John Zappe

John Zappe is the editor of The Fordyce Letter. He was a newspaper reporter and editor until his geek gene lead him to launch his first website in 1994. Never a recruiter, he instead built online employment sites and sold advertising services to recruiters and employers. Besides writing for ERE.net, John consults with digital content operations, focusing on the advertising side. Contact him at zappemedia@gmail.com.

Articles by John Zappe

HR Insights, Leadership

Survey Says Helping People, Not Profits, Is Primary Driver for HR

by on May 17, 2013, 9:05 AM  |  1 comment
HR is all about showing the executive team the value you bring.

I was chatting with some talent acquisition leaders at the recent ERE conference when I mentioned an innovative application being demo-ed by one of the vendors. It uses automated voice analysis to screen and help select customer service reps.

Almost instantly came OFCCP (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs) and EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) objections, and near unanimous declarations of opposition to the tool. This is before anyone knew much about it.

What reminded me of this conversation was a report I came across a while ago. HR professionals chose their career, the report says, primarily because they “want to help people grow and develop.” Next, and way down the scale, was business growth and development as a career choice driver. Read more…

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HR News & Trends, HR Technology

Tech Startups Worry They Won’t Be Able to Find the Talent They Need

by on May 15, 2013, 10:25 AM  |  No comments yet
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More technology start-ups will be looking to hire than at any time in the last four years, says Silicon Valley Bank, but they worry they won’t be able to find the talent they need.

Even as most leaders and founders of the firms surveyed by the bank for its annual Startup Outlook report say conditions in the U.S. are better this year than last, the number of them who report hiring talent is their biggest challenge has grown. Nine out of 10 executives report finding and hiring the talent they need is their biggest challenge.

The annual survey says 87 percent of the tech start-ups reported plans to add staff this year. That’s up four points from last year, and 14 points from the first survey conducted in 2010. Read more…

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HR News & Trends, Recruiting and Staffing

2013 College Grads Will Find a Job Market About as Tough as 2012

by on May 13, 2013, 12:15 PM  |  No comments yet
College graduates

With only days left before this year’s college seniors become alums, those who don’t already have jobs are going to find it as hard to find work as last year’s grads did.

And for those in the liberal arts, three different surveys of hiring managers and recruiting leaders recently found that employers are only planning slight — if any –  increases in the number of entry-level grads they bring on board.

Most striking about the surveys is that while they measured different aspects of hiring plans, and talked to different types of companies and employers, the bottom line was the same: entry-level jobs in a grad’s field are few. Read more…

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HR News & Trends

April Unemployment Numbers Show Economy is Still Growing, But Slowly

by on May 3, 2013, 9:55 AM  |  No comments yet
hiring

After a mediocre jobs report from ADP, and the government’s own anemic March report last month, economists and the financial markets were hoping today’s report on April employment would make it at least into six digits.

No worries. The report from the U.S. Department of Labor this morning said 165,000 new non-farm jobs were created last month, while the unemployment rate declined slightly to 7.5 percent, even as the size of the workforce ticked up slightly. (It is still lower than at any time in more than three decades.)

The government also adjusted up its initial numbers for both February and March, increasing the new job estimates by a combined 114,000. With the revisions, job growth in the first quarter totaled 618,000. That’s just slightly behind the 208,000 monthly average during all of last year. Read more…

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HR News & Trends, Recruiting and Staffing

Survey: LinkedIn Is the Most Popular Site For Social Recruiting

by on Apr 30, 2013, 11:27 AM  |  3 Comments
linkedin-logo

If you’re beginning to think every one is using LinkedIn to source candidates, you’re close to right.

Nearly every survey on source of hire or use of social media by recruiters shows LinkedIn to be a key part of the mix; often it leads all the listed social media sites. The company itself reported adding 2,400 customers in just the last quarter of 2012, bringing the total to 16,400 organizations under contract.

Now comes a Bullhorn survey to report that of the 160,000 registered users on Bullhorn Reach, 97 percent use LinkedIn to source candidates. That’s not as surprising as it might seem at first glance.  Read more…

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HR News & Trends, Recruiting and Staffing

Temp Hiring Expected to Increase Again in 2nd Quarter

by on Apr 22, 2013, 12:15 PM  |  No comments yet
temp-sticker

U.S. employers may be hesitant to hire permanent, full-timers, but they’re bringing on temporary and contract labor faster than they have in months.

The Palmer Forecast says demand for temporary workers will grow at a rate 5.9 percent faster this quarter than in the same period last year. And that follows a first quarter growth rate that was 6 percent ahead of 2012.

“Our forecast for the 2013 second quarter follows recent trends showing growth and indicating another increase in demand for temporary workers,” says Greg Palmer, founder and managing director of industry consultant G. Palmer & Associates. It’s the 14th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in hiring for temporary workers, he added. Read more…

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HR Technology, Recruiting and Staffing

LinkedIn Recruiter: A New Twist on Building Up a Talent Pipeline

by on Apr 10, 2013, 12:05 PM  |  1 comment
LinkedIN

Sporting a new look and with some new features — including a recommendation engine that ‘learns’ the kind of people a recruiter most want — LinkedIn Recruiter is getting an official relaunch this morning.

The redesign itself is an updating the classic LinkedIn Recruiter look to make it more consistent with the LinkedIn homepage redesign that was introduced last fall.

Parker Barril, Linkedin’s Talent Solutions head of product, unveiled the fresh, new LinkedIn Recruiter at a live and webcast user event — ConnectIn – in San Francisco. As he put it, “the consumerization of the enterprise,” the trend toward making products and services easier to use, “is influencing a new generation of products.” Read more…

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HR News & Trends

March Job Growth Only at 88,000 – Lowest Number Since Last June

by on Apr 5, 2013, 10:10 AM  |  No comments yet
Photo by istockphoto

It’s not going to be a good day for the global financial markets.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that March saw only 88,000 non-farm jobs added to the U.S. economy, the worst showing since last June and far below the 200,000 range economists were anticipating.

European financial markets dropped sharply after the Labor Department released the numbers, hitting a one-month low. In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 143 points and S&P 500 futures were down nearly 17 points in the minutes after the 8:30 a.m. EDT report. Read more…

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HR News & Trends, Recruiting and Staffing

Survey: Hiring Is Slowing Compared to 2012 – and the Trend Will Continue

by on Apr 4, 2013, 9:00 AM  |  1 comment
Hiring11

Hiring is slowing from last year, and the trend is predicted to continue at least through the rest of the first half of the year, says a new report from CareerBuilder.

The job board’s quarterly employment forecast says the U.S. should expect somewhat slower hiring through the end of June than it saw for the same period last year.

That comes on the heels of a first quarter that was slightly better than what CareerBuilder’s survey foresaw three months ago, but which was still down from 2012.

Of the more than 2,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals distributed across industries and company sizes polled for the report, 26 percent said they expect an increase in their full-time, permanent headcount this quarter. Last year, CareerBuilder forecast a 30 percent second-quarter increase, and later, found 34 percent actually did add staff. Read more…

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HR Technology, Recruiting and Staffing

Surveys Show That Employer Use of Video Interviewing is Growing Rapidly

by on Mar 28, 2013, 10:20 AM  |  1 comment
123RF Stock Photo

If you aren’t already using video for interviewing, what are you waiting for?

More and more employers all the time are finding that conducting at least an initial, live interview can save them both money and time, and can give them a better sense of their candidates than even an in-depth phone screen.

The heaviest users of live video interviews are the biggest employers; 80 percent of those with more than 10,000 workers have used or use video interviews. But even employers as small as 100 workers are giving it a try. Read more…

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