Robert Half  just released the results of its Finance and Accounting Survey in which 36 percent of the CFO's who responded said that the number one reason that new hires don not work out is  poor skills. I would suspect that if you talked to operational executives you would get the same feedback. So, if this country is so great why do we get this type of response to such surveys?

I was taught long ago that “whatever you focus on expands” and I wish I could credit the teacher. You have probably all heard something similar in the past. In this article I am going to do my best to put this concept into practical terms for the recruiting industry.

Based on many conversations and my own personal observations, the recruiting industry is coming back nicely. Many of my clients had their best quarter, not in years, but EVER! Companies are beginning to re-invest in their growth and operations. However, some recruiters are still stuck in “fear” mode and are focusing on scarcity right now, still thinking the business is in recession mode.

The Impact of the Affordable Care Act

An issue brief funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its Quick Strike Series considers how employers might react to provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and offers an analysis of factors that are likely to influence their decisions to drop or retain employer-sponsored insurance (ESI).

The U.S. economy in the third quarter registered a 2.5 percent annual growth rate—an important indication that we are not slipping back into recession. This pace of growth in our gross domestic product—the largest measure of our economy—indicates we are not in a double-dip recession but is insufficient to reduce the 9.1 percent unemployment rate and remains below our historical GDP growth rate average of 3 percent levels.

There is nothing more frustrating in a job search than the lack of response by hiring managers or recruiters. You follow all the rules of a compelling cover letter. You compose a custom resume that matches your accomplishments to the job specifications posted by the company or the recruiter.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (“USCCR” or “Commission”) has issued a briefing report – English Only Policies in the Workplace (pdf) – recommending that an employer’s English-only policy be deemed unlawful only if such policies are enacted to harass, embarrass, or exclude employees and/or applicants based on their national origin.

As they said at Bunker Hill, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!"

Last week, I wrote about early motions to dismiss employment lawsuits under Rule 12(b)(6) and questioned whether they were always the best strategy for the employer.

AT&T Inc has settled a nationwide lawsuit by a U.S. agency accusing it of age discrimination for refusing to rehire tens of thousands of workers who had retired from the largest U.S. telephone company.

I'm sure you've heard by now that OFCCP published the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the compensation data collection tool. According to the ANPRM, the purpose of the new tool is "to provide insight into potential problems of pay discrimination by contractors that warrant further review or evaluation by OFCCP or contractor self-audit."

My guess, from multiple observations and sources, is that unethical conduct for business advantage is not only used, but welcomed. The organizations may have massive policies on “ethics” but they are applied primarily to employees doing unethical things for personal gain. If the employee is caught, he/she may be fired.

5 Ways Abrasive Managers Get in Their Own Way and Everyone Else’s

Do you feel frustrated and maybe even betrayed by team members who seem unwilling to participate? 

Does their behavior leave you feeling isolated, and burdened with the responsibility of feeling like you have to do everything yourself?

Are you fed up with having to deal with insolent, unresponsive, defiant employees?

As co-owner of a small IT solutions company in Alpharetta, Julie Haley would rather be out networking and snapping up new business instead of spending hours looking for ways to curb her firm’s escalating health insurance costs.

Like small businesses across Georgia and the nation, health care costs for Edge Solutions, which Haley started in 2008, have been jumping by double digits. Haley estimates in the first year alone, health care costs made up 25 percent of operating expenses – in part because without at least 10 employees insurers wouldn’t even bother talking with her.

 I TYPED these words on a computer designed by Apple, co-founded by the college dropout Steve Jobs. The program I used to write it was created by Microsoft, started by the college dropouts Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

And as soon as it is published, I will share it with my friends via Twitter, co-founded by the college dropouts Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and Facebook — invented, among others, by the college dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, and nurtured by the degreeless Sean Parker.

There’s both an art and a science to writing job orders. The science involves information: getting a description of the position, the selling points of the job, the company’s sense of urgency, and an idea of where to look for candidates.

The art has to do with gathering all this information quickly while building a rapport with the hiring manager and nailing down a fee agreement.

Human Resources and in-house counsel, please consider this a legal "consumer report." Remember - we offer a "no legalese" guarantee, or your money back!

My fellow employment lawyers, is that Rule 12(b)(6) motion really necessary?

Can an employer require employees to report their workers compensation injuries more quickly than required under Tennessee law? Yes, says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in a recent opinion. As always, however, the devil is in the details.

With all the talk about companies becoming more “agile” and outsourcing their IT operations to service providers, there's an interesting counter-trend starting to develop. While technology companies appear to be holding off on hiring because of economic fears, companies in sectors like healthcare and retail are moving to build their IT teams, in some cases reversing course on a strategy of outsourcing as much of their IT operations as possible.

About 86% of full-time workers are above normal weight or have at least one chronic condition

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Full-time workers in the U.S. who are overweight or obese and have other chronic health conditions miss an estimated 450 million additional days of work each year compared with healthy workers -- resulting in an estimated cost of more than $153 billion in lost productivity annually.

Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York and Oregon aim to improve services for unemployed workers

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor today awarded more than $7.6 million in grants to five states to design and implement innovative strategies that will improve re-employment services for unemployed workers.

(Helena, MT) A new “Phishing” scam is targeting Montanans receiving unemployment benefits. “We have received tips that callers may be saying they are Unemployment Insurance staff and asking Montanans for confidential information. These calls are coming from outside Montana’s ‘406’ area code,” said Labor Commissioner, Keith Kelly.

CHICAGO, IL – October 14, 2011  If you’re looking for a job, you may see ads for staffing agencies that promise results. Many of these services may be legitimate and helpful, but others may misrepresent their services, promote out-dated or fictitious job offerings, or charge high fees in advance for services that may not lead to a job. 

On September 21, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) announced its new worker misclassification amnesty program, which is designed to encourage employers that have wrongly classified any of their workers to come forward and correctly classify their workers as employees going forward.  Officially called the Voluntary Classification Settlement Program (VCSP), the program is the IRS’s attempt to “enable many employers to resolve past worker classification issues and achieve certainty under the tax law at a low cost by voluntarily reclassifying their workers”.  

Justice Department Settles Religious Discrimination Lawsuit Against Berkeley School District in Illinois

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice announced today that it has entered into a consent decree with the Board of Education of Berkeley School District 87 in Berkeley, Ill. that, if approved by the court, will resolve a religious accommodations lawsuit filed in December 2010.   In its lawsuit, the United States alleged that the school district violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of Safoorah Khan, a Muslim teacher at McArthur Middle

 It's Monday morning, and our well intended applicant, dedicated to self-improvement and great interview results, is back from a conference where she attended a training session. This session was touted as a must attend event where one could learn all they needed to become a successful interviewee.  People who had attended sessions delivered by this trainer raved about how great it. 

Executive Summary

California's Governor Jerry Brown recently signed into law a bill that will dramatically increase penalties for employers who willfully misclassify employees as independent contractors. The new law compels a $5,000 to $25,000 fine for each violation and also prohibits companies from charging fees or making any other deductions from the pay of independent contractors who have misclassified.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about Occupy Wall Street. She said to me “This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life”. I told her I feel exactly the same way.

The only difference is that she’s in her early twenties, and I’m in my early fifties.

Welcome back to our online influencer series! If you missed part one, be sure to read it first here.

Where we left off
Now that we’ve pulled together a solid list of potential influencers as outlined in part one, we can begin to determine which influencers will become a part of our outreach and rank them based on a number of variants.

On October the 10th, 2011 Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 22 (AB 22) which restricts employers and prospective employers – with the exception of certain financial institutions – from using consumer credit reports and credit checks for making decisions about hiring.

WASHINGTON — After two years on the unemployment rolls, Selena Forte thought she’d found a temporary job at a delivery company that matched her qualifications.

But Forte, a 55-year-old from Cleveland, says a recruiter for an employment agency told her she would not be considered for the job because she had been out of work too long. She had lost her job driving a bus. 

“They didn’t even want to hear about my experience,” said Forte. “It didn’t make sense. You’re always told just go out there and get a job.”

Facebook is the new frontier to master in the search for candidates and a means of branding your business.  Facebook will be the topic of Today's Technology Tidbit the remainder of 2011, and well into 2012.  New information and Apps for searching Facebook are ongoing.  We will attempt to discover and learn these new techniques one Tidbit at a time.

Did you ever have a love/hate relationship…Can’t live with them…can’t live without them? Sure, most of us have. What makes this even more interesting is that I am talking about your ATS (Applicant Tracking System)?

On one hand, resume parsing is a miracle and saves us countless minutes of data entry time (which translates into more phone time). On the other hand, I often sit there and think, “Who does this system think it is? What does it know about my candidates!”

Class action lawsuit against Black Swan movie producer challenges the use of unpaid interns.

The use of unpaid interns is a long-standing practice in many industries, particularly in the entertainment industry. That practice is under fire with the filing of a lawsuit by two interns who worked on the movie Black Swan.

Affected employers will no doubt have a variety of wage-hour questions in the aftermath of any major disaster, such as Hurricane Irene. The number and scope of the issues raised might well be practically endless. In this article, we'll address in very general ways the federal Fair Labor Standards Act topics that experience suggests will be among the most pressing.

Source One Staffing Assigned Women to a Known Hostile Work Environment and Engaged in Sex Stereotyping When Making Job Assignments, Federal Agency Says

CHICAGO – The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) filed a class lawsuit yesterday alleging that Source One Staffing, Inc. (“Source One”) assigned female employees to a known hostile work environment and retaliated against two female employees who reported that their supervisor was making sexual advances toward them.  The EEOC also claims that Source One categorized jobs as “men’s work” or “women’s work” and assigned employees accordingly.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Minimum-wage workers in eight states could see their paychecks grow by hundreds of dollars next year, thanks to automatic annual increases in the rates.

Colorado, Montana, Ohio, Washington and Oregon recently announced their 2012 minimum wages, which contain bumps ranging from 28 cents to 37 cents per hour. This translates into annual raises of between $582 and $770 for full-time workers at that end of the pay scale depending on where they live.

I can hear some of you saying what do you mean “are we really serving your client?” Of course we are, otherwise we would not still be in business. In response I would ask when was the last time you asked your client what they really needed. When was the last time you took the time to sit down and really listen to what the needs of their organizations are?

IRS Announces New Voluntary Worker Classification Settlement Program; Past Payroll Tax Relief Provided to Employers Who Reclassify Their Workers

IR-2011-95, Sept. 21, 2011 WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service today launched a new program that will enable many employers to resolve past worker classification issues and achieve certainty under the tax law at a low cost by voluntarily reclassifying their workers.

My experience has proven to me that most recruiters I interact with these days are simply robbing a living. They take more than they deserve, they play games to get and keep monies for hires in any creative way they can concoct. With the economy and job market the way it is today I don't know if these people are more akin to the negative stigma associated with used car salesmen or human traffickers. Either way, I - as well as everyone I speak to today about the topic - find them to be an unsavory breed and a necessary evil.

I have yet to find a reliable recruiter that lives up to their promises, delivers quality, invests effort into their placements and has any loyalty to anything other than filling their own purse.