We wish you and your family a very Happy Thanksgiving!
Monthly Archives: November 2009
Poll: A Majority Hire based on ‘Chemistry’
A majority of human resources professionals (54%) make their final decision to hire a person based on “chemistry,” according to a poll released Tuesday by the Society for Human Resource Management.
It found that 15% of human resources professionals said chemistry accounts for 75% of the final decision to hire, and 39% said chemistry amounts to 50% of the final decision to hire.
The survey also found that 30% of human resources professionals made a decision not to hire within 15 minutes of meeting the job candidate. And 28% made a decision not to hire within five minutes.
Respondents to the survey included 498 randomly selected members of the Society for Human Resource Management who are recruiting professionals.
Posted in Interviewing, Workforce Trends
Tagged Hiring, Hiring Chemistry, Job Interviews, SHRM
Employee Discontent Expected to Reach Crisis Level Next Year
Employee turnover is expected to rise next year as a new survey shows that many workers are unhappy with their present jobs. Sixty percent of employees intend to leave and an additional one-in-four are networking and updating their resumes, according to research from Right Management. Right Management is the talent and career management expert within Manpower, the global leader in employment services.
Right Management surveyed more than 900 workers in North America and asked: Do you plan to pursue new job opportunities as the economy improves in 2010?
– 60% – Yes, I intend to leave
– 21% – Maybe, so I’m networking
– 6% – Not likely, but I’ve updated my resume
– 13% – No, I intend to stay
“The study provides a barometer of employee engagement in the workplace, with results that might alarm and surprise many employers,” said Douglas J. Matthews, President and Chief Operating Officer at Right Management. “Employees are clearly expressing their pent up frustration with how they have been treated through the downturn. While employers may have taken the necessary steps to streamline operations to remain viable, it appears many employees may have felt neglected in the process. The result is a disengaged and disgruntled workforce.”
Matthews cautions that the best workers are mobile in any economy. “We know that people are attracted by career development opportunities, attaining work/life balance and working for an innovative company culture. If management doesn’t provide employees with these opportunities, then workers are going to take their knowledge and skills elsewhere. Talented staff can change jobs because they can and want to, not because they have to.”
“As leaders, we need to accommodate different lifestyles and work choices and find ways to balance these with business needs to ensure high levels of productivity and performance,” states Matthews. “This influences how organizations attract, engage and retain talent. A segmented, customized and flexible talent strategy is critical to stem the alarming levels of employee turnover anticipated next year.”
Right Management surveyed 904 employees in North America via an online poll. The survey ran between October 19 and November 5, 2009.
Monster Warns About Job Scams
Some employment scams appear as job postings or classifieds while others may target victims with an offer through an unsolicited email. Below are the most common scams you may see:
Money-Laundering Scams
Money launderers often create job descriptions that offer commissions or pay as high as $2000 per day to process checks on behalf of foreign nationals. They are recruiting local citizens to “process payments” or “transfer funds,” because as foreign nationals, they can’t do it themselves. The image below is an example of a money laundering scam hidden behind what appears to be an offer of employment. Learn more about money laundering scams here.
Reshipping Scams
Reshipping, or postal forwarding, scams typically require job seekers to receive stolen goods in their own homes– frequently consumer electronics — and then forward the packages, often outside the United States. Those who fall for reshipping scams may be liable for shipping charges and even the cost of goods purchased online with stolen credit cards. Read more about reshipping scams here.
Pre-pay/Work at Home Scams
Although there are genuine jobs working at home, many “offers” are not valid forms of employment and may have the simple goal of obtaining an initial monetary investment from the victim. Using claims such as ‘be your own boss’ and ‘make money quickly’, Work at Home scams will not guarantee regular salaried employment and almost always require an “up-front” investment of money for products or instructions before explaining how the plan works. Find out more about avoiding these scams.
Protect Yourself
What seems like a lucrative job offer could cost you your savings and more. Learn to identify the signals of an employment scam to protect yourself. When conducting a job search:
- Look for signals in a job posting or email offer, which could serve as an indicator that what is being presented as employment is not legitimate. Don’t get involved with an employer that can’t make its business model perfectly clear to you or one that’s willing to hire you without even a phone interview. Do your own research on any employer that makes you feel at all uneasy.
- Never put your social security or national ID number, credit card number, bank account number or any type of sensitive personal identification data in your resume. You should never share any personal information with a prospective employer, even if they suggest that it is for a “routine background check”, until you are confident that the employer and employment opportunity is legitimate. Use Monster’s resume visibility options to ‘Be Safe’.
- Do not engage in any transaction in which you are requested to transfer or exchange currency or funds to a prospective employer. Remain alert for the Work at Home employers who require you to make an up-front investment.
- Be cautious when dealing with individuals/companies from outside your own country. If you see a questionable job posting or suspect misuse of the Monster website or its brand, please report the suspected fraud to Monster.
If you think you have been a victim of fraud, immediately report the fraud to your local police and contact Monster, so steps can be taken to ensure your safety. We also recommend that you file an online report with The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). For more information on how to conduct a safe job search, visit Monster’s Security Center. You can also check out LooksTooGoodToBeTrue.com.
Original Source: The Monster Team
Visual: Hot Industries for Jobs – Oct 2009
Since flat is the new up, some of the information in the graph is not as encouraging as we would all like to see. To some degree it is very much what is declining the least, that may have the most opportunity. Nonetheless though, Indeed.com does a great job of helping you to know where to pinpoint your job search.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Growth Segments, Hot Jobs, indeed.com, Job Growth, Jobs by Industry, Major Industries
Up and Coming Leaders Lack the Skills to Lead
Click on picture to enlarge
A glaring gap exists between the leadership skills organizations have now and the ones they will need in five years, according to new research from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL).
Executives in the U.S., India and Singapore surveyed by CCL, a provider of executive education, identified the four most important leadership skills for the future as: 1) leading people; 2) strategic planning; 3) inspiring commitment; and 4) managing change. However, the survey showed that all four areas are weak points among today’s leaders.
“When it comes to leadership talent, organizations do not have what they need to handle their biggest challenges in the very near future. At CCL, we call this the ‘leadership gap,’” said Sylvester Taylor, a CCL director who helped devise the study. “The good news is companies still can develop these skills in their people, but they don’t have any time to waste.”
CCL surveyed 2,200 leaders from 15 companies for its “Understanding the Leadership Gap” study. Researchers asked executives and managers from an array of corporations and government agencies to consider a set of 20 leadership skills. Respondents then ranked those skills in terms of how important they will be for success five years from now and how accomplished their colleagues are at them today.
The study found that organizations in the U.S., India and Singapore share many of the same gaps. Globally, executives and managers rated “leading people,” or knowing how to hire, direct and motivate talented staff, as the most important leadership skill for the future. “Strategic planning,” which involves translating vision into realistic business strategies, ranked second in importance. It was followed by “inspiring commitment,” which calls for recognizing and rewarding employee accomplishments, and then “managing change,” which includes dealing with resistance to change and involving colleagues in the design and implementation of change.
Based on these research findings, CCL created the Leadership Gap Indicator, an assessment tool that helps organizations define and measure the leadership characteristics most important for their success.
“Identifying gaps in leadership capacity brings a focus to hiring and development decisions and can improve return on talent investment,” Taylor said. “Without hard evidence to rely on, there is a risk that the skills gap will simply widen and that your organization will not have the leadership resources needed to survive and thrive.”
For more info: http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/leadershipGap.pdf
Thank You! To our Veterans
Freedom is not Free. On behalf of Manpower I want to thank all of those that have served in our Armed Forces. Your sacrfice and contribution is deeply appreciated.
Posted in General Information
Tagged Airforce, Armed Forces, Army, Marines, Navy, Veterans Day 2009
Survey: Seasonal Work is Top Reason for Hiring Contingents
The most-cited reason for using contingent labor by companies around the world is to complete work during peak seasonal periods, according to a survey released by Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN). Nineteen percent of firms surveyed cited it as the primary reason they use contingent labor.
The next-most cited reason was as cover for employees who may be on leave; it was cited by 7% of firms.
Fifty-four percent of firms said they do not use contingent labor.
In addition, the Manpower survey found that 62% of firms around the world did not view contingent workers as a key element of their workforce strategies. Thirty-four percent of employers said they did, and 4% were unsure.
Manpower CEO Jeffrey Joerres said employers’ natural instinct in the upturn will be to bring in contingent workers first and be cautious about hiring permanent workers. “But, the winners in the post-recovery world will be the companies that leverage contingent workers as ‘workforce accelerators,’ having mastered the art of managing a dynamic mix of permanent and contingent workers to optimize their performance, increasing their speed of execution, building talent capability, keeping fixed costs low and doing more with less,” Joerres said.
The survey included more than 41,000 employers in 35 countries.
Crazy Business or Brilliant Start-up #18
There are numerous tools out there for managing HR functions like time sheets and accounting, but employees’ paid leave has been all but overlooked. That’s according to strategic design firm Matter, which recently launched its answer to that need in the form of Perq.
Employee leave management is a complex task with potentially high stakes: companies lose millions or even billions of dollars in revenue each year without even knowing it because of unaccounted employee time off, says Atlanta-based Matter (which is not to be confused with the London company that goes by the same name). Enter Perq, a web application that’s designed to let companies easily create an online version of their employee leave policies, view a shared calendar, and manage leave requests, accrued time off and multiple benefit levels. Personalized dashboards and automated tracking make it easy to keep up with accrual and rollover, while a simple leave request process keeps staff and managers connected and informed. Perq is free for up to three users; beyond that, pricing starts at USD 9 per month for up to 10 users. The service is also available for licensing and deployment as a white label product for enterprises with special brand or security requirements.
Of course, Perq may scratch the employee-leave itch for companies in the English-speaking world, but it seems safe to assume there are plenty of small to medium-sized businesses in other parts of the globe with the same need. One to localize or adapt for HR managers in your neck of the woods…?*
Website: www.perqworks.com
Contact: info@perqworks.com
* P.S. If you’re interested in translation or localization, Perq says to get in touch: hello@perqworks.com.
Original Source: Springwise
Posted in New Business Ideas
Tagged Franchise, New Business Idea, Perq, Perq.com, PTO Automation, Start-up
Be Your Own Leadership Consultant
I recently wrote an article for the Des Moines Business Record on the importance of real leadership in the workplace. What I really tried to point out is how a real leader lives and thinks. I hope you will find this article helpful as you lead in your work, life and any other areas that you devote yourself too.
Article:
As the world and business continue to turn, grow and change, one thing is for sure. There is always a need for leaders – real leaders who do what they believe is right to move things forward and inspire others to come along. In times of struggle, leaders give hope; in times of uncertainty, they give direction. However, being a leader does not always mean having success; more times than not, it might mean failure. Being OK with failure, learning from it and moving forward may be the true definition of a real leader.
If you are reading this, you are probably in some form of leadership in your company. To be sure, though, being in a position of leadership is not the same as being a leader. I bet it wouldn’t take you long to think of people throughout your career who have been in positions of leadership but have been far from leaders. Maybe they lead by fear and intimidation or incompetence and blame. Real leadership is rare in the workplace.
A lot of companies bring in consultants to be leadership gurus and train their people how to lead. The only problem with that approach is that everyone is different; in leadership, one size does not fit all. Trying to form everyone with all of their different personalities and dispositions into one type of manager just ends up frustrating people.
Click here to continue reading.
