Strategic Recruiting 6: Lean Staffing -
Conclusion The
principles of lean staffing are borrowed directly from
Lean Thinking, a manufacturing approach designed to banish waste.
The idea is that eliminating wasteful practices is the source of
increased customer satisfaction. Some advanced recruiting organizations
have begun to utilize these ideas. Read More
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Reveille and Hyperbole:
Shares of job Web site operator Monster Worldwide Inc. recently rose after the federal government reported better-than-expected employment figures. Shares of Monster rose $1.28, or 3.1 percent, to $42.99 in afternoon trading.
Fujitsu Services, one of Europe's leading IT services companies, has won the top accolade of Overall HR Excellence at the HR Excellence Awards 2007.
Alcatel-Lucent and Synterra announced a strategic partnership to deploy Russia's first Universal WiMAX networks. This project will be conducted in cooperation with regional telecom operators to provide WiMAX access throughout the country.
StepStone, one of the world's largest providers of on-demand, talent management solutions, offering a portfolio of technology, software and online services that enable organisations to attract, recruit, develop, retain and manage the best available talent, announced continued business growth and momentum across the company in the second quarter, with more than 80 new Solutions customers signed during the period and a significant number of existing customers choosing to expand their use of StepStone products and services.
Deck Chairs:
Manny, Moe & Jack, announced the appointment of Troy E. Fee as Senior Vice President of Human Resources. Fee, who will join Pep Boys' executive committee of senior leaders, will be responsible for all aspects of Human Resources for the Company's almost 19,000 associates.
…
United Staffing Associates (USA) is proud to announce the hiring of Greg D. Elson as Director of Communication and Technology for the rapidly growing staffing agency.
…
You Should Know: On Labor day Who Are We Celebrating?
152.8 million
Number of people 16 and older in the nation's labor force in May 2007.
In the nation's labor force are 82.1 million men and 70.7 million women. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Employee Benefits
82%
Percentage of full-time workers 18 to 64 covered by health insurance
during all or part of 2005. (Source: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance
Coverage in the United States: 2005, at
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html)
77%
Percentage of workers in private industry who receive a paid vacation
as one of their employment benefits. In addition:
-- 76 percent of workers receive paid holidays.
-- 15 percent have access to employer assistance for child care.
-- 12 percent have access to long-term care insurance.
-- 71 percent have access to medical care, 46 percent to dental care, 29
percent to vision care and 64 percent to outpatient prescription drug
coverage.
(Source: Upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2008) Another Day, Another Dollar
$41,386 and $31,858
The 2005 annual median earnings for male and female full-time,
year-round workers, respectively. (Source: Income, Poverty, and Health
Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005, at
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html)
$1,421
Average weekly wage in New York County, N.Y., for the third quarter of
2006, the highest among the nation's 325 largest counties. Kent County,
R.I., led the nation in growth of average weekly wages the third quarters
of 2005 to 2006, with an increase of 18 percent. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cewqtr.pdf
Deep Release: MGA Increases Resource Power for Job Seekers Montgomery, Gray & Associates (MGA) announce a joint venture with Salary.com as well as the addition of new job trigger technology to identify jobs before they are advertised.
The most popular and comprehensive source for industry/job compensation and related intelligence, SALARY.com, and the leading career marketing and outplacement company, Montgomery, Gray & Associates (MGA), have entered into a joint venture partnership to assist job seekers. The co-branded website is now available for all job seekers at www.mgacareers.com
MGA has also developed a new and innovative "Job Trigger" Networking Technology to help job seekers identify job opportunities before they are advertised.
This technology also gives job seekers a tremendous networking competitive edge over others, to identify companies in the change and growth mode, to get in the door to the hiring managers, before others may even be aware of a job opportunity.
MGA's technology scans more than 25,000 sources of business information (management changes, company expansions, etc.) in real time, 24 hours/day, 7 days a week, to insure the most timely and accurate company and contact intelligence. This greatly accelerates and enhances a job seeker's networking leverage and resources.
Montgomery, Gray & Associates is headquartered in Princeton, NJ, with offices regionally in the Philadelphia area/Southeastern PA, Southern, Central, and Northern NJ, Florida, and affiliates nationwide. For over 16 years MGA has been the most successful career marketing company in the career transition industry, assisting job seekers to identify better positions, accelerate the job search, and maximize ones' marketability and compensation.
Deeper Release: Kijiji and the Curse of Craigslist
Online classifieds have been at once among the most disruptive of Internet sectors and the hardest to break into. Google and Yahoo set up initiatives there, only to see them grow ever more marginalized. Now eBay's Kijiji, having polished its act for more than two years outside the U.S., has set up shop on turf long dominated by Craigslist. The news got me thinking about why no one has been able to stop Craig Newmark and his skeleton-crew staff. There are some lessons there that apply to Internet business in general.
Kijiji's extremely low-key launch last week was greeted with pokerfaced analysis by more mainstream outlets and by snickering from some blogs. And there's reason for both. If eBay can interlace Kijiji with its marketplace business, it has a strong base from which to compete against Craigslist. On the other hand, eBay is now competing with itself - it owns a 25% stake in Craigslist - and that is just the kind of thinking that has gotten Yahoo in trouble.
One analyst, Ben Schachter of UBS, was optimistic, but only over the long term. I think he's right. There are short-term nuts to crack first, such as: How do you make money at this? If you charge a fee for listings, everyone will head straight to Craigslist, which is free. And if you rely on ads, then those ads are competing for attention with the people who put the listing on your site.
Moving into the online-classifieds business is a bit like being in a pickup bar around closing time: The opportunities that stand before you often look much more enticing than they may be in reality. We keep reading about how newspapers are starving to death because the Internet - especially online classifieds - keep eating their lunch. And their dinner and breakfast.
So it's reasonable to think, in a Tony Robbins kind of sunny logic: "If newspapers are losing money on classifieds, then someone must be making money - why can't that someone be me?" But the thing is, no one is really making all the money that the newspapers are losing. And there's one reason for it: Craig Newmark.
I like reading about Newmark in the business press, which simply doesn't get him. He's referred to with bizarre labels like socialist (whether Stalin-style socialism or Swedish-style socialism depends, I guess, on whether or not you're in print). Nevermind that Newmark has painstakingly nurtured his list into one of the most essential properties on the Web, succeeding where many others failed.
No, Newmark is an oddball because he leaves money on the table. If Wall Street were a church, that would violate a sacred commandment. Craigslist reportedly made $25 million last year, which is really nothing next to its potential. With one phone call to Goldman Sachs, Newmark could launch the biggest tech IPO of the next year or so and make enough money to built a rocket to fire into orbit, where it would bump into all the other rockets built by tech billionaires. But he doesn't! It's just so … so … socialist!
Actually, Newmark is not so much a radical as a hard-core traditionalist, harking back to the days when people created something on the Internet because they thought it would give other people what they needed. And that is the reason behind Craigslist's success, its secret sauce.
In the years since those early days, the Internet has become a big, honking, disruptive, money-creating machine. Not only was this inevitable, it's become necessary for people (like me) who make a living off the Internet. By holding out, Newmark isn't rebelling against Internet business as he is offering a key lesson. Imagine a line running between two poles, one of which is a Newmark-like devotion to the consumer and the other a desire to make money. There is overlap, of course, but not enough: Move too close to Newmark's user focus and shareholders get antsy; go too far in the other direction and your customers will look elsewhere. A smart company is constantly assessing where it stands on that line.
There are people at eBay who understand this, which is why the company may emerge as the first real competitor to Craigslist. That would be good for Craigslist, since it would spur it to better address some of its weaknesses: spam listings, fraud, unethical sellers. But to do that right, it would help for eBay to sell its stake back to Craigslist. At this point, the two are better off as competitors than friends.
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