April 2010 Hiring Trends Show Slow Improvements
U.S. employers in April added 290,000 new hires, more than Wall Street expected and the largest gain since March 2006, according to a recent WSJ article. The unemployment rate rose to 9.9%, a sign that more Americans are looking for jobs.
At the end of April 2010, the major job aggregation sites released hiring data and analysis, indicating slow but measurable growth. Below is a summary job report from Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, and Execunet.com.
The slow job growth demonstrates some early signs of a recovery. However, job growth was inconsistent, effecting some cities, industries and job functions more than others. Indeed.com publishes a monthly report of where the jobs are, giving insights into which job market is strongest and which is weakest. Indeed’s job market survey shows slightly stronger job advertising activity, demonstrating slow growth.
Indeed’s April 2010 survey of job advertisements show the job market is strongest in Washington DC and San Jose CA. Washington has been at the top of the list for a while, as Federal government spending has been high. However, San Jose CA improved in April to sharing a 1:1 ratio of unemployed per job advertisements. The top 10 job markets are geographically spread throughout the US (with the exception of the Southeast US). Baltimore, NYC, Salt Lake City UT, Oklahoma City OK, Hartford CT, Boston MA are all at 1:2 ratio of unemployed to job advertisements. Seattle WA & Austin TX, both at 1:3, round out the 10 best job markets.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is Detroit MI (#48, 1:7), Los Angeles CA (#49, 1:8), and Miami FL (#50, 1:9). Florida has the unfortunate distinction of having 4 of the worst 10 job markets – Tampa (#40, 1:5), Orlando (#42, 1:5), Jacksonville (#44, 1:6) and Miami (#50, 1:9). California has 3 of the worst 10 job markets – Sacramento (#46, 1:6), Riverside (#47, 1:7), and Los Angeles (#49, 1:8).
It’s interesting to note that these ratios have been slowly improving month over month through 2010. This indicates that there is some job growth, but it’s growing at a very slow pace.
Proactive Recruiting
Over the years, one of the biggest challenges Hire Velocity has faced is communicating the importance of proactive recruiting to our clients. A large majority of US companies approach recruiting from a much more reactive standpoint. For example, many companies fail to build the relationships and talent pipelines they should be building, when hiring is down. Instead, many companies wait until five electrical engineers are needed, and they post jobs expecting to get the five best electrical engineers out there. Although this approach does work occasionally, we have come to find that the best talent is acquired through continuous proactive recruiting. Creating a talent pipeline can enable your company to pick from the best available prospects when the time comes. Generally, companies may view proactive recruiting as the more expensive approach, but the cost of reactive recruiting can reach similar heights while necessarily bringing back the quality talent you’re looking for in a timely manner.
Instead, find a recruiting partner that can build relationships with prospective applicants and passive candidates in order to streamline the hiring process. The University of Illinois at Chicago did a study on proactive recruiting particularly pertaining to finding qualified female candidates. In two different job searches for the same position, proactive recruiting nearly doubled the number of qualified applicants and showed a huge increase in the number of female applicants. Proactive recruiting was defined as an aggressive search for talent rather than a simple job post.
In recent years, Technology has eased the pains of creating an effective proactive recruiting process. Applicant tracking systems such as Silk Road’s Open Hire, iCims, and Taleo, (for example) have enabled companies to build robust talent pools and ease the process of finding qualified passive candidates. Leveraging the right technologies can create the infrastructure and foundation needed to lower your recruiting costs and enhance your recruiting process. Thus, it’s essential to look past the “reactive” recruiting methods such as job postings, and create a proactive recruiting process that will build a much more qualified talent pool.
Finally, remember that it is always a good practice to continuously promote your brand from a recruiting perspective. Your career site is the door to your company and should display the goals, values and culture of your company. Once you do proactively get the candidate to your front door, make sure you leave a great impression!
Valeri Marks
CEO
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Technology Industry On Hiring Spree
The past few years have been hard on the recruiting industry, especially in the technology industry. With companies like Microsoft and Intel having mass layoffs last year, the industry seemed to get hit hard by the recession. However, many tech companies began a hiring spree late last year and continue to be actively hiring. ISI Group, a research firm, says that they believe overall revenues will rise more than 10% for the first quarter for many large tech companies. That is a major improvement when looking at a 16% decline just last year.
Take a look at Intel, a company that laid off 79,800 employees at the end of 2009. The popular computer chip maker said that it plans to hire 1,000 to 2,000 people in 2010, the first substantial hiring spree for the company in five years. Google, the world’s leading search engine company, said that it hired 786 new employees in the first quarter and that it expects to continue hiring.
The hiring spree in the technology industry is not just affecting the big players, smaller startups are also beginning to hire. LinkedIn, the social networking website for professionals, hired 184 people last year and 154 so far this year to bring its employee count to about 500. The company said it also plans to add an additional 300 hires this year. Another social media startup, Twitter, said it hired about 125 employees since last May, which brings the company to a total of 170 employees.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Using Twitter for Recruiting
Twitter is a great tool for businesses looking to have direct contact with consumers. With over 15 million active users, businesses have cited the social media network as a way to let users know about new products or services. Twitter even has a dedicated page for businesses explaining how the service can be used. But can Twitter be used in the recruiting industry? The answer is yes. Twitter is a fantastic resource for companies looking to reach an endless amount of users with little effort.
Many companies have dedicated an entire Twitter account to listing available jobs. For example, MTV (@MTVnetworksjobs) tweets its open positions and is always willing to answer questions about job related questions. The account has over 21,000 followers, this means that every time the network posts a job, over 21,000 people see it. Furthermore, if one of those over 21,000 people retweet the job listing, every one of his or her followers sees it too. This is a fantastic approach to promoting your open positions to an endless amount of candidates.
For the average business, getting over 21,000 followers like MTV Networks is not an easy task. It takes quality posts and strategic timing to acquire a following. It is important to take into consideration when people will be using Twitter before posting a job listing. For example, tweeting a job posting at 3am on a Monday night is not likely to have a large reach because many users are asleep and may have work early the next morning. Instead you may want to think about tweeting it at 7:30am when many users are waking up to check their Twitter timeline before getting ready to start the work day. You may want to also think about retweeting the job posting later in the day at around 6:30pm when users are getting out of work and home to browse the Internet. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t acquire a large following at first, keep tweeting on a regular basis and the following will surely come.
You can always check out Hire Velocity’s on Twitter @HireVelocity and @HVJobListings.
Byron West
President
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Good News for the Recruiting Industry!
On Thursday March 18, President Obama signed into action a new bill, which will directly affect the staffing industry over the next few years. Our industry has taken one of the largest hits over the past two years, since many companies reduced their hiring initiatives, which left many staffing and recruiting companies with half the volume they were used to in prior years. However, President Obama has made it one of his top concerns to get the whole country and economy back on its feet, starting with reducing unemployment. February saw little progress in decreasing nonfarm unemployment. The current unemployment rate has remained at 9.7% and February only saw 36,000 more employed Americans in comparison to January. The new bill will directly respond to these sluggish numbers by creating $18 billion in tax breaks for companies who hire in the next year. The bill is proposed to create 250,000 new jobs over the next year. Although that may not seem largely significant, it will bring new business for the recruiting industry, something that we can all look forward too!
Byron West
President
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Spring 2010 ERE Expo Learnings
Hire Velocity attended the ERE Expo last week in San Diego. We were able to meet a lot of interesting people and learn about some of the new technology in the recruitment field. The ERE Expo is a great place for recruitment professionals to network and exchange ideas with other professionals. Going to all the sessions and exhibits is a way to learn about new recruiting products, services and technologies.
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) was really embraced at the ERE Expo this time. RPO has been shaped into a customizable service that ranges from outsourcing of a single task to outsourcing the entire recruiting process. Outsourcing a single task, or On-Demand RPO, seems to be the trend recently with more companies outsourcing tasks such as sourcing & screening to extend the reach of their team versus permanently adding onto it. We also heard some very strong opinions that life cycle recruiting needs to be done by more than one recruiter. Rather than having one person manage the entire recruiting process, it is more economical and efficient to have people do the specific tasks of the recruiting process such as sourcing and screening, relationship management, and administrative functions. This is the most efficient way to get quality results.
A big topic at this ERE Expo was incorporating social media into the recruiting process. Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs is all part of the social media strategy that needs to be adopted by companies because it is the future. In the recruitment industry, a hot trend is tweeting and retweeting open job positions. By doing this, there is potential for thousands and thousands of job candidates to view the open position. Tracking ROI by each social media channel is just now coming into play so companies can identify the source of each candidate found. Reporting is getting very sophisticated but there are a lot of amazing tools, techniques, and companies that can be leveraged.
The old school “Post & Pray” method of recruiting is rapidly becoming outdated and the general consensus is that is a waste of money. The Internet is only growing, so it is important to utilize all of the resources available to maximize the response. It’s a big Internet world out there so cast a wide but targeted net. Don’t just fish in one pond!
One of our favorite sessions dealt with the 4 pillars of recruiting – Process & Policy, Technology, Team Alignment and Metrics. These pillars are critical for success in your recruiting organization.
Valeri Marks
CEO
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