Having been a manager of 100+ employees, I always seem to get drawn in by articles like these, especially when they give it in a top 10 list (they hit on 2 of my weaknesses).

This CareerBuilder article came through my RSS reader late yesterday. Most of you have probably completed your office gift-giving, but today may be the day for many of you.

Fifty-six percent of the 1,150 hiring managers polled said they would be giving gifts to their employees this year. Of those 56%, about one-third plan to spend $10 or less, one-in-five expect to spend more than $25 and nearly one-in-ten expect to spend more than $50 per employee.

Here is the definitive list of top 10 items:

• Apple iPod
• Cash
• Gift Card
• Fruit-of-the-Month
• Candy
• Ornament or Decoration
• Book
• Food Basket
• Wine/Alcohol
• Gag Gift

One note on the gag gift – they caution you to make sure you know the employee before attempting to pull it off. I need to put in my 2 cents on this topic, I strongly urge you to not even go there. I have seen some well-conceived gag gifts that were not well received. Oh is that uncomfortable to observe.

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From Fortune/CNN Money.com:

A market research firm called Borrell Associates is now claiming that in 2006, online ad spending for employee recruitment – a.k.a., help wanted – has for the first time surpassed comparable spending in newspapers. The actual amounts are $5.9 billion on the Web vs. $5.4 billion for newspapers.We haven’t seen the full report, but in a thorough post, Alan Mutter quotes this nugget:

“When the history of Internet advertising is written, recruitment sites will undoubtedly dominate the first chapter,” says Borrell. “In 12 years, these sites have grown from a few job boards to hundreds of niche competitors. Online recruitment now accounts for 25% of Internet advertising.”

It’s definitely a major milestone. Moreover, the report predicts that online recruitment will grow to $10 billion by 2011.

Newspapers are bleeding readers fast and should not be used for printed employment ads. Our success with their online offerings have been marginal. I remember when we first started sourcing, we would submit ads and receive the press check (or whatever it is called) via fax machine to proof. Those days seem long ago.

Today, our preference is to use a combination of major online job boards and niche online job boards for employment ads. The newspapers just don’t have the juice they used to have. But we are watching the Yahoo development to see how that develops.

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