Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
For the past two years, manufacturing suppliers have looked for ways to cut costs – just like nearly every other business. In the wake of the financial crisis, the importance of operating lean was driven home, and every opportunity to minimize expenses was examined. This sort of financial discipline may have seemed to make sense at the time, but the consequences are now becoming clear. Under-staff your company, and you could be exposed to significant risk.
According to a recent support by the Institute for Supply Management – Chicago, “Suppliers have cut staff so much that there is no support team when a failure occurs, the response is slow, laborious and inadequate.”
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Tags: BYTE, financial crisis, risk, risk management
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Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
For decades, we’ve all known that the best way to get a new job is through your personal network. It’s easier than working through headhunters, pitching through corporate websites and sending resume after resume through the job boards. A new social media solution is poised to turn those “real world” referrals into an online affair. For corporate recruiters, this could mean that there’s yet another fire hose of resumes with which to contend.
According to Mashable:
Users who log in to Simply Hired with their Facebook accounts can now search for jobs at their friends’ companies and send private messages to inquire about openings on the site.
SimplyHired also pulls profile data about current and previous work titles, location and interests (including companies users “Like”) to make more personalized job recommendations.
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Tags: BYTE, Corporate Recruiting, Facebook, job boards, recruiting, Simply Hired, social media, social networking, talent pools
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Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
According to the National Venture Capital Association, VC-backed companies are creating jobs at an impressive rate – which has significant implications for corporate recruiters. Look for your plate to fill up with reqs needing high-impact candidates, and be prepared to compete in a talent marketplace that may outpace your company’s ability to attract and close the most capable candidates!
The NVCA, through a study it completed with StartupHire.com, announced that more than 13,000 positions were posted as open (on StartUpHire) in the first quarter of 2010, a 16 percent increase from the end of 2009. VC purse strings are starting to loosen, which means the job market is starting to get the fuel it needs for growth. For corporate recruiters, the implications are obvious: positions will need to be filled.
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Tags: clean technology, cleantech, employees, hiring, information technology, interviewing, job market, life sciences, National Venture Capital Association, NVCA, outsourced recruiting, StartupHire, STREAM, talent market, talent pools, venture capital
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Monday, May 3rd, 2010
How well do you know your professional network? Well, the folks over at MIT probably disagree with you. New research, conducted by Ray Reagans, Associate Professor of Organization Studies at the university’s Sloan School of Management, suggests that you may not have the grasp on your network that you think.
Reagans says that you need to see how your networks are connected. People with a “high need for closure” (NFC) – i.e., those who prefer order and predictability, according to Technorati – are likely to assume that the people in their networks are similar to them, and that the pattern extends to their connections’ connections, as well. The downside is that these assumptions may not be correct.
“In order for networks to be useful, you need to accurately see how your networks are connected,” Reagans says. He continues, “People with high NFC tend to overuse heuristics – educated guesses based on past experience – and are therefore much less likely to benefit from networks. It could also hinder their careers. Even if they know what kinds of contacts are valuable, their inability to accurately see relationships will limit their ability to select the right contacts.”
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Tags: MIT, need for closure, networking, NFC, Organizational Studies, professional network, Sloan School of Management, social networking, STREAM
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
As the employment market flirts with recovery, look for entry-level positions in the financial services industry to show plenty of potential. This summer, new hires for these junior positions are expected to surge between 20 percent and 50 percent relative to the same period last year. Even if this is based on the depressed employment levels of 2009, it is nonetheless an impressive growth rate – and one that will put a considerable strain on corporate recruiters in the financial business.
This summer, look for the convergence of two powerful forces in the financial services industry. One, of course, is the need to hire aggressively. On the other side of the equation, though, is a market still bearing the weight of a 9.7 percent unemployment rate. Even though 162,000 jobs were created in March, it wasn’t enough to offset the effects of the financial crisis that struck in September 2008 … particularly the 400,000 positions shed in the financial services industry (including insurance) alone.
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Tags: BYTE, candidates, financial services, financial services industry, hiring, HR outsourcing, HRO, insurance, insurance industry, interviewing, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, recruiting outsourcing, resumes, talent, talent market, talent pools, unemployment, unemployment rate
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Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Competition in the social media space benefits everyone in the talent supply chain – candidates, hiring managers and corporate recruiters. As the major platforms compete for users and look for ways to increase their traffic, they’ve been rolling out new features. LinkedIn, in particular, has been pursuing this agenda rather aggressively, and its latest enhancement speaks directly to increasing action on its network for the talent market in a tough employment market.
LinkedIn’s new Real-Time Profile Matches is still in beta testing, but the company’s objective is salient: make it easier to pair high-quality candidates with open reqs. It was clearly developed with corporate recruiters in mind, as LinkedIn is implying that it’s trying to shrink time to hire across the industry.
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Tags: candidates, Corporate Recruiting, LinkedIn, social media, social networking, STREAM, talent market
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Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
It’s still a bit early to tell, but it looks like the economy is finding its legs. As this trend continues, businesses will become more comfortable making larger strategic investments. The game-changing initiatives that get the green light are likely to have talent implications, and corporate recruiters should be ready for a new kind of action.
The momentum that comes with a turn in the economy can have a slingshot effect for companies that plan well. Making the right decisions now – and executing them effectively – can magnify ROI down the road. Every aspect of strategy execution has this potential, including corporate recruiting. But, before you rush out to assemble talent pools, you’ll want to get a feel for the new talent markets you are about to enter. Whether it’s for a product line or region, you should know the challenges and opportunities that await you.
KGTiger’s TMR service provides one thing: answers. As you’re preparing to recruit into the unknown, the risks begin to become apparent quickly, and the most daunting is the belief that there are “unknown unknowns” waiting to trip up your imminent strategic hiring program. Detailed talent market research reports from TMR can take much of the guesswork out of your riskiest, highest-potential and most important business initiatives. With TMR you can drive business decisions based on what you know – instead of what you think!
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Tags: Corporate Recruiting, economy, HR, HR outsourcing, HRO, human resources, market entry, market research, new market entry, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, product launch, recruiting outsourcing, research, risk management, ROI, talent, talent acquisition, talent market, talent pools, TMR
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
The high rate of unemployment right now is leading many candidates to pursue jobs through as many channels as possible. But, looking to the future, the dynamic is bound to change when the job market recovers. This means that job-seekers will settle into the venues in which they are most comfortable. For members of the Baby Boom generation, who are likely to resist full retirement, corporate website job pages will become increasingly important.
According to a recent story on social media blog AllFacebook, Boomers turn to authority. For example, 49 percent of them use online reviews and recommendations on a retailer’s website to make purchasing decisions. Only 9 percent turn to other blogs or communities. For corporate recruiters, there’s a lesson to be learned from this.
Though retail behavior doesn’t necessarily align with job-hunting, the tendency of Baby Boomers to stick with a trusted source should not be trivialized. Boomers who prefer retailers’ sites may be more likely to look for open positions on a corporate site rather than through a job board or social media. Use your jobs page to make it easier for Boomers who are looking for you, and you have a better chance of turning eyeballs into an application and an application into a filled position.
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Tags: Baby Boomers, Blog, BYTE, candidates, Facebook, generations, HR outsourcing, HRO, human resources, job market, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, recruiting outsourcing, social media, social networking
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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
So, what can we make of the talent market right now? A year ago, the situation was nothing short of dismal. Job cuts peaked in January 2009, according to the latest data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, with 241,729 layoffs announced – the largest one-month reduction since January 2002. And, the five months that followed continued to be severe. Since the start of the recession, 2.5 million positions have been cut, Challenger says, with 1.6 million of them coming between July 2008 and June 2009.
Yet, the second half of last year wasn’t nearly as bad. After January, the layoff rate did fall, though it stayed above a monthly average of 130,000 for the first six months of 2009. The situation became much better after July 1, 2009, and the monthly average for from July through November was only around 69,000, with November (the last month reported) coming in at slightly above 50,000 cut positions.
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Tags: BYTE, Challenger Gray and Christmas, hiring in a recession, job cuts, layoff, layoffs, recession, talent market, unemployment, unemployment rate
Posted in Intelligence, News | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Are you tending an electronic graveyard for online resumes? This is the public perception of the application process. Job-seekers are lobbing as many resumes as they can, in the hopes of either finding a better job or removing themselves from the 10 percent of the workforce that is unemployed. The sheer volume this creates, unfortunately, is the cause of the job-hunters’ belief that most of those resumes will never get anywhere.
High unemployment, of course, sends traffic flocking to job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder. Seven of the top 10 job sites, according to a recent Fox News report, saw traffic double year-over-year. In June alone, 65 million people visited job sites. The application volume associated with these trends, doubtless, is why resumes can sit in front of a corporate recruiter’s eyes for 20 seconds or less.
The easiest way to solve the problem of applicant volume, of course, is education. Explain to job-seekers that they need to tailor their resumes to each position … and that they should only respond to postings that match their qualifications. But, this won’t happen. So, corporate recruiters need to find operational remedies.
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Tags: BYTE, CareerBuilder, hiring managers, job boards, job sites, Monster, resume formatting, resumes, unemployment, unemployment rate
Posted in News, Process | No Comments »
