If there’s one thing Americans love, it’s year-end,”top ten” lists.

Not to discount the role family time, seasonal light displays, gift-giving and Charlie Brown all play in creating an overall sense of merriment this time of year, but I’d be willing to bet that top ten lists have a lot to do with what makes this season so merry and bright. Because for everything that divides this country throughout the year – religion, politics, the necessity of airport patdowns, Jacob versus Edward, etc. – December marks the one time of year we can all seem to agree that there’s nothing we, as a country, can’t – or won’t – categorize, list, judge, rank…and then blog about.

So in the spirit of the season (and not wanting to miss out on one of America’s favorite pastimes), I’m proud to announce The Hiring Site’s very own year-end top ten list:

The Hiring Site’s Top 10 Most-Read Blog Posts of 2010:

1. How to Craft a Candidate Rejection Letter or E-mail (Yes, You Have Time To Do It) Time was not on the side many overworked hiring managers this year, but that’s no excuse to leave a candidate hanging. While you probably don’t want to write a candidate rejection letter any more than a candidate wants to receive one, there’s a good reason why you should. Fortunately, there’s also a way to do it that won’t eat up valuable work hours. We provide both.
2. Will the Real Candidate Please Stand Up? How to Spot a Fake Resume Thanks to a rise in websites like CareerExcuse.com and FakeResume.com, it became even easier for job seekers to falsify information on their resumes. Here we give tips for making sure you don’t fall victim to fakes.
3. Job Creation Up, Unemployment Rate Down (But There’s a Catch…) Little did we know at the time, but June 2010 – the topic of our monthly summary of the unemployment situation report – would later be identified by economists as the month the recession officially ended.
4. Social Media Recruiting Made Easy: A New (Free) eBook If you haven’t visited this post since February (or at all) be sure to go back and download our popular eBook on social media recruitment, Will Tweet for Talent: A User’s Guide to Talent Recruitment through Social Media, which has since been updated with more current facts and figures.
5. The HIRE Act — What Does It Mean for Your Business? In March of this year, President Obama signed into law the HIRE Act, which allows businesses that hire unemployed workers certain tax credits. We broke down the basics of the law to show what the HIRE Act means for both you and your organization overall.
6. CareerBuilder Unveils Its New Big Game Commercial (With a Little Help from You) Adding a little levity to our usual fare, we asked you to vote on which CareerBuilder ad you wanted to see during the Big Game – the very ad that results in one of CareerBuilder’s biggest traffic surges of the year and – more importantly – increased exposure for CareerBuilder customers.
7. Perceived Risks Don’t Negate Proven Rewards of Social Media Recruiting While it’s fun to focus on the benefits of social media recruitment, in June we took a moment to address – and clarify – the realities and misconceptions of its potential risks.
8. How Does Your Company Promote Employee Wellness?  Sure, it helped that we sweetened the deal by adding the chance to win an iPod nano – but it was refreshing to see the huge response from employers who actively promote their employees’ well-being.  Although only one person won the iPod, everyone who read both this post and our follow-up post walked away with some great ideas for promoting wellness at their own organizations.
9. BLS Employment Situation Report for July – Channeling “Groundhog Day”? July marked yet another month of slow but sure – but definitely slow – progress, when we did our monthly summary of the Labor Department’s Employment situation report. (Five months later, can we not say the exact same thing? Maybe we are living Groundhog Day.)
10. “What Happens if the Owner Dies?” True Tales of Interview Questions That Stumped Hiring Managers When we challenged readers to share the most difficult interview questions they’ve ever gotten – from job candidates, the only thing more surprising than the questions our readers submitted were the surprisingly insightful lessons they gleaned from their experiences.

What’s Ahead for 2011?
But let’s not dwell too much on the past…Here’s a peek of the topics we have in store to cover for 2011:

• Building a talent pipeline for today and the future
• Using talent intelligence to make smarter decisions and strengthen business operations
• Emerging media and recruitment: Strategies and best practices
• Employment branding: Taking it to the next level
• The new rules for succession planning and retention
• New recruitment trends: Do they live up to the hype?

Anything we’re missing? What topics do you want us to cover in 2011? Tell us in the comments section below!