Spring is here as rising temperatures indicate. It's the time when optimism gets a boost and we look forward to summer fun. Unfortunately current developments in the job market cause some concern. While labor demand is still rising, the speed of growth is slowing. Employers in the US increased their online job postings by 3.1% in April as compared to March. Since February this is the third consecutive month of declining growth. While demand increased by 6.1% in February as compared to…

Do you ever feel like your head will burst if you have to create or remember another login/password combo? Sure, your browser tries to help (at least mine does), prompting helpfully to ‘remember’ the login – usually. But that’s specific to your computer. What happens when you’re away from it? If you’re like me, you try to stick to a few combos and keep them in your head.

So what does this have to do with job boards and career sites? Plenty. If you use…

Have you scoured our job boards lately? I probably wouldn’t blame you if you have no interest, you’d be sharing the same view as jobseekers.

Why might I say this…?

Well they are as boring as Bat$%#%. This topic has been on my mind for a while, and when I saw a tweet on twitter from Katie McNab (Pepsi Co Recruitment Manager) I decided it was time to vent.

Katie showed an example of two ads that she believed were dismal  and she was right, well I was mortified when they…

Total volume added in the past 90 days and the percentage increase compared to the same period last year.

Data: WANTED Analytics | Analysis: StaffingU…

Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails

That's what Recruiters are made of !"

What are little HR Professionals made of?

"Sugar and spice and all things nice

That's what HR Professionals are made of!"

When you are finished laughing and / or gagging I am curious to…

It’s quite a few years since I worked a desk as a recruiter. But I did, for many years. And I was a pretty good recruiter too. Not great mind you. Just good enough to have a lot of fun, and make a bit of money.

At Firebrand we have hired 25 new recruiters in the past 6 months, so I am spending a lot of time training and coaching. As a result I am telling a lot of stories from my time on the desk. And it reminded me that…

In my mind, the engagement level of an organization's Recruiters are a major indicator of how well that organization's Recruitment function performs.  Over the years I have worked with hundreds of Recruiters in countries all over the world and one of the characteristics that always differentiated the performance of the great Recruiters from their Recruitment colleagues was the high levels of passion and engagement they brought every day to their role and their organization.

I remember…

Face it, more and more hiring managers are admitting that they will look at a candidate’s social media profile at some point during the hiring process. And why shouldn’t they. There is a lot of valuable information to be gleamed from a candidate’s electronic footprint. A lot has been written about some of the pitfalls and problems with using this data, so I won’t hash over it here. My focus is on 9 things you should consider if you are going to adopt a strategy of using social media (social…

Every once in a while, I'll post something other than an interview or article.  Things have been super busy here at ClearFit, finding employees for our small business customers, so this is my first opportunity to share some news…

CareerBuilder’s Q2 2011 Job Forecast reports that the hiring outlook is the strongest it has been in three years, according to its survey (jointly conducted with USA Today) of 2800 hiring managers and HR professionals.

Some key highlights:

• 28% of employers surveyed added full time permanent employees in Q1.
• 31% of workers say…

What a way to end a weekend...and on to recruitment news.

We are in the midst of a transition period in recruiting and recruitment advertising. Newspaper advertising once dominated how people searched for a job. Then the big job boards supplanted newspapers as the destination of choice for job-seekers looking for new opportunities. Things are changing again.…

Sometimes the journey wears you down...

Sometimes the journey builds you up...

Sometimes the journey wears you down to build you up.

You will know when you arrive.

ValentinoBM (Photo Poem in B&W) - circa 2008 Winter - Campus University of…

The baby bunny featured in this picture, is Marco Polo.  I gave him this name because he was the first of three baby bunnies born in our back yard who ventured out into the world beyond his rabbit hole.

How this relates to recruiting is that some candidates we evaluate for employment opportunities are born Explorers like my Marco Polo, and some are…