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Archive for August, 2009

Employment News for the Week of August 28

What a week. While many news channels were saturated with coverage of Ted Kennedy’s passing and the Michael Jackson homicide investigation, here’s what you may have missed in employment and recruiting news…
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Job Seekers Want to Know: “Why Don’t You Call Us Back?”…Pt.2

Thanks to everyone who offered feedback after my earlier post asking recruiters why they don’t get back to job seekers. Just as I anticipated, the overwhelming reason people gave for not responding to job seekers was time constraints:

  • One respondent reported receiving up to 500 applicants for one filled position, while another said they had 50 – 100 applicants they were trying to reach each day, adding, “If they [recruiters] called very candidate back that called them they would be fielding candidate call backs all day.”  Okay, fair enough.
  • Other than lack of time, someone else offered the possibility that recruiters were trying to test job seekers’ follow-up skills, while another respondent turned the tables on job seekers, saying that they often fail to show up for interviews on time, if at all – or are just too lazy to check the status of their applications on-line. 
  • One last possibility a recruiter offered? “Recruiters are lazy.”  Well…alright then. 

Is that why so many job seekers responded with similar experiences where employers didn’t call back even after they’d interviewed – and been told they’d hear back either way? Because if that’s true – which I know it’s not for several of you, who even expressed a lot of sympathy for these job seekers – then it’s actually not alright.

In fact, to paraphrase Julia Roberts’ hooker with a heart of gold, it’s actually a big mistake. Big. Huge. And here’s why: Continue Reading…

GM’s Buick Rejection on Twitter — and What We Can Learn From It

If a friend tells you they’re not a huge fan of your three wolves T-shirt, well, maybe you’d defiantly wear it to dinner anyway because you know it looks, um, fabulous.  But if your customers or candidates told you a new product of yours was hideous, would you scrap it? Continue reading

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CareerBuilder Leadership Series: Spotlight on Ben Roth, Founder and CEO of Roth Staffing

benroth

In CareerBuilder’s recent interview with Ben Roth, founder and chief executive officer of Roth Staffing Companies, L.P., Ben revealed his thoughts on the “three circles of the hedgehog,” his advice to other companies on how to create a values-driven company, the importance of his company’s “Ambassadors” in driving employee engagement, and more.

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Money Talks When It Comes to Retaining Top Talent, Survey Shows

Employers who want to retain top talent over the next 12 months had better be willing to pay up – at least that’s what the results of the annual Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations (EDGE) Report indicate.

Released today, the report, conducted by CareerBuilder and Robert Half International, provides an overview of the current employment situation, as well as a glimpse of the future hiring landscape.  More than 500 hiring managers and 500 workers nationwide participated in the study, now in its fifth year.

Looking at the results of the report, it looks like employers are going to have to pull out all the financial stops to retain their high performers as the economy turns around: Continue Reading…

In Case You Missed It: Employment News for the Week of August 21

While you were figuring out how many Big Macs you earn in a year, setting your TiVo for the Project Runway premiere, or getting fitted for your very own invisibility cloak, here’s what was happening in the world of hiring and recruiting this week…  Continue Reading…

More Workers Seeking Out Job Positions with Small Businesses (and Landing Them, Too)

shortsSome current trends may seem obvious–possible Mad Men spoilers or First Lady Michelle Obama in shorts (oh my gosh!), but there’s another that may surprise you: small business. You heard me right. As workers find their way around one of the toughest economies and job markets in the nation’s history, more and more of them are seeking out–and finding–new job positions with small businesses, according to a new CareerBuilder survey.

One in five workers (22 percent) surveyed who were laid off from full-time jobs in the last 12 months landed new jobs with small businesses. Another 59 percent said they are interested in working for a small business. And 29 percent of workers are getting the entrepreneurial bug and considering starting a small business of their own. With those kinds of numbers, it’s not a surprise that small businesses account for most of the nation’s new job creation, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Continue Reading…

Nearly Half of Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Screen Job Candidates

Wow…according to CareerBuilder’s latest survey, the number of employers using social networking sites to screen candidates has more than doubled in the last year.  

Out of more than 2,600 hiring managers, 45 percent reported using social networking sites to research job candidates’ backgrounds for information that verified – or supplemented – the information on their resumes.  This finding represents a huge increase from the 22 percent of hiring managers who said the same thing last year.

The most popular site to search, not surprisingly, is Facebook, followed closely by LinkedIn and MySpace. Searching blogs and following candidates on Twitter were also popular means of screening. (Looks like you’re safe, Friendster users.)

(Side note/shameless plug: As of yesterday, hiring managers have a new social networking site on which to research candidates: Brightfuse, CareerBuilder’s new professional networking site. Check out the press release here.)

Of those who searched social networking sites to screen candidates, as many as 35 percent found content on that caused them not to hire the candidate, such as: Continue Reading…

Social Networking vs. Social NOTworking: Where Do You Stand?

 “Social Notworking: The practice of spending time unproductively on social-networking websites, especially when one should be working.” – UrbanDictionary.com

In the ongoing debate over whether social networking is a productivity booster or a productivity destroyer, what’s your stance?

If you’re part of Team Destroyer, here’s new fuel for your fire: A recent study from Nucleus Research found that Facebook negatively affects office productivity.  The results of Nucleus’ survey of 237 office workers indicate that roughly half (47 percent) of office workers regularly log on to Facebook during working hours – and the vast majority of those workers (87 percent) can’t define a clear business reason for doing so – all of which result in an average of 1.5 percent in lost production across the entire office.

On the surface, this finding seems to support the argument for companies to ban access to social networking sites, but consider this Continue Reading…

It’s Easier than Ever for Green Employers to Find their Job Seeker Match

Green-collar jobs are expected to grow rapidly over the next several years –at a rate of 1.3 million jobs per year through 2030, to be exact. More and more of today’s job seekers are seeking out employment with environmentally conscious businesses. Continue reading

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