According to the U.S. Government and Accountability Office, approximately 40% of America's workforce now qualifies as contingent workers.  This change in the way people prefer to work is evidenced by the change in Talent Acquisition tactics across organizations.  With a persistent War for…

The Baby Boomer generation, once the largest age group participating in the workforce, is coming of age.  I don't mean that in a John Hughes movie sort of way.  I do mean that they're approaching their desired retirement age.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, every…

In the past couple of years, HR technology has grown leaps and bounds to encompass real hard quantitative data.  For the first time, HR and Talent Acquisition have a seat at the table and are able to inform business decisions with numbers and facts, not qualitative anecdotes.  Yet, as employers rush to use strategic analytics in these critical functions, the question…

We've long heard that there's a skills gap in many industries- healthcare, the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) have had particular difficulty in finding top talent.  Companies across the nation have felt the sting of trying to recruit top talent to fill open positions.  They don't call it a war for talent for nothing. But when candidates are in…

HR and Talent Acquisition leaders have long lamented that their voices are underrepresented in the board room.  Often, you hear leaders in these departments say they lack a seat at the table.  SAP's Workforce 2020 study states that 52% of CEO's believed…

According to a 2013 Addecco Staffing survey, 92% of executives believe there is a very real "skills gap" that prevents employers from finding and hiring top talent.  Many thought leaders in the recruiting and staffing industry have weighed in on whether the skills gap is real or imagined.  But it's clear that in certain…

According to Pew Research, Millennials surpassed Generation X in the workforce as the largest group of employees. In 2015, they made up a third of the workforce. Many projections estimate this group of employees will…

For decades, researchers have studied what makes one person a more successful hire in an organization than another.  In 1975, researcher John Morse found that employees placed in jobs that were “congruent” with their personality reported more positive feelings associated with their job- feelings of increased job competency, higher self-esteem, and an overall feeling…

There's a secret to what makes a hiring process good versus great.  Often, it's the collaboration that's intrinsic to the hiring process itself.  In today's work environment, teamwork is highly prized.  We're living in an age now where one person can't do a job all by themselves- it has to be team focused and collaborative.  As businesses continue to grow in complexity,…

It seems you can do everything from your mobile device these days- find a good restaurant, chat with people a world away, go shopping, and even find a job.  According to Glassdoor, 90% of candidates search for jobs on mobile devices.…

2015 was a big year for employer branding.  Because the job market right now is candidate driven, it seemed like every company was seeking an edge in the war for top talent. Employer branding was thought to be that edge. According to LinkedIn, 56% of…

A significant challenge in the recruiting process is how Talent Acquisition can predict future employee performance.  Many Talent Acquisition professionals choose to screen and evaluate candidates on things like cultural fit, believing that a well performing employee would gel well with the current team.  However, approximately 20% of employees hired using …

There is growing concern in the workplace.  According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the retirement age of 65 every day for the next 20 years.  While many will continue to work past 65, approximately 72% of employers surveyed by AARP and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) have growing concerns about how to address this…

Ah the elusive purple squirrel... you may not know it when you're writing the job description, but you've got someone in mind for the role.  Typically, recruiters have a set list of requirements for the job.  They've also usually got a list of things that they'd like their purple squirrel to accomplish in their first year.  Then there's the secret list in the back of their…

As recruiting has evolved, social recruiting has become a major piece of the recruitment process. Unfortunately, this is often done poorly.  We've all had the experience of logging onto LinkedIn and getting an email from a recruiter we've never met in an industry we've never considered.  Usually, they read like a form email detailing the recruiter's needs. …

For the life of them, some companies just can't hold onto good talent. I have a friend who works for a company that feels like a revolving door.  She meets the new hire, learns their name, and just as quickly, it's as if he or she never existed. Some companies are notorious for this constant flow of new hires.  It must be exhausting having to see people come in and out on an…

With the health of the economy safely on the upswing, more job seekers are on the market than the past few years. With stacks of resumes to pore through, many recruiters are looking for the "perfect" candidate.  What does the "perfect" candidate mean?  To some companies, this is a laundry list of skills.  To others, it may be attitude. Is there something that all of these…

If you've ever been without a job, it can feel like the process of finding a job takes forever.  And you might be right.  Recently, The Wall Street Journal declared time to hire is increasing. Across industries, the time to hire was thankfully under 30 days, although…

In the digital age, references seem quite easy to obtain.  An employer can simply log onto LinkedIn, read the bevy of recommendations and move on.  Not so fast.  Those recommendations could be friends, family and even strangers with nice things to say about the person.  They may not represent the candidate's work style, ethics, or values in any way.  The old way of doing…

Recently, one of my good friends got hired at a new job.  This was the sort of dream job that one absolutely couldn't turn down.  But she almost never took the recruiter's call.  You see, this recruiter called her back for an interview almost 7 months after she initially applied.  We talk a lot about the …