All Articles Tagged "hiring"
Just About Every Single Recruiter Is Looking You Up Online Before Deciding Whether to Hire You
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An infographic created by recruiting software company Bullhorn illustrates what you probably knew to be true: nearly every recruiter is doing an online background check during the hiring process.
According to their numbers 98 percent of recruiters are using social media to find new hires. Nearly a fifth (17 percent) say Facebook is the place for quality employees, but 38 percent say they’ll be looking at Twitter a little more closely this year. So be careful with what you tweet. Thirty-seven percent said they’ll be using Facebook even more. Nearly all — 97 percent — said they used LinkedIn.
The company also says that salaries for executives at the VP, director, and manager level have, unsurprisingly increased while those for sales positions, recruiters, and account managers have gone down.
Finally, Bullhorn reports that recruiters say they’re having issues finding candidates with the necessary skills and talents. So if you’re not constantly learning, adding to your skill set, or increasing your expertise, you’re going to have big troubles standing out and getting that next big position.
Below is a small portion of the infographic. You can view it in its entirety on AllTwitter.
via Bullhorn
Where The Jobs Are: These Companies Are Hiring The Most
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Looking for a job like the 12.1 million other Americans who are unemployed? Using data from job search engine Simply Hired, Forbes has compiled a list of the companies that are currently hiring the most. So dust off that resume and go for it. Here are the top five places, ranked by the most job openings.
1) AT&T: 35,479 job openings. The telecommunications giant is looking to fill retail positions, sales spots, and management jobs, among others.
2) Family Dollar Stores: 23,769 listings. The price-point retail chain is looking for store managers, customer service representatives, human resources coordinators, and more.
3) Toys “R” Us: 17,073 new slots. Like the other retailers, Toys “R” Us is bringing on thousands of part-time seasonal workers right now.
4) Kindred Healthcare: 14,233 job openings. All are full-time positions.
5) Best Buy: 13,979 postings. About half of these openings are for part-time, seasonal, contract or temporary positions.
Pepsi Paying Out $3.1Mil for Discriminatory Hiring Practices
Using criminal background checks to screen out job applicants — even if they weren’t convicted of a crime has cost Pepsi Co. $3.1 million in a settlement after federal charges of race discrimination were brought against the soda giant.
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Pepsi’s policy of not hiring workers with arrest records disproportionately excluded more than 300 black applicants. The policy barred applicants who had been arrested, but not convicted of a crime, and denied employment to others who were convicted of minor offenses. The EEOC says using arrest and conviction records to deny employment can be illegal if it’s irrelevant for the job.
Pepsi Beverage spokesman Dave DeCecco said the company’s criminal background check policy has always been neutral and that the EEOC did not find any intentional discrimination. After the issue was first raised in 2006, he said the company worked with the EEOC to revise its background check process “to create a workplace that is as diverse and inclusive as possible.”
The new policy is said to take a more “individualized approach” in considering applicants’ criminal history against the particular job being sought. Pepsi will also provide the EEOC with regular reports on its hiring practices and offer antidiscrimination training to its hiring personnel and managers.
EEOC may soon be cracking down on other companies as part of its national effort to correct hiring policies that disproportionately discriminate against black and Latino applicants, according to Julie Schmid, acting director of the EEOC’s Minnesota office
“We hope that employers with unnecessarily broad criminal background check policies take note of this agreement and reassess their policies to ensure compliance” with anti-discrimination laws.”
Do you think Pepsi’s policy was wrong? Should companies use arrest records to exclude applicants?
Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.
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Cost of Entry Level Talent Going Up
(Wall Street Journal) — Need entry-level talent? Be prepared to pay a little more this year than you did last. The average salary offer for bachelor’s degree graduates rose 6% in 2011 to $51,171, according to a new survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Some newly minted degree holders, however, will cost even more. Chemical-engineering graduates saw their average salary offer increase 1.8% to $66,058, while offers for grads with computer-related degrees jumped 9.6% to $63,760, NACE reports. Computer-engineering grads gained 4.1%, bringing their average to $62,849. The priciest recruits? Petroleum-engineering grads are now receiving offers averaging $82,740, or 7.1% more than last year, making these folks the highest-paid majors in the survey.
Hire Talent Not Skills
(Wall Street Journal) — My best employee of all time was nicknamed Shaq. While his genetic gifts would have never landed him a spot on the New Jersey Nets, he worked for my company as a computer forensic examiner. When I hired him, Shaq was barely qualified to use a computer, let alone conduct detailed forensic examinations on hard drives that later had to stand up in court and pass the rigors of cross examination. So why did I take him on? I hired Shaq because during his interview he clearly demonstrated that he was intelligent, had a lot of energy and seemed to come out on the “glass half full” side of things during stressful situations. Because of these qualities, within three months of joining my company he was out in the field, conducting examinations on his own. Shaq had absorbed the training so fast that within a year of his hire he was testifying in court and handling our most complicated cases.
Time to Hire an E-Lancer?
(Inc.) — With unemployment at 9 percent and 2012 looking bleak, many job seekers find themselves adrift in a modern version of the preindustrial piecework economy. E-lancers, freelancers, and assorted contract laborers are taking on discrete assignments that would once have been handled by full-time employees. Recognizing that financial crisis or no, people still need things done, entrepreneurs are brokering tasks for the un- and underemployed. Amazon was in this space early with Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourced market in which programmers bid out simple tasks that humans do better than computers, like identifying objects in pictures. Although the opportunities advertised on SkillSlate, which bills itself as a local-service auction site, are more substantial, most are not the stuff of which careers are made.
The New Normal: To Get a Job, You Need a Job
(Christian Science Monitor) — Nearly a year after she lost her job at an IT help desk, Michelle Chesney-Offutt got a call from a job recruiter. “They were very excited about getting me up for an interview,” she recalls. But at the end of the chat, the recruiter noticed she’d been out of work for more than six months. The firm would not consider hiring anyone who had been out of work that long. ”I was in shock, because that makes no sense,” says the Sandwich, Ill., resident. “I can understand why in times past that would be a good indication of a person’s work ethic, but in the current situation” it’s not. Still out of work two years later, Ms. Chesney-Offutt’s situation represents the economy’s Catch-22 for the unemployed: The longer they’re out of work, the harder it is to find a job. Now, some employers have added a twist: They won’t even consider hiring someone who doesn’t hold a job. As GOP presidential candidates trade jabs about who has created more jobs and President Obama prepares to unveil his new jobs plan, this discrimination threatens to make it harder for the unemployed – even those who have been out of work for only a few weeks – to get their careers back on track.
Hiring Talent Like a Pro
(Entrepreneur) — “If a CEO looks at his function as [finding the employees] to achieve business goals, spending a significant amount of time hiring the very best people for key positions is a great way to run abusiness,” says Reese, who spends as much time searching for–and getting to know–potential interns and recent grads as he does looking for industry leaders. “Great things come out of a culture that combines experience with youth and enthusiasm,” he says, citing Bill Gates, who hired a similar mix of “kids” and “veterans” in the early days of Microsoft, as an example…Jared Hecht, co-founder and CEO of New York City-based GroupMe, says a company’s core idea is one of its most valuable assets for recruiting–and retaining–talent. It doesn’t matter how many great people you hire if you can’t keep their attention, he says. Launched in July 2010, Hecht’s mobile group-texting and conference-calling service has raised more than $11 million from investors, has partnerships with Bon Jovi and MTV and sends more than 100 million messages a month.
Where the Jobs Are
(The Daily Beast) — The latest monthly jobs report reveals more jobs were added in July than expected, but not enough to move the needle from an overall unemployment rate above 9 percent. Though the president has promised to focus on jobs, “higher wages and faster economic growth,” looming challenges like corporate restructuring andoverseas growth will be hard to remedy. What’s a worker to do? One smart tactic is to hone skills for a job that’s projected to grow in the next decade to ensure marketability well into the future. Another tactic: get in at a company that is expanding in that area, as well. Not only will you be garnering a paycheck and experience, but you’ll be more likely to get hired and you’ll get your foot in the door at a company that will likely expand as the need for the particular service or expertise grows. To figure out which employers are in hiring mode, The Daily Beast first analyzed the most recent statistics on occupation growth to find the fastest-growing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment projections for 2008-2018.
Why Are The Unemployed Being Asked Not to Apply For Jobs?
With unemployment rates for African Americans coming in at a whopping 15.9 percent as recently reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s clear that folks need jobs. So why are the good mid-level jobs, and even some gigs deemed entry-level out there that the unemployed are applying for, being given to people who already have jobs?
According to our friends over at theGrio, more and more employers are becoming hesitant to offer jobs to the unemployed. Why? According to writer David A. Love, because they’re assuming the worst of those candidates. There’s a perception floating around that if you were laid off, chances are you were given the boot because of your inadequacies and laziness, since of course, employers always keep their “top tier” workers. On top of that, others making the hiring decisions don’t want to pay for extra training for those who have been out work for an extended period of time. But most of all, cutting out unemployed individuals who haven’t gained experience for a while helps make the hiring process go a faster. Less candidates, less time spent reading over resumes. Crazy, right?
Can’t tell you how jacked up this is on so many levels. You’re either too qualified for some jobs on one end, or you’ve been unemployed so long you’re all of a sudden not fit to work on the other. You can’t win for trying these days! But what are your thoughts?
To read the entire thought-provoking article and hear from the head of the National Employment Law Project, click over to theGrio.
