It was a week for quantitative easing and not just on Fed Treasury desks. Though private employers added more jobs than expected last month, the unemployment rate in “financial activities” jumped from 6.3% to 6.7% from August to October, as 22,000 more would-be financiers joined the hunt for work, according to federal data released this morning.
The chief executive of Adecco Group in the UK and Ireland says he is worried that recent trends are moving recruitment away from the all-important human element. Peter Searle told the Recruitment and Employment (REC) convention in London earlier this week: “The worry I have as we move forward is that social media, RPOs and managed service providers are all moving the recruitment process away from human beings.”
For a long time I have been a daily reader, disciple if you will, of Leo Babauta the author of the famous ZenHabits.net blog as well as some excellent books on creating habits to develop a fulfilling and simply productive life. Some of his early posts dealt with David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” or GTD. Leo eventually created his own version of the theory, “Zen to Done“, which offered a simpler way to achieve the same things…just as he did. This post in particular had a huge impact on my professional and personal life. I am not a naturally organized person, but this post pointed me in a direction that I follow today, two companies and one blog later. As recruiters we all manage a great deal of steps in the process. I hope you find this as useful as I did!
Why ‘What’s the Next Action’ is the Most Important Question
By Leo Babauta
Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits.
One of the fundamentals of GTD is to ask yourself, with any item that you are processing from your inbox (physical or email or voicemail), with any project that you have on your projects list: “What’s the Next Action?”
And it is this question, this simple little four-word question, that can be transforming for many people, even if they don’t realize it. Here’s why.
1. A project can sit on our to-do list for a long time without getting done. David Allen points out that that’s because you can’t DO a project — you can only do a physical action. You can’t do a website redesign or a home makeover. You can’t even do your taxes. Each of those is a multi-step project that should not be on your to-do list, but should be on a separate projects list (meant to simply keep track of projects, not to be used for daily action). So GTD defines projects as anything that takes more than one step — a much different definition than many of us use for the word “project”.
Allen tells us to look at that project, and ask ourselves, “What is the very next physicalaction that can be taken with this project?” With the above examples, I might start a website redesign by finding five other sites with looks that will inspire my new design. The action could be to simply bookmark (and print) five sites with inspiring designs. With a room makeover, I might first stop by the paint store and get a color pallet. For taxes, I could simply gather my 1099 forms, or download the new 1040 form. There could be a number of “next actions” but the key is to choose one and put that on your to-do list. That’s something you can do.
Medical Solutions has just earned its fifth consecutive certification from the Joint Commission for healthcare staffing companies. By demonstrating compliance with The Joint Commission’s national standards for health care quality and safety, Medical Solutions has earned the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval™ through the year 2012.
Korn/Ferry International (NYSE:KFY), a premier global provider of talent management solutions, today announced that Tom Rowe has joined the Firm as a Senior Client Partner and Head of the North American Insurance Practice. He will be based out of the Firm’s New York office.
International recruitment company Advantage Resourcing is pleased to announce the launch of new operations in Singapore, under its Advantage Professional division.
LinkedIn has taken its integration with Twitter a one step ahead. LinkedIn Signal is basically a stream of Twitter & LinkedIn Status update for LinkedIn users – at one place! It shows you what people are twitting OR “Statusing” (my version of “Updating Status”!) who are in your LinkedIn network. .
Do you subscribe? You should, we give away really cool things for free: Click to Subscribe
I have always been a big fan of LinkedIn and been using this tool for past 4 – 5 years in sourcing. However, in recent past they are shifting from Professional Networking to Commercial Job Board. In some way – they 
are breaching what they promised by replacing paid accounts to let people get direct access. This move totally goes opposite of basic concept of networking they incepted years back.
Anyways – it seems that they are reciprocating to these criticisms by focusing on innovation (Google Way!). It was a pleasant surprise when I saw LinkedIn Labs consolidate damage in some manner. They have recently released a series of beta tools including Signal, LI Instant etc. I would like to talk about LinkedIn signal in this post.
What is LinkedIn Signal?
LinkedIn has taken its integration with Twitter a one step ahead. LinkedIn Signal is basically a stream of Twitter & LinkedIn Status update for LinkedIn users – at one place! It shows you what people are twitting OR “Statusing” (my version of “Updating Status”!) who are in your LinkedIn network. However, this is only true if you have connected your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts wherein you can view your twits through LI.
Being in Beta version – I did subscribe to this and got an invite. On first stance, it looks really interesting and cool. Best thing about this is you can search and filter your streams according to various fields LinkedIn offers. However, it made me think what is the basic utility? Here’s what I came up with. I am sure these are starters. Creative folks around will add to this in big way.
Searching Twits/Status stream Real-Time
I tried searching “looking for job” and got 3k+ results. That’s not all – LinkedIn Signal also provides you a facility to filter through various fields like Company, Industry, Time Posted, Region, School and even hash tags.
OK – now this is interesting. What if I query “looking for job” and filter it through industry as “IT” and selects a specific location – it gets more interesting. Beauty over here is that you can filter those twits to LinkedIn filters – unique isn’t it? That’s where I think once these social networks joins hands to each other – you have one big POT. OK – let’s move ahead.
Linkedin Signal
Job Search – for Candidates
It has proven that Recruiters / HRs are one of the biggest communities to use Social Networking. I would not even look at a recruiter who doesn’t have a LI OR social networking account. Sometimes you get more jobs advertised on twitter than on job boards. As sometimes Hiring Managers / Team members also twits-in for jobs which are not advertised. Hence, LI Signal does make a very good platform to search jobs for candidates. Let’s see?
I queried-in “Account Manager” and got 3k+ results. Most of them will jobs and some of them might be candidates as well. Plus – filters make it really good to make our own choices as per industry, region, time-posted etc.
Cross Referencing
By combining twitter / LI – Signal gives a great platform to cross reference any prospective candidates. We can easily put candidate’s name on Signal to see what he is twitting OR what people are saying about him. This helps you to cross reference any candidate before putting him forward to interview OR even submit. See what he is up to on Twitter / LI…
Few other Advantages: –
Problems: –
Hence, it does not cover entire gamut; however a pretty good add-on tool to have in your armory.
I sincerely hope LinkedIn should promote their LABS in big way. Being an early-bird in Professional Networking they have captured a huge amount of followers and they are now commercializing their offering; minimizing usage for normal users. If they want to strike a right balance between commercializing and socializing – they have to continue finding new ways to attract with new offerings.
For now – enjoy what they have in BETA. It might go to their new discount offering soon
With over three-million registered users and counting, Twitter is a great tool to network and engage with both active and passive candidates. The value for recruiters is in using Twitter to find valuable information on potential candidates and as an effective recruitment marketing vehicle.
Success is often dictated by the experience of the staffing firm you choose. The growing importance of temporary staffing in the medical field has given locum tenens practitioners the benefit of working steadily and utilizing their knowledge and experience in an appropriate way. Healthcare recruiting firms are in dire need of locum tenens physicians and successfully recruit providers who seek viable options in pursuing their career interests.
RECENT TRENDS IN RETAIL RECRUITMENT – Retailing is a fascinating business, people-oriented, based on service to consumers. Is operates in an environment of useful products and services. Wherever you turn in retail, you can find something interesting to watch, explore, and often to buy. We live in an era that is rich in products and services for most people to buy.
The future success of staffing and recruiting firms depends on their ability to leverage constantly evolving technology to meet the changing needs of their clients.
Nicole Smartt, vice president of Star Staffing, has joined Lisa Rogelstad and Carla Shevchuk as co-owner of the staffing firm. Ms. Smartt joined the company in 2009 and successfully grew the division by adding a substantial client base and revenue. She has seven years of staffing and human resources experience.
Money and PayScale.com rate the top 100 careers with great pay and growth prospects.
Do you work in the legal profession? Do you have aspirations of doing so? Either way, you may be ready to find a new employer. Here are 10 reasons why registering with a good legal recruiter could be the easiest way to make the right move.
Lisa Proctor has been named President of Sanford Rose Associates® – Lake Lanier Islands, a new executive search firm within the Sanford Rose Associates® executive search network primarily focused on the Financial Services, Insurance, and Banking industries.
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