•  Australian job vacancies surprisingly fell 3.9% in seasonally adjusted terms in the three months through August, the second consecutive quarter on quarter fall in the leading indicator for employment growth.  Market economists had expected a slight rise of 0.4% in the August quarter after the Australian Bureau of Statistics job vacancies series fell 2.8% seasonally adjusted in the preceding quarter.  A fall of 4.7% in job vacancies in the private sector was the main contributor to the quarter on quarter slump, overshadowing a 2.7% increase in public sector vacancies, according to the ABS data published Thursday. (Yahoo)
   
• Power distributor Ergon Energy has launched a national recruitment drive pushing the advantages of living in the bush and offering pay and lifestyle incentives to attract skilled workers to regional Queensland. The push is in response to a tight labour market and is part of the state government-owned corporation's multi-billion five-year expansion plans to cater for an expected jump in electricity demand. (TheAge)

• SimplyHired indexes more than 4.5 million jobs from thousands of sources and provides filtered searches, ratings and other services for job hunters. In this podcast I talked with company CEO Gautam Godhwani about the job search site, which officially was launched last week.  Godhwani describes his site a Web 2.0 because of its "deep" filtering and partnerships with LinkedIn (for referrals), GoogleMaps, PayScale (salary data) and others. I guess Web 2.0 means integrating with other sources of content in this context. (Other views are here.) (ZDNet)
   

• If the United States were to add two billion low-wage workers, you'd expect that wages would fall across the board, right? Well, there is a famous theorem in international economics—the Stolper-Samuelson theorem—that says when a rich capital-abundant country (such as the United States) trades with a poor labor-abundant country (such as China), wages in the rich country fall and profits go up. The theorem's economic logic is simple. Free trade is tantamount to a massive increase in the rich country's labor supply, since the products made by poor country workers can now be imported. Additionally, demand for workers in the rich country falls as rich country firms abandon labor-intensive production to the poor country. The net result is an effective increase in labor supply and a decrease in labor demand in the rich country, and wages fall. (TomPaine.com)
   

• s Monster.com in danger of losing its job?  Earlier this year, when Hans Gieskes' son graduated from Connecticut College, Gieskes suggested that he post his resume on Monster.com, and start job hunting. Gieskes the Younger had a different idea. ''He said, 'Dad, I'm using SimplyHired,' because it gives him all the Monster listings, the listing from HotJobs, and all the other sites in one single search," Gieskes recalls. (Globe)
   
• My pals over at Jobster have given me an excuse to swim back up to the surface from my staffing abyss and do some blogging. It looks like Jason is back at it talking about what Jobster is all about. He recently did a webcast from the September ERE conference. Feel free to check out the link below to see what Jason has to say.  Here's the link to view the video: http://www.jobster.com/corp/erewebcast.jsp (Recruiting Revolution)
   
• So what if you're unhappy with your online profile according to the search engines? Weblogs are - simply put - the best way to develop your online profile. They're also a great way to cover up some silly posting to a mailing list you made a few years ago that Google has decided to rank as #1 for everyone to see. Start a weblog writing about your field of interest and make sure it has your full name in the title and on every page. When a recruiter Google's your name and your field of interest it's almost certain to appear in the top few pages of results. That is until everyone on the web catches onto this idea. (Mark Maunder)
   
• As Internetnews.com reported on Tuesday, analysts said that Google plans to add classified ads to its index. The article cites a report from research firm Classified Intelligence, which says that Google has asked classified advertising sites, including CareerBuilder and Adicio, for a direct feed of listings, that would facilitate the listing of classified ads for the search engine.(EditorsWeBlog)
   
• Forget recruitment ads, PR and job board posts. The most effective form of recruitment marketing that I have ever seen is direct, sign-in based marketing. It's why the ATS as CRM is the most important concept out there. (Andrew Marritt)
   
• To win the recruitment marketing game you need to demonstrate uniqueness, you need to create a desire, you need to tell a good story. We used a competition and our relationship with F1 to do that. What corporate resources do you have at your disposal that you could use to build relationships, build buzz and engage people? (Andrew Marritt)
   
• Gartner released its 2005 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, assessing the maturity, impact and adoption speed of 44 technologies and trends over the coming decade. From Corporate Blogging to Carbon Nanotubes and Speech Recognition to Service-Oriented Architecture, the Hype Cycle highlights the progression of an emerging technology from conception, to market over-enthusiasm, through a period of disillusionment, to an eventual understanding of the technology's relevance and role in a market or domain. As such it provides an invaluable aid to strategic planners who advise their organisations on the adoption of emerging technologies. (Gartner)
   
• "Fusion is only now coming to the newsroom, but the fusion has already taken place in the minds of the readers." Commenting on one of his most recent travails, the conversion of the Wall Street Journal's Asian and European editions to compact format, renowned newspaper designer Mario Garcia insists that newspapers need to integrate their online and print editions to suit the already changed habits of readers in a multimedia world. (EditorsWeBlog)
   
• Google is repeating Alta Vista's mistake that allowed Google to become number one in search, they're diversifying into everything, and neglecting search. It's as if they have become the executive who told Larry and Sergey: "As long as we're 80 percent as good as our competitors, that's good enough. Our users don't really care about search." (RSS)
   
• There were 84,283 hot spots worldwide at the end of the second quarter, said the report. The Asia-Pacific region is driving much of the growth, with hot spots growing 35 percent between second-quarter 2004 and second-quarter 2005 in the region. The fastest-growing Asia-Pacific Wi-Fi operator is Australia's Telstra Corp., with 711 hot spots at the end of the second quarter, said the report.(RCR)
   
• The Open Content Alliance just launched, and looks like a very large, ambitious project to aggregate and make available digital content. Structurally, it is a collaboration among some big, diverse, international players: Yahoo, Adobe, HP, the Internet Archive, the European Archive, the British National Archives, the University of California, the University of Toronto.  According to the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle, the philosophy behind Open Content is allied to open source, and to free access to material...(SmartMobs)
   
• Businesses have been slow to respond to the threats posed by weblogs and equally slow to capitalise on the opportunities they present, according to the results of a survey of public relations consultants released today. Nearly 60 per cent of respondents said that companies have not yet woken up to the risks, and 64 per cent said that a disgruntled employee or customer could cause significant damage to a firm's reputation by posting damaging remarks on blogs - the online message boards and diaries which have become so popular in the past year. A number of companies, including Ryanair and Land Rover, have been the subject of sustained, negative blogging campaigns, which have attracted the attention of the mainstream media. (TimesOnline)
   
• "Games will save the world by teaching the majority of people how to critically filter the increasing information they are exposed to." Gamers are critical-thinking goal-oriented people. Games are learning environments. The Yahoo Senior Director of Engineering Operations is founder of the World of Warcraft guild The Azure Blades (this was actually on their resume). Being a guild leader requires coordinating 100's of people all around the world, working toward common goals, balancing player needs and politics all while trying to win the game. Public Diplomacy and Virtual Worlds project at USC is looking at MMOG games as a method for acquiring public diplomacy skills. (FutureSalon)
   
• Many newspapers are currently struggling as they are facing declines in readership and also advertising. One way to win back readers could be to focus on local news - something that lies at the heart of newspapers', at least regional and local newspapers', competence. The idea is currently often cited and newspapers start to experiment with it. (EditorsWeBlog)

• Increased outsourcing opportunities globally will support margins in the short term, despite pressure from higher demand for skilled employees, Chief Executive S. Ramadorai told journalists on a visit to Singapore.  "Looking at the supply and demand of professionals, skilled capabilities that are needed, on balance, the margin impact is not substantial," he said. (ExpressIndia)
  

• Condoms to boost recruitment levels...The Slovak army has launched an advertising campaign on condoms in a bid to boost recruitment levels.  The adverts featuring a picture of a muscular soldier and the words ‘show yourself' are to appear on 27,000 packs of condoms to be distributed at recruitment centres across Slovakia, a defence ministry spokesman said. He said the army had been inspired by the neighbouring Czech Republic which devised a similar campaign last year. (Daily Times)

•  Looking for a more user-friendly job search system, Bentley College switched from MonsterTRAK to eRecruiting this past June. "It is much more user-friendly," remarked Caitlin Blasco, the Undergraduate Director for Career Services. Provided by Experience, Inc., eRecruiting provides a platform for companies to place job openings for Bentley College students. Already used by many area schools such as Boston College and Babson, students are able to see what opportunities are being provided and can apply for them online. (BentleyVanguard)
   
• A group that wants stronger immigration controls is causing controversy with a study that claims McDonald's disproportionately hires Hispanic workers in Connecticut.  State officials have declined to launch an investigation despite demands from Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control. (Newsday)
   
• The number of new jobless claims plunged last week, falling further than expected as Hurricane Katrina's contribution to unemployment receded. It was just one week's data, and some other signs were more problematic. But the report Thursday offered renewed hope that the underlying labor market is strengthening, and that the economic damage from the storms of the past month, while painful, will be temporary. (AJC)
   
• The idea of a part-time, high-status option for professors is one of the hottest innovations under consideration at universities around the country, to plug the leaky career pipeline that has undermined the progress of women in academia, a profession in which long work hours peak during childbearing years. Among doctoral degree recipients, men with young children are 50 percent more likely than women with young children to begin a job on the tenure track, the class of jobs that are an entree to a serious academic career and the possibility, five to 10 years down the road, of a lifetime, tenured appointment. (Boston.com)
   
• The number of Americans with broadband access reached 42% of the US population in August 2005, increasing 16% since the beginning of 2005. In January 2005, 103.8 mln Americans had broadband access; by August, that figure had grown to 120.8 mln. In August 2005, the share of active US Internet users connecting online via broadband from home reached an all-time high, at 61.3%, compared with 51.4% of active Internet users in August 2004. In August 2005, there were 86.1 mln Internet users accessing the Web through high-speed connections, marking a 34% gain over 64.1 mln during August 2004. (Neilsen)
   

• Rather than undergoing a continuous increase in immigrant levels as is commonly perceived, the United States experienced a sharp spike in immigration flows over the past decade that had a distinct beginning, middle and end. From the early 1990s through the middle of the decade, slightly more than 1.1 million migrants came to the United States every year on average. In the peak years of 1999 and 2000, the annual inflow was about 35% higher, topping 1.5 million. By 2002 and 2003, the number coming to the country was back around the 1.1 million mark. This basic pattern of increase, peak and decline is evident for the foreign-born from every region of the world and for both legal and unauthorized migrants. (Pew)
   

• After facing falling circulation in the last years, new managers at the Los Angeles Times plan to change the paper's reporting. They want more stories on celebrities and Hollywood, shorter stories, more regional reporting and more combination coverage linking the paper and its web site. (EditorsWeBlog)
   

• Richard Posner offers an economic analysis of the issue of elite professional women leaving the workforce (mainly to have children) from the point of view of the university/professional school. He states that given roughly half (see his post for numbers) of professional women from elite universities drop out of the career world, the full value of their places in the university is not achieved. This means that places didn't go to a number of (mostly) men, who would have more fully "productive careers." (Corante)
   

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