You Should Know
Global:
SimplyHired Job Search Engine Receives Fox Interactive Funding
Om Malik reports that Fox Interactive Media and Foundation Capital have ventured into the jobs search engine market with $13.5 million in funding of SimplyHired.com. Back in February SEJ contributor and Local Social Search Guru Greg Sterling looked into SimplyHired, which he said is Simply Fascinating: (Search Engine Journal)

Murdoch's News Corp. Buys Stake In Jobs Site
ust the job: When teenagers spend half their youth perusing online hangouts like MySpace.com, it eventually becomes high time they detach themselves from their keyboards and get a job. Perhaps that's why Rupert Murdoch's team of strategists at Fox Interactive Media came to the conclusion that a stake in SimplyHired.com would fit in well with holdings like MySpace and video game network IGN Entertainment. It would also at least make a shiny new addition to parent company New Corp.'s digital media mantelpiece. (Forbes)

HR firms eyeing non-profit ops
The executive search industry is beginning to look at non-profit organisations for profit. With the development sector scaling up, the need for professionals to head these organisations has come to the fore. With high profile NPOs like the Bill Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation and Gere Foundation making their presence felt in India and running their ships like a well-oiled efficient engines, executive search firms are increasingly being mandated to find someone to run their organisation like a corporate. (NewsEdge)

Product Design for the Elderly
If we are what we use, then it seems the elderly people in today's society are cranky, stupid and tacky. Of course, looking at products made for the elderly really says more about what product designers and manufacturers think the elderly are. Even as technology has gotten smaller, more powerful and cheaper, the design aesthetic for the pre-Boomer generation is still exemplified by orthopedic shoes. But this won't last for long. As our society matures, and Baby Boomers start swelling the ranks of the "elderly," we will have to start coming up with better-looking, more useful products for seniors. As a result, the engineers who currently dominate design for the elderly must learn to work with designers, just as they have in the high-tech product world. (Gizmodo)

Labours not lost
Unions in pharmaceutical industry have always been considered a big stumbling block. Today however, with changing times and increased professionalism few seem to be interested in activities conventionally associated with unions, Sushmi Dey explores. In the words of Karl Marx, "Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally." Unions and communism was born as a defence mechanism to escape from the exploitation of the minor and inconspicuous working class.(Pharma)



Ganging Up on Google
A phalanx of foes -- from eBay to search rivals and Uncle Sam -- is lining up to keep the search giant in check  The family of Joan Miro had a bone to pick with Google. The search giant used some of his images in its Web-site logo on Apr. 20 -- until Miro's family very publicly complained Google was violating the Spanish artist's copyrights. (BusinessWeek)


India:
The ‘HR' files: BPOs turn spies in poaching battle
Employees are planted to gain access to database of employees and extract information on fresh applicants
Employees in some of India's leading BPOs are being planted as spies in rival firms to conduct specific jobs. Some are being sent for as short a period as a week to gain access to their database of employees and contact information of fresh applicants. After accomplishing their "mission," they return to their original workplace. One such incident recently unfolded at a Mumbai-based BPO organisation, Tracmail. A human resource (HR) employee of a large multinational captive BPO applied to Tracmail for a job in their HR department. After extensive interview sessions, Tracmail found that the intention of the applicant was to actually gain access to the company's confidential database of its employees. (EconomicTimes)



Global outsourcing biz creates record
The first quarter of 2006 has seen the global outsourcing industry posting a record performance. The segment saw $22.7 billion in total contract value (TCV) for contracts valued at $50 million or more, up 173% y-o-y, comprising a record number of 83 outsourcing transactions, according to TPI Index, a quarterly report on the state of the global outsourcing industry by sourcing advisory firm TPI Inc. (IndiaTimes)


Kuala Lumpur:
Oracle to host human capital seminar
Oracle Corp Malaysia Sdn Bhd is organising an industry-academic dialogue on April 25 at the Nikko Hotel here. The enterprise software giant said the dialogue is themed "Transforming Learning for Human Capital Development," and would be a platform for industry players and academicians to discuss and exchange ideas on the future of human capital development in Malaysia. (Star Online)

Pakistan:
Availability of high qualified human capital in IT distinguishes Pak: PM
The availability of high qualified human capital and reduced cost of doing business has made Pakistan an destination place for the IT software business, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said. The Prime Minister was talking to Sir Terence Mathews, Chairman, Wesley Clover and Mitel and March Network who called on him at Prime Minister's House on Monday. The Prime Minister said that the government being cognizant of the vital role played by emerging technologies in the development process today has placed development of education sector among its highest priorities. He said government is investing in human capital to prepared a critical mass of highly qualified people in key areas of science and technology to lead the development process. (Pakistan Online)

Uganda:
Country Soon to Jump Onto the Outsourcing Bandwagon
Since independence, Uganda has been actively engaged in the outsourcing industry, offshoring the refining and value-addition processes of most of her raw materials to Europe and America - to her disadvantage. This sad spectacle is, however, set to change and the country is set to realise its first positive benefits out of outsourcing. InterGlobal Services (IGS), a U.S. call centre operator in conjunction with the Busoga Kingdom are in the final stages of setting up a 150-seater world-class call centre in Jinja, 80 kilometres east of Kampala. (East African Business Week)

UK:
Tesco vows to distribute religious knowledge to UK workforce
Supermarket giant bids to extend its workforce's working knowledge of religions operating in UK. (PersonnelToday)

New 'IT Job Describer' tool should help employers develop staff professionalism
In response to the growing demand by employers for more relevant and business specific skills from their IT workforce, the British Computer Society (BCS) has launched IT Job Describer. This new professional solution has been developed to enable employers to enhance and raise standards within their IT teams. IT Job Describer, a browser based solution, developed in conjunction with BCS partner InfoBasis, is designed to help businesses create IT job descriptions, identify skills, training and experience against the recognized benchmark of the SFIAplus IT skills training and development standard. BCS believes the tool will give employers the building blocks for developing professionalism within their IT departments. (Public Technology)

Most top firms can erase pension gaps
 Most of Britain's largest firms are financially strong enough to erase pension deficits within a few years with their surplus cash, countering the idea of a crisis in the pension field, according to accountants KPMG. KPMG, which surveyed 66 companies from among the FTSE 100 index, said half of the firms were theoretically able to pay off their entire pension shortfalls with existing cash within a year, and more than 70 percent could do so in three years. (Reuters)

US:
News site group offers free franchises and five bucks a story
US local news and citizen journalism network Out2 Media is offering 500 free franchises of its online community newspaper business from today. Florida-based Out2 publishes 13,400 hyper-local online newspapers across the US combining professional reports with content submitted by users. Citizen reporters are paid $5 for each report and sites are supported by local advertising which, Out2 believes, is a market that still has potential for significant growth. Each site combines national stories with local relevance - a hybrid content model that is essential for community news sites, according to Out2 CEO Bob Leonard. "Newspapers can't do this because it doesn't make financial sense to let the public talk to the public - if they do that on their site they have a product that competes with the newspaper," he said. (Journalism.co.uk)

Report: Tech Jobs Tracking Up
After four years of net job losses in technology, the growth in 2005 indicates the industry has "turned the corner," American Electronics Association Vice President of Research and Industry Analysis Matthew Kazmierczak told TechNewsWorld. The American Electronics Association is reporting that the tech job market is getting hot again, with a net gain of 61,000 new good-paying technology gigs added to last year's pool of 5.6 million.  Although some U.S. states lost technology jobs while others gained, the overall increase marks an end to a long tech job skid. (TechNewsWorld)




Deep Release:
Surprises in Outsourcing Survey Conducted by the Accounts Payable Network
In contrast to popular thinking, companies that outsource are not necessarily sending jobs overseas, according to survey results released today by The Accounts Payable Network (TAPN), the leading accounts payable resource for financial professionals.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said their companies outsource some function, while just one-third say their companies off-shore some function, survey data shows.

"A lot of outsourcing is not off-shored, and the work actually stays in the United States," says TAPN CEO Phil Binkow. "Many companies have been outsourcing for some time, particularly tasks such as payroll and freight audit and payment."

Survey participants included 107 CFOs, controllers, AP managers and finance specialists around North America. For the survey, TAPN defined outsourcing as work done by a third party, whether within or outside of the survey participant's country. Off-shoring was defined by TAPN as work done in a country different from the participant's, either by a unit within the participant's organization or by a third party.

Payroll is the most commonly outsourced task (27 percent), followed by information technology responsibilities (25 percent), according to the survey results. Information technology was also shown as the most commonly off-shored (19 percent).

Companies often outsource discrete functions within an operating unit. For example, 32 percent of respondents said their AP departments outsourced recovery audit. Similarly, 30 percent of respondents said their AP departments outsourced scanning and imaging, followed by freight audit and payment (25 percent), data entry (23 percent) and travel and expense (18 percent).

Reducing and controlling operating costs is the primary, though not the only, driver behind outsourcing (51 percent) and off-shoring, (62 percent), participants indicated.

Almost half of the respondents (48 percent) noted that their organizations have created shared services centers (SSCs) to manage back-office and administrative tasks. Among respondents at organizations with SSCs, 72 percent reported that AP was handled by the center, followed by payroll (62 percent) and information technology services (57 percent).

Coming Soon

NYHR Week 06 New York Hilton April 25 - 28< 2006 $1,695 Register	Kennedy Information's Recruiting 2006 Conference and Expo May 10 - 11 Las Vegas $1,195 Register
HR Shared Services Summit Optimizing HR Shared Services to Achieve Excellence in Your Organization $1,999 May 22 - 24, 2006 · Sonesta Hotel - Coconut Grove, FL	NACE National Meeting & Expo Anaheim Marriott/ Anaheim Convention Center May 30 - June 2, 2006 More Info Register
3rd Annual Best Practices in Talent Management, Leadership Development and Succession Planning Conference 25th - 26th May 2006 Barcelona, Spain £2006.57 Register	Hunt Scanlon Advisors present Generating Higher ROI on Human Capital June 7, 2006 Chicago
OnRec Online Recruitment Conference Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre June 20 Westminster, London contact: Chris@OnRec.com More Info	2006 EREC 21-22 June 2006 ExCel London, UK Register
SHRM's 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition June 25-28 Washington, D.C. $1,350 Read more Register	OnRec Expo 2006 12-13 September 2006 Donald E. Stephens Convention Center Chicago Register
2006 Strategic HR Conference October 4-6, 2006 Westin Kierland Resort Phoenix, Arizona	Human Resource Executive's 9th Annual HR Technology® Conference Oct. 4-6, 2006 Navy Pier in Chicago, IL $!095 Register
2006 SHRM Workplace Diversity Conference October 16-18, 2006 Century Plaza Hotel and Spa Los Angeles, California	Hunt Scanlon Advisors present "Defining Leaders" New York city October 18 - 20, 2006 New York Palace
HR.com's Employers of Excellence 2006 October 25 - 27, 2006 Red Rock Resort Las Vegas, Nevada Register

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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