices.  She argues that corporate culture is one of the greatest predictors of a company’s ability to successfully adapt to social media.   

Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on February 23, 2009
• There are 0 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Employee Engagement, Social Media

Last week, my colleague, Amy Chulik, wrote a post about how the number of working women is set to surpass that of men for the first time in history.

Now, the Financial Times is reporting on another gender shift: The increase of men undergoing plastic surgery or non-invasive cosmetic treatments to further their professional longevity. According to the article:

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on February 19, 2009
• There are 0 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Economy