No real surprises from this CNNMoney.com article (emphasis mine):

Employers are trimming their hiring plans but still expect to add workers in 2008, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Online job search site CareerBuilder.com said its survey of 3,016 hiring managers and human resource professionals in the private sector found that 32 percent of companies plan to increase the number of full-time, permanent employees in the upcoming year. A year ago, 40 percent said they expected to add staff.

Slow, steady growth is an ideal situation.  The hiring trend has been on such a torrid pace that finding strong candidates has become an extended process.  I’ve thought for the past year that a slight slowdown would be helpful.

Comments(0)

The Herman Trend Alert offers up an excellent analysis of the most pressing topic of today – retention.  I thought this statement was spot on:

The Hodes 2007 Workplace Study holds that two factors are critical to retaining valued employees. The first is choosing quality people, not settling for “warm bodies”. The second is choosing people who have long-term expectations of staying with the organization.

We encounter companies that have a hire fast, fire fast mentality.  Personally, I think this approach is high risk, low reward and we never condone this approach at Select Metrix. 

The second point is an important one also.  If you are looking at a candidate who is not currently employed, it is of utmost importance to take the extra time to make sure your position is a fit.  There are many salespeople who are in transition and are simply looking for a quick stop, money-grab position.

When employers make inferior quality hires, often they will inadvertently lose current employees who now no longer feel valued.

The study also cites what we have been saying all along—that employee turnover, regardless of industry, is expensive. Some reports even show the estimated cost of a single vacancy for some jobs has been calculated anywhere from $7000 to $12,000 per day. According to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the estimated 2007 annual voluntary turnover rate is about 24 percent.

For more about the Hodes 2007 Workplace Study, please visit http://www.hodes.com/publications/retentionstudy.asp. (my editing)

I worked for a high-tech company in a Regional Sales Manager position.  My coworkers were better salespeople than me so I learned much and developed my skills immensely.  Then our boss hired two absolute stiffs to join our group.  They had little skill and were hired for the wrong reasons.  The morale amongst our existing team plummeted soon after as we observed their flamboyant incompetence.

Comments(2)

This is bad – straight from Online Media Daily:

NEARLY 9 OUT OF 10 email messages delivered to large enterprises in November were spam, according to the latest stats from Proofpoint. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based data security company released its Proofpoint Spam Index and found that while overall spam levels dropped slightly (from 89% in October to 88% in November), large companies were still receiving an extremely high volume of spam–with an upsurge in attachment-based spam of almost every kind.

If they think that is bad, they should see how much comment spam a blog can generate.

Comments(0)