What I love about recruiting is that every day I learn something new.  Both good and bad.  Would love your opinion about this.

About ten months ago, I got two fee paid assignments from a foreign company with offices in the US.  One was a general manager, the other a director of digital.  I placed both candidates.

Last week I got a call from one of the GM candidates.  He had been approached by another recruiter to interview for a digital…

The above must be the most over-used Recruiting / Agency line in the world. Year in & year out it gets trotted out – but no new colour palette or font will make it sound anything else but trite. It means absolutely zero.

So you went back to work? And on day ONE you’ve already decided you cant hack it any more….so should you, as the above statement says, just go & jack it in!

In this market & indeed in all others I’ve worked in. I say not. My school of thought (based…

I have to write about this every year so lets start 2012 by resolving to write better job descriptions. 

It starts with your JOB TITLE.

The title is the first thing a job seeker sees when searching online so its important to give it context. It must inform the job seeker, not confuse them. And its a chance to add keywords which will help make it…

Labor demand at the end of 2011 was back where the year began. In fact, it was 1.9% below last January’s average. What started in 2010 with plenty of optimism ended in a four months decline. In December, employers removed another 4.6% of their job openings compared to November. Nevertheless, the US economy had gained 1.45 million jobs last year by the end of November.

United States Job Openings (Online Postings)

January…

First off, let me start by saying Happy New Year.

So the festive season is at an end and hopefully you have had your fill of fine food and wine, Christmas and the New Year has enabled you to spend quality time with your friends and family. Now we have the joy of looking ahead and getting back to reality, with this in mind we start to think of what we want from this year, our hopes and dreams i.e. winning the lottery and winning the euro millions back to back!!

And then reality…

It’s almost part of my daily routine – wake up, have breakfast, watch the news, read the paper, check the latest unemployment figures. The International Labour Organisation predicts that the number of 15-24 unemployed by the end of 2011 will be 74.6 million, a rate of 12.6%.

Although this number sits lower than the 12.7% of 2010, the ILO has suggested that since 2010 many young people have given up looking for work and dropped out of the labour market all together.  In the month…

Most businesses review their progress on a yearly basis and publish or print an annual report – the status of the business – for the past year. They also go through a formal planning process and create formal plans for the future. You need to treat your career as a business: with annual reviews and formal planning.

Once a year you can evaluate your career progress using the following criteria. Evaluate each area on a scale of 1 (awful) to 5 (fantastic). Assess the weak spots (scored 3…

Who’s Richard Reid and why do I hate him?  Reid was the shoe bomber and to be fair, I’ve never met him. But still I hate him, why? Reid committed his crime in 2001 hence we are now at the 10^th anniversary of those annoying ‘fake’ inspections at most airports.

Being a long term FM practitioner I get very annoyed at things that are illogical or not quite right. And having just gone abroad again yesterday there were two things at the airport that troubled me:

The first…

The speech messages you deliver in words are accompanied by vocal messages. The manner in which the words are spoken often makes the message clear and understandable. The vocal tones which accompany words may affect the acceptance the listener has of the message.

For example, because your voice is an audible representation of your physical and emotional state, the vocal tones may reinforce positively the words you speak. Or the tone may send a conflicting, negative, message. Think of…

I have been searching online and cannot find a strong front end web developer thats available that is local to Chicago.  Any help would be great

In a typical contract staffing situation, a company utilizes the services of a worker for a specific amount of time and outsources the employment of that worker to a third party. That third party is often referred to as the Employer of Record and serves as the W-2 employer for that worker.  As the Employer of Record, the third party takes on the legal liability and the responsibility for the following employment…

For those who read my blog, you'll know I've recently changed jobs, and I've been pretty slack in posting here in the last year.  Some will say "again?" others have been congratulatory, I have to say it has been an interesting experience.  I'm 37 years old and I'm into my 5th professional job (not counting the moss farming, kitchen hand and service station attendant during University and high school).  Being the new boy again, facing those nerves of the unknown, will they like me? will…

Who should you follow!!

So in reality you should not strive to be a follower but a leader. That said this post is about who out in the industry should you follow. By follow I mean on twitter, connected to on Linkedin, RSS feeds etc. People or companies that will provide you valuable information about staffing and recruiting. This list is not all encompassing, but hits allot of the biggies.

Now as I am sure I do not…

After celebrating the holidays, Guido gets bored and decides to pass the time by making fun of Jim Stroud. Special thanks to Jason Bax of Business Unusual! (http://businessunusual.net)

There's a lot of good news about contract staffing as 2011 comes to a close.

Citing data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Staffing Industry Analysts has reported that the number of contract/temporary workers increased by 22,300 in November, bringing the total of…

When it comes to qualifying, there are 3 questions I live by.  The first is "Why is this position open?"  The second is "What are the details of the job?"  And last, but certainly not least, "What is the budget for the project?" These seem simple enough, and easy to say...but so many people I have worked with don't ask these questions, and then wonder why their candidate doesn't get hired or the company goes dark on them.…

2011 was a huge year for Technology news, both good and bad. We gained the robot we dreamed of as kids when Siri was introduced this fall, but we lost one of the greatest minds technology has known just one day later with the…