older workers searching for jobs
March 31, 2009
New graduates and younger unemployed workers aren’t the only ones looking for jobs.
Nielsen Online recently released a report stating that the 65-year and older age group is the fastest growing group in the career development category. During January, the demographic saw a 20 percent increase in visitors to job sites, to 3.6 million from 2.5 million during January 2008.
These statistics aren’t surprising since the current economy is causing many people of all ages to consider career changes, delay retirement or return to work to earn some additional cash.
Robert Graber, CEO of WallStJobs.com, said these results represent an important opportunity for businesses looking for experienced and successful candidates to fill positions.
“Smart companies will look at these statistics and see opportunity,” Graber said. “Interns can be any age. In fact, bringing in more seasoned interns can give your business the benefit of the candidate’s vast experience while the intern develops new skills or business experience.”
Graber said that aside from bringing experience and insight to the workforce, hiring workers 65-years and older also helps add more diversity to the company. In turn, this builds a stronger ability for the company to communicate across generations internally and externally, while at the same time adding a new perspective.
top companies for female executives
March 31, 2009
The National Association of Female Executives (NAFE) has created a list of top 50 companies for executive women. Here’s the list at a glance:
Abbott
Aetna
Allstate Insurance
American Express
AstraZeneca International
Avon Products
Bank of America
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Cisco Systems
Colgate-Palmolive
Dow Chemical
DuPont
Eli Lilly and Company
First Horizon National
Ford Motor Company
General Mills
Hewlett-Packard
HSBC – North America
IBM
Intel
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorgan Chase
Kellogg
Kraft Foods
Liz Claiborne
Macy’s
Marriott International
McGraw-Hill
Merck & Co
MetLife
New York Life Insurance
New York Times
Northern Trust
Office Depot
Pearson
Pfizer
Phoenix Companies
PNC Financial Services Group
Principal Financial Group
Procter & Gamble
Prudential Financial
Sallie Mae
Schering-Plough
State Farm Mutual
Texas Instruments
Verizon Communications
Wal-Mart Stores
WellPoint
Wyeth
Xerox
Non-Profits
Baptist Health South Florida
Bon Secours Richmond Health System
MidMichigan Health
TriHealth
VCU Health System
NAFE uses several evaluators when deciding who the candidates will be. They look for companies who make women a priority and who focus on increasing their pipeline of women executives. NAFE also places emphasis on companies who discover and nurture female talent early on, companies that develop mentoring programs especially for women, and companies that address gender issues and develop leaders among women.
You can see profiles of the top 10 companies here.
how fast can you start a startup?
March 31, 2009
How long does it take to launch a startup? Some students at UT Austin are willing to bet they only need three days to conceptualize and launch the prototype.
At a student-created event in Austin called 3 Day Startup, 40 students will gather on Friday, April 3, to brainstorm ideas. On Saturday, they plan business strategies, do market research, iron out legal issues, and write code for a prototype of the new company.
On Sunday, the group will pitch their plan to a panel of judges consisting of venture capitalists, angel investors, and local entrepreneurs, who will provide candid feedback on how the startup can become more successful.
“We bring in all the resources required to create a new venture and have our participants pitch their ideas. The best one is picked, and 40 passionate entrepreneurs immediately jump on it and make it happen,” Thomas Finsterbusch, 3 Day Startup organizer and 2nd year Computer Science PhD student at The University of Texas at Austin, said.
This is the second year the event will be held. Nik Daftary, CEO of turn2live.com, the company launched last year, said, “It was the epitome of everything that I had hoped for in the MBA program at McCombs. It was really cool to see that it was coming out of the Computer Science department.”
Turn2live.com is the first online tool that enables users to discover shows using intuitive search terms. These terms exist outside of the traditional boundaries of genre, artist and venue and include creative, mood-oriented keywords such as “sunny” and “sensual.” The company showcased its official launch at SXSW 2009 with the Austin Digital Media Council at the Austin Interactive Showcase in Austin, Texas.
the future according to microsoft
March 31, 2009
tweet with top business pros
March 31, 2009
If you’ve ever wondered what top business professionals are using Twitter and how you can find them, ExecTweets may be able to help.
ExecTweets is a resource that helps you find and follow the top business executives on Twitter. The site aggregates the tweets of top business executives and allows the community to find the most insightful, business-related tweets.
The site encourages readers to vote for the top tweets, and the more votes a tweet gets, the more it is displayed on the main page. The site features a Top Links section that allows readers to see what Web sites are referred to by executives. There also is a Hot Topics area that provides the most popular keyword phases being tweeted by executives.
The site was created by Federated Media in partnership with Microsoft. ExecTweets plans to generate revenue from its current and future sponsors, and hopes to land other deals so it can share some revenue with Twitter.
So far, the site’s users include people such as Amazon.com’s Werner Vogels, Virgin’s Richard Branson, eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, Digg’s Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, Twitter’s Evan William, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and CollegeRecruiter.com’s Steven Rothberg.
“I was thrilled to learn that the tweets that I post daily and sometimes multiple times per day to Twitter.com/StevenRothberg will receive added exposure from this great new service,” Rothberg said. “Twitter is the fastest growing social media site on the planet and is well integrated with other high traffic social media sites such as Facebook.
“It has grown from being a curiosity to being a phenomenal business tool,” Rothberg added. “And the features provided by ExecTweets will allow those of us who add a lot of post business-related content to Twitter to gain even more exposure from our efforts.”
monster, cb pull out all the stops
March 31, 2009
Now that there’s plenty of job seeker lovin’ to be had, rivals Monster and CareerBuilder are dreaming up every possible tactic to become the darling of search in an all-out job board war.
From free job fairs to contests to book deals, both job boards have been digging deep into their bag of tricks to win over the hearts and home pages of America’s job seekers.
For starters, CareerBuilder’s received a ton of mileage out of their partnership with CNN. CB executives are always on-hand to dole out tips during morning shows or to provide colorful charts and graphs depicting job losses across America. Surveys and stories featuring job seeking advice or anecdotes appear regularly on CNN’s homepage.
A partnership with Facebook Engagement Ads, a program launched in August to more closely integrate advertisers into the fabric of the site, brought out the Creepy Co-Worker in all of us. The beta period for the engagement ads is expected to run into the early summer, so expect more of these interactive ads from CareerBuilder.
The job board also ran a bevy of online banner ads on sites like Gawker, Deadspin, and College Humor with the notion that job seekers browsing these sites during their lunch hour might hop over to the CB site for a little undercover job search.
Not to be outdone by Monster’s NFL contest, CareerBuilder launched their own friendly competition and asked job seekers to submit a 45-second video telling why it’s probably time to get a new job, with the winner receiving $5000.
While their web site didn’t get a complete overhaul, they did launch and promote AnonymousTipGiver.com, a web site that allows employees to tell their bosses how they should run the company.
CareerBuilder’s solid online-advertising efforts, superlative organic search, and smart tactical promotion assures that their brand won’t soon be forgotten, even as job boards continue to lose their relevancy to DIY searches on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.
***
Monster received its fair share of attention during the Super Bowl with the launch of their Fandemonium contest in partnership with the NFL, which will continue to provide press for the job board during several upcoming NFL events, and with the debut of their Super Bowl spot depicting a moose’s front and hindquarters displayed in different rooms.
The Monster.com site underwent a complete overhaul at the beginning of the year, treating job seekers to customizable features and tools integrated throughout the Monster site. They aggressively promoted their makeover on various online sites like About.com, Amazon, CNN, Digg, Fandango, Time.com. comScore noted the surge in traffic that followed; however, their report declared CareerBuilder the overall leader of January traffic with 12.2 million visitors v. Monster’s 9.5 million.
Despite earlier criticism that their Super Bowl campaign failed to address the recession, Monster eventually did come through when they announced a free job fair to stop in over 140 cities nationwide. Reports from the earlier attendees say that attendance was overwhelming.
***
What else do these competitors have in store for us in 2009? I expect to see a more aggressive sweep into social media from Monster.com, especially in the Twitter playground, in which there seems to be a never-ending supply of job seeker applications. I wouldn’t be surprised if another one of Monster’s acquisitions included a strong player in this category.
CareerBuilder’s “It’s Probably Time” campaign may be running out of gas, especially considering that many Americans aren’t looking to change jobs at the moment due to threats of layoffs. Look for a fresh campaign and a new slogan to address the millions of jobless. They should keep promoting BrightFuse, a possible competitor to LinkedIn, especially since BrightFuse appeals to an entirely different market. I also expect that CareerBuilder will continue expanding their brand internationally to gain further market share over Monster, and that they will launch more niche sites here and abroad. Need more proof that they’re in it to win it? Just ask their CEO.
the ceo with a heart
March 31, 2009
I receive many company layoff notices and emails from unemployed friends asking for help with their job search, so when I come across something positive like this heartwarming story, I make it a point to pass it along.
Some people may not see this as heartwarming or innovative; in fact, they may say that this CEO was just doing his job and his approach can hardly be deemed noteworthy. But it’s not the CEO’s actions that made an impression on me; rather, it was the employees’ willingness to sacrifice for others who tugged at my heartstrings.
Here’s the story: Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, was facing some tough choices. He knew he had to start distributing pink slips soon, because the chances that his staff of 8,000 employees would all be able to keep their jobs and benefits in an economy in freefall were slim.
So before he made the impending announcement, Levy spent a day observing all the workers in his hospital and taking note of how integral each and every person’s actions were in those patients’ lives.
Following his observations, the CEO gathered the staff in a hospital auditorium and began with this: “I want to run an idea by you that I think is important, and I’d like to get your reaction to it. I’d like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners – the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them.
“Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,” he continued. “It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.”
The audience exploded into applause. They didn’t want to see a single person lose their job. Rather, they were willing to do anything necessary, Levy would soon find out, to make sure that those pink slips didn’t get sent out.
Over the next few days, Levy received thousands of messages from his employees suggesting layoff alternatives that ranged from lowering wages to shortening work weeks to forgoing bonuses. The CEO came to realize the power of sacrifice and empathy, and the employees found those same traits in a source that nowadays seems unlikely.
What do you think? Do you feel Levy’s actions can be called revolutionary, or was he just doing his job? Do you think the employees’ suggestions would go far enough to sustain the entire staff, or are they delaying the inevitable? Should CEOs ask individual employees to sacrifice for the greater good of the flock?
voicescreener goes public
March 31, 2009
VoiceScreener, which was launched in free private beta trial in November 2008, became available to the public earlier this month.
VoiceScreener, a human resources solution that claims to eliminate or reduce the time spent on live phone interviews for small to medium-size businesses, was created by Web telephone company HarQen. The company decided to make the new product public after the beta trial included 150 companies, 60 to 80 percent of which made faster hires with VoiceScreener.
VoiceScreener eliminates the need for first-round interviews by allowing HR personnel and job applicants to interact virtually. HR personnel can record a greeting and interview questions to be posted online and invite candidates to answer the questions through a link or “Interview Now” button that can be inserted in any online job posting.
Employers can then listen to a candidate’s responses. They also can ask team members to review and rank candidate responses. VoiceScreener automatically creates a report listing the candidates who have completed the interview in order of team preference.
The minimal VoiceScreener plan costs $99 per month and allows companies to interview up to 180 candidates over the course of one year. Additional interviews may be purchased in blocks of 25, 50 or 100. There also is a $199 per month plan that provides up to 420 interviews per year.
“This economic downturn has brought about an astonishing number of layoffs of highly qualified people and this often means up to 10 times as many people are applying for any given job posting,” Kelly Fitzsimmons, co-founder and CEO of HarQen, said. “It’s hard enough to identify the right candidate in a normal hiring environment, but now the game has changed significantly.
“Many staffing agencies are turning to VoiceScreener because it is an effective way to identify the top prospects very efficiently,” Fitzsimmons added. “That is just what small businesses need to be doing, so VoiceScreener’s e-commerce solution is arriving at just the right time.”
canada’s workopolis partners with mobile provider
March 31, 2009
Via mJob – Workopolis, Canada’s largest job board – or at least it’s best known – has partnered with Rogers Wireless, which provides wireless voice and data communications services across Canada to more than 7.9 million customers under both the Rogers Wireless and Fido brands.
“We understand that job seekers can’t always be at their computers and that’s why Workopolis was the first job site in Canada to go mobile last November,” said Max Tremblay, Vice President of Marketing, Workopolis. “We wanted to provide job seekers the opportunity to access our job postings when, where and how they want to. Helping to connect Canadians to their next career will be that much easier with Rogers Wireless on board as our partner.”
Checkout the mobile review by MobileSyrup:
“As Canada’s largest wireless provider, Rogers Wireless is committed to continuing to bring Canadians innovative services and products that add value to their lives,” said John Boynton, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Rogers Wireless. “The wireless device can be an indispensable tool to the increasing number of Canadians who are seeking work. Not only can they be available for calls from potential employers, they can now browse jobs from Workopolis directly on their handsets, for free until May 31, when they’re out and about.”
Access to the site is free thru May 31. No specific news on a cost afterwards, but it will likely be individual mobile minutes.
problems in HR that can be solved by Excel
March 31, 2009
can any one help me in getting the problems in HR that can be solved by Excel
