Partner with a staffing company to source STEM talent

July 16, 2014 By

It is becoming increasingly clear to employers across the United States that science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs take more than twice as long to fill as other openings. With STEM jobs increasing consistently, outpacing every other industry for job demand, employers are finding it more challenging than ever before to hire talented candidates with STEM backgrounds.

With the skills gap only widening as employers continue to demand more STEM backgrounds, many companies find themselves without options for hiring because there likely won’t be a significant increase in STEM backgrounds until today’s younger students have graduated and enter the workforce in the coming years. Even then, it is still expected that the STEM demand will continue to rise alongside advances in technology. In 2013 alone, 43.2 percent of job openings in the region required STEM skills.
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POSTED IN: Engineering, Medical & Science, Recruiting, Technology | Leave a Comment

Metropolitan employment showing improvement nationwide

July 15, 2014 By

Jobs report: in your regionSources: Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Report – May 2014, Regional and State Employment and Unemployment – May 2014

The national BLS “The Employment Situation — June 2014” report showed another surge in employment, adding 288,000 new jobs to the economy, the fifth straight month to show 200,000+ job gains.  Economists are hopeful that this upswing will continue as we enter the third quarter.

Both regional and state unemployment rates saw little change in the United States metropolitan areas, according to the BLS’ latest Metropolitan Employment and Unemployment report. In May, the national unemployment rate held at 6.3 percent after April’s drop of 0.4 percent, proving to be 1.2 percentage points lower than it had been a year earlier. In fact, forty-nine states and the District of Columbia have seen unemployment rate decreases over the past year.
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POSTED IN: In America, Job Market Update, Regional Report | Leave a Comment

Interview techniques and questions to discover critical thinkers

July 14, 2014 By

Millennial indecisive about his job. He, like many other Gen Yers may be a job hopper.Traditional job interviews only provide a finite look into a job candidate’s background and experience. Asking the right questions is a critical part of understanding a candidate and discovering if they truly meet the expectations and requirements for the position. Hiring experts say that rushing to judgment during the interview process is a top reason employers make bad hires, but preparing the right interview questions is a smart first step toward avoiding this common mistake.

One of the more difficult skill sets to interview for is critical thinking. Finding critical thinkers to join your team is a worthwhile investment to make, but many employers struggle to confirm if a potential job candidate is truly a critical thinker, or if their past experience simply meets the job demands on the surface. Interviewing for critical thinking competency is one of the best ways to determine if a candidate will not only fulfill the role, but bring new perspectives and ideas to the team as a whole. The following questions and techniques are geared to help employers efficiently understand if the candidate they are interviewing is a critical thinker.

Describe a problem to the candidate that has missing information, then ask, “What further information would you seek out first before making a decision?”

The candidate will need to assess the given information and quickly seek out holes where more information is necessary. If executed properly, this question should reveal if the candidate can analyze problems and apply an investigatory mentality when they lack required information. In many business situations, employees are not given the precise information or resources that they need to make decisions with ease. This type of question prepares employees to think about how they can acquire the needed resources to make an informed decision.
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POSTED IN: Recruiting

Adecco Experience: Meet the Talent

July 11, 2014 By

FB_followwinnersIn April, Adecco launched the Adecco Experience program across 50 countries as part of the Way to Work program. Four candidates from each country were selected to work as interns with some of the most exciting companies in the world. Once the internships wrap up in August, one of the 54 participants will be chosen to intern as ‘CEO of Adecco Group’ for an entire month, and will work directly with Adecco Group CEO Patrick De Maeseneire in Zurich, Switzerland.

After a rigorous application and interview process, Adecco Staffing US selected three college students and one recent graduate to participate in internships with some premier clients, including Honda of America Manufacturing, Inc., BMW of Manhattan, Inc., ANN INC. (the parent company of Ann Taylor and LOFT), and one of the largest financial services organizations in the country.

Now it’s time to introduce you to the talent! Do you think they have what it takes to run a Fortune Global 500 company with 31,000 employees in 60 countries around the world?

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POSTED IN: Way to Work Program | Leave a Comment

June’s jobs report shows widespread growth across industries

July 9, 2014 By

201302-wpe-post-headerSource: BLS June jobs report

In June, the United States generated 288,000 new jobs, making it the fifth straight month in which we’ve seen job gains of 200,000+. The positive news continued as the unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage points — dropping from 6.3% to 6.1%, which is the lowest we’ve seen since September 2008. Over the past year, the unemployment rate has declined by 1.4 percentage points and the unemployed persons by 2.3 million.

In May, job growth had continued to over 200,000 new jobs, improving upon March and April’s success. Revised numbers were released in June, showing that both April and May had seen growth of 29,000 more than previously reported. The May payroll number was revised from +217,000 to +224,000 and the April numbers were revised from +282,000 to +304,000.

This month, employment gains were widespread across sectors, and the professional and business services saw the largest increase, with an addition of 67,000 jobs. Temporary help services also continued its upward trend, gaining an average of 2.16 million jobs over the last year.

Employment gains were widespread across sectors with the highest gains led by professional and business services, retail trade and food services and drinking places. Here are some key sector highlights from the BLS “The Employment Situation – June 2014” jobs report:
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POSTED IN: In America, In your industry, Job Market Update | Leave a Comment

Using agile programming ideas in your IT recruiting

July 8, 2014 By

149134795I’ve led and been part of agile development teams for over a decade – and have been hiring developers for even longer.  Through both types of experiences I’ve been able to apply agile development ideas to IT recruiting, interviewing and screening high quality tech candidates. And now, I’d like to pass that experience along.

Let’s talk about agile programming

My introduction to agile programming was from Kent Beck’s eXtreme Programming books. If you haven’t read them, his core idea was that software development needs to embrace change, and he suggests that there are certain practices that are so helpful in the face of change, that they should be used in the extreme. Beck based his work on best practices, but many readers saw the ideas of pair-programming, unit-testing, simple designs, refactoring and continuous integration for the first time in his books.

Creating an agile IT recruiting process

Just like in programming, it’s important to be agile throughout the recruitment process. So, to follow Beck’s lead, I took a look at what was working in my personal recruiting process and tried to figure out how to increase its effectiveness by doing more of it.

In programming, the point of being agile is to react to change, but in recruiting, the point of being agile is to see more candidates. Rather than rushing towards filtering and only deeply interviewing a few candidates, I tried to figure out a quick way to get to know as many candidates as possible.
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POSTED IN: Engineering, Recruiting, Technology | Leave a Comment
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