No surprise here but the Career News is reporting that candidates are negotiating for higher starting salaries in this current market (emphasis mine): Job candidates are more apt to ask for higher starting salaries this coming year, and companies may have to up the ante to attract them. That’s according to an annual study on employment and compensation trends by Robert Half International (RHI) and CareerBuilder.com titled The (EDGE) Report. Fifty-seven percent of hiring managers polled for the project said it was difficult to find qualified candidates 12 months ago; 91 percent said recruiting is equally or more challenging today. More than half (52 percent) of hiring managers who are… Read More
Continue ReadingTelecommuting – Now More Than A Trend
We’ve been on the telecommuting trend for quite some time this year as it continues to grow. I think it is safe to say it is more than a trend now. As we source for sales positions, it is quite apparent that the younger candidates almost always address this issue early in the process. They want to know what tools are in place and what the office expectations are. We only work in the sales arena so our data may be slightly exaggerated to that end. Nonetheless, telecommuting is a hot article topic as you can see from CareerJournal.com’s Good News for Professionals Who Want to Work at Home: A… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Disarming Casualness Of The Web
We’re in full-fledge sourcing mode here at Select Metrix and I am taking up the task of resume mining. I am aghast at what I am finding. A new trend that I have seen before, but not to this level, is writing without capitalization. I know this is an offshoot of texting. My dislike of this improper writing format probably reveals my lack of appreciation for text messaging. I don’t do it – email is fine with me. Online resumes are difficult to manage in that the formatting is often truncated and oddly spaced due to the job board’s coding. Yet, capitalization is not affected. I just read through a resume… Read More
Continue ReadingThe No-Show Trend
We haven’t seen this trend yet, but I suspect it may show up on our front stoop at some point. From The Career News (sorry, no link) comes this abridged story from MSNBC.com: The first step to acing the interview: Show up! I know this sounds obvious, but apparently not to everyone. “It happens all the time lately,” says Emmanuel Conde, director of recruitment for Alliant Technologies, an information-technology staffing firm that estimates about 50 percent of entry-level IT professionals they try to place don’t show up for interviews. Among senior level folks, about 20 percent skip it. The no-show phenomenon is a growing problem for many recruiters and hiring… Read More
Continue ReadingFinancing Via Job Change
I enjoy skewering the mainstream media for “talking down the economy” which is a practice they condemned back in 2000. But all signs point to a slowdown in this red-hot economy which has led the Federal Reserve to target a soft landing. I’m no economist, but I found this article by John Sumser quite interesting. His take on the economy is one I have not heard (emphasis mine): The veterans, burnt by the dot com bust and the post 911 recession will argue that business will contract and layoffs will ensue. That’s the prototypical recession profile. Everywhere you turn, this scenario is forecast or implied. … Or, there may be… Read More
Continue ReadingSelling In The Information Age
I was reading an interesting article from ManageSmarter.com titled Sales Triggers for Advantage and came across this opening: Do you remember the old days when the sales professional’s role was easier to manage? I’m not saying the actual job of selling was easier—none of us signed up for a sales career because it was easy—but the amount of information we had to work with was far less than today. Before the Web, you had a directory of industry professionals to cold call and some leads to follow up on. You drew from your own contacts and those of your colleagues, and perhaps read a trade magazine or journal for industry… Read More
Continue ReadingWork/Life Balance Has Reached Executives
BusinessWeek.com offers up a good summation of today’s hiring market in terms of executive recruitment. We could have wrote this article – it describes exactly what we are encountering in a couple of executive searches. Let’s unpack a couple points from the article: This new environment requires that executive headhunters and companies’ human resources and business leaders delve deeper into what’s really important to senior-management candidates and calibrate the recruitment process accordingly. Very true. Part of this understanding comes from assessing their motivations and rewards, the other part from interaction. Yesterday I posted on the need for flexibility when hiring since candidates desire work/life balance far more than in previous… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Value Of Flexibility
We’ve been focusing on retention recently as the present job market has forced this issue. One point to note is that retention topics show up during the offer stage of hiring new salespeople. The items the candidate values are often the ones in which they engage the hiring company. Forbes.com’s How To Keep Your Employees Happy offers this: Interestingly, throwing money at staffers isn’t always the answer. Neither is throwing a party every few months. Having fun at work and creating a cohesive team is just one element. The most successful companies also realize flexibility, values, career development and providing meaningful experiences are also important elements to minimizing turnover. The… Read More
Continue Reading"We’d Rather Miss A Good One Than Hire A Bad One"
Interesting story today from the AP – Employers study applicants’ personalities – that discusses hiring processes designed to see if a candidate is the right fit. These processes are a good start, but much of what they are trying to accomplish could be done through assessments. Despite a labor shortage in many sectors, some employers are pickier than ever about whom they hire. Businesses in fields where jobs are highly coveted — or just sound like fun — are stepping up efforts to weed out people who might have the right credentials but the wrong personality. But if you would rather take the longer route, there is this approach: Rackspace… Read More
Continue ReadingHiring Remains Strong
The latest numbers are out and the experts are…drumroll please…”surprised.” From Reuters: Employers added a surprisingly strong 166,000 new non-farm jobs in October, well ahead of forecasts in an early sign that consumer incomes may be better supported than thought heading into the fourth quarter, according to a government report on Friday. The Labor Department said the national unemployment rate in October was unchanged at 4.7 percent. It revised September hiring to show that 96,000 jobs were added instead of 110,000 it reported a month ago and said 93,000 new jobs in August instead of 89,000 that it previously reported. Don’t buy the hype about a bad economy. The 166,000… Read More
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