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!

Courtesy: I’m Blogging IT

This post originally appeared on Snelling Staff Services’ Hire Education Blog, an up-to-date hiring resource for employers and job seekers.

Your Clients and Candidates: Closer than You May Realize

It might seem strange to those in the staffing industry to directly compare their candidates to their clients, as many staffing firms view the recruiting and business development functions areas as two distinct entities that don’t impact one another.  Your candidates, however, are much more linked to your clients than you may realize. They are even, in many situations, one and the same: New research released in CareerBuilder and Inavero’s 2010 Opportunities in Staffing Guide reveals that 46 percent of staffing firm clients have also worked with a staffing firm as a job candidate.

If you have worked in the staffing industry for a long time, you’ve probably had the following experience: You have a great candidate (we’ll call him Joe), who is an IT professional focusing on Java. A few years ago, you placed Joe in a contract position with your client. You’ve kept in contact with Joe periodically over the years as he has accepted different positions across the country (like you do with all your great candidates).

One day, Joe e-mails you and says he’s now in the position to hire people himself and is looking for IT staffing help. I hear this story all the time, especially within the IT sector. It’s no surprise that 54 percent of IT clients surveyed in CareerBuilder and Inavero’s study said they once worked with a staffing firm as a job candidate.

What is the key factor in creating an environment that makes clients and candidates want to keep coming back to you? My suggestion is to first focus on delivering an exceptional candidate experience.  If you get this right, the referrals — from both candidates and clients — will come.

The Top Five Drivers for Job Seeker Loyalty and Referrals

The 2010 Opportunities in Staffing Guide identified the top five drivers for job seeker loyalty and referrals. Excel in the following areas and you will be well on your way to creating a unique experience for your candidates that will keep your company and personal brand top of mind:

1.Deliver great service. As you can see by the chart to the left, service was the number one driver for satisfaction with job candidates when working with a staffing firm. What processes do you have in place to ensure that you are providing the best experience and differentiating your firm from your competitors? How quickly does it take you to get back to people when they contact you? What “surprises” do you build into the process to go above and beyond? Think about ways you can make working with you more memorable.

2. Connect people with the best-fit jobs. There is a misconception that job seekers are not satisfied with staffing firms unless they receive a job.  Although attaining a position does drive satisfaction, it is not necessarily the first thing job seekers care about. Stay focused on the interactions candidates have with your staffing firm along the way to that placement. Candidates may very well alter their opinion of you (for better or for worse) as you work to make connections between them and your clients.

3. Be professional at all times. Not many people would argue the point that staffing professionals have a tough job. The stress of the position and volume of communication you receive can sometimes test your patience. Remaining professional at all times, however, is essential to creating a long-term referral network. You might speak to 25 people a day about their job search, but the job seeker on the other end may have only have spoken to you. Make that call memorable — in a good way.

4. Always be responsive in communication. There aren’t many things worse than never hearing back from someone. When someone is in a job search or unemployed, the stress of unresponsive communication is compounded. Job seekers are looking for progress, or at least a realistic view of their chances. Focus on setting proper expectations with your candidates and just say no when you cannot place them.  Hearing “no” is better than silence.

5. Promote your strong reputation. A strong reputation is based on the compiled experiences and interactions a person has had with you or your firm.  Technology makes it easier than ever to share these experiences.  Encourage candidates to share their experience through your referral network, Facebook page, or within review sites — these testimonials will help spread the word about you and your business successes.

Your candidate and client experiences are definitively linked. With the progress of social media and real-time communication, it is easier than ever for people to share both their good and bad experiences.  Focus on providing the best experiences possible for the job seekers you serve. Not only will this create more opportunities for candidate referrals in the short-term, but it will also position you as the “go-to” person when it comes to staffing when that candidate becomes a client.

Access a complimentary copy of CareerBuilder and Inavero’s 2010 Opportunities in Staffing Guide here.

Eric Gilpin is president of CareerBuilder’s Staffing & Recruiting Group. He has more than 10 years of experience in the staffing industry, and is responsible for developing sales teams and strategies to help clients meet their goals and promote the staffing industry overall. With people development and industry awareness as priorities, Gilpin is focused on technology, social media, and product design as key growth drivers for the staffing and recruiting industry.

Courtesy: I’m Blogging IT

February 26th

Your weekly IT update!

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February 22nd

Your weekly IT update!

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February 26th

Your weekly IT update!

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As Social Media begins to play an even greater role in the world today, it will be important that we realize the benefits that it can offer.  In an article published this week by CIO.com it stated that Facebook has now become the second most popular site on the web, passing Yahoo with only Google ahead of them.  Facebook’s 133.6 million unique visitors gives credibility to the exposure that social media provides and the different ways it can help businesses advertise and hire.  These numbers further emphasize the importance of  sites like Facebook and why organizations need to embrace social media and not let the benefits it can bring slip past them. 

http://www.cio.com/article/549614/Facebook_Now_Second_Most_Popular_Site_on_Web_Beating_Out_Yahoo?source=rss_news

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Co-workers can really make or break a workplace. A bad boss can make your life miserable, yes, but at least you can commiserate with your fellow disgruntled colleagues. In most situations, they are the ones sitting next to you eight hours a day. They engage in idle chitchat with you and exchange e-mails with you all day. They are as important to the job as your job duties.

Not everyone is so lucky. A recent CareerBuilder survey finds 39 percent of workers feel they don’t fit in with their colleagues. Workers in health care, sales, and professional and business services were most likely to feel like they’re out of step with their co-workers.

When asked to share the most bizarre things they’ve seen their colleagues do, surveyed workers had some unique stories:

• Co-worker ate the cheese off the pizza box at a company meeting.
• Co-worker talks openly about flatulence.
• Co-worker in the cubicle next to me wears 3-D glasses with the lenses removed.
• Co-worker repeatedly bangs a mallet on the table for no apparent reason.
• Co-worker whistles 8 hours a day.
• Co-worker chews tobacco and spits it into empty soda bottles.
• Former boss brought a baby sippy cup to a meeting and started drinking out of it.
• Co-worker cleaned fingernails using a counterpart’s business card while sitting in their office.

Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder, has the following advice for anyone who encounters this unorthodox behavior at work:

• Talk it out: Talk professionally and honestly to your co-worker about his or her behavior. Be sure to do this in private and try not to embarrass anyone or make the situation worse.
• Take it to a higher level: Don’t be afraid to get your boss involved or talk to HR. If the behavior is having a negative impact on your ability to do your job, it might be time to call in the big guns.
• Mix it up: If you can’t come to an agreement with a co-worker who is bothering you, ask to be reseated in another area.

I’ve not been (un)lucky enough to witness any workplace behavior quite as strange as the ones above, but I’m guessing some of you have. Feel free to share the strangest things you’ve seen at work. It’ll make you feel good to get it off of your chest and it will probably make the rest of us feel normal.

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The BLS released January’s jobs report this morning, and while it wasn’t complete cause for celebration, it was encouraging. The unemployment rate fell from 10.0 to 9.7 percent in January, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged, down -20,000 compared to -779,000 in January 2009.

Here are the highlights:

• The number of unemployed persons decreased to 14.8 million
• Employment fell in construction by -75,000, in transportation and warehousing by 19,000, and in financial activities by -16,000
• Temporary help services added 52,000 jobs,  retail trade employment rose by 42,000, the federal government added 33,000 jobs (including 9,000 temporary positions for Census 2010) and health care continued to trend up by adding 14,500 jobs.
• The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) continued to trend up in January, reaching 6.3 million. Since the start of the recession, the number of long-term unemployed has risen by 5.0 million
• There were 1.1 million discouraged workers — not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them — up from 734,000 a year earlier. 

Even though the Bureau of Labor Statistics job loss numbers could  were negative for January, unemployed Americans continue to be resilient in their job searches. In fact, 58 percent of those laid off in the last twelve months have secured new positions. According to an updated survey by CareerBuilder, 51 percent of workers who were laid off from full-time jobs in the last 12 months have found new full-time positions, up from 48 percent in June 2009.

Want to know how those people found their jobs? Watch CareerBuilder’s Jason Ferrara discuss the survey on First Business.

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If you’re one of the people who tuned into the big game yesterday–and seeing as the audience is expected to top 100 million people, you probably were a viewer–you saw a heck of a game. And by now everyone accepts the fact that the commercials are just as much of a draw as the game itself.

In case you were away from the TV getting your third plate of food (or, let’s be honest, opening up another bag of chips so you could eat bean dip straight from the jar), you might have missed some of the commercials. This year, CareerBuilder did something different from our usual big reveal during the game. We held a contest where anyone could submit a commercial idea to us and we’d pick the winner. We narrowed it down to three and let everyone vote on which should air during the game. And the winner was…”Casual Friday!” In case you missed out or want to watch it again, here it is:

If you want to see the other two commercials that didn’t air, check out our YouTube channel.

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Working from home isn’t exactly a new concept, so I was surprised to see it was a headline story on NPR today. Then I read the actual story, which is yet another lesson not to judge a book by its cover or an article by its headline. Adam Hochberg’s article and the accompanying audio story look at how commonplace telecommuting has become and at the attitudes employees and employers have toward it.

Hochberg points out that many companies give employees an option to telecommute on occasion, but some workers worry about how it reflects on their reputation.

University of Maryland marketing professor P.K. Kannan says his research has found that about a third of people who can telecommute rarely do so, often because they’re afraid their boss won’t like it.

“It seemed like there was some stigma associated with telecommuting,” Kannan says. “Some people are saying it’s a career suicide. ‘If you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind, so I really don’t want to telecommute even though I could.’ “

And people aren’t just telecommuting on designated days, either. Some companies only exist in the virtual world because workers are spread out. No storefronts, no skyscrapers, no strip malls—just a band of remote employees.

I recommend reading the story if you’re thinking about working from home. Jobs that allow you to work from your home office some or all of the time are often the most sought after, and yet people don’t realize what a culture shock telecommuting can be, especially if they’re used to cubicle world.

We have discussed the topic several times, specifically here and here, which might help you if you’re on the fence about taking one of these positions.

For those of you who have worked from home on a temporary or permanent basis, did you like it? Did you hate it? Is it something you would do again (if you’re not still doing it)? Seeing as so many job seekers are looking to these jobs, your firsthand experiences are welcome in the comments section!

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