The Japanese Art of Rejection: The "No!" Drama
"Our Prime Minister needs a speech."--the mysterious Mr. Narita Barely after my feet had hit their first tatami mat in Tokyo, I was introduced to the mysterious and very well-connected Mr. Narita. This, thanks to a very hip German Calvin Klein male model look-alike friend, "Axel", whose smooth style and luck had brought him to the base of Mr. Narita's pyramid of power. Without...
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Culture Reaps Rewards
Being a gay-friendly workplace means a lot more than simply having a few lesbian employees or having a boss that asks homophobes to cut it out when they start gay-bashing. A workplace that really feels like a good place to go in the morning is a coveted thing. It seems that Harris Bank might be one of those rare places. In a press release, the bank announced that it has been recognized...
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New Jobs a Post-Military Must
Recruiters may be accustomed to the unique challenges that military families face when they return home, looking for work. Although they have served the country, they often have a difficult time proving to employers that they deserve good job opportunities. It's long been common knowledge that military families often struggle to make ends meet once their time in the service comes to an...
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Pick Niche Job Boards Like A Pro
Big job boards make one central claim: they're big. They have lots of candidates in their resume database, heavy Internet traffic, and great exposure for your jobs. Your employment site can't compete with a big job board not because of functionality, but because of visibility - big boards offer bulk, and with bulk, comes the promise of some quality. Recruiters tasked with posting jobs,...
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Facebook Sponsored Stories for Recruiting
Facebook recently announced that they are rolling out a new method of advertising. They are calling the new advertising format "Sponsored Stories." Using Facebook Sponsored Stories, companies will be able to promote news feed generated content. Mashable already called the new move "bold, clever and lacking empathy." What the new format does is to juice up an individual's status updates with...
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Nothing Wrong with Being "Only a Number"
"Numb and number"—typical math-phobic high school student's response to math class After back-to-back day-long interviewing, a weary recruiter who then begins to think, "Take a number", may be forgiven for taking his feelings of numbness about the parading applicants a step closer to total numb(er)ness: "They are numbers. Only numbers. Each and every one of them—just a...
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CT Woman Fired After Facebook Comments
The area of employment law in relation to social media is still very new. However, you can be certain that legal precedents will be set in 2011 with many important cases coming up. In Connecticut, a judge will hear a case involving a woman who made comments about her manager on her Facebook profile. The interesting fact about the case is that she was using Facebook on her own personal time....
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Technology Creates New Jobs in Illinois
In the "Land of Lincoln", the Illinois Technology Association (ITA) offers a breath of economic optimism. The ITA's 5th Annual Salary Survey found just over half of the 135+ responding companies anticipate the need for a larger staff in 2011, with less than 4% projecting smaller requirements. Salaries are expected to increase nominally, 3%, for the rank and file positions, but remain...
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Profile Search with Linkedin Instant Search
If you're a recruiter who needs a seriously geeky Linkedin fix every day, you might want to check out the projects being developed by Linkedin Labs. Linkedin describes the service as "a small set of projects and experimental features built by the employees of LinkedIn." They are mostly demonstrations of the power of the social graph and information contained on Linkedin. One experiment...
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Put Your Recruiting Department into Rotation
Corporate recruiters need to have a deep understanding of their company culture, specific job requirements, and fit with the individual hiring managers. A lot of attention is paid on how to take a great job order and build strong relationships with hiring managers. However, corporate recruiters are often asked to carry a heavy requirement load - a truly deep understanding of jobs across different...
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You Think You Understand Your Opportunity Costs?
"....researchers found that exposure to introductory economics instruction was strikingly counterproductive"—Cornell University professor Robert H. Frank, New York Times, September 1, 2005 Do you think you know what opportunity cost is or why anyone should care what it is? "Sure," you say. You've read Economics for Dummies. Or you picked up some version of the concept in a...
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Google Keeps On Hiring
In a speech at the Digital - Life - Design (DLD) conference, Eric Schmidt confirmed that Google will hire an additional 1,000 employees in Europe. Over the past few years, Google's hiring has been rapid and aggressive across the globe. Recruitment at the company has become the stuff of legend, with aggressive packages given to lure employees away from rivals like Facebook. Google recently...
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Weekly Pay Check Discrepancies
In the labor song "59 Cents", one line stands out: "Your paycheck's not for extras, it's for staying alive!" How often do we forget the discrepancy between wages for men and women! The Bureau of Labor Statistics published their recent findings that remind us of this inequality. Men who were employed full time in management, professional, and related occupations in fourth quarter 2010 had the...
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Cable and Content Get Married
Television stars are said to be "larger than life." As if mimicking the stars, media industries are competing to become bigger and bigger. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission both approved the merger of Comcast Corporation, the nation's largest cable and internet service provider, with NBC Universal, one of the country's largest and oldest...
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How To Be An Honest Recruiter
The need to prevaricate a little happens to both corporate and agency recruiters. Maybe you're a corporate recruiter and your company has decreased benefit plans each year for the past five years. Or your management thinks screaming is a refreshing jolt to creativity. On the agency side, you might have dealt with bad employers that are good clients. Sometimes the worst employers have high...
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Financial Managers Need to Be More than Just Finance Experts
Specialization in any field has long been seen as a good thing because employees can develop their skills to a high degree and find innovative solutions to their employer's needs. The problem with specialization when it comes to career advancement is that it can lock you in a position. Being a valuable member of a financial team is important, but you also need to be valuable as a manager. In...
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The $1 Billion Bonus Blues
"Goldman Sachs Bonuses: Bank Paying Staff over $5 Billion for Just Three Months Work" –Huffington Post headline, April 18, 2010 The newly-minted well-suited Harvard M.B.A glances at your confidently steepled fingers while you tout the job perks and your company's clout. You can't help thinking that he looks like a cross between an attentive lap dog and lofty Lincoln enthroned in...
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Wellness Programs Get Social
Folk wisdom insists that Californians are healthier. Maybe it's the climate and its year-long fresh fruits and vegetables. But soon, perhaps some of that health might rub off on the rest of us by ways other than produce. California-based company Vivecoach has announced a new product to help coworkers encourage one another to embrace healthier life choices. This web- and mobile-based...
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Who Wants to Help People? Everyone, It Seems.
During 2010, nearly 10 million searches were performed on the the Bureau of Labor Statistics job search engine. The website hosts a lot of traffic, and it just announced what visitors to it are likely to investigate. Of those 10 million searches, most of them were to research occupations. Strikingly, most searches seem to focus on jobs devoted to helping people on a very concrete level, in...
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Occupations Expected to Grow by 2018
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the visitors to their website are most likely to be searching for information about jobs that are projected to become increasingly in demand within the next decade. The BLS provides data that points to an enormous increase in work that is familiar to many people. These are not tech-savvy jobs or green economy jobs that seem to gain a lot of press,...
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Real Networking with Linkedin
I can almost hear the collective groans. "Not another blog post about networking with Linkedin..." Well, too bad, I say. You're here already and you might as well read on. A lot has been said about how to network with Linkedin, and for good reason. The professional social network is a great resource for every type of professional and of course especially for recruiters. Over the years,...
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The Perfect Interview Question
Knowing that conventional job interviews have a boilerplate feel, many recruiters may understandably be yearning for something fresh, insightful and revealing to ask an applicant, in the form of a completely unexpected, yet deep question, the answer(s) to which cannot be rehearsed, rote or standardized. Inexorably, last year's clever career query quickly becomes this year's withered...
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The Best Places You'll Probably Never Work
Perhaps, you pause before you bite into a plum to think of the work that went into your possessing that piece of fruit. But what about the workers who provide you with the software and tools that you use in the office? How is their work life? If they work at NetApp, the answer is "pretty darn good." Fortune is coming out with their annual best places to work reviews, and NetApp came up...
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Employers Reduce Employee Benefits
The 2010 BenchmarkPro survey reveals how companies are dealing with economic troubles caused by the recession. Nearly half of companies reduced or eliminated employee benefits. BenchmarkPro reports that, "Other methods were also utilized as the results found 32.8 percent of organizations initiated hiring freezes. Nearly 28 percent of survey respondents used permanent layoffs, affecting 9.7...
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Executive Compensation in the U.K.
As the news emblazons with corporate scandals, it's worth pausing and seeing how other countries approach business executive compensation. No need to reinvent the wheel, as the aphorism goes. Recently in January, WorldatWork published a book, "Executive Compensation Practices in the UK" about how the United Kingdom deals with executive pay and bonuses, long-term compensation, benefits, and...
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Good Neighbors and Recruiting
When I stepped out of my house last night to shovel my driveway, I didn't know I was in for a two hour odyssey of frustration, embarrassment, and well... backaches. But the gods had it in for me. My snowblower wouldn't start, so I, being the super mechanically inclined guy that I am, determined that there must not be any gasoline in the tank. After inspecting my completely empty red gas...
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Public Citizen Responds to the President's Statement about Corporate Regulation
Maybe as a child you had fun building monopolies and crushing your opponent while playing Monopoly. Maybe your game piece was a dog or a top hat, but at the end, the only drawback was having to put away all that money and title deeds and having wasted your afternoon. The reality of big business is not the stuff of board games, as we all know. Their role in the country is constantly defined...
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StepStone Solutions Upgrades MrTed
MRTedTalentLink, a popular talent management program, released a new version of its software as a service program. The press release issued by StepStone Solutions announced that MrTedTalentLinkv10.1 has the following features: Substantial enhancements to the application process that give the recruiter full control over the candidate experience through new configuration options...
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Your Value vs. Your Values
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."—Oscar Wilde "I want to be measured by my values, not by my value"—M. Moffa There are two alternative and very different measures of a man or a woman: his or her value vs. his or her values. Which of these matters more to your company---meaning, on the one hand, the one you work, recruit or are...
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Honeywell's Safety Solutions
It's the hundred year anniversary of the infamous fire of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City. The women textile workers were locked into the room where they were sewing while fire destroyed the building. Many of the women jumped out of the windows in a futile escape. The anniversary has stemmed conversations about the legacy of this deadly factory fire. How far have we come...
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Emergency Grant to Help Iowans
When a company lays off massive numbers of employees, what is the most effective help for these newly unemployed people? Although some conciliatory money is helpful, in the long-term, it only goes so far. In the words of Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis, "Only another job can replace a job lost." The U.S. Department of Labor announced a $775,351 National Emergency Grant to assist about...
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Future Employment Trends for Financial Managers
It goes without saying that today's job market makes it as much of a challenge to advance in a career as it does to begin one. Three out of 10 people work in the finance industry, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor. In 2008, financial managers held 539,300 jobs and 7 percent were employed by local, state or Federal government. Job prospects for financial managers is expected to average the...
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Benefits
Benefits are programs that employers have for their employees in addition to compensation (salary and other financial considerations.) Common benefits packages include: Health insurance: Most countries have a system of employer based healthcare. Employers purchase health insurance for their employees at group rates and then pass that benefit on to their employee. Employers will often offer...
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Two Tips for Recruiting Sales Professionals
If you've been asked to recruit sales professionals before, you've experienced a particular form of recruiting agony. Sales positions typically don't have definable job requirements. While a sales job might list industry experience or a developed book of clients as a requirement, hiring sales people is really more about assessing potential for success. There is absolutely nothing to type into a...
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Up go the prices
In 2010, global markets had to pay more to buy Texan cotton, but Americans spent more money for petroleum. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the U.S. import prices advanced 4.8 percent and export prices increased 6.5 percent in 2010. In 2010, import prices rose for the second consecutive year, increasing 4.8 percent after an 8.6-percent advance in 2009. Export prices increased...
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When the Housing Bubble Burst, Who Loses Work?
The U.S. housing bubble certainly is not just about houses and banks. It's also about the loss of many people's livelihoods. Construction workers found themselves without houses to build. Landscapers looked for the people to plant new gardens, but instead found homeowners making do with what was previously there. The demand for machinery shriveled as construction of new dwellings...
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Nipping Discrimination in the Bud
"Hmmm... was I rejected because a star applicant got the job OR was I rejected because the employer discriminates against people like me?" When opening that rejection email, this is often the thought process that buzzes past. Certainly a long history of Jim Crow and other institutionalized policies of discrimination are specters that haunt employers and employees alike. How can...
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Women at Work since 1970
The feminist movement of the 1970's struggled to secure women positions in the workplace. Recent statistics suggest that these efforts have certainly paid off, as women's employment has nearly doubled since 1970. This upward trend ceased in recent years, however. In 1999, the United States saw the most women paid for their labor. At that time, 60 percent of women were part of the...
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The Right to Remain Anonymous
When is anonymity still a basic right? While leaving anonymous comments in forums on the internet is often considered cowardly, plenty of good reasons exist for people to wish to remain nameless as they speak truth to power. This week the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled that a city council president must meet strict criteria before she is able to learn the identities of her anonymous...
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The Physician in the Emergency Room is Working
"Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will!" This popular slogan began in the 1880s in the United States. The dream of the eight hour workday has come to fruition for many workers, but plenty of people still face days where there is little time for the sleep, never mind the leisure articulated in that slogan. Recently, there is some hope for progress for...
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Challenge to Definition of Unemployment
"Well, I got a new gig for a couple of nights during the week," says a friend. Should you raise your glass and toast the news? Or should you grimace at the lukewarm news? Although plenty of people are not officially unemployed, plenty of working adults are not working nearly enough. In a recent press release, Decision Toolbox, a national recruiting firm, announced that from their...
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To Share or Not to Share: Upcoming Webinar on Social Networking Sites
As long as you don't do anything too sketchy, should you bother worrying about what you share online? Although it might be obvious not to post self-incriminating photos or racy memoirs, there may be some fuzzy judgment calls about what information to share and what to protect. Being informed about these issues is probably a good idea-- especially if you make your living by spending a lot of...
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Careers in Corporate Finance
You have your choice of various career options when you work in corporate finance. Whether you are fresh out of college or a seasoned finance professional looking for a change of venue, a career in corporate finance offers many opportunities for professional and personal growth. Listed below are job options for persons pursuing a career in corporate finance. Controller. The duties of...
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Four Career Tips for Financial Executives
Chief Financial Officers and other financial executives have usually already journeyed a long career path to get into their current position. However, once professionals have reached the realm of financial executive management, many find it hard to stay there, or worse, hard to even keep their job. The difficulty of keeping and grooming your financial management career is of course interwoven...
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Female Leadership in the Automotive Industry
Women, among the chief beneficiaries of affirmative action, received accolades at Inforum's annual Auto Show Breakfast, for their work in developing and manufacturing the new Dodge Charger. Along with recognizing these women's hard labor, speakers drew the audience's attention to ways that the automotive industry can improve the everyday realities for women at work in their plants. "The...
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The Painful Dilemma of a Recruiter Recruiting Recruiters
"Above all, do no harm."—Hippocratic oath sworn by physicians Citing a modest uptick in the economy and the expected retirement of many baby-boomer professionals, a very recent Wall Street Journal article, "Firms Enlist More Recruiters" (by Joe Light, December 19, 2010), reports that demand for recruiters is projected to significantly increase through May 2011. One survey,...
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When You Spot The Spinach in Her Smile
"I'm strong to the finish, 'cause I eat my spinach."--Popeye You are in the beginning of an interview and listening very attentively. Then you see it: the legendary and universally dreaded embedded shred of spinach wedged between the methodically flashed upper incisors of the Stepford-wife fixed smile facing you. What should you do? Ignore it and allow emotional distraction and...
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Agent Double-O-No!: How Not to Be Recruited by Spooks
"Hang up. I'll call you back"—the response when I first contacted "the Agency" Most expert advice about advertising for staff includes warnings not to be vague, ambiguous, fuzzy about time frames, anonymous, terse, too low-key, hard to spot among other ads or otherwise nondescript. An ad like this one (about the size of and conveying about as much information as a piece of Dentine...
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